AQS Grand Rapids: A Wicked Good Time

I was able to spend two days at the American Quilt Society show in Grand Rapids, MI! One afternoon we viewed the main exhibit of contest quilts, and the next day we covered the special exhibits and vendor's mall. It was great running into many friends. How we find each other in the thousands of faces, I don't know, but we did!

You can see all of the winning quilts at the AQS website here. The Best of Show winner was Michigan's own Pat Holly! It is another stunning masterpiece in her India-inspired series.

Saffron Splendor by Pat Holly

Best Use of Color went to another Michigan quilter! Deborah S. Hyde of West Bloomfield's amazing Sam in Sunlight is a portrait of her son. Unforgeable.

Sam in Sunlight by Deborah S, Hyde

One of the special exhibits was The Wicked (TM) Cherrywood Challenge. Quilters had to use the 'Wicked' Green and black fabrics to make a 20" square quilt influenced by the musical Broadway hit--which I will remind you was based on the Gregory Maguire book. (I read the book and enjoyed its originality. But have not seen the musical.)

We voted on our favorite quilt, which was not an easy task. The voting box was so full we had to really shove our paper in. But one lucky quilter was going to win Cherrywood fabric, so we were all motivated to vote!

Keeping on theme... first time quilter and retired elementary school teacher Janet Schug entered her first quilt, The Journey Home based on Frank L. Baum's The Wizard of Oz. Janet say it represents her journey into new beginnings as well as the journey of others.

Janet Schug and The Journey Home

The blocks have a delightful unsophistication, while incorporating careful fabric choices and placement. Janet told me she hand stamped each letter of the words one by one. 

 Janet eagerly told viewers that if one can dream it one can do it, and that she is the living example.

Downtown Grand Rapids is an exciting place to be. We could look across the river to see the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum and the Van Andel Public Museum. A few blocks in the other direction was the Grand Rapids Art Museum. We ate at the B.O.B. I learned that meant Big Old Building!

the view from my room

 I have lots more to tell about my trip. So watch for other posts to come.

How The Jubilee Singers Saved Fisk

Give Me Wings: How a Choir of Former Slaves Took on the World by Kathy Lowinger is a beautiful, informative, and inspiring book for readers ages 11 to 14.

Lowinger presents the story of Ella Sheppard who was born a slave. Ella's father bought her freedom, but her mother was considered 'indispensable' and was not for sale. Her father struggled to provide for the family but managed to give Ella a piano and music lessons. She yearned for an education and applied to and was accepted to the Fisk Free Colored School.

The school was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Then came the idea of concerts to raise money. Ella led the school choir, consisting of mostly former slaves, in performing Esther, the Beautiful Queen. Audiences were not impressed and donations were scanty. People expected a minstrel show!

One day Ella had the choir sing Steal Away and discovered that audiences were moved by the slave songs which the freed blacks wanted to leave behind in the past.

Changing their repertoire to Spirituals and finding a promoter in Henry Ward Beecher the choir's success as The Jubliee Singers took them to meet the Queen of England and earned Frisk $20,000. The school was saved. Today Fisk University lists among its graduates W.E.B DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Nikki Giovanni and the Honorable John R. Lewis.

Moving stories illustrate the prejudice the Jubilee Singers had to contend with. When they were introduced by General Fisk himself he noted the singer's values before emancipation and commented that after the audience heard their voices they would agree they were vastly undervalued. In England their introduction warned the audience not to expect sophisticated artistry. After the concert a lady from the audience told Ella that if that wasn't artistry, she didn't know what was.

This book includes side bar stories on slavery and historical background to the story. I suggest that the descriptions of slavery may be upsetting to early elementary readers. At any age, it is upsetting to read about! A timeline is included and further reading suggestions. We learned what happens in the people's later lives. Full color illustrations appear on nearly every page.

I was very impressed with this beautiful book.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for  fair and unbiased review.

Give Me Wings: How a Choir of Former Slaves Took On The World
Kathy Lowinger
Annick Press
Publication August 18, 2015
$21.95 hard cover
ISBN: 13:9781554517473
ePub: 13: 9781554517480
PDF: 13: 9781554517497

+++++

I wrote about Lucy McKim Garrison who collected and published the first slave songs here.
And the The Book of American Negro Spirituals here.

More "Row By Row" Rows...

from Heritage Quilt Shop, Gladwin, MI

from The Pincushion in Imlay City MI

The waterlily and fish Row by Rows are quickly made up with fusible applique. I don't usually work with fusible so the challenge is learning to keep my iron, scissors, and hand sticky-free.

from Quilted Nine Patch, Romeo, MI

I have enough rows made to create several wall hangings. I believe I will set them with pieced blocks not solid sashing.

