Quilts, Poverty, and Gees Bend - Part 1

For the second time, I am reading a book called The Quilts of Gee's Bend by Susan Goldman Rubin. A;though it is a book written for youth, it is a billiant and beautiful book for any age.

In a nutshell, After theCivil War the Pettway plantation owners left. They had enslaved 100 people whom they simply abandoned in the slave cabins. Of course, enslaved people had always had to spplement their sparse rations to survive, so the people of Gees Bend fished and farmed and stayed alive. Then another owner bought the plantation and turned their slave cabins into tenant farms which meant they did all the work and he took a portion of the profits. By then the slave cabins had become a small village. They had to live with a cycle of credit with the local store for seeds each year and paid off the debt with the money from the harvest.

The storekeeper died and according to the story, left no records of the debts so the widow sent a gang of white men who took everything the Gees Bend folks had, tools, pigs, chickens, stored sweet potatos, everything, and they were left to starve.

A local journalist got wind of the situation and wrote about it and sent the article to the government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who had begun the Works Project Administration by then. The WPA arranged to send flour and corn meal to save the people from starvation in the short term and then set them up with small farm loans to buy tools and animals for the long term.

The cabins were so quickly and poorly made that the wind came right up through the floors and the walls so the women had taken to sewing quilts from fabric scraps from worn out clothes, and feed sacks. They used the scraps of cotton that fell to the floor in the cottin gin for batting. These quilts were layered under the children, on top of the children and on the walls to keep out the chill. Every year in the summer, the women would hang out their quilts to air and it wa like an art show.

The quilts were discovered and sold in the New York market where celebrities and folk art enthusiasts gave them the attention and honor they deserved and the quilt makers began to see some profit from their work.

Sadly, a collector bought the quilts and turned them into expensive art works sold at high prices, cards, accessories, and even postal stamps, but the Quilters of Gees Bend had no royalties or a fair share of this bounty until someone came to their aid and they had a law suit.

I am leaving now, but I will write more when I return.

Quilting - Follow up on previous blog post about the book published by GCHS

Common Threads Through Time, Quilts of the Gloucester County Historical Society

In my previous post, I mentioned buying this book for myself for Christmas and a copy for each of the following, my sister, my daughter, and my Cousin Patty all of whom have quilts made by my Grandmother Mabel Wright.

I was so excited to find, this morning, a quilting store and a place to take lessons and I am signed up for January 2026 Earlu Girl Quilt Company, 235 S. White Horse Pike, Audubon, NJ 856-617-6322. Hours: closed Monday, open, Tuesday 10:00-5:00, Wed. 10:00 -7:00, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10:00 - 5:00, Sunday 12:00 - 4:00.

earlygirlquilts.com

My own quilting experience consists of having made 2 original art quilts by machine for my daughter. One was very large on tan corduroy with a border of 2 inch denim pockets inside each of which there was a toy. On each pocket there was the letter of the alphabet. In the center was a cloth representative of the Ben Franklin Bridge; in the water were boats with velcro that could be taken off and put back on, and planes in the sky, also with velcro. This large quilt was hanging above a two story bed made by my father for my daughter when we lived on 8th Street in Philadelphia in 1983. Up top was her bunk, down below a curtained play room and sorage area. She could awaken in her top bunk and play with the toys in the quilt pockets or the boats and planes. The next quilt that I made for her was a portrait of our house, a twin sized bed quilt that she could take with her when she had to go for the weekend with her father for visittion. It was in case she got homesick. Those poignant quilts made me even more appreciative of the history of quilts especially as described in the book Common Threads. Many of those quilts were about women leaving their homes for a mariage or moving away to a new community, even a new region, or country.

Fortunately the Early Girl Quilt Company is holding day classes and I am signed up for January! I am so excited to be starting something new and meaningful. I will also be meeting new women and making new friends.

PBS Passport has a couple of quilting documentaries on offer and I have watched most of what they have but I will be watching again for a refresher. Also, I went to the Gees Bend Quilt Show at the Philadelphia Art Museum when it was on exhibit in 2008. I may stil have the catalogue from the show, even the book that I believe came out about the Gees Bend Quilters. I think I have a book tucked away somewhere about the Noank Quilters too.

