I retired from the Public Defender Dept. November 12, 2015 after 16 health destroying years.
Now, I'm a full time multi-media artist and writer on a new adventure. As an artist, I create with beads, fabric, fiber, and ceramic clay. Sometimes separately; sometimes in assorted combinations. You can find my on-line store at: www.debthumanart.com.
Brady and I went on an adventure last week. We went to the farmers market.
Her pouches contain her vaccination record and poop bags. Some of the businesses in southern New Mexico have started asking to see proof of rabies vaccination before letting a dog onto the premises. Because rabies vaccination is required by law, this is a legal way of keeping out dogs, including service dogs. We’ve got a horrible problem with people buying a certificate on Amazon, putting a vest on Fido the Family Pet, and saying Fido is a service dog. There is no certification for service dogs in the United States. While certification is good in theory, it’s unworkable in real life. What tasks get certified? What if I need my dog to perform a task to assist me with my disability but the task isn’t on the certification list?
Part of going to the farmers market is exercise for me. I’m working on building up my endurance. I’m getting better, but I can only stand for a certain amount of time and can only walk a limited distance without my walker. I want to visit Santa Fe which would require a whole lot of walking. Plus, shops in the older buildings have stairs, narrow aisles, and are miserable to navigate if you need a walker.
I stopped at a stand advertising Yemeni Chai. I got to taste the tea, and bought some. I found some tomatoes for sandwiches. We stopped in a bookstore and I found a book on wire wrapping jewelry.
I’m so tired of physical setbacks. I broke my foot in December. Foot surgery in February. Six weeks in a wheelchair. Four weeks pushing a walker. Physical therapy. Going to the gym to build up muscle and to regain strength. Fell off my tricycle, bruised my tailbone, bruised my abdomen, major scrap on my shin for which I should have gone to the Emergency Room, and I’m regressing. I feel like curling up in a ball and sleeping for a month or so.
I noticed I’ve got some blooming cactus in the back yard, so I grabbed my camera.
We’re in a multi-year drought and we’ve lost cactus.
There was more to photograph, but I am limited on how much walking I can do, and I had reached my limit. Which is one of the reasons I’m frustrated and bummed out.
It’s easy to get side tracked if you’re an artist. It’s especially easy if one of your media is photography. I was about to make myself some oatmeal for breakfast and I looked out the window. Fog on the mountain! Fog is rare in the desert. I grabbed the camera. Clad in PJs and slippers, I went into the back yard and started photographing.
Fog eating the Robledo Mountains.
Fog eating the Dona Ana Mountains.
We don’t often get rain, and it has rained hard the last couple of days.
Raindrops on Desert Sage.
Some photos aren’t meant to be pretty. I used the one below will be used for designing fabric and put nine new designs in my Spoonflower shop.
I’m still struggling to get myself put back together. After the phone pole jumping out in front of my electric tricycle and causing several booboos, owies, a bruised tailbone and a sprained thumb, I lost two weeks at the gym. Now, I have to backtrack a bit to get to where I was before I fell off my tricycle. I’m planing on getting back into the gym on Monday. This inability to do the things I want to do is frustrating, anxiety causing, and a PITA.
I am working my way back to healthy by going to the gym and working out, doing exercises at home, and riding a bike. I am prone to vertigo so a two-wheel bike is a horrible option. So I got a tricycle. An electric tricycle with pedal assist. I got an expensive helmet and flashing lights so people would see me when I’m riding my tricycle. I took my trike for a ride. Everything was going great until a telephone pole jumped out in front of me. When I hit the pole, I rammed the handlebars into my abdomen and slammed my tailbone against the seat. I put a serious scrap on my shin. Although I was bleeding, my sock never ripped. This getting in shape business is tough work. The shin is healing, the bruises are starting to disappear, and my tailbone hurts. Fortunately, my helmet had a great warranty. Because I fell, I got a new helmet for free.
I got the little person sewn down. I was doing hand quilting along the bars, but if it hurts to sit, I’m not going to get much done. I do want to translate this into a painting.
I’ve added some jewelry to my online store, Deb Thuman Art. I’ve got a pile of jewelry that I made and I need to get it all in my store. If I put three items into my store each day, in about a month, I’ll be up to date. Maybe. Provided I don’t make anything new.
These are all in my store here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com. There’s a necklace to match the blue/green earrings.
