Mary Cartledgehayes

The Life Waiting For Me: Flying Through The Sky

2012-01-29T14:47:00.000-05:00

My friend Carolyn went sky-diving and wrote this fabulous post, which includes a video. Best parachuting sequence I've ever seen. Now I want to do it.

The Life Waiting For Me: Flying Through The Sky: I'm not really sure who decided jumping out of an airplane at 13,500 feet was a good idea. And I'm not sure what exactly possessed me to ag...

Art Project 52 -3 - In Which I Write an Essay

2012-01-26T15:22:00.001-05:00

Last week's artist project: writing an essay with a maximum of 600 words to submit for possible publication in one of four books to be published this year by the Tending Your Inner Garden program founders, Deb Engle and Diane Glass.

I'm sharing the first paragraph of the essay, which will appear in the Winter volume.

Deadline for the second book is February 15. If you want to take part but the thought paralyzes you, the best trick I know for breaking through resistance is to decide to write for ten minutes a day. That's all you need: ten minutes a day.

The Onset of Winter by Mary Cartledgehayes

Nearly three years ago, Maureen called from South Carolina to tell me that her sister Terry, my friend of 35 years, had a malevolent sarcoma on her left arm. Chemotherapy might be called for. “And” (note: in medical conversations, and often precedes a full-on kick to the head) “she may have her arm amputated.”

Middle Bass Grade School, circa 1972

2012-01-26T15:11:00.000-05:00

Middle Bass Grade School painted the color God intended.

Charlie Cartledge is in the foreground. Circa 1972.

TBM Tuesday -- bomber

2012-01-24T04:27:00.003-05:00

Seeing the original lets you know how far this project has come.

Wooohoooo! 100 Countries and Counting!

2012-01-20T19:03:00.000-05:00

Amazing at things a person can accomplish while sick in bed. Yesterday a visitor from Trinidad and Tobago put the number of countries that have visited this blog at 100. How exciting is that?

I'd jump up and down but I've been sick in bed all week. I picked up viral bronchitis last week at the Kentucky Arts Council event on business practices for emerging artists. I went to the doctor Tuesday morning and, while I don't feel any better yet, at least I've stopped getting worse.

That doctor visit was followed by a trip to the drugstore, which took an eternity because the wrong dosage was written on the cough syrup prescription. While I was checking out, the tornado warning siren began to wail. This is how awful I felt: I drove home with the siren still screaming on the assumption that if a tornado had flung me to the next county at least I'd be out of my misery.

I've known people, friends of mine, who've had bronchitis, but none of them ever reported on how ghastly an illness it is. I never had much of a fever or much of a cough, but when I do cough it feels as though my throat is on fire. And I'm sick -- sick like the flu but a different kind of misery. Lots of rest, lots of fluids, cough syrup with codeine. I'm hoping to be well enough to spend tomorrow on the couch rather than in bed, but for now I'm still weak and woeful.

Trinidad and Tobago being the hundredth country is swell. My dad was stationed in Trinidad during World War II, and while there he met a professional photographer who taught him the essentials of light and composition. Last year a friend visited the country while on a cruise and sent me a magnet showing the country. Connections; it's all about connections between people and communities.

TBM Tuesdays: Exterior Views

2012-01-17T06:02:00.000-05:00

Charlie Cartledge, my brother, is restoring a World War II TBM-3U Avenger, BuNo. 91436. Each Tuesday I post photos of the TBM as it looked in October, 2011. Today's photos are of the exterior.

Be sure to pay special attention to the rivets. In person, they're beautiful.

Charlie Cartledge at the newly installed bomber's turret.

Proof that the bomber's turret has movable parts.

Finally, a photo of the photographer's assistant:

Middle Bass Aerial View, 2005

2012-01-16T19:29:00.000-05:00

Aerial view and key. (Translation of key follows.)

In Belle Cartledge's hand-writing:
Middle Bass Island, Ohio 2005
1. Lauber-Schnoor dock
2. Bill Gross's Walleye
3. Lonz Airfield - closed
4. Lonz Marina - closed
5. Jim Roesch's marina and family home
6. Lonz Estate - overgrown brush, formerly vineyards

Art Project 52-2. "What's for Breakfast?" collage

2012-01-15T12:33:00.001-05:00

Collage, "What's for Breakfast?" by Mary Cartledgehayes. 40" x 24. 2012. Deconstructed cereal boxes on canvas.

Detail photo, "What's for Breakfast?" by Mary Cartledgehayes, 2012.

The story behind the completed photo: This collage has been in the works for several years. I was cutting up cereal boxes to use as the base for mail art, and eventually I began cutting out the solid blocks of color on the boxes as well. The canvas is one Mary Flowers gave me. She'd bought it at Goodwill for $2 as an unfortunate abstract in burgundy and browns. Mary, who often works in textiles, covered the piece with tan suede and added circles and nature-oriented trims. When I admired it a few years later, she told me I could take it home.

The fiber piece remained on my wall for months before it began to lose its zing. I decided to utilize Mary's "take what is and learn what it can become" method. I worked consistently for a month and then returned to the piece every few weeks. Last year I gave up. I simply didn't know what to do next.

This week I was determined that this collage would be Art Project 52-2. I began by painting the outside edges navy blue. Then yesterday my friends Susan and Kenny came to visit. She said, "Show me your new art," and I presented the piece for observation and commentary.

"I stopped because I didn't know how to finish it."

We batted around potential additions (a silver spoon, a school-size milk carton) to emphasize the cereal-box origins of the collage, but in the end Susan and Kenny agreed that I didn't know how to finish the piece because it was already complete.

Trusting their judgment, I added just a few more bits later in the evening, primarily the few long thin pieces scattered at odd angles. Those pieces turned out to be the surprise that satisfies.

Not Towels

2012-01-15T11:54:00.001-05:00

Source: thebloggess.com via Carly on Pinterest

If you wonder why people are lauding the virtues of Pinterest, this post should be enough to convince you to spend some time in that land of wonder. My life would have been poor indeed if I'd never heard the story of this chicken. And here's the link to the actual blog where you can hear about the man who, one fateful day, said to his wife, "Don't buy towels while you're shopping."

I would like to have this chicken my very own self. He was originally $300 but on sale for $100, which must be the bargain of the decade, and he almost stabbed several store employees on his way out of the house.

A fine chicken story indeed.

Quilt-speak

2012-01-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

As promised, another view of Mary Flowers' quilt.

Somebody asked if I'd mind sharing what I wrote around the edge of the quilt. Here is what it says:

Where ever we may be, the sun is shining on me and thee. The same sun, yours and mine, no matter how near or distant our houses may be. That sun warms, comforts, nurtures – much the same way that you (my dearest friend Mary Flowers) and I (your dearest friend Mary Jo Cartledgehayes have warmed, comforted, and nurtured each other for what is now more than forty years.

Forty. How can that be? And why do I feel as though if we'd blinked we'd have missed it. “Ars longa, vita brevia” - the Latin, constant believe that life is short and arts long. Today, January 8, 2012, the day I am completing this quilt, I understand the statement anew. Life – our lives – are long in the day-to-day; in experiences and creativity and curiosity and people loved steadfastly. Long in cute shoes, pretty dresses, leather jackets, blue jeans (remember the time we went somewhere and they wouldn't let us in because we were wearing jean? Jeans that cost $50 in 1979-ish? I think that was the night you put your purse on top of the car and we got in and started off and papers flew out like giant snowflakes in the dark). Long in places: Paris, even though we weren't there at the same time and London and Middle Bass and the Carolinas; bars and 24-hour breakfast places; baptisms, burials, weddings, Cookie Days, and the thousands of ordinary days (14,600 to be precise) that we have laughed our heads off, cried our eyes out, raged, ranted, run (remember running on East Main?) and sung.

Our lives are long in the counting of days and goodness, but they are also the blink of an eye. But art: here's the thing: art, even the oldest – Phoenician, Babylonian, cave paintings – or the famous: Mona Lisa, the crown jewels, the Daniel Morgan statue: art is long but art is frozen, forever frozen in the moment of its completion.

We have been a lot of things over the course of our amazing lives, but what we have not-not-not-not-not-not been is frozen. Those flames you saw dancing on my head when I was in the pulpit? Girl, those flames were dancing over your head, too, this whole time, since back when your dad christened you May-Ree and me May-Ree Jo. We are the brains in our heads. We are the wrinkles and scars on our bodies. We are the flame. And we are the dance. xxxooo Mary Jo

What Do I Do First? Wednesday

2012-01-11T14:39:00.000-05:00

Okay, here's the thing. I'm a sequential addict, and this month my addiction is Pinterest. If you are not yet categorizing the world and its amazements, check out the site and get cracking. Once you do, holler so I can admire -- not to mention re-Pin - your finds.

If you want an example of the fascinating properties, you can look at my Shoes! Glorious Shoes! Pinterest board. My mother and sister created within me a tiny Imelda Marcos inside me who is always craving one more pair of shoes. The goodness of Pinterest is that I can skip the purchase step and revel in the gallery.

Now, what shall I do next? I'm sitting at an overcrowded desk, pledged to complete one art project a week in 2012 and knowing that already, in time-to-get-stuff-done terms, I'm behind. Why? Because tomorrow (Thursday) I will be in Berea, Kentucky, attending a day-long seminar -- sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council-- titled Successful Business Practices for Artists: A Workshop for Emerging Artists. It will be a twelve-hour day, which eliminates any other accomplishments on Thursday.

Friday must be rest-up and catch-up day, because Saturday I go to Frankfort, Kentucky, for a seminar sponsored by the Kentucky Historical Society. Curators Jennifer Spence and Louise Jones are leading a three-hour session on Preserving Family Treasures, including "basic techniques for handling, storing, preserving artifacts and paper materials." I'm thrilled to be attending and confident that I can get answers to the questions that have come up in four months of working with my parents' papers.

(For instance, I've found a product -- quite expensive and also toxic -- that claims to eliminate allet mold, spores, mildew, etc. to which damp papers and objects are heir. Damp is part of the triumvirate of preservation enemies, the other two being bugs and the acidity of newsprint. I'm hoping to learn whether the product is worth the investment or whether it will do the job but cause everything it touches to disintegrate in five years. I'm also looking forward to spending a few hours with other people who share my interest.

I've worked on my blogs this week and made changes so I can post more consistently. Here's a list of how I'm organizing my work:
Middle Bass Mondays. I'll post photos and documents related to the island where I grew up and where my parents lived for more than 60 years. In adding this topic to this blog, I simplify my own life but eliminating another of my blogs (A Middle Bass Life), which I began last fall. I transferred those posts over here this morning. (By the way, if you are an artist or a writer with a connection to Middle Bass, please leave a comment, because I'd love to showcase your art on an upcoming Monday.)
TBM Tuesdays. Back in October, I took two or three hundred photos of my brother Charlie's TBM Avenger, which he's been restoring for almost two decades. The work he's done is exquisite, and the photos reveal views of vintage aircraft restoration that it's difficult to find elsewhere. (By the way, if you are renovating/rebuilding a vintage aircraft, leave a comment so I can put you on my links list where other folks can find you.)
Show-off Sundays. Every Sunday I'll be posting the week's completed art project. Fiber arts, installation art, painting, watercolors, photography, assemblage: I work in all of these areas, and 2012 is the year I'll finalize every single almost-there piece, one per week.

This morning I realized I'd like to become Ground Zero in offering information (covers, pub dates, interviews) about books written by writers I've mentored and by colleagues who who hold, as I do, an M. F. A. degree in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. Goucher was the first institution to offer a limited residency M. F. A. program devoted solely to creative nonfiction. The first graduation was held in 1999; I was in the second class, graduating in 2000. In other words, we're still a small enough group that I can keep up with what's been published and help keep our work from drowning in the swamp of twenty-first century publishing.

Before starting that project, though, I must submit a piece to Tending Your Inner Garden. The program, created by friends a decade ago, is publishing four books this year and actively recruiting contributors. I'll always regret it if I don't take part. (Check out the full guidelines at TYIG.) Deadline: January 15.

I'm also part of a group putting together a literary/photography journal -- Third Friday -- that will initially be available in Paris (yes, the one in France) and in Louisville. I must overcome my slap-dash filing system and find the essay I want to have included. More daunting, I must choose a few photos to offer for publication. I shoot in color, and the photographs will be reproduced in black and white, and I've never done this before -- in other words, I'm out of my league and it's scary. Again, though, I'll regret not making the attempt, and therefore I must plod on. Deadline: January 31.

Then we have the grants. Writers can apply for Al Smith Fellowships this year. Application deadline: January 31. The Kentucky Foundation for Women also has deadlines, including applications to work at Hopscotch House -- which offers enough room for me to begin The Brides project - and also applications for artist grants. Deadlines: I'll let you know once I check e-mails.

