You guys, I gotta phone a friend. Pendennis is helping me out tonight because I am in the weeds, eating weeds, wearing an outfit made of weeds, with lots of homework on the subject of being in the weeds.
Pendennis has been compiling a list of second-look-worthy posts and here are three of them, now:
Here’s a pretty funny takedown of Mother Hubbard from 2014; this piece, called “Rejected,” dates way back to 2013 and contains a pep talk and a reality check for all of us; and this, ‘F’ as in ‘Forget It,” is as true today as it was two years ago.
Thanks, Pendennis. It’s not so bad in the weeds when you’re here.
Instant noodles for sale at Costco. Not that Top Ramen saved my life, not Cup O’ Noodles, but I support all instant noodle companies and their products. Image: Wikipedia.
Hey, gang.
I’m going to show you a homework assignment. For my Literature of the Senses class this week, we’re to write short pieces on the sense of taste. These are just one- to two-page writing exercises and I’ve put this together. I blogged about ramen noodles some years ago, and I did look back at this entry for reference, but it’s entirely retooled, as you’ll see.
It’s hard to write stuff and it’s hard to write about hard stuff. It’s hard to think about hard stuff that happened. Maybe I should go bake cupcakes or something. Mmm … Cupcakes.
Anyway, here you are.
Top Ramen
As a young woman, many times had I fervently wished I could zap my appetite into nothingness so that I could slim down for the summer or whatever. It seemed so simple: Just don’t eat. I was never able to not eat, though, and usually not able to eat even slightly less. My appetite was stronger, in the end, than my desire to own smaller jeans.
But when I was dying in 2008 from failed abdominal surgeries related to advanced Ulcerative Colitis, my appetite really did vanish and it stayed gone for a dangerously long time, entirely without me trying. It turns out that having no appetite is a woeful, morbid thing.
My body knew my intestines were failing, so the appetite mechanism was doing me a favor by closing up shop. If nothing came in, nothing could leak out, internally. But my doctors and my family desperately needed me to eat, even a little, so that I could heal. If I couldn’t manage to start getting some nutrition, a feeding tube was in my future.
It was frightening to want nothing to eat, to snap my head away with a grimace when food came close to my mouth. It was alienating in the extreme that spaghetti with marinara sauce, my favorite food, did nothing to stir my appetite. I desired nothing. I craved nothing. There would be days at a time that I consumed only air and the dry skin on my lips as I chewed them whenever the doctors would call with test results, which were usually bad.
“Mary, honey,” my mother would ask, coming into the living room. “What would you like to try today?”
Every day, it was the same. The proposition of selecting and then trying to get food down was as exhausting as flushing my four IR drains, which had to happen twice a day.
“I guess ice cream,” I’d say, my voice barely above a whisper.
But when the Haagen Dazs hit my tongue, even if it were praline pecan or butter brickle, which in former days I would’ve devoured, I never managed more than two bird-sized bites before I had to set down my spoon and sink back into the couch, weary, baffled, and still unfed, the cream turning sour in my mouth. I was down to 118 pounds, 117, 116 …
We tried bacon. We tried mac n’ cheese. We tried bacon mac n’ cheese. We tried pudding, crackers, chips. Lasagna, Cap’n Crunch, sushi, tacos. Everything was revolting, everything was too much. I missed my appetite, which is to say I missed being part of the human race.
Then one day, when my mother asked me what I might like to try to eat, for some reason I blurted out, “How about ramen noodles?”
I meant Top Ramen, of course. The brick of noodles you get six-for-a-dollar with the flavor packet inside each plastic pack. Mom ran to the store and got a bagful. When she brought me a bowl of the piping hot noodles, for the first time in months, I felt hungry.
The cheap ramen was salty and easy to swallow. It was fun to eat, too, those long, curly noodles and the bullion broth free of bits, chunks, or vegetal matter of any kind. It is a benign food substance, Top Ramen. There is nothing to avoid, nothing to pick out. One can surrender to simplicity, to plainness. It is the anti-foodie food. The nutritional value may normally be in question, but for an invalid like me, the 400 calories of starch and salt were 400 more than what I was getting before and for some reason, my body accepted Top Ramen. I wanted to eat it and eating it did not make me sicker.
Every day, I ate the Chicken or Beef flavored ramen for breakfast (never Shrimp, gross.) The life-force noodle soup was my sole meal of the day. I even looked forward to the moment when my mother would bring it to me after I had had another interminable night on the couch, vomiting into my bowl, leaking sh-t from my ostomy bag onto the covers. Not every night was that bad; some were worse.
It makes me cry to think of my mother, there in her red bathrobe, coming in with a chipper smile and the wooden tray with the big bowl of Top Ramen for me, a cloth napkin, a fork, and a wide spoon. She’d place the tray on the big trunk we used for a coffee table and say, “Bon appetite, sweetie.”
“Thanks, Mama,” I’d say, and I’d start to eat, slowly, bringing a forkful of noodles all the way up, high above my head. I’d tip back and open my mouth, lowering the ramen slowly down onto my tongue and the day would begin that way, looking up at the ceiling, tasting the rich, savory broth clinging to the noodles. I would let it all slip down my gullet, hardly needing to chew.
Doesn’t she just look suuuuper over it? “Mujer de Pueblo” by Pedro Lira, c. 1910.
Do you ever have those days when you just cannotsew? As in, nothing you cut, stitch, or otherwise patch or quilt goes the way it should? Oh, me neither! But if you have a friend who has ever felt that way (cough, cough), you might want to show them this.
😉
Mary
p.s. Much love to all my new pals in Kentucky. Today was so, so great.
For those of you who are anxiously awaiting the Second-Ever PaperGirl Essay Contest, you shall have your chance soon; I’m thinking I’ll announce the next topic around Thanksgiving. But I’ll bet that some of you have dreams bigger than a one-time essay, hm? I’ll bet some of you wonder if you might like to start a blog.
Oh yeah, baby.
