Ponderables for November 1st

Road Lessons

At an Amish cafe in Alabama, we were offered the "wise and wonderful discount"--which sounded much more appealing than "senior."

So if you, too, are wise and wonderful, and if you like road trips, Carlene and I would like to share our lessons from the road:

1. Do not drive after dark on unfamiliar roads.  It can be unnerving and besides, you can't see a thing but the lights of other cars and trucks.

2. And if you do, be sure your GPR is not set on "scenic routes" after dark.

3. Avoid Houston, always, all the time, any hour of the day or night, any day of the week.  (It took us three hours to get through Houston and we could have made better time and seen much prettier views had we taken Highway 90.)

4. Avoid Interstate 10 (east of San Antonio) unless you want to drive squeezed in between road barriers and 18-wheelers.

5. Unless you are going to a trusted motel along the way (as we do Comfort), always ask to smell the room first.  An hour in the Covington Best Western after a long day of driving was terribly unpleasant.  Turns out Best Western is testing some horrible new cleaning products.

6.  Have your house professionally cleaned the day before you are due to arrive.  Pam brought Nora over to clean and the house sparkled when we walked in.

Home again!

Home after a wonderful trip and sleepy!  We're both about to take a winter nap--brrr!  The house is warm and food has been delivered from Pam and Jan, so we're all set to re-enter after we wake up.

We enjoyed a beautiful day yesterday driving south to and then through the Mississippi coast.  When we left the motel yesterday morning, the tire light came on; we got air; then it came on again as we were driving along the coast.  Fortunately, in both cases, we were within a mile of a tire repair shop.   The second shop found that we had a big staple in the tire and fixed it for free--so I'm very grateful that it didn't happen on one of our long drives on unfamiliar roads.

By the tine we reached Covington, we were so tired we grabbed a room in the first motel we saw--a Best Western.  The room had such a noxious smell of cleaners that we had to get up and move to another motel at 11:00.

Comfort Motel never lets us down.

So today we just drove, straight, thinking we could make it to San Antonio.  But after three hours in Houston traffic, and after chicken fried steak at Luby's in Katy, we decided to get a motel in Sealy and drive the last couple of hours tomorrow.

Looking forward to seeing our little witch when we get home!

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

The Road Between Franklin and Murphy
The Nantahala National Forest

My brother rocking his accessories!

Bob and Jocelyn at Little Italy

Fall in Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama

Bob and Jocelyn took me to a wonderful antiques and crafts fair on Friday--a small town halfway from Lawrenceville to Athens.  If you've never been to a Georgia fair, and if you're ever in these parts in October, it's a real taste of the South that we like to repeat every year.  I bought each of us an illuminated candy corn necklace--real hits to the other fair goers!  Bob said we should have brought them to sell, but instead we told everyone to go to the Halloween clearance table at Michaels.

We had pizza at Little Italy in Winder--where everyone in town was dressed in Halloween costumes.  I loved watching the little kids and their parents trick-or-treating in the stores.


Saturday morning,  Carlene and I drove into the mountains (I hadn't had enough of the fall mountains yet).  In  Cornelia, I asked one of the old-timers, "Where's the best barbecue around here?"  He directed us to his pick  and said, "It's so good it will make a puppy pull a freight train!"  (which, in fact, it wasn't--but it was fun to get some local color language and talk to the men in overalls and baseball caps.)

The drive today from Franklin to Murphy was beautiful! In Blue Ridge, famous for its apples, we had the best fried apple pies I've ever tasted.

We stopped at the John C Campbell Folk Arts School and Crafts Store, then drove on to Birmingham where we had dinner at Cracker Barrel.  I'd love to spend a week at the John C. Campbell school, maybe next fall.


We still have almost 900 miles to drive.  We'll resume our adventures tomorrow!

Cathedral Window Quilt

Forty nine years ago,  pregnant,  I discovered how to make this beautiful Cathedral Window quilt.  I started one, but never finished mine.  Carlene did. I still consider this one of the most beautiful patterns ever.

This morning Carlene gave me the one she has been storing in the bottom of a trunk for a few years--and I treasure it so much!

