Personal Bags for the Migrant Workers

This is the trunk of my car, a 2007 Ford Focus. Now you know that year had a fairly big trunk.  As you see this trunk is full.  There are 4 large trash bags in there and in each trash bag is 10 bags of personal items for the migrant workers.  That seems like a lot, huh?  But wait.

This is the back seat of my car. There are 3 more trash bags here. In two of them are 10 migrant bags and one holds 5.  That makes a total of 65 bags for the migrant workers. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, I will tell you. In my fair city, or county we have  many gardens. That is farmers who grow produce for market. We are especially known for our Pueblo Chile, which is a particular breed of chile pepper which is used in our Green Chile. It is not as hot as a Jalepeno, but it is pretty close. Without the produce which is grown out here on the Mesa, a lot of farmers would go broke. Pueblo is also famous for it's Chile Frijole festival which happens every fall downtown on Union Avenue.  If you want to know what heaven is you gotta go to one of these.  I will find out the exact date and blog it so you can be sure and come. It draws people from all over the world, I kid you not!



But, this is about Migrant Bags.  On these farms are a lot of "Migrant Workers" and they are called that because if they were illegal immigrants they would be sent back to Mexico.  But facts are facts, and East of Pueblo there are many "Migrant Workers" who come to work on the farms and without them, the fields would lay fallow. Occasionally there is a crack down and it is then the produce suffers.  The "work force" in town does not want to work under a system that pays them by the bushel to drag a sack through a field in the blazing sun with no job security at all.  My daughter and son in law tried it once. They lasted 5 hours each, 10 hours together. It was time to harvest the peas.  Total take for the day:  $3.30 . That figures out to 33 cents an hour. Courses that does not take into account the trip to the emergency room to clean her eye after Tex tossed a weed over his shoulder and hit her in the eye!

Back on the subject. The workers have no medical, no child care, no nothing, but there are philanthropic people who know where to go to volunteer and help. There is a clinic staffed with 4 doctors who shall remain nameless in a location which shall remain undisclosed. There is a place the people can go get free clothes and once a week a care package consisting of dried beans, corn meal, canned tomatoes and some other dried staples. Several churches get together in the spring and make up "Migrant Bags" which is a cloth bag we sew.  Inside is a towel, wash cloth, a bar of soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb. We used to put more stuff in when we did it on our own, but now that we are organized they are more uniform.  Sometimes it takes very little to give a man or woman a little bit of pride.

Our church along with Christ Congregational packed up 65 bags.  Tomorrow I will take these to a church down on Hudson and they will be placed with the ones from several other churches and will be taken to the centers east of town to be dispersed.  The cloth bags are made out of cotton material and are very pretty as well as useful.  If you would be interested in helping us in this endeavor, please leave me a comment and I will get in touch with you.

If you are just wanting to disrupt an operation that has been going on for umpteen years, please just turn your head and look the other way. The Good Lord rewards that also!

The sister, the Royal Gorge, and the bag of shirts.

Well, as is want to happen in my life, sometimes I had the pleasure of entertaining my sister, Donna and her friends, Karen and Alice. They were on vacation! The word vacation usually strikes fear in my heart, but this time I handled it well.  Probably because it did not entail my driving 400-600 miles one way to visit and then drive right back home.
And so they arrived. Plans were made to the Royal Gorge just outside of Canon City on the following day. And so we did. It was a lovely day to do that!  Donna and I took the incline to the bottom of the Royal Gorge. It was maybe a 10 minute ride down, but it seems a lot longer when I have to actually worry about whether anyone checked the cables to see if they were frayed, oiled or greased all the moving parts, checked that the locks were working properly on the doors.  I don't know who died and left me in charge of controlling the world, but I strongly suspect it was my mother!
It was indeed a beautiful, panoramic view. At the bottom we got to see the rapids very close.  I had to worry about Donna falling in and drowning. She fared well.  Back up and then the quest to find the other 2 members of the party. Karen was easy, but Alice was lost. After contacting the Rangers and starting the hunt, we happened to spot her standing outside the entrance gate waving. Alice, get in here!
One more thing to do. Walk to the center of the bridge to take our pictures by the Kansas Flag. Let's see, drive 400 miles to get your picture taken by the flag of the state you drove 400 miles to leave. OK! Got it!  After a flurry of picture taking we were looking down and trying to figure if we wanted to bungee jump or not when here came the ranger again. He stopped by us and pointed at a bag on the other side of the bridge. I quickly spotted our tee shirt bag and sprinted over to get it. He said "Glad that is yours! I thought we were going to have to vacate the whole area. Al Quaida, you know"
That was it for the day. We arrived home very tired little puppies, and I decided it was great fun to go on vaction, if I did not actually have to go anywhere!

