Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Our neighborhood had a disaster drill last week. Just prior to the drill I'd volunteered to be the alternate area-captain for our area of three streets --- about 55 houses. At 7:00 pm, when an earthquake was supposed to have occurred, I put on my orange vest, red backpack and black fannypack and proceeded to our EAP (emergency assembly point.) (I have not yet been issued my orange hard-hat.) The turn-out for our area was pretty good, but it was woefully inadequate in some of the other areas.

Since then, I've attended a meeting to evaluate the drill, and I've been compiling lists of various sorts: emergency supplies that each household should keep on hand, the basic information we should collect from each household (like how many people live in the house), and an up-to-date list of names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of the street captains, alternate street captains, area captains and alternate area captains. Mostly for my own benefit, I started to compile a list of the families on our street. It was not difficult to write down each house number, but I was dismayed to learn that seven out of 21 houses are not listed in our community directory. I was even more astonished to realize that I would not recognize three of the families that are listed, and I have no idea who lives in five of the houses --- and this street is just one block long.

We've lived here for more than 35 years. When we first moved in, most of the families had pre-school children and we knew each other because the kids played together. Those kids have now grown up and left town, some families have moved away and other families have moved in. There's a wider range of ages and life-styles. Many of the women have full-time jobs and are not around during the day. I've never been the sort to pop into a neighbor's house every day for coffee, but I certainly have some catching up to do to form at least a nodding acquaintance with my neighbors.

The need to do this was emphazied on the night of the disaster drill when 20 minutes into the drill, an older man appeared, looking for other disaster workers. He explained he'd come from a street a few blocks away. At first we thought he was confused.

We told him, "Your EAP is further down the road."

"I've been there for 20 minutes," he replied, "but no one else has showed up."

It turned out that he'd been asked at the last minute to substitute for one of the street captains in his area. He'd done his duty very well, seeking out the nearest group when no one appeard at his EAP. He came wearing a badge with his name and address, carrying a cell phone and operating a crank-generated flashlight. Further conversation revealed that he'd lived though the London Blitz in World War II. We took his concluding words to heart.

"When you've been though an experience like that, you know how important it is for neighbors to help neighbors."

Isolation and Creativity: The Quilts of Gee's Bend

We saw the exhibit "Quilts of Gee's Bend" last month, and as I slowly read the book about Gee's Bend and look at the pictures of these amazing works of art, I wonder about the relationship between isolation and creativity.

Gee's Bend was a geographically isolated town in Alabama. The citizens were also racially isolated because they were black, and economically isolated because they were very poor.

The quilts were rapidly and crudely made --- they needed five or six quilts on each bed in the winter, and these were large families of eight, nine or ten children. One quilter related that the kids might tear a quilt apart in a year (probably because the fabric was old.) So the women were pressed to keep up a production of as many as 20 or 30 quilts a year (in addition to working in the fields, keeping house, taking care of children and having a new baby every year or two.)

But making quilts was one of the few creative things they could do. After ripping apart old clothing, and worn household textiles, and grabbing on to any other kind of fabric they could find, they started assembling the pieces: Color against color, shapes (mostly rectangles) in endlessly varied configurations. Some kind of bed coverings were a necessity, but the designs in these quilts go far beyond utility.

Several scholarly articles accompany the photographs in the book. Each author ponders the reasons why this particular group of women was able to develop a common activity into such a high art form. I think isolation was an important (though not the only) factor.

I know that many artists work best in groups or "schools" and I am always amazed at the people who write best in cafes or other public places. But I find that my own creativity is often born out of isolation --- or perhaps deprivation is a better word. When I don't have much reading material, I'm more likely to write. Apparently I need a diet of so many words a day, and if I don't get them by reading, I feel the need to create them myself. If my environment is bleak, I'm inspired to "fix it up" by adding color or ornament, or simply by rearranging things.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I feel the same way when I'm overstimulated by an exhibit as I do when I've eaten too much rich food. I didn't sleep the night after seeing the Quilts of Gee's Bend. I wanted to get up and start making quilts! But I'll be going back in a few weeks for another dose. They're just too good to miss!