Friday Field Trip: The Textile Museum

Washington, D.C.'s Kalorama Neighborhood

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
--from "Little Gidding (No. 4 of "Four Quartets")," by T.S. Eliot

I'm intrigued by T.S. Eliot's idea of exploration. That we keep exploring unfamiliar places so that we can come home and make the familiar new again. More than that, Eliot might be saying that exploration leaves us with a deeper knowledge of our own "place" and ourselves. Perhaps familiarity breeds a dullness of vision, and it is by traveling and encountering new cultures that we fully open our eyes to an understanding of where we live; that the voyage to know what seems foreign is essentially a way to achieve self-knowledge.

The Spanish Steps

As I was walking along the streets of Washington, D.C. on my latest Friday Field Trip--a series of solo jaunts to get to know the Baltimore-Washington region where I'm now living--I could feel something waking up inside of me. It was partly the energy of the city, with people walking briskly and purposefully to their jobs. It was also the jarring strangeness and elegance of Embassy Row, where even the tiniest nations from all across the globe inhabit stately row houses.

Mostly it was the upsurge in memories of exploring other cities when I was younger and alive with dreams of what my future would hold: of getting off at a randomly chosen Metro station in Mexico City to walk around a neighborhood and imagine the dreams contained in each home; of staring up at the skyscrapers in Chicago's Loop and thinking about the great work I could do in each office; of biking along the beachfront path in Santa Monica and feeling the restless creativity of Los Angeles; of admiring the juxtaposition of art objects in a Phoenix museum.

The Textile Museum

I'm viewing these Friday Field Trips as ways to reconnect with myself, and more specifically with those entwined senses of imagination, curiosity, and wonder that sometimes get squashed as I'm driving carpool, folding laundry, or going about the daily-ness of living. There is wonder to be found in each of those activities (OK, maybe not in folding laundry) if I'm awake enough to see it, just as artisans wove wonder into the objects of daily life displayed in The Textile Museum's current exhibit, "The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings From the Permanent Collection."

There is wonder embodied in the exhibit's woven Victorian wallcovering of scrolled floral forms. In a brilliantly dyed Peruvian wall hanging that juxtaposes European, Asian, and Native American motifs. In the collaborative colored Vs of a rug woven by Navajo women and designed by a Modernist artist. In a massive embroidered wool rug stitched by a Mexican artisan in 1783.

George Hewitt Myers, who bought his first Turkish rugs in college and started The Textile Museum, recognized the wonder of these objects and collected them to understand the techniques, colors, and patterns that formed them. His quest to bring together astounding examples of non-Western textiles is a form of exploration, and one that ultimately helps us understand the textile beauty beneath our feet and all around us.

Prince Panda by Joseph Barbaccia

Friday Field Trip: Mt. Pleasant Farm

As I drive around my new home in Howard County, Maryland, I have been trying to make sense of the place. It's a sometimes uneasy mix of rural and suburban.

My daily drive to my son's school takes me along the busy county roads that shuttle commuters to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Alongside them the fields of sweet corn are spent, glowing golden in the sunny but cool early fall.

I take a winding side road to be sure to drive past an old stone farmhouse nestled in a green hollow. The long way around takes me past a stucco farmhouse built onto an original log cabin. The farm is perched atop a hill only a few feet away from the busy junction of two farm roads-turned highways.

However, between the surviving farms, small developments of McMansions increasingly dominate the landscape. Round a corner on the shady country lane, and the road is cleared of trees, opening up to reveal a sign advertising estates starting in the $750,000s. Though the loss of farmland to development slowed across Maryland between 2002 and 2007, Howard County itself lost more than 8,200 acres of agricultural land, a 22 percent decline.

This morning I decided to take a closer look at Howard County's rich agricultural heritage. I hiked the paths of the 300-year-old Mt. Pleasant Farm, which the Howard County Conservancy, the county's non-profit land trust, currently runs as an environmental education center.

I was drawn immediately to the Montjoy Barn, built in the late 1700s and moved to its current site for preservation. It is the oldest barn in Howard County and the only existing example of an English wheat barn in the county. Its horizontal siding sets it apart from the vertical board and batten barns on the rest of the farm.

Just past the barn a mowed trail winds through a meadow of goldenrod, thistle, and milkweed. Purple chicory flowers bloom low alongside the path.

Each dip and bend in the path reveals a new vista of native plants and grasses. At the bottom of the hill, a small stream lined with mica bounds the farm; a group of Conservancy volunteers closely monitors its water quality.

Another trail winds along the back of the farm, past a grassy meadow that must once have been corn fields. From there the noise of the cars on the road recedes, and the housing developments across the highway seem a world away. I notice the slender plastic tubes that protect the hardwood saplings from deer. In a few decades these young trees will have reforested some of the cleared areas. As those trees grow and leaf out, the pressure of population growth will no doubt continue to put more demands on the land, challenging residents to preserve at least as much as they take away.

Starting Small

I have a few designs emerging slowly from needle and thread on wool and stone. This Crewel Stone, for my friend Jackie at Smoothpebble, stitches the rich harvest of late summer and early autumn. It is golden; sun made manifest.

Happy birthday, Jackie.

I know that most of you have endless amounts of self-love and self-confidence, and you never wake up without them. However, for those of you who have moments, like me, when that reservoir of inner acceptance is running low, fill it up by reading this grace-filled post of Jackie's.