It is so exciting to be starting something new, learning something new, especially something with such deep and meaningful roots in my life.

Happy Trails! wrightj45@yahoo.com

Quilting - Common Threads Through Time, published by Gloucester Co. Historical Society, NJ (review and thoughts)

Several years ago, I was fortunate in visiting the Gloucester County Historica Scoiety for the Quilt show. I have been to GCHS many times for many exhibitions, but this was especially interesting to me because my Grandmother, Mabel Young Wright, was a quilter. Every grandchild was given a quilt and my cousin Patty Gushue. inherited several more which she gave to her granddaughters. She also gave one to my daughter, Lavinia Jones Wright, when she married 6 or 7 years ago. I still have my childhood sunbonnet babies quilt somewhere in the atic in tattered remnants from frequet use and washing. My marriage quilt, the wedding ring patter (I think) is still in the cedar chest in the attic as well- also much used and washed.

Among the many things I love about quilts are that they were hand made from readily available materials (often in early days, from re-purposed fabric from worn out clothing) and making quilts allowed women in the past, who had so few opportunities to excercise artisitic creativity in between child rearing and the rigors of housekeeping, a chance to meditate, concentrate and make something beautiful. I love the thriftiness of the early quilts from worn out clothing. I have an afghan made from scraps of wool yard too small to use for knitting, that the same grandmother made.

When I saw that the GCHS had published a book about their quilt collection, I hurried over to buy 4 copies, one for myself, which I just read, and one for my daughter, my cousin Patty, and my sister (who still has her quilt).

Not only do quilts tell the history of a community of women, their marriages, their departures and arrivals in new homes, the generations of daughters and sons and their life events, they tell the story of the history of fabrics, such a big part of American history - think COTTON ald all that implies.

For several years I have been searching for a close by daytime quilting group and this morning after I finished my book, I found one - in Audubon and I am on my way there now to see if I can sign up for daytime classes! I will write more about the book and about the quilt shop when I return.

I am so lucky! wrightj45@yahoo.com

My review of = Mexico: 500 Years of History, Paul Gillingham

For a few nights, I have been listening to the audio book of Mexico: 500 Yers of History by Paul Gillingham. I have always felt that Americans are shamefully ignorant of the History and Culture of our near neighbors North and South.

I read a history of Canada about 25 years ago when I was on a visit to Toronto, Canada. with my daughter as chaperone with Audubon Marching Band. Also, I read more, including the long narrative poem by Longfellow - EVANGELINE about the expulsion of the Arcadians, when I visited Nova Scotia, twice, many years later. In fact, I had visited Mexico once as well, but I was 18 and didn't know anything about where I was going. Back in the 1960's, a trip to Mexico was a kind of rite of passage for the more bohemian/intellectual/adventurous young people.

Anyhow, it happens that I have been working with a young Friend at Woodbury Friends Meeting, First Day School. Over a couple of years on Sundays, We took a chronological approach to world history from Dinosaurs to the 1600's, the Age of Exploration, and reached the point in time, this Autumn, when explorers from Europe were landing in the Americas. Several Friends will be exploring the topic from Indigenous people to Colonists including Puritans and Quakers, and Mexico, Central America and South America. One Friend has Canadian relatives, one Friend is from Mexico.

Needless to say, in the boiling turmoil that is our current state of affairs in the United States with Trump's persecution of Immigrants, so many of whom are from South America, Central America and Mexico, I felt a burning need to know more about these places, so when I read the review of this book, I knew it was the one for me. I have bought a map of South America to use with my young Friend and to teach myself where countries are down there.

I am writing my observations from only half way through, because it is such a big book and covers so much. What I wanted to mention was that chapter 13 delves into the 'invisible lives' of women in the 1500's and 1600's, in Mexico, the period of the invasion of Mexico by Spain. The first several chapters of the book discuss the invasion and the people involved, but when we get to Chapter 13, we hear about some of the women for whom records miractulously existed.