The photos are a tad odd because I had to crop them like crazy to use them in my store. Now when I put them in a blog post, the background gets a little weird. It’s always something.
We lost power for a couple hours because we had a rollicking thunderstorm with pouring rain. This made for some rain photos.
I went to the farmers market Saturday morning. During the market, terrorists paraded up and down the street. Idiots conned into believing Israel is the enemy chanted globalize the infatada. Let’s look at history. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza. In 2006, the people of Gaza voted to have Hamas run their government. Israel offered Hamas 95% of what Hamas asked for – a result any intelligent negotiator would consider a major win and accept – Hamas refused the offer. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprovoked attack on Israel. Israel fought back. Per the head of Hamas, the point of the attack was to kill Jews and obliterate Israel.
Students for Justice in Palestine sounds innocent enough. It’s not. It’s a terrorist organization. Their express purpose, according to the people who run the organization, is to kill Jews and obliterate Israel. Yet these people are on college campuses all across the US. Would any college allow an organization whose express purpose is to kill Blacks and obliterate (choose any country in Africa)? Nope.
And so the idiots and terrorists marched down the street. I stood there screaming: Am Yisrael chai! (the people of Israel live) while pumping my fist in the air. I said that the next time I come to the market I’m bring a Super Soaker to fire at these jerks. I was told just don’t do it in front of the market management. As much as I’d love super soaking these people, I think that could be construed as a battery – an illegal act.
Perhaps instead, I’ll just stand I the middle of the street and block the parade. That’s not a crime. I’ll forgo the Super Soaker. Brandishing said Super Soaker can be considered an assault. It will be just me, my walker and my service dog.
I hate buying what I can make, so soap is hardening on the patio. Jim has an allergy to fragrances, so I have to keep smelly stuff away from him. I use melt and pour goat milk soap, add almond oil, and tea tree oil. Yes, I’m 72. Yes, I STILL have an acne problem. I need to use soap with tea tree oil in order to stop acne before it starts. I use a moisturizer with retinol – a substance used to treat acne. If I use a regular moisturizer for a few days, I break out.
The acne was supposed to stop after I finished going through puberty. It didn’t. It was supposed to stop if I took oral contraceptives. It didn’t. It was supposed to stop after I went through menopause. It didn’t. It was supposed to stop after my face stopped producing more oil than an oil well. It didn’t. Maybe it will stop after I’m dead. I want to go to medical school when I’m dead and the med students might be in for a surprise if my corpse keeps on making pimples.
Hearts.
Pigs.
Fish.
After the soap hardens, I’ll put it in a plastic bag to keep under the sink until I need to use the soap.
I’ve been working out at the gym at least once a week. Stop laughing. That’s better than the once a month I had been pushing myself to go to the gym. I feel stronger after each workout although I’m still limited to how long I can stand or walk before I’m in pain. I’ve been doing exercises that help with the hip pain. I’ve been riding my exercise bike.
Soon, I’ll be riding an electric tricycle. Because I’m prone to vertigo, it’s not safe for me to ride a two-wheel bike. I live at the top of a hill and just the thought of having to pedal manually up that hill after a workout is enough to keep me off of a bike. This bike has a pedal assist. I’ll have to pedal up the hill, but the motor will make that much easier for me. In theory, the tricycle will go 16 mph on a flat surface. I’ve no intention of discovering if that’s true. At least not right away. Jim hit a snag putting my bike together and he has to call the company on Monday for advice. I eventually will have one of those big flags for the back of the bike. I want to be visible. I think I still have some flaming orange dye so I can dye a tee shirt and be more visible.
Along with being more stable than a two-wheeler just because there are three wheels, this bike has a lower center of gravity to add even more stability. There’s a basket for the back of the bike. I’m looking forward to doing some exploring with this bike. Of course I’ll need to have something pithy embroidered on the front of a tee shirt now that I’ll be a bad-ass bike rider. Perhaps a flaming skull.
I’ve discovered my health insurance gives people an incentive to be healthy. I got $25 for my annual checkup and $25 for having a mammogram. I don’t get actual money, but I can trade the “money” for gift cards. I chose a Barnes and Nobel gift card. I can get “money” for working out. I can get a whole lot of reading done this way.
I’ve got the strips of fabric sewn together. Using a one-way fabric was interesting. I had to make sure all the eyes were going in the same direction.
I’ve drafted the little person. Now to figure out where the little person should be.
