Quilt Show Coming

On the 14th and 20th of this month I’ll be  spinning – and dressed in pioneer costume – at the Aurora Colony Museum’s annual quilt show. This is a beautiful show, with the museum’s antiques providing a perfect background. Here’s a link to more information:

http://www.auroracolony.org/old/aurora/calendar_event/bountiful_oregon_39th_annual_quilt_show/

Finishing Things

2011 - The Year for Finishing Things

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to finish things and I hadn’t expected the rush of pleasure at finishing this quilt (clearly a beginner’s effort, but it will keep someone warm anyway).

Paying attention to the dire predictions for the future can bring any of us down, so I’m paying particular attention to joy and wanted to share this with you, not because it’s a work of art, but because I wanted to share the fun. The pieced top was made by some anonymous woman my mother met a few years ago, and when my favorite comforter was threadbare, I decided to recover it with fabric I already had – how sustainable of me, eh?

My mother helped tie the layers together and I used old sheets for the back and to enlarge the top to the size I needed. I recommend finishing something – it takes one thing off our psychic to-do list and it seems that by doing so, we assert our belief in the future, or some such affirmative thing. Yay!

We Can’t Stand Reality – Empire of Illusion #2

Here’s more from my notes on author Chris Hedges latest book Empire of Illusion. In it he sites Daniel Boorstin’s book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America” with the following: We live in a world where fantasy has displaced reality.

Reality is shunned as negative, a barrier to success. Reality is complex and boring compared to the hype and glitz we are pummeled with. We are comforted by cliche’s and empty inspirational messages like “American is the greatest country on earth,” “the future will be prosperous,” and “we are blessed by God.”

The flight into illusion sweeps away the core values of the open society, and corrodes the ability to think for oneself, to dissent, to sustain a free society. “Life is a state of permanent amnesia, a world in search of new forms of escapism and quick, sensual gratification.”

Hedges finds the America of today so diminished from just a couple of decades ago that it is nearly unrecognizable. The phrase ‘consent of the governed’ is now an empty saying. I’ll post more on the facets of illusion practiced in the U.S., including professional wrestling, pornography, politics, higher education, and his grim conclusions.

Economic Desperation Coming to a Town Near You

I just finished a phone call from an angry woman. She needed money and my employer couldn’t give her what she wanted. As I calmed down, I realized that her anger and abuse was probably triggered by desperation. I realized that predictions of a surge of foreclosures and huge numbers of people soon to run out of unemployment insurance give a scary picture of the near future. My recent phone call lingers as an unpleasant example of what may be coming.

I think we’re seeing signs of desperate people all around. Parents are taking in their grown children who have lost jobs or marriages; churches are asked for financial help more than they can handle, and who hasn’t heard of the tremendous increase in food bank demand?

The crimes said to be committed due to drugs now may be spreading to the jobless, cashless, and folks buried-in-debt all around us. TV news has featured newly homeless people who’ve lost everything in the recession. These are terrible realities undermining what I’ve thought was a decent society. The chasm dividing the rich and the poor gapes at us all. The rich are baled out and appear to be doing fine while legions of newly created poor people are ignored by the government, allowed to become hungry, homeless, and angry.

When you’ve hit bottom, where do you go?

We need to create ways to keep a roof over people’s heads, even if they can’t pay. People need some means to keep necessities in place, whether it becomes a US version of “the dole” or WPA, or some other concept. If we allow foreclosures to leave homes empty and people without options, what do we expect will happen?

We need to take care of the folks whose boats are sinking, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because it will help keep all of us from being swamped by a tide of crimes by the desperate.

I’m not saying poor people are criminals, but I believe that when people have nothing to lose, some of them will use extreme means to either get what they need or exact a revenge on others. I hear “the economy is improving” but the reality is that the bottom has dropped out from under thousands of our fellow citizens. I’ll post my personal action on this as soon as I figure one out.