Quilting the Quilt - styles and trends

How to quilt the quilt has been on my mind for the past two or three months. I have a quilt started for the Empire Quilters Show next March, and I've been trying to decide how I want it to be quilted -- by me on the machine? By a quilter with a long arm machine? I can do smaller ones by hand and this is not enormous but I know I won't get it done in time by hand. So ... well so far I don't know if it's going to look like the picture in my mind which includes appliques on top of the already quilted piece ... sounds dumb, huh? Maybe it is, I haven't got far enough to see if it's going to work the way I'm envisioning.
Meanwhile, the whole matter of quliting has been muddying my mind. I've been watching trends and reacting, I realize. That realization came to me as I did the Steppes quilt that I wrote about a few entries ago. Above is a picture of a section of it; I quilted fairly heavily, in waves and swirls that seemed to echo the way I perceived the landscape when I drove through it or sat on a hilltop eating lunch and feeling I was melting into the undulating hiills. This quilting is not "free motion". I'm not sure I can do free motion on my sewing machine. I haven't taken a class because I fear my machine is too old.
To digress: I have a Japanese-made Riccar bought over 40 years ago. It has no plastic parts, it's supposed to be portable but weights a good 50 pounds. Only one part has broken in all those years -- the foot lift lever. It's sewn at least a million miles of seams, counting many, many garments and 30 or so years of quilting. Every so often I look at magnificent machines that do many things electronically and think, ahhh what I could do with that! ... Then I look at the price tag and I think, but I could go to Sri Lanka, or New Zealond or Terra Del Fuego for the same amount. And when it comes to choices, I'll chose travel as long as I'm physically able -- which I hope will be a very long time yet.
I've been watching fashions change in the quilting world. Those who read quilting history know that quilters are "early adopters". As soon as sewing machines became available women began using them. The blizzard of new gadgets and devices and techniques invented in the last 15 or 20 years have been fantastic and received with enormous enthusiasm. In the last five years I've noticed a great change in the amount and style of quilting on the quilts in shows. And I notice it myself in my work.

This is another memory quilt. Artistically it is less successful than the Steppes quilt. It show three photo transfers of me in the Himalayas on the way to a high pass complete with prayer flags and the Annapurnas in the background. The other fabrics are "mountainous". It's been hanging in my entry hall for four or five years and I love being reminded of trekking in the Nepalese sub-kingdom of Mustang. I was the oldest in the group and the last up to every pass. But I did it!! This quilt reminds me how much I loved that journey. ... However the quilting on it is very sparse, certainly compared to the Steppes piece. I've now hung the whole Mongolia set in the hallway and decided to do much more quilting on this one. It now looks incomplete. But it didn't at the time I made it.
I'm reminded of the bad old days when women changed the length of their skirs because of fashion. Once I thought a skirt a midcalf was the only graceful length. Then just covering the knees seem more graceful and less dowdy. Suddenly there were mini skirts. That took some getting used to. After a while anything covering the knees looked awful. Fortunately then came maxis and midis and now everything is fine. Horray!!! I was very aware [because I was making a lot of my own clohtes] that different lengths and shapes were a matter of familarity and conformity.
A similar phenomenon is happening with quilting density. For a while the ideas was to quilt enough so the batting wouldn't shift and bunch up when washed. But now we have polyester batting that will not bunch up. Meanwhile some good teachers showed quilters how to do free motion. It was fun and the surface gained an interest it never had before. I suppose it started with one teacher but it spread rapidly. Then came the long arm quilting machines which are a big, big fad. At the two most recent shows I've seen in New Jersey I began to dislike a lot of the machine stitching that overlay all types of patterns. Some enhanced the overall design but many seemed like chocolate icing hiding the cake beneath -- was it vanilla inside,or chocolate or maybe silly putty?
Newness is appealing for a while, but then people begin to look and become more discriminating -- one day in the not so distant future we'll see th e"skirt fashion" idea come to quilting. We'll be more discriminating about what will enhance our quilts the most. I'm sure quite a few people are already thinking in those terms. I can't, and don't want to, suggest any rules on the question. I will requilt the Mustang memory quilt and exactly what will happen with the possible show quilt, I don't know yet ... if it turns out badly it will NOT be my show quilt. That's as far as I can see in the future tonight.

Quilting the Quilt - styles and trends

How to quilt the quilt? The question has nagged at me for the two or three months. I have a quilt started for the Empire Quilters Show next March, how to quilt the quilt? On my machine? Send it to a long arm quilter? I can do smaller ones by hand and this is not enormous but I know I won't get it done in time.. So ... well so far I don't know if it's going to look like the picture in my mind which includes appliques on top of the already quilted piece ... sounds dumb, huh? Maybe it is, I haven't got far enough to see if it's going to work the way I'm envisioning.
Meanwhile, the whole matter of quliting has been muddying my mind. I've been watching trends and reacting. That realization came to me as I did the Steppes quilt that I wrote about a few entries ago. Above is a picture of a section of it; I quilted fairly heavily, in waves and swirls that echoed the way I perceived the landscape when I rode through it or sat on a hilltop eating lunch feeling I was melting into the undulating hiills. This quilting is not "free motion". I'm not sure I can do free motion on my sewing machine. I haven't taken a class because I fear my machine is too old.
Explanation: I have a Japanese-made Riccar bought over 40 years ago. It has no plastic parts, it's supposed to be portable but weighs a good 50 pounds. Only one part has broken in all those years -- the foot lift lever. It's sewn at least a million miles of seams, counting many, many garments and 30 or so years of quilting. Every so often I look at magnificent machines that do many things electronically and think, ahhh what I could do with that! ... Then I look at the price tag and I think, but for that price I could go to Sri Lanka, or Tasmania or Terra Del Fuego -- all places I'd love to visit [Yeah, I know I have unusual tastes.] When it comes to choices, I'll chose travel as long as I'm physically able -- which I hope will be a very long time yet.
I've been watching fashions change in the quilting world. Quilting history shows that quilters are "early adopters". As soon as sewing machines became available women began using them. The blizzard of new gadgets, devices and techniques and sewing machines invented in the last 15 or 20 years have been fantastic and received with enormous enthusiasm. In the last five years I've noticed a great change in the amount and style of quilting on the quilts in shows. I notice it in my own work.

