MIA

I disappeared a bit while having adventures.

First adventure: I bought a new bed. My other bed was over 20 years old, had become terribly uncomfortable, and rotating the mattress no longer helped. I bought a Dreamcloud hybrid mattress with adjustable frame. I must say, I haven’t slept so well in at least a decade.

Second adventure: I am transitioning into retirement by cutting down to part-time work while I try to discover what retired life will look like. I had completely abandoned quilting when I moved here so decided it’s time to get back to it and use the stash of material and finish all the projects I had packed up. The first step was to get:

Third adventure: travel.

When I moved from Wyoming to North Carolina in December 2011, I really wanted to stop at The National Quilt Museum. Given that it was the middle of winter, and I was transporting a bird and two dogs (whose whole purpose in life became to get that bird), it just was not going to happen. This was the year I got to go back and visit Paducah, Kentucky.

Click through the images above to see just a few of the quilts they had on display.

The Ohio River runs right through Paducah, which is nicknamed Four Rivers because four major waterways come together within a 40-mile area: the Ohio, Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi. This confluence made Paducah a hub of river transportation which drove commerce for the United States. While there, I enjoyed visiting the Inland Waterways Museum.

The Inland Waterways Museum told all about the history of how these major rivers have been used over the centuries. I remember those boring Social Studies classes in high school (a long, long time ago) where we “learned” how these, and other major waterways were involved in Westward Expansion and dominated the development of industry and commerce in early United States history. In high school, those words meant nothing, but I learned SO much at this museum and, in truth, spent more time in there than in the quilt museum.

One of the fascinating things I learned there was about the 1937 Ohio River Valley Flood. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the Ohio River Valley. The river had flooded many times in its history, but none of them rivaled this one. Communities large and small were affected all along the Ohio’s 981-mile course. The damage stretched from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois. In Paducah, flood waters submerged 90% of city at its peak. Click HERE for a film from that time.

Finally, Paducah was in the Path of Totality for the April 8th eclipse which was when I was in town. I stood out in the parking lot of my hotel and enjoyed it. No crowds, just the sun and moon and me.

Naturally, a phone camera with a filter doesn’t capture great images, but these are some of the pictures I took. Notice that little dot in the third picture? That is actually the moon in front of the sun.

I like eclipses. The first one I remember was in 1963 when I was a little girl in Alaska. My brother had taken me with him while he helped a friend paint a house. They painted the house yellow, which I liked but then painted the trim brown, which I thought made it look dull. It’s funny how I remember that opinion. The light from the sky got dimmer and dimmer until it was dark and cold. I have had a fascination with them ever since.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing.