#Charlottesville

If it wasn't personal before, it's personal now.

My first trip to Virginia took place in the fall of my junior year in high school. Visiting two campuses as part of a college-shopping tour, I ultimately chose William and Mary in Williamsburg. But it was a close call and I could have just as easily ended up at UVA in Charlottesville.

The 35 years I spent in Williamsburg, getting my degree, meeting and then marrying Don, forging a library career and raising two daughters, included many trips to Charlottesville. I well remember listening to Bonnie Raitt singing in the UVA arena, visiting Monticello with 3 year old Meg and tiny infant Melissa, eating "grillswith" (griddled Krispy Kreme donuts topped with ice cream) at the corner cafe and bagels from Bodo's. When we drove Meg home with two broken arms after her car accident at Smith Mountain Lake, we stopped in Charlottesville to pick up sandwiches. Wanting to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in style, we went to the Boar's Head Inn. We cheered from the sidelines as our local high school football team won the state championship in Charlottesville.

You get the idea.

So this past weekend hit home, or close to it. Raised a radical liberal New Yorker, I went off to college and learned fast that many (not all) Virginians referred to the "War between the States" or "the recent unpleasantness" rather than the Civil War. The Commonwealth celebrated the birth of Jefferson Davis, but there was no observance of Lincoln's birthday. And when a professor waxed eloquent about the virtues of sorghum over maple syrup, I muttered under my breath "but we won the war," and then took a long drag on my cigarette and blew smoke. Tobacco. How ironic.

Virginia changed a lot 0ver the 35 years from 1974 to 2009, when we finally pulled up stakes and headed for Texas (I know, I know). It had moved from red to purple and was leaning blue. There was hope.

And the decision to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville was yet another step in the correct direction (I won't say "right"). Though it ended in tragedy, I dare to hope it galvanizes other localities to see the insanity of memorializing hatred and slavery.

So today I stitched, taking words written by Marti in New Mexico, in response to the Peace Pin Project that began last February ...

"Hope is standing up not standing aside ...
to connect in a way that helps to make us all one ...

There will be other peace patches for a cloth I'm thinking will be named It's all connected. Eventually, I hope to have enough to make a two-sided peace shawl, stitched together Pojagi-style.

And there will be more posts after Don and I finish up our month-long joyride taking care of Parker (who enters daycare next week) and return from our birthday season visit to Jackson and Jace in St Louis ...

Getting ready to roll ...

Because life goes on and I have much more to say.

Forgiveness redux

This is how I began yesterday's post entitled Forgiveness:

Three more peace pins have fallen from my fingers, the a-sides all hand-dyed cochineal linen (which is not as pink as it looks here, but the color was saturated enough to give my camera fits) ...

with the b-sides also reflecting each person's named peaceful colors ...

Clockwise from the upper left, indigo blue and rose for Stephanie in California, any and all colors for Vicky in Washington, and wild rose colors for Suzanna in California.

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There was more, but I did the blog-equivalent of hitting "Reply to all" instead of "Reply to sender" ... I inadvertently hit "Publish" instead of "Save to draft."

So it was that some of you saw the unedited, first draft version of what appears below (with a tip of the hat to Ann Lamott's classic Bird by bird, which introduced me to the notion of "sh---y first drafts"). I didn't realize my error until later in the day when comments started to arrive in my inbox. I quickly rectified my error by reverting the post to draft mode and sent explanatory emails to the commenters. Then looked at the stats and realized the post had been seen rather more widely than I might have hoped.

Ah well.

Here's the more circumspect version of my less-than-perfect first draft:

Back in my teaching days I attended an amazing training program called the Eastern Virginia Writing Project (one of 200-some sites in the federally-funded National Writing Project). The two month Summer Institute was designed to give us the tools to become better teachers of writing by taking us through the recursive writing process of plan, draft, revise, edit ... repeat as needed, then publish (cue irony here).

Anyway, one of many prompts was to write about forgiveness. I liked the resulting piece well enough to revisit it in one of my earliest blog posts entitled Food is Love (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2009/08/food-is-love.html). 

Long story short, I re-revisited that piece yesterday. Without going into the details this time around, I will simply say: life is recursive and being a parent never ends, even when your kids are in their thirties. The corollary to that being: the need to seek forgiveness never ends either.

And who knows, perhaps yesterday's slip was more Freudian than not. Because it turns out my daughter was among those who read the inadvertent post. Now a parent herself, she brought a new perspective to my gaffe and sent me a text message that read, "Please don't feel guilty." To which I responded, "But I do guilt so well."

So I guess I've already been forgiven ... but I'm still bringing her some cookie dough tomorrow.

