Mary Fons - PaperGirl

19 Sep 2014

On Hospital Advocacy, Part 2.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Family, Paean, Sicky | 4

Sally Field and Crystal Lee Sutton, the woman who inspired the 1979 film, "Norma Rae." Field won the Oscar for her role in the movie. — File under “Famous Advocates.”Sally Field and Crystal Lee Sutton, the woman who inspired the 1979 film, “Norma Rae.” Photo: Wikipedia.

If the first trip to the ER in Atlanta was harrowing and depressing, the second trip restored my faith in humanity. Oh, it was still harrowing and there was plenty to be depressed about, but I had a friend with me on the second trip and that made all the difference. (First half of this two-part post here; more on how I got here in the first place, here. )

So there it was, Saturday morning. I’m in my hotel room, and nothing good is going to happen. After agonizing deliberation (because I didn’t want to make a fuss, be dramatic, or admit defeat) I called my friend and colleague, Marlene.

A word about Marlene.

You know the feeling you get at Thanksgiving dinner when all the casserole dishes have been put out and your mom has finally taken off her apron and is sitting down for Pete’s sake; when everyone has wine and rolls, and the turkey’s out and the gravy pitcher is already making the rounds; that moment when everyone raises their glasses to toast and the kids are toasting with juice or milk and you’re just overwhelmed with love and gratitude because people are generally good and the world is spinning at the correct speed for once? That feeling? That is Marlene. She is the embodiment of the Thanksgiving toast. She is everything that is good.

She’s also a successful businesswoman at the helm of a national network of convention center-sized quilt shows — including Quilting LIVE!, the show that had taken me to Atlanta. Tools Marlene carries at any given time might include: a laptop, bluetooth headset, box cutter, first-aid kit, talent contracts, cash box, dinner reservations and a little gift she got you, just because. As you can see, Marlene is a good person to call when you’re slightly dying.

Marlene arrived in lightning speed and helped me down to the car. Her husband was waiting right outside. (Don’t get me started on Stan; if Marlene is the Thanksgiving toast, Stan is like, birthday cake the day before your birthday.)

Here are excerpts from conversations that morning at the hospital. These are pretty much verbatim and all illustrate the need for an advocate at the hospital — preferably Marlene:

Conversation No. 1
NURSE: (to me) What do you do, hon?
ME: (weakly) I’m a…quilter. Writer.
MARLENE: This young lady is a national television star. She’s a magazine editor, an author, and an expert quilter here for the quilt show in town this weekend. She’s a dear part of our team and we care about her very much. We’d like to see the doctor. Now.
NURSE: Uh, yes, right away!

Conversation No. 2
ME: (feebly, to NURSE.) Please… The pain medicine. Please, when you —
MARLENE: (to NURSE.) I’ve asked you three times for lidocaine and pain medicine. If I have to ask again, I will not be very nice. Thank you, we appreciate it.

Conversation No. 3
NURSE: Okay, here’s that pain medicine. This should help.
ME: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
MARLENE: Now we’re getting somewhere. (to ME.) I’ll go down and get the prescriptions, hon, you just sit back and let that take effect. That’s the good stuff.

The help with the nurses, the coordination to help cover my show duties that morning, and of course the ride to the hospital — all that was beautiful. But perhaps the best thing Marlene did for me was when I lay on the bed in the exam room, twitching and gnashing my teeth. She stood above me and smoothed my hair, stroked it softly as we waited for the doctor. That simple, compassionate action did more for me than the Dilaudid, I swear.

“I miss my cat!” she laughed. “You’re my cat right now, Mar.” And she made me laugh, and I felt better. And then, ever thinking, my advocate said, “Does this bother you? Do you want me to stop?”

And I said, “No, no. Please. It’s wonderful.”

17 Sep 2014

Interlude No. 2: Chapters

by Mary | posted in: Family, Luv, Story | 3

Sleeping with my mom's dog, Scrabble. — Sleeping with mom’s dog, Scrabble. She’s good in a pinch.

I miss Yuri.

Our New York City days have been so good. When he comes in the door in the evening, I leap up and run to him. I always like to look pretty when he arrives. Dinner will be almost ready or I’ll have been baking cinnamon rolls, his new favorite treat. He calls them “cinni-minis.” I jotted down the recipe and taped it to the cabinet above the stove and it says, “Yuri’s Cinni-Mini’s” and there are hearts and frosting smears all over the paper.

We have a mouse in the apartment. Naturally, we named him Mickey. Neither of us are really okay with Mickey being there but neither one of us wants to buy a trap. Maybe if Mickey started paying rent we could get comfortable with him running past on the parquet floor every once in awhile, at night, when I’m reading and Yuri is finishing up work for the day.

All this rigmarole. The fears. Atlanta. Taping the TV show. New medicine that has freaking nitroglycerine in it. I made an appointment with my surgeon in Chicago because she has operated on me a lot. New York is full of smart doctors but I think it’s wise at this juncture to speak to the lady who has had her hands in my abdomen on three separate occasions.

The worst case scenario is that I was misdiagnosed in 2008 and I actually have Crohn’s disease. (That would mean an already colon-less me would begin small-intestine re-sectionings.) The best case scenario is that I am how I am now, which appears problematic.

Last night, I let my mom’s dog Scrabble sleep with me in the bed. I’m mostly against animals in my bed (unless you take me to dinner first — hey-o!) but Scrabble is squeaky clean and very soft, with short, white curly fur. She looks and feels like a lamb. Scrabble is a miniature Golden Doodle and she can shake, roll over, and fetch three different toys by name, but she still jumps up on people when she sees them because she is so excited to have friends.

When she was a puppy, I would lay her on her back and give her a puppy massage. She was very hyperactive, being a happy puppy, but I would flip her on her back and use my fingers to do a puppy version of a deep tissue massage and she would just totally conk out. She loved it. It got so I would say, “Scrabble? You wan’na puppy massage?” and she would get this look like, “Is this seriously going to happen right now?” And I’d massage her little chicken wings and that’s how I fell in love with her, down on the floor of the living room, smiling at her happy puppy face, burying my face in her fur.

16 Sep 2014

Interlude: The Zarf

by Mary | posted in: Food, Word Nerd | 0

The day has ended too late to write the second half of my cri de coeur on hospital buddies. I’d be up till midnight with it and that would be foolish of me. Big day today, bigger one tomorrow, filming the 2500 series of Love of Quilting.

And so, a brief interlude. A brief interlude on the zarf.

You know the sleeve that goes on your go-cup of coffee? The paper sleeve? It has a name. It’s called a “zarf.” Amazing.

When people started drinking coffee and tea (which is to say “when people started”) they put little holder-sleeve thingies on their handle-free cups to keep their paws from getting burned on the vessels of hot liquid. Tea- and coffee-drinking humans have kept this item in heavy rotation ever since, though modern day zarfs are made of cardboard, not porcelain or wood or ivory.

I learned this because my mother and stepfather play Scrabble so much. Also, crossword puzzles.

Also, it’s good to be home.

15 Sep 2014

On Hospital Advocacy, Part 1.

by Mary | posted in: Rant, Sicky, Tips | 6

A friend, indeed. — The one on the left is bleeding profusely.

When I went to the ER on Thursday, I went by myself. When I went to the ER on Saturday, I had an advocate. The difference between the two visits was stark. I’ve been to an emergency room alone before and I’ve gone in plenty of times with a friend or family member, too, but never in such short succession. Comparing the trips closely showed me plainly how one has to do these things:

You must have an advocate at the hospital.

If you are a solo person considering driving yourself to an ER tonight (or any night in the future), I urge you to call someone to go with you; at the very least, ask someone to meet you there. Of course, if your arm is hanging off or you’ve got visibly spreading flesh-eating bacteria working its way across your chest, you will probably get through the door with a minimum of hassle. I’m talking to the people out there who struggle with internal problems (e.g., possible appendicitis, possible internal flesh-eating bacteria, fissures, Crohn’s, etc.) because without someone to vouch for you, you are light years away from the care you assume you’ll get in a room created for the express purpose of dealing with people in emergency health situations.

Note: If you’re a person who doesn’t have a soul on earth to call, my advice would be to get to the ER tonight however you have to, get the hell out, and set about making some friends first thing tomorrow morning. Book clubs are good, online dating works well, and if you’re a quilter, run to your nearest guild and join the next sew-a-long. Any of these strategies will yield people clamoring to take you to the hospital before you know it.

