“Women are like tea bags: You never know how strong they are until they’re in hot waters.” Eleanor Roosevelt The news that a senior citizen like myself needed to stay inside for protection from a virus left an unsettling feeling. What could I do with all the time? Day after day of isolation from meetings, […]
Category Archives: Cleo Thoughts
quilt“God uses beautiful mathematics in creating the world.” – Paul Dirac, theoretical physicist Quilt made by Polly, a Hidatsa-Arikara artisan Ask a quilter if they are good in math and most will answer, “Not really.” But glancing at any comforter, one realizes that quilt makers need to apply a working knowledge of linear […]
“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isaiah 9:2 Snowflakes drifted in the sky. A cold wind from the north whistled against the bricks of our classroom. My six behavior-disordered fifth grade boys and I enjoyed […]
“Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.” – Al Hirschfield Quilt illustration from www Quilting Board.com Wedding Gift-Stained Glass Quilt Artist. As a child, I never considered myself an artist. Coloring was an everyday event in our school, especially satisfying for those who owned the big box of Crayolas with the […]
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The conditions of the Dust Bowl pressed the farmers and ranchers into despair. Too many days with the sun blocked out by the Black Blizzards. Fine grains of sand covering everything, including the linings of the lungs. A losing battle with locust, grasshoppers and drought that devoured any hope of a crop. Watching children lose […]
“People are beginning to realize that American sign language is a value added.” -T. Alan Hurwitz,Past President of Galludet College It all started in the hallway. My fourth grade students lined up in the cavernous entry to the school. Our classroom door opened on the opposite side of the walls from the entrance to […]
What can be done with a shovel and a wheelbarrow? Last Saturday, my husband, Vernon, and I joined other green thumbs in the Oak Lawn area to create the first Community/Pantry Garden. Under the direction of Dolly Foster, Oak Lawn Park District horticulturist, the plan for the morning involved building 12 raised beds, setting up six […]
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“A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy.” -John Sawhill Photo by Amy Smart, Diary of a Quilter My husband and I visited friends in the northern part of rural Illinois. As with most retirees, the endless battle of getting rid of a life time of […]
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“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.” – Alice Walker Life on the Florida reservation brought challenges to the women who faced the hardships of Everglade living. Resources were few. The threat of depression hung like the billowy clouds overhead. In the Seminole Indian homes called chickees, the women […]
School librarians are the main line of defense in the battle for literacy in this country. They are the ones who find the books that will peak the interest of even the most reluctant reader. They are the ones who stock the shelves with all of the wonders that kids want to explore: the stars, […]