In Chapter 14 we hear a lot about the mix of races: Of course the Indigenous peopls in their millions, most notqably Mayans and Aztecs and Mexicans, the Spanish, but also the Africans, Portugese, and Germans. The author and several reviewers make the point that Mexico has the most diverse population in the world. There is a lot of discussion in this chapter about racism and racial hierarchy.

If you read CASTE: The Origins of our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson, then this will be a fascinating expansion and contrast to that narrative. If you haven't read it, you should!

Well, that's it for me for now. I have Christmas cards to write, but I will come back later after a few more chapters and drop some ideas.

As always if you want to discuss this or anything else, you can reach me by e-mail (not by comments - that blog feature is so polluted by spammers that I can't bear to look at it though blogspot does its best to root out the trash)

wrightj45@yahoo.com A review on-line said this: "As elegantly written as it is powerful in scope, rich in character and anecdote, Mexico uses the latest research to dazzling effect, showing how often Mexico has been a dynamic and vital shaper of world affairs"

My thoughts after reading - Taking Religion Seriously, Charles Murray

Why I went back to church: When my daughter was a toddler, I decided I wanted her to have a religious education of some kind, but not the 'patriarchal' kind. To be clear, I wanted my daughter to have a basic education in EVERYTHING - literature, science, relgion, ART. I wanted her to be well rounded and I wanted her to have a chance to be successful in the world, whatever that might mean. I wanted to give her the tools as I could perceive them. She was in Girl Scouts, she played softball, she had theater classes, art classes from kindergarten on, swimming lessons, the works. So that was my first motivation, to give my daughter a bsic view of the Judeo/Christian belief system.

My mother had been my Sunday School teacher at Gloria Dei, Old Swedes Church on Front Street in Philadelphia and I not only had a basic education in religion but an introduction to Colonial history as well. Yhe church was one of the oldest in the country as well as in Philadelphia and it was founded by the earliest settlers, the Swedes. We had a Swedish boat model maybe the Kalmar Nickel? handing in the center of the small church. I liked church in those days, that church, with its small, intimate, quiet and orderly EVERYTHING: a brilliant an dhumane minister, Reverend Dr. Roak, the architecture, rituals, congregation. It suited me, a sensitive and frightened child in a fairly harsh environment.

Much later, I rebelled because I began to percieve the patriarchal structure of our society and the church and because we moved to New Jersey and had a drunken and ineffectual minister. I began to think ministers were a problem, at least that role and the power of it. In my teens I asked my mother to let me stop going to that church but I would explore some others and she agreed. The church was a bedrock for my mother and she served it in many ways, vestry, many many fund raising church suppers; my father even maide a stained glass window for the church, St John's Episcopal, two doors down from their last home in Maple Shade, on Linwood Avenue.

I tried all the local churches in Maple Shade, but like Goldilocks, each church was too something or other. When I looked for the right church for my daughter, I found the Quakers, perfect for Philadelphia dwellers; Pennsylvania is aa Quaker state. I had read up on Lutherans, Methodists, and what I liked about the Quakers was the 'no priests' system. When I met the buildings, I was even more enamored - I love old architecture and there was a lot about it that reminded me of Gloria Dei, Old Swedes Church, venerable, simple, elegant.

The people were wonderful at Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, kind, patient, accepting. And I liked going to Meeting on Sunday and listening to the witness of the congregants. But then, we moved to New Jersey in 1985 and for many reasons the transport back and forth on Sunday became impossible, so we stopped going. I needed at least one day a week off anyhow since I worked full time and all day on Saturday at the University of the Arts. As a single mother, I had housework, shopping, yard work - the works!

What I went back to the Friends Meeting seven years ago, this time in Woodbury, NJ it was to fix myself. I was suffering from resentment and anger over a family situation and I didn't want to feel that way anymore. I hoped Friends (Quakers) might be able to help. This time, I was going to religion to help myself be a better person and what I meant by better was more Christ-like, as in forgiving, loving, kind, understanding and generous, less selfish and less judgemental.

What I found was that attending Quaker Meeting gives you the opportunity every week to work on that. And I think that perhaps that is one of the best things religion has to offer, the opportunity each week to work on yourself, make yourself more Christ-like and perhaps that is how Christ is born again and again and again, in our hearts as we try to live up to his example. Isn't that what we mean when we say Christian?

