Gallery ho!

[altivo]

Highlight photos of the spinning show are now online.



To see all 16 photos, click on the thumbnail above, and then use the "newer" button at the top right corner of each image.

I changed the water on the flax I started soaking yesterday. My instructions say to replace all the water after 24 hours, then half of it each 24 hours following until the retting process is complete. Telling when the process is complete seems to be tricky.

Another experimenter reported that her flax (soaking in a rain barrel) smelled very bad today. This surprises me a bit, as I could detect no odor as I poured off the old water. It was the color of strong green tea, but had no odor at all. The flax is certainly wet now, but not ready to shed its bark. We shall see what happens.

Gary got bitten by the cat this morning. Now he has a red and swollen fingertip. He went off to the urgent care center in Woodstock after dinner but they had already closed. Hospital emergency room is just too expensive to even consider, so he's waiting until tomorrow morning.

Comments

[schnee]

Yowch. Did you disinfect the bite wound?

[altivo]

He says he did, and he is extremely paranoid about such things. It was a puncture wound of course, and those are hard to clean.

Urgent care closed before he got there, so he came home. Then he calmed down enough to follow my instructions and soak the hand in a strong salt solution for a half hour. That can help draw the infection, and in fact it reduced the swelling and discomfort quite a bit. He slept well and it is somewhat better this morning. I told him to soak it again, but he probably will decide he's too busy for that. We'll see.

Of course, with the so-called health care system in this country, just getting an antibiotic for an infection like that can cost hundreds of dollars. His insurance won't cover it, and I'm not allowed to put him on my insurance because, you know, same sex "families" don't exist.

[schnee]

Aye. :/ I'm more reluctant these days to criticize other countries' social or political qualities, but I've got to say that I was already quite alarmed when you said that you couldn't go to the hospital emergency room because it'd be too expensive. There is something deeply wrong if someone in a modern, industrialized civilization with an injury that needs immediate care (and bite wounds of any kind, whether from non-human animals or humans, do) cannot get that care for monetary reasons.

[altivo]

The attitudes that lead to this situation are very deeply entrenched and go all the way back to the early Puritan settlers in the 17th century. In essence, it's the superstitious belief that "people get what they deserve" and "God will provide if he chooses to do so, but if he doesn't then you deserve to die and it would be a sin for anyone to interfere."

The laissez faire capitalism of the industrial revolution amplified this situation by reinforcing the belief that no one should have to provide for anyone else. In fact, even employers should not be responsible for the safety of their workers.

It took a series of terrible disasters to change this in the 20th century so that employers were often forced to protect their workers' safety, and unionization helped to spread the idea that employers were doing themselves a favor by protecting the health of their workers as well.

Unfortunately, in the present climate we are moving rapidly backward. Since the Reagan administration, regulations have been nullified or revoked, unions have been disenfranchised, and the prevailing conditions have come more and more to resemble those of the late 19th or early 20th century.

In essence, the wealthy own everything here. The rest of us are little more than serfs, with no rights, and if we have no jobs, nothing at all. No health care, no income, and, in the end, no life. The GOP and the Tea Party look on this as the normal state of affair. "God wills it." Sound familiar?