Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 12
June 20, 2015
Sunshine and #40
The yellow striped shorty socks are finally off the needles:
The lightest stripes are actually white, but picture taken late at night...will try for an outdoor shot later and add it.
This is the 40th pair of socks I've knit, from the night I cast on the first one, January 28, 2012. I've learned a lot. I'm still learning. This pair has mostly Cascade 220 and Cascade 220 Superwash yarns in it, but the blue stripe at the top and the lighter blue stripe at the toe are both Bernat Sesame yarns from my mother's stash. The brighter yellow-gold (the Cascade 220 Superwash yarn) was purchased for socks for my son, but it turned out he wasn't that interested. The slightly darker caramel color stripes were on sale as a dyeing error and I thought the color looked "interesting." I still think it looks interesting and it will be used again. The yarn ends are still shaggy inside--not yet woven in--because I wanted a picture of them right after getting the toes together. Boosts my spirits.
Of the 40 pairs I've knitted, 3 were custom knit for friends, and one pair knit for myself was given to another friend for her husband to try on, and ended up going home with her daughter. A number have worn out. This is the 10th pair of shorty socks (all still whole) and there are 19 left in service of the 26 regular pairs knitted and kept for myself.
Pairs completed this year (including 2 pair started last year): 6 regular, 3 shorty. 4 pairs of regular socks (1 for friend) and all the shorty pairs were begun and finished so far this year. I need to keep up the pace, as some of the oldest socks are at or over their durability limit.
The lightest stripes are actually white, but picture taken late at night...will try for an outdoor shot later and add it.
This is the 40th pair of socks I've knit, from the night I cast on the first one, January 28, 2012. I've learned a lot. I'm still learning. This pair has mostly Cascade 220 and Cascade 220 Superwash yarns in it, but the blue stripe at the top and the lighter blue stripe at the toe are both Bernat Sesame yarns from my mother's stash. The brighter yellow-gold (the Cascade 220 Superwash yarn) was purchased for socks for my son, but it turned out he wasn't that interested. The slightly darker caramel color stripes were on sale as a dyeing error and I thought the color looked "interesting." I still think it looks interesting and it will be used again. The yarn ends are still shaggy inside--not yet woven in--because I wanted a picture of them right after getting the toes together. Boosts my spirits.
Of the 40 pairs I've knitted, 3 were custom knit for friends, and one pair knit for myself was given to another friend for her husband to try on, and ended up going home with her daughter. A number have worn out. This is the 10th pair of shorty socks (all still whole) and there are 19 left in service of the 26 regular pairs knitted and kept for myself.
Pairs completed this year (including 2 pair started last year): 6 regular, 3 shorty. 4 pairs of regular socks (1 for friend) and all the shorty pairs were begun and finished so far this year. I need to keep up the pace, as some of the oldest socks are at or over their durability limit.
June 18, 2015
Charleston, SC and Me
I've never been to Charleston, South Carolina. I never intend to go there. So aside from the rather obvious point that they celebrate their past (which includes a solid history of supporting the Confederacy, including the state capitol flying a Confederate flag), and the many-many pictures of pretty old houses and Spanish-moss-draped trees and colorful gardens, including on some PBS shows about gardening, I don't know Charleston except when something there hits the news.
Which it has in spades lately. I had seen the video of the black man shot in the back by a police officer who later claimed to have been in fear of his life. (Ritual disclaimer: it's not just Charleston, S.C. Texas has its own out-of-control white cops and right-wing gun nuts, a plentiful supply. I've already blogged about the racist white cop in McKinney, Texas, screaming abuse at unarmed black teenagers at a pool party and throwing a young girl on the ground and kneeling on her.) But now Charleston has the church shooting. The young white guy who shoots and kills black men and women in a church during a prayer meeting, after going in and sitting with them awhile (with the intent of killing them.) And people who are asking why, and how does this happen (all those people are white--the black people know exactly why it happens, has happened, and will happen again until white people quit doing it, raise kids who absolutely will not do it, raise grandkids who absolutely will not do it...But we still have actively, eagerly racist white parents and grandparents. And I can say from personal experience that arguing with them does not change their mindset.) Some white people are wondering if maybe the shooter wasn't a white guy, really (you can practically hear them praying for it to be a Hispanic guy with a grudge, a middle-Eastern terrorist trying to stir up race hatred, some other foreign terrorist, anyone but an ordinary young white guy who just hated black people.)
Now he's in custody: Dylan Roof, a 21 yo with previous police arrest. Young white guy. Here's The Daily Beast's background info on him. "Strong conservative beliefs", check. As in, hates people of color, thinks they're all criminals. "Southern pride," check. As in "hates people of color and thinks the Confederates should have won the Civil War and open slavery of African Americans should still exist." Family buys him a .45 pistol for his birthday even though he's known to use drugs and wears racist slogans, check. As in the song from South Pacific, he was "carefully taught" to be an angry racist, a Confederate apologist, a "south will rise again" gun nut assassin.
His claim, quoted in this article (and probably taken from the witness he left alive to testify to why he did it) is "“I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.” Right. There it is, the old lie that has been used to justify suppression of people of color from the beginning of slavery in this country...black men are all rapists if not chained down, and black people are "taking over." Taking power that belongs by nature to white men. Possibly even gaining power over some white people--as police officers, as elected officials, as officers in the military, as--and this is what has stuck so hard in the craw of white supremacists--as President of the United States. Every vile jest about the President and his wife, every vicious attack, every threat, comes from that old lie, that white people should have the power and black people must not because they will rape white women. (And women are "ours"--belong to white men. That's another rant. Later.)
Dylan Roof and his kind are the white population's responsibility. Black people didn't make him into a murderer, someone who would walk into a church and kill the people worshipping there. "Family values" that include racism and bitterness and anger gave him his excuses, his reasons, his weapon. "Conservative values"--white conservative values--that paint people of color as lazy, worthless, violent, natural criminals, unredeemable--and "Southern pride" with its emphasis on the injustice of the Civil War and the myth of white superiority and the need to protect white women--those gave him reasons, excuses, and what he perceived as a mission. He's not crazy. He's the kind of domestic terrorist, the idealistic assassin, that comes out of that stew of hatred, mythology, lies, and self-pity again and again. There is social support behind him; he may have acted alone (though his parents bought him the gun) but he knew he had an approving, supportive milieu in which to develop these ideas, nurture them, hug them to himself.
And right there is the white population's responsibility. We leave children to grow up being trained to be racists, and some of them trained to be racist killers. We let adults' racist outbursts go unchallenged. We are silent. Not all of us, no...but too many. Too many of us are scared. But are we as scared as Tamir Rice in the last moments of his life when he, a 12 yo boy, was shot by an out of control white policeman? Are we as scared as those men and women in the Mother Emmanuel AME church when Roof pulled out his gun and started shooting? Do we have any excuse for being that scared, other than...we just aren't very brave?
Some of you reading this may be on the other side. You may be proud of Roof. You may be teaching your children that black people are criminals, racists, deserve to die, must "go." Your vision of America is an all-white, right-wing, facist state where nobody gets to disagree with you. I'm not talking to you; you're beyond hope and I feel about you the way you feel about black people. Worse, even. You're a disgrace to your race.
I'm talking to my fellow white people who consider themselves moderate, who are maybe conservatives but aren't, in their minds, racist, who are maybe Southerners who aren't, in their minds extreme in their Southern pride (great-grand-daddy was so brave, you know) and think maybe the Confederate flag is a "freedom of speech" issue. I'm talking to you who don't want to be rude, don't want to make a fuss, don't want to upset your spouse, in-laws, neighbors, boss, co-workers, etc., when they make racist comments, when they defend racist attitudes, when they expect you to laugh at their jokes and you don't want to but you also don't want to be "PC." To white liberals who are liberal in silence because Twitter mobs are unpleasant, your family doesn't need the hassle, and so on. Enough with that.
Yeah, it took me awhile too, esp in the years right after my military service because I was getting the post-Nam bashing of former service people if I opened my mouth about anything (and sometimes when I didn't say anything) and basically curled into a defensive posture of not giving a damn publicly for (admittedly) too long. I'm not proud of that. But here's the thing, fellow white folks: most of the time confronting your friends on racist comments and jokes does not get you beaten up. You can go that far. You can tell your brother-in-law, your uncle, your best friend, to knock it off. That you don't like those comments, that the jokes aren't funny, that (if they're FoxNews watchers) they're factually wrong. You can tell the guy at church who thinks nobody's offended by flying a Confederate flag that you're offended, that the flag has never stood for liberty and justice for all. You can tell your friend that they have a right to be proud of their ancestor who fought bravely in the Civil War, but that the cause was vile. You can correct misstatements when you see or hear them (yes, the Civil War WAS about slavery; the VP of the Confederacy said so at the start of the war.) You can move on to contronting the racists in print (or e-format), in letters to the editor, in email, on blogs, on Twitter and other social media. Yes, there's blowback. So? You thought defending the country involved no risk? If your excuse is that you don't have a big enough platform--use the platform you have. If it's one other person you talk to--that's a start. Break the silence.