A few pages from Day's current art journal

I love her work and play on paper--and we are so enjoying sharing what we make!  I love my precious girl!

My current projects

1.  Painting a Mexican pastry baking pan:

2. Making a spiral book with gel prints.  This strip of pages is not yet finished.  I will add more pages and connect them to the textile bobbin, then add a strip of ribbon to wind the pages around the bobbin.

I showed this to a woman who owns "The Art Room" in Franklin, N.C., this week and she's asked me to teach a class in this process at her studio:

3. Looking always at peeling billboards--love the layering and textures!

My Georgia Tribe

Bob and Jocelyn (love birds) at Bone Island Grill yesterday--
as we celebrated our 47th (hers) and 71st (mine)  October birthdays

The View from Dot's camper

Betty (who has lost so many pounds you can barely see her)
beside her friend Dot at Dot's permanent campsite in North Carolina

Betty and I had a wonderful time visiting Dot and her friends and family--
who have RVs in the North Carolina mountains.
Dot and her husband's camper is right on the edge of the river--just beautiful!

Me and My Brother, Bob,
in the month of our 68th and 71st birthdays

One of Carlene's claims to fame is her
most delicious fried squash!

Carlene --in a photo by Jocelyn that makes her look
glowy (as she is)  in the October sun

Monday

Kate--who knows about bugs and stuff--guided me to the most likely source of my bites: the kissing beetle.

These nasty little buggers like to bite humans when they are sleeping, particularly around the mouth and eyes.  But first, they inject their victims with a numbing agent so that the sleeping person doesn't feel a thing until they are well out of town.

They can be dangerous to humans and dogs and make them very sick.  They have not done so for me--probably because I got right up and took a hot bath in the middle of the night.  But if you ever get mysterious bites in the night, and if you wake up looking all spotted and puffy, these guys may be your culprits.

We've had another wonderful day.  Bob and Jocelyn brought dinner and we visited until dark-thirty.

Tomorrow, Betty and I will go to the mountains in search of fall colors and adventure.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Arrived in Georgia on Friday--but somewhere along the way, picked up a biter that accompanied me to bed and took numerous bites on my arms, legs, and face.  I woke up yesterday morning all spotted, some of them welts the size of large marbles, some little bitty but itchy.

After Camomile lotion and some other various creams and lotions and potions, they are pretty much gone--as is yesterday's rain which prevented going to the crafts show Jocelyn and I had planned on.  So she and Bob drove over in the rain and we had a good day and dinner at O'Charley's.  While I was napping away my Benadryl, and before they arrived, Carlene watched This Beautiful Fantastic on Amazon.  (She doesn't nap.)

It's a beautiful day in Georgia and we're starting to see a bit of color in some trees, but nothing like usual due to the drought they've had.  Hoping yesterday's rain brings out some more color.

Jocelyn and I are going to a crafts fair on Friday, and Betty and I are driving to Clayton and Highlands on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Then Carlene and I will start heading back to Texas on Saturday.  This will be her first long trip since her accident on Christmas Eve.

From door to door, I drove 1016 miles.  I got off the expressway in Alabama and drove the "historic route" of Highway 80 through Demopolis and Selma.  The road was not the original two-lane road, but the route felt familiar as that was the route we used to take between Texas and Georgia before the Interstates.

I remember Selma being something of a city back in the 60s and early 70s, but most of the downtown buildings are abandoned now and it looks almost like a ghost town compared to the Selma I remember.

Llamas in East Texas

Mississippi Bridge in Natchez

A Gulf Station billboard that might have been there on our first trip

Bales of Cotton

Day 2 Thursday

I'm averaging about 400 miles a day and landed tonight not where I'd planned, but almost to Meridian.  Maybe Carlene and I will pop onto the Trace next week.

The Natchez Trace to Tupelo would have been beautiful, but it would have taken five hours, so I decided after short stops in Natchitoches, then Jena, Louisiana, then crossing the Mississippi River and stopping at the Natchez Visitor's Center (which is exceptional), to head on up to the main roads.

Unfortunately, getting there took a long time and a detour on a one-lane gravel road due to an accident with an 18-wheeler on the two-lane road.