On both trips, I was in identical straits. Pure agony. Any human being who took one look at me (and how could you miss me, howling like that) could see that this was a woman in trouble. Was I foaming at the mouth? Well, no. But I was flagging. And while I understand totally the need for proper identification and at least a cursory examination of a person before IVs and medications are flung around hither and thither, Thursday’s experience reminded me that the collective brain of the ER has been removed and a skeptical, bureaucratic, Policy And Procedures Manual has been wedged in its place. This is not news, I realize, but my shock and indignation is fresh, so it feels like news.

Additional Note: I’m sure there are at least a handful of folks reading who are now or have been professionals in the medical field. I owe my life to a number of you, first of all, and don’t think I don’t know it. I see the problem(s) I’m talking about having less to do with individuals and more with the medical industrial complex. Indeed, it is the lack of individuality and specificity in the system that does damage.

The nurse was working the night shift. I get it. That sucks. And we all have bad days. But she began from a place of inhumanity. She came past my curtain and asked quite casually, “What seems to be the problem today?” (I’m writhing on the bed at this point.) She almost snorted when I told her I needed a certain kind of pain medicine — I’m allergic to morphine — and when I refused a CT scan I felt a freshet of loathing from Little Miss Ratchett. I know roughly when a CT scan of my abdomen is needed and when it is not; it would’ve been useless to do one at that time, given my symptoms and my traveler status, most especially because my pain had yet to be treated. (It appears that hospitals do far more CT scans than they need to**, primarily because they can bill for them. To be fair, this over-scanning has something to do with protection from litigious customers, but I felt my hospital was being either lazy or thick with their order. Not that I said so at the time.)

Halfway through my time there, as I’m trying to explain my entire medical history again, somehow, and get what I need to feel better, I realized how silly it was to be there alone. It was my fault. My stoicism was ill-conceived. The nurse might’ve been a jerk, but I looked up some stats and it appears that fiending drug addicts make frequent trips to emergency rooms all the time, looking for a fix. Here I was, a woman by herself, from out of state, with no visible injuries, crazy eyes, and an increasingly petulant attitude (see: refusing CT scan), begging for pain medicine. If a junkie could pull off looking/sounding like me that night, that junkie would be pretty amazing. But I hear they’ll do anything, so maybe the nurse was right to be so totally unhelpful. I tried to get in touch with someone from the quilt show to speak with the hospital, but when I couldn’t make contact and feared waking up the whole team, I gave up. Not being able to call for backup did not help my case.

I left with the bare minimum of relief and went away, 10% better in one regard, 30% worse in others.

Tomorrow, the second visit, and the wonder of compassion, advocacy, and my friend Marlene.

**Between 2000 and 2010, the National Center for Health Statistics showed the use of advanced imaging scans— CT or MRI—increased to 17% from 5% of all emergency-room visits. A Push For Less Testing in Wall Street Journal, Feb. 23, 2014.

14 Sep 2014

Travel Tips: The Large Scarf

by Mary | posted in: Sicky | 7

No polkas were harmed in the making of this scarf.

Always travel with a large scarf. This is a rule for all the ladies. Men should heed the scarf rule, too, but they may understandably beg off for fear of appearing too European.

You will find that a large scarf serves many purposes on a journey. I have used my oversized, linen/viscose, blue-and-white polka-dot Marc Jacobs scarf (variation pictured above) in the following ways since leaving for Atlanta. My scarf has been…

an artsy-fartsy fashion accessory
a warm shawl
a bunched up pillow in the backseat of a car
a filter at my nose/mouth because someone in front of me was being fartsy on the plane (no artsy, just fartsy)
a napkin (just the corner)
a blanket on my lap while in various wheelchairs yesterday and today
a comfort (see: familiarity, things that are soft)

After my interview with Nellie Bly, I foolishly thought I might get another good night’s sleep and be ready to tackle Day 3 of the Atlanta trip without incident. The Agony had other plans for me, however. Around 1am, it wrapped a ragged, bloody fist around my abdomen and associated parts and every half hour, on the hour, I was in the bathroom, basically disintegrating at an alarming pace. It was 2:30am, it was 3:17am. It was 4:02am, it was 5:01am. I was afraid my pitiful wails were going to start waking the people in rooms nearby. I made deals with my body: “You stop doing this and we’ll go to the zoo, baby,” and “You cool it, we’ll go to Atlantic City.” I took five sitz baths. I used my entire arsenal of medicine — twice. No relief. It was 5:48am, it was 6:23am.

My class was to begin at 8:30am. I would take a step and stop, locked in position, my face in some crazy kabuki mask of pain or death. Just when I got my face right I’d have to go to the bathroom again and the battery acid/toxic waste mix would run through me and I would squall like a newborn baby. I managed a shower, noting my knuckles (white.) It was 7:02am, it was 7:26am. The tasks before me included: putting on my makeup and packing the case, zipping my luggage, making it to the elevator with a box of my books, my suitcase, my briefcase, and my class materials. Also, I had to stop crying. I sat, gathering my strength to do these things. I sat for so long, I realized they were impossible. I called for help.

And so it was that I went to an Atlanta ER again, though the second time it was to a different, better-run hospital and I did not drive myself but had more than one friend with me to assist me at the gates. It made all the difference in the world. I got medicine that helped me avoid pain-induced cardiac arrest (it’s funny, really) and plans were rearranged so that I would stay another night in Georgia, not go home to NYC, and come straight to Iowa a day early.

I’m telling you, that scarf was a lifesaver. It covered me in the hospitals. I wadded it up and bit on it before the pain meds kicked in. I dried my eyes with it. In the wheelchair in Atlanta, the one in Chicago, and the one in Des Moines, it was my little lap blanky — you know, like your Nana puts over her legs when she plays bridge? That was me. I was your Nana. I was probably paler and slightly more demoralized than your Nana, but I’d better not go around making assumptions about Nana. Nana’s a pistol.

Take a scarf. You never know.

**Note: The Fons & Porter company is great for many reasons. They were nothing short of heroic these past couple days. You too, Katy. Thank you.

12 Sep 2014

Nellie Bly Interviews PaperGirl: Interview No. 09228971

by Mary | posted in: Sicky | 6

Nellie Bly: How’s Atlanta?

PaperGirl: The Quilting LIVE! show is fantastic. Lots of quilters, beautiful quilts, classes — it’s a great show. We did a luncheon event today where I had the pleasure of interviewing my mother and Liz Porter while attendees enjoyed salads and pecan pie — it was kind of a phenomenal event, honestly. Very inspiring, very entertaining. Mom and Liz are amazing. Later, I sold a ton of books at my book signing and there’s another signing tomorrow. So yeah, it’s been good.

NB: (Pause.) I understand that you had a setback.

PG: (Pause.) Correct.

NB: You went to the ER?

PG: Yeah.

NB: In Atlanta?

PG: Yeah.

NB: When? What happened?

PG: I was struggling pretty bad Wednesday but pushed through. At about 3:15am, I couldn’t catch my breath, the pain was so intense. I decided to drive myself to the hospital.

NG: You rented a car.

PG: Yes, and I’m very glad I did when I arrived here. It came in handy.

NB: The pain you were experiencing was related to complications from your illness. Do you want to elaborate on what was going on?

PG: Not particularly. It’s all so unpleasant. I can tell you that I’ve had these issues before and I know when to say “uncle.” Wednesday night — Thursday morning, actually — was as bad as it’s been. I said uncle.

NB: Did you find relief at the hospital? Were they able to help you?

PG: I had better care at Bellevue. It’s hard to be at a hospital in a town far away, on your own. It’s hard to advocate for yourself in the system, you know? And if you’re in excruciating pain, it’s worse. Look, I’ll spare you the details, Nellie. I had a pretty awful nurse. She was…unresponsive. Very cold. The doctor tried order a CT scan, which was absurd. They always want to to a CT scan but 9 times out of 10, you don’t need one. That’s my very unprofessional opinion, but I’ve been around the hospital block enough to know. Anyway, they gave me enough Tylenol 9000 or whatever to crest the worst of it. I returned to my hotel room and got about two hours of sleep before I had to teach my class at 8:30am.

NB: Yikes. Maybe you should’ve cancelled class and rested. You have to take care of your health.

PG: Oh, I thought about cancelling the day, sure. But I weighed the options. Option 1 was to be in pain but push through and grit my teeth and make it work. Option 2 was to languish, feel depressed, still be in pain and miss the committments I had made and let people down, etc. Option 2 seemed worse, so… I went with Option 1. My students were so wonderful I had a great class, actually, and I just sorta made myself stay upright.

NB: How do you feel now?

PG: Better! I got a really good night’s sleep last night. That helps a lot. Thanks for asking.

