No, it's NOT a "lunatic fringe"

As everybody in the known universe is aware by now, yesterday saw the murder of Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab province in Pakistan. Taseer was assassinated for suggesting that it might just possibly be a good idea to amend the mandatory death sentence for insulting Islam - a suggestion that engendered massive riots and a nationwide protest strike a couple of days ago.

Bear in mind that "insulting Islam" can include anything from a scholar's observation that there are Aramaic words in the Koran to, well, a cartoon.

In a brilliant example of doublethink, the Guardian described this as "a killing that exposed a deep-rooted vein of extremism" just sentences before saying this about Pakistani scholars' reaction (bolding mine):

A prominent group of Islamic scholars said that the funeral prayers should not be offered and warned that anyone who expressed grief for Taseer could suffer the same fate.

The Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan group represents scholars from the mainstream Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims. Although considered moderate, they have led protests in favour of the blasphemy law.

"More than 500 scholars of the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat have advised Muslims not to offer the funeral prayers of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer, nor try to lead the prayers," the group said.

"Also, there should be no expression of grief or sympathy on the death of the governor, as those who support blasphemy of the prophet are themselves indulging in blasphemy."

Now, a quick quiz for those who may or may not have been paying attention.

Moderate. Mainstream. Extremist.

Which of these words does not belong with the other two?

Now just in case anybody actually reads this post and wants to go jumping on me for being anti-Muslim, I am not saying all Muslims are evil murdering bastards who assassinate anybody who disagrees with them. Salman Taheer obviously wasn't. I lived in a Muslim neighborhood in Africa for two years and my neighbors never expressed an Islamic duty to kill me; they were real nice people. They did keep wishing out loud that I would convert to Islam so they could fix me up with a nice Muslim boy, but what the heck; my grandmother said essentially the same thing, if you substitute "Methodism, Methodist" for "Islam, Muslim."

I just want to point out that the Evil Murdering Bastards party is not a small fringe of extremists who misunderstand the Koran; it's a large group of mainstream Muslims who understand the Koran perfectly well. Take Sura 5:33, for example:

The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter.

X-Rated Punctuation Rant

Hysterically funny, if you're the sort of person who really cares about apostrophes (I do) and isn't offended by four-letter words (I spent ten years in the computer business. Once you've enjoyed a heated difference of opinion with a programmer from CalTech, your ears get sort of numbed to the profanity.)

With those caveats in mind, read on here. Preferably not while drinking coffee.

206 Bones, with a Side of Coconut Milk

It's a dull, drizzly afternoon and I've been vegging out with a good suspense novel - Kathy Reichs' 206 Bones. And admiring her heroine, who starts the book tied up, entombed, cold, and hungry. I don't think it spoils the plot to reveal that she saws through her bonds, kicks out the (cemented shut) door and escapes through a sewer in time to save both her life and her professional reputation; after the 11 previous novels, one wouldn't expect anything less from Temperance Brennan.

But what really impressed me is what Temperance fantasizes about when she first recognizes her situation: Seared ahi tuna. Thai soup with lemongrass and coconut milk. Mussels in wine sauce.

Even when (metaphorically) tied to the railroad tracks, the lady remains a gourmet.

In her situation, I'm pretty sure I would have been focusing on:

(1) the high probability of imminent death
(2) a place to pee
(3) a cheeseburger
and (4) the extremely high probability of imminent death.

In that order.

Given Brennan's indomitability, I guess the least I can do - now that I've finished the book - is to go and have a serious discussion with my sewing machine, which started spitting out disgusting birds' nests of entangled thread yesterday.

Clouds and stones and trees

Judging by the news reports, Central Texas must be the only part of the Northern Hemisphere that isn't freezing. Even Atlanta got 10 inches of global warming the other day. Atlanta. Here we had two bright, crisp, perfect days over the weekend - then today, when I had a chance to get out on a hiking trail, the sky was clouded over. The creek was dry, so I experienced the walk as going through a narrow band of brown trees and gray stones, framed at the bottom by the round white rocks of the creek and at the top by pearlescent clouds. Even so, I found some interesting things to photograph, like this humongous juniper tree trunk with multiple knotholes. It would make a great starting point for embroidery... or maybe for dyeing, with the knotholes marked off by round gathers held by rubber bands and the whole cloth tightly pleated.

Now to figure out how I'd hold the pleats in place...What I envision is a long plastic box that's only 2-4" wide. Sadly, nothing we buy happens to come in a box of those dimensions, so this will have to go on the back burner. It's getting pretty crowded back there, too.

Never Tamper With a Christmas Tradition

Many, many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and our daughters were too small to read a calendar, I made a couple of simple little quilts to help them count down the days to Christmas. The top one is a Christmas tree and the bottom one is a street scene, and there are 25 velcro-backed "ornaments" which get transferred one by one to the tree.

This year I was having a head cold and otherwise distracted from Christmas and didn't bother to put the quilts up. After all, the "children" are twenty-somethings now, both living away from home, one in New York. Surely they wouldn't care...

Wrong. The Fashionista arrived from New York, looking amazingly grown-up and sophisticated in her City Black outfit, and demanded, "WHERE ARE THE CHRISTMAS QUILTS?"

Within minutes the girls had unearthed the quilts and hung them, and then they took turns moving ornaments so fast ("After all, we have a lot of days to catch up on,") that I got only one unblurred snapshot.

Finally, a passable arrangement

So, I dyed all this fabric and screen printed it and discharged it with silkscreens of ancient texts (Irish, runes, and cuneiform) with a vague idea of doing a second shrine-inspired composition. (Shrine Composition #1 is on the shelf under the coffee table at the moment, being hand quilted; I'll pin it up and take a shapshot once the Great Purple Monstrosity is off the board.)

The idea for the Great Purple Monstrosity, aka Shrine Composition 2, is to go back to the origins of the word. "Shrine" comes from Latin "scrinium," meaning a thingie to hold books. I want the incomplete and overlapping layers of text to reference ancient writings; then I'm going to make a scroll to put in each of the "niche" areas. The niche idea is taking off from the niche full of fabric-wrapped books I saw at the Jama Masjid in Delhi a few years ago. I don't know why the "niches" here are half-window blocks. I tried some full-window blocks and didn't like the way they looked. I kind of like it this way, with some openness and some confusion about perspective.

Anyway, I've been pinning this thing up and fiddling with it and discarding "window" fabrics for quite a while, and today I finally don't feel compelled to move anything. I'll give it a couple of days and then start sewing - umm, well, with packages to wrap and stockings to stuff and Christmas dinner and both my girls in Austin for Christmas, it will probably stay on the design board more than a couple of days. We'll see. In the interim, if anybody has any suggestions for improving the composition, I'm all ears. (Try to ignore the fact that the strips aren't pinned exactly straight. I got awfully tired of positioning strips during the last week of the design phase.)

Now that I'm looking at the snapshot, I'm beginning to feel that the big windows should be below the smaller windows. Dither, dither, dither.

Out of tragedy, a hauntingly beautiful image

I captured this photo from one of the many stories about the forest fire in Israel.

The colors are beautiful. The composition is excellent. If I didn't know the source, it would simply be a glorious image to go in my "inspirations" folder, next to innumerable Hubble space photos.

But I cannot look at it without thinking of the lives lost in that fire. Anything based on this image would have to somehow evoke the 43 souls the fire took. And even then...

How can we make art out of someone else's tragedy?

How can we not try to transform tragedy into art?

This is getting over my head. I'm going to go cut up fabric.