Roman shade success; Medicare-for-All politics; and a portal opens, maybe.

The Roman shade project is done, huzzah! I installed the shade for the bedroom window yesterday morning. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

As a reminder, this was the old, ugly shade. I think the new one is a vast improvement. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Now that I've done two of these, I'm putting this in the "projects to never do again" category*. The mechanics were straightforward enough, but hanging this shade by myself was a challenge because it was so wide. At one point I had thought about doing two shades, one for each windowpane; it would have been easier to hang two shorter ones by myself. But now that the single long shade is up, I'm not inclined to take it down and start over. At all.

I made this installation harder on myself by forgetting to take down the old shade before screwing the new one to the wall. I just got so excited to get the new shade up that I forgot. The old one used the same clip-in system as the shade in the office/craft room, but there's not a lot of clearance for a screwdriver because the clip tilts in toward the room, and having to keep the new shade out of the way didn't make the process any easier. I guess I could have tried using pliers to bend the clip back and out of the way, since I was going to throw the brackets away; too bad I didn't think of that until just now.

If you're thinking of sewing a Roman shade for yourself, I highly recommend getting this gadget or making one out of a nine-inch length of thin wire you happen to have around the house. Basically, it's a needle threader for blinds and shades. I wouldn't have bothered to get it except that I was ordering some other stuff from this vendor, and it was a cheap add-on. I ended up being very glad I had it. It made the process of threading the blind cord through the cord lock take seconds rather than minutes. 

I like the softness of the new shades much better than the industrial clunkiness of the old metal shades, and of course the new colors work better than that dirty beige. So all in all, I'm glad I made these shades.

And one thing I realized while making the shades is that I had fun figuring out all the steps. Life has gotten pretty repetitive for me -- dare I say boring -- lately. This provided me with a challenge, and I like challenges (within reason). 

So I might be scouting around the house for new challenges to take on. But I'm still going to pay somebody to convert the tub/shower combo to just a shower. I'm not completely crazy.

***

* I've posted several times over the years about various projects, often knitted ones: "It's done, and I'm never doing it again." Often, after some time has passed, I end up doing another project like the one I said I'd never do again. So feel free to take my claim above with a large grain of salt.

***

That's enough about Roman shades. On to part two.

I spotted this article from Vox in my Apple News feed earlier today: "Medicare-for-all has a doctor problem". The author, Eric Levitz, attempts to poke holes in Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's support of Medicare for All by saying we would have to make changes in our current healthcare payment system for it to be fair to doctors. Healthcare professionals in the US are much better paid than those in countries that have single-payer healthcare systems, and something would have to be done, he says, to make sure they wouldn't have to take a pay cut.

He cites a report in the Washington Free Beacon that claims El-Sayed's partner, a psychiatrist in private practice, doesn't accept Medicare, presumably because Medicare's reimbursement rates aren't high enough. And then he says:

According to a widely cited 2018 analysis by the economist Charles Blahous, if a single-payer system kept provider payments constant, national health spending would rise by $3.25 trillion over a decade, even with administrative savings taken into account. By contrast, if all providers were forced to accept Medicare's rates, health spending would actually fall by $2.05 trillion over the same period.

So I looked up Charles Blahous. He is a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; previously, he was deputy director of  the National Economic Council under President Bush the Younger and has also been associated with the Hoover Institution, a right-leaning think tank that's part of Stanford University (weirdly, as Stanford is pretty liberal). 

Then I looked up whether the Washington Free Beacon leans right or left. Sure enough, adfontesmedia.com says it has a strong right bias and rates it as mixed when it comes to reliability. 

I am all for examining both sides of an issue. But I also think it's important to be clear about where your sources fall on the political spectrum when you're reporting on political issues, especially in these times, and Levitz doesn't. I'm not inclined to take a libertarian-leaning economist's opinion that Medicare for All is unworkable, and I sure as hell would not reference a hit piece in a far-right publication if I were writing a supposedly even-handed report.

Levitz does suggest some incremental changes to make a single-payer system more palatable in the long run, including instituting state-level caps on healthcare payment rates and removing hurdles that prevent doctors trained abroad to easily set up shop in the US. But I think he too quickly dismisses the profound impact that doing away with private insurance would have on our healthcare system. And doctors may not have to take as much of a pay cut as right-leaning economists claim, once the financial barriers to healthcare are lifted and everyone can afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Plus the elimination of the byzantine system of today would not only be good for doctors, but for patients, too.