I'm trying to do these things in spite of some mechanical difficulties. I took them all to a sports medicine physician, who confirmed that I have Achilles tendonitis, often caused by running up too many hills; tennis elbow, often caused by too aggressive repetitive actions on the court; and a rotator cuff injuy, in this case the result of babying my arm too much after last year's surgery. I'm in a fair amount of pain from the first two but doing my rehabilitation therapies twice a day (more in the case of one or two exercises), and they are helping. I'm having a bit of trouble avoiding repetitive actions, though (typing, sewing, folding, driving) that could cause further damage. I still can't lift a coffee cup or turn left while driving, but I'm getting there.

Let us not forget the ordinary tasks. Pay bills. Walk dogs. Laundry. Mail the mail-art that's been addressed and in a basket for days. File papers from my desk. Get the Christmas things from boxes in the kitchen into either the storage space or the garage in spite of not being able to lift. Mail my daughter's birthday box and my friend Mary Flowers' quilt.

Michael would taken care of most of those tasks if not for spending two of his days off this week down in the trenches -- literally. Here is the photo documentation:

It was dark but fortunately not cold for the work on the water leak, and we had running water before midnight. Not a small achievement.

I talked to my mother while all of that was going on. "Why didn't he and his friend Craig just hire someone?" she asked.

"Because they're men, Mother," I replied.

On that note, I'm off to the bank to report my misplaced debit card (it's here somewhere but I can't go on waiting for it to turn up), to the gas station to fill up for tomorrow's trip; and, first, to the kitchen for lunch. Stay tuned; the adventures never end.

TBM Tuesdays: The Restoration of an Avenger

2012-01-10T10:56:00.006-05:00

In 1998, my brother Charlie Cartledge purchased a husk of a World War II bomber in Kissimmee, Florida.

In a hangar in Wadsworth, Ohio, he is fast approaching completion -- fast, that is, in the ways of airplane restoration. Don't look for it in the skies near you in the next month or two.

Last fall I took several hundred photos of Charlie's restoration. I'll be posting those photos here on Tuesdays over the next several months. For today, a quick view of where it all began and what the TMB looks like now.

Charlie's plane is TBM-3U Avenger, BuNo. 91436. (You can access a list of condition and location of all known surviving TBMs on wikipedia.)

The plane in Kissimmee, Florida in 1986.

Charlie purchased the TBM in December, 1998, and moved it to Wadsworth, Ohio.

This photo and the next few show the fuselage metalwork complete. May, 2003

To see photos of the TBM in October 2007, when the paint job in Navy markings was completed, check out Charlie's blog. He also posts photos from time to time on facebook.

The back of the plane, October, 2011.

Propellers! We have propellers!

This photo and the one below were taken this past week. Amazing how a sunny day and open doors can improve a photograph.

The last two photos were taken by Liberty Aviation Museum, one of three partners in building a museum, hangar, and diner in Port Clinton, Ohio, to honor the Ford Tri-Motor airplane (a. k. a. Tin Goose) and to have exceptional restored planes on exhibit -- including, so far, a Tri-Motor and a B-25J. A museum membership form can be downloaded at their website, and for only $20.00 a year, you, too, can be part of this adventure. The museum is also on facebook, so head over there to give them a look and a Like.

If you are restoring an airplane, you're welcome leave a comment so people can check out your website/blog. Charlie said when I was photographing his TBM that he had to figure out most of this stuff (wiring, metalwork, etc.) himself; we agree that making the information available publicly is of benefit to the entire flying community.

Call for manuscripts,RCWMS Essay Contest * Corrected Deadline

2012-01-10T08:53:00.004-05:00

Correction: Deadline for essays is January 17, 2012.

The Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South is committed to supporting women as they find their voices and make them heard.

Our 2012 Essay Contest is now open for submissions. Women eighteen years of age and older may submit previously unpublished nonfiction essays of 1400 words or less. Deadline: January 17, 2012.

Essays this year should focus on grandmothers or elder women in the writer's life. We welcome writing about being a grandmother, having a grandmother, or having been influenced by an elder woman.

Prizes will be $300 for first place, $200 for second place, and $100 for third place. The winning essay will be published in the RCWMS newsletter, South of the Garden, in March 2012. Winners will be notified by mail.

The limit is two essays per person. Submit four double-spaced copies of each essay. Previous first place winners and RCWMS Board members are not eligible. No sermons, please. No e-mail submissions. Manuscripts will not be returned. Do not put your name on your essay(s). Attach a cover letter with essay's title, your name, address, phone number, and e-mail.

Submissions must be postmarked by January 16, 2012 (because the 15th is a Sunday). Mail submissions: RCWMS Essay Contest, 1202 Watts St., Durham, NC 27701.

Grow. Breathe. Write. Call for Manuscripts.

2012-01-10T00:01:00.005-05:00

Deb Engle, co-creator of Tending Your Inner Garden

My dear friends Deb Engle and Diane Glass, co-founders of Tending Your Inner Garden, are celebrating their tenth anniversary by publishing four books this year, each a collection of essays, poetry and stories by women.

Maximum length is 600 words.

Full details are on their website, but here's a portion of the announcement about the series: "We’re inviting you and every woman you know to submit a story, poem, essay or other creation for any or all of our Tending Your Inner Garden seasonal books. Each book will reflect the overall theme of Tending Your Inner Garden: Helping women listen to and trust their inner guidance as they connect with Spirit and the Earth.
This is the best way we know to honor the tenth anniversary of Tending Your Inner Garden. And it’s also the most lasting and impactful way we can think of to celebrate women, Spirit and nature. We’ve spelled out all the details below, and we encourage you to take part."

Be a part of this exciting venture. Read their guidelines. Write something authentic. Submit it by e-mail. Also, feel free to alert other women who might be interested; they want to include voices from as many parts of the world as possible.

When you click over to the Tending Your Inner Garden website, be sure to follow the link to read about their 2012 program. This year, for the first time a distance version of the course is being offered. If you want to explore the seasons of life and the cycles of change in a kind, supportive environment, this course would make a lovely gift to yourself in the new year. Sign up RIGHT NOW to be part of the January 10 presentation about the distance program.

Project 52.1. The Enduring Friendship Big Block Quilt

2012-01-08T19:03:00.004-05:00

Project 52.1

This is my year to complete all of my half-finished projects. The first one is a quilt for my friend Mary Flowers. I'd already made her a quilt -- primary colors with a red binding --a few years ago, but she wanted a second one.

"The first one has to get washed once in a while," she said, "and, besides, Jennifer has two."

Jennifer, being one of my own personal daughters, wasn't a convincing argument. However, the image of Mary, like Linus from the Charlie Brown comic strip, sitting beside the washing machine, sucking her thumb, waiting for her blanket to reappear, did convince me.

She was hoping for colors like rust, brown, aubergine, orange, gold: the vibrancy of falling leaves. Those colors remind me of every boring antique quilt I've ever seen, and I can't stand the thought of working with them. I found a good substitute, though, in turquoise and tangerine. That combination developed from the first fabric I chose for her, the birdhouses you see above.

This is the only fabric that appears twice in the quilt. That's because Mary has a number of vintage birdhouses ornamenting her lawn / garden in South Carolina. Here are a few photos I took of them in the summer of 2011:

Every decision about the quilt emerged from that birdhouse fabric. It allowed for turquoise, which allowed the peace sign fabric, which freed me to use any other color I wanted. The huge Jetson-looking tangerine blobs convinced me to make the entire quilt from 18" squares. I like those blobs very well and didn't want them to get lost in the trimming process.

I hand-quilted the piece with orange thread, and this afternoon I finished hand-sewing vintage binding onto it. I was then going to write my name, the date, the location (information all quilters are encouraged to include), and care instructions on the back, but once I got started writing I couldn't stop until I'd gone around 2.5 times.

Then I traced around my left hand, because I love the shape of hands and also because Mary Flowers once told me she would recognize my hand if we were separated by fifty years and all she saw was one finger. (Do you know what I call that? I call that enduring friendship. And thus we have The Enduring Friendship Big Block Quilt.)

I still have to clip a few threads on the quilt and to take another photo that shows all twelve blocks. I'll do the former tonight and the latter tomorrow, in the morning light, when I have time to figure out a way to display the entire piece on the gate.

Meanwhile, what did I notice in forcing Project 1 through to completion (and, trust me, it was a forced completion; yesterday I came up with a new idea; I had to remind myself I was determined to complete one project a week in 2012 that and I was rapidly running out of week)?

I noticed --that I like the look of handwriting around the inside borders of a quilt backed with white muslin.

--that I might enjoy making a quilt in which my printed words, in various colors, become the pattern. That idea is a bit nerve-wracking; what would happen if after investing ten or twenty hours in writing I added something I didn't want to keep in the finished quilt?

--that sometimes I worry needlessly about silly things that are easily resolved once I get on with the project.

If you've completed a project this week, I'd love it if you leave a comment and a link. We can all enjoy this party!

Hellloooo, 2012

2012-01-02T00:02:00.001-05:00

2011 was capped off by my annual meeting with Dick Clark to welcome the new year. He was on the television in my bedroom, where I was snug as a bug, keeping my right arm still and allowing the muscles and ligaments to recover.

While I was in South Carolina, I met my friend Brian for coffee, and we talked about the New Year's Eve we spent in Times Square with our friend Susan Malavet. Cold? Oh, Lordie, it was brutally cold. We'd have frozen, no doubt, if not for Susan, who lived north of the city and was the veteran of numerous New Year's Eves in New York City.

The most amazing aspect of being there is the other-worldly / one-world feeling you get when you visit the Mona Lisa or when you see Charles Dickens' name inscribed in a visitors' log at Shakespeare's birthplace, both of which I've done. It's equal parts awe -- I'm part of something so much larger than myself -- and also of connection -- not to the artist but to the millions who've joined in admiring the work.

The next most amazing aspect was that within twenty minutes Susan, Brian, and I were the only people left on the street. I don't know where all of those people went, or how they got away so quickly. If they'd all flowed to Grand Central Station, they'd all flowed out of it again by the time we arrived there to catch a train. The night is a masterpiece of civic planning and foot-traffic flow.

And here we are with a whole new year,all bright and shiny, just waiting for us to pitch in and make something of it.

I'm beginning a new series of large art pieces this year involving bridal gowns (and perhaps additional garments) and narrative.

I'm also planning a number of smaller pieces. Rather than making 365 pieces of art, though, as I did last year, I'm going to complete 52 pieces of art (painting, collage, quilt, fiber art, assemblage) in 2012. Yep, that's one a week. Twenty or so pieces are already off to a good start; at least a dozen more are right at being finished and just need me to push through that final "what the hell do I do now?" stage.

My other major art project for 2012 is to learn how to operate all of the bells and whistles on my Nikon camera.

And then there's that book project. It's a very fine project, indeed, but I won't be working on it until the repetitive stress injury to my elbow heals.

Finally, I'm still researching preservation techniques and still working on Step One, which is to halt the damage to paper records, photographs, and ephemera from my parents' house.

For the record, the Year of the Rabbit continues until February 4, when the Year of the Dragon begins. Other dragon years are 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, and 2000. If any of those are your birth year, you can expect an especially propitious time of it. The rest of us can expect the usual sun and rain falling on the just and unjust alike.

Why U of L hospital needs to drop the merger plan

2011-12-29T07:58:00.005-05:00

The University of Louisville is in the process of attempting to merge with three other hospitals. The critical detail in this merger is the potential for reproductive services to be curtailed, because the owner-in-chief would be a Roman Catholic facility. The big C -- in this case, choice as to abortion, sterilization procedures, etc. -- would be regulated and determined by a nonlocal, private, religious-based entity.

The argument in favor of the merger is that more patients can be served. Times are tough, money is scarce, more beds are required.

This week I've been in search of a doctor. On Monday, I was looking for a family doctor to check out my right elbow, which I injured either while knocking the pink Christmas tree out of the rafters with a rake (the ladder is too heavy for me to carry) or while building a ceiling-high Christmas tree out of cable wire spools and green duct tape. The pain has waked me in the night and made lifting a filled coffee cup a lesson in anatomy, based on the directions the pain shoots. I made a list of nearby family doctors who are accepting new patients and accept my insurance.

Then I crossed off every doctor affiliated with the U of L, with Jewish Hospital, and with St. Mary and Elizabeth, each of which is connected to the merger plan.

The merger debate flows around the question of whether patients without insurance will be able to get the level of reproductive care post-merger that they've had access to pre-merger.

My point is that a merged system is going to face adamant resistance from people like me. Hell, no, I won't go -- not even if it means waiting an extra week to get health care. I don't need reproductive health care services, but I'm not taking my medical care needs (and insurance payments) to an entity choosing to limit reproductive health care and then daring to argue it is for the good of the community.