NB: When do you go home?

PG: I go back to New York tomorrow for about 36 hours. Then I fly to Iowa for the first week of TV. Mom and I go to South Carolina over the weekend for a Quilts of Valor event. Then we come back for the second week of TV in Iowa. Then I go down to the Panhandle for another 3-day event.

NB: Hm. Are you su–

PG: Option 1, Bly. Option 1.

NB: I’d like to ask you ab–

PG: I’m pretty tired. No offense. But it’s been a very long couple of days and, uh, I’m gonna hit the hay.

NB: Of course. Good to talk to you.

[END]

9 Sep 2014

Gimmie A Peach! Quilting LIVE! in Atlanta

by Mary | posted in: Quilting, Work | 0

When I saw the poster for the show, I thought, "When did I pose for this?" But it is not me. I don't know who it is, but we have a similar forehead. — When I saw the poster for the show, I thought, “When did I pose for this?” But it is not me.

I am bound for Atlanta.

This weekend is the big Quilting LIVE! show — an event so jam-packed with excitement, the organizers had to deploy caps lock and an exclamation point in the naming of it.

It really is going to be neat. Many wonderful speakers and teachers will be there, including my mother, Liz Porter, Mark Lipinski, Debby Kratovil, as well as friends Ebony Love and Victoria Findlay Wolfe, and Diane Tomlinson of Team Quilty. I just named about 10% of the great/luminary folks who will be at the show, so please google it and see for yourself all the reasons you should come on over if that makes sense for your life in the next four days.

Aside from the classes I’m teaching and the book signings and the Quilty magazine gallery walks I’ll be doing, I’m honored to be the interviewer/moderator for a very special luncheon with my mother and Liz. I’ll be asking them questions about their history, the Fons & Porter story, where they see quilting in America headed — all that and more. Plus: lunch! It’s going to be very cool and I plan to watch several James Lipton clips on YouTube before Friday to bone up on technique.

If you’re in the area, come see the show. So many quilts. So many fantastic people. It’s the quilt industry. It’s fun.

7 Sep 2014

On Technique.

by Mary | posted in: Art | 1

It's a very, very good record. Photo: London Jazz Collector. — It’s a very, very good record. Photo: London Jazz Collector.

Legendary jazz saxophone player Art Pepper, who loved heroin, music, and women very much and in that order, said something that, when I read it, etched itself into my brain. Every time I turn it over in my head, it feels more true. He said:

“You only need enough technique to say what you have to say.”

He was talking about music. I’m talking about anything. Didn’t go to art school? Who cares, unless your soul tells you you need to blow glass to say what you need to say and you haven’t the foggiest how to blow glass. Can’t sew in a sleeve to save your life? So what, if all you want to do is make skirts all your life. Want to write a novel but have never been to Yaddo? Big deal, unless you want to write a real connected-y story about sad people who go to places like Yaddo and then have kids who are “unknowable” (or whatever.)

See what I mean? You don’t have to kill yourself over technique unless your lack of technique is killing you.

You believe that, you can go anywhere. And you probably will.

6 Sep 2014

A Problematic Crouton.

by Mary | posted in: Art, Food | 1

Judgemental croutons, since there are no pics of the Top Chef show on Wikipedia. But there are croutons. — Judgemental croutons, since there are no pics of the Top Chef show on Wikipedia. There are croutons, though.

While designing and sewing together my latest quilt — a complicated affair — I took in a little Top Chef on Hulu. I watched the entirety of Season 9 and enjoyed it, but I’ve had enough of that show for a while. I’m pushing my plate away. I’m dabbing the corners of my mouth with my cloth napkin. I’m telling the waiter to not serve me any more…metaphors.

Top Chef is a great show. I watched 17 episodes back to back over the course of about ten days as I stitched and snipped through the evenings. It’s good television. But either the show changed or I forgot just how grave it all is, and by the last four episodes, the vacuum of food-centric seriousness began to (cheese) grate on me.

The judges got to me first. Each judge is a talented and successful food industry person who has earned his/her opinion on kumquat, fried caper blossoms, fried caper kumquat blossoms, etc., etc. You’ve got restaurateurs, cookbook authors, chefs, vintners, celebrities in their industry — hard workers all, at the top of their game. Plus, the three main host/judges, Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi, and Gail Simmons, have been conducting Top Chef for years. They not only know food, wine, and chef-i-ness, they know Top Chef.

But all this success and knowledge is diminished after too long in hyper-focus. I don’t know if that hyper-focus is the nature of the show itself or the nature of watching an entire season in about as much time as it takes to roast a turkey. Either way, let’s look at some examples of what started to burn me out.

Example 1
Gail Simmons, pained, looks at Contestant X, who is also pained. Simmons then looks at Tom Colicchio, then back at Contestant X. “That crouton was…problematic,” Simmons says, and folds her hands. Contestant X deflates, stares hard at ground.

Example 2
Tom Colicchio, pained, looks at agonized, pained Contestants Y and Z. “I just don’t understand,” Colicchio says, earnestly baffled. “Where was the cohesion? I’m eating arugula, I’m eating cod. The cod and the arugula were not having a conversation. That was upsetting.” Contestants Y and Z shuffle feet, mumble something about the oven not being hot enough. Colicchio doesn’t blink.

Look, I get that the stakes are high. There’s a lot riding on the competition and it is a cooking show. But the problematic croutons feel silly at a certain point.

The contestants started getting to me next, but not because I decided I didn’t like them personally. I make a small portion of my living being on television, and I know firsthand how unfair it is to pass judgment on people you have never met simply because they show up on a screen in your home. A few edited minutes on camera hardly illustrates the grand symphony of one human’s experience, so judge not.

In fact, it was precisely this human shrinkage that I couldn’t get over. I’m certain the show’s audience sees 10-15% of what’s filmed in a day of Top Chef activity, and I got more and more frustrated at the style of editing we the audience are made to endure. Let’s say this is an actual sentence said by a contestant on Day 26 of the competition:

“There are no useable cherries in this bag. What the heck am I supposed to do with this? Oh, wait. Phew! Here they are! Gosh, I was really worried for a second. Sorry, that was uncalled for. Hey, does anyone have any lip balm? It’s windy on this mountaintop where we have to cook fresh fish that we caught ourselves with one hand behind our back. I really need some lip balm because I’m concerned that my lip is cracking.”

What you get on the show is this:

“There are no useable cherries in this bag. What the heck am I supposed to do with this?… I was really worried… It’s windy… We have to cook… I’m cracking.”

The fractured image I was getting of the contestants, the characters I was seeing as shaped by the producers and line editors, it all just stopped working for me.

I love to cook and I love to sew and I love to see talented people doing what they love. Therefore, I enjoy shows like Project Runway and Top Chef, because it’s interesting to watch real people do hard things that they (usually) love to do. But it’s only fashion, and it’s only food, and it’s just a bit much after so many hours, even when I’m busy doing my own art. Maybe some people live in a world where they mete out an episode a week for themselves, even while entire seasons are at their fingertips, but I am not those people. I go big when I’m home.

5 Sep 2014

The B–b Touch Story.

by Mary | posted in: Family, Story | 3

Swimsuit Layout, Ladies Home Journal, 1932. Photo: George Eastman House.

I don’t know how the story came up today, but somehow it did. I’m going to tell it to you now, and you should know two things before I begin:

1. The story involves boobs and I have to call them “boobs” because the word is part of the story;
2. I asked my younger sister for permission to write this up. When you’re telling a story about someone else’s bosom [<— see? no] you ought to ask first. A rule to live by.

Years ago, my younger sister Rebecca and I were on Washington Island, enjoying long, hazy days of summer vacation. We swam at the beach, read book after book in patio chairs on the the deck, ate candy bars and mac n’ cheese, etc. I was in the first half of high school, I think, which would’ve put my sister at the tail end of junior high.

Rebecca and I shared a room in the cabin we occupied that summer. Now, my family — me, my older sister, my younger sister, and my mom — is a loving, open one, emotionally-speaking. If you have a problem, you can talk about it and you will get a decent hug. But my mother is extremely modest and that modesty was passed onto her daughters while we lived under her roof. This is neither good nor bad, it just is. I don’t know about my sisters these days — I should ask them — but at some point I rebelled against this modesty and now wonder at times if I’m not a bit of an exhibitionist; I fling off my yoga clothes with glee and couldn’t give a flip if the shade is up or down. I kind of like it when its up.