This is another memory quilt. Artistically it is less successful than the Steppes. It show photo transfers of me in the Himalayas on the way to a high pass complete with prayer flags and the Annapurnas in the background. The fabrics are "mountainous". It's been hanging in my entry hall for four or five years. I love being reminded of trekking in the Nepalese sub-kingdom of Mustang. I was the oldest in the group and the last up to every pass. But I did it!! This quilt makes me happy. ... However the quilting on it is very sparse. I've now hung the whole Mongolia set in the hallway and decided to do much more quilting on this one. It now looks incomplete. But it didn't at the time I made it.
I'm reminded of the bad old days when women changed the length of their skirts because of fashion. Once I thought a skirt a midcalf was the perfect length. Then just covering the knees seem more graceful and less dowdy. Suddenly there were mini skirts. That took some getting used to. After a while anything covering the knees looked awful. Fortunately then came maxis and midis and now anything goes. Horray!!! [So, of course, most of us wear pants -- but lately they've come in lots of lenghts too.] I've become very aware of how easily influenced my taste is, and I think I'm not the only one.
A similar phenomenon is happening with quilting density. For a while the ideas was to quilt enough so the batting wouldn't shift and bunch up when washed. But now we have polyester batting that will not bunch up and art quilts we aren't going to wash anyway. Then someone started teaching free motion quilting. It was fun and the surface became interesting in a new way. The idea spread rapidly. Then came the long arm quilting machines which are a big, big fad. At the two most recent shows I've seen in New Jersey I disliked a lot of the machine stitching that overlay all types of patterns. Some enhanced the overall design but many seemed like chocolate icing hiding the cake beneath -- was it vanilla inside,or chocolate or maybe Play Doh?
Newness is appealing for a while, but then people begin to look and become more discriminating -- one day in the not so distant future we'll see the "skirt fashion" idea come to quilting. We'll be more discriminating about what will enhance our quilts the most. I'm sure quite a few people are already thinking in those terms. I can't, and don't want to, suggest any rules on the question. I will requilt the Mustang memory quilt and exactly what will happen with the possible show quilt, I don't know yet ... if it turns out badly it will NOT be my show quilt. That's as far as I can see in the future tonight.

Inattentional Blindness

The grasshopper, I mean --
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaw back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her forearms and thoroughly washes her facee.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.

This is Mary Oliver again. If you go back to my entry two weeks ago, she says she knows how to pay attention. This excerpt proves it -- plus that she choses exactly the right words to paint that grasshopper for us.

Well above the wave-washed ribbon of sand,
among the tough dune grasses but before the hearty
shoreline trees, thorny wild roses spread low.
The salty sea winds have forced the roses to flatten
their tangles like a souring pad. Among the bramble
the plentious hips glow, the shell-hard skin is polished
by the windblown sand to a gilded crimson.

This is my attempt to pay attention to the wild roses on a Cape Cod beach -- you can see that a picture, in this case, is worth all those words.
Why have I captioned this entry "Inattentional Blindness"? I am reaading a book by Temple Grandin called Animal Translaton in which she talks about how she, as an autistic person understands animals. She says she and animals see far more acute than normal [her word, I'm not being politically incorrect] people and explains that the neocortex of autisic people does not work as effectively as in normal people. Animals have far less neocortex than humans. She says she and they perceive the world largely in pictures -- visually paying enormous attention to detail. And that normal people have a selective inability to notice most of the details of their world. She cites a book called INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS by cognitive psychologists, Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, who explain that the human neocortex has grown huge and takes over out attentional perception, blocking out things that are either not important to us or distracting. Because of the workings of the neocortex we have the ability -- which I suspect most people have experienced -- of being completely absorbed in thoughts so that we can have driven or walked or rode from point A to B, even if it took a hour and a fair amount of intelligent manouvering in traffic, but remember nothing that we saw along the way. This happens in one form or another almost all day long. Say Mack and Rock, our brain is constsructed to be blind to much of our surroundings.
This gives me a long, long pause. I've also been reading Ani Tenzin Palmo, a Tibetan Buddhist nun -- and I've read a good bit about Buddhist meditation in the last several years. In her Reflections on a Mountain Lake, she writes about making the mind clear of thoughts so you can truly pay attention to the what is going on. The Tibetan Buddhists have developed many practices for doing this, as have the Zen Buddhists and others. So it seems the goal is a kind of regression from the inattentional blindness that humans have developed in the course of evolution. I'm not sure what that means.
One thing I have observed is that our most vivid memories and the moments when we feel most alive are those times when we are entirely absorbed in what we are doing -- whatever it is, whether intellectual or physical. Think about it, aren't your most vivid memories from such moments? Thinkof moments creating something, being absorbed in something beautiful, engaging in an exciting and meaningful conversatioin, or dancing, playing a sport ... We need to pay more attention ... maybe we've evolved a bit too far. Or maybe it's the complexity of our lives, the way so many things bombard us so that our neocortex is overworked blocking out things that may be more worth noticing than whatever that nattering thought was during the half hour we were going from A to B earlier today.

