Laundry Line Divine

You, by now, understand that I am a modern woman.
I have my own Twitter account.
And I sort the clothespin basket after a storm to make sure the wet ones don’t mark up the edges of my husbands’ nice shirts I hang on the line to dry.

I extol the virtues of my new Mac and turn my compost weekly.
Or monthly, depending on how many trips I make in to NYC.
Or how many hours I spend at my art table.
Or how many hours I am driving to and from the soccer field, or guitar lessons or making lunches.

I am in charge of being a Full Time Mom here at my house.
I am also in charge of completing my first non-fiction book proposal, a little slower than I planned, but life- she happens.

This past weekend I helped a group of parents at my daughter’s school host the 8th grade graduation. Next year you will be reading about that event in my life, but this year, I was in charge of the punches. I made 3 varieties. Since this is not a food blog, I won’t fill you in on the recipe…which I made up myself. I don’t like super sweet drinks. And I don’t like to feed people a whole bunch of food coloring, so I made several large batches of herb teas- one blueberry, one lemon and one mint. To these each I added fruity embellishments, sweetened them with agave and floated ice cubes made with juice or tea to keep them from diluting the punch. I also put little bits of mint, lemon or berries in to the ice cubes to make them pretty.
If I knew the punch would stay super cold, I would have loved to put orange goldfish crackers in the ice cubes. Wouldn’t that be funny to have goldfish in your drink? Maybe I could do that with gummy bears…though that defeats the sweetness thing.
I will work on this and get back to you.

What I loved about the punches and I love about hanging wash and I love about getting mail, is that the celebration of communication happens in real time. Twitter and Facebook is an altered space, which I willingly enter for periods of time.
But laundry, you cannot hurry it. If you linger you will likely enjoy it more. And you will have sweet smelling shirts for your effort.

The punches were one of those things I do for celebrations. I love to have parties or gatherings where really good things happen. Even at my Moms’ memorial service, the Lutheran ladies filled the serving table to brimming with a carousel of colored Jell-o salads that I wish I had photographed. They know how to float things in Jell-o.
Hmm. Maybe there is a key idea in that clue.

Today, I got great mail. Over at A Day Without Sushi, she has been posting about snail mail. I have enjoyed the discussion at Amber’s site. There are also pages about snail mail on Facebook, but mostly there I find people looking for friends, not mail.

My stepdad, Bob, is a first rate correspondent. He and my Mom both wrote letters and cards every single day. Bob has slowed down a bit, but today’s letter was one whole side in his neat handwriting and also a photo of a coyote from out at hunting camp. One of my Mom’s favorite sign-offs from a phone call or visit was “Keep those cards and letters coming”. She meant it. In her study at their home in Escanaba are neat stacks of her letters from her steady correspondents, my sisters, me and a few of my Aunts. Years of letters. I have boxes of them here. And, perhaps one day, I will sort them. I pulled a few of them out a few years ago to make art with the letters that seemed unimportant. Here is what I did with some of them.
Do you like to get mail? Do you write letters? Have you ever written a letter to yourself? My pal MamaGena, the Pleasure Revolutionary from The School of the Womanly Arts, gives homework every once in awhile to her students, asking them to write the love letter they dream of receiving. I have done this a few times and it is a fun exercise. I must admit that my husband, in our early courtship, wrote me letters and cards. I wish he would do this again, but we live in such close contact, I guess he does not think of it. Maybe Mama will give him some homework?

What about you? Is there a letter you could write this week that would change someone’s day for the better? I was at the post office the other day and there are some really nice new stamps just issued. Postcards only take a few lines and seconds of time. Writing a letter costs less that a Grande Latte and lasts a heck of a lot longer. The buzz I mean.

Can you feel me nudging you?
Would you write to me?
If you stop in at www.femailart.com, you will find our FeMail PO box number, to which you could send me a letter.

A few months ago, my cousin Alice Anne started writing to me after reading this blog. We now have a steady correspondence that I love. This past week’s letter had ginger candies in it! Just like her Mom, she is a sender of great stuff. My Aunt will put together a box for me every other year or so and I end up with great gardening gloves and a baggie of used jewelry for my collages or to share.

The United States Postal Service is here for us. Facebook and all Social Media are great, but you cannot carry them around in your pocket and read it over and over again. I know, you can carry your phone everywhere, but really…remember the pleasure of unfolding paper which was last touched by your friend, maybe even SWAK???????

Mail me.

Mail some one.

Until then, I will be keeping you posted here on the Laundry Line with dry clothespins and cool things to drink.