Meanwhile, I'm searching for a doctor. I had an appointment tomorrow with a Norton family doctor up the street, but his office phoned yesterday and postponed my appointment until next Friday. Could a different doctor see me? Yes, on Wednesday. Could I be called if there i8s a cancellation. Yes, but the bored young man on the other end of the phone never paused, and I didn't hear the tap of computer keys proving he'd made note of my request.

I don't see any reason to bother with those folks, especially since I have no prior relationship. However, my elbow awakened me at five a. m. by sending bolts of pain up my forearm. I've seen searching online since then for nearby family practice, urgent care, and/or orthopedic services. Hmm. Norton has an urgent care facility next door to the (useless to me) family care facility. You'd think somebody might have mentioned that. Four doors further up from them is an orthopedic/sports medicine physician, also affiliated with Norton. I think I'll call his office first.

If I can't get to Norton this week, I'm headed for the Walgreen's drop-in clinic. They're low on my list of treatment providers, but after five days anything is better than nothing.

The point is that I'll go to Walgreen's rather than any facility connected to the merger. U of L continues to proclaim the potential benefits, but they're ignoring the loss of potential patients like me. We are legion; we have insurance; and we know the personal and the medical are political.

The Speed of Light

2011-12-29T07:37:00.000-05:00

November 2, 4:48 p. m.

November 2, 4:49 p. m.

November 2, 4:50 p. m.

I never realized how quickly a sunset happens until I checked the time on this series of photos.

I'll be home for Christmas

2011-12-21T12:00:00.001-05:00

I'm in South Carolina for a sad event -- the funeral of my daughter's stepson. Michael J. Honeycutt, called Jay, age 32, died early Saturday, leaving a fifteen-year-old daughter.

The death of someone so young is, always, heart-breaking. A bit of consolation rests in the family's decision to allow organ donation, but consolation is a hollow word this week.

The kind people who love Jay are brittle with mourning, flooded with grief.

Tara's cousin and his family made cookies yesterday, which are being delivered to me at Tara's 'nother cousin's house in Greer. My teenage niece is going with Mary Flowers and me and the cookies to Westminster, SC, for the memorial service.

May we all go well into this day.

A week before Christmas and all through the house --

2011-12-17T10:46:00.000-05:00

Last night's reading at Day's Espresso was an excellent experience. I'm finally working on the book I've been contemplating for several years. I wrote four pages on Thursday, decided it was a stupid idea and would never sell, had a good night's sleep, and revised and rewrote the pages, ending up with 2.5, which I read last night. Each participant must provide a 20-word introduction, and the prevailing winds in recent months have inclined toward "our next writer will be judging show dogs in Argentina next week." (It had to be explained to me that the statement was completely true except for the show dogs, the judging, and the Argentina.) Last night, I was introduced as follows: "Mary Jo Cartledgehayes will be reading from her new book, soon to be made into a major motion picture."

I then read the entire 2.5 pages that is the book so far. The reception was warm, and I'm still explaining away the major motion picture.

And now it's Saturday, one week until Christmas Eve. Time for a list:
1. Find my debit card. In the two days I worked on the book, I lost my car keys, my debit card, my spectacles, and my Chihuahua. All were re-discovered (thank you, Michael), except the debit card.
2. Address Christmas cards.
3. One more post office run. Michael hauled packages into the post office yesterday, unaided. Not all were for Christmas; some had been in my car for three weeks. Two more to go,which he didn't take because they weren't yet in a box, addressed.
4. Find two boxes the right size before going to the post office.
5. Post newly received art on my other blog.
6. Post more Middle Bass ephemera on my other other blog.
7. Layer and pin the two quilt tops I've made so I can begin quilting.
8. Four more pages on the new book. (Four pages in long-hand today equals 2.5 pages tomorrow, a good pace for a long haul.)
9. Order checks.

Ahh. There's also the matter of Christmas trees. Today? Tomorrow? Certainly soon. But first I need to find my debit card to prevent it being more thoroughly lost in the confusion.

Save our landfills, holiday version

2011-12-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

Here come the holidays, complete with big boxes and more Styrofoam packing material than the earth can bear. This video shows a nifty way to handle the Styrofoam material. Melt it in acetone, and then build from it something charming. The video shows a voodoo doll, which is not up my alley; but I know there a zillion other, more favorable items you / I could make.

The video doesn't say to work in a well-ventilated area, but any time fumes are involved -- any time there's a chemical reaction -- you're better off working outside. Let me see what you come up with.

Christmas ornaments!

2011-12-12T14:11:00.002-05:00

Source: etsy.com via Amber on Pinterest

I have a ton of friends with new babies this year, and this ornament is totally darling.

Persistence

2011-12-11T21:36:00.002-05:00

I first met Rebecca Skloot at a conference in Baltimore in August, 2003. On that occasion, she did a fifteen-minute reading from the manuscript of her new book, due out the next year. The book was about a woman named Henrietta Lacks, who appeared one day in 1951 at the Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore. She had terminal cervical cancer and died not long after. The story doesn't end there, though. Her cells (known as HeLa cells) are still alive, still replicating, and still the basis for a multi-millon dollar worldwide industry in cancer research.

HeLa cell

Skloot writes that scientists had tried for years without success to keep human cells alive in culture. Lacks' cells were different. They "reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. [Italics mine.] They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory." (NPR book excerpt.)

HeLa cells

According to an interview with The Root, Skloot first heard of the cells in a biology class when she was 16. The woman behind the cells, though, was a mystery. Even her family didn't know until the 1970s that her cells were preserved. The HeLa cells mattered, but their origin did not, which is to say that Henrietta Lacks, the human being, didn't count, nor did her family. Because of Rebecca Skloot, that situation changed.

In 2004, I heard Skloot read a second time. Again, she was introduced as an author whose book would be released the following year. It was a nightmare of a reading; her printer had failed an hour earlier, so she was stuck reading from reading from her laptop, with the usual accompanying pauses and breaks in attention. Didn't matter. The text was riveting, the writing smooth and smart and muscular and wildly informative. I made a mental note to watch for the book's release the next year.

HeLa cells

And I did. I watched for it in 2005, in 2006, in 2007, in 2008, in 2009, and in 2010. And then one day, it happened. Rebecca Skloot put an update on facebook saying The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was soon to be published. In an excerpt from the book on NPR, Skloot describes what carried her through those years: an obsession with Mrs. Lacks, her family, and the ethical questions raised by the use of HeLa cells.

Tonight I was watching an interview with Publisher's Marketplace news editor Sarah Weinman, and I learned that, in 2011, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was the third-most-purchased book on the New York Times combined list of paper and electronic bestsellers. Number Three on the over-all NY Times book list. How great is that?


HeLa cell splitting

I am happy for Rebecca, for the scientific community, and for the rest of us, because the ethical issues she reports on belong to every one of us. Not until tonight did I remember my own personal example. My husband died in 2000. Ten million of his blood cells, though, give or take a million, are are alive and well and frozen in Little Rock, Arkansas. My husband Fred, who had a vicious cancer, was scheduled for two autologous stem cell transplants, requiring the harvesting of his own stem cells. At the time of apharesis, we signed a document giving any left-over blood cells to the hospital. Fred's failing health allowed only one transplant; and so The University of Arkansas Medical System owns a living piece of him. Perhaps the cells are still frozen. Perhaps they've been thrown out. Perhaps they're being used. How odd to imagine; and how kind of Rebecca Skloot to have prompted the thought that he may still be carrying on. (He always said he'd be the last one off the planet and would turn out the lights as he departed.)

Going back to my long wait, this evening I read on the Niemann Storyboard that the Henrietta Lacks book took 11 years for Skloot to write. There was the extensive, time-consuming research, of course, but Skloot also says in that posting that "Figuring out the [triple narrative] structure of this book was maddening, and it took me a very long time."

Persistence. Showing up. Doing the work, redoing the work, expanding the work, documenting every weather report and every statement from at least two sources, struggling with material enough and themes enough to swamp any writer -- Skloot didn't know how to write the book when she started. Eleven years later, she did.

I've mentored two dozen or more writers over the last ten years. Often, after I read the first 10 or 20 pages of their manuscripts, they ask me if they should keep working; if they're capable of being writers; it the work is worth pursuing. There are three equally accurate answers, always: Yes. Nobody knows. And How much time have you got?

Take me to bed

2011-12-08T15:01:00.003-05:00

For my newest adventure, I tripped into polyvore today, which I'd read about just yesterday. I was searching for an acrylic dresser, which I found, but then I wandered through some obscure corridors and decided to see what sort of narrative I could create. That blob of items on the right side? They aren't supposed to be there -- but I can't get rid of them without deleting the whole shooting match.

I'm really only doing this to keep from having to run errands. Unfortunately, they can be postponed no longer. It was 28 degrees when Michael walked our Lab this morning. It's now 3:05 and as warm as it's likely to get today. I'm off to do the dutiful bits, and then I'm heading to Kaviar forge on Frankfort Avenue for the artists' sale they're sponsoring tonight. Forging will be taking place. Photos will only appear if I can find someone in the next hour who can suggest camera settings.

On Writing Again

2011-12-07T15:54:00.001-05:00

I've been a dervish of tidying, which I fear is connected to the book proposal I'm mentally writing.

I'm cleaning out, nesting, and battening down the hatches all at once, a mixed-metaphor precursor to finding within myself the necessary levels of stupidity and forgetfulness that will free me to enter into a new book project.

Easier to pledge to scourge yourself once a day with a metal-tipped flog. You might convince yourself that a scourge or two is pleasing to God; but you can't bullshit about writing a book. The process demands utter concentration and a powerful indifference to other people, spiked with intermittent blistering annoyance.

The writing, editing and publishing of my 2003 book was one of the three worst experiences of my life. My husband Fred died a month after I signed the contract. My sister died two weeks before the book was released. In between I had to listen to an insufferable agent tell me that I needed to put Fred's death in the book "for balance."

Yeah. That's what she wanted out of my husband's death: balance.

At the time I was still having to remind myself to tie my shoes each morning; and I'm not a whore, so eventually I advised the publishing house that rather than include Fred's death I'd return the advance and reclaim my manuscript.

The agent fell off the face of the earth (I'd been warned but thought it impossible in my case); the editor was let go from the company; the publicity person got fired; the in-house make-it-happen person left
to be an agent ; and the book became that most useless creation, a publishing orphan.

To round things off, George W. Bush threw a war and newspapers threw out the reviews of Grace they'd planned to publish in favor of big photos of shock and awe.

I put 70,000 miles on my car, showing up for every signing, Q&A, book fair, symposium, and retreat I could get myself into. (For those of you who believe in the book-tour fallacy? I'm still paying off that credit card.) And then the United Methodist Church -- a major character in the book -- refused membership to a gay person, making a mockery of every sermon I'd ever preached and every statement I'd ever made about the Church's goodness, mercy, and inclusivity.

The entire process was like every other death you endure. I've kept circling my wagons and seeking shelter in the center, near the campfire.

A bigger man might have written a new nonfiction book sooner, but a bigger man can't write with the beauty and wisdom and rhythm and authenticity and metaphor that I do. A woman might have done it, but (no news here) we are still a sexist society, and women with any sense read the book, wrote to thank me for telling the truth, and put the book back on the shelf, after wiping off their fingerprints.

Regret? Yeah, baby. I regret every minute I wasted on that book.

On the other hand, I'm going to sue a number of copies in a piece of performance art, as soon as I clear up a few questions about outside burning in the county. I read Fahrenheit 451 years ago and have reread it numerous times since. Of course I'm opposed to book burnings; but in this case it's my book, my match, and my decision.

Meanwhile, I've got this book taking shape in spite of myself. I know the first three paragraphs; and I'm experienced enough to know that when I write them down, the next 200 pages will emerge like a river overflowing its banks. But it's December. I have things to do. I'll continue to put this project off until I have no other choice.

Lost!

2011-12-07T14:59:00.000-05:00

I've always known this to be true, and yet here it is, in my face once more. You give yourself over to organization for a day, a week, ten days; and the house is lighter, and your spirits lift, and then you reach for the one thing you need -- in order to complete the ONE IMPORTANT ITEM on today's To Do list -- and the damned thing is gone.

Not gone-gone,
as in you took care of it
and therefore can stop thinking. Gone is
precisely what it is not. Gone-ish
is precisely what it is.
doing you no good, because it's not the what
that's in question but the where.

Where? Here, a moment ago.
Here, in my hands. I carried it
into this very room to place an address label
or stuff a photograph into the envelope
or a twenty dollar bill.

Of all the wheres it might be, here is where it
is not. The remainder of the afternoon,
crafted around the tasks intended to follow
the placing and stuffing, has drizzled its way
to some other lame pursuit, the pursuit of that
which once was here, where it belonged,
before this tidied order was created.

The errands, and I, are at a standstill,
derailed and disheveled by our earlier success.

