I hope you don’t think I’m being unfaithful to the Fancy PaperGirl Mailbox. But I do have a kind of official (okay, really official) pen pal. I’m not going to tell you who it is. That’s for you to wonder. But I will tell you that that this person and I have many things in common.
We are both quilters. That’s how we met. We both love the American quilt: what it represents, what it can do, what it hasn’t been able to do, yet, and what it can be, if given enough time and space and attention.
We both work actively in the quilt industry (#clue) and do various things within it. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve had unusual career tracks, if you could call them “tracks” at all; we’re both trained in disciplines other than Fiber Arts, Family and Consumer Sciences, or any other quilt-related courses of study (not that there exist such courses of study, but hello, let’s make that happen.) Neither of us — however surprising in my case — learned how to make quilts at our respective mothers’ knees. We picked up quilting later in our still both young-ish lives.
We have both felt misunderstood at times, for different reasons. Really, though, they’re the same reasons. When you feel misunderstood, it doesn’t matter how you’re misunderstood; it just hurts when people say mean things.
He’s good with the phone, a better friend than I am or ever was, at least re: text message/voicemail reply time — and this is why we write letters.
He owns bow-ties.
We dash off a postcard whenever we get one from the other, picking up a conversation right where we left off. For example, I wrote to him about a big crush I have on someone that I’m not going to try and blog about/pursue, ahem. I told my penpal that the crush gave me energy, that I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but that it gave me a driving energy that felt really good. A week or so after I mailed that sentiment on a repurposed piece of hotel stationary, I got a postcard from my penpal that said only:
I understand your crush. My friend Glenn would say we are built that way. (We = the type of person you and I are.) So I say take whatever drive you can find and run with it.
Of course, just as in any good, long conversation, we frequently will introduce new ideas, new thoughts into the mix; it’s not just call-and-response. The other postcard that came with the latest batch said:
Interesting movement of dilemma. Life is either:
a) pure biology, a.k.a. you die and that’s it, or:
b) There’s more to it, a.k.a., our efforts are towards a greater good (or bad.)
Choosing one of these should dictate all future actions. Instead, I’m working on a personal legacy, which doesn’t answer either. Which one?
Indeed, [PENPAL], I think about this a lot. But I’m going to break our letter chain (for a moment, hang on) and answer you here, tomorrow.
“A má notícia” by Belmiro de Almeida, c. 1896. Image: Wikipedia.
On and off all day, I have been crying.
I get worried when I feel physically bad for more than a day or two (I’m on Day 3) and then I have a crying symptom on top of that.
A few years ago, my surgeon looked at me sternly and told me sadness was a serious symptom to which I needed to pay attention. She didn’t mean that I was depressed and that depression was serious (though I was, at the time, mildly, and of course depression is serious); she meant that in her experience, when Mary Fons gets sick, Mary Fons doesn’t always run a fever but she oftentimes gets very sad and bursts into tears multiple times a day.
Today, I burst into tears four times. Okay, five, because I just did it again.
Do the crying jags mean I’m sick not with a cold but with something else? My guts have felt strange lately but it’s so hard to tell. I’ve changed my diet recently; is that why I feel bad? And certainly there are perfectly good, totally reasonable and seemingly unrelated reasons to cry, cry, cry:
— My aunt is very sick and the fate of my cousins is uncertain
— I feel a terrible nostalgia for my sisters and my mom and Iowa
— People in every part of the country learn how to quilt on public television and I have taught people how to quilt on public television and I learned how to read with help from public television and my president wants to kill public television and this makes me so sad I cannot bear it, I cannot
— I must admit that I feel overwhelmed by work and school
May I ask a favor?
Is it okay to come to you and just burst into tears? I strive on the ol’ PG to offer content of substance. I strive to be precise and topical and entertaining and thought-provoking and I desperately want to make you smile. But I almost didn’t write to tonight because I feel so terribly sad and then I thought, “Well, maybe that’s why you ought to write.”
There are vulnerable posts and there are vulnerable posts. This is the latter.
Sophie, me, and Justin at the Illinois College Press Association awards luncheon. Photo: Me!
This weekend was press weekend for F Newsmagazine (also referred to as “F News” or just “F”), the student-run paper at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) where I am fortunate to serve as associate editor.
By the way, “associate editor” really just means I edit the F+ section (culture, first-person stuff, listicles, etc.) and do a few items of business that other editors don’t have to worry about. My title sounds fancier than it actually is; I don’t have seniority over anyone, for example. But a) I don’t particularly want seniority over anyone and b) I like sounding fancy, even if I’m not. So I’m keepin’ it!
Press weekend means that it’s it’s time to produce the latest print edition of F News, so the editorial staff — there are five of us — along with the designers and the two faculty advisors sit in the newspaper office at 116 S. Michigan Avenue all day Saturday and Sunday and copy edit and do layouts and spend our only free moments in the whole entire week working on the paper.
Yes, we get paid. We do not get paid much, though. The hourly pay is not commensurate to the talent and love (and hours) that everyone brings to the project so there has to be another reason why we work at the newspaper.
First:
I remember the moment I learned that SAIC had a student magazine. I was in Arizona, in a hotel room near the airport. It was late. I had just finished the gig where my quilts had been misplaced by UPS, a gig that must have been not long after the gig in Buffalo where I discovered sponge candy because I remember that I was eating sponge candy in bed and I was really tired. I was so tired but I was staying up to read the SAIC student paper because by then I knew I had been accepted to grad school at the college/museum and I had been on campus earlier that week to do some paperwork. That day, I picked up a copy of F News while I was in a waiting room. When I understood what it was, I thought, “Well, Mary Fons. I think someone needs to send an email.”
I missed making Quilty. I missed deadlines and sign-offs and editorial meetings. I emailed the paper and asked them if they were hiring. It was summer; they were. I met Paul, the faculty advisor, and Sophie, the managing editor, and I interviewed with them and before too long they said I could have a job on staff, even though I was to learn that the skills I developed as the editor of a hobby magazine were not totally transferrable to a college newspaper. Let me tell you, in case you’ve forgotten: You’re never done learning and you are never done feeling really dumb.
But I’ve learned. My writing has gotten better. My copy editing skills are way, way better. I feel like F News is this other school I get to go to.* It feels like this other class I get paid to attend.
Boy, it’s a lot of work. We all have office hours, a two-hour editorial meeting every week, press weekends like this one, and other activities, which is to say nothing about the job itself, which requires much thought and action. There are times I get frustrated because I’m working on F News stuff instead of doing my schoolwork or working on my book, but then I think to myself, “You can only work at this place while you’re in school. Don’t miss this.”
And I also think about the people. It’s the people at F News who make it worth the time and the not-money. Where to begin?
There’s arts editor Irena, the beautiful art history graduate student whose goofball tendencies are perfectly in balance with her naturally brooding temperament (a fabulous, fascinating mix!); there’s the recently-turned-21-year-old undergrad entertainment editor, Rosie, whose love for her fellow man, woman, and punk rock kid would melt the crustiest, grumpiest of hearts; there’s news editor Justin, my colleague in the Writing department, who has read All The Most Interesting Books and Articles That Have Ever Been Written and whose sartorial choices put mine to shame. And then there’s Sophie.
There are others. I could go on. I should go on. I need to. But I also need to do homework because I was at press weekend all weekend and I’m also still sick.
Thank you, F News, for teaching me better copy editing skills. Thank you for having a great color printer that we are not supposed to use for personal things but that everyone totally uses for personal things. (Thank you for being so great that everyone cares about you and therefore doesn’t abuse their printer privileges often.) Thank you for the staff of people who make you.
Thank you for doing my homework.
(Anything’s possible.)
*Yes, that’s a dangling participle and if you wrote it, I’d make you change it.
The Sick Chicken by Winslow Homer, 1874. Image: Wikipedia.
For the past hour, I have been working on a lovely post about the beauty of friendship. But I have to stop. Because I am sick. I am sick with a terrible cold. My nose hurts. My body aches. My lips are dry and cracked. I am hot. Then I am cold. Then I am sad. Then I feel sorry for myself and I say, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mary,” and then I say, “It’s too late!” and then I say, “Stop talking because it hurts the head.”
So I have to stop, now. I think it’s going to have to be good enough that I found a painting by Winslow Homer called, “The Sick Chicken.”
Do you remember the last time we talked about Winslow Homer? I had so much to say about this painting. Those were good times, weren’t they? I could breathe back then. I could run and jump and play. But no longer. Now, I shall perish on this couch, wads of snotty kleenex strewn all around, the remnants of my veggie burger drying out on the coffee table. Woe, woe!
At least we have the memories. Goodbye, cruel world. Hello, heating pad. Hello, pillow. Hello, darkness…
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Mary’s fine. She does have a cold but she’ll be all right. Being dramatic about having post-nasal drip helps her get better more quickly. Trust me.]
“A lunch sits on a blue tablecloth with a brown paper bag and red napkin. There are carrots, a pear, a sandwich on wheat bread with lettuce (chicken salad) and a carton of milk.” Image courtesy the National Cancer Institute, 1989, via Wikipedia.
I’m a lunch person.
If you want to win my favor, butter me up, pitch me an idea, ask me out, or ask me to do something for you that will not be fun for me or that will be very challenging but that I will consider doing because I love you, like you, want to pitch you an idea or ask you out, it would behoove you to ask me out to lunch and discuss everything there. Over a tasty meal in a pleasant, lunch-serving establishment, I am amenable to many things.
This love of lunch probably springs from my continual astonishment that I am, in fact, an adult. I’ve said it before: Whenever I do things like pay a doctor’s bill, return home from an airport, or take my seat at a lunch — to say nothing of a luncheon — I just shake my head. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point, I convinced everyone I was capable of saying things like, “The tuna for me, thank you. Rare.”
Of course, not every day is a “Mary, darling, let’s do lunch” day. That’s maybe once a week, if I’m lucky. (People in my world know the strategy, so I do get to go out to lunch with some frequency; I am, as a result, very busy.)
The majority of my lunches during the week are not foofy, though. The majority of my lunches happen at a table in the school newspaper office or between classes at a cafe in the Loop near school. I like these lunches just as well. I love a bowl of soup. I like a tasty salad. I just like to pause in my day and say, “This is the time where I must eat. Everyone just hang on.”
Breakfast is nice. It’s the first thing you eat, that breakfast, and that means the day is fresh. But the day becomes instantly not fresh if you eat something not fresh for breakfast. If you eat the last piece of spelt toast in the freezer (which you heated up in the microwave because you do not own a toaster), then how fresh can the day really be? Dinner is nice, of course, except that by the time dinner comes, unless I really plan for it, I do not want to have a large meal. Why?
Because I had a nice lunch.
*My apologies for a slow week on the ol’ PG. I turned in my project. The project nearly killed me, but but I turned it in an guess what? That. Thing. Is. Fabulous! Maybe I’ll post it! It’s 23 pages long but I’m about as proud of it as anything I’ve done in school so far. Thanks for all the well-wishes, you guys.
The Steel Makers, by Mikhail Trufanov, 1956. Image: Wikipedia.
I am at a Peet’s Coffee working on the titanic research project that is due Wednesday for my (amazing) class in the Fiber and Material Studies department. This thing needs to get done no later than tomorrow morning if I am going to retain my sanity.
But I have stopped working on my project to write this — I know, I know — because a) my brain is short-circuiting from so much information gathering and organizing and b) I presently have company.
Two Russian men came in a while ago and took a seat at the table to my right. One of them is dressed in business attire (it’s Sunday — maybe church attire?); one is in sneakers, jeans, and a puffy coat. One of the guys is wearing so much cologne, I am getting a headache. (It’s good cologne; there’s just way too much of it.)
I can for sure identify four words in their conversation, but only three actually count because one of the four words is a proper noun: Sascha. Otherwise, it’s just “iPhone,” “auto,” and “super,” but when the guys say it, it sounds like this: “zu-pear.”
What’s weird — and distracting! — is that there are other, Russian words vaguely familiar to me, not because I know what they mean but because my ex-husband was Croatian and my ex-boyfriend was Russian, and that means I’ve overheard a lot of conversations with parents, siblings and friends in Balkan and Russian tongues and the two languages share a number of similar sounds. Mostly clueless to the content of these conversations until I got the post-call or post-conversation de-brief, I still know these languages when I hear them. (Sometimes Serbian is hard to distinguish from Croatian, but don’t tell any Croatians I said that.)
Here are a few of the words I am picking up from the Russians. I’ll list the word first in Cyrillic, then give the phonetic spelling of at least one of the conjugations/versions in Russian, then a Croatian version of the word (in quotations), then the English equivalent. Don’t worry! It’s fun.
Anyone who speaks any of these languages is going to laugh and laugh at how wrong I am about the equivalencies, but you can at least see what I mean when I say there are similarities:
Добрый — Dobriy — “dobro” — good Не за что — Nyez-ashta — “Nije za ništa” — that’s all right Большой — vyelik — “velika” — too big маленький — malen’kiy — “mali” — small Помогите — Pomogite — “pomoć” — help Извините — eez-veen-eete — “oprostite” — sorry
What we have learned from this is that if I landed in Russia right now, I could possibly say “I’m sorry I am so small. Please help.” But it would sound more like Croatian. Perhaps what we have actually learned is that I am glad I am not in Russia right now — or Croatia, for that matter. I think I’d better just stay right here at this Peet’s Coffee.
By the way, this Sascha person they’re talking about is really in trouble. He did something bad. I don’t think he killed anyone (Russian Guy No. 1 and Russian Guy No. 2’s tones are not hushed in that “Sascha killed somebody way”) but they’re clearly annoyed at the guy.
Okay, it’s time for me to stop procrastinating and get back to work.
This is just the beginning. The HSTs will finish about 1 1/4”, I think. Patchwork and photo: Me.
Yesterday, as I was piecing my Bolt From the Blue quilt, I was dealing with serious regret. The regrets were small but continual: They were waste regrets.
The 2 1/2” x 4 1/2” Flying Geese units I was making (and will continue to make for this quilt) involve some not insubstantial fabric waste. I use the the flippy-corner method for my geese, which means when I trim the back of this particular unit, I cut off what could become about a 1 1/4” finished half-square triangle (HST), if I chose to sew the two trimmed parts together, press them open, and square up the now-existing unit. I apologize to my non-quilting readers for all this quilt jargon, but trust me: Turning the waste from a Flying Goose (ew!) into a mini-half-square triangle is possible. Doing this, using patchwork waste to make other patchwork is sometimes called working with “leaders and enders;” I just call it more patchwork. Either way, it’s a thing.
But I wasn’t doing the HST thing. I was just trimming that unit waste straight into the garbage. Because I just can’t deal, okay? I knew if I sewed them up and pressed them out I’d stare at those dang things for the next two years and wonder what to do with them. But the guilt was really getting to me. I mean, it felt terrible to just throw away all that ready-to-sew potential. All those wonderful little HSTs in such lovely, bright colors, destined for the incinerator, well, it just broke my lil’ patchworkin’ heart.
Then I had an idea.
As I’ve been doing my research (for both my lecture and also for my Fiber department research project) I’ve been sifting through lots of big, thick books about quilts and let me tell you what’s wonderful: It’s wonderful when historians find people writing about making their quilts — but this doesn’t happen often. When there’s a journal entry or a newspaper article with a quiltmaker talking about the process of making her quilt or how she did this or that, where she got the idea, who helped her with it, well, it’s just gold. We’ve got pictures of quilts. We’ve got (some) records of things. But there’s really not that much in the history books from the quilters, talking about making their quilts.
Then — I’m getting to the contest, hang on — I thought about the PaperGirl Retreat, how much I want to figure out what that is and then do it because I want to get people writing and quilting more. Have you ever noticed that the root word of “textile” is text? How we speak of “weaving” a tale? Yes, just like we weave cloth. Sewing and writing is really, really close in terms of like, culture and life.
I thought, “Well, how about an essay contest? It could get people writing about quilts! The winner could win my little patches and they could do something neat with them. Or not. But they’d be writing about making.” Reader, I literally took all those little triangles out of the trash and fired them through the machine. They’re ready for the next guy.
(I hope it’s obvious that I do not think my little “leaders and enders” are so amazing that people will be just clamoring to win them; this is about creativity and fun and getting you writing.)
So here’s the official deal:
Write 500-600 words about the last quilt you made (or the one you’re making now.) Mail your essay to the PaperGirl post office box.The deadline is March 31st, the end of the month, and that means you need to put it in the mail by that date. I figure I’ll have all the HSTs by then and it gives you plenty of time to really work on your essay. You can count on me throwing in some extra goodies in the prize bag, by the way, but don’t think there’s going to be an actual quilt or anything. I’m thinking some good Aurifil thread or maybe some candy.
I’m sure you have questions. Fire away, BUT: Don’t send me anything first thing in the morning. Think about this. Mull. Because tomorrow I plan to a) answer questions that may arise until then; and b) offer some advice on essay writing and give more details as to what I’m looking for. For now, just think about what you’d have to say about your quilt-making process.
This sounds fun to me. Does it sound fun to you? Even if one person enters, that will still be fun. And it’ll be one quilter writing about her (or his) quiltmaking process. Win. Win.
Portrait of a sixteen-year-old Franz Schubert by Leopold Kupelwieser, 1812. Image: Wikipedia.
I’ve got something different for you today. I’m still unsure whether to post it or not, but as it involves no stories of wild behavior (me? never), or gossip or politics, it’s probably all right. So far, I have not regretted this kind of vulnerability on the ol’ PG.
The post you’ll see below was written in May of last year but never finished (and therefore never posted.) Thus, it stayed in the Drafts folder in WordPress, the blogging platform used to make PaperGirl.
In May of 2016, Claus was staying with me. It was the time before he left Chicago to go back to Berlin indefinitely. We knew the end was near. Our days were tender, sweet. I’m not sure why I didn’t finish this post about the pictures he showed me. I think I felt bashful and, looking over the draft of the post, I didn’t know quite how to explain my emotions. I was feeling the same vulnerability I feel now, I suppose.
And if you’re wondering why I’m writing about Claus again, well, I’m wondering that, too. These things are confusing. Let’s just say that I’m doing some spring cleaning. Or maybe that I’m finishing up a UFO.*
Here’s the post. Remember, it wasn’t quite finished when I let it be and I don’t know that I should go back and finish it. I think the fragment is the point, today. Leaving things loose like this is not something I like, but we get used to things.
I saw a picture of the most handsome young man yesterday. It was a picture from the past. I recognized the face of the boy because the person who was showing me the picture was the person in the picture. I was looking at Claus. And the picture I was looking at was of Claus at age nineteen or so. The picture was taken of him in his hometown outside Hamburg sometime in the late 1980s.
Seeing someone who left his teenage years decades ago suddenly be nineteen is weird. And fun. And funny. (That hair!) And if like me you overthink everything and refuse to just let a picture be a picture, seeing such a picture is really uncomfortable. Because it confers a kind of sad, caged-animal feeling. I’ll explain.
The young man in the picture was really, really cute. He was an objectively, aesthetically cute teenage guy, the kind of guy seventeen-year-old (give or take a few years) girls freak out over. Athletic build. Strong jaw. Dirty blonde. Great smile — which, I learned, was close-lipped because Claus had braces at the time, and this makes it more perfect because the picture was then more real. Long story short: The boy I saw in the picture was essentially made in a lab for me to be in love with at age fifteen. Swoon. City.
Like most of us, the year that I was forced to be fifteen was not great. I was not cute. I was too talkative. I was having terrible trouble with math. I had a lot on my mind at home, too, including dealing with a mom who was gone a lot (out of necessity! I don’t blame her!) and a broken relationship with my dad. And on and on. Everyone is unhappy in their own ways throughout adolescence; I wasn’t special. Like anyone that age going through whatever they go through, I would’ve given anything for a cute, nice boy to look my way. I would’ve given anything to be asked to the dance. It might’ve made all the other stuff not seem so bad. But with a couple rare exceptions, I was not asked to dances.
If you had come to me back then and showed me the picture of young Claus and said, “Hey, Fons. What do you think of this guy?” I would have pushed my big glasses up my nose and straightened my cloth headband before I took a look, almost as if he could see me from inside the photo and I could do something to look my best. Upon seeing the picture of the cutie-patootie, I would’ve smiled like a dweeb and rolled my eyes like, “Duh, he’s hot??” If you would’ve told me then that the boy was German and that the picture was taken inGermany, you would’ve had to peel me off the ceiling because what could possibly be more hot and amazing and dreamy than a cute boy who was from Germany??
And then, if you would’ve told me that the guy in the picture would care for me deeply someday, that he would kiss me most passionately, invite me to go on a journey across America with him and tell me — he, a bona fide philosopher! — that I was one of the most brilliant people he had ever met… Well, this is where the sad, caged-animal thing comes in.
Why must we live life in the straight line we’re given? Why are we forced to plod along, day, night, day, night, day, night, in this linear way? Why couldn’t my fifteen-year-old-self just get a hint that what seemed absolutely impossible (being liked by someone like that) was in the cards? It would’ve helped so much. It would’ve been so great, just a little “Chin up, kiddo, you’ve got a great family and moxie to spare — and there’s gonna be a lot of love in your life. Just… Standby.”
I guess I just
*An “unfinished object.” A “UFO” is quilter parlance for any quilt project you’ve started but not yet finished.
I’m ashamed to admit it was the only time I was able to do so in three days of being in that fine American city, but this was a work trip, not a vacation; I had two full-day workshops plus a new lecture to present (and reading for school on top of that.) This is the quilt teacher’s lament, you see: All dressed up, no time to sightsee.
But after my class finished yesterday, though my dogs were barkin’, I allowed myself only enough time to dip into my room to freshen up and turn right around to catch the Waving Girl ferry. The boat would take me to the Savannah riverfront and from there, I could walk downtown. When will I be back in Savannah, you know? Claus and I would like to take a trip to the American South. It could happen. But when?
When I got off the ferry, the no-see-em bugs were out for blood. They were swarming around everyone, landing in our hair and eyelashes. Batting them away was taking so much energy I was worried I had made a mistake, that I should’ve just stayed in my hotel room and promised Savannah I’d catch her on the flipside, but by the time I made my way up the steps to the city proper, there was enough breeze to blow the bugs away and my Savannah escapade* began in earnest.
Have you been to Savannah? The place is a dream. I’ve been reading about the place enough that I want to tell you all I’ve learned — but not yet. Tonight, a personal narrative, mostly because I have to get something off my chest.
By the time I hit the town, the sun was setting. I had an hour of good daylight left and this was causing me some anxiety; I was less interested in observing Savannah nightlife that I was in seeing its celebrated wedding cake houses and mossy, palm-studded squares. Luckily, I hit a few really good spots on accident right away: the Savannah College of Art and Design campus; a statue of John Wesley; and Broughton Street, which opened up to me and I walked along as the lights strung from either side of that main drag came on. The twinkle cast a lovely light and I got some good pictures you can see on my Instagram.
Because I was following my nose, I’m afraid I can’t trace for you my exact path through the city. But I can tell you that at one point I walked right past the famous Byrd Cookie. Open since 1924 and still using many of the family’s original cooky recipes, when I saw it I marched right in and bought a delicious Savannah souvenir for myself and a pal: a bag of Key Lime Coolers and Scotch Oatmeal cookys. Two-for-one. Score.
It was after that that something rather awful happened, and if I don’t tell the tale I’m afraid the memory will knock around in my head and become more vivid than it already is, here, a full day later.
I was crossing the street, munching. I had reached a paw into the bag of miniature Byrd Key Lime Coolers because I figured nothing could be more Savannah than eating those tiny, local cookys while walking through City Market. I had just reached the curb when I heard the unmistakable sound of a human body making hard contact with something it ought not to make hard contact with. The sound was a splat, a crunch; my ears witnessed a punching. The impact hung in the air for a millisecond and then I heard sharp intakes of breath and cries of alarm from nearby witnesses.
I whirled to my left and saw her. A woman lay prone on the paved street to the side of horse-drawn carriage. She had fallen while disembarking. From where she lay on the concrete, I saw how tall those carriages really are; the force of her fall was such that I had heard her hit the ground, face-first, from more than 30 feet away. A fleeting thought occurred: So many people were drinking all around me, with open containers. There was something boozy about her fall, but of course I didn’t know. All I knew is that the sight of her there, laying motionless on the hard concrete, flooded me with horror and the lemon cookie in my mouth went to paste.
I dropped the sweets from my hand. Breathless, I said, to no one,”Oh my god, oh my god,” for there was a broken face in our midst, a busted jawbone, teeth shattered, maybe a broken pelvis or slipped disc. The woman had caught her foot in the rail of the carriage and hit the ground hard. I was at least partly a witness to this terrible moment in her life and my night in Savannah was now indelibly altered from the light sightseeing trip I had envisioned. It wasn’t that I thought,”Oh, now my night is ruined.” It was that my vague, weird fears of being horribly disfigured in a freak accident were being validated, right there in Savannah, Georgia.
As I approached, all but covering my eyes with a sugary hand for fear of seeing what I knew I was about to see, the woman, miraculously, stood. I heard her say to the man who had hopped off the carriage, “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.” Relief flooded me to see her talking and not screaming. But how? My body was tight as a spring.
I saw the woman give the man a pat on his shoulder and tell the other passengers in the carriage she was okay; they were all as aghast as I was. I stood, dumb, there at the curb, the blinding white, powdered sugar cookys at my feet. I watched the woman stumble across to the curb near me and keep going up the street. I realized, as I began walking again — only able to think of her bloody, broken teeth — that my left hand was clutching my breast and that I was still in full wince, still shielding myself from that sound of her body hitting the road from too-high up.
The woman passed me, limping. She was in shock. Of this there can be no doubt. She was a few paces ahead of me; suddenly, she turned and went into a bar. I didn’t follow her. I didn’t know what to do. I guess I thought she was okay; an hour later, I would think, “No, she was hurt. She was in a daze. She had broken bones.” And I wished I would’ve followed her into the bar to make sure she had a friend, a helper.
So that’s all I can tell you now. There’s so much to tell about QuiltCon and the other amazing thing that happened this week, but that’s all I can say for now.
*I love a thesaurus. I thought, “There must be a better word than ‘adventure.'” An “escapade” is “an act or incident involving excitement, daring, or adventure.” That’s more like it.
Greetings from Savannah! Image: Modern Quilt Guild
Getting ready to come to beautiful Savannah, GA for the big, basically sold-out QuiltCon East 2017 has had me busier than a one-armed paper-hanger. Actually, for anyone who knows the quilt business, saying that I was busier than a person getting ready to go teach and lecture at a big quilt show is sufficient. Gah!
I’ll be teaching all day today and tomorrow; my lecture is Saturday morning and I leave a little bit after that, but I’m hoping to Instagram what I can from the show and hopefully post on the ol’ PG tonight, if I’m not too exhausted. Sometimes, I surprise myself!
If you’re here at the show, you must at least try to find me and say hi. The best thing about big quilt conferences is actually meeting people that are usually just tiny pictures attached to comments online.
Whether or not we see each other, and whether or not you’re at the show or just checking out all the social media posts that will start flooding in from all your favorite quilters/bloggers/posters, etc., about an hour — enjoy the show!
Transparent brackets on a scary, scary mold of human teeth. Photo: Wikipedia.
A few weeks ago, I had a dentist appointment.
I put a comment in the comments section that let you know the visit was pain-free and it was, mostly. My new dentist zinged me with the spinny thing a couple times, but just when I was about to cry and rip off my paper napkin he switched to the old-fashioned scraper tool and I was okay. (The scraper doesn’t bother me for some reason.) The good news was that I didn’t have any cavities, so yay me for brushing my teeth even when I’m so tired I can’t see straight. The bad news is that I need a crown, but this was not news. I have a tooth on my lower right that is 79% filling at this point and I was actually surprised that my new dentist — who has extremely hairy arms but an excellent sense of humor — let me out the door without scheduling the appointment, but he didn’t. He said I would be okay for awhile, as long as I stop eating ice.*
The reason I’m doing an official follow-up to the dentist post is because something major happened.
I asked about braces.
Oh, I had them when I was a kid. Actually, I was a tween, but advertising executives hadn’t come up with that word for 13-year-olds back in the mid-’90s, so I think of myself as a kid back then — a kid with real messed up teeth. Man, were they crooked. Jacked-up toofs run in my family. The Fons clan has deep palates and our teeth are relatively large and excited to show up to the mouth party, so there’s a lot of crowding. Besides, you know, my family members — both on the Fons and Graham side — are just so wise, most of us have had to have all four respective wisdom teeth removed. If we didn’t, you see, we would be too wise.We would like, rule the galaxy because of our wisdom We would also have even crooked-er teeth.
So yes, I had braces as a youth and as a result, my teeth became super straight. But over the next decade or so, something happened: My lower teeth started to get all crooked again. This wasn’t something I noticed while it was happening, obviously; teeth move slowly. But a couple years ago I realized my lower incisor was starting to cock a little bit. A year after that, I saw how it had moved the tooth next to it — and the tooth next to that. Needless to day, I was steamed: Not only did I have braces in junior high, I had rubber bands, too.
From that day on, I began to notice my (crooked) teeth when I viewed episodes of Quilty or Love of Quilting. I began to be self-conscious about the way my teeth looked on camera and, more immediately pressing, how they looked in the bathroom mirror when I was flossing. I know plenty of folks vainer than I, but I’m not ashamed to say that I care about my appearance and try to keep myself looking and feeling my best. Besides, I do have a job that is public in many ways. How my teeth look — and how I feel about how my teeth look — is not an entirely trivial thing.
When I asked my dentist about all this, he said, with a reassuring nonchalance, “You should talk to an orthodontist. Sure. I see that, on the bottom. I’ll give you a referral to the two best guys. Get a quote, see what they say. It wouldn’t take too much. You’d be much happier.”
And a few days ago, I had one of the appointments. It’s so much money. But it’s my face. My teeth. You know? I give to charities. I save for retirement. I pay my taxes and I try to be generous. I’m in debt for school, but I’m paying it back as I go along. I can’t really “afford” to straighten my smile but I could figure it out. And it’s really been bugging me, how my teeth have shifted and gotten all weird. The thought that keeps coming to me is hard to admit, but I can tell you anything, so here goes:
I’ll be 40 in three years. How cool would it be to have the best smile of my life when I hit 40?
What if, you know? Just what if? They would be on the inside, by the way, if I’m willing to pay extra.
I think I’d have to try and make that work.
*[EDITOR’S NOTE: I am literally eating ice right now. It’s soft ice and I’m chewing carefully. Note to self to take iron supplement every day, not just when I remember.]
Portrait of a woman, aged sixteen, previously identified as Mary Fitzalan, Duchess of Norfolk, 1565. Image: Wikipedia.
Whatever you have heard, whatever conclusions you may have drawn, I feel compelled tonight to make sure you know that I am not a grown-up.
Saying such a thing is painful for two reasons.
The first (and probably the most painful) reason is that when I say it, I sound like someone in a Disney World commercial. I say that I’m not a grown-up and suddenly I see myself in one of those commercials, smiling a real cheesy smile while wearing a Donald Duck visor and a fannypack, throwing up my hands with a shrug while I whirl around in the teacups as the voiceover plays me saying, “I guess I’m just not ready to grow up, yet, Mickey!”
I think you trust that I like fun. But I am not a fan of amusement parks.
