Hello! I’m here to show you how to make masks for school children. If you are on a team, I’ll let you know when your part starts and ends.

We will be using this pattern for our masks, but I have changed it a bit to make it easier to make lots of masks in a short time. We will be using elastic and will be including a nose wire.

If you are a cutter, I will supply the fabric and one pattern sheet for you. Let me know if you need freezer paper.

Press your fabric if it isn’t already. Trace the size “teen” from the pattern onto freezer paper. Make yourself 4 copies. Be aware, after a lot of use, they will get fuzzy and not want to stick to the fabric. That is fine, you can make more. Freezer paper is cheap.

If your fabric is non-directional, go ahead and lay them out like this. Press to the fabric with a hot iron (no steam). I then fold the width of fabric over a couple of times and cut 6 layers at once. I was able to squeeze 3 more pieces out of that end part by cutting it and folding the other way. The goal here is to waste as little fabric as possible.

If the fabric pattern has a direction, make sure you lay it out like this.

Each mask requires 4 of these pieces. The lining can be the same, but I try to make the special fabrics stretch by cutting a different lining.

Here are cut masks with lining fabric. Stick them in a bag and label for your sewers. Cutters, you are done.

Sewers, you can do all of the following with a regular machine. I’ll show you how if you want to do that.

Using a 1/4″ seam, stitch front and lining pieces together at the center seam. Snip the curves and put right sides together. I usually don’t pin anything but the center seam, nesting the seams in opposite directions. Stitch top and bottom seams this way, making sure the seam is flipped the same direction on each side.

Flip it inside out and press it.

If you have a finisher you are handing off to, you are done, otherwise, just keep going.

Cut a piece of wire about 3 1/2″ long and turn each end with a jewelry tool. (I can provide a pile of these if you don’t have the tools). On the top of your mask, stitch a channel for the wire by sewing a seam 1/2″ from the edge, but not all the way across. Insert your wire.

Finish the ends of the mask with a serger or with some edge stitch (zigzag works. This is an edge stitch my machine has. Then fold over about 1/2″ and press down on the inside. You can either insert the elastic now or after the final sewing. I did it afterward. I cut 1 piece of elastic 25″ long (we are testing on kids now to see if that is correct). Now topstitch as shown. Be careful of the wire. It will break a needle if you hit it.

Tie the elastic and hide the knot in your channel on one side and voila,  you are done.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been busy sewing for our essential workers when I am not working from home. I created a document to get you started.

Find it here.

On the eve of Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative Board of Trustees elections, let us consider a performance evaluation for incumbents. After all, we are their employers, and now is the time to give them a grade. Did they earn our votes for the next four years?

July 20, 2017 — A well-known character returns to the BOT. With his ongoing litigation against his former employer in full swing, John Tapia knew he would not win an election, even with a little help from his friends. So, he simply helped another likely suspect “win” by one vote and got himself re-installed as the at-large trustee. The challenger to this trustee asked to canvass the election, but oops, our cooperative DESTROYED the records

October 5, 2017 — The general manager that greatly improved JMEC’s bottom line resigned, ostensibly because he was running for a state legislative seat. He won. He is now running to be your next US Congressman.

November 30, 2017 — The “new” board quickly tried to prevent their actions being scrutinized, especially the process to hire a new general manager

December 21, 2017 — The board killed a well-thought out plan for a solar array negotiated by the former GM. We would only find out much later why (see entry on December 22, 2018).

February 15, 2018 — The BOT chooses a new GM

May 3, 2018 — Owner/members asked the board to put bylaw changes to a vote by owner/members. The reaction of the BOT was to change the meeting location last minute to Cuba, three hours from most of its membership.

July 26, 2018 — The BOT insists on holding a general meeting in a far, far away place,and it turned out to be a dud

August 30, 2018 — When member/owners continued to speak out about bylaws and meter issues, the board adopts a policy to simply severely limiting outside communications to members by cooperative employees and trustees.

December 15, 2018 — JMEC deals with insurance hikes following the CA fires. A number of job-related injuries don’t help matters.

December 22, 2018 — Only because of his own litigation against his former employer did we find out that the cooperative’s new solar array project was really a sweetheart deal for the trustee-at-large, now an unelected member of the board. Member/owners requested he resign due to this conflict, but six of your trustees decided to ignore their request, in direct violation of their bylaws.

February 15, 2019 — A ray of sunshine emerged as a piece of New Mexico legislation, HB300, was passed and signed into law. It allows for cooperatives to reach a quorum by mail and vote by mail. Unfortunately, the legislation is at-will, and the JMEC board rejected the idea immediately. The Board’s attorney actually claims this bill was never passed.

February 22, 2019 — Trustees continued to pay themselves handsomely for their work in 2018.

May 8, 2019 — Four trustees submitted member-supported bylaw reforms to the board asking that special meetings be noticed to put them to a vote. In direct violation of their bylaws requiring this notice, the board refused.

Do you think they deserve another four years? If you fail to show up and vote for districts 4, 5 and 6 this month, you implicitly hire them back. While the staff writers at the Rio Grande Sun may appreciate the regular fodder for their newspaper, I believe it is time to send some trustees a pink slip

To fire the current board members that were involved in silencing members and turn the page to ensure real reform, please vote (all elections are from 7AM-7PM):

District 4, Patrick Herrera vs. Lucas Cordova. June 21st @JMEC headquarters/Hernandez
District 5, Stanley Crawford vs. Victor Salazar. June 24th @Espanola Valley High School
District 6, Bruce Duran, June 26th @Pojoaque Middle School*

*Bruce Duran is an incumbent, but also one of the trustees that submitted bylaw changes for the member/owners that were ignored by the majority of the BOT (including Lucas Cordova and VictorSalazar).

