A LIST OF FAVORITE POSTS

Here are a few favorite Pattern and Outrage posts. I selected some based on my preference and others on what readers select.* Some sections below will also mention a a tag which you can tap on the sidebar and find other posts on that topic. WRITING, RACE, RANTS AND LAMENTS are three for starters.

Morning of Surprise Hearing
Poem / prompt response regarding Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the 1/6 Committee

The White Underwing

Lost Orgasms or Zero Faith

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Why I Admire Dog People So Much

Peace is a Leaf Sent round the World

The Gilded Age of Hangers

College Drop-off: A Poem

Deirdre
A retelling of the ancient Irish tale
about Deirdre, the Princess of Sorrows (and also my namesake)

Black Stallion — fan fic

Ordinary dog walk in February

Joy Harjo and Ted Lasso — What?

Gathering the Dream

Accidental Beauty

Eclipse Day Ramble

Excerpt: “This body. This day. A braid of: my mother, my own gladness, the relief at not being the boss, the smell of chicken stock on the stove. A short yelp of hallelujah is in order.”

Posts related to race, justice, protest and learning:

A shithole country
Written while waiting for the Derrick Chauvin verdict

A long-winded memory share
Thoughts about plantation weddings and Nikole Hannah-Jones, 2022

Reflection on Night in Slave Quarters
Written after spending a night in the slave quarters in Medford, Mass. at the Royall House. The event was organized by The Slave Dwelling Project, 2014

Homage to Harriet Jacobs
Written after visiting the grave site of Harriet Jacobs in Cambridge, Mass., and having read her memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Sent – Hearts for Charleston Quilt
Lots of pictures of the collaborate quilt made for the surviving community at the Charleston Mother Emanuel AME. The Hearts for Charleston Quilt tab on the sidebar will take you to many more posts about this year-long effort.

Ferns, Fractals, and African Textiles
A quick look at some of the interesting points made by Ron Eglash in his book, African Fractals, Modern Computing and Indigenous Design.

He asserts that the broad, sophisticated, and conscious use of fractal mathematics in many sectors of African life is the basis for digital circuitry.

African Burying Ground — for reverence, reflection, learning
A post about a relatively newly consecrated burial ground in Portsmouth, NH

Racism is a Morphing Beast
Report from an anti-racism workshop in Boston

“If you’re gonna dig a hole, at some point someone has to pick up the goddamned shovel.” Leslie Mac on progressive whites’ tendency to get stuck on education and reflection about racism and failing to move on to action.

Our problematic past
A post written after hearing the keynote speaker of the Annual Slave Dwelling Project, 2021. Susan Neiman’s talk was entitled, What Americans Can Learn from Germany’s Racial Reckoning.

Confederate Flag of Truce
A post about artist Sonya Clark’s provocative show at the DeCordova, in Lincoln, MA

Middle Passage Marker Boston

Gratitude and Slavery

Ms. Wheatley and Ms. Gorman

Liberty Marches Boston, January 2017

The Weight of Cloth:
Posts below are related to a work of historic fiction, tentatively titled The Weight of Cloth. It’s set in South Carolina, 1737 – 1744 (with a later epilogue) and primarily told by four women — the historic white figure of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, and three enslaved women, Melody, Saffron, and July. See also posts tagged South Carolina, slavery, and writing.

Bibliography, The Weight of Cloth

Names of the Enslaved named in Eliza L. Pinckney’s Will

Freedom — a deleted excerpt from manuscript

Silence of listening and acknowledging
One of many posts about listening to Black voices and wondering about
being a white writer with Black characters — from 2016

Maroons or the untamed
Window into writing/research during 2nd draft

Erasure poems

A series of erasure poems using a letter from Eliza Lucas Pinckney to her father

Writing exercise in imitation of Colum McCann

Captioned Water Was, this piece describes the Middle Passage and early days post-auction for a couple of characters in my novel. I called it Blood and Indigo back then. This chapter is not in the manuscript (lots of them were cut along the way).

