So - A Needle Pulling Thread!

So many times I write about things that have connections for me.

What better symbolism than the above photo?

A needle pulling thread through a quilt.

A needle pulling and connecting seemingly unrelated scraps from everyday life to create a more than functional - dare I say ESSENTIAL? - work of art.

Today I visited the Conner Quilters at the Whitewater Valley Arts Association building where they meet every Tuesday from 9 am til 1 pm, weather permitting.

Even today the weather was permitting and cabin fever is rising here in the Valley!

I met some of our community's most talented artists today.

Most of them would refute that they are artists, but I am convinced the most important arts are the ones we weave into our everyday lives.

And these ladies certainly have done that!

One of the ladies asked me if I had seen the Quilt Show at the 2013 Bicentennial last summer.

AND HOW!

You may remember my blog post from Tuesday, July 3, 2013.

In it I am taken back to my childhood at the same Quilt Show!

My Land Of Counterpane!

I felt like a kid in a candy shop during my visit with these local artists!

I felt like I was among legends of needle and thread, legends of women who have gone before me in life, art, EVERYTHING.

I felt blessed to be able to find these women who are so willing to share time, care, knowledge, and laughter.

I can not wait til next Tuesday!

As I watched the stitches coming together today in the tiny quilting space where these ladies hold court I remembered sitting on my bed (upon one of the many quilts Grannie Katie had made for her unlimited font of grand children!) as a young girl learning the most basic of hand stitches.

I would get bored with the radio or the television and entertain myself with inspiring songs from Hollywood musicals.

Today as I left the Whitewater Valley Arts Association building I was humming this, one of my favorites:

I can hear Mom now:

"Oh, Suzanna! Are you EVER going to get your head out of the clouds?'

I hope not Mom, I hope not!

-Suzanna

Thinking Back on Those Who Went Before Me

If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I am PRE-occupied with thoughts on occupations.

I have always figured that if you study the things a person devotes themselves to you will know them on a deeper level. 

I have been fascinated since childhood with the various reasons an individual would choose a certain occupation. 

Two of my passions that have filled my inner world since I was very young have been art and writing. 

A very serious 10-year old Suzanna decided that she would never be able to support herself with either of these things and so threw herself into various other practices to secure her future endeavors. 

Big mistake, sister, big mistake. 

Thirty-five years later you have come full circle. 

Thirty- five years later you wish you were as smart as you were at age 9.

Thirty-five years later your heart is younger than at age 10.

As I was researching the illustrious Tatman family of Connersville, Indiana the other day I stumbled across a photo in Harry Smith's Connersville, A Pictorial History. (As soon as I get permission I will post that photograph here.)

The photo was a 1937 lineup of the twenty-nine employees of the News Examiner commemorating its fiftieth anniversary as a daily paper. Twenty-one of those were male, and eight were female. For those of you not in the know - the Tatman family was long associated with, no WAS, the News Examiner.

1937.

Things were still pretty rough all over in 1937. 

FDR's New Deal Programs were, at last, budging the morale across the nation. 

Work was being provided, skills were being taught, much needed cash was earned, and a sense of pride at earning, instead of being handed supplies, food and cash.

Here again I draw on history to help me cope with the present. 

Here again I say "What did my grandparents do?"

What did the nation do?

The previous way of life was gone.

So a new way of life had to be created. 

It is time for that again folks. 

Instead of saying "It's too hard."

It's time to just find a way while the naysayers are naysaying.

It's time to just get up off the dirt we were kicked into and just do the work of getting on with it. 

Many times an ending is overlooked as the beautiful opportunity for a whole new world. 

Adventuring into whole new worlds is not for the faint of heart, but it is essential to survival. 

Only the adventurers will survive. 

Adventurers never need to leave town though. 

The most wonderful adventure of all is staying and making what is old and shredded all new again. 

I looked at that 1937 photograph of those twenty-nine people and wondered what each one's story would be if I could ask them. 

Obviously each one got up and went about the business of business. 

This modern American society wants to glamorize the risk takers and drama makers. 

Some of the most riveting stories that have been unfolded for me were those of the ordinary man or woman just getting up and living life past the tragedy that every second of life hands us. 

Some of the biggest superheroes I have ever met were just average people I worked along side of, or sat next to riding the bus day after day, or the clerk that was always at that shop where I could run in and get what I needed. 

The most Shakespearean of dramas play out on the streets of every day American life and we walk past them not noticing every second of everyday. 

I have decided to be my own superhero and go back to that 9-year old little girl's world of the possibilities of living a life immersed in art and writing. 

We all know what thoughts the other possibilities hold so why entertain them if they do not produce the desired results?

This last little bit I leave you with just to prove that even bad things can make us who we are and we can be ok with them when we finally sit back and realize we would not change a single thing:

- Suzanna

One Thing Remains the Same

The term "Indiana winter" conjures a certain image in my mind.

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/iwx/program_areas/events/historical/blizzardof1978/images/benko2.jpg

It is not an entirely accurate image.

At least not in the recent decade or so.

We have been pretty blessed with mild winters and typically hot sweaty Hoosier summers. 

The thing that HAS changed is that we no longer have four clearly defined seasons any more it seems. 

Winter belabors us into begging for glimpses of mud, long ago giving up the hopes of seeing sweet young green tufts of grass popping up through melting snow and along slowly languishing icy patches. 

Then, just as we have unrolled our last line of hope and good will, clinging on to life in the gray white state of blah that stretches along the varying landscape - 60 degree days pop onto the scene and melt everything into flash floods and washouts. Quickly the 70 degree days tease early planters to death flipping onto Randy Ollis' weather forecast for three days in a row. Then a late late season snow and one last frost comes to kill the precious young buds that foretell of beautiful tender fruits that would have been the young life of that year's orchards and gardens tucked in here and there in Hoosier's lives for generations. 

Its enough to make any regular Joe or Judy just throw in the towel and move south.

Not us died in the wool Hoosiers though...

Not us ones who KNOW.

Those of us who KNOW what secrets Indiana holds. 

We KNOW what buried treasure there is out there for us by living in this seemingly boring, white bread and butter, corn and beans world.

We let the rest of the world pass us by, because we know even with our truncated change of seasons, even with our lack of huge municipal funds to exact great changes in our communities (for there really are NO huge municipalities around to source that kind of fairy tale pot of gold), even with our clinging to generations of traditions that had more relevance in the past, we really KNOW we have the good life right here.

We really know that sometimes our unexpected harsh weather pushes us back to things we really know are the best things in life. 

When mother nature spreads her hands to dump a big heaping of what ever she wants on us this season we know that the most important things are our loved ones. 

Modern conveniences do not mean much when we do not have a connection to others. The ones we love, the ones we have spent years (or just beginning to spend years) pulling and pushing through this so-called hum drum life tucked in between the corn fields, cow pastures, factories, small towns, rivers, hills and hollows that we call Indiana are what REALLY make this place so special. 

It takes a special kind of creative life to repeatedly bring something forth from the depths of your heart that starts out as a feeling, becomes an idea, and then materializes soon into a new direction in life. This is what is needed every single day to stay connected, vibrant, and eternally in love with this Indiana of 2014. 

So here I extract another post from the depths of my heart securely wrapped up against the frosts and blasting winds of this harsh Indiana winter of 2013 - 2014. I sit at my laptop, sweet hot tea, cozy homemade afghans, throw pillows and my loved ones at arms length waiting to be folded up and told how precious they are just by my silent cuddle and pleased look on my face. 

Take this long winter's pause to just become human again, take in the wonders your life has unfolded for you and understand that this too shall pass. 

-Suzanna