Next, I’m auditioning thread.
I think this one is going to be both hand and machine quilted. I’m thinking about how I can quilt barbed wire between the bars. I’ll outline the little person and the bars by hand.
I hit a sale at Superior Threads and my latest batch of thread arrived in the mail today.
Some of the thread is designed for hand quilting. Some will be for the embroidery machine. Some will be for the sewing room.
I’m having a peripheral neuropathy flareup. One of the sure antidotes to the pain is to make art. I had a major depressive episode Monday, and saw the beginnings of a quilt in my head. Or maybe it’s the beginnings of a painting. I’m not entirely sure. I thought about how bipolar disorder, or any DSM-V label, separates the person with the illness from the rest of the world. Like the time I listened to a woman clearly old enough to know better talk trash about someone who had bipolar disorder. When I told her I have bipolar disorder, she literally backed away from me. Gotta watch out for those mental illness cooties.
I dug out my box of fabric and started auditioning fabric for this quilt.
This usually takes a long time. Today was not usually. Today, the fabrics jumped out of the box and insisted on being put together. I was careful about values. How many times have quilters gotten out fabrics and then realized every fabric was a medium value. The red is medium bordering on dark, but I didn’t find a fabric I liked better.
Start here:
End here.
I”ve been playing around with moon shots lately. We’ve had partially cloudy skies and I wanted to get some of the cloud feeling into the shot. The shot, without any editing, is the top photo. I shoot in RAW rather than JPEG. Current thinking is that because modern sensors are so much more sensitive, there’s no need for RAW. RAW files are huge and take up a whole lot of room on the hard drive or the external storage. I don’t use the cloud. I don’t trust the security and someone dumping child pornography into your cloud account can net you many years in a federal prison. Worse, because cloud users don’t own the cloud, the feds don’t need users’ permission to run barefoot through all the person has stored. Because the user doesn’t own the cloud, the user’s standing to contest the warrant or warrentless search is likely nil. Translation: if the feds find child pornography in your area of the cloud, you’re screwed.
The RAW advantage is the sensor records far more detail than JPEG. That advantage is critical when doing nature photography and you have only what nature has given you to work with. When I adjusted the exposure, the background was revealed. The photo is a whole lot more intriguing than the sky was when I took the original shot.
I’ve been playing around with photos in editing with the intention of using the final photo to design fabric. Lately, my Spoonflower shop has gotten a lot of traffic and I’ve had some sales. You can find my designs here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
Independence Day. In the movie, when the mother ship explodes, Will Smith says: Elvis has left the building.
Independence Day. The Bill of Rights has left the building. We have a concentration camp in the Everglades. It’s not there because of the alligators. It’s there so We The People can’t see what’s happening to the people illegally seized and incarcerated there.
We have a president who claims to love Jews. I never believed that for a minute. That’s the same president who said there are good nazis. Okay, there are good nazis – and every one of them is dead. Now, the same president claims some bankers are shylocks. Shylock is the name of the money lender in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The character is a Jew who wants a pound of flesh if he isn’t repaid the money he lent.
We have a suspension of due process. We have idiots in charge of the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services. We have a psychopath in the White House.
We have a congress that passed a horrible bill designed by a psychopath and voted on by degenerate politicians who would rather bow to a dictator than do what’s morally right.
Nobody living can ever stop me as I go walking the freedom highway Nobody living can make me turn back This land was made for you and me. Woody Guthrie
Pete Seeger was hauled in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee for singing that song. During the same time, I had a music teacher who taught us a folk song. I lived in a republican town. Mother Theresa couldn’t get elected if she ran as a democrat. The teacher taught us This Land Is Your Land and told us it was written by a famous folk singer. She put her job on the line when she did that.
But this land is still troubled by men who have to hate. They twist away our freedom and twist away our fate. Law is their weapon and treason is their cry. You can stop them if you try. Phil Ochs, Power and The Glory.
This verse was left off for the commercial recording. Ochs wanted to make a patriotic song and thought that verse was inappropriate. Wrong Phil. It’s damned appropriate. It’s the First Amendment in action. We must speak out. We must stop them.
If we don’t stop them, the constitution and the Bill of Rights will leave the building.
I can either wait, and wait, and wait until this passes, or I can try and draw myself out of the muck. Nothing is rolling around in my brain. No images demanding to be made. No feelings demanding a voice. Nothing.
