slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • What shapes me

    I’m at the studio, looking out the kitchen window at the bird feeder, the cardinal couple and chickadees and sparrows and what I think is some kind of thrush. They are flitting around but not eating. I look to the side and the orange cat from next door, Ralph, is napping nearby in the leaves, eyes almost but not quite shut. He’s lucky that there’s not a mockingbird around.

    Today as I left the house, there was a crow with one white tail feather in my neighbor’s yard.

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    I’ve decided that it’s time to start writing again, whether here or in my journal. This blog has gone through several transformations since I began it in February 2005. First, it was almost completely about my back yard garden and permaculture. Then things got a little crazy at work and it became a place for therapy. (Later during the difficult transfer from GoDaddy to WordPress I did not transfer a lot of the early, more personal posts.) I talked about depression, anxiety, and panic disorder, and my experiences as a recovering agoraphobic. Mostly my focus was on simple living, organic/local cooking, and food issues, particularly honest labeling.

    As I moved forward (step by step, inch by inch) in my healing I was able to do some of the traveling that I had dreamed about all my life. Then I suffered major volunteerism burn-out with the food and environmental organizations. Other writers in the area were blogging about local food and I felt like I had said what I wanted to say, so I pretty much stopped writing about food and wrote more about my personal life and travel.

    I made the switch to writing about mostly my artwork and travel as my focus shifted there. The two are interlinked. I stopped writing so much personal stuff. I started feeling weird and preachy about politics. I lost most of my readers to other social media, and I stopped reading many blogs as I got addicted to Facebook.

    And you know, that’s a good thing.

    I’m a grown-ass woman, and my mama is not around any more to complain about what she hears from people at church about my writing on the Internet.

    So I’m going to write about whatever I want, in my voice, which means if I want to say that something is fucked up, I’m not going back to edit it. In real life, I curse like a sailor. If it offends anyone, perhaps this is your chance to move on.

    For those of you who don’t know me in real life, this is what shapes me.

    My politics are unapologetically leftist. I am not a Democrat. I am not a Communist, and I might be a Democratic Socialist if I have to fall in with a party, which I do not plan to do in the near future. I love Bernie Sanders with all my heart.

    I was brought up in a Southern Baptist church that my parents were heavily active in, a church that was somewhat moderate before a hard right turn in the mid-eighties. Now I am unaffiliated in religion as well, although I joined a very progressive Presbyterian USA congregation about the same time that I started the blog that really helped my outlook on life. In actuality, I’m probably an atheist. Or a Quaker. Or a druid, although I dislike the magic part. I’m too logical to be a pagan. I am fascinated with Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. I’m an ordained Priestess in the Church of the Latter Day Dude.

    I’ve stopped labeling myself with what I do for a paycheck. However, although my official job title is “Administrative Support Associate” I refer to my job as “Secretary.” I honor my mother and my aunt that way. I don’t like it when people take perfectly good words and make them pejorative. It makes me stubbornly cling to them.

    When people ask me what kind of artist I am, I really struggle with that. I think that almost any endeavor can be art if done with the right spirit. I will call myself an artist, though. That’s progress from the first half of my life.

    It should go without saying that I am a feminist, but many feminists annoy the crap out of me.

    I am quite pissed off at the protests that dilute their focus by trying to please everybody, because I know it’s impossible. I’m not pleased with people who get hung up on semantics. I believe in courtesy, and listening, but I’m not paying attention to those who think that I’m not doing the right thing or that I’m not doing enough or that I don’t care about their passion or issue because I’m not talking about it. Once they get into scolding, I’m out.

    There’s not enough room in my head for all that.

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    Last night I dreamed that I was walking to my childhood home, about five miles away. I was exhausted and I called my mother and asked her to come get me.

    “I can’t,” she said.

    “But I’m so tired,” I cried.

    “Go pick up your niece. She needs you.”

    “I can’t,” I whimpered. “My car has broken down.”

    I called my niece at her college about a four hour drive away. “I am coming for you in about four hours. I don’t know how, but be ready.”

    My niece: “Sure, great? Who are you?”

    :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    I’m doing the best I can.

    I’ll keep doing the best I can.

    I hope that you will too, whatever that means for you.

