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This is one of my versions of Simplicity 8059.  I wore it to work on Friday because I knew I was meeting Tasha, who authors the blog, The Tell Tale Tasha for dinner.

These pictures were taken by my coworker shortly before I left to meet Tasha. I'd planned to take a few photos today of the other three cardigans but I just didn't have the heart to do it. It seemed like such a frivolous thing to be doing. Taking pictures of garments when there are people trapped in airports, being turned away from the United States in foreign countries, and when permanent residents (green card holders) of the United States are not being allowed to return to the US because they happened to be vacationing, visiting family, or working in a Muslim country.

I've alternated between crying and wanting to scream all.dayum.day.  I can not believe that we've come to this in America...and then in the next breathe...I can because Black people have been persecuted in America for the last 238 years.

These words kept running through my head all day...

"First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me."

Pastor Martin Niemoller 

Pastor Niemoller was a national conservative and initial supporter of Adolf Hitler but he became a founder of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph, but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemoller was imprisoned in concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.

Info from Wikipedia

One more thought and Imma tie this all together. I was a small child during the 60's and I remember it as a decade of upheaval...Vietnam, Civil Rights, riots on collage campuses and three assassinations - John F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.  Up was down, right was wrong and it seemed like we were on the edge of a cliff waiting to fall into a great abyss from which there was no return. I was a small child and I remember the fear and uncertainty.

I've felt that same fear and uncertainty since November 9th...I feel it even more now that he is in office. Because I know that even though it seems like fear should take the day and we should prevent Muslims from coming to this country, I totally disagree with this stance. See I was in NYC when the Twin Towers fell. I didn't watch it on TV from the safety of my living room. I had to come back to the city day after day and walk past the signs where people asked about their missing loved ones. So if I don't want Muslims or refugees banned from entering the country, why do others?

I know in my heart that once they've finished banning them others will be next. Hispanics, Black people, members of the LGBTQ community, women who have an abortion, will we all be banned and censored by hate?

Will history repeat itself? Have we not learned anything as a human race?

So while the world is upside down, when wrong is right, when hate is the currency of the day, and morality has been thrown out the window, I will be sewing (because it keeps me calm and from falling into despair) but I'm not sure I will be smiling in my new garments here. 

It will be a day by day thing because today I can't stop crying...