Like a Patchwork Quilt

One movie I enjoy watching over and over again is called Down in the Delta. It tells the story of a family's history by incorporating flashbacks of their ancestors from the 19th century with events from the present-day family saga.

The closing scenes are highlighted by the song, Patchwork Quilt (music and lyrics by Michelle Lanchester). I've taken just a little kreativ license with the lyrics to express my appreciation to the geneabloggers mentioned in the gratitude quilt shown here :-

Your lives have meaning. Your lives have joy. You touch so many people, many more than you will know. You wrap yourselves around me like a patchwork quilt. You're letting me feel your beautiful souls. . . .

The talented and kind souls featured in this gratitude quilt have each deservedly received the Kreativ Blogger Award, and each of these geneabloggers have in turn generously passed this award along to me as the Keeper of benotforgot.com.

By the beginning of 2009, I had been blogging about my ancestors for about a year, and had been posting on forums and message boards and various family history sites for more than a decade. It was early this year when I found that there was an alternate universe out there -- a warm and welcoming world inhabited by an amazing race of people who are often affectionately referred to as geneabloggers. I am so enjoying residing in this world of kindred spirits.

With thanks this day . . . to Leslie Ann & M. Diane to Caroline & Craig to Mavis & Greta . . . enjoying the warmth of your souls . . .

• Leslie Ann Ballou at Ancestors Live Here aka gen_freak
• M. Diane Rogers at Canada Genealogy or Jane's Your Aunt aka mdiane_rogers
• Caroline Pointer at Family Stories aka FamilyStories
• Craig Manson at Geneablogie
• Mavis Jones at Georgia Black Crackers aka NCChemist
• Greta Koehl at Greta's Genealogy Bog

One thing requested upon acceptance of this award is for the recipient to pay it forward to other deserving bloggers. Part of my problem with that is that I believe that every blogger is kreativ (otherwise, they wouldn't be blogging, right?) -- and I subscribe to a lot of blogs. I do not leave comments as often as I should, but I do enjoy the visits, and I do read what you write. To each of you who are on my personal blog-list :-

You share the spark, you fan the flame, You feed the fires, you pass the names. For all those known and for all unnamed, For all who have walked the way; We raise this toast, with thanks this day.

Mike Garofalo

Kreativ Blogger Award recipients are also asked to tell a few secrets about his or her self!?! Secrets?!? Well . . . here goes :-

1. I know how to tat -- i.e., make lace using a shuttle and thread.
2. I cannot whistle. Give me a decent blade of grass (bermuda is good) and I can create a variety of weird (and irritating) noises, some of which might be called a whistle. Other than that, I absolutely cannot whistle.
3. My wedding gown (1975) was ice-blue velvet trimmed with white fur (designed and made by my Mom), and I carried a white fur muff instead of the traditional bouquet of flowers.
4. I attending Willie Nelson's very first 4th of July picnic -- in 1973 at Dripping Springs.
5. I'm a wannabe storm chaser. In 1980 a series of 35 of my photos of a killer F-3 tornado were aired during the news on Ch. 36 in Austin. I captured the images with my Canon AE-1 while standing on my front porch in Rices Crossing.
6. My name is recorded somewhere in the pages (or boxes or files) of Texas history as a designer & creator & seller of an officially licensed Texas Sesquicentennial souvenir product -- i.e., a cross-stitch pattern of the official SQ logo with a border of quilt blocks with a Texas theme.
7. In the 1980s I taught classes at the International Quilt Festival, which is attended by people from all over the world, and where one of my class members was the mother of Cat Stevens who sang "Moon Shadow" in 1971.
8. My very first piano teacher was a teenage girl named Judy (the neighbor's granddaughter) who later married Merle Kilgore (1934-2005), who was best friend & manager of Hank Williams, Jr. for many years.
9. My 2nd toes are longer than my big toes . . . and I can pick up things with my toes, as well as pinch with my toes . . . and I HATE wearing shoes!
10. My favorite comfort food is my Mom's chicken & dumplings. She makes the kind you roll out like pie crust. I think she said her Grandma Henry made them that way?
11. My Hubbie & I spent more than a month riding horseback