Some Kind of Madness

Oh hai. Sorry for the long radio silence, it's been crazy. The previously mentioned family emergency again, this time even more involved and protracted.

At least I have a singleton sock to show off, the Sock Madness 7 warmup pattern, Bricks and Tiles by Anita Grahn. Marvelous to relate, knitting technique is constantly advancing: the sock has a modified afterthought heel with gusset that actually fits my Frankenfeet.



The sock got to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC. As always when I reflect on the struggle for Civil Rights and the reactionary violence, I was struck by how young the Rev. Dr. King was – not yet 40 when assassinated. Not that the memorial gives much sense of that. It's unexpectedly isolated from biography, historical context, and the architectural conversation between national monuments that makes the national mall as a whole so moving and powerful.



I kept trying to figure out where the scowling statue is looking – not, in my opinion, at the Jefferson Memorial across the Tidal Basin, but somewhere else. Perhaps the uncharacteristic show of displeasure by the great practitioner of nonviolence is caused by the armed drone on display at the Air and Space Museum, mounted as if diving for a kill. Perhaps it's important to add the U.S. is diverse in many ways – not all visitors to the museum find that gruesome.



With so much madness in the air (so to speak), it's no wonder this has been my earworm.