In my head
I have composed at least 5 or 6 different blog posts over the past two weeks. One
would have been title ‘intimated through admiration’ and would have talked
about how I was struggling trying to quilt a top for Kathleen Loomis. I have
always admired her work, and we have become close friends over the years after
we met for the first time in a master class at Nancy Crow’s barn. She has
entrusted me with two of her gorgeous tops and had given me the freedom to ‘do
whatever you want’. When I suggested an idea for the first one, however, she
didn’t like that one particularly, suggested something else and I started
getting nervous because what she wanted isn’t easy to do on the longarm. I
tried, but was thinking I was ruining her top, which resulted in stalled
activity on my part. But we resolved the issue, and put off the second top for
after the upcoming events that are keeping me very busy into June.
Another
post would have been on important life decisions and how they are being taken. Yet another one on the joy of the reopening of
our open air pool which I consider to be the biggest asset of the small town we
are living in, but which, as is sensible in German latitudes, closes from
September through April, and we must be happy if it reopens on May 1st
already, and we don’t have to wait until the middle of the month.
Then I went
to the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe and wanted to write about that, but by now I
should know that it is virtually impossible to do that while the show is on if
I still want to catch a sufficient amount of sleep…
Plus, there are so many
people who report about events like that that I have kind of decided that it doesn’t
make a whole lot of sense to keep adding to that. But I did teach a class, and
I could have reported on how that went, as it was a new class…
In any
case, I have been very busy. Also with the preparations for the Textile Art
Symposium that will begin on the coming Monday. I collected all the handwritten
samples of articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that I will use,
and it was fascinating to see people’s reactions. With some articles I had been
the person to suggest for some of the participants that they write this
particular article. But at the beginning, when only a couple of articles had
been chosen, I was thrilled about how people chose ‘their’ article because it
meant a lot to them personally. And even in the later stages, when I was
suggesting, it turned out that my suggestions coincided with people’s special
interests. I had asked a woman from Brazil to write an article in Portuguese,
and as she was the last one in the long line, it was article 15 that had not
been done before. The article on the right to have and to change a nationality.
It turns out she had wanted to do so, give up her Brazilian nationality to
become only German to reduce difficulties and bureaucracy. But Brazil does not
allow that. Once a Brazilian, you cannot give that up, so she had double
citizenship. Brazil does not adhere to the UDHR in this aspect. The woman
writing in Hungarian chose article 20, on freedom of press and freedom to
assemble, because she thought that was something to vex the current leader. And
it continued like that.
People I
have been talking to about the project find it interesting. Some did not even
know there is such a thing as a Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
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Article 1 in Xhosa |
I have
started stitching and am making progress, although I still don’t know whether I
will be able to finish during the week we will be working in the public realm
behind the City Hall. And after we had the warmest and driest April since the
beginning of weather data recordings it is turning cold, and is supposed to
rain next week… Might have to retrieve my ski underwear which I have already
packed away for the summer!
Then there are all the things I did not do. But I won't lament about that. Somebody suggested I might have a problem saying 'no', which I had never thought about. Given the fact that my mother claims 'no' was the first word I said I had never thought it might be a problem. And I don't think it is. It is a problem, though, that I think too many things are important and should be paid proper attention. What I need to learn, it seems, is, to find out early enough how much of my personal attention that needs to be.