  • Weekend Update

    Well, it’s been a week, eh?

    I can’t say yet that I am responding in a healthy way to the stress and horror of the real world, but I feel rested this weekend, finally. I did actually cook dinner and do laundry on Thursday night. I spent this morning drinking coffee at the house, grocery shopping at Deep Roots, and now I’m back at the studio for the first time since Jan. 16. So far, so good.

    Other than going to the Women’s March, part of my problem is that I started having spells of vertigo on Jan. 16, so I couldn’t drive and since they happened later in the day/evening I couldn’t get much done at night. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong so he figured that it was an inner ear problem from all that head congestion I’ve had in the past 6-7 weeks. The last spell I had was on Sunday, and it was mild, so I think that I’m past it. I sure hope so. I was starting to feel like Louise II from Arrested Development.

    To catch up…I decided that while my filler strips for the t-shirt quilt were quite beautiful, they just weren’t right for it. I needed to honor the t-shirt spirit of the piece. So despite what the online teacher said, I’m going to use the rest of the t-shirts to fill in the spaces. And if it screws it up, so be it. It was getting too precious and this is a learning piece for me. Plus I found an old cotton knit hippie piecework jacket that I had squirreled away that will be perfect.

    Although I will use these remnants and fat quarters and charm squares of new cotton fabric and enjoy playing with them, there is a comfort for me in re-using old clothes. I want to continue to focus on that. I’ve started digging out Sandy’s old khaki pants to use to join the cloth woven shirt panels.

    I noticed that I really liked the pattern of the wrinkles in this piece of cloth so I decided to do a wabi-sabi thing and call it “anti-ironing.”


    When it starts getting warmer, I will move my tapestry loom out onto my front porch and weave again. That will feel good.

    Politics wise, I plan to march at the 11th Annual Moral March in Raleigh on February 11 (mental and physical health permitting) and I’ve bought a train ticket to go to the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. on April 29. I am encouraged by the people rising up. #RESIST

    Here is a link to an article that really helped me and others this week: How to #StayOutraged Without Losing Your Mind. I am choosing to focus on environmental issues and civil rights, although I know it is all important and interconnected. Hopefully this tactic will help me stay engaged without being overwhelmed, but I realize that I will have to take mental health breaks. As my favorite therapist Stuart Smalley says, “And that’s okay.”

  • Women’s March on Washington

    A selection of photos from the Women’s March on Washington, D.C.

    ^^^Making the posters the night before.

    ^^^Waiting to get on the Metro in Alexandria. It ended up being pretty awful. We were crushed after the second or third stop and got off the train at a station where they were managing the crowds better. The way back was better.

    ^^^Trying to get out of the Metro at L’Enfant Plaza.


    ^^^Where we ended up before we crossed Independence Ave., found a bathroom in the Freer-Sackler Gallery, then joined the march on the other side of it. There were people everywhere and we couldn’t see past the people around us and so everyone just moved toward the White House.


    ^^^My favorite sign (so many to choose from!) was “Free Tic-Tacs if You Can Define Consent.”

    We took Carty to the Air and Space Museum for an hour then had a much better Metro experience on the way back.

    ^^^After we checked out of the hotel on Sunday we rode the Metro back and went to the Museum of the American Indian and the Freer-Sackler Gallery to see the “Art of the Qur’an” exhibit. Beautiful manuscripts! I know manuscripts and they were the BEST manuscripts! One of them was HUGE!

    ^^^Some people came back out and left their signs on Sunday.

  • Snow Days in Greensboro

    I didn’t go out much in the snow, but I did begin weaving “Cathedral” again. We used the wood stove for a couple of days, watched a couple of movies, and I almost finished the first book of the Poldark series. The TV series follows the book pretty closely, so far.

  • Sewing in the new studio

    As you know, I’m enjoying my new studio. I spent a good part of every day of my Christmas break from work there. It was hard to let go of that routine. From now on it will have to be on weeknights and weekends, although I will have to carve out time to do the stuff that needs to be done at home too, I suppose.

    It helps to have a great studio-mate!

    Looks like we have a big snowstorm bearing down on us tonight so I’m going to try to scoot by there and pick up a few items to work on at home. There are some pieces that I want to hand stitch on.

