• Hazel Scott, virtuoso pianist and Black cultural icon, in an off the shoulder beaded gown, shot in profile. Her features are classically beautiful, like a Greek statue, but cut from granite, strong and confident.
    Music - Politics, Schmolitics

    The Second Vanishing of Hazel Scott

    October 14, 2025 - By 

    I had never heard of Hazel Scott before, her star fell into the shadows of McCarthyism before I was born. It’s a shame that she was forgotten the first time;  let’s resist her second disappearance. It may be time to fire up a PBS Passport membership to watch this documentary (and so much more). I wonder what Mom and Dad thought of her TV show; Pop did love Nat “King” Cole and other Black entertainers.  Sometimes it seems we Americans are forgetting who we were, which means we don’t know who we are, and we won’t recognize who we’ll become.…

  • Hot Off The Presses

    Wish I Were There: Pre-K Program In Colorado

    October 14, 2025 - By 

    This may look like playing in mud, but it’s pre-k “how to do school” set in an experimental farm study area. The kids have a mobile classroom that takes them all over the Grand Valley, in the shadow of the Colorado National Monument. Link: A Grand Junction pre-K in the midst of farm experiments teaches kids how to learn and parents how to support them

  • Sewing machine image with mantra “Keep calm and carry a sharp seam ripper”
    Sewing And Quilting

    Onesie Quilt Project

    October 10, 2025 - By 

    My niece wants me to make her a quilt using her daughter’s outgrown onesies. Leah Day has a practical, inexpensive method, but touching fabric fires off my dang “burning tinglies” that I’m fighting during my #strokerecovery. Also, I’m determined to engage her in the process; not doing hours of work while she sits on her phone or visits friends. So my niece will need to do a lot of the prep work with me, rather than simply dropping off a garbage bag full of onesies and skyving off. We’ll be working with sharps, so it’ll need to be just us…

  • Health And Fitness - Politics, Schmolitics

    Medicaid: What Is Able-Bodied?

    September 29, 2025 - By 

    A family member is on Medicaid, and could be affected by the #BigUglyBill and the murky definition of “able-bodied.” Also, a family friend is on Medicaid, but is moving to a Red state. I worry that both of them could lose health care in this era of “screw the poor and disabled.” Via Mother Jones: “The Deceptive Phrase Behind Trump’s Medicaid Purge” www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/medicaid-rfkjr-able-bodied-keyword-mother-tongue/

  • Dr Catty Lavelle consults with her patient, who was in the hospital and desperately needed a CAT scan
    Health And Fitness

    Stroke Of Luck: Friday May 16 2025 (from my written journal)

    July 2, 2025 - By 

    The following is from my written journal… as part of my occupational therapy, I’m supposed to try keyboarding. There may be typos, even using a full size keyboard. On Sunday night May 11, 2025, I had a stroke.  Full stop. I was lying on the couch, watching videos on my iPhone, holding it in my left hand. Around 9pm, my hand kept flopping over and I had to hold it up with both hands. It irritated me so I decided to go upstairs to go to bed.  Standing up, I was a little unsteady, and really had to dig deep to…

  • Politics, Schmolitics

    El Rey Trompo Has $1B In Pro Malo Legal Work In The Bag

    April 12, 2025 - By 

    Post: These are just the latest legal firms to bend the knee to Trump, the king of spin and deceit. Now the Deputy Attorney General of the United States can call on his former law firm for free legal work…for evil, not the public good. And also bar Justice Department lawyers from American Bar Association events.     Four of the firms – Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett– agreed to pledge $125m each in pro bono work to causes backed by the Trump administration. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft said it would…

  • Politics, Schmolitics

    Grade D for DOGE:  Email Terminates NEH Grant For Archeology Southwest

    April 12, 2025 - By 

    Post: How one NEH-funded group found out their grant was terminated – in an a poorly written, bellicose email that looked like spam.   Dear Friends, Well, last Thursday, April 3, after I wrote to you, we received a uniquely sourced, strangely formatted, poorly written e-mail. Ostensibly (see below) from the federal government, it was a notice of termination for our recently awarded $350,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant that funds meaningfully important expansions of the cyberSW […] Link: New Mexico Delegation Reintroduces Chaco Protection Legislation – Archaeology Southwest