More Quilts, Etc.

OK, here are a few more quilt photos. In order they are:
Six blocks of the sock monkey quilt.
The Community Quilt, which will be won in a raffle at 4 p.m. on Sunday of Strawberry Festival. Standing in front of the quilt are Catholine Tribble, on the left in the quilted vest, and Annie Miksch, on the right. Annie is also a gifted quilter, but none of her stuff was on display because she gives it all away. If you know Annie, you know that makes perfect sense. Annie does not do good; Annie does EXCELLENT. It's just who she is.
Next, a detail of the quilt that had the gingko-leaf shaped quilting. If you look closely you can see it.
Then, a close up of a square from the crazy frog quilt. I'm not sure why frogs would be wearing clothes or be flying through the air with the clothes flying off, but there it is. The person who made it said she had the fabric for a long time before the design came together for her. I apologize for not getting her name. I apologize for not getting anyone's name – mea culpa. I was so dazzled by the quilts I did not note the names of the quilters. Sigh. I'll make a note of that for two years from now.
Finally, the photo I attached to yesterday's email alerting people to the new blog posting, the one with my friend Becky, my unrelated twin, down in the lower left hand corner.
In other news, it is raining steadily here today. It varies from light steady to torrential, but it's all rain, all the time. At the moment it is torrential.
Rick went to work for a few hours this morning, then came home and went to bed, which is where he is now.
Woke up to a note from our son JD in the tabletop diary:
May 5, '09
WOKE UP AROUND 1 AND JIVE WAS KNOCKING ON THE BACK DOOR, COMPLETELY DRENCHED AND THE COFFEE POT WAS ON ALL NIGHT. NOT COMPLAINING, JUST SOMETHING TO BE MORE AWARE OF FOR EVERYONE'S SAFETY, INCLUDING THE DOG.
J.D.
Rick and I took notice. Rick said, “Well, he was the safety officer at his last job.” I said, “It's amazing to me that the kid who gave us the most grief is now the one who tells us how to behave.” My friend Becky told me for years that JD would end up being a bank president, or something like that. At this point I really see what she was talking about.
The dog – well, he always wants to go out when I get up to go to bed, and he did that last night, and when I went to the door to whistle him in a few minutes later, he didn't come. As Rick says, you don't feel like standing there whistling, clapping, and calling for 15 minutes in the pouring rain in the middle of the night. I thought, oh well, I'm going to bed, I'll hear him when he scratches on the door. Instead I went to sleep and did not hear him.
It was nasty out there last night. I could tell because there is a dog a few houses up the hill who starts barking every time I whistle for our dog, or call him, or toss a ball, or walk out the back door, or sneeze. I whistled and called for quite a while and all was silence. So even the neighborhood sentry couldn't be bothered to come out and do his stuff. I can't imagine where Jive was that he didn't come into the nice warm dry house. And he ain't talking.
I am re-reading a good book: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. It was originally published in 1951, the year before Tey died at the age of 55 or 56 – her birth year is listed as “1896 or 97.” If you have read her books you understand why her readers mourn her early passing and the loss of her potential for writing more books. Here is a list of her published novels: Brat Farrar; The Daughter of Time; The Franchise Affair; The Man in the Queue; Miss Pym Disposes; A Shilling for Candles; The Singing Sands; To Love and Be Wise.
They are considered mysteries, but more than mysteries. I am not sure if I've read them all; I'm thinking as I start this one again that maybe I'll just read all of Josephine Tey again. I will not betray here a word of plot; I merely invite you to read, or re-read, Josephine Tey, and if she strikes your fancy, you are in for some good reading.

Island Quilters Feed the Soul

Becky and I went down to Camp Burton last Saturday to see the quilt show. It happens every two years, and it is always worth the wait. The intricate patterns and passionate colors lift you up and make you feel glad to be alive in a world where quilts happen.
Patchwork quilts are one of the original recycling projects – using bits of worn out and used up items, as well as things like patterned flour sacks, to make new and beautiful covers for beds in a time before central heating and electric blankets, or electric anything. Many quilts were stitched by candlelight during winter evenings, I imagine.
Quilts now are not so much recycled material as new cloth that has been carefully chosen and coordinated to make stunning original works of art.
This show included quilts that the guild had done as a group – the “mystery quilts” and the “block of the month” quilts were the ones I noticed.
The mystery quilt is a project whose instructions are given out monthly over a year, and the quilters have to follow the instructions and use their imaginations and fabrics to put the whole thing together. The results are several quilts with the same pieces cut out, recognizable as all the same, but radically different from one another.
The block of the month quilts are made by quilters who receive instructions for one square a month for a year. They make the squares and at the end of the year they put them together and finish them in their own original borders. These quilts are not so recognizable as being part of the same project, because they vary so widely in their colors, composition, and borders.
Then there are theme quilts and the one-of-a-kind quilts: florals, orientals, children's; appliqué quilts; embroidered quilts. I loved some of the whimsical quilts – one quilt was made of fabric with sock monkeys, and another featured frogs flying through the air.
You have to look close to see the actual quilting, the patterned stitching which holds the quilt together. Patterns are varied and beautiful, done by machine or by hand. One of my favorites was a gingko leaf pattern.
Catholine Tribble was there with the Community Quilt which will be auctioned off at this year's Strawberry Festival. Catholine is featured in a square on this year's quilt.
I have a warm spot in my heart for Catholine. Last year she made an appliquéd and embroidered hand-quilted work of art, about the size of a pot holder, and on one side is a representation of Women, Women & Song in 1988, Then, and on the other side Women, Women & Song in 2008, Now, based on publicity photos of the trio. It was in a show at the Blue Heron Art Gallery last year.
The quilt show was as always breathtaking in its beauty. I am always blown away by the skill and artistry of these quilters, their eye for pattern and color, their patience and craft. I'll never be a quilter myself, but boy do I enjoy the works of the people who are. Hats off, ladies. “Beautiful” barely begins to say it. Only two years to go until the next show.