The second reason it’s painful to admit that I am not an actual grown-up person is because everyone expects me to be and I have convinced people for long enough that I can behave like a grown-up person, to bail out now would be difficult at best.
Since 2005, I have supported myself as a freelancer. Writing, performance, and quilting gigs are how I make my living. This means that I have to deal with self-employment tax and save receipts and fill out countless 1099 forms and keep track of so, so many things. When tax time comes, I think, “I can’t do this. This is very hard.” But I do it, anyway, because I am a good citizen. I’m not a grown-up, you see, but I am at least a good citizen.
But taxes are kind of like, easier, because they only happen once a year. (I used to file quarterly but I’m not making very much money right now, so I can get by doing it once in April.) What really blows me away is that I am grown-up enough to go buy groceries when I need them.
Let me ask you: Do you ever marvel at your ability to do any of the following?
buy groceries
pay the internet/electric/gas/phone bill/condo fee/tax man
get to a place (any place!) on time, with your act together
give to a charity
get to your gate early
cook a meal
go on a date
get a job, keep a job, lose a job, get another job
complete a lot of homework
I’m telling you, sometimes I cannot believe I can do any of those things. Because I am not a grown-up. I am a kid. I am a goofy, goofy kid. I don’t know how I can feed myself, half the time. I don’t know when I learned these things. But I am surviving, somehow, and I am generally content.
I do have a good mom. But my mother is not doing my homework, you know? Sometimes, I just shake my head. Because I have no idea.
Mail from Marloes from the Netherlands! How cool is that?? Letter: Marloes, Scan: Me.
Yesterday, I went to the mighty Merchandise Mart to pick up the PaperGirl mail.
I walked the whole way from school to the Mart and I was glad I did. The day was fine, the Chicago River looked pretty good, and there was a man on the Wells Street bridge smoking a cigar when I passed. (I must admit: I like the smell of a man’s cigar when I’m in a city, crossing a bridge, going to pick up the mail.) And when I got inside the Mart, I felt happy. After all, I have a key to a mailbox that will never contain a gas bill or a credit card statement, only glorious mail from people who like this blog. People like Annabelle, Richard, Katherine, Leah, Ellen, Lorel, Marloes, Deborah, and Liz.
Where do I begin?
Remember a little while back when someone suggested there be a PaperGirl retreat? Or was that me who thought it up? I can’t remember, but let me tell you: That idea keeps rolling around in my brain and I like it rolling around. When I opened the fabulous letters in this last batch, the idea of a P.G. retreat rolled up to me again for a totally selfless reason: You people should meet each other. You really should. The letters I have here in a box at the foot of my desk are written by such interesting, funny, neat people. You’re like, pre-BFFs. Trust me.
I keep fantasizing about what a PaperGirl retreat would be. It would be a quilting/writing retreat. I’d teach patchwork and writing. You could write about your quilts. You could put words on your quilts. You could just write about your life and then, when that got really hard, you could just go sew. That’s like my entire life. And along with workshop instruction and learning and fun, we’d go to the Art Institute and look at art and have some fabulous dinners downtown. We would drink really good coffee at breakfast and we’d go see a show or something at night. But the night wouldn’t go too late because I turn into a pumpkin.
Wouldn’t that be kind of great? I really love the idea of doing a workshop weekend that blends quilting and writing. Look, you heard it here first: If there’s interest, I can schedule a phone call with the one and only Carmen and we could at least think through logistics. How hard could it be? I’ve been teaching patchwork and writing long enough. I’ve been living in Chicago long enough. Hey, Rita and Lily had fun with me — my first testimonials, perhaps!
Anywhoo, it wouldn’t be a PaperGirl Mailbag post without sharing some mail, so let’s have it. Tonight, not a lace swatch or Italian linen (I haven’t forgotten about that!) but a poem, written by the irresistible, one-and-only Leah. It might seem boastful to post this poem for everyone to see, but I can’t resist the opportunity to share its charms, Leah. Rhyming “Wonder Woman-y” and using the word “gravel”? Seriously? Leah, you leave me no choice. Ahem:
In Chicago’s a sewist named Fons, With talent to rival magic wands: She enjoys frequent travel O’er land, sea, and gravel She just went to see Claus (not Hans.)
Her interests are varied and many, Her life’s more busy than any; Creating and planning, Studying and cramming, She’s a little bit Wonder Woman-y.
From Chicago, New York, or D.C., She writes for all others to see; Her adventures in life All the joy, all the strife, On her excellent blog, th’ ‘Ol P.G.’
Reading it’s always a pleasure, A favorite use of my leisure; It brightens my days In so many ways It’s fun, insightful — a treasure!
That came in the mail! Can you believe it? Amazing.
One last thing: Of course I love to get poems (and hats and chocolate from Seattle and drawings) but I must tell you that this mailbox thing is really for you, too. It’s good to write a letter to someone. It feels good. Don’t worry about writing it “well.” Don’t worry about the perfect card. Just write to me. You might discover something.
A basic response form; in grad school, they’re a little more involved. Usually. Image: Wikipedia.
A gal pursuing an MFA in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) needs to take a seminar, an elective, and a workshop each term. There’s plenty more stuff you have to do on top of that, but those are the three categories under which actual courses fall.
On Thursday, I have to send out 15-20 pages of writing to the people in my spring workshop — and I’m nervous about it.
The writer’s workshop comes as a standard feature in any writing degree program and countless creative writing courses ’round the world. The writer’s workshop is a place for a student to get thoughtful feedback on her work from multiple perspectives and have a meaningful discussion with like-minded people (read: fellow writers.)
It goes like this:
The writer provides her pages a week before class. Her classmates read her work carefully, make notes, respond to questions she may have posed beforehand. When workshop time comes, people go around the room and give their in-depth, generous-but-firm feedback while the teacher acts as benevolent moderator. The respondents ask for clarifications as needed; they pose questions. The writer isn’t usually allowed to comment until all feedback has been shared, however; she just takes notes, nods, and goes, “Mm-hm.” When everyone has shared their glowing praise and diplomatic criticism, she is allowed to respond to a few things. Workshop over, she thanks her fellow students, collects their notes, then goes back to her writing desk excited to incorporate what she’s gleaned from the vibrant conversation while at the same time realizing she must stay true to her vision.
That’s the best-case scenario. And plenty of workshops go something like that. Other ones, not so much. This is because there are problems with the standard workshop model. Several problems that come to mind include:
workshops are full of human beings and human beings are fickle and weird (ask me how I know) and this affects how people read, think (or not think), and give feedback
when you’re in the middle of writing something, it can be detrimental to have even really nice people telling you what they do or don’t like about what you’re working on
if you don’t have a thick skin, you may cry
if you don’t have a clear vision, you may falter
if you don’t stay open-minded, you may waste a great opportunity to improve your work
Workshops that have gone off the rails make for horror stories. You can actually google “writers’ workshop horror stories” and be entertained for a good ten minutes, even if you’re not a writer.
When I was an undergrad at the University of Iowa, I took exactly one writing course (comedy for the stage, in case you’re wondering.) Other than that, until I started grad school, I had never taken a writing class in my life — and I had certainly never been in a formal workshop. My fall workshop was pretty good. But I’m nervous about this one next week.
I’m nervous partly because the class is big: There will be 15 response sheets coming to me a week from today. Fifteen! I’m nervous because the pages I’m turning in have been worked and worked but aren’t finished, yet. I’m nervous because I’m writing about my dad.
But there’s value in sharing these particular pages. I want to know where my blind spots are in the draft; I’m actually a little stuck right now because of those blind spots. My classmates can help me, even if it’s going to be really painful to hear their criticism. There will be that, make no mistake; I am writing my little patootie off and it’s still so far from where it needs to be. Wish me luck.
And by the way: I AM SO EXCITED FOR YOU ALL TO READ THIS BOOK! Sorry. I never do that. I never use all-caps. But sometimes when I’m struggling I just think about the day when I announce the book deal and you all get a special pre-order price and an autographed copy and all that. I really do think about that, how PaperGirl is a snack but the book I’m writing is a meal.
You’re invited for dinner. You’re so, so invited. Sit by me.
Not what I’m looking for — but at least it wouldn’t make noise. Image: Wikipedia.
The writer’s conference was fabulous in every way. I have arrived home inspired, encouraged, and feeling generally optimistic my life as a writer.
But the trip was not without its pain, as you know, and I’m afraid that it wasn’t just nostalgia pain I had to endure. This trip forced me to admit a painful truth, and that painful truth is that my luggage is dead. I have to buy new luggage. Maybe even before QuiltCon in two weeks. It’s bad, you guys.
This luggage situation really frosts my tarts* because the luggage I have been using for the past couple years was way, way too expensive to be pooping out on me this soon. Nevertheless, both of my silver hard-top Zero Halliburton suitcases have major problems. Suitcase One has latches that no longer stay latched and call me crazy, but I kind of want the contents of my suitcase to, you know, stay put until I decide otherwise. The horror of seeing one’s suitcase half-open as it comes around on the baggage claim is hard to describe. Is something valuable falling out?? Possibly more horrifying: Is something embarrassing falling out?? Note that “something valuable” would be earrings and “something embarrassing” would be any number of lady items.
Suitcase Two has a wheel problem. This is a nice way to say that the wheels on Suitcase Two are surely the most poorly-designed objects on or off a suitcase that ever were designed ever on the planet. And no, I am not a designer of suitcase wheels; I’m not saying I could do better. Except that it’s clear common sense was not drawn upon in the design of the blinkin’ things and they should have consulted me.
The wheels are plastic, which I’ll concede seems standard. But the two back wheels feature plastic brakes. The brakes are activated by pressing down on small square buttons on the top of the…fender (I don’t know suitcase wheel words!) that stop the wheel from rolling when deployed. This would be a nice feature if you are a person who takes many sea journeys, I imagine; there, you would need to keep your luggage from rolling to and fro on the deck of the ship. But if you’re not a fancy sailor or a well-heeled woman on the Titanic, why on Earth do you need brakes on your luggage wheels? (Confession: I have engaged the brake buttons a couple times while on a packed subway. Having brakes that kept my suitcase from rolling back and forth and into people as the train lurched was sort of cool, though it’s amazing how well one’s foot works just fine in such situations.)
And the brakes break. (I replaced a wheel once already.) And the brakes get stuck halfway down on the wheels. On this latest trip, as I rolled Suitcase One through the lobby of the hotel and through various airport terminals, I discovered that the brakes are now in some half-stuck state. This not only makes it hard to roll my luggage along for the resistance, it creates the most ridiculous, unbelievably loud and continuous sound. When I pull my luggage, it sounds like someone is intermittently honking a sad clown horn. It sounds like a duck is crying. My luggage sounds like a sad, plaintive duck.
