the narrative thread

August 1, 2017

Dog Days

I’m grumpy. It’s hot. It hit 106 this weekend. I know, I know… it’s San Antonio in the summer, so of course it’s hot. I was born and raised down here, without air conditioning I might add, so I should know about hot as well as anyone, but still… It is dreadfully, awfully, terribly, unbearably hot. And I am well aware that this part of the country is not the only place that’s suffering. Even my friend in the Pacific Northwest can make that claim.

It’s not only hot here, though, it’s ugly because we have a drought. The grass is dead, the flowers have faded, the trees look limp, and the vegetables, including the jalapeños, have all shriveled and died. When it’s too hot for peppers, you know the situation is dire! The swimming pool is steadily evaporating and what water remains registers a “cool” 91 degrees. No matter; it’s too hot to swim anyway, and the pool is too far to reach. You open the door from our den to the outside and the bomb of white-hot heat that that goes off in your lungs is enough to make you keel over before you can make it across the patio.

We are surely, certainly, absolutely, thoroughly in the Dog Days of summer. Everyone is unmotivated, uncomfortable, and generally unconcerned about anyone or anything else except making it to fall. Even our usually energetic Swiss Mountain Dog, Mac, always the first one to bolt out the door for a walk or a ride or a meet-and-greet, has taken to lying on the couch (where he isn’t supposed to be) under the big overhead fan for hours at a time. Apparently, the Dog Days of summer are even too much for a dog!

Many people think that the expression Dog Days comes from exactly that: the image of an exhausted, over-heated canine with his tongue hanging out, panting and plopping down onto the pavement. Actually, though, the descriptive expression dates from ancient Egypt and has its origins in astronomy. So-called Dog Days refer to the period around the summer solstice when the star Sirius rises at roughly the same time as the sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, this period ranges from early July to mid-August or so. For the Egyptians, this was the new year, the time when the inundation of the Nile began and the land got replenished. Interestingly, the hieroglyph for Sirius was a dog.

The ancient Greeks identified Sirius as the “the dog star” at the tip of the nose of a dog constellation, Canis Major, but they hardly saw the season of Sirius rising as welcoming. Rather, they and Romans developed superstitions about Dog Days, claiming that they brought not only heat and drought and storms, but bad luck, fever, and madness of all kinds, including mad dogs. Some of those beliefs endure to this day, reinforced by modern horror stories of deaths due to closed cars, heat prostration in homes without air circulation, and heat stroke at marathons and football practice. Sadly, eleven children died of heat suffocation in closed cars in this country just this last month in July.

For most of us, thankfully, the effects of Dog Days aren’t quite so dire, though the lethargy and moodiness created by unrelenting heat is a real phenomenon which has been studied and documented by researchers. As reported in a recent column by Dr. Oz, extreme heat makes people tired and less willing to help others. “Heat triggers an inflammatory response that boosts stress hormones, aggravates residual pains or aliments, and amps up mood-altering hormones.” (San Antonio Express-News, 7/31/2017) In other words, people tend to get “hot under the collar” in hot weather. They are not nice, even here in the friendly “Hi y’all” state. This is not encouraging news in America, where aggression and aggravation are already at a fevered pitch everywhere, regardless of the temperatures.

Meanwhile, I’ll confess: I don’t feel friendly either, nor do I feel especially well physically. I am listless and uncomfortable and I just don’t want to be bothered. I don’t like to shop in the heat, finding the stores too hot and the getting in and out of cars , with those bombs of white-hot heat hitting me, too debilitating; I don’t like to cook in the heat, finding the prep too much trouble and the heat from the oven or the fire from the outdoor grill just too much to endure; and I certainly don’t like to walk, or garden, or do any outside activities, finding them all too sweaty and more arduous than I can endure. As the Victorians so properly put it, the Dog Days are just “… the hottest, most unwholesome time of year.”

So, I remain unapologetically grumpy, and tired and listless and uncomfortable. I have historic precedence and modern research as my rationale to do so. In The Seven Year Itch (1955), Marilyn Monroe put her underwear in the fridge to soothe the New York summer heat. As for me, I’m going go to lie down with Mac on the couch under the fan. It may not be the 1950s, but Mac is a pretty “cool cat.”

July 15, 2017

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Anniversaries

My husband and I are celebrating our 576th month wedding anniversary this week. In each of the first 100 of those months, we exchanged little greeting cards, a romantic gesture to mark the date and to celebrate our progress as a couple, much as teenagers do when they manage to sustain a relationship for more than a few weeks. While we were hardly teenagers, we were still young enough, and naive enough, to consider ourselves remarkable. “Hey! Another anniversary and we’re still married.” This was, after all, the era of Woodstock, of free love and flower children; couples didn’t last very long, much less bother to get married in the first place.

Anniversary. The word comes from the Latin anniversarius, meaning “year” and “turning,” though anniversaries don’t always count years. People track daily, weekly, or monthly anniversaries of having quit smoking, for example, or of having maintained a dietary program. Birthdays are anniversaries. The remembrance of major events, personal achievement, national holidays — all are anniversaries of sorts. We even have words for anniversaries that become too numerous to count: centennial, sesquicentennial, bicentennial.

Not all anniversaries are happy, of course. Many mark catastrophes that have left death and destruction in their wake and emotional scars on entire populations: 9/11 comes to mind. Psychologists have a name for the grief and anxiety survivors often experience on or around the anniversary of a traumatic event or personal loss: “the anniversary reaction.” Some people struggle openly with such reactions, while others may have only a vague idea, if any at all, why they experience a recurring malaise at certain times of the year.

Good or bad, happy or sad, what all anniversaries have in common is that they mark a remembrance and serve as a way of reminding us to not take anything, or anyone, for granted — not love, or life, or freedom, or security, and especially not the presence of those who are dearest to us. Gratitude for what we have while we have it may be the one true secret to joy in life, and the best antidote to experiencing debilitating loss and regret later.

So this week, my husband and I will celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary (in years), along with the “coincidental 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing (a lesser commemoration, to be sure). We will get all dressed up and go out for a lovely dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. Yes, we will exchange anniversary cards both serious and silly, and we will toast to our good fortune in being alive and well and together in love. And we will be grateful, because we know what we have is rare; we may no longer be young and naive, but we still consider ourselves and our relationship to be remarkable.

A lasting marriage is one thing, and there are all sorts of ways and reasons why couples stay together in spite of their problems and dissatisfactions. But a good marriage, a truly happy, fulfilling marriage, is something else again. Any marriage counselor will tell you that “marriage takes work,” work to develop the interpersonal skills required in any partnership. But actually, marriage takes more than that: it takes awareness. Relationships are never static; they grow or diminish, move in different directions “for better or worse.” The wedding ceremony isn’t the end of the courtship dance; it’s only the beginning. You have to pay attention if you want to keep dancing in the right direction.

My mother was widowed when I was a little girl, so I was raised by her and my grandmother. (Interestingly, my husband’s mother was also widowed when he was a boy, which probably accounts for why gender issues and divisions of domestic labor have never been points of contention between us.) Growing up, I was the only kid with a single working mother, so my models of the typical family were found in the homes of my friends with whom I spent so much time. Even as a youngster, I could feel the undercurrents and readily see that some marriages were better than others, that some homes were happier and more harmonious than other, and that the state of the marriage and the home were somehow related.

My best friend from 5th grade on was Judy, and she lived nearby on top of a small grocery store and gas station they ran. Her family, she, her parents and her two brothers, became my second family and have remained so for my entire life, though only Judy and one brother are now still living. Her mother and father, Mr. and Ms. P as I called them, had a very traditional marriage: Ms. P cooked and cleaned and yelled at the kids, and Mr. P worked long hours and was entitled to rest and relax when he got home. Everyone deferred to Daddy — but Mom called the shots.

These were not people of wealth and sophistication. They lived modestly, often frugally, but always with joy, generosity and gratitude. There was a love you could feel in their home, a genuine, palpable affection among them that welcomed and embraced everyone else. And there was humor, always humor, even in times of hardship and disappointment.

Judy and I grew up and moved away, she to the West Coast and I to the East Coast, but I stayed close with her parents who lived well into their mid-90s. On the occasion of their 70th wedding anniversary (yes, in years), they took a cruise to Alaska. They became quite the “celebrity couple” on the ship, and were honored on the last night at the Captain’s gala. The MC congratulated them on their anniversary and then asked for the secret to their long and happy marriage. Ms. P thought a second and simply said, “Just be nice.”

Mr. P didn’t have to think at all. “Just do what she says,” he replied.

And that’s how you have a happy anniversary year after year.

July 1, 2017

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Chihuly in the Sky

It’s hot — most days over 100 degrees. It’s South Texas. It’s July. Of course it’s hot!

For people in more northern parts of the country, summer brings welcome relief to the gray, cold, heavy days of winter that seem to linger too long. Summers mean a change over in wardrobe, from winter sweaters to summer whites; it means men don’t wear jackets and women don’t wear hose. It means cleaning up the yard, clearing the deck of fall and winter debris, and firing up the grill. It means making weekend trips to the shore, stocking beer in the pantry, and digging out recipes for potato salad and cold slaw. In short, for most of the country, summer means relaxing into that school-is-out, livin’-is-easy lifestyle — casual, convivial, even chic.

But not in Texas. Here, summer means a descent into environmental hell: budget-wrecking electric bills for the AC that runs 24/7; swimming pools like bath water at 90 degrees; citronella candles and bug sprays in battle with mosquitos; chiggers and ants in the lawn, cockroaches and millipedes in the house, and sun screen and sun lotion and sun hats on everybody everywhere every day. Oh, but yes, there’s beer in the cooler and margaritas in the freezer, because damn it’s hot!

Texans don’t especially love summer, which may be why the 4th of July isn’t celebrated here with quite the fanfare that it is in say Boston, or Washington or New York. When you live in a place where fireworks are often banned as a fire hazard, the holiday tends to lose some of its “sparkle.” When I was a kid growing up down here, July 4th meant going out to the drive-in movie theatre where the hamburgers and hot dogs in the concession stand were grilled for you and where there would, in fact, be fireworks overhead at intermission, if fireworks were allowed at all that year. We would sit out on the hood of the car and watch them spiral downward almost close enough to touch — until I invariably got scared and scrambled back into the car. To this day, I have never really liked fireworks.

But then there are the pyrotechnics by Grucci, which is in a class all by itself — virtually a “Chihuly in the sky,” full of color and wonder and whirling fantasia. The Gruccis of New York have been in business for six generations in America and are affectionately known as “America’s First Family of Fireworks.” Little wonder: they have staged the official inaugural fireworks for every US president since Ronald Reagan in 1981. Their fiery starbursts and exploding chrysanthemums have rained down on Olympic Games, World’s Fairs, America’s Bicentennial in New York, the Millennium on the Mall in Washington, and on countless other holidays and celebrations across the country and around the world. These days there are other big pyrotechnic companies competing for their business, but Grucci still sets the standard. (And you can catch a Grucci display this July 4th, either in person or on TV, bursting over the Charles River in Boston.)

I don’t have many fond Independence Day memories, but a couple of the most vivid do involve Gucci, such as being at America’s Bicentennial in 1976 with Operation Sail and fireworks over the Hudson River in New York or, some years later, sitting out on a boat with good friends on Long Island Sound with Grucci overhead being choreographed to the music of “Dirty Dancing.” Mostly, though, the July 4th picnics and cookouts and treks to the beach all blend together, highlighted here and there by sometimes humorous, sometimes less-than-fond recollections of horrendous traffic, hot-as-Hades temperatures, and minor mishaps with barbecue grills and firecrackers.

Memories have a way of coming full circle, as does so much in life. On a recent July 4th evening, I found myself once again sitting on the hood of a car to watch fireworks. This time, though, I wasn’t at a drive-in movie theatre, but here in “Military City” San Antonio, parked outside the fence around Randolph AFB, where a broad collection of off-the-highway humanity had gathered to ooh and aah at the lighting of the Nation’s birthday candles. And ooh and aah we did, all of us, expressing spontaneous enthusiasm for the show and general good will toward each other. There were no marching bands, no empty political slogans, not even much flag waving. There was simply us, a wildly diverse group of gathered spectators — kids and grandmas, old and young and middle-aged, black and white and brown, with coolers and lawn chairs and blankets alongside pick-ups or Cadillacs or Camrays— all of us there simply sharing a pride of place in America, a moment of — dare I say it? — unity.

The fireworks may not have been Grucci “Chihuly in the sky” that night, but we certainly had a “rainbow coalition” on the ground. Now there’s a concept worth trying to recapture and a memory worth holding onto, especially this year.

Happy Birthday USA.

June 16, 2017

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About Arts n’ Crafts

I can still recall how I felt that day, now over 30 years ago, when I had my first piece of writing accepted for publication. Thrilled wasn’t the word; I became positively giddy when the editor called. I had recently been laid off from my high-school teaching job and had decided that, instead of trying to find another position, I would devote one solid year to my writing. I had to determine, once and for all, if I could establish a viable freelance career, which had been a dream of mine since I was a girl. If at the end of that first year I had published nothing and gotten nowhere, then I would give it all up as a youthful fantasy and go look for “a real job.”

Not surprisingly, that first published article, “Teachers: Migrant Workers of the ‘80s,” came directly out of my own experience, which gave it a distinct voice of authority on the page. “Write what you know,” the old adage goes, and so I did. By the end of that first year, I had published seven more articles in newspapers and magazines, including one in The New York Times, and even had my first book contract in hand. Finally, I could call myself a “working writer;” finally I could join my local press club and become an official member of those national writers’ organizations; finally I could attend those big writers’ conferences with big-name authors and not feel like an interloper.

Over the years I have continued to write what I know — and what I see and hear and want to find out more about. I may not have gotten rich and famous, but I have enjoyed a satisfying freelance career that has brought me pride and pleasure, and even some awards along the way. Eventually, I also returned to teaching — teaching writing, mostly, and thus entering endless academic debates over whether writing is an art or a craft or whether it can be taught at all.

I bring all this up because I have just been notified that one of my art quilts, “Art Glass Quilted,” has been accepted into a exhibit opening in September at the Center for Contemporary Art in Abilene, TX. (See the detail shot above and the full quilt on my Gallery page.) This time, “thrilled” is the word for how I feel at the news, because it means that I am beginning to reach a standard of excellence I have set for myself. Last year, I joined the Studio Art Quilt Associates, an international organization of artists, teachers, collectors and exhibitors, to help me define those standards and develop my craft; not only is “Art Glass Quilted” the first piece I’ve had accepted into a juried exhibition, but now I also feel somewhat less presumptuous in calling myself a “fabric artist.”

The piece was inspired by some handmade Lalíque crystal medallions decorating the grand staircase of a cruise ship I was on in the Mediterranean a while back. I have always loved art glass, and used to collect small vases by Gallé, Daum Nancy and others. I decided to see if I could capture the luminescent frosting and sparkle of art glass on what is clearly a pieced quilt. Attempting to translate one artistic medium into another presented some formidable challenges in design and execution, but I was determined. With each new project, I have been trying to develop new techniques and push myself beyond the boundaries of traditional quilting into more original, unexpected work.

Publication, exhibition, performance, and sharing one’s work in a larger community are all forms of validation that encourage creative people to keep creating. Writers, artists, actors, musicians, and designers most often work in a space inside their own heads, sometimes for years, before any sort of validation, much less public recognition or financial renumeration, comes. The notion of “bursting onto the scene,” or being “an overnight success” belies and belittles the painstaking development of craft and process, trial and error, submission and rejection that always underpins any apparent success.

