V's Version

Well - it's official. We are in the whirlwind of autumn. To me, autumn means change - maybe it's because of school starting, maybe it's because of the autumnal equinox and the sun's continued decent on the horizon, maybe it's because of the leaves swirling about in the wind (even here in Northern California there are scattered deciduous trees with their bright falling leaves.)


The fresh start of autumn is not the fresh start of spring, all dewy and new and green. No, no. Autumn change is crisp and wise and infused with the faith that both sees the oncoming darkness of winter and holds the courage to withstand it, knowing that change only brings more and we are part of cycles, not lines.

It is among these swirling leaves of change that I experience the drive of disciplined steady quilting, the floppy sweet awkwardness of our new puppy Jax, the heightened academic expectations of the 4th grade, the dedication it takes to be at every windy soccer game, the steadfast commitment to religious education as Pk studies world religions with his new Buddhist teacher and the flurry of details it takes to plan our upcoming commitment ceremony in Hawaii.

I've done all of these things before, but not with these eyes, not with this heart.

It feels like all of it is new, but not new. I've done all of these things before, but not with these eyes, not with this heart. My eyes have disintegrated. My heart has shattered. I cannot experience the world in the same way, with the same naiveté as I once had and I am glad of it. Dewy green optimism has it's place but give me the crunchy crisp wisdom of experience any day!

With all of that said, I have to admit that planning the commitment ceremony is fun! It's a TOTALLY different experience than planning my wedding with P back in the early 90s. I know more. Dani and I have split the responsibilities. Our individual spiritual backgrounds are called upon and the commitment is not only for us to move forward together as a couple, but for us to accept each other's family as our own. We are making it a union of families. And what better way to head into the second half of our lives than to have a simple ceremony at sunset with the autumn breezes of Maui about us and the soft sandy skin of Pele underneath us?

I am looking forward to tricking out a (!!! crazy too expensive) wedding dress that I snagged off craigslist for $30! Bless that Craig and his little list.

The magnolia panels have gone from 12 to 10 to 8. It was just too crowded. The green background fabric in the first picture, although the color of life, reminded me too much of mold and algea. The purple in the second picture works better. I chose one light purple (still watery) full of gentle vines and leaves and one that has bold grapes (to represent New Orleans' cuisine.) The purples won't be all in straight lines like it is on the wall now - I'll break it up. Somehow. That's my challenge at the moment. And next will come the center medallion to represent the fabulous costumes of the Mardi Gras Indians.

This is an amazing project to work on.

Ooooo! I just got permission to use a photograph taken by a 13 year boy from the 6th Ward named Curtis who was part of the Kid Camera Project - an effort to give New Orleans children an opportunity to express their post-Katrina experience. The photograph is of a boy holding up 6 fingers - I can only assume that it is a gesture of 6th Ward pride (where Syd lives.) I am very excited to have permissions.

Have you ever found yourself on a chilly autumn morning sitting on a warm toilet seat carefully snipping heart shapes out of used red glitter wrapping paper? ....No? .......And now that you have this specific image in your head - do you wonder why it is that I have brought it to you?

Sharing this moment gives a glimpse into my personality.

I do not like to waste anything - not even wrapping paper from a gift that was carelessly torn open by someone else. Especially if the wrapping paper is glittery and red.

I can both multi-task (toilet - scissors) and procrastinate (could be quilting) at the same time.

I love making Valentines so much that I save paper and ribbons all year so that I can make them in January.

I have the bizarre notion that offering a glimpse into my personality is worth taking the moment to write it. (OK - and yes - writing is also multi-tasking and procrasting.)

Well - alright then. With that moment over, I shall move on to making the quilt. It is currently in the dreaded ugly stage. I see a pattern with my quilting: I alternately feel love for, loathing for and ambivilance toward the quilt. Yesterday morning I loved it. I loved everything about it and was high from the burst of work I did into the wee hours of the morning. But yesterday afternoon the quilt took a terrible turn for the worse as I added a green that was all wrong. Today, with all of yesterday's seams ripped out, I will begin again with purples.

