Ok, I went shopping again today. It's Saturday and shopping is relatively mindless after a week of mindful work. Shopping for me is down time. Just looking, editing, selecting, and then, 'to buy or not to buy'. I usually buy. Something. Today, two more purses. This has been a difficult purse season. After a year of use, my bright taxi cab yellow Fossil bag is showing wear. There are newer colors out there, newer textures and much newer shapes.

A month ago I bought a great pair of boots and stuck them under the bed while I pondered whether to keep them. Well, I love them and wore them in Marfa so I'm keeping them. They'll walk me through my public and private lives for as many days as my toes can fold into those Western toes. My new boots are bronze and green metallic and since their purchase, I seem to be color coding everything to these new boots. I only see bronze and green and perennial black. There are few other colors in the spectrum.

And as I said, this has been a difficult purse season. I am not sure I've found 'the one' yet. I began looking for a yellow purse replacement when an unscheduled hour opened up before a haircut appointment. I came home that day with two handbags - a practical leather bag with pressed croc markings - it held everything just like the yellow Fossil bag and was so boring I never took it out of the shopping bag. The second bag was kelly green fake fur with lots of flaps and pockets and covered buttons. I loved it and also knew that it would have had limited use. Tht green fake fur needs chic little black suits or voluminous skirts with layers of shrugs and sweaters. I never took it out of the shopping bag either for fear I would really keep it. I returned both bags and shopped again, leaving the store with a Brahmin green pressed leather bag that i learned is so special that it can be registered on line. Discontinued color so it wasn't full price. Elegant, yet with just a reference to those Mexican handbags with hand tooled roses. Will it go with the boots? More than likely.

And then today, I felt the unquenchable urge to make a quick trip to a store that stocks trendy less expensive bags than the Brahmin. And how easy it was to leave that shop with two handbags - a fashionable and sensible brown metallic mesh bag and a fashionable, frivolous green velvet ruffles bag. I've pulled my boots out from under the bed and confirmed that both bags look really good with the boots.

So my Saturday has been defined by purses. The future of the Brahmin is uncertain. I'll carry green velvet ruffles on my wrist to a dinner this Thursday night. Yes, with the boots and a ruched skirt.

A front came into town today for the first game of the World Series. Astros play at home tonight. Here we are in a sporting event mode again.

Woke very early this a.m. - just after 5:00 - and somehow found 'blogher'. What a present so early in the day. I am ready to sign up for their two day conference in August 2006. Also found Ronnie Bennett's blog on aging and listened to a panel discussion on 'going naked'. Then thought I'd check my own blog - I haven't posted in over a year. And guess what - I posted when the Astros were in the play-offs. And now just this week they've made it to the World Series for the very first time. What is it about my blog that entries are made around sporting event times? And I don't even follow the Astros or any other team and had to be conscious about mentioning their winning game at work so people won't think I am totally out of it. Everyone expresses great interest in the outcome - at least, the people I know and work with in the public sphere. I have to believe they really care about the Astros being a part of the World Series. At the very least, they must care because it brings Houston into the spotlight. And they may like baseball. Or they may like cheering for a home team because it's wrapped up as part of our identity. I am not going to delve further this morning. We've already been in the spotlight as the Good Samaritan for evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Houston's response was truly wonderful and heartfelt. And we were organized about it. We can thank Mayor White and Judge Eckels for the fine partnership they created to serve this city and the people who poured into it after Katrina. Can you put the Astro's win in the same sort of category. I can't.

So writing the paragraph above, I find myself in a familiar quandary - should I rewrite and tighten before posting? Sleep on the text before publishing? Are such concerns even in the blogging spirit?

So, I see that I've not written since Super Bowl Sunday. Today one of my staff listened to the Astros game on the radio at her desk. They've made the playoffs. Why do I mention sporting events on this blog? Not worth thinking of an answer.

So, the Red Purse is falling short of content. My life is full and my blog does not reflect the day to day to day when so much is happening that there is rarely time to fully prepare for or anticipate the next event or conversation. And there is rarely time to contemplate or assess what has already taken place. I move through my work days like a well trained race horse, saddled up and performing. That's what they pay me me for.

