Addendum to Quilts

Claude of Blogging in Paris http://covonline.net/

wrote as a comment
"I read your post yesterday, just after I had spent a few hours with Parisian quilting ladies. I am totally hopeless at anything like sewing or quilting, but I like looking at the way they are working and took quite a few photos. Sent the address of your blog and post to my quilting friend. She loved the story and is going to buy the book"

So I wanted to share some additional information from another blog that I just stumbled across. By happenstance, while wandering around on the internet I found another interesting site about that mentions the Gee's Bend Quilters and small world this blogger lives in Atlanta and has been to the exhibit of the quilts at the High Museum in Atlanta.

The Enlightened Hillbilly
A blog by Southerners who sometimes fit the stereotype, but mostly don’t.


Lord We Need Cover

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I’ve been lazy. When we started this blog back in November, I got involved for several reasons, but the main one was the fact that I was getting really pissed off reading the newspaper every morning. Writing through that pissedoffedness helped me feel better. Helped me get through the day.

But I kinda took a holiday over the holidays. After the holidays were over, I started reading the newspaper again, and I’d see one more bomb in Iraq, more people dead, more stupid responses from the White House to anything and everything. And I just didn’t care. My brain said, “Oh, yeah, that again.” Even Dick Cheney shooting a rich Texas Republican in the face didn’t get the blood flowing to my typing fingers again.

Ah, but spring is here, and there is new inspiration — but not from politics.

Tonight, my buddy Dan and I went to the members’ preview of a new exhibition at Atlanta’s High Museum called “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend.” If you haven’t heard of the little community in Southwest Alabama known as Gee’s Bend, it sits (as you can see from that map link) in a bend of the Alabama River. It’s an isolated place — a former plantation established by a slave owner named Joseph Gee, now inhabited primarily by descendents of the slaves who toiled there, many of whom carry the family name of slave owner Mark Pettway, who bought the plantation from the Gee family in 1845.

Going back four generations from the present, the women of Gee’s Bend have made quilts. But their style is entirely distinctive. Developed in the isolation of that river bend, it defies the conventions of the quilts we typically see. My wife, who with her best friend and her mother spent a weekend hanging out with the Gee’s Bend quilters a year or so ago, says the quilts look like “jazz come to life” on fabric. I don’t know how much time the Pettway women spend listening to Miles and Trane, but I agree with my darlin’ wife.

These quilts historically were made out of necessity. The High exhibition offers many of the women’s verbatim descriptions of their work. One of them relates a story how her grandmother essentially forced her to learn quilting. “You’ve got to learn,” she said, “because you’re gonna need cover.”

Tonight at the High, many of these wonderful women were in attendance: China Pettway, Arlonzia Pettway, Nettie Young, Gearldine Westbrook and many others. They wandered among the museum patrons, answering questions about their work, telling stories about how this fabric used to be part of a daughter’s outgrown school dress, or how the pattern on the first quilt one woman ever made from new fabric (as opposed to the typical well-worn hand-me-down clothes) came from her notion that she wanted to capture the moon and stars, the entire night sky, on a quilt.

And then, entirely unexpectedly, China and Arlonzia Pettway, along with a few of their friends, began to sing. They clapped their hands to keep time and sang a song that I think, judging from its refrain, was called “He Brought Me Over.” It was simple and beautiful, a declaration of faith in a God who had brought them over sickness, troubles and trials. If you want to see it for yourself, here’s about 30 seconds, caught on a crappy camera phone.

Their declaration of faith in something greater than themselves was public, but done without pretense and proselytizing. It wasn’t the harsh words of the preacher who wants to dictate how you should live your life. Instead, it was beautiful music that did nothing more than invite curiosity about the source of the wonders it portrayed. Their art, hanging all around them on the walls of this great, newly expanded museum, was evidence that life’s most basic necessities — such as the need to ward off the cold and to make waste of nothing — can, with a little skill and persistence, be turned into honest-to-God art for the ages.

I think that this year, I want to learn from them. We’d all do well to do that, I think. We’ve spent so much time learning from those who tear down, those who bring greater trial and turmoil to a world already beset with woe. This year, let’s learn from the folks who, as the Rev. Joseph Lowery said at Coretta Scott King’s funeral this year, turn words into “deeds that meet needs.” The magnificent women of Gee’s Bend turn their scraps and their necessities into things we need — like music and beauty and a nice warm cover on the bed at night.

Let’s learn from them. We’ve got to. Because, in today’s world, Lord knows we’re gonna need cover.