Visual work, including some tutorials:

Photo Transfer Four Ways

Digital collage — a Diana Photo App Tutorial

Mice-making tutorial
How to sew and dress small mice out of premade felt

Where is your edge
A look at why fiber art takes a while to get good at.

“To find one’s voice with cloth is particularly challenging, I think, because there are so many ways to attach scraps to each other and to a flat surface, and then many ways to quilt or otherwise add texture. And while one is busy trying to figure out what techniques fit with one’s temperament and basic work-tempo, there is the perhaps less-tricky but still not-exactly-straight-forward business of finding one’s basic subject matter.”

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* What readers select is revealed in daily stats, which I check regularly. For some of the mysteriously recurring reads, I try to determine where a link might be (such as Pinterest). Mostly I can’t figure it out.

Are you a person who loses things a lot of the time or just now and then? A recent New Yorker article by Kathryn Schulz takes a beautiful wander through the topic. Subtitled, Reflections on Two Seasons of Loss, Schulz examines not just the business of losing things, but also the topics of losing our minds and our loved ones.

Things go missing so much in this house that I have categories for lost objects, not unlike the childhood game of calling out ‘warm’, ‘cold’ or ‘HOT HOT HOT’. I usually can tell that I’m going to retrieve a lost object before I find it and often sense its general vicinity. Lest you think that gives me some sort of advantage, know this: even a ‘hot’ lost item with a felt sense of place can take DAYS to find.

In my early twenties, my checkbook went missing so often that the bank tellers on North Street in Pittsfield rolled their eyes to see me coming. I’ve gotten somewhat better. Keeping a neater house helps. Fewer distractions helps.

In spite of my incapacity, family members are right to ask me where things are, since in addition to being an over-the-top loser of things, I’m a good finder. Is that uncommon? My mother used to call me “old eagle eyes” and ask me to round up her scissors.

When the “where’s my” question is posed to me, it feels like more of an imposition than it might otherwise, because I’m kinetic. Being kinetic means taking notes to remember anything and moving my body to find a lost object. When both boys were home over Christmas, I really enjoyed cooking for them, felt neutral about loaning the car, and got very annoyed with the “where’s my?” routine.

“Where’s my jacket?” “Where’d I leave the car fob?” “Did you move my paycheck?”

I was asked to find things I hadn’t used, touched, or even laid eyes on. Being winter, I’d have to unearth myself from a blanket, heating pad, and lap top (that’s two cords and a lot of fabric). My joints hurt sometimes. I’d groan. Then I’d wander around the house, maybe finding their lost thing, maybe not.

Objects can move from one category of lost to another. ‘Fucking vanished’ is a category, but believe it or not, a mutable one. Some things that I could swear after a vigorous, multi-day hunt have been taken by leprechauns do in fact show up (‘taken by leprechauns’ is a whimsical name for ‘fucking vanished’). The reverse happens as well. It’s hard when something that felt retrievable shifts into the ‘permanently gone’ category.

Frequently losing things teaches you about attachment, sharpens intuition, and inspires resourcefulness. Humility is involved. But those are topics for another time.

Let’s instead descend into my studio, which is really messy (also a topic for another time). Yesterday when I went downstairs to find some xerox color copies I’d gone to some trouble to make a few months back, I wasn’t sure how readily I would find them. That they were pretty much right where I’d thought they’d be felt like a gift.

There are about forty-five collages ready to be mounted to card stock. Then, at last, they will be SoulCollage cards.

Because I hate to measure and really suck at it, it took a good long while to mount just five of the collages. At five a day, I’ll need eight days to get through the pile. But guess what? After an especially demoralizing day of writing, the task actually satisfied. I took my time. I enjoyed working toward a goal with manageable and discrete steps — so unlike finishing a novel (am I finishing? is it a novel?)