Temperature Quilt, 2nd attempt

 

For the first week in September I had the house all to myself, and at some point I developed a stage of beginning Blues. Couldn’t go anywhere because of the strike on German trains, my husband and son were away with the car, longish distance biking still not possible due to the wrist, and no other activities in the exercise realm either. It was a bit weird – because during lockdown times I had sometimes thought it might have been slightly easier if I had been in lockdown by myself, now the guys were out of the house and I still wasn’t really content. Of course, it wasn’t lockdown, travel would have been possible in principle, only I was not physically able to go anywhere, nor technically equipped to do something interesting. I didn’t mind being by myself, I can do that very well, but I did mind being scooped up in the house despite without the real possibility to move about.

I figured sitting down with sewing was the most helpful remedy and went upstairs to work on my scrap project, which had already progressed a bit since the former post about it. 

 

There is more to the right, just not shown in the picture.

After just a few minutes, however, I got very itchy because we were finally having a few nice and sunny days and I really wanted to sit outside. I searched (and relatively quickly found) my temperature quilt project, 2^nd attempt. I had started that earlier in the year but put it on hold when I realized how big it was going to be as I had not really calculated what the chosen block size would add up to. It would have been over 7’ in height, and that was just too overwhelmingly large. When I reported my dismay my good friend Kathy had suggested I scale down the block size, which was a wonderful idea but also meant I would have to take apart the entire first month which I had already assembled. Of course, I am glad I had assembled that first month and made it a vital part of the production process, because otherwise I would never have found out until much later that I was facing this serious size problem.

This temperature quilt is a hand sewing project, so sitting outside on the terrace was a perfect surrounding for taking it up again. 

 

I made new templates, which left the quarter circle at the same size but seriously shrunk the background. That meant I could take apart the first month in complete blocks, mark the background fabric smaller and sew it all back together. The work of one afternoon, and I got a few new blocks for the second month done in that sitting as well. 

 

Since then, several more afternoons on the terrace have followed. I take my box, sit in the shade on an umbrella, and stitch the individual blocks, assembling them right away in monthly strips. 

 

Orientation is determined by whether there was a rise or a drop in temperature, and depending on whether the difference is larger in the maximum temperature or the minimum temperature of the day. (Not fretting about it, because, strictly speaking, the four possible orientations don’t cover the entire range of possibilities that can come up.)

In this respect, of course, this temperature is not wildly original, there have already been many that did that. 

 

But I am juxtaposing two years: the past year, when I turned 55, and the year of my birth. The idea had started before I knew that 2020 would be the year of the pandemic and there wouldn’t be a whole lot of variation in terms of days out of town. (During my first attempt at a temperature quilt I had the trip to South Africa in August, which meant it could have been a difference in temperatures. Except for the fact that winter in South Africa is not much different in temperatures, at least maximum temperatures, than summer in Germany. Only the minimum was slightly cooler.) The difficult part in this concoction had been obtaining the data for my year of birth, which took several attempts, even almost led to the abortion of the project. But I managed to obtain those, and then the size hick-up... January 1965 will be followed by January 2020, February 1965 by February 2020, and so on.

Meanwhile, the project is growing. We have had a whole row of nice warm days, nicer and more consistent than most of the summer. While I have been stitching, there have been news that it was the summer with the most rainfall in Bavaria since who knows when, the hottest summer on average in Europe since the beginning of temperature records (except that it doesn’t feel like it for me), and the EU commission is passing a weird trade agreements which endanger the Amazon Forest, it’s been Earth Hour Day, hurricanes are sweeping the Southern US.

Tomato harvest has been pitiful due to the amount of rain we have had...

But sunsets have been very pretty lately.

 This quilt contains a lot of climate related thoughts indeed.

On receiving the Forced to Flee catalogue

Day before yesterday’s mail brought a pleasant surprise with the shipment of the artist copy of the catalogue for “forced to flee”. I’d had no idea that a detail of my quilt would be published on the cover. It is a very nice and impressive catalogue, and I feel very honored to be included amongst the selected artists. 