Final reminder! Holiday Mail for Heroes!

2011-12-06T15:45:00.000-05:00

I've just finished labeling my stuffed-full priority mail envelope and am headed to the post office to send it off to Holiday Mail for Heroes, the annual drive conducted by the Red Cross and Pitney Bowes to deliver holiday greetings to service men, service women, veterans, folks in veterans' hospitals, and family of military personnel.

I counted twice and forgot three times, but I know I have 50+ cards in the envelope.

Any are welcome, as long as they don't have glitter on them. Take a few minutes to sign a card, or fifty; pop them into an envelope; and ship them off to the following address:

Holiday Mail For Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

Postmark deadline is December 9, which is Friday. Store-bought cards are fine; it's the thought that counts, and the action.

Betsy Ross

2011-11-29T15:24:00.000-05:00

My mother was a genealogical researcher, and the things she learned in her research informed her in numerous other ways. Labels, for instance. As long as could see, Mother labeled everything that came through her hands.

This piece, for instance, was given to her in 1976 by Hazel Heise. Hazel was the postmistress when I was growing up and lived in the large white house directly across from the town hall. (Yes, I know it's gone, but if you know the island at all, you know where her house was.)

The Verbs of Life

2011-11-29T14:47:00.004-05:00

I'm cleaning off my main desk and creating files, some new, some the identical files I create every time my system loses its effectiveness.

I'm going great guns, filling trash cans and stacking up piles. I thought I might be far enough along that I could stop and make a list of things to do.

A mental scan of tasks revealed I don't have the time, paper, or inclination to make the list of substance the coming appearance of December requires.

A better option, I thought, was to make a list of verbs. We've lived by verbs since our Dick, Jane, and Sally days; ("Run, Dick, run." "Go, Spot, go."). Theologian Mary Daly gave her life to verbs, of which God was one. Verbs, no matter your theological persuasion, are the key to happiness.

Here's the list:
repair
restore
clean
scan
research
purchase
organize
dry out
wrap
write (correspondence)
write (business)
write (for publication)
photograph
learn (how to photograph items)
sign
address
clean out
scrub
discard.

That should put enough parameters on my day, especially since I've left off some important verbs like "mail" and "walk" and "eat." However, there's such a thing as being too organized.

I came to my conclusion after reading some organizing-themed blogs. The authors offer suggestions and tools, sometimes free, sometimes not, such as templates for laying out chores and -- well, I don't know what other kind of templates they offer, because I'm not going to use them anyhow, but I'll have you know there are dozens, if not hundreds, of organizational templates floating out there.

The blogs also contain photographs. Many, many photographs of precisely organized closets and cupboards and shoes and dinnerware and dog leashes and -- well, you get the point. They're fascinating for a read or two, and then they give me the willies. Too much like a navy submarine or a prison camp. Life is for flinging your elbows out and knocking the occasional valuable crystal pitcher off the kitchen table, where it wouldn't have been in the first place if you'd followed that template. But then you wouldn't have had the notion to fling your elbows around, to make new space, to express your native exuberance.

Organization? Not so much. Space for exuberance? Yes, indeed. And at my house, my friends, that's the point.

Put-in-Bay Boat Line, Inc, 1988

2011-11-29T07:41:00.000-05:00

1988 ferry schedule for Put-in-Bay Boat Line, formerly Parker's.

Holiday Mail for Heroes!

2011-11-28T20:51:00.001-05:00

Now that I've finished making 365 pieces of mail art in 365 days -- with nothing left to do between now and midnight on November 30 but post the final 10 on the Mail Art 365 blog -- I'm feeling released, relieved, and recharged.

The only trouble is that I can't keep working the way I have. Making art consistently for a year uses up the ordinary in you, so you can't use boring materials, by which I mean things that are silly or cute or overly prissy.

Therefore, yesterday and today I went through the folders and boxes in which I keep mail art supplies, all the bits I've trimmed out of magazines, discarded books, etc. over the last several years. I reduced my collection of materials by about two-thirds. My reasoning is that if I haven't used something in the course of making 365 pieces, chances are it's never going to tempt me. My ART can still be any of those things, but they have to grow out of the composition, not from an external object.

Also (no surprise here) I'm bored with all of the techniques I've used to date. I don't want to stop using textiles and trims, but I've achieved a uniformity with my unorthodox materials that feels . . . boring.

I don't know where I go from here. I'm not at a loss so much as at a pause. I don't mind, because I'm still clearing out debris from my flying finish there at the end of the project; and I have tons of mailart waiting to be addressed. Even more important, it's time to get started on contributions for Holiday Mail for Heroes, which always brings out new impulses in me.

Holiday Mail for Heroes is the annual drive sponsored by the Red Cross and Pitney-Bowes. Together, they collect, inspect, and distribute greeting cards for men and women in the military and their families, as well as for veterans.

Two rules are strict: no last names (because you aren't establishing a relationship; you're offering a greeting) and no glitter (because if the recipient is in the hospital, big trouble could result). Full instructions are on the website.

This is the the third year I've taken part. Making greeting cards allows me to be newly conscious, here and now, of the work our servicewomen and men do, of the dangers they endure, of the wounds they suffer, and of the hardships their families endure in their absence.

I like making cards because it takes longer than simply signing my name; and I like the sense of connection I'm conveying with my glue stick and needle (even if the recipient doesn't notice). This year, though, there are no limits on the number each person can send, so I may sign some regular store-bought Christmas cards and Hanukkah cards, too, so nobody gets left out.

Some of the ones I make will have lace and bows. Those will go into a separate envelope marked For Women! 'cause I don't think it matters if you're a military wife at home wiping children's noses or a woman off somewhere at a duty station polishing boots. In either case, a hit of girlfriend vibes can rock the holiday season.

Postmark date is December 9. Have at it, chickies. And leave a comment letting me know if you're going to participate this year. After all this talk, I'd like to know people are joining me in this excellent project.

Steampunk

2011-11-28T20:08:00.000-05:00

For all of you who, like me, vaguely know that you like steampunk while not precisely knowing what the hell it is, urban dictionary has a series of definitions that will guide you to the brass ring.

My favorite is that steampunk is goth after it discovers the color brown. I also expect vintage door plates to be part of the costume.

Definitions: yet another service we offer.

Mr. Punch and friends

2011-11-28T19:35:00.001-05:00

Belle and Doug Cartledge (he's wearing his puppeteer hat), with Mr. Punch looking over my mother's shoulder, 1981.

Belle's Dolls, the early years

2011-11-28T09:16:00.000-05:00

One of the first dolls Mother made.

Back then, Belle's Dolls was not yet established and the series of First Ladies and Presidents that Mother sculpted and for which Daddy cast molds weren't even a dream.

They'd made puppets when I was little, carved and dressed them, but this was an Island Pottery doll. The photo was taken on the picnic table in front of my folks' house on Fox Road.

Cartledges, circa 1979

2011-11-27T23:01:00.000-05:00

Front row: Amy's David scratching his head, my Jennifer nearly invisible in front of my mother, my brother's older daughter Sharon, and my Tara.
Back row: Doug Cartledge, Mary Jo Cartledge, Amy Cartledge Thomas Reidling who looks taller than I am but was three inches shorter (it's the heels!), Belle Cartledge, Douglas and Charlie.

A mystery photo! I think we're standing at the base of Lonz's hill, and that the building visible to the right is what was the Shop at the Dock. Amy's Michael Douglas hasn't arrived yet, so that makes it the late 70s. It's possible this is the trip when my good friend Mary Flowers went along, and she would have taken the photo.

I'm smiling at the girls, my dad is smiling at my mother, and Amy is smiling for the camera. And thus it always was, with one minor blip. Amy was Miss Ice Fishing Guide Queen in 1963 or 1964, and I went on to win the crown the following year.

Making Music, 1967

2011-11-27T21:14:00.001-05:00

July 10, 1967. Doug Cartledge on violin, Lesley Wilson on 5-string banjo, Elmer Wilson on guitar.

Elmer Wilson and some friends rented a school bus on what was Albert Gmelch's property on the north shore. If you drove straight up the main road, not turning at the pear trees, and continued down the dirt / gravel road, you'd pass Carrie High's house (now Bob White's) on the right and Albert's (now the Middle Bass Inn) on the left before driving into the lake. Between the houses and the water was a silver school bus, which is where the Wilson family vacationed.

Originally, I think Elmer and John rented the bus merely for fishing trips. Amy and I got to go out with them sometimes; we were experts at baiting hooks with worms but were both unnerved by the enormous sheephead Amy caught that lay on the floor of the boat groaning. Elmer worked at a glass factory and got four weeks vacation a year, so he'd come up often during the summer. Then the whole family started coming, which is when the major music / singalong sessions in Elmer's kitchen began.

Lots of people used retired school buses for vacationing at Albert's. None of them had bathrooms, although some of the houses further down the line west of Albert's house surely did. Otherwise, Albert's outhouse was the communal toilet; and if you wanted to bathe you could have yourself a sponge bath or take a bar of soap along into the lake.

Yeah. Bathing in the lake, back when Lake Erie was a pool of water, arsenic, Lake Erie water snakes, flammable materials, and dead fish floating to shore. Good times.

From left: Lesley Wilson (in chair), Elmer Wilson, Doug Cartledge, and John Baker. I think in this photo they're outside at Elmer's trailer, and most likely they're just in from fishing and my father just in from work. (He was vineyard foreman at Lonz Winery in those years.)

When I say music-making, I mean playing and singing until two in the morning. Elmer would sometimes have his daughter Penny play guitar, and he'd pick up on the ukulele. The adults, especially the musicians, had shots of whiskey between sessions. We kids would walk down to our house sometimes, watching our shadows grow in the moonlight and the quartz glittering on the road. When the monument was turned off, there was true natural darkness, dependent on the phase of the moon, and the stars!-- if you never lived far away from the electrified world, you've never seen the true depth, breadth, and number of stars.

Planting iris bulbs and watching lights twinkle - and then there's mail art

2011-11-26T23:43:00.004-05:00

A year ago, on December 1, I joined with a group of 80-some folks who decided to make 365 pieces of mail art in one year. Since then, we've had a total of 125+ people sign up to be part of the project.

Everyone has worked / is working at their personal best speed. I'm a binge mail artist; I like doing a whole pile all at once, and I like doing series and themes.This piece is from my Postal Art series.

This piece is from my final-50 series, which contains observations and comments and philosophy of a year's worth of mail art. Yes, I have finished all 365 pieces. Today I realized I wanted them to be not only finished but posted on my mail art blog and also on the Mail Art 365 blog where all of the participants post art.

The mad dash to total victory was interrupted today by a serious desire to prepare for winter. I got into the ground the iris bulbs that I dug up at my old house in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which came to me from Middle Bass Island, Ohio, in 1996 or thereabouts. I also planted the red flowers my daughter sent home with me in June when I was in North Carolina for my grandson's graduation; and I transplanted the monster hosta she gave me then, too. It did well this summer, but I think it will appreciate the late afternoon shade it will get next year.

I headed out to get supplies at Hancock Fabrics. The one on Dixie Highway must be the worst of the Hancocks in the country, based solely on the number of potholes in their parking lot, the inconvenience of their cutting table, and the absence of two out of two items I went to purchase. However, their $9 per yard Christmas fabrics were 60 % off, so I got half yard hunks of five, plus a chicken fabric and one that looks like exploding dandelions. A successful run. And then on the way home I got to admire the houses with Christmas lights. I was especially taken with one done in purples, with those hangy-down lights spread across the front of the house and on a number of shrubs. The installers were standing back near the road, admiring their handiwork and I was happy enough at the sight to roll down the window and tell them, "It's really beautiful."

Now I'm bone tired, and Laramie the Chihuahua is trying her best to sleep in my lap while I type, resting her chin on my left wrist, which is a little less effective for both of us than we might hope. So we're off to bed. Tomorrow I should finish posting all of my Mailart 365 pieces, which will put me back in the running to finish my fibonacci series on time. I've written more than I've posted; now it's time to prioritize their public emergence.

I'm just sayin'

2011-11-22T10:14:00.000-05:00

Borrowed from Americans against the Tea Party. And may I also throw in that Bush ran on the coattails of Jesus and left America a poorer, hungrier nation than when he arrived?

Special Edition! The Art of Russell Brohl II

2011-11-22T09:59:00.001-05:00

Liturgical vestments by Russell Brohl.

Russell Brohl II is a Middle Bass native and the son of Russ and Lisa Brohl.

Liturgical vestments by Russell Brohl.

Although his folks were living in Columbus when he was born, they met on the island and moved there when Russell was two. They owned Margie and Artie Wolf's house (you may know it as the post office) (or, if you haven't been to Middle Bass since the 1950s, the Gaydishes' house).

Liturgical vestments by Russell Brohl.

