Art? Craft? Both?

This is from October of 2014. It's about writing--which you understand by now is bound to happen. It was a lovely and loving time and I enjoyed finding it. I hope you enjoy reading it.

I grew up loving quilts. I have ones that were made by my great grandmother, my

grandmother, and my Aunt Nellie. They’re old and beautiful, with tiny stitches and scraps of memories scattered over them like the leaves that are rustling through my yard these days. While I treasure the quilts and the memories, making quilts wasn’t something I ever truly thought I’d do. For one simple reason.

         

They are art.

I am a writer. I’ve had nine books published and am still at it. There is little that I love more than writing, but it’s a craft to me, not an art. Some writers are artists, and I writhe with envy when I read their books, but I am not. This is okay with me. I just write.

But then I had grandchildren—they are seven of the things I love more than writing. When I got ready to retire, I was afraid—for one wild, crazy instant—that I would be bored, so I thought why not go ahead and make a quilt for each grandchild? Not fancy like the old ones I have that would require anything artistic of me, but simpler patterns. After all, I liked to sew. How hard could it be?

          

Ahem.

          

It could be hard. And it was. Especially since I haven’t had a single minute of boredom since I retired—there hasn’t been time. Five of those nine books have been published in the three and a half years since retirement, six of the seven quilts are made, and I’ve never had so much fun in my entire life.

         

Quilts tend to consume the person who’s making them. I started out with a 6-inch by 24-inch ruler, a rotary cutter, a cutting mat, and enough fabric for the quilt I was making. I now have many rulers, many cutters, a mat that completely covers my cutting table, and enough fabric to cover a small country.

          

Years ago, I wrote a book called The Debutante’s Second Chance, a Silhouette Special Edition. In it, the heroine made a quilt. It was incidental. When I wrote A Soft Place to Fall, the heroine opened a quilt shop, and it wasn’t incidental at all. In my newest book, Back to McGuffey’s, Kate is a lover of quilts. In my work-in-progress, Arlie has a quilt room many of us would cheerfully die for. Quilting and writing have over time become inextricably intertwined.

         

I’m working on Number Seven on my grandkids’ quilts. It’s still a craft to me; I can’t do anything without a pattern and need help choosing fabric every single time. Likewise, I’m working on my Number Ten book and I’m still a craftsman, not an artist. And it’s still okay with me.

What I love, and what maybe is a little artistic, is what is alike in books and quilts. They both have stories to tell, they’ll both be around for children and grandchildren, they both contain beloved memories within their construction. Not big memories, perhaps, like wedding days or births or even bittersweet goodbyes, but ones that lie gentle in the pockets behind their owners’ hearts. When the quilts are used or the books read, the memories slip out and create magic.

And there it is. Whether writers and/or sewists are artists or craftsmen, we have the opportunity to create magic. Aren’t we the lucky ones?

Wilder Today than Yesterday - @Scott Johnson

Scott Johnson's back with us this week. Just as Duane and I make ourselves at home at the Black Dog Coffee House, I like that Scott fits right in here at the Window, too. I love--and maybe envy a little--his adventures and today, I particularly love his and John Prine's insights. - Liz

I have seen many rivers in my life. I once swam all the way across the Ohio just to say I had done it. I have fallen into mountain streams as cold as ice water and have waded in plenty of muddy creeks looking for crawdads and snakes and little fish and even bones of bison eroding from the bank. I love the feeling of flowing water. I have read the stories of Twain’s adventures on the Mississippi and followed Lewis and Clark up the Missouri. I have fished the Yellowstone and the Big Horn, and made camp along the banks of the Rio Grande. I have seen the power of flood waters and the despair of rivers that once flowed but are now dry. I have heard the stories of how rivers that were so polluted would catch on fire and in the high mountains I have quenched my thirst from still pools. I have canoed, rowed, motored, kayaked and tubed down many. Most of us have stories born from rivers and creeks and other bodies of water. Water is universal, and whether it is fresh or salty, humans have always been drawn to it.

The Eel River in Logansport, IN

We have two rivers flowing through our town. Most of the time we cross them without a thought but this morning, I slowed and nearly stopped crossing the Eel and just looked for a moment. I rolled down the window and the fresh cold air blew into my face. The sun, in my eyes, glittered and played over the uneven surface of the water. Even with all my travels I had to wonder if I had ever seen a prettier scene. Few places could possibly look this good. I know it is not always this pretty…I make it a point to really look at every river I cross. So I have seen it roiling and muddy and treacherous. But today it was peaceful and pretty. I wondered how it must have looked centuries ago before the fields were bare dirt and before we had drained the lowlands that protected the flowing waters. It must have been just about this pretty nearly every day in the long past.