Pueblo Aids Memorial Quilt Panel #1.

This is the first group of panels that were assembled for our quilt.  The blue one on the top left is for Craig.  Craig was a friend of mine. He loved Charlie Chaplin and if you look closely you will see Charlie on his panel. You will also see his little dog. He was born 6/6/60 and passed 3/12/94.

Below Craig is Shawn. Shawn was born 8/26/66 and passed 7/31/97. I did not know him very well, although I made this panel for him. He loved to cook and he loved the great outdoors and his panel reflects that.

The yellow one with the red heart belongs to David. He was born 8/25/47 and passed 8/23/89. This block was made by his sister. His sister has worked tirelessly to keep AIDS in the fore front of our minds and to always be sure there is an observance of World AIDS Day every year on December 1.

The one on the right with the eagle is for Randy.  He was a very good friend of my nephew.  He was born 5/15/63 and passed 10/1/91, which just happened to be my birthday.  He was in the Marine Corps. Seems ironic in the world before "Don't ask, don't tell" that one who held "Semper Fi" in highest esteem should die of AIDS.

Down below on the left is Frank.  He was born 6/12/62 and passed 11/13/95.  I did not know Frank, but I helped his brother make this panel.

The panel with the dove is for Steven. He was born 4/12/52 and passed 4/5/95.  I received a frantic call after there had been an article in the paper about the quilt from Steven's Aunt.  Would I please make a memorial for her nephew.  It says on the panel that he is missed by his sisters and mourned deeply by Aunt Kathy.  That is all I know about him.

The rainbow music panel belongs to Danny.  It was mde by his mother.  Below is a picture of the big panel that is in the big quilt in San Francisco.  A labor of love. He was born 5/26/60 and passed 10/12/93

The green one is for Father James.  He was born 5/6/37 and passed 10/25/89

So you see, there are young and old, gay and straight. There are brothers, fathers, nephews. The face of AIDS takes many different form, but one death is not diminished by a thousand deaths.  Each one is unique in it's own way and by the people who are left to mourn.  Please look on this post as an act of love  and watch for the next one.

Pueblo AIDS Memorial Quilt; Inception and Evolution.

I now know the year!  In 1996 I had given a class on building a panel for the big quilt in San Francisco.  Someone wanted to know why there was no memorial of any kind for people who had died from AIDS in this area; why it was all so far away.  So a few of us got to kicking it around. I don't remember who all was there and if I did I could not tell you anyway as that is a matter of privacy. (Did I say that out loud!)

AIDS was at that time a very misunderstood disease. We have come a long ways, but it is still misunderstood.  It is a different kind of misunderstanding now though.  People actually  think there is a cure for AIDS.  Nothing could be further from the truth. It is no longer a Gay Disease and knows no class distinction or color line. People are now living far longer, thanks to the "cocktails". But they are now dying from aging factors. The medications are so strong and the body is so toxic from them that bodies are aging very quickly. PWA's (People  With Aids) never did die from AIDS. They died from opportunistic infections contracted through a compromised immune system.

I digress! I am not here to give you a history of the disease, I am here to tell you why we have this memorial.  We thought about doing copper leaves on a brass tree. That was cost prohibitive. All kinds of ideas were kicked around and nothing fit just right. Then I had the brilliant idea, "Why improve on perfection! Duplicate the Big Quilt only do it little." That was the perfect fit! The quilt is displayed several times a year.  Always on December 1, which is World AIDS Day  and then a couple more times. 

The blocks are 12 inches by 24 inches. The big blocks are 3 feet by 6 feet. That is the size of a grave. Our blocks are miniatures of the big blocks but they are no less reverent. Each block is stitched with love and memories and represents some one that was loved by someone. Not all the blocks have names. One says just Mark. Some give the full name, birth and death and a detailed picture of that persons life.  The most moving block.... 

