ARSiddons

As promised, I am offering selections from books I love. This is aAne Rivers Sidons only non-fiction book. I will be offering more of her work later on....Let me know if this lights up your life -I hope if will.


John Chancellor Makes Me Cry by Anne Rivers Siddons
Page 21:”Outside the kitchen, the ice shawled down”
When I first read the word ‘shawled’, my first reaction was “You cannot do that!. You can't take a noun and turn it into a verb! You just can’t!” The long time teacher in me was roaring out!. Then I realized that, of course she could. She had, after all, just done it!. And I can’t deny that it’s a lovely word, even if it does break rules. Shawls are important to me. I make shawls. When I first began weaving them, I was using the beater so firmly that the cloth almost stood up by itself when I took it off the loom. I had to learn not to beat so hard. I had always done everything full tilt, so it was a hard lesson. But who wants a shawl that won’t shawl? See, I can do it, too, ARS.

January 2003 1

# Books Worth Rereading (Excerpts), and things to think about some more:

tilt, so it was a hard lesson. But who wants a shawl that won’t shawl? See, I can do it, too, ARS.

Page 245: “The thin scrim of blue that hangs over the hills doesn’t obscure but it colors. Farther north, into North Carolina, where they grow wild and fierce, stretching toward the two mile-high mark, these mountains are called the Great Smokies, because of that shawling gauze.”

Page 246:”the wildflower color of the mountain hardwoods that is so glorious in early October had long since bled away; we were left with the tawny shawls of kudzu and the black skeletons of hardwoods, with the black-green of the evergreens like an animal’s undercoat.”
More shawling!. And scrim is a lovely word, too.

Page : “In the summers, it is the white of peeling board cottages on stilts along the eroding beach, the dust-pink of tabby foundations, the pearly ecru of crushed oyster-shell driveways, the spindrift gray of Spanish moss, the black-green and the tomato-red of window shrouding oleanders, the opalescent wheat of the lion-colored, wind-surfed marshes, the dirty tan of the sand, the foaming hazel of the sea.”

(Ten color words in one sentence!. I love it. I also admit that is an quite a run-on sentence. But she can do this when she pleases, because I can see every one of these things. I wonder if it’s because I grew up in the same part of the South she did, and we have seen and experienced the same things? Probably. I lived at the beach a large part of my life, and yep, it’s just like she says it is. Sometimes, I take pictures of places where the colors just assault my eyes and senses!. I am hoping to translate this bombardment to photo paper until I can get to the dye pot and start trying to copy the colors to put on the loom in someway. There has to be a way. My head isn’t big enough to hold all these colors in one place at one time. I need a tactile reminder of the beauty I have seen. The colors are too magnificent to be forgotten.
And speaking of color, I once took a natural dyeing class from a very good instructor. I was overheard to grouse because my group assignment was to make variations of a brown/dun/grey, etc. and I thought the color was ugly. My instructor said “there is not such thing as an ugly color It all depends on where you put it. All of it is essential.” She was right. She also taught me that everything I made needed a ‘hit of light’ in it to make it come alive. Right again. How lucky I am to know so many astute people. How lucky I am that I actually listened to some of them. Mj)
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