A Quilt Show Jaunt

Thanks, everybody,  for the sympathy and commiseration following my post about shingles.  My friend Marion commented that shingles pain was like being shot in the back, and that's the best description I've heard.    I'm feeling better, and some days I'm able to get out and about--briefly.  Then back to ice packs...  

* * * * *

I made a quick trip to the Stitch Modern quilt show sponsored by East Bay Modern Quilters at the Piedmont Art Center.

The show is small, but includes a range of quilts--modern, traditional, complex, simple, and heartfelt.  I managed to get photos of most of them, but hastily, because the place was about to close.

Sampler Quilt I, Kristen Takakuwa

Shattered Heartburst, Lacy Asbill

Handcrafted Round Robin, Rita Nguyen, Anna Carloni, Terri Carpenter, Birgit Hottenrott, and Kristen Takakuwa

Stacked Coins - I Ching, Michele Wyman

Alas, I didn't get the name of the quilt or quilter, and I can't make it out in the photo.  Nice quilting.

Black Lives Matter, Elizabeth Jerde

Refractions, Chancy Fessler

Double Wedding Ring Quilt, Tara Faughnan (hand quilted!)

Playing with Color, Patricia Smith

Challenge #1,  Inta Faulk

HiFi, Kathy Grady.  A whole cloth quilt made with hand-dyed fabric

Luna Mountains, Claire Sherman

Bits and Pieces, Stacy Sharman

Beehive,  Dan Rouse

Window: Embers, Darci Read

(detail)

 Convergence, Carol Van Zandt.  Quilted by Terri Carpenter

 Pink X,  Stacy Sharman. A quilt made from "pieced triangles of wool taken from women's career clothing of the 1980s and 90s: a jacket with tremendous shoulder pads, a tailored pink wool dress, a cashmere sweater, to name a few of the items."

And guess who else was there?

Kate Johnson, who taught the pool exercise class I joined in 2002, a wonderful teacher who inspired many couch potatoes to get with an exercise program.   She left in 2010 (or later?  neither of us could remember) to study for a certificate in nutrition.  She's working with people in pools again, though, and quilting!  Thank you, Kate, for introducing me to the only exercise program I've been able to stick with.

* * * * *

Stitch Modern,  Piedmont Arts Center, 801 Magnolia Ave, Piedmont, through May 8.  The hours are 12 pm-3 pm, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The Scourge: Shingles and Me

Yep, I have shingles.  I haven't had a normal night's sleep since April 13, and I look like a weary old bag.  I'm not sure why I'm writing this post, except to let you know that you're acquainted with someone who's had shingles, and it's a bitch, every bit as bad as you've heard.

The pain I developed on the left side of my back two weeks ago, which I attributed to hefting a crate of oranges out of the Food Pantry fridge, turned out to be shingles.  The pain was the precursor to The Rash.  I won't go into it what that looks like--well, an ugly red trail extending from my backbone around the left side of my torso to my chest--but it hurt like hell.    (Two "hell's" and I'm only in the second paragraph.)

The muscle spasm phase was so disconcerting--muscles on the left side of my back seizing up so fiercely and unpredictably that I'd shout out loud.  "Stop it!"  "Shit!"  Or anything else that came to mind, Tourette's-like. I cancelled my birthday dinner in a restaurant because what would other patrons say?  A woman letting out loud, random shouts?   Also, the writhing. 

During that phase, my doctor prescribed a muscle relaxant and Aleve (nothing stronger due to doctors being freaked out about stronger meds turning us all into heroin addicts).  Ice helped a tiny bit. Heat was hopeless.

Ice was a minimal help

Several nights I didn't sleep at all, but paced around the house, sitting in various chairs trying to get comfortable, and switching out ice packs to try to soothe the pain.  If I got lucky, I'd get a couple of hours sleep from 6-8 am, when the really terrible pain seemed to retreat for the day, only to take hold again at 6 pm.

The appearance of the rash, which started small and seemed like eczema,  changed the picture.  Shingles? I thought, as I searched Google.   Tell me, no. I e-mailed the doctor, who requested photos.   "Definitely shingles," she wrote.  "Come in at 4:40 today."

I'll tell you this:  The doctor is much more sympathetic about shingles than about muscle spasms.  She's prescribed a six-week course of a med that she hopes will prevent the scary recurrent pain syndrome called,  "postherpetic neuralgia."  I'm to check in with her regularly.  She didn't push Acyclovir on me because I'm allergic to it, so I'm still coping with pain by using Aleve and ice.

This morning, I looked in the mirror and saw a seriously old-baggish,  unwell person.  I proceeded to use about half a tube under eye concealer to try to cover the big dark circles above and below my eyes. 

Definitely made things better

Then  I went to Safeway and bought a $4.99 miniature rose and a bag of peanut M&Ms to cheer myself up.  I smeared some more Tinactin on my rash (for some reason, this helps).