Russell is a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago and finished his teaching certificate this fall.

The liturgical garments are available for purchase. Contact Russell through his website or facebook for further information.

Images copyright 2011 by Russell Brohl II

Nigel Ayers: Compost: Live at Tate St Ives

2011-11-20T16:56:00.000-05:00

Nigel Ayers: Compost: Live at Tate St Ives: Field Club & Friends - late at the Tate St Ives Friday 25 November: FREE ADMISSION Multimedia artist Nigel Ayers, will perform a live psyc...

My cousin Nigel. Everybody needs to show up, what with me not being able to get there.

Discombobulation

2011-11-20T12:52:00.003-05:00

When I was on the island last month, I scrubbed up some of the ceramics from Island Pottery (my mother's first business) and also -- I can't believe it! -- finally was able to reclaim my own personal Mary Hoyer doll. That's her head sticking out of the pink pitcher. That's her body, too, splayed out in the front of the pitcher. Other items are a flat Christmas train with a mud wasp nest firmly embedded on the inner can't-get-to sides, a sweet deer planter, two elephants, and a very nice indeed black kitty.

Mary Hoyer, the best Christmas present ever, disappeared a number of years ago. I knew she was somewhere in the pottery shop but could never track her down -- until this trip. She's a little the worse for wear. I remember cutting her hair but I think I focused on the bangs and am certain I didn't invent that buzz cut she's got now. Her entire body is with her, although not attached, which makes her a step ahead of my sister's doll. It is now a body wearing a green Christmas dress that matched the green Christmas dress Mother made for Amy that year. (Mary Hoyer and I were in red.)

That first Christmas when I was showing off my beauty, people asked me what I'd decided to name her. I said, "She already had a name when I got her." And then I'd unsnap the back of her dress and show them: Mary Hoyer, in a circle, right there on her back. A quick search just revealed that the Mary Hoyer Doll Co. still exists; it's in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and has a museum attached showcasing the earlier dolls. Current products must be of a different size, because the company's homepage has a link to a page selling clothes sized for the dolls made in the 1950s.

I also caught sight of a genuine early Mary Hoyer dress for sale on ebay for $295.00. Yeah, no.

Mary Hoyer's discombobulation is not all that dissimilar from my own. I'm racing against the calendar to finish the Mailart 365 project on time, which is to say on or by November 30. The project, created by Londoner Andy Geezer, involved more than 80 mail artists who committed to making 365 pieces of mailart in a year. We had rolling starting dates, but I was one of the original signees and began the project on December 1. (A more recent signee just posted Piece Number 9 online.)

I've worked in bursts on Mailart 365 pieces and at this instant am up to 297 artworks completed, scanned, and posted on my mailart blog. Today is November 19. I have -- no, don't tell me. I've been doing the math for several weeks now, and it's enough for me to know I just have to keep working steadily for the next several days to come in under the wire. Of course, this is not a competition; and every person involved is comfortable with the idea of working at our own pace and also knows that things come up. This project is for fun, not for tearing one's hair out. I, however, am fond of deadlines. I like the urgency, not to mention the thrill of victory. I think the stimulation increases; I've ventured into territory I may not have discovered if I weren't thinking about ways to create that don't involve hours of glue-drying time or days of stitching and yet leave me satisfied with the work I've done.

On top of that, I started a new blog a few weeks ago where I'm posting photos and ephemera that document the life and history of Middle Bass Island. The project makes me happy.

Finally, I've done more work toward getting my etsy shop opened. It's existed for two years. Any day now, I'm going to list some of my handwork for sale. Any day now. I swear. I just have to add a few things and take a couple dozen more stitches and mount some pieces on watercolor paper and do some fabulous photography and read the shop owner rules a few more times and decide what photo I want to have be my icon. My friend Debbie in Japan suggested I use this piece on my mailart business cards:

I don't know. What do you think? Too seasonal? Too spidery? Perfect? Any and all comments greatly appreciated.

Fox and Hens

2011-11-19T18:27:00.000-05:00

The Ladies, a constant source of activity and conversation, not to mention eggs.

Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial

2011-11-18T11:29:00.000-05:00

aka Perry's Monument, 1982.

Ice shanty, 1968

2011-11-18T11:25:00.000-05:00

Ice shanty, January 1968. In front of it are Nick (world's best dog), Mary Jo, and Charlie. This photo, by the way, was taken with one of those newly released Polaroid instant cameras.

Lonz Winery in watercolor

2011-11-18T11:24:00.000-05:00

Lonz Winery watercolor by Belle Cartledge, 1997

Bad Hair Day Today, Good Friend Day Tomorrow

2011-11-15T23:38:00.001-05:00

Once in a while you have to break down and do all of the things that have been on a list for too long. Today, therefore, was dentist, hair-trim, oil-change, Goodwill-dropoff day.

The nice young man who trimmed my hair seemed to have a loose grasp of the term "layering." so while my hair is a couple of inches shorter and a day-of-rain curlier, it's lacking an essential element or two, like getting the weight of the hair off my neck and shoulders. It's the first time I've had a layered haircut that's thicker at the bottom than at the top. Inexplicable. And so I shall continue gathering it to the top of my head and letting a few tendrils frame my face, in the classic aged Gibson girl look.

Tomorrow I'm off to Cincinnati to see my dear friend Jane. We were last together at the funeral of her daughter-in-law Jennifer, which was achingly sad but also mildly hysterical, in that teenage girl giggly way, because Jane's daughter kept dragging us out of the bathroom with admonishments that we had things to do or people to see or -- well, I don't quite know what the command performance was, but every time it happened Jane and I shed 45 years. I'm so looking forward to having an afternoon together. And so proud of us for making it happen.

How to Paint a Freighter

2011-11-15T09:43:00.000-05:00

Doug Cartledge working on an oil painting of the freighter Herbert C. Jackson, captained by Russ Brohl until his retirement.

Hubcap Ranch

2011-11-13T09:43:00.001-05:00

Litto's Hubcap Ranch, a California State landmark

I think it was the angel Michael in the movie "Michael" who said, "No matter what anybody tells you, there's no such thing as too much hubcaps." Or maybe he said pie. In any case . . .

Hubcap guitar

2011-11-13T09:35:00.003-05:00

Another use for those pesky hubcaps you have nailed to your garage door.

from the Landfill Art Project

2011-11-13T09:27:00.001-05:00

Catawba Grape Juice

2011-11-12T06:49:00.000-05:00

During Prohibition, George Lonz was such a concerned citizen that he wrote to all of his former wine customers, described his grape juice, and gave very clear directions on what must not be done, lest the grape juice turn into wine.

Loving My Life

2011-11-12T02:10:00.001-05:00

I've been off doing fabulous things rather than posting.

First, I'm nearing the December 1 deadline for those participants who are taking part in Mailart 365. We decided we'd make a piece of mail art a day for a solid year. I'm not the only one who tends to work in bursts rather than in daily dollops. I'm also not the only one who gets to put in overtime in the next ten days to finish on time. I've posted 252 of my art pieces since December 1, 2010. I've completed 271!-which means I have fewer than a hundred still to make and 19 days left in which to make them. It's a fearsome deadline, but also no deadline at all, because the aim is 365 pieces of art, not a calendar date.

I've also been posting a photo every day on my 18-day-old blog about the art and life of Middle Bass Island. This project, as you might surmise, is walking hand-in-hand with my efforts to get various photos and documents and pieces of paper and whatever else passed through my parents hands dry and de-bugged. I'm pretty sure I have a year's worth of potential postings. My favorite post so far is the one on November 10 showing photos of Jim Roesch raising the flag at the Main Dock early one morning. Jim and I talked for a few minutes afterwards. I'd remembered that he and I cleaned cottages together one summer for Jim Bretz. A few years later, I think he worked at the Shoppe at the Dock when I was waitressing there.

Jim's wife Mary owned the shop My Aunt Erma's on the island, and one day when Mother and I popped in to buy something darling, Mary remarked that Jim had more jobs as a kid than anybody else she'd ever heard of. I can probably tie him in the jobs-as-a-kid category, and so can most everybody who spent summers on the island. Things needed to get done, and there were a limited number of people to do them. All hands on deck.

Otherwise, I spent several hours today at the ginormous Unique Thrift Store on Preston Highway (the same awful, busy, nothing-but-strip-malls street down which my Chihuahua was found wandering before being delivered to the Humane Society). Every holiday they throw a 50 % off sale, and today (yesterday; November 11) was no exception. The store opened at 9:00. I arrived at 9:15 and didn't get my hands on a shopping cart the entire three hours I was there. I found materials for three art projects that I've been contemplating; as well as embellishments and a canvas and some paints and even more things that I didn't bring home. There were a number of things I'd like to have purchased, but after the first half hour, I was making decisions based strictly on weight. That meant no books and no cast iron and no bulky what-have-yous. Even so, by the time I came trickling home, I was ready for a nap and lunch.

Tomorrow I'm gong to my friend Karen's exciting exhibit, complete with music and poets, at the Iroquois branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. It runs from noon until two, and I'm hoping to return home with photographs. In between these adventures, I'm still working to get my etsy shop open. I made a banner that I hate. I have items for all three categories of sales: hand-made, supplies, and vintage. Things need a little tweaking still, and I must sort out how I'll store items between posting and purchase; but if it's to be done, 'tis best done quickly. Christmas waits for no one, and the stores are full of jingle bells and mass-manufactured pseudo-necessities. Art, now -- art is worth giving, and worth getting; it changes us; and not for the worse. I must get on with it.

Keep in touch. I'm always happy to have you leave comments.

Tomatoes

2011-11-12T00:43:00.000-05:00

When my daughter Jennifer asked my father three days before he died if there was anything he wanted to tell Grandma, Daddy said, "Yes. Tell her to plant the tomatoes in April."

I was thinking about his tomatoes today and how he would brush off suggestions he stay in town a little longer rather than rush home. Tomatoes usually figured into the reasons. He had to decide what kind to grow this year. He had to decide how many to plant. He had to order seed, to fix up the cups in which he started them, to transplant them from small cups to larger ones. He had to instruct Mother in weeding and harvesting. Always something to remind the health professionals that he was more than the old man they saw in front of them; he was active and engaged, a farmer doing his work, and doing it well; and therefore needing exceptional care in order to allow him to keep working.

East Point Manor

2011-11-11T16:25:00.001-05:00

East Point Manor. In the National Register of Historic Places.

Raising the American Flag

2011-11-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

In honor of Veteran's Day, here are some photos of Jim Roesch raising the American flag at the main dock on Middle Bass on a bright October morning a few weeks ago.

Lonz's 1930s

2011-11-10T03:27:00.000-05:00

From left: George Lonz, Ruth Fischer, Louis Kresbach, Dorothy (?), and Fannie Lonz.

Scan of a photocopy of a photo.

What Constitutes a Family

2011-11-09T14:44:00.000-05:00

My great-nephew Carson had to draw a picture of his family in school. He's four, and four-year-olds, as we all know, are radical conservatives. Busy learning the rules, they don't have time for variations. So when his teacher said he was to draw a picture of his family, he quickly did so, using one version of the standardized family unit. The group he drew was himself, his mom, and a grandparent or two.

You can see the downside if you're Carson's dad and a steadfast presence in his life. It isn't about something juvenile, like being left out. It's about a really important concept, which is that some people have more than one essential family unit. Some boys are lucky enough to have two. In his sketch as well, grandparents could be revealed -- Grandpa Dean and Grandma Kathy -- but I don't have any photos of them to base a likeness upon, and besides I want to stake a claim, clearly, that the tall fellow and the cute dude above are as thoroughly a family as he and his mom are, or as I and my mom are. And I'm mailing this sketch along with some a thank you letter to Carson so he can see that it's okay to be family in more ways than one.

Carson's grandmother is my late sister, Amy Cartledge Thomas Reidling-Jones, originally of Middle Bass Island, Ohio. I'm posting daily photos of Middle Bass elsewhere if you'd like to catch a look.

Birthday greetings

2011-11-09T06:18:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Cinammon on her recent college graduation!

Milk Glass

2011-11-08T07:12:00.000-05:00

My mother's milk glass collection, 1980. My sister also collected milk glass. I wasn't interested in it until a year or two ago, when I bought a bird on nest identical to the one on the far right in this photo.

Vinegar

2011-11-07T09:10:00.000-05:00

Nature watercolor

2011-11-06T09:08:00.001-05:00

Watercolor by Belle Cartledge, July 10, 1995

Goin' to the Chapel of Love

2011-11-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

In honor of my friends Mary and Denis, who were married today in Bali. lovelovelove

Lonz Winery interior, 1950

2011-11-05T15:31:00.000-04:00

Lonz Winery, Regatta 1950. From left: Richard Roesch, Albert Gmelch, Doug and Belle Cartledge

The Goat, 1978

2011-11-05T09:28:00.001-04:00

In my mother's handwriting on the back: "Ben Nardi's father and the goat." My parents had two different goats, Nan and Daisy, the first of which my sister, Amy, bought while living in an apartment in Toledo, Ohio.