Inevitably, in talking about creative work, the old familiar question arises: “It may be good, but is it art?” I’ll leave that determination to critics, judges, and Aristotle, but I do believe that the basic skills of craftsmanship, which are the foundations of any art can, indeed, be taught and practiced and honed to produce consistently high levels of performance, even among people who are not especially talented. The passion, the inspiration, the originality — these are the inexplicables that some might call “talent,” which must come from within the individual. They cannot be taught, but their influence on a creative work is distinctive.

Art or craft? Talent or competence? Vocation or avocation? Do you care? At this stage of my life, I certainly don’t. I’ve had the arguments, established the careers, survived the rejections, and emerged still enthusiastic enough to be thrilled by creative achievements of any kind and lucky enough to have the time to pursue them. I’m already auditioning fabrics for my next project.

Meanwhile, I’ve also started looking into Abilene and plans to attend the exhibition opening this fall. After all, I could be on my way to becoming the “Grandma Moses” of the art quilt set. I wouldn’t want to miss my debut!

June 1, 2017

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“Brooching” the Subject

On a trip to South Africa a couple years ago, I ran into one of my tour companions in a famous jewelry store in Johannesburg. She had evidently been there quite a while pondering the purchase of a pair of truly magnificent, and expensive, yellow diamond earrings. “Can I wear these with jeans and flip-flops?” she asked me, indicating her current attire. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?” Thus affirmed in a decision I’m sure she had already made, she bought the earrings, immediately put them on, and happily flip-flopped out of the store.

People, even “women of a certain age,” just don’t dress up much anymore. And they surely don’t wear brooches. Brooches demand a certain dressiness, a jacket or scarf or bodice on which to pin them, whereas other pieces, such as rings or watches, or even diamond earrings, more easily adapt.

Since ancient times, jewelry has been not only an instrument of enhancement, but also a public statement of wealth, status, and position — which is exactly how the term “statement piece” originated. Royalty has always used jewels as symbols: think of all those scepters and crowns. In more modern days, jewelry has become a common symbol of recognition or special occasions, i.e., the engagement ring or a gold watch. Even those who aren’t rich and famous can enjoy famous pieces. Liz Taylor’s 33 carat diamond from Richard Burton or Princess Diana’s diamond-encircled sapphire, for example, have become so iconic and so desirable that they are reproduced at every price point and available to everyone from tony shoppers on Rodeo Drive to home shoppers on QVC.

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Southern California was happening on a special exhibition at the Reagan Presidential Library: “Read My Pins” is a display of over 200 signature brooches, most of them costume quality, owned and worn by Madeline Albright. Those who are old enough to remember her will recall that her lapel jewelry began to be remarked upon when she was part of President Clinton’s cabinet as our Ambassador to the UN (1993-97), later becoming more noticeable, and more of a diplomatic “messaging” tool, when she became our first female Secretary of State (1997-2001). (My own copy of her “spiderweb with spider” pin is shown above.) In her illustrated memoir, Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box, we not only learn about the origins of many of these brooches and their key roles in moments of diplomatic history, but we also learn about the Secretary, about her humor and humanity, and her evolution into a confident, independent leader.

The jewelry a woman wears says a lot about her, not only about her personal taste and style, but about how she views herself. Once upon a time, the jewels a woman wore said more about the wealth and prestige of the man who gave them to her, and his view of her, than it did about the woman herself. An old wives’ tale warns that “…if a woman buys herself diamonds, she’ll never get them from a man.” That warning may have had merit back when women were little more than chattel and dependent on men for both their net worth and their self-worth, but it’s hardly relevant now. Today’s women, single or married or divorced, are accomplished, independent, and affluent enough to buy their own jewelry and make their own statements. They celebrate their commitment to themselves and are not shy about sporting the rewards to prove it.

The word brooch has its origins in the Latin word broccus , which mean “projecting.” Madeline Albright used her brooches in ways true to the intention of the word. Through them, she was able to project hope, to protest frustration, to communicate pride in herself and respect for others. In an international diplomatic community still dominated by men, she made a statement and became a presence through something so entirely feminine as a pin.

Sometimes the strongest statements are the subtle ones.

May 18, 2017

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California Smilin’

There are some places on earth that just make you smile. California is one of those places and, having just returned, I am happy to report that it is still there. Despite dire predictions of its imminent demise due to earthquakes, fires, floods, and Jerry Brown, everything is still pretty much as it’s always been, especially in Southern California: the jacaranda are blooming, the surf is crashing, and the traffic is barely moving. The sun shines even when it doesn’t because, as Joan Didion famously put it, “The future always looks good in the golden land because no one remembers the past.”

Actually, California exists in the never-ending, ever-expanding present, which is probably why I like it so much. I, too, feel “present” when I’m there. The state’s long and varied history, from early Native Americans through European and Spanish explorers, up to being a Mexican territory and then US statehood in 1830, stretches seamlessly into today’s sprawling, bustling beauty of urban development and breathtaking natural landscapes. The state’s official motto is “Eureka,” a Gold Rush exclamation meaning “I have found it.” Evidently, a lot of people have.

At just about 40 million, California is the most populous state in the union, and one of the world’s most diverse concentrated populations. No one race or ethnic group constitutes a majority, 27 percent of residents are foreign born, and more immigrants settle in California than anywhere else in the country. In short, the American Dream is alive and well there. Even as its roots are deeply buried in the discovery of gold, the production of fame, and the lure of technology, the future is always NOW in California, and it’s always exciting.

