After visiting the exhibition, I spotted this ad for her work--currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art--near Houston Street.

In the middle of a Saturday afternoon, in midtown Manhattan, we were near collapse after a morning exploring the Upper West Side and Central Park, then shopping around midtown. Then we went to the Modern Museum of Art. I felt it essential to visit at least one of the major, internationally-renowned museums New York City has to offer, even while we were resisting the traditional tourist visit to the City.

Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon, artist and photographer, has a knack for amazing titles. Her current show: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I-XVIII. At some point as we neared delirium, we wandered into the photography section of the museum, tucked on one of the expansive floors, and found Taryn Simon’s stunning exhibition of photographs. To be honest, the named intrigued me first, as names and titles nearly always do. A great name is the fastest way to get me interested. (I read Angela’s Ashes in sixth grade–I know, right?–because I desperately wanted to know who Angela was, and what was her relation to the little grungy boy on the cover; no other reason.)

We found ourselves surrounded by austere faces, portraits of men, women, rabbits, sitting each by themselves, amid a series of people (and sometimes things) who are somehow related, whose lives and stories intersect by some grand or small event. There was something about “bloodlines,” as after looking deeper at the panels and photographs, I was confused about the organization of the show and its larger meaning. I left intrigued deeply, wanting to spend more time pondering this series, these “chapters,” later, but not wanting to buy the $125 exhibition book–which was the show in its entirety, amazing.

Hours later, I am in the hotel room taking a much-needed rest, and flipping through a Time magazine I’d brought with, when there is this bold headline: “There Will Be Bloodlines: Taryn Simon untangles the ties that bind.”

I kid you not, I got goosebumps. If I had looked at this magazine a day earlier, I might have overlooked this name, skimmed the article at best. Here was this woman, and her explanation of this newest project, which was four years in the making, and took her to twenty-five countries.

Now I have a proper explanation of the project’s theme and meaning:

The organizing principle for this project is what she calls bloodlines: all the living descendants, plus any living forebears, of a single man or woman who sets a story in motion.

And the reasoning, the messy ties and stories and variable havoc that occurs within these “bloodlines” is where her project becomes truly fascinating. It echoes what I see and know deeply: that family lines, genetics, and genealogy have little to do with  the way our lives turn out, have almost nothing to do with the events that shape our individual lives in the present.A simple concept, really; and this explains why the tribal man with ten wives, dozens of children, and many dozen grandchildren appears in a massive sequence. And also, why there is a man missing from his own story–a blank canvas appears instead; he was executed for war crimes after the end of WWII and Nazi Germany, but descendants appear after his spot, along with more missing people, via their empty canvases, as well as pieces of clothing that act in lieu of a person, who preferred not to share his or her face in association with this man. Meaning becomes clear.

Simone depicts bloodlines as flowing charts of small portraits–like a living periodic table of the elements. What resonates is the persistence, and finally the insufficiency, of ancestry and kinship as systems for making sense of unruly destinies. To show that blood lineage can be an extremely loopy line, she sought out unlikely subjects; one is a Lebanese man who claims to be reincarnated, so he pops up more than once in his own family history. “I was always looking for a surreal twist,” she says, “something that would lead to a collapse of logic.”

All the same, even the most outlandish chapters have their universal element. As Simon put it, “We’re all the living dead, pieces of what came before.” What she means is that we all carry the DNA of our forebears; there ghostly current pulses through us. The intricate machinery of her project is designed to show that blood ties are a weak line of defense against the blows administered by history, politics, or sheer unlucky circumstances. [italics my own.]

Yes. This entire work is more stunningly magnificent than I ever could have imagined, aligning greatly with my own theories on this whole world and what happens to us during our time here.

Portraits telling stories

Quilt I made, shared online

I have been thinking for a couple days on something I read in my May 2012 issue of Atlanta Magazine, in their feature on the craft scene in the city.

The ladies who started Indie Craft Experience (ICE) Atlanta are featured–the very fun and quirky biannual expo in an old warehouse downtown, with food trucks outside and tons of talented craftsmen and women inside. Ben and I went to our first ICE Atlanta last summer and came away with a few really cool pieces, including organic baby clothes for a friend, a funky bottle opener, and a wool-and-cotton stuffed elephant that graces my office space.

The feature includes a few local artists and shops, but one little bit got me thinking, about modern aesthetic, modern craft, and the influence technology on the projects we imagine, plan, and execute today.