Island Swapping | Article Archives | Cleveland Magazine - Your guide to the best of Cleveland

2011-11-05T09:24:00.000-04:00

Island Swapping | Article Archives | Cleveland Magazine - Your guide to the best of Cleveland

July 2004 article about North Bass that heavily references the State of Ohio's plans for Middle Bass.

Crystal Cave Champagne

2011-11-05T07:00:00.002-04:00

Crystal Cave Brand American Champagne. Selected by Heineman Winery. Produced & Bottled by Geo. F. Lonz, Middle Bass, O.

On a sidenote there's no such thing as a small c Champagne, nor can there be an "American Champagne". The word refers to a bubbly spirits from a particular region of France.

Joan Minchak Photo, Middle Bass

2011-11-04T09:05:00.000-04:00

<a href='http://fineartamerica.com/featured/middle-bass-island-joan-minchak.html' size='20'><img src='http://fineartamerica.com/displayartwork.html?id=2281540&width=250&height=187' alt='Sell Art Online' title='Sell Art Online' style='border: none;'></a>

Darn. The photo isn't showing, so instead I'll give you the link so you can click through and see. It's quite a nice photo, from a unique angle:

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/middle-bass-island-joan-minchak.html

Cards and prints available for purchase.

Perry's Monument with Blue Boat

2011-11-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

Perry's Monument with Blue Boat, oil painting by Doug Cartledge, circa 1995.

Document Preservation

2011-11-03T15:41:00.004-04:00

It's been raining all day, so my living room smells like wet dog.

My kitchen smells like the damp newspapers, photographs, baby books, albums, genealogies, diplomas, wedding announcements, thank you cards, etc. that I've brought from my mother's house to begin putting in order.

I began researching document preservation six weeks ago and was immediately overwhelmed by the size of the task. The one thing of which I'm certain is that it's going to be a long haul.

The immediate task? Stop the deterioration.

How do you do that?

First step is to segregate the newspapers from every other item. Newspapers have a higher acid content than other paper grades and will not only self-destruct rapidly but will share their high acid content with everything they touch.

Second step is to kill the crawly things. I haven't seen any silverfish, but there was one slimy little critter with an angular back I noticed darting between two photographs yesterday.

Ick. Double ick, because if I'm serious about preservation, I really can't simply toss the piles of stuff into a room, set off a bug bomb, and head out the door with the dogs. You just know that anything toxic enough to kill bugs is going to damage paper.

So there's that. And then comes the third step, which is to thoroughly dry out each and every piece. Not so dry that they crumble, you understand, but dry enough that the growth of mold is halted.

The other third step is to remove any framed photographs from their frames.

Of course, these aren't truly consecutive steps. In a perfect world, they would all be completed simultaneously.

Generally speaking, I'm to handle each piece of paper separately, because friction causes further deterioration. (No clutching a bunch of photos in one hand and hauling them to a table with more light to study them.) I'm to use both hands, on the outside edges, unless the piece is 8 x 10 or larger, in which case I'm to use my third hand to support the back side. The use of cotton gloves is strongly encouraged but not going to happen. Acid-free storage products are essential for storage once everything is clean and dry and not twitching.

Years ago I heard that Bounty paper towels are acid-free. I contacted the company to confirm the rumor, and they said it's true, so I'm using Bounty sheets between each item as I go, both for protection and to absorb the damp.

I've heard there are several local companies good at stabilizing ephemera. (Louisville is a river city with periodic heavy rains, tornadoes, floods, etc.; so it's not surprising.) I'm waiting for recommendations. I'm also going to call Cousin Carolyn (my mother's cousin, who is about my age) for advice. Carolyn and my mother worked together on family genealogy for decades, and I suspect she knows quite a bit about preservation. I'm also posting about the art and life of Middle Bass Island; pop on over to the other blog for a look if you're curious.

Current Events

2011-11-03T15:22:00.001-04:00

CSG seventh-graders take trip to Stone Laboratory

The article doesn't indicate how or why the Columbus School for Girls got to Middle Bass, or what they did if/while they were there; but it's a thorough recounting of what must have been a splendid adventure at the Monument and on Gibraltar.

Catawba Island to Middle Bass Island

2011-11-03T09:01:00.003-04:00

In honor of this week's flash trip to Middle Bass (there and back in 48 hours, which would have been 36 if not for a tire blow out), I'm posting photos from my October 17 trip. Mid-afternoon, Miller's Ferry Dock on Catawba Island, Ohio. Note the white caps on Lake Erie.

They made me back onto the boat. First time. If I have my way, it's also the last time. I got new glasses last week, and my peripheral vision hasn't quite caught up to the new state of affairs. Boat guy stopped me at one point and said, "You've got two inches on this side. You got about twenty feet on the other side."

"How about I pull over and start over?"

He seemed to think that was a good idea.

Regarding the topic of place in literature, you can see how someone who grew up in this neighborhood would construct a worldview different from someone who grew up in Des Moines or Atlanta. No cornfields. No mass transit. No buildings blocking the view or the wind or the sun.

Porthole photos are my favorite! The water was rough enough that we approached Middle Bass via the east side of South Bass. Only the second time I've been on a ferry when that was necessary.

Water churning behind the boat.

Growing up, I always loved the ferry rides when the water sprayed over the deck.

(My camera lenses work better after a splash of lake water.) In the background are the remains of the old Lonz's marina.

Tri-Motor School Bus

2011-11-03T07:36:00.001-04:00

Ford Tri-Motor school bus, 1965

From left:

Amy (or was she Aimee that year?) Cartledge, Middle Bass; Douglas Cartledge, Middle Bass. Please leave a comment if you can identify the others. I'll put the photo on facebook, too, for identifications.

United States Bicentennial Flower Garden Flag, 1976

2011-11-02T19:12:00.001-04:00

American flag recreated in flowers in honor of the country's bicentennial by gardeners supreme Doug and Belle Cartledge, 1976.

The Flowers of Ohio

2011-10-31T16:41:00.004-04:00

Not all of the flowers are dead and gone in northern Ohio by the end of October.

These first two photos are from the memorial garden at Skypark. The ones that follow were at Shirley's house: an exquisite bouquet of hot pink roses and alstrameria and baby's breath and purple zinnias (?). The colors don't seem to go together until you're facing them head-on, and then the rush of beauty is enough to knock your breath out of your body.

Here's Shirley's summertime dream, the plant that must have hot, sunny weather. Confused, it's kicking out blooms and buds like it's June.

And here's Mother's snowball bush on Middle Bass Island. It's a bit overgrown, and I was surprised to see faded snowballs and fresh green snowballs but very few of the expected big fat white snowballs. Love this plant, which has bloomed in front of my mother's house as long as I can remember.

The only way I might have captured a shot with colors other than green would have been lying on the ground. By that time, the rain had persisted for three days, the ground was saturated, and I was thoroughly finished with wet feet. Somehow I took along 4 pairs of stomps, but this week I'm water-proofing every pair. They did fine until the water was more than an inch deep, and then I remembered why I decided not to spend a winter on the island and write a book about it: because most people aren't up to reading much about cold feet and gray skies.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T16:41:00.000-04:00

From ghosties and ghoulies . . .

long-leggedy beasties . . .

good lord, deliver us.

Heading for Middle Bass, pre-Halloween

2011-10-28T17:46:00.001-04:00

I took Laramie along with me on my Ohio trip a few weeks ago. After a big day of play with her pals Bella (under the table) and Bomber (hiding behind the gorgeous roses so as not to be involved in any conflicts), Laramie settled in for a nap.

Okay, maybe they didn't so much settle in for a nap as sit still during a short truce. Bella and Laramie did not see eye to eye. In fact, Laramie shocked me by trying to remove Bella's nose. Luckily, my first finger got in the way. It hurt a bit but no bleeding or bitemarks, and afterwards they all decided to take life a bit easier. Also, I put Laramie away in a bedroom to repent of her grievous acts of commission and omission.

Bella and Bomber belong to Shirley, whose decorations are always a treat to see.

Nice combination of textures.

Mantels are made for decorating.

Here's the other end of it.

And here's what happened when I did a close-up because I thought I saw a chipmunk. I did. I did see a chipmunk. Bomber believes squeakers should be removed from toys immediately, and he was whaling away at Laramie's toy. Short dog, tall chipmunk perch.

My Mother Has Wanted a Dollhouse Since She Was a Little Girl

2011-10-26T13:31:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, events coalesce in such a way that a whole new attitude toward the world erupts. And so I bring you my mother, Joanna Belle Cartledge, on the event of my delivering my friends' doll house to her:

She was tickled pink. Laughing out loud happy. "My God," she said. "It must have cost a fortune. The only ones I've ever seen like it were in the huge department stores in Detroit when I was a girl>

She's holding in her hand a photo of Teri Smith, maker of the doll house; Teri's daughter Ami's Smith Caines, who married two years ago and is expecting a baby boy in the winter; and my grand-daughter Elizabeth wriggling to get off Ami's lap.

I angled that first photo just right so it looks as though Mom's wearing my purple Halloween witch hat. Here you can see atop the house Mother's red witch hat. You can also see, if you increase the size of the photo, two Peggy Nisbet dolls I've found recently at sales. One is the yeoman and the other is one on Henry VII's wife, back when she still had a head. You can also see a nice dog sitting on the front step hoping to be let in, and at the far edge of the house is a red chicken. Upstairs a baby is in a bubble-filled porcelain tub, in a bathroom that also contains a porcelain potty with wooden seat and sink with gold (okay, maybe not solid gold, but pretty nonetheless) fixtures.

There aren't many ideas that emerge full-blown and attainable the way this one was. We all get by with a little help from our friends, but in this case it was with a generous outpouring from Teri and Amy. And there's my grinning mother, in case any of us wondered how serious she was about that childhood desire.

why -o -why -o whyo--

2011-10-19T11:44:00.003-04:00

Yes, I'm in Ohio. Have been here for days, in fact, with nary a scanner nor a cord to download my photos onto my laptop in sight. Everybody says you gotta have photos if you're gonna blog, but I've got something better than that today. I'm on the island where I grew up; it's cold and raining; I've been outside three times and had to change shoes and socks each time I came back in; and I'm beside myself with amazement at the workings of my mother's mind.

She has always been a collector, as well as a trader, as well as a ceramicist who became a nationally known doll artist when she began sculpting all of the First Ladies, followed by sculpting all of the presidents. Belle's Dolls is the name of her business, and she'd still be working at it, at age 89, if her vision would allow it.

Now here's the thing. It's gloomy and empty at Mother's house; and it's warm and bright at my brother's cottage, so I'm taking trips to the house and hauling stuff to Charlie's to (at this point -- sorting papers will have to come later) scrub. I just picked up a small box, and this is what it contained:

Your Golden Opportunity

to start your tableware service

FREE

The

American Bank

Port Clinton

Ohio

The pale yellow brochure shows a distinguished gentleman standing behind the dining room chair in which is seated a chic blonde woman with a slight smile and a hairstyle that looked better on her than me back in the day. In the forefront are three beautiful tableware designs. You can choose between Camelot (elegant silverplate), Golden Scroll (luxurious goldenware, a metal with which I am not precisely what you'd call familiar), or Nassau (gleaming stainless). If you put $25 into a new or existing account, you got a place setting free. But only one place setting. If you wanted more, you had to pay for it. Each 4-piece place setting after the first was $2.99, except for the gleaming stainless, which came in a 5-piece place setting.

As is that weren't fascinating enough, tucked inside the brochure is the negative to a lovely photo of my parents. They are in the ceramics studio. He's wearing his huge high puppeteer's hat for presentation of a Punch and Judy show; and Mother is leaning into him, smiling.

I don't know where you people keep your negatives, but my parents' filing system outdoes any you've ever run across before. In the same pile as the Golden Opportunity brochure is a small black plastic wallet that contains a photo of a beautiful woman I think was my mother in her late teens, a card showing Mother to be a member in good standing on the Madame Alexander Doll Club, a mermbership card confirming her place in The Genealogical Society of Southwestern Pennsylvania (expires Dec. 31, 1996); a card showing she's a member of the Fostoria Glass Society of America (expires Sept. 1990); another Genealogical membership card, this one expiring in 1995; a piece of card stock with the address of an institution on the front and, on the back, a phone number for someone clearly not in that institution. Finally, there's a very fine, large card from Royal Doulton declaring this piece a Dunkirk Tankard, featuring a painting by leading marine artist Geoff Hunt to mark the 50th anniversary of the evacuation of Dunkirk. Mother has tankard 632 of a limited edition of 14,000. The tankard itself is not to hand, but I'll go look at the Royal Doulton pieces I scrubbed clean last night and see if perhaps one of the them belongs to the Official Placard.