In case you're wondering:  I had The Shot.  My doctor talked me into it two years ago.  What she didn't tell me was the 50% of people who are vaccinated develop shingles anyway.  Maybe the shot means  a milder case, but who knows.  I would in no way describe this as mild.  You don't writhe with something "mild."

In the meantime, I had to abandon my normal life.  No pool exercise, no dinners or lunches with friends, very little e-mail.  No sewing.  I watched Foyle's War and HGTV.  I moaned. 

And now I've heard of two poor souls who had it twice.

Torturous, Tortuous, or How I Survived One More of Those Tests Everybody Hates

I'm decades beyond reproducing, but in some ways I'm a wannabe mom or grandmother, especially when it comes to reading blogs. I'm a sucker for baby pictures and anecdotes of small children saying cute things.   Plus, mommy bloggers have a ready-made subject 24/7.  Old-bag bloggers do not.  Not fair.


This week, the only thing I have to blog about is my every-five-year ordeal of having an endoscopy and colonoscopy.  Probably everyone who reads this blog has endured one or both of those, as I had, but I still found the whole process an ordeal, and I'd been dreading it for months.  ("Months!"  Jerry echoes.)

The day's menu

It sorta worked, Babs

On Prep Day, I woke up feeling anxious and picked on.  Why me?  (We're not talking logic here.)  What I wanted to feel was Sensible Resignation.

 Two things helped.  First, I thought about Barbara Bush's (punishing) mantra that you can choose to be happy or unhappy, which I don't really believe,  but I pretended I did for the day.  And the other thing that helped was to pretend I was Catholic (or Jewish, or any religion or practice where fasting is prescribed as a positive thing to do and,  more important, people survive it all the time). Also, I showered and dressed and put on make-up so that I wouldn't feel like a patient.

At 3 pm,  I drank the first of two small brown bottles of noxious goop.  It tasted salty and cloying, with a phony overlay of maraschino cherry flavoring.  At 8:30 pm, I barely made it through the second bottle. My advice is to: a) chill the bottles, and b) drink the goop through a straw.

 Ugh.

On Tuesday morning, Jerry and I got up at 5:30 am and made our way in the dark to Emeryville where there's a surgi-center owned by the doctors of Berkeley Gastroenterology.  Day after day, they perform these tests on people over 50 who are doing what they've been told they have to do. What a market!  I had a co-pay of $166 for procedures that I know from experience are billed at several thousand dollars.

By 7:30, I was stripped, gowned, and lying a gurney in a very chilly room, attached to an IV and a cardiac monitor.  The nurse hooked oxygen tubes into my nose that blasted cold air.  The warm blankets were not warm.

"If there's an earthquake, I'm screwed,"  I commented, looking at all the stuff I was hooked up to.

"Oh, we'd get you out right away," the anesthesiologist said. The nurse nodded.  I didn't actually believe them.   I thought they'd save themselves first.  Human nature.

The gastroenterologist appeared.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Cold and tense," I said.

He blew that off, cranked up some rock music, and told me they were starting a med.  The next thing I knew I was in a curtained cubicle.  It was over.

A nurse appeared.

'How are you?" she said.

"Excellent drugs!" I answered.  She laughed.  Most of the nurses were old enough to have had a colonoscopy or two, which helped.

I got dressed and scanned a written summary.  All fine, but I have "a tortuous colon," which made the procedure "unusually difficult."  A tortuous colon!  I resolved to go straight home and review the meaning of that word.*  I was vaguely proud of my colon for giving them are hard time.

Then the doctor himself cruised by and summarized the summary. When he was finished,  Jerry and I scooted out of there directly to Fat Apple's where I ate a giant, carb-loaded breakfast of pumpkin pancakes and scrambled eggs.   I rejoiced that it was over and felt so expansive that I showed the waitress my hospital bracelet and told her I'd just survived a colonoscopy.  She congratulated me;  she'd also had one, of course. Everyone has.

I lost a pound and a half, but will it stay lost?

And I have to go back in five years.

Phooey.

And because you read this far, here's a cute kid who survived his first day of kindergarten, a much bigger deal:

Note the transitional object

* "...marked by twists, turns, or bends."

Quilt Show

The East Bay Heritage Quilters puts on a big show, "Voices in Cloth," every two years,  and  I went to the 2016 show a week ago.  Much to see--vintage quilts, new quilts by members, booths of vendors selling all kinds of stuff.  It was rainy outside the Craneway Pavilion in Pt. Richmond, but inside there was a lot of action.


The guild asks that no quilt photos be published without permission of the quilters, so my relatively few pictures are of quilts made by women in my mini-group, the No Problem Quilters, who were happy to give permission.  I thought their quilts were among the best at the show, no bias, of course.

Crosswalk Variation 1, Claudia Alldredge.  Quilted by Angie Woolman.

Japanese Lattice, Ann Rhode.  Quilted by Angie Woolman.