    We’ll have plenty of firewood, although most of this needs to cure to use next winter. No problem, we have lots of old wood in the back since the last two winters were so mild.

    The travel t-shirt quilt layout is basically this:

    Now I’m stitching together strips of cloth and triangles to have a pile of this “filler” material to choose from to put in between the t-shirt pieces. I hung a sheet from a piece of wooden moulding for my design wall and I fiddle around with pinning pieces up and moving them around.

    I’ve spent more than half of the last month sick with two different bad colds. I don’t recommend it as a diet plan, but I did lose five pounds. You have to take the positive where you can get it these days.

  • 2017 First Day Part II

    goeast

    gowest

    So, here is what I’m thinking about for 2017.

    There will be a local exhibition of six fiber artists at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Greensboro, NC in January and another Tapestry Weavers South exhibition at Yadkin Cultural Arts Center later this year.

    I’m planning to go to the Women’s March on Washington on January 21 with a couple of friends. Quite a few women I know are taking buses to DC. We jumped on reserving a hotel room near the Metro station in Alexandria right away for Saturday night before the rooms sold out and the prices jacked up, and will stay in a cheap hotel about an hour away on Friday night. Now I am shaking in my shoes with anxiety about the whole thing. I don’t even like to go to the movies or concerts because I hate crowds. What the hell was I thinking? But I’m going to go because I think it is important. One of my friends will drive and I’ll take my Dramamine and Xanax for the journey.

    Winter/Spring is my busy time at work, so I’m not planning anything then except maybe a trip to Lake Waccamaw around Easter.

    May 16 is our 30th anniversary. We are going to celebrate the hard work that went into this by traveling to Ireland and southern England for two weeks. We’ve paid for most of the trip already over the last few months. We’ll stay in Howth (on the harbor near Dublin) for one night on the way and one night on the way back, and most of our time will be spent in London and Cornwall.

    Yes, I am a fan of Poldark! But mostly, it is because I love sea cliffs and a large branch of my ancestry is from Cornwall.

    In late June, Susanne and I plan to go back to Focus on Book Arts for our third time. Because of the trip to the UK, that is currently the only retreat I’m planning. Unlike the last time, I won’t be making it a bigger trip because I need to do it as cheaply as possible. FOBA arranges for room/board at Pacific University and it is less expensive than other retreats. Also, it has a nice selection of both technical classes and loosey goosey creative classes with nationally known book arts instructors.

    In June and July I guess I will be blogging those trips!

    Sandy and I will try to make it out to Colorado again before the year is out. We both love it there. We’ll try to visit a new national park if we can. We’ve been to Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde, and Great Sand Dunes so far in Colorado.

    I’ll try to get back to weaving “Cathedral” again. Now that I have the front porch screened in I know that I will enjoy weaving on the porch bug-free.

    I expect that my current obsession with weaving cloth strips and fabric piecework (and maybe quilting) will continue. So there will be plenty of retreat time right here in Greensboro.

  • 2017 First Day Part I

    “Then what is the answer? Not to be deluded by dreams.” – Robinson Jeffers, “The Answer”

    Wow. This is going to be hard. I wouldn’t blame you at all if you skipped this one. I always write a post on New Year’s Day about my goals and expectations for the coming year. I am not a cheery person these days and I don’t want to bring anybody down. But philosophically I have belonged in the camp of the Dark Mountain Project for quite some time. This kind of gloomy realistic thinking does not resonate with most people and most certainly will not get you invited to parties, but I’m not a people person anyway. If I had children, I really don’t know if I would still be sane as this point. Also, I’m not really interested in discussing it, but here’s what is in the back of my mind, and I feel that it is important to put it out there today.

    THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION

    “We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
    As the rock and ocean that we were made from.”

    1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
    2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
    3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
    4. We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
    5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
    6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
    7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
    8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.

    From the Dark Mountain Project Manifesto

    So, there is the broader view of my thinking for the years ahead. Next, a cheerier post about our plans for the year.

  • 2016 Wrap-Up…working on the bucket list

    A lot of people are happy to see 2016 go. Yes, it was a very stressful year for almost everyone, but I am quite fearful of the next few years so I’m not ready to let 2016 go yet. However, I don’t have much choice, do I? So here’s my annual wrap-up blog post.