It's been a nice quiet day.   Phone reception was practically nil today, so I got in road zone and looked at trees and barns, cemeteries and cows and small town window displays:

The Look I'm Going After

Mrs. B's in Jena

The Mississippi Bridge at Natchez

Random Acts of Kindness

1.

Last night, I stopped by Valero to gas up and get a drink and a snack.  Inside, a young woman in the line smiled and said, "Go ahead, Mama."

As I was about to pay, I realized I had left my wallet in the car, so I left to get it.  When I got back, the young woman had paid for me.

"Thank you," I said.  "You're an angel."

She grinned.  "You're welcome, Mama, but I'm not no f...... angel."

"Well, I'll consider this a birthday present," I said.

So as it turned out, the giver-of-the-drink-and-snack, along with the cashier, all had October birthdays, and we had a moment together!

2. This one wasn't so random: Jan packed me delicious road trip oatmeal cookies--which I had for lunch along with an avocado sandwich in the sweet little Old Town of Bastrop.

3. Every person I've met on the road has been friendly--including the desk people at the BW.  I met a woman in Bastrop--who guessed by my purchase of old photos--that I might do mixed media projects.  She does, too, so we shared some ideas for transferring photos to canvas--and of course, I told her about gel printing.


I've driven back roads under a grey sky, but no rain--a very relaxing day on the road, hardly any traffic.  Landed just now at the Nacogdoches Best Western and had fried catfish at the Clear Creek Restaurant--yummy!

My plan for tomorrow is to drive to Natchez, take the Natchez Trace to Tupelo, then hop on I20 and drive to Carlene's.

Until three days ago, I had never heard of joss paper.  It's a fibrous paper much like think cardboard. It's used--for one thing--to make Buddhist prayer flags.  It's made--I just read on the internet--of bamboo.

Three days ago,  Robyn McClendon, whose work and teaching focus on natural fibers and colors, earthy tones, and tribal images and symbols, mentioned joss Paper.

She also demonstrated what she calls "intuitive scripting"--writing that resembles Asian writing but that is spontaneously made by the maker with no inherent meaning.  It's one of the signature elements of her art work.   She showed how to use feathers and bamboo sticks and other natural markers to make marks with Sumi ink on calligraphy paper from Asia.  (note to self: get these for Nathan for Christmas, along with a book on Japanese writing.)

In Day's birthday present to me, there was a book of stunning Japanese designs and a package of Origami paper--along with other collage elements, like a book of transit maps from all over the world. And on the day it arrived I got two rolls of Asian Washi tape I'd ordered.

I could feel my fingers itching to play with them, but--giving out of time before my departure, with "miles to go before I" drive--I stacked them on my dining room table to take with me on my trip.

Then last night, Pam brought me a birthday bag of similar deliciousness--including several varieties of joss paper.

I had never mentioned this to Pam, nor does she watch Robyn's videos--so this was pure serendipity. She said the word just popped into her mind and she knew I had to have some, so she did a search until she found it at an international market on Bandera Road!

When she left, I gave it a roll on the gel press and loved the results--but what I loved even more was the way she was intuitively led to something I'd never even known existed, something she knew I "needed," and that she had searched all over town until she found it!

Seventy One Years on Planet Earth....

How lucky am I???

I'm having a wonderful birthday--mostly on the phone, but also with some sweet emails and a porch visit this morning from Jan and the boys singing Happy Birthday.

I had just turned the phone off and set up Vera Blake as my fall-to-sleep movie of the afternoon when Day called, so we had a little birthday visit in the crack between hers and mine.  (I was in labor the entirety of my 23rd birthday as I recall, though she waited until after midnight to show her face and gender!). How lucky am I!

And then to get this email from my mama who brought me into the world 71 years and 12 hours ago:

This marks the anniversary of your
“Coming Out” party ... you had been with us for nine months ... we already loved you,  then we got to see you, hold you, watch you, cherish you ... 
and soon see you smile.... hear you 
laugh!  It was a birth for us, too!   We
Became Parents of a beautiful daughter, Guardians of a Special Gift, 
Nurturers of a perfect Child ....
Ever grateful for that day, what we wanted more than anything was to honor the privilege and gift of making a Home worthy of the “mission” of yours and later Bob’s years with us .... I am so thankful for these extended years I have been given to share life with you and from where Lloyd is now, there is an echo ....LISTEN!