This recent trip was with my husband, not my mother, and it began in San Diego, a beautiful city that defies every stereotype of a Navy-base border town. We spent a wonderful day in Balboa Park, home to museums, galleries, botanical gardens and the famous San Diego Zoo. Initially constructed for the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal, the buildings in the Spanish Renaissance style are situated along the broad El Prado walkway (where you’ll also find a fabulous restaurant by that name).

No trains for us this time; rather, we rented a car and drove up the Coast, making a stop in tony La Jolla, for an elegant dinner surfside in The Marine Room (since 1941), and a visit to peaceful Mission San Juan Capistrano (1776), where mud nests in the stone ruins await the return of the swallows from Argentina on St. Joseph’s Day. The mood is calm and gracious this far south, but the atmosphere changes decidedly as you move into Orange County. Multi-lane avenues and intricate freeways connect Pacific piers and volleyball-crazed beach towns with the manicured suburbs situated in Santa Ana Canyon. Tall palms wave over all like flags on a racetrack. This is the Southern California everybody recognizes: “Gentlemen start your engines.”

We stopped in Long Beach to “up our glamour quotient” by staying on the Queen Mary. She was launched in 1936 as the grandest ocean liner ever built, and was considered the “only civilized way to travel” by European royalty and Hollywood movie stars, whose photos are all over the ship. One-way trans-Atlantic passage in a first-class stateroom, which was our room accommodation, was $1056 in the 1930s — enough money then to purchase a house! Few people realize that for five years during WWII, The Queen Mary performed as a troopship and transported more than 800,000 Allied troops. She was retired in 1967 and remains permanently moored in Long Beach as a hotel and tourist attraction.

Having hobnobbed with the ghosts of the greats on the ship, we were ready for prime time players by the time we hit LA. First stop: Paramount Pictures, founded in1914, is the only major motion-picture studio still operating in Hollywood. This the studio that has garnered numerous best picture Oscars, including for “Titanic” and “The Godfather,” the studio that created such stars as Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Gary Cooper and Bob Hope, the studio that took over Desilu Productions and the beloved Lucy, and the studio that still today produces major motion pictures and currently popular television shows such as “This Is Us.” Paramount is not only a historic landmark, but a defining symbol for all things Hollywood, including our movie star president Ronald Reagan. You walk through the iron “wishing gates,” and you understand the hopes and aspirations of all those casting-call extras who waited outside hoping to be chosen, all those golden dreamers who were drawn to Hollywood — all those who still are.

I had to revisit Hollywood Boulevard, the Walk of Fame, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (1927) and the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (1926) where my Mother and I stayed 60 years ago. The whole strip is a bit seedy now, full of souvenir shops and throngs of tourists, but the sidewalk is still studded with stars and the notable handprints/footprints in cement in front of the Chinese Theatre remain mostly intact. Maps to the homes of celebrities in Beverly Hills (updated!) are still sold on the street corners, and bald guys smoking cigars and driving Bentley convertibles still cruise down Rodeo Drive. It’s all there, still — the real and the imagined, the past and the future, the sublime and the ridiculous — now and then and forever.

And it all makes me smile.

May 1, 2017

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Toward Sunset

The Sunset Limited, the oldest named train in the United States, runs 2000 miles from New Orleans to Los Angeles. Put into service in 1894, it was Southern Pacific’s premier train, offering both westbound and eastbound service in a little over 43 hours at a speed of just under 50 mph. The Sunset Limited is still operated by Amtrak today, albeit with less frequency and a great deal less style than it possessed in its heyday.

In 1950, The Sunset Limited became a “streamlilner,” a stainless-steel, diesel-powered connection of some 15+ cars that included a formal dining car, an informal grill/ lounge, overnight sleeping cars configured as full bedrooms, compartments or roomettes, and “chair cars” with reclining leg rest seats. All were operated by the famous Pullman Car Company, founded by George Pullman who had pioneered the development of the “sleeper berths.” Before commercial airlines and an improved highway system offered more convenient alternatives, the sleek, streamlined passenger trains of the 1950s were THE most elegant, THE most stylish, and THE most comfortable way to go long distances.

So that’s how we went, my mother and I, to California on our first big vacation in 1957. Not that we were wealthy or particularly sophisticated, you understand, but we were in need of an adventure and the newly-opened Disneyland beckoned. Everyone, her friends and family in our small Texas town, told her it was “unseemly” for her to take off across the country alone with a little girl — she was recently widowed and I was only nine. They insisted she simply couldn’t do such a thing, but she said “Watch me.”

We boarded The Sunset Limited in San Antonio, where the romance of train travel began the moment we stepped into the beautiful Sunset Station (photo above). Built in Spanish Mission Revival Style in 1902, Sunset Station is no longer used as a terminal now, but it is on the National Register of Historic Places and is still rented for special events. Walking there today, I am struck by how small it is, considering that San Antonio was a major passenger hub in the 1950s, with trains not only going East to West, but North to Chicago and connecting up the East Coast. But back then, I had the perspective of a little girl who had not been on any big trips or spent time in any big cities. Like Harry Potter transported through a train-station portal, I walked into Sunset Station that June and fell in love with both.

