The Gift of Time and Space

Just back from St. Louis, where I delivered this and 3 other similar contemporary crazy quilt squares to a dear friend for her wedding quilt. Well, it's aged into an anniversary quilt, but it is beautifully moving from the idea stage to finished-comforting-object stage.

I'm off to The Clearing in Door County on Sunday, to attend Judy Bridges' Writers' Retreat. It's exciting to trust that something equally beautiful and concrete will emerge in poetic or narrative form from the phrases and verbal images lurking and gestating in thought. "The Clearing" - place and process! I know I'll learn and grow. What a great gift.

Sidewalk art as book-work

Waupaca Community Arts Center recently participated in Arts on the Square's Chalk of the Town event. Our entry was 16' long and 4' tall. I thought of it as a book you read as you walked along. The sidewalk in front of our store is quite uneven and stony. The bulk of the work was done on Tuesday, and somewhat washed away in the steady rains of Tuesday evening. Wednesday from 11 - 4 Selene Bloedorn-Saeed and Anita Golke helped me as I basically redid the whole thing. No rain since, and it seems to be holding up. What I have enjoyed is hearing people laugh as they get to the end. The copy reads "Life without ART is like cheese curds without SQUEAK" -- for non cheeseheads: curds are best FRESH and warm, when they squeak as you chew - a mellifluous symphony in your mouth.

Books In Memoriam

Just had a wonderful weekend with a friend of over 50 years. We gathered for her mom's memorial service. My friend had printed the pages for a wonderful memory book for the members of her extended family. I had printed 2 additional sheets to insert. Constructing the books required a bit of changing from plan A to plan B, but we got a production line going and completed the project in time, and in good form. For my friend, the experience of choosing the photos and laying out the pages provided a welcome opportunity to look through family photos and to get a comforting sense of her mom's life in the process.

Compiling memorial books brings a sweet sense of closure that can be shared in a simple way and enjoyed by circles of family and friends. A small group or individuals can choose the photos most meaningful to them if you have a stack of inexpensive, small plastic photo albums along with boxes of copied photos, on a convenient table as they attend a wake, visiting hours, or a reception after a memorial service. This provides a thoughtful memorial without one person bearing the entire burden of creating all the books.

It was not a burden to create my friend's books, because she had all the parts on hand, all the materials we needed to finish the job, and an edition of only 7 books. The shared information and experience enriched and blessed my life, too.

I recently attended a writers' retreat at Sinsinawa Mounds, in Wisconsin, conducted by Judy Bridges. She is an excellent writing mentor and runs Redbird Studio (http://www.redbirdstudio.com/index.html), and it was a great experience. The retreat gave me a good objective look at my writing, and a firm but joyful push to keep going. I haven't created any books lately. . . That will come.