The victims of this racist terrorism cannot stop another occurrence. They're dead. The potential victims of the next attack cannot prevent attacks as long as there are hate-filled white people who want them dead. White people are the only ones who can put pressure on other white people to change, and use sufficient force (if persuasion isn't enough) to make change happen. White people have the resources, both economically and politically. If in fact (as I believe and hope) most white people are appalled by such things--if they want the violence against black people and other people of color to stop--then they--we--are going to have to quit hiding behind the excuses we've been using. We're going to have to swallow all the easy excuses we make for not speaking out, for not arguing, for not answering back, for letting our white leaders wimp out. Because that's what it is--wimping out. We need to get over that. We need to accept the responsibility that history has given us. We need to make healthy change happen.
If you reading this are a person of color, my apologies to you, to the victims, to the families who lost their loved ones, to the church for the loss of its pastor, to voters for the loss of the man they elected...though, as you already know, apologies alone don't get the job done.
Comments are closed.
Which it has in spades lately. I had seen the video of the black man shot in the back by a police officer who later claimed to have been in fear of his life. (Ritual disclaimer: it's not just Charleston, S.C. Texas has its own out-of-control white cops and right-wing gun nuts, a plentiful supply. I've already blogged about the racist white cop in McKinney, Texas, screaming abuse at unarmed black teenagers at a pool party and throwing a young girl on the ground and kneeling on her.) But now Charleston has the church shooting. The young white guy who shoots and kills black men and women in a church during a prayer meeting, after going in and sitting with them awhile (with the intent of killing them.) And people who are asking why, and how does this happen (all those people are white--the black people know exactly why it happens, has happened, and will happen again until white people quit doing it, raise kids who absolutely will not do it, raise grandkids who absolutely will not do it...But we still have actively, eagerly racist white parents and grandparents. And I can say from personal experience that arguing with them does not change their mindset.) Some white people are wondering if maybe the shooter wasn't a white guy, really (you can practically hear them praying for it to be a Hispanic guy with a grudge, a middle-Eastern terrorist trying to stir up race hatred, some other foreign terrorist, anyone but an ordinary young white guy who just hated black people.)
Now he's in custody: Dylan Roof, a 21 yo with previous police arrest. Young white guy. Here's The Daily Beast's background info on him. "Strong conservative beliefs", check. As in, hates people of color, thinks they're all criminals. "Southern pride," check. As in "hates people of color and thinks the Confederates should have won the Civil War and open slavery of African Americans should still exist." Family buys him a .45 pistol for his birthday even though he's known to use drugs and wears racist slogans, check. As in the song from South Pacific, he was "carefully taught" to be an angry racist, a Confederate apologist, a "south will rise again" gun nut assassin.
His claim, quoted in this article (and probably taken from the witness he left alive to testify to why he did it) is "“I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.” Right. There it is, the old lie that has been used to justify suppression of people of color from the beginning of slavery in this country...black men are all rapists if not chained down, and black people are "taking over." Taking power that belongs by nature to white men. Possibly even gaining power over some white people--as police officers, as elected officials, as officers in the military, as--and this is what has stuck so hard in the craw of white supremacists--as President of the United States. Every vile jest about the President and his wife, every vicious attack, every threat, comes from that old lie, that white people should have the power and black people must not because they will rape white women. (And women are "ours"--belong to white men. That's another rant. Later.)
Dylan Roof and his kind are the white population's responsibility. Black people didn't make him into a murderer, someone who would walk into a church and kill the people worshipping there. "Family values" that include racism and bitterness and anger gave him his excuses, his reasons, his weapon. "Conservative values"--white conservative values--that paint people of color as lazy, worthless, violent, natural criminals, unredeemable--and "Southern pride" with its emphasis on the injustice of the Civil War and the myth of white superiority and the need to protect white women--those gave him reasons, excuses, and what he perceived as a mission. He's not crazy. He's the kind of domestic terrorist, the idealistic assassin, that comes out of that stew of hatred, mythology, lies, and self-pity again and again. There is social support behind him; he may have acted alone (though his parents bought him the gun) but he knew he had an approving, supportive milieu in which to develop these ideas, nurture them, hug them to himself.
And right there is the white population's responsibility. We leave children to grow up being trained to be racists, and some of them trained to be racist killers. We let adults' racist outbursts go unchallenged. We are silent. Not all of us, no...but too many. Too many of us are scared. But are we as scared as Tamir Rice in the last moments of his life when he, a 12 yo boy, was shot by an out of control white policeman? Are we as scared as those men and women in the Mother Emmanuel AME church when Roof pulled out his gun and started shooting? Do we have any excuse for being that scared, other than...we just aren't very brave?
Some of you reading this may be on the other side. You may be proud of Roof. You may be teaching your children that black people are criminals, racists, deserve to die, must "go." Your vision of America is an all-white, right-wing, facist state where nobody gets to disagree with you. I'm not talking to you; you're beyond hope and I feel about you the way you feel about black people. Worse, even. You're a disgrace to your race.
I'm talking to my fellow white people who consider themselves moderate, who are maybe conservatives but aren't, in their minds, racist, who are maybe Southerners who aren't, in their minds extreme in their Southern pride (great-grand-daddy was so brave, you know) and think maybe the Confederate flag is a "freedom of speech" issue. I'm talking to you who don't want to be rude, don't want to make a fuss, don't want to upset your spouse, in-laws, neighbors, boss, co-workers, etc., when they make racist comments, when they defend racist attitudes, when they expect you to laugh at their jokes and you don't want to but you also don't want to be "PC." To white liberals who are liberal in silence because Twitter mobs are unpleasant, your family doesn't need the hassle, and so on. Enough with that.
Yeah, it took me awhile too, esp in the years right after my military service because I was getting the post-Nam bashing of former service people if I opened my mouth about anything (and sometimes when I didn't say anything) and basically curled into a defensive posture of not giving a damn publicly for (admittedly) too long. I'm not proud of that. But here's the thing, fellow white folks: most of the time confronting your friends on racist comments and jokes does not get you beaten up. You can go that far. You can tell your brother-in-law, your uncle, your best friend, to knock it off. That you don't like those comments, that the jokes aren't funny, that (if they're FoxNews watchers) they're factually wrong. You can tell the guy at church who thinks nobody's offended by flying a Confederate flag that you're offended, that the flag has never stood for liberty and justice for all. You can tell your friend that they have a right to be proud of their ancestor who fought bravely in the Civil War, but that the cause was vile. You can correct misstatements when you see or hear them (yes, the Civil War WAS about slavery; the VP of the Confederacy said so at the start of the war.) You can move on to contronting the racists in print (or e-format), in letters to the editor, in email, on blogs, on Twitter and other social media. Yes, there's blowback. So? You thought defending the country involved no risk? If your excuse is that you don't have a big enough platform--use the platform you have. If it's one other person you talk to--that's a start. Break the silence.
The victims of this racist terrorism cannot stop another occurrence. They're dead. The potential victims of the next attack cannot prevent attacks as long as there are hate-filled white people who want them dead. White people are the only ones who can put pressure on other white people to change, and use sufficient force (if persuasion isn't enough) to make change happen. White people have the resources, both economically and politically. If in fact (as I believe and hope) most white people are appalled by such things--if they want the violence against black people and other people of color to stop--then they--we--are going to have to quit hiding behind the excuses we've been using. We're going to have to swallow all the easy excuses we make for not speaking out, for not arguing, for not answering back, for letting our white leaders wimp out. Because that's what it is--wimping out. We need to get over that. We need to accept the responsibility that history has given us. We need to make healthy change happen.
If you reading this are a person of color, my apologies to you, to the victims, to the families who lost their loved ones, to the church for the loss of its pastor, to voters for the loss of the man they elected...though, as you already know, apologies alone don't get the job done.
Comments are closed.
June 15, 2015
A Red Sock Day
Yesterday, actually. I thought I'd finish these last week, but didn't until Sunday afternoon, when I purse-stringed the toes, sewed in loose ends, etc.
These socks were cast on early Sunday morning at KeyCon in Winnipeg, but had only some of the cuff worked when I got home--the other red pair, started before the trip, was finished on the train an hour or so before it reached the station.
Why, you may wonder (or not <G>) does the new pair have a pale stripe?
Here's why:
This is the first of the two pairs...they're less than a month apart in age, with these having been worn only a few times--not enough to "show" when I'm washing them. Despite the apparent difference in color (it's a difference in lighting) they were made with the same yarn, same dye lot. And I did not want to confuse the pairs. So the second has a stripe. Since I have an overage of red yarn (all the same manufacturer, same color number, and more of them the same dye lot) I will be knitting quite a few red socks, and decided to mark the pairs with a toe stripe--each pair will have a different color toe stripe and if I run out of colors I'll start making two-row stripes, not one-row stripes for the second round. The older red socks show enough wear that I can tell them from the new ones.
And now I'm onto the second sock of the yellow-striped shorty pair, almost to the heel turn. The first sock is almost to the toe decreases, but I'm going to catch up with sock #2 so I can finish them at the same time.
These socks were cast on early Sunday morning at KeyCon in Winnipeg, but had only some of the cuff worked when I got home--the other red pair, started before the trip, was finished on the train an hour or so before it reached the station.
Why, you may wonder (or not <G>) does the new pair have a pale stripe?
Here's why:
This is the first of the two pairs...they're less than a month apart in age, with these having been worn only a few times--not enough to "show" when I'm washing them. Despite the apparent difference in color (it's a difference in lighting) they were made with the same yarn, same dye lot. And I did not want to confuse the pairs. So the second has a stripe. Since I have an overage of red yarn (all the same manufacturer, same color number, and more of them the same dye lot) I will be knitting quite a few red socks, and decided to mark the pairs with a toe stripe--each pair will have a different color toe stripe and if I run out of colors I'll start making two-row stripes, not one-row stripes for the second round. The older red socks show enough wear that I can tell them from the new ones.