You should know that my superstar stepdad, Mark, turned me onto the Zero Halliburton brand (no connection to the Halliburton company you’re thinking of, by the way.) Mark was a commercial airline pilot for years and was in the Air Force before that; the guy knows a few things about luggage. He bought me my first Zero suitcase back when I was in college because he has long believed it’s the best stuff on the market. I used that suitcase until it was too banged up to take on business trips; it was awesome. After retiring that one, I got another Zero suitcase that served me well for years, and I travel a lot and am generally hard on things like shoes and eyeglasses and suitcases. But neither of those pieces had wheel brakes. I will look at the company’s website, see if there are any sales going on, and probably get another couple pieces from them.
Unless you brilliant PG readers tell me otherwise. So, how about it? Do you have luggage brands you swear by? Remember: I haul heavy books and quilts from one coast to another on average 2.4 times per month. I can’t mess around with stuff from Wal-Mart. Nothing wrong with it, but this is serious stuff. Talk to me!
Back in October, I went blonde. Not Marilyn blonde. Not Madonna blonde. But like, definitely blondish.
Thing were changing in my life. I felt that to reflect The New Me, I needed a new attitude, a new hairdo. (I like saying things like “I needed a new attitude” and using words like “hairdo”; it makes me feel like a character in a pop song from 198os or a sitcom character in the 1950s.) Besides, I like changing my hair. Folks who watch the PBS show and/or watched Quilty over the years know that to be true; my hair is somewhat different in every season, pretty much. And why not? Changing your hair(do) is fun, it’s never permanent — even when it’s a perm — and I love getting shampooed by another human being. I mean, woah. That is the best.
When I thought over what I could do with my hair — I did notwant to chop it off again — I realized I hadn’t been blonde in awhile. The last time I was sorta blonde was in 2013, but that was mostly a heavy highlight situation. Before that, it was high school. It was time.
It’s been a somewhat gradual transition, but now, sitting here in almost mid-February, I am darned blonde and I have to tell you: Blondes may indeed have more fun.
It’s not like I’m suddenly partying all day long and bathing in confetti and riding around in Lamborghini convertibles in a bikini, which is what I picture when I picture Blondes Having Fun. But I swear, people treat me differently lately. I’m serious. It’s weird. It’s good. But it’s a little weird.
I’m telling you now because I’ve been blonde long enough to say it with conviction: People like blonde people. Blonde women? It’s hard to give you hard evidence. It’s not like people go, “Oh, hello! You’re blonde. I like that. Right this way!” or “Miss, would you like a hot chocolate? I just want to buy you one!” All I can tell you is that people are smiling at me 10-15% more than usual. True story. Smiling is happening with slightly more frequency than before. I’m not smiling more than usual. I’m always smiling. I have not changed my smile quotient. It’s everyone else.
I wonder about my fellow artificially-blonde friends. Is the Blonde Effect true for you? Do you stay blonde because you are doing your part for the goodwill of man…or do you just like looking like a cutie-patootie?
“The Old Quilt [SCOUT]” by Walter Langley, date unknown. Image: Wikipedia.Tonight, a cross-post, because you cannot believe the stack of reading I have to do before tomorrow — and you should’ve seen the piles I read for today. Some people make mountains out of molehills; some graduate school professors make them out of reading assignments. Holy mackerel.*
But worry not: This is no sloppy-seconds kind of post I’m offering; I’m actually particularly fond of this week’s Quilt Scout column on how to measure the time it takes for you to make a quilt. That’s the question quilters get asked the most, you know: “How long did that take you??”
You are welcome; I am now going to go read an entire book and two PDF documents, all of which have copious footnotes. It was nice knowing you. Make sure Pendennis has all the candy pumpkins he needs.
*Note to self: Look up etymology of “Holy mackerel.” Second note to self: Stop blogging this very instant and start reading all the things you have to read, Mary Fons. I mean it. I’m serious. Go. Mary. MARY.
Picture of high school audience, Ladies Home Journal, 1945. Image: Wikipedia.
This morning, I beat the sun by a long shot.
I was up at 4 a.m. (gah!) so that I could have tea, go over my materials one last time, get all foofed-up, and get to my rental car, which I secured yesterday evening. By my careful calculations, I needed to be on the road to the northwestern suburbs of Chicago by 6 a.m. in order to be at the first of several high school gigs today.
Every year, a handful of dedicated high schools in the Chicagoland area hold “Writer’s Week” festivals. These festivals — which the students love but always struggle for funding and booster support, dangit — invite professional writers to share their work with the students and to talk and answer questions about the writing life. I have been a featured performer at a number of these festivals for well over a decade, now, which is great but also super weird, because I remember my first few times doing these gigs and it does not seem so very long ago. I remember being a young slam poet and freaking out the night before these gigs, timing my set until it was absolutely perfect because I had a limited repertoire; I remember rambunctious boys in the back of the auditorium one year who threw me off — and how I learned that day, the hard way, how to effectively stop any heckler. (Ninety-nine percent of the time, ignore them. I called the kids out that day and it wasn’t good. They wanted attention and they got it. I learned a lot that afternoon.)
I did first-and second-period at my favorite place, William Fremd High (they saw quilts one year), and then spent seventh and eighth at Bartlett High, a school with students were so respectful and courteous, one gets nervous. I did four shows today, in other words. In case you’ve never performed for 50 minutes in front of an auditorium of 300 or so high school students four times in one day, I assure you: It’s not for the faint of heart and when you come home, you will want to eat food and then face plant into the couch for awhile.
Twice today I was approached by quilters: a teacher at Bartlett and the mother-in-law of one of the Writer’s Week organizers. Both of them were excited to say hi and I could see that both of them were looking at me as the quilting person they’ve watched on TV while trying to square it with the high school poetry/writing presenter they just watched live onstage. Welcome to my world.
For many years, I have had a hard time telling people what it is that I “do.” I’m a writer. I’m a quilter. I’m a performer. I write about quilts. I write poetry and perform it. I perform, in a way, in the quilt world because of the on-camera work. I teach people how to quilt, but also how to write — it’s all this gorgeous, difficult slurry of words and fabric scraps and microphone cords. In the past couple years, I have been really working, with every project I take on, to combine these loves. How can writing and quilting and performance come together? Where do writing and quilting intersect — not for me, but for you? What can I give? And how can I help? (By helping others, giving my art away, that’s how I better understand myself. This is the win-win.)
These are the questions. Thank you, high schoolers and faculty and staff, for giving me an audience today. I move toward answers every time I go to work.
I can’t. I JUST CANNOT. Photo courtesy a plain old google search, as Wikipedia doesn’t have any pictures of miniature Maltipoos, yet. If I get one, I’ll post one.
Most of you loved the idea and your enthusiasm was powerful. I had visions of little Pipkin (brilliant, Lesley!) licking his whiskers, curling up for a nap on a stack of quilts. I even emailed the pet adoption center downtown and filled out the application form to foster a kitten after several readers advised me to start there. It was all very exciting.
Just a few people said, “Hm… Are you sure, Mar?” and I was glad that those voices were there because as much as I hated to admit it, I had a small but real hesitation in my mind about getting a cat. If the “Hang on there, cowgirl” people hadn’t spoken up, I might’ve ignored that little doubt and there could be a kitten on my lap right now.
(Oh, wow. There could be a kitten on my lapright now… That sounds really great. Wait! No! Focus, Mary Fons! Focus!)
Here’s the problem: As I said in the original post, I really, really want a little dog. I love cats. I do. And we know from this Quilt Scout column that I’m not sold on the idea that “there are two kinds of people in the world” and therefore there are cat people and dog people and ne’er the twain shall meet. Truth be told, I’m actually afraid of big dogs; I’ve personally known two people who have suffered dog bites — bad ones. Like, face bites that required surgery. (I know; it’s really, really horrible.) But even not-so-big dogs can freak me out: One of my best friends from back home, her dog when we were growing up was mean as a snake, barked incessantly, and snapped at me whenever I got near her and she wasn’t much bigger than a Big Wheel.
But the truth is, like a young girl who has watched way too many old-school Disney movies dreams of her Prince Charming, I dream of my teacup Maltipoo, Philip Larkin. He’s a teacup Maltipoo and he’s my guy. My problem with getting a cat is that really, I want a dog and I’m not ready to be mature and wise and gracious and giving and get a different species entirely because I can’t have him, yet. (If you haven’t read the original post, the reasons I can’t have Philip Larkin right now are listed there.) I just have this Phil-or-nothing mindset. It’s like I’m practicing pet chastity or something, saving myself for…marriage. (That’s a super weird line of metaphor that I’m going to drop immediately, even though it is weirdly accurate.)
Perhaps what cinched it for me was my learning from all of you about how cats really need to have a feline companion, especially if they’re alone for long hours in the day. Having two cats makes total sense and if I ever have a cat, I’ll have two. But that was just it: Instead of not having one dog, suddenly I had two cats. And it felt wrong.
For now, I shall wait. I will pet my friend Sophie’s cats. I will pet my friend Heather’s cat. And I might still foster a kitten at some point, just to make sure! But several people have asked me about the Cat Question and I thought I’d update you.
Flag of the United States of America. Image: Wikipedia.
Preface
Settle in, friends, for a longer read. Get a fresh cup of tea; prepare a snack of the sweet or savory kind. Tuck your knees up under your seat and if you have a quilt, pull a quilt up over your lap. If you have a pet, pat the space next to you so your pet will come sit by you.
I don’t ask for much — I keep not doing a PaperGirl Pledge Drive because I just can’t bring myself to full on ask you for money — but this time I do want something from you and I want it fiercely. Read this post, please, and read all the way to the end. I initially broke this up into three different posts, but I can’t risk parts being jumbled up, so I’ve fashioned a chapter book.
Pendennis, I’ll have you know, is on my lap. I literally went to the shelf to get him when I started this piece this morning and I put him in my lap as I wrote. I need him as a source of strength because I am afraid to write what I am writing, have been afraid to write this for a solid year. I write to you all in the spirit of Pendennis.
Chapter I
To begin, I have to tell you a story.
In 2007, I was working with the Neo-Futurists, the theater company you know I love very much. I was about a year into my ensemble-ship and I was more alive as an artist than I had ever been before, more satisfied with the work than I had ever been. But there was a big, fat fly in the ointment. I had a secret, and my secret isolated me from my new, brilliant, talented artistic family, something that I could not speak about for fear of…well, I didn’t know what, but I was afraid. The entire cast — indeed, the entire company, from ensemble members to the staff to the board and beyond that to every donor and audience member — were vocally, vociferously liberal in their politics.