We boarded about noon and were escorted to our private compartment. I was delighted. It had a large picture window with a fold-out table and banquette benches on either side so we could sit and watch the passing landscapes. These benches, our porter later explained, folded down and turned into beds. We also had our own tiny bathroom, a full-length mirror, and enough storage space for our carry-on “train cases.” As nice as these accommodations were, however, I was already visualizing the passenger-train mysteries I had read, and so could hardly wait to get out into the public cars to identify suspicious characters who might be plotting nefarious deeds!

We went to lunch in the club car, where I had my very first triple-decker club sandwich held together by frilly toothpicks. To this day, I never make a club sandwich without using frilly toothpicks and I never fail to smile at the memory. It took a little practice to get our “rail legs,” especially for my mother in her high heels, but we made it to the lounge where we played Go Fish with a deck of blue, Southern Pacific playing cards. (Actually, I think I still have them somewhere.)

That evening, of course we dressed up for dinner in the full-service dining car, its tables for four covered in white and set with fresh flowers and fine china. The steward seated us, handed us menus, and explained that our orders were to be written on small order cards. Choices were extensive: appetizers and salads, dinner entrées and specialty dishes, homemade desserts. Always a hearty eater, I decided on steak, the most expensive item on the menu at $2.75. Another lone passenger had been seated with us and he and my mother were talking quietly when the waiter set my meal down in front of me. “Oh my goodness!” the man suddenly exclaimed. “She’ll never eat all that.” And then it was my turn to say, “Watch me.”

As we headed toward sunset, we watched the land roll by, crossing the High Bridge of the Pecos River and rumbling toward El Paso; the next morning, we awoke in the desert of Arizona between Phoenix and Yuma, and then moved on into Southern California. Finally, after 30 hours and a dozen stops, we pulled into Union Station in Los Angeles. I was exhilarated, even though there hadn’t been a murder aboard!

The train trip alone was quite an adventure, but that was only the beginning of a magical week. Disneyland, with its jungle cruise, spinning tea cups and rocket to the moon, provided unimaginable thrills — and favors for my future Disney birthday parties. We stayed at the grand Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, itself a sort of Fantasyland, promoting movie studios and glamorous stars with their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I have a postcard from the famous Brown Derby Restaurant on Vine (no longer there) that my mother sent to my grandmother. She wrote, “We had lunch here today and Stephanie got autographs from five movie stars!”

This great adventure of ours was 60 years ago, and my mother and I (she’s 93) still talk about it as “the trip of a lifetime.” It was the first of many trips that instilled a passion and shaped a lifetime for me, but only because my mother dared to be bold, to show me that the world is a wonderful place with much to teach and little to fear. In recent years when I was about to depart for Egypt — or China or Africa or Turkey or the UAE —people would say, “What? Where? You can’t go there.”

Watch me.

April 17, 2017

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Fiesta! Una Cosa de Mujer

Fiesta starts in San Antonio this week, a sure sign that the doldrums of winter and sacrifices of Lent are over and that the weather is certifiably warm enough for beer and margaritas. Fiesta is ten-day city-wide celebration of Tex-Mex history and culture that has been going on for 126 years now. What began as a small parade of flower-bedecked carriages in front of the Alamo in 1891 has evolved into an internationally-known celebration that truly offers something for everyone at every age for every interest and at every taste level. Fiesta attracts around 3.5 million visitors each year to San Antonio; the Battle of Flowers Parade, alone, draws almost a half million spectators along its route.

There are several parades during Feista, in the streets and on the River, with flowers, flames, and lights; there’s even one for pooches. There are the foods of Fiesta: Mexican, German, Cajun, Gulf seafood, barbecue, even flaming Cheetos, all with beer and margaritas, of course. There is the music: mariachis, along with the San Antonio Symphony, conjunto tejano, military and marching bands, and rock groups and New Orleans jazz, not to mention the musicians and mimes in Market Square. And then there is the pageantry and tradition of it all, from the stunning coronation of the Queen of the Order of the Alamo and her royal court, to the craziness of “Cornyation,” the irreverent satire and outrageous spoof of Fiesta royalty that has raised millions of dollars for AIDS-related charities. Proceeds from all Fiesta events, by the way, go toward charities and conservation, and the entire enterprise depends on thousands of local volunteers.

Not surprisingly, most of them are women. In fact, the whole Fiesta celebration was begun by a woman, Ellen Sladen, the wife of a congressman, as a salute to the heroes of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto. It was her idea to decorate those carriages in front of the Alamo back in 1891, and to have two lines of them confront each other and the occupants pelt each other with fresh flowers — thus, the Battle of Flowers. Today, the Battle of Flowers Parade is the only one in the country to be planned and directed completely by women; it is second in size only to the Tournament of Roses Parade.

Fresh flowers are no longer used on the floats, however; rather, paper and foil flowers are handmade by Mary Rose Garcia and six other women, all relatives of her mother who began doing this in 1923. These women work five days a week, 8 hours a day, from late January to April, to make what is needed for the 38 floats; this year, that amounts to over 15,000 new flowers, many in the new colors of dark green to enhance the 2017 theme of Global World Heritage locations. (The four San Antonio missions, plus the Alamo, were named, collectively, as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015.)