Cover of the catalogue for SAQA Forced to Flee

And with a quilt like this, which is so important for me, and very emotional. Not the most personal quilt I ever made, but certainly one of the most emotional ones indeed. 

And I am profoundly moved at the variety of takes at the topic that are included in the selection. Forebears who emigrated to the US (at that time they were still welcome to the country, not facing walls, water bombing or blood hounds at the border), fires that have destroyed homes, the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, looking at migrants as people, not burdens or numbers, the dead boy on the beach, barbed wire as a very impressive embroidery stitch on several pieces…

As I was leafing through the pages, recognizing so many names and thinking about the kinds of friendships that have formed with many of the other artists in this exhibition, I felt a deep sense of connection, and of gratitude. For the influence that being a member of SAQA has had on my quilting, the development that it made possible for me. And for the possibilities of meeting so many interesting people and becoming friends with them.

At the same time I was outraged. The topic of the exhibition, so vibrant and important, so many deeply touching quilts. And yet – look at what is happening now. It was the day after the fire in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I, too, have been to the cathedral, I was impressed, and I am very sad that it was damaged so badly. But looking at the photos of the quilts I wondered whether the amounts that were being donated in that very minute to “rebuild it, but even more beautiful”, zillions just whipped out of pocket books of entrepreneurs, companies could not be spent in a more sensible, humane way. In a way that is more in the spirit of Notre Dame, for whom the cathedral was built. Yes, a cathedral is important. We need places to worship. But this one in particular has become a national symbol for a state much more so than it is in the people’s minds as a place of worship.

If the overflowing funds that are obviously out there, as they can be distributed (or at least pledged) so quickly, before we even know how much restoration will cost, or whether it will be really possible, if those funds had been poured into the Banlieues of Paris a few decades ago, giving immigrant childrean a perspective, schooling, a job, then La Grande Nation would be in a different state.

And the same holds true for any other topic of unrest that are unsettling the world these days. If politicians would just listen to scientists and numbers, AND to millions of school children taking their frustration at the inactivity in face of the climate catastrophe to the streets, if they would spend the amount that has now been offered to rebuild a house of stone, to save the house of nature that we are living on, then they would not need to discuss the fact that these children are skipping school, and that cannot be tolerated, it is “breaking the law”. If serious measures were taken, not regarding economic profit, but global and universal perspective for a liveable future, let’s do everything we can – then these children would probably gladly go back to school on Fridays. (Listen to an excerpt of Greta Thunberg's speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week here.)

If leaders had seen Africa as a continent of dignity, considered its peoples as equals and its prospects as global instead of keeping the countries in a permanent state of economical and political dependency on Western Aid, perhaps the situation in those countries would be different, and we would not have a threat of millions of people taking to the road in search of a better, any life.

German is known for its terrible (in the eyes of foreign language learners) capacity to combine several words into one and come up with a newly created meaning. 

Just a week ago I was reminded of one of these linguistic monsters we have had to create, when I was talking to a city employee about the first Fridays for Future demonstration in our town. 

The word is “Klimawandelfolgekosten”. Climate change follow-up costs. Meaning economic effects in our own country (drought, floods, or other extreme weather conditions), costs of maintaining political stability in countries even more effected by climate change, refugees and migrants caused by changing conditions, lack of professional perspectives, agricultural devastation… At 22 letters it is not even the longest we can come up with, I have counted 32 letters in a word. But it is definitely one of the more gruesome words we have constructed to abstract our awareness from what the entire situation is about.

(And I am not going to start about my wrath at Germany’s Minister of the Interior linguistic jingles with the new law for ‘Regulated Back-Transfer of Migrants’ here.)

36 quilts selected, from a total of 191 entries – perhaps SAQA should have set up a group of exhibitions, including all entries, or at least 100, and sent them to all corners to the world. Where will we flee when this planet has been mined towards extinction?

That very last minute.