Waiting are four more rows: Surrey Rd. Quilt Shop in Clare, Stitchin' at the Barn in Imlay City, Sew What in Wyandotte, Quilter's Gardne in Fenton. AND my brother picked up three more rows for me while he was Up North!

When they are all finished I will decide which are going to go together. But there is another month to collect them!

Toadstool Fantasy Quilt from 1976

Talk about retro! The June 1976 issue of Quilt World included a pattern by Pauline W. Rogers. The first patterns were in the March-April issue of that year. I remember when mushrooms were a big design element in home decorating. This pattern sure brings back memories.

You Love His Music--The Great Unknown Harold Arlen

from my personal collection

from my personal collection

One of America's most beloved songs is Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It was cut from the film but director Arthur Freed insisted it was returned. MGM executives thought the barnyard scene was ugly, the song slowed the picture down, and the idea was too sophisticated for the general public. Freed insisted it was Rainbow or him.

The next screening of the movie the song was back in. 

The movie ended. The audience was silent, then broke into applause and cheers. 

Judy Garland's interpretation of the song was so good people believed she was singing from the heart in her own words. The song became associated with Garland. 

Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and all the Wizard of Oz songs, were written by Harold Arlen and the lyrics by E. B. 'Yip' Harburg.

Arlen also wrote the music to:

image from Amazon

image from Songbook

from my personal collection

from my personal collection

image from eBay

from my personal collection

Image from Amazon

from The National Museum of Play

Judy Garland loved Arlen's songs even before Wizard. She performed Stormy Weather at her famous Carnegie Hall concert of 1961. What was not included on her best selling album of that concert was her calling for Harold Arlen to stand up to be recognized for having written the music.

Arlen, biographer Walter Rimler contends, was an unknown man during his life and remains unknown today--in spite of having written some of the most beloved, ground-breaking, and complex songs.

Reading The Man thatGot Away was glorious fun. The whole early Twentieth Century musical world appears, from Tin Pan Alley to Paul McCarthy. Arlen wrote for Broadway revues, Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, for Hollywood including The Cabin in the Sky, The Wizard of Oz, and Gay
Purr-ee (which I loved as a girl).

Arlen was born Hyman Arluck, son of a Yiddish-speaking cantor in Buffalo, NY. He grew up in a mixed neighborhood and was drawn to jazz and gospel music. He competed at amateur nights and played piano at the burlesque house. He organied a local group then in his early twenties published his first song. 

His parents were not amused, and asked Jack Yellon (author of Happy Days are Here Again and Ain't She Sweet) to “talk sense” into their son. After hearing Arlen play, Yellen called the rabbi and advised he admit defeat: his son was going to be a musician like his old man. Just different music.

Arlen went to New York City where he met Ray Bolger. Arlen's group made records that caused Bob Crosby to consider him “one of the best stylists” he ever heard. From there Arlen went on to write for Broadway. After floundering he met Vincent Younmans who brought Arlen up to speed on the music scene and modern styles.

It was a pivotal moment in American pop music with the rise of Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, the Gershwin brothers, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael and Yip Harburg.

Arlen wrote Get Happy with Ted Koehler. He realized his future was not in performance; he was a song writer. He could tap into mystical inspiration and summon music. He was writing for a commercial market, but he knew he was creating “art.”

image from Ruth Etting website

Johnny Mercer founded Capitol Records which changed music. Now artists didn't need to wait for a Broadway show or a movie contract to premiere their songs. It also meant the demise of the Tin Pan Alley style of songwriting.

Arlen meet the love of his life, a beautiful seventeen-year-old chorus girl Anya Taranda. His Jewish parents and her Russian Orthodox family kept them from marrying. When an undiagnosed brain tumor caused personality changes in Anya, Arlen struggled in his marriage and drank to excess, but they never divorced.

His friends considered Arlen a decent and kind man who wanted fame but didn't like the limelight. He helped Judy Garland with her medical bills. He shared his home with his parents and his unemployed brother and his family.

Arlen's musical compositions reflected his wit and humanity and his tendency toward depression. His life had its challenges: disapproving parents, an ill wife, the lack of work or lyricists to work with, his alcoholism. His later years brought Parkinson's disease.