And then I come home and most often instead of expanding my website or adding to my transitional business plan, I peruse ebay and suddenly exhibit great interest in vintage cotton print tablecloths or antique rhinestone brooches, old funky purses or glass negatives and satin eiderdowns from the U.K. Items won are shipped to my office address and my house is more and more filled with objects that I like. And there is hardly a surface on which I can set a bowl for a meal or a space to spread out a newspaper to read. I really do enjoy all of my stuff, every bit of it.

Off to bed now, under an eiderdown, with the air conditioning on - only in Houston.

Today is Super Bowl XXXVIII Sunday in Houston and I am in Houston too. I've managed to retain the name of one of the teams that will play in Reliant Center this afternoon. I like Super Bowl Sundays because they are so quiet. Few cars on the roads, few folks outside and many fewer sounds. No one is out blasting with leaf blowers or driving with amplified rap. I love the quiet of Super Bowl Sundays.

Today, I will work on "Shoreline" - the newly titled series now in the works for "Women On The Verge Of Something Else", our group exhibition at FotoFest opening on March 13, 2004. The solidness of squares is providing the structure for this series of nine photo collages that will form a tick-tack-toe quilt of images. These images are now emerging from the piled chaos of hundreds of photos, test strips and random pieces of paper in a room the cats can no longer enter. The door is always closed because the nine 22 x 22 inch squares of Arches paper lay in a grid on the floor, holding the photos and scraps of images that will coalesce in due time when I've looked at them long enough with 'soft eyes'. A photo collage takes form when I look - without focusing - at the shapes of each scrap and how each relates to all the others. There are no step-by-step instructions - just the looking with soft eyes, moving one scrap away and replacing it with another. Always, there is the dark hour when no collage holds. The images have no inherent relationship to one another. Despair overtakes the process. Every photo is pushed aside, back into piled chaos. A brisk walk around the block and chocolate can dissipate despair. Then, a new beginning. One by one photos and scraps are placed side-by-side and examined with very soft eyes until there is a 'whole'. A 'whole' collage is always unexpected, serendipitous, a surprise that leaves me with feelings of pleasure tinged with gentle subversiveness. Why should this mishmash hold together - but it does.

May nine 'wholes' hold to make "Shoreline". And across town at Reliant Stadium, may the better team win. And more on professional sports and the patriarchy later.

So, just when will Americans see that our current administration really is lying, spinning and moving with great speed toward a very different America than the one that we profess to love? I'm talking about the America whose freedoms and civil rights we've so taken for granted that they appear unchanging or unchangeable? Well, things are changing daily, incrementally and if we do not tune in for a day, we miss witnessing one more affront, one more assault on the values and liberties we've been born and bred to believe are unassailable. I 'm scared. What is it that blinds so many of us? Is it the malls where we can lose ourselves in background music and goods made in Third World countries, professional sports ("Give them bread and circuses."), the illusion of power given us with SUVs, Hummers and snow mobiles, cell phones, Palm Pilots and pagers or the day to day struggle and overwork that leave no time for civic engagement? Please link to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/opinion/30KRUG.html

On Sunday I heard a sermon given by the pastor of the Seattle First Baptist Church. He read an email he'd received from a soldier in Iraq. The soldier wrote that he and his buddies listened to the pastor's sermons and the choir by logging on to the church's website at

http://www.seattlefirstbaptist.org/Default.asp?Header=%26nbsp%3B%26nbsp%3BSermons&Locator=Sermons

It's not often that I feel bursts of patriotism, but the words of this lone soldier coupled with what I know about this particular congregation offered me that rare opportunity. Seattle First Baptist has been picketed by conservative Baptists for its stand on equal rights for gays and lesbians. Seattle First Baptist is not crazy about Bush or the Iraq War and its members are willing to talk about it all. The congregation does not waver. It just keeps doing the right thing.

