where the water goes

Today’s On Point radio program (with Tom Ashbrook) focused on how the lowered volume of the Mississippi River is forcing businesses to find alternatives to river travel…how the federal government can’t sufficiently address the problem even on the micro-level of funding a study… how water might become the precious commodity that oil currently is (on this point, one caller queried, “why else would Ted Turner be buying up 1,000′s upon 1,000′s of river front properties!!?”).

This quilt is called “Long Island Blues” because it was pieced while waiting to hear how friends and family on Long Island fared in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Because the quilt is more about rising water levels than about the destructive winds and tides of these increasingly common giant storms,  the composition has a quietness to it.  There is nothing quiet about what is happening, of course.  We should, as a nation, be acting like those poor orcas trapped in the Hudson Bay, breathing out of a ridiculously small area of open water — arching, leaping, arching, leaping for air in pure panic.  Instead, we are still trying to fend off those who say climate change isn’t real?!  And still making excuses for the failure to SPEAK OF THE PROBLEM, because it is political poison?!

I can hardly think of a situation that could be more pervasively or profoundly demoralizing (oh yeah, which reminds me, I’ve committed to being more CHEERFUL in 2013).

My younger son had to write an essay about the ‘American Dream’ last week – what it is, how his relatives may have lived it, how he views the idea as it relates to him.

“… the American Dream is an illusion,” he started out.  “It may have existed at one time, but it doesn’t anymore.”

Remember when scientists (I’m talking pre-Rachel Carson, or her contemporaries) thought that technology and innovation could solve anything?   The generation of kids approaching adulthood are not afforded that optimism.

“Long Island Blues” before stitching

Perhaps it is setting myself up for failure to ask that I become more cheerful.

Perhaps it would be more realistic to figure out how to bring my heart and soul to the problem of global warming in a whole new way this year (and mightn’t that make me feel better? maybe not more cheerful, but more engaged, more useful…)

… posting lamentations online hardly counts as anything;  making quilts of grief hardly counts as anything.

Have you made any commitments toward being less of a consumer this year?  If so, what?

P.S. “Long Island Blues” features antique linens that were gifted to me, linen and silk that I was allowed to take from the scrap pile of an upholsterer (some of which I dunked in my indigo bucket this summer), a skirt that I bought at the warehouse that receives goods after they don’t sell at Salvation Army, a repurposed piece of a Tibetan Prayer flag, a shirt from Supersavers that also went into the indigo vat, three small chunks of quilting cotton bought at a fabric store, and lastly one piece of blue and white linen bought in the Fashion District of NYC about eight years ago (I still have a little more left!!)

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weekend

Hosta grow by the hour.  Peony and ligularia conspire toward heaven with their burgundy-hued leaves – both ruffled disks and palmated clusters.

The maple trees lining our neighborhood streets unfurl their leaves seemingly overnight, transforming the city.  Everywhere, inhabitants go, “Ahhhhhhhhh.”  Evidence of nature’s resilience and capacity for growth is on display and provokes the idiotic but grateful query, “Does this happen every year?! Really?”

Joe Pye weed keeps up with the hosta, and little scilla clumps spring up and out of spiky leaves all over the south side of the house… goat’s weed and white nancy busily filling in everywhere else.  It’s just the beginning.

I potted up my basil and tomatoes, and divided some perennials for my sister.

With Newton Open Studios less than a month away, I am in ‘full mess mode’.  Sachets, purses, dolls are in progress all over the first floor, and after the initial freedom of taking over the family room, it suddenly feels like too much. I plan to start the week folding and tidying.

Too much to report on lately is the feeling.

I finished hand-quilting a Global Warming Quilt a couple of days ago and am calling it ‘Joplin’.

While stitching this large central spiral, my husband and I were watching Nova.  The program showcased the science of tornadoes — their destructive power and unpredictability — while detailing the intensely active year of 2011.  It was weird — remember? — to watch the morning news last summer and watch one awful scene of destruction after another.  Joplin was one of the hardest hit towns.