And now I'm onto the second sock of the yellow-striped shorty pair, almost to the heel turn. The first sock is almost to the toe decreases, but I'm going to catch up with sock #2 so I can finish them at the same time.
June 11, 2015
Apparently, this is "Knitting Posts Day"
And "If you talk about a problem long enough, you may figure out how to solve it." The yellow-striped sock that was laddering badly at the ends of rows starting about five or six rows back? The one I posted about earlier today, bemoaning the need to rip back all those rows?
It's fixed, and without ripping everything back. When I looked again, both at it and at the pictures, I realized that the problem existed only in that one small area, and that it looked, despite the correct stitch count on the needles, exactly like a stitch had taken off for the South Pole. What if, I said to myself, I could just drop a few stitches off one needle, let them run down that far, and then rebuild vertically? Surely it's worth a try, I said to myself, instead of frogging the whole yellow stripe and the white below it. So I did. And in violation of all reason, given the right number of stitches on the needles, there was a nub of a stitch...and by working some stitches back up, and grabbing not only every obvious ladder but anything that looked remotely loose, including the sides of oversized stitches, things came back in line (mostly) on their own. Connected again, and somewhat whonky looking, but not BAD. Mostly, it ws the stitches knit with two yarns where stripes began and ended, which are always large anyway. So I knit another row of the yellow to firm things up and see.
There was still some slack somewhere and I could not see it (you really don't want to hear about the peculiarities of my vision as the result of age, astigmatism, myopia, a new lens in one eye and a cataract in the other...but there, you just did) so I turned savage, made another stitch out of something only slightly too long, and then knit that together with the stitch next to it. Had to do that again two rows later, but now...now there's some "scar tissue" of the fixup, followed by nice smooth knitting, including two stripe transitions that behaved perfectly. From other striped socks where other things went awry, I know that after a few wearings wonky bits on the bottom of the sock felt up, flatten out, and look good, so now that there's no structural weakness, I'm happy with it. I can't get a picture of the inside now (where the trouble showed best) because I'm probably 10 rows beyond it, but there will be a picture later, when it's done and I can turn it inside out more easily.
It's fixed, and without ripping everything back. When I looked again, both at it and at the pictures, I realized that the problem existed only in that one small area, and that it looked, despite the correct stitch count on the needles, exactly like a stitch had taken off for the South Pole. What if, I said to myself, I could just drop a few stitches off one needle, let them run down that far, and then rebuild vertically? Surely it's worth a try, I said to myself, instead of frogging the whole yellow stripe and the white below it. So I did. And in violation of all reason, given the right number of stitches on the needles, there was a nub of a stitch...and by working some stitches back up, and grabbing not only every obvious ladder but anything that looked remotely loose, including the sides of oversized stitches, things came back in line (mostly) on their own. Connected again, and somewhat whonky looking, but not BAD. Mostly, it ws the stitches knit with two yarns where stripes began and ended, which are always large anyway. So I knit another row of the yellow to firm things up and see.
There was still some slack somewhere and I could not see it (you really don't want to hear about the peculiarities of my vision as the result of age, astigmatism, myopia, a new lens in one eye and a cataract in the other...but there, you just did) so I turned savage, made another stitch out of something only slightly too long, and then knit that together with the stitch next to it. Had to do that again two rows later, but now...now there's some "scar tissue" of the fixup, followed by nice smooth knitting, including two stripe transitions that behaved perfectly. From other striped socks where other things went awry, I know that after a few wearings wonky bits on the bottom of the sock felt up, flatten out, and look good, so now that there's no structural weakness, I'm happy with it. I can't get a picture of the inside now (where the trouble showed best) because I'm probably 10 rows beyond it, but there will be a picture later, when it's done and I can turn it inside out more easily.
A Nifty Knitting Book
Knitters and geeky-knitters should both be glad that Joan of Dark has another book out, Geek Knits, published by St. Martin's Press and available at Barnes & Nobel and other fine stores, Amazon.com, etc. For more information on price & where to get it, check out her website at
http://joanofdark.com/books
In addition to all the patterns, the pictures include projects modeled by some well-known figures in science fiction....for example, G.R.R. Martin, with a dire wolf on his shoulder...
Then there's the Captain America knit dress for women to reveal their inner hero status...more practical than a bronze bra.
Or, for Harry Potter or Mythbuster fans, this Muggle Artifact Back Cover modeled by Adam Savage
Very techie, with sine waves, electrical coils, and other interesting designs relating to technology.All photos here courtesy of Kyle Cassidy.
http://joanofdark.com/books
In addition to all the patterns, the pictures include projects modeled by some well-known figures in science fiction....for example, G.R.R. Martin, with a dire wolf on his shoulder...
Then there's the Captain America knit dress for women to reveal their inner hero status...more practical than a bronze bra.
Or, for Harry Potter or Mythbuster fans, this Muggle Artifact Back Cover modeled by Adam Savage
Very techie, with sine waves, electrical coils, and other interesting designs relating to technology.All photos here courtesy of Kyle Cassidy.
Mother Was Right...Again.
Many years ago, when I was a child, my mother pointed out (repeatedly!) that the first thing to do after making a mistake was admit it. Because if you didn't admit your mistake, you'd just keep on making the same one, and whatever you'd been doing would be ruined. "Admit it, then learn to fix it, then learn how not to make it again, and you won't have to be afraid of trying new things because you 'might make a mistake.'"
Don't you kind of cringe when your mother is STILL right, even after she's been dead for 25 years? But she is, and admitting it is the first step to getting it.
Which leads up to this:
This is the first sock in a pair of shorty socks, one of the summer socks to wear while biking. The heel's been turned; I'm on the foot. Stripes change at the back and bottom of the food, and though everything was fine for awhile, experienced knitters will notice serious laddering problems on the left of the sock image. Here's a closeup:
I don't know why the laddering started...it almost looks like a dropped stitch even, but the stitch count on the needles is correct--so no droppage. But my mistake was thinking (twice) that I'd fixed the earliest laddering and going ahead without looking on the inside of the sock, where clearly no fix had happened. Until the moment the widening rungs of the ladder made it painfully clear. For non-knitters, look at all those little bumps...the "purl bumps" running along side by side and evenlytoward the bottom of this image. That's how it's supposed to look. A little roughness (where stitches were taken with two yarns while changing color) is normal--large bicolored bumps, for instance--and short "stitches" running vertically across a stripe in another color are intentional. But there shouldn't be straight strands running horizontally or diagonally between the regular bumps to the bottom and the regular bumps to the top of this image. And there are.
The only way to fix it at this point is to rip it back to before the first ladder and try again. Oh, sure, I could take a strand of yarn, run it from side to side with a yarn needle, yanking the two sides together and stitch them down--making a really bulky line under my foot and destroying the flexibility of a knitted fabric in the process. But that's not the real fix. The real fix is to rip back past the laddering, get the good stitches onto needles, and this time knit it correctly. It would help if I understood what I'd done wrong. But I don't. I'll just have to be very, very careful. And it won't be a quick fix, since I'm not at all sure I can get those stitches back once I've ripped back that far...and I don't know how that yellow yarn will behave when it's been ripped back. Some yarns hate it and go all fuzzy and try to unwind their plies.
If I had ripped back the first row that laddered...admitting the mistake right off the bat...I wouldn't be faced with a harder job now. So Mother was right. Again. Her voice in my head is giving that mother-sigh and wondering if I will ever learn and suspecting that if I haven't learned by now (age 70) it's probably useless to keep telling me. But still. Haste makes waste. Hurry makes worry. Do it right the first time. If you don't do it right, you'll have to do it over. Etc.
Don't you kind of cringe when your mother is STILL right, even after she's been dead for 25 years? But she is, and admitting it is the first step to getting it.
Which leads up to this:
This is the first sock in a pair of shorty socks, one of the summer socks to wear while biking. The heel's been turned; I'm on the foot. Stripes change at the back and bottom of the food, and though everything was fine for awhile, experienced knitters will notice serious laddering problems on the left of the sock image. Here's a closeup:
I don't know why the laddering started...it almost looks like a dropped stitch even, but the stitch count on the needles is correct--so no droppage. But my mistake was thinking (twice) that I'd fixed the earliest laddering and going ahead without looking on the inside of the sock, where clearly no fix had happened. Until the moment the widening rungs of the ladder made it painfully clear. For non-knitters, look at all those little bumps...the "purl bumps" running along side by side and evenlytoward the bottom of this image. That's how it's supposed to look. A little roughness (where stitches were taken with two yarns while changing color) is normal--large bicolored bumps, for instance--and short "stitches" running vertically across a stripe in another color are intentional. But there shouldn't be straight strands running horizontally or diagonally between the regular bumps to the bottom and the regular bumps to the top of this image. And there are.
The only way to fix it at this point is to rip it back to before the first ladder and try again. Oh, sure, I could take a strand of yarn, run it from side to side with a yarn needle, yanking the two sides together and stitch them down--making a really bulky line under my foot and destroying the flexibility of a knitted fabric in the process. But that's not the real fix. The real fix is to rip back past the laddering, get the good stitches onto needles, and this time knit it correctly. It would help if I understood what I'd done wrong. But I don't. I'll just have to be very, very careful. And it won't be a quick fix, since I'm not at all sure I can get those stitches back once I've ripped back that far...and I don't know how that yellow yarn will behave when it's been ripped back. Some yarns hate it and go all fuzzy and try to unwind their plies.
