Rather ominous photo of cologne in Milan, 1965. Image: Wikipedia.
Forgive me for being absent a few days, but there simply is no time to do anything whatsoever but repack my suitcase, answer emails, make rawther important phone calls, and smell Nick.
Yes, Nick, my PIO — that’s “Person of Interest” — smells so good, I need to smell him whenever possible. I’m glad most of my work requires me to go out of town, because if I had to work around Nick, smelling as good as he does, I would get nothing done. Have you ever tried to write a letter from the editor while sniffing the collar of someone’s t-shirt? Pointless!
Nick has always smelled great. He’s got that wonderful smell of a guy who cares about his laundry. He smells like a person who really scrubs the back of his neck when he takes a shower and he definitely reads the care labels on his clothes. Do you know what I mean? That sort of “this is just who I am” smell is enough to make me kind of woozy, but it’s worse, now, because Nick has become smitten with a certain cologne. This cologne smells great in the bottle but let me tell you: It’s downright criminal on Nick.
The fragrance: Neroli Portofino Acqua by Tom Ford.
It’s hard to describe the scent — scents are tough — but I’ll try. It’s got bergamot going on; it’s got a hint of lemon. It’s musky and dusky. It’s young but not frivolous. It’s smart but not stuffy. When I smell it, I think of a person who takes cool trips and does cool things and is kind to animals. Also, that person knows how to bake scones with currants and when you visit them in their country home for a week in the summer, they know you love them. It goes without saying that this mythical cologne person is rich. Because some colognes just smell expensive, you know? Neroli Portofino Acqua one smells like it has to cost a fortune, but it turns out that a small bottle isn’t terribly expensive at about $100 plus tax. The price surprised me and Nick, too, considering the fancy Tom Ford label and the way it smells like it has gold flecks in it or something.*
Nick and I have been talking a lot about fears and “what comes next” and we had a text message fight yesterday. I never have text message fights but it was a weak moment. We’re sort of at a point — and relationships have all kinds of different points all the time, it’s not just one — where we are either going to kick it up a notch … or not, I guess. The fear of failure, the fear of wasting time, the fear of “what if this” and “what if that” is terrible on thoughtful people. Text message fights may occur from time to time.
We patched it up. Yesterday, he brought me flowers. Today, I smelled his wrist. And you do the next thing.
*For another perfume-inspired reverie, you should definitely read this.
Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer, better known as Ann Landers, in 1961. Photo: Wikipedia.
I have decided that this blog should become an advice column — but not the normal kind where people write to the columnist for advice.
No, this blog ought to be an advice column where I bring you my problems and quandaries and you give me advice! It already happens so often! Anytime I ask for it, I get great advice!
Whether I’m wondering about how to feel about public breastfeeding or the matter of having an emotional support animal or what book to start with on my summer reading list, the advice and counsel I get from PaperGirl readers is way more interesting and helpful than what I might dole out to you sitting here on my tuffet.*
Honestly, don’t you think that’s a fun idea? An “advice column” where the columnist is the one asking for the advice? Hilarious!
Thanks to all of you, my summer reading list is set. I didn’t tabulate exact votes, but it was pretty clear how things shook out. I am going to read my five novels in this order, as per your advice:
1984 byGeorge Orwell
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Pale King by David Foster Wallace Tender is the Night by Ernest Hemingway
It was pretty close between Orwell and Tartt, but I think it’s okay for me to start with the shorter work before I dive into the really long one. Henry James was definitely in third place, and David Foster Wallace and Hemingway were neck and neck bringing up the caboose, but I decided to let Hemingway come in last. He so often comes in first, doesn’t he? He’ll be okay.
Once I’m finished with Orwell, I’ll bring you my book report. It’s interesting timing: I’ve been thinking about deleting my Facebook account. I was going to bring you the case and — wait for it — ask you for your advice. Reading 1984 with that in mind, that idea about deleting Facebook, will be most interesting.
Thanks, gang.
*I’m not on a tuffet. I just needed to create a visual of some haughty Advice Columnist who thinks she knows everything and putting her on a tuffet seemed right.
Summer reading swag! I would LOVE wearing a summer reading pin! Photo: Rachel Larue via Wikipedia.
A few weeks back, I put on my librarian hat — a fetching chapeau! — and did some organization and pruning of my living room library. (I have a library full of quilt history books, but that is in the office.)
As I worked through the shelves, I found lots of titles I was ready to give away, and it felt good to watch that pile grow. Most of the books I didn’t want I put up in my building’s laundry room on the cute “take a book, leave a book” shelves by the elevator. Right now, someone is enjoying a gluten-free baking cookbook and my extra copy of the Lapham’s Quarterly on “Time.” (Interesting how I bought that particular issue twice!)
While it felt good to shed extra stuff and hopefully make someone happy, it felt bad to see all the books I own but haven’t read. There aren’t that many, but it cannot be denied that I have a good deal of fabulous reading material that I’ve never cracked. I think this is true for most people who love to buy books. You can’t wait to read the books you just bought, but then you get busy or you get interested in something else and then it’s five years later and you never read that biography of Eleanor Roosevelt or the complete history of polka dots or The Brothers Karamazov.
For me, it’s always the novels I don’t get around to reading. I go for the essay, the article, the interview, the criticism. Non-fiction, in other words. But I do want to read a novel or two this summer for heaven’s sake, so I thought I’d ask for your help.
Here are five novels I own but have not yet read, and I want YOU to tell me what to read first.
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 1984 by George Orwell The Pale King by David Foster Wallace Tender is the Night by Ernest Hemingway
I thought about giving you descriptions, but, since so many of you are book-nerdy like me, I thought you might enjoy looking into the books on your own. Of course, most folks won’t need to look up Orwell’s 1984; that canonical work is pretty well known and I am horrified to admit that I’ve never read it! Me! An Orwell fangirl! But this is what I mean about books you own: Sometimes, you just never get around to them, even if they’re classic works of literature that most people read their sophomore year of high school.
I can’t wait to see what you think, gang. Some of the books are (much) longer than others, but I’m ready for what you all decide. Oh, and if anyone wants to read along with me, please do: I’ll write up a book report when I get done with each title.
The caption under this photo in Wikipedia reads: “A sign indicating where jurors are to conjugate inside Hillsborough County Superior Courthouse in Nashua, New Hampshire.”
Wait a second.
I looked up the word “conjugate” because that’s … wrong. It’s adorable, but it’s wrong. It should be “jurors congregate.” Right?
Then I thought, well, maybe jurors do conjugate. The “j” and the “u” are the same in both words, right? I did some poking around and I didn’t find anything in a definition for “conjugate” that really made sense in the context of the caption. But I could be wrong. After all, I’ve not studied law; I don’t know what jurors do. I’ve not served on a jury. I took an advanced vocab class one summer during undergrad and learned a lot of Latin roots and suffixes and things, but there’s a lot I don’t know about words. Jurors conjugate. Why not?
It seems like a small thing, getting words mixed up. The person who did the captioning got it wrong, I’m pretty sure, but I’m not sure beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m glad I don’t have to stake my life on being right or the caption writer being wrong.
I’m thinking in this way because I’ve been watching some damnable series on Netflix called “The Staircase.” Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s a documentary in 13 episodes. The filmmakers tracked — exhaustively, relentlessly, remarkably — a murder case which took place over several years in the early 2000s. I have no recollection of this case, but it was a big story in mainstream media, as the series shows. I won’t tell you everything that happens because I haven’t seen the last four episodes and I can’t bear to go through it all. Just know that the story is painful, sad, tedious, shocking, depressing, and discomfiting in the extreme.