So the fact that this soldier in Iraq took comfort in the pastor's sermons and apparently has logged on more than once seems a very good sign. Wasn't the war turned into a vehicle to 'free the Iraqi people'? And freeing people should mean freeing them - and all of us - to be how we really are and all we can be.

Merry Christmas.

Today is Sunday. Perused two newspapers while comfortably in bed - the Houston Chronicle and parts of The New York Times - and then spent precious time buying several catalog items on line. One purchase is definitely not necessary. Maybe it will not fit or will ook like the picture so I can return it and feel that I've not made another frivolous purchase.

Now my day truly begins with weekend catch up that includes running at least two loads of laundry, taking a left-over chocolate cake break with a mug of yerba mate tea (my quiet cup of confidence) and giving three cats some extra weekend attention. Also made a call to my parents - I consider it sheer luck and good fortune that I can dail ten numbers and talk to my 86 year old mom and dad. Any time I want to. They are alive and well both at the other end of the line and at home in Seattle.

Mom says she has two more purse stories for www.pursestories.com. She told me one and could not remember the second. It will come back to her. Mom and Dad are headed off to church - the Sunday ritual she dreads, but she dreads displeasing the Lord even more. Habit of a lifetime. Her reward for getting out of the house and driving to the church service is knowing that she and my father have done their duty for another week. Dad will stop at a taco stand on the way home and she will order a bean burrito. Her weekly indulgence, she says.

So, now I will print out purse images to make at least 20 greeting cards to give to a group at Parkway Place next Saturday. Irina and I will make new acquaintances and gather purse stories with recorder and digital camera at this senior living retirement community. I've not done much with my www.pursestories.com in over a month. Five weekends in a row were taken up with what I call 'life in general', meaning 'not my job'. On the last Saturday in September was a wonderful wedding in Galveston, followed by a week in Seattle with my family (add two weekends here), a two day trip to Chappell Hill, TX, with my American Leadership Forum classmates followed by another very special wedding weekend that brought two daughters to town. We three produced over 900 photographs for the bride and groom. And while the bride and groom were away on their honeymoon, the bride's mom and I were the first to see the photos of this beautiful time.

All of these good things and my job leave no time at all for anything more in my life than attempts at consecutive and reasonably good nights of sleep.

After a week at work, Friday nights can be rocky - or more specifically - sleepless. Last Friday evening, I went to a birthday party for a short time, ate two slices of pizza (a mistake, it turns out - did the sausage have sodium nitrate in it?), and fell into bed soooo tired. Up at 1:30 a.m. with the beginnings of a headache so took a headache pill that is laced with caffeine. I really have to make an effort to fall asleep again quickly before the caffeine kicks in. Instead, I chose to look at notebooks of negatives and so was up until daylight, very happily immersed with thousands of images. Part of thinking ahead to what I need to create for my part of the group FotoFest exhibition "Women On The Verge Of Something Else." Realized that all of my work hits this subject. However, I do want to shoot one beautiful new image of a woman with arms thrust skyward in celebration. She is no longer hidden. She is here, alive and well and strong.

Strong this woman will be in this future photo, but that sleepless Friday night left me so weary that I spent all of Saturday in bed and missed another afternoon birthday party for a very dear friend.

I have not yet been able to balance a goodly number of hours of sleep with a 48+ hours/week job and the 8 - 20+ hours that I like to spend on my website and related art projects. I've learned to make conscious decisions about seeing 1 or maybe 2 friends during a week or scheduling one personal social event every 1 - 2 weeks. If I see more friends or more movies or go to more personal social events, my second career as artist loses traction and momentum.

Back to 'Women On The Verge Of Something Else'. I've decided to make a piece for this exhibition from that old square green board with its hooks and keys that I got from the storeroom at Baker Hughes several years ago. Working title is 'When One Door Closes, Remember to OPEN Another'. This piece will also have a subtitle that references a comment George Krause made to me 5 years ago. Subtitle may be any of the following:

1. Test strips may be the real thing.
2. Pick and choose the very best. The best may be blurry, indifferently exposed and just about perfect.
3. Test strips - life's bookmarks.