Happy Trails whatever road you are on =

wrightj45@yahoo.com

(as always if you wish to talk to me use my e-mail because the comments section of the blog is polluted by spam)

Religion - Nadia Bolz Weber, Pastor

I have read a couple of books and many blog posts from Pastor Nadia. This one I copied to share with you. I will also find the link so you can follow her if you wish to. This is an excerpt "On Sept 2nd, Eric and I stood on a beach in St. Bees watching the grey movements of the Irish Sea before taking our first steps of a 200 mile walk that would carry us clear across Northern England to Robin Hood’s Bay on the North Sea. The tradition is to pick up a small stone from the first coast and carry it in your pocket until you place it on the second. Before we left, friends had asked what they could pray for.

They only answer I could summon was, “acceptance”. So that was the stone I carried in my pocket. That of a small, smooth prayer of acceptance. It was all I had that I thought might, maybe, perhaps slay the Goliath I was facing. Because sixteen days before leaving for Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast hike, I was diagnosed with invasive ductile carcinoma. Breast Cancer. A treatable, survivable form of Breast Cancer, but breast cancer nonetheless. “C.a.n.c.e.r” As a word, “cancer” could really use some synonyms. How is it that we have but one word for such a wildly broad spectrum of implication? Cancer is the term for something as simple as a suspicious mole removed in your doctor’s office AND for Leukemia. That one word, “cancer”, when spoken for the first time by your doctor is a gunshot. It’s footsteps behind you in a dark alley; a tornado siren, and your spouse saying “we need to talk”, all rolled into one.

Acceptance When friends asked what they could pray for, I knew I did not need bravery. I did not even need strength, per se. I just needed acceptance. Why? Simply because I had cancer and wished I did not. For 2 weeks I walked with this simplest of prayers. When it was raining and I wished it wasn’t – I’d ask God for acceptance. When the trail was steeper than I wished, I’d do the same. When my legs ached and I longed for a place to rest and unlike on the Camino there were no café’s at which to stop, I’d repeat it. Acceptance. When I wished the day’s walk was over but we had two more kilometers to go and those two kilometers felt like five, I’d whisper, “acceptance”.

A prayer, a reminder, an aspiration. Each time I noticed myself wishing things were different, that the weather, the trail, Eric, or I myself were different, I whispered my one-word prayer. I hoped this tiny stone could hit my denial square in the forehead, knock my fear on its ass, and flatten self-pity. Because cancer is a giant, and I am so small, so ill-equipped, so prone to oppositional behavior. So in this way, over the course of two weeks trudging across England, I practiced acceptance I mean, what other options did I have? Fight the wind? Resent the cold? Be more miserable than necessary? I’ve done that throughout my life, and I’m exhausted. When we got home from the walk, I told my spiritual director Jane about my one-word prayer. On the day of my surgery she sent me this perfect text message.

“Mental health is a dedication to reality at all costs”.

-M. Scott Peck

Making peace with what is becomes a struggle when the “is” in question is not what we want; when what “is” changes us, humbles us, reduces us. When the “is” isn’t even clear yet, because you’re waiting on pathology reports. My God, the whole thing feels uncanningly like grief. To be in grief is to be emotionally left behind. The person IS gone, the job IS lost, the body IS changed but the world in which that’s true feels 1,000 miles away from you and you’re left in a ghost land of what was, crawling through a desert of molasses toward the country of what is. And it is a fucking process.

When we got home from the walk, I told my spiritual director Jane about my one-word prayer. On the day of my surgery she sent me this perfect text message. “Mental health is a dedication to reality at all costs”.

-M. Scott Peck

My God, the whole thing feels uncanningly like grief.

To be in grief is to be emotionally left behind. The person IS gone, the job IS lost, the body IS changed but the world in which that’s true feels 1,000 miles away from you and you’re left in a ghost land of what was, crawling through a desert of molasses toward the country of what is. And it is a fucking process.

Nadia Bolz-Weber from The Corners From: thecorners@substack.com

Things to do when you can't do what you used to do.

