One Word At A Time: Quilt

By Ginny (MAD21)

A long time ago while visiting a friend at her house, I saw a really interesting and pretty quilt she had hanging in her room. It wasn't just any kind of quilt where all the colors matched perfectly, although somehow everything still looked beautiful together. It was obvious someone had spent a lot of time creating it. But there was something that seemed different. I couldn't figure out what it was, so I asked my friend where it came from.

It turns out that quilt was a story, Her Story. My friend explained that it was a quilt her mother had made for her. Every single piece of fabric came from a favorite item of clothing she had worn when she was a baby and young child. Somewhere in the midst of our conversation, her mother came into the room. She grinned, and joined our conversation. She began telling me about all the different pieces of fabric... and the memories that went along with them. I remember there were pieces from the outfit my friend had worn home from the hospital when she was born, pajamas, fancy dresses, and parts of t-shirts from places they liked to visit, among others. There were a few that had stains on them, but they were part of the quilt's design, too. They were part of the memories as much as any other part of the quilt. It was so beautifully made.

Many pieces part of one whole.

It's a fairly easy analogy to compare our lives to a quilt, I believe. We have many, many individual experiences, but they are all still part of one whole. As I've gotten older, I have found myself thinking of experiences I've had in my life and feeling like I had lived it in another lifetime. Things like running into an old friend or co-worker you haven't seen in years, or visiting places from your childhood. So many things have happened, so much time has passed.

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Every Day Life: Smells

By Lara

I was rushing around my kitchen this morning trying to pry frozen pieces of chicken apart so I could extract the wax paper that separated them. I was also feeding the cat, opening blinds, taking medicine, and fixing my breakfast. When my frozen waffles popped up from the toaster, I stopped everything I was doing.

That smell. Eggo waffles crisp and brown from the toaster. It took me back to my grandparent's kitchen. I was six or seven eating breakfast with my grandfather. Every morning for as long as I can remember he ate one waffle and one scrambled egg for breakfast. I felt the sun on my face through the window. I heard the coo coo clock in the dining room. I saw my grandfather reading the paper and eating his breakfast with the dog wagging her tail under the table expecting the "last bite" of waffle. I heard the birds chirping out the back door.

The flashback didn't take long, but I was surprised at how vivid it was and that it took such priority in my thought processes.

Smells can have such amazing emotional ties to people, places and experiences. It got me thinking on my way to work, "What other smells affect me so powerfully?"

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Always Connected to Everything, Everywhere

By Alan

I loved this illustration of storage of data as it has developed over the years. We older folks forget how much data we now store quite easily with billions of characters of storage in something smaller than a piece of gum that we carry in our pocket, and ready access to music or data through universally available wireless connections. The current Black Friday deals have hard drives around $100 that can store almost 48,000 hours (2TB drives). If you want to save 5 years worth of music, you can store it cheaply and quickly.

In the same way that anyone under 40 doesn't remember a time when you couldn't call overseas on the telephone, and everyone in a small town knew the telephone operators by name, consider that the kids born today will have no recollection of what it meant to have the phone ring with no answer, either human or robotic. It's difficult to buy a phone without an answering machine in it or a phone number without the capacity for an answering service.

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Where Were You?

By MAD21

Today, everyone seems to be talking about “where you were eight years ago today.” There are several people who have written amazing posts about what they were doing and their thoughts on the events. I thought I would share a few of them here. And then post my own thoughts.

Billy Coffey wrote about how the planes that flew over his house on a regular basis for years used to annoy him, but on the days that followed 9/11 it was eerily silent, and he missed them.

I loved the verse that Bridget Chumbley posted: “I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:20-23)

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