2010 is now in the building....

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) , from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, 1917

Actually, it is a grey morning all morning, a week after a blizzard that brought South Dakota to a halt. It's the first day of 2010, and the morning after a full moon. These are observations, not omens. I am looking forward to a ritual Southern New Year's Day dinner with black-eyed peas, cornbread and wine. After that, I will continue quilting and thinking about the year ahead.

2010 promises great joy and will require much work on all fronts. There may be joyous and sorrowful changes. Every day, I hold a bit of the deep past in my hands and of my own past in my memories. It is time to write them down and to map them out.

Everyone who works in a museum and touches the fragments of history knows the melancholy joy of it. I seek it in the tiny buildings dotting the prairie and hills as well as in my daily work, and I sew it into the quilts that are becoming one of my own greatest joys.