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N.B. To those kindly commented yesterday, I am keeping your comments along with the original post, which will remain a draft in perpetuity (or however long Blogger exists). Thank you all, as always, for your presence here.

- The truth of the matter

Retrospective (12/5)

Patch #318 Don't follow the herd

Original Post

Back in the day when I was an elementary school librarian, one of my favorite lessons was about the Tree Octopus ...

I made worksheets with questions like "What is the habitat of the tree octopus?" and "What is their means of locomotion?"

I linked to this website on my SmartBoard

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

and pointed out how hard it was to read compared to books written for the students' age level.

Always there were one or two students who would raise their hands while saying, "But Mrs. Ackert ..." Knowing my students, I would gently reassure them, "Not yet ... I'll call on you later, I promise."

The final part of the worksheet was "How do you know this website is correct?" To which students would say "if it's on the internet it has to be true" or "check the encyclopedia." So I would hand a print encyclopedia to someone and ask them to look it up. While they flipped pages, I'd turn to one of my hand-raisers and ask, "You had something to say earlier?" At which point they would blurt out words to the effect of "Mrs. Ackert, there can't be any such thing as a tree octopus!"

I don't know how many kids "got" that lesson, but I'm hoping there are a few more skeptical information consumers in the world by virtue of my efforts. Judging from this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/technology/facebook-is-said-to-question-its-influence-in-election.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

"We the People" need all the skepticism we can muster!

Addendum

In response to Dana's comment, here's what I was seeing on Facebook and what I did about it ...

- What's in a name

Patch #310 Red letter day

Years ago, when I was the Needleworker at Colonial Williamsburg, my father suggested that I create a stylized signature in stitch. A brand, if you will, although I don't think he called it that.

In hindsight, this wasn't a surprising suggestion as he was a marketing exec for a toy company and worked on Madison Avenue. However, my modus operandi at the time was cross stitch and I wasn't able to see my way out of the figurative box that format imposed.

Indeed, I neglected signing my work more often than not. And when I did, it was arguably "over-wrought" as these two samplers amply depict ...

So today I was faced with signing a newly completed gift and once again found myself supremely dissatisfied with the result. As I tore out the stitches, I thought about my recent forays into eccentric lettering and started to play ...

At long last, I actually liked what I saw ... 

and went with it ...

- Three-fer Thursday

Retrospective (10/14)

Patch #280 Hazel's swirled

I loved seeing what Hazel did to her hair in this post at Handstories 

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2016/10/continuing-my-mid-life-metamorphosis-.html

She called it metamorphosis, which fit perfectly with the bit of butterfly Shibori in this patch/homage.

Original Post 

I finally finished the September patches with this trio ...

For those of you coming over from Jude Hill's SunMoonStars, I've been making a patch for each day of 2016. Sometimes (okay, many times) I get behind. So when I do finish a patch, I insert it retrospectively into the original post. I've even got a subject heading titled Retrospective in the Index with 100+ entries.

So today I finished the patch for September 19

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/turning-redux.html

which was inspired by Jude Hill's post Turning. In the original post, I pictured a close-up shot of my antique clock reel, which coincidentally resembled a rising/setting sun ...

The original post for September 20th

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/golden.html

promised a take on yellow indiangrass. So I cut a stem to better see the colors ...

then found a variegated floss that would work ...

resulting in this ...

Last, but not least, I conjured up memories of my teenage peace activist years for the September 21 post about Vietnam

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/war-and-peace.html

My mom's family was quite conservative (as was my mom), but I took after my liberal-minded dad. Consequently, I wore black armbands and clothing embellished with peace signs quite frequently ... including at family gatherings. One uncle used to disdainfully point out that I was wearing the "sign of the American chicken," but in spite of the glowering looks and shaking heads, I persisted. I'm proud of it to this day and my only regret is that I stopped wearing peace signs after the Vietnam War ended ...

I guess I could remedy that anytime, right?

- Wrapped

Patch #279 Once upon a time

There's a song called Wrapped by Walt Wilkins that tugs on my heart with the words ...

Summer gold, Winter blue

Wherever I am, whatever I do

I'm wrapped in you

Forty-two years ago today, Don and I met on a blind date. Hours earlier, I sat for this yearbook picture ...

wearing the India cotton top that I later wore to the frat dance we went to. And while I don't have a picture of Don from that night, I know this is the shirt he wore ...

Forty-two years. You can read more about that first date in this post: 

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2009_10_05_archive.html?m=1

which was written when we were celebrating a mere thirty-five years. Oh but we were young, right?

So we're celebrating this time around with a quiet dinner at home. Steak on the grill, popovers, artichokes dipped in butter, and a good red wine are on the menu.

In the meantime, Don is working on a frame for his latest landscape in the Contours series ...