John Prine once wrote, “Old trees just grow stronger and old rivers grow wilder every day.” I have no explanation but these words have always meant something to me. I have even considered having them permanently added to my skin but I always chicken out. These words ring true, but the damn realist in me knows that they are not accurate. Yes, old trees grow big and they are strong but they are the ones that break under heavy forces because they are no longer flexible. Rivers carry more water as they get older but only up to a point. Then the land flattens out and the river starts to meander and roam along a flood plain creating a soft peaceful flow.

So how do we define, strength and wildness? Is your current condition that which makes you strong? Is it your current life that defines your wildness? Or is it your past? Is it what you have been through? Is it the accumulation of your experiences that add one upon another that defines us. Perhaps I am stronger, not physically, but stronger nonetheless for the adventures, the joys and the sorrows that I have experienced. Perhaps I am wilder today than yesterday because I have added experience.

Yes, this is what John must have been writing about. It is the strength and the wildness that comes with age and experience. It is the ability to know that life goes on, for an uncertain amount of time that makes us strong and wild. It is this knowledge that ultimately makes us fearless. If we can keep growing yet all the while bending in the wind and meandering on our way…if we keep adding to our wildness through experience each day, life will be well spent. There is really nothing to lose. So do it.

Too busy

I'm late. Did you notice? The reason I am late is because I haven't had time to get a new post written or dig up an old one to recycle here. Well, I mean, I've had time, but not time I could easily or happily dedicate. I've had company--beloved family and friend. I've had other responsibilities. I've had a last-minute-what-fun shopping trip to Kokomo.

In other words, I've spent the past week smelling the roses.

I am "too busy" by my own design. I like doing what I do. Writing, wearing a pink jacket at Dukes a couple of days a month, sewing quilts with crooked blocks, having deep discussions with people who share my beliefs and values and with people who don't. Watching Jeopardy and going out and listening to music with Duane. Being that kind of too busy means I forget things (meetings), overbook myself (two lunches in the same day), and occasionally fall asleep before eight o'clock. It means I do things pretty much--it must be said--half-assed. I know that's not a very polite way of putting it, but it's definitely accurate.

And I have the best time. I played Farkle with the eight-year-old (he won), fried potatoes for the 14-year-old (he loves them), talked religion with the 44-year-old (he knows a lot more than I do), and worked a puzzle with the 43-year-old (I had to wait for her to come and get it started. It's hard.) I baked three loaves of banana bread, three loaves of pumpkin bread, and three dozen cookies on Saturday morning. There is half a loaf of pumpkin bread left,

So, yes, I'm late. And didn't have anything profound to offer this week. I'm sorry if I've fallen short--it does happen a lot. But I hope you have a great week and that if you didn't get the blog or my column read it's because you're having a wonderful time being too busy.

Unexpected routine

"I see the turning of a leaf dancing in an autumn sun, and brilliant shades of crimson glowing when a day is done." - Hazelmarie Mattie Elliott

From 2013--I think.

It’s funny the things that become routine without you realizing they’ve done it. My office is in the garage and its door is probably 50 feet from the back door of the house. I make this walk upwards of 10 times a day. More if I’m restless or if the words are hiding from me. Less if my fingers can’t keep up with them.

Coming from the house, I look toward the east and west horizons to see if anything has changed since the last time. Are the beans out of the field? Did they spread manure—I can tell when they do. Are the suet feeders empty?

Going back to the house, I look down. For season-predicting wooly worms. For the nasty little black worms that come out in fall. To see if the cats’ bowls are empty. Again. To make sure I see the step that hasn’t moved in 10 years or so but still manages to trip me from time to time.

When I hear the noises, I know where to look to see the waving magic carpet of dark birds or the honking, straining vee of geese heading out for their long flight.

What I don’t hear will call my attention just as quickly, and I still know where to look. The deer will be sauntering through the lower slope of the side yard, slurping up water released by the geothermal system that keeps our house comfortable in all seasons. The cats will run down to join them, silent in their reminder that this is their yard, after all. The deer nod their heads in greeting—or so it seems to me—and go on drinking.

