Here are two short pieces. One is about a small place looking to revitalize an 180-year-old building. The other is a 12-year old movie that lingers and lingers.
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This post is a most sincere thank you to Shake Rag Alley for the Arts.
I’m inviting you to support a project. The Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, WI is restoring Potter’s House, a small brick house built in 1850 by a German potter named Bernard Klais. They need attention, support, and money.
Why do I care? Some of you know all this. In 2023 my story “How Crow Got Out of Jail” (Read Here) won First Prize in the Wisconsin Writers Association Jade Ring contest.
One of the prizes was five days’ accommodation provided by the Shake Rag Alley people in Mineral Point, WI (which is an hour west and slightly south from Madison). My week there was quiet, centering and interesting even though, at first, I didn’t know what to expect. I’m already retired and Len is not (usually) a rowdy spouse, so why do I need to go somewhere else to write?
Plus I had to plan it in advance! I had to take myself seriously enough to find a time to go and then make arrangements with people and obligations here. Nothing was onerous but I had to do it because for five days I was going to live my life in a slightly different place and way.
I arrived there on a chilly Monday morning in March. They gave me a large studio (microwave, sink, bed, desk, sitting area, Wi-Fi) on the second floor of a very old building. It had been refurbished recently but the past hundred-plus years shone through and I was very aware I wasn’t in a motel. I was in a place that had been around since Wisconsin was new; there was a quiet, quirky feeling in that room that I have known no other place.
When I sat in the rocking chair and propped my feet on the coffee table to read, I could imagine the women and men who had sat here before me. I could imagine them chatting with each other, telling the kids to go to bed, splitting a beer. It wasn’t dazzling, it was deep. It kind of felt like an hour’s hike into a woods when you remember to breathe in the peace of the place. You have come somewhere even if you don’t know how to say it.
Earth has unexpectedly welcoming places and this was and is one of them. Places where the question is not how powerful are we - but how far back do we go? At the end of long days, who are we? What tea or earthy wine should we drink tonight? If we are very quiet, can we hear creaks and music? We wonder how these small places even survive and hey, is that pigeon on the windowsill looking at me for a reason?
Shake Rag Alley honors the Cornish immigrants who turned this place into a mining town that was a birthplace of statehood and a strong supporter of the Union in the Civil War. There’s history here.
At mealtimes Cornish women ‘shook a rag’ toward the ridge where the men worked their noisy mining windlasses. Shaking rags signified it was time to eat. Kind of a “dinner’s ready” text.
These days Shake Rag Alley for the Arts owns Potter’s House and Potter’s house needs to be restored. Once it’s complete, this little place will be used for even more creative activities and art classes and retreats for adults and kids.
To see photos go right here:
To make a donation and designate it towards Potters House, go here and please add "Potter's House" in the note. Donate here.
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Ilo Ilo
Long ago I read a quote about writing that went something like this. “Some people make an outline and then they write. Others, like an uncomfortable horse with an unnamable thirst, wander until they find water and then they drink.”
Guess who not only writes like a yearning horse, but generally lives her whole life this way?
How do you decide what you are going to watch next? Len has a list on his phone in his IMDb app. He even has his list in categories. Which is probably how we have watched at least ten crime-noir series this year alone. I think my fav was Dept Q (I just read they are making a season 2). Compelling even though, seriously, are all detectives thin and intense persons with secretly broken hearts who illuminate their inner souls by looking for violently bad guys? In my whole life, I have never met such a person. Also, Dept Q drove me crazy until I realized its star, Matthew Goode, was the hunk from Leap Year.
Anyways, that’s Len’s method of perusing and choosing movies. (Which rhymes.)
My system is this. I to walk to the library with an empty backpack and meander in their DVD’s. Yesterday I came home with seven shows that I could never ever have found by any system: definitely wandering horse picks.
Last night we watched Ilo Ilo. It was so remarkable that I am going to suggest you watch it, too. It’s also on Prime to rent.
The movie was made in and about Singapore, it won dazzling awards when released in 2013. It’s how a small family and their Philippine maid navigate their nation’s 1997 financial crisis.
There is no single story arc and It doesn’t start with a problem that will get solved. Instead, we watch a youngish professional couple who never talk to each other. As long as they’re middle class, they can continue along the way they are living. They mostly ignore that their 10-year-old son is a nasty brat. The woman is pregnant; she wears maternity outfits which look like baby dresses. She works in HR at a shipping company that is, as the economic crisis goes on, laying off more and more workers.
They hire a maid from Philippines. That woman, Terry, is poor, resourceful, and patient. Terry knows that being treated without due respect has nothing to do with her self-esteem. She is in Singapore to earn enough to support her family back home. She knows what she’s doing and that keeps her going.
I kept mumbling, “This is so hard to watch. But so good. This is the other side of the world and this is so scarily familiar.”
Ilo Ilo is Chinese for “Mom and Dad are not home.”
If you are a bit weary of handsome people who are tragically unhappy, maybe check this movie.
If you google it, Wikipedia tells you everything that happens. I suggest you just put on your ‘thirsty horse hat’ and watch it and let it affect you as it will.
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