(I started to write this post on Friday and then other stuff happened…)

 

screenshot from Instagram

It is Friday, and the school children’s demonstration for a more earnest dealing with the problem of climate change in Berlin is probably still on. First pictures have been posted already.

https://www.bild.de/regional/berlin/berlin-aktuell/fridays-for-future-klimaaktivistin-greta-kommt-nach-berlin-60934686.bild.html

Greta posted a selfie on Instagram yesterday as she was traveling on the train. 

screenshot from Instagram

I had read somewhere that she had insisted her mother change her way of traveling for her career, i.e. that she give up flying, and when I heard that Greta was coming to Berlin I had wondered. Would she skip more than one day of school, or would she fly, or… But she seems to be very true to herself. What an admirable young woman!

I have been following this discussion about skipping school to demonstrate for action against climate change for a while. And my husband and I had a rather severe discussion about it last week, after the reports on demonstrations. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier have spoken up on behalf of the young people taking to the streets. Despite the fact that they are skipping school in order to do so.

Because – as is frequently the case with “public debates” in Germany when there is a lot of broohaw going on about a ‘topic’, but really they are talking about a side issue of complete unimportance  -  many self-declared very important people (read: old male f****s) are speaking up against the fact that these kids are skipping school. To protest. Now, that cannot be allowed or tolerated, no way! They should abide to law and order, and that means they have to go to school during school hours.

(This is where I continue writing on Sunday.)

What the important people are not writing about is the fact that these young people have an issue at hand, and that they have all the right in the world to demonstrate for their cause. Forty years ago some of the people speaking against the young demonstrators today might have been the ones who were demonstrating against atomic weapons and atomic energy. They surely would not have wanted to have their elders tell them what is right or wrong in their mode of demonstration, nor would they have listened.

Yet these old people are also the ones who usually complain that young people are not politically aware enough, that they only care about their digital world and social media – and here they are, they are going to the streets, they are telling us what they are afraid about. They are telling us that our way of living is not good for the environment, that it is endangering their – and everybody’s! – future. What is more important – the future of the planet, or a few school lessons they did not attend? Where are these young people going to learn more important things for life – in the class room, or on the streets in a political discussion and activity?

In our paper I read an article about a young man who started as tree-planting society when he was nine years old, and that organization is still going strong, has grown stronger even now through Greta and her actions. 

 So their voices can be heard, their actions are important. 

My hausband is completely against the fact that the children skip school for their demonstrations. However, he is also of the opinion that they should not be punished for this (at least principals in Bavaria are handing out severe reprimands against the students for any day missed, I am not sure how it is being dealt with in other federal states in Germany). I think it is fantastic that they are demonstrating – and I think, they are only being noticed at all BECAUSE they are striking during school time. If Greta had stood in front of the parliament building in Stockholm with a sign “hej, rättar klimatet!” in the afternoons, nobody would ever have listened. So this strike is only being talked about because it affects school hours, and it is talked about as if it were only a school strike as for e.g. cleaner streets. The people who are against these strikes are – at least in Germany – not talking about the issues being raised. They are not talking about the fact that carbondioxide emissions have risen, despite all our grand intentions. They are not talking about the fact that airline companies still don’t pay taxes for fuel, which keeps airtravel prices at an unjust advantage to any rail travel (where it exists as a viable option).

If I were a teacher in a German school right now – or in any country, it doesn’t matter – I would dedicate Friday’s lessons towards the topic of climate change, political empowerment, political opinion building, anything that could be used as a justification to go and take the kids to a demonstration. If I were a headmaster, I would order the whole teacher body at my school to do that. And if I were a politician with anything to say in a government, I would listen to the voices of these young people and stop whining about saving banks, multinational corporations or other unhealthy concoctions humans have come up with and take every action needed and possible in order to attempt saving it all in this last and latest minute that we still have.

At least sociologists have started looking at who these kids are – but does that lead to them being heard and taken seriously?

However, the heading for this post wasn’t meant to refer to a political statement, really. I had wanted to write about was how this past week I managed to finish a quilt in that very last minute… I think I will leave that for tomorrow!