Man, I ain’t got time to binge watch anything but my email box, and here this show goes and hooks me! I was going to take a walk tonight, but no way. I had to watch, and now I’m scared of being sucked into a murder case. A real one. I haven’t killed anyone. I don’t plan to. I would hope no one is out to kill me. But “The Staircase” shows these things can happen to anyone! We’re all just one Kafkaesque scenario away from a different, bad world.
The trouble with watching TV like this is twofold: You can’t look. And you can’t look away.
Well, it’s certainly very creative, sweetie. Image: Wikipedia.
A N N O U N C E M E N T N O . 1
It has come to the attention of The Management that some folks are having trouble accessing this blog. Unacceptable! I’m sure it’s got something to do with the mischievous internet goblins who know that I’m thinking of deleting my Facebook account. More on that later. Anyway, I’ve got a call out to my brilliant web wizard, Julie Feirer. I’m sure there’s something she can do. She must not fail!
A N N O U N C E M E N T N O . 2
I am writing thank-you notes to the folks who donated during the First-Ever PaperGirl Pledge Drive, but I’ve got a problem. You see, if you donated via PayPal, I could simply email you a thank-you, but this is not my style. Your PaperGirl is, perhaps not surprisingly, super into paper. The problem is that I don’t get a person’s mailing address with a PayPal donation, so I am going to have to ask for it. It will be a slight nightmare keeping everything straight, but I can try:
If you donated will you please email me your mailing address? (If you haven’t donated, why, there’s still time!)
I’d like you to use my school email, since it’s separate and it’s funny how after you graduate from a school, you don’t have to really send emails about school anymore. Here’s that address:
m f o n s @ s a i c . e d u
Use no spaces, of course, when you enter that address into your “To” field; I’m just trying to keep the spambots away. (Robots crawl the internet looking for email addresses to spam. You know that, right? If you have a website or a newsletter or anything, don’t put your email address on the screen without funky spacing. I think it’s supposed to help.)
The thank-you notes are being written. I have a huge bag already. It’s going to take time, but it’s important to me that I send you a proper thank-you note. My mama raised me good.
Seagull on ledge of Leo Burnett building, Chicago, 2017. Image: Wikipedia.
Google Maps tells me I live .7 miles from Lake Michigan.
That doesn’t seem very far, but it’s not a straight shot. I can’t lean out my window and see the lake. I can lean out the window and see over to Grant Park (when the Cubs won the World Series, I leaned out a lot) but I’m not rich enough yet for a close-up lake view.
But every once in awhile — it doesn’t happen often — a seagull from over at the lake will wing its way over to my block and sail through the sky past my 16th floor windows. The bird is bright white against the gray and brown and glassy blue of the mid-rises and the high-rises here in the South Loop. If a seagull comes through up here, I notice, even if I’m not looking at the window at all. The contrast is remarkable enough to catch the eye.
Oh, seagull.
Just because you finish a degree; just because you decide to mention you’re seeing someone; just because you’re working a job you love — nothing is set. Ground shifts; it shifts again. In your case, maybe I should say that the air current changes and changes again or the rain stops, then it starts again. My point is that no matter where you fly, there you are, and just because you wanted the city to be different than the lake, that doesn’t mean it will be. I hope you find what you’re looking for, but like …
From 1896 lantern slide lecture, “The Illustration of Books” by Edward L. Burchard, Columbian Museum. Image: Wikipedia.
When a person in magazine publishing says she’s “in press” or the magazine she works for is “going to press” it doesn’t mean she’s physically squished between two large ink rollers, nor does it mean she’s about to push a big red button that starts a Gotham-style newspaper printing press spewing out special edition headline news in a Batman movie montage. (You know what I mean, right?)
Being in press means you are under deadline to get all the content, the photos, the captions, graphics — every jot and tittle you see in a piece of printed matter — corralled onto the pages of the given publication before you must sign off on the thing and send it out into the world. (Then you get your big red button moment, sort of.) Making a printed anything that is good at all is an impossible task, so press is pretty scary. The more text, the more photos, the more captions, the more facts you have to check, etc., the scarier it is.
In press, all the things you didn’t know you were missing are revealed. For a 180-page quarterly journal like Quiltfolk, we have about five days of press. That’s five days of anguish as you go through page after page, caption after caption, looking for ways to make it better, make it prettier, make it make sense, and above all make it not wrong. It’s terrifying. Quiltfolk is way more like a book than a magazine (no ads, all those pages, all those photos) so I have a job where we make a big, fat book, four times a year. And by the way: We’ve been workin on the issue since April. It’s just that this is the crunch time. This is press.
Yes, we’re in press right now. And I was going to put up a post that said I couldn’t say hi at all because we’re in press. But I can’t help myself: I’m a publishin’ fool. Press is exhausting and frightening, but it’s also a blast. I love it. I love to make type move and I love to select a photo and I love to communicate this way. I’m not good at so many things and I’m not even that good at this, but I have ink in my veins, I really do.
I’ll tell you more about Issue 07 of Quiltfolk soon. Maybe even tomorrow, if those captions don’t take me out first.
Everyone’s just nutty about all those subscription box things.
Well, okay: If you haven’t heard about the subscription box thing, you are proof that not everyone is nutty about them, but once I tell you what they are, you might go nuts. Everyone else is, already! Here’s the definition from Wikipedia, which one should not really use to define things, but I am in press for Issue 07 of Quiltfolk and have to get up before dawn to edit:
A subscription box is a recurring delivery of niche products. Subscription boxes are a marketing strategy and a method of product distribution. Subscription boxes are used by subscription-based e-commerce businesses, referred to as “subcom” for short, which follow a subscription business model.”
What do you buy that you probably don’t actually need? Clothes? Jewelry? Makeup? Toys? Snacks? Home decor items? Kitchen gadgets? All of these things can now be purchased via subscription box. Whatever company you sign up with — and once you pay them, of course — they put things in a box and send them to you. From what I understand, some subscription boxes allow you to send things back; other “subcoms” just give you your stuff and if you don’t like it, well, better luck next month.
I do not subscribe to any of these boxes. I’m not saying I never would, but I don’t want strangers sending me things I did not shop for myself. I can appreciate that it’s fun, that it’s like Christmas when you open a new subscription box, except … Well, you’re paying for it. So it’s sort of like Christmas for adults. Yay.
However!
I thought of a few subscription boxes I would love to get. None of them are real but they obviously should be.
Ice Cream Box — Weekly
A new flavor every time, as long as the new flavors are always praline pecan, butter brickle, or salty caramel.
Massage Box — Every 4 hours A small masseuse pops out of the box and makes it all better.
Box of Money — Constantly Signature required.
Housekeeper Box — 3 x Week Just think: When you open the box, the person is already inside, ready to start tidying while you pack your suitcase to go back to the airport!
Jewelry Box — Whenever Lots of fance jewelry, all gold and sparkly things. Because you’re worth it and you’re nice to the UPS delivery person.
Chicago Woman Files Paperwork, Deposit for Mini Maltipoo Puppy from Reputable Breeder by P. N. Dennis
CHICAGO, IL — Quilter and editor Mary Fons may have a puppy on the way.
After years of longing for a small, well-trained, hypoallergenic dog to help her stave off depression and anxiety, her application materials have been processed with a reputable breeder in Arkansas. A deposit has also been placed, making the dog — who Fons intends to name Philip Larkin after her favorite poet — one step closer to becoming a reality.
“It’s been a journey, getting to this point,” Fons said. “I’m excited. I’ve thought and thought about how it would all work; all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it; when it would be the ‘right’ time … I’ve thought rationally about all this for years. Then a couple months ago, I just totally broke down. I need him. I need Philip.”