If I had ripped back the first row that laddered...admitting the mistake right off the bat...I wouldn't be faced with a harder job now. So Mother was right. Again. Her voice in my head is giving that mother-sigh and wondering if I will ever learn and suspecting that if I haven't learned by now (age 70) it's probably useless to keep telling me. But still. Haste makes waste. Hurry makes worry. Do it right the first time. If you don't do it right, you'll have to do it over. Etc.
June 8, 2015
McKinney Texas
For those who haven't heard about it yet: In one of McKinney's gated communities , a mother threw a pool party for her daughters and their friends to celebrate the end of the school year. Only thing is, this mother and daughters are persons of color, and their friends' kids are persons of color, and despite the fact that the gated community's pool is supposedly open for such parties for all residents...suddenly there were "too many black people" at the party. So somebody (stories differ) called the police, telling them that a bunch of black people were in their pool and refused to leave. (Because, duh, they either lived there or had been invited to the party.)
So the police arrived and at least one of them was a hate-filled, fury-filled bully named Casebolt who (among other things) grabbed a young black teenager in a bikini by her hair and threw her down, pushing her face in the dirt and then kneeling on her back in a classic display of racism and police thuggery, and then pulled a gun on others. All this was fortunately videotaped by a 15 yo who'd been at the party, who happened to be white. Black kids were arrested right and left; the white kids (and the nastier looking white residents hovering around approving the police--take a look at the guy in shorts & T shirt who's sticking right with the worst of the cops, and the two butt-ugly-with-rage white women, one of whom is alleged to have taken a punch at one of the black girls.) Several white kids also in the pool area (not sure if they were party guests) commented that the police chased and manhandled only black and Hispanic kids, and appeared to completely ignore white kids, whatever they were doing.
http://tinyurl.com/orbdx6d
http://tinyurl.com/nzthnlr
http://tinyurl.com/olxpdhq
McKinney is the county seat of Collin County, whose past history with regard to racism is "We got it, we love it, we're gonna keep it till we die." It's essentially a bedroom community for Dallas now, though it claims to be "slow paced" and "friendly." It's north of Plano. It has a convention & visitors website, with a little brag that it's one of Texas' top 20 tourist destinations. (No, it's not. There are many more than 20 better places to visit in Texas.) And that Money Magazine chose McKinney as the #1 Best Place to Live in America in 2014. (I presume that means for white people. Of the most conservative and conventional type.) McKinney is 74% white, 18% Hispanic, 10% black. Its median household income is $79,000, which is almost $30,000 more than the Texas median of $50,000. Both population and income have shot up starting in the mid-1990s and faster since about 2000. McKinney has voted solidly Republican since at least 1996, with Democrat votes coming in ~25% until 2008; Obama made inroads but only to 33% of the vote in both 2008 and 2012. Black population has been about the same proportionally throughout .
From my end of Texas, we were well aware that north of Dallas was a large area of white-dominated, racist, KKK-friendly, religiously narrow-minded communities that were not a destination to visit unless, passing through, you stopped at a fast-food place for a sandwich. I assumed that there were non-racists in those communities, but the voting history, the stuff people posted online from there, and the kinds of bragging they did made it clear they were not in the majority. So an incident like this in McKinney surprises me only in that someone got a clear no-questions-left video of that one police officer without its being confiscated and destroyed. It doesn't surprise me that an unshaven redneck carried a sign thanking the police for "taking care of the situation". It doesn't surprise me that it happened. It doesn't surprise me that the thug-cop who threw the girl down and knelt on her liked to watch cop-porn videos online, or that (before he deleted his accounts) he had already put up the video of himself doing that on his favorites list. It doesn't surprise me that some white people on Twitter not only defend that cop, but insist that the teenagers invited to the party were "thugs" who "invaded" the community. They do not see thuggishness on their own faces twisted in rage and hatred.
McKinney is not alone in its dominant attitudes. Plano's no better. Dallas is no better. It's an area that wants people of color to do menial work for little pay and stay "in their place." North Texas in general is an area that hates easily: blacks, Hispanics, immigrants (unless European or rich), poor people gay, lesbians, transgendered, bisexual, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and for that matter any of the more liberal (to it) Christian denominations. You may think I'm harsh on North Texas. And that's true. Some of it's experience. My grandparents moved from South Texas to Dallas for a year when the hardware stores in the Valley were doing well, and put my mother in a private school. They may also have been seeking better medical care for both her (she'd had polio and annual bouts of malaria) and her mother. My mother was treated very badly by faculty and other students, slammed as a "dirty Mexican" for her straight black hair, dark eyes, and bilingualism. She was glad to get back to the Border country. On various trips to North Texas, I heard things said...and I've certainly seen the open and unguarded racism expressed during political campaigns by North Texans.
But going back to the current situation. The double standard's very clear nationwide, and this is another window into the hellhole. A Duggar can get away with molesting his younger sisters and a neighbor kid for years--no report to the police, no arrest, no jail time, no mandated psychological counseling for him, no therapy for the victims--because a) he's white (the biggest thing) and b) he's from a so-called Christian family and thus assumed to have had a good ol' family values background. Multiple posters on Twitter and elsewhere have give him a clean wipe for what he did at 14 and 15 on the grounds that "he was just a kid." Yet child molestration--sexual activity with a child--is a serious crime. A white boy in Cleburne (south of Fort Worth) can drive drunk and recklessly and kill a bunch of people and get sent to an expensive addiction-treatment center instead of jail. Heck, George W. Bush never served a day in jail for his multiple drunk driving arrests when he was young, and his wife killed someone while driving and never was charged. All white. All from so-called "good families."
Here are black kids who at worst--at worst--were annoying people by being black kids having fun at a pool party and maybe some (not according to the party-giver's words, but maybe) didn't have a proper written guest pass. But even so: they weren't destroying property. They weren't breaking to apartments, smashing car windows, beating up on people. They weren't grabbing younger kids as sexual objects. They were just "there." But from the first moment this hit the news, they've been vilified as "thugs," and "invaders," and scolded for "not knowing better." Same age as Josh Duggar...doing nothing wrong but being visible and therefore annoying to white racists. Probably, yes, loud and goofy (just like white teenagers--it's not like white teenagers are quiet at a pool party and cookout. Been to them, when our kid was invited.) But not criminals. Not "thugs." Not "gangs".
Where's the "he's just a kid" pass for black kids? Nowhere. When 12 year old Tamir Rice was shot by a cop who had already shown psychological unfitness for duty in a previous department...and the cop lied about what really happened (what really happened was he hopped out of the car and shot Tamir while screaming at him--no delay, no attempt to talk to him) people were eager to find reasons why Tamir was "out of control" and explain that his bad family caused his bad behavior. What caused the cop's bad behavior? What bad family set him up to shoot a 12 year old and then lie about the circumstances? What bad behavior of his parents caused him to let the kid die rather than call an ambulance? Or take Michael Brown: I knew kids in high school who shoplifted, and charges were never filed...and they certainly weren't stopped by police for jaywalking (about the only place you'd get in very mild trouble for jaywalking was the three or four block length of Main Street downtown) or shot.
Why, for that matter, did the supposed "good cops" at the McKinney situation not intervene when Casebolt, the clearly out of control thug-cop, was yanking that girl around and kneeling on her? Why did they wait until he pulled a gun (though: good on them for stopping him from shooting kids and maybe others. I'm glad they did that, because Casebolt looks so out of control I believe he'd have shot someone just to relieve his own tension.) Why didn't they get that disgusting white guy in the shorts and T-shirt away from the thug-cop and the kids and tell him to go back to his apartment and stay there? He wasn't helping. He was inflaming things and acting as an approving audience for the thug-cop. Why, for that matter, are cops' social media not policed by their departments, with some understanding that a person whose "favorites" list consists of videos in which cops beat up on citizens or are praised for beating up on citizens is a sign of impending trouble--this guy is an angry sicko about to break loose? Casebolt should not be a law officer ever again, anywhere, until he has had psychiatric evaluation and some serious retraining...and yet he's been teaching in their police academy. What has he been teaching in the police academy? Just how to use excessive force on kids who have not committed any crime?
At some point in police recruitment and training, we completely lost track of what police officers should be like...or we allowed media representations of them that were both flattering and exciting, and thus let them think this is what policing was about: kicking in doors, slamming people up against walls and onto the ground, shooting their pets, shooting them, cussing them out, screaming at them, kicking and hitting and hitting. I used to blame the FOX TV program "Cops", which regularly showed cops being violent and then complaining about violent criminals. But I think it's more than that, though that's certainly part of it. There've always been some bad cops. There've always been some crazy cops. But in my childhood the typical cop made an effort to stay calm, not scream and holler at people just like an out-of-control angry husband or hysterical woman. They had some understanding of human psychology--of what produces paralyzing fear, for instance, or pain so intense the person cannot control his/her reactions. Most people when arrested were not thrown on the ground. Being stopped while driving did not mean being screamed at to "get on the ground!!!" SWAT teams didn't show up heavily armed and kick in the door screaming at the people in the house in the middle of the night.
