“Art is the highest form of hope.” ― Gerhard Richter
This week I really noticed mornings that were lighter. It is just so nice to walk Sherman and greet the morning at.the.same.time! (rather that stumbling around in the darkness!) This morning it was mild but windy. And those winds were moving the clouds right along…almost painting the sky with shades of grey tinged with oranges and reds. A lovely morning to walk!
It was a slower paced week where I appreciated the beauty of small things.
The gradual changes in my Hitchhiker… it is “42 teeth big” and I am almost to the final color of my yarn. I will keep knitting until I am almost out of yarn and then bind off. This project has been so inspiring to make, and I am currently spinning some yarn that I think will make another hitchhiker. Some unexpected inspiration from Bonny this week… a beaded hitchhiker! I found some beads in my recently organizing. I am eager to get this fiber spun up so I can cast on!
The other beauty I have been appreciating is the #WOMENSART Twitter account! What a lovely little rabbit hole to travel down! All the art is breath-taking, but the fiber arts are truly spectacular! I am sharing a few that have caught my eye!
Lucy Sparrow, UK textile artist known as a ‘Feltist’ who plays with and subverts representations of everyday objects #womensartpic.twitter.com/wlUtXmYRkI
Contemporary Nova Scotia textile artist and quilter Laurie Swim creates quilt art which captures her local landscapes #womensartpic.twitter.com/95pXyWOIbI
And finally, did you know the Brontë sisters quilted?
The hand-sewn patchwork quilt created by the Brontë sisters, consisting of silks, taffetas, velvets and cotton which may have been taken from old Brontë dresses #womensartpic.twitter.com/n1UePaf3HI
“If you’re reading this…
Congratulations, you’re alive.
If that’s not something to smile about,
then I don’t know what is.”
― Chad Sugg, Monsters Under Your Head
Welcome to Week 6 of Hope. This week, I found that humor is a necessary element of hope… especially after listening to Billy Collin’s “The Present” last week. I had read this poem previous, but hearing it early Saturday morning I was struck by the truth of it. Leave it to Billy to make clear that staying in the moment is… futile. I chuckled about it all week!
Another thing that brought a huge smile to my face is the fact that The White House has dogs in residence again! I am entirely smitten with Champ and Major and some brilliant person has given the First Dogs a Twitter account. They are absolutely worth a follow!
Final funny for the week… I am stuck on Bobble Island. This is nothing like Sleeve Island… it is bumpy, and there is lots of going back and forth. I could find myself trapped here and that thought is terrifying… and I still have what feels like eleventy-billion bobbles to go!
Finally! An accurate photo of the color of my Heart Warmer!
I hope you find some humor this weekend! See you all back here next week!
When I’m at work I sing. It gives me strength during difficult times, and I believe it helps heal. — Lori Marie Key
I don’t know if you all watched the very moving and long overdue Memorial for the more than 400,000 American’s who have died. I did and it seems that this service broke the dam. I cried and once I started, I just could not stop. It felt like all the months of living on the edge of “what next” created a torrent of tears. But there was hope in those tears! It felt like a huge weight had been lifted. Thank you, Lori Marie Key, for giving me hope (and releasing the floodgates!)
But the tears did not stop on Tuesday night… they continued on into Wednesday. I have watched a few inaugurations, but Wednesday was more emotional and I cried lots. I wept with joy and sadness when Kamala was sworn in. Joy because YES, a WOMAN! But I also thought about how it must have felt for Hillary… bittersweet. And President Biden’s speech will absolutely go down in the history books as one of the greatest Inaugural Addresses ever.
But let’s talk for a minute about the hope that Amanda Gorman filled me with…a shining beacon of hope! Her entire poem was moving, but the ending was a clarion call for me. (you can read The Hill We Climb here)
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left, with every breath from my bronze, pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one, we will rise from the golden hills of the West, we will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution, we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked South, we will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful, when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.
I have not be able to get enough of Amanda since Wednesday and I stumbled across these video’s – a treasure trove of brilliance! This poem really stood out to me… especially since 1/6.
And finally, Bernie. Who knew that he and his mittens would bring such laughter (and inside that laughter…hope!)
There have been *hundreds* of memes but my favorites are in this Twitter thread from local photographer Dave DiCello:
I didn’t want to do the Bernie thing. I didn’t. But I also had too many ideas as soon as I saw the meme to ignore it. Tried to do a little more than just plopping him into random scenes around #Pittsburgh, and these were fun to do. Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/eItLMovASN
“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
― John Bunyan
This week, hope seemed to be jumping up all around me shouting… Over here! and Look at me! Yes, hope was overflowing and it filled me! Lots of people doing things that can never be repaid.
My community has a place where those with an abundance can give to those in need. I am always amazed at the generosity of this community, but this week one incredible woman… oh my lands…knit and donated 7 pairs of hand knit socks! This extraordinary act might have brought tears to my eyes! I mean… what a wonder!
Last week there were so many people who “did something” that can never be repaid. Eugene Goodman is one of those people. I have had Officer Goodman on my mind all week and it made me happy to read that he is being considered for the Congressional Gold Medal. This nation owes him a debt of gratitude and he gives me so much hope!
I follow a plethora of people on Twitter, but one person I follow never ceases to inspire me, to make me think, to make me stop and consider. They did that this week in a big way with this letter that felt like it was written to me. In the letter, Pastor Emily frankly discussed the anger they felt… anger that I too was feeling… then they opened the window to let hope in:
“Perhaps I am writing this letter more to myself than anyone else, but I sense that there are others who might feel the same as I do tonight. To us I say this: there is hope. There is hope, because there is the knowledge that this is not the way things should be. There is hope because we care enough to not look away.”
I would like to thank Pastor Emily for allowing me to share their words here.
“I have to say I hit a wall on Friday afternoon. Then I read about Nancy Pelosi. At 80 years old, she faced madmen with assault rifles, stayed up until 4:30 a.m. to make sure the House certified Biden’s election, and then got to work drafting articles of impeachment. What a heroine!!”
A week that just overflowed with hope…(and if you need one tiny bit more…since December 21 the Pittsburgh daylight has increased by 19 minutes and 23 seconds – Yahoo!)
Have a great weekend and I will see you all back here next week!
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. — Anne Lamott
I think we all need a bit of stubborn hope today, even though it feels like all hope has vanished.
I expected *something* to happening on Wednesday…what I did not imagine was that a mob of white supremacist insurgents would actually gain access to the People’s House. Nor could I imagine they would gleefully post their criminal behavior all over social media and then just waltz out looking like their team just won the Super Bowl….while the Capital Police held the doors for them! Yesterday, as more news unfolded surrounding the horrors of Wednesday, my mood got progressively darker.
But despite the trauma to our great nation there were some things this week that gave me some hope to hold! Things like Reverend Doctor Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff… Stacey Abrams and Nsé Ufot… and the Atlanta Dream who did some research, liked what they heard, and lifted Rev Warnock up… by wearing his name on their shirts!
It still feels so dark to me today, but I am stubbornly holding onto hope.
Have a good weekend everyone, see you all back here next week!