Fons’s name is now listed on the “High Priority Waiting List” on the breeder’s website. The breeder (whose name Fons said she would wait to disclose until she had permission) was suggested some months ago by a reader of Fons’s blog, PaperGirl.
“For me to find Philip as a direct result of a PaperGirl reader is just … It’s perfect. They’ve been with me this whole time, you know? They’ve watched this develop.” The 38-year-old woman blinked back tears.
The breeder with whom Fons is now in close contact with is USDA Class-A licensed and sells registered puppies with full guarantee and microchip. The application process was apparently intense. “I wrote way more than she needed on every question, but [she] told me later she loved it, that she had full faith that I was absolutely ready for a dog. I filled out another form after that, sent my deposit, and that’s when I got on the list.”
Fons’s paperwork isn’t over yet. She has drafted a petition to her condo board to allow her to have her dog on special dispensation, as the building allows residents to have cats but not dogs.
“I’ve struggled with whether I deserve to ask for special treatment,” Fons said. “Anyone who knows me knows that’s been true for a long time. I’m not a rule breaker — and I’m not so special. But I am human, and my heart hurts. I will be responsible for — and with — my non-shedding, five-pound pet. I intend to train him and make him a source of joy for everyone he comes into contact with.”
And if the condo board denies her petition? “Well, it’s going to come with a strong letter of recommendation from my psychiatrist, so that would be some stone cold stuff,” Fons said, “but I would respect their decision. I’m not going to sneak a dog into my home. But my amazing Arkansas breeder isn’t going anywhere, so I’d just double down on my search for a new apartment and take it from there. But I would be sad.”
On the side of Fons’s fridge is a sheet of paper printed with information on neighborhood boarding services, pet stores, and groomers. “I’m going to be ready when [REDACTED] calls,” she said. Fons is listed on the waiting list as desiring a “small, male, apricot” mini Maltipoo; the next litter that would produce a puppy fitting the description could be 3-5 months from now. Possibly more. Fons says she’s waited this long, so it’s okay.
“It’s all so real now,” she said. Then she grinned. “Can you imagine what it’ll be like when I finally meet him? How am I going to blog with a tiny puppy on my lap?? I think I might have to skip writing words and post YouTube videos of me and Philip on the ol’ PG for awhile. They’re gonna have to see him in action.”
Ladies cleaning in Germany in 1961, I understand. Image: Wikipedia.
You know you’re spring cleaning when you …
… vacuum out the pen cup
That’s right: the pen cup. That coffee mug or other ceramic vessel which holds things like pens, paperclips, erasers c. 1987, bent thumbtacks, pieces of three different eyeglass repair kits, etc. Ever taken all the stuff out of that cup and looked at the inside of it? It’s gross! Lo, I am a woman with many pen cups. One by one, they are being vacuumed to squeaky.
… wipe down the rocking part of the rocking chair
You think rocking back and forth in a chair keeps the dust off? Well, it doesn’t! Get that rag out!
… inspect and organize the tool box
Notice I did not say the “toolbox.” A “toolbox” sounds more consequential than the big, lidded, blue plastic tub where I toss any janky, tool-like object I encounter here at home. Today’s cleaning jag showed me I possess not one, not two, but three hammers! I’m not sure this happened, but meanwhile I have zero nails. I’m sure everything will be fine.
… vanquish Cord Hell All these cords for things that need to be charged or electrified … I am not a luddite! I enjoy many modern-day technological conveniences! But Cord Hell is a place. And that place is real. One day you’re connecting your phone cord to an extension cord and the next day, you’re in Cord Hell! Vanquish it and find peace. I recommend a) getting rid of everything you literally do not need; b) twisty-ties.
… forget to eat lunch I don’t like people who chirp, “Why, I just got so busy I forgot to eat lunch!” It’s annoying, right? Yes, but it happened to me today. I was so focused on — and so soulfully enjoying — organizing and deep-cleaning my house, I stopped for nary a snack.
I wanted an opening, I wanted a “new view.” Item by item, book by book, shelf by shelf, I’m making one right where I am. Next up: that red wall.
Speaking of updates, I owe you a few! I have breaking news regarding Philip Larkin; this Nick person I’ve mentioned a few times; extremely cool things happening with the magazine, and more.
Don’t miss a post! Who knows? Maybe I’ll get another hammer.
This photo is captioned, “1971 Jamaica Vacation” and I love everything about it. Image: Wikipedia.
Now that school’s really over, I feel like I’m taking sips from a balloon full of helium. Just sipping helium from a balloon, on and off, all day. It’s sort of pleasant and buzzy, but also I do not like it atall. Does that make sense?
Mind you, I don’t want to be back in school. I’m good on school for awhile. It’s too soon for me to miss it, you might say. And it’s not like I’m out of school and unsure what’s going to happen next. I think we all know there’s plenty happening that has been happening for awhile. Uncertainty is not my problem.
But this huge … opening has arrived. Not just in my schedule, but in my mind, too, I suppose. What do you do with an opening?
Does an opening in life make changes possible? Big ones? For instance: Is it time to devote some of my recently-acquired free time to volunteer somewhere? Start that quilt-related non-profit I’ve dreamed of for years? Perhaps I should go vegan or take up jai alai. Or squash. Maybe I should eat and play squash. Perhaps I should dye my hair a different color or sign up for tap classes. I’m feeling like any of those things are possible, in theory. That’s how open it all feels right now.
Many wise people would tell me — might tell me now — that I should just put one foot in front of the other and relax for a minute or two. But when you’re sucking helium out of a balloon, it’s hard to relax. You get a little hot. You feel funny.
Years ago, I got a tattoo of an airplane on my wrist. It wasn’t an impulsive decision; I had wanted this tattoo for years. One day I did it.
Explaining a tattoo is tricky. If your explanation goes no deeper than “I was drunk in the Bahamas!” or “Somebody dared me,” it’s perhaps best not to explain.
But if the opposite is true, if your tattoo holds deep literal or symbolic meaning in your life/psyche, you’re also in a tough position. How do you explain in passing the varied, layered, complicated feelings that go into the desire to permanently mark something on your body? And why try? For people who don’t have tattoos — certainly those who are actively anti-tattoo — no explanation will be enough, however compelling.
Here’s what I’ll say about my airplane.
Something happens to me when I’m in an airplane. Something good. I sit still, for one thing. I’m stuck, so it’s easy to focus. Whatever I’m writing, at 35,000 feet, it tends to go well. But my love for airplanes isn’t just because I’m extra productive in my sky office; I’m romanced by the very existence of an airplane. Call me country, but the fact of flying amazes and delights me, every time, still. We’re flying? Like … like birds? No, no, it’s not possible.
But of course it is possible and I do it a lot.
I’m on a plane right now, in fact. I’m headed to Portland, headed to Quiltfolk.There’s a lot to do: Spring Quilt Market starts tomorrow, but being at the big show is just the beginning of the next five days. Mike and I are making serious moves at Quiltfolk; now that I’m done with school, prepare to watch more things move even faster.
So why am I on about the tattoo? That tattoo, by the way, that I regretted almost immediately and am now getting removed?
Well, I’m flying for this work trip and I’m on this plane, and I’m writing, and it’s the same. I feel happy, focused, right with the world, somehow. Except that this plane ride is totally different. I’m not flying to a gig. I don’t have quilts with me, I don’t have syllabi to hand out or patchwork to demonstrate once I get to where I’m going. I’ve gone to Market for years, but this is my first time with Quiltfolk, and that means I’m not pitching companies to buy ads for a web series or a magazine, like I did with Quilty, because Quiltfolk, like PaperGirl, doesn’t do ads. And I’m not in grad school anymore. I’m not a student anymore. I’m a … person?