Yes, people's taxes would go up to support a single-payer system, but the increase would be offset by the loss of the premium/copay/coinsurance morass we're currently slogging through. Are there figures on how much of an offset? Levitz doesn't say.

A lot of doctors already support a single-payer system -- between 49% and 59%, depending on who's doing the survey and how the questions are asked.

Let's see a study from Medicare-for-All proponents that answers the Blahous analysis. Then we can make a better decision on whether to go forward.

EDITED TO ADD: Levitz wouldn't have had to look very far to find a response to Blahous from Medicare-for-All proponents. Mama Google found this one for me in just a few seconds.

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Finally: there's reportedly a seismic shift brewing this week due to an annual astrological phenomenon known as the Lion's Gate. It happens between this Tuesday and August 12th, with the big punch on August 8th. This year's is supposed to be especially intense due to Jupiter's conjunction with the Sun in Leo on the date of the full moon this Wednesday, and particulary auspicious because the date of the portal opening, 8/8/2026, reduces via numerology to 8, a number associated with abundance and with balance between the physical and the spiritual.

I'm not an astrology stan, and I haven't dabbled in numerology for decades, but I thought I'd mention this thing since I keep hearing about it. You can find more info on the annual Lion's Gate here.

***

These moments of bloggy pros and cons have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who hopes that good things will come through the Lion's Gate because honey, we are due.

Roman shades progress; and gifted kids when they grow up.

It's next weekend, and the first Roman shade is done, including the installation. Here's the proof: 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

I spent a lot of time stressing over the installation process: how to position the pulleys and cord lock device, whether I should have bought a wider mounting board, where to stick the darn thing on the wall, how hard it would be to mount it with the angle brackets with the shade attached, and on and on. Turned out it was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. The shade is actually pretty light, weight-wise, so I was able to duck under it to get to the angle brackets. And I had cut the fabric so that screwing it to the top of the window frame was the perfect length, which bypassed my concerns about finding studs in the wall to screw into and/or installing wall anchors.

Getting the old shade down was also pretty easy. My old shades aren't mounted the normal way; instead there's a tab that clips them into the hanging bracket. I shoved a screwdriver into a slot in the tab and pushed it toward the window to release the clip, and poof, down came the blind.

In short, the process was easier than I expected it to be. And now that I know what I'm doing, more or less, the bedroom shade is going much faster. I forgot to get a photo of the office window before I took the old blind down, but here's a "before" shot of the bedroom window. I guess that 35 years ago, when the rooms were all varying shades of tan, these beige shades looked great. Not so much anymore. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

This window is large enough that I'm having to lay out the new shade on the bed to pin it. Tigs, of course, is helping. 

"Is comfy, Mama. What you mean, is going on the window?"
Lynne Cantwell 2026

This afternoon, I sewed on all the rings, attached the weight rod, and sewed the velcro to the top. Next step is stringing it all up to the to-be-assembled header board. The cords and hanging hardware may have to wait 'til next Saturday, but we'll see how the week goes.

***

I really miss Jo-Ann Fabrics. Wikipedia says it began as a single fabric store in Cleveland in 1943, eventually growing to a national chain. But its fortunes rose and fell over the years with the popularity of sewing as a craft, and toward the end, it was diversifying its merchandise line to encompass other crafts and home decor items. Eventually, the whole thing shut down last year when the company couldn't find a buyer. Wikipedia says that Michaels bought the company's intellectual property and private labels. But with the exception of an expanded fabric department, I don't see much evidence of that, at least at our Santa Fe Michaels. And when I say "expanded", I mean their fabric inventory is maybe 15 percent of what Jo-Ann carried.

Multiple times during this process, I thought about how easy it would have been to gather everything I needed with a single trip to Jo-Ann: "Oh, I need thread to match the blue fabric; guess that's a trip to Michaels now. Oh, I need sew-on velcro by the yard; guess I'm buying multiple precut packs from Michaels instead. Oh, I need pulleys and a cord lock for each window; I bet Jo-Ann would have carried them -- they carried upholstery fabrics and notions -- but it looks like my choices now are either Amazon or random places on the internet I've never done business with before."

