Week 26 in Review (8/8 – 8/14 2016)

Here’s a thumbnail view of what happened this past week in The 70273 Project:

~~ If you’ll look in the right sidebar, you’ll see code you can copy and paste on your blog to show that you’re a member of The 70,273 Project Team. Please grab the code and display it proudly.

~~ We currently have 637 likes on The 70273 Project Facebook page and, thanks to the efforts of Debbie Spouse Buckner, the number of folks gathered around our virtual campfire in The 70273 Project Facebook group has grown to 207 folks. As MJ Kinman mentioned recently, we will soon be petitioning for grants, so please do stop by and show your support by liking the Facebook page and joining the Facebook group and encouraging folks you know to do the same. It warms the hearts – or should I say checkbooks – of grantors to see that the project is supported far, wide, and consistently.

~~ Chloe Grice penned our Monday Morsel. Won’t you please send me a quote or a thought or a photo – something for an upcoming Monday Morsel?

The whispering voices of these blocks are already increasing in volume in my ears even as their numbers swell into life. They call me to work, their voices becoming at times demanding. Do this! Take that out, I don’t like it. That’s not me.

I have spent the last two weeks trying to do other, absorbing sewing tasks, projects left incomplete in the chaos of my life that have their own distinctive calls. I am pulled almost without will, back into the red and white world we are creating with our fingers, our collectively clever hands.

The pure, clean white, cleansing the now ancient memories of pain, of dirt, of neglect and suffering. I think of those suffering within their minds, aware but trapped inside. I think of children, mute with anguish and loss. I think of men with damaged bodies, yearning for escape from their inevitable fate. And women. Grieving, screaming, dying. The white cloth soothes me and tissue thin it sits with me, this epitaph, an unspoken prayer for release. Souls set free.

~~ I continue to receive encouraging, enthusiastic emails like the one from Catherine Symchych, who saw a flyer about The 70273 Project in a quilt shop in Michigan, and wants to do a Group quilt with seventh graders in her school. And I heard from Susan Himmelman Bianchi that she received permission from the board of directors to make a presentation about The 70273 Project to a 500+ members of an association she belongs to. After the general meeting, notices about The 70273 Project will be posted on their facebook page and go out in their newsletter. Thank you Catherine and Susan and all the rest of you who are regularly spreading the word and encouraging others to join us in commemorating the 70,273 disabled people who died at the hands of Aktion T4 and celebrating the countless numbers of special needs people who live among us today.

~~ Thanks to envelopes and boxes from Tari Vickery, Linda Heron, Linda Smith, Margaret Williams, Laurie Dunn and her grandchildren Steven, Grace, Jillian, and William, our block count climbs to 2843! Kitty Sorgen, it sure looks like I’ll have 3,000 blocks in my hands by 9/5/2016, so be thinking about our next goal.

Till next week . . . y’all keep smiling and stitching.