Bet you don't know what a Federal Grand Jury does

Dollars to donuts, most people don't know what a federal grand jury is or does? The usual picture is straight out of TV and movies -- the judge in his high seat, the jury lined up on one side of the room, somewhat higher than the lowly defendant and lawyers. Wrong. No judge, no courtroom, no defendants. Lawyers, oh, yes! Witnesses too. I was clueless too when I got the notice in the mail and took myself downtown to the federal court house.
The United States Constitution defines a federal grand jury, that much I know but I will make some stupid mistake if I try to explain much about why. I think there is no federal agency that can arrest a person without an indictment that has been voted on by a federal grand jury. There are, we all know, state and local law enforcement agencies that can arrest people. But what a federal grand jury does is hear evidence and vote to indict [or not] the people in question.
A federal grand jury is larger and longer empaneled than other juries. We don't see any judges. In the southern district of NY a "regular" grand jury meets every day for month and then is finished. But as one might imagine this is a very busy district so several additional grand juries have been empanelled. When I was called I thought about it and decided that every day for a month would be a financial hardship. But I have enjoyed other instances of jury duty so I told the judge I would be willing to fill one of the spaces that were available on a "special" and/or an "aditional" grand jury which would meet twice a week "until October" [this was the first Monday of April].
Even having volunteered I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I got named to the "April '05 Speical".
--As an aside: most New Yorkers dread those jury duty notices whatever divison it's called for: civil, criminal, state or federal. And most immediately begin plotting how to get out of the duty. A few oddballs like me actually think it's interesting and enjoy seeing how the justice system operates. I've been on civil jury and a couple of criminal juries and found them fascinating. --
What I discovered: there are 23 members of a federal grand jury, with 16 needed for a quorum. Thus one can take occasional days off if need be. We are never quite sure if we're going to meet or at what time of day we'll be called. We call a recorded message at 6:00 the night before. Often it's 9:45, but it could be almost anytime up to 2:00 which is after lunch. We do not meet in a coutroom but a simple meeting room. This grand jury was empanelled in April 2005 specifically to hear organized crime cases -- which covers a lot of territory, not just, as some might think, Mafia. A chairperson and deputy chairperson were chosen. The members of the jury has changed over the 17 months as people had various reasons to be excused. Although 4 or 5 have been on since the beginning..
I'm not sure it's a jury of "peers" -- few of us feel like peers to the drug rings or scam artists we hear about -- but we are a group of senious minded, responsible people and our ethnicity is fairly reflective of NYC. Over 1/3 are people of color, some are Hispanic, there's a balance of men and women, it leans to older people who either are retired or have been in a job [often a civil service one] long enough to have the freedom to be away two days a week. I find them an interesting group of people from neighborhoods and jobs that I would never meet in my usual life although I could well ride the subway with them most any time. There are no Asian people on the jury, which is a bit of an imbalance -- not intentional.
So what do we do? An Assistant US District Attorney comes in to tell us about the situation and people he or she is investigating. Usually we have a proposed indictment but occasionally, if it's a big, complex case, the AUSDA will do an informational session -- we had a long and interesting Power Point presentation about a complex conspiracy recently -- and the indictments are brought in later. After the DA explains the case a witness is called, often an FBI agent, sometimes a person from the immigration authority, sometimes a NYPD officer, once in a while a "lay" person who's been caught up in a scam. We hear the evidence and the DA explains the laws at length. We have ample opportunity to ask questions about either the law or the evidence. We deliberate -- it's usually pretty cut and dry actually. The whole thing has been recorded by a court stenographer. We get paid a whopping $40 a day for transportation and expenses.
I've found it interesting and often soporific -- a lot of dozing happens. Lawyers have to repeat the same legalities over and over. I'm not very happy that I now hear that the ending date of "October" is not firm. Apparently the court can extent this jury for two more six-month periods. I'm not sure I am willing to stay that kind of course.
So this was today's lesson in civics ... the point is, it is easy to live our lives and have almost no idea how the legal system works. I am far from a gung-ho patriot but I am fascinated by what goes on in court houses -- not just the theatrics of a Judge Judy. We've heard a fair amount about drama -- murders, robberies, drug deals, scams of many sorts ... My impression from the others is that we have a sense of responsibility. We may be bored half the time but it's worthwhile, in fact it's a necessary part of our political system. A part I can support ... which I can't say about the whole system.
We have just moved from that grand old Grecian pillared building in the picture to a newer courthouse across the street. The new tower building has some dignity but there was something more inspiring about walking up those steps into a big shiny marble entrance hall that I miss.

Finishing Things is Fantastic

I finished the three memory quilts about Mongolia. I'm trying to show the biggest -- almost as big as the two others together -- of the steppes. The steppes are horse country -- wild, wild East of Asia. Kids learn to ride before they walk. In the annual Nadam festival the horses race several kilometers; the jockeys are kids, 5 up to maybe 10. Mostly boys, but a few girls nowadays. They not only have to ride the course, they have to know how to let the horses cool down afterwards. Very exciting. Lately some parents are putting helmets on the kids.
Also in the picture, the gray damoiselle cranes that nest out on the flat plane with no protection except their coloration and fierce will to protect themselves, their eggs and chicks from hawks, wolves and all other preditors. I saw several pairs, and a couple of chicks.
In the background, thanks to photo transfer with my wonderful new printer, a picture of a family's gers, one for living, one for cooking in summer and between them a solar panel powering the satellite dish. Maybe they have a single electric bulb also but probably don't need it in summer. That far north it stayed light quite late -- one night when my Girl Guide Exec. [Canadian] roommate wanted to give me an star gazing lesson, we had to sit out until 11:00 to see the stars begin to shine.
Also in the background, another transfer not clear in this reproduction, is an ovoo. This is a cairn of stones that have been deposited around a pole on which is the Buddhist enternal wheel. These are scattered all over the steppe. The are adorned with the Mongolian equivalent of the Tibetan prayer flags, in this case, blue or orange strips of fabric or plastic. People also leave offerings at the ovoos, often crutches [when the owner no longer needs them], liquor bottles, animal skulls, and coins. One circumambulates an ovoo clockwise as one circumambulates other Buddist structures like stupas and statues in shrines.
I quilted the steppes heavily in undulating patterns like the land. Until I hung it up I thought the bottom was nice and straight and now I see it isn't. When something like this happens I think of the Amish who are said to have intentionally sewn a mistake into each quilt so as not to challenge God by making something perfect. In my case, I'm not even a contender against God. I always get something wrong without intending to.


