Remembering

During the holiday season we celebrate family and friends, our togetherness, our sharing and our caring for our past and our future.  We are in the midst of turbulence and new forces that effect our hopes and dreams.  I personally am thinking of my role in holding back the tide of intolerance and inequality.  As a child of Jim Crow I know all too well the effects of being different. So I am going to look back on what was accomplished during the last eight years even in the face of obstruction.  I am happy I had a chance to see the first African American elected President of the United States, even though we are experiencing the anger and backlash of that event.

Loretta Hoard, Sandy Nelson and I ventured from Baltimore via train to Washington to see the events.  Loretta was the only one lucky enough to get a ticket to the Mall for the inauguration.  Sandy and I got caught in the masses and actually had to watch it on TV but it was wonderful to be there.

So what was accomplished?  A sense of hope, excitement and acknowledgement for the African American presence in America.

Remember for yourself what life was like for you during the last eight years.  Drop me a note and friend me on Facebook if you haven't already.

We visited the exhibit of the Quilts for Obama and my piece Winds for Change was in the exhibition.

We had good weather the day before the inauguration but it was way cold on the special day.

This is as close I was able to get!  

Fire!

 We East Bay residents are filled with sadness over the horrific fire that occurred this weekend in Oakland.  We fear for our children and the general safety of the public when social events can take place in unsafe places. This year I have been talking about another terrible fire in Oakland and now this. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the families effected by this terrible fire.

These are two previous fire quilts that I made.  Firestorm is about the 1991 firestorm in the Oakland/Berkeley hills and Houses on Fire is about the housing fires in Hayward in the 1960s.

 Houses on Fire is in the collection of the Hayward Historical Society Museum

Firestorm is presently exhibiting at the California Humanities Gallery in Oakland.  The exhibit ends on December 31, 2016.

With all of these events we are looking at loss of life and property and the ramifications of loss of housing or in some case insufficient, affordable housing.  

I don't want to leave out the families and institutions that have been effected by the fires in southern states.  We send them our thoughts and prayers also.  So very quickly things change for so many.