SPEAK FOR THE LAND

 

Temples
     of sacred rock
Templates
     of sequestered ravines
Treasures
     of seasonal rendezvous
Turning turbines
     of sandswept rollers
Timeless troves
      of surrounding riches.

 

Memories
     of quaint chronicles
Monuments
     of quiet cathedrals
Mosaics
      of quixotic colors
Majesties
      of quivering columns
Measures
       of quaking choices.

In honor of Terry Tempest Williams who does speak for our land

 

 

Honoring Anne Frank's 90th Birthday Week with a view from her window in the Attic of her family's Annex hiding spot

MEM FOX: COURIER FOR CHILDREN
SHARING WORDS TOGETHER

 

Touches of

            hands held

            hugs given

 

Smiles for

            bursting energy

            bountiful giggles

 

Nods of

            sparkling affirmation

            total interaction

 

Positive, protective

Peaceful, plentiful

Prayerful.



HARRIET POWERS: COURIER THROUGH THE CENTURIES

 

I was late getting back to our Washington D.C. family tour bus in 1997.  With toddler age, wiggling grandchildren, my own children were not happy with Mimi holding up the bus.  But I had been held in total amazement by the Smithsonian Institution Quilt Collection Show, especially Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt.  

During her slave years and beyond, she had pursued and persisted in creatively designing a Bible Quilt with metaphor, alliteration and scraps.  As Jan Richardson in The Mysteries of Making, points out “Powers quilts are not the size of typical bed covers; they are significantly wider than they are long.  This fact, together with Power’s own words about her work, suggests that she created them as a form of proclamation.” (Richardson, p. 216)  Quilts were her platform for speaking her mind and displaying deep knowledge of the Bible.  

“The little we know about Harriet Power’s life reminds us of how the histories of so many women have disappeared. It reminds us too that mystery always attends the process of making. No matter how much we may know about an artist, what an artist creates can never be fully explained.  This is both a gift and a challenge of the creative process: there is a tension between what is revealed and what is concealed.”  (Richardson, p 216)

 The Bible Quilt was first displayed at the Cotton Fair, most likely the Northeast Georgia Fair, of 1886. It was seen by an art teacher, Jennie Smith who wanted to buy it. Powers said no but four years later contacted Smith and said it was for sale, “ownin ter de hardness of de times” (Smith essay, 1891 in Hicks, 28)

Smith continues in the essay, “After giving me a full description of each scene with great earnestness and deep piety, she departed, but has been back several time to visit the darling offspring of her brain. She was only in measure consoled for its loss when I promised to save her all my scraps.” (Hicks, 28)

It is through Powers’ scene descriptions to Smith, quilt viewers recognize just how artistically creative and symbolic she was. The square I copied for my Couriers’ quilt, “The Baptism of Christ” has a dove identified by Powers, as the Holy Spirit, descending on Jesus.   Mary E. Lyons in her book, Stitching Stars, says “Doves appear three times in Harriet’s quilts. The dove was also the most frequent bird in slave spirituals because it could easily fly away to freedom.” (Lyons, 15) When Jennie died the man who settled her estate gave the quilt to the Smithsonian. 

Powers designed an even more elaborate story quilt which “is like reading a book of the weather, and real events” (Evans, 25) but even in the Bible quilt on the Judas square,  Harriet describes, “the star that appeared in 1886 for the first time in three hundred years,”(Evans, 16)

The second story quilt went through a number of owners but eventually was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1964.

Two incidents almost 100 years apart illustrate how misconceptions often infiltrate our American art scene.  In 1895 Jennie organized a display of her student’s art work at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.  Smith also arranged for the Bible Quilt, which she now owned, to be displayed in the segregated Negro Building.  Clara R. Jemison reported on the fair for Tuscaloosa Times and was particularly taken by the Bible Quilt, “‘Have you seen the Biblical quilt? It was made long ago by a poor ignorant slave who could not read, and whose knowledge of the Bible was the stories told her by other more fortunate.’ Jemison provided no evidence why she wrote as fact that Harriet Powers was poor, uneducated and illiterate.” (Hicks, 30) Not only does Jemison believe Harriet had to have someone else relate and interpret the stories but she just assumes Powers is illiterate. 