The other two pieces of the three-part quilt: The one with fish, deer, hawk and rabbit is of the tiaga in the north near Lake Khosvol which is surrounded by larch forests -- it's really southern Siberia. There we met some of the tribal people who follow the reindeer, including a woman shaman. The reindeer people live in teepees of deer skin very much like the Plains Indians of the US used to live. The lake is crystalline and very beautiful.
The third part is the Gobi, with Bactrian camels, dunes (only in some parts), huge beds of dinosaur fossils ... and here we saw a wolf -- an old, possibly blind, wolf -- my heart hurts just remembering him. We also saw, which this does not reflect -- ICE. Yes, in canyons of mountains in the desert were some patches of ice left from the winter. Also not reflected, we saw one of the year's very few rainstorms when the trackless desert became a vast three or four inch deep lake. Then a wonderful rainbow. ... With experiences like this do I need to explain why I LOVE to travel and why I come home and make memory quilts? Every moment I sewed on these pieces I remembered different moments ... gives me great happiness.
I can't finish writing anything about Mongolia without invoking the name of Chengis [current spelling]. He conquored his known world. I was inclined to remember him as the leader of a terrifying army. At the Nadam festival announcers and actors reading traditional poetry used a declamatory bass baritone that gave me prickles at the nape of the neck. I love things theatrical! The sound of those voices were as grand as the steppes and the vast skies. Goosebumps all over.
Dear readers, if I can suggest in what I write the wonderfulness of this wide earth and the peoples who live here, in the hidden corners, the far away places, with traditions we do not know or understand ... if I can impart any little portion of my awe and wonder and love for their diversity I'll have done something worthwhile.

Seven Puncture Wounds

I thought, no, I won't write about this. But Joan, my sister-in-law who is in the middle of nasty chemotherapy for breast cancer sent me a note yesteray about pink and white M&Ms of which 50 cents for every pack goes to research. And both quilt magazines I received lately advertise the Olfa rotary cutters and mats in pink, percentages gong to research. And I think of Virginia Spiegel's project selling art quilt postcards at $30 each. She's already made over $50,000 for research and will be hoping to double that at Houston in a few weeks. It's a serious and important subject, I hope a cure will be found. I had the unfounded and head-in-the-sand idea that it wouldn't affect me in my own tender flesh.
Hubris asks to be humbled ... so I'm recovering from seven puncture wounds in my left breast inflicted on Tuesday after a couple of mammogams showed a change from the previous mammogram -- THREE years ago -- a tiny spot only visible on a magnified X-ray and sonogram. But ... "we should check it out." I considered rejecting that reasoning and would have said, no, let's wait and see if it changes. There's been no breast cancer among my blood relatives. BUT none of them took estrogen for many years either as I have. Weighing the facts, I decided okay.
I said to the nice M.D. that in a way doing a biopsy with such slight indications is CYA medicine. [CYA is cover your ass] She said defensively, as expected, But there are times we catch something very early -- a major part of the goal of the whole initiave that urges we women to have regular mammograms. [A theory to which I am not an enthusiastic adherent.] She agreed that in another country such aggressive medicine would be unlikely ... it would be "wait and see."
Anyway, after a couple of pricks when the anesthesia was administered, the subsequent seven punctures were painless. Thursday she called to say the pathology showed only benign results. Happy ending. BUT the moral of the story, from my point of view, is not HURRAY I'm okay. It's: this is one of the things that's wrong with American healthcare. This procedure cost Medicare a few thousand dollars, and it cost me about a thousand. So the clinic is richer and has a nice statistics to prove they are doing exactly what they exist to do. But it was quite unnecessary.
Thanks to the scare tactics of the media and the fact that almost no one understands statistics [I'm not a statistical genius either but I have a basic grasp of how and who uses them] we have little ability to balance pros anc cons. Another case in point, a cousin just wrote and asked if I'll get a flu shot soon. No! I've never had a flu shot. Why? Because I've never had the flu. Can I get the flu? Sure. But I seem to have a good immune system and rarely have more than one or two colds a winter and no flus. Why should I have a flu shot?
This week the news is telling us that every teen and many others ought to have HIV tests because somebody's statistics say X-thousand people are infected and don't know it. Likewise, there's a whole battery of tests we're told we should have regularly for things like colon and prostrate cancer, bone density, cholesterol level, etc. No doubt they save lives but the shotgun approach of test everyone just doesn't make sense unless you are a manufacturer of the tests, a clinic that administers them, a government agency that wants to rack up some impressive numbers or an insurance company that has calculated that it's cheaper to do a lot of tests than pay for the care of those dying of the undetected results.
Where are we, the individuals in all this Big Brother medicine? We're the scared little rabbits paying too much for health insurance and for drugs and deciding to live the "good life" while we can and eating too much, exercising too little and never asking where or how our spinach is grown until someone dies of E. coli. If we took the trouble to know how artifically most of our food is produced, and how artificially the flavors are added ... well, in fact there's a couple of generations who don't know what a tomato truly should taste like, and who have no idea that most fruit should be rather soft and quite sweet and truly flavorful with a satisfying texture in the mouth -- not something similar to eating styrofoam somehow infused with the scent of actual strawberries or apples.
It's a soapbox and I've only begun this rant. But I'll try in the next few notes to write about quilting ... meanwhile those pesky puncture wounds itch as they're healing ... which I guess is a good sign. [Sorry no pictures today.]

Autumn at 11:03 tonight!!