Next to those amazing treasures is a Winston Churchill jug by Royal Doulton. He's sitting down, black suit, brown overcoat, white shirt, blue bow tie with white polka dots, black hat, and a cigar clenched between his teeth. I was about to plunge him into the sink when I remembered that anything Mother owns has something inside it. I can't explain it; I'm merely reporting. I wiggled the jug upside down, and an envelope of stamps fell out. The accompanying paper is titled UMM Al QIWAIN 1966 and goes on to reveal that Mother has a complete set of ten values honoring Sir Winston Churchill. The stamps have been glued together by island humidity into a group of two, two groups of three, and two singles. Also in the jug is Something Else. Worst of all, it's a Something Else that wants to stay where it is. I tried using my long fingers to pull it out. No luck. Then I tried the needlenose pliers I brought from Mother's yesterday. No good. I have a pair of scissors on the table but suspect they will contribute not so much a solution as more work for me to do.

Oh, wait. They're pinking shears. Those things never cut anything after the first ten or twenty years of use, so I've just used them to wriggle out the enclosure: a postcard showing Spectre Column at Luray Caverns, Virginia. Dated November, 1980, our new friend Jean writes that the box arrived in record time, and that her offer is $40.00, which leaves Mother a $10.00 balance on her W. C. We can let her know if it's not satisfactory.

But how are we to tell? The only W. C. I know about is the British water closet, a. k. a. toilet, and I can't see how Mother has a $10.00 balance there. I'm also a little slow in understanding the relationship between Sir Winston and the postcard -- but such is life at the moment. And now that he's empty, I shall go wash his dusty old hat and shoes and overcoat, sprucing him up into the fine porcelain figure he's been since the beginning.

Maybe a photo later? I'd have to take it with my cell phone, text it to myself, download it, and then upload it, which is at least two steps more than seem likely. Winston is not my only gentleman caller this afternoon. Much remains to be done before nightfall. But we'll see. Check back.

P. S. I feel honor-bound to disclose that somewhere in a little book not currently evident, Mother wrote the date and the amount she paid for the Churchill mug. Also, I just piled the ephemera together and noticed a tiny bag of white and silver round and bugle beads. That's less than one handful of Mother's things, and there are hundreds and hundreds of hands full. I think I've just learned the definition of infinity - and beyond.

Spite and Malice 40216

2011-10-16T15:23:00.000-04:00

I accidentally turned down this street last week and came upon this delightful house. It's like a house in a fairy tale, one you want to live in because you know it's filled with candy and cupcakes.

A day or two later, I went back with Laramie and the camera so I could get photos better than the one on my cell phone. Two guys looking under a car hood in a driveway watched me emerge from the Jeep with camera and dog in tow, and what with there being a No Trespassing sign and all in the front yard of the darling house, I decided to chat them up.

"Do you know the story behind that house?" I asked.

"Yeah," said one of the men, with a slight grin.

So here's the story. Beside this house is a vacant lot. Beside the vacant lot is another house about this size. Behind the colorful house, at some distance, is another house. Several years ago, a woman bought the vacant lot and the two houses for $60,000. The third house, now multicolored, was owned by an elderly man who died at age 93, after which the house idled in an estate for a time and was eventually purchased by the owner of the other properties.

The first two houses she bought have been renovated and are occupied. The vacant lot and this third house were on the back burner. Two homeowners on the street got riled up, muttering about weeds and grass and rundown houses, to the point of official papers being served demanding that the space be cleared up.

It happened once.

It happened twice.

It happened a third time, and that was when the woman said to her son, "Paint the house."

So he did.

The complaining neighbors are not as happy as you might expect, even though their demands were met.

As thee two men told me, not everybody has lots of extra money to throw around, especially not these days in these economic times. The complainers know the governor and the mayor -- which shouldn't exactly matter, what with the house being in the county -- and that's why they created such a stink over a situation where a person is actively restoring houses and making them available at reasonable rents.

Human nature: is there anything as satisfying to observe? And the best part of the story is that it all happened here, on Eureka Avenue:

Why I Love Ohio

2011-10-15T11:34:00.000-04:00

These photos were taken at the end of August. I'd stopped at a service station next to an interstate exit, and while pumping gas I noticed how beautiful the sky was. This sky is Ohio. Kentucky shares it but without the contrasting gray on days like today.

Ohio: wide open spaces.

Ohio: wide open spaces with short trees.

Ohio: it doesn't all look like this, but most of it does, and that's a good thing.

Ohio: corn field in August. A beautiful sight.

Ohio: rustic stuff sitting around being photogenic.

Ohio: More rustice stuff being photogenic.

Ohio: the water tower in the middle of nowhere against which the rustic stuff is leaning.

Ohio: weathered wood up close.

Ohio: where sometimes you get the feeling you're being watched.

Ohio, where check-out time in this motel is noon; where Laramie is so exhausted from helping me drive last night that she's still in bed; where the dog in the adjoining room has been barking without ceasing for 45 minutes, in between scratching on the door; and where if I'd left the motel half an hour ago I could have had Mother's doll house all set up to surprise her when she came back from lunch.

Stay tuned for more Ohio and a closer look at what was watching me.

Except for that weird black wrought iron thing growing out of the back of her head, my mother's looking fabulous!

2011-10-15T00:53:00.000-04:00

This photo of Mother was taken in May. When her grandson Michael saw it in September, he said, "She hasn't changed in thirty years. She looked just like that when I was a little kid."

When I showed the photo to Mary Flowers, my close friend who's known my mother since we were in our twenties, said, "She doesn't look a day over sixty! How does she do that?"

I must remember to tell Mom -- and have the camera ready when I do, because she'll giggle.

Going to See Grandma. Still.

2011-10-14T12:10:00.002-04:00

Yes, I'm still going to see Grandma, but first I had to sing a little song with my close personal friend Slim.

Packing the car isn't as simple as you might suppose, The green dollhouse with the gingerbread? I've had it in the car since I was down South and my friends Terry Smith and her daughter Amanda Smith Caines said I could borrow it. Mother's wanted a dollhouse since she was a little girl, and today she's getting one.

The pink polka dot piece is Laramie's new winter coat. Last year I thought coats for dogs were stupid, so I got her a basic purple keep-the-snow-off-my-tummy coat. This year she got polka dots and a fur hoodie.

Last night I decided I'd take along the two Madame Alexander dolls I found a few months ago. They're the Cherry Twins (Strawberry Twins?), and it's unusual to find the pair.

I'm also taking along a quilt top I purchased that I totally love. All 50 states are embroidered on it, along with their names and capital city; and in the middle is an embroidered map of the United States. Great find, don't you think? So Mother needs to get to see it.

Here is Laramie in her new coat last week. This is one of 100+ photos I just sent to Walgreen's so I can take them along. Mother can't see well, but colors and baby Amy should be pretty clear to her.

HeLa Cell -- a k a Our Savior

2011-10-13T13:12:00.002-04:00

Source: featureshoot.com via Mary Jo on Pinterest

This photo came in number 12 in the annual Nikon photomicrography contest. It shows a HeLa cancer cell. -- a cell very few people had heard of until Rebecca Skloot published her brilliant and ground-breaking book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta Lacks walked into a hospital one day. Turned out she had cancer. Turned out cancer cells from her body are still being used for the kind of research that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. And nobody told her family. Now there's a book, and a foundation to provide for her descendants, and the extraordinary photo at the top of this post.

I'm mesmerized by the photo, its exquisite coloration and all the vibrancy of great abstract art. I want to paint it or quilt it or show it off to the world, and then I think, It's a HeLa cell. How can cancer be this beautiful?

I'm reminded that while the old saying beauty is as beauty does is true, beauty also exists apart from our experience. A fallen leaf, a sunset, a cancer cell -- the beauty simply is.

Almost on the Road Trip

2011-10-13T00:33:00.003-04:00

I'm not quite out the door on the way to see Mother. Tasks kept presenting themselves, and they felt so enormous that I wonder if I'm completely finished with the flu.

I'm having as much trouble leaving this time as I did back in early September when I set out to see my new niece, Amy Belle Mason Reidling, in South Carolina. Back then, my British cousin Danny, who lives in Italy, had devised an organizational plan that sounded effective enough that I tried it. too. I used his system but my own neon bits of paper.

I also took an obligatory coffeetable photo, because it won't be in the living room long. With our two dogs the table is simply too large -- and yet it is at the same time too small for the number of art objects and half-done projects I want to display to best advantage. (That camel isn't dead; he's resting.)

My big project was completing three quilts to take with me, one for the baby and one for each of her older sisters. I was using a method that was vaunted as being SO MUCH FASTER than other methods. Maybe so, but in triplicate there was nothing fast about it.

I also chose that week to scrub all of our plastic containers. Those pictured below are just the remnants; I'd already scrubbed a dozen standard rectangular green-lidded hold-everything plastic boxes suitable for stuffing in everything important and then stacking them with the one thing you need in the box on the bottom, plus half a dozen laundry baskets that showed up out of nowhere.

The project went well until the plastic revolted and took off for the woods at the far end of our property. The plan, it seems, was to hide there and then -- well, they didn't have a plan for then, being both plastic and brainless.

I dragged them back, restoring if not order then at least a clear path for the lawn mower. At that point, my To Do list was still growing (the pink/yellow/orange/yellow slips at the top of the cabinet read D O N E; you can see the problem). Clearly, baby Amy would be graduating from kindergarten by the time I finished the essentials, so I packed three not-quite-finished quilts and myself into the Jeep and headed south.

Today I've reified the process, although with different tasks. I cleaned my studio a bit. A little bit. Almost. Okay, I didn't touch the studio. I did tidy up out back, though, where I stacked my gathered assemblage art supplies; dragged mailing supplies into the house; and emptied a can of Kilz on two pieces of furniture that will eventually be either Tiffany blue or a soft purple, unless I paint them turquoise.

Then came the errands: bank, eye doctor (yes, my new glasses were there; so sorry we forgot to call you a week ago), drugstore ("our refrigerator system isn't working right so you can't buy milk, and, no, we don't have the Boone's Farm peach whatever it is you want to take so you and your mother can drink a toast"), salvage store (I'd never entered one before; did you know you can buy -- or at least I could and did today -- Olay Regenerist for $3.99? No need to rush out; I bought the only package they had).

I tried to hit the post office and the dry cleaners as well, but the former closed at 5:00 and the latter at 6:00, so I was out of luck. That's where tomorrow begins: with the dry cleaner and the post office and another stop at the drug store, the one where I bought the original Boone's Farm peach whatever that was so good I almost had it for breakfast the next morning. (Fruit. Boone's Farm Peach slightly alcoholic drink is a fruit, right? Peaches? Fruit? Yeah, that's what I thought. In the blink of an eye, I knew exactly how it is people become alcoholics.) And then I'll give Laramie a bath and together tomorrow, or maybe Friday, we'll hit the ground driving.

Road Trip!

2011-10-12T12:45:00.002-04:00

I'm off to Ohio to see my mother, after surviving a knock-out punch from the flu over the weekend. You know how you're in the cold and flu section aisle at the drug store reading boxes that say the enclosed medicine addresses the aches flu causes? Those aches had me awake most of Sunday night. I even went so far as to bathe in Epsom salts at two and at three desert the bed thinking the red chair in the living room would sleep better. I was wrong. Everything hurt, in huge neon letters, especially the bones in my feet, my hip sockets, my shoulders, and my hands.

I flew home from the hospital in this plane, the first one my parents bought, when I was two days old.

On Monday I had The Cough that in my compadre verged on pneumonia. On Tuesday I was just achey enough to think some germs might ride my coat tails into the care center where Mother lives.

I"m leaving today, in an hour, or maybe two, depending on whether Laramie gets a bath. She got a new winter coat, bright pink with huge white polka dots, for the viewing pleasure of Mother and her colleagues, so a bath seems appropriate. Maybe a dab of Chanel No. 5 while I'm at it.

Middle Bass Island (please note the vineyards). Daddy, Mother, me, Amy, circa 1960. Daddy had most likely driven the grape truck to the vineyard where the three of us were picking grapes; and our friend Tom Lee, a photographer in Cleveland, happened by. I don't know why I'm the only one who looks ready to jump out of her skin, but it's probably because I didn't have anything with me to read.

I spent hours last night writing at Mother's request writing notes to people who've been in touch with her since my father died. She was quite acute on my last visit, enough so that she gave me the precise wording of appreciation. More notes need to be written, but I can't put my hands on the sympathy cards and notes I received on her behalf. I did find the envelope containing all of the Christmas cards they received in 1999 and the list of all of the relatives I phoned in February 2000.