ICE features work from the new crafting or “indie” scene. There, you are as likely to find a cross-stitching of Bea Arthur as you are handmade earrings. Urban motifs like skulls and studs have replaced country kitsch. Peterson credits this evolution to the Internet. “Crafting isn’t as isolated as it used to be,” she says. “You can get online and share ideas.” This Venn diagram of technology and handwork is what gives modern crafting its quirky aesthetic, which resonates deeply with a new generation.

The inspiration we find on Pinterest

The Internet has definitely changed how we craft.

It has changed what kinds of materials and fabrics are available to use, it has given us the blogging community to share in-progress and finished projects and bounce ideas, and then there are all the other kinds of social media to provide continuous graphic inspiration.

Broad Street, where all the good food is at Five Points. It's hard not to frequent the many spots near GSU when you're nearby.

Tonight Alicia Philipp came to my nonprofits class to speak to us about her thirty-five years working as the President of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. Community foundations are organizations where donors who want to donate large sums of money, but don’t have $25 million required to start an individual foundation in their name, can place their money in order to help a community they are invested in, or care about immensely. She is currently working on a project to fund a for-profit co-op owned by workers living in an inner-city area who will grow hydroponic lettuce to sell to large institutions like Emory University; they needed to raise $1 million this year to start by January 2013. She spoke with six individuals and among those SIX people, raised $800,000 of it. She has been doing incredible things like this in Atlanta and the 26 counties that make up its Metro area since she became the Foundations’ president at age 23. 

Someone asked her why she’d chosen to stay in Atlanta for thirty-five years, and working with the CFGA. Why had she never gone elsewhere?

Well, certainly the offers were there over the years, she said. And there were times she really felt like she needed a change. But she would get an offer and then, an extraordinary new project or opportunity would arise with the Foundation here in Atlanta, and she would know immediately she needed to be in Atlanta to make it happen, to help it succeed. She understood after these moments that it wasn’t about working for a Community Foundation anywhere, it was about working for the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. It was about this place, these people, this city.

Her words were hitting my straight through the heart. I was near tears (burning throat, watery eyes) several times, as the meaning of what she was saying sunk in. Yes. Atlanta. I want to be here and be a part of this community. I am not ready to leave it behind.  I am invested here.

Is this what it feels like to be vested in a place? To care dearly about its citizens, to wish to see it grow, innovate, improve? To want to make it a better place? Not that I don’t want everywhere to be improving, but I have this deeper feeling that I really want to be a part of Atlanta’s improvements, history, community.

I remember going to interviews to receive scholarships in high school, and the adult panel members would ask these questions about what I was going to do in college, in life, in career, that would improve Dublin, Georgia, and did I plan on returning to the city after school. I was completely honest — “nope!” — and received no scholarships.

But now I see what they were trying to do, for their community. Invest in its future, help it thrive.

Here I am, after six years in Atlanta; I’ve recently made a commitment to a lease that will keep me here post-graduation, and I could not be more excited about staying here. Alicia’s words felt like a giant prophecy, or a reaffirmation I suppose, a reminder that there is a reason I am excited to be here. It is OK, in fact exciting, to reach this point and understand that I care about one particular place.

After all, haven’t I been learning about playing with the notion of “place” for over two years in graduate school? One of the themes that keeps reappearing in my own work in public history is that Place plays its own role in the past, present, and future; it is a character all its own, in the human narrative. A place holds special meaning for the people “from” there; and I feel “from” Atlanta. I really do. (And that’s quite weird to say, to feel. Michigan-Georgia hybrid with 13 addresses under my belt in 24 years.)

Yes, I see. It is about place. I know the history here. I want to work here and be a part of the community that includes this amazing woman who has dedicated her life to this urban space. To this city I am part of, where I am staying.

Soon-to-be my city vista

Atlanta is my home, and it matters. How could I leave it now, just when I can begin to contribute the most to it? Alicia reminded me that’s OK, and it is important, even, to care about a place in the world enough to stay long enough to make a difference. This is a recent realization for me, truly new. Atlanta is my community. There are things I want and need to do here. I’m not done yet–I’ve barely begun.

While on the Atlanta Race Riot tour (which I've taken twice now)

I happened upon a display of a small segment of the AIDS Quilt on campus at GSU last night. It is here for three days, to promote health and awareness of HIV/AIDS, sponsored by the GSU campus health and auxiliary services. I have seen small bits of it, but they were specific panels I had asked them to pull for me when I visited the headquarters of the NAMES Project Foundation in January. The difference this time was spending time as an anonymous visitor, as much time as I wanted, to observe, to read, to cry, to ponder the lives of these hundreds of souls whose squares ensure they remain part of the legacy, that they will not be forgotten in the midst of statistics on AIDS and the lives it has cost us.