I was not.
A few years prior, I had read some books and met some people and had some conversations that dazzled and inspired me and I had a cascade of revelations. Until then, I had always aligned myself with my Iowa-Dem-to-the-core family, but there was a lot about the liberal worldview that I had come to object to, had always sort of mildly been repulsed by — I cannot delve into details right now — and with the wind of dissidence in my sails from all this book learnin’, I finally copped to it, much to the horror of my mother and sisters, who have never wavered in their views.
The thing was, I didn’t align with the conservatives, either. What was so electric about some of the ideology I was learning about, which was libertarian, basically, was that it was neither of those blunt, hulking sports teams known as Republican (red jerseys) or Democrat (blue jerseys.) For a good many years, when asked through which political lens I viewed the world, I’d say, with a bit of a bratty attitude caused as much by my political affiliations as my being in my mid-twenties, “I’m a libertarian.”
Okay, so back to the Neo-Futurists. There were many political plays in our show, which changed week to week. I was cast in 2006, during the Bush administration and during that time, Bush was loathed and lambasted in our show; his policies and supporters, of course, got the same treatment. I was a castmember during the first Obama campaign and election and Obama was basically worshiped, even as he appointed to his cabinet some of the same people who had all but engineered the financial collapse of our country, even as government surveillance increased, etc. Through all this, I kept my mouth shut.
Most everyone in the cast wrote political plays for the show. There were impassioned conversations about politics in rehearsal. But I was mum; mum in the show, mum in the room. Then one day, though I don’t recall the breaking point, I decided to break my silence.
I wrote a play called “Donkey Punch.” In it, I sat on the stage in a single spotlight and talked about the proposition of universal healthcare (I was skeptical); about the war in Iraq (I was not entirely opposed); I talked about illegal immigration (how aspects of it made me uncomfortable.) Between each of these statements, I had cast come out and beat me with red, white, and blue pillowcase puppets I had made into the shape of donkeys and elephants. At the end of the play, I rose to my feet and said, quite plainly, what the play was really about: It was about how afraid I was to be the only non-liberal in the room, how I was afraid that now that the people I loved knew that I was different, they wouldn’t like me and they wouldn’t want me there.
So began a terrible time. Some nights, I was booed from the audience, hissed at. The play lasted in the show just four weeks, which is not a long time for a strong piece in that show (politics aside, the aesthetic structure of the piece was true) but I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t the audience that was killing me: It was the ensemble. Not everyone, I must rush to point out, treated me badly, and more on that in a moment. Though most of my ensemble-mates treated me like my family did around all this — shocked and disappointed but sort of willing to ignore it — several members of the ensemble hated me. That’s not an exaggeration: They hated me. One of them proposed a piece at the following week’s rehearsal that aligned me with Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, Leine Riefenstahl. Another stood up from her seat and, pointing her finger at my face, told me I’d be sorry about what I was saying when I got sick one day and needed insurance; none of us could know that within a year, I would be gravely ill at Mayo Clinic. The other very angry person was the villain from this post, so it didn’t bother me as much, but still, and even with the lukewarm acceptance from other cast members of my outing myself as a non-liberal, I was a miserable creature, furious at myself for coming out, furious at a group of people who said they were tolerant but were the rabid opposite. I was afraid of the audience every time the play came up in the show. I was afraid that I actually didn’t know what I was talking about. Most deeply, I was in anguish that the politics got in the way of what the play was really about: Fear.
In the midst of all the grey storm clouds, there was a lining so silver, it has turned to gold in my memory. There was one person in the ensemble who showed the kind of courage in friendship you read about in great literature. Think Horatio. Think Samwise.
After the conversation around my play had reached a fever pitch (this was with one performance under my belt and when the finger-pointing and the Hitler references had been made), Neo ensemble member Bilal Dardai caught up to me as I ran, sobbing, to my car, and hugged me, and spoke words I will never forget:
“Mary. Mary, wait. Okay… Look, I don’t like your play. In fact, I really, really don’t like what you say in it. But I respect your right say it. And you’re really brave. I’m in your corner, even though I hate some of what you’ve got in that corner. It’s gonna be okay. They feel strongly about their politics. Just… Just shake it off. Your play… Is important. It’s important. I stand by it.”
And so he did stand by it. Even though he hated my politics, he protected my right to talk about them. Bilal knows how much his actions of protection and solidarity in the face of vehemently disagreeing with my views meant to me then and now; I have told him many times and in writing this, I tell him again, now, for all the world to see.
That is the story of “Donkey Punch” and now we speed through the years.
Chapter II
One of the things I liked about identifying as a libertarian — in fact, now that I consider it, probably the thing I liked about it — was that it seemed to announce to the world that I was a person who thinks for herself. I don’t vote straight ticket, thankyouverymuch. I look at the issues how I want to look at them. Just because I agree with you on Issue A, that does not imply, sir, that I agree with you on Issues B and C. Buzz off. I loved that being a libertarian was being a pain-in-the-you-know-what, being less easy to lump with the group.
My libertarianism was based also on an extremely rosy, Horatio Algerian view of the world, all bootstraps and elbow grease. Why shouldn’t it have been? My mother, after being heartbroken and abandoned by my father over and over again for 19 years, not only started her own business and put three girls through college but built a small empire with a needle and thread, forget bootstraps. At that time, having quit my job as a waitress, I was making a living as a freelance writer and stage performer. America was a great country. I had proof all around me that if you try hard and do the right thing, this country is your oyster. And so my thinking went for some years.
But, because I so pride myself on being a person who is always trying to read more and think harder, because I want to be the kind of soul who is always discovering and questioning, because I took a certain pride in being soindependent I would even turn my back on my family’s Democratic political views if I had to, I kept right on reading and thinking, discovering and questioning; some years a little more, some years a little less. And so it was that about two years ago, I found that I was beginning to change my mind.
You know that feeling when you’ve been food poisoned and it just starts to come on? Those very first twangs and kicks in your stomach, that jet of sour that you suddenly find shooting along your jaw? That’s what it feels like when you realize you might have to change your mind about some of the political views you used to crow about. That’s how it felt to me, anyway. It was, and is, an intensely uncomfortable experience. Because political opinions are so loud, so self-righteous. They’re impassioned and final; they’re pristine, they’re endorsed by history, or culture, or God. Our political views are the megaphones of our values and our values are born from that which we love and that which we are afraid of and when you feel like what you love or what you were afraid of is changing, it’s embarrassing. Your pride is in grave danger and this just plain sucks. My sister Hannah and I were at each other throats many times about things I said or ways I felt about this or that issue and when I found myself questioning what I thought, oh, no. She was right, I was wrong. No one likes to lose an argument. And my sister could be so biting, so arrogant about things. I didn’t like it that she would eventually learn I had turned away from some of the things I held true and thus be smug and satisfied.
As I began to realize that some of the things I used to believe I no longer believed, I felt like I had been walking around with my skirt tucked into my pantyhose for five years straight and had just noticed that was not a great look for me. I felt stupid and, even worse, I felt like I had caused the family pain for nothing. Wait, no: The skirt in the pantyhose was worse. My family would get over it.
The beliefs I had about the world being an oyster for everyone, well, they weren’t based in reality. The wage gap, the color lines, the issue of being a woman instead of a man — these handicaps are real. Some of my beliefs weathered the storm, like my firm belief that politicians and billionaires are all corrupt and in bed with each other. But a lot of the things I ignored or argued against before? They had to go.
And now we come to the end of Chapter II and I must pull myself from the past and put you directly into the present with me and this is the hardest part, this moment, because I have been avoiding it for so long.
Chapter III
I have been living in another closet.
It was made by my own hands and I have kept the door shut tight because I’m terrified that what happened ten years ago with the Neos will happen again, that when I tell you how I feel, you’ll leave me. You’ll stop listening. You’ll forget Pendennis and plays about vacuums; you’ll not send any letters, now, and you’ll say, “Ugh! I knew it!” Worse — way worse than any of that, I’m afraid that I’ll cause more tiny cracks of division among regular folks in our troubled nation and the happy soil of the PaperGirl comments section will fester with typo-ridden political manifestos and back-and-forths between people arguing, Facebook-style, over all this. I can’t bear that. I’d rather shut it all down than see people “talk ugly” to each other, as my grandmother would say. My closet has been my protection against that possibility. And it worked for me, and for you, I suppose, for a long time.
But last night, as a sledgehammer came down and cracked the bedrock on which my country was built, so did my heart split in two. When I saw families that couldn’t get to each other because of Trump’s Muslim ban, when I saw the faces of every immigrant on the boats at Ellis Island being turned back by an anguished Statue of Liberty, rather than shelter them with her generous robe, instead bar the golden door of opportunity and send them away from freedom and back into tyranny; when I saw that, my friends, I wept tears so bitter, they burned. I’m coming out now, because the pain of living inside is worse than telling you: I loathe our president and I am committed to actively resisting him and his policies.
Don’t leave. Listen.
Again and again, I have stopped — literally stopped — my hands over this keyboard, halting my impulse to tell you how deeply I oppose Trump, both the man and the president. Countless times, I censored myself. Because you don’t come to me for politics. Because I want this blog to be an oasis. Because what do I know. Because I have changed my mind before. Because maybe it will get better. Because if you disagree with me and never come around again, what will that accomplish? Who cares about my opinion, anyhow? I’m not an expert and I’m not a journalist. I’m a quilter. A student of writing and a person trying to figure out her life, just like you.
I didn’t say anything when he was on tape talking about grabbing women by their private parts, even though I felt like I couldn’t breathe for two days. Instead, I wrote a post about how wonderful women are. When it was coming to election time, I didn’t tell you who to vote for. I just told you to vote. When he was elected and I felt panic and shame, I wrote about quilt blocks. When he signed the order for the Mexico wall, I didn’t blog at all, didn’t tell you the horror I saw just ten days ago, at the Berlin Wall Memorial, how I just got back from seeing what happens when you wall people off from each other, how sick it is, how nothing good can come. I didn’t blog the day 250,000 people took over downtown Chicago to protest our president because I didn’t know how to tell you that I was one of those people. I marched with my friend K—, who has seen me weep and gnash my teeth over when, when it would get so bad that I would have to talk.
But I’ve been doing research on the AIDS quilt and an image kept coming to my mind. People who were dying and the friends and family of those people, as they marched for the FDA to approve drugs that would save lives, they held up signs that said “SILENCE = DEATH” because no one was talking about the disease that was killing hundreds of thousands of us. Then I watched a documentary about civil rights and the madness of our prison system and Martin Luther King was quoted at one point. He said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
That’s me. He was talking about me. I’ve been the silent friend. I have been complicit in that which I oppose because I have said nothing. I have a readership of thousands. I could speak up about what I see and what I believe and call out wrongdoing, abuses of power as I see them. But I haven’t, until now, partly because I’ve felt hopeless, that it won’t do anything, anyway, that we’re all just too entrenched in our beliefs and it’s too late. Mostly, though, I’ve stayed quiet because I was afraid. That’s over, now. Because this isn’t about me — it never is, not really.