When darkness has fallen, its velvet cushion of quiet is often broken by sounds from the high school. We’ll hear the band on Friday nights when there are home games, kids shouting at other times. It never ceases to amaze me how loud and clear the voices are from two-point-three miles away. We laugh, Duane and I do, about our remote control bleachers.

 Sometimes we are in the real bleachers when our grandson plays or our son-in-law coaches, or in lawn chairs at soccer matches where a younger grandson runs and kicks with unbridled glee and without mercy. There is much said about youth sports being too competitive, but the memories that are made on fields and gym floors and ball diamonds are not ones I’d want to give up. They are ones I still hear and feel and see and smell in the soft-crisp nights of autumn. Those memories are like the scent of burning leaves and the snap of fresh apples in their sweetness.

I have walked between the house and the office twice already this morning and am getting ready to make the third trip. The grass is still an optimistic green beneath the scattering of leaves, the marigolds and the mums raucously bright reminders of the brilliance of fall. The cats mutter as they eat the morning food they had to remind me at least three times they were waiting for.

The grain trucks are already rumbling over the roads this morning. The air smells of harvest time and makes me want soup and something pumpkin and desserty even though I haven’t had breakfast yet.

Soon I will walk on the Nickel Plate Trail. The leaves will crunch beneath my feet. I’ll laugh out loud and alone at the book I listen to as I walk. It will smell so good. Feel so good.

It is unexpected routine. It is fall in all its glory.

Playing the poor hand well...

"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well." - Jack London

Welcome Scott Johnson to the Window. Scott owns Legacy Outfitters in Logansport, Indiana, home of Black Dog Coffee Shop and some of the best art in the area. There's always music, art, books, good coffee, and conviviality there--it's one of our favorite places. And Scott's one of our favorite people. He's smart and hilarious and generous. Likes his bourbon and works with wood--I think he finds the story in wood and saws and sands until it can be read and felt. 

He posted this story on Facebook and I was enthralled. Seriously so. And I wanted to share it and share Scott, too. Come to Legacy Outfitters and meet him. Shake hands with him--it's a good, solid handshake. Buy something beautiful while you're there. Listen to some music or play some music. Have some coffee or a glass of something if it's a beer and wine night. And look around for stories. They're all over the place. 

Thanks for joining us, Scott.

One time I hopped a train.

I was a young man and out west of the Missouri River… just past where the Great Plains begin, and I had been walking down this lonely stretch of highway for more than a few miles. I knew where I was going. I knew my old Ford truck had just snapped its timing chain and I knew that I had to get to a town, call a wrecker and get it hauled in and fixed up. It wasn’t the first time in my life that I had been stranded. All total, I have run out of gas over 80 times. Mostly I did this when I was young but now and then I still let it happen just to make sure I know how to make my way in the world when things get tough. It’s the same reason why from time to time I tell a lie or I steal a little bit. It’s always a good idea to have those skills honed just in case. You never know when you might fall on hard times.

 Anyway.

In this particular case, I wasn’t out of gas but I was definitely stranded. I was about 20 miles from anyplace with a telephone and while I had a pistol in my belt and some money in my pocket, I found myself in a fairly tight spot. That old truck that I had walked away from on the side of that lonely highway wasn’t worth the price of a tow and certainly wasn’t worth a new engine which is what I suspected blew when the timing chain broke. I was debating in my mind just what I should do. The responsible person would have just sucked on it and had it hauled in and fixed up and waited for it to break down closer to home, but in those days, I wasn’t the most responsible of young men. So I started walking.

I was actually walking west towards that little town on the horizon when I saw this train crawling down the tracks next to the highway going east. It wasn’t going very fast. There were some coal cars and box cars and it had four engines pulling it so I figured it was in for the long haul.

Now, just the winter before I had read a book by Jack London. His most famous books are probably The Call of the Wild or White Fang, which is even better and The Sea Wolf, which in my opinion is his greatest of all. But that winter I had read The Road.Jack London was once a hobo. Actually he was what is called a Tramp Royal. That means he was one of the most experienced, well traveled, toughest sombitches to ever ride a rail. Jack London could write the words because he had lived the life. He was the real thing. He had frozen over mountains, starved over prairies and been parched over the deserts. He had been around and man, could he get to you. 

He wrote about how to catch and hold a “blind” on a train car and how to keep ahead of a railroad bull and how to make friends with a fireman or brakeman and how to steer clear of engineers and how and when to ditch. I had read about all these things. But up until this moment I had never dared actually do it.