My favorite thing about this artifact is that it is explicitly not an artifact. Cleve Jones, the one to conceive of the idea of this Quilt–as an awareness tool SO BIG that it would not be possible for politicians and heterosexual men and women to ignore it laying across the land–specifically explains in his memoir that this is not to be something to be tucked away and not seen, enjoyed, laid out in the grass, touched. It is here to provocate. It makes people sad, angry, nostalgic, happy, and often, all of these at once.

I have the constant urge to lay down and wrap one of the panels around me. This is silly and probably violates some giant rule (it certainly would in a museum), but this is what I really want to do when I see the squares laid across the ground. I want to be near them. I kneel down and stroke the sides, the edges, the various materials–velvet, polyester, silk, synthetic silk, cotton, leather, corduroy, pieces of clothing that were formerly owned by the namesake of each–I love reaching out and touching them, feeling myself connect to the names, the words written by mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lovers, nieces, friends, coworkers, children. I feel the pain in the words, the grief, the hurt of every day this person lives without this person they have lost.

One of the first panels I approached when I got to the student center was simple, with a photo in the center, birth and death dates, and beneath it read, “I loved being your mom.”

I was instantly moved. Ten seconds into my experience with this enormous, emotional piece of folk art. I wanted to share just a few images, moments, and words I found during my visit. You might notice that people put every kind of thing onto these Quilt panels. Shirts and clothing are very common. But one square below is two shirts, and below them, the man’s name is spelled out using an extension cord. I broke into a smile seeing this, and other odd momentos that surely carry such meaning.

My friend Margi shared with me some of the meaning behind her brother Parnell’s double-panel they made for him, and it contained so many more, subtle notes of significance than I imagined first seeing it. Every bit of his panel is steeped in vast, loving, meaning. I can only imagine the same amount of thought, love, and meaning poured into each of the details of every one of the squares I saw last night.

For clarity, the Quilt itself is not all connected, as it is miles and miles long. It is contained of 12-foot by 12-foot squares that each contain eight panels. So when you see a panel by itself, that is 3-feet by 6-feet, roughly the size of a human coffin. The portion on display in our student center is less than one percent of the entire Quilt.

yes, yes, yes

this sentiment is very similar to the one my Mom wrote on Craig Koller's square

Akron, Ohio remembers its numbers lost to HIV/AIDS. so moving.

yes, that is an extension cord spelling out his name

favorite shirts are a common bit included on panels

the graphic enlarged on his panel (above) is this tattoo

the hats and scarves on this one again made me wonder what life this man lead, where he went, what he did in his career, who he loved. I wish I knew so much more about him.

Atlanta Gay Mens Chorus

"lover of bluegrass and flowers." I adore the bits I do learn about these lives, told by the ones who love them

He was 11 when HIV/AIDS took his life. On his quilt square is a poem he wrote about dying, for all those who also have HIV/AIDS, to let them know it is all right to die.

James Lewis, age 11

what I look like when I leave that quiet, reflective room

Panels hanging on campus again today

Panels hanging inside the student center, through our windows peeking out onto GIlmer by twilight. So serene. So powerful.

The quilt show that is also a part of the Expo was smaller than usual, Marie said. All the quilts were nicely done, but bland, generic, traditional, and in general, very ehhh. Except for one row of extraordinary mini quilts, all around 1′ x 2′, designed each by a member of the NYC Metro Modern Quilt Guild. (Add this exhibit to the list of additional reasons for me to live in NYC in my life. What an awesome guild.) There were panels along the bottoms of the display that told about the inspiration behind each of the mini quilts, a form that offers so much potential for creative juice, because no technique is too big to get overwhelmed by when the final product is tiny. The driving force behind these quilts was the question, “what does modern quilting mean to you?” And the results, in both work of art and words explaining, were captivating, creatively inspiring, and beautiful.

My favorites are here. My photos do them terrible justice. All the mini quilts were beautiful–you should read more about them and their meaning.

The first, Back in To-Day, features two photographs transferred onto the fabric, the first from the Library of Congress’s folklife photograph collection, of a woman–in her own modern day–working on a quilt. The second is the creator of this piece, working on her own modern quilt. Quilting, she says, is modern always–for the person doing it. It is happening right now. Interesting perspective on modern quilting.