Happy Seventy-First!  And for the MANY yet to come!

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️   L I N D A

How lucky am I to be loved by Carlene for 71 years and to have Lloyd still echoing in the wings, always present!  

Right now, my voice is hoarse from talking and my heart is happy and I'm really really going to turn off the phone for a bit and get some sleep and seal in all these good wishes and the love of my incredible tribe of family and friends!

October 13th

It's a cozy night at home, this Jackson's 18th birthday.  Everything looks softer and more homey in autumn light, then, later, more vivid when the leaves turn orange and red and gold.

Here's Jackson with Nana --he's now about 6'4"

I drove to Central Market to get some more of that healing chicken soup and couldn't muster the energy to walk in.  Pam--bless her!--brought me some more and some beef vegetable soup.  Food is starting to sound good again and dribbles of energy are returning.

I didn't get to attend the rodeo as planned (before this now-fading virus appeared)  but Will's cowgirls were right there in the middle of it all:

Words in Pain

I spent yesterday finishing Words in Pain by Olga Jacoby--insofar a book this profoundly honest can ever be "finished."

This unforgettable book of letters from Olga (who would die in 1913 at the age of 38) describes her feelings about impending death--the worst of which is leaving her four adopted children and her beloved husband.  (Her fourth daughter, an infant, was adopted shortly before her death--as her family had means to provide care and nurses for their family and she acted on her fear that abandoned babies would not have families to love them.)

She doesn't reveal a great deal about her illness, as her very active and keen mind is concerned always with her family and her philosophy about life.  One of her great-granddaughters, Jocelyn, writes an afterword for the book that tells more about her, her marriage to Jack, and what became of her four children.   She also was a kind of pioneer in the "right to die" movement.  When her pain became unbearable in not being able to be an active part of her family's life, she chose to take enough sleeping pills to end her own life.

She wants Jack to marry again and go on with his life.  She wants him to "Marry again as soon as you can and forget me as much as will be necessary for your future happiness."

"Of course, if you have a daughter, you must give her my name.  She could not be happier than I have been."

Here are a few of the lines I have marked:

"Love, like strength and courage, is a strange thing; the more we give the more we find we have to give.  Once given out, love is set rolling for ever to amass more, resembling an avalanche by the irresistible force with which it sweeps aside all obstacles, but utterly unlike in its effect, for it brings happiness wherever it passes and lands destruction nowhere."

She quotes a Mrs. A.J. Stanley:

"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children, who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has made the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had, whose life was an inspiration, whose memory is a benediction."

"Oh, Doctor, what pain to realize how great, how beautiful religion was meant to be, and to see how bedraggled it has become, all through lack of courage and veracity and too much greed for money and conventionalities."

Getting Better

Well, the worst is over--but as always, thanks to Carlene's adage that "everything is tuition," I'm reflecting on what I learned from this bout of sickness:

1. Never take for granted that you feel good most of the time!

2. Remember that, whatever it is, it will pass--no pun originally intended.

3. You know you're feeling better when: you can't resist stopping by the kitchen on the way to warm up chicken soup to try one little thing with the brayer on the gel plate.

4. Enjoy that your family and friends are checking up on you and wishing you well.

5. Have a friend, like Pam, who just goes straight to Central Market and buys you exactly what's good for upset stomach and delivers it to your porch--Imodium and bananas and chicken soup, bread for dry toast, and a big jar of applesauce.

6. Remember, as Freda said, that people pay a lot of money for a cleanse, and you got one for free.

7. Stay in bed all day, in pajamas, guilt-free, watching videos and movies and reading something good.

I've spent our first cool and breezy day in bed (virus or food poisoning), but I've just taken my first couple of bites of toast, so I'm hoping that it's on its way out.

Pam brought me a Halloween bag filled with soup and rice, bananas and applesauce, bread and medicine--for which I am so very grateful.

A few things I have learned....