Now here I was walking west toward that little town and there was this big old train moving east…and it just so happened that east is the direction that I really wanted to go. My daughters were very young and I had been gone for almost a month and I was trying to get home. Home was east. East. 

So I stared at this train for a while. I waved at the engineer as it went past and hell, he even waved back. As I watched it, my steps began to slow and pretty soon I realized that I was walking toward the tracks. I stood there for a while wondering if I actually had the gravel to do what I knew I wanted to do. I wanted to hop this train.

At first I just jogged along beside the cars. In those days I was pretty fit and I had been living pretty hard and so keeping up with that train wasn’t very tough. However, it was speeding up slowly and I was getting blown so I knew that soon a decision had to be made. I had my backpack slung and there wasn’t really anything in that old pickup from which I couldn’t walk away so in that moment, I decided. I slid the pack from my back and tossed it up onto the blind of one of the middle cars. I grabbed the rail with one hand and then both and held on tight. I ran with it for another hundred yards or so. Now and then I pulled myself up and let my feet leave the ground to test my nerve but then I let them back down and ran a few more steps. Finally I pulled up, made the first rung and hopped aboard. Man, it was mighty.

It was a beautiful day and as the train picked up speed I just stood there and watched the ties slide under me. The breeze was fresh and it was still before noon so I settled down and looking back now I must have looked like that guy in the Titanic movie, yelling that I was the king of the world. It was perhaps the most free I had ever been…ever have been. I rode that train for miles.

The neat thing about riding a train is that you don’t have to watch the road. You don’t have to pay attention to traffic or your speed or your radio or much of anything else so you get to just sit back and watch. You get to look. You get to see things. You get to think about things. The only thing I didn’t like is looking backwards, so I climbed up on top of that car and looked out at the world ahead of me.

When I became a teacher I once took my class down to the railroad tracks to talk about the size of the universe. In my experience there is nothing that gives you the feeling of infinity more than looking down a railroad track until it disappears to a point. Riding that train and looking out ahead of the engines miles out to the horizon…man, that was infinity. The wind was blowing from the west and I was heading east so it was easy to sit up on there and watch the miles go by. My only regret was that I never even looked back and waved goodbye at that old truck. I have no idea what ever happened to it.

I got sleepy after a while so I climbed back down onto the blind and lay down. I wrapped my belt around the ladder and then around my leg so I couldn’t fall off easily and drifted off for a bit. I felt the train slow and speed up…there were sections of track that were rough and some were as smooth as glass. We passed through small towns and the whistle blew at every crossing but the engines were quite a bit forward so it didn’t wake me much. I woke up thirsty and sore and climbed back up on top. The sun was lower now…at my back so I knew I was still going in the right direction. I didn’t know how far we had come. But I could see that the grazing land was giving way to crop land and I could see small wetlands dotting the landscape.

There is a state that has a motto of 10,000 lakes but before we drained all those wetlands it must have been 10,000,000 lakes. It seemed a shame that I wasn’t on a train a hundred years ago when the sod was thick and the wildlife thicker. Everyone thinks that farmland is so productive but it is not. For miles I saw one species of plant. Corn, or beans….that was it. The only place that still had any biodiversity were the wetlands. That is where all the life was. That is where it has always been. Water. The next set of billionaires are going to be made because of water. We will pay, too…anybody that has ever been thirsty knows how much they would pay for a drink.

I would have paid all I had on me. And more. I was thirsty, man. And I was trapped. You see, getting on a train is one thing but getting off is a whole other set of problems. You have to wait. You don’t get to pull off at the next exit. You have to wait…and you have to be thirsty.

It was dark now when we finally started to slow down to where I thought I could survive ditching. I couldn’t see anything that looked like a town…just a few scattered lights here and there, but we were slowing. The problem was that it was too dark to ditch. Ditching involves jumping from that train into the ditch and hope you don’t hit something too hard. If it’s daylight, it’s problem enough. Usually the grass is tall and you have no idea how many big rocks are lying in wait for you but at night…it is absolutely terrifying. You are actually jumping off into the unknown. You have no idea what you might hit or land in or actually just how far you have to fall. I have heard of hobos that jumped to their death because they ditched into a chasm or headlong into a bridge abutment. But my thirst was getting serious now. My head was pounding and I knew I was dehydrated from the wind beating me all day and I needed to get to ground. I heard the whistle in the distance so I knew there was a crossing ahead. I strained my eyes and hoped like hell we would slow a bit more but we never really did. Not enough anyway. 