The second one is scanned images of the quilter’s deceased cat, which he started playing with in ditigal form after sorting through some papers years after the cat had died and realizing that chopping the images up yielded graphic and interesting results.

The third is all creams, tiny stitches, and one patch of teal. Right up my modern quilt alley. They are all stunning in person.

I also loved the African textiles and traditional patterns and quilting motifs, but anyone who’s ever heard me gush about these motifs from when I was researching them for my material culture class already knows I’m crazy for them. The things they have done with narrow woven pieces of fabric, and created so much movement and pattern… amazing.

A good day.

Back in To-Day by Earamichia Brown

Kitty X-Ray by David Sisson

"for Amanda" by Amy K. Smith

There was a great display of a woman's personal collection of traditional quilts from her African American family

More from her display. So graphic.

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 huge number of them becoming part of American families. (I wrote about it too.) Tens of thousands of these girls are growing up Chinese-American, in predominantly upper-middle class families, and they have a distinct perspective on the world, and their spot in it.

That Americans have been adopting from Asia is not new information to most people; American families with an adopted Chinese (or more generally Asian–Korean, Vietnamese) child is more and more common in the general public. On the sitcom Modern Family, Cam and Mitchell adopted their daughter Lily from Vietnam, and that diversity is one of the mainstays of the “modern” aspect of the family composition on the show. In your own community, at the grocery store or Target, multicultural families are an ever more common site within the larger populace.

Girls practice Chinese dance on rainy Saturday afternoon in February.

What I realized–in one of those sudden ideas that come to mind only when a combination of other triggers intersect perfectly–is that there is an important historical story here, and that I could help to tell it, begin to collect it, with the tools I have. I had been thinking a lot about identity, and the concept of “roots,” genealogy, and biology, and thinking about how much, how deeply, it doesn’t matter in the end. I had been thinking a lot about how much I want to adopt in my own life. And I had been thinking about the group of people–oftentimes members of Families with Children from China (FCC)–who is here, connected, who live this story every day: the families. Also being a public radio addict, I love podcasts and the new media we have to share stories and collect and share history, and decided the internet combined with an audio format would be the perfect way to tell this story.

Over the course of a few months in early 2011, I wielded in and narrowed my enormous original scope, and decided on what would become the final capstone project for my master’s in public history.

I would collect oral histories of families who had adopted children from China (mostly girls, but a few boys as well), who live in the Metro Atlanta area. They will be delivered in an online format, much like a podcast, and often in small series that connect the stories of various families to each other.

I wrote a paper to end the semester, with grand ideas, plans, and notions of this project.
Then in the fall, I had to begin to deliver on my many (many) promises. An important thing to point out is that I knew not one singular person in the Atlanta community who had adopted a child from China. I am not in the age demographic of adoptive parents, and I am not even married. Nor do I have kids. I spend a lot of my time at work and at school. So I started cold-calling people, with a very strange request, indeed, when they did call me back or answer my unknown number: “Yes, hi, I am a graduate student at Georgia State, and I am working on a project about families who have adopted children from China. If you are interested, could I explain a little bit about what I am doing?”

Strangely, I only felt really nervous the very first time I did a dialing session. That first, painful, jump into the icy water. Turns out, the water was not cold at all. A few returned my calls or answered, and connected me with people who were either more directly involved, or spoke to me themselves. In each case that I have spoken with a mom, dad, or family as a group, I have been allowed a little more access into their lives, and they have shared my project with their friends, people also connected through FCC–the Atlanta chapter and beyond. It has been extraordinary.

What began as a few contacts in the fall has snowballed in 2012. I have been graciously welcomed into homes, invited to hear personal tales of how these families became what they are–decisions about family, ethnicity, fertility, biological children, and all other manner of real, complex lives.

I ate Chinese food to celebrate Chinese New Year with one very active playgroup, the kids averaging about six to ten years old, and it was a rowdy, wonderful evening, meeting parents and further discussing and explaining this project and my goals.

I watched a rehearsal performance of the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company, which has become a haven and passion for a number of adopted Chinese girls over the years, many of whom continue to dance into high school and college.

I was invited to a monthly book club begun by mothers of adopted Chinese girls and boys, who found there was a need to read the literature (spanning many topics) on kids, adoption, China, parenting, and a number of issues within these topics, and that reading them together was more meaningful. I have begun attending them, and the most striking note I took away from my first session was that there are issues of confidence, perception from outsiders, and even simple semantics that arise in every adoptive mothers’ mind, and that the support from small groups like this one is indispensable for these women. It was so lovely to sit and discuss their most recent selection, Lucky Girl, with them–quite frankly, most I did was listen.

