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The second blue quilt was meant to be simple. I set specific, easy guidelines in order to piece it quickly and with a minimum of fuss. It’s that staring process, the decision-making at every cut and sewn seam. This color or that one, this way or that, rearrange and rethink the border? It was meant…
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In their official First Lady portraits “20th-century predecessors show a parade of cream-colored gowns, strings of pearls and periwinkle skirts. Clinton rocked a pantsuit in midnight black.” As first lady, she chaired the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, pushing a proposed healthcare system some in the media dubbed “Hillarycare.” That failed, but she…
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Here are the first two lines of seven. Maybe a little bland so far? Not quite what I had in mind? Once the squares are pieced and sewn, the effort in the first two rows is inevitably tame, inevitably distant from my vision. I began sewing the paler squares, the ones I like least. sigh…
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I received a bulk email from a neighbor. He neglected to use the blind feature (Bcc) so better than three dozen people who apparently do not know one another except through him now have one another’s emails. (I should tell him my story about the Bonsai Kittens—a hoax my then-adolescent niece believed and sent out…
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This has been a bustling week. I am sipping ice water and Vera is playing on Acorn (my subscription runs out in a week or two). We are just back from an evening walk on the shore. Cool air blows in from the skylight and it’s hard to imagine knitting a sweater. Last weekend our…
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What Toni Morrison wrote just after the 2016 election. She saw what was coming. So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the…
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NINE YEARS AGO ON MY OLD BLOG I POSTED: 8/8/2010: I woke this morning and realized that I didn’t have to run today [I was mostly running every other day until 2012], the weather is perfect, and I’ve spent my entire summer reading to prepare for the new school year and making jam. The jam…
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I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.—Toni Morrison, in a 2015 essay for The Nation & Word-work is sublime … because…
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When I began teaching English, I was already a great fan of Toni Morrison. I photocopied her entire first novel, The Bluest Eye, to use for one class and later was able to order classroom sets. A student came up to me after class and asked where he could find her poems. She doesn’t write…
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IMPERFECT PATIENCE 