Not the Photos

I meant to post some trip photos. I miss my computer, which died last week. Now I'm using my mini-netbook, which gets most of the job done with email, but is not a full computer. Earlier today it was willing to post photos to this blog, but then I went off to find the photos, and now it won't post them. I click on the "add image" icon and nothing happens. Gripe gripe gripe. Maybe tomorrow.

By the Sea, By the Sea

My cousin Nancy and I decided to celebrate Earth Day by taking a road trip. This sounds counterintuitive, and it is, but sometimes it does the heart good to get outta town and see a different part of the world. It turned out that the only day we both could get away was Earth Day.
We are seeing the Oregon coast. It is a favorite destination for us. We practice the “staring at the waves” asana, and feel calm.
We both grew up with the ocean, down on the Central Coast of California. Living on Vashon Island keeps us close to salt water and tides, but on Puget Sound the only times the waves are up are when there's a strong wind, or when a large ship sails by leaving a wake which breaks on the shore about 10 minutes after the ship passes. These waves are not the same as the steady rolling of the breakers on a sandy coastal beach.
So it is a coming home to sit here at the edge of a sandy beach and watch the waves roll in.
It is strange the things you miss when you leave a place you've lived all your life. When I left California and came to the Island, I found I missed the sounds of trains, which had always been part of the background where I lived in California. In fact, my freshman dorm in college was located across the street from the main coast line and my first night there I awoke to what sounded and felt like a train coming down the hall outside my door. I got used to that, I guess, but the first night was startling.
Skunks. I was astonished to realize after I'd been on the Island for a while that there are no skunks here. They were a part of life on the farm in California. Occasionally someone would hit a skunk on the road, and you'd see that pile of black and white fur and blood and you'd prepare to pass through a cloud of skunk miasma – whewie. When I visit California and smell that old familiar reek I feel surprisingly nostalgic.
As I write the sun has been coming up, changing the sky from nighttime gray to daytime blue with fluffy white clouds. A few hearty early risers walk on the beach. What shall today bring?
We may do a little beach walking. I may go back to bed. Hard to say. We have stepped out of reality for a couple of days, and we're rolling with the waves.

Asparagus and Other Metaphors

I had asparagus for breakfast this morning. I didn’t plan to have asparagus for breakfast. It was supposed to be part of dinner last night, but I forgot to cook it, and this morning there it was. I rinsed it and cooked it. That and a handful of almonds, and I was set for the day.
It’s a miracle that I like asparagus. My mother used to boil asparagus until it was practically gray. The result was slimy, mucilaginous spears that came apart when disturbed by a fork, except for the woody ends. My reaction as a child was: yuck. I only ate it for the mayonnaise.
After I left home I learned that you could cook asparagus lightly, and have tasty, crisp spears with a little field crunch left in them. You could pick one up in your fingers and eat it without mayo or anything else. Mmm…yummy.
I also learned that in preparing asparagus, you were supposed to pick up a raw spear by the ends and bend it until it broke, and throw away the segment of the spear below the break and cook the segment above the break. That lower piece was the woody part of the spear. It is called woody because trying to eat it is like trying to eat a stick of wood.
When I finally got around to asking my mother why she boiled asparagus for so long, she said, “To get the whole spear soft.” She did not break or trim asparagus; she rinsed it off and cooked it whole, and she cooked the edible part to paste in an effort to get the woody part soft enough to eat.
I understand this. Asparagus is not cheap. Everything in the heart, soul, and mind of a depression kid would rebel at the thought of spending so much money on a vegetable, then throwing away half of what you bought.
Of course there was a generational taste preference involved, also. There seemed to be a cultural belief in the 50s that vegetables were meant to be boiled into submission. The first time my husband and I served my mother stir-fried vegetables she took a bite and exclaimed, “They’re raw!” Rick and I looked at each other and said, “Uh-oh.”
We have come again into hard times. Hard times are relative, of course. An American hard time would be considered pretty deluxe by many of our fellow earthlings, who live in a poverty that we cannot imagine.
But that is not my point. My point is that when times get tough we indulge in economies, and some economies are false economies, such as boiling the whole asparagus spear until it is no longer good to eat in any part, assuming you can afford asparagus in the first place.
So my sermon for today is this: seize the day and don’t boil the asparagus too long. If you don’t have as much as you did, enjoy what you have. That’s all.