Except with people of color. Nobody who was old enough to see in person or watch on TV the brutality and the obvious out-of-control rage and hatred of the white cops beating up on civil rights marchers will forget it...and there's a deep chasm between those of us who were horrified and disgusted and grief-stricken and those who continued to make excuses for it, and side with the police. We can recognize, in new situations, the same out-of-control rage and hatred. That's not even talking about the KKK and its vile behavior. And it's still horrifying, disgusting, sickening. The way the distorted mouths, lips curled up and out, twisting and snarling, come out with the same obscenities and insults. The bunches up jaw muscles. The tightened muscles around the eyes. The swollen necks and veins. The eagerness to hurt, to kill.
White kids...will be ignored when they're doing small wrongs. If their pool party gets rowdy and loud...if some white kids crash a backyard party...nobody calls the police, or not for a long time. If the police need to talk to them (exceptions in some working class neighborhoods in tough cities) the police talk. They don't grab white girls and slam them to the ground unless the girl attacks them. (That being said, an Austin policeman broke a white female musician's wrist because he was afraid she might kick him in the shins. That's also excessive force.) They talk to the white boys. They don't use force to arrest them first and then ask the questions. If the kid gets upset, they try to calm him or her down. They make allowances for the age of the kid. Because they don't know who the fathers are and whether roughing up the kid will get them sued.
Black kids--Hispanic kids--are expected to hear and understand a screaming white guy instantly, and comply instantly. A deaf black man, who (being deaf) could not hear the policeman yelling from behind him, was shot because he didn't obey instantly. They're expected to "hold still" while being hurt, tased or beaten repeatedly if they can't. (One kid was forced down on top of a fire ant bed, and tased because--with the ants biting him all over his front, he squirmed.) Eric Garner was killed by a cop putting a choke hold on him...the cop either not knowing, or not caring, that compression of the carotid arteries and airway could cause death, and the reason the man didn't "just relax" was that his body was telling him he was about to die--and he was. Anyone will struggle for air. But people of color are supposed to be completely submissive, even when choked. Black kids are supposed to be able to react in a way that no kid can--and no white kid is expected to.
We do still have some good police officers. But we don't have enough, and the bad ones have sullied the reputation of all of them.
And I'm not even able to talk coherently about those smug, smirking blonde girls-with-guns on the Capitol steps bragging about their privilege. Just make a rage sound in the back of my throat.
So the police arrived and at least one of them was a hate-filled, fury-filled bully named Casebolt who (among other things) grabbed a young black teenager in a bikini by her hair and threw her down, pushing her face in the dirt and then kneeling on her back in a classic display of racism and police thuggery, and then pulled a gun on others. All this was fortunately videotaped by a 15 yo who'd been at the party, who happened to be white. Black kids were arrested right and left; the white kids (and the nastier looking white residents hovering around approving the police--take a look at the guy in shorts & T shirt who's sticking right with the worst of the cops, and the two butt-ugly-with-rage white women, one of whom is alleged to have taken a punch at one of the black girls.) Several white kids also in the pool area (not sure if they were party guests) commented that the police chased and manhandled only black and Hispanic kids, and appeared to completely ignore white kids, whatever they were doing.
http://tinyurl.com/orbdx6d
http://tinyurl.com/nzthnlr
http://tinyurl.com/olxpdhq
McKinney is the county seat of Collin County, whose past history with regard to racism is "We got it, we love it, we're gonna keep it till we die." It's essentially a bedroom community for Dallas now, though it claims to be "slow paced" and "friendly." It's north of Plano. It has a convention & visitors website, with a little brag that it's one of Texas' top 20 tourist destinations. (No, it's not. There are many more than 20 better places to visit in Texas.) And that Money Magazine chose McKinney as the #1 Best Place to Live in America in 2014. (I presume that means for white people. Of the most conservative and conventional type.) McKinney is 74% white, 18% Hispanic, 10% black. Its median household income is $79,000, which is almost $30,000 more than the Texas median of $50,000. Both population and income have shot up starting in the mid-1990s and faster since about 2000. McKinney has voted solidly Republican since at least 1996, with Democrat votes coming in ~25% until 2008; Obama made inroads but only to 33% of the vote in both 2008 and 2012. Black population has been about the same proportionally throughout .
From my end of Texas, we were well aware that north of Dallas was a large area of white-dominated, racist, KKK-friendly, religiously narrow-minded communities that were not a destination to visit unless, passing through, you stopped at a fast-food place for a sandwich. I assumed that there were non-racists in those communities, but the voting history, the stuff people posted online from there, and the kinds of bragging they did made it clear they were not in the majority. So an incident like this in McKinney surprises me only in that someone got a clear no-questions-left video of that one police officer without its being confiscated and destroyed. It doesn't surprise me that an unshaven redneck carried a sign thanking the police for "taking care of the situation". It doesn't surprise me that it happened. It doesn't surprise me that the thug-cop who threw the girl down and knelt on her liked to watch cop-porn videos online, or that (before he deleted his accounts) he had already put up the video of himself doing that on his favorites list. It doesn't surprise me that some white people on Twitter not only defend that cop, but insist that the teenagers invited to the party were "thugs" who "invaded" the community. They do not see thuggishness on their own faces twisted in rage and hatred.
McKinney is not alone in its dominant attitudes. Plano's no better. Dallas is no better. It's an area that wants people of color to do menial work for little pay and stay "in their place." North Texas in general is an area that hates easily: blacks, Hispanics, immigrants (unless European or rich), poor people gay, lesbians, transgendered, bisexual, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and for that matter any of the more liberal (to it) Christian denominations. You may think I'm harsh on North Texas. And that's true. Some of it's experience. My grandparents moved from South Texas to Dallas for a year when the hardware stores in the Valley were doing well, and put my mother in a private school. They may also have been seeking better medical care for both her (she'd had polio and annual bouts of malaria) and her mother. My mother was treated very badly by faculty and other students, slammed as a "dirty Mexican" for her straight black hair, dark eyes, and bilingualism. She was glad to get back to the Border country. On various trips to North Texas, I heard things said...and I've certainly seen the open and unguarded racism expressed during political campaigns by North Texans.
But going back to the current situation. The double standard's very clear nationwide, and this is another window into the hellhole. A Duggar can get away with molesting his younger sisters and a neighbor kid for years--no report to the police, no arrest, no jail time, no mandated psychological counseling for him, no therapy for the victims--because a) he's white (the biggest thing) and b) he's from a so-called Christian family and thus assumed to have had a good ol' family values background. Multiple posters on Twitter and elsewhere have give him a clean wipe for what he did at 14 and 15 on the grounds that "he was just a kid." Yet child molestration--sexual activity with a child--is a serious crime. A white boy in Cleburne (south of Fort Worth) can drive drunk and recklessly and kill a bunch of people and get sent to an expensive addiction-treatment center instead of jail. Heck, George W. Bush never served a day in jail for his multiple drunk driving arrests when he was young, and his wife killed someone while driving and never was charged. All white. All from so-called "good families."
Here are black kids who at worst--at worst--were annoying people by being black kids having fun at a pool party and maybe some (not according to the party-giver's words, but maybe) didn't have a proper written guest pass. But even so: they weren't destroying property. They weren't breaking to apartments, smashing car windows, beating up on people. They weren't grabbing younger kids as sexual objects. They were just "there." But from the first moment this hit the news, they've been vilified as "thugs," and "invaders," and scolded for "not knowing better." Same age as Josh Duggar...doing nothing wrong but being visible and therefore annoying to white racists. Probably, yes, loud and goofy (just like white teenagers--it's not like white teenagers are quiet at a pool party and cookout. Been to them, when our kid was invited.) But not criminals. Not "thugs." Not "gangs".
Where's the "he's just a kid" pass for black kids? Nowhere. When 12 year old Tamir Rice was shot by a cop who had already shown psychological unfitness for duty in a previous department...and the cop lied about what really happened (what really happened was he hopped out of the car and shot Tamir while screaming at him--no delay, no attempt to talk to him) people were eager to find reasons why Tamir was "out of control" and explain that his bad family caused his bad behavior. What caused the cop's bad behavior? What bad family set him up to shoot a 12 year old and then lie about the circumstances? What bad behavior of his parents caused him to let the kid die rather than call an ambulance? Or take Michael Brown: I knew kids in high school who shoplifted, and charges were never filed...and they certainly weren't stopped by police for jaywalking (about the only place you'd get in very mild trouble for jaywalking was the three or four block length of Main Street downtown) or shot.
Why, for that matter, did the supposed "good cops" at the McKinney situation not intervene when Casebolt, the clearly out of control thug-cop, was yanking that girl around and kneeling on her? Why did they wait until he pulled a gun (though: good on them for stopping him from shooting kids and maybe others. I'm glad they did that, because Casebolt looks so out of control I believe he'd have shot someone just to relieve his own tension.) Why didn't they get that disgusting white guy in the shorts and T-shirt away from the thug-cop and the kids and tell him to go back to his apartment and stay there? He wasn't helping. He was inflaming things and acting as an approving audience for the thug-cop. Why, for that matter, are cops' social media not policed by their departments, with some understanding that a person whose "favorites" list consists of videos in which cops beat up on citizens or are praised for beating up on citizens is a sign of impending trouble--this guy is an angry sicko about to break loose? Casebolt should not be a law officer ever again, anywhere, until he has had psychiatric evaluation and some serious retraining...and yet he's been teaching in their police academy. What has he been teaching in the police academy? Just how to use excessive force on kids who have not committed any crime?
