The Quilt Files, Episode 2

Too much to do ... get Boy ready for band camp ... start paying writing assignment ... finish chapter for critique group ... balance checkbook ... boy, I wish I could figure out how to copy video from my Black Belt show DVD and wow you with my cement breaks and awesome skit. But I've only got time for something short and sweet.

So here's episode two of my Quilt Files, my second finished project. This is a 27" square wall hanging I finished back in the winter of 2003. I fell in love with this group of fabrics—I do so love jewel tones—and bought a couple of charm packs (precut squares). Although I've since learned this pattern is called "Trip around the World," I didn't refer to any books for the design, just figured it out myself. Piecing it together was easy, only a couple afternoons' work, but I did the quilting by hand. You can't really see it on the back, but I used multicolored thread and stitched in the ditch, which looks really nice on against the black background.

This hangs in my front hallway almost all year round (I've got holiday hangings I swap in at Halloween and Christmas) and visitors almost always remark on it. I love the colors, so I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.

Confessions of an Olympic Junkie

Oh, my blog posts will be short and few these next two weeks. Hi, my name is Diane, and I'm an Olympic junkie. I'll watch nearly anything if it's Olympic. Gymnastics? I love watching the tumbling and near-falls. Swimming? As a kid it was the sport featured in my gold-medal dreams, before I discovered I was short, slow, and klutzy. Diving? Hoo boy, look at 'em twist and tumble—and how do those 10-meter divers manage not to crap their pants every time they look down from the platform? And we haven't even started the track-and-field or taekwondo or archery or rowing competitions yet.

Thanks to the joy of TIVO, I don't have to watch all the commercials, all the "human interest" stories, all the replays and interviews. I don't have to stay up until 1:30 am to see the end of live competition. I don't have to procrastinate on Chapter 17 by writing in my blog....

Whoops! I think there are pretty horses jumping for gold! See you later!

O Pioneers!: The Official Haiku Review

It's amazing the difference one word (and ninety years) can make. It took me three weeks and much toil to get through James Fenimore Cooper's 1823 novel The Pioneers. It took me less than two days to devour Willa Cather's 1913 novel O Pioneers! So without further ado (or complaint), here is my official Haiku Review:

For her, the land is
work, love, grief, poetry, self
Land is life; life, land.

Cather's short novel follows one woman over twenty years as she tries to make a success of her family's Nebraska farm. Sounds terribly exciting, right? But listen to how Cather turns the prairie into poetry:

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab building huddles on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that after this opening description Cather soon recounts the story of a kitten being rescued (awwwww!), but she punctuates her entire story with similar examples of beautiful writing. Her main character, Alexandra Bergson, isn't stunningly beautiful or spunky or clever; she seems an ordinary farmgirl, albeit one with dedication, determination, and a willingness to take risks. Despite her older brothers' hesitance to adopt newfangled techniques, Alexandra brings prosperity to her farm through canny management. It allows her younger brother to go to college and leave Alexandra and the land behind. There seems to be no room for adventure or grand passions in her life, but she sees that such passions can bring tragedy. In the end, she has love and her farm (although her older brothers attempt to take it from her—bad men, grrr!), and the simple life suits her: "We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little while."

Beyond the pure beauty of her words, Cather's talent is to portray the essence of her subjects in just a few scenes. The novel is less than 200 pages long, but I felt I learned more about her characters and their Nebraska farmlands than I did from Cooper's 450 pages. After finishing I immediately wanted to hit the library and find Cather's other books. Of course, they will have to wait for the end of the summer, after I read a couple more American classics. But it does make me wonder what other marvels I have missed.

Photo of the Week--8/4/08

Although most of our trip to Lisbon in August 1999 was sunny and warm, we happened to get rained upon on during our visit to the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. Luckily the cloisters of this 16th-century monastery are so beautiful they stand out even against the gloomy skies. I even think the gray setting gives you a better feeling of the age of this complex, whose church is still in use. (We saw two wedding in progress while we were there.) It reminds you that at one time Portugal was one of the great powers of the world, with the wealth to show it off. Lisbon is a beautiful city, both ancient and modern, and you can tell they take great pride in their history.