The airplanes don’t really change. The tattoos don’t change. We change.
After the time away and the big announcements about graduation and Ken Burns (!), I’m feeling a desire for a good, old-fashioned PaperGirl post about something small but remarkable.
Do you feel me on this? I don’t want to do the pledge drive yet, I don’t want to make any grand proclamations, even though I have several to make. No, I just want to type up a standard-issue PaperGirl-Out-In-The-World observation, fold it into a digital paper airplane and sail it your way. Does that sound all right?
Let’s see, what have I got — ah, yes!
A couple weeks ago, flying home from Nebraska, I rubbed my eyes and pulled out my laptop. I was tired, but I had to read about Navajo blanket weaving for class. No sooner had I read the introduction did the most heavenly smell on the planet come wafting by my nose.
Fresh chocolate cake.
The sugary, buttery, cocoa-rich smell of a moist chocolate cake, thick with creamy frosting, was suddenly filling the air. The smell was definitely fresh chocolate cake and it was pungent, I’m telling you: This wasn’t some passenger’s cup of airplane hot chocolate I was smelling. The wholeplane suddenly smelled like a magic chocolate cake bakery. But where? Why??
I sat up in my chair and craned my neck around to find the source. It was dim in the cabin, so I couldn’t see very well. I continued to followed my nose until I saw her.
There, in the seat kitty-corner from me, a lady was happily — okay, blissfully — eating forkfuls of chocolate cake from the plastic to-go container plunked on her tray table.
I loved her for eating this cake. The wedge was huge. The frosting was so thick I could see it pulling on the cake as she lifted big bites to her mouth. She was talking to someone next to her but I don’t know they were tag-teaming this cake. I think this was her deal. I think she and her friend (brother? husband? complete stranger?) were at a restaurant in Omaha and they looked at the time and it was like, “Nope, we don’t have time for dessert; gotta get to the airport.” And she was like, “Well, in that case, I’d like your biggest slice of chocolate cake to go.”
I watched the woman for a minute or too and it was great. But better than watching her was watching everyone else watch her. Let me tell you what brings people together: the smell of chocolate cake. All the people in our immediate vicinity had the same reaction that I had when they smelled that lady’s fabulous plane snack. They sat up. They inhaled deeply. They looked around like prarie dogs. They identified the cake person. And they watched her with a little envy but mostly happiness.
A person going to town on a gorgeous piece of chocolate cake?
Fons, with quilt! Photo: Leah Nash for Quiltfolk, but I made it black n’ white. (Do I need to say that??)
Hi!
It feels like I need to say “Hi!” again after being away. You look so good to me!! Hi!
First off, I want to say that I see the comments about the font needing to be a bigger and a darker, and I shall make it so. With the server migration, things got a little funky and I agree there are tweaks needed. Julie and I will work on it, I promise. Until then, you can always go up to “View” and click “Zoom” and you can make your screen bigger. Thank you for your patience.
As promised yesterday, I’m going to paste in the painstakingly crafted foreword to the thesis I worked on for so long. Before you read it, you should know what I’m foreword-ing, no?
My 1,512-page thesis was a compendium. It was everything I have published or otherwise officially submitted in two years of in graduate school.
I included all my essays, F Newsmagazine articles, Quiltfolk articles, Quilt Scout columns, other freelance writing, research projects, three lectures, one poem, the materials for the exhibit at the Chicago Design Museum next year, and … every blog post. That’s right: The past two years of PaperGirl is in my thesis. The whole way, May. And what’s really cool is that if you get a master’s at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, your thesis is bound and kept in the library of the Art Institute. We’re in there, guys. You and me. We’re in one of the best museums in the entire world.
It literally took three 18-hour days to make the two copies of my thesis, partly because each section had its own introduction and title page and also because I hand-stamped every page (of both copies) with a page number using one of those cool auto-advance number-stamper things I think they use in law offices? It was fun, but I still have a bruise on my hand. (Seriously.)
If you’re new to the blog, I promise, promise, promise: Entires are never this long. But most days I’m not writing to you in the week I finish my master’s degree. And to make sure you know I care about the eyes of my readers, I’m going to boldface the whole thing.
Thank You,
Mary
F O R E W O R D
Christmas Day, Chicago, 2015. Half-past two in the afternoon.
I was standing at the kitchen counter at my sister’s house, wearing a sweater, jeans, and busted-up fuzzy slippers. Like everyone else in the room, I was drinking prosecco. My younger sister and her husband were both absorbed in something online. My mom and stepdad were playing Scrabble at the big table, picking at pie. Hannah, my older sister, was scrolling through Instagram on her phone.
“So I have news,” I announced to the room, then paused for effect. “I have applied to graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.”
My sister Rebecca looked up at me. “Why?”
Hannah stayed glued to her phone but shifted in her seat and from where I stood I could see the rise of one penciled-in eyebrow. Mark tapped out the score on the calculator he and Mom keep in the Travel Scrabble box. Jack bumped the power cord on his laptop then clicked it back into place.
“I want to study writing,” I said.
It was as if I had announced I was going to the store for a gallon of milk. Except there was hostility in the air, too, like I had announced I was going to the store for a gallon of milk and I had a history of stealing groceries. There goes Mary with her same old dairy-aisle kleptomaniac crap — and on Christmas!
“Well, I think it’s fantastic,” my mom said, and took a sip from her champagne flute. “You’ll be so happy you did it, honey.” My stepfather raised his glass but didn’t actually cheers anything.
“Thank you, Mother,” I said. Then, curtly, to the room: “Am I missing something? Is there something wrong with me pursuing a master’s degree in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago?”
I was the only one in my family without a postgraduate education, so the bad vibes were not based in any anti-school sentiment. Something else was going on that made me sad and I felt the ruthless sensation of being alone among my own people.
My throat closed up, but I pressed the issue: Why was me going to grad school not a happy occasion?
It came out that no one had faith in an MFA program for writers. They were a waste of time, Hannah said, and besides, I had been making a good deal of my living as a freelancer for some time. My blog had thousands of subscribers. Why spend all that time and money for a piece of paper?
Rebecca agreed. She pointed out that SAIC is one of the most expensive schools in the country and when she worked in the Loop, she’d have to dodge throngs of SAIC kids every day at lunch. “It’s obviously a good school, but there are a lot of stocking hats and sad paintings over there,” she said. “I don’t think you’d like it.”
For the few brief minutes we discussed it, it was clear that no one was impressed with my announcement because they weren’t impressed with the plan and also because my family was used to this particular family member (me) making splashy life changes every few years. My decision to go to grad school wasn’t earth-shattering; it was simply the latest solution to the problem of Mary getting bored. The tears that stung my eyes were the result of knowing they were half-right, but there was anger, too: The half they were wrong about they were really wrong about. To study writing for real was something I had wanted pretty much my whole life.
Christmas Day three years ago was the first time I would have to defend why I wanted a master’s degree; why I wanted to get that degree in writing; why I wanted to go to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and why I wanted to do all of this now.
Katherine Hepburn said, “Never complain, never explain,” but Katherine Hepburn never went to grad school. Explaining the reasons why I chose all this was something I would have a good deal of practice with over the next two years.
You could say I’m explaining right now.
* * *
I went to high school in the mid-90s in a small Midwestern town. College prep courses may have been a thing on the East Coast by then, but in Winterset, Iowa, “advanced placement” classes were a novelty. The first one they ever offered, AP English, was offered my senior year. For the first time in high school, I was not dogged by my homework but exhilarated by it.