If the emotional patten remains the same with this quilt, I will ultimately be pleased with it, holding only tinge of regret for the mistakes in it. When I send it off to New Orleans, I will miss it like the child that it is - born of my creation but not belonging to me at all.

Someone said to me the other day that they had to check the site to find out how my summer went and I realized, of course, that they would be sadly disappointed.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll see if I can evoke some sense of the various places where I was blessed to spend time this summer.

Dani, Pk and I left for the east coast before school had officially ended because the airfares were a fraction of the cost.

Some would call The River House a shack; others would call it a palace. My father’s part-time home in southwestern Rhode Island is what I consider to be a magic place on the Wood River. It is not a domicile of daily habitation but the refuge of a merchant seaman who bakes on the high seas most of the time and returns annually to putter, to nap in the hammock and socialize in the gazebo, to connect with his family and rejuvenate his Yankee soul.

The main structure itself is a modest cabin (maybe 600 square feet) with low ceilings over a narrow galley kitchen where we intimately navigate each other in order to move from the back door into the house. A baker’s wooden workbench serves, among many other things, both as a place to eat and to separate the kitchen from the front room. Cozy, cluttered, sandy and satisfying, the main room is home to an old cast iron woodstove, an enormous roll top desk worthy of a sea Captain, two functional futon couches, an aging rocking chair whose veneer vanished long ago and a comfy old reading chair whose low armrests are made atop maple wagon wheels. The eclectic furniture is enhanced by the odd features of the décor: walls made entirely of thick rough hewn oak boards, nailed into a diagonal pattern over bare insulation by square iron nails; low ceilings made of rustic oak and smoke-yellowed Formica; electrical outlets made into the ceiling; exposed wooden beams with outdated propane lamps still attached; a potpourri of artifacts –inherited New England antiques, knick knacks deposited by friends and family and novelties collected from around the world. It’s like a three-dimensional scrapbook and there is nothing quite like snuggling into it on a rainy day with the fire roaring in the stove.

On one side of the main living room, just next to the woodstove, is a wooden beaded curtain that suggests a partition. Beyond the beaded curtain is a small door marked with a brass sign that reads, “Head” and, next to it, another suggestion of a partition (this one made of a gauzy curtain). Beyond the gauze is the place known as “The Cave.” I liken my father’s Cave to the compact darkness of a seaman’s sleeping quarters (with a little less privacy).

On the other side of the main living room is a panoramic bank of windows and a front door that leads to the magic that is the outdoors. The cabin is surrounded by towering oaks, white birch and fragrant pines and is twenty feet off the Wood River, one of the cleanest, most beautiful winding waterways in the region. A long, wildly wooded river with gentle curves, a strong, smooth current and a few wide open spaces, it is made perfect by the sandy-floored swimming hole directly in front of the cabin. As the large dock overhangs the river slightly, the view is spectacular: mists rising off the glassy surface in the morning, warm sunny afternoons when the breeze from the Atlantic makes its way up the river corridor and calm evenings with rose colored sunsets seen just beyond the silhouette of the forest on the far banks.

Pk loves to cannonball off the dock. My father and his partner Gini take their morning coffee there. Friends and caretakers Dave and Sharon drink beer and smoke cigarettes in the evening, read books and fish for trout on the weekends. I love to watch the mallards and the swans, the great blue heron and red-winged black birds, the Canadian geese and the kingfisher. We all keep watch for the river otter and the beaver, the painted turtles and the snappers. The dock is many things to many people.

That’s how it is at the River House. We each come from out separate lives in separate parts of the country, to connect with nature, with each other and with ourselves. I think my father (one of the hardest working people I know) figures that he may not be wealthy in stocks and bonds but he has the River House and it’s magic to leave as a legacy. He is not the kind of man to throw lavish social gatherings or to show off in any way, for that matter. He is a simple man with both humility (most of the time) and a heart of gold always. He offers his version of paradise to a parade of souls. This parade has changed over my lifetime from a steady stream of people unknown to me in the past to a slow but constant trickle of regulars. My father’s open door policy is both a blessing to him and a curse upon him sometimes!