I think I will save that for later.  I will get my first post up on Wednesday. It will be the first section we  finished.  I have got to be honest with you on this point, I am not sure I will be able to do more than 2 posts a month on this quilt. My heart and soul is in every block that is on this quilt. Some of these people were people I was very close to at one time or another.  Some were children of friends, some were husbands, some lovers of friends. This will be very draining on me, but I fill back up rather quickly when I am doing something that I am as passionate about as this project.  See you on Wednesday!

Pueblo AIDS Memorial Quilt

Ok, I been promising this for quite some time, so it is time for it to actually come to fruition!  I am going to do the history of the Pueblo AIDS Memorial Quilt, but first I have homework for you!  I need you to familiarize yourselves with the original AIDS Quilt.  Here is your link: AIDS Quilt   Just click on that and away you will go.  I set it up that way!  This will give you all kinds of resources so when I actually start writing about our quilt, you will not feel that you are in Never, Never  Land.

By reading on this site you will be able to see the correlation, between the big quilt that lives in California and our quilt which lives in my basement! The big quilt is not displayed all together any more, because there is no place that can hold the complete work.  It is rather displayed in panels as they are requested, ie. if it is in Texas they will send mostly Texas panels, but you can request  a panel and that one will be sent.  It is definitely a work of love.  So, go do your homework and I will probably get my first installment posted Sunday or Monday.

Have a great weekend!!

There is a genius inside me and it wants to be free!

Every time I set at this keyboard I think, "This  is the day I shall write something  that will actually change the world!"  Maybe not so much change the world, but at least make a little bit of difference in someones way of thinking.  I keep thinking that today is the day that I will write something that will at least be remembered, if not for a long time at least until you are through reading what I have written.

Maybe I have writer's block!  I have heard of that and I guess it could be possible.  I set here looking at the leaves on the Cherry Tree, sipping my coffee, staring at the screen and nothing happens. Well, actually something is happening!  What is happening is that I am typing like a fool  and the letters are appearing very slowly.  See I am done typing this line and it is just now putting up the word "fool".  Now I wait for it to finish so I can go back and redo the words I spelled wrong or where I hit the wrong key, which happens with amazing regularity.  No wonder I am frustrated!  The best part of all of this is if I will just walk away, when I come back it will no doubt be functioning like it is meant to and all my stress will have been for nothing.

Instead I set here like an idiot and continue beating my brains over nothing.  I give up!  We had quite a little storm out here last night.  Scared the ducks and geese and, beat my trees, bushes and garden to a pulp.  At least it did all this before I had vegetables that were almost ready to eat.  That is what usually happens!

Ok, I am off to get ready for church.   You all have a nice day and I shall check in tomorrow or the next day.

Today at my house with the Choke Cherries and Llama's!

Here you see my lovely Choke Cherry Bush! I am afraid the Choke Cherry is about to take my back yard.  It is hard to believe that this started out as one little twig about the size of a healthy piece of bindweed.  On the right you can see my house and look right in my bedroom window.  Don't strain your eyes, cause I am not in there sleeping in the middle of the day!  It does give you some idea of how high the Choke Cherry has grown!

And here are the Llama's trying to carry on a conversation with me.  The Choke Cherry bush is on my right as I talk to the kids here.  Actually they just finished eating 2 carrots and are waiting to see if I will run back in the house and get any more.  Alas, they will be disappointed.  No more carrots.

If you could see the ground at the bottom of this fence you would see where Asparagus should be growing for me to pick.  If you look closely at these innocent looking creatures you may see Asparagus on their teeth!

I ask you, though, who can stay mad at a Llama? They have the biggest, brownest eyes, and the prettiest eyelashes.  They have not spit on me yet.  I expect if they do that I may be a little angry.

So this is my tale for today. Choke Cherry bushes are loaded with blooms, but I will not get a berry off the bush because the birds are way to fast for me. The only way we get Choke Cherry Jelly around here is to go to the Farmers Market and buy the cherries.  Asparagus plants that flourish and I can not get a piece for my table, because I am not as fast as a Llama. Got lots of bindweed coming and I am sure I will get to take care of that!  The Bindweed and the stickers are all mine.  The ducks and geese will not touch the stickers, I don't care what you have heard!