Funny

As Close to Heaven

It's only in the past ten or fifteen years that I've gotten back out to Suffolk Downs through the happy event of a friend claiming a Thoroughbred and asking if I'd take a few photographs of her horse, Sassy. It was as if I'd gotten a key to heaven. Since she was intent on taking care of Sassy as much as she could before heading to work, training dogs, I began hanging around, taking photographs and eventually doing interviews on video. I have quite an amazing collection of people talking about their experiences in this most difficult way of living. (Three of them have died.) I video taped Clemente, who tells everyone that I am his personal photographer and have made an X-rated video of him.  I still take photographs of him, whenever I can, and must, absolutely must, buckle down to putting together the video with all that work. I'm not that good at editing complex pieces and it would cost 7 or 8 thousand to have it done by the editor I've been working with. I've never been able to afford it and should just continue on with the trailer she made when I hoped to get a grant for the project.

 Clemente is a rascal from Puerto Rico who rattles on in a high-pitched voice. I often don't understand him, but K. always gets what he's saying. He was a jockey for many years, riding at tracks all over the country, then an exercise rider when I first met him, and now a hot walker and a groom. He was badly hurt in a fall and didn't stay in the hospital long enough, so he's often in pain, sometimes complaining, endlessly joking. Often I've spent an afternoon at the races, following him from one place to another, as he wanders here and there, taking to this person, to that one, introducing me and laughing, laughing, laughing. For some inexplicable reason, I find his face just fascinating. He's one of the people I'd never tire looking at. And never tire photographing.

I met him through my friend Joe who used him as an exercise rider. Joe told me about one day when Clemente was riding by on a white horse, a very white horse, and he yelled to Joe, "Look at me, a black man on a white horse," and Joe said, "Yeah, just like a fly in a glass of milk." Clemente says he was once white, but he's drunk so much coffee that he's turned dark brown. And he says he has a twin brother, the one locked in the basement, or the one who was in a bad mood yesterday. His family has gold mines, he says, and air planes and he's going to take us on one, to Puerto Rico. And he says Puetro Ricans no lie, no cheat, no do drugs. He's always laughing.

 When we first moved up to this god forsaken place, Boston, I used to take K, who was only nine, out to Suffolk Downs. I found it as comforting as I found the Greyhouse bus station...both places that reminded me of the relentlessness of New York as I knew it. K missed NY as much as I did, but she found the track frightening. Too many drunk men. And I soon realized that I couldn't take her with me. I was never interested in the horses, but in the people, and since she wasn't interested in the horses, it was more torture than pleasure for her.

 At some point, I got used to my new life, more-or-less, and stopped going out there, though I did take a class from MIT once. A very quiet young woman took the most marvelous photographs by just turning around and photographing those old guys checking their programs, yelling at the races. Back then, the grandstands were crowded on race days and she had a Rolei, a camera that you look down into to focus, and they didn't notice what she was doing. I'd hadn't been able to photograph there since as far as I was concerned, the earth would open up to swallow me if I took pictures of strangers.

 K. is quite horrified by the amount of money Clemente bets, but he says he doesn't want to leave anything for anyone to fight over and besides, if he gave his money to someone to save, what would happen if that person died? His money would be gone anyway. For instance, if he gave his money to me, and I died, would I have told K. where I'd hidden it? Well, she says, she'd buy a lot of clothes with it and he laughs, laughs, See? Loose my mon-ee.

We went out to the opening day of the track and to watch the Preakness. Usually Suffolk Downs opens on Derby Day, but the legislature in this state won't allow increased gaming, refuses to let slot machines into the track, or a casino to be built there, watches as all the money goes to the big casinos in neighboring states, pretending that lottery tickets sold by the state aren't gambling, etc., etc., so Suffolk Downs is going to hell in a hand basket with losses and didn't open when it usually does. I don't like chronic gambling any more than I like alcoholism, but obsessive gamblers bet on which rain drop will fall down the window pane faster. And I do like the people who make their livings, such as they are, in horse racing. They work endlessly hard to earn very little, most of them, at least.

