Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Where Is the Light?

When COVID hit and we started stay-at-home time in March, The Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts closed it's doors. Everything was on pause while the virus moved through communities and made us all re-think every action.

After a few weeks the Museum sent out a newsletter asking anyone interested to make a quilt square. The staff would collect the squares and put them together to create a quarantine quilt to display when the museum reopens. I think the staff was surprised by the response. At last count they stated hundreds of squares had arrived and more came in the mail every day.

I love to quilt so I pondered an idea for a week or so and then went through my stash. I wanted certain colors to highlight my plan.  I wanted to show that while the world was facing a difficult and unknown challenge I had hope that there would be answers. That science would step up and do the necessary research to "fix" this particular problem and we'd end up with another vaccine to avoid becoming sick and treatments to use if we did end up infected.

My square turned out pretty much the way I hoped it would. I call it "Light at the End of the Tunnel".


Since last week the darkness filling America has changed drastically and violently. The death of an innocent black man at the hands of some Minneapolis policemen was video taped and shown on TV. We watched a man die.....on the news....over and over again. So the protests began and some turned to violent riots and destruction during evening hours. Most gatherings were peaceful....but these did not make the news with any regularity. Instead we saw images of crowds running through dark streets, breaking store windows, throwing things and starting fires. Many of these faces were white and many peaceful protestors tried to remind the public that this violence was not the intention of their demonstrations. But their voices are also getting lost in the shuffle. Instead of calming leadership from Washington DC we had rhetoric that fired up the crowds.

It's been a week now of building unrest in America. I begin to wonder....if there was a request for a quilt square commemorating this past week what on earth would I make. Where is the light at the end of this long, long tunnel?

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