Lorene Diver, from Iowa, also was amazed by the quilt at the fair and took pictures, writing descriptions on the back.  She tried to buy the quilt from Jennie but was not successful.  She did however learn Powers mailing address and contacted her. “Contrary to Clara R. Jemison’s published assessment of Powers status, intelligence and literary skills, Mrs. Powers wrote back.” (Hicks, 37) This letter was discovered in 2009 with Diver’s file was opened at the Lee County Historical Society.  In the letter Powers talks about her life, her quilts (more than the two known) and “reading the Bible more than ever.” She ends with “This I accomplish…”(Hicks, 38)

Another much later controversy  began in 1991.   “One of the largest and most important controversies in the recent history of the American quilt community took place when the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History granted a license for replication of several of their important historic nineteenth century quilts.” (Freeman, 101) The Smithsonian often did this for art artifacts but did not realize to the quilt community “quilts were much more than mere artifacts.” (Freeman, 101)

Reproduction was arranged to happen in China and would allow sales of 200 to 500 quilts which was at most one third their cost if handmade in US.  Harriet Carter, founder of Quilter’s Hall of Fame (1979) helped organize a grass roots and letter writing campaign with copies sent to the Washington Post.  (The Post had originally posted an article on the project.)  After meeting with Mrs. Carter the Post responded to these actions with a second article titled “The Quilts that Struck a Nerve,” with a sidebar to the article called “A Bible of Black History” with a picture of Harriet Powers and her quilt.

Protests (with women draped in quilts) and many meetings were held between the quilt community and the Smithsonian.  “Two issues dominated the controversy: the first was mass reproduction of the quilts; and the second was having the work done in China. However, the whole matter might have gone unnoticed if not for the inclusion of the Harriet Powers quilt…which seems to have been regarded as a kind of living treasure and therefore invested with a sacredness one doesn’t normally associate with conventional art objects.” (Freeman, 103)

As a result the quilt community was allowed more access to the Smithsonian Quilt Collection, a major show in 1997, and opportunity for seminars and research.

The “major show” was the one I was totally caught up in, making me late for the bus, but not too late for how a courier with conviction and courage works.

 

Sources

Freeman, Roland. A Communion of the Spirts: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1996.

Hicks, Kyra E. This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces. Black Threads Press, 2009.

 

Lyons, Mary E. Stitching Stars, The Story Quilts of Harriet Powers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.

 

Richardson, Jan.  In the Sanctuary of Women. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2010.

 

My Couriers Project:

Finding my voice through research, writing, and quilting

In March, 2017, I found myself searching: probing for positive means and methods to express my frustrations, sadness, and desperations as the world around me turned to negativity, sarcasm and sometimes outright hate. My spiritual connections helped: deep talk and prayer through journaling and group conversations with my Companions Spiritual Group and my pastor.  My pastor asked me to think about how I could react with what I had been given with a touch of humanity and humility?  I pondered: “Is God calling me to do something new?”

Jan Richardson in Sanctuary of Women says, “Our experiences rarely contain just one meaning; much more often they contain multiple meanings or deeper meaning that only reveal themselves with time and attention. “ (Richardson, 127)
Perhaps my past was nudging me with new meanings:

• When I kept a diary/journal affectionately called Mindy through junior high and high school chronicling my stories of angst, happiness, despair and joy.
• When I constructed a Cathedrals window quilt in1990 with each “window” a different piece of fabric I had used to sew an outfit for one of my children. Each piece of fabric told a story.
•   When I turned to poetry and journaling as healing therapy and prayer after the devastating loss of my husband, David, in 1993.
• When I first observed Harriet Powers Bible Quilt in 1997 at the Smithsonian

Numerous events in the last couple of years also illustrated multiple meanings.  In late 2007 I started a Spiritual Quilt Journal (SQJ): writing a spiritual entry and designing a matching quilt square for each month in 2008. At the end of the year I combined the squares into a quilt and gave numerous talks to local groups.
In 2012 I used The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom by Christine Valters Painter to journal spiritually with fabric asking myself “How do I find my spiritual voice?  How do I merge my passions? What ancient paths should I seek?

In March, 2016, The Flint Institute of Arts held an exhibit “From Heart to Hand: African American Quilts” and I was introduced to Yvonne Wells, who “describes herself as a storyteller first and a folk quilter second, works with an incredibly broad range of images which she classifies as religious , sociopolitical, and picture quilts as well as mere “doodle pieces.” (Just How I Picture It in My Mind,79) Discovering pictures of her quilts, “Yesterday, Civil Rights in the South III” and “The Great American Pastime: Homage to Jackie Robinson I,” changed my perspective of story quilts forever

Later that same year of 2016 I decided to explore more deeply, Jan Richardson, and found again Harriet Powers.  In her chapter, “Mysteries of Making” in Sanctuary of Women , Richardson focuses on Powers and how she interspersed scripture, prayer, interpretation and quilt.
That fall, I gave a presentation to my Companions on Harriet Powers, Valorie Wells and Jan Richardson, a prewrite to my Couriers Project.
All of these events, discussions, and reflective prayers led to March, 2017 when I decided to focus on my Couriers Project. Using as much positive energy as I could muster I would research through deep reading and journaling, write with blog entries and poetry and sew designed quilt squares of women of history and today who have shown deep courage and conviction in the face of their own tensions, troubles, turmoil, and turbulence.  