Love, S

When did you get your first piece of mail? I think mine was an oversized postcard from my Uncle Aubrey. I brag I still have it right here. The other side told of my Uncle’s overseas peregrinations. The chipmunk reminds me of what my Uncle and I shared- a love for our family cabin on a small lake in northern Wisconsin. The story of his travels were less interesting to my 4 year old self.

All my growing up years my Mom kept a twice-weekly correspondence with her sister, my Aunt Alice. She had periods of writing on manual typewriter, by long hand, to an electric cast off from one of our college dorms. This papery and ink connection between them had the nature of a life line that I never questioned until it disappeared with Aunt Alice’s death 9 years ago. I believe the evaporation of that relationship was part of my Mom’s undoing in to Alzheimer’s disease.

I am a hound with my kids about thank you notes. They don’t always hit my mark with numbers, but they certainly have established the habit that a gift requires a hand written acknowledgement. They both have received thank you notes, which makes the teachable moment apparent. The pleasure of someone else’s hand in yours is ever so satisfying. Both kids have had pen pals over the years. My daughter is a fiend for a letter. I loved the weeks she was away at camp last summer. The mail we got from her through those days of her hating then loving being at sleep away camp are a treasure from an eleven year old’s heart. Nothing that could have been said in a text or email, passages are scratched out, time passes in-between paragraphs and we weathered the changing winds of a young girl’s heart.

As regular readers of this Laundry Line know, I am engaged in a postal discourse with my dear friend Karen. We are both mixed media artists and began this mail art collaboration over 1,000 days ago. Karen makes me a card then sends it to me. I respond. And we have not stopped all through major life transitions and travels, joy and loss, seasons of moons and loves and recipes and gardens blossoming and being put to rest. The sighs of the year, like an accordian playing sweet Italian dancing music…our cards keep us in tears and laughter, connected at the heart by the breath of our friendship.

Do you write to anyone, even seasonally? Karen and I are debating starting a “Fe-Mail” correspondence club. Here is an excerpt from our “Fe-Mail” treatise:

The work you see here at Berkshire Art Kitchen is our collaboration. The 85 or so postcards chronicle our lives, our friendship, and our dialogue in vibrant mixed media art creations. “Fe-Mail” Art is our postal discourse that visually and artistically nourishes our selves and each other as we send cards for the pleasure of giving them away. Sending art through the mail is a long-standing tradition across the globe. These cards embody our female perspective while honoring the radial Mail Art movement. “Fe-Mail” channels the flow of everyday life as our Muse with the tidbits of papers that run through our fingers, at home and on the road. Our daily lives are the fuel for our creative passions. By sending our cards out in to the postal system, we invited the Universe to collaborate with us. We invited the stamps placed on our cards and the lives the cards lived until they arrived in our mailboxes to continue our creative conversation.

What does it mean to simultaneously honor the feminine self, the role of mothering and also commune with the Muse? In this project, we answer that question in our collaboration that has lasted over 1,000 days.

Our work together as artists began in Collage Eclectica art classes that Karen teaches at IS183 Art School of the Berkshires in 2006. Meeting weekly for 3 hours of studio art, among other artists, in the spirit of creative exploration, we had all the ingredients to support and inspire us.
Karen teaches that carving out the time for art making is the first step to awakening the artist within. Suzi fell in love immediately, bursting with enthusiasm for the techniques Karen taught. She re-awakened a passion for collage that wove in her writing and daily journaling. The steady diet of discussion of creativity and life, of the overlap of mothering and doing artistic work simultaneously fueled us both to dig deeper in to our commitment to make art no matter what.

With FE-MAIL, we invite the viewer to live life to its fullest. In these cards are the impressions we made while witnessing the death of Karen’s Dad, the decline of Suzi’s Mom. Our life is intricately woven in to these cards- our celebrations and losses and the comfort and encouragement we have to offer one another. You can read deeply in to the details in these cards to glean the themes that inspire us, the artists that impact us and our digestion of busy lives as Artists, Moms, Wives, Daughters, Sisters, and all the other roles we play.”

Karen just reported that her post mistress from the tiny post office in her town took her whole family to see our show! My postal clerk blanched at my suggestion he take in our show, that he had collaborated with us in a way. Over these past weeks I have begun to get mail from other friends. I have posted Bonnie’s card to me below. My mailing address is apparent in the slideshow of our exhibit at Berkshire Art Kitchen. Send me a card and I guarantee I will write back to you. Our show is held over for 2 more weeks at BAK. If you’d like a personal tour, let me know.

My first mail art from Bonnie, who is an amazing collagist.

And no matter your proximity to BAK or “Fe-Mail”, consider sending someone a handwritten note. Let me know how that goes.