Clutter

One of the neat inventions of the modern era are blowers and suckers for yard work. This time of the year, with detritus falling off trees, I find myself blowing the detritus to the side of the drive and then using the sucker mode to pick up the stuff and place in the compost bin. In the fall, I like to keep the driveway and curb in front of our house clear of leaves to avoid washing down the storm sewer and head to the lakes which can raise lake phosphorous levels, so having both is also handy. This is a tale of how my wife likes to declutter, and how the leaf blower played apart.

With Sucker attachment

Many years ago I bought an electric corded leaf blower/sucker. There were two different attachments, one for each main action of the machine. About five years ago part of the attachment for sucking broke. I really like the sucker as in the fall we rake the leaves on to piles or rows and then I use that to pick them up, which in the process breaks them up making them better for mulching the flower beds.  Hence, I had to buy a new one, but I kept the old one, which allowed me blow with one and suck with the other without changing attachments. Well, this last week the electric engine on the original machine stopped working so I am down to the one. My wife said, "Good, another piece of clutter gone." I am not sure something one uses is clutter, but I am not an expert on clutter except at perhaps making clutter. Do I need a second blower/sucker machine, no, but it sure helps with certain jobs like cleaning the driveway. It is much easier to change the cord then change the attachment, and I kept the blower on the old and the sucker on the new. Taking on and off each attachment leads to the likelihood that one attachment will break, like that small plastic piece on the old sucker that when  broken rendered it useless. Planned obsolescence makes buying a part the cost of a new machine. I liked using the two machines so much that I thought I would go buy another one just to have that ability again. But, my wife's comment put an end to that thought.

This comment, and other comments on her desperate efforts to declutter, led to a dream I had the other night. In my dream we were camping, and we get home to find out that someone had squatted in our house. Not only had they squatted, but they sold much of our stuff. I am irate, and in my dream am upset that they sold our kayaks. I am not sure if they sold my bike or not, as that was not in the dream. My wife's only comment was that, "This is good, there is less clutter." She was not concerned about our house being violated or gear sold, only less clutter to deal with. This statement shows my wife's priorities, getting rid of stuff. I was really mad at what had happened. Somehow I tracked down one of the kayaks that was illicitly sold by the squatter and grabbed it. My wife told me I stole it, and I said it was an illicit sale the squatter and I was reclaiming my rightful ownership. The squatter had no right to not only live in our house, but to sell our stuff. She may have had a different tune, in my dream, if they sold her sewing machine, or stamp sets. I got the kayak back only to see it stolen again. I then woke up.

With blower attachment

My wife is an organizer and has been on this declutter mission for sometime now. She is always on the lookout for an angle to get rid of an item or two or three or..... I am one of those people who hold on to a part from something that broke, thinking at some point I will find a reuse for it. For example, I have pieces of wood a tube from a broken bike pump. I even have harvested screws, bolts and nuts off of old electronics, like a broken DVD player, to keep in case a I need a small screw or bolt. The idea is to save a trip to the hardware store, but my looking probably wastes more time than a trip to the hardware store which is but a few minute bike ride away. I am may have used one or two of those mined screws in the past several years. I have a whole bunch of miscellaneous screws and nuts. My wife's grandfather had a whole cigar box full of nuts, which some how I ended up with. This was obviously before the wife's decluttering days. Unless specifically purchased, most often my bolts don't match the nuts. The DVD with bolts, often had a built in nut for the bolt. 

The whole clutter thing raises a couple questions: When does being frugal become parsimonious? And, when does saving parts of objects become clutter? Everyone will have a different idea on how these questions are answered, and they will have different levels and types of clutter in their home. 

I never would have thought the leaf blower and other issues would lead to such a weird dream of squatters and them selling my kayaks. Most interesting of all, was my wife's reaction about their being a few less items of clutter around the house. It may only be a matter of time before I am deemed clutter.