Anyway, when Rebecca and I were sharing that room that summer**, we were respectful of each other’s privacy and gave each other a wide berth. If one of us was getting dressed, the other would get dressed in the bathroom. Privacy, space — my family respects these things and anyway, ew?? Naked sister?? Grody to the max.

But one afternoon we were changing out of our swimsuits and we ended up in our room at the same time and didn’t care. Maybe our older sister was hogging the bathroom, maybe we were rushing to get to the drive-in ice cream place before it got dark out. All of a sudden, mid-change, we decided to see who had bigger boobs.

“I think mine are bigger,” I said, my sweatshirt halfway on. We had not yet decided to actually compare chest size.

“I don’t know,” my sister said, holding up her bra, swimsuit still on. “Mine might be bigger.” There was, perhaps surprisingly, no competition between us on the issue as I remember it; we were just genuinely curious.

“Maybe we’re the same,” I said, and then, with wide eyes, “Do you want to actually see if we are? Like, should we look??”

And then, with much giggling, my sister and I got in front of the full-length mirror — careful to put plenty of space between us — and decided on the count of three that we’d yank up our respective shirts and compare boobs. Which is just what we did.

“One, two, THREE!”

We were about the same, as it turned out. And neither of us was expecting to be shocked or scandalized, but I think we were both surprised how not a big deal it was to see each other’s boobs. It was like, “Oh, sure. Boobs.” (I can only imagine how different the boys down the road would’ve reacted to such a display. A slightly different reaction, one imagines.)

But then something horrifying happened — and this is why the story gets told in my family all the time, why it turned into a catchphrase for us. My sister and I figured we had to examine from the sides, not just the front, obviously. We had a perspective issue from the front. But we did not have a plan in place for this profile view. So there we are, looking in the mirror, cocking our heads this way and that to figure out which Fons girl was ampler, and I go, “Okay, turn to the side and let’s see from the side,” and my sister, who is on my left, turns to her right. I turn to my left, and that’s when it happened: Our boobs made contact.

“AAAAAGHHHHHHHHH!” my sister screamed, jumping away from me so fast and far she practically hit the wall on the other side of the room. She made a sound like a dying goose and cried, “BOOB TOUCH!!!”

“AAAAAAGGGHHHHH!” I screamed, recoiling like a cocktail shrimp, grabbing my sweatshirt, gasping, making gagging sounds and generally making a scene. We were laughing so hard we could hardly breathe because “boob touch” was hilarious and we were totally grossed out, too. Aside from the fact that we had just TOUCHED BOOBS, we had touched clammy, post-beach, wet swimsuit boobs, so they kind stuck together for the split second that we made contact.

“BOOB TOUCH!!!! AAAAAGGHHHHHHH!” We continued to gasp and splutter and I’m sure we ran (now fully clothed, of course) to tell the story to Hannah and Mom immediately. To this day, I can make myself laugh just by making a face of teenage horror and yelling “BOOB TOUCH!!! AAAAAGHHHHH!” and I’m pretty sure my sister can do the same. It’s one of my favorite Fons sister stories.

What do you think, sis? Did I get it right?

**I’m sure that annoyed us both, but as I think back on it now, I feel a sweet pain in the general vicinity of my solar plexus; I’d give a lot, actually, to have a snapshot showing how we shared that room at that time. Did she read in her bed longer than I did? Did we laugh after the lights were off, even a little? I hope so.

3 Sep 2014

A Case For “Freedom ’90”

by Mary | posted in: Art, Paean | 1

George Michael, looking off into space that didn't suck as much as the space he was in at the time. — George Michael, looking off into space that didn’t suck as much as the space he was in at the time.

Yuri saw George Lucas on Broadway the other day! He had bushy hair and was wearing a pink shirt. George Lucas! How about that.

This post is about a different George: George Michael.

When I was in junior high school, I had a poster of George Michael on my closet door. It wasn’t life-sized — I would’ve been weirded out by an actual man-sized photograph, which says something important about a fourteen year-old girl’s sexuality — but it was full-sized, which I was very happy about. I had to cut a small chunk out of the poster on the right side to allow for the doorknob, that’s how big the poster was.

My sisters and I absolutely adored George Michael, like everyone else did at that time. He was one of the biggest stars on the planet back then and we hung on every syllable we heard him speak on the radio in that British accent (insert insane giggling and squealing here.) The five o’clock shadow, the leather jacket. The aviator shades. The song “Faith” was loved so much by me and the other girls I knew, at some point it ceased being a song and became a person — and that person was the most beautiful, perfect, fun, happy, popular person who had ever existed, ever. We conferred this strange relationship with the song onto the actual person who sang it; ergo, George Michael became the golden calf of the Winterset School System’s entire female population, at least for awhile. This phenomenon was not unique to small town Iowa; this was a craze that swept the nation, this George worship.

But all that time, George Michael was not being himself.

As we would later learn, he hated the pop idol stuff not just because it was extremely weird, but also because he was wearing a terrible, goofy mask while he endured it. A gay man, Michael not only had to pretend he was straight, he had to pretend he was the straightest man who ever lived; a real “lock up your daughters” kind of guy. He had to be a straight girl’s sex symbol rock star, for heaven’s sake, and all he really wanted to do was kiss his boyfriend and sing a duet with Elton John. (That happened later, much to George’s delight.)

After Faith sold 20 million copies and the mask hardened into something truly untenable, George Michael decided to do something about it. Enter Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1., released in 1990, when I was about to enter high school. The album is a total 180 from Faith. There are gospel choirs, acoustic guitars, great lyrics, a Stevie Wonder cover, and plenty of downtempo tracks that even I liked at as a jumpy fifteen year-old. Michael refused to use his face on the cover of the record, nor would he allow his face to be in any videos that were released for singles. Crazy, I know. Crazy and awesome.

Freedom ’90 is a track from that album and I believe that it is a perfect song. They do exist, you know, perfect songs, and this is one of them. You can sing to it. You can dance to it. It’s got highs and lows. It’ll give you goosebumps when it hits the bridge, but when you hum it to yourself later, washing the dishes, you might find you’ve got a little frog in your throat because the lyrics are so touching, so real. Look what he says:

“All we have to do now/is take these lies/and make them true, somehow
All we have to see/is that I don’t belong to you/and you don’t belong to me.”

That’s a sincere cry from a man wearing a mask, coming to terms with his life, and that’s a sentiment can get maudlin and lame real quick. But Freedom ’90 is a celebratory wild yawp, sonically. You’ve got a tambourine, cymbal crashes, a dirty “wonka-chika-wonka-chika” funk guitar on it, and “dunk-a-chika-dunk! dunk-a-chika-dunk” beat that from the instant it starts, your booty is moving. It’s the opposite of maudlin, miles and miles away from sog or pity. It’s a great, great song. I watched the video again tonight and was a little bummed that it didn’t hold up quite as well as I thought it would, but the 90s supermodels are lovely in their prime and it’s still awesome to see the guitar, leather jacket, and jukebox from the Faith video blow up a bunch of times.

Interesting note: I have had several boyfriends in my life who had Freedom ’90 in “favorite songs” lists. A boyfriend of mine in college was fond of ska and punk music, bands with names like Choking Victim and Rancid. But I think he knew how good and honest Freedom ’90 really was and he liked it because of that. If punk rock is about saying “I don’t have to be like you, at all” then George Michael was totally punk rock with that song and the whole Listen Without Prejudice album.

You should listen to it. Watch the video later; just listen to Freedom ’90 first, loud as you’re able to. Then listen to Faith. Then sing Freedom to yourself while you wash the dishes and think about what lies you can make true, somehow.

I did that today, and it felt pretty good.

2 Sep 2014

Art Interlude: Patchwork Foto

by Mary | posted in: Art | 2

Foto Scan, 2014. — Patchwork Foto No. 291871, 2014.

Patchwork Foto, 2014. — Patchwork Foto No. 101, 2014.

I make art from time to time. I like to put words on things and enjoy using my utter lack of training in computer-aided graphic design to my advantage.

Example: the homepage of my website. I needed new slideshow pictures desperately. I have no web designer on retainer at the moment, nor do I have Photoshop (these things are expensive and I need to pay rent in New York right now.) Necessity is the mother of invention, as anyone with a website and no “web guy” knows, so, faced with a creative challenge, I cobbled together a solution that I feel turned out pretty slick. I used from images from my book, multiplying them and staggering them just so. I like the result. Check it out when you’re done here, if you like.

The humble scanner is a great tool for non art-school people who wish to make art with their computer. The scanner is really a camera, only what you take pictures of takes on this flattened quality because, you know, the scanner is flat and stuff. I started scanning quilt blocks a few years ago (my Twitter banner has been a scanned red quilt block forever) and thought they were just rad-looking; there’s a milky quality to fabric when it’s scanned, and all the threads seem magnified and all the rips are suddenly centerstage. I love it.