    “Save our State,” a postcard tapestry I sent to an exhibition in Oaxaca, Mexico this year

    I marked a couple of things off my bucket list this year. One event that might have made my bucket list but didn’t was voting for my man Bernie in the presidential election. It wasn’t on my list because I never ever expected him to get so close to the goal. Bernie Sanders has been my political hero for years, and it filled my heart with gladness to vote for him in the primary. At least our guys won in the N.C. governor and attorney general elections, which can only help, although the legislature has a controlling majority and is hellbent on taking away the powers of the governor’s office now that their party lost it. UGH.

    My heart ached all year about the sale of my mother’s house in Marietta in late 2015. Although I’m glad that we don’t have to deal with its upkeep, it will always be home to me. I didn’t expect its loss to hurt so much.

    In January, a big bucket list item was fulfilled when my tapestry, “98% Water,” was accepted into the American Tapestry Alliance Biennial exhibition. Right now I think it is still in Kansas at the Mulvane Art Museum. and will be traveling to its final venue at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. I also rented a small room at my church around the corner as a studio space, which I enjoyed for most of the year. My grand-nephew lost his father who was only in his mid-thirties, which had a huge impact on our family. This post wrapped up that month pretty well.

    Pocosin Arts Center in Columbia, North Carolina was the location of a workshop Susanne and I took from Daniel Essig. It’s a sweet little town that most people breeze through on their way to the Outer Banks without a second look, but it is also the home to the headquarters of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, which I took as the theme of my wood covered mica book.


    In March, my cousin Fred Adams died. He had Type 1 diabetes and a stroke and was in kidney failure for a long time. His house at Lake Waccamaw is the place that I have written about and photographed so much here over the years. He was a dearly loved family member and we all miss him very much. Everyone who knew Fred loved him. He was one of those kind of people – funny, intelligent, and friendly.

    During the spring, I dived into weaving and sewing cloth strips, mostly from my worn-out jeans that I collected over the years. I learned a lot about what my little sewing machine is and is not capable of! I owe this cloth party to Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth.

    Then in April I used the diced up denim trimmings to make paper!

    Which was really fun until my back and hips said uh-uh.

    Tapestry Weavers South had an impressive 20th Anniversary exhibition at Yadkin Arts Center in May. I’m so glad that I became more involved with this group.

    May 2016 also brought the second bucket list item to fruition – we took a train ride on a sleeper car. It was during a big beautiful trip to Montana and Washington and Oregon, and there are too many gorgeous photos to choose from so you’ll have to travel back in time to my link above if you want to see them. We flew to Minneapolis, boarded Amtrak in Saint Paul, got off at Glacier National Park for three days, took the train again to Seattle where we only spent a couple of hours near the depot, then took the train to Portland. There we rented a car and drove to Mount St. Helens National Monument, the Astoria and Cannon Beach area, up the Columbia Gorge, to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Painted Hills) in central Oregon, to Bend and Sisters, and back to Portland for the last two days, where we flew back east.

    It was absolutely one of the greatest trips I’ve ever taken, but I will not be riding in a sleeper car again! It also reinforced the idea that Sandy and I really should go west if we are ever able to retire.

    June and July brought me back to the studio and growing field peas and butterbeans in my garden, which is much reduced in size now due to my chronic physical problems. I spent July 4th weekend at the lake at my sister’s house for the first time. She has kittens!

    In August I finished up the denim blanket, which I learned was too large, bulky, and heavy to use as I intended, so I cut it in half and now it is two rugs on my bedroom floor. When I need picnic blankets, I’ll roll them up and take them along. I started on a new blanket project with a bunch of my husband’s old cotton and linen shirts.



    On Labor Day weekend I traveled to South Bend, Indiana via Chicago to attend the opening reception of the ATA Biennial at the South Bend Museum of Art. I flew through Chicago, took Amtrak to South Bend with the points I earned from the May trip, stayed in an AirBNB (which has made me a convert!). On the way back I spent a few hours at the Art Institute of Chicago.