After this morning's early rain, the sun is shining in full golden fall glory. My garden's orange cosmos and mutabulis roses sparkle in the light. Surely this is the day for a long walk - after the cards are glued and made ready for next weekend's story gathering time.

And then there was the project called 'putting all the sorted piles on the bedroom floor into file folders and then into a box'. Did I really promise myself I would not have to step over these carefully edited piles for another week? I don't remember.

Today is Sunday. Perused two newspapers while comfortably in bed - the Houston Chronicle and parts of The New York Times - and then spent precious time buying several catalog items on line. One purchase is definitely not necessary. Maybe it will not fit or will not look like the picture so I can return it and feel that I've not made another frivolous purchase.

Now my day truly begins with weekend catch up that includes running at least two loads of laundry, taking a left-over chocolate cake break with a mug of yerba mate tea (my quiet cup of confidence) and giving three cats some extra weekend attention. Also made a call to my parents - I consider it sheer luck and good fortune that I can dail ten numbers and talk to my 86 year old mom and dad. Any time I want to. They are alive and well both at the other end of the line and at home in Seattle.

Mom says she has two more purse stories for www.pursestories.com. She told me one and could not remember the second. It will come back to her. Mom and Dad are headed off to church - the Sunday ritual she dreads, but she dreads displeasing the Lord even more. Habit of a lifetime. Her reward for getting out of the house and driving to the church service is knowing that she and my father have done their duty for another week. Dad will stop at a taco stand on the way home and she will order a bean burrito. Her weekly indulgence, she says.

So, now I will print out purse images to make at least 20 greeting cards to give to a group at Parkway Place next Saturday. Irina and I will make new acquaintances and gather purse stories with recorder and digital camera at this senior living retirement community. I've not done much with my www.pursestories.com in over a month. Five weekends in a row were taken up with what I call 'life in general', meaning 'not my job'. On the last Saturday in September was a wonderful wedding in Galveston, followed by a week in Seattle with my family (add two weekends here), a two day trip to Chappell Hill, TX, with my American Leadership Forum classmates followed by another very special wedding weekend that brought two daughters to town. We three produced over 900 photographs for the bride and groom. And while the bride and groom were away on their honeymoon, the bride's mom and I were the first to see the photos of this beautiful time.

All of these good things and my job leave no time at all for anything more in my life than attempts at consecutive and reasonably good nights of sleep.

After a week at work, Friday nights can be rocky - or more specifically - sleepless. Last Friday evening, I went to a birthday party for a short time, ate two slices of pizza (a mistake, it turns out - did the sausage have sodium nitrate in it?), and fell into bed soooo tired. Up at 1:30 a.m. with the beginnings of a headache so took a headache pill that is laced with caffeine. I really have to make an effort to fall asleep again quickly before the caffeine kicks in. Instead, I chose to look at notebooks of negatives and so was up until daylight, very happily immersed with thousands of images. Part of thinking ahead to what I need to create for my part of the group FotoFest exhibition "Women On The Verge Of Something Else." Realized that all of my work hits this subject. However, I do want to shoot one beautiful new image of a woman with arms thrust skyward in celebration. She is no longer hidden. She is here, alive and well and strong.

Strong this woman will be in this future photo, but that sleepless Friday night left me so weary that I spent all of Saturday in bed and missed another afternoon birthday party for a very dear friend.

I have not yet been able to balance a goodly number of hours of sleep with a 48+ hours/week job and the 8 - 20+ hours that I like to spend on my website and related art projects. I've learned to make conscious decisions about seeing 1 or maybe 2 friends during a week or scheduling one personal social event every 1 - 2 weeks. If I see more friends or more movies or go to more personal social events, my second career as artist loses traction and momentum.