I’m Not a Vegetarian But…

Once in a blue moon I buy a little piece of round steak to slice up and throw into a stir fry. So the other day I was browsing the meat section, and noticed on a package of beef the claim that, “our cows are 100% vegetarian!”
It stopped me cold. Wait a minute. Aren’t all cows vegetarian? All the ones I knew back when I grew up on the farm certainly were.
Then I remembered mad cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE). The main way it spreads is by feeding cows to other cows. No, a cow doesn’t step up to a steak dinner and think, “Elsie, is that you?” What happens is that sick cows, sheep, and chickens are butchered, ground up, and mixed into cattle feed.
Aside from my gut reaction, “What a stupid idea,” my curiosity was piqued, and I did a little reading, and learned about the warble fly, and prions, among other things.
Turns out that a couple of decades ago the British government required cattle owners to use an aggressive organophosphate to kill off the warble fly (hypoderma bovis). OK, this is where it gets really creepy: the warble fly lays its eggs on the front legs of the cow. The cow licks its legs, ingesting the eggs. Once the eggs are inside the cow they hatch into larva which then tunnel through the cow’s body until they are just under the cow’s skin, where they cause bumps, or warbles. When the warble flies are mature they break through the cow’s skin and fly away. Argh. Didn’t I see that story on Twilight Zone back in the 60s?
Anyway – the tunnels made by the larva fill with something called butcher’s jelly, making the meat unsaleable, and the holes left in the skin by the warble flies breaking through render the hide unusable. So the British government decreed that all cows should be treated to kill warble flies, using an organophosphate (poison) that was put on the cow’s back and went through the cow’s skin and spread through the cow’s whole system. Voila, no more warble flies, or other parasites. The meat and hides are fine. Everyone’s happy.
But wait. Now the prions in the cow’s body have been weakened by the organophosphate poison. What’s a prion (pree-on)? One definition I found says, “the theoretical unit of infection.” So, theoretically, a prion is a tiny little protein thing that is like a virus, but not a virus, and unlike a virus, it is not alive. This is where the research loses me. How can a tiny little part of a living body not be alive? OK, I’ll leave it for now. This is thick enough without following that particular garden path.
Suffice it to say that damaged prions are proteins that are folded wrong, making them infectious agents. Infection leads to the formation of amyloid plaques, which cause deterioration of the brain. That’s the short version.
Because prions are not alive they cannot be killed, or cured. They just go about their amoral business for amoral reasons of their own – and they aren’t talking – and when a cow or sheep that has these misfolded prions is ground up and fed to other cows, the prions are spread around and carry on with their plaque-making. When infected cows are butchered and fed to humans, the humans then have prions misfolding proteins in their bodies and plaques begin to form in their brains. The condition is untreatable and always fatal.
Whew. Suddenly I’m thinking that a 100% vegetarian cow is a good idea, and I’m wondering if the systemic flea poison I apply to my dog’s back is a bad idea. So I read up on that. Turns out that the active ingredient in that poison is imidacloprid, a “chlorinated analog of nicotine.” “Imidacloprid is notable for its relatively low toxicity to most animals other than insects,” according to Wikipedia. So, not an organophosphate, and much easier than getting fleas to actually smoke and die from that, although I’m sure that there is a strong contingent of people who would be happy to explain why you should never use imidacloprid.
So that’s our lesson for today, kids. Oh yeah, I also learned that there is a British punk/folk/rock band named Warble Fly. Maybe “The Brain Rotting Prions” was already taken.

April Fools (That’s Tuels)

Well, dear hearts, I haven’t had much to say the last week or two. I’ve been in a funk, it’s true, and when I’m in a funk I don’t like to talk to anyone, or write, apparently.
Tonight I caught up on the blogs I follow, because I haven’t been reading, either. Gosh, I know some good writers, great storytellers, deep thinkers. I am grateful for them, and for the internet, which allows me to read their stories and thoughts, any time, day or night, without bothering them.
I think of these down times I have as bouts of emotional flu. The correct name is depression, probably, and yes, I do take an antidepressant, but sometimes the old clouds move in anyway. No, I don’t want to take any more pills to cheer myself up. I know now that the mood will pass pretty soon and I’ll get moving again, but I do take these time outs from life.
There is an ad on TV for one of those pills to cheer you up. It asks, “Where does depression hurt?” “Everywhere!” I said back to the television. “Everywhere,” said the announcer’s voice. They got that right.
It hurts everywhere.