When my father bought the property with his third wife in the early 1990s, I helped to clean up an old mouse infested trailer that reeked of hunter’s urine and was a blight on the front lawn. With help from some of the parade of souls it was moved to the back of the property, rigged up with electricity and stabilized against rocking on its axels. This became known as the “East Wing”, a word play indicating both the relationship that I have to my father and the trailer’s proximity to his castle. “Princess” was my nickname growing up, as it was my mother’s before me. For better and for worse, I am always princess, never queen, as my father’s old-school chauvinism mandates such respect.

The East Wing is just one of the outer buildings on his small parcel of wooded land. There is also a barn that doubles as boat storage, an outhouse named (long before our time) “Le Toilette, a storage shed that holds at least a cord of wood and an amazing screened-in gazebo overlooking the river that was built by my almost-brother-in-law, Mike, and my sister Jenn. Because the East Wing is at the back of the property and far from the action and because I visit the River House for long periods of time, it has become the place that I have made my home as I have raised a child. I sleep better in the narrow bunk of that little aluminum trailer than anywhere I have ever been. I cannot describe how much of a home it is – with its hand-painted panels and stained glass window, with the breeze off the river and the pattering of rain on the roof.

Some might mind the batting of moths against the frayed screens, the nibbling of mice in the drawers, the silent trail of spiders and ants, but I do not. Some might mind the faint scent of mildew or the knowledge that the bed cushions (circa 1973) have never been washed, but I do not. I feel like it is paradise among the pines and a home to my son who becomes more Huck Finn each year. I find peace and sanctuary in an afternoon nap. I find the space for giggles in a morning of family bed snuggling. I find room to breathe and be aware of all I am, all that I am meant to do.

That is the magic of the River House.

But it is not the end of the story, for I am not alone there. No one is ever alone there for very long. There is the parade of friends and relatives and the friends of relatives and the family of the friends of relatives and the neighbors and the friends of the neighbors and…paradise can get hectic on the weekend.

Rhode Island is, like many New England towns, home to an interesting mix of people. There are the students of Johnson & Wales and Brown Universities and of Rhode Island School of Design, one of the premiere art schools in the country. There are the blue-collar workers of what is, essentially, a blue-collar state – manufacturers of fashion jewelry, fabricators of metal products, makers of electric equipment and machinery, shipbuilders and boat builders. There are hard-core Yankees, second-generation Italian Americans, first generation Latinos and a fair share of corrupt public employees. This is the fabric of Rhode Island and there isn’t a lot of room for clean and sober liberal pagan feminist lesbians, that is for sure. It is the one place in my life where I can offer my son the best of freedom and nature and the worst of male chauvinism and culturally sanctioned alcohol consumption.

Because I am a glass half-full kind of a gal, I am choosing to use the culture that Rhode Island offers as a chance to expose Pk to different kinds of people than we normally encounter in out travels– the kind of people that he will likely deal with as he ventures forth from Central Northern California – away from liberal Santa Cruz, away from lesbian events, away from Unitarian Universalist community. It is good that he witnesses men being jerks and has an opportunity to process the injustice of their actions. It is good that he sees first-hand what it is like when people drink and do drugs – how it changes them in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. I don’t know that I would readily choose to expose him to illegal pyrotechnics or to recreational firearms (paintball and hunting are a big part of many boys lives there) or to negotiating with adults who drink and drive, but, well, there it is. We get the difficult with the easy.

And it probably is for the best, as a lesbian mother, that I expose him to a variety of realities in the safety of our own family. I could never hope to intentionally create the learning opportunities Pk has had in Rhode Island. Role models come in both the people we honor and respect and those whom we experience as unfair, unkind and disconnected. Some I want him to emulate, some I do not.

Still, I wouldn’t trade any of it. The River House is both the paradox and the paradigm of paradise and I am grateful for our friends and family, the river and trees, the nearby soft sand beaches, the seafood and Del’s lemonade, the manly men and their wheeling and dealing, alcohol and its lessons, the camaraderie and the solitude, the loyalty of people who cover your back and then betray you as they talk behind it.