I realize I'm part of the problem. I quit sewing clothing decades ago, when fabric prices rose to the point where it was cheaper to buy ready-made clothing than make my own, despite the lure of wearing a one-of-a-kind garment created by my own hands. But sometimes, damn it, you want to avoid the overpriced, mass-produced stuff like "custom" Roman blinds and make something really custom. Small, independent fabric stores still exist, but it seems like most of them cater to quilters, with maybe some clothing fabrics on the side. That's not helpful for the kinds of things I'm interested in sewing these days.

I'll be done with this project in another week or so, and then I'm sure my sewing machine will go back to gathering dust in the closet. It's just a shame, that's all.

***

If you're only here for the Roman shade saga, you can stop here. The rest is about smart kids when they grow up.

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There's an article in New Scientist this week about giftedness and how gifted kids turn out as adults. Alas, you have to subscribe to read the whole thing; I read it as part of my Apple News subscription (and btw, if you have an iPhone, Apple News is a terrific news aggregator and worth the monthly subscription fee). 

Kids who are labeled gifted have probably heard the derisive term, "early ripe, early rot". I sure did (from my brother, among others). But this article talks about studies that have tracked intellectually gifted kids into adulthood. The conclusion? 

Far from growing into troubled adults, many gifted individuals appear to flourish later in life. Long-term studies suggest they are more likely than average to achieve professional success and, contrary to popular stereotypes, often enjoy better mental health. Scientists are also starting to understand what makes gifted brains so exceptional, finding that they are better integrated and can process information more efficiently..."

And then it goes into the current debate over whether giftedness is just another form of neurodiversity, which I've already bitched about on this blog. Thankfully, for me at least, the authors of this article have found people to refute that argument:

Yet neurodivergence tends to describe neurodevelopmental conditions, which can create functional problems in everyday life, such as inattention, emotional dysregulation or hyperactivity. That doesn't seem to be the case for gifted children. "It is simply on the higher end in a spectrum of human intelligence," says Mimi Wellisch, a psychologist based in Australia who has published on gifted children extensively... Problems with behaviour "are unlikely to be a byproduct of giftedness," she says.

As for gifted-kids-as-adults, a 2020 study headed by David Lubinski, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, looked at the outcomes for 50-year-olds who were identified as mathematically gifted as kids, finding them to have a greater sense of well-being than non-gifted folks. In 2025, another team headed by Lubinski talked with 50-year-old former gifted kids, and "around half reported experiencing boredom and frustration in mixed-ability classes." And in terms of outcomes, Lubinski found in 2013, when comparing people who skipped a grade with those who didn't, 27 percent of kids who had skipped a grade later earned a Ph.D., compared with 15 percent of kids who hadn't. 

Lubinski says that based on his findings, the current fashion to remove educational supports specifically aimed at gifted kids in the name of treating everybody the same (so as to not make gifted kids feel pressured to achieve) is unfair, and could even be considered a form of prejudice. 

Which is pretty much what I said in my blog post last year.

The article also touches on complaints about the cultural problems regarding IQ tests and other methods being developed to identify gifted individuals, but this post has already gone on long enough. If you have any interest in the topic of giftedness, I recommend tracking down this article. It's a good one. And not just because it quotes researchers who agree with me.

*** 

These moments of long-winded blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who doesn't have a Ph.D. but might get one someday. Who knows?

Things in progress.

So the big news today, of course, is the death of South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. A medical examiner's report released this evening says he died of a tear in his aorta, likely caused by atherosclerosis, but we'll know more when the report is finalized in a couple of weeks. 

Republicans still control the Senate, even with Graham gone, but the math will be a titch harder until his replacement is named. There are still questions lingering about the condition of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, too, including about a photo released by his office today that looks like a retread from several years ago. If it turns out the worst is true about him, the GOP will be holding onto Senate control by just one seat until their replacements come on board. 

Both McConnell and Graham knew that Trump would be bad news for the country if elected, but when push came to shove, neither one stepped up to block his crazy ideas from becoming law. That's not the legacy I'd want to have.