This weekend I did some scans, this time with messages and fabric from my stash with some patchwork thrown in for fun. Examples above of what I call “Patchwork Foto.” That’s what these sorts of pictures are called, I’ve decided. It’s like “ramen.” Singular, but it has lots of pieces. It’s art! You gotta name it funny.

I’m breaking the “one image only” rule for PaperGirl but the exception proves the rule and besides, this is a series. Watch for more of these and the development of them. They’re part of a larger project.

1 Sep 2014

Ah, Youth!

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Luv, New York City | 4

A still from television's Little House on the Prairie. Kids these days! — A still from television’s Little House on the Prairie. Kids these days!

Happy Labor Day.

The U.S. Department of Labor tells us that in 1887, there were five forward-thinking states that voted to observe a newfangled thing called “Labor Day.” Among those five states: New York. Perhaps that’s why everyone has been so crazy in the city this weekend; I’m sure everyone living here knows New York was an early adopter of Labor Day and the knowledge has made them drunk on power. And alcohol.

Before I get to the story about nearly stepping on two kids making out in my apartment building last night, a terrific quote from one Mr. Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners back in the early 1880s. McGuire was a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor and he is credited by many as being the first to suggest there oughtta be a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

I think that’s pretty well-said, don’t you? “Who from rude nature” and “delved and carved” are downright snazzy, son. And he’s right, too: We do behold grandeur, all over the place, all the time. If you don’t see it, you should clean your glasses.

Now, about stepping on these kids.

Several of Yuri’s friends were in New York to attend the U.S. Open and we went out with them last night. It was very, very difficult for me to wrench myself away from my sewing machine (I’m working on entering a quilt in QuiltCon this year) but I delved and carved myself into a Roberto Cavalli dress that made me feel like a real kitten and I got into the mood. I checked my diet rulebook and, to my delight, found that tequila is allowed. I had two modest servings of Don Julio on the rocks last night and nothing horrifying occurred. Good news for my guts and my brain, which was starting to feel a little “all work, no play.”

We taxied to a place. We danced. We clinked glasses with friends. We moved to another place. There was revelry. But not surprisingly, I was ready to go home before Yuri was ready. There was no drama in this. We’re reasonable people and we have different thresholds and clocks and such.

“Honey, I think I’m gonna dip!” I shouted over the boots-cats-boots-cats music throbbing through the speakers somewhere deep in the Lower East Side.

“What?” Yuri turned his ear toward me. An extremely enthusiastic Puerto Rican girl who wasn’t an inch over five feet tall careened past us and slammed into a man I hoped was her boyfriend. Splash.

“I’m gonna take off! I’ve had fun! I’m good! You stay out!” Behind me, a hand rested lightly on my waist. I realized it was not Yuri and gave the man behind me a filthy look; he retreated.

Yuri gave me a look of “I don’t want you to leave” but, being a reasonable person who knows me by now, said, “Are you sure?” and when I nodded vigorously, hugged me tight and said, “Okay, baby. Let’s get you a cab.”

When I got home, I had a dickens of a time getting the front gate open. I was at it for 10 minutes and when I finally got in the door, I was elated. It was nearly two in the morning and I was in very high heels. I was so happy, I didn’t mind that I nearly stepped on two youngsters in flagrante on the floor. Right there, on the floor of the building, at the foot of the stairs, laying on top of each other and vigorously making out, was the son of my landlord and a cute little blond gal.

“Oh! Uh, sorry,” I said, and waited for them to sort of roll out of my way. I needed to go up the stairs.

“No, we’re sorry,” said the young man, and kind of smooshed his way over to the side. I can’t verify it, but I’m guessing they had been drinking. An iPhone fell out of the girl’s pocket and I barely missed stepping on that. I’m telling you, they were lying on the floor! The landlord’s kid! And some girl who looked like she just had her sweet sixteen! A Labor Day scandal!

“Watch your phone, there,” I said, and I couldn’t help but smile as I made my way up the stairs. I thought about those kids — they were maybe college freshman-age? younger? — and how different their lives are from mine. I mean, this apartment building is really pretty amazing and the young guy, his dad owns it. In New York City. It’s huge. It’s pre-war. It’s a stunning place, with art all over the walls and vaulted ceilings. No wonder the landlord’s kid can nab the cute blondes, you know? He’s got game. My make-out sessions in high school (which totaled about four, by the way) took place in cars or cornfields. Same planet — but you know what they say about the worlds.

Enjoy your four-day work week, you crazy New Yorkers. And me, and you. Let’s all enjoy the grandeur of the week however many bodies we have to step over as we labor.

30 Aug 2014

“Suddenly, The Koons Is Me.”

by Mary | posted in: Art | 0

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, by Jeff Koons, 1988. Photo: Mary Fons

Yuri and I went to the Whitney Museum yesterday for the Jeff Koons retrospective. We loved every second of it. If you are in New York now or will be between now and October 29th, I urge you to see the exhibit yourself.

Maybe don’t take your kids if they’re under thirteen or fourteen. There are a few moment of technicolor nudity writ real large in the show and that could be disturbing for a kid, I suppose (probably more so for the adult who has to answer the inevitable questions, e.g., “Why are that man and that woman stuck together like that, Mommy? Is she crying?”, etc.) But there’s so much that a child would absolutely go nuts for, though — the giant pile of clay, the inflatables, etc. — it’s painful to actively dissuade families. Maybe just skip the fourth floor of the show where all the porny stuff is?

Here’s what the Whitney says about Koons:

Jeff Koons is widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, popular, and controversial artists of the postwar era. Throughout his career, he has pioneered new approaches to the readymade, tested the boundaries between advanced art and mass culture, challenged the limits of industrial fabrication, and transformed the relationship of artists to the cult of celebrity and the global market.

That means he’s really cool, he’s super smart, and his art is very, very expensive. A lot of people cannot stand Jeff Koons (or his art) for those very reasons. Koons haters have long hauled out the tired, meaningless, “That’s not art,” defense, or — worse because it’s incorrect — they’ll sniff, “I could do that.” You couldn’t. Neither could I. You could make your art. And I could make my art. But Jeff Koons’s yacht-sized balloon dog (or the glorious, exuberant, first version of “Puppy,” made of 20,000 live flowers, which wasn’t at the show because it was an installation in a castle in Germany in 1992) is his art and I, for one, think it’s marvelous.

The “readymade” that they reference in the Whitney bit is the Warhol thing of taking a box of Brillo pads, for example, and putting it literally on a pedestal and saying, “This is art.” Now, Warhol got that from Marcel Duchamp, who did it first: Duchamp was a koo-koo-krazy Dadaist who put a ceramic urinal on a pedestal, signed it “R. Mutt,” and sat back to see what the art world would do. That was in 1917 and art has not been the same since. Plenty of folks (then and now) wished art would go back to nice, simple paintings, but that is silly because there has always been transgressive art. Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, Manet’s Olympia — today, these paintings are downright tame (albeit beautiful and kinda creepy in their respective ways) but when they were unveiled, they were not. People lost their minds and said the world was going to hell in a handbasket. Under the sun, there is nothing new for us. You do get that, right? I am reminded all the time.

If you want nice simple paintings, you can get them. Boy, can you get them. But for those who want their art to reflect back the world as it truly feels — fractured, splintered, beautiful, hilarious, ridiculous, frightening, etc. — we need our Koonses, our Duchamps, and our Warhols for sure. The Koons exhibit reminded me that the world is all of the things I think it is, but more, so much more than that as well: more frightening, more beautiful, more unknowable. It did precisely what art is supposed to do.

And you know, boobs and plastic and stuff.

**Editor’s Note: The title of this post is a line from a Lady Gaga song. Gaga’s latest album, “ARTPOP”, features cover art by Jeff Koons. I have listened to that album so many times, my iTunes is like, “Oh for heaven’s sake… REALLY?? AGAIN with the Gaga???”

28 Aug 2014

A Morning Ritual, Changed.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Sicky | 1

I have one Versace teacup. It's in storage right now. — I have exactly one Versace teacup. I got it on eBay and yeah, the tea tastes better. Currently in storage.

This morning, I drank tea and wrote in my journal. It was the same as so many mornings, save for two differences: the tea was black and the sky was light. Not long ago, it was the other way around.