You own this cooperative. You are the boss. You only need to show up and vote to enforce this personnel action. Vote for Patrick Herrera, Stanley Crawford and Bruce Duran as your JMEC trustees this June. Let’s take back our coop!

A quick Roundhouse roundup:

HB4 — Ethics Commission has passed the House and is now stuck in the Senate Rules Committee

Unfortunately, the commission will only handle cases involving the Gift Act and campaign finance issues. The dismal process for handling harassment claims is still in the hands of the legislature. This legislation does have a blackout near elections, confidentiality up to the point where probable cause is found and real teeth in the form of subpeona power. It also requires a complaint to be made under oath.

HB300 — Allow mail-in votes to form a quorum for rural electrical cooperatives

This too passed the House, and it is stuck in Senate Rules

Find the names/emails of the Senate Rules Committee Members here.

Now we will talk about House Memorial 63.

Recently, the governor signed Senate Bill 11, titled “Gross Receipts for Non-Profit Organizations” into law. Don’t let the name fool you, it isn’t really about non-profit organizations. It specifically carves out an exception to the usual tax-exempt status of non-profit entities for two specific businesses, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. I will skip the part where I explain how dumb I think creating exemptions from exemptions to the tax code is as a policy. I now turn you to the smiley photo op moment published on the governor’s Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/GovMLG/photos/a.2265811537078391/2305286606464217/?type=3&theater, accessed 3/5/2019.

Pictured are Senators Cisneros and Martinez, the governor, and Representatives Chandler and Romero.

The caption reads “This important safeguard will ensure lab-adjacent New Mexico communities maintain a crucial revenue stream.“

Again, don’t let this fool you. “lab-adjecent” means Los Alamos County and City, who will reap the benefit of the $20M local portion of GRT paid by Triad, the new contractor for LANL. While Senators Cisneros and Martinez have constituents in Los Alamos County (Cisneros in White Rock and Martinez in Los Alamos proper), and Chris Chandler represents all of Los Alamos in the House, Andrea Romero has precisely ZERO constituents that will directly benefit from this GRT bill. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Under state statute, local portions of the GRT collected are collected by the County and City in which the payer is located. In this case, Los Alamos is both city and county and grabs 2% of the tax. The remaining 5% and change goes into the state of New Mexico’s general fund, which gets spent, well, on “stuff”. So, I was curious about how the communities surrounding LANL that are not Los Alamos might benefit from this tax. The answer is, they mostly don’t, except tangentially.

Now enters House Memorial 63. It asked that the legislature fund a study to determine the most equitable way to allocate GRT taxes collected from a place like LANL. You see, Los Alamos is a town of 18,000 residents, and 55% of the workforce at LANL don’t live there. They live in Santa Fe city and county, Rio Arriba and Sandoval. No doubt some also make the long commute from Bernalillo. Additionally, the Department of Energy really likes to keep its employees happy, and it grants Los Alamos schools an additional $8M/year to make sure it stays that way.

Joseph Sanchez, representative of House District 40, in the northern parts of Espanola and farther reaches of Rio Arriba County, and incidentally a staff member in Los Alamos, wanted to know if there was a way to quantify the impact and equity in this tax code. There was only one problem. His “progressive” representative colleague Susan Herrera would not just refuse to cosponsor the bill, she would sit in committee and work to kill it. The smiling face of Andrea Romero, representative to the northernmost parts of Santa Fe County which are also “lab-adjecent” was nowhere to be found on the issue when it got to committee.

Today, I got to see progressives fight AGAINST social and economic inequality. Yup, you heard it here first.

I wrote and had published an open letter to this committee, which you can read here. It lays out the great disparity in Los Alamos and its neighboring communities in the areas of education and in income. It begs the question of whether the United States’ second most wealthy County should receive 100% of the benefit of this local GRT. The answer for progressive Susan Herrera seems to be that yes, Los Alamos deserves this cash influx and that they act as good stewards and neighbors to surrounding communities. I whole-heartedly disagree that the issue is that simple.

I would like to thank Joseph Sanchez for taking on this issue and advocating for his constituents (and Romero’s and Herrera’s). I would also like to thank Mayor Javier Sanchez of Espanola, who spoke of losing money when students flee to the much more superbly funded district of Los Alamos, and for Ohkay Owingeh and Santa Clara Pueblos, who stood in support of the bill.

Before the committee started, I noticed a fist bump between a gentleman and Susan Herrera. That gentleman is the lobbyist for Los Alamos.

After the committee ended, a Bernie delegate (self-proclaimed progressive) from Los Alamos approached me to suggest we talk to their superintendent to “see what they are doing that Pojoaque and Espanola are not”. I calmly told him “You mean besides getting $8M/year from DOE?”

A stammer and a rationalization followed.

Well done, progressives. Well done.

To weigh in with your local reps on this issue, feel free to contact them here:

Susan Herrera susan.herrera@nmlegis.gov

Andrea Romero andrea@andrearomero.com

Susan Herrera susan.herrera@nmlegis.gov

Richard Martinez richard.martinez@nmlegis.gov

Carlos Cisneros carlos.cisneros@nmlegis.gov