***

Besides those news stories still in progress, I have not yet finished the Roman shades for my bedroom and office/craft room. Progress has been made: all the fabric for both is cut, and most of the sewing is done on the shade for the office/craft room. There's still a fair bit of work ahead on that shade, though, including all the hardware. I'd be farther along if I hadn't played hooky yesterday. But in my defense, I also went to the hardware store, bought the board for the hardware for both shades, and got the store to cut it to the lengths I need. 

I will not be doing a tutorial for this project; if you're after step-by-step directions, there are about a squintillion videos out there, some more useful than others. (I'm actually using one method for the office/craft room shade and a different one for the bedroom shade.)

If you've never bought any fabric from Spoonflower, I can tell you that it's different experience than going to the fabric store. First, there's no instant gratification; you put in your order and it takes them a week or two to print it on your preferred fabric and send it to you. Their selvedges are huge compared to fabric from a store, but the width of printed fabric they say you'll get is the size you get (I measured mine to be sure). And their order control system gave me a little thrill. 

Lynne Cantwell | July 2026

Both fabrics I received are excellent quality. The one in the photo above is a performance linen. The downside is that it's polyester, and it ravels like crazy. The lining fabric I bought (from a different online vendor) is also polyester, and it too ravels like crazy. That's making me ... crazy. Didn't seem to bother Tigs, though. 

Lynne Cantwell | July 2026

(Then he plopped his butt down on it and I had to chase him away. Then I stepped on his tail. Poor little guy.)

The other fabric I purchased is a cotton sateen, which should have been easier to manage than those slippery polyesters, except it's 116 inches wide. Cutting all of this stuff has been an adventure -- my dining room table is round and only 42 inches wide. I had to spend a lot of time shifting the fabric and the cutting mat and the fabric and the cutting mat and... I kept thinking how nice it would be to have one of those ginormous work tables that I saw in one how-to video. Just lay it all out flat and cut it, boom, done. Alas.

Once all the fabric was cut, I had to iron it. I usually don't bother with ironing fabric when I sew. I know you're supposed to, but you're also supposed to wash it before you cut it, and you're supposed to iron all your seams flat, and I don't do any of that stuff, either. But I was convinced by one of the tutorials that said if you don't get those creases out now, you'll be seeing them every time you look at your shade once it's done. So there I was, slaving over a steam iron in my 80-degree dining room. 

I used to laugh at my mother for spending summer afternoons sweating over a hot iron to press her sheets and dish towels. Dish towels, for godsakes! Ever since then, I've said that if God wanted us to iron, She wouldn't have invented permanent press. I'm sure that today both She and my mother were laughing at me.

Anyway, the fun continued as I played bobbin thread chicken on the last bit of sewing before dinner. This game is similar to yarn chicken, where you're sweating the amount of yarn you have left compared to the amount of knitting you still have to do -- although with the bobbin thread version, running out too soon usually comes as a surprise. Today, though, I finished with inches to spare!

Lynne Cantwell | July 2026

The next step is to attach the dowel rods to the shade, then turn the thing right-side-out and hem it, then attach the rings and the pull cord and sew velcro at the top and... yeah. It's a long way from being done. Maybe next weekend. 

Then I get to make the other shade.

And *then* I get to figure out how to get the old shades off the windows. Wish me luck!

***

These moments of bloggy craftiness have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. It's summer! Do something fun!

Marking the 250th; mainstream Democrats' nerves; and my reading challenge is done.

Lester120 | Deposit Photos

It's the day after the 4th of July, and even though most of the big stuff is over, the weekend lingers on. So happy Independence Day, y'all, and happy 250th to the USA. 

A lot of Americans don't feel like there's much to celebrate on this anniversary of our nation's birth, especially given the shitshow that Trump has made of the nationwide celebration. I remember the bicentennial in 1976; Watergate was not long behind us (Nixon resigned in '74), and it seemed like our political system was healthy and had stood up to the rule of law. It felt like we could go on, like we could continue striving for that more perfect union the Founding Fathers talked about.

Today, not so much.

But: I'm not a huge follower of astrology, but I've happened upon several astrological forecasts of late that indicate we are heading for some kind of upheaval, likely this month. But I have a sense that there's already an upheaval ongoing, and it has to do with the success of democratic socialist candidates during this primary season.