In the meantime, I putter around camp and read in the hammock, clean the river in the canoe and try to capture the pure joy smell essence of sunshine on pine needles. Dani gets to know my family better and Pk is just a kid. He swims and dives, kayaks and hunts for frogs. He sells golf balls back to the golfers at a nearby course and helps his Grampy fix things. He learns hard lessons and climbs tall trees. He has the rare and amazing experience to be utterly bored and to alleviate his boredom by building a fort all on his own. What more could any mother possibly want? We are blessed well beyond measure.

Blooms and blossoms and green and growing
The true colors of this quilt are finally showing
Where will it go?
I am not knowing!

There were some intense moments today when I did the magnolia panel that the flower is on the first stages of decline. In it, I used the fabric of a woman who is currently in an abusive relationship (I'm trying to be a refuge and help her get out) and of my mother who, of course, did not make it out in time. Heavy. Many tears and genuine hope that the cycles of abuse are just that - cycles and not prisons . I must believe that it is possible to change - to get out. The reality is that most don't. But I have to believe, you know? And walk the walk.

I am consumed by the quilt and it is only my desire to share my passion that drags me from the studio to this little white box.

I just finished the shotgun houses - I decided on six of them - each has something special peeking out of the windows. I love it that the lines of the house clapboards are all askew, the windows are off kilter. I have raw edges and frayed blue jeans (from one of the Brother Sun boys) and little clues about the original fabric (boxer shorts, work shirt, party dress..)

Actually the window part of the houses took a lot of time on the little white box as I used Photoshop to take photographs and scanned images from history to print them on cloth. Many photos ended up on the cutting room floor as it were!

Now that the houses are finished, I have moved onto the magnolia crazy quilt panels. Each of the 10 panels has a magnolia in a different stage of development - creating a full life to death to life cycle. I chose the magnolia for a number of reasons. Syd loves flowering trees, I have one in my own front yard and, most importantly, because a magnolia seed germinates best if it is soaked in water. How is THAT for symbolism?

While I wait for the latest pictures to load up so that I can show you, I wanted to talk about that drive that I have as an artist. I am grateful for Dani and Pk who pull me into the everyday world where people eat and converse because I think that there is part of me that would like to disappear for weeks on end with just the whir of the machine, the snip of scissors, the steamy smells of iron bursts and all of the textures of my color coded creations. I would sip on cold coffee and maybe eat a little bit of toast when I remembered.

But there is a new puppy to train and almost 2 and a half hours of commute time each day to get Pk to school. There are soccer games (Pk scored the first goal of the first game!!) and geomeotry homework and dinner to make and a garden to water. So I hold the reins of my galloping passion to create. I train myself to channel it into the many of areas of my rich life.

To love, to nurture and to create. That is my mission. The trick is to balance all three!

Granted, I have been pre-occupied with quilting and being a mom and the web site and everything but still manage to do some activism every now and then. Dani and I suggest that you alert ABC if you do not want the new 911 docu-drama to be aired (not that I watch or own a TV) nor, more importantly, should it be used with "study guides" in public schools for history purposes.

From the working assets web site:

Since publishing our original action alert regarding ABC's inaccurate and biased "docu-drama" to be broadcast on Sept. 10th and 11th, we've learned even more disturbing details about the show - which is scheduled to occupy six hours of prime time television, less that two months before an important national election.

• The film - written by an avowed conservative activist - was provided in advance to approximately 900 right-wing bloggers and media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh. However, former President Bill Clinton and two of his cabinet officials were denied when they requested preview copies of the film. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright has called the film - which includes several scenes with no basis in reality -- "false and defamatory."
• In response to mounting pressure, the film's producers are making some small changes...but according to conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt, "blame on the Clinton team is in the DNA of the project and could not be eradicated."
• ABC has teamed up with Scholastic Inc., a company that sells textbooks, to send letters to 100,000 teachers across the country offering free copies of the film and "study guides," despite the fact that the film is a "docu-drama" in which important facts and events have simply been invented out of thin air.