Tag: Gee’s Bend
Tag: Quilts

Link

Quilts of Gee's Bend

The Ladies of Gees Bend are quilters who have recently been "discovered" in Gee's Bend Alabama. The quilters came to my grandchildren's elementary school last week and talked about their quilts and the history behind them. The Art Museum here in Atlanta is having an exhibit of the quilts. They have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and other museums. My daughter said that before the Ladies of Gees's Bend were discovered by an Atlanta folk art enthusiast the quilts many times were given away or sold for little or nothing. That has all changed now as have the lives of these quilters. The amazing part of the story of the quilters is their patterns which have been handed down from generation to generation at times and are extremely modernistic. And most all of these ladies had never been out of Gee's Bend much less to a museum so the ideas for the patterns came from their ancestors and from their hearts.

Collective History
Gee’s Bend is a small rural community nestled into a curve in the Alabama River southwest of Selma, Alabama. Founded in antebellum times, it was the site of cotton plantations, primarily the lands of Joseph Gee and his relative Mark Pettway, who bought the Gee estate in 1850. After the Civil War, the freed slaves took the name Pettway, became tenant farmers for the Pettway family, and founded an all-black community nearly isolated from the surrounding world. During the Great Depression, the federal government stepped in to purchase land and homes for the community, bringing strange renown — as an "Alabama Africa" — to this sleepy hamlet.

The town’s women developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art. The women of Gee’s Bend passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present. In 2002, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in partnership with the nonprofit Tinwood Alliance, of Atlanta, presented an exhibition of seventy quilt masterpieces from the Bend. The exhibition, entitled "The Quilts of Gee’s Bend," is accompanied by two companion books, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and the larger Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts, both published by Tinwood Media, as well as a documentary video on the Gee’s Bend quilters and a double-CD of Gee’s Bend gospel music from 1941 and 2002.

And This

Art critics worldwide have compared the quilts to the works of important artists such as Henri Matisse and Paul Klee. The New York Times called the quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced." The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is currently preparing a second major museum exhibition and tour of Gee’s Bend quilts, to premiere in 2006.

Click on title above and read about the "Quilters of Gee's Bend"

Also go here http://www.high.org/ to read about the quilt exhibit here in Atlanta.

About the Exhibition

"The Quilts of Gee's Bend" celebrates the artistic legacy of several generations of women quilters in the isolated, historically African American community of Gee's Bend, Alabama. This nationally acclaimed exhibition of over 60 quilts provides a fascinating look at a group of 45 20th-century artists whose innovative use of materials and bold command of design have resulted in what The New York Times has called, "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced."

The quilts, dating from the 1920s to 2000, represent four generations of artists who took fabrics from their everyday lives-corduroy, denim, cotton sheets and well-worn clothing-and fashioned them into compositions that more closely resemble modernist abstract paintings than familiar quilt patterns. The women learned the craft from their mothers or grandmothers, but placed special emphasis on individuality and innovation with each new work. The quilts' vibrant color schemes and abstract compositions vary widely from the ordered regularity associated with traditional Western quilt making, and most are of the type known as piece, strip or patchwork

Link

MARINES.... THE FEW THE PROUD.

Mar 24, 2006 11:44 pm US/Pacific

Santa Clarita Woman, 78, Asked To Enlist As Marine






(AP) SAUGUS, Calif. Sonia Goldstein was flattered by the nice recruiting letter asking her to consider becoming one of "the few, the proud."

But at age 78, she thinks she may be just a little old to enlist in the Marine Corps.

The letter told her the corps could use her unique language skills, but also warned that life as a Marine would test her physical and mental abilities.

Goldstein says she'll do whatever she can for her country, but this is kind of stretching it

The Marines ordinarily recruit people 18 to 27, says Major Joseph Kloppel, a Corps spokesman. He says the letter must have been sent by mistake.


(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Today's email from Garrison Keeler

This is an interesting site, Garrison Keeler from his NPR program. To get the daily "Writers Almanac" go to the link above (title of post) and click on Newsletter.

Here is the poem and interesting info for

TODAY MARCH 22, 2006






Poem: "Morning" by Billy Collins from Panic, Lightning. © University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with permission.


Morning

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

and if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.


Literary and Historical Notes:

It's the birthday of the lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim, (books by this author) born in New York City (1930). He was twelve years old when he became friends with a boy named Jamie Hammerstein, whose father was the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. Sondheim's parents had recently divorced, and he spent as much time as possible at the Hammersteins' house. He wrote his first musical when he was fifteen.

