MMMay16 Wrap-up

What is Me-Made-May'16?

Me-Made-May'16 (#MMMay16 for social media interaction) is a challenge designed to encourage people who sew/knit/crochet/refashion/upcycle garments for themselves to wear and love them more. The me-made and self-stitched challenges have been taking place for six years now and they work on both a personal and community level. The participants decide the specifics of their own challenge, so that the month is appropriate and challenging for them (more on this below). For example, a very common pledge is for a participant to aim to wear one self-stitched or refashioned garment each day for the duration of May 2016. The participants can also choose to document their challenge with daily photos (though this is in no way compulsory for taking part) and share them with other participants (more on this below as well).

I've participated in Me Made May since May 2010.

Since "participants decide the specifics of their own challenge", I set myself the stretch (in 2010) goal of wearing something me-made every day in May. This was a learning experience as I realized that I sewed for a fantasy life instead of my real wardrobe needs.

In 2016, it is a completely different story. As Clio ably pointed out in her Cheater's guide to MMM, that's a trivially easy accomplishment if you sew your own loungewear/nightclothes.  The internets do not need a daily picture of me wearing a nightgown or bathrobe.

In past years, I joined the legions who spent April and May feverishly sewing to fill wardrobe gaps.  My sixth rendition of Simplicity 2938 did not get done in time, and that's OK.  I'll finish up the binding in June and wear it all summer.

Simplicity 2938

I hate sewing under time pressure.  But, I walked into Elfriede's Fine Fabrics for a spool of thread to match the dyed shirt above, and spied her new shipment from Elliot Berman.  I was shocked that Elfriede, a PhD biochemist, did not recognize the MIT school colors.

Simplicity 2263

I purchased a yard of this rayon challis and stitched it up in time to wear to the recent William Barton Rogers Society lecture at the Petersen Museum in LA.   It was MMM^2 because Bad Dad wore his new fave (snow-dyed) shirt.

MMM by proxy while driving a mock Maserati at the Petersen.

When MMMay was smaller, and I was less jaded, I used to think posting daily outfit of the day #ootd photos were encouraging and fun. Moreover, some people organized weekly themes. Once, everyone swirled while taking their photos. I participated by showing my hometown and my sewing space. I didn't realize it had become a competition in some circles.

I did register that most of the participants were younger and thinner than me. I'm glad that younger people are making their own clothes. That means more business for the stores that serve our mutual past-time. Yay! Nevertheless, it made me feel fat.

Then a young (and thin) participant wrote that she felt bad about showing her dining room table while others had these gorgeous and big sewing studios.

Hmmm.  It was not my intent to make anyone feel bad.  I used to sew on my desk in my dorm room.  The room was so tiny, I had to put the ironing table out in the hallway.

The commercial internet is full of photos of the young, thin and gorgeous and huge, styled homes.  It would be nice if the non-commercial internet put more real images out there.  But, daily selfies are not my thing.

Trust me.  I wore something me-made when I took this photo on the walk home from the library last week.  BTW, mentioning that you can walk from your house to the library and enjoy sunsets like this along the way, that's still bragging.

This photo is still bragging.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Why are we spending so much time talking about bathrooms and not talking about clean and safe water?

I'm supposed to attend a work conference this summer in North Carolina.  Rather than prepare for the conference, I'm figuring out if I should go and changing my travel plans because the venue changed from a state (university) to a private conference center.

My bullshit detector wonders why the chatter cycle is so focused on bathrooms for transgendered individuals and not on issues that impact a larger swath of society.

I've written before in It's a girl! Maybe about how male/female gene expression is a tricky business. In short, XY=Boy and XX=Girl is sometimes wrong. If the Y gene is very damaged, the child may appear as a female. If the Y gene is slightly damaged, the child may appear outwardly as a male, but with complications.

Erroneous Gender Identification by the Amelogenin Sex Test reported that a common gender test is commonly wrong.

The amelogenin gene, located on the X and Y chromosomes in humans (1), produces a protein important in the development of the tooth enamel matrix (2). Using specific amelogenin PCR primers, different bp fragments are amplifiable from the X and Y chromosomes, respectively (3). Hence, it has been a central system to differentiate males from females especially in forensic casework and prenatal diagnosis

Under electrophoresis, the amelogenin gene originating from X and Y chromosomes are resolvable due to differing weights/sizes. An XY sample should have two bumps (two types/weights), and an XX sample should have one bump.  A male soldier showed one bump, at the place where female versions of the gene usually fall.

The occurrence of this phenomenon has been reported as an 0.018% observed sex test failure rate in the Austrian National DNA database (9), 1.85% observed sex test failure rate in Indian males (10), 0.6% frequency of sex test failure attributable to deletion from 350 specimens from all around the world (11), and 8% (2 out of 24) samples of unrelated Sri Lankan males (11).