Take a second, would you? Sign the petition here

The Newer Orleans (TNO) quilt will depict all that New Orleans has been, the pain she has seen and what she will be again - for we cannot seperate any one part of time from another. The shotgun houses are one way to represent the past, present and future. they have rich history, they were heavily damaged and, in order to maintain the diverse and interesting fabric of the city, they need to be rebuilt.

On my wall, they are made from many kinds of fabrics - vintage silk ball gowns, a Chanel suit from the 60s, my own denim work clothes, Syd's grandfather's boxer shorts (that survived!) and brand new fabrics. I think on the wall & sometimes change my mind too (as I did with the dark blue fabric sky on the pink house.)

Thanks for staying tuned.

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Dani and I have been working - no - TOILING over the site. We have learned a lot and have only had one really rough spot. (Let's call it an opportunity for deeper conversation, shall we?) It's still not perfect, but it is acceptable. I hope that you will join the crowds coming to visit because we now have the bandwidth to accomodate you! Can you believe that I know what bandwidth is?

And how about refreshing? Did you know that we sometimes have to REFRESH (or reload or update or hit F5 for you PC types) each page to get all the latest and greatest information? I had no idea that my lowly computer stored a cache of every web site that I have been to. Yee-ikes. You could fill books with what I don't know about computers. But, on the bright side, you could now fill a thin pamphlet with what I DO know!!

So - if you go to the site and it doesn't look different - try refreshing your page! Oh my gosh - I really am excited. It's finally done. Will you please please go see it? The first person to hit all of the buttons and links wins a prize.

Keep me posted.

V Kingsley, quilting in Felton, CA

This is me with the oncologist that I was with through the first three and a half years of cancer. If it looks like he's making a pass at me - it's because he's like that. He does plenty (!!) of good in this world but isn't always appropriate. If you know me, you can tell that I'm not thrilled by how close he is but I was too intimidated in that particular moment to whack him over the head with the bag of chemo in my hand.

Yes - even I - a strong-willed can-do dyke - get sometimes intimidated by doctors. And that is the subject of this rant. (Look out.) If I (can-do dyke) can't wack a doctor with a chemo bag during an inappropriate gesture (which just happened to be caught on film) what chance does my mother-in-law have against the legion of specialists who tell her do this and do that? What chance does any of us have when we hear scary diagnosis or (even more frustrating) the blah blah blah big words that are too overwhelming to even grasp during our two minute session with the big cheese?

And don't even get me started with insurance companies.

But seriously - if you bought a big ticket item (say, a car) and someone (say the mechanic) told you that you had to buy a new car or else something really bad would happen to you, don't you think you would ask a few questions like "How scary of a thing?" or "Why can't I use the car I just bought?" or "Can't I shop around for a good price?" or "How will I finance this new car?" Don't you think you might ask "Why?" or say, maybe in a righteous voice, "Bug off!" ? Don't you think you would at least pause for details?

I would like to think that you would. And I would like to think that I would too. And if we would do that - then why can't some of us ask "why?" when a hospital orders a second $$ CT scan when they are holding a $$ CT scan from 2 days ago in their hot little hands? Why is it so often that no one thinks to ask, to challenge, to stand up as the medical consumers that we are?

I had to stand up many times. Even intimidated, I said no a lot. And it was shocking, scandelous, anti-establishment, rebellious and frowned upon. I was mocked. I was threatened (for real - I was once threatened that the sherriff would be dispatched to my home and I would be pink-slipped for endangering my own life when I refused to go along with a certain medical protocol.) I was accused of being depressed. I was NOT a very good girl.

I wrote everything down. And so should you. I made the doctors stop mid sentence to spell what it was that they were rattling off. I did research. I tried alternative therapies & recorded results (or lack thereof). Either I or one of my fabulous advocates kept decent notes and we were often able to remind a doctor of dosages, relate information from one doctor to another easily and refer back to medical events with accuracy and in a fraction of the time that someone would have been able to do in the three-volume tome that is my medical chart.

How can we empower each other to stand up? How can I take this gift of surviving and do something meaningful with it?

I'm going to think on it and you get back to me, OK? I know you have ideas.
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