The teacher taught from one book: the fifth edition of a college-level composition textbook called The Bedford Reader. I loved its tissue-thin pages, how they felt like pages of a Bible or the Shakespeare anthology Mom had on the bookshelf at home. I devoured the readings Mrs. Chase assigned and as I did, I put myself in a kind of conversation with the book, scribbling notes in the margins, drawing goofy doodles and inside jokes for my friends on the front and back covers.
After 20 years of moves, boyfriends, a marriage and divorce, and countless cleaning purges that dispensed with plenty of other books, I’ve still got that Bedford Reader. Flipping through its pages now, seeing all those proclamations and exclamations, is an exercise in facial expressions: I see myself and my brow furrows; my eyes get wide; I wince. The sheer spunkiness of me at sixteen is excruciating. “I love Matthew McConaughey!!!” I write, and when I like something, I draw a happy face saying “YES!!!” When I don’t, there in green ink is, “What does the author MEAN??? Don’t KNOW don’t CARE!!!”
Two years ago, just before grad school began, I purchased a thick, black Leuchtturm notebook. A German-designed notebook of consequence, it was big enough to last through two years of note-taking in writing department classes, workshops, seminars, and advising sessions. I thumbed through it the other day, not long after I had pulled out my Bedford Reader, to reference the bibliography.
Then came the shock: The content of my notes and doodles in my grad school notebook are virtually the same today as they were 20 years ago. It was all right there. The exclamations and proclamations with the same liberal use of exclamation points, the same rhetorical questions to myself, the same conversations with an audience of one … The only difference, really, is a subtle weariness creeping in; as a 38-year-old, I write, now in black ink: “What does the author mean? Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Shocking as it was to see myself so plainly after all this time, there exists a sense of satisfaction in the continuity from one book to the other. I might be an enthusiastic idiot, but I’ve always had a strong sense of self.
But the apparently indelible blueprint brings with it a terrible weight, too. Can a person change? Can she learn? Can she become a better writer or is it predetermined how good she’ll get? We know that women are born with a set number of eggs; is a woman’s portion of writing ability also set at birth? Does studying it allow only for cosmetic changes and nothing deeper? Why, indeed, sisters, did I pursue a master’s degree in writing if, from notebook to notebook, year to year, I’m still holding my pen the same way?
* * *
Oh, please. Two years in a MFAW program has made me way better at writing.
You can’t really chart it. You can’t quantify it. You, the reader, or I may or may not be able to read from one end of this manuscript to the other and see that from August 2016 to May 2018 my sentences get tighter, my references more nuanced, my verbs more precise. You may or may not perceive how I got better at editing my own writing and the writing of others. You’ll see a lot of published work that didn’t exist before, but there’s no way to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that in grad school, the Mary Fons motherboard was rewired and has become vastly more complex (and definitely more expensive.)
Then again, I’m also two years older. That counts for something. This 1,500-page thesis may not be a lot of things, but it’s undeniable proof a girl’s been practicing.
Most of my cohort came seeking an MFAW because they want to teach. Many hoped to assemble an agent-ready manuscript. Some succeeded, and those novels and poetry collections will serve as their thesis, pages polished to gleaming (or gleaming enough) in advising meeting after advising meeting, over two years of workshops and critiques. I, too, took work through that laundering process. When I arrived, I thought that writing and polishing the essays included here was the point of all this. My colleague’s goals were the same as mine.
But as I rode my bike up the street to MacClean in the heat of September; as icy water mixed with street salt seeped through my shoes through two long winters, what I was getting from graduate school and what I’d been seeking changed. I started out making a quilt with someone else’s fabric, you could say, and then I remembered I had this huge basket of my own gorgeous scraps.
More than mastering a single essay — or a dozen of them — I discovered that my task was to understand the kind of writer I am, not the kind of writer I wish I was. My sisters were correct: Grad school can’t teach you how to write. But I learned that grad school can offer the chance to discover how you write. And if you care enough, work ceaselessly, and accept the way you hold your pen, then you can improve. Maybe you can improve a lot. That’s the real — and somewhat hidden — lesson. It was certainly the knowledge I came for, and after I learned it, it was the reason I stayed.
* * *
My family has heartily congratulated me on my accomplishment. Getting a master’s degree — even in writing — is way harder than stealing a gallon of milk. They’re proud of me.
My thesis doesn’t just double as a doorstop: It’s proof of concept. I am this person. I am this writer. If you’re interested in getting to know her, I suggest you get comfortable. You’re gonna be here awhile.
Have you ever physically felt like you came through something?
I think we all come through things without realizing it.
If we’re lucky, sometimes old emotional pain slips away. You hold onto something for a long time but then, all of a sudden, you find yourself being calm about something you used to be agitated about. Something that used to trigger bad feeling or angst stirs no major reaction from you and you go, “How about that. I’m okay, now.” Do you know what I’m talking about? How you can come through things without realizing it? Emotions, man. Wild stuff.
There are other times, though, when you come through something or you enter a new space and you know you’re different. You know because you feel physically changed and it’s a light-switch moment.
I turned in my thesis yesterday. I have one class left to attend. There’s a reading and a paper to hand in but I say to you this night that the graduate school clock is ticking to a stop and I literally feel like a different person. (That’s “literally” as in “literally” and not just as in “totally.”) I feel like a new woman. I feel like I want to cry. New people cry, you know. Ask a baby.
I have been away for two weeks due to my job, the ending of school (see: thesis) and the website server migration, which is now complete.* The last time I saw you, I hadn’t spent three days and hundreds of dollars making two copies of my 1,512-page thesis. I’ll tell you more about the thesis later; for now, I just have to reconnect and tell you that I missed you and that I am not the same Mary.
Except, of course, that I am. And the foreword to my thesis, which I will post tomorrow, discusses this exact topic.
I missed you all very much. The PaperGirl break scared me. It really did. This blog is such a huge part of my life, a place I devote hours and hours and hours to every week, day after day, week after week, year after year. If I didn’t maintain it, what else would I be able to do?
Maybe a 1,512 page book? But you wouldn’t be there, so what’s the point?
I’ll tell you more about the thesis tomorrow and I’ll post the foreword, too. Fair warning: In the next week or so, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: I’m going to do a Pendennis / PaperGirl Pledge Drive. My student loans are coming due, I’m working at a startup, the server migration was not free, and … well, I asked a few friends if I should do it and they grabbed me and said, “YES, MARY.” If you want to get ahead of the curve, there’s a “Donate” button up there that should work beautifully, thanks to Julie.
Tonight, I cried in my kitchen. I asked myself if I should start up the ol’ PG again or not. And I wept to think I wouldn’t.
*I’m working with Julie to tweak and revamp the website. Now that school is 97 percent done, this is actually possible. I know it needs help — and I’m interested in working on the blog’s formatting for readability and aesthetic. So please standby and be patient. I’m going to make it very nice, I promise!!
**IMPORTANT: My blog used to weirdly, horribly, be a different URL than my website. Don’t ask because I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. Anyway, if you have a bookmark or a subscription, please, please, please change your whatchamacallit to this: www.maryfons.com/papergirl … Pendennis thanks you and so do I.
a) revenge, served cold
b) that library fine
c) website maintenance
d) all of the above e) B and C, but not A
2. IF one of the things Mary has put off includes website maintenance, why might she have put it off?
a) lol
b) expensive
c) confusing, scary
d) while it happens, she can’t blog
e) the mob is involved f) A, B, C, and D, but not E
3. What’s so interesting about mobsters in the 1920s? Why is that still a thing?
a) speakeasies
b) cigars, hats
c) cool cars
d) funny voices
e) spangles f) all of the above
4. True or False: Mary really does have to do maintenance on her (old, poo-ey) website because there have been horrifying email problems and extra charges and it’s just been a big ball of awful for too long.
