Elizabeth Gilbert

Today I had lunch with a friend of the family, to celebrate her 95th birthday. She gave me stock tips, ordered a carafe of wine for our table, and thoroughly enjoyed the slice of chocolate birthday cake brought by the waiter. She reminisced about being one of the few female students at CU Boulder in the 30’s, and said if she had arrived a generation later, she would have been a businesswoman instead of an attorney’s wife and the head of the education board.

If I make it to 95, I hope to be as fiesty and sassy! In the meantime, I was so proud to tell her about our incredible friends and customers, and even strangers, who are sending quilts for our relief effort in Japan. She marveled at the generosity of the quilt donors, and the passion with which you’ve responded to our call to help.

I spent time with another remarkable woman this last weekend – Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love) came to speak at the big campus auditorium here in Boulder, and I just loved hearing her talk about her creative process, her travel experiences, and how it felt to have Javier Bardem play the part of her husband. (lots of giggling from the audience)

Because I am leaving for Bali in 2 weeks, I hoped to gain some insight into her experience there. Sam came with me, and as soon as we got home he wanted to watch the movie. After hearing her speak, and then watching the movie, we “got it” …picking up on a lot of things about her journey that weren’t apparent the first time we saw the film.

I guess what I admired the most about Liz was that she has a fierce work ethic, but she is very humble at the same time. She doesn’t hesitate in her writing or in person, to point out her own imperfections. I think this is what endeared her to us – that she could bare her own fears and weaknesses so naturally that we didn’t cringe and turn away – but rather we followed her deeper into the story to see what happened next.

What I got out of our lunch with the 95 year old birthday girl was – Wisdom with Age means the older you get, the more you realize that you DON”T know! (As opposed to people who get more bossy and Smarty-Pants with age.)

Now here’s the punchline. We dropped off our matriarch friend at a hearing aid office for an appointment after lunch, and it was in a retail space where we used to have a local quilt shop. What is the world coming to? Quilt shops replaced with hearing aids?!? Where are these young quilters going to learn to sew?!

Over the years I’ve met a few bossy older quilters who loved to tell the newbies and younger quilters that they were breaking the rules, doing it wrong, and didn’t know what they were doing. I took my first Hawaiian quilting class 20 years ago (when I was 32) and the teacher just about bit my head off when I wanted to ‘break the rules’ and use batiks on a hand-dyed background, instead of the traditional solid-on-solid applique. Nevermind my original applique pattern or neat needleturned edges.

But hey, you know what? Breaking the Rules – that’s called Creativity. It’s called Evolution of an art form. It’s Revolution, it’s Chaos, and it’s very exciting to those who are just bursting with ideas and creative expression. There were riots the first time Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was performed. Today it is considered a masterwork of genius. He had to learn the rules in order to break them so spectacularly, but his genius was in his musical coloring outside the traditional classical lines.

What’s YOUR Rite of Spring, in this vernal season?

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eQuilter *1000 QUILTS for JAPAN*

http://www.equilter.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/quiltsforjapan.html

eQuilter is partnering with Mission of Love to deliver one or more shipments of disaster relief supplies (medical, educational, and basic needs) and donated comfort quilts, to the people of Japan.

IMPORTANT: Please carefully read all of the project page information about deadlines, shipping, sizes, and FAQs… and if your question is not answered, you can contact eQuilter Customer Service at [email protected]

I’ll be writing to you from a famous festival, in a famous city, in the weekend newsletter. The first person to guess the city AND festival (exactly) on our eQuilter Facebook page will get a $25 gift certificate from me! Go on! Take a wild guess!

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