At some point in police recruitment and training, we completely lost track of what police officers should be like...or we allowed media representations of them that were both flattering and exciting, and thus let them think this is what policing was about: kicking in doors, slamming people up against walls and onto the ground, shooting their pets, shooting them, cussing them out, screaming at them, kicking and hitting and hitting. I used to blame the FOX TV program "Cops", which regularly showed cops being violent and then complaining about violent criminals. But I think it's more than that, though that's certainly part of it. There've always been some bad cops. There've always been some crazy cops. But in my childhood the typical cop made an effort to stay calm, not scream and holler at people just like an out-of-control angry husband or hysterical woman. They had some understanding of human psychology--of what produces paralyzing fear, for instance, or pain so intense the person cannot control his/her reactions. Most people when arrested were not thrown on the ground. Being stopped while driving did not mean being screamed at to "get on the ground!!!" SWAT teams didn't show up heavily armed and kick in the door screaming at the people in the house in the middle of the night.
Except with people of color. Nobody who was old enough to see in person or watch on TV the brutality and the obvious out-of-control rage and hatred of the white cops beating up on civil rights marchers will forget it...and there's a deep chasm between those of us who were horrified and disgusted and grief-stricken and those who continued to make excuses for it, and side with the police. We can recognize, in new situations, the same out-of-control rage and hatred. That's not even talking about the KKK and its vile behavior. And it's still horrifying, disgusting, sickening. The way the distorted mouths, lips curled up and out, twisting and snarling, come out with the same obscenities and insults. The bunches up jaw muscles. The tightened muscles around the eyes. The swollen necks and veins. The eagerness to hurt, to kill.
White kids...will be ignored when they're doing small wrongs. If their pool party gets rowdy and loud...if some white kids crash a backyard party...nobody calls the police, or not for a long time. If the police need to talk to them (exceptions in some working class neighborhoods in tough cities) the police talk. They don't grab white girls and slam them to the ground unless the girl attacks them. (That being said, an Austin policeman broke a white female musician's wrist because he was afraid she might kick him in the shins. That's also excessive force.) They talk to the white boys. They don't use force to arrest them first and then ask the questions. If the kid gets upset, they try to calm him or her down. They make allowances for the age of the kid. Because they don't know who the fathers are and whether roughing up the kid will get them sued.
Black kids--Hispanic kids--are expected to hear and understand a screaming white guy instantly, and comply instantly. A deaf black man, who (being deaf) could not hear the policeman yelling from behind him, was shot because he didn't obey instantly. They're expected to "hold still" while being hurt, tased or beaten repeatedly if they can't. (One kid was forced down on top of a fire ant bed, and tased because--with the ants biting him all over his front, he squirmed.) Eric Garner was killed by a cop putting a choke hold on him...the cop either not knowing, or not caring, that compression of the carotid arteries and airway could cause death, and the reason the man didn't "just relax" was that his body was telling him he was about to die--and he was. Anyone will struggle for air. But people of color are supposed to be completely submissive, even when choked. Black kids are supposed to be able to react in a way that no kid can--and no white kid is expected to.
We do still have some good police officers. But we don't have enough, and the bad ones have sullied the reputation of all of them.
And I'm not even able to talk coherently about those smug, smirking blonde girls-with-guns on the Capitol steps bragging about their privilege. Just make a rage sound in the back of my throat.
June 5, 2015
A Concatenation of Stupid
My mother the engineer said (more than once and in several ways) "There are no accidents; they are all caused." The following is an account from online sources of a tragedy for all involved, and resulting from stupid behavior by all involved.
Direct from The Eagle in Bryan-College Station:
http://tinyurl.com/ohactek How a graduation party turns into a fight over beer pong and a young woman acquires a gunshot wound that kills her.
In brief (do read the article, and look up another one Gawker I failed to copy the URL for) , a graduating Texas A&M student (white male) gave a big graduation party for himself and some friends, asked neighbors to come over and talk to him instead of calling the police with a noise complaint, and when an older neighbor from across the street with a few friends (black males) did so, he let them into the party, where, for a time, everything appears to have been copacetic. Long after midnight however, an argument erupted between one of Mr. White Graduate's friends and one of the neighbor's friends over the rules to beer pong. Mr. White Graduate invited the neighbor and friends to leave. This turned into a fight--punches thrown, including by Mr. White Graduate and other friends of his. Racial slurs were uttered, claims neighbor & friends; a claim denied by Mr. White Graduate. The neighbor and his friends left. Mr. White Graduate decided that beer pong with his underage girlfriend, Miss Blonde Sweetheart, would be a good idea and sent her to get more beer from the back yard. Neighbor (henceforth, Mr. Alleged Shooter) returned to the party residence with a firearm intending to "scare" Mr. White Graduate and his friends, and said 40 caliber Glock discharged "accidentally" 14 rounds, with one round hitting, and ultimately killing Miss Blonde Sweetheart. Mr. White Graduate took cover under a couch, he says.
The disparity in accounts of the "racial slurs" thing is clearly a matter of drunk white guys not thinking they're saying anything bad, when they are. If the friends who attend your funeral are driving down the road in trucks displaying Confederate flags, (as these friends were, driving to Miss Blonde Sweetheart's funeral) these are EXACTLY the kind of people who will yell racial slurs at black people any time they're mad or drunk or (especially) both. Texas A&M is not a school known for its lack of racial slurs. I've heard them there while visiting, and more off-campus on the street.
The "accidental" shooting falls into the category of "it's not a accident if you're intending to intimidate someone with a firearm and the firearm does what it's designed to do." It may be that Mr. Alleged Shooter did not come back across the street with the clear intent to kill Miss Blonde Sweetheart in particular, but he had been drinking (erodes judgment and coordination), he was angry, and he intended to "scare" the college kids. "The gun went off by accident" is an excuse used by most of the people who shoot someone they wish they hadn't a minute later. In Texas, if you're a white law officer you can usually get away with it. A white homeowner *may* get away with it. A black man with a criminal record? No way. After all, Mr. Alleged Shooter had been in trouble already for having a firearm in a previous location. Already the comments on a Gawker article about this are demonizing Mr. Alleged Shooter as a hideous thug. Maybe.
But maybe also no stupider than the law officer who wanted to fondle a friend's new firearm, did not check to see that it was unloaded, "dry-fired" a loaded weapon--same caliber and make as the one in this story--and nearly shot his friend (did shoot out the window of the office) or several others reported in the past year. Men playing with guns have shot themselves, friends, families and innocent bystanders. If they're white and claim it's an accident, too often it's not even charged.
It's still stupid. Do not carry your weapon where you have to fumble in your pocket for it--someday your keys will catch on the trigger and BAM. Do not stick it in your belt or otherwise in your pants--it can fall out and--since you were dumb enough to carry it loaded and cocked--it can and will go off and BAM. Do not play with your weapon on the way home from your concealed carry class, where they should (but didn't) convince you that it's not a toy. Most of all, never draw your weapon when you've been drinking, or are angry, or to "scare" someone. When you draw a weapon, you are signaling your willingness (even eagerness) to kill. When you point it at a person or animal, you are signaling your intent to kill that person or animal. That's what the pistol/revolver/rifle is *for*--killing something. Not a toy. Not a game.
It's a sad situation all around. Mr. Alleged Shooter and his friends had not brought a gun to the party in the first place; they had behaved well enough until (long after midnight and the consumption of much alcohol) he felt aggrieved and disrespected. Does this make his coming back over with a 40 caliber Glock OK? No, that was stupid. Any non-drunk person in broad daylight can see it was a very bad idea, no matter whether anyone was killed or not. (Those white kids are going to call the cops if you do actually just "scare" them waving a gun around; and since you're a convicted felon, the outcome of that is going to be a charge for having the pistol, which convicted felons aren't supposed to have. DUH.)
Miss Blonde Sweetheart was at A&M because her parents wanted her to be nearby, somewhere they thought safe (first error: Bryan/College Station is no safer than any other college town, which means "not safe.") She always did what they told her, they say...yup, right there, parents, explains why she was at a loud, drunken party with older students long after midnight, and fetching beer into the garage for a game of beer pong.
Mr. White Graduate (the cause of the party) made the mistake of going around to his neighbors and asking them to come talk to him, instead of calling the police, if they were bothered by the noise he and his friends were going to make. (Hint to graduates who want to have a loud drunken party--do it out on someone's many-acre farm or ranch, where it *doesn't* bother anyone but the cows and the coyotes. In my mind--granted, I was never a party animal--anyone who thinks graduates have a right to bother their neighbors on the night of graduation didn't learn the right things at college. Planning to start your life as a college grad by annoying people with a loud drunken fandango is...stupid.)
That Mr. Alleged Shooter considered this a sort of invitation isn't surprising to me, and that he and his friends were agreeable enough that they weren't asked to leave until everyone got to the irritable stage of alcohol poisoning and there was an argument about the rules of beer pong also doesn't surprise me. At any party with enough liquor (and sometimes even without) someone is going to start an argument about something. Drunk people argue louder, and with less reasoning, and with no impulse control. The people who question "Why was he even there?" missed the part about neighbors (including Mr. Alleged Shooter) being told, "If it bothers you, come talk to me instead of calling the police" and the fact that once he was there, he was invited in. He was there to join the group rather than shutting it down. The only reason that question is asked is because he's black; if it had been a white man with no record who came over to complain, but was told "Come on in, have a beer" nobody'd be asking that question.