T F
5. True or False: Mary really won’t be able to blog while the maintenance happens. It’ll take about a week. The whole website will be down, not just the blog. It’s the only way!
T F
6. Short Answer: If Mary is driving in Louisiana going 54 miles an hour in a 45 mph zone and she sees lights flashing behind her, will she get a speeding ticket and will she miss you and the ol’ PG while the website maintenance is being done this week?
Well, that’s not surprising: You got 100 percent! I’ll see you in a week, gang. The website is going to look broken, but it’ll only be down for maintenance for a minute. It’s high time and probably good timing: My thesis is due in 2.5 weeks. I’ll stay in touch on Facebook, though, so look for me over there while Julie Feirer does her magic. Thank you, Julie.
Bookplate of American painter and illustrator Edward Penfield (1866-1925). Image: Wikipedia.
Though there’s a lot of reading I have to do for school — particularly for my Contemporary Histories In Fiber course, holy weft — I do at least attempt to pick up and read other things. I wish I could sit down and sew, but when most of what you do is pick up paper or scroll over a screen and reading what’s printed on it, this is what you tend to keep doing.
So tonight, I thought I’d share a list of books/magazines surrounding me. And I mean that literally. My home is one big book nook. Many of these books and periodicals hang out on the floor next to my black leather recliner until they cycle back out; other texts are stacked high on the glass coffee table (where I also put my feet sometimes, let’s be honest); some books are perpetually falling off my bedside table. My home is tidy, but until I get a proper library, this is how things are. (I looked online at a condo on Michigan Avenue that had a library. The condo cost $2.2 million … but they allow dogs. Insert laughing/weeping here.)
Anyway, here’s a list of what I’m dipping in and out of. I’m forcing myself to write just one or two lines of description for each title because I have to get up super early in the morning: I’m flying to Des Moines to tape the PBS show on Monday! I’m taping three episodes with Mom and I’m so excited. I miss TV, sometimes.
What I’m Reading Lately (Non-Fiction)
Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert
This book is the history of the world. And the history of the world is told in cotton. And it takes just about 700 pages to go through it all.
Craeft: How Traditional Crafts Are About More Than Just Making, Alex Langlands
I bought this book about artisanal work (in weaving, haymaking, etc.) because it was in the window of Sandmeyer’s Bookstore in my neighborhood and was so beautiful it lured me in. I judged the book by its cover and so far … Yeah, it’s worth it. I think.
The Age of Homespun, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
If you love American history, textiles, and LIFE ITSELF, get this book and read it. It was at my mom’s house and I started reading it. Hi, Mom! (I’ll bring it to you when we sew this summer, I promise.)
The American Bystander Magazine
Humor. There are misses, but it’s mostly hits. (And I need to laugh as much as I need my morning tea, so I’ve subscribed from the start.)
Lapham’s Quarterly: State of Mind
Every issue is a review, you could say, on a theme. An issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is a meal for the mind. Lapham’s gives me faith in humanity. I’m a subscriber.
Quiltfolk Magazine, Issue 06 : Arizona The magazine where I serve as editorial director is getting better and better and better and better. And my whole heart belongs to this project. And I re-read the whole issue on my way back from Baltimore. Issue 06 is our best yet — that is a fact.
The Dumb Internet
Sometimes, even, on my phone. Barf.
What I’m Reading Lately (Fiction)
Not a single novel. Not even a short story. I’m not knocking fiction. I just have enough trouble with reality to “get lost” in anything else. I keep waiting to slip into a new phase of my life when I read only fiction. It’s an interesting idea, being a Mary who says things like, “I’m re-reading Ulysses. It’s … Well, I suppose it’s as good the second time but since I know what happens … ” But this is unlikely to happen in the near future, as for the past 6-7 years, all I ever want to read is people who write with their actual voice, not via someone else’s. Is that weird?
Amazing. This is a picture from Wikipedia showing the EXACT LOCATION OF THIS STORY. Pretty much. Image: Wikipedia.
I was hungry for pizza, but there wasn’t time.
This was three days ago, when I was connecting in St. Louis on my way to Baltimore. I know the St. Louis airport well, so I knew there was pizza to be had at the California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) but I also knew I couldn’t trust the St. Louis airport CPK to get me a pie before I had to get on the plane. Oh, they say they can make your pie in under 10 minutes, but they can’t. They are very nice people but they never, ever can ever do that.
I knew I’d have to grab a different snack, but I really needed something hot. You know how it is, how you get when you travel — or maybe when you don’t travel — and the thought of consuming a handful of dumb trail mix or a dumb bag of chips just makes you feel despondent and wan while the thought of a Hot Item Of Some Kind gives you the strength to go on. You know that feeling, right? That’s where I was the other day.
On my way to my gate, having resigned myself to eating trail mix and/or chips for dinner, I passed by a Starbucks. Because I am trained by Jeff Bezos* to want the things his company sells, I thought:
“Oh. That egg-white sandwich thing. That’s hot and not horrifying. I’ll get one of those.”
So I approached the counter and I ordered my egg-white sammy and waited for the gal to heat it up. When she wrapped up the sammy in the paper and handed it to me, I have to tell you: I felt happy. I felt a mini-frisson of energy, a zap of hope that I could take up arms against a sea of troubles — at least until I got to the east coast.
“Thank you,” I said to the nice girl at the register, probably too intensely. “Thank you … so much.”
And so I’m walking to my gate. And I’m adjusting my attaché and re-hitching my purse up on my shoulder, when … plop.
Egg-white sammy down.
Ah, yes: I had turned the paper bag the wrong way as I was adjusting my things and that Starbucks sammy just fell right out onto the airport floor and came completely apart. I didn’t know what had happened at first; a rounded egg disc made for a Starbucks breakfast-style sammy does not make sense out of context. I mean, I felt something drop as I was walking and as I looked down, I thought, “Okay, I think I dropped my sammy,” but I didn’t stop walking because I was not yet computing, so as I’m trying to compute, I kicked the egg disc. Not on purpose, of course; it’s that I was walking and adjusting and obviously dropping egg-white sammy components and before I could stop everything and avoid contact with the sammy pieces and/or regain my dignity (lol), I kicked my own food.
I bought a sammy and I dropped it in the airport and then I kicked it.
That was new. That was a new experience, traveling.
Oh, I muddled through. Within 45 minutes or so I was nestled in 6D, munching airplane peanuts and drinking white wine. I had a drink coupon from Southwest, you see, so I got the wine. Because I fly a lot. And that’s what I get. I get coupons for white wine and packets of peanuts and when you are the kind of person who accidentally kicks her “delicious” dinner down an airport terminal on a Tuesday night, these kinds of perks are real. Real good.
*Wait, wait. That’s not right. Jeff Bezos is the Amazon guy. The Starbucks guy is the other guy. Zuckerberg.
Joy in Concepción, Chile. Image: Camdiluv via Wikipedia.
Holy Easter Bunny! The readership hath spoken!
Verily, I say unto thee: I will not go back and edit past entries of the ol’ PG. At all. Ever. Except for glaring typos. And at least not until a Major Publisher wants to publish The PaperGirl Compendium Criterion Collection with an Introduction By Virginia Woolf.
Yes, almost without exception*, PaperGirl readers (a handsomer, delightful readership there never was) do not want me to tinker with the past. And that’s nice to know, partly because there is no time to go back and mess with history, but also because this log has been, for many years, a record of myself. One record, anyway: My diary holds another record; my essays another. My Instagram another. My email “Sent” list another. We all leave records all over the place; I keep a few extra going, just in case.
