quiltersmuse.com Blog

A recent article in the Concord Monitor makes it clear that officials have been discussing the possibility of doing away with the City Library. This past winter, it was a warm haven for the homeless of our community who could be seen snoozing comfortably in some of the chairs. In some instances, the library is a drop off point for parents who do not want to pay a babysitter.

In spite of these two problems, the library estimates foot traffic per month at about 19,500 people. Counting close to 20,000 library users per month tells me that Concord residents like to read and enjoy the resources at the library for research and for Internet use. Many folks are not in a position to own their own home computer.

I hate to say this, but we are raising a bunch of dummies. In one instance, a young person stood muttering to herself because the computer went down during a transaction in a store. She could not figure out that if the purchase was 98 cents, the customer would receive two cents back from a dollar bill. I am not exaggerating!

Therefore, it is refreshing to think of all of these people and their children who are seeking out learning and books. According to the law, the library and the recreation department are the only two discretionary spending areas in the budget. A $3.3 million dollar shortfall is expected, yet property taxes continue to be pretty hefty!

I have no answers because I am not in charge of policy, or government spending. All I have is a “voice.” With that, I want to speak up to say that the Concord Library means a lot to many people, including us. It is foolish talk to discuss getting rid of it. New England is the home of the “free library” idea.

The library seems like the least service that should be available. How do we balance the budget? How about cutting some of the “frew-frew” money spent on Education in our schools?

I can do more math in my head than a student can do, with or without a computer. I learned how to add and subtract with a piece of paper and a pencil, the old way. I am just not sure why we are settling for less quality in Education and spending more and more, all the time. That is my opinion, not that anyone asked. My (tongue in cheek) suggestion is that everyone take up quilting and learn math the practical way.

This situation totally reminds me of the book, 1984. It seems like “government speak” when people don’t really say what they mean. In my humble opinion, this whole discussion seems to be leading up to another case of stick it to the taxpayer with more fees. The verdict is NOT in, and neither is “Lucy” of Charlie Brown fame, with her “5 cents for psychiatric help” sign. A lot of readers will be needing a therapist, should the library be removed from our midst.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

Now, from the title of this blog, you might think I was a little wacky, having jingles in my head and all. Actually, the jingles to which I refer are the little songs that accompany advertisements on television. Some of the songs are cute and one would wish they didn’t have such stupid words. I suppose I could make up my own words, as the tunes won’t stop playing. It is an art to write such memorable “jingles.”

This morning, I woke up with two competing ad tunes. Can you imagine? On top of that, and in the middle of all this internal head noise was a catchy song for which a friend sent me some YouTube links.

The original song was written in Portuguese and I have listened to it a number of times because it is fun to compare the Portuguese words with the Spanish words I know for the same objects. The song is written in a stream of consciousness manner, and is composed of snippets of life, disjointed visual images evoked by the words, as if one were seeing a surreal movie.

At first, you try to make sense of the flow of the words, and then you realize that the only important thing to realize is that all the images have continuity because they represent parts of life. The song is called “The Waters of March.”

The song version I like best is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3oNSFQVzNM

My friend, Mindy Fitterman, forwarded the following links and I like them all, but particularly the woman, singing in Portuguese, and also the English translation and explanation of the song on wikipedia:

Happy Spring!
(unless, of course, you live in the Southern Hemisphere)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waters_of_March

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHMqnjjk0mw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHB5rphc66g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3oNSFQVzNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeX0t6ozZ3U&feature=related

Lyrics: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/waters.html
http://artists.letssingit.com/basia-lyrics-waters-of-march-px4dctn

I will leave it to you to copy and paste any of the urls.

Seeing some photos of Texas Bluebonnets, tonight, brought to mind another favorite song, “Walker Behind the Wheel” by Bill Staines, on his “Bridges” CD: “Do the Bluebonnets carpet the fields in the spring? Does the Brazos still run to the sea? Does the sun still shine bright on that Texas girl? … She gave her heart to me.” Those may not be the exact words, but I have not listened to the song in perhaps a year. Great tune. And yes, yet another song to occupy the empty spaces in my brain, which seem to be ever increasing with age.