Back to 'Women On The Verge Of Something Else'. I've decided to make a piece for this exhibition from that old square green board with its hooks and keys that I got from the storeroom at Baker Hughes several years ago. Working title is 'When One Door Closes, Remember to OPEN Another'. This piece will also have a subtitle that references a comment George Krause made to me 5 years ago. Subtitle may be any of the following:

1. Test strips may be the real thing.
2. Pick and choose the very best. The best may be blurry, indifferently exposed and just about perfect.
3. Test strips - life's bookmarks.

After this morning's early rain, the sun is shining in full golden fall glory. My garden's orange cosmos and mutabulis roses sparkle in the light. Surely this is the day for a long walk - after the cards are glued and made ready for next weekend's story gathering time.

And then there was the project called 'putting all the sorted piles on the bedroom floor into file folders and then into a box'. Did I really promise myself I would not have to step over these carefully edited piles for another week? I don't remember.

[ Wed Oct 08, 04:22:25 PM | Mary Margaret Hansen | ]
A Week of Discovery

October 8 2003 is quintessential fall – brisk wind, blue blue sky, moments of rain, yellow leaves falling. I enter the park at the gate near the money plants. Ahead of me is a grey haired man in denim jackets and khaki pants. His stride is slower than mine. I can’t decide if he is beginning or ending his walk or how I should pace myself to overtake him. His walk appears aimless and I am suddenly happy to see a young woman approaching us. I am not alone. The man cracks off a tree branch far too lean for a walking stick and heads up a minor path into the trees. I am not liking this man. I look back and see that he is simply standing among the trees. A swift decision changes my walk to a jog. The most I want to be surprised by in this park is a rabbit.

Damn. Dissolved are years of visiting Seattle and walking Discovery Park trails without a look over my shoulder. I head for open space where is it always possible to see Puget Sound – and distant figures intentionally walking, jogging, seeking the view.

On the bluff, a walker approaches, a greeting is shared. He looks prepared to make the entire Loop. Off we go, he unaware of his follower. At the junction of South Beach Trail and North Loop Trail, he heads down toward the beach down the steps through sunlit trees and brisk wind. Halfway down the bluff, I decide I am being foolish for following. The beach is not my destination.

Take back the park, I say, and turn back up the steps through falling leaves. Common sense says that the man with the lean walking stick will not walk this far into the park. Back on the Loop trail, I pass a woman with headphones and see a couple in the distance. This is my experience of Discovery Park. I return the same way I entered the park and pause to watch the light on the trunk of a medrona tree. There is no one on the path but me.


[ Sun Oct 05, 06:34:59 PM | Mary Margaret Hansen | edit]
Brilliant bouquets of sunflowers, asters, roses and mums at Ballard's Farmers Market. Jeanne bought a bouquet for Dan, Caroline found a bright yellow oil cloth baby bib scattered with hibiscus flowers and I bought the world's tiniest set of Tarot cards for Mary's Christmas stocking.

There were a few other things I couldn't leave behind. Seduced by an $8 flat of fresh blue berries - the last of the season, a handmade cake of citrus lavender soap and 3 totes made from bright funky Mexican oilcloth. No resistance here. I will photograph the totes and post on my website with a story.

After the Wedding

Yes. After a promising bright blue morning, it rained hard. The southwest sky turned dark and moved east just as predicted. An executive decision was made by the bride's brother and sister to move the wedding ceremony from the garden to the carport and tent that extended down the driveway. Even the wedding cakes were arranged under the car port adjacent to the arch of autumn flowers where the judge presided over the bilingual service just after 4:00 in the afternoon. Nothing happened quite as Elizabeth had planned. Yet family and friends gathered, enjoyed and celebrated. Elizabeth and Manuel are man and wife. Photos posted soon.

Wedding Day

Weather reports are not good. After two weeks of sunny dappled light and blue skies, severe stormy weather is on the way - just for today. Then a front will blow through bringing cool clear weather. During today's severe stormy weather - or between bouts of it - Elizabeth and Manuel will be married in Sally's garden. A very beautiful ravine garden where white lantana is now blooming as planned just infront of glorious orange cosmos. White pumpkins are ready to be set at the garden entryway, white tents cover the driveway and strings of white lights hang among the ropes of English ivy in the trees. The garden is ready for this wedding. Mariachis are coming and the families and friends have gathered from Mexico, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Texas.