With the finding of our first mistyped amelogenin result on a male out of a total of 96 samples, we can report the failure rate of this test as 1.04% in Israel. Moreover, the failure of two different primer sets, to amplify the Y chromosome DNA, suggests that this sample contains a deletion in the relevant area.

Huh?!?!?!?!?!?!

What causes this gene deletion? Could it be that different populations evolved differently over time? Or could environmental factors be at play? Do you also notice a correlation between countries with high pollution and high sex-test failures?

What about sperm counts? Industrial chemicals and heavy metals can depress sperm counts.   Sperm counts are holding steady in some countries, and dropping in others. 

It is well-known that Chemicals in Water Alter Gender of Fish and the Pesticide atrazine can turn male frogs into females. Pesticides are a large contributor to the collapse of frog and fish populations around the world. What are their effects in mammals, including humans?  There is a lot that we don't know.  But we won't learn more unless we focus attention to those problems.

Isn't it funny how the North Carolina bathroom controversy has pushed the Flint water crisis (and other stories about aging water infrastructure) and industrial/agricultural water pollution out of the news?

We're allowing ourselves to be distracted by a side show about bathrooms instead of examining the prevalence of poisons in water supplies world-wide and what that is doing to the genetically vulnerable among us.

Asides:

I'm deeply offended and disappointed by the NIH gender dysphoria web page.

The cause of gender dysphoria is unknown. Hormones in the womb, genes, social and environmental factors (such as parenting) may be involved.

Let's blame the parenting, usually mothers, instead of the hormone disrupting chemicals in our water.

A transgender 9-year-old tells her story in the LA Times.

Last weekend, I saw The Edge Theater Company's production of Casa Valentina. It is a good production of a good play. I highly recommend seeing it this weekend (the closing weekend of the show.)

The river that binds us

I'm swamped with both family work and market work that demand much of my time and attention.  The story about how I named my blog explains why.

As I sat on an airplane, leaving the family that needs me, to the job that also needs me, I pondered the irony that a woman so concerned with climate change is sitting on an airplane, spewing CO2 into the stratosphere.

A window seat in an airplane between LAX and DEN is also a good time to reflect about the water cycle.

Our familial home is down there, as is DD's school and DH's lab.

Remember when our elementary school teachers told us that, if we could pour a cup of water on top of the Continental Divide, half could end up in the Atlantic Ocean and half would end up in the Pacific Ocean?

It turns out, that it is not quite so simple.

The Colorado River, originating west of the Continental Divide, used to drain into the Pacific Ocean. But it hasn't for decades, because all of the water was used and reused until it peters out in the inland deserts of California (to grow alfalfa to grow cows to feed people.)

Colorado Snowpack

The water evaporates off the ocean and eventually falls down as condensed water or ice in the mountains.  Imagine the amount of energy it takes to lift up that large a mass and move it that great a distance!

Somewhere over the Four Corners area.  Not sure if this is the Colorado River or a tributary.  

The melted snow seeps into the soil and seeps into rivulets, creeks, small tributary rivers and then eventually into the mighty* Colorado River.  More than half of Colorado River water flow begins as groundwater.

Beginning in 1957, with the opening of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, trans-basin water diversions were moving water from the western side of the Continental Divide to the eastern side. Without this water, the massive population growth of the Colorado Front Range wouldn't have been possible.

Trans-basin water diversion map.

Want to learn more about Northern (Colorado) Water, the public agency that brings this water to millions?  Of course you do!

Visit the Northern Water Annual open house and conservation gardens fair next Saturday, May 21, 2016.   Walk this scale model of the Colorado-Big Thompson and Windy Gap projects that deliver *half* of the water used by the Northern Colorado member communities (including Boulder.)  It's awe-inspiring to think about the amount of work that it takes to bring this volume and mass of water across the harsh alpine environment.

My favorite part is this landscape sculpture, which allows me to walk the journey of my Colorado tap water from mountain-top through tunnels, pipelines, and reservoirs.  It makes the monumental intimate.

Landscape art that makes this huge engineering and social project intimate.

Read Your Colorado Water Blog write-up about this event for more details.  I went last year with some gardening enthusiast friends.  I geeked out over the water engineering while they geeked out over the gardening booths.

Many, many Front Range nurseries set up booths at the fair to sell Colorado native plants that are rarely sold at commercial nurseries.  It's one-stop shopping for people who grow native and low-water gardens.  Plants, education, ideas and support from Colorado Extension master gardeners.

Whether I am in Boulder, Colorado, or in Los Angeles, the two parts of my life depend on the mighty* Colorado River.

* Anything that can carve the Grand Canyon and all the minor canyons you see here deserves the adjective mighty.  Anything that can bind my torn heart also deserves the adjective mighty.