I listened to one mother console another on the fear that she, who had never had children biologically, somehow loved her daughter in a less, or different, way than the mother who had two biological boys before adopting her Chinese daughter. This second mother listened earnestly, and then vehemently countered that, having both, she promises there is not one thing different in the love for each of her three children, biological or adopted. She repeats this for emphasis, staring her friend straight in the eye. She is brought to tears when talking about it further.

It is moving. There are many times I am near tears in working on this project. The stories, the love, the shared experiences are so moving. I am up to my ears in adoption stories, and pictures of young, growing, and grown-up families; it only makes my conviction and desire to adopt stronger, if that was possible.

I was invited by two girls, ages 8 and 9, to watch the videos their older sister (film-producer earning her master’s at Columbia, might I add) made of their respective adoptions, after I had finished interviewing their parents. It was the first time in the course of this work that I watched, in moving picture, the moment when a little two-year-old met her parents and sisters. It was remarkable, joyous, and scary, and sad all at once–many in that room captured on film feeling so many varieties of emotions all at once. It is a moment not everyone would perhaps want to share with me; I was honored, yet again, by their gracious invitation into the lives of others.

Is it that adoptive families tend to be willing to share, because they are used to being the ones in the room who created their family in a manner somewhat different from “normal”? I don’t know the reasons, but I am grateful for their positive responses to this project, the excitement some have expressed, and the thanks others have shared. We all recognize that these are stories worth telling, collecting, connecting, sharing. I think they are especially rich in the aural format, voices captured in this moment in the lives of these families. The little girls, little boys, teenagers I have spoken to–those voices are being saved, and their notions of themselves are now recorded, as documentation that this is how they felt in 2012, about their spot in this wide world. I giggle, I cry, I am in awe as I listen back to the words and thoughts that I have collected. How far I have brought this, into fruition, into something quite extraordinary–something I wanted but that, if I’m being honest, seemed impossibly large to attempt.

I have been invited into homes, back into homes, met kids, siblings, parents, friends, interviewed many of them. I’ve met with people without the voice recorder on as many occasions, listening and talking and proving that I can be trusted with their family’s history.

I was most recently offered two beautiful, hardcover books that have been compiled from families’ personal photographs ad writings, on the China adoption experience. The collection is from photo collections and families across the United States, who all have this same experience in common. The first of the books was compiled and designed in the basement of the family I most recently interviewed, and they insisted they had “too many copies” lying around, so gave me one of each of these two books. They are cherished additions to the resources I have already compiled as I entered this world to begin work on this project. From one, I found the inspiration to finally settle on a title:

A Thousand Ways Richer:

The China adoption experience in Atlanta, An Oral History

I have been shown unbelievable support, consideration, and openness as I have thus far explored the China adoption community in Atlanta. The most striking discovery has been confirmed and reaffirmed by nearly every mother or father I speak to: the adoption of their daughter, son, or multiple children has brought them more than just a child–their lives have been enriched in a thousand ways they could not have imagined before. A child, yes. Also, culture, dance, food, language, history. Also, activity, sports, small businesses, and an entire community of support, best friends, love, play groups. Some who share this initial experience go on to become lifelong friends. One man’s Chinese daughter has already made him reconsider his perception on race, and interracial marriage–and she’s only eight.

I will explore many of these facets in the forthcoming website, where I post the stories and some of the audio. But the quick thesis to this thing, what has inspired the title, is a combination of the thousands of ways life is changed by adoption, and the countless ways I am also richer for knowing these incredible women, men, daughters, and sons. The ways my life has been enriched are too numerous to count, and I would have missed every single one of them if I had shied away from doing this, in favor of something easier, smaller, with people I already knew. It has been exhilarating to know what I am capable of, if I just pick up the phone and ask.

In 1988, the NAMES Project staff and an enormous group of volunteers brought the Quilt to the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. for the second time (a year after its first memorial display), and he gave a speak that can be found on YouTube–filled with emotion and setting much of responsibility for where we stood in 1988 on inaction from the government of the United States, the one country in the world with the most resources to act. The story behind the Quilt, its legacy, meaning, and growth–not to mention the hundreds of thousands of stories contained within its squares–are incredible. I thoroughly enjoyed reading of its provenance and meaning through Cleve’s eyes.

But I will not share all of this here. I will share an excerpt from that 1988 speech.

