Quilts of Valor: A Way to Say Thank You

I have not been sewing as much this trip south, but I have finished a few quilt tops and quilted a few tops with fleece backing.  A majority of my sewing time has been creating a Quilt of Valor top.  When quilted, it will be given to a veteran in order to say welcome home, soldier and thank you for your service.  This particular pattern was created by Le Ann Weaver of Persimmon Quilting.  Le Ann has many designs for Quilts of Valor.  I chose this one because I have a love affair with Flying Geese blocks :)

The Quilts of Valor Foundation began in 2003 with a dream.  The founder, Catherine Roberts’, son Nat was deployed in Iraq and she had this dream:

The dream was as vivid as real life. I saw a young man sitting on the side of his bed in the middle of the night, hunched over. The permeating feeling was one of utter despair. I could see his war demons clustered around, dragging him down into an emotional gutter. Then, as if viewing a movie, I saw him in the next scene wrapped in a quilt. His whole demeanor changed from one of despair to one of hope and well being. The quilt had made this dramatic change. The message of my dream was:
Quilts = Healing

According to their website, the mission of the Quilts of Valor Foundation is to cover service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor.

On this Memorial Day weekend, I want to say thank you to all of you who have served our country as we honor those in remembrance.  You have touched us all.

peace~~~

More High Drama in Apartment Living

Yesterday Zoë got a couple of boosters so we could send her to doggy jail while we visit Catalina Island.  Poor thang just got sick...lethargic and hardly moving, tail hanging down and head scooting along the floor.  The head thing wasn't that big a stretch as she is pretty close to the ground already.  She is much better today.  Still feeling punky but better.  Poor lil thang.

With living for six weeks at a time in an apartment, I have been learning some of the joys. Someone new moved in down the way and now I find dog pooh in the grass.  Oh yeah Zoë is interested, trying to learn who is around.  She's happy to do pee-overs on those spots, but the pooh is a problem.  Oh not for her but for me.  Kids play in the grassy areas.  I walk there with my pup at night before we go to bed. Who does that??  What type of people don't clean up after their dogs?


I think of all the things about apartment living, it is the noise that is the hardest for me.  Not just living noises--people come and go and are generally considerate of others in different times of the day.  I am talking about the loud-talking and drama that happens after I go to bed.  

I have a new upstairs neighbor.  She lives next door to my friend who has a problem with alcohol (he has been clean and sober now for over three months, has a great job in a vet's office, and is happy again) and directly overhead of me.  I expected creaks and groans, living noises.  What I didn't expect was to listen to her phone conversations like she was sitting in my living area.  She is a loud-talker.  I can turn up my music in the daytime to drown her out but can't at 3 a.m.  I can tune out her friends visiting, but not at 2 a.m. as they stand outside my window talking and laughing as they stall their goodbyes.  See, she has this habit of allowing her friends to park in her parking space and then she parks along the side of the apartments in the red-zone.  Then when they leave, she returns her car to her spot.  Hours the car is there and no one in management notices because all is back to normal by morning.  But last night was different...

Last night she got caught.  I heard loud crashes around 9:30-10:30.  I heard her screaming and cursing at someone, with a male voice answering.  I heard things moving upstairs overhead.  More screaming and cursing.  I ignored it...just life and shaking my head...until I couldn't any longer.  I peeked out the window.  Tow truck, towing off her illegally parked car.  She was livid.  "I was just here for only a minute as I was unloading my groceries!  This is BS!  I will call the police!"  The tow company said to go ahead and call the police.  She did, screaming into the phone how it was all BS.  The car was just there for a minute as she unloaded her groceries.

Of course I looked and of course a truck was parked in her space, a space that is directly behind her stairs, a space that is about 10 steps from those stairs.  Of course she had to unload the groceries there because there was a big truck in her space!  The fact that both the car and the truck had been in their respective spots for at least an hour...well can't help her there.  Maybe she had a ton of groceries to unload.

I did turn on my ocean sounds machine and the pup and I settled down for the night.  Poor lil Zoë slept under the bed most the night and never barked.  I don't know how the story ended because I fell asleep. Damn!  But whatever happened between 11 pm and 7 am, her car was parked in her space and there was no big truck anywhere.

Did it really happen or did I just dream it all?  LOL
peace~~~

I've Got Those Ol' High School Blues

“And it occurred to me; I was not part of the action. Oh God, I thought, I'm not an anthropologist. I'm the lonely voice-over narrator of adolescence. The bitter, voice-over voice.”  

― Joanna Pearson, The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills 

My high school days were long long ago in a galaxy far far away.  I moved away to Southern Oregon not long after my 19th birthday and have lived in Oregon for the past 46 years.  Not much to remind me of my high school days up north.  

I spend more time thinking of those old glory days when I am in Southern California visiting my mom.  And of course...the old neighborhoods--oh look!  I remember when that was just a road through vineyards, the old high school friends with whom I meet up--wow it will be so great to reconnect!, the 60s music on my car radio--C'mon Baby Light My Fire, on my iPod--He Ain't Heavy; He's My Brother.  Most everything surrounding me down south brings back emotions and flashes of memory.