My stitching chair caught his attention somehow and he commented on the frayed state of affairs along the corded edges of the arms. "I know," was my response,"I've been thinking about how to repair them. Do you think multiple colors would be too much?"

You can figure out his answer ...

That's a Hazel Monte ship sailing along the armrest ...

Sorta like Georgia's Window  

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/07/backlit.html?m=1 ...

"What about blue?" Well, what about that ...

It ended up being a different kind of wrapping stitch in colors I've always loved. So one last look at the way we were the night before our wedding to prove the point ...

And we've lived happily ever after.

- Reveries

Patch #275 Mooning

As in daydreaming ...

Stitching one of nine planets that arrived from Jude Hill via EXOT Blue ...

Hearing my mom singing Shine on Harvest Moon in my mind. She loved to sing.

Thinking about four years ago in Eastern Long Island Hospital where a full moon shone in the window of my father's room. He died just before Hurricane Sandy.

Wondering whether October is the Harvest Moon or not. Well yes and no, depending on which web link I clicked. Could be Harvest Moon, or Hunter's Moon, or even Falling Leaf Moon ... which I particularly liked.

Checking to see when the next full moon will be. Right in the middle of the month, when we'll be in St Louis with my littlest moon child. Perfect.

Deciding the grid on the patch echoes the calendar patches of past months, but no longer numbering the days.

And considering orange ... today we'll see G. I think he'll like this one.

- Ripples on the pond of memory

I had fun putting together the patches for September 13th (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_09_13_archive.html) and 14th (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/life-x-3.html) ...

because they reminded me of this ...

Howard Johnson's was my mom's favorite place to go when my dad was out of town on business. Since he ate out a lot at work, he wasn't much for eating out when he got home. Not surprising since mom was a pretty good cook, but she appreciated having a break every so often, even if it meant bringing my younger brother and me along.

As I recall, my meal of choice was fried flounder and my brother's was fried clams. Sadly, I can't recall what my mom used to order, although I do remember her favorite ice cream was HoJo's chocolate chip because it was smooth rather than chunky. My favorite treat was getting to cadge sugar cubes to nibble on later. As skinny as I was back then, mom probably thought the extra calories would do me good.

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After stitching on the latest patches, I looked over where the cloth is going ...

and my eye caught on the 9/11 patch followed by Mo's heart ...

making me think yet again of what Mo so often writes:

       "Love is the answer."

- Turning redux

Retrospective (10/6)

Patch #263 Almost Equinox

Original Post 

I just had to show this in response to Jude Hill's post entitled Turning (http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/2016/09/turning.html) ...

It's an antique clock reel for winding skeins (which I mistakenly called a click reel for years because of the loud sound it makes every 40 revolutions) gifted by my parents back when I was the Needleworker at Colonial Williamsburg ...

Later ...

Three more patches ...

I'm slowly catching up with this month.  The patch for September 8th (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/never-say.html) started here with a print of the Hot Springs fountain and some indigo shibori that I made last year ...

the mirror imaging was too good to pass up, so I went with it ...

I originally planned to do a Celtic knot-like take on the GPS clover leaf in the September 9th post (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/drinking-kool-aid.html), but as I looked back at the Google search image collage of Magnolia Market near the end, my eye caught on the interior shot of the metal roof and light strings. It sure did remind me of the thrifted multi-color jacket I just got.

Sure enough, there were some patches of color that looked very similar to the metal roof panels. A few Jude Hill thread beads later, the lights came on ...

Interesting side note: my needle literally squeaked through the cloth, which I had hoped was linen since the fabric content label was cut out (my Cursillista readers in Tidewater Virginia will get a kick out of the maker's label that remained) ...

Looking more closely at the frayed edges of the patch, I realized I was working with wool. But hey, it made it through the wash, so onward!

The last patch for today came from cloth that I had been invited to bring to Deb McClintock's native natural dye workshop on September 10th (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/dye-stuff.html). It was originally a vintage linen tablecloth ...

that I dyed last year with Prairie Tea (Croton) gathered in the yard. Better yet, it bore a striking resemblance to the Texas Persimmon dyed linen blouse that Deb was wearing ...

Gotta love what the land gives us!

- Remembering 9/11

Patch #255 North Pool

There are those who remember 9/11 every day ...

Our family lost a husband, a father, a grandfather, a brother, an uncle ... but above all, we lost days, weeks, months, and years with a dear, wise man. A man whose eyes reflected the laughter in his words. A man who always counseled, "Enjoy the ride."

Today the New York Times editorial board wrote a paean to the memorial site, saying in part ...

...

...

I have not yet been there, but today I will stitch my own path of remembrance ... we will never forget.