I'm having a hard time finding somebody in this entire situation who wasn't stupid about something that contributed to it. Mr. Alleged Shooter was certainly wrong to come back to where he'd been asked to leave, and wrong to bring a gun to "scare" people he was mad at.
But Mr. White Graduate was wrong to plan a big noisy drunken graduation party in a residential area where he knew (clearly) that he was going to annoy people with noise. By his own account, he may also have thrown the first punch, escalating an argument to a physical confrontation--and even if his wasn't the first punch, allowing himself and his friends to get physical was wrong. Moreover, he was serving alcohol to underage students (including Miss Blonde Sweetheart) which is illegal and should result in charges against him. Racial slurs--I'm convinced they were thrown, because drunk Texas boys who will put Confederate flags on their trucks *undoubtedly* use racial slurs. So I don't believe Mr. White Graduate when he says he didn't hear any. I think he was so used to them they slid past his ears without registering as something he should put a stop to.
Miss Blonde Sweetheart should not have been at that party (underage for alcohol in this state) or fetching beer for the others...I'm reasonably sure her parents would have told her that if she'd asked. "Hey Mom, Dad, is it OK if I go over to X's graduation party and drink beer and play drinking games with all these older guys?" She didn't ask them. Of course. This is what happens with nice, friendly, pretty, overly compliant girls who are finally out of their parents' direct control at an age where this kind of stuff seems like an exciting adventure in adulthood, rather than a really dumb idea.
This is a perfect example of piling stupid on stupid, and blunder on blunder, and then somebody dies and it's not fun & games anymore. Mr. Alleged Shooter will be lucky if he gets to spend the rest of his natural life in prison (otherwise, Texas being a state with the death penalty he'll have a shorter miserable time on death row.) Mr. White Graduate likely won't learn anything from all this because as near as I can see he's getting loads of sympathy (racially based, IMO) as the innocent victim of his own hospitality who lost the love of his life (kind of.) Mr. White Graduate's white college friends, huddled in a defensive group of "We didn't do nothin'" won't learn anything either, except it will reinforce their dislike and distrust of people of color. They're not about to see their part in the problem, any more than Mr. White Graduate. Miss Blonde Sweetheart is dead, and once again the sense given by the media is that she became perfect the moment she was dead, and other pretty blonde college girls aren't going to catch on that partying with older guys and drinking like a fish are not part of a survival strategy.
FWIW, I don't think Mr. Alleged Shooter is/was an evil thug. I do think he committed a crime, not his first, and what led to the crime was a string of bad decisions and behind those was a lot of inability to think straight while under the influence and maybe sober as well. While granting that he's had a hard life and plenty of reason to be angry with privileged young white college grads and their buddies for punching him and his friends, he hasn't advanced any worthy cause by his actions. Nor has Mr. White Graduate or his friends who are playing victim to the hilt, judging by the reports. Nothing was their fault. I would feel sorry for them all, except that they were all part of the reason Miss Blonde Sweetheart is dead and gone, and it didn't have to be that way.
The Texas legislature and Governor having just made universal open carry legal, including on college campuses unless forbidden by the college administration, we can expect more of this kind of thing, by which I mean drinking and firearms all over the town. Had Mr. White Graduate and his friends been armed, I would expect even more injuries...including to people in neighboring houses (gunfights with modern weapons in and around modern dwelling places mean rounds entering through walls and windows.) A bunch of drunks shooting will cause more injuries and deaths than one drunk shooting. The Texas legislators who voted for this law and the Governor should (but will not be) held accountable for the additional deaths that will occur. I can only wish that they experience the outcome of their legislation in another way and come to realize how stupid it was.
Comments are disabled. Read the account. Think about it. Write your own post on your own blog if you want to. And don't be stupid with firearms.
Direct from The Eagle in Bryan-College Station:
http://tinyurl.com/ohactek How a graduation party turns into a fight over beer pong and a young woman acquires a gunshot wound that kills her.
In brief (do read the article, and look up another one Gawker I failed to copy the URL for) , a graduating Texas A&M student (white male) gave a big graduation party for himself and some friends, asked neighbors to come over and talk to him instead of calling the police with a noise complaint, and when an older neighbor from across the street with a few friends (black males) did so, he let them into the party, where, for a time, everything appears to have been copacetic. Long after midnight however, an argument erupted between one of Mr. White Graduate's friends and one of the neighbor's friends over the rules to beer pong. Mr. White Graduate invited the neighbor and friends to leave. This turned into a fight--punches thrown, including by Mr. White Graduate and other friends of his. Racial slurs were uttered, claims neighbor & friends; a claim denied by Mr. White Graduate. The neighbor and his friends left. Mr. White Graduate decided that beer pong with his underage girlfriend, Miss Blonde Sweetheart, would be a good idea and sent her to get more beer from the back yard. Neighbor (henceforth, Mr. Alleged Shooter) returned to the party residence with a firearm intending to "scare" Mr. White Graduate and his friends, and said 40 caliber Glock discharged "accidentally" 14 rounds, with one round hitting, and ultimately killing Miss Blonde Sweetheart. Mr. White Graduate took cover under a couch, he says.
The disparity in accounts of the "racial slurs" thing is clearly a matter of drunk white guys not thinking they're saying anything bad, when they are. If the friends who attend your funeral are driving down the road in trucks displaying Confederate flags, (as these friends were, driving to Miss Blonde Sweetheart's funeral) these are EXACTLY the kind of people who will yell racial slurs at black people any time they're mad or drunk or (especially) both. Texas A&M is not a school known for its lack of racial slurs. I've heard them there while visiting, and more off-campus on the street.
The "accidental" shooting falls into the category of "it's not a accident if you're intending to intimidate someone with a firearm and the firearm does what it's designed to do." It may be that Mr. Alleged Shooter did not come back across the street with the clear intent to kill Miss Blonde Sweetheart in particular, but he had been drinking (erodes judgment and coordination), he was angry, and he intended to "scare" the college kids. "The gun went off by accident" is an excuse used by most of the people who shoot someone they wish they hadn't a minute later. In Texas, if you're a white law officer you can usually get away with it. A white homeowner *may* get away with it. A black man with a criminal record? No way. After all, Mr. Alleged Shooter had been in trouble already for having a firearm in a previous location. Already the comments on a Gawker article about this are demonizing Mr. Alleged Shooter as a hideous thug. Maybe.
But maybe also no stupider than the law officer who wanted to fondle a friend's new firearm, did not check to see that it was unloaded, "dry-fired" a loaded weapon--same caliber and make as the one in this story--and nearly shot his friend (did shoot out the window of the office) or several others reported in the past year. Men playing with guns have shot themselves, friends, families and innocent bystanders. If they're white and claim it's an accident, too often it's not even charged.
It's still stupid. Do not carry your weapon where you have to fumble in your pocket for it--someday your keys will catch on the trigger and BAM. Do not stick it in your belt or otherwise in your pants--it can fall out and--since you were dumb enough to carry it loaded and cocked--it can and will go off and BAM. Do not play with your weapon on the way home from your concealed carry class, where they should (but didn't) convince you that it's not a toy. Most of all, never draw your weapon when you've been drinking, or are angry, or to "scare" someone. When you draw a weapon, you are signaling your willingness (even eagerness) to kill. When you point it at a person or animal, you are signaling your intent to kill that person or animal. That's what the pistol/revolver/rifle is *for*--killing something. Not a toy. Not a game.
It's a sad situation all around. Mr. Alleged Shooter and his friends had not brought a gun to the party in the first place; they had behaved well enough until (long after midnight and the consumption of much alcohol) he felt aggrieved and disrespected. Does this make his coming back over with a 40 caliber Glock OK? No, that was stupid. Any non-drunk person in broad daylight can see it was a very bad idea, no matter whether anyone was killed or not. (Those white kids are going to call the cops if you do actually just "scare" them waving a gun around; and since you're a convicted felon, the outcome of that is going to be a charge for having the pistol, which convicted felons aren't supposed to have. DUH.)
Miss Blonde Sweetheart was at A&M because her parents wanted her to be nearby, somewhere they thought safe (first error: Bryan/College Station is no safer than any other college town, which means "not safe.") She always did what they told her, they say...yup, right there, parents, explains why she was at a loud, drunken party with older students long after midnight, and fetching beer into the garage for a game of beer pong.
Mr. White Graduate (the cause of the party) made the mistake of going around to his neighbors and asking them to come talk to him, instead of calling the police, if they were bothered by the noise he and his friends were going to make. (Hint to graduates who want to have a loud drunken party--do it out on someone's many-acre farm or ranch, where it *doesn't* bother anyone but the cows and the coyotes. In my mind--granted, I was never a party animal--anyone who thinks graduates have a right to bother their neighbors on the night of graduation didn't learn the right things at college. Planning to start your life as a college grad by annoying people with a loud drunken fandango is...stupid.)
That Mr. Alleged Shooter considered this a sort of invitation isn't surprising to me, and that he and his friends were agreeable enough that they weren't asked to leave until everyone got to the irritable stage of alcohol poisoning and there was an argument about the rules of beer pong also doesn't surprise me. At any party with enough liquor (and sometimes even without) someone is going to start an argument about something. Drunk people argue louder, and with less reasoning, and with no impulse control. The people who question "Why was he even there?" missed the part about neighbors (including Mr. Alleged Shooter) being told, "If it bothers you, come talk to me instead of calling the police" and the fact that once he was there, he was invited in. He was there to join the group rather than shutting it down. The only reason that question is asked is because he's black; if it had been a white man with no record who came over to complain, but was told "Come on in, have a beer" nobody'd be asking that question.