Then there is the Chair of the cascarones, overseeing a group of 25 female volunteers who make the 25,000 to 30,000 confetti eggs that are sold, and cracked over the heads of revelers, during Fiesta. Having a cascarón cracked over your head is supposed to be good luck, and is a Mexican tradition enjoyed throughout South Texas all year long, especially during the Eastertime. (As a teenager, when a boy cracked a cascarón on my head during our spring carnival, it meant he liked me. I used to make cascarones for that spring carnival as a student when I was in Catholic school, but we won’t get into that now.)

And finally there are the seamstresses, the talented and patient women who painstakingly hand embroider and embellish with thousands of beads and sequins the 10 foot trains that trail the dresses of the 25 duchesses and the princess of the royal court. Under the direction of the Mistress of the Robes, who determines the theme, and local designers who then interpret that theme, seven women work from the previous August to create these extravagant garments. (The female royalty is chosen each year by the all-male members of the Order of the Alamo, and King Antonio, who escorts the Queen and who is usually two or three times her age, is chosen from among the all-male members of the Texas Cavaliers. But we won’t get into all that either right now.)

Suffice it to say that, by and large, Fiesta is a woman’s thing, una cosa de mujer. Yes, it is a wonderful event, a genuine source of civic pride and distinction for San Antonio, for South Texas, and for all the various cultures and traditions that co-mingle here, but it has a legion of “behind the scenes” heroines who are all too often unsung. That, too, is a Texas tradition.

So what else is new?

April 1, 2017

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Easter Flower Pickin’

Texas may be known for many wild things, but the best, by far, are its wildflowers. Every spring from early March through April, highways and hillsides in Central Texas and the Hill Country are blanketed in blue and pink. More than just the official state flower, the Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) has become THE iconic symbol of Texas, reproduced on t-shirts and souvenirs, notecards and dinner plates, and painted, photographed, woven and stitched by everyone from professional artists to school children. A maroon hybrid called Alamo Fire (Lupinus texenis—Fabaccae) was even developed for cultivation by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service in the University’s school color! (Available from www.wildseedfarms.com ) That just shows how far those Aggies will go for all things Texas!

These days, traditional bluebonnet seeds are sold in nurseries all over the country, though I can tell you from frustrating experience that they rarely grow. That’s probably because indigenous wildflowers need most what home gardeners don’t provide: native soil, some neglect and a drought. Lady Bird Johnson understood the advantage of local conditions when she encouraged President Johnson to get the Highway Beautification Act* passed in 1965. Today, over 50 years later, the explosion of color all along Texas highways owes its profusion to what is unofficially called “Lady Bird’s Bill,” and to the 30,000 pounds of native wildflower seeds sown by the Texas Highway Department each year.

Bluebonnets may be the star of the show here, but certain other varieties have strong supporting roles: my favorite, the Indian paintbrush or Indian pink (Castilleja indivisa) is similar in size and shape to the bluebonnet, but is a strong pinkish orange. Often the two flowers grow together creating broad swaths of vibrant pink and blue in the landscape. Then there is the delicate pink primrose known as buttercup (Oenothera speciosa), which only blooms for a day; the joyful Indian blanket commonly known as firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella), with its starburst of red, orange and yellow; the happy little coneflower or Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera), with its high crown and broad red-and-yellow brim that resembles a sombrero; and the beautiful, fluttering white Prickly poppy (Argemone Mexicana), which you dare not touch, and which the cattle will avoid even in a drought!

Such floral abundance has always provided ready Easter decorations in Texas. When I was a little girl, Easter preparations began in earnest when Lent was over on Holy Saturday. First, we dyed Easter eggs, always in solid colors and always too many. Then we would head down to Coleto Creek way out in the country toward Fannin to go “Easter flower pickin’.” We carried small buckets, bottles of water, and scissors for clipping, and my Mother would find a spot to park off the side of a little dirt road near the creek. Treading carefully and watching for snakes, we sought patches of profusion, where we were sure a bucket or two of flowers wouldn’t be missed and wouldn’t impede the proliferation of seeds for next year. Sometimes we’d have to move the car once or twice to get just the right mix. My grandmother, already elderly even when I was small, usually stayed in the car, managed the buckets and water, and complained about the heat.

Back at home, we’d lay out newspapers over the kitchen table where we cut and trimmed all the flowers and got rid of all the bugs. The blooms were sorted by type and condition; the longest, prettiest ones got arranged into one of my Mother’s prized milk glass vases. The smaller, shorter blossoms got woven in with long grasses, which I gathered from the vacant lot next door, and shaped into round Easter nests in front of the fireplace. By the end of the day, spring had come to our house. All we had to do was wait for the Easter bunny.

Interesting how childhood traditions endure and adapt. When I was a newlywed, my Holy Saturday Easter flower pickin’ meant picking out plants and flowers to bring home from a local flower shop, since there were few wildflower-coated hillsides in New York City. Pink and yellow tulips replaced bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush on the dinner table, and a tall, white potted Easter lily had pride of place in the living room. Later, after our son was born and we were living out in the suburbs, Easter flower pickin’ meant cutting some of our own home-grown tulips and daffodils, supplemented with an Easter-flower family field trip to one of the large local nurseries nearby. We still dyed eggs on Holy Saturday and built Easter nests, but with faux grass (less messy).