This photo was taken in 1979 or 1980. Mother had come to visit us in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and we were on our way to Biltmore House. Mother had taken the curlers out of her hair but not yet brushed it. The skinny girl on the left? That's me.

Going to see Mother is more complicated than simply walking out the door, even when correspondence isn't the issue. I always have a car full of things to take along to show her or to give her.

Last trip, I took along photos of baby Amy and a charming pink and green and glitter banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY (I got it for my birthday two years ago). I stretched it across the top of her curtains, hoping people would notice and ask, "Oh, is it your birthday?" thus jumpstarting her memory and a reply of "No, I have a new great-grandchild. Would you like to see her picture?"

What did I take for her to see?
--Two of four small claw feet holding crystal balls that I bought at a yard sale the week before. Mother said she recognized them but couldn't recall what they ordinarily attached to.
--A bottle of wine with which to toast the baby's arrival. (We forgot to drink it.)
--A plastic box in which Mother kept a chatelaine given to her in 2000 (I found the note about it this morning in the box where the sympathy cards weren't). Inside the lid of the box, Mother had taped one of her first granddaughter's portraits. Heaven only knows what I thought we were going to sew.
--A covered milk glass box with interesting designs painted on.
--A coal stove pencil sharpener (how cool is that?). Mother's vision is pretty much gone, but she recognized the coal stove immediately.
--A milk glass shoe. I saw it in an antique shop and called Mom to ask what she thought of the price. I'd never seen one before with a lid, nor had she. This being my favorite pattern and it being a great price, I bought it. I'd have left it with Mother but she doesn't have anywhere it's not likely to get knocked off (most likely by my own personal elbow) and broken.

Driving back last time, I thought I need to find a dollhouse for Mother. Two reasons: she'd wanted one since she was a girl and never had one; and a dollhouse would give me a goal when popping into flea markets (doll house furniture) and also create concrete conversational material not only between me and Mother but between Mother and anybody else who cared to discuss the subject.

When I went to Spartanburg the following week, I was telling my friend Terry about my need. She had a dollhouse in its original packaging that she'd have been happy to donate to the cause, except that after some thought we both knew I'd never get the thing put together. Then her daughter Amy called, and the two of them talked things over, and Terry handed me the phone to explain to Amy why I was looking for a dollhouse.

"Oh, yes, you can take ours," she bubbled, so happy at the thought of the beautiful farmhouse with gingerbread trim Terry had made years before -- in fact, I think it was before Amy. I well remember the X-acto knife and little tiny trim she cut out and thinking I'd go bananas with that particular project.
And so I've had a green dollhouse in the back of the Jeep for a month.

I found last week, for $2.00, a baby in a porcelain bathtub as well as the matching sink and toilet with wooden seat. I also lucked up on a Peggy Nisbet doll ($6.00) -- especially a treasure because I'd found a Peggy Nisbet queen ($5.00) in Ohio and gave it to Mom on my last visit. The newer find is a Court Guard, complete with fancy duds and spear.Good thing; I don't know that two dead wives of Henry VIII could get along well in one house, no matter how fine it is.

In a fit of coincidence, when I looked through the papers in the Cartledge box this morning, I found three envelopes containing doll house items. Mother received them in 1995 or thereabouts when she took part in an international miniatures exchange, so she has bathroom towels, shower curtain, floor mat, and after-shower robe as accessories.

And now I'm off to bathe Laramie and pack and run to the bank and the post office and the dry cleaners before departing for Ohio. Time to step lively; the goal in any such drive is to avoid major traffic times in Cincinnati and in Columbus. Back atcha on the other side.

The Church of Now, By God, Break Another Plate, Boy

2011-10-10T17:04:00.004-04:00

My old and precious friend Pat Jobe offering a musical tribute to teachers, firemen, and others who serve, reminding us that they when they get to the gates of hell they can't get in. Why? Because they've already been.

Then he tells a true story -- and sings a song he wrote about it -- about a fellow who got hit over the head with a chicken. The fellow and his wife were setting a picnic table outside while arguing over whether or not to sell a car. He got so mad that he threw a plate against the barn wall. It broke. He threw another one. It broke. Next thing he knew he was on the ground and a chicken was running as fast as it could away from him. then he heard his wife say, "Now you go ahead and break another plate, boy."

Sounded like a song to Pat. Sounds like a good name for a new church to me.

2011 Nobel Peace Prize

2011-10-07T10:24:00.001-04:00

Details to follow -- but what a glorious day, when three women are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That recognition is being made of women -- the ones who do the grunt work day by day and always face greater physical danger than men -- in the awarding of this most prestigious of prizes makes this a day of celebration and commitment to justice, freedom, and safety for all.

My new improved cynical self

2011-10-06T11:24:00.002-04:00

At last the riddle of where Casey Anthony, the woman acquitted of murdering her child, should take up residence is resolved.

She and Amanda Knox, the woman imprisoned for killing her roommate but released from an Italian jail this week, can rent a place together.

The two women should have a lot to talk about.

The President's Address

2011-10-06T11:18:00.003-04:00

I've been listening to President Barack Obama.

I'm in my studio adding items to Pinterest; he is in the bedroom on the television.

He first caught my attention when he mentioned the bridge connecting Kentucky and Indiana. He's referring to the I-64 bridge over the Ohio River, which was closed in the middle of rush hour a few weeks ago because the steel used was a lower grade than required and is failing.

Louisville is a major part of the east-west corridor; and to lose a bridge is bad. The only thing that prevents it from being catastrophic is that the steel failure was caught before the bridge collapsed, as I remember one doing in 1967/68 in southern Ohio and more recently in Wisconsin. Nobody's dead, which is a positive aspect of a dismaying circumstance.

It's also positive that the president has decided to stop placating people how would love to see his presidency go down in flames and would, in fact, rather see our country destroyed than see our first bi-racial president succeed. The President is calling them to account in this address. He says they will have to answer to him and also to their voters back home if they refuse the job bill, an instrument that will address some of the massive infrastructure problems in the country as well as the massive unemployment and foreclosure problems.

Talk on, Mr. President. Be strong, and speak the truth. Get the country working, and then please turn your attention to cleaning up the slime trail being left by the Bank of America. They're fiddling around, and American families are getting burned.

Surprise balls in Crafts for decoration, gifts, presents and accessories at weddings

2011-10-06T08:45:00.000-04:00

Surprise balls in Crafts for decoration, gifts, presents and accessories at weddings

This present is The Bomb! My sister created a gift genre called Today Presents: as in, "I saw this today and thought of you, so I bought if for you." (Very inexpensive, you understand: 59 cents, 2 dollars, $1.03.

With this gift, you can gather up a year's worth of Today Presents, wrap them in crepe paper, and present them to someone you love or like or admire.

I turned the original photo up on Pinterest, my new true love, and went back to the source for details.

Feel free to make one for me any time the notion strikes you.

Be well, be peace, be joy.

Ray Charles - Stand By Me

2011-09-28T07:38:00.000-04:00

Good morning. Yesterday a stick poked itself into my eye. I decided to take the "wait and see" approach to visiting the eye doctor. When I woke up at 5:30-ish weeping from the pain, I decided the wait was over. I've taken a pain pill and am playing with youtube until the doctor's office opens.

How to Build a Spider Web in Your Back Yard

2011-09-23T12:07:00.000-04:00


I was visiting my friend Mary Flowers in South Carolina a few weeks ago and decided to photograph the lovely vintage items with which she's ornamented her outside areas. After a while, I noticed this fellow and realized I'd been walking within inches of him for thirty minutes or longer. Yuck. I do not want to brush up against spiders accidentally. On the other hand, I quickly became engrossed in the question of how well my camera could capture him in the act of creation.

This is the context in which the spider was working -- a lot of green, a lot of web, a lot of spider.

Each of these photos is from the back and has been enlarged so that you and I can see the way in which the web emerges. It's as though the spider is sitting on a cloud, which then becomes shape.

On my first trip to South Carolina, Mary Flowers' sister Martha pointed out one of these doozies, sans arachnid, to me and said, ""It's a rotten spahder."
"A rotten spahder?" I replied. "What is that?"
"A spahder. A rotten spahder. Make sure you don't let it see your teeth, because if it does you'll die."

That mystifying statement was eventually translated into "writing spider."

Mary Flowers told me while I was photographing that the legend she'd always heard was that if it writes your name on its web, you'll die. After all, it's a writing spider.

Photos of the writing spider from the front will appear on a subsequent blog. Right now I must wander off and wonder to myself how many writing spiders you'd have to put in a room for how many years before they turned out a reasonable semblance of Shakespeare.

*That lonely wooden harbor

2011-09-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

Don't you love the lyrics you sing that aren't the actual lyrics?

After my last post about the song "Suzanne", when I quoted the words "Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time looking for that lonely wooden harbor," it struck me that the lyrics made no sense, and perhaps I'd jumbled them up somewhere along the line of years between 1967, when I first heard the song by who I thought until now was David McCallum (yes, the same David McCallum; he released an album or two when he was young), and now.

I went back and listened to Leonard Cohen again -- twice, actually, because I was so caught up in the music that I forgot to hear the words the first time. The actual lyrics are "and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower."

Oh, I don't know. "Lonely wooden harbor" makes as much sense as "lonely wooden tower," what with there having been no tower and all in the Jesus story. Leonard can sing it his way, and I'll try to do the same here on out, but if I fall back on custom, love is still the tune and the conclusion.

JUDY COLLINS & LEONARD COHEN - "Suzanne" 1976

2011-09-22T11:56:00.002-04:00

1976 Chicago concert. Judy Collins' purity of voice merging with Cohen's gravel - pleasure divine.

How is it, do you suppose, that this song became my favorite lullaby?

Is that even what I mean, favorite? It was the most natural of lullabies. When I rocked my first grandchild, I sang this song over and over to him. Eventually, I heard myself, and the only sense it made was muscle memory: the memory of singing it to my own first baby, and the song, like the baby, being bone of my bone, blood of my blood, and from then passed along to every baby I touched.

"Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time looking for that lonely wooden harbor . . ." * What are those lyrics but love speaking its own name?

And "she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China" -- that, too, is love singing its own lullaby to you.

Lullaby, and good night. Speak peace. Be peace.

Suzanne by Leonard Cohen (from "Live At The Isle of Wight 1970")

2011-09-22T11:44:00.000-04:00

"Suzanne." I've sung this song to every baby I've ever rocked, beginning with my own first child.

Joan Baez - Diamonds And Rust

2011-09-22T11:34:00.002-04:00

When the album of the same name was released, I listened to it until I wore it out, and especially to this song.

"You were so good with words, and with keeping things vague; well, I need some of that vagueness now; it's all come back too clearly . . . "

Decades after, one of my daughters phoned and said, "Mama, have you ever heard the song 'Diamonds and Rust'?"

I knew she must be having a very bad day.

Joan Baez - Forever Young

2011-09-22T11:31:00.001-04:00

I recall Baez saying this song was for her son. I sang it to my children when they were small. I need to relearn the lyrics; there's a new crop of small children to whom it can be sung.

Ella's Song by Sweet Honey in the Rock

2011-09-22T11:15:00.001-04:00

Another version of "Ella's Song" by Sweet Honey in the Rock; the photograph is of the original Ella whose statements became the song.

Sweet honey in the rock - Ella's Song ("We who believe in freedom . . ")

2011-09-22T11:09:00.001-04:00

SweetSweet Honey in the Rock, 1990 concert in the Netherlands. Somebody posted the youtube video on facebook this morning, and in watching it I was reminded of what is best and brightest in America, and I wanted to share the moment with you.

Long Hot Moving Day Week Month Season

2011-09-21T12:28:00.000-04:00

As soon as I got home from North Carolina and my grandson's graduation, I started packing full blast. A move was afoot, from St. Matthews to the outer skirts of Shively. Both townlets are inside Louisville proper, as is the entire footprint of the county, ever since city and county governments united a dozen or so years ago.

All Michael wanted was a little bit of lawn to mow.

All I wanted was a pile of underbrush to hack at, and lots and lots of light inside.

Koko and Laramie wanted bunnies to catch glimpses of and to smell the footprints of (paw prints of) every morning. We have bunnies, of all sorts.

Here it is September -- nearly the end of September at that -- and the moving-in continues. We have two big-ass televisions in the kitchen because the one we plan to keep needs a tube or a switch or some silly thing, and until it arrives the one we're not keeping remains. My studio is glorious and allows me to dump any given box all over the floor whenever I want to, because it's the last room to get settled into and one more box dumped out isn't going to make a difference. I keep getting letters from a friend in prison asking why on earth I chose Shively. I keep telling him I love Shively, but we don't live there; we live two blocks west, which puts us two blocks closer to an EPA Superfund clean up site than we'd be otherwise. But we have grass to mow and great light and underbrush and bunnies, and we are hilariously happy every single day of our lives.