Epilogue
Writing this is all I have done all day. I started it around 10 this morning. I have not been out of the house. I have not put on “real” clothes. I have had a low-grade headache all day and I have been crying, on and off, all day long. I made some spaghetti at one point, ate it. I took a restless, crappy nap around 3:30. I feel so weird, like this day was marked in the Big Book of Days for one thing and one thing only: this. It has taken everything out of me. I am scared to hit the “Publish” button and I know, looking at the clock, astonished that it is nearly 8:00 p.m., it’s time.
I don’t want a blue ribbon for this post. I’m not brave. If I were, I would’ve done this a long time ago. All I want is for you, each one of you, to know how much I love you. And how much I appreciate you reading the ol’ PG, day after day, year after year — because I need you. It’s not the writing I need; it’s you. I have my diary. I have my column. I have the book that I’m writing. I write articles for the school paper. I write emails. But this blog is special. It’s like nothing else that I write because you’re on the other end of it. I’m not alone because of you. I read all your comments. I love them. You are my friends. I love the Trump voters the same as the Hillary ones. Exactly the same. Just like Bilal loved me.
Bilal’s parents, by the way, they’re from Pakistan. That my true friend in my time of need was born to immigrants from the Middle East, this is not an unimportant detail.
PaperGirl will not become a political blog. I pledge to you to not “go off” about things unless I really think them through. I pledge to not get histrionic, or hysterical, or knee-jerk. Believe me, I feel like I walk around with the wrong information or not enough information about anything to talk to you about anything, so you won’t get tirades now, just because I’ve broken the seal. I won’t try to to change your mind about anything that you hold dear; you have exquisite reasons for the things you believe. But before I go, I will tell you one thing that I come by honestly, that you can see plain in my testimony and that I cannot leave you without saying, just this once:
It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to say you’re keeping your options open. It’s okay to say yes and then say no.
You don’t lose when you say, “I’ve been thinking. And I’ve changed my mind about a few things.”
Fiber artwork depicting adaptive yoga by “FiberArtGirl” in 2012. Image: Wikipedia! See footnote.
I did it! Yesterday was Day 30 of my 30-Day Bikram yoga challenge. I did 30 classes in 30 days without skipping a single day. How about that. It took serious dedication, I ain’t gon’ lie. But it also wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done because I was genuinely grateful to be there.
When I walked into the studio a month ago, my body was crying out for help. My knees were junky, my shoulder hurt all the time, and bad habits were catching up to me in all kinds of ways. I was hungry to do some work in that hot room, even if it hurt — and it frequently did. But when you have the right mindset about something, the struggle bus doesn’t seem like the worst way to get from Point A to Point B. At least you’re gonna get out of where you are, right? At least you’re going to have Point A in the rearview mirror before too long and if Point A is just that lousy, you can’t wait to see it getting smaller and smaller as you go forward. The struggle bus feels pretty good when you see that, even if where you are is kinda rough.
I don’t usually prescribe things or give advice — a girl needs to figure out her own life before she starts telling others about theirs — but tonight, I can’t help myself:
My dears, try some yoga.
There are PaperGirl readers out there who are practitioners already and I am mentally high-fiving you all. But for those who haven’t ever tried yoga or have fallen off their practice, I urge you with not a whiff of ecstatic-weirdo-convert or tiresome “Let me tell you how much you’re missing by not doing [insert thing here]”: Give yoga a chance.
It’s about breathing and stretching. That’s all. Yoga is not a religion. It’s not a threat. It’s just you.
“Yoga” means “union,” as in the union of your body and your breath, for example. You don’t have to be fit to start; that’s never been true. You can do yoga with injuries because there are modifications for every pose. People in wheelchairs do yoga;* people who have had spinal surgeries (and all kinds of surgeries) do it. You can move your toe one little inch and if that’s your yoga that day, if that’s you doing something good for your body, that’s terrific! You’re doing yoga!
I’m telling you, my knees don’t hurt right now. Really, after just 30 days of stretching and breathing and stuff, they feel great. My shoulder hasn’t felt better in two years. And I’m a very skeptical person! But the proof is in the mirror. My pelt is shiner. My eyes are sparklier. I don’t feel as sad as I did 30 days ago, either.
Hey, don’t take it from me. My mom — the one-and-only Marianne Fons — does regular yoga. She started years ago when a studio opened in Winterset and she credits yoga with helping her be more flexible. She loves how during “relaxation” at the end of every class — yoga classes end with “savasana” pose, which is basically like taking a mini-nap! — she often gets great ideas, like what her next quilt will be, or how to end a chapter of her novel. Mom also says yoga gives her extra pep. We all want more pep, even Marianne, who was born with a pep surplus.
Yoga is not a contest. You don’t have to go in being “good at yoga”; the big revelation is that no one is ever “good at yoga.” Because that is not the point. Having yoga in your life is about taking a few minutes each day to love your sweet, tired, beautiful, tough, hard, soft, aging, sick, strong, fabulous, confusing, mysterious, gorgeous, true body. Nothing more, nothing less. You are so powerful. Did you forget? Yoga can help you remember. I promise.
Give it a shot this year. Tell them Mary sent you. Do any kind of yoga, whatever feels good. It can be “old lady yoga” or Bikram yoga. Ashtanga is way cool but it’s pretty demanding. Lots of gyms offer it, many cities that do Groupons will offer awesome deals to get started. Shop around. Get a pal to do it with you; that could be fun. Don’t see it as a New Year’s resolution; see it as your birthright to be a friend to yourself, to act on your own behalf.
Okay, advice over.
You know what I did to celebrate the completion 30 day challenge? I went to yoga. So I’m 31/30. Well, I also got a veggie burger from Devil Dawgs around the corner from the studio and mercy that thing was good. It’s the spicy sauce and the grilled onions.
*The image for this post came from Wikipedia as usual, but how neat that when I searched ‘yoga’ I found a quilt about yoga!! This was made by someone called “FiberArtGirl.” Way cool. Thanks, quilter. This is really lovely.
Advertisement for depilatory cream, c. 1915. Image: Wikipedia.
As my appointment with my dermatologist drew to a close on Tuesday, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Well, I could have refused it, but I didn’t.
“We got a new hair-removal laser,” Dr. B. said, re-clipping my chart to her clipboard and gesturing to an enormous box in the corner of the room. “It’s state-of-the-art, really the best on the market. We’re doing a training session with the staff on Friday and there’s one slot left open for volunteers.”
What she meant was “volunteers willing to be zapped with literal laser beams on their bodies — but for free instead of paying for it!”
Now, I’m not a person who really obsesses over body hair — you people know who you are — but I have been curious about this laser business. I looked at the pamphlet Dr. B. gave me; that laser was fancy. That it wouldn’t cost me anything was the selling point, as it were, proof that laser hair-removal just doesn’t mean that much to me: I’ll try it if I don’t have to pay for it. Lo and behold, here was my chance.
“Okay,” I said, and hopped off the chair. My appointment was set by the girls for today at 2 p.m.
I almost cancelled. It was Friday afternoon, it seemed like a low-commitment appointment, and who wants to get zapped by a literal laser beam just for fun? Well, me, apparently. Besides, I like Dr. B. and the office staff a lot and didn’t want to flake out on them, even for a no-big-deal, free appointment like this one.
Little did I know what a huge deal this actually was, this training session — and little did I know that I would soon have six people looking at my armpit.
When I arrived promptly at two, they were all waiting for me, all the girls and Dr. B., plus the guy in charge of the training. It turns out Dr. B.’s office isn’t even open on Fridays, but the entire staff was there all day today to learn this equipment. There was a decidedly serious look on everyone’s face which I would come to understand was because the guy doing the training — call him Laser Guy — was super intense about this laser training. Which is a good thing, I suppose, but you could’ve cut the air with a knife — or a, you know, laser.
“Come in,” said Dr. B. with a tight smile; Veronica ushered me back into the exam room.
“So what area are we doing?” Veronica asked me in a low voice as she opened up packets of alcohol swabs.
I had been thinking about this and decided that I would like to never have to shave my knees. Shaving my legs is no big deal, but man! Shaving the knees is annoying. The Marie Antoinette-ness of the situation not being lost on me, I told Veronica, ever-so-slightly stressing the “eee’s” in the last two words:
“I’d like to do my knees, please.”
She jerked her head up. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you. It’s just the upper lip, chin, or armpits.”
I have big rabbit teeth. One of my eyes is sizably smaller than the other and remember my lipoma? I’ve got plenty of “unique” physical characteristics, but upper lip hair and chin hair, not yet. I’m sure my day will come. Standing there with Victoria today, I was grateful anew for this: I don’t know if I would be okay with a laser, especially a free one, was going to be laser-ing my face.
“I guess arm…pits,” I said, and Veronica gave me a paper shirt to put on as she went to get the rest of the staff, Dr. B., and Laser Guy. I didn’t even have time to feel sad about having to shave my knees for the rest of my days before everyone was filing into the room.
Dr. B. gave me a pair of leaded goggles that made me look like a character from Bladerunner. I was instructed to lay back and put my arm up. Laser Guy barked orders and talked about me like I wasn’t there, like, “Now, you would want to ask the client, ‘Do you have any other questions before we get started?’ and if she asks about pain, you would want to say what?”
“She would like to ask about pain, actually,” I said, totally blind at this point because of the goggles and aware of a fan blowing somewhere. Dr. B. told me the pain would be about a 4-5 out of 10 and that I’d be fine. Okay, I said, and Laser Guy talked a little more and then they went for it. They zapped my armpits.
It was really weird. It didn’t hurt that much, but remember that our armpits are not supposed to be seeing much action. Really, they’re not supposed to see any action of any kind, ever. That’s a tender spot that isn’t good for much. My point is that if there’s a laser in there, it’s not going to feel good. And you smell burnt hair, kinda. I mentioned that I smelled it and Veronica said,
“That’s the smell of success!”
“Don’t say that,” Laser Guy said. “That’s not for the clients to hear, just our little joke. Seriously, don’t say that.”
When I had changed and walked out of the room, they all sort of role-played with me about after-care follow-up appointments while Laser Guy watched and took notes. The whole thing was surreal, like an alien had body-snatched Dr. B. and the gals for the afternoon to train them to use a world-domination laser beam. I thanked them and made a beeline for the elevator.