I just wanted to fit in somehow.  We lived down in the boonies rather than in the thick of the school kids.  My friends from elementary and junior high didn't go to early school with the bulk of the school kids at the high school.  More than three-quarters of the kids in my junior high went to a different high school.  So fitting in meant changing groups, learning the "rules," and meeting new people.  For a shy child throughout my life until mid-eighth grade, this wasn't perfect but doable.  I worked at it :)

By my junior year I had learned the ropes.  I started dating a football player.  My friends were the leaders of the class, of the school.  But I was rather unique in that I also had groups of friends in multiple cliques--geeks and freaks and groups of multi-ethnicity.

Senior year things changed.  I changed as I began to come into myself.  I started dating a Marine who then went overseas.  I started protesting the war in Vietnam (while still supporting my fella over there).  I pulled away from the leaders of the school and hung more with fringe groups.  The stoners, the nerds, former leader-group people who had also pulled away.  I was 17 and naively felt I knew a huge bunch of stuff about life.

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.” ― Jim Morrison

And looking back now with the wisdom and privilege of age, I realize I was not unique in my emotions and desire to fit in somewhere.  The path of my journey was unique but the raft on which I rode was so very much like most teens' rafts.  We want to be accepted, validated.  We want to be loved.  We want good, real friends, friends we can rely on when needed. We are all just looking at how we fit into the world.

And at 65, I realize our goals are still relatively the same.  Hopefully we have some life-time friends...but we still want acceptance, want love, reliable friends.  And how we fit into the world constantly changes as we move through that world.


“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” ― George Eliot 
 
peace~~~

What She Needs is a Good Listening To

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Empty barrels make the most noise.

We are talkers.  It is hard to sit and listen to people when we want to be the talker.  Remember when we were back in school?  The teacher would ask a question and we'd raise our hand, wave our hand, hold our hand up with our other hand.  Say, "Oh!  Oh!  Pick me!  Pick me!" and hope against hope we get to talk.

In Portland and other cities around the country, a group of people have been improving on the art of listening. They set up some chairs on a corner and invite people to come sit and talk to them.  And they listen.  They don't give advice, engage in chat, talk.  They simply listen.  

The organization is called Sidewalk Talk.  Their mission is simple: That in every major city in the US, once a week there would be listeners listening somewhere in that city. That is the long term dream. And the even longer term dream is that by listening to stories we heal that which divides our communities.

In Portland on May 9, listening volunteers set up chairs in Lownsdale Square.  This park is located between the courthouse and the jail, making it a great spot for people to stop and talk.  With the weather cooperating, volunteers stood besides their chairs and asked pedestrians if they would like to talk.

In reading about this organization, there are volunteers who have regular spots in their city and people come to rely on the volunteers to be there to listen.  From their website:

For example, Traci Ruble, who is one of the co- creators of Sidewalk Talk is listening the second Wednesday of every month at Church & Market in San Fran from 11:30 - 1:30. When you start informing the public you will be there at a set time, folks will come back.

And so the listening has begun in Portland.  About time, eh?

 peace~~~ 

A Normal Heart

Gary was one of my best friends.  Our parents met at the YMCA back in the early 50s and would get together on a Sunday evening to play cards.  Gary and Scott were my sister's and my ages, so we would play together.  When it would be bedtime, my sister and I would be put to bed in the parents' room, soon to be carry-walked out to the car when it was time to go home.  Dad would run the car long enough to warm it up.

As we grew older, Gary and I would hang out together.  Gary could name the year and model of any car he saw.  He was a personable multi-freckled carrot-top, outgoing and ready for adventure. When he got a car--a big boat of a Chevy--we would cruise around Los Angeles.  We would cruise along Mulholland Drive along the Hollywood Hills.  We'd cruise along Sunset Blvd.  One of the most fun thing we would do is drive along the hills, passing the gated houses.  When another car would come along, we'd turn into a driveway like we lived there.  Yeah bet no one else thought of that one ;)

We supported one another like no one else has.  For example, I went out with a friend of his in my senior year.  When I wouldn't sleep with the guy, he spread a vicious rumor, telling Gary that I was pregnant.  Gary immediately offered to marry me.  It was the sweetest thing :)

When I got my first apartment, Gary was a constant visitor.  We'd sit up--the 22 stairs--in my little place, waxing philosophy, playing records, protesting the war, and generally just being 18 year old kids.  He worked at the Jack-in-a-Box on the corner of Arrow and Towne...or was it Garey...doesn't matter now because it isn't there anymore.  At that time, there was no inside seating at Jack-in-the-Boxes; they were only drive-through.  So I'd play carhop between the customer window and the car.  There might have been maybe a foot space, but the hamburger-hungry would play along, even giving me a tip on occasion.

Gary was my elder son's godfather.  
Gary was part of my family.

Gary came out to me when I was a senior, him a junior. This was in the late 60s, a time when being gay meant you were sick.  His parents sent him to a psychiatrist in order to turn him around.  He was just confused, right?  Well-over a long year or two of therapy...a long year or two of medications...an unhappy young man who couldn't just be who he was.  Ashamed and tortured, Gary took his life at age 19. 

Some days I miss him as much as I did when he died in 1970.  Something will trigger a memory, especially when I am down in Southern California, and there we would be, laughing at something ridiculously stupid.  There we'd be, sitting in a little teen club, listening to the Turtles play their delightful music, or just having long deep discussions.

Gary wasn't sick, depraved, wicked.  He was just a wonderful young man with a broad open face full of freckles and mischief, a young man with a normal heart, living, loving, being.  I wish we could have just let him.

peace~~~