Sally Ride Science

Prelude   Only recently have I come to full terms with the church's role in my spiritual life as well as my life as an artist.  Growing up, the church was one of my first and only consistent encounters with aesthetic beauty - the order and seasonal colors of the liturgy, the banners, the stained glass windows, and the rich musical history, dating all the way back to Johann Sebastian Bach and beyond.  So it makes  sense that as an adult, my creative medium is quilt-making, the elements of which are fabric, piecing, color, and composition. In 1998, the same year I started my first quilt while living in Yountville, California, I returned to the Midwest after an eight year post-collegiate stint living west of the Missouri River.  I landed at my parents' house in a small college town in west central Illinois.  It was a far cry from the Napa Valley, but with the proximity of the college, I succumbed to both internal and external...

  North Star or satelite? The earth roars as it moves. Screens scream out their monetized mythologies, Everywhere.   Water and trees Sing nature's fecund harmonies. I dive in deep And swim in the dew of my lover's eyes.

I bought a new shower curtain on Saturday.  The one with the PVC.  Not because it was the cheapest, but for the smell.  An olfactory trip back to the most highly anticipated day of my childhood year - Christmas!  The smell of new toys.  Plastic toys.  That just-opened burst of chemical off-gassing.  So many presents!  Big Jim and all his macho man accessories.  Tents, campers, motorcycles, race cars, tree stumps.  Each was individually packaged in its own plastic isolette, ready to serve a supporting role in my ever expanding action-adventure tableau.  Occasionally my sister would invite me across the hallway to play Barbies.  She’d already be set up in the largest open floor space of her lavender bedroom, between the foot of her bed and the double closets that spanned the north wall.  From the floor, the vertical lines of the closet doors shot up to the ceiling above her Lively Livin’ dream house like two colossal high-r...

Rose Garden, Lynn Anderson, 1970 Birthdays are bittersweet. Most holidays are. The awkward silence of family get-togethers; so much of me, unable to attend. Advent calendars were my favorite part of Christmas. Those little swinging doors, patiently opened one day at a time, marked my jubilant, albeit Protestant progression towards the Nativity. Immaculate birth. Virgin Mary. Joseph getting short shrift for his role in the matter. In March of 1989, I traveled to Montreal to meet my mother again.  We’d had no contact since our last on February 2, 1968.  I didn’t know I had a younger brother until just a few weeks before my trip. Lying on a trundle bed next to him on the first of my four-night stay, he told me that every year on my birthday, our mother locked herself in her bedroom and murmured sounds of crying would drift through the walls. The bathroom was the only room in our two-story house with a lock on the door.  It was a legitimately private space where Mom...

Shortly after moving into my [former] studio at Prentiss & Burlington Streets in Iowa City, I started tuning into the pirate radio station broadcasting from the space across the hall. It featured everything from raw urban rap, to stories read by a gentle-voiced young woman. Without enough DJ’s for 24/7 programming, the station often resorted to long stretches of prerecorded sets and large doses of dead air. I rarely saw any of the other artists, musicians (including Iris Dement - how did I miss her?), or DJ’s that worked in the building. When I did, we exchanged little more than a terse, under-the-breath “hull-oh.” Eventually, I passed a young woman in the hall who offered me a flier advertising her radio show. It revealed she was the storytelling DJ I’d heard. She was authentically funky, far beyond the usual Iowa City fare, softened by her intoxicating smile. The daily walk from my parking spot to the studio led me under a concrete railroad bridge-cum-unsanctioned gallery of loca...

Black Dog Black dog running in white snow, Turns his head to cross the road. What does this black dog know? Winter slows; Life is pulse and rest.

Creeping Charlie My goatskin gloves match the yellow tines of my rake (bar code still affixed), And reduce to two the number of blisters on my tender palms. I had intended to rake the entire yard, But can only manage that which is in the shade. As shadows grow long, I fall further short of my goal. Creeping Charlie must love the shade; There's so much more of it here. It does not, however, tolerate the herbicide applied unsolicited by my neighbor to the east, Along our shared fence line. All around, cicadas sing a siren song; In the distance, fire trucks theirs. Heart attack or house fire - Either way, I'm glad it's not mine. My neighbor to the west comments wryly on my efforts. I'm not quite sure how to take it. The evening breeze brings such sweet relief.