Cheerio!

Patricia Cummings

Today seemed to be a hopeful day. I had a strange sixth sense about it. I don’t know why. I wasn’t even thinking about anything financial, and was surprised to see, tonight, that the Dow Jones average, etc. was up. It was a good day on Wall Street, not that I pay any attention to such things because I am not an “investor.”

We have always invested in ourselves, that is, our ongoing understanding of the world, via books and education. We think it is a good preoccupation. There are so many new topics of interest. I can’t even keep up with myself and the books I accumulate.

However, that is okay. Buying books, we feel, is a better “investment” than say, smoking, drinking, “pigging out,” carousing, gambling, etc. I am happy to be married to a guy who enjoys books just as much as I do. We should live in a library. On most days, I think we do.

Now, to continue with my original thought: here are the questions that remain at the end of this day.

I wonder:

Why it is that when I asked one relative a question, I heard from another one, with whom I had never discussed the topic, and who lives on the other end of the state.

I wonder:

How someone can remove a beeswax stain that is brown, on a quilt? She “ironed” the quilt, after storing it, in progress, in a plastic bag.

I wonder:

Why the antiques stores are in such a jumble of a mess, and why sellers don’t try to make their merchandise look more desirable by arranging it in something other than a heap.

I wonder:

When the economy will turn around enough so that qualified people can return to positions commensurate with their abilities and knowledge.

I wonder:

What the future will bring for some quilt magazines, with all of the hustling and restructuring that is now going on, and with bankruptcy a threat for some.

I wonder:

If quilt frames that were stored on the ceiling were actually used in some places in early New England, or not, and why no one else remembers the example I saw in Woolwich, Maine in the early 1990s.

I wonder what else I could be doing to help others, short of giving them money (an impossibility).

If anyone has any suggested answers to any of the above quandaries, I may be contacted at the same spot I am always found: pat@quiltersmuse.com

Until then, I will count my blessings, instead of sheep.

Patricia Cummings, P.I.A.
Quilter’s Muse Publications and Virtual Museum

This year has been dubbed “The Year of the Kitchen.” Historic New England, Inc. has planned many program events centered around this topic, including some programs in New Hampshire.

Oddly-shaped apron from the Lewis Collection from South Sutton, NH.

Kitchens have been the center of the home, with guests often entertained there. In the past, aprons were important commodities. Joyce Cheney who wrote Aprons: Icons of the American Home recently donated 200 of her aprons to the American Textile History Museum, a generous donation, indeed. I guess that my article about the Lewis Collection aprons, in a recent issue of The Quilter magazine was quite timely.

Kitchen utensils are many and varied, although that was not always true. There are two favorite historic spots in New England that feature hearths and ironware, and sometimes, cooking demonstrations. Those are found at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, and the President Franklin Pierce Homestead in Hillsborough, New Hampshire.

The Remick Museum in Tamworth features “live” cooking programs that are participatory: workshops on baking sourdough bread, and other foods; and a special Thanksgiving Dinner, as well as a special “tea” party. Virginia Taylor is their food interpreter, and she has been compiling a cookbook of old time recipes, that was promised to be ready “soon,” a while ago. We’ll have to check on that!

The Wright Museum in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire has a wonderful display of how a kitchen would have looked during World War II, as well as how a parlor might have been set up. I am sure there are similar historic set-ups that show how people lived and worked. I would love to hear of any other local, New England locations. Write to: pat@quiltersmuse.com Thanks!

See the latest article posted today about our antique home!

Happy Home and Hearth to You!