Here's a seasonal disconnect. Summer ends before midnight and I'm showing you a picture of myself sitting in front of a snow bank through which a mountain stream has cut a channel -- this picture was taken in Valdez, Alaska within 24 hours of the Summer Solstice!! And, indeed, on midsummer's eve, when I'm told it didn't really get dark, it snowed on top of the local mountains. {I was snugly in bed with a blanket over my head blocking out the light.]
All this is to mark the season with a recognition of the wonder of weather -- wherever one happens to be. Here in New England we can look forward in autumn to a magnificence of gold and red, every bit as heart stoppingly lovely as the white and pink flowering trees of spring.
A few years ago a guy in the playwriting group I belonged to wrote a comdey about a couple cutting short their vacation in the Caribbean because of hurricane warnings. The husband explained, "Elaine doesn't like weather." To listen to casual conversation in NYC, one gets the impression most people don't like weather. But some of us love weather -- not just the people who say they could never retire to Florida because they would miss the seasons. I'm among those who like weather even when it's making me miserable for the time being. I don't like those humid summer days when I break into a sweat just brushing my teeth, and I don't like heavy rain the makes me walk around in wet shoes, or the cold winds that howl around corners literally giving me a headache from the cold against my forehead. But it's part of the territory.
Anyway, this is just a quick blog, because it's called Calender Pages, to acknowledge that the season is officially changing. And I will acknowledge that it is Rosh Hoshanah -- and that it seems appropriate for people to end a year with the end of a season -- as we officially do in January a bit after the start of winter. Never -- unless we become robotized and thus not really human -- will people stop noting the change of seasons, and enjoying -- and complaining about -- the weather. What would New Yorkers talk about without the weather? So often we want to say something to someone we know only casually from riding up the elevator or seeing in a store ... we can be a little friendly without being personal with a remark about the weather -- love it or hate it, we've got it and I say Hurray!

This Week's Poem & Poet

I've been reading Stanley Kunitz's 1994 book, PASSING THROUGH, Later Poems, New and Selected. In the middle of the book is a poem that's been a favorite for some time, "The Layers". The title already appeals to someone who maks quilts, for we define our work as being three layers ... so meditation about layers as a metaphor for our lives is a natrual process as we work. I don't know the copyright laws so I won't quote the whole poem, here's the final lines:
In my darkest night
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus clouded voice
directed me
"Live in the layers
not the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chaper
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

The poem is wonderful, you can Google Stanley Kunitz. At American Academy of Poets you can get a nice picture, a bio and hear him reading. At Poem Hunter, you can read this and any other poem of his -- it's a fantastic site. Let's pause for a picture of some layers at sunset which is appropriate for many reasons.

Kunitz was Poet Laureat in 2000 -- he was 94. He died last May at age 100. He wrote this poem in his late 70s I believe.
I found a wonderful prose poem in the book, it's one of several pieces he wrote when the Whitney Museum had an exhibit of needlework; a book was made of the exhibit called, A BLESSING OF WOMEN. I quote this one for reasons that will be obvious although I like others in ghe group even more.

BLESS MRS. AUSTIN EARNEST of Paris, Illinois, whose husband, a local politician of no other fame, organized in 1853 a rally for the Presidential candidate of the new Republican party, following which she gathered the material used to decorate the stand wherefrom the immortal Lincoln spoke and, with scissors and needle and reverential heart, transformed it into a quilted patchwork treasure.

To friends and readers of this blog who think poetry is difficult and full of high flown language, I hope you'll see from these short quotes from Kunitz and from last Thursday's quote from Mary Oliver, that poems are often very wonderful and not the least big scary. Don't get hung up in the litter of literature teachers who made you think poetry is only for literary types; poetry is very everyone ... and I don't mean Hallmark card poetry, I mean those skinny books with lots of white space on the pages. I mean poems being written people who are living and writing today.

I May Dislocate My Shoulder

I may dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back for making great advances into the cyberworld. I still can't believe that yesterday I managed to scan a picture and then post it on a blog!! Talk about old dogs and new tricks ... Why am I so proud? Any 12 year old could have done that. Yes! but when I was twelve I was just getting used to indoor plumbing -- and the drinking water was hand pumped from a well in the yard even then.
My daughter Leslie reminds me what a slow adapter I was to ATM carsds. My first one actually expired before I took it out of my wallet and tried to use it. When I replaced it I asked Leslie to show me how. Now I almost never go beyond the ATM vetibule of a bank anymore. --By the way a pet peeve. Do not call it "an ATM machine." The M stand for machine.

This bridge is a symbol for where I've come from and where I am now. It goes over a creek below the hill Versailles, Indiana. I rode a school bus over iit the years [12] I went to school there. At that time the paint was faded or maybe nonexistent; but now it's been freshly painted and become picturesque. I took this picture in June went I went home for my -- no, I won't say the number -- high school reunion. We had 56 in our graduating class and over half put in an appearance reunion weekend, only three have died which we consider lucky. Slightly under half of us began in the first grade together and continued through all 12 years. More of us have had successful and satisfying lives than I would have expected. I'm not the only one who can look back and say, "it's a different world."
Indeed!! That little four-square house I wrote about in my first blog entry had no electicity, no running water, no telephone, of course, nothing like central heating. I remember that men came when I was four and cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling and then in other ceilings and then THERE WAS LIGHT!. Perhaps a year later other men, attaching other wires to our house, hung a big black box with a crank and a horn shaped thing to hold to your ear. it jingled a variety of combinations of sound. One combination was ours, others were for our neighbors.
Thus did technology enter my world. My father plowed and mowed and harvested with a pair of horses, Gray and Jim. He had a Model A Ford. Just before I was six he bought a John Deere tractor and sold the horses. About that time the cast iron cookstove in the middle of the kitchen which burned wood or coal was replaced with a kerosene kitchen stove. I love to tell this story to young people ... it seems mythological.
With those memories still clear in my mind ... I think readers can understand that I feel I personally have experienced a technlogical revolution and when I learn something new -- like blogging, you'll have to forgive me if I pat myself on the back.
One other observation on the subject. When I was in Tibet in 1996, the little group I was with was having tea with the Abbot of Ramoche monastery in Lhasa in a room build about a thousand years ago. Nearby we heard a phone ring and saw a monk answering it -- a touch tone phone. They, like much of the world that is only in the last ten or fifteen years acquiring technology, went from nothing to digital, skipping all the intermediary steps. This is happening all over the world. Maybe it doesn't amaze young people who have known nothing else, but to me it's like going from puberty to adulthood skipping all those confusing teenage years. Of course, now it's cell phones ...Think about it ... yes, I feel like a human bridge with a memory that gives me a perspective full of wonder and amazement. WOW!

