The Flax of the Matter

Although you may usually associate linen with crumpled skirts and tacky souvenir tea towels, acquiring the facts about flax would certainly be a good idea.

While you may not usually make puns about homespun fabrics, or even about mass manufactured products, please be aware that flax much prefers temperate climates if it is to thrive.

What is your usual attitude towards middle latitudes?

What is your acquaintance with linseeds, linseed oil and linen cloth?

What is your acquaintance with the Maintenance of Health, and how did you acquire that acquaintance?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee hopes you are well acquainted with many important matters.

 

• To the Point
• Appropriate Bluntness
• Accurate Records
• Circles, Cycles, Spirals and Feedback Loops
• People are Dyeing
• Dressing Appropriately When Addressing Weather-Related Problems
• Paying Attention Properly

 

What is your acquaintance with the Linum genus of flowering plants and the Linaceae family more generally?

Flax seeds and linen cloth have had a long history.  Their uses in the European Middle Ages can therefore be regarded as relatively recent.

How do you compare your uses of the products of nature with their historical uses?

How do you compare your uses of the products of culture with their historical uses?

What do you know about the history of cash crops? 

What do you know about the politics of cash crops?

What do you know about the politics of cash?

Many products described today as linens are not made of linen at all.

What do you know about cultural practices associated with making and collecting linen items?

What do you know about Earth rainfall climatology and the effects of precipitation on cultural practices?

Perhaps you are mostly interested in examining historical records through art rather than through science.

How do you compare one record with another and another and another?

How do you usually measure well-being?

How do you usually express vigilance and diligence?

When, if ever, have you performed a climatological vigil, and how, and who has done so with you, and why?

Over many decades, members of the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee have mainly performed climatological vigils in the privacy of their own homes.  They have done so gently, silently and respectfully.

How carefully, at any time of the year, do you think about food, nutrition, health care, economic necessities, and the problems associated with cumulonimbus flammagenitus clouds?

Perhaps you spend at least a little time, possibly at the end of each day or week or month or year, quietly seeking to become more fully aware of, and attentive towards, your uses of time, energy and other resources.

What have women from medieval Europe taught you about the facts - and flax - of the matter?

What have you been learning about hygiene, nutrition and exercise from historical sources, and current ones?

What have you been learning about clouds and crowds, and how?

What have you been learning about, and from, the history of households and the history of health care?

For reasons of good mental health, you may find it necessary to stop and smell the roses from time to time, or to enjoy whichever lovely fragrance is naturally available in your local vicinity. 

Yet making a chaplet of roses or a bed of roses is not a sensible priority during an emergency, including a medical emergency and a climate emergency. 

And gathering rosebuds now, as in the 14th century, may not be a good idea when a very likely disaster is around the corner. 

Are you acquainted with the Latin term carpe diem and its English equivalent, seize the day?

Is it better to take a bull by the horns or a rose with its thorns?

You are probably aware that every rose has at least one thorn.

Yet far too many people dangerously deny the thorn exists.

How do you interpret images?

How do you interpret words?

Where do you usually locate enlightened educational enhancements?

What is your acquaintance with straight lines, the linings of clothing, curtains and handbags, and the history of lingerie?