Blast Housekeeping

The masthead for the blog is a picture of a beautiful navajo germantown weaving that I liquified in Photoshop. Germantown wool is a three or four ply commercial yarn that was imported from Germantown, a town near Philadelphia. This wool was given to the navajo indians by the United States government after the Long Walk in 1863, their native churro herds having been destroyed.

Germantown wool was much finer and produced a weaving with many more knots to the inch. The resultant textiles were very bright colored and were given the name of eyedazzlers. There was a revival and great germantowns were produced throughout the 1920's. I sold my last great germantown last year in New Mexico. If I get another good one, I will put a picture up on the blog.

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On my way to see the new X-men movie this afternoon.

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Manny Gratz, a very nice man in town and sometime reader of these pages, writes that he is on the mend after a scary surgery. Great for Manny, continued good health. In similar news, Wendy Murphy stopped by to let me know that her son Conrad, the baseball player in the horrible crash on highway 76 last month, is starting to speak and is probably going to be okay. They were worried about brain damage and serious cognitive impairment and I am so happy for Wendy, Jim and the whole Murphy family. It will be a tough road but he will pull through.

Manny sent me this cool text to speech link to check out.

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I saw my old friend and neighbor Ted at the bank this morning. Unbeknownst to me, his wife had suddenly passed away after a short illness. A non smoker, she had a persistent cough. She didn't have it checked, thinking it was nothing, until it was too late and it turned out to be lung cancer. Ted is having a hard time, understandably, having loved this woman for fifty years. Tell the people you love that you love them often, someday you may never get another chance.

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The hawks are a daily source of pleasure and amusement.  They are beautiful flyers and seem to really enjoy soaring. I got pictures of brother and sister on different branches Saturday and the picture above is mother keeping an eye on her children and the strange man in the blue van.