I See No Stranger

"I see no stranger" is the title of an art show and a quote from Guru Nanak, the founder of the religion of Sikhism. He's sitting under a tree with a book of hymns under his arm while a musician tunes up and a prince has come on horseback to pay him homage. Never heard of him? Never heard of Sikhism? ... Maybe you've seen Sikhs -- the Indian men with turbans and often luxurious handlebar mustaches. Remeber the Sikh medic in THE ENGLISH PATIENT? I went to an art show about Sikhism at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan art last night.
I can say I was aware of Sikhism, certainly of the Sikhs here in NYC and that I saw in India -- I even wrote a Sikh taxi driver role in a play once and the conscientious actor [Italian] found a Sikh and learned to wrap a turban properly. From novels and nearly forgotten reading I knew their founder was call "Guru". That was it. Very little. Now I know just a little bit more. Briefly; in approximately 1500 Guru Nanak announced all men are the same, none should be strangers to another; no real division exists between Hindus and Muslims -- as there was in India [specifically Kashmir] at the time. The Guru wandered the length and breadth of India including Sri Lanka and into Pakistan [which was then India] and Afghanistan with a message of univerality; he shared his message by singing devotional songs he wrote. It was a time of much religious fervor in the subcontinent and his message resonated with many, Nine subsequent gurus followed. The 10th announced that hencefore the Guru would be the book of writings -- not a book of do's and don't but a book of universal praise.
That's it. The religion evolved and got more complicated -- as tends to happen. A some point the men stopped cutting their hair and began wearing turbans to keep it out of the way and taking the last name Singh which means lion. Women took a name meaning Princess. Painters, in the Indian classical fashion painted episodes in Guru Nanak's life and in the lives of future Gurus. The most interesting part of the art exhibit to me was sketches in ink drawn before the paintings were made; they were far more animated and three dimensional -- these artists didn't have to paint in the traditional way; they understood realism but chose tradition. Also shown were some late drawings of workers at various trades; these were truely portraitsl which I liked very much especially a bare chested "tracker" and his stocky middle aged female companion.
The exhibiton had some beautiful textiles, weavings and rugs. The opening was made more delightful by the embroidered jackets and other attire of the women present. Also it was good to see the show with Gary who looks carefully and thoughtfully at things that are new to him ... a talent reallly. I can get overwhelmed by my ignorance of a style, especially one that is relatively stuff, and then stop looking -- and I'm easily distracted by people watching.
So that is a little bit of information -- one of the reasons to live in NYC ... this is just one of the many things on public display -- this relatively new, private musuem mostly houses Tibetan art. It's very near where I work and I should visit it a bit more than I do. I have gone to some fascinating lectures there. They also had a series of lessons on Tibetan applique which was then put on a quilt; but that was during my woriking hours.
I have to mention that at one exhibit of Tibetan artifacts they had a large robe that was made ENTIRELY of kingfisher feathers woven in some manner I could not understand, so that it appeared to be a a textile like a complicated satin!! The utter simplicity was breath taking ... more so than Montezuma's feathered robes [I saw one or two in Vienna, of all places] where you know immediately they are feathers. We have magnificent textiles today but people in the past also became great craftspeople working in astonishing textiles.
I am going to add one of the butterfly postcards at the bottom of this -- it's got nothing to do with Sikhism but leads in a way into the previous [i.e., now following] comment.

Channeling Martha

Although I don't haven't had a TV since 1989, and I've never seen The Martha Stewart S how, I've seen her magazine and quite recently the transcription & recording service at which I transcribe every manner of recorded material did three batchs of videos which will probably be cut for future shows. For all I know the "Martha in Paris" segment has already run or will soon. So when an interior decoration problem arose a work last week ... this is what happened.

The brownstone in which the office is located has been cut up into a number of smal rooms. Claustrophobia is avoided because most rooms have half walls with glass in the upper half. Until last week I was looking through glass, through an empty office to a window. Then the office was rented by a slightly self-conscious guy who thought of blocking MY window. I said, wait, I'll do something. I thought I would use a long narrow quilt in a part of the window, leaving light around the edges. But then I thought he'd be looking at a not very interesting back. Besides the one that would be best is still in the UFO category [it has been an Unfinished Object for some years now]

Sometime that evening the answer simply came to me and I immediately thought I'd seen something like it in a Martha Stewart Living magazine ... maybe. Viola! a window blocker that lets light in but give sufficent privacy.



I made approximately 40 quilt postcards in the early summer, using the designs as drawn by Bea Oglesby in her recent book aptly called BUTTERFLIES. I had suddenly realized that I could attach the post cards, in pairs, to face both sides of the window, pin them to grosgrain ribbons and attach the ribbons to the frame of a window pane. It works!! Now I have a variety of butterflies to look at as I work and the young guy, who says his mother who lives in Houston and is a maker of traditional quilts, has some appreciation also. And, as he says it gives him privacy to scratch his [shaved, I think] bald head.