It’s a cool thing, having a blog. In fact, the ol’ PG is one of the best things in my life and has been one of the best things in my life for many years. Look how dedicated I am! I post 4-5 times a week, most weeks, and that’s while I’m in school and doing All The Things. Writing a blog must be pretty great, right? You bet it’s great, and you should start one of your own if you have been thinking about that. But there are things to know before you start, trust me on that.
Well, if you’ve been thinking about writing a blog — or writing, period, no blog necessary — and if you live in Chicago or can get here without too much trouble, you’re in luck: I’m teaching blogging for the University of Chicago Writer’s Studio again in November! The class meets once a week for four weeks, Tuesday mornings from 10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.; we’ve got a cozy classroom downtown, right off Michigan Avenue at the Gleacher Center at Cityfront Plaza.
Doesn’t that just sound great? You, me, classmates, blog writing exercises, reading homework, quick lessons in WordPress, and workshop time? By that date on the calendar it’ll be peak chai latte season, too, and my oversize sweater/cowboy boot/skinny jean game will be on point, y’all. Boom. Fall + writing class + sweater + chai latte = heaven itself.
Here’s the link to the info page. Sign up. Learn from someone who really loves this stuff and — yep, I’m going to say it — learn about yourself along the way.
Joan Flasch, c. 1985. Photo courtesy Merikay Waldvogel.
I don’t know if you noticed, but a few weeks ago, I went slightly dark here on the ol’ PG. I don’t mean that I was making depressing jokes or being generally gloomy; I mean that my posts were spotty and “content-lite,” let’s call it. There was a very good reason for this, but I didn’t even have the energy to go into it.
What was going on is that I was working as a journalist, I guess, writing a piece for F Newsmagazine that took 95% of my time, focus, and energy, both physical and emotional. The story I wrote is something I am extremely proud of, not because it’s perfect — it isn’t — but because I did something I’ve never done before: I wrote a profile of a special person who passed away too early and to do it properly (which was the only way to do it, obviously) required investigation, interviews, historical documents, and intense focus.
I grew to care for this person who passed away in 1988 and I grew to care about the people who cared about her and who took time for me and this story. It all happened because of quilts, but quilts are only the start of the story.
I’d just love it if you read the piece. It’s a feature-length story, so it’s a longer read. But you’ll be rewarded, I promise. And here is the link. Enjoy!
“Girl, Dog, and Trees,” by Bahniuk, 2012. Image: Panoramio via Wikipedia.
I wanted a picture of Las Vegas for this post.
But none of the photos of the strip were right. The glitter of the casinos and the vibrating neon lights didn’t strike me as “eternal” or “resilient” in the light of the mass murder, which is what I was hoping. I figured the lights would read as beacons of hope, but they didn’t. They frightened me. They made me feel sick.
Focusing was very difficult today because I kept thinking how the people who got down on the ground when they heard shots were doing exactly what we’re all supposed to do when someone is shooting because getting down on the ground is safer. But it wasn’t safer this time because the devil had scopes and cameras. This time, doing the safe thing was the wrong thing. Down was up; up was down. And death swept the ground.
If you know someone (or know someone who knows someone) who was wounded or who lost their life at the concert, I love you and I am sorry for this. If you don’t know anyone (or anyone who knows anyone) I love you, too, and I’m sorry for this.
Last night, in under 75 minutes, patchwork quilts generated $5,300.00 in Hurricane Maria relief aid. We did that. Together. And this should give you a deep hope, this act we did together. If we can turn quilts into food and medicine; if we can say “Yes” to the question, “Can you help me?”, we can make it. We can make it in the face of all this.
The picture I found for this post is more perfect than I could have hoped for: It’s Las Vegas. The image is filed in Wikipedia, right along with the pictures of the city, because Las Vegas isn’t just the strip or the casinos, of course: It’s the desert, the sky, the sagebrush, the sun. Las Vegas is a girl, running in pink shorts, giving chase to her dog across the little rocks, running to dinner, or her new baby brother, or to get to the hide-and-seek game.
Las Vegas is a little girl, 16 miles northeast of the city, running purely for the sake of going fast, for the sake of feeling the air on her soft, perfect cheek.
A stack of quilts does no one any good, really — unless it can do a LOT of good! Photo: Marianne Fons.
There’s so much pain right now. All over. On our shores. In our backyard. Buy a quilt and send your love and energy to a place where it’s darker than where you are now, maybe. And if it’s dark where you are, hang in there.
All the info you need should be in the auction, but I’ll do my very best to answer questions.
Pendennis, reclining on the back of Big Red, one of the quilts being auctioned off tomorrow! Photo: Me.
Wow! Setting up an auction is a lot of work. But it’s exciting. It’s actually one of the most exciting things I’ve done in a long time, I have to say. Helping feels great. (It sure feels better than doing nothing.)
In case you missed it: I’m going to sell ten quilts to raise money to benefit those down in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands who have had their lives turned upside down as a result of Hurricane Maria. I’m donating all the money raised to Americares.
Yesterday’s post gives a lot of details, so check it out.
And this post is going to serve the same purpose: to give more details. Instead of rushing through this and going off half-cocked, I’ve decided to start the auction at 7:00 p.m. CST, October 2, 2017; I will post the link to the auction here on the ol’ PG at that time! The auction will last two days, until October 4, 7:00 p.m. I’m hoping it won’t take that long to sell off quilts for hurricane relief, but who knows? Maybe no one wants homemade quilts by Mary Fons with help from Pendennis and simultaneously help their brothers and sisters in need… Cough! Cough!
A few more important things:
There’s a quilt I’ve decided to auction that is one of those should-I-or-shouldn’t-I situations. But I’ve decided on “should.” There’s a quilt I have called “Memories.” It was one of the first quilts I made. We featured it on Love of Quilting (Episode 1709), which some may remember because I talked about how I had actually lost three of the blocks from the quilt! I made this quilt 10 years ago and… It’s gorgeous. It’s really, really gorgeous, y’all, and it’s huge, at 90 x 90. Dawn Cavanaugh longarmed it and it’s just truly phenomenal, almost show quality.But… Well, it’s time. I want to help people and share the love of this quilt more than I want to have that quilt on the back bed, sitting under other quilts, you know? It’s done what I needed it to do for me. It’s given to me. Now, it can give to you, and give to other people. This one is a take-a-deep-breath-and-go-for-it quilt. It’s scary to give till it hurts, I gotta say!
I’ve decided that all the quilts will have a “Buy Now” price in case someone is really freakin’ out to get one. I don’t think this will happen (Jinny Beyer/Nancy Crow I am not — and they command higher prices than that!!!) but I figure there could be someone out there who wants to help people and wants a quilt and why not give the option? Can’t hurt, I guess, but I set it super high so that it will encourage people to bid and have fun with this.
Will you spread the word? I know, I know: The more people know about this, the more people you’ll be competing with to win! But remember: The point is to raise the most money possible, so please share about this auction on social media and on your various phone trees? We can do this together, and the lights are still off in Puerto Rico. They need us all.
Sneak peek! These quilts aren’t doing much good just sitting up at the house in Washington Island, now are they? Let’s put them to good use, my friends. Photo: Marianne Fons.
It’s hard to know how to help.
Texas. Florida. Mexico. The Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico. There have been so many devastating weather events lately, I spend a good deal of time feeling depressed and frightened and useless when these reports come in. And I feel guilty, too, because what can I do? Does $25 to the Red Cross really help? Should I go to Texas, to Mexico and try to sandbag or something? But how does that even work and won’t I just be in the way? What if I make everything worse and what if I put myself in danger on top of everything else? You probably recognize at least some of this unhappy thinking which, sadly, is 100% ineffective in all directions.
This morning, after clicking through the (more bad) news, my brow furrowed and I sank onto the couch with a groan. Our countrymen and countrywomen in Puerto Rico find themselves facing a humanitarian crisis that could threaten the stability of the region for a long, long time. It’s chaos down there and can you just imagine being a little kid down there right now? How scary it must be? All of a sudden, thinking about that, I just got fed up. I decided that nope, not today, no more stewing, no more gnashing of teeth and groaning and doing nothing. Today, I decided, today I would act, I would do an actionable thing to help someone out there on that island. That’s a U.S. territory, dammit, and more needs to be done.
I have come to understand that what is very helpful in a crisis situation like the one in Puerto Rico, the best thing for me to do is to send money — but I simply do not have extra right now. So I thought, “How could I raise some money?” Walking to and fro on my carpet, sipping my tea (I’m back on tea, coffee’s for the birds, at least in the morning), I remembered that I’ve been needing to make good on something I say to hundreds of people all over the country: Quilters who make lots of quilts should give lots of quilts away. “Don’t keep your quilts in a stack in a closet,” I say, sometimes even shaking my fist. “Give your quilts to people who want or need them! Go make more quilts! You will, anyway! Give it away, people!”
“Mary, Mary, wait a second,” you say. “Calm down.” And then, scratching your attractive head, you ask me why I’m on about quilts when I said I wanted to send money to Puerto Rico.
Wait for it!
Despite my fervent “Give away your quilts” message, which I do stand by — fervently! — I find myself with a quilt surplus right now. Some of these quilts are from my book, Make + Love Quilts, available at fine quilt shops everywhere; some are from the days of Quilty magazine; one or two were “just-for-funs”; one is a sample I made for the fabric line. I’ve given away other quilts over the years but somehow I haven’t yet given these quilts away and you know what? It’s time to turn them into money for people in need.
I’m going to auction off ten (10) quilts tomorrow, October 1st, 2017, and all the money will go to Americares to benefit victims of Hurricane Maria. This is going to be fun and awesome. Ten people will get their very own Mary Fons quilt and hundreds of people will get at least a little bit of help down in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico! And I’ll have more room in my house! This is great!
All of this will go down tomorrow. No, I don’t know exactly what time. I have homework to do and I have to set up this online silent auction thing. All will be revealed, don’t get antsy. Actually, no: Do get antsy! Be excited to buy a quilt from me and help so many people! But because I know there are burning questions, here are a few details for now:
Where’s the money going?
I spent a lot of time looking at which organization I want to send money to and Americares wins. They recently air-lifted $1.8 million in food and medical supplies to the Virgin Islands, and that was just another day at the office, if you will. Their website says: “Hurricane Maria: Emergency Relief Fund; For every $10 you donate today, we can provide $200 in aid — that’s the power of giving to Americares.” Think of the math, you guys: If I sell ten quilts at a minimum bid of $100 and no one bids a penny more, that’s $1000! By Americares’ math, we’re raising $20k, y’all! We can do it!
Will you be offended if I ask you how we know you’ll donate the money and not just spend it on candy corn pumpkins for Pendennis?
Nope, I won’t be offended. I actually have thought of this already and am going to make this part really fun: I’m going to make a video of me writing the check and sending the donation to Americares! Pendennis will come with me and Sophie will probably film it. (Sophie, will you please film the video?)
I don’t live in the U.S. and am wondering if this matters?
I guess I’d better limit participation to folks in the continental United States. But actually, if you want to pay the shipping of a quilt to your homeland, go for it! But you gotta pay shipping because that will eat into the donation.
What size are these quilts? And what else can you tell me about them?
The quilts are all lap- or queen-size. All the measurements will be listed on the silent auction thingy I’m going to try and make tonight. All quilts will have a label on the back that gives the date and says that I made it, you bought it, and together, we did something to help our brothers and sisters in the human race.
Is my payment tax deductible? I’m not a 501(c)3, so I think…no. I’m not sure, but I think what’s happening here is that you’re simply buying something and instead of me taking your money and spending it on candy corn pumpkins for Pendennis, I’m giving it away!
But what about this and that and how does this work and Mary Fons!!!
I have never done this before and I don’t know what I’m doing. Please do not get mad at me if I screw something up. We are doing this together. This is not about us, it’s about helping people who have lost everything, everything. That said, I’m going to try and make this easy and fun. Gulp.
HOT TIP: If you don’t subscribe to this blog, I highly, highly recommend doing that now. Because when you subscribe, you get an email in your email box whenever I post a post. Like, instantly, you get an email when there’s a new PaperGirl and that means you’ll instantly know when this whole thing goes live tomorrow. Your email is safe with me; even if I wanted to “sell” your name, I wouldn’t have the first idea about how to do that. Sell what? To whom?
Pendennis just ran into the room and picked three blog posts from the past to offer for today’s PaperGirl installment! But he selected these posts totally at random! And P. gave me six minutes to post this post, so I’d better get started.
She’s kind of like a ninja?? (Image: “Animal locomotion,” Plate 156. Eadweard Muybridge, 1887. Courtesy Wikipedia.)
It’s been hard the past few days to touch base because I can’t tell you where I am!
It’s true: I’ve been in [REDACTED] for the past couple few days because I’m on assignment for this magazine and I can’t let the cat out of the bag about which state Quiltfolk’s Issue 05 will spotlight. Not me, Satie! No way, Monet!
And while it’s fun to be a lil’ ninja and fly under the radar, it’s also the pits: I can’t write to you about all the things and I can’t even do any Instagram stuff! Believe me, I’m in a very cool place with crazy-good photo opportunities. The Instagram stuff can wait, but it’s torture to not write up what I’ve seen and the things I’ve experienced since getting here yesterday morning. I just need you to help me download things, you know? Downloads of the mental variety. This is something you help me with.
Agh! Okay, one thing:
It’s been so horribly hot in Chicago; we broke records all week last week with temperatures in the low- to mid-90s. I hate a summer that stretches into October, and of course it’s all just very anxiety-provoking and confusing and frightening, all this extreme weather.
Anyway, I experienced a fall moment today and it took my breath away, honestly. There was a quicksilver chill in the air and when it whistled through me, my entire life-in-autumn flashed before my eyes. Autumns of my childhood (the sharpened pencils, the trick-o-treats); the autumns of my young adulthood (the cigarettes outside the bars, the late-night rehearsals); the autumns more recent (the leaves downtown, the frost on the windows of the cabs in the morning.) But in that moment when you first feel the fall air, all the autumns blend together and it’s just your life, in technicolor, in a sweater.
Really, the perfect picture for Mark’s post is this image of homemade buttermilk ice cream with espresso-chocolate chip cookies. Image: Wikipedia.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things have been intense around here lately. Grad school is hard. If I stop for a half-an-hour, I’m behind. I love all of it, but I’m ridin’ the struggle bus. And whattaya know, but last night I woke myself up whimpering (!) because the scratchy throat I felt in the newspaper office yesterday had become agonizing. Even though it was barely 4 a.m., my body ached so bad and my sneezes were so hilariously powerful, I was not gonna fall back asleep. So I got up.
And in my email box, there was this wonderful, incredible piece of writing from one of my very first (and personal favorite) PaperGirl readers, Mark H. (You may remember Mark and Netta from my trip to Florida! And I’m sure I’ve mentioned how they send me fudge and pecans at Christmastime, swoon.) Mark had sent me an email a few days ago, his email subject line the same as it’s been for years: “Note from Mark.” He was checking in on me, you see: Mark’s been reading the ol’ PG long enough to be able to read between the lines and suspected I was kind of freaking out with all my activities and schoolwork. He had an idea for me, because Mark likes to help people.
“Maybe you could have your readers write a post or two,” Mark said, “about why they read your blog and why they keep coming back. I bet they’d like to do it and it would take something off your plate.”
What a friend, right? And the idea sounded neat, except 1) it would necessitate a bit of planning and organization on my part and I can hardly find time to floss; and 2) I was a little worried that if I asked people why they read or love this blog, it might be a little self-congratulatory or hoo-hoo-look-a-me. I told Mark he was amazing and kind, as usual, and that I’d keep thinking about a way to do it and indeed, I did think about it.
But before I had a solution, however — and suffering from my cold enough to really need a break — Mark wrote back and said, essentially: “Well, tough, kiddo. I’ve decided I might as well just give this a shot. You can post it if you want, but you certainly don’t have to. It was fun to write!”
Mark, you’re a true-blue friend. You made me cry with this. I appreciate you so much. Thanks, buddy. I’m so glad you’re here. Don’t leave. I won’t if you won’t, okay? And this is the first-ever guest post on PaperGirl. How cool is that?? 😀
* * *
“It was actually an errant internet search that brought me to this blog many years ago. My wife and I had to work in different parts of the country, and I was searching for love poems to tell her how much I missed her. When I entered the words “love poems” in the search box I accidentally searched the “video” tab, not the “all” tab. Mary’s video of her famous poem was near the top. So I clicked it. I didn’t know what slam poetry was, but I liked what she was doing. There was a little icon at the bottom that linked to her blog, so I clicked that one too. I wanted to know more about a person who could write poems like this.
The blog gave me great insight into the life of this stranger. I read along for a few months, never commenting, but decided to send a few encouraging words to her one night because she was particularly despondent about losing her hair. I don’t know if she knew how sick she was back then, but my medical background told me that she was in serious trouble. I don’t know if she knew this, or was just downplaying the situation, but I wasn’t sure if she would survive it. I wanted her to know how much I enjoyed her blog, so I sent her a short note about what it meant to me. I didn’t really expect her to reply, but she did. This began a years-long friendship between us, even though we have very little in common.
I use Mary’s blog as part of my unwinding process at night. It’s hard for me to shut off my mind at the end of my stressful days, so I follow an odd mix of bloggers to help me escape the mental replays of my day. When I started following her blog, she wasn’t a quilter. She was a freelance writer and performer. She wrote about her life and her thoughts, and it was fascinating to me. The blog took me to Michigan Avenue, or a cold slab in a hospital, or New York, or Washington, or Winterset, Iowa, or the Arizona desert, or on an early morning run along Lake Michigan.
While the blog is not meant to be educational, I’ve learned a great deal from it. I’ve been introduced to George Orwell’s six rules of writing (which I now use frequently), haiku poetry, various recipes, international philosophy, decorating tips on a budget, and even silly poems about fruit, which I’ve come to adore.
By far the most endearing quality of this blog comes from Mary’s vulnerability. Mary shares some deeply personal thoughts about her life, that some of my best friends would never share with me about their own. In some ways, I feel that I shouldn’t know this much about a stranger, but her easy writing style always draws me in. I’ve discovered that she’s actually an introvert, but that she does not shy away from relationships. In fact, I’d say she delights in them. Her ability to write about her emotions is at once humanly familiar and heart-wrenching, and for me, it’s the most authentic part of her site.
I’m curious what other readers draw from PaperGirl. No doubt, many of you are quilters, but I am not. (I might have sewn a button back on my lab coat a few years ago, but that’s it.) I’ve slept under a quilt most of my adult life. When my girls went away college, it was a quilt that went on their dorm room beds. When Hurricane Irma roared through my state last week, I hunkered down under my grandmother’s quilt. I’ve used quilts most of my life, but really just see them as heavy blankets. Some make their way to museums, but for me, the beauty and fascination of themisin the backstory of those who make them. Mary’s blog is just that for me. How ’bout you? What brings you here?
That picture of a teddy bear has nothing to do with this post. It’s just that there’s pretty much one decent picture of a condominium on Wikipedia and I used it the other day, so why not go with an affable-looking stuffed bear, instead? That’s what I said.
On Thursday, they shut off the water in my building from floors 9 through 21, starting at 9:00 in the morning and going till 5:00 or so. This wasn’t arbitrary. It’s not like the management got pushed too far and said, “We’ve had it! No water today!” or anything like that. No, it was just that maintenance needed to be done on the pipes or something and that’s how it goes in a mid-rise condo building.
I took a shower real fast (it was 8:44 a.m. when I remembered this was happening) and filled up two bowls of water so that I’d have it if I needed it later, which I absolutely did because I ate chips and had chippy stuff on my fingers. When I rinsed my hands in the sink with my water reserves I felt very Boxcar Children and congratulated myself for probably being the kind of person who could survive against all odds.
The whole temporary-water-shut-off thing got me thinking about how some people who live in a house or in a smaller apartment building might not know what it’s like to live in a condo building like mine, smack dab in a big city. After all, I don’t know what it’s like to own a whole house in the country. I have questions about that, like, “What’s it like to have a basement?” and “How often do you need a new roof?” and “Is it illegal to not cut the grass if you just don’t feel like it for 20 years?”
Therefore, just in case you’ve always wanted to know, here’s a list that maybe gives you some idea of what it’s like to live in a mid-rise condo building (mine = 20 floors) in downtown Chicago. This is not a complete list and I’m going off my own experience in this building, of course.*
1. You have to wait for the elevators, sometimes.
2. There’s a rooftop patio or deck, usually, and you can go up there and hang out and look at the sky and the city.
3. If you have doormen, they are your friends, hopefully. (I have doormen and they are my friends and their names are Stanley, JC, Roosevelt, William, and Victor.)
4. There’s a receiving room. And a smaller room with all the mailboxes. If you’re really, really lucky, there’s a mail chute.
5. It’s really stinky in the alley behind the building where all the dumpsters are from your building, the ones next to your building, and the pizza place and the 7-Eleven.
6. You have a programmed fob on your keychain that opens a series of security doors. The fob looks like a disk and it makes the locks go from red to green when you wave it over the thingy and then you can open the door.
7. Sometimes the water gets shut off for maintenance. (See above.)
8. There is a maintenance staff and they are usually men but not always. (All the maintenance staff here are men and they are all my friends, too, just like my doormen, and their names are Leo, Miguel, John, Richard, and one guy whose name I can never, ever remember, ever.)
9. There’s a garbage chute on every floor. Honest, I still get a thrill when I take out the garbage because I get to use the garbage chute. It’s magic.
10. I pay an “assessment”, which is on top of a mortgage. An assessment is a fee that covers the doormen, the maintenance guys, the on-site management stuff, the whirlpool cleaning, the elevators, etc., etc. The assessment in my building is really high. I can’t talk about it.
11. There are bike rooms. My bike is down there, safe and sound, and Claus has a bike down there, too, because he moved back to Germany and couldn’t take his bike. Anyone wanna buy Claus’s bike?
12. You don’t meet the vast majority of your neighbors, but if you live in a building long enough, you meet a few of them.
13. There’s a vending machine in the basement!
14. There’s a fitness center down there, too, but it’s scary so I don’t go in.
and
15. It’s wonderful to live in a condo building, if you’re into that sort of thing — and I absolutely am.
**I don’t write about things that don’t interest me, but I’ll admit I was surprised just how fun it was to write this. It was simple. Simple and physical. Perhaps what’s surprising is that no matter how many times I learn and relearn that “simple” and “physical” is the best kind of writing, I have to learn it some more.
My actual planner a few weeks back. And this is just the stuff written down. Image: Me.
Some people ask me, sometimes with a Southern accent but most often not with a Southern accent, “Why, Miss Mary! How ever do you keep up with all the things you have to do?”
And I say: “Pape-cal.”
“Pape-cal” is short for “paper-calendar”; specifically, one that fits inside one’s purse. This item is more commonly referred to as a “planner”. Other people might call it a “day runner” or a “datebook”. I like calling it my pape-cal because it’s funny: pape-cal! And it makes me happy to call my planner my pape-cal because it’s something my sisters and my mom and I came up with.
We each have a pape-cal. My sister Hannah’s pape-cal is actually a large calendar she has on the wall, but it counts. This all comes from my mother, of course; some of my earliest memories in life involve observing my mother pencil in notes, trips, reminders, travel plans, birthdays, etc., in her pape-cal. I’m not sure if she still saves them, but she used to.
[Psst. Mom. Do you still save your pape-cals?]
Now, I do use my Google calendar function on my computer and my phone, but only for backup and a nice, full picture of the month. I tried to lose my pape-cal and just use screens and it was a total disaster. I’m not kidding: I mixed up a day for an important task, I accidentally flaked on a birthday party, and, worst of all, I felt like my I was spinning away from Earth, flung into the atmosphere, unable to get purchase on my life. No, things were no good without pape-cal. No good a’tall.
I remember Claus looking at me as I sobbed about feeling disorganized and spacey, how I felt that my life was falling apart.
“Claus! My life! It’s falling apart!”
“Maybe you should write things down again,” he said. “You used to have a little book, Piggy.”
(He used to call me Piggy.)
“Oh, right,” I sniffed. “That’s true. I used to have my pape-cal.” I brightened. “Yeah! I’ll just get my planner back! Thanks, Bear!”
(I used to call him Bear.)
Anyway, I got a fresh pape-cal and the situation improved considerably.
By the end of every year, my planner is so beat up you just can’t believe it. And boy it’s happening now, as we head into the tenth month of the year. It’s a good thing that the other day, my 2018 book came in the mail. (In case you’re interested, I use the same make and model year after year, the best in the biz: the Leuchtturm 1917 pape-cal. There can be no other. It’s a perfect pape.)
The cover of my 2017 book was a deep rose pink. My 2018 pape-cal is a perfect mouse brown. I have already begun to fill it.
Please tell me not to buy binoculars. Please tell me not to buy binoculars. Please tell me to —
Okay, I won’t. But I really want to. Because a building in my neighborhood was finished a while back and at this very moment, I can look across the way and see the glowing TV screens, the outlines of the furniture, the movements of the inhabitants of the units in that building. I can’t see what’s on the TV; I can’t tell much about the furniture past whether what I’m looking at is a lamp or a couch; I can’t see faces by a longshot. But I can see life happening over there and I know they can see my life, too. Which makes me want to pull the shades down — or not.
This morning, I was up at 5 a.m. sharp so that I could put in a good four hours on the cover story I’m writing for the October issue. Just as I settled with my tea,* I saw the lights go on in the unit over from mine and up a little bit. Two people were crossing back and forth in the room.
I thought to myself, “They’re going jogging.”
Because apparently, when two people are up and moving around before dawn, I automatically assume that they are more responsible and active than I am, that they have things figured out: Namely, that going jogging with your beloved is definitely the best way to start the morning. Within seconds, I pictured the vital, peppy couple getting back home an hour later and laughing over yogurt with blueberries and some sort of herbal tea before heading off to work. At some point in my constructed scenario, they made out, but don’t worry; I didn’t get quite that far. My point is that the silhouette peoples’ lives were somehow…smoother. Less treacherous. Easier, at any rate, than mine feels, sometimes.
In a few moments of looking at the building over there, I made up a whole life for two perfect strangers. That’s weird. It’s as weird as me not-quite-peeping on my not-quite-neighbors, if you ask me. But we’re only human.
But it’s hard to not watch. We’re only human.
*I’m back with the tea in the morning. I just couldn’t do it. The coffee is nice in the afternoon, though!
What’s adorable is how many students I see in class or on campus eating lunch they brought from home.
Do you feel me on this? There’s just something about seeing a stranger take a fork and a Tupperware container out of her tote bag and dig into whatever it is she put together before she left the house that morning. It’s hard to explain why it’s sweet, exactly; it just is. It’s comforting to see someone who appears to have thought ahead. Someone who’s not wasteful. Someone trying to be careful with her money, maybe. (Buying a quick lunch in the Loop every day for a week will set you back anywhere from 50 to 100 bucks, depending on whether you want extra avocado and/or a small cup of water, for example.)
Yes, it’s heartening to see someone skipping the lunch lines and taking a seat on a bench, sovereign. It reminds us that there are other ways. We can be adults. We don’t have to hemorrhage money every day on pre-wrapped salads and muffins. There are options.
Today, I took the brown bag lunch option: I made myself a grilled cheese to take to school.
The bread got buttered on both outside sides. The pan got heated up. Muenster got torn into pieces and placed, lovingly, in between the thick slices. Into the pan my sammich went. Once I heard sizzling, I smooshed the squares down a few times with the spatula and then put the lid on the pan so it could get hotter in there and melt the cheese, please.
The flip is hard, not just because the maneuver itself is tricky — and it is — but because it’s hard to know just when to flip a grilled cheese. You really want a nice toast, so you can’t flip too soon. But leave it on too long and you’re movin’ to Scorch City.
Fortunately for me today, the flip was perfect. My grilled cheese looked good enough to be photographed for a slightly off-brand, low-production-value food magazine. I wrapped it carefully in aluminum foil, put it in a lunch bag with a napkin and a cookie, and I got out the door.
It smelled so damn good, and I was so blinkin’ hungry, I ate half of it in the elevator on the way down.
High school kids doing a musical. From such humble beginnings… Image: Wikipedia.
If you like to put on little plays in your living room, this is the blog for you, as sometimes I write little plays. Some might be more “dialogues” than plays, but it won’t matter if you really want to have some fun. Grab a buddy and go back and forth! All these scripts are what my actress friend Kristina calls “two-handers”, or plays for two people.
Here are three of my favorite scripts. One is from almost five years ago!
‘I’ll Be Entertaining This Weekend’
So… This is really funny, you guys. It’s old. And it still made me laugh. So check this one out for sure. (I am so weird.)
A picture of the Kosovo Ballet troupe performing “Flight towards the light” in 2013. Why not? Image: Wikipedia.
I’m afraid Doctor Faustus is not finished Fausting himself into a froth, yet — and the clock is ticking.
Since going two days without posting doesn’t feel right — but I really do need to keep turning pages and finish two big articles for the newspaper — tonight I’m going to lean on Pendennis to select from my robust archive not one, not two, but three posts he thinks are worth going back and checking out. Everyone wins!
‘Colleen, This One’s For You’
A year ago next month, I met one of the sweetest ladies ever, quite by a hilarious accident. I love you, Colleen.
Pendennis would like you to note that a PaperGirl Archive Roundup like you have just been given might happen again in the next couple of days if I don’t get some of my homework done. He is very serious about this.
Think of archive posts like reruns! Sometimes they’re sort of comforting.
The following is an imaginary convo between you and me but it’s like, super real.
YOU: Why the long face?
ME: I have to read all of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus by Tuesday. For school.
YOU: That’s that one about the guy who sells his soul to the devil for fame and glory, right?
ME: Pretty much.
YOU: And he’s got the good angel on one shoulder and the devil on another, doesn’t he?
ME: Yep.
YOU: It’s not Shakespeare, is it? Isn’t Doctor Faustus a really old story?
ME: (Sighs.) There are a million versions. Thomas Mann’s was published in 1947 and it’s this classic, scary story, retold in modern times, but it’s also big, intricate allegory for Germany under fascism. It’s incredible. This book is like… It’s a brocade. A tapestry. But all that richness don’t make it fast reading. And I’m only on page 150.
YOU: Out of?
ME: Out of 534.
YOU: (Whistles.) Why are you talking to me, kid? You better this laptop and crack that book.
ME: I’m sleepy and I’m grumpy!
YOU: You’re in grad school! This is how it works! You read long books and you read ’em fast! What do you think you’re paying for?
ME: I have to write a response paper tooooooo —
YOU: Mary Katherine Fons, I am about to take this blog away from you. Go get that book. Get yourself some tea, pull Pendennis into your lap, and quit yer bellyachin’. Mann’s novel is a masterpiece and your heart, brain, and soul are being nourished and enriched with every sentence you read.
ME: Maybe I could sell my soul to Mephistopheles and just snap my f—
Confession: This image of a Century of Progress quilt was not found on Wikipedia. I found it on UK Pinterest. I’m not proud of what I’ve done.
Do you like scandals? Do you like quilts? Do you like quilt scandals??
If you answered “yes” to one or more of those questions, you are going to love the latest Quilt Scout. Check out my latest Quilt Scout column on the Sears & Roebuck Quilt Contest at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. You can click right here and you will get a fascinating education.
While you’re doing that, I’m going to pack for TV taping and go to bed for Lord’s sake.
I will blog from INSIDE the Liberty department store! This, I solemnly swear! Image: Wikipedia.
To the generous, gifted, and winsome quilters I spent Friday and Saturday with in Pennsylvania: Thank you.
Not only were you fun to hang with, you were particularly fearless in your workings of the patch (patchwork) and you geeked out right along with me with the quilt history stuff. Really, thank you for being so Good.
I’ve been thinking about my Pennsylvania experience since I left, but right before I sat down to write, something I said the other night suddenly hit me as being true in another respect: I told you that even though much of my time is spent writing about quilts, talking to quilters, teaching patchwork, lecturing on quilt history, reading and thinking about quilts in America, etc. — after all that, when I get home in the evening, what do I want to do? Sew.
Of course, it isn’t always the case; sometimes I’m so pooped when I get home, “sewing” looks more like “eatin’ chips”. But it’s generally true that making quilts is still, always something I want to do; indeed, if I didn’t have pages to turn in for workshop tomorrow, articles to write for the paper, and TV wardrobe to select, I’d be sewing right now.
I thought about that sentiment when I sat down because I have been writing all day. I worked on an essay; I edited an article; I drafted a number of delicate emails; I wrote up pitches; I researched things and made notes — and that was just the four hours between 5:30 and 9:30 a.m. I left the house a little after that and the rest of the day had me writing, too, just in different locations.
And what do I do when I get home? Exactly. Because it never fails me. Now, I fail at writing, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t fail me, just as needles and thread don’t fail me or anyone else.
“Mary,” you ask me, and you cock your head to the side. (You look adorable when you do that.)
“Yes?” I reply, reclining in my patchwork kimono, eatin’ chips. “What can I do ya for?” I say, and I think this is hysterical, so I laugh, which causes me to inhale some chip dust. I’m good, though.
“You gave this post a title that, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with anything.”
“Au contraire,” I say, and I wipe my chippy fingers on my sock.
“When I get home from a long day of quilts, I want to sew. When I get home from a long day of writing, I want to write. Well,” I say, licking a tiny chip from the corner of my mouth, “I have been traveling and lot and will continue to in the next months, but I still want more trips.”
“Ohhhh,” you say, ” — and you want to go to Europe.”
I tell you yes, that’s it, exactly: I would be so excited if I could visit quilting people across the pond. Maybe I have to put it out there to move the ball forward; I am definitely not too proud to beg.
Young woman with suitcase, Hollywood, 1942. Image: Wikipedia.
Tomorrow morning, pre-dawn, I leave Philly and return to Chicago.
I’m there for three days of class and working in the newspaper office and then it’s to Iowa to tape episodes of Love of Quilting with Mom. After we wrap TV, I go back to Chicago, and then I go to New England on assignment.
School began last week, and I love everything. I’m reading Mann’s Dr. Faustus; I’m polishing up an essay I worked on this summer so that I can fork it over in workshop next week; I’m preparing for a newspaper staff retreat tomorrow and an open meeting for writers on Monday.
It does feel sometimes that I do not know how to do less than this.
I’m not beleaguered. I’m not complaining. I’ve chosen all these activities, all these tasks. I’m the one who can stay put. Only I can say “later”, or say “no”. But I don’t. I never do. Not unless I’m forced to, and whatever tries to force me has to get past me first. I’m not competitive with other people, but I try to best myself every day. Is it a fair fight? Me against me?
Absolutely.
I met so many incredible quilters these past two days in the Philly area. No matter where I go, no matter how tired I might be or how many other things are weighing down on me, quilters bolster me, build me up. It happens every time and it’s real.
The mighty — and mighty flawed — Mexican-style taco. Image: Wikipedia.
I think the idea for Taco Tape® first came to me when I was in junior high school. I was probably eating a taco when it happened.
The concept — which I’ll get to in a second — didn’t truly come into focus until a high school Econ class, however. Teach split us into small groups and tasked us with dreaming up a new product, then creating a marketing plan for it. Pretty standard-issue high school Economics assignment, but from humble beginnings, great things can come.
Our teacher may have chalked some product ideas up on the chalkboard. There might have been some discussion once we were divided into groups. But I had no use for these brainstorms. I needed no idea bank. I already had a brilliant product idea from years before! This was my moment! I politely informed my group that our product would be Taco Tape® . They shrugged and said it sounded like a good idea — because it is.
In short, Taco Tape® is an edible taco repair system.
Think about it. When you are eating a taco, a burrito — a tortilla-wrapped item of any kind, really — nine times out of ten, you’re going to run into problems. Because tacos fall apart! Juices from pico de gallo or chicken or sauce will compromise your snack. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. Am I wrong? Do you not reach the end of your burrito or taco and find yourself regressing into some simian version of yourself, poking at your plate, scooping up the orts, lamely fashioning numerous other, tiny burritos by pinching shreds of your tortilla around a bean here, a chunk of carnitas there? Sad!
With Taco Tape®, all your burritos and tacos stay together — all the way down to the last delicious bite. Taco Tape® is made from 100% organic wheat and corn and comes off a Taco Tape® dispenser at your table, right next to the salt, pepper, and hot sauce! The secret to Taco Tape® is the invisible, flavorless, 100% natural, edible adhesive on the underside of the tortilla strip. Just pull off a piece of tape, bandage up your taco or burrito — and enjoy every perfect bite.
Right?? Wouldn’t Taco Tape® be great?
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Taco Tape®, actually; I wrote about it years ago when the ol’ PG was very new and on a different website/server thing, both of which have been lost to time. But the coolest thing happened a couple years ago: A high school class somewhere here in the U.S. contacted me about using Taco Tape® as their product in their own Econ class! Someone else had the idea for an edible taco repair system! They googled it and the internet did produce my name in relation to it, so these darling teenagers emailed me to ask me if they could play around with the idea. Sometimes, you realize the world is gonna be okay.
My name was connected with Taco Tape®! On the internet! And now it is again. Seriously, can someone get to work on this? The world’s burritos need you. And I may or may not have the proprietary edible glue formula. Hm.
P.S. I am thinking about all my Florida friends and family and all of your friends and family anywhere in the path of Irma or The Next Big One. It’s frightening. We’re with you in the ways we can be.
Teenager in Italy, playing with light display. Image: Wikipedia.
I’m a busy gal. A few of the things on my list:
Complete my master’s degree.
Research and write and edit for Quiltfolk.
Write two (2) new lectures for QuiltCon 2018.
Continue to develop Super-Secret Project No. 1.
Poke X about Super-Secret Project No. 2 with Y.
So that’s a lot — and we both know I could keep going. But instead of listing all the rest of the stuff I get to do/want to do/have to do, I’d really like to list a few projects that I really, really want to do but can’t, for lack of bandwidth. After all, actually doing things is hard and taxing, while dreaming about doing other things is fun; everybody knows that.
So, here’s a list of projects that I want to do but just totally cannot prioritize just this second:
Develop Taco Tape. (*remind me to explain at some point)
Make a PaperGirl one-off glossy magazine for sale at gigs and/or as a gift for a donation of any size to the maintenance of this blog and the girl who writes it. (!)
Make a big coffee table book with a carefully-curated selection of exceptional (and exceptionally strange) public domain photos and images I have collected over the years of sifting through WikiCommons.
This last one, man … I’m telling you. That book will be so cool when I finally am able to do it — and I really want to do it. Because I have a big file of awesome pictures and illos from years of writing this blog. When I go looking for a picture of gooey butter cake or a man crossing the street with an enormous bouquet of roses, you won’t believe what I come across.
Sometimes, I’ll just click through the images in a folder I have marked “Everything Has To Be Moved”, the working title for this photo book. I don’t know that I’d make up a fictional narrative for each photo; I like the idea of these disparate photographs and illustrations simply living together, selected by me, for their beauty or uniqueness, or their quality, or their subject(s), or all of that.
I traffic in words more than images, of course, but visual language is real and I reckon I’m semi-bilingual.
Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park, Chicago. Image: Wikipedia.
When I arrived home about 90 minutes ago, my internet was down.
Whenever an internate outage happens, I immediately get the prickly heat: Did I not pay my bill? Has the world discovered I am not, in fact, an adult person, able to pay her bills, but a foolish child who cannot handle — and does not deserve — the perks of being an adult? While I could still check on my phone where we are on the whole “imminent threat of nuclear war” thing, I couldn’t post on the ol’ PG, which upset me greatly.
So I restarted my computer and restarted my modem. That’s what internet monkeys have been trained to do, right? Right. But it didn’t work. So I tried it again. And I restarted my computer. And then, thanks be, after some minutes I heard the “ding!” of my email program downloading many, many things that I need to deal with immediately, even though it is nearly midnight. Did I deal with them?
No.
Because first, I must run to you. You, reader. Because I love you. And if I don’t write down my life, if I don’t wave, however digitally, to you, it’s not okay. It just isn’t. You’re stuck with me.
But the delay in connecting to the internet put me behind. Hey, I know my genius, brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning prose seems effortless, the truth is that writing my public journal takes time. Some posts come easy; some come real hard. It’s a mystery, which posts will be which. Some posts might come easy because I had a certain sandwich at lunch; other posts are brutal and take hours (or happen over the course of a couple days) and who knows why — though I do want to point out that if a writer/person takes a real long time to write/say something, it’s because that writer/person is not sure of what he/she wants to write/say. Makes sense, right? It makes sense for me, too.
So here we are, and I have no time. What you’re reading is has been quickly written because I have very little time before the clock strikes midnight. This cannot be polished further if I want to post for September 5, which I do want to do.
What can I tell you in 30 minutes?
I can tell you that very much against my inclination I have gone jogging a few times over the past month. I don’t want to be a jogger. I don’t want to “go jogging”. I don’t want to do 5k runs, or 10k runs, or — ever, ever — a marathon.
But on my birthday, exactly a month ago, I was up at the Island and I just needed to run. I was probably needing to run from something; let’s be honest, people. So I did. I ran three miles. It felt good. I didn’t listen to music. I didn’t go fast. I just did it. What I liked was that there weren’t any screens involved. What I liked is how I remembered “jogging” doesn’t belong to “joggers” and that there is no “right way” to move faster than walking. What I liked is that I forgot that I liked it.
Yesterday, I went jogging. I didn’t go for hours. I went for 30 minutes. It was great. I didn’t do it well. I wasn’t a fitness model in a magazine. I just moved my body through space, outside, with no internet eating at me. I ran through Grant Park and I ran past the great Buckingham Fountain. Had I ever seen it more fully? Had I seen it with more reverence?
I have just enough time to tell you that I had not. I have just enough time to tell you that it was time to make the change.