Quilters

It has been part of the world since at least the 12th century, brought to Europe by the Crusaders, although it may date back to before the common, that is Christian, era. Padded fabric was used for clothing, bedding and even armor. It may have originated in China and/or India. Interestingly, "quilt" comes from the Latin culcita, meaning a stuffed sack. The word has come to have 2 meanings. It is used as noun, meaning the 3-layer stitched bedcovering, and as a verb, meaning the act of stitching through the 3 layers to hold them together. When we think of quilts today, we turn our minds to bed covering, or perhaps a wall decoration.

Quilting Room at the Missouri Prison

For some reason, quilting is now associated with as part of Americana--those items generally that took hold in the United States and flourished. Using scraps of fabric was more than frugality, it was often out of necessity. At times it seems it was destined to become a lost craft, or art, but every time that seems to happen nostalgia, or desire to create kicks in and saves the art form from becoming lost. Quilting is much easier now than the early quilting bees, where everything was handstitched. Sewing machines are used and there are long arm quilting machines. My wife has been quilting for over 45 years, and with JoAnn Fabrics now having closed has lost her go-to store for supplies, that may end. She made over 300 quilts the past few years for Access Community Health to provide to disadvantaged households to welcome their infants. 

My Hovel male ancestors, in addition to farmers, were weavers. They weaved linen from homegrown  flax. The weaved cloth would be used for clothing, and perhaps bedding. I would not want to try my hand at sewing, due to poor fine motor skills, so that skill has obviously been lost to me. Although, I doubt the wife would even let me try to use her Janome. My twin brother has done some sewing, as has one of our sons. It makes my wife happy that our son sews to repair clothes, or what have you. 

One of the quilts designed and made by the prisoners

Men have been sewing for a long time--many tailors were men, so they obviously developed better fine motor skills than me. However, we watched a short 33 minute documentary on Netflix on Monday night called The Quilters. Male prisoners in a high security prison in Missouri quilt for foster kids and others. All of the material and equipment used is donated. It is really quite a heart-warming story of restorative justice to see men, some of whom are lifers, make a quilt for some one else and then tear up at the thank you note sometimes received. As one prisoner said, quilting puts him on the outside. They seem to do their own designs. To get the quilting gig, a prisoner must not have had any write ups or demerits, for obvious reasons since sewing involves the the use of sharp objects. Heck even the wife learned a couple things. Such as a man using a rotary cutter to take out some poorly done stitching that caused a few puffs in the quilting. 

A sad part of the show was one man, probably in his sixties, who was written up because he was working on fabric in his cell with a small cutter, which is a no no to have outside the sewing area.  He was removed from quilting due to this. He certainly had a knack for design. A misstep on his part taking the sharp with him to his cell. 

Assembling a quilt

During the show, one man says the room is organized chaos. That is how I felt when my wife was making the quilts for Access Community Health, as she had an assembly line process and partially done quilts were piled, albeit neatly, through the room. She often made thirty or more quilts at a time and when completed we would pack in large plastic bags, not unlike what they do in the show. A few years ago, a mom brought her child into the Access Community Health clinic, wrapped in a quilt my wife had made. It was the only item the mother had for her child.

Beware if you watch that The Quilters show on Netflix, however, as there is some jargon involved. They were speaking English, but it did not make any sense. I commented to my wife, when the quilting prisoners were using some jargon, that I did not understand a thing they said. As a 45 year quilter, she understood what they were talking about and doing. I could say my wife knows three languages: English, Nursing and Quilting. Nursing also has its own short hand, or did before the advent of digital medical records. I would come home from work and see her often times neat handwriting with some odd notation, which turned out to be shorthand nurses use. To me it was a squiggle. I was supposed to understand that notation. As a planner people often complained about planning jargon, but they must not have had to put up with nurse notations or quilting jargon. One could say each occupation or hobby has its own jargon.

There is a certain irony in these men quilting. If they make a mistake it is often correctable by removing stitches and redoing the seam. Recutting is a different story. Yet, many are serving long, if not life, prison sentences for a horrible crime in which there is no do over. They showed men who readily admitted to their crime, and find a certain rehabilitation in quilting. They are doing something that both helps themselves and others, which is the best part of The Quilters. 

Images from Google.

"You can’t rewrite what happened, but you can stop rereading the worst parts over and over again."

