{"id":15335,"date":"2026-02-23T14:07:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T21:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/?p=15335"},"modified":"2026-02-23T14:07:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T21:07:24","slug":"finding-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/2026\/02\/finding-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding joy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Friday night – I’m days behind in posting this, I know – we went to a Graham Platner for US Senate Town Hall in a nearby town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we got there, these two musicians were playing. The most foot-stompin’, hand-clappin’ music. So enjoyable and helped me let go of the unsolvable problems of political, social, environmental and every other aspect of life. They played for a long time. A film crew was setting up to make a video of the event and it took them quite awhile. I didn’t mind because it was such good energy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gus, Matthias<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once the film crew was ready, Graham joined them. The three guys knew each other, hometown boys. The whole event had such a grass-roots, local feeling. Really special. They all look very somber in the photo below, probably because they were performing “Whose Side are you on?,” a famous labor union song. I looked up some background on the song – it was written by Florence Reece in 1931 during the Harlan County, KY, mining conflict. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Graham, Gus, Matthias<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The event pulled me out of a slump and I allowed myself to enjoy it. Graham’s speech was great, being part of the crowd was great. I felt the wisdom of enjoying the moment, enjoying the togetherness, regardless of what the future might bring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here’s the tassel of my finished Melt the Ice Hat. Already a number of people have complimented me on the hat. And I’m almost done with a second one! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Melt the Ice hat featuring tassel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday night – I’m days behind in posting this, I know – we went to a Graham Platner for US Senate Town Hall in a nearby town. When we got there, these two musicians...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15338,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335\/revisions\/15338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}