Outside, the sun was shining and my armpits were tingling in a pleasant way. All in a day’s work.
Messing around with a little practice needle-turn this afternoon. It ain’t perfect, yet, but so what? I love applique! Photo: Me.
Over the years of being around quilters, hearing quilters’ stories, and telling my own, I’ve come to believe that for those of us who come to quilting later in life—by that I mean people who did not grow up sewing and making quilts—there are two paths that lead us to the quilting life: joy…or pain.
Think about it: happy events like the birth of a baby, a graduation, or nuptials are perfect occasions for the gift of a quilt and indeed, many quilters point to such an occasion as the reason they got started in the first place. The baby quilt is such a popular rationale for a person’s first quilt, we in the business like to joke that it’s “the gateway drug.
Intrigued? I hope so!
That’s an excerpt from my latest Quilt Scout column, which went up today. My friend and colleague Rhianna — named after “Rhiannon,” the Fleetwood Mac song, how awesome is that?! — at Quilts, Inc., said it was her favorite column I’ve written so far. Thanks, Rhi.
Click over and read the full piece if you like, then swing back through the ol’ PG and tell me: How did you come to quilting?
Advertisement from a magazine published in 1892 that I think was called “The Century” but the Wiki entry is kind of confusing. Image: Wikipedia.
Heaven knows why I remembered this the other day but there it was. Gather ’round, and I shall tell you about the time a man named Python made me calf’s head soup.
It was 2003. I was living with my friend Will on Winona and Broadway, working as a brunch waitress on the weekends and trying to get my freelance writing career off the ground. I was at the Green Mill poetry slam every week, doing high school poetry gigs here and there, and basically hustling, as 24-year-olds do, to make ends meet while trying my best to have some fun. I managed the first thing okay and boy did I nail the second part. I was a wild child that year, for better and (mostly) worse.
At the restaurant, I worked with Norma. One part Rizzo from Grease, two parts Anita from West Side Story, twice my age and fond of Misty ultra-slim cigarettes when she took her break, Norma was the best part of my job. I adored her. (I wrote a poem some years later about her and the mischief we would make when we went out on the town.) One Sunday, Norma and I finished our shift and met back up at a bar around the corner from my place. The Lakeview Lounge closed years ago, but it was a tiny, crummy, hole-in-the-wall staple in Uptown for many decades. There was a minuscule stage behind the bar where — and I say this with love — crusty burn-outs — would play Lynard Skynard while they sipped warm Michelob and chain-smoked Camel hard pack cigarettes. Because of course in 2003 in Chicago, you could still smoke in bars. Heck, maybe the Lakeview closed down after the smoking ban went into effect. That place was 10% furniture and people, 15% alcohol and 75% pure cigarette smoke, both fresh and stale. Without any smoke, maybe it just ceased to exist.
Anyway, that night, the bartender brought over a round of drinks. “From the gentleman over there,” he said. The bartender’s beard was scruffy but not in a sexy, scruffy-bearded bartender way; it was just scary. He jerked his thumb over to a man sitting at the far end of the bar nursing what Norma and I would learn was a generous shot of Jameson’s and a Budweiser back. The man was forty-something, we guessed and wearing a fisherman’s jacket that may or may not have contained fishing lures and/or bait.
Norma and I raised our glasses to thank the man; he raised his glass back. And because that was how things at the Lakeview Lounge worked (and that’s how these things work everywhere, I suppose, if certain conditions are right) over the course of the night, Norma and I got to know Python. His name really was Python. He was from Transylvania — as in Transylvania, Romania — and he was a world-famous pinball designer. Only in Chicago, baby, and maybe only if you hang out with me. Unusual things do tend to happen in my life; hanging out with a celebrity pinball designer from the place where Dracula was supposed to be from could be considered unusual, right?
I liked Python. He was funny, strange, and a real b.s’er, kinda like me back then. He was also the most talented illustrator I had ever met and he really was famous in the pinball/early video game world; if you remember the arcade game Joust — the one with the knights on ostriches — then you know Python. He was one of the lead artists on that game and many other famous ones that gamer geeks admire a great deal. He hung out at the Lakeview and Norma and I (sort of) hung out at the Lakeview and so over the course of the next few months, I got to know him and he would draw little drawings for me. We became friends and talked about art and politics. He told me about the horrors of living under communism; I recited poems for him, which he loved. He never tried to take advantage of me and even though he was much older than I was, I was never creeped out by him. In the spring, he asked me if I wanted to spend the weekend at his ranch in Michigan and I said I’d love to go.
This is the sort of thing, by the way, that makes me feel okay about not having children. I mean, how did my mother survive me literally saying following sentence: “Hi, Mom! I’m going to spend the weekend in Michigan with a guy twice my age from Transylvania. His name is Python. His accent is really terrific. He designs pinball games. See ya!”
But the weekend was great. Python was a real outdoorsman, so I got to shoot a bunch of guns. I ate bacon straight from the smokehouse he built on the property. There may have been live chickens, but it was a long time ago, now. And on Saturday morning, Python asked me if I had ever had calf’s head soup. I said that no, I had not had the pleasure. He got very excited and said that he happened to have a calf’s head handy, so dinner was settled. I felt very scared for the first time that weekend but I helped chop carrots and celery, anyway.
I would learn later that calf’s head soup is also called mock turtle soup and that it’s not so crazy to eat if you live in certain parts of the world (e.g., Romania) or if you were fancy and lived at any point during the Victorian-era in England or the U.S. when it was all the rage among the upper crust. All I knew at the time is that there were chunks of a dang cow head boiling in broth all afternoon and that the clock was ticking: I was going to have to eat the stuff at some point and eat it, I did — and more than just the head meat, too. You see, Python insisted I eat one of the eyes.
“Oh, that’s okay, haha,” I said, feigning an eyeball allergy. But he wouldn’t let me off the hook.
“It’s the best part of the animal,” he said, holding the thing up on a spoon. “Just eat it, Mary. It’s so good for you! You will feel like Supergirl! More Supergirl than you already are.”
I can be brave when I want to be. So I did it. I ate the eyeball. And wouldn’t you know it: I felt like Supergirl. It was all the phosphorous. And yes, it was really, really gross. It was like a hard-boiled egg except that IT WAS AN EYEBALL.
I’m sorry to say that Python died a few years ago. I can’t remember how I learned of his death; we hadn’t been in touch in a long time. He had cancer. An article I read told about how all his friends and fans from the pinball and illustration world rallied around him to raise money for his medical bills. I hope he felt all that love when he was sick.
Remember me, Python? That poet girl? I’ve come a long way. Thanks for the snack.
This is what we call “the good old days.” Image: Wikipedia.
My friends Mark and Netta sent me their box of Christmas goodies this year as they do every year. The pecans! The fudge! The humanity! Mark and Netta, you have some good mail coming your way as a token of my appreciation, though I should turn you over to the police because that fudge should be illegal and those fresh Florida pecans are criminal. You should be in jail for what you’ve done, but don’t worry: I’ll make sure you get out before December next year so you can send more.
Mark and Netta, you’re my mind tonight not just because I have pecan dust on my front but because you are some of my most-cherished, loyal-est readers, with me from the start, almost exactly ten years ago (!) when I began writing this blog. For those looking for the entries from 2006, for now, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.* When I switched servers at one point, all the old stuff went away — except that I have everything in hard copy from 2006-2012, hurray! It’s all in a big, red binder.
Tonight I pulled the binder out to see what was going on 10 years ago on PaperGirl — and I hit pure gold.
This is because when Liberty was here to visit, I thought very deeply about the cell phone thing with the kids these days. The girl is on her phone a lot — and I don’t even think she uses it as much as a lot of kids (or adults, for that matter) use theirs. I really struggled with the whole thing, though. I really, really hate it when people have headphones in while they’re with other people. What is that about? And I despair that for so many people, when there is the slightest lull in a conversation, this is a cue to pull out a device and start flicking through whatever. Can you just be for two seconds? Can you wait?
But I use my phone. Not as much as many 12-year-olds, but way more than some people. I was just on the train for 35 minutes coming from the north side of the city; you better believe I was listening to music and scrolling through Instagram. But I was alone, on a commute. That’s okay, right? Or should I just be bored and let my mind wander because that’s a good thing to do? It’s complicated.
In light of all this, my entry for December 27th, 2006 is of particular interest.** Mom, I’m sorry, but I gotta throw you and this adorable story under the bus. Enjoy!
My mother told us all a secret tonight.
We were in the middle of a particularly hot round of Apples To Apples with family friends, talking about games of all kinds: board games, card games, electronic games, mind games, dating games, etc. Pac-Man was mentioned as a favorite early video game.
“Remember that Pac-Man game you all got for Christmas back on the farm?” Mom said, looking mischievous. Biccy and I nodded, wistful.
The game she was talking about was a self-contained, yellow plastic bubble device shaped like a Pac-Man. There was a small screen and a little console below that with up, down, and sideways buttons. There was a button and an on/off button and that was about it. The game was Pac-Man. It was only Pac-Man. The ghosts gave chase, the Power Pellets got chomped, the electronic beeps sounded out the Pac-Man theme over and over and over again. Nothing was worse than watching the screen slowly fade, signaling the death of the four C-batteries required to run the thing, which I think was produced by Texas Instruments. Everything electronic in the 1980s was produced by Texas Instruments.
Mom went on: “I played that thing for weeks before I gave it to you. I would stay up at night for hours, secretly mastering Pac-Man.”
My sister and I looked at our mom like she was some weirdo woman who had just walked in off the street to play Apples To Apples with us and eat our Royal Dansk cookies.
“And you know,” my mom said, “several of my friends revealed to me that they did it, too. Marty and Jan gave that Pac-Man game to their kids only after getting sick of it themselves. Hours and hours they said they played, after the kids went to bed.”
Mom popped a Hershey’s Kiss into her mouth with a satisfied smile. She and her friends had gotten away with something.
I’m still shocked. Mom was so anti-videogame! She still is. She resented my grandpa for years after he surreptitiously purchased a Nintendo for us, and here it comes out that she was fiending for power pellets long before we were.
And then she went and waxed everyone at Apples To Apples. My mother, she is complex.
*I plan to make these available. Stay tuned.
**I’m a better writer today than I was 10 years ago. I’ve got a long way to go, but guess what? It appears that if you do something a lot over the course of 10 years, you get better at it.
!["The Old Quilt [SCOUT]" by Walter Langley, date unknown. Image: Wikipedia.](https://www.papergirltoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Walter_Langley_-_The_Old_Quilt.jpg)