This morning, December 1st, 2025, I was texting with a friend who was talking about having what she calls 'the blahs' and I know that feeling well. It was my genetic gift to be almost always inspired by the world. Sparks were always going off in my mind from things I read or saw, or heard in conversation. But pnce in awhile, especially now that I am old, I get the blah's and even worse, the melancholy cloud drops over me - both at the same time! Ugh!

My subtitle for some of these posts should be "getting old/being old" but the fact is that younger people get this problem too. In fact when I retired, a bunch of teachers my age and also retiring were worried about what they were going to do with themselves. They had no hobbies! Hobbies seemed to be always banging on my door like salespeople "Buy Me - Try Me - Volunteer Here!" So when I retired, I DROVE (one of my go-to stimulators) and I found such interesting places, I began to volunteer everywhere, from Port Norris and the Bayshore Discovery Project to the Alice Paul Foundation in Mount Laurel with several places in between: Camden County Historical Society in Camden, Gloucester County Historical Society in Woodbury, and Red Bank Battlefield in National Park. In each of those places I developed a keen and avid interest and collected dozens of books which I read - they were each a passion, literally! And I made friends.

So what happened when I got visual disability and couldn't read anymore, or drive far away, and when my joints and spine deteriorated to such a degree that I couldn't sit for hours at a computer, or do a four hour touring shift, or climb steps to tour a house? Well, I discovered the Free Books Project and gave away all my books! I founded a small Seniors Group that met monthly at my local Seniors' Hall and that lasted for 7 years. We did 'show and tell' based projects such as a one page scrap booking project with an old family photo that we framed.

One cold snowy January Sunday morning about 6/7 years ago, I dropped in at the Woodbury Friends Meeting and I liked it so much I joined and religion became my next big interest. I have just listened to a great audio book called "Taking Religion Seriously." I volunteered to teach first day school there and that opened up a bunch of interests too.

Throughout all of this, my new found freedom gave me the time to develop my lifelong painting and art passions and I have been showing paintings in group shows at The Station (Eiland Art Center) in Merchantville, NJ. I have two paintings up there right now and tomorrow I am meeting there for lunch with an artist friend. She and I met at the Haddon Fortnightly annual show in March and we both have works in the Merchantville show.

In 2024, I was in seven group shows and that kind of burned me out, not for painting but for the rigors of framing, wiring, applying, dropping off and picking up for shows. This year I only did two group shows at The Station, my favorite venue.

What I have been doing lately though, is small postcard sized paintings, often in water color. I have a little pocket sized Windsor Newton water color set, and you just need a cup of water and some good small brushes. They are quick studies and I have become quite good at them. I can do a little beauty in about 2 or 3 hours and a couple in a day. Over my birthday week, I did half a dozen and gave them away (framed inexpensively with dollar store frames) as thank you noes to each of the people who took me out to lunch for my birthday. They are so small that they aren't a burdensome gift for people and those people can also re-gift them if they like. When a friend's cat died recently, I did a little 8x10 portrait painting of her cat for her and it gave her such solace that I have been thinking about doing little paintings of pets next to give away. But first, some landscapes to offer the people in my Woodbury Friends congregation for Christmas - there are only 6 or 8 of us who attend regularly so I could do 6 or 8 small landscapes to give away.

I can't hike anymore, or kayak. And I can't drive far away anymore as my eyesight deteriorates, or read. But I can still paint, and I listen to audio books!, and I can still write this blog - a big benefit for me as I love to write (compose and structure my thoughts) and this is a perfect venue. Also another friend introduced me to Art Journaling and I have slowly been adopting that as well. I learn a lot from this blog and writing it often inspires me to a new idea. This blog just now gave me the idea of the postcard sized paintings for friends of their pets. By the way, one year I saw a magnificent Art gallery show of 19th century painted postcard- size landscapes of famous travel destinations done to send to people back home from travellers abroad. It was before the time of printed postcards. They were beautiful and INSPIRING! Well, I hope you, too, are finding things to do to replace the things you can no longer do. "The world is so full of such wondeful things, I am sure we should be happy as Queens and Kings!"

Happy Trails, wrightj45@yahoo.com