1.  Pages of paper--made thicker with paint and/or matte medium--really can be sewed together in a patchwork!  I borrowed an idea from Kate Crane to make a spiral book: Use a large wooden antique spool as the base, cut or tear pieces already gel printed with acrylic paint, draw or paint over it; rubber stamp or stencil over it--and voila!

2. I'm by nature a neat and orderly sort of person--even though my house at the moment provides little evidence of that.  Some of those who sew on paper leave the threads uneven and hanging--which I, from years of sewing, can't make myself do.

I learned early on to be neat and clean, even as I painted.  Here you see me painting my hand--and at this particular moment, decades later, my hands are covered with black and gold paint.

3. Acrylic paint is forgiving and changeable until it dries.  If it gets on your clothes, they are done for.

4. Glue Sticks and watercolor pencils, at the very least, should go in a journal bag with a journal when you travel--as well as a printer that makes tiny prints from your iPhone.  Nellie taught me this when we traveled to Italy together.  Writing about your trip while you're taking it is much more alive than writing about it afterwards back at home.

5. For anything you want to do--from pouring resin to drawing to making quilts--you can find hundreds of free videos on You Tube.

6. A gel press (I have several in different sizes) is the most fun tool ever!  The small hand-held ones can be used like rubber stamps; the larger ones can be made complex with drawings and stamping and then the substrate you're using (journal, water-color paper, deli-paper, etc) can be pressed into the plate to pick up beautiful patterns.

7.  Rolodex cards can be painted and gel-printed and drawn on--then you can make a "book" in a regular Rolodex file using painted cards.

8. I've always associated words with journals, but in an "art journal," words are optional.  The trope in most art journal circles is that the maker adds a word or phrase or affirmation atop the visual pages, but they almost always seem extraneous to me.

Southside Side Streets

Side streets of Southside feel like, smell like, sound like Mexico:
tire and repair shops and rows of small, cracked buildings
looking today (me thinking about upcoming Halloween) like
multi-colored teeth, some missing.

After driving down the main roads of Home Depot and Wal-mart
and all the stores we have everywhere,
it's a relief for the eyes to turn onto side streets
where they have what we don't back home:

Repair, upholstery, wigs, tire shops, bakeries,
piñatas, sugar skulls, altars and plastic flowers for upcoming Day of the Dead,
Bright green and orange fruit stands, tattoo parlors,
and one bright pink "xxx adult toy store"

Where I live--a few miles north --you rarely see repair
shops or mis-matched peeling buildings or signs.
You send what doesn't work back to Wisconsin or New Jersey,
call tech support, or give it to Good Will and get a new one.

Driving down Mission Road, I'm on a sewing machine mission,
nothing wrong with it except my inability to read instructions--
this two year old brand new machine intent on making a
trick-or-treat bag and sewing papers together.

I read the instructions,  (my daddy called them
"the destructions") but I failed the test and the threads
from the bobbin never quite caught the threads
from the spool, or--turn the dial another way--made knots.





When I walk into Raul's Sewing Center,
the walls and tables are covered with ancient machines.

A man wearing an undershirt and a nice smile
sits down and threads it like the pro he is,
adjusts the tension, shows me what little knobs to turn, and has the little Brother from China,
humming along in no time.





"What got your started in sewing machines?" I asked.

"It's a long story!" he said.  "But it was forty years ago and I was just a boy."
I want to hear him tell the story, long or not, but he's only charging
me ten dollars for this half-hour tutorial
and a man who can't walk has just rolled in with a fixer upper metal one.

If you want to find people who've been in any shop for 40 years,
or people who have long stories to tell, just not enough time;
If you want to get anything fixed, instead of
throwing it away and ordering a new one....

You have to go the South Side, off the main roads,
Call ahead to see if they are open, and take your net
for catching stories.

"Are you Raul?" I asked.

"No, but that's what everybody calls me, always has," Jerry said.
"I  never got around to changing the sign when we moved in."

Book Arts

As I proceed on these projects I'm doing, I seem to be zooming in on what it is I want to do.  In the online communities, it's called Book Arts.

Making books--broadly defined books, but also Rolodex file cards and other unique papers--involves building small books that can be used for writing in, collections of quotations, etc.  Or they can stand alone as visual books with no words at all.