As a young man, he got a job in Hollywood as a scriptwriter for TV in the 1950s, but he really wanted to be working on musicals. Then, one day, a he met a guy at a party who asked him if he would be willing to write the lyrics for a modern-day retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story set in New York City. Sondheim wasn't sure he wanted to write lyrics without music, but he decided to take the job anyway, and the result was West Side Story (1957), which got mixed reviews on Broadway but became a huge hit as a movie.

He went on to compose the music and lyrics for many more musicals, including Sweeney Todd (1979) is about a murderer who makes meat pies out of his victims, and Sunday in the Park with George (1981) about the relationship between the painter George Seurat and the people in his own painting.



It's the birthday of the poet Billy Collins, (books by this author) born in Queens, New York (1941). He's one of the few modern poets whose books have sold more than a hundred thousand copies. He thinks that too much modern poetry lacks humor. He said, "It's the fault of the Romantics, who eliminated humor from poetry. Shakespeare's hilarious, Chaucer's hilarious. [Then] the Romantics killed off humor, and they also eliminated sex, things which were replaced by landscape. I thought that was a pretty bad trade-off, so I'm trying to write about humor and landscape, and occasionally sex."

He was in his forties when published his first book The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988), but by the end of the century he was arguably the country's most popular poet. His collection Sailing Alone Around the Room (2000), has sold more copies than any other collection of poetry in the 21st century.



It's the birthday of novelist Louis L'Amour, (books by this author) born in Jamestown, North Dakota (1908). One of the hardest working and best-selling novelists ever, he wrote a hundred and one books in his lifetime.

He knew he wanted to be a writer from the time that he could walk. So L'Amour quit school when he was fifteen and traveled around the West working as an animal skinner, ranch hand and lumberjack. Wherever he went, he got people to tell him their own stories and whatever stories they knew about the Old West. Once, he met a gunman who had ridden with Billy the Kid and who had gone on to sell real estate.

In the early 1930s, L'Amour hopped an East African Schooner and made his way from Africa to Asia. He lived with bandits in the mountains of China and then started boxing professionally in Singapore. He won thirty-four of his fifty-nine boxing matches by knockout.

When L'Amour got back to the United States he started writing for pulp fiction magazines because he needed money and the pulp magazines paid him the fastest. He wrote all kinds of adventure stories, but eventually settled on westerns. L'Amour's first big success was Hondo (1953), about a love triangle between a cowboy, an Apache warrior and a young widow living on a remote Arizona ranch. It begins, "He rolled the cigarette in his lips, liking the taste of the tobacco, squinting his eyes against the sun glare."

In Ride the Dark Trail (1972), L'Amour wrote, "I just pointed my rifle at him ... and let him have the big one right through the third button on his shirt. If he ever figured to sew that particular button on again he was going to have to scrape it off his backbone."

L'Amour said, "I write about hard-shelled men who built with nerve and hand that which the soft-bellied latecomers call the 'western myth.'"
















Link

Art Linkletter on aging

On my previous post I said I might have to remain "Link Less" if I could not figure out how to add links to this blog. This reminded me of Art Linkletter who had a tv show years ago "Kids say the darndest things". I went to Google and found this USA Today article about Art Linkletter at the age of 90.

Linkletter says the darndest things about aging
By Adele Slaughter, Spotlight Health, with medical adviser Stephen A. Shoop, M.D.
Over the past 60 years, Art Linkletter told us that kids say the darndest things. Now the Emmy award-winning performer is speaking up about aging and keeping your brain healthy.

Art Linkletter advocates keeping mental fitness a priority later in life.


"We know that the brain continues to grow just like everything else in the body, if it is used," says the 90-year-old Linkletter. "That is why I am so active and have espoused the cause of lifelong learning — not necessarily a formal education — but whether you do a crossword puzzle or you collect peanuts from Madagascar, do something that keeps your brain active."

To that end, Linkletter gives over 70 lectures every year, and even has booked a lecture on his birthday in 2012 when he will turn 100.

"I go out speaking mostly to large audiences of seniors, without notes, for an hour to an hour and a half on different scientific subjects," says Linkletter. " 'Old' often means a sinking back into oneself because you don't hear as well, and you don't talk to anybody, and so you regress. And while that is not brain death, it is brain disuse and misuse."

Finding ways to keep the brain healthy longer is a growing concern because people are living longer, and there is no current way to replace or repair damaged brain tissue.

"Art Linkletter is a very interesting guy," says Gary Small, professor of psychiatry at UCLA. "First of all, he probably has some good aging genes, and he's an amazing man and has been active and involved throughout his life. At 90, he's incredibly sharp. He's someone who 'lives better longer,' which is the motto of the UCLA Center on Aging."