    Only a couple of weeks later I took what seems to be turning into an annual trip to see my Aunt Delaine and cousin Cherie near Denver, Colorado. Hey, you can’t tell we’re related, can you? This time I was there to go to a class with paper collage artist Elizabeth St. Hilaire at the Art Makers Denver retreat. As usual the entire time with my family was lovely.

    After the disastrous owners’ meeting in July I had written off Deep Roots. When I came back in September I got involved with a group of Deep Roots owners with the purpose of changing the direction of the cooperative, whose management and majority of the board got way off track in trying to deal with the financial problems. I spoke before the board about communication – my speech is in the minutes here. The good news is that we did prevail. The general manager was gone by November and most of the board members who supported him serve their last day on the board today.

    I didn’t write on my blog at all in October or November. My nerves were shot and I was angry or shellshocked all the time. But once I was able to, I did a catch-up post here. The good news: I met and drank with Ben Harper. We screened in our front porch. We went to Savannah, Georgia for a long weekend for Sandy’s birthday.

    My favorite place in Savannah was Bonaventure Cemetery. I’ve got it in my head now to do a angel tapestry after the “Cathedral” tapestry is finished.

    We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend with my sister, brother-in-law, brother, and cousin-in-law (Fred’s wife) at Lake Waccamaw. I didn’t blog it.

    Then I took Susanne’s offer to move the church studio into her house. We are having a great time! I’m working on a travel themed t-shirt quilt. I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

    Goodbye, 2016.

  • T-shirt Upcycling and Life

    Just some photos from the last few days

    ^^^The Lyle Lovett collection, well loved

    ^^^This one was in absolute tatters

    ^^^Pablocito actually was taking a bath in the tub, but he wouldn’t do it after I got the camera.

    ^^^Theo doesn’t like the camera either, which is a damned shame since he’s so handsome.

    ^^^Anybody want some big chunks of beautiful maple?


    ^^^Proof that I wasn’t a total humbug this Christmas

  • Happy Kwanzaa and Boxing Day!

    Well, I’m about holidayed out and I haven’t even celebrated much of anything! That’s typical for me, though. I started losing my holiday spirit when I worked in retail and then the many years of Christmas without my father and now my mother pretty much did it in. If I had chosen to have children, I’m sure it would have been different. I’m grateful that I’m in a place and time in my life where my friends and family understand and don’t judge or try to force me to be merry.

    This Christmas we had my brother-in-law over for dinner on Christmas Eve and then watched westerns and A Christmas Story on Christmas Day by ourselves. We had a couple of good meals, one of which was collaborative between Sandy and me and it ended up much better than I would have ever guessed, but also may not ever be able to be replicated! It was linguine with shrimp and smoked beef kielbasa from the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market, along with broccoli, red peppers, onions, garlic, olive oil, lime juice, and feta cheese. Then yesterday I slow cooked a small pastured pork picnic ham in my crock pot with sweet potatoes, red potatoes, apple juice, water, liquid smoke, and Worcestershire sauce. I cooked it just a tad too long but it was still tender and tasty. I foresee more barbecue in the future. (In North Carolina, barbecue is a noun and it refers only to pork. We do not barbecue. We cook or grill out.)

    Right now I am at my studio on Wharton St. where I am working on ironing a light interfacing to the backs of old t-shirt logos and designs in preparation for a t-shirt quilt. I’m taking an online Craftsy class from Winnie Fleming called “The Ultimate T-Shirt Quilt.” (Today classes on Craftsy are less than $20, not affiliated, just sayin’.) So far it is perfect for me – I needed something to kick me into action that would be fun and not too taxing on my brain. Although I donated several of my better t-shirts to charity in my purges this past year, I saved some of my favorite for a project like this. Many of them are twenty years old and very worn out. I’m going to either draw, paint, or stitch over the designs that are worn out.

    A little later Sandy and I are going to see Arrival at the movie theater. It’s hard to get me to go to a theater because I don’t like sitting in a crowd. But I like to see a sci-fi film on the big screen and Sandy loves loves loves going to the movies.

    Then I’ll have the rest of the week all to myself when Sandy goes back to work. I’ll try to get over here in the morning and spend most of each day here, except for tomorrow when I need to get the painting around the front porch door finished so Sandy can hang the door back up.

    It will feel a little like retirement!