We stand here tonight in the shadow of monuments, great structures of stone and metal created by the American people to honor our nation’s dead to proclaim the principles of our democracy. Here we remember the soldiers of wars won and lost. Here we trace with our fingers the promises of justice and liberty etched deep by our ancestors in marble and bronze.

Today we have borne in our arms and on our shoulders a new monument to our nation’s capital. It is not made of stone or metal and was not raised by engineers. Our monument was sewn of soft fabric and thread and was created in homes across America wherever friends and families gathered together to remember their loved ones lost to AIDS.

We bring a quilt. We bring it here today with shocked sorrow at its vastness and the speed by with its acreage redoubles. We bring it to this place, at this time, accompanied by our deepest hope: that the leaders of our nation will see the evidence of our labor and our love and that they will be moved.

We bring a quilt. We’ve carried this quilt to every part of our country, and we have seen that the American people know how to defeat AIDS. We have seen that the answers exist and that tens of thousands of Americans have already stepped forward to accept their share and more of this painful struggle. We have seen the compassion and skill with which the American people fight AIDS and care for people with AIDS. We have witnessed the loving dedication of volunteers, families, and friends and the extraordinary bravery of people with AIDS, themselves working beyond exhaustion. And everywhere in this land of ours we have seen death.

In the past fifteen months over twenty thousand Americans have been killed by AIDS. Fifteen months from now our new president will deliver his first state of the union address. And on that day, America will have lost more sons and daughters to AIDS than we lost fighting in Southeast Asia–those whose names we can read today from a polished black stone wall.

We bring a quilt. It grows day by day and night by night and yet its expanse does not begin to cover our grief, nor does its weight outweigh the heaviness within our hearts.

For we carry with us tonight a burdensome truth that must be simply spoken: History will record that in the last quarter of the twentieth century a new and deadly virus emerged and that the one nation on earth with the resources, knowledge, and institutions to respond to the new epidemic failed to do so. History will further record that our nation’s failure was the result of ignorance, prejudice, greed, and fear. Not in the heartlands of America, but in the Oval Office and the halls of Congress.

The American people are ready and able to defeat AIDS. We know how it can be done and the people who will do it. It will take a lot of money, hard work, and national leadership. It will require us to understand there is no conflict between the scientific response and the compassionate response. No conflict between love and logic. Some will question us, asking how could that be. We will answer, How could it not?

We bring a quilt. We hope it will help people remember. We hope it will teach our leaders to act.

There are many, many things more I could share. There is so much meaning, lore, love, and anger contained in the Quilt. Over time, I will share more.

I have also learned so much more about Parnell Peterson and Craig Koller, the two men whose squares I visited, since writing about what I wish I knew and then about visiting their panels. In some way, over time, I would like to share that here, too. I must figure out how best I want to express it, share stories. For now, they are mine, held close, and written in the notebook I’ve dedicated to the stories I collect of their lives.

What a powerful source of memory, of honoring those who we have lost to AIDS.

As I have written about a few times already , I have been exploring the many squares on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and have been remembering especially two men who were important to my Mom, to our community, and to my perception and experience with the death tolls from AIDS. Almost as soon as I learned, via their website, that the Quilt is stored and the foundation headquartered here in Atlanta, I called, left a message, and asked to visit–especially to see the two squares I had been pouring over, Craig’s and Parnell’s.

Photos on Craig's quilt square, of Parnell Peterson (left) and Craig Koller, from Parnell's family

Richie, a veteran of the NAMES Project Foundation, called me back after the MLK holiday weekend, and I planned a visit for today. This morning I spent some time crying, touching the quilt, reading the many lovely words, poems, thoughts contributed to each of their squares, and learned more about these two men via the wonderful memorial that this Quilt provides. It provides a way to remember, in a very communal and large-scale way, yet allowing for quite private and personal time with those who are being remembered. Richie pulled up the information on these two squares, 2744 (Parnell’s) and 5508 (Craig’s), so I could see where they had traveled, where they had been requested, and where and when they were each on display.

I learned that the demographic who has been contributing the most new squares–they receive on average about 400 new squares each year–are nieces. Girls my age, who have memories, however clear or unclear, of their uncles who died while we were young, and who have now reached the age in which remembering them properly has been an important part of grieving, or becoming an adult, of understanding how this illness has devastated families. I am exactly that generation, that demographic, though I have to consider myself an honorary niece only.