Finally it seemed that the ditch was filled with tall grass and we had just passed the crossing so I knew there was a road, so I made a jump for it. I threw my pack off first and then made the leap. You can’t be timid when you jump from a train because you have to be damn sure you clear the track. So you go for it. I wrapped my arms around my head and my hands in front of my face to protect myself as much as I could and I jumped. We were going faster than I thought because when I hit the ground my feet stopped but my upper body kept going so I tumbled hard. I must have gone upside down about three times but I swear I came up standing somehow. My mouth was full of dirt and grass and I had gravel in my pockets. I was just thankful that I didn’t have a railroad spike up my ass.

I had a few scrapes and cuts and it took me about a half hour to find my pack but I finally did.
I straight lined it to the first light I could see that might be a house or a barn and found an old man that opened the door for me and gave me something to drink. It was the best glass of water that I have ever had even to this day. He was a nice old guy. I told him I had broken down a few miles down the road. I didn’t tell him that it was a few hundred miles back down the road, and he pointed me into town. Three miles and an hour and a half later I was in a Days Inn just out of a shower and staring in the mirror at a sunburned and banged up face. Grinning. One time, I hopped a train.

Life on a tilt

I wrote this several months back and used it in Peru Indiana Today. It still makes a...well, tilted kind of sense to me.

Our prompt for this month's meeting of our writing group, WordPlay, was "Upside Down."

          I laughed thinking about it, because it seems as if all of life since the day I retired has been, if not completely tumbled, at least tilted. Crooked.

          I thought it would be hard not having a routine that required me to be somewhere at a certain time five days a week. Although I looked forward to it, I also thought it would be a process.

          I was used to it the first Monday I didn’t have to get dressed and leave the house.

          I thought it would be a piece of cake sharing the house with my husband. After all, we’d loved each other for two thirds of our lives and had often said how nice it would be to have more time together.

          Well, maybe not that much time. And I was startled that he didn’t want to travel a few times a year—maybe twelve. He was surprised that I did.

          Since a college education hadn’t been part of my past, I wanted to make it part of my future. I didn’t mind that I’d be the oldest kid in class. I wasn’t aiming for the dean’s list or any of those Latin phrases in my GPA. I just thought it would be fun to learn. To interact with different generations and different demographics.

          It wasn’t. I learned, but my retention was that of a 60-year-old, not a traditional college freshman, and interaction didn’t happen. I wanted it to, but maybe I went about it wrong. Maybe…I don’t know, but upside down wasn’t the right way to be then. I stopped after three classes. Tilted some more to try to find the right path for me.  

          I walk fast. I mean, I really don’t, because I have short legs so even though I’m hustling along, I can’t keep up with anyone else. I also don’t watch where I’m going or pick up my feet. (Yes, my mother did speak to me about these issues. So did my husband. No, I didn’t listen.)

          So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I tripped over a flat spot in the tile while volunteering at the hospital. I found out from my prone position what the term “rapid response” means. It means 15 people arrive in seconds, look down at you in consternation, and ask if “she” blacked out. If “she” is all right. If “she” can get up. I had gone bodily upside down in the space of a heartbeat and it created a mental topsy turvy at the same time. I am the mother and the nana and the daughter. I don’t need care, for heaven’s sake—I give care. I don’t call my husband and ask for him to come and take me home—I’m the person who supplies a ride to whomever needs one. I don’t use the ER at the hospital—I pick up their mail on my rounds as a volunteer messenger.

          Twyla Tharp said, “In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.”

          Sometimes, in our turns upside down, we see new limitations. We see dreams die and we have to look off at a new angle to find new ones. We get hurt and often before the bruises heal, we are hurt again. There are no arrows that warn us that “this side up” is the way to go, so we fall again and again, whether it’s literally or figuratively. 

         I watched a Jenny Doan video this morning on the making of a quilt with the squares placed on point. She cut, sewed, and pressed. She cut again, turned, sewed, and pressed again. The results were beautiful.

          That is where we are in retirement. We’re too often upside down. Too often on a tilt. Unlike Ms. Tharp’s hopeful quote, we can no longer transform into anything—our butterfly phase has long passed. But we can still transform, still turn ourselves in a direction where we can see sunlight. And the results are still beautiful.