“Me and my mother. At Soul N’ Vinegar(our secret spot, where we eat beets and laugh)”
Here’s a little bit of text from the “Quilt and Conversations” workshops section of the website:
Community Workshop: offered monthly, announced in our newsletter (High & Mighty Co.) Each workshop, we'll make space and time to share our stories through photos and fabric. We'll start with a guided journal prompt that leads us into the creation of an improv quilt block that captures the narrative of you and the communities you come from!
So, I got a library card the other day, (so did my mother) and for a second, it was like I was a kid again. You know that feeling when a world opens up and , just for a second, something feels new and shiny? Like you’re opening a door that’s always been there but the knob was missing. I wonder how I went so long without the simple thing, a library card. It was free and now, on my key ring, is a big old universe of knowledge and deep thinking authors and spots of sun.
As I write this, I’m listening to an audiobook and taking inventory of all the things I want to learn or maybe forgot I learned last week. Do we all do that? Learn something then store it like water in a cracked fish tank. Wait til we have time to remember then remember it’s too late?
I think of the things my great grandmother taught me.
We take down the curtains once a month and give them a wash. By hand. The machine doesn’t care about the lace. We wax the floors before breakfast. Hominy and Slab bacon. Eggs if we have it and then time to snap the green beans. Green beans from the garden of a friend that occupies the back of our yard. The garden we freely harvest from. Sometimes too much but “ Y’all welcome to it! ,” Mr. Willy says.
Mr. Willy is a good man who grows watermelons beside the wall so the birds don’t get them. I remember him. I remember these things because I learned them. Not in a school but in a little house beside my sister and the snapped green beans.
As I’m preparing to launch the workshops (the ones I ain’t shut up about, ya know?) I’m reminded of these things and the reasons why I needed to fold in more education in my practice. Because education is the foundation and it’s hard to keep these traditions going if nobody’s learning them.
I teach because people taught me and I can’t forget that.
What did you learn today?
What did you forget?
Sam C.