I sat down with my iPad and started drawing. It didn’t have to be good, just an idea. I’ve often made quilts (and paintings) about my inner turmoil. Maybe it’s time to make a quilt about my foot.
I thought about showing physical pain from peripheral neuropathy. I thought about showing pain from the surgery I had to put my foot back together after I broke it, and the marbles I have to pick up with my toes. The marbles are part of the physical therapy that will strengthen my arch. The foot looks weird because when I broke my foot, the arch collapsed. After the surgery, my food is weird looking.
The brown, oblong things with the holes are the plates attached to my bones. The silver thing is the screw that holds the plates in place. The screw may or may not be removed in a few months. The triangles are like the pain from the neuropathy. Sometimes sharp, sometimes dull. The coral round things are the marbles I need to pick up with my toes.
Surgery left me with a foot that looks like it merged with an erector set. I no longer have pain from the surgery, but I do have pain from the fallen arch of my foot.
I’ve no idea if this drawing is something I want to make into a quilt. I do want to keep playing around with my iPad and try and come up with something.
I will be starting EMDR on Monday. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR has been quite successful treating PTSD and CPTSD. Maybe some of the very hurt, scared and confused child can come out in a quilt.
Recently, New York started allowing adoptees to get a copy of their original, pre-adoption birth certificate with the names of the birth parents. When I joined ALMA – Adoptees Liberty Movement Association – in 1987, pre adoption records could only be obtained on the black market. The price all throughout the east coast and as far west as Texas was $1500.00. I thought it remarkable that the entire black market had the same price. That smacks of an organization controlling access.
Instead, I spent hours and hours in Erie County Hall looking up property records. I spent hours and hours in the basement of Erie County Hall looking at jury records, immigration records and anything else that I could find. I discovered that my family on my mother’s side isn’t from Germany. On my great-great-grandfather’s immigration papers, he renounced allegiance to the kind of Prussia. They were from Dittersdorf, East Prussia.
I found my great-grandmother’s marriage records and discovered that she was several months pregnant when she got married. When I was born, my great-grandfather, perhaps remembering his own history, put a silver dollar in my hand.
For $45, I got documentation that originally I was not only not allowed to have by law, but was also not allowed to even know existed..
This is my original birth certificate. My mother made up my father’s middle name. What she didn’t know until I found my father and later told her is that my middle name, Lee, is a Harmon family name. It’s also my father’s middle name. It was the name of my great-grandfather. He died in the Chieftain Mine in West Virginia on his first day of work. My great-grandmother was pregnant. She likely was thrown out of mine company owned housing. She went back to live with her parents and never remarried.
I didn’t know that birth certificates were two pages. I didn’t know that my mother was tested for syphilis while she was pregnant. I’ve no idea if that was something only done to single women or if all pregnant women had to be tested for syphilis.
This is the last page of my order of adoption. It was all but impossible to get records unsealed. What shocks me is that my mother and The Drunk would have had to agree to let me see my own records.
And to Judge Jacob A. Latona, here’s a single finger salute. I got my records and I didn’t need a judge’s permission.
Why is all this important? Have you ever filled out a medical history that included you, your parents and your siblings? I used to just write: Pursuant to NYS Domestic Relations Law sec. 100-140 inclusive, I am not allowed to know the answers to any of these questions. My knowledge of my medical history came from finding my father and requesting death records of his father, brother, and grandmother.
Have you ever tried to do a family history perhaps through Ancestry? If you’re an adoptee, there’s no history. No story about where your family came from. No finding out about family heroes and family embarrassments. Every family has both.
After I found my father, I discovered I’m Scott-Irish on his side. That explains all the times I have been asked if I’m Irish. All that searching showed me I’m Polish on my mother’s side. Further searching and a chance reading of a novel showed me my grandmother’s horrible German was Yiddish. We aren’t just Polish, we are Polish Jews.
I worship in a temple, I celebrate Jewish holidays, and I treasure Hibernian Heritage Day (March 17) when I can celebrate who I’ve always been….a Scott-Irish, Polish Jew.
I wanted to go to the No Kings demonstration yesterday. I planned on it. I didn’t go.
I’m still doing rehab following a broken foot. I can only stand for so long or walk so far without a walker. Because the demonstration was in a park, I’d have to be pushing a walker over grass. That’s not easy. It meant if there had been any sort of problem and I needed to leave in a hurry, or out run a bullet, I couldn’t. I still planned on going. I had wanted to photograph the demonstration. I got up, looked at the air quality index, and realized I needed to stay home. The air quality was solidly in the poor range.