I made a donation in honor of my parents, who have been caring, compassionate examples for my brothers and me, and in honor of Craig and Parnell, obviously, and for each of their families. The wonderful (small) staff gave me a book of some quilt squares, and a calendar I have already poured over several times. I felt so welcomed, and depending on how much longer I am in Atlanta, I want to help quilt squares together as they need me. Seeing a modest and hard-working organization and staff like that also reminds me that I am in the right field; non-profits, working to educate and engage the public, and ensuring that life has been well-spent by taking care of the issues that matter most.

Take a moment to drink in how enormous each panel of this quilt is. Each square is intentionally 3 feet by 6 feet, about the size of a human grave. I was not prepared for the commanding presence, and for how much more meaningful seeing each component up-close truly is.

That's me next to Craig's square

The portion my family contributed to Craig's square, which is on the bottom, in the very middle

Parnell McKenna Peterson's square (double-sized, like Craig's). The entire bottom is littered with lovely messages to him.

I especially enjoyed seeing all of the contributions made by people who loved each of them. Their lives and memories matter to many.

My mom, Craig, and some other of their high school friends here, also part of Craig's square. Craig is on the bottom left.

Parnell

Craig

Craig, in the center of his beautiful square. (Hazard of storing thousands of quilt squares, creases.)

The modest headquarters of the largest piece of community folk art in the world. The Quilt weighs 54 tons. They're all stored here.

Take-home goodies: book, calendar. There are very generous, wonderful people taking care of this quilt.

My family's little square on Craig's quilt square

I bring these up now because I have been thinking so much about the illness, the virus, the stigma, the massive too-little-too-late effort to stem its spread, and the continued work by scientists, doctors, activists, and others to find long-term resolution (if not a cure). I bring up these memories because it is curious to me why I should remember them both so clearly, I can picture the rooms, and where I was sitting. I don’t have similar memories learning about cancer (several types having affected my grandparents), or my mother’s heart rhythm disturbance, both of which affected my own life in much more direct ways.

There is just something that hurts so deeply when I think about it. Yet it is a feeling I have embraced, it is important to feel deeply on this earth, in this life, especially when I have my health and so many do not.

Two of my Mom’s high school friends, Craig Koller and Parnell Peterson, died of AIDS. Parnell, who I do not remember, died in 1991, at age 33. Craig died in 1997, at age 40. I remember visiting Craig and his mother and sister’s family in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in spring of 1997, and I knew at that point that he was sick (though I’m unsure if I knew what was making him sick).

It’s strange what I’ve been feeling recently, since finding the images of each Parnell and Craig’s quilt squares on the NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt. I am going to see the quilt next week, and they have pulled these two squares for me to see. My family, my Mom, Dad and siblings, contributed a tiny portion to Craig’s square, at the request of his mother, and so we are part of a collage of love surrounding Craig’s image on his doubly-large square. I did not know this until very recently, as that is one part in my saga that I do not recall.

Square 05508, Craig Koller's portion is the bottom, middle. My family's photo-transfer contribution is third down on the right side panel along his square.

But since seeing these fuzzy images online, and trying desperately and ineffectively to zoom in enough to see both of their faces clearly, I have been experiencing what I can only say is deep grief– to the extent that I can understand it, which I know I cannot fully. I have not lost a parent, or a sibling, or a spouse or lover or very close friend to this illness– or even to any illness. I have not had, as a deep-feeling adult, any such loss from any tragedy or illness. And yet, I think of lives gone too early, of what Parnell might have liked to do in his life, and I sob. I cry, I get angry, I am sad. It’s usually in the car rides home, during my commutes. Certain songs, or lyrics, and thoughts, and prayers, and images either on the road or in my brain, and I am heaving again. I do not remember crying so deeply about something so big, over which I have no control, except when I read The Kite Runner, and spent a few nights in my room, on my bed, reading and sobbing for Afghanistan. (The whole thing, the whole place, every person in that country, which has seen so much. If you’ve read it, you understand the injustice and the pain and the violence that cannot be escaped, and the hatred that runs deep along ethnic lines.) Other than that, I have not cried so much over people I remember so little about, or in fact, if we look at the larger loss, of millions of lives taken by HIV/AIDS, of people whose stories I don’t know.

I find myself wishing deeply, searching in futility, to learn more about their lives–Parnell and Craig. I search for anything I can find on the internet, time and again, on Parnell. On Craig. I’ve looked at the cold, simple statement of their deaths on Ancestry.com’s death index about a hundred times. I long to know what Craig did for a living, what he liked to eat and watch, things beyond his illness and pain. I wonder what Parnell was doing in the 1980s, as a twenty-something as I am now, so sure that he has his whole life before him, as I feel now. Thirty-three is not so far away. Did he know anything about the disease, as it was spreading? The things I’ve been reading about, the “gay cancer” and the doctor’s fears, and the devastation it would bring to the huge steps the gay community had made in those years before, what did he think of it? Who were his friends, how did he share his diagnosis with them, with his family? I do know that his mother, Mary Peterson, seemed like an amazing, talented woman. My Mom vouched that it was so. I wish I could talk to her now.