In the spirit of not monkeying with the past, however painful it might be to read, here are three old entries that I am not even going to glance at before linking you over. I know there are new readers who haven’t gone back and read the entire blog (what, you have better things to do??) so here’s a taste for you:
Any typos? Any pre-AP-style guide moments? Any awkward grammar? Any weird stuff? It stays! It stays — and I ain’t going anywhere.
xo
Mary
*One nice lady, also a blogger, said that I should do what makes me happy. A sentiment in the same vein as everyone else, really, just said in a different way.
Well, they’re not my style. But what a woman! Shoes, c. 1720, England. From LACAMA, via Wikipedia.
I do this thing.
When I’m struggling to get something done, or when I have to make a tough phone call, or when I need to do/be/sound better than feel, I just pretend I’m someone else.
Now, I don’t go by a different name or anything. I don’t misrepresent who I am. That would be super weird. This is an internal thing I do, an inner monologue type situation. When faced with something I feel powerless to do — and you better believe sometimes that’s just like, getting out of the house and being a person in the world — I say to myself, often out loud:
“Well, I can’t do this. So I’m just going to pretend I’m a woman who can.”
Sometimes I pretend I’m a Katherine Hepburn type or a Madonna type. It’s not that I’m doing an impression or that I would trust Madonna’s judgement in all things. It’s that I need to channel a woman who seems like she would not be afraid of X, Y, or Z.
Shoes help me here, too.
If I am feeling weak, feeling sunk, it helps me every time if I put on a pair of smart shoes. I’ll brush the dirt off my shoulders (metaphorical dirt, usually, but you never know), buckle myself into a snappy shoe, and bing. Something changes. Suddenly, my feet are stronger, more … accounted for, strangely? Yes, I become more accounted for, somehow, on the Earth. And this makes me better able to pretend to be someone else who can do all the things I can’t.
It’s then that I can walk out the door. And wonder of wonders, the woman I’m pretending to be?
Crazy Quilt, by Tamar Horton Harris North, 1877. Image: Newark Museum, via Wikipedia.
Hi, gang.
I posted about this on my Facebook page this morning and I already have close to 1,000 responses. If you haven’t already, I would deeply appreciate you sparing under 20 seconds (unless you answer the optional third question) to take this 100 percent anonymous survey about quilting and feminism.
This is anonymous. I don’t require you to enter your name, email address, or anything of the kind in order to contribute your answer/thoughts. I’m writing a paper for grad school that is interested in this question — I’m not out to draw conclusions right now. It’s just a study. In case you haven’t clicked over already, the questions on the survey are:
Do you consider yourself a quilter? (Y/N/Maybe)
Do you consider yourself a feminist? (Y/N/Maybe)
Is there anything you’d like to say?
And that third question is optional.
Hey, man: I need to graduate. And before I graduate, I need to write a final paper. Before my final paper, I need to write my midterm essay. This data is going to go a long way toward allll those things. So share the survey link with your friends and family and guild members — even your cat, if she quilts! I don’t discriminate between people and cats! I’m a catiminist!
I like those windows. With a few changes, this room could work. Image: Wikipedia.
Do you ever have so much work to do, so many bills to pay, so many errands to run, so many people to get in touch with, so much reading to do for class, and so many chores you cannot get to, you get sort of glassy-eyed and spend the day re-organizing your bookshelves, deciding once more that you definitely, seriously, no-kidding, need an entirely new apartment?
No? Just me?
I don’t know what’s going on with me. I’m so restless. I need a new view!
Getting antsy like this feels familiar. It’s a thing with me. My family and longtime friends — and certainly a few boyfriends — would all attest that yes, Mary needs to reinvent, flip the script, change the mood from time to time.
My need for a literal and figurative fresh coat of paint is evidenced by my fondness for fashion and by the many different things I have done with my hair over the years. Need a new perspective? Get a new pair of shoes! Want a different view? Go blonde! Trust me, everything looks different when you go from brunette to blonde — at least for awhile.
I guess I feel like life moves so fast and everything changes so quickly, I’m hardly the same person I was even just six months ago, let alone seven years ago, when I bought this place. Remember New York and Washington? Love fueled that adventure, but if I were a person who didn’t like to change her view, I wouldn’t have gone. You’d better believe I was looking for a change of scenery as much as I was looking for the love of my life. It’s just how I am.
Now that graduation approaches, now that I see (and am over-the-moon excited by) the work before me in the quilt world and beyond, I look around at my seven-year-old couch and my aren’t-they-awfully-tiny windows and my kitchen floor that I never finished and my damned dishwasher that now needs to be replaced and I think, “Fons, you’ve outgrown this place.”
And I can’t get a dog here. It’s a no-dogs-allowed building. So my lil’ Philip Larkin can never be, as long as I live here. (I hereby promise to give you all a Philip update within the week; there are several things to discuss.)
The only way it could work is if I found renters for this place whose occupancy would cover the costs of anything else I’d move into. I want a new view bad enough to poke around online and dream about such things, but this is nothing that can happen right now, I’m afraid. First things first: Graduate from school. Start paying loans. Go from part-time work to full-time. Deal with whatever it is inside of me that I don’t want to deal with so instead I’m looking to live in a different apartment. Do that first.
There are plenty of fun and exciting things going on in the great city of Chicago this weekend. I won’t see any of it, though, which sounds sad but it’s okay.
My weekend will be spent polishing my QuiltCon 2018 lecture slides and rehearsing everything 90,000 times before the big show next week. I assure you: There’s nothing else I want to be doing this weekend. I care deeply about this work: Besides, debut lectures at QuiltCon don’t come along every day. In fact, they only come along once a year, which makes them sort of like Christmas or my birthday, except that I don’t get presents and I spend months and months researching and writing and then dozens of hours making great slides for my slideshow and then I get in front of a huge crowd of people and talk to them and hope I don’t screw up and ruin my reputation and never get asked back to any show, ever. In this way, making and debuting two new lectures is not like Christmas or my birthday. At all.
As I was thinking through everything I need to get right, every detail I must lock down, I realized that there is one thing I am not at all concerned about: I am not concerned with freaking out up there once I’m onstage. Certainly, part of the reason I won’t lose my nerves or have a full-on panic attack is because I have nearly two decades of professional experience doing things onstage. But it’s also because in college, I actually studied how to be in front of people.
Yes, my master’s in writing gets all the attention these days, but I have a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa (’01) — and that degree is in Theater Arts. During those four, heady years taking Meisner I & II, rehearsing the next show, communicating with directors, and writing short pieces of my own, I learned a lot more than my lines.
I learned how to work closely with people. Like, really closely. Making a play — which typically goes from the table read to opening night in matter of weeks — is an incredibly intense, focused experience. Many of you know this from your own theater-making experience. You do hard work in small spaces, either with a tiny ensemble or a huge one, both of which come with their own challenges. You put in long hours. You must be professional, on time, courteous. There are long periods of tedium punctuated with periods of intense activity; your problem-solving skills are harnessed in all kinds of unexpected ways, I assure you.
And you have to memorize a script. (Some monologues are about as long as this post, for example.) You have to memorize your blocking. Then, once the play opens, you have to hope people come to see what you’ve made! Sometimes they don’t come and this is devastating, so you have to grow into a person who can accept that. Of course, sometimes the people do come and then you’ve really got to bring the juice. Can you? Will you? You’ll find out when the curtain goes up, honey. Break a leg.
So this is just a shout-out to all my theater people out there. Graduation is coming (!) and there are plenty of parents and grandparents out there who have a theater major in the family who is about to get their degree. Y’all might be worried about the kid, right? What she’ll do with a degree in theater for Lord’s sake??
