Weekly update: the flock is growing, and this week's books

 (Just a short post this time.)

I need 100 Birds in the Air blocks for the wedding quilt.  They'll be assembled in 25 sets of four -- 13 of one color and 12 of the other.  That means 52 + 48 individual blocks.  Each cutting creates two blocks so I just used each of the blue prints until I'd used them all -- more than 52, I'm sure.  I'm now working on the greens.

(Confession:  I went fabric shopping to get more greens.)

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All That She Carried, by Tiya Miles

In the 1850's Ashley, a 9-year-old enslaved girl in South Carolina, was sold. As a parting remembrance her mother Rosa gave her a cloth sack that contained "a tattered dress, three handfulls of pecans, and a lock of Rosa's hair." We know that because in 1921 Ashley's granddaughter Ruth Middleton embroidered the story on the sack. The sack was discovered at a flea market some 20 years ago and was given to Middleton Plantation, a historic site in South Carolina. Scholar Tiya Miles uses each element -- the sack, the contents, and the women who possessed it -- for a full recounting of the economic, social, and political milieu of slavery and plantation culture.

"The story of the bag and of their family ripples out like salted waves off the coast of Lowcountry, South Carolina, flowing into the histories of African America and the United States of America....this story cloth captures the emotional texture of Black women's lives during and after slavery, and reveals the staying power of love across time..." (p. 292)

I came for the textiles and stayed for the explication. (Truly, a story based on fabric spins out into history.)  All That She Carried  is an outstanding example of material culture scholarship.

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Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann

Classical references add dimension to this tale of intergenerational family turmoil played out in a small Texas town over the course of one week. After thirty years of marriage June Briscoe only tolerates her husband Peter. His philandering is an open secret in Olympus. Their son March returns home after a two-year absence caused by his brief affair with his brother Hap's wife Vera. Fraternal twins Artie and Arlo, Peter's children from a previous relationship, are back in the Briscoe family orbit. Artie has been the manager for Arlo's music career, though she'd rather spend her time hunting and fishing. [Have you caught on to the mythical references yet? Clue: March's dogs are Romulus and Remus.] When Artie's boyfriend is killed in a tragic accident the twins cover for one another. Multiple strands, not very tightly wound in the first place, unravel rapidly.

No one is completely wrong but no one is completely justified. Epigraphs are quotations from Ovid. Classical lore continues to influence contemporary literature. 

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