The Pioneers: The Official Haiku Review

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I'd been having trouble making my way through the overgrown forest that is James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers. It's really not my fault; even the great Mark Twain opined that Cooper broke several literary rules, explaining: "I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote." I guess I should be glad I picked The Pioneers to read instead of The Deerslayer. And I did finish it, despite the struggle. So here is my Official Haiku Review:

Earth and her bounty
Are not a way to keep score
We should be stewards

The Pioneers was the first of the Leatherstocking Tales to be written, but it falls last chronologically. It is set in 1793 in upstate New York, lately civilized by men such as local judge Marmaduke Temple (Cooper has some great names, at least). The new roads and towns and laws are making life difficult for the elderly Natty Bumppo (aka the Leatherstocking, aka the Deerslayer), who lives off the land much as the dwindling Native American population used to. The book opens with Bumppo and Temple arguing over which one of them shot a deer (and thus owns the carcass). This argument lasts a long time—they and other characters rehash it several times, much to my intense boredom—but it is representative of a larger problem: who owns the land and its resources? Bumppo used to hunt and fish at will; now Temple insists he observe a hunting season. This leads to a confrontation that enlivens the last 100 pages of the book. (Why is it only the last 100 pages? sigh.)

Ironically, while Temple tries to control the land and restrict Bumppo's hunting, he agrees with the old hunter when it comes to the wasteful ways of other townspeople. Instead of catching only the fish they need to eat, the locals use nets to trap the biggest fish, leaving the smaller ones to go to waste. When a pigeon migration flies overhead, the locals see it as sport, shooting as many as they can and leaving most of the meat to rot. Temple even worries that the trees may be overharvested. Of course, Temple's concern isn't purely out of love of nature; he is biggest landowner in the county, and depleted lands could lose their value.

Interestingly enough, there is a romance in the novel that almost exactly parallels the one in The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne's classic that I read last month. Of course, the novel's resolution favors white landowners like Temple; it's no great spoiler to tell you that the two characters who are closest to the land end up either die or move west at the close of the novel. Maybe Cooper thought this was progress, or Manifest Destiny; maybe he thought it was a tragedy. (He published the novel in 1823, less than a decade before the Trail of Tears forced the relocation of most of the South's Native Americans to the west of the Mississippi.) I can't really tell; either the author is too subtle for my poor understanding, or else Twain was right:

A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are–oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language. Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

Photo of the Week--7/28/08

We began our second year of living overseas with a wonderful, week-long trip to Ireland. As you can see from the picture, there's a good reason why it's called the Emerald Isle—greenery everywhere. Even our rental car was acid green (about the only thing Boy remembers from the trip), and we drove it up and down, alongside beaches and through hills, occasionally getting stopped by an Irish traffic jam (ie, a flock of sheep on the road). The lack of signposts made getting lost a frequent but enjoyable event during our trip. This is Dunguaire Castle, a 16th-century tower house on the shores of Galway Bay. The hill, the rocks, the water, the green everywhere—it just seemed to encapsulate everything wonderful about Ireland.

Procrastination Vacation!

Ah, summer! It's August, and the fish are calling us. "Come catch us!" they whisper. "Come filet us!" they hint. "Come fry us up in pancake mix and butter!" they suggest. "Come eat us!" they insist. We shan't disappoint them.

Yes, it's time to join what's becoming an annual ritual for my family: fish camp. We find a place on a lake, rent a few cabins and a pontoon boat, catch fish like crazy, and eat eat eat! This year we will have almost 40 people from four generations of the family: my 92-year-old grandmother, still healthy and witty and determined to enjoy everything now that it's our turn to cook; 7 of her 8 children (plus 4 or 5 of their spouses/partners); 10 of her 11 grandchildren (plus 6 of their spouses/partners); and 8 or 9 of her great-grandchildren, from Boy, the eldest at 14, to the newest addition, only 3 months old. It will be quite the gathering, complete with food, cards, food, swimming, biking, food, reading, sightseeing, and I think some food.

So, Dear Readers (all six of you), I am taking a break from this blog. Although my laptop is accompanying us up North, I won't being trying to work. I have no need to procrastinate, and thus no need to spend time here. Besides, half my regular readers will be up at camp with me. Through the magic of scheduled postings, a new photo-of-the-week entry will appear on Monday; if I manage to finish The Pioneers tonight, I might schedule it to appear during the week. But maybe not. The fish are waiting, you see, and I need to get ready.