Almost every day of last year and into a healthy slice of this one, I would get up before the sun to read and write. I rarely set an alarm; I just woke up, sometimes at 3:30 in the morning, unable to go back to sleep. This was due partly because I was excited by the prospect of being up when so few others were. I felt as though the hours from 3:30am to 5:30am were on sale; perfectly fine hours that no one really wanted. They came cheap.

But I also woke up because like a newborn baby, I needed soothing. I was scared and sad and lonesome, “waking at four to soundless dark.”** Having my tea tray in bed in the middle of the night with my journal and books all around me was how I soothed myself. The routine was the gentle mother, swaying me to calm.

The fall of 2012 was the worst time of my life, health-wise. The despair of searing, chronic pain worked its way into every fiber of my frame. The sheer exhaustion of day-in, day-out agony management had constricted my world into a hard, glittering dot. I worked very hard. I was in a relationship I cherished, but there were limits to it and we both knew it. My social life outside of seeing Mr. X dwindled to zero, as most of the time I didn’t have the energy to make plans, much less make good on them. I fought with my sisters or I withdrew from them. My mom and I weren’t getting along, either. I didn’t want any of this whittling away to be true, except that I did, if it meant sanity. The hard, glittering dot I could focus on. Everything else was too hard. I was in the hospital all the time.

The medication I was taking made my head feel like a rainstick. You know those things you get in hippie music stores? It was like that when I sat up in bed. “Wffffffft,” my face and brain would go, one way, then I’d put my head on the headboard and breathe and “Wfffffff,” the rainstick would run the other way. I’d take a deep breath — not too deep — and determine if my guts were good, bad, or a real laugh riot. At that time, it was usually the riot. After gentle tummy rub and pat and an admonishment to stop flirting with cigarettes (there were days I’d have half a one, feeling it was justified, being in the trenches and all) I’d decide that I could make it to the kitchen. I’d usually have to stop halfway from my bedroom to put my hand on the living room table and let the rainstick go for a minute, but I never fainted.

Then tea tray preparation would commence and I so enjoyed it. While I waited for the water to boil in my stainless steel kettle (I brought it to New York with me, like a goldfish) I would do the things. Into the French press went the tea: Earl Gray Creme, loose, from Teavana or Argo Tea. No variation there; I’ve been drinking this tea for years. Then, into a little monkey dish my sister Rebecca made in her pottery class, almonds: Dry Roasted & Salted from Trader Joe’s. They had to be these almonds; no others would do. Then…Nutella. I’d scoop a big scoop of Nutella into the little monkey dish because Nutella and Dry Roasted & Salted almonds from Trader Joe’s is delicious. It’s like eating a candy bar in a bowl. Sweet, salty, and totally decadent without being half a cheesecake or a box of petit fours. (One of the results of being so physically miserable all the time is that you feel you have license to eat whatever the Sam Hill you want to, especially if you’re only managing about 1000 calories a day.)

With the honey pot, the pichet of milk, a couple spoons, a little dish of meds, and my fancy Versace teacup, I’d be ready. The water would reach pre-boiling, I’d pour it into the French press, and then I’d carry the whole operation back to my fluffy, lovely bed and sink into the cloud again.

I read all kinds of things. And I wrote pages and pages. I wrote my grad school essay that way and I would work, too, so there’s a lot of those mornings in Quilty, however invisible they may be in a happy quilting magazine. You never know; maybe the weirdness is there. Quilty is kinda weird.

The 4am mornings, they’ve been slipping away. This spring, when I was first in NYC with Yuri, I kept them up a little, but my body and brain were soon in agreement that sleeping in the arms of love is better than sitting alone, crunching hard almonds coated in the sugar that was probably killing you all along.

Yuri sleeps later than me still, though, so I still get up and read and write. But the tea is black. And the sky is light. And that rhymes and I love it, and I love that it rhymes.

**From Philip Larkin’s “Aubade,” the finest poem in the English language, in my view, and a kind of poetic soundtrack, if you will, to this entire era.

27 Aug 2014

Grace Coolidge, Raccoon Whisperer (or: On Not Being One Kind of Blog)

by Mary | posted in: Art, Work | 16

Grace, with raccoon, 1927. — Grace with raccoon, Easter Day, 1927.

That photograph is of First Lady Grace Coolidge with Rebecca, her pet raccoon. My younger sister’s name is Rebecca. Though there are zero Rebeccas in Fons or Graham family history, I am confident my little sister was not named after a White House raccoon. There was no Internet when she was born, for one thing. Did my parents even know about the Coolidge raccoon? Without the Internet, how did they know anything? How did they even know the name Rebecca? The mind reels.*

I don’t know if it shows, but I spend an inordinate amount of my day

1) panicking about the certain-if-not-imminent collapse of America (it’ll be because of the banks)
2) thinking about PaperGirl and its continuity, quality, etc.
3) in search of lost time

That second thing is the most surmountable here, so let’s mount. The goal for me with the ol’ PG is to never let it be about one thing. Life is not about one thing, after all. There’s a lure of making a blog about one thing. A “Mommy” blog can be marketed as such, same as “Foodie” blogs. You can’t blame a person for wanting to have a niche and stick to it. A blog that is about one thing has an easy elevator speech. Let’s listen in on a conversation between a food blogger (“FOOD BLOGGER”) and an advertising executive (“AD EXEC”) in an elevator at a busy blogging convention:

FOOD BLOGGER: (Noticing AD EXEC’s badge.) Oh, hi. You’re an ad exec.
AD EXEC: Yes, I am.
FOOD BLOGGER: (Extends hand.) I’m a blogger. I have over 15,000 page views a month and a bounce rate of 7%. Most people stay on my page for eight minutes at a time.
AD EXEC: Those are great numbers. What’s your blog about?
FOOD BLOGGER: Food.
AD EXEC: Here’s my card.

Let’s listen in on another conversation. We’re at that same blogging convention and two ladies meet each other in a line for coffee:

LADY 1: Boy, am I ready for a latte!
LADY 2: Tell me about it. (Glances at LADY 1’s badge; it says “Blogger.”) What’s your blog called?
LADY 1: (With dreamy look) TheKidsAreAlright-dot-Mom-dot-Blogspot-dot-Com.
LADY 2: I’m a mommy blogger, too! (The women embrace.)

And what’s my blog about? Everything. Nothing at all. I’ve auditioned several replies to the question, but none seem to be winners. (This does not inspire confidence in the concept of the thing.) Attempts to answer “What’s your blog about?” have included:

“It’s a blog about… My… Life?”
Eyes glaze.

“It’s… Well, it’s about all kinds of things.”
Folks suddenly need to check for text messages.

“You know, it’s just sort of a clearinghouse for thoughts. But it’s not just me rambling on about this or that, no way. I try to keep things tight. I have a point of view and I try to…keep things…tight.”
No, no, no. I’ve totally lost them.

Putting a picture up there of Grace with her raccoon, that was me being my own trainer, trying lead my brain away from the trap of consistency. If I write about my diet too much, I’m a “health and wellness” blogger or — far more undesirable to me — a blogger who writes mainly about her chronic health problems. (I recognize the value of such blogs and have no criticism for people who write them, I just don’t want to write a blog like that.) If I write about living in NYC too much, I might alienate all the non-NYC (or non-NYC-loving) readers out there and be labeled an “urban” blogger, which sounds trendy and gross.

I must stay on my toes. While updating readers on the progress of my radical, intestine-rescue diet is appropriate from time to time in the name of consistency, I mustn’t offer daily reports of how it feels to eat hamburger patties for breakfast. (It’s weird but I’m getting used to it.) Though I had doctor’s appointments yesterday and today that I do want to share about at some point, I must vary my dispatches so that PaperGirl is not a long slog through the life and times of a gimpy gal with flagging chutzpah in the face of significant health issues. I have to do the slog; why should you?

So the raccoon. Does that make sense? And if someone wants to take a stab at the question, “What is PaperGirl about?” by all means do so. I need a good answer.

*An Internet search tells me Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and the Bible were both around before the Internet, so maybe my folks got the name from one of those places. I should ask my mom.

25 Aug 2014

My Novel Idea.

by Mary | posted in: Art, Family, Story | 8

Photo: E.J. Bellocq. (A very interesting fellow; if you look him up, note that there will be a fair amount of NSFW content.) — The man who took this photo, E.J. Bellocq, was an interesting fellow. Look him up, but take caution: most of his photography would be NSFW.

My mother is writing a novel.

For many years she talked about writing it, but now she’s actually doing it. She’s workshopping chapters, attending writing groups (one of which she started herself because that’s what you do when you’re Marianne Fons), and she’s a sponge for information on how to go from idea to page, from page to accepted manuscript, from publication to the paperback rack in every airport Hudson News from here to Bejing. If anyone can write a novel (and not many can) my mother can.