Arlin always had the regard of his peers. Paul McCarthy bought the rights to Arlen's songs and published The Harold Arlen Songbook. NPR celebrated his 80^th birthday with his songs. And if at his 1986 death few Americans knew his name his music is beloved.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Man that Got Away; The Life and Songs of Harold Arlen

by Walter Rimler

University of Illinois Press

Publication August 2015

$29.95 hard bound

ISBN:978-0-252-03946-1

Gallivanting

On Saturday we left Metro Detroit on a day trip into the 'thumb' of Michigan in search of quilt shops and ancestors.

My grandmother Emma Becker Gochenour called it 'gallavanting'. She and her girlfriends from the North Tonawanda Baptist Church loved to spend a day wandering around Ontario or New York.

On our trip we took Van Dyke road north into the countryside, through Romeo and Almont to Imlay City. I went to four quilt shops to pick up their Row By Row patterns and then we went east and searched for the Lynn Township Cemetery to see my husband's mother's ancestors. (That's another post.)

Almont was having it's Homecoming Day  which is held every five years. The downtown businesses had quilts hanging in the windows. We stopped to see them. The photos are not great because of the window reflections. It seems that Stitchin at the Barn was associated with some of the quilts.

I learned that Almont is the sixth oldest village in the state of Michigan!

The quilt shops I visited included Shelby Township's Decorative Stitch, Quilted Nine Patch in Bruce Twp, and Stitchin' at the Barn, and the Pincushion in Imlay City. Each shop offered something different than I had seen before. 

On the way home we picked up sweet corn, $4.50 for a dozen huge ears. We had it for dinner and it was like eating pure sugar! 

God's Patient Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman who Captivated C. S. Lewis

"A soul straight, bright and tempered like a sword. But not a perfected saint. A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God's patients, not yet cured.”

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The new biography of Joy Davidson Gresham Lewis by Abigail Santamaria arose from her interest in the woman who C. S. Lewis loved. Santamaria had turned to Lewis to help understand the tragic and senseless deaths of 9-11. She had seen the movie Shadowlands with Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins, which concerns their relationship, marriage, and Joy's death from cancer and its impact on Lewis. Who was this brilliant, brash, and complicated woman?

Santamaria shows Joy with all her failings and her wonders--Brilliant, self-centered, brusque, driven, manipulative, strong, and always a searcher.

Joy Davidson was born to Jewish immigrant parents. At age eight she announced she was an atheist. At eleven she entered high school and at age 14 college. She won the Yale Young Poets award. Concerned with social justice, Joy joined the CPUSA and was an ardent supporter of socialism. 

She tried her hand writing scripts in Hollywood believing that literature and the arts could educate and promote the values she believed in. 

Joy fell in love with a handsome, convivial folk singer who became a writer of pulp sci-fi and noir fiction. They had two children. Joy and Bill struggled to support the family by writing, too often neglecting the children and too often unable to properly feed them. They both drank too much. Seeking answers, they became involved with Dianetics, the pseudo-science/religion of sci-fi writer Ron L. Hubbard. 

Joy had a conversion experience, a moment of grace when one night Bill didn't make it home. Still seeking answers, Joy and Bill joined the local Presbyterian church. While Bill later took up Zen Buddhism, Joy read the works of C.S. Lewis and began a correspondence with Lewis. Joy fell in love with Lewis and was determined to met him.

What in the world drew the shy, celibate, middle aged scholar to allow Joy into his life, even to marry her, and finally learn the joys of erotic love because of her?

Lewis's love for Joy was unconditional. She was flawed; her tales about her marriage unreliable. She had gone to England to snare Lewis. People thought she was unfeminine, dumpy, and dowdy. She cursed. She was also his intellectual equal, willing to be completely herself with him and was able to see past his persona to the inner man. She was witty, she talked too much but always was entertaining, witty, and full of life. Joy was open and without artifice. She understood Lewis better than he did himself. Their love was transformative.

Joy had thyroid disease and as a teen underwent radium treatment. As an adult her cancer was undiagnoised. The cancer spread throughout her body and she was expected to have only weeks to live. Instead she beat the cancer and enjoyed three years of happiness with Lewis before the cancer returned with a fury. How Lewis and Joy dealt with pain and the limitations of ill health is inspiring. Their friends saw a marvelous marriage of equals truly in love. For in Joy, Lewis combined all the forms of love: Agape, Phila, pity, and Eros.

The author notes that Joy's life shows that redemption is possible, that in spite of human nature's self centered sinfulness, we can transcend to a spiritual transcendence.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman who Captivated C. S. Lewis

by Abigail Santamaria

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication: August 4, 2015

$28.00 hard cover

ISBN: 9780151013715