This is as close to heaven as I'm going to get. We bet two dollars on four horses to win, not on any of the favorites and not on the one that won the Derby who Clemente said won that race because the jockey is from Puerto Rico and would win this race. Even I knew that would never happen. So, we bet on the long shots and nothing came in even though Astrology, the horse K. chose, came in third. We bet to win. K. said we should have bet on Shackleford, but that's just because the young woman sitting in front of us was telling someone about a horse named after a Russian writer and I looked at the Preakness listing and only found Shackleford, an explorer, and mentioned that to K., but we didn't put two dollars on it.

We had a great time.

I am well behind in blogging and hope to catch up with some photos of the wonderful dinner with Claire Benyon...that was a remarkable treat, meeting a wonderful New Zealander. I learned that good bloggers read faithfully and even read all the comments on the blogs they follow and realized that when I'm capable of keeping up with the blog reading, I never read the comments because, to me, that's like reading other people's mail...   obviously I've carried over my scruples into the wrong place. And I learned that I should answer every comment on my own blog...  oh, dear, apologies all around...and thanks for reading this!!

Earth Day in Chelsea and lots of other stuff

 Chelsea declared this Saturday as Earth Day and I went along to the parking lot in back of City Hall to get my green tee-shirt and decided to photograph various sites for the Chelsea Collaborative since I don't have the energy for serious, useful work. The most heroic attempt at cleaning and clearing was at this cove, near the Marina that's private... (This is in the fancy area of this small and extremely beleagured little city which is now predominantly Hispanic, Admiral's Hill, with townhouses and condos. There's a nice park where no one is allowed to lay soccer anymore. I used to scoff at anyone who lived here, but now I'm so tired of maintaining my two-family, all the snow, the garden, the roof, the oil tank, blah and blah, that I would, and maybe will, happily trade it for a condo there if I can possibly afford it which means if I can finally take the plastic off the windows because it's warm enough not to need heat and clear up enough to ask a realtor to look at it.)

These reeds were filled with endless debris, even syringes. The black bags are for garbage, nothing that might be salvaged. The white bags are for recycling. This distinction was quite heroic given the circumstances. Folks were actually stopping to try to unscrew and empty the bottles before putting them in the appropriate bag. One man, who is also part of the Community Garden, had been lobbying to get this as a clean-up site in the hope that wild life might be encouraged to re-inhabit it. It's going to take an enormous amount of work, but two hours of the heavy labor of twenty or thirty people did a bit.

One of the benefits of going around to different cleaning areas to photograph is that I got to see Mill Creek, a site that has taken twenty years and probably a lot of money,  to recover. A white heron, a gorgeous thing, was standing out in the flowing water. Two plastic bags floating on the reeds hardly disturbed the general restoration of this site. Now there's a small park for kids up the path and an area where hot dogs and non-dogs were served to all of us.

One of the things I told Elsa is that I'm tempted to outline sections in my garden and photograph the before and after. I bought clothes line at the Dollar Store and proceeded to weigh it down with bricks and take the before photographs. Then I dug out some weeds, etc., which truly showed me what an insane idea this is because I went to sleep afterwards. I don't seem to be able to do any gardening, even in small doses. My body does not like it.

The photographs of what I accomplished in the small amount of time I worked will look a lot better than these. I'll probably abandon this project.

Elsa said the idea reminded her of work done by various folks in some previous decade, I don't remember which one. But for me, it's attached to my plan to put string grids across my shelves and then write down where every object came from and what it means to me. I thought that would  make a really interesting bit of work -- photographs with extensive text. About twenty years ago.  Of course, I would never have shown it anywhere. And I didn't do it because I couldn't get the strings to look like a grid.

This project, passe as it probably is, and impossible as it will be to manage, given the size of my garden and the general mess, probably won't get done, either. But it was fun to think about.

This is the sushi lunch that Elsa art directed. I also have some nice photographs of the empty plates (we ate everything, everything ) and her paying the bill, but enough is enough.

Birthdays

This particular photograph is out of focus and I thought about just bagging it, but actually it's so sweet and earnest. Elsa is an enthusiastic person, generous and curious, so this really does look like the way she is. I'm interested, also, though more reserved, so this is a rare image that actually shows that I'm quite friendly, when you get to know me, and quite content. 

I always remember Elsa's birthday at the end of April, probably because mine is a bit sooner in the month. I spent mine in the community garden, taking photographs and planting onions and barely survived it. Actually I thought my daughter would forget it, but I've become so emotionally deadened, that it wouldn't have bothered me, not like the way it bothered me when my father forgot it, but that was because he was getting so old and losing track of details he'd never lost track of. If Krissy had forgotten it, I don't think I would have minded, but she didn't. 

 So, when I got an e-mail from Elsa asking whether my birthday had already happened, I said we should have lunch and she said yes and we had lunch on HER (this really deserves capitalizing) birthday! What could have been better. I got to redo my birthday and we had sushi (she says I take the best food pictures, but they are on another camera so you will not get to see how she art directed the photographs of our respective and gorgeous plates of vegetarian sushi) and she took a Polaroid 20x24 of us in her studio.

She is the goddess of this huge camera, and instrumental in lobbying for the continued production of the film and chemicals. And she loves this monsterously large machine which is so expensive to use. But actually fits her very well. I'd prefer to travel with a camera, but she has made a home for the Polaroid, a studio with lots of photographs on the wall and postcards, strobe lights and background paper, and the essence of Elsa's ability to make anyone comfortable with her questions and conversations as she potters.

After I was back in the studio,  I remembered that some years ago I took a lot of video footage when Elsa took photographs of us and included Krissy and Bogie....that was one of those many things I do which I love doing and then forget about even though they are actually very precious. What could be more interesting than having taped the whole process as Elsa measures where we're standing, disappears behind the camera, stands with us, talking all the time about something or other.

 I love listening to her. She would be an excellent person to accompany someone to a doctor visit, though I don't know if she likes doing this. But she's so pragmatic and matter-of-fact and would say, "Well, that's not good news. But let's look it up and see other ways of handling it (acupuncture and herbs in addition to traditional medicine). And you've had a good life and should get a few more years of it, so make the best of it."

I am very good at going to the doctor with people and always glad to do it. I'm quite non-reactive and useful under those circumstances, but I don't do the afterwards research that she does...and probably am not as comforting because I look so damn forlorn. I was actually extremely happy to be with Elsa, not the least bit worried or fretful, but I look miserable. When she's thinking, her face closes up, but she doesn't look as if it's the end of the world.

Elsa's a grandmother! How can that have happened? I asked her a question like...how could we have gotten so old... and she said, "Well, we weren't hit by a car when we were crossing the street and didn't die of some disease or get in an accident," and I said, "No, I meant how did so much time go by," and she said, "Oh, that's a different question." But how did so much time go by? How is Isaac married and a parent and living in San Francisco? How did Elsa and I get to our ages? The memories are so vivid and seem so recent that it's absolutely peculiar. But that is a different question.

I love Elsa and always feel so much better when I see her. That's a fact. But why haven't I seen her for well over a year? It's that sort of slippage, the not paying attention to those who matter and what's interesting, not making the effort to call, or e-mail, to get together. Every time I see her, I swear that I'll lobby to see her once a month. And then don't. What I liked about those olden days, in New York, when I was scrabbling around, were the long afternoons of just hanging around with a friend, talking. Then I moved up here and met successful people and learned that having a friendship means having lunch every now and then. But now that I'm retired, I could make it mean more than that. Or happen more often. That's one of the benefit, if I'll only take advantage of it.

Butterflies

 All last night, I was lost. Somehow my ex and I were in separate hotel rooms, but when he left, I didn't know where my room was, there was one of those elevators that go round and round, shaking, stopping at half floors, in a castle that's a hotel, where is floor 5 and 1/2, and where is the room, and why are papers torn all over the floor, and my daughter's toys broken, and all that jewelry, and why can't I get to my parents' house in Nova Scotia and, oh, isn't this a fascinating idea, a plastic box with sand and jewelry, just shake it and a new image is revealed, quite beautiful. It was casually put together (held by tape) by a young college girl at the Rosenberg's house, where are Marv and Lilliann? And more, much more of these dreams. It was awful to be asleep.

I wake up exhausted. But I was exhausted yesterday, only revived briefly by the Zumba class.

Last Friday and Saturday, I put together two videos -- one from the community garden and the other of the Fiesta de las Mariposas. Though I know how to edit with Final Cut Express, I don't know how to edit with it and am not entirely sure what I'm doing. So it takes longer. But it takes a long time, anyway. And my body hates sitting. But I couldn't get up. I even lost track of time and was almost late to lunch with a friend, that was followed by tea with another friend.

Graciously, Margaret checks the Mariposa Fiesta video and informs me that the title is incorrect in Spanish and she changes it to Fiesta de las Mariposas. This time I didn't give her editing credit because that was my only mistake. Last time, she got the editor title for Carmen demonstrating how to make butterflies with wire and netting. There was a tiny bit in there about something or other, me and the camera, etc.... Margaret is the important ingredient in these videos with Spanish speakers, but she was also important on Sunday afternoon because the one about the first two days of work in the garden made her happy -- all those folks working, able to see themselves on Chelsea Cable TV, all those kids playing and shoveling.

(One sterling quality about Margaret is that she laughs out loud when she's happy. I almost never laugh out loud. And besides, without Margaret, I wouldn't have gotten in the Senior Citizen Center, video taped the quilting ladies, etc, etc...........)

Now my problem is printing titles on the 7 copies that I made of the Mariposa Fiesta. I'm determined that what I'm now doing about events in Chelsea, (additionally trying to get as much of the oral history as I can) will go into an archive. When I moved here in 1985 and did a photo project with oral histories, there was no place to show the framed photos except at a local branch of a state school. So they've all been dispersed. Fortunately, I found out that the local library does have an archive. Though it's an attractive building, it has no charm for me since you can't walk into the stacks. But at least it has a room where boxes of old photos are store.

The next video that will need Margaret is of the women actually making the butterflies, most of them with recycled paper and glitter that was actually made in America, it's that old. I was very grateful that the women allowed me to tape them. I even taped hanging the butterflies in the large all-purpose room, but my daughter somehow taped over the first half, so all those hard-working ladies have vanished, leaving Carlos on the ladder, hanging butterflies from the ceiling.

What I love about it all is that sometimes the women start singing when they are making butterflies, and some of them dance when they are handing the butterflies to Carlos who dances a little while he's hanging them. Two women even sang unaccompanied solos at the Fiesta. (Spanish and English)

I'm trying to learn bits of Spanish -- oruga = caterpillar. Da Nada. Deficile (that's useful for the exercise classes which really are difficult.

When I was in Tucson, and listening to Nance giving English lessons on the phone or through skipe, I heard lots of laughing. She's another person who laughs a lot. I though about giving similar lessons, but I'm not a good phone person. If a person was actually around me, she or he could at least tell that I'm reasonably friendly in a calm way. But I'm not very conversational and I don't have that wonderful ability to laugh.

Lucky Nance. Lucky Margaret. Lucky Krissy.
Lucky me for different reasons.

quilts

So, here is the scoop, but not the only reason I haven't been caring for my blog. I seem to have been spinning around since I got back form Tucson, always busy, busy working, making busy work. But here's the first quilt I made after I joined, yes joined, the Empty Spools Quilters on Friday mornings at the Chelsea Senior Center. After making a video about them, hanging around all those weeks, drinking coffee and eating cookies, they invited me to join and make quilts for babies in the Intensive Care Unit of Boston Medical Center. I couldn't resist. I'd fallen in love with these ladies, all of them in their eighties, some in their upper 80's... (I am particularly fond of Helen, a tiny woman with the eye of a hawk, telling me what I've done wrong and insisting that I rip the stitches out. "You don't have to go so fast. Slow down," she says.)

Being with them, I realized that in the past I'd find a way of inserting that I have an inter-racial daughter and wasn't married to her father in conversations when I met a new person. That set up my political and social stance so that I never had to say much more. People, more-or-less, knew what was appropriate to talk about around me. And it wasn't negative racial statements. I haven't done that at the Senior Center, so sometimes I hear, "My mother wanted me to marry anyone, just to get married, as long as he wasn't black, of course." And I don't flinch. These are ladies who've grown up in a poor, close knit community, haven't gone to college (I don't think any of them have), worked in factories, are Catholic and think about going to mass and who has just died, some friend they've known all their lives. In other words, I don't wave my usual political banners, but fly under the radar and am, actually, quite happy there. Except that something I'm doing bothers my back horribly.  I leave there at noon on Friday, barely able to walk because my sciatic nerve has kicked in. My daughter says I'm crazy to go somewhere, do something, that makes me feel to rotten afterwards, but I love being there. I just HATE making quilts.

In the olden days, when it made sense to do it because I was too poor to buy many clothes and when cloth and yarn were so cheap, I made wrap-around dresses, long three-tiered skits,  Krissy's jumpers and long skirts, and knit sweaters. It no longer costs less to do that than to buy them. It's a luxury to knit yourself a sweater. A simple one costs, maybe, $90 in yarn...   But I sewed. And was terrible about finishing anything. I hated to hem, but eventually I got everything done....after much stalling around.

At any rate, I just wanted to make a red quilt, red and red and red. And didn't think at all about how the squares would fit together. It took three of us to find a decent pattern so it looks alright from a distance, not that any mother wrapping her baby in this will ever see it from a distance.

I thought that if I finished a quilt, about 40"x40", I was done. But oh, no, you've got to make a back for it. Naturally there isn't enough cloth to easily find a whole piece that will look decent with the colors of the front, since the cloth is all donated...  I was crushed when I had to make my first back...here it is.

Then, damn it all, you've got to cut a batting to put between both of them. And then you have to pin it all nicely so that Mary can sew the quilting...she takes it and whirrs it through the sewing machine. That was once done by hand, women sitting around the frame, finishing a large quilt. Quilting the quilt. Or perhaps they stretched it on a table in the kitchen and sewed alone...but I think that much of quilting had a component of shared work, like raising a barn. So, here are the components of my first quilt which is now waiting for Mary.

All this reminds me of my friend, Marion, who made many quilted photos based on specific, historical patterns when she was getting her Masters. (I was very impressed by her premise.) She has always been interested in women's work and must have read a great deal about the history of quilting, the origin of certain traditional patterns...a long, unrecognized, but important form of creativity, decoration, art. I've always admired her ability to delve into what's behind the surface of what I notice -- oh, a nice quilt on the bed -- and then don't bother to think about. This was long before quilts, like those of the women from Gee's Bend (is this right?) were shown in museums and became high-priced collectors items.

And it reminds me of how often she and I laughed about our projects all those years ago -- those patterns, those damn dresses, that fabulous fabric store on Second Avenue and 5th (?) Street, all that earnest work we did.

This is my second quilt. I knew that I didn't want to sew so many 4" pieces together so I made 5 squares of four inchers...then used for solid 8" pieces and then the larger 16" pieces. When you've sewn together 4 little squares,you have to cut them all down so that they're the same size. I didn't know that...this involves a rotary cutter, a cutting board and a clear, heavy plastic gismo with measurements on it... so for the first quilt, I had to do quite a bit of cutting down.

Yesterday Eileen put together a quilt that I liked, but she didn't. But it doesn't matter to her whether she likes them. She just zips them together. I could't do that, though I haven't been making baby quilts for 31 years like she has. Maybe I'd just work on whatever is available, have the philosophy of using up squares that have been hanging around...  Well, anyway, I liked what she'd put together.

So, then I was done with the front and started the back. No easy thing since all the fabric is donated and there aren't necessarily pieces large enough for a back. Therefore the back for the purple quilt was pieced...five strips of fabric that I found by rummaging in the backstairs closet, taking out the big roll of batting, and various plastic boxes, digging around. 

But, by the time I got it pieced together and held it up so that Eileen could take this picture, they decided it will work well for the front of a quilt. So, next Friday, I will have to find TWO backs, put batting between them, tape it all down, pin it and I'm done with three quilts...

I should

write about Japan because that's what's consuming all of us...the thought of so many people dying, of their homes being destroyed, the families with nowhere to live, the boats, cars, trucks tossed as if they were toys, seeing all those image....I was talking with a friend who said, "How lucky we are," and "There's nothing to do but to do the best we can." She's done a lot of community work, political and community building. And that's really all I can do...since there's nothing, absolutely nothing I can do (except, I suppose send a contribution) about all that suffering.

On Friday, two days after I got back from Tucson, the day of the sunami, I went to the Empty Spool Quilters at the senior center, where I've been spending many Friday mornings with these women. They've been making quilts for babies in the I.C.U. at Boston Medical since 1989. There are six left. And now I've joined the group.  Angela has already started making the quilt that she's going to donate to the Chelsea Community Garden for fund raising. These squares are just gorgeous...sewn against a 10" square of newspaper so that very small pieces can be patched on. 

I have to say that I was exhausted after those three hours. My first quilt is close to having the squares all sewn together...but not close enough. My idea was red, red, pink, purple, all together now. But I realize that it does make sense if there's some planning. My general attitude is Why Plan? And that usually stands me in good stead, but it took three of us twenty minutes to  make more sense of my squares than I had thought necessary.

It is work -- quilting. Physical work. Even though they, all of whom are in their eighties, say it's fun, a good way to pass the time, something to do in the evening. But there's a lot of measuring, cutting, bending, pinning and unpinning, sewing, leaning over, cutting, etc. They laughed when I complained since I am a baby.

I did look at houses in Tucson. Though this was on a busy street, there was very little noise to be heard inside. And it was large, interesting. I'm not ready, yet, but part of me could have jumped into this house if only it had air conditioning, rather than evaporative cooling.

Imaging a yard of dirt and cactus. Bare. Sparse. Dull to look at, really, but it would be a great place to live.

First of all, it was eighty degrees for many of the days I was there. And the park near N. and W's house has a lot going on, including drumming that starts at 3 on Sundays. I imagine that most drumming groups are welcoming, as was this group. One lady, banging on some interesting looking metal instrument, was using oxygen and in a wheelchair. Her daughter must have pushed her up for the afternoon. What can be better than a group that's so inclusive?

If I move to Tucson, I'll join this group.

The kitchen manager in Rincon, the local hang-out, restaurant, grocery store, had this tattoo drawn on when she was older, she said. It took her a year to decide exactly what she wanted , but her niece had a book with an illustration of these wolves. And so ...  at that point, she had a job, an important job, so she had to have a whole wardrobe of shirts that covered it up. 

Older women seem to like it, she told me, when I slobbered over it.

It's far more gorgeous than this photo.

For the first few days I sat in the comfortable chairs at Rincon, eavesdropping. The conversations were mostly about stocks and also about the viscosity of oil in pipelines. One nice, old (maybe six years older than me) fellow had lived in a Buddhist community in L.A. and had a large part of developing a still-successful community garden around there. After that he lived off the grid, but now has moved to Tucson, for health reasons.

And then one morning, by good fortune, a fellow sat down who obviously had planned to drink coffee and read the New York Review of Books. Well, I thought, this is interesting, everyone else is reading about stocks, and was glad that we began talking. And even gladder that he was willing to take out a temporary adoption of me, drive me out to meet a couple who have been restoring an old adobe house -- what a gorgeous place they've been saving for the last nine years and to see the racetrack and where the bats roost during the day. 

It turns out that his wife worked with my friend, N., in the line of small world coincidences. And that they live on the other side of the park where folks learn to walk on tight ropes and juggle and drum on weekends and where we went for a walk with his dog, Gillie................  In case anyone is interested in casting this dog in a starring role in a clever dog movie, I have many more photographs........