Sleeping people

On my other blog, I was just writing about the article on sleep in today's NYTimes. Then I remembered that I have this quilt hanging in my bathroom. It was among my first attempts to make an art quilt. The nine photographs were transferred to fabric. The background fabric is from a sheet that says "sleep" all over it. I have always been touched by people who sleep in public, especially the homeless people who sleep on park benches. I included other photos of sleepers: there is a boy sleeping on a haystack-- he is in Sikkim--who reminded me of the nursery rhyme "Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, the are in the meadow, the cows are in the corn. Where's the little boy who looks after the sleep? He's under a haystack, fast asleep." There is a woman on a street in Calcutta, and two of my grandchildren sprawled on a bed safely indoors. I love the man in the lower right corner, a city worker sleeping on Fifth Avenue at noon on the recently laid concrete oblivious to all the workers and shoppers and taxis within feet of him.