Titles, Inc.

Here Yesterday, Gone Today

She said she didn’t hear the crash of the tree when it fell, only the furious roaring of the wind. Erica, Art’s archivist, was alone in the house and found out the tree had been uprooted when the next door neighbor frantically pounded on the door.

It landed smash bang on the neighbor’s open bed truck in his driveway.  When I got Art’s phone call I drove home immediately because I could not imagine how a tree actually next to our house, not on the open lawn, could fall in their driveway.  Even looking at the scene it was hard to understand how the wind could lay it at such an angle.

What a huge tree it was.  The base of it still near the side of our house, the fat trunk across the lawn and the limbs and top branches across the bed of his truck folding it into a V.  The cab was intact.  Wow, I kept thinking, wow.  It had to be a min-tornado to rip that tree out.  The morning weather report had warned of heavy winds but what does that have to do with me? Well, a random wild rip-roaring gust made it very personal.

It was resolved quickly.  Phone calls made, visits to the site, and then a crew of men buzzing away at it.  They removed the top of the tree – the large spreading branches and the limbs resting on the truck.  Just the trunk and its stripped heavy limbs remained.  I  thought of advertising Free Firewood, but it was all gone when I got back from the shop the next day.  The hole was filled.  It is as if it were never there.

Art did rescue the large round thermometer he had attached to the tree.  It had faced his office window and he could check to see the temperature of the day.  It didn’t record Wind.

---Florence

Billy Corgan Comes to Town

It was his birthday.  Age?  I’m not telling.  However with the Internet there are no secrets. Whatever age the calendar marks Billy, he is still a youth.  He has a sweet boyish charm, a radiant smile, and oh my gahd, those big blue eyes. 
 
He’s back in Chicago for a short time. I guess he needs our bracing fresh air – it snowed here at the end of  March – can’t get more bracing than that. He visited the shop and at that time there were several people buying books.  Even though his bald head was covered with a wool cap they knew our Billy. They cautiously asked for autographs and of course he agreed, and I, ever commercial, gave them my business cards for his signature on the blank side.
 
I encouraged shy Simone to get his picture with her on her cell phone camera (right). Another young man pulled out his cell phone and repeated the process. In between, Billy was browsing the store to get his armful of books on varied subjects. There was no time for chatting so we made plans for him to drop over on Sunday.
 
Hating to cook, I bought food that needed only heating. On the table were hummus and crackers, chicken, and mashed potatoes.  As we started to eat I heard Billy’s quiet out-loud thought: all white. Yes, it was. No orange carrots, no yellow squash.  But look, green tea!  Alas that was colorless too. The color was provided by the conversation, reminiscences, anecdotes, some philosophical exchanges, pleasantries and laughter. 
 
 It was Billy’s birthday week, so I brought out the birthday cake and Art and I sang him a Happy Birthday. Oh, it was a chocolate cake, not white. Is chocolate a color?
 
I asked Billy whether I could tell about his hands. He said everybody knows. Billy’s left hand is red with sturdy red fingers and his right hand is white with long delicate white fingers. I told you he was beautiful, didn’t I?
 
--- Florence

Goodbye PT, Hello Reality

Oh pooh.  I can reach for the sky, but I won’t get there with the left arm.

 

I went to my scheduled Evaluation.  Scott recorded all the angles and distance the left arm could reach.  Checking the records of my steady progress against the recent static results, he said they had gone as far as they could, and how did I feel about ending the physical therapy?  I said I was OK with the decision.  And we said Goodbye all around. 

 

Dr. Johnson, head honcho, had asked to see my X-rays, both the original break and the last checkup.  So I finally called the orthopedic doctor’s office and brought the copies back to David to look at.  I got the phone call today.  He confirmed the decision to end PT visits.  He said it was a very, very  nasty break and it precluded activity as normal in the past.  I complained, “My shoulders don’t even match as I see them in the mirror.”  That’s how it will be, he told me.

 

So, ladies and gentlemen, you who have been kind enough to ask about my continuing improvement, this is the final report.  I am absolutely functional except that I can’t scratch my right shoulder.  And don’t ask me to reach behind my back.

 

That means I will always have to put my bra on backwards, hooking it in the front. 

 

----Florence

A Quilt Not To Cuddle Under

What better way to learn quilting than at a quilting club in Friendship, Indiana.

That’s what Addie Davis did back in 1974. Each lady embroidered her name on several patches and distributed them to the other members who then sewed them together into their own patchwork friendship quilt.

Addie comes into the store, sometimes buying a tiny objet d'art (chotchka), and we chat.  She's a very pretty petite woman with curly white hair, vibrant, dynamic, age 82.  She invited me to visit her quilts.  I've seen fine quilts.  Lauren has some gorgeous pieces she made that are hanging, framed.  I've been to the stunning annual quilting exhibit at the Botanical Gardens here in town.  Bonnie made a charming sentimental quilt featuring a tree, each leaf having been signed by a guest at Natalie's Bat Mitzvah.  Even I, many years ago, made two log cabin design quilts in a Make a Quilt in a Day class at our high school adult program.  I loved it, but two quilts satisfied that passion.