Now living in Texas again, I eagerly welcome the explosion of wildflowers in the spring and can actually pick bluebonnets myself on my morning walks down a little side road where I live. Easter is somewhat late this year, and the wildflowers have pretty much peaked, but I still have one last cluster of bluebonnets on my kitchen table. I will have to purchase assorted flowers for Easter arrangements, but come Holy Saturday, I will again dye eggs, make a nest for the chocolate bunnies, and begin to prepare our traditional Easter dinner of baked ham and scalloped potatoes. I won’t have to wait for the Easter bunny however, not because I am too old, but because I am the Easter Bunny.

HIP – HOP.

*Note: in the interest of “factual” information, the Highway Beautification Act was formed to control billboards, advertising and roadside junkyards, as well as to implement native landscaping along highways in all 50 states. Lady Bird Johnson, herself a native of East Texas, was passionate about preserving natural landscapes and cultivating native plants and flowers. In 1982, she and actress Helen Hayes established the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas, Austin, a 284 acre native plant botanic garden and resource center for conservation and education. www.wildflower.org

March 15, 2017

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Something New

Sustained concentration takes a lot out of you, especially when your project gets derailed at the end. (See “Goal Digger, 3/1/17) Buoyed by the promise of a rescheduled museum exhibition in the near future, I have now hung “Busted” in my studio in my own one-woman show. It inspires me to start on something new — as soon as I figure out what that will be.

I have several possibilities. Before I got consumed with this museum competition, I had begun yet another small piece in my Istanbul series: a whirling dervish done in rich fabrics with lots of movement. I have been collecting beautiful, distinctive fabrics, (and hauling them in my luggage) ever since my first trip to the Middle East a few years ago. In Egypt I not only learned about the many, many variations of thread count and finish and weave of those famous Egyptian cottons (from a generous and knowledgeable shirtmaker in Luxor), but I also became captivated by the intricate geometrics and artful appliqué of the Tentmakers of Cairo. They, in fact, inspired me to move beyond traditional block quilting into art quilts and appliqué myself, for which I then began to cultivate a more diverse stash of materials.

What quilter doesn’t collect fabric? For me, this has become one of the great joys of travel, as well as an immediate way to relive memories. Just looking at the fabrics, admiring their designs and feeling their textures reminds me of where I bought them — in a souk in Turkey, on the roadside in Africa, or in a modern shopping mall in Dubai. I have silks from China, tapestries from Spain, and laces from Greece; I have material that is hand-painted, hand-dyed, hand-embroidered, even hand-woven! Honestly, I have enough fabrics now to last me a lifetime — but of course, I will buy more, even at my local quilt shop.

If I don’t return to my dervish, I might tackle one of the other ideas that have been floating around in my head. I haven’t designed any one of them yet, but I have begun to accumulate fabrics, embellishments and found objects that might be suitable. It’s the old chicken-or-the-egg dilemma: which comes first, the design or the materials? To be sure, beautiful fabrics can be inspirations in themselves, but we need to design with them in mind rather than rushing out to buy something new for every new idea. I recently took a course from a well-known quilt artist and her first rule for our class project was to “Use what you have!” It’s a good lesson, but still a challenge, no matter how big of a stash you have — and I’m not just talking about fabric.

Anyway, after “Busted,” my first order of business was to clean up my studio so I could find what I have. It’s always a good idea to clear the worktable before embarking on a new project, especially when that worktable, and the counters and the cabinets and the couch and the floor and even the ironing board are all littered and cluttered, scattered and piled. I became a whirling dervish with a feather duster; I even took my sewing machine apart and removed all those fuzzy balls under the needle plate. And as I whirled, the ideas swirled around me. I could hardly wait to get started on “something new.”

That was a week ago.

Anyone who has ever worked at home is familiar with the way distractions can derail a good idea. You start off the day with your usual routines — exercise, breakfast, a quick check of your e-mail — but then: Turbo Tax wants me to get started on my taxes, my insurance company has begun processing my surgical bills, a friend sends hotel choices for a trip we’re planning … I take care of these little things, and then remember to take the meat out to thaw for dinner, and then double check that casserole recipe while I’m at it. Since I’m in the kitchen, I rinse out the coffee pot and load the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. On my way to my studio, I pop in a load of laundry, because it’s Monday and Monday is laundry day.

By the time I get into my sewing room, start flipping through my idea notebook and digging out some of those beautiful fabrics, I am already preoccupied with other things in my day and overwhelmed by the creative possibilities I have laid out before me. Too many ideas can also be a distraction. Besides, it’s almost lunchtime. I decide to have a yogurt, take a nap, and start again refreshed in the afternoon. But of course, the afternoon dribbles away too. Before I know it, a whole week is gone and I have nothing but a tidy house and balanced meals to show for it.

As a writer, I have always rehearsed my pieces in my heard before committing words to paper, so I have perfected the ability “to write” while performing mundane activities such as cooking and cleaning and doing laundry. I’ve even dictated stories while commuting. But you can’t really do that when pursuing a tactile art. Sure, you can roll ideas around in your head, but at some point, there has to be hands-on, focused attention to sketching, tracing, piecing, sewing. No matter how adept you are at mental visualization, that vision has to become a real thing. You simply cannot paint or sculpt, or sew, while you are also doing something else.

So today I am headed into my studio to get started on “something new.” As soon as I get this posted.