If you're interested in learning about these, I can give you many teachers' names, but the one I'm following most closely at the moment is Robyn McClendon. She has many excellent videos on You Tube and I signed up on her Patreon for more videos and extras.  To be a Patreon member, you pay anywhere from $2 to $10 a month and get more in-depth videos and information about workshops and even international retreats with some.

Robyn is well-known and travels all over the world, collecting images and materials and teaching workshops.

If this interests you at all, as it does Nellie and me, check out Robyn on You Tube.

Still I Miss You

Still I Miss You
by Inês Pedrosa, Andrea Rosenberg

Chris told me about this book and I just ordered it on Kindle for $1.99. Here is one of several highlighted passages she shared with me from the book:

For every act of horror, we found infinite acts of love. Our shared passion for history led us to human generosity: in the shadow of every dictator, we found a throng of democrats; in the creases of each massacre, thousands of lives devoted to other people’s happiness. The sowers of horror were always a minority—an effective minority, sure, but one that grows in exact proportion to people’s belief in their power. And the two of us refused to believe. That persistent refusal was, for us, a war against the propagandistic expansion of terror.

Welcome to the Forever Juicy Club

In every little town and city, you can find chapters of Old Ladies' Clubs.  It's easy to join , no membership fees.  You just have to give in to being OLD (yuck!) and be fluent in negativity about it. (Of course, I don't know any members personally, but sometimes I overhear them at the next table talking.)

I'm proposing a resistance.  Let's call it the Forever Juicy Club and everyone I know and love is invited to join.

I was inspired this week by a lunch conversation with Chris, and a long phone conversation with Nellie. We are all (as are all my friends) intent on avoiding the Old Ladies' Club--which includes daily doses of "ain't it awful" cartoons in your inbox.

Chris who's seven years younger has also decided not to join the Widows' Club.  She misses Ron very much, and she's devoted to continuing the life they built together by being joyful, traveling, writing, horseback riding, making jewelry, and dancing.  She inspires me so much!  We met at a StoryCircle conference years ago and she's also a member of a Story Circle group in Kerrville.

Nellie and Arthur just returned from a Smithsonian tour of to Scotland and England and are going next week to the John C. Campbell Folk Art School. She'll be taking a class in Crankie-making and Arthur is taking one in woodworking.  She recently flew to New York to take a class from the cartoonist/writer, Lynda Barry.

I liked this video she sent me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YnT5dopGI

Pam and I met for dinner tonight at the newly-remodeled Sorrento's on Broadway and the food and the conversation were delicious as we talked about books and You Tube classes we're both watching.  We talked about Words in Pain--the wonderful book she gave me.  "When you share a book you love with someone you love, you're telling them more about who you are," she said.

We have to choose to be invigorated by life and to live it to the fullest or the Old Ladies' Club will start sending us invitations to join their ranks, so we're all going to have to pledge not to get "old" in spite of chronology.   You can be an avid reader, an actor, a writer, an artist.  You can be a swimmer or yogi or walker. A photographer, painter or cartoon maker. You can crochet, build gardens or decorate houses.  It really doesn't matter what you choose as long as it's something that engages your imagination and curiosity and fires your passion for living, observing and moving.

Welcome to October, Mr. Orange!

I love October!

Yesterday was my little brother's birthday (I was three when he was born and disrupted my being an only child for a minute, then I found him quite fascinating and wonderful).  Happy Birthday, Bob!

It's also Jackson's, Day's and Jocelyn's birthday month--so it's a big deal month of making and sending and receiving boxes in the mail.

The Pritchetts gave me a wonderful birthday party early on Bob's birthday and I ate way too much cake and ribs and salad, but that's what birthdays are for, I think.

They got one of those Nothing Bundt Cakes--lemon with white icing--and it's so good!  Veronica picked my present--a box of biodegradable and beautifully scented bath soaps and bombs and oils--from a store called Lush.  And all four of them wrote notes on the card--that's always my favorite part. We ate on the porch at sunset and watched deer and turkeys wandering around the yard and geese overhead.

After picking up Elena from second grade, we stopped by a pumpkin patch and she spent lots of time picking out tiny pumpkins, then we picked up Nathan from seventh grade. Then my phone battery died.