***

I can tell you this much: the moderate Democrats who have kept a lock on their party for years (into their dotage, in many cases) are freaking out. A few days ago, Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic wrote a piece about how "Marxist-Leninist organizers" have been infiltrating the Democratic Socialists of America since Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential candidacy and are poised to take over the organization. He says the DSA has begun supporting "militant anti-Zionism" and is otherwise aligning itself with communist organizations. And he compares the use of "Democratic" in DSA to authoritarian regimes around the world that use the same word. Pretty scary stuff. (The Atlantic has a stiff paywall -- a subscription is $89 a year, which is why I dropped mine several years ago. I'm accessing the article via Apple News.)

The Atlantic, despite its reputation as liberal-leaning, went with this piece at the same time that conservative columnists at the Washington Post and headline writers at the Wall Street Journal are either dropping "democratic" from references to democratic socialist candidates altogether or being wibbly-wobbly about it: sometimes they refer to them as "democratic socialists" and sometimes as just "socialists", as if the two terms are synonymous. Which they're not.

(Chait, by the way, is reportedly a progressive, but he's also Jewish, which might explain why he's sensitive about the whole Zionism thing.)

The founding editor of the DSA's Jacobin magazine, Bhaskar Sunkara, published a response to Chait's piece, which you can read here. (There's no paywall, but you'll have to give up your email address to read it.) The gist of it is that Chait is misreading the DSA's history, that it's a big tent that allows people who hold a lot of leftist viewpoints to join, and that there's a through-line from the DSA's founding to its stances today that Chait is misreading.

We're also in an atmosphere where Trump, at Mount Rushmore Friday, conflated democratic socialism with communism and claimed America is under attack: "You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both."

I mean, one expects that out of Trump, who lies all the time. And conservatives have equated socialism with communism in their diatribes for generations; it's a short step for them to rope in democratic socialism and equate that with communism, too. But that Democrats are working so blatantly to discredit the DSA is new.

Here's my view: The Democrats in positions of power really like it there, and they will do anything to stay. They have been biding their time since Trump 2.0 began, telling us they have no power in Congress right now so they can't do anything to rein him in, thereby hoping to encourage a groundswell of blue votes that would win them control of at least one house of Congress, and ideally both, this year. 

The groundswell has built, all right, but it's not the one they wanted. People on the left are sick of Trump's self-dealing and other shenanigans, and they're sick of Democrats' mealy-mouthed responses to it all. They want fresh faces with fresh ideas. So they're voting for younger candidates who espouse democratic socialist views, even as those candidates run as Democrats.

It's not happening everywhere; some democratic socialist candidates are losing their primaries. But it's clear that the successes they've had are scaring the pants off the Democratic leadership. And New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani's successes for the little guy are only making it worse. His speech on the eve of Independence Day has received a fair bit of news coverage.

Some commentators see democratic socialism as the left's equivalent of MAGA. It's true that MAGA started as a collection of disgruntled far-right voters who, juiced by Fox News, coalesced around Trump's candidacy. Democratic socialism is attracting disgruntled far-left voters, and in that sense, I guess, they're similar.

Could democratic socialists take over the Democratic Party the way MAGA has taken over the GOP? It won't happen this year. But by 2028? If they find a candidate with something near to Trump's charisma, I think it could happen. I'm not seeing anyone who's that much of a rising star yet; Mamdani is a naturalized citizen, so he can't be president. But a lot can happen in two years.

***

Oh! I nearly forgot. I finished reading Underground Airlines. I pretty much gave the background for the story last week, so I'll just say a couple of things. First, it turns out that I could have used it as my book set in Indiana; a bunch of the action happens in Indianapolis. Second, it's a terrific read. Third, I get why it attracted the criticism that it did: here's a white author writing about the Black experience. But I think it was pretty sensitively handled, and anyway, c'mon, it's alternate history. The Black experience in the world of the novel can be different than what's happening in the real world today. That's the beauty of speculative fiction: imagining how things might be different.

I haven't sent in my results yet, but it's on my to-do list. Maybe I'll get a sticker or something. I'll let you know.

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These moments of bloggy prognostication have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy barbecue leftovers!