Archive for February, 2012
My life is richer, simply because I asked
Subtitle: An oral history project, incredible families, much talk on adoption, China, love, and family, and how I found a title for this project Last January, I was struck with an idea for a project. I had read a book about a generation of Chinese girls who had been adopted into families worldwide, with a [...]
February 29th, 2012Medical journal reports, quilting is good for you
A recent blog post was sent my way by a friend, on the recent medical findings on the benefits of quilting on your health. I am happy to report the findings, which people who quilt (and I am one) have long suspected. The Relationship Between Quilting and Well-Being Emily Burt & Jacqueline Atkinson Journal of [...]
February 23rd, 2012Henry Miller’s commandments
I found this today via Denyse Schmidt Quilts, who got it from the blog The Improvised Life. The comment reads: In the early thirties, as he was writing Tropic of Cancer, his first published novel that was to become a classic of twentieth century fiction- Henry Miller wrote himself this list of 11 commandments. It applies [...]
February 23rd, 2012A new Chernobyl
Photographer David Guttenfelder recently won a World Press Photo Award for his work, for National Geographic, on the deserted town of Namie, Japan–which lies within a 12-mile radius of the site of last year’s nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. His photographs were some of the most stark and significant images I had seen [...]
February 22nd, 2012Being Yi Jie Xie
Calligraphy practice, the characters of my name “Yi Jie Xie, how do you keep your white skirt so white?” For some reason, I have never forgotten this sentence, uttered to me on a hot summer day in Yangzhou, after an afternoon watching Chinese students play table tennis against American students with quite sub-par abilities. We [...]
February 20th, 2012A day in Colmar [October 2005]
Colmar, France is one of the most amazing and charming little cities I’ve ever been to. I was a freshly-minted eighteen-year-old, and it was my first stint outside the United States. It was a liberating day for me, when we visited this French town on the German border, because I broke away from the group after [...]
February 20th, 20121988: “History will record…”
An incredibly powerful photo from Cleve Jones’s book. He says: "Here I am with the friends of Zoel St. Sauver at his panel, 1988. For many of us, AIDS was our World War II, our Vietnam. This photograph reminds me of the classic memorial to Iwo Jima. All of us in the picture were HIV [...]
February 12th, 2012Life, at this moment
How can anyone resist a survey, right? Right now, I am… :: marveling at my new, beautiful set of rings from an amazing silversmith in Jerusalem, Israel–they feel perfect :: tired of weekly assigned readings for my classes. I’m truly, honestly over reading for class. :: laughing because that is what you do when things are out of [...]
February 6th, 2012