National Weather Service reports suggest "My Big Fat Monsoon Wedding" with the emphasis on monsoon. We've vowed to dance in the rain with mud between our toes. The bride and groom are delighted with one another and their happiness is palpable. Rain or shine, we'll gather at 4:00 this afternoon - perhaps with umbrellas and yellow ponchos - to celebrate with Elizabeth and Manuel and all the people they love the most.

Signs of Life From a Closeted Blogger

I’ve been yearning for my own blog. The entire idea of blogging or on-line journaling is becoming irresistible. My feelings about it are approaching those I have when I rush out on a weekend after a 60 hour work week to spend a clandestine hour at Border’s perusing periodicals, meandering through elaborate wedding books (Vera Wang’s is so beautiful) and checking out new paperbacks – I found Pamela Ribon’s “Why Girls Are Weird,” a novel about a young woman in Austin who blogs – I bought it. No resistance there.

Writing is becoming easier and easier and it was never hard. I spend time at my job writing – newsletters, proposals, sales letters, thank you very much letters. A definite rhythm develops. The words flow like dance steps, without effort, one phrase leading to another. Then there is the pleasure of editing. Rereading generates different words, better words that come straight from that unconscious universal soup reservoir. The final edit is almost a game, tightening each paragraph with a read-through that focuses on words to be eliminated or exchanged for words shorter and pithier. There is sport in compressing a sentence by removing enough words to delete one line. Have I said it better with less – I stand corrected – FEWER words? (Check out your grammar books folks. If you can count the things you speak/write about – use the word ‘fewer’. If you cannot put a number on the subject – use the word ‘less’. I am so aggrieved that even the NYT no longer follows a rule of grammar that, for me, defines a real distinction.

What a blog digression. My days of grammar lessons go back to the 1950s. I am remembering childhood and adolescence as a time when I wrote plays and novels and won prizes for my essays. I thought I was going to be a writer when I grew up but never figured out how I was to make a living at it.

Much of the time, I actually think in expository essay form. That in itself is a worthy notion on which to write more. I remember a road trip from Atlanta to Houston in 1995. I was by myself – very happily by myself – stopping where I wanted, seeing what interested me, sleeping late and driving late. I had no car radio, just the hum of the highway and the expectation of discovery. That was heaven to me and driving time became the space for assigning words to thoughts and running words into sentences that came together as essays quickly lost. No notes scribbled as I drove, but I knew that I’d written pages on that trip without benefit of pencil or keyboard.

www.pursestories.com began as Purse Stories, an installation of handbags and photo collages with hand written sentences and a few paragraphs on the wall. As intended, the website draws stories from far-flung people, newly posted every week. But just as often the purse stories one the site are those that I’ve heard and transcribed or are stories I pull from my day-to-day life (See “My First E-Bay Purse Purchase” and “Every Purse Should Be This Practical”). What began as visual art is becoming oral history, story sharing.

www.pursestories.com led me to the Creative Capital Professional Development for Visual Artists Workshop hosted by DiverseWorks. That did it – somehow I took the potential for blogging from that weekend experience. I never remember talking specifically about blogging at the workshop. What I remember was being called an artist for three whole days, hearing the precise steps I can take to transition into living and supporting an artist’s life and meeting other artists on common respectful ground. That weekend broke the creative egg.

That hidden secret world of writing rolled out like a marble. Are we mixing too many metaphors here?

I was onward toward blogging. In quiet moments in bed in the morning and late at night, paragraphs jumble in my mind. A friend counseled the need for a hand held recorder.

My youngest daughter tells me “A blog is perfect for you, Mom. You want to tell people all kinds of stuff. I don’t, but you do. It is perfect for you.” And as she says it I feel the longing, the irresistible urge like a wave covering me in words and paragraphs and simile and narrative and memory and space and, I am sure, a life long lack of grammatically parallel sentences. But that is another blog entry.

When does it begin? I am ready.