Greetings All You Mavens of Cloth, Art, and Wonder,
Welcome back to BLOCK! I'm just back from the Old Pueblo - Tucson, Arizona. It was a short trip, just three days, and I was so steeped in the seasonal magic of March that I found myself stuffing orange blossoms into my car's air conditioning vents on the long drive home - just to make all the sunshine and sweetness last a little bit longer.
I saw friends and held their new babies, I ate meals deserving of the city's recent and remarkable status as Capital City of Gastronomy by UNESCO, I attended the Tucson Festival of Books, where I had the chance to, once again, experience "literary badass," Luis Alberto Urrea, present. And - best of all - I made new friendss in the realm of quilts and quilt-based activism (more on this in future posts)..
Driving home along the two-lane highway between Wickenburg and Wikieup, I rolled down the driver's side window and flew my hand on the wind behind the wing mirror of the car. Urrea's voice was with me once again, via audiobook, telling the true stories of men, women, and children crossing the boarder along The Devil's Highway (the migratory route for which his 2006 book is named), and I marveled over the contrast between their experience in the desert and my own. Dry, stabbing, desolation. Globemallow, Poppy, and Lupine. The brutal indifference of the summer sun, and the geo-politics of poverty. The softness of wildflowers born out of winter rains, captured like a picture-quilt on my smartphone's camera roll. How am I complicit? I wondered with each passing mile.
By the time I pulled in to Wikieup, the sun was setting and Urrea's bone-chilling account had reached its disturbing conclusion. I stopped for some bad coffee and fuel, and was shocked (for better and worse) how quickly my mind drifted back to the people and tasks, responsibilities and projects, all waiting for me when I got home.
I pulled out into the new night and went through my to-do list, one by one, until my mind I fell upon BLOCK like a bumble bee on an orange blossom. And I felt a new confidence in my decision to make BLOCK a slow blog - a place for original exploration and research, adventure and storytelling.
So, with this in mind, today's post marks my shift away from BLOCK as a weekly blog, the way it has operated for most of the last five years. Instead, I'm hoping to produce an even more meaningful, original, and creative space, by doing away with arbitrary deadlines. Posting every Tuesday will instead be swapped for non-fiction, long-form, pieces posted every time I complete one (which are in the works mavens!). While serialized installments of The Adventures of Polly Field: The Quilt Queen (the working title of my attempt at a fiction novel) will continue to be posted on the first Tuesday of each month.
I sincerely hope you'll continue to join me for this exploration of quilts and quilt culture, and I'm looking forward to the new wave of creativity this change will hopefully inspire.
Peace & love mavens,
A-
Thanks for visiting BLOCK!