I also have an idea for a novel — but I have almost zero desire to write it. Though I applaud my mother’s efforts and support this particular flavor of The American Dream, I have reason to believe writing a novel is not fun. I wrote a one-woman show and it nearly killed me. Hemingway shot himself in the head. One of my favorite essayists, Joseph Epstein wrote in the New York Times in 2002:

“Without attempting to overdo the drama of the difficulty of writing, to be in the middle of composing a book is almost always to feel oneself in a state of confusion, doubt and mental imprisonment, with an accompanying intense wish that one worked instead at bricklaying.”

Still, the dream to write a novel has its pull. There have been three occasions in my life when I shared my storyline with someone (we all have to listen to our friends’ novel ideas, sometimes) and each time that happened, the concept of actually writing the dang thing got goosed.

Here’s the idea:

The book opens at the height of the Chinese Opium War. It’s the 1830s. Chaos. Death. Opium dens. Dirty deals. Murder. Money. It’s quite the moment in human history. The story is set in Brittain, China, points far flung; this is a global adventure. Ship voyages, train voyages. The book is written in the third person and we get POVs for anyone and everyone, but the meat of the story follows Josephine Ella (not settled on that name, yet) as she rises to become the most powerful madam on two continents! Two really big continents!

She’s this brilliant businesswoman whose whole goal is to help her fellow countrywoman rise out of poverty. Is she going about it all wrong with the whole brothel thing? Yes, except that all her “girls” are healthy and have their own money and she encourages them to leave as soon as they can and make a life for themselves. Anyway, she’s got a heart of gold, naturally, and everyone loves her.

There’s a love triangle! There’s a super high-up executive in the East India Company who falls in love with her and promises her riches beyond her wildest dreams, but he has to compete with the general in the British Army who is also in love with her. And then there’s an opium trader who is also in love with her. But Josephine actually pines for her childhood sweetheart, the boy who saved her from certain death when she was abandoned by her mother and we find out Josephine is adopted! And then she gets addicted to opium!! But then she gets better!

And that’s like, the first book. Then there’s the second book, which is the prequel. The third book is the continuation of the first book, and then you’ve got all the spin-offs.

The movie will be amazing. The costumes? I mean can you imagine? Fughettaboudit.

24 Aug 2014

Indefi-fatidi-ga-flipping-impossible.

by Mary | posted in: Word Nerd | 4

Indefatigable.

Indefatigable. Indefatigable.

Indef — OH, FOR LORD’S SAKE!

I just hate that word because I cannot pronounce it. Years! Years I try, years I end up with something that sounds like a dog trying to speak English or a mush-mouthed come-on word from a very drunk man, as in, “Baby, you’re jusht.. Wow, indegfahekgaaaaaahh — buy me a drink.” To make matters worser, I usually try not one but several of the homemade variations below, as I’ll say “indefatigable” once, get mad that I know how to use the word in a sentence but can never successfully pronounce it, then try again with another version, fail again, and then just say, “You know, like, uh, unwavering.” My attempts have included:

indefatigatible
indefatable-gull
indafigatable

I’m about to indefuggetaboutit. Anyone else have issues with this one? Tricks to remember how to say it?

I ask because one can change these things. For the longest time, I could never quite remember what the word cipher meant. I would kinda recall that it meant…mysterious? Murky? I knew that wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t lock it into my brain, which is a shame because it’s such a great word. Then one day I realized that I know and use the word decipher all the time! To decipher means to figure out something unclear, especially something you read or study, like writing. But of course! A cipher is a secret way of writing. To decipher it would be to figure it out. Voila! The vocabulary needle gets moved.

But the other one. The one up there. Still no good.

22 Aug 2014

Alone At Last: Making Sewing Hot Since 1915.

by Mary | posted in: Art, Quilting | 10

"Alone At Last," A. Willette, 1915. — “Alone At Last,” A. Willette, 1915.

I know.

It’s one heck of a picture, especially if you’re a chick who likes to sew.

I found it quite by accident while sifting through Wikicommons, a clearinghouse for public domain images that is occasionally The Best Thing Ever. I say “occasionally” because copyrighted work (i.e., The Wizard of Oz, images of the quilts of Gee’s Bend, etc.) is, by definition, not in the public domain, so Wikicommons has its limits because those copyrighted images are the ones tends to need most and they are not there. But then you find something like this and it’s just great.

The drawing was made by Frenchman Adolphe Willette (1857-1926) and the description we get from the Wikifolk (via the Library of Congress) says:

“A soldier on leave from World War I embraces a young woman, whose chair by a sewing machine tipped in haste while she answered his arrival. At his heels a small dog begs for attention.”

That dog’s gon’ wait awhile.

My mom and I speak on American quilts and quilters and we often remark on the need for a tune-up of the quilter’s public image. The world tends to picture us as being — how to put it — rather long in tooth and either super docile or extra cranky. (There there are those who fit such bills.) But American quilters are 21 million strong: We’re as diverse a group as that number would clearly produce. There are interesting reasons for the prevailing image of the “little old lady” quilter which I’d love to expound upon at a later time — it has to do with WWII — but for now, l urge you to share this free image with wild abandon. Credit it properly, of course, and pin it and tell your friends.

We quilters are a saucy bunch when we want to be, darn it. We may be ample-bosomed. Long-legged. Firecrackery.* Lusty. We, like the nerdy librarians (who clearly have a good PR machine working for them) need simply to take off our glasses and take out our hairpins to reveal sexy, sensuous kittens with throaty laughs who were just waiting for you to take a little initiative, soldier.

Though… Well, wait till we finish this block. Then take the initiative. Because we just have the one seam left. On this block. Just… Hang on just one second, dear.

*Firecrackery = new word, possibly best word ever

21 Aug 2014

Cinnamon Rolls, No Fingie.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Food | 6

The cinnamon rolls, from the Minimalist Baker. (Recipe in comments!)

There’s a real trick to living, a knack one has to get. I totally get the knack on lock for a minute but then I lose it again. It would be nice for the ground to stop moving under my feet; maybe then, maybe then.

Thank goodness this post is about homemade cinnamon rolls.

If I love you, I cook for you. I’m not a lusty Italian woman with an ample bosom and flour on her apron, caught in a perpetual loop of plucking ripe tomatoes off the vine (for love.) But I recently came across these words from that man about food, Michael Pollan, and he’s got it right:

“For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?”

We all know Yuri likes cookys, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my skills with cheesecake send him over the moon. But I got it into my head last week that I needed to bake something else special for this special man, something truly “Woah.” Cinnamon rolls seemed to be the “woah” ticket. Gooey, ooey, warm cinnamon rolls that might look right at home on a farmhouse table with a pot of hot coffee nearby. Lordy! Bring me my purse! We got groceries to git!

My rolls were interesting to make and they turned out beautifully. But as I was drowning the hot, cinnamony bombs of yum in thick cream cheese frosting, I knew there was something else going on, something other than the “Let me feed you” thing. There is nothing in a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls that is “legal” for me to eat except the cinnamon — and even that isn’t recommended for a few weeks. The cinnamon rolls, which I have never made in my life until now, were clearly me living vicariously through Yuri.

Which is okay. I mean, there are cinnamon rolls as a result, so it can’t be that awful. It is dangerous, though: I very nearly popped a frosting-coated finger into my mouth as I put the empty bowl into the sink. This is not an option for me today. Why make such a gorgeous city and lock yourself out of the gates?

Knack, knack. Who’s there?

19 Aug 2014

Old Friends: The Sylvanian Families

by Mary | posted in: Art, Family, Luv, Travel | 2

Sylvanian Families, shown here enacting the Sgt. Pepper album cover. — The Sylvanian Families, shown here reenacting the Sgt. Pepper album cover.

I wish I had more cause to use the word “sylvan” on a regular basis. Sylvan means “of the forest” and it’s a well-formed adjective if you ask me, a real looker. I’m also fond of it because it’s the root word in the name Sylvanian, as in The Sylvanian Families, the line of woodland creature miniatures that experienced huge popularity in the US in the late 1980s. I was a child in the late 1980s and my sisters and I had a handful of Sylvanian Family characters. Did we love anything more than these toys? Maybe we loved our mother more.

Maybe.

