While I’m not “done” with the sort of weavings and paintings I showed in my thesis exhibition, I’m already researching and sketching for a new project-liturgical banners. I don’t recall when these little flag like things with “Happy Spring” or Santa Claus or whatever started sprouting up on suburban lawns-it was probably while I was living in NYC. Since moving to Easton, they seem only to be multiplying-along with the tribe affiliation lawn signs, flags and banners. I had the idea of using the same hardware as most folks use for their seasonal banners or flags, but making, and displaying in the appropriate season, liturgical banners. 
My husband’s Christmas gift of the book “English Medieval Embroidery; Opus Anglicanum” is a gold mine for my research. As some of you might know, I’m a huge fan of deep reds, and reds often play key roles in my painting, dyeing and weaving, have ever since I started making paintings. To my surprise and delight, this book has a huge amount of embroidery on deep red velvet-it is on the cover, it dominates the background for embroideries throughout the book. I was so inspired I ordered silk velvet-suitably to dye-along with embroidery threads, also ready to dye. 
Yesterday at church, the priest held up the church copy of the book of gospels, which had repoussé metal on the corners and a medallion on the center of the cover, over a background of-you guessed it-of deep red velvet. Then he pointed to the metal cross that was on a background of brocade fabric and asked if I could replace the current fabric with red velvet! Mind you, I had already ordered silk velvet, and had intended to try both Madder root and cochineal to dye it red. So marvelously enough, it looks like I’m actually going to be doing a real liturgical textile project before I even start on my liturgical banners for the house project!

Yes, I’m binge watching the Twilight Zone for New Year’s. There is one episode in particular that has afflicted and haunted me since I first watched it. It really hits a nerve; “Time enough at last.” A simple man who just wants the freedom to read, but is oppressed by his life including his job at the bank, sneaks into the bank vault at lunch to read. His desire in life is simple-to read. The bomb gets dropped while he is in the vault, and he emerges the only man left alive. O.k., so he would have been burned up by the fallout, but lets suspend that reality because we are after all in the Twilight Zone. He finds a grocery store-all the food he could ever eat and more. But he is alone and desolate, until he spots the Public Library. He is overjoyed. He selects and stacks up piles and piles and piles of books. Finally, there is enough time. All the time I need, all the time I want. He bends down to pick up a book, and his glasses fall off, you can hear the lenses breaking. He manages to pick up the glasses, the camera gives us a sample of the extremely blurred vision he has without them, and the lenses simply fall out. 

Now that I’m retired from my full-time job, there is enough time at last. This episode had a particular resonance when I watched it this year, on January 1, the first day of my retirement. I don’t take a minute for granted. 

“A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
When I was a kid, I dreaded my mother uttering this sentence. At best, it meant put that thing away, don’t leave it where you have it now. At worst, it meant clean your room. 

When we lived in Philadelphia “the room” that would need cleaning was my playroom. I wasn’t allowed to keep any toys in my bedroom. We lived in a huge old Victorian that I loved and my mother hated. She hated it was too big, she couldn’t possibly keep it clean, you needed servants for a place that big and of course that was way beyond our means. The only reason we could live in that huge house, in that neighborhood, was that it was owned by the church where my dad was the pastor. My playroom was actually an “observatory,” that is, an indoor greenhouse linked to the main house. There were very wide windowsills that my mom filled with tropical plants when it got too cold for them outside. The entire interior of the room was where I played. Now that I think of it. there wasn’t much of any furniture I can recall. No wonder my stuff was always all over the floor. It was easy for my parents to ignore it, to close the door if company came over. Yo didn’t have to go through that room to go anywhere, it was in the back of the house. Why can’t I remember any furniture? There must have been some place to put my stuff away. 
My parents were amazed I always knew where everything was in that mess. When asked, I could find the kitchen scissors, or whatever I has swiped from them in an instant. But once every so often, they would “clean it up.” Half finished projects were rent asunder. What was organization to them was chaos to me. Thus the dread when my mom got to saying “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” too often. It was the harbinger of the dreaded room cleaning. 

Fast forward fifty something years, summer 2019. I go down to MICA for my summer grad school intensive, leaving behind my husband to do repairs on the house which is in full-on renovation mode. Lumber and or tools in every room in the house. Impossible to clean. Stuff everywhere. In my studio at MICA, I have only my own things. No chop saw or gallons of paint to step over. I started hanging up materials on the walls, the cords and yarn and rovings, in a color palette inspired system. A place for everything, and everything in its place started running though my head like a mantra. The meaning had totally flipped. Ordering things was a kind of thinking, and the order freed me to move forward with other things. I realized in that first week of the summer intensive, how much environment  could encourage-or discourage-my studio practice. My mother died in 1979, that her words came to me, helped guide me felt good, like I haven’t forgotten her.

My full-time job of the better part of 19 years ended officially yesterday, December 31, 2021. Today I begin a new life where I don’t have to get up at 5:30 every morning 5 days a week and come home exhausted and try to teach as an adjunct and do my art during that exhausted time when I wasn’t at work or getting ready to go to work or driving to and from work. 

A place for everything, and everything in its place no longer needs quotations because it’s now mine. I want to order my life around what I think is important. Sure, getting stuff organized, at least every so often is helpful. But those words are a lot more now. I want to organize my life purposefully, to put my time and resources where they are most important.