---St Mother Teresa

Nurses

We have all come into contact with a nurse. They are the medical professionals that undertake much of the grunt work, while doctors float about dictating orders.  The most famous nurse maybe the fictional Margaret "Hotlips" Houlihan, followed by Florence Nightingale. Generation Z may not know Hotlips, or Florence. Yes, nurses do a great deal of work and can put in long hours. They even have a week dedicated to themselves, not a day (well, they have that too), but a week.

One would think Nurses week would start on a Sunday and last through the following Saturday, but this year it started on a Tuesday. I found this odd. Is it a play to the fact that some nurses do not have Mon-Fri or 9 - 5 jobs? What I found out is that Nurses week ends on Florence Nightingale's birthday, May 12, so it begins one week early with National Nurses Day on May 6. Instead of celebrating Nurses Day on May 12, they essentially have two recognized days and the whole week in between. 

Florence Nightingale, c 1860

National Nurses Week was established by a nursing organization in January1974. President Nixon declared a week in February 1974 to recognize those often low-sung heroes of the medical profession. My wife is a nurse, so I should have been paying more homage to her this week. Heck, she is a mother, and Mother's Day fell the day before Florence's birthday, so she could get double recognition. Lucky her.

Hotlips on MASH set

Nurses must have a great lobby, after all it was their own organization that came up with the idea to celebrate themselves. Some causes have months, Women's History Month, Pride month, just to name two. After Nurses Week, the third week of May celebrates American Public Works Week. Now, as a former city planner, I looked up if there was a planners week. Sure enough there is a planners day, but not city or regional planners, but the type of planner that you use to layout your day or week or month. Basically a calendar. My wife would like that as she is a highly organized list making kind of person. She may like that more than Nurses Week.

My spouse, as a nurse, gets kudos for a whole week, while as a city planner we get topped by a calendar schedule. Planners must lack the lobby efforts of nurses and other organizations, or else they have more humility to not call attention to themselves. Now, I get it, nurses perform work that impacts ones health, and that work is important. We planners simply help create the built environment, and minimize impact on the natural. Hey, just because we had a hand in where they work, the roads that took the bus or car from their home to the hospital or clinic, there is no need for any recognition. Planners often bear the brunt of bad tempers from having to tell a person no. I have long said, if the Fitchburg festival had me in a dunk tank the line would be around the block at McKee Farms Park. Yet, if conserving farm land, and attempting to thwart bad development was the cost, it is a badge I gladly wore.

UW Capping Ceremony for Nursing Students
1950's

While I had the metaphorical badge for attempting to thwart bad development, my wife does not own a nurse cap. Apparently, nurse caps have been a thing of the past since before the 1990's. She then, and now get a pin. How exciting. I like the cap idea better. The cap was referred to as a Flossie, in honor of Florence Nightingale. Perhaps the pinning ceremony should be referenced as the Holi, in honor of Hotlips, whose nickname was in honor of her ability to get pinned. The medical profession has a long list of alphabet titles now, apparently to spread out duties to lower cost staff. Meriter nurses are considering going on strike, for pay, working conditions and what ever else. Nurses there working fulltime and without shift pay, make over $100,000 a year. I am not sure how much sympathy they will get. The medical profession is full of sludge--required actions that make things difficult and expensive. I have to say, it is probably worse than government. 

Medical care, with aging baby boomers and the continued Make America Ill of processed foods, high fructose corn syrup and other additives all work against the human body and our health. Nurses are in demand and that is why they can earn that level of pay. As Nursing week comes to a close, I ponder what comes next, will May become Nursing Month? Or better yet, start April 14 and end May 12 for four weeks of nurse appreciation? While I may pick on her, I do appreciate my live-in nurse. 