The Sylvanian Family toys are achingly adorable. They defy the laws of cute. Somewhere, there toy designers responsible for these things are doing time for crimes against humanity. For one thing, Sylvanians are perfectly sized: around two to five inches tall, depending on the character. They all wear finely made clothes — pinafores, little overalls, kerchiefs. They’re plastic, but they’re soft. They have like, a soft little pelt of fur on them. They have little black eyes that are either glistening with love for you or sparkling with general jolliness, depending on the light in the play room.

Sylvanians are grouped first into species; in my day, that meant rabbits, squirrels, beaver, hedgehogs, bears, foxes, raccoons, deer, and mice. These days, the company who makes them** has more animals on offer, including freaking meerkats. Within the species there are different families with the most wonderful names, e.g., The Timbertop Family (bears), The Dappledawn Family (rabbits), and The Thistlethorn Family (mice.) Within the families are the individuals (e.g., Brother Dexter Pepperwood, Sister Magdelena, Baby Aiden, etc.) and they all have their little character descriptions.

As it turns out, The Sylvanian Families toy line originated in Japan. When I read that, everything made sense. The Japanese do seem to have a lock on cute. The word “kawaii” means “cute” in that culture and even the word “kawaii” is cute. You can really take those double “ii’s” into a high register. It’s perfect for those moments when you see a figurine that is a tiny mouse baby with a diaper on and her own teensy baby bottle.

There t’wernt a lot of money in the ol’ Fons household back when we were kids playing with toys, but before the divorce came in and effectively closed the toy box, we scored a few rabbits and foxes and a couple mice, I think. My sister and I were reminiscing about the Sylvanian Families today and also about taking a trip together. We could use a little bonding time, a little one-on-one. We’re all grown up now and it takes planning to make plans.

We were thinking about locales when it came to me: “Wait a minute,” I said to my sister, clicking and clacking on my computer. “There’s a Sylvanian Families store in London.”

“Well,” said my sister, “Maybe we should go to London.”

We may just. If we do go, it will be in December and it won’t be a terribly long trip. London is expensive, I’m only able to eat hamburger patties for a year or so, and it’ll be chilly at the Thames that time of year. But I can sip tea with my sister. And we can talk about the blue shag rug at the farmhouse. And we can buy a few little mice while we’re in town.

**The story of the manufacture of these toys is long, long, long and complex and confusing. Many companies have owned the line and its knock-offs and licensed etcetera. Wikipedia is there for you if you seek the deets.

18 Aug 2014

High Heels On a Bike = Remarkable?

by Mary | posted in: Fashion, New York City | 4

I'm like her! Only I've got heels on and she's younger than me or uses excellent face cream. Photo: NY Transit Forums — The Citbikes of New York. I’m like this chick! Only I’ve got heels on and she’s younger than me or uses excellent face cream. Photo: NY Transit Forums

A large man with a proportionately large afro shouted to me today that I was the most amazing thing he had seen in New York City.

Let me explain.

Some time ago, I spoke of my love of the Chicago Divvy bikeshare program in its infancy; the NYC version works just the same and upon arrival I became a key-carrying member. The bikeshare system has changed the way I relate to this city and I am most grateful for it.

In years past, I was a subway-taker, like everyone else in Manhattan who doesn’t have a driver. (This is most people, though in Manhattan, Those Who Are Chauffeured must be counted.) I had to admit to myself awhile back that even though the people-watching and the idea of the subway is cool to me, the actual subway makes me claustrophobic and neurotic. At least once per ride, I think of a skyscraper sighing down into the ground the moment I’m barreling underneath it and !squish! bye-bye Mary and everyone else who just wanted to go see a movie or whatever.

The other trouble with the subway in a city so intricate as New York is that I would descend into a hole and pop up out of another hole and miss the geography of the place. It’s hard for me to get the lay of the land that way; I need to knit together the streets, the blocks, the neighborhoods. As my main mode of transport is now the Citibike, this is solved. I am understanding this place in a way I never have before. And yes, I wear a helmet. You just have to wear one.

So back to Afro Man.

I like to wear heels. I’m the shortest in my family, so I took to wearing heels years ago and now it’s just a rule. I also like to be girly and fancy. I ride my bike in heels, too. Not all of my shoes are appropriate for this, but my knockin’ around town heels are. They even have little nubbly things for traction.

As I hopped onto a Citibike to go to the store for farmer’s cheese, I swung my leg up over the saddle of my horse-slash-bike, and my be-heeled feets began to push the pedals. I went about a half a block and slowed for a car to pass when the aforementioned large man with the aforementioned large afro called out to me from the sidewalk.

“High heels on a bike!” he whistled. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen in New York City so far!” He laughed and shook his head.

I laughed, too. “You haven’t seen much yet,” I called after him, and rode away.

17 Aug 2014

Quilts + My Brain Fog

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Quilting, Work | 6

Eva Phillips, Lora King and Crystal Cruise on side of quilt frame. Photo: Terry Eiler, 1978.

Nestled cozily in the Library of Congress, waiting for me to discover it tonight while doing research, the photograph above shows members of the Meadows of Dan Baptist Church quilting group hand quilting a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt on a frame. Isn’t it marvelous?

Quilts have wrapped around me, covered the ground under me, and been pulled over me my whole life. As a tot, I sat on a lap I had to share with a wooden hoop (didn’t mind.) I played under tables in church basements while quilts were basted above me. Spools of thread were great tables for my sisters and my Sullivan Family figurines. Being immersed like this means I have had a deep love for the American patchwork quilt for a long time, almost like a person loves her country. There’s no question, almost no notice taken of the love and honor one has for it; it’s just who you are.

As a result of this immersion and by sheer osmosis I’ve known a fair bit about quilts and quiltmaking for some time — even when I wasn’t making quilts myself.

My “quilt epiphany” happened right around the time I got sick. Life as I knew it was falling to pieces, and it made perfect sense to tear fabric up into pieces and sew it back together again, but prettier. Growing along with my passion for making quilts grew a deep and abiding love for the history of the American quilt, the story of the thing, the reasons why, the hows, the styles, etc. And so my quilt geekhood has ripened into true geekdom. I could talk double-pinks and madder browns all day, I think. The stories, the people, the quilts themselves never get old. Even when they are old.

This post has taken me well over an hour to compose and it’s still not right. My brain is in a fog. The diet is very difficult. My guts feel better — honestly, they do. In fact, there are several reasons to be extremely happy with the results of this major change so far.

But I’m slow. And I’m foggy. And I keep looking at those women quilting and I would like to crawl under the table and be six.

16 Aug 2014

The Color Me Quilter Promo Video.

by Mary | posted in: Pendennis, Work | 0

A still from the film. (A fancy way of saying I took a screenshot of my screen while the video was playing.)

I made a video.

It is very silly, but it’s also meant to be informative.

It explains a bit about the webinar series I do called “Color Me Quilter.” The next one is on Thursday, and it’s all about blue. Blue and white quilts, indigo dye, how to “audition” blues for your quilt (green-based? red-based? help!) and a bonus lesson, plus all kinds of other pretty fascinating stuff you never knew about blue as it relates to quiltmaking in America. These webinars, they’re kinda neat.

Pendennis helped me make this video and I’m afraid he appears extremely ornery in it. He’s actually well-mannered for a monkey. I think it’s a snack issue. He needs a lot of snacks and he didn’t have one before we started. As you’ll see in the video, he reaches a point where he simply can’t wait.

Check out Color Me Quilter. You will like it. And do enjoy the video by clicking right heah.

15 Aug 2014

The Big Orange Head Joke.

by Mary | posted in: Joke | 3

Tonight, a joke.

I’d heard this one before, but driving in Wisconsin not long ago, I heard it again on the radio. It’s a keeper for sure — and the kids love it.

A guy is walking along the street one day and he sees his friend Tom. But Tom looks different. Tom has a big orange head. Like, his head is big and orange. The guy goes over to Tom right away.

“Tom! Hey, man… What happened to your head?” asks the guy.

“It was the darndest thing,” says Tom. “I found one of those magic genie lamps. You know, the ones where you rub the side and the genie comes out and grants you three wishes?”

“Wow!” says the guy. “That’s amazing!”

“I know!” says Tom. “And he wasn’t kidding. I wished for a million bucks and poof! The genie showed me on my phone that I had a million bucks in the bank.”

“Holy cow!” says the guy.

“Yep. Then, I wished for a beautiful wife and poof! this amazing woman appeared and we’re married and she’s incredible, look.” and Tom shows the guy a picture of his beautiful wife.

“Dang,” says the guy. “That’s unbelieveable!” Then, eyeing Tom, he says, “What was the third wish?”

“Well,” said Tom, “For my third wish, I wished for a big orange head.”

[that’s it]

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