Go to the link in the title above and read the rest of this good advice.

I give up

I have tried and tried to figure out how to use Blogspot to add a link list but either my head is too thick or their directions don't make sense. I want my links to be in the sidebar over where it says Google News and Edit Me but I can't do it so I will remain link less.

Down Memory Lane

Recently I have been reminiscing about my childhood. I think this was spurred by a movie video I bought at our library branch's book sale. "Bright Eyes " with Shirley Temple, filmed in 1934.

I bought it so the grandchildren could watch it when they come over. The littlest one,M,who is 9, reminds me of Shirley Temple. Same blonde curls and dimpled smile. I love and adore M but when I was little I detested Shirley Temple. My hair was brown, stick straight, and cut in a Buster Brown hair style with bangs. I always wanted Shirley's curls. I wished and wished for blonde curls.

Once when I was about 6 the merchants in Athens had a "Shirley Temple look alike contest on the stage of the Palace Theater. My mother "curled" my hair with a curling iron and topped my "curls" off with a bow ribbon.I competed and lost. A tiny 3 year old girl with "stick straight brown hair" won the prize which was a new outfit.

Not long after that, my mother let her beauty parlor talk her into bringing me in for a "Permanent Wave." Now don't think of rollers, end papers and a solution. That is a "cold wave" and had not been invented yet. Think of a machine with wires and clamps,resembling an electric chair or some invader from outer space with tentacles. The wires and clamps were attached to my head-hair and the juice was turned on. I remember the smell of sizzling hair.

Boy, was I scared. Finally the ordeal was over. When I looked in the mirror I started crying. My hair had turned into a frizzy, scary steel wool mess.

I managed to "live" until I had enough haircuts to get rid of the mess. I never had another perm until the "Toni Home Perms" (cold wave) came out and my girlfriends and I curled each other's hair.

Now, after all these years, my hair has decided to curl on its own. I suppose it is the texture of the grey hair that lives underneath all the sandy blond "Miss Clairol" I get now at the beauty salon.

Wait long enough and wishes can come true......:)

PS: This Thursday I have an appointment for a "body wave" which is what they call perms now. This is the first perm I have had in about 5 years or so. It is not that I am still desperate for curls at my "advanced age." My hair,especially on top has thinned and will do nothing but lay flat.

Wish me luck.:)

A reference site that has it all

REFDESK is the one stop site for reading, learning, researching, goofing off, using time wisely and whatever you want to use it for. Even though REFDESK is run by Matt Drudge's Dad, it is nevertheless an interesting site.

I can't get the link to work but just go to

www.refdesk.com

Trees.-"The tree that owns itself"

When I was growing up in Athens Georgia, one of my favorite things was walking or roller skating down Prince Avenue near the street where I lived. Prince Avenue was lined with large old magnolia trees in the front of several antebellum houses, white columns and all. While in grammar school one of my teachers took us on a class walk and told us all abut the history of the houses and pointed out the type of columns and the architectural details. I grew up loving trees and many times heard the story of "The Tree That Owned Itself" in Athens. Some years ago we built a home in Atlanta and planted 6 magnolias in the front yard to line the driveway. They have now grown to at least 50 feet tall. We have since moved to a townhouse but the magnolias still carry on proudly

Mighty Oak Enjoys Golden Years
Tree's Descendant Continues Legend

By Derrick Dorsey



Dan Magill, who in 1946 proposed that his mother's garden club give new life to the legend of "The Tree that Owns Itself," presided over anniversary celebrations in 1996.
Photo by Rob Carr/Staff

More than 50 years ago, an Athens legend was reborn.
In 1946, the newly formed Athens Junior Ladies Garden Club was in search of an idea for a first project. A young man by the name of Dan Magill, whose mother was a member of the club, suggested the women plant a tree for their project. But not just any tree.

As most Athenians, young Magill was aware of the story of "The Tree That Owns Itself."

The tale dated back to 1890 when the Athens Banner, predecessor to today's Athens Banner-Herald, reported that Col. William Jackson, a professor at the University of Georgia, had willed possession of his favorite tree and eight feet of earth around it to the tree itself. It was said that Jackson left the tree to itself because of the love he had developed for the large white oak over the years.





As a child, he had played many a day underneath the tree's ample shade, and he had continued to visit the tree, located at the corner of Finley and Dearing streets, many times as an adult, whenever he needed a quiet place to read or relax.

In 1906, several years after Jackson died, philanthropist George F. Peabody -- famous today for the Peabody Awards given annually in his name -- donated a marble marker to the tree. The marker informed passers-by of the tree's unique history.