I'm having a hard time finding somebody in this entire situation who wasn't stupid about something that contributed to it. Mr. Alleged Shooter was certainly wrong to come back to where he'd been asked to leave, and wrong to bring a gun to "scare" people he was mad at.
But Mr. White Graduate was wrong to plan a big noisy drunken graduation party in a residential area where he knew (clearly) that he was going to annoy people with noise. By his own account, he may also have thrown the first punch, escalating an argument to a physical confrontation--and even if his wasn't the first punch, allowing himself and his friends to get physical was wrong. Moreover, he was serving alcohol to underage students (including Miss Blonde Sweetheart) which is illegal and should result in charges against him. Racial slurs--I'm convinced they were thrown, because drunk Texas boys who will put Confederate flags on their trucks *undoubtedly* use racial slurs. So I don't believe Mr. White Graduate when he says he didn't hear any. I think he was so used to them they slid past his ears without registering as something he should put a stop to.
Miss Blonde Sweetheart should not have been at that party (underage for alcohol in this state) or fetching beer for the others...I'm reasonably sure her parents would have told her that if she'd asked. "Hey Mom, Dad, is it OK if I go over to X's graduation party and drink beer and play drinking games with all these older guys?" She didn't ask them. Of course. This is what happens with nice, friendly, pretty, overly compliant girls who are finally out of their parents' direct control at an age where this kind of stuff seems like an exciting adventure in adulthood, rather than a really dumb idea.
This is a perfect example of piling stupid on stupid, and blunder on blunder, and then somebody dies and it's not fun & games anymore. Mr. Alleged Shooter will be lucky if he gets to spend the rest of his natural life in prison (otherwise, Texas being a state with the death penalty he'll have a shorter miserable time on death row.) Mr. White Graduate likely won't learn anything from all this because as near as I can see he's getting loads of sympathy (racially based, IMO) as the innocent victim of his own hospitality who lost the love of his life (kind of.) Mr. White Graduate's white college friends, huddled in a defensive group of "We didn't do nothin'" won't learn anything either, except it will reinforce their dislike and distrust of people of color. They're not about to see their part in the problem, any more than Mr. White Graduate. Miss Blonde Sweetheart is dead, and once again the sense given by the media is that she became perfect the moment she was dead, and other pretty blonde college girls aren't going to catch on that partying with older guys and drinking like a fish are not part of a survival strategy.
FWIW, I don't think Mr. Alleged Shooter is/was an evil thug. I do think he committed a crime, not his first, and what led to the crime was a string of bad decisions and behind those was a lot of inability to think straight while under the influence and maybe sober as well. While granting that he's had a hard life and plenty of reason to be angry with privileged young white college grads and their buddies for punching him and his friends, he hasn't advanced any worthy cause by his actions. Nor has Mr. White Graduate or his friends who are playing victim to the hilt, judging by the reports. Nothing was their fault. I would feel sorry for them all, except that they were all part of the reason Miss Blonde Sweetheart is dead and gone, and it didn't have to be that way.
The Texas legislature and Governor having just made universal open carry legal, including on college campuses unless forbidden by the college administration, we can expect more of this kind of thing, by which I mean drinking and firearms all over the town. Had Mr. White Graduate and his friends been armed, I would expect even more injuries...including to people in neighboring houses (gunfights with modern weapons in and around modern dwelling places mean rounds entering through walls and windows.) A bunch of drunks shooting will cause more injuries and deaths than one drunk shooting. The Texas legislators who voted for this law and the Governor should (but will not be) held accountable for the additional deaths that will occur. I can only wish that they experience the outcome of their legislation in another way and come to realize how stupid it was.
Comments are disabled. Read the account. Think about it. Write your own post on your own blog if you want to. And don't be stupid with firearms.
May 31, 2015
Saturday Butterflies
Common Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus communis) nectaring on small yellow Compositae
Gray Hairstreak (probably) (Strymon melinus) nectaring on Prairie Bluets
Lyside Sulphur (Kricogonia lyside) also nectaring on Prairie Bluets
All three of these small butterflies were on low growth above a "seep" slope leading down to a long skinny pool fed by seepage from a rocky area upslope. Here's a view of the habitat.
The water barely shows, with emergent vegetation quickly filling in. There's a terrace berm to the left, beyond the water, running parallel to a line of brush (on the rocky hump out of sight to the right) with the water accumulating in a long skinny line at the base of the berm. The berm is the result of an attempt to reduce erosion when this was a plowed field many decades ago. The roof in the distance (showing against the line of dark trees) is a rain barn, collecting rainwater into tanks for wildlife.
May 20, 2015
Trip Socks
After finishing the Humbling Socks, I cast on a pair of red socks to take on the trip to Winnipeg. For one reason after another, they were not as far along as I'd hoped when I started out that day (the 12th) and the trip was the usual mix of expected and unexpected, but I knit every time I could without annoying others or making my fingers too sore. I also had along two more balls of red yarn for a second pair, if I got the first pair far enough along to start them. No pictures tonight, but I may add pix tomorrow.
The first pair progressed well enough on the bus and train that I was able to turn the heels on the morning of May 14th. Not as much knitting got done during KeyCon (people are actually more interesting than knitting!) but some did. I started the second pair of socks at KeyCon, with most knitting moments still going to the first pair. By the time I got back to the starting point, I had finished the first pair, and had 3.5 inches of ribbing (out of 5 planned) on each of the socks of the second pair. I make more mistakes when knitting tired, in poor light, while being jounced around, and while being distracted. So I got lots of practice in fixing mistakes.
The socks on my feet are the newly completed pair from the trip, their first wearing this morning. The cuffs are how far I got on the "following" pair on the trip. When I started the trip, the cuffs of the now finished socks were maybe half as long as the cuffs shown above...and became the socks on my feet. On the bus and train to Chicago, I finished the cuffs and the knit-only ankle part and most of the heel flap of both. In the hotel the first night I finished the heel flaps. The next morning, before heading to the Field Museum with a friend, I turned both heels. That night I picked up the stitches and started the gusset decreases of one sock before going to bed. The next day, at the airport and on the plane, I finished the gusset decreases and started the foot of one sock. In amongst the convention actitivities, I picked up stitches and got the gusset decreases of the other sock done, and both socks well onto the foot. I also cast on the following pair on Sunday (would normally have done that about the time I turned the heels, but didn't want four pairs of "live" socks with me on the flights) and up to about an inch of cuff each.
On the flights back from Winnipeg, I worked on the new pair, with the others packed in my checked bag. On the next day, on the commuter train into Chicago, I knitted (an hour of knitting, almost)...and once on the train home knitted more. Found people interested in what I was doing, so time was spent chatting and demonstrating, as well as knitting. Still, I finished both socks the next morning (May 20), the second one only about an hour from the end of the train ride.
Having the knitting along did not impede me in visiting the museum or interacting with people, and every stitch on the needles (that is not a mistake it's going to take time to fix) is gain.
Here's the obligatory "socks on feet" shot.
It's darkly cloudy this morning--it stormed last night and more is expected--so all pics were taken in the kitchen with flash and ceiling light. Works well for red socks.
The first pair progressed well enough on the bus and train that I was able to turn the heels on the morning of May 14th. Not as much knitting got done during KeyCon (people are actually more interesting than knitting!) but some did. I started the second pair of socks at KeyCon, with most knitting moments still going to the first pair. By the time I got back to the starting point, I had finished the first pair, and had 3.5 inches of ribbing (out of 5 planned) on each of the socks of the second pair. I make more mistakes when knitting tired, in poor light, while being jounced around, and while being distracted. So I got lots of practice in fixing mistakes.
The socks on my feet are the newly completed pair from the trip, their first wearing this morning. The cuffs are how far I got on the "following" pair on the trip. When I started the trip, the cuffs of the now finished socks were maybe half as long as the cuffs shown above...and became the socks on my feet. On the bus and train to Chicago, I finished the cuffs and the knit-only ankle part and most of the heel flap of both. In the hotel the first night I finished the heel flaps. The next morning, before heading to the Field Museum with a friend, I turned both heels. That night I picked up the stitches and started the gusset decreases of one sock before going to bed. The next day, at the airport and on the plane, I finished the gusset decreases and started the foot of one sock. In amongst the convention actitivities, I picked up stitches and got the gusset decreases of the other sock done, and both socks well onto the foot. I also cast on the following pair on Sunday (would normally have done that about the time I turned the heels, but didn't want four pairs of "live" socks with me on the flights) and up to about an inch of cuff each.
On the flights back from Winnipeg, I worked on the new pair, with the others packed in my checked bag. On the next day, on the commuter train into Chicago, I knitted (an hour of knitting, almost)...and once on the train home knitted more. Found people interested in what I was doing, so time was spent chatting and demonstrating, as well as knitting. Still, I finished both socks the next morning (May 20), the second one only about an hour from the end of the train ride.
Having the knitting along did not impede me in visiting the museum or interacting with people, and every stitch on the needles (that is not a mistake it's going to take time to fix) is gain.
Here's the obligatory "socks on feet" shot.
It's darkly cloudy this morning--it stormed last night and more is expected--so all pics were taken in the kitchen with flash and ceiling light. Works well for red socks.
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