How long did Craig live with HIV before it became AIDS? Where was he in the 1980s? I know he and Parnell both lived near San Francisco; were they the kind of high school friends who made sure to keep in touch? Who did he lose to this epidemic before he succumbed to it? One of the most heart-wrenching parts of the story of AIDS is the proximity, the high number of friends some people lost in those first decades, to the disease, as the latency period was so long and the specific communities affected were so defined. It breaks my heart, truly, to imagine the young men who died alone, and who were not given memorial services by their families because of a denial or unacceptable of their son’s sexuality. Doctors and nurses tell of miserable, terribly painful deaths some endured alone. No one to comfort them.

That is what makes me so happy about the AIDS memorial quilt. I pour into it so many hopes, that unknown names, that the memories of countless people who are remembered no where else have been stitched lovingly into these 91,000+ squares. The squares are all shaped to resemble coffins, which is a stark and essential reminder that these are lives, lost. People loved them, people rejected or hated some of them, but they all had lives, beliefs, love, careers and causes, before HIV/AIDS. Randy Shilts, in his book And the Band Played On, talks about how there was a very clear line, for every gay man, in their lives and experiences: there was life Before HIV/AIDS, and there was After. I was born into the world of After, the world as we know it from now on With AIDS. And as Stevie Nicks so eloquently says in “Landslide”–a song it is impossible to not cry to–time makes you older, children get older, I’m getting older too. Time makes us older, literally, but also, it makes us older with the heavy things it lays on our hearts. As an adult, I am brave and I accept uncertainty, but man, does the world scare me, overwhelm me.

I cannot on my own find a cure for HIV and AIDS. I am sad every day that I do not know more about the lives of the two men who were loving, caring friends of my Mom’s, whose generation (all three of them were born in 1957) was most directly hit with this unimaginably unforgivable and deadly disease. But I can love others, love those around me who might be different, but who are people all the same, like me, trying to survive in this big world, that has so much hate. I can also keep Craig and Parnell in my heart, grieve the loss of their lives, and keep their memory alive. I wish I could tell them I love them; I hope they know somehow that I do. 

And here I shall stop; I am sobbing again.

Its way of lessening the distance between artists, authors, and other people we admire is my absolute favorite reason for the micro-blogging social network. (A close second place is how it has changed the way I think in my own head. In pithy little statements on life and what’s occurring in mine.)

I have squealed in delight when a respected writer or journalist responds to me on Twitter. It’s like little brushes with fame, or relative fame, and with people whose work you greatly admire but that you would almost never meet in your entire life. Yet here, on Twitter, it’s like they are those living, breathing people, who pass their thoughts along into the Twitter-sphere like the rest of us.

The relationship between authors/writers and social networking is also changing our perception and idea of what exactly makes the writer/artist. And as the title of this post suggests (and the NYT article from which it came), the digital age is transforming the way we understand authorship. I, after all, am also a digital author, this website as my outlet for things that would only otherwise exist in my head or among my friends and family (who can only hear me ramble about some things so many times before tiring, understandably). This blog has changed the way I communicate with everyone around me, and so has Twitter. So it makes sense that it is doing the same thing to professional writers, authors, journalists, artists everywhere, best-sellers or no. Some authors become humorists on Twitter, as it becomes an outlet for personas they didn’t have an outlet for elsewhere. The internet is well-known to affect people’s actual or perceived personas. The fascinating New York Times article on authors tweeting is well worth your time:

At their best, social media democratize literature and demystify the writing process. As Suzanne Fischer tweets of following her favorite author, “It’s fascinating to learn what an unsettling & emotional process it is for her to write characters into the world.” When that mythic author comes down for a chat, she gets followers.

Some of my favorite people to follow on Twitter:

@patricox / Patrick Cox, reporter for PRI’s The World, and creator/host of The World in Words podcast on all things language.

@elizabethlittle / Author Elizabeth Little. She has the best sense of humor. I think we would be excellent real-life friends.

@jenny8lee / Jennifer 8. Lee: Journalist, freelancer, author, Chinese-American. Her real middle name is 8.