Angie did a remarkable job of machine-quilting.  Look at the back:

Disappearing Four Patch, Mabry Benson

Disappearing Four Patch, Claudia Alldredge.  Quilted by Angie Woolman.  Same pattern, different "setting."

And side by side:

Scrapple, Rebecca Rohrkaste

Salvaged, Ann Rhode.  Hand-quilted by Ann (!)

Dutch Wax,  Mabry Benson

One of the quilts I put in the show:

Zigzag Roman Square, Liz Randal.  Quilted by Angie Woolman.

And a shot that shows the colors more accurately.

Staccato, Liz Randal.  Quilted by Angie Woolman

And, finally, Angie Woolman with her own wonderful quilt.

Bed on Fire,  Angie Woolman

Off to iron the fabric I bought:

The new Berkeley Art Museum and a Few Thoughts on Nancy Reagan

This is what we woke up to this morning:

Toppled

Fifteen years ago,  a landscaper chose the wrong species of tree fern to plant up against the house, a tall one instead of one sturdier squat one.  It grew away from the house and toward the sun until most of the foliage was on one side.  Recent torrents of rain did it in.

Not a crisis, obviously, but startling.  Now we'll get a squat one.

* * * * *

A couple of weeks ago, I checked out the new UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, which opened in January in the former campus printing plant.  I like it--the light's good, the spaces feel friendly to visitors and art, and the cafe serves good food.

I've followed the campus art museum from pillar to post, starting in the winter of 1969, when I drove up to Berkeley from UC Santa Barbara with friends.  At that time, the Art Gallery was housed in an old building near Sproul Hall:

The Old Art Gallery, as it's now known

By the fall of 1970, I'd transferred to Berkeley, and from my window in a high-rise dorm I looked down on the back of the brand-new art museum, a gigantic Brutalist structure on Bancroft Way.  One evening I looked out my window and saw a guy in black rappelling down its side on a black rope. We all thought the new museum was the bee's knees.

 The front of the old art museum

By the 1980's, I hardly ever went to the art museum because it was too hard to find parking, and because, with a few exceptions, I didn't think the shows were very interesting.  I did, however, become a regular visitor to the campus printing plant, in downtown Berkeley, because by then I was a writer/editor in the Graduate Division.

Many years later, the massive concrete museum was found to be a seismically unsafe, so it was propped up and braced while people decided what to do about a new building.   To my amazement,  the new location turned out to be the now-abandoned printing plant, close to BART and restaurants. The 1939 building was going to be re-purposed to look like this:

At the corner of Center and Oxford Streets.  Designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

This is what it looks like today:

Stretching the block between Center and Addison, across from the West Gate of the campus. To the left, the former printing plant, and to the right, an addition with a huge screen at one end.

The screen faces Addison Street:

Walking alongside it

The Center Street entrance

A Rosie Lee Tompkins quilt

The Forum, where they were setting up for a dance performance

A view across Center Street, which is lined with restaurants, including Top Dog and Bongo Burger, Berkeley institutions

Cafe Babette on the museum's second level; no outdoor seating, alas

The stairwells are ORANGE

More orange

The Berkeley Art Museum is open Wednesday-Sunday from 11 am-9 pm.  General admission is $12; senior admission is $10.  Free admission to UC students, staff, and retirees.

 * * * * *

My First Lady archives

 I have something of a side-line in First Ladies. I read all the biographies and autobiographies I can lay my hands on, Republicans and Democrats, although I go only as far back as Eleanor Roosevelt.

These ladies range from feisty (Bess Truman) to Nobel-material (Eleanor Roosevelt) to silly (Mamie Eisenhower).   Pat Nixon was piteous, and Babs Bush, however well-mannered she is, apparently can be downright unpleasant; one of her assistants said she's "a good person, but not nice."

Nancy Reagan, in my opinion, was insecure and sad.  As a child, she was abandoned by her father and then, temporarily, by her mother. I don't think she ever got over it. She was very afraid of a) being alone, and b) getting it wrong, although she often did--buying new White House china during a recession and launching the "Just say No" campaign are two examples.

If only it were as simple as just saying "no."

 Long-time Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote that around the White House Nancy was known as "The Hairdo with Anxiety." Noonan herself tried to find a pillar to hide behind if she saw her coming, as Raisa Gorbachev probably did after this meeting, described in a puff piece produced by the Reagan Library: "Mrs. Reagan arrived wearing this Galanos gray suit.  Raisa Gorbachev, in contrast, was starkly dressed."

Poor Raisa.

Nevertheless, when I heard that Nancy Reagan died,  I thought, she's had some tough times and rest in peace. The internet lit up with very unkind, vitriolic comments, and I thought, why? She's gone, poor woman.

Then came her funeral and the likes of Judy Woodruff and the New York Times going on about her great romance with Ronnie (I'd call it an enmeshed relationship, excluding even their children) and her social graces as the queen of Camelot in 1980's-era Washington in her Adolfos and Galanos.   Is this really admirable?  Are we that desperate for heroines?  

Back to Eleanor and her hairnets.