I have been quilting in series so all these butterfly postcards is just an extension. I'm a little amazed that I got hooked on them. I bought the book because the drawings seemed to make applique fairly easy [raw edge, mostly zig-zag/outline stiched on the machine -- I am not a hand appliquer]. I thought: well, butterflies are kind of nice, maybe I'll want to use them one day. Now I'm aware that my attitude was that mixture of supercilliousness and ignorance that is how we often approach things that we've paid very little attention to and know little about. By "we" I mean me -- it's a self-defensive mental habit because there's not enough time to be interested in everything anyway. I think others do the same.

Bea has used actual butterflies and gives their names. In making the ones in her book, I discovered in a very immediate way that there's a great variety of shapes/configurations, of colors and of marking. And Bea is far from comprehensive. She makes me considef all I don't know much about. In the lasts few years I've traveled with bird watchers in Costa Rica, Turkey and Mongolia and discovered from them that they look first for shape of the bird. Until someone says something self-evident the bells don't start dinging in my brain ... of course, I can tell the difference between a chicken, a duck and goose by shape. They happen to know the difference between an eagle and a perigrine hawk, and much, much more, including the differnt songs of different birds.

A little bit of knowledge leads to curiosity, at least for me. I'm not inspired to become a lepedopterist, but I'll look at butterflies more carefully now ... it's not too late to stretch a little bit, learn something new. Mary Oliver's poetry can make me look more closely at nature, Bea Oglesby's simple butterfly book has opened another window [tho' paradoxically, the butterflies block a window also!]

My bird watching acquaintances, I saw, live in a world that has a dimension to which they are exquisitely attuned. In a way it's the equivalent of knowing that dogs hear high pitched sounds I don't. Other people live in perceptual worlds that are different than mine, and richer in that way. Perhaps I am richer than some of them because I have traveled many places they haven't, or because I can bake bread and pastry as they can't. A woman on the the grand jury I'm on, said she's stymied by the idea of making cookies. If I had a dollar for every cookies I've baked, almost effortlessly, I'd be able to take a six month around the world trip.

I work at a computer facing those hanging butterfly quilt post cards and, when the work is dull I think thoughts like these ... I'm happy to have seen an ad for a new book by Bea Oglesby which has birds in it. When it comes to the City Quilter shop here in Manhattan, I'll buy it. Maybe I'll make bird post cards or maybe something else ...

Poetry Thursday

I'm reading Mary Oliver's HOUSE OF LIGHT which contains my favorite poem of hers -- although I like the book of collected poems that came out in, I think 2000 even more than this book. The poem is "The Summer Day". She describes a grasshopper exquisitely in 38 words. Then she writes:

I don't know exactly what prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I've been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Pay attention ... besides the gift of chosing the perfect words to describe what she wishes to share, Mary Oliver's great talent is to pay attention. Isn't that what we all should be doing? As she asked. Paying attention is the first step in Buddhist meditation ... but not the last. It is not something Westerners consider meditation. Some people pay attention, most do not. Our minds are muscles, as I've heard two people say in the last week or so ... but we have little idea that we can train them or let them atrophy as we can our other muscles. We can teach ourselves to pay attention and greatly enrich our lives. We can teach ourself to reallly listen, to really see, to really feel, taste, smell. To be present in this "one wild and precious life."
How often do we even think of our minds as muscles we can control? Part of the time we are involved in something and using our minds, but a lot of that time we're doing something rote and part of the mind is puttering random thoughts. A large part of the time we have parked our minds in automatic static. We walk or drive or ride somewhere and our minds play the static of: what I should have said or done, what I will do or say, what I want to eat, a memory that pops up and passes quickly ... meanwhile we don't see the people or things around us, barely feel the sun or hear the birds -- or the car going through the red light...
Mary Oliver goes for walks, it seems, most days, she pays attention to the grasshoppers, turtles, snakes, deer, plants, everything. We can read her poetry and be enriched by her attention and her craft. We can learn, too, to pay attention to what is around us, perhaps we will gain some of the philosophy Mary Oliver has about nature, and perhaps we will gain some of the reverence and compassion toward others and other creatures the Buddists cultivate by paying attention.
By the way the picture at the top of this entry is "The Shell Tree" -- a dead tree on a beach on Cape Cod that someone has festoons with sea shells. It's been there some time. So far people leave it alone or perhaps once in a whle add a shell.