Photos from Google Images

Discord

When I grew up in Sun Prairie, I found that the city, for much of the 1960's at least, did not separate based on class and income. The street in which I grew up contained adults employed as shop owners, workers at the porcelain plant, truck drivers, and professionals. While all white, it was a mix of people on varied portions of the socio-economic spectrum. At some point, things began to change. First, there was the Royal Oaks subdivision on the then far west edge of Sun Prairie, the name of which connotates exclusiveness. Yet, the exclusiveness would really take off in the 1980's and1990's with subdivisions promoting, often by deed restriction, larger homes which priced out the working class. Yet, the divide has also occurred due to other institutions. Much of the street on which I grew up was Catholic attending the Church a block away. The Church, the schools, the city were all institutions one could count on at that time. But, since then there has been change in our institutions that has led to discord.

Over a decade ago I read a book by the controversial author Charles Murray titled Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010. A NY Times bestseller, this book was published in 2012. The book compared two "fictional" areas of the US, a working class and a middle or upper middle class area. While the areas were fictional, the statistics were real. My memory may fail in some instances, but I believe my general thesis will be correct. The book described how the divide of working class whites and white collar whites grew larger over that fifty year time span. That divide seems emblematic of some of the problems the nation faces today.

Source: Amazon.com

Nationally, the class divide has grown worse and is leading to an interesting shift in political attitudes. For example, working class are now voting more Republican than before, and Democrats have become the party of the upper middle class. While the book described the upper middle class as more religious than the poor, I think that has fallen too, as secularism has taken hold. The poor whites have lower rates of marriage. Fortune magazine, in 2024, reported that only one in five young men under age 25 was employed. Further, over 10% of men aged 25 to 44 were not working nor looking for work. Prime working age men out of the labor force should be a cause for concern. There are a lot of NEETs--Not in Education, Employment or Training. This adds to the divide, or perhaps the divide and has led to these men being out of the workforce.

As I read Murray's book, I came to the realization that the church had failed many of the working class and poor whites. The described "fictional" poor area was easily an Italian working class area in which the fishing industry was the predominate employment base. It is populated by the Italian working class made famed in the movie "Rocky." The Church, from Paul VI to Benedict XVI, became so focused on sex and pelvic issues that it failed to recognize what was happening inside, and how it was treating the then faithful. Pope Francis rightly understood that people well know the Church's positions on pelvic issues, so, like a good teacher, he wanted to move to the next lesson. His idea was for an evangelizing church that accompanies rather than denigrates the faithful. He had an idea to respect and teach, rather than condemnation and derogate. The shape of the US Church is, well, sinking. Francis' ideas have been opposed by many in the US hierarchy, so it may well be too late for the poor  and working class in the US, but it may help those in developing countries. People were not getting married, particularly in the church because it became the purveyor of rules over mercy, of doctrine over faith, of pelvic issues, over accompanying people due to loss of jobs, personal issues, or whatever else humanity is inflicted with in the modern world. We have to recall that era was in flux economically, socially and religiously. In failing to accompany their flock, the church has now lost generations. 

John Garvey, former president of Catholic University of America read the same book and commented that the problem was due to the increased family units without a male presence, and their lack of religious involvement. But, people lost interest in the church, and it was not all secularism, but the church attitudes, read clericalism, and its tendency to always criticize, that turned people off.

Religious institutions have has also lost trust. In the Catholic Church much of it due the sexual abuse crisis. Rather odd that a church that preached on pelvic issues failed to address abuse by clergy. Nothing speaks of clericalism more than the preferential treatment shown to clerical abusers, who were forgiven and reassigned, while at the same time condemning ordinary folk who failed to live to the ideal. This all played a role in the loss of trust and now influence of the Catholic Church in the US, and much of the world. The US Bishops have become a laughing stock, and it is no more so proven than by the Trump AI post of him dressed as a pope, days before the conclave, and just after his appointments of Robert Barron and Timothy Dolan to a commission on religious freedom.

The  disconnect between Pope Francis and many in the US hierarchy was canyon. Take the Bishop of Winona, MN, who attended the State of the Union address by President Trump, and called the representative who invited him, from West Virginia, a good Catholic. That representative went to the notorious prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration is sending migrants and gang members kicked out of the US. Compare this to Pope Francis who on the last Thursday of his life visited prisoners in a prison in Rome. He apologized for being unable to wash their feet on that Holy Thursday. He gave away his bit of wealth to the prisoners. It was an act of accompaniment by the Pope, not the condemnation that the Winona Bishop, and much of the US hierarchy seem so enamored with. Perhaps knowing how off track US conservative church members are, Pope Francis, it was a badge of honor for him to be criticized by them. Francis warned about ideologies taking over for faith. 