Our poor air quality, which has been going on for several days, is because of two wildfires in the Gila Wilderness. The fires are more than 200 miles west of us so we are in no danger from the fires. All the crud in the air from the fires is blithely floating by my house. This is causing an allergic reaction.
This is what I saw the other night. Looks pretty, right?
Tweaking the photo in editing shows what the camera “saw”. Those vivid blues are courtesy of air pollution from the fires.
I saw photos of the local No Kings demonstration this morning. There were more people than I expected. There was someone with a “Free Palestine” sign. Apparently this person is utterly ignorant of Israel’s history. Israel left Gaza in 2005. In 2006, led by hatred, the people of Gaza voted Hamas into power.
Another person was wearing a keffiheh. The only reason for anyone in this country to wear such a thing is to advertise the wearer’s hatred of Jews.
I’m now glad I stayed home.
I’m slowly recovering from the broken foot and have been able to do some photography outside.
The Dona Ana Mountains about a half hour after sunrise.
The view from my backyard a half hour after sunrise. Yes, I know there’s a dead yucca spike smack in the middle of the shot. Yes, I know it shouldn’t be there.
This was taken about an hour before sunset last night. I liked how the light was on the cactus.
This is what a cactus dying from thirst looks like. Note the tiny tuna developing on the cactus pad. There were incredibly few blooms in the desert this spring. We had less than half the average amount of rain last year. When the annual rainfall is about 10 inches, missing half of it is disastrous. Monsoon season – don’t laugh that’s what it’s called here – started June 1. Since then, we’ve had less than a half inch of rain.
I had made a couple pairs of pajama bottoms from knit fabric I got at JoAnn’s. The fabric had an incredibly short lifespan and developed holes faster than I could patch them. That’s what happens with cheap fabric. I hit a sale at Mood and bought cotton knit for three pairs of pajama bottoms. I started on one pair yesterday.
This is for the pair that’s in progress.
A future pair.
The other future pair.
Because fabric from Mood is so often wider than what I could get from JoAnn’s, I’m discovering I can make gym shorts and pajama bottoms from the fabric. I need gym shorts as well as pajamas.
Today is Father’s Day, a day I hate. I didn’t have a father. The violent drunk my mother married never forgot that I was someone else’s kid. I tried talking to him after I found out I was adopted. He said he wasn’t my real father. That explains why I was never his real daughter. That explains why he gave his kids an allowance but didn’t give me an allowance until I begged for one. This explains why he hit me but not his real kids. I’d share a happy memory, but there are none. I’m supposed to be grateful that he gave me a name. I had a perfectly good name before I was adopted. Instead, I’m the family shame because my mother wasn’t married when I was born. That was a big deal in 1952. She married The Drunk a month before my fourth birthday because she didn’t want to send me to school without a father. That was for her benefit. She was a violent, drunken narcissist and never did anything for anyone else’s benefit.
Father’s Day and Mother’s Day are days when I am forced to remember that I never had parents.
Today is Tina’s yahrzeit – the anniversary of her death according to the Hebrew calendar. On the civil calendar, her anniversary is June 24. Of the three siblings I grew up with, she was the only one who seemed to like me.
And so I’m depressed. I’ll be okay as soon as the antidepressant kicks in.
I’ve been designing fabric and putting new designs in my Spoonflower shop. To design fabric, I take photos – usually nature photography. Then, I use an editing program to play around.
These are the photos for the designs I created this morning.
Some of these designs look a little different after I finished the designing and proofing process in Spoonflower.
I saw the surgeon on Tuesday, and my foot is healed! No more boot! I can’t walk around barefoot. I need to wear arch supports in my shoes – something I’ve been doing for years. Now that I’m able to walk again, I’ve developed new pains. I’m so used to sitting or being hunched over a walker, that my hips and lower back need help. Part of the problem with wearing a boot is that no matter what I do with my shoe on the non-broken foot, my legs aren’t the same length. I’ve got an appointment with my chiropractor in two weeks to get everything aligned correctly.
Being able to walk again, I took some moon shots last night. There’s a tiny sliver of a moon. I used a long shutter speed and moved the camera around. I merged. two shots in editing and then started playing.
Deb's Art 