Four Squares - redux

This is the picture I meant to start yesterday's blog with, err ... with which I meant to start ... yeah I know ... Since these postings are most recent first if anyone reads through in backward sequence this is the image that should start the September 12 blog. I got the pictures in it reversed. The second quilt picture shows most of the quilt.
Today's federal grand jury sessioin was short, one presentation from 12:00 to about 12:45. So I had most of the day and spent the early part removing paper foundation and then adding batting and backing to the 14th of my "star quartet: series about which more at some future time. I had time for a few errands and when I got home from the jury [more about that at another time too] I decided to finish the Mongolia set ... looking at the Mongolia pictures yesterday inspired me. I did the Lake Koshovl and the Gobi sections months ago and got waylaid by other projects. I'll do pictures of these in the near future too.
Since almost no one knows geography if it's an exotic place -- like almost anywhere you haven't actually been -- here's a brief geography of Mongolia. First you always hear of "Inner" and "Outer" Mongolia ... this is a Chinese viewpoint. "Inner" is the bottom half of the Gobi Desert which makes up a section of Northeastern China, north of Beijing. "Outer" is a dated term. Mongolia is a democracy and was one of the first countries to break away from the former USSR -- peacefully. It was occupied by Russians from the '40s through the [I'm fuzzy] late '80s, I think. Anyway, it's essentially a lozenge shaped country, pretty large, but with a very small population.
The southern section of Mongolia is Gobi Desert, this includes the Flaming Clikffs area were, in the early 1900s Roy Andrews Chapman of the NYC Natural History Museum found a trove of dinosaur bones -- and all the ones kids see in the museum were found him him there. The entire middle section of Mongolia is steppes -- rolling hills, home of nomadic people who live in gers -- which the Russians called "yerts" -- gers, rhymes with bears. They are horse and sheep people. It's a wide open land, thrilling to be in.
To the far west are the Altai Mountains. These are on the Russian border and many people who live there are tribal peoples who keep reindeer and still follow shamistic way of life. The northern portion of Mongolia is tiaga -- it borders Siberia. It is hilly,forested with ever greens and contains Lake Khovskol, which connects to Lake Baikel in Russia -- the deepest and purest and biggest inland lake in Asia.
All that is said because I love sharing information and think it's wonderful when people learn more about the world in which we live. But mainly to explain my three little wall quilts. One big one seemed overwhelming to plan and make, but two small ones, Gobi and Hovskol were fun to make, and now that I've begun the steppes section -- which is the size of the to others together -- as it should be, logically -- I'm liking it a lot too. I have to transfer a couple of photos and then I can go on with it. More later.
I'll see about a photo here at the bottom of one of the ger camps at which I stayed. I might point out that the Mongolians have NO sense of privacy or personal modesty as far as I can tell. We visited many gers, all are totally open plan. This was a "little" trying in the cases when there were three beds and I shared a ger with a married couple. ... Well, hey, we were all adults. We coped.

Four Square Quilt

One of the few One Patch Quilts I've made, this was finished this summer and took about two years to make ... because it's not as simple as it looks. Each patch is hand quilted in a pattern of straight lines, none of the 54 squares have the same pattern. Color and layout were inspired, though I didn't try for an exact copy, by an Ellsworth Kelly painting ... I was attracted by the "Amish" colors, and had a good selection of them in my stash.
This is not "typical" of my quilts ... well, I don't think I have a typical style. But I do like simplicity that isn't as simple as it first appears. It is lap size and is keeping my toes warm as I type. It took a couple of years because I did the hand quilting only during bus rides -- mainly going to Cape Cod to visit Rachel and family. Also I sewed in the evenings when I was reading and had WQXR, the classical music station, on and heard they were going to play something I especially like and wanted to listen to with [almost] full attention -- not the partial attention of reading at the same time. Hand quilting when lines are already marked is rote work, not thinking work. So all the stitches in the squares are happy time work, peaceful [pun! as if you didn't get it] work.

I start with this quilt for another reason and call it "Four Square Quilt" because it echoes my actual start in life. I was born in a little four square house on a little square 40 acre farm out in that part of the Midwest where surveyors laid out the land for settlers in mile square grids. Those grids were divided into plots, the smallest usually was 40 acres. Which was all my parents, as recent newly weds at the end of the depression, could afford.
A four-square house [still a recognized architectural form] is one that is square [surprise!]; within it the rooms are all squares of exactly the same size. What could be simpler? These houses often have a porch along the front and sometimes a structure against the back -- ours had a narrow, full length front orch and a shed at the back. The farm had a number of other building, a big [it seemed] barn, and a grainary, a "summer house" with a cellar for root vegetables and canned goods, and there was an outhouse, of course, also a chicken house and pig stye and spring house for keeping milk cool until it was picked up by the dairy truck. A little later my father built a garage.
I was born, literally, in that house. As was my m brother 22 months later. We lived there until the summer I turned eleven. In the post-war prosperity my father was able to buy a 100 acre farm a mile away and build a bigger house and two barns. I have the kind of visual memory that doesn't forget places and orientations. I remember where every bit of furniture was in that first house -- the second house too -- and I could draw a diagram of it as well as of the entire farm with considerable detail
So this is to say that squares, grids are a deep part of my psychic orientation in the world ... this may explain some of the pleasure I get from quilting, especially quilting that uses block formation -- and especially with some complication within the blocks. Grids are comforting because you know where you are. Thus, living now in New York City the girds above Houston make address finding easy and I get disoriented further downtown where the streets follow older patterns. On the other hand girds are confining and utterly unnatural on the landscape. But humans enjoys geometry -- certainly I enjoyed it in high school. Geometry goes back to early civilizations. I don't think many ancient cities were laid out on girds but when Zoser and Cheops wanted fine monuments, they built pyramids. So did the Mexicans and the Mayas, as had the Hopewell peoples of the Ohio River Valley -- not many people know that the American Midwest was once dotted with pyramids. Like much else Native Ameican, we invaders destroyed nearly all of them.



Where there are no grids a feeling of freedom and excitement quickens the heart. This is almost impossible in the United States for the country was symstematically spider webbed with asphalt and concrete during the last two-thirds of the 20th century, all for the sake of the automobile. I think I read that someting like 14% of the US has been paved! Well, if it was only 4%, that's still a lot of open nature that has been 'disappeared" for the sake of gas guzzling, carbon monoxide spewing machinery. I had never experienced the freedom of roadless space until I was in the Sahara -- and not very deep into it at that. Last summer in Mongolia, both in the steppes and in the Gobi I understood spaciousness in a way different from but yet analogous to the spaciousness I had discovered trekking in roadless parts of Nepal.
I realized that the visceral feeling of freedom -- and of smallness -- in vast roadless spaces is something very few people from the crowded countries ever experience. Being "off the grid" is liberating to body and mind. I imagine people who sail the ocean in small ships experience this also. Those who never experience it has missed a sense of nature that changes the way you look at the world.
So, how did I get from quilting and being born in a tiny four-square house to this discovery of open space? Well, it took most of my life, it was a journey, it was complicated. Quilting, as I wrote, can be routine, and that leads to meditation ... so this blog will be a series of both regular observations and meditations, about the craft, about my life, and about life in general. Enough for a start,