The seeds for the decline of the Church were sown by its own actions. This is shown, when reading between the lines, in Murray's book. The US Church has opened itself up to having the faith mocked by President Trump. Bit by bit, the church failed to accompany people, to try to get them to find a deeper relationship with Jesus. The one who recognized this was Jorge Bergoglio. He noted that there are times when Jesus is knocking to get out. As Pope Francis, in an audience in Jan 2023 said: "The voice of the Lord can always be recognized; it has a unique style it is a voice that pacifies, encourages and reassures in difficulties. The Gospel reminds us of this continually: 'Do not be afraid (Lk 1:30)'." 

Cardinal David of the Philippines
Source: Google images

When there is discord in the world, reaction is often to look to the past with a view that it was a perfect time. We see that in the world today, and in the Catholic Church with the many young traditional minded priests in the US that harken for a time viewed as the good old days. Bishop Hying of Madison seems to want to go back to the Middle Ages. That may be the view of some, but Cardinal David of the Philippines in a 3 May 2025 article in "America" (online) is quoted as saying:

In a time when the globalized economic and political order is crumbling—especially exposed during the Trump era and its aftermath—the church may well be one of the last stubborn institutions that still holds a truly global character.

This unique position places a serious responsibility on the church: not to retreat into self-preservation or nostalgic idealism, but to engage the world by offering a credible witness to a renewed model of humanity.

The church should relate to the world not with fear or condescension, but with a humble yet bold presence that takes the world’s realities seriously: its wounds, its aspirations, its complexity.

Cardinal David's comments show the divide between some in the US Church and those in what is termed the "global south". The church in the US, as an institution, failed to accompany poor and working class people for much of the time during Murray's fifty year time span. It abandoned them, or paid them little heed in a time of need, when they faced economic hardship, social difficulties, or personal doubt. Those people responded by leaving, as they saw an institution that cared little for them. People do not like to be consistently talked down to. The discord between economic classes has grown in the United States, and the institutions--government, religious, education, have done little to offset the divide. Those with cash drive the conversation, and with Pope Francis having been counter to this, it is no wonder so many trads in the US fought him. 

Tim Busch, head of Napa Institute,
one of the organizations that wined and dined some Cardinals.
Source: NCR

The following was heaven sent: The National Catholic Reporter on 5 May (see note below) had an article that some cardinals are being wined and dined by conservative Catholic organizations, which you can read here. While scheduled before the death of Francis, it is concerning. Showing the lack of class these organizations have, NCR has the London Times quoting an anonymous Papal Foundation VIP: "This room could raise a billion to help the church. So long as we have the right pope." Francis, rolled over in his simple grave, as Cardinal Dolan spoke to the group. One wonders what the Cardinals from Mongolia, East Timor, and other far flung places think of this. It is not part of what was Francis' vision for the church. Influence peddling at its best. Sadly, this is only one aspect of the traditional-conservative forces and their push to influence the conclave. 

It will be interesting to see if this American political lobbying effort affects the conclave. Per that news report, American money has its strings for the right man. It is not out of the goodness of their heart, it is for a pope who will follow their agenda. It could well represent thirty pieces of silver It speaks to the division in the world between poor and working class and wealthy. Until the division in the world is tempered, discord will reign and this does not require traditionalism, but a break from clericalism that has so negatively affected the church.

Note regarding the NCR article--I wrote a rough draft of this blog on the morning of Monday, May 5. I reviewed the rough draft that afternoon. After completing that first review, with a few minutes before dinner, I looked at America magazine and NCR to see if there was any more recent news on the discussions from the general congregation meetings. I saw this article and realized it could well be the hand of God at work to provide me more information for this blog post. Truly heaven sent. Sadly, there are more concerted effort on their part for control of the Church.