I promise you: She’ll use it.
She’ll use it when she meets a new person and gives them a “Hello!” and a confident handshake. She’ll use it when she’s giving a presentation at work. She’s going to use her theater degree when she’s faced with a problem with her spouse and recalls what she learned about body language and tone of voice and maybe she can respond more thoughtfully to what she was trained to observe in this person she loves so much. She’ll use it when she reads a wonderful quote in a magazine that she wants to remember it forever. She’ll use her memorization skills and then she’ll have it forever.
She’ll probably use it (however subconsciously) when she throws parties, too. I’m serious. Go to the theater people’s parties. We have the party bone, take it from me.
A handyman on break, c. 1975, Georgia. Image: Wikipedia, via the US National Archives and Records Administration.
My friend Nick did a good job with Valentine’s Day yesterday. He paid me awfully nice compliments in a card (I am evidently brilliant, gorgeous, funny, and sexy!) and he brought a heart-shaped pizza for us to have for dinner. That’s right, a heart-shaped pizza. That pizza is going to get its own post, but not tonight.
Tonight, I need to ask you all how a woman goes about hiring a handyman, because I need one, bad, and I don’t have the first clue about to get one.
“Hang on, Mary,” you say. You purse your lips and put a hand on your hip. “We’re glad to hear you’re eating heart-shaped pizzas and getting cards, but we’d be really glad if this Nick person was handy.”
I dissolve into giggles.
“Not that kind of handy! Mary! Now, seriously: What do you need fixed? Can’t Nick help you?”
I pull myself together and I thank you for your concern. One of the I like spending time with Nick is because he is extremely helpful. He’s fixed my internet, my phone, my icemaker, my computer. He always tidies the kitchen when he’s over and sometimes I go into the bathroom and something looks strange and I realize the sink is totally free of toothpaste bits and this is because Nick enjoys rinsing things. It’s wonderful.
But though he tried his dead-level best, Nick can’t fix my dishwasher, and I need that dishwasher fixed. Now.
So I need a handyman, or a fix-it guy — or girl, or marmoset for heaven’s sake. I literally do not care, as long as they/it knows about water pressure and, like, “parts.” Because a girl working full time and going to grad school full time cannot have a broken dishwasher. Cannot, cannot, cannot. The hopeless, helpless, panicked feeling I got when I opened the dishwasher for the fifth time and saw the dishes were not clean but in fact now dirtier with hardened, shellacked food and soap on them? That was a bad feeling. I can’t. I need my dishwasher to wash the dishes I put inside of it. It’s not so much to ask, right? Please?
Beyond that, I need some heavy pictures hung. I need a new faucet installed in my bathroom. I need a new medicine cabinet stuck on the wall. I need a chain on the light in the pantry. I need the vent cover thing in my closet to stop falling of the blinkin’ wall or I’m going to start throwing my body against it until it goes in its home.
Tell me how to hire someone trustworthy to help me do these things. Please?
Now, of course I know there are services online, but it’s the wild west out there. I live in a big city. It’s a shot in the dark, trying to find someone who won’t take advantage of my household fix-it ignorance. Believe me, I’ve been here before: I hired a handyman a year ago to do a few things and it was an awful experience. He did a poor job. It was so expensive. Afterward, the dumb, big corporate company kept calling me and texting me with advertisements and things. Ugh.
Angie’s List might have worked years ago but Angie sold that business awhile back and now it’s just big, corporate, plastic companies who buy space on the thing. I asked Dion, one of the maintenance guys in my building, if he knew anyone who did this kind of work; he didn’t. (And yes, my building has maintenance staff, but they do building stuff, common area stuff, water shut-offs and the like. They don’t hang pictures and they don’t do fridges, washers, dryers, etc.)
What I’m hoping is that one of you dear people has a brother in Evanston who is the best handyman in three states and you can give me his number. Or you have been using the same handyman for 20 years and why, he/she lives right down the street from me! This is what I’m hoping, because I don’t know what else to do.
Thanks, everyone. I need you. Perhaps more importantly: The dishes need you.
QuiltCon? I know her. Image courtesy Modern Quilt Guild.
It snowed today in Chicago. I like snow. I like winter. But there isn’t anything wrong with going to California sometimes, you know, just to make sure your sandals are still in good shape.
Lucky for me and any other chilly quilters — modern or otherwise — out there, QuiltCon 2018 is coming! And this year, the most exciting happening of the quilt calendar year will be underway in sunny Pasadena.
Yes, at this exact moment, two weeks from now, the quilts will have been unveiled. All the awards will have been given out, which means we’ll all know who got Best In Show and isn’t that so exciting? Two weeks from now, vendors will be vending; neat classes will have gone down; “sewlebrities” will be soaking their autograph hands; after lots of emails and Instagram posts, internet friends will be hanging out IRL; and many, many, many, many, many, many, many pictures will have been uploaded to many, many, many, many, many, many social media pages.
And I’m excited. Though I don’t make modern quilts, I love them and I love the people who make them. I’m also deeply glad to have emerged as a kind of go-to quilt history geek for the modern set. Put me in, baby. I’m happy as a clam (?) giving historical lectures at QuiltCon; the full houses that greet me seem to indicate folks like what I’m puttin’ down.
The only downside is that I have to top myself every year. For example, two years ago, I debuted “The Great American Quilt Revival: The Reason We’re All Here Right Now.” It went well — too well?? — so last year, I brought the pain with “Standing On the Shoulders of Giants: A Brief History of the American Quilt.” That one was really good. (Well, it was! Ask anyone who’s seen my lectures: I have serious powerpoint game.) And the lectures I debut at QuiltCon go into my repetoire and have a life after the MQG show, but it’s neat to present them for the first time out there with the mod squad.
But I have to tell you … This year in Pasadena, I don’t have a new lecture … I’ve got TWO!
Talk about topping what you did last year. QuiltCon 2019 is happening in Nashville next year; maybe I’ll pull out my guitar.* Anyway, both lectures are in pretty good shape, but this weekend is going to have me hunkering down, smoothing out, and rehearsing. For real, these two lectures (see descriptions below) are literally my best work yet, so that’s one of 9,000 reasons to do QuiltCon 2018.
See you in Cali!
The AIDS Quilt: Comfort, Compassion, and Change
When the first panels of “the AIDS quilt” were sewn together in San Francisco in 1987, the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic had only just begun. At the peak of the crisis in 1995, 319,849 people — mostly young, vibrant men — were dead from complications from AIDS while 200,000 more had were testing positive for the virus. As the death toll grew, so did the quilt. The story of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is the story of a modern plague and exists as evidence of enduring hope for victims and survivors, friends and family. Learn about the beauty of the quilt and an essential, tragic period in our history in this must-see lecture by Mary Fons. Warning: This lecture contains graphic content.
*Note: I curated an exhibit of panels from the NAMES Project quilt which will be on display during the show this year.
The Modern Quilt: Roots & Frontiers
The modern quilt was born in the first decade of the 21st century — but it didn’t hatch out of an egg. Modern quilts have aesthetic roots in various 20th century art movements, draw from many cultural “moments,” and owe plenty to quilts and quilters that came before. Seeing those roots helps us as quilters look ahead — and the future of the modern quilt is nothing short of thrilling. Popular QuiltCon lecturer Mary Fons brings you the history of the modern quilt (so far) and predicts what’s to come as the moderns forge ahead in what she believes is the second wave of the Great American Quilt Revival.
*Note to self: Buy guitar. Learn how to play guitar, write music, sing while playing guitar.