This is pre-binding.

And, last but not least, here is first finished bag.  It’s a very unstructured linen tote, with silk handles and lining.

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Place

“I heard a Crow elder say… ‘You know, I think if people stay somewhere long enough — even white people — the spirits will begin to speak to them.  It’s the power of the spirits coming up from the land.  The spirits and the old powers aren’t lost, they just need people to be around long enough and the spirits will begin to influence them.’”

Gary Snyder, “The Practice of the Wild”

It is strange to think that the house we live in has stood for more than 200 years.  When it was first built, this area was farmland, and Route 9 was a dirt carriage track to Boston (the “Old Post Road”).  The beech tree that I so admire in a neighbor’s backyard may have been here even longer.  What is 20 years in comparison?  (And, actually, 2012 only makes 19).

Still, nearly two decades is long-ish in the arc of a human life, and very long in my particular life when moves were very frequent as a child.

The warmth of spring was unsettling (again) today.  What is the mass-pleasure about ‘nice’ weather, anyway?  I sometimes get the feeling that no one would care if climate change utterly destroyed life as we know it, as long as we didn’t have to wear mittens!

So, I was up.  I thought it was K’s restless legs that had me downstairs at 1:00, 2:00 a.m., but maybe it was one of the ‘old powers’ — drawing me to the window, and finally, outside, to capture this shot of the full moon just minutes before the sky clouded over fully and rain began to spatter.

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“Venice, Anyone?”

“Venice, Anyone?” is the smallest & bluest of the Global Warming series, to date.  Finished it this weekend. Found some older, in-progress pictures from April of this year:

Unlike so many others, this little quilt’s basic composition remained the same from start to finish.

After a few quick seams, I decided to use a little stitch-witchery to adhere rough edges, since I didn’t know when I would have time to actually get around to assembling and quilting.

The red stripes marked where I was adhering fabric with the sticky tape, and even though there are so few, I managed to gunk up the iron by touching a piece.  Boo hoo!  I had to stop & clean the iron before calling it a day.  Because quilting through anything with glue is not great, I kept the sticky tape pieces small and away from edges.

This is possibly a piece that I would have liked the outcome a little better had I decided to go toward gesso rather than thread.  Hard to know, now, but the spontaneous feel of collage often is diminished by the finishing process.   In this case, the original design stayed put, and I wouldn’t say the quilting took away from it, but it doesn’t really enhance it either, which it should.

The fish fabric, by the way, was too bright initially, so I toned it down in a tea bath.

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Getting there

Getting there.  Or not?  I like flickr.  It aids memory.  Refreshes the heart and mind of the cycles that go ’round and ’round.  Some evolving.  Some degenerating.  Reminders of the seasonal.  But, this morning’s search reminded me that a version of this quilt (below), photographed in April of last year, was titled “One Year Into It” – which makes the piece above, “Two Years and A Month Into It”.

So now two things come to mind.

A question – How do I keep my thoughts from turning in on themselves and stewing in a negative pot?  (i.e. “oh god, can’t I finish anything?!!!  will I ever quilt at a satisfactory pace while working full-time?  does that make me wrong to do X or Y?”).

And a NOTE TO SELF – perhaps it is time to employ a trick.  Like the one I used to make a quilt in honor of the women of Gee’s Bend.  THAT trick was – quilt must be made ONLY with scraps on floor or worktable and had to be designed in a single session.

For this, what?  A deadline?  No – it has to have something more than that.  Any ideas?

Work from the bottom up?  Letting the blue seep up and in (the rising waters associated with global warming)  Let the blue be the filler when two irregular patches are coming together?  Let the OFF-ness of the blue – its unintentionality, its potentially non-pleasing placement – stand for the idea that the consequences of global warming are unpleasing, don’t fit, and create mismatches of a truly awful nature.

Not to get too serious about it all, of course – because being too serious is a great way to stay stuck.

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