The Tree That Owns Itself stood for many years after the first stories of its ownership of itself began to surface, and it continued to attract a steady flow of curious visitors as the decades passed.

However, as all things must, Jackson's beloved tree died in 1942 after being blown over in a windstorm. The 150-year-old tree had suffered for some time from root disease, and the high winds proved more than it could bear.

For four years after the fall, the site marked by Peabody's marble monument stood empty except for the weeds that soon took over. It was in this same empty plot of land that Magill wanted his mother's garden club to plant a tree in 1946.

The members of the club took up Magill's suggestion, and soon had spread the word about town that they were looking for a descendant from the famous oak to plant in its place. As it turned out, there was more than one family in possession of progeny from the original tree.

The club chose a sapling belonging to Capt. and Mrs. Jack Watson because of its size and likelihood for survival. The Watsons' tree was said to have been grown from an acorn that had fallen from The Tree That Owned Itself.

On Dec. 4, 1946, the tiny tree, standing three feet above ground, was planted in the same spot its parent had occupied for a century and a half. Athens Mayor Bob McWhorter christened the seedling at an official ceremony, and when all was said and done, the town again was home to a Tree That Owns Itself. More than 50 years have passed since the replanting. The white oak now stands 50 feet tall and is one of the most popular attractions for tourists and new residents

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot defend themselves or run away. And
few destroyers of trees ever plant any; nor can planting avail much toward
restoring our grand aboriginal giants. It took more than three thousand
years to make some of the oldest of the Sequoias, trees that are still
standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty
forests of the Sierra. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer
(1838-1914)

Word a Day

If you love words and enjoy learning about them then go here and sign up for the free daily email.http://wordsmith.org/awad/sub.html




" The magic of words -- that's what A.Word.A.Day (AWAD) is about.
We are a community of more than 600,000 linguaphiles in at least 200 countries. You too can join us."

"

And then this from Eric Shakle's ebook

At 76 I have 4 more years to go before I make it to 80......so I have all this to look forward to. ,,,:)---< CHANCY



LIFE BEGINS AT 80

By Frank C. Laubach

I have good news for you. The first 80 years are the hardest. The second 80 are a succession of birthday parties. Once you reach 80, everyone wants to carry your baggage and help you up the steps. If you forget your name or anybody else's name, or an appointment, or your own telephone number, or promise to be three places at the same time, or can't remember how many grandchildren you have, you need only explain that you are 80.

Being 80 is a lot better than being 70. At 70 people are mad at you for everything. At 80 you have a perfect excuse no matter what you do. If you act foolishly, it's your second childhood. Everybody is looking for symptoms of softening of the brain.

Being 70 is no fun at all. At that age they expect you to retire to a house in Florida and complain about your arthritis (they used to call it lumbago) and you ask everybody to stop mumbling because you can't understand them. (Actually your hearing is about 50 percent gone.)

If you survive until you are 80, everybody is surprised that you are still alive. They treat you with respect just for having lived so long. Actually they seem surprised that you can walk and talk sensibly.

So please, folks, try to make it to 80. It's the best time of life. People forgive you for anything. If you ask me, life begins at 80.

Reprinted by permission of the Laubach Family Association

Eric Shakle

Eric Shakle began his "ebook" some years back when he turned 80.
Read what he had to say:

"

Like most of my generation, I used to regard the Internet as a fearsome monster rapidly devouring the world we knew. Then at the age of 79, I bought my first computer, studied David Pogue's hilarious book The i-Mac for Dummies, and began a new life. Captivated by the magic of the World Wide Web, I began writing freelance articles about my discoveries. Some of them have been published by the New York Times, the Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), the Straits Times (Singapore) and the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) plus other newspapers and magazines around the world.

"

And also what his son said about him:

I thought that I would never see
My father grasp technology.
Now his thoughts rush 'round the world
A brain let loose like flags unfurled.
Ian Shackle, Frog Rock, New South Wales, Australia

http://bdb.co.za/shackle/ebook.htm



http://www.mayyoubeblessedmovie.com/

Just for lent no more "nagativity"

Yesterday I decided that I have gotten way too negative recently in my thoughts, self talk and my conversations with my husband and others. So--------------------I have decided to give up "negativity" for Lent.
Today I have caught myself dozens of times getting ready to come out with a negative and I backed up and started over or said nothing at all. Plus I am thinking positive thoughts when a negative comes to mind. Maybe the "nagativity"( but I love my new word)..... has to do with this bronchitis I have been fighting that drained me. I am feeling 98% better today so that's a plus.

We'll see how it goes.