Emily August

Here I am yesterday getting ready to use the insurance that I pay out of pocket for myself, and dreading the fact that I opted not to pay for prescription coverage. I won’t tell you what my total bill was, but I will tell you that I’ve had the flu and that it developed into bronchitis of course because I have my failed lungs, and now I am kind of poor as a result. Slowly mending. I can’t believe how everyone in New York City is so sick and how long its taking to get well!

I hope to meet up with a bunch of people tonight in Jersey City who are starting a new venture and its going to be good! Stay tuned.

Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ’til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

sorry for the gap in posts recently. i completed quite a few goals recently and i’m feeling a bit burned out. i’ve taken some time to set up a new feed for my blog and then it turned out that feedburner migrated over to google anyway, so that was a waste of time. anyway, life is good lately and i will return soon with posts about what i have been up to.

you can look forward to the following:

• new little feather hair pieces in my etsy shop
• new songs recorded and uploaded for your listening pleasure (in collaboration with a new friend, i hope!)
• some new sewing adventures as i am in need of smaller clothing
• happy little tree collages
• i’d love to get to printing more things with my gocco as well

other news from mercer manor:

• rory was in a show last week that was sold out both nights. i didn’t post about it but he did.
• our roommie is starting grad school this month.
• we had a party this weekend and our friend colin took pictures that you can find here. that is his picture of my homemade fancy cupcakes above!

happy inauguration day!

U.S. Airways flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River yesterday. My roommate and I were sitting in the living room when we heard about it early in the afternoon; she had just gotten home from work and I was just finishing a presentation for a client. I had to get to the post office to drop something off for my boss… and get the last of my writing samples in the mail as part of applying to grad school. Suddenly Allison was trying to get the news story up on CNN.com and we became glued to the TV. Since our post office is a small hike into the next neighborhood nearer the waterfront, I decided to bring my camera with me and see what I could see.

It was extremely cold yesterday and there was almost a parade of Jersey City residents and people getting off work that would walk to the end of one of the piers, stand there for five minutes and then turn around to leave because it was so cold. These were taken near sunset, and by this time the passengers were rescued and the plane was sinking almost all the way. I think I just wanted to be able to tell my kids that I saw a plane in a river, because hopefully this will be the one and only time I get to see something like this in my life.

I also found the financial district to be very pretty yesterday. Due to the extreme cold, it was almost empty of pedestrians. I headed into the city for Rory’s show, and went to kill some time at Whole Foods cafe in Tribeca where I found myself unintentionally sitting above a street that was filled with ambulances and emergency workers lined up to help the situation down at the river. The number of workers outside in the extreme cold was almost heart-warming to see.

It certainly is disconcerting realizing that a major catastrophe has happened within about a mile or two of where you are sitting. Over dinner later on, around the block from a theater where we were headed for the night, Rory and I talked about 9-11 and got into some of the more detailed parts of the day that he had experienced while at school. He had met his sister-in-law after she came over on one of the ferries to meet him in Hoboken. Remembering my own experience of 9-11 I had asked, “How did you feel that day? Did you immediately want to be home with your family?” and “How did you get home?” He had told me the story before but I was shocked as he went through the story and he said, “You know they had to hose everybody off as the got off the ferries, right?” How had I missed that detail before? I imagine that’s the kind of thing you don’t want to remember about going through such a traumatic experience. I can’t even begin to imagine the small details of really sitting inside a plane cabin and waiting to “brace for impact”.

My heart goes out to anyone who had to live through this, and I’m especially glad everyone made it off the plane safely. I hope each of the survivors is able to overcome the shock of the situation, and not get overwhelmed by what they experienced yesterday. Bravo to the pilot!

Many ferry boats were out there on the water as the plane sank.

The Sultan’s Elephant was a giant public art installation featuring miraculously big marionettes, in, funny enough, Nantes, France. You can listen to the song in the background of reading this blog post, and you’ll see it goes along nicely.

These images are via Wikipedia:

Credit for the find goes to Jenny Hart, founder of Sublime Stitching who linked to the Wikipedia entry and pointed out that the girl was meant to have run around wreaking havoc all around her, and that she had literally stitched cars into the pavement while at play. Brilliant!

My favorite line of her post is, “These are cars she stitched to the earth.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The elephant

A replica of the elephant was built in Nantes (France) in 2007, as part of the Machines of the Isle of Nantes permanent exhibition.[4]

I have a secret.

I believe that my sewing machine is magic and that I can invent a new form of faux bois by which I can wood-panel my entire bedroom. I’ll keep experimenting and let you know how the woodgrain goes. This was born out of showing my boyfriend how to sew holes in order to make a place for a screw to be attached to a garment (with or without a grommet): my Brother sewing machine has lots of stitch functionality. He also inspired me to learn how to change out the needle and wow the machine is working really nicely right now. He is working on a really cool project for a show that’s coming up in NYC in a few weeks involving turn of the century undergarments (really). I’ll post more about it closer to the date!

Sorry for doubling up on Ruby posts in my blog tonight, but just wanted to share this image of the note we were left by Tim and Herbie after having them play in our apartment last month.

Note the well-captured lack of mouth on Rubes.

And with this we bid you good night.

Do you think Ruby might hate us?, originally uploaded by ahemler.

And tying them to various places of Ruby.

via ReForm School.

Since recently experimenting with soft-form cat toys, and while being a collector of beautiful woodland creatures, I adore these cheetah, deer, and giraffe forms in patterned fabric.

(a few days ago, as seen by rory)

To the tune of:

and listen to it loudly if you can, for the deep drums and cause to brandish our silver tambourines again. Our street is crowned the prettiest in Jersey City in the New York Times. You know I exaggerate but our street is the most beautiful street in the world.

I am scanning old pictures for a friend (okay, trying to find good ones with no luck is more like it — I am so sorry, I will keep trying), and I ran across this photo of me with my old friend of friends Kevin Jacobs, whom Brendan and I ran into at the diner just the other night when we had our annual meeting in our home town. This, after not seeing him for about six years, and missing him at the funeral of a friend and then probably this is the one picture I have of him. I like coincidences like that. It makes me think things happen for a reason, and this keeps me safe in my little bubble of God.

Whenever I tell people where I am from, they cannot believe there is a place called Brick Township. Well, I and my fellow schoolmates (plus lots of people from the NJ scene board) can tell you, it does exist and it is on the shore and I miss living near the ocean and I secretly hate the city and how mean everyone is to everyone else. And it is dirty. And maybe I’ve been drinking a little bit too much wine in preparation for posting details of this fabulous party we are having this month:

We, in conjunction with James of Draw and Quarter are showing a great movie with a modern twist of soundtrack. We’re showing Man With The/A Movie Camera to the tune of a great album by The Books called The Lemon of Pink. It was probably on your radar in 2007, and Rory and I discovered they are a perfect match for the film, which has its own soundtrack that we’ll be sure to play some of as well. Please come if you can make it to our party! Out of towners are welcome to the floors and couches.