And a happy September to all of you.

Goodbye, Summer

School starts next week, and we snuck in a last weekend trip to the lake. It had rained most of the night before, and the morning was overcast when we set out. But the sun came out just after we got to the park. The weather must have scared away most folks, so we had the whole place to ourselves.

I haven't used my camera much this summer, and I enjoyed the process of getting my "camera" eyes readjusted. At first I saw the stones on the beach as an amorphous gray pile. Then my eyes snagged on the man-made debris: a spent gun shell, a bandaid, a bottle cap. The colors and patterns of the natural world finally emerged. Ladybugs flitted between stones (which I didn't manage to get a good photo of). Shells and seaweed formed abstract tableaux.


Shells nestled among the stones and a piece of weathered red brick.


A strand of seaweed framed a stone glossy from a receding wave.



A delicate branch rested on a stone frame.


Seaweed arched across a stone.


Not far away, a caterpillar formed a fuzzy arch across the wood chips on the playground.


It was a quiet goodbye to summer.

Settling In

I have done a lot of driving this summer. Lovely drives down country lanes bordered by vegetation so lush that my car moves through tunnels of green.

Down the country lane that leads to the county fairgrounds, I admire the barn that has been rooted on its Maryland hill for at least a century. Nature and the elements have gently altered it. Trees have grown to tower over it. Its boards have weathered to silver in places. The farmer has tweaked it: a cinder block office has been tacked onto the side; a new tractor parked alongside; a tin awning added to shade stalls. Surface changes only: the barn's frame--its essence--remains intact and functional. More than that, though, the evidence of the slow accumulation of refinements means that the barn belongs.

I have to admit that as I pass the barn I feel envy mixed in with the admiration. Not envy in the sense of wanting to possess what the farmer has. But envy for the barn's quiet, sure knowledge of belonging.

It has been a little over a month since we moved to Maryland, and I am still feeling an acute sense of dislocation, a sense of not being home. This is my 12th move in my 43 years, the 8th move as an adult. I know the drill--how to pack and unpack and dispose of boxes, update addresses, register kids in school, make friends, scout out grocery stores and restaurants and doctors and hair stylists. Those are the surface changes that are meant to take hold and root me in a new place. But the roots are slow in taking hold since I know that this is only a temporary move, a one-year caesura in our life back in New York.

So I'm betwixt and between, and feeling uneasy about it. But I'm also trying to hold on to the idea that this in-between-ness could hold some rewards as well: a heightened appreciation for all of the amazing things in my old home and in my new one. And, most importantly, that what I have right here with me--my family most of all--is all that I need to feel at home.

Il Dolce Far Niente (The Sweet Doing of Nothing)

"Our culture aids and abets us with the expectation promoted by the information and communications industry that more information is always better and always potentially available. Therefore, we must always be available to receive any such piece of information that is sent, solicited or not. If we succumb to this illusion, we cooperate in maintaining a persistent dividedness of mind and heart. We deaden and numb our feelings, we fail to ask the deeper more essential questions. We are so busy sending and receiving fragments of information that we can increase our tolerance for violence, escalate our consumerism, and impair our compassion."
--Janet Ruffing,"Resisting the Demon of Busyness," Spiritual Life, Summer 1995.

I have an internal alarm bell that goes off when I am too busy being busy to pay attention to the important things. What trips the alarm is my driving. When I honk at a driver who cuts off my forward progress, as I did on Sunday, then I know I am trying to go too fast, do too much, push past the pace that's comfortable for me.

This spring with all its busyness and planning has fragmented my attention. I need a little break from the inspiring but constant flow of information and entertainment--blogging, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, ipod, etc.--to create a few more small spaces in my life for quiet contemplation, for the sweet doing of nothing.

Have a Happy May!

Growth Rings

I am so thrilled that Jackie, paper artisan and photographer--and true friend of my heart--just opened up an Etsy shop, smoothpebble studio, to share her papercuts. Jackie's papercuts were what inspired me to try my hand at the difficult craft, where finding that sweet spot of just the right pressure on the paper is the elusive goal. When you reach that point, it's all bliss and flow, and Jackie's certainly there. It's been exciting to see Jackie's own patterns emerge. She's uploaded a great selection of her papercuts to her Flickr Papercut/paper gallery, which is so inspiring.

Jackie snuck in the opening of her Etsy shop while I was away at Easter, but when I returned I immediately snapped up this tree ring snip that I had admired on her blog. Her careful cuts reveal the heart of the tree, its growth moving outward like ripples from its core. Those rings tell the story of the good years and bad, a layering of wet years interwoven with drought, when growth shows up as a thinner line. Those rings give the tree its strength, a core that is shells within shells within shells packed so tightly around themselves that the resulting strong, upright trunk holds in even its branches thrashing in the wind.

The papercut speaks to me of the parallel path of personal growth that Jackie and I have been on since we both started our blogs. Jackie's post, Self Love, expresses her search for authenticity and self-acceptance with her unique blend of honesty, grace, and humor.

In addition the growth rings snip, I have the honor of having Jackie's book, For the Beauty of the Earth, as my daily meditation on nature's patterns. The photographs are little epiphanies, wordless tributes to color, pattern, and, truly, the joy of life's unfolding. Watch the slideshow of Jackie's 365::2009 photographs, and you'll see what I mean.

Be sure to pay Jackie a visit to congratulate her on the shop opening. Tell her a little birdie says hello.