One day Addie mentioned she had her quilts appraised.  “Yes?” I asked politely, “And?”

She said, “$10,000 to $17,000.”  Well.  Numbers like that grab my attention.  I had no idea quilts have that kind of price.  She told me that the quilt market is down in this economy, but the market is still strong for folk art and fiber art, the category of her handiwork.  I was so ready to visit Addie now, to see the quilts inspired in Friendship, Indiana.

Oh my, Addie has come a long way.  Her quilts are dynamite.  Not for the bed, oh no.  They are Art to hang like tapestries.  The pictures she had shown me in a quilting book that reproduced two of her pieces were flat photographs.  Hers have to be seen in living color, her Crazy Quilts with pieces and layers and appliqués, embellished with embroidery, jewels, buttons, ribbons, lace.  Then, of course, there are the enhancements like commemorative ribbons, commemorative badges, a tiny gold violin, political buttons, anything George Washington related, all attached strategically, dramatically.

The fabrics are cigarette silks, cigar flannels (who remembers that?), vintage silks.  Some of the vintage silks came from Sister Antonia who had made fine vestments for the church but had to abandon the sewings when her eyesight failed.  The vintage embroidery floss came from Sister Toni, too.  Addie visits fabric stores wherever she travels.  When she had to make a medical trip to Mayo Clinic she found a fabric store with two old proprietors who still had vintage silks from lack of interest of today’s buyers looking for the avant garde. Addie recalls a trip to Florence, Italy where she bought beautiful lustrous fabric in a tiny non-tourist shop. 

Addie has one quilt hanging, the others are folded between white sheets and laid into archival boxes.  She spreads them one at a time on the bed.  I walk around the bed slowly, there is so much to look at.

I love the Jesse Willcox Smith one.  Addie has reproduced the easily recognizable pictures by this famous children’s book illustrator.  They are pieced and embroidered, the boy flying his kite, the boy on his tricycle, the girl with her doll, the baby in the buggy.  Each of the many little figures engaged in different activities has its own embroidered facial expression.  Adorable.

And the quilt with the little tin soldiers marching around the entire border. Each soldier with his tiny red jacket, the gilt thread making epaulets, the double row of gold buttons that are really tiny round beads, his black pants, tall hat, shiny boots.    

Another quilt with replicas of famous museum paintings.   Quilts bursting with energy, pattern and color.

I think I saw eight quilts.  Each breathlessly gorgeous and each entirely different from the others.

Addie admits to being a bit old to continue this fine work.  Eyesight and agility of fingers for the sewing are slipping.  She’s ready to sell.

That’s what artists do.  They create their art.  And sell it.

-- Florence

Reach For the Sky

The physical therapist, Scott, is an absolute monster.  When I accused him of brutality he said, “I have made strong men howl, and sweet little old ladies cry.”  “Well,” I told him, “I won’t give you the satisfaction.” 

Today, I did scream, “Shit!”  He laughed and continued manipulating the shoulder.

I am lying down, and he has put my arm back flat against the table.  Proudly he announces, “Look at that!  Complete rotation!”  “But I’m dying here,” I shriek. 

At all of the exercises he wants 15 repeats.  I get to 11.  That’s it.  I hurt.  I’m finished. He says, “OK, just give me two more.”

He’s marvelous.  He keeps cheering me on, “Look at you!”  “Up up up up up. You did it!”  “You’re a fighter!”  I have picked up the chant.  “Am I great, or what!”  “I am so great!”

Today, as I got ready to leave, he noticed I put my “bad” arm into the coat sleeve first so that I can easily reach behind to slide my “good” arm in.  “No, no,” he says, “take it off.”  I do.  “Now,” he says, “put your good arm in first.”  Aha!  He’s wrong!  I tell him primly, “No, the nurse said put the bad one in first.”  He says, “That was when that arm wouldn’t move.  Put your good arm in first and make the bad one work to find the sleeve.”  More ouch.  That arm is not happy going behind my back which is why he wants me to struggle with it.

I had to put a book on a high shelf in the store.  It was in my left hand as I held several other books tucked in my right arm. Stretching I still couldn’t reach the space on shelf. Remembering Scott’s goading, I put down the group of books, and used my right hand to push the left elbow straight, giving me the needed extra inch, and I slid the book in place.  Such a victory!

I can do just about everything I need to.  The doctor had told me that because the break was not precisely sitting together (as I understand it) I would not have the same mobility as before.  Like reaching to the sky.  I looked at the mirror, and sure enough, the elbow is bent and it is only half-way to the sky.

Scott and I are determined to get that arm straight up there.  Not that it really matters.

-- Florence