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

After writing a blog yesterday about art quilts, I began to think about all of the artists and creative people I know who are “gay.” I considered how the word, “gay” has changed since the 1960s, when I was a teenager. The first song I ever wrote, at that time, had the following words, “I sing cuz I’m happy, I sing cuz I’m gay, I sing to chase them ole blues away, I sing cuz I ain’t got nothin’ else to do, I’m singin’ all the time.”

“Gay,” of course, meant “happy, lighthearted.” Now, I could never sing that song today because I am the furthest thing from “gay” that you could imagine, according to the word’s current meaning. Yet in the innocence of youth, being 14 years old, the song was okay. In high school, concurrently, I was reading a novel titled, “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.” The book had nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality.

This morning, I “Googled” the words “History of Gays” and came up with some interesting sites. The first wikipedia site has a lot of detailed information, although much of it is unsupported by scholastic citations. At any rate, they date homosexuality to 12,000 BCE. In 5,000 BCE, an erotically-engraved rock suggests dancers who encircle two “cavorting” males. As early as 27 BCE, the first same sex marriage is celebrated. Not until the 4th century is there a law that prohibits same-sex marriage. By the 16th century, King Henry VIII, who seemed to have a penchant for beheading everyone, even his own wives, passed a law in 1588 making homosexuality a crime to be punished by death. It was not until 1861 that the punishment was amended to a prison sentence of ten years to life.

In the 17th century Virginia Colony, Richard Cornish was hanged for sodomy, and at Plymouth (”Plimouth”) Plantation, the first known conviction for lesbianism occurred. Fast forward to 1928 when a published book, The Well of Loneliness, brings homosexuality to public awareness. Throughout the 20th century, homosexuality is decriminalized and re-criminalized in many countries. In the 1930s, it is considered a mental illness. Police arrest homosexuals. In Nazi Germany, thousands of targeted homosexuals are murdered. In the 21st century, we see both the repeal of sodomy laws, and the institution of laws against “homosexuality,” a word that first appeared in print in 1869.

More recently, “same sex marriage,” “civil unions,” and “civil partnerships,” have been recognized, and in some cases in the United States, the status carries the same weight of commitment and legal privileges enjoyed by heterosexual married couples. These same-sex arrangements are a long way from being universally-accepted, yet seem to be “safer” situations than indiscriminate, multiple “encounters.”

Christians point to the Bible and decry homosexual acts based on the report that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because the people who lived there engaged in sodomy. Ironically, a well-known, successful, evangelical preacher, whose custom was to rail weekly against the perversity of the homosexual behavior of others, was a closet homosexual all along, hiding this fact from his wife and children. When the truth finally came out, as truth has a way of doing, he and his family made an appearance on the Oprah Show, centered on his “fall from grace,” and was subsequently interviewed on a special news program.

As you can see, thousands of years of both discrimination and endorsement of “gay” practices has passed. The topic has been considered from a moral standpoint, from a psychiatric viewpoint, and consistently, has been a topic dealt with by Kings, the courts, the police, countries and states, towns, vigilantes, health officials, parents, church members, and the general public.

Many homosexuals, who were famous people, chose to keep that personal information, “personal.” The public was not aware of their preferences until after their deaths, in some instances. As you might agree, people are people, and the way they behave is their own business. Part of the “hatred” of homosexuals arises from blame placed on them for the AIDS epidemic. We have not even begun to see the tip of the iceberg of that problem in the United States. HIV/AIDS is most prevalent in Africa, where I learned this week, many grandmothers are raising their grandchildren because their own children have died of the disease.

Everything has a history and I thought that some of you might be interested in reading this short summary. For more details please do the same Google search I did and you will come up with more sites and more information than you really want to know. This is a topic that I am sure I, personally, do not fully understand. However, I have learned that it is better to accept PEOPLE as people, first and foremost, and to get past the prejudices that potentially can isolate us from each other. Luckily, our only Judge is not of this world, and only after our own deaths will it be proved whether we are worthy to sit “at the right hand of the Father,” the Creator of the Universe, the Author of Life Itself.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications