Remembering Marian

2013

Yesterday I duded up (a dress, no pearls) and went to a memorial service for my friend Marian.  She died at the age of 90  on May 20,  after four months of being tethered to oxygen in hospitals.

I love the part of memorial services where people talk about the person who died: the talents, foibles, idiosyncrasies.  Whether the speakers are scheduled or impromptu, it works for me.  Let's share! But yesterday there were no speakers, no chance to offer memories of Marian, so the sheet with the notes I'd jotted down remained folded up in my purse.  I felt a bit cheated by this, although heaven knows, it's a choice left up to the family.

So here are my notes:

When Marian hired me as a part-typist in Entomology in 1974, and I don’t think either of us anticipated it would lead to a 40-year friendship.  

 

Marian and me at my farewell party in Entomology, 1981

 

I worked for her for only seven years, but during that time I married one of “the men” as she used to refer to the professors because there were no women professors at that time,  and the fact of the marriage continued to mildly blow her mind right up until my last visit with her, two weeks before she died.

 

I made this list of the things that said “Marian” to me:

1.  Saying “My dear!” with a raised eyebrow

2.  Exclaiming “Sartorial splendor!” to any professor wearing a tie

3.  How she saved every postage stamp she came across to add to her collection “later.”  (Did "later" ever happen?)

4.  Peppery

5. Indefatigable

6.  Fun!

7. Devoted to her job.  Jerry said to say there was no one before or after who was so conscientious.

8.  How she’d run downstairs to the vending machines to get a Snickers bar if the workday got too  hairy and then feel guilty about her diet.

9.  The time I went with her to choose a 1977 Ford Granada

10.   How she told me was nothing better than sitting under a tree taking alternating bites of banana and orange.

11. She was adventurous in retirement--traveled often,  especially to see gardens.

12. Her scarves and her Ferragamos

13. Her garden club

14. Her Desert Rose dishes:

Prized

15. Devotion to Cal football and the Cal Band

16. She was a role model for growing old gracefully, yet actively

17. I will miss her.   

Talking to my dad at my wedding, 1977

 

 

 

High Desert Wedding: Part 2

When the guests gathered at 4 pm for Francis and Libby's wedding, everything was set up and ready to go, with plenty of parking along the road:

One of the perks of rural living: plenty of parking

 The long tables were set up with tablecloths and burlap runners, with centerpieces of flower bouquet and pots of succulents:

 

 

 

 

Bales of hay covered with vintage tablecloths served as benches:

 

 

 

Iced beer in an old bathtub, plus two kinds of locally-brewed craft beer on tap:

 

 

Four quilts that Debbie made since January, all  "Around the World" pattern, were tossed over a chain-link fence for color and camouflage:

 

 



 (Pause: Four quilts made while you're madly helping to plan a wedding and busy being employed?)

 

 

This quilt goes to Libby and Francis. (I lent my Bernina for Debbie to use for machine-quilting, my contribution to this gargantuan effort.)

 

Silverware ready for the buffet dinner:

 

 

 

 Around 4:30, the crowd of more than 100 guests migrated over to the ceremony area.

 

 First down the aisle: two of Libby's cousins with the couple's dogs:

 

 

Two more cousins, with sunflower bouquets:

 

 

Short boots with dresses was the order of the day

 

 

 

Libby's sister, Annie, as maid of honor:

She also carried a cell phone for the bride

 

And then Debbie escorted her daughter down the aisle. 

 

 

 

The officiant was a judge who's a family friend:

 

Libby using her cell phone to read her vows:

 

 

 

Francis looking very happy walking up the aisle:

 

 

 

Wedding party group shot, minus two bridesmaids (sorry!):

 

 

One of the best-dressed guests, I thought:

 

 

 

Debbie and me, beers in hand--could have been 1970...

...except we're both blonder than we were then.

 

 

 

One of the most moving parts was Debbie giving a heartfelt toast, thanking her "village"  not only for the help they'd given preparing for the wedding (including helping to paint her house and bringing food to the wedding), but also for support during a difficult divorce, especially from her sister Katie (right), their parents, and Debbie's former babysitting co-op from Mt. Washington.   

Here's Debbie giving her toast, with younger daughter, Annie, standing by.

 

How many MOBs wear short red lace dresses with boots?

 

And Francis and Annie listening to Debbie's toast:

 

 



 

Dinner was locally- and organically-raised.   Debbie bought the pig months ago and  went to watch it be butchered.  Libby chose the recipes for baked beans, salads, and mac 'n cheese, and friends prepared them and brought the food. 

 

After dinner, the band, LA Hootenanny, took over,  the sun slipped behind the hills, and the lights came on.

 

Dessert was a wedding cake baked by Annie, plus a dozen home-made pies made by Debbie's friend Dianne, one of which Jerry got to bring home and eat three times a day:

 



 

Note the tiny pastry hearts on the crust.

 

 

We left for home the next morning, after a quick trip to Debbie's to pick up the pie and the sewing machine! 

 

Still shaking my head over where 44 years have gone and how someone I met when I was 20 has a married daughter. 



High Desert Wedding: Part 1

 



The bride as a teenager, standing in front of the Berkeley dorm where her mother and I met in 1970

First swimsuit

Last weekend we made a trek to Southern California to attend the wedding of my friend Debbie's daughter, Libby. 

Debbie and I met in 1970 in a dorm at Berkeley, so we're talking about a 44-year friendship here. When Libby arrived in 1986,  I bought her first swimsuit and started sending a party dress to mark each birthday. When she was a teenager, she visited me a couple of times for a weekend (lots of movies and shopping).

Libby at two in her birthday dress

Now she was going to marry her long-time boyfriend, Francis.  This was an event I wouldn't miss. 

The invitation

So last Friday Jerry and I drove down I-5 (does it get any duller?),  escaping at Bakersfield (which gets the Golden Armpit Award), and then driving through miles of desert to Hesperia, where the Walmart is so big that I thought it was a state prison. This may be the only town on the planet that has a car pawn shop.

Debbie lives 15 miles up the road, in higher desert, on 2-1/2 acres of native habitat, a much nicer place. The wedding was going to be at her house.

We headed there the first night for the rehearsal dinner, which didn't seem to involve a rehearsal, but the food was  very good.

The setting

Things were already set up for the next day's wedding: hanging lights, flags, bales of hay, a dance floor.  By evening, the fierce heat had waned, and the hills loomed close and vivid (and sculptural and bluish).  The bride looked beautiful:

Libby in blue, with her sister Annie

Good food

The sun sank behind the mountains...

...and the lights came on: 



 

Jerry was so entranced by the native flora (Joshua trees and juniper, among other things) that he put out a bug trap overnight, and early the next morning, we left our motel and drove to Debbie's house to collect it:

The bug trap.  Don't ask.

No one at the house was up yet.   I wandered around surveying what was left to be done.

Signs to be posted...



 

...but the porta-potties were in place.

Some chairs set up for the ceremony

 

 

 

The aisle the bride would walk up

 

 

 

 

The sun rose, and we drove back to Hesperia to our motel. 

 

 

 

More to come...

 

 

 

Why the Best Part of Quilt National Was Picking Apricots

Once upon a time, there was a little girl--that would be me--whose father was an art professor and very critical of anything artistic, starting with crayon drawings in elementary school:

 

c. 1955

 

So she bagged it on making art and became an English major.  Years later, she thought, what the hell, why not try making quilts?   She'd learned to sew in the eighth grade and from her mother, and besides, her father didn't think sewing was worth much, was merely "loving hands at home," (his words), and he wouldn't bother to criticize it.  (A rocky relationship, yes.)

Turned out making quilts was pretty easy to do.

I bought the book "Quilts, Quilts, Quilts!" (Diana McClun and Laura Nownes) to learn the basics--seam allowances, rotary cutter, patterns--and plunged ahead. Wow!  Fun!  So accessible!  And I could make a cover for a bed!

Cut to the present.

On Saturday, Rebecca and I made a pilgrimage to the San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum to a traveling show of about  half of the quilts accepted for the 2013 Quilt National.  Subtitle: "The Best of Contemporary Quilts."

If you're not a quilter, I'll can tell you that it is an extremely prestigious juried show.  It is A Big Deal.

Rebecca had a quilt accepted for the 2001 show and her quilt mini-group gave her a champagne toast:

Full Circle, Rebecca Rohrkaste, 2001

Imagine my disappointment halfway through the first gallery on Saturday when we had yet to come across a pieced quilt, let alone something you could put on a bed or--in my case--even remotely imagine doing myself.

"Art departments have hijacked the show!" I wailed to Rebecca. 

"Surface design artists," she corrected gently.  "This has been going on for years."

Google "surface design" and you find a description like this one: "Surface design techniques can be used to create unique, original fabrics for your art quilts. Common techniques include fabric dyeing, painting, and printing, as well as digital image transfer. There are many different approaches within each of these categories: screen printing, immersion dyeing, stamping, and more...[my bold]--

What we were viewing was much more complicated than any woman who'd traveled the Oregon Trail or run an Amish household in Pennsylvania or quilted with feed sacks in the Depression would do, much less the beleaguered daughter of an art professor who finally found a safe way to express herself by running up quilts on a Featherweight.

Don't get me wrong:  The quilts were inventive and displayed impeccable workmanship. We admired them. Neither of us has a "my-five-year-old-could-do this" attitude about modern art:  Rebecca went to the Rhode Island School of Design, and I minored in History of Art and love contemporary art.  We both think dyeing your own fabric is a fine idea, but so is buying commercially available fabric.

And so are quilts you can put on a bed created by people who aren't out to create "art" and who haven't necessarily gone to art school. 

We finally came across a pieced quilt, and I took an illegal picture:

Bow Tie, Sylvia Gregaregian, 2011

 

 

 

 

I swear I saw Rebecca's shoulders drop two or three inches when she came across this beauty.

The beautiful machine quilting

We perked up.  My disappointment ebbed.  But I left the show unmoved.

This morning I found a fascinating--and validating-- blog post by quilter Kathleen Loomis about this show.  She counted only two quilts out of 85 as being pieced in this show of what's supposed to be "the pantheon of contemporary quilting."

She says, "I like the fact that the quilt world has been so adventurous in trying and accepting new techniques and approaches...but have we gotten so enamored of the new that we have totally disrespected and discarded the old?"

I agree.  I'd just like to see a celebration of traditional techniques used to create quilts that are wonderful, appealing, and warm.  In all senses of that word.

After the show, Rebecca and I went to my sister's house and picked Blenheim apricots from her tree.

Rebecca descending the ladder



Bountiful!

An apron pocketful

Ready to be brought home to ripen