Arms Of The Angel

For ten years I worked for the Cherokee Nation until last week.  In 2000 I was practicing law when a friend who worked for newly-elected Cherokee Nation Principal Chief invited me to apply for a post in Policy, Planning and Development.  I was hired on and worked as Planning Analyst V,  Strategy Researcher/Writer, and then Environmental Programs Researcher/Writer.  Last week I got the bad news (at 4 a.m. one morning) that my mother had leukemia.  By the next day, the security of a steady paycheck and a predictable routine was overshadowed by the realization that each and every day of life is profoundly precious and irreplaceable--- thus we have a chance to savor it.

Since I resigned, I've gotten over the feeling that the days are flashing before my eyes as if under a strobe light.  Would it be awesome to be a professional artist, and let creation flow thru my fingertips becoming bright cheery warm tactile quilts???  Several years back I wrote an article for fiber artists, "Don't Quit Your Day Job," about the economics of art and how we live in a wage-world of globalism where the markets are seeking a level, and dollars are draining from us on the deep end, toward  shallower countries where labor is often still uncommodofied (my theory anyway) by a shift abandoning subsistence farming as a fall-back.  Here I am not taking my own best rational advice.

 I'm a quilt collector.  Its a rather bad hobby left over from a time when I lived in a huge house.  Now I live in a modest home, and quilts bulge from the cedar chests and trunks, linen cabinets and stacks.  With no great camera at this moment, I'm promising some day that you'll find a gallery of the seven-pointed start quilts I have acquired over the years.

So these days I am now in the financial care of my beloved sweet smart funny talented husband, Dennis Tibbits who is a Speech Pathologist, educator, business man, musician, dragon slayer, and Cat-Daddy.  I am beginning to get legal work already.