Yes We Can

Thank you Terry Grant for posting this - now someone pass it on from here -

Superbowl Hangover

Sorry about them Patriots Poppy. Me, I watch for the commercials!

No unfinished business

I've been in New York all week sitting at my Mom's bedside in the same hospital where I was born. She is busy at the work of dying. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon. I think she is satisfied that she has no unfinished business. Then again she could fool us all and be imperiously bossing her way around the nursing home by Spring but I think not. My sisters and brother have been with her round the clock because she gets anxious and disoriented if left alone despite the best efforts of the nursing staff. I spent my shifts talking with her and doing a lot of hand stitching on this piece, more than I expected to. More slow cloth, the stitches marking out the moments as they passed. My Dad was well enough to visit with her one afternoon and she spoke to him on the phone the next day briefly.These days she always ends her conversations with "I love you." Northern Westchester is a wonderful facility and with a retired postal worker's medical insurance, she's getting the kind of treatment usually reserved for movie stars. Christopher Reeve, Superman himself, lived his last days right down the hall from her room. There is art on the walls everywhere. This installation by Kim Tamalonis is across from the main elevators on the Lobby floor. At first I thought they were glazed tiles but on closer inspection each element is a separate canvas. It's called "The One That Got Away". Much thought has been given to the needs of caretakers here. There is a center where they can go and rest, have a snack, use the internet. There's a massage chair great for having spent the night sleeping in an upright chair and a quiet room with deep leather chairs and waterfalls on the wall. There is a baby grand piano just outside the doors of these rooms and a talented man was playing something from the Standards songbook, I forget exactly what but it felt appropriate. Somehow it didn't feel right to luxuriate there but the music was enchanting.I guess I haven't been at the caretaker thing long enough. Meanwhile,upstairs, Rosalie was sleeping peacefully for the first time since I arrived. I got home to Georgia late last night and my Mom goes back to the nursing home for Hospice care today. Many thanks to all the kind folks who are thinking about us and helping first hand with this, Life's final project.

Damn Disney!

Damn him! I just got off the phone with my Dad who called early this morning to let me know that my Mom has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. She has been living in a nursing home for more than a year now and has been in failing health for a long time. She's in the hospital and responding to excellent care. Both my sisters and brother are either with her or nearby. I sat down on the couch to absorb all this information and take in a little electronic anesthesia and what do I see? The scene from Dumbo where his mother is locked up in elephant jail and can only reach through the bars to hold her baby while the choir sings "Baby Mine", a very sweet and tender lullaby that I would have loved to sing to my own babies long ago except that I would be bawling my eyes out and scaring the kid.Thanks Walt. So I did some of that and came here to talk about it to myself. Here's my Mom, Rosalie, on the left and Jim's Mom, Eleanor who passed away just a few weeks ago. This was taken at our wedding in 1977. Jim and I both have a keen appreciation for strong women and their accomplishments.

In the Middle of the Night almost

I got just enough done on the new piece yesterday to call it a good day's work. I have to look at it awhile to decide how next to proceed. Hand stitching to replace the basting? Paint to work/rework value issues? Build the sandwich using that new wool batting that I got from OHCO? It's kind of heavy but has the depth that this piece will be happy with. The damask has a love of weavy give. Throw in a dentist appointment (where I finally got my teeth into "Art & Fear") , two loads of laundry, a really good meatloaf, and updated my Work In Progress page for the first time in a year and I felt no guilt about creeping into the sack at 7:30. Of course, that gets me up at 3:45 and there's a long day ahead but that will fly by too.Registrations for HGA's Convergence 2008 are coming in and we are working hard to get everyone's class assignments into the database and paperwork mailed out. June is bearing down on us like a freight train. So here in the wee hours I did a little Follow The Links game and, thanks to a long overdue (and deeply inspiring) post by Danny Gregory, found the work of his mum, Hazel Kahan filled with some of the most exquisite images of leaves, a theme I've felt has been done to death in fiber art lately but newly inspires me find them, make them into my art. And, if you don't already know her, come by and see Anne's work. The next time y'all start whining about not having the studio space to do the things you want to do, think of Anne and get on with it! Here she is in her "wet" studio. That Green piece just knocks me out!