Sources

Hutchins, Catherine E.,editor. Just How I Picture it in My Mind, Contemporary African American Quilts from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Published by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, 2006.  

Painter, Christine Valters. The Artist’s Rule.  Sorin Books: Notre Dame, Indiana, 2011.

Painter, Christine Valters. Lectio Divina, the sacred art.   Woodstock, Vermont: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2011.

Richardson, Jan. In the Sanctuary of Women. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2010.

 

 

FEELING DIFFERENT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feeling different resonates.  Getting uniforms would seem to make one more the same.  Hiding differences.  Yet Dad probably meant feeling different than what he and his new buddies sensed as they rode trains to Texas from far off cornfields, distant sky scrapers and fishing docks; feeling different from where they had come, who they used to be.  The uniforms would do that.  Clothe them in the war and a reality of where they were.  Why they were there.  No claim or proof now of who inhabited a tiny apartment just a week ago, who typed railroad requisitions just a month ago, who wrote sports and editorials for the Athenian high school paper just two years ago.   No country kid anymore who couldn’t tell mountains from hills, wanted his wife with him, but not with all these “naked men running from the shower.” (Feb 17, 1943 #5 letter) A uniform and a new haircut; feeling different along with thousands of others, all sensing different together.

How long did the fresh uniform aura and hair length sustain him?  How long before it endured stains of Texas dust, Mississippi sweat and frozen vomit?  How long before he knew he could still hold unto speckles of differences and likenesses which molded him unique, but still cast him as a World War II airman?  Gazing at the “Acres of Cadets” photo, differences are not apparent.  Sameness, precise military meticulousness and minutia resonate.  

In the same February letter Dad discusses “There are some things we have to do that are as nutty as the things I had to do when I took the exam at Kalamazoo.  I have gotten over the little homesick spell I had last night and feel considerably better. Things like that are bound to come I guess and all I can do is just face it.”  Was he able to talk about the “nutty things and the homesickness?”  Were these feelings too different to share? Did he endure it inside himself, alone?   

Feeling different continued to resonate.

SEVEN ON THE SEVENTEENTH

 

 

On the day, February 16, 1943, my father departed by train from Chicago for basic training in Texas he began writing letters to my mother back in Michigan.  There are seven first letters, postmarked at different times, but all the same date, February 17.  Each letter echoes the poignant pleas of a very homesick twenty year old, “…to say I missed you last night would be putting it mildly, but then I have got to face it.  More than me had that homesick look in their eye.”

Mom and Dad were country kids growing up in the southern farmlands of Michigan.  A big trip meant traveling slightly northwest thirty miles to Kalamazoo or slightly northeast thirty miles to Battle Creek.  Now, Dad has left all that is familiar, especially his wife of just a year.

Dad describes these new scenes… “the hills or mountains (take your choice) of Missouri. Rolled across the plains of Arkansas, the oilfields of Oklahoma, went through Claremore, the home of Will Rogers, saw the Will Rogers airport. We went by a huge airplane factory and saw lots of bombers flying around…”

After sharing the lower train berth with his card playing new buddy, Herb, and “waking up about six times” he continues… “Well this is Texas—rolling plains and ranch homes, little old shacks that look 100 years old… we just passed a field of Texas Longhorns.  There is a lot of cactus.”

Each letter is a new chapter… “Well, this is San Antonio—wow!!!---they piled us all in a truck---had a physical---our names were taken---chow---marched to barracks---Herb and I bunk together---cut cards for upper or lower. I got the upper… I have your picture all set up and darling you sure look sweet to me.”

Millions wrote letters home during World War II. Today emails more instantly gratify spouses, sweethearts and those on modern battlefields. These communications can’t conquer loneliness, lost time together, or death.  They can, however, endow a daughter with specifics to shape a memory of just what it was like to be her father.  Seventy two years later the sentences surround me with a cascade of images I savor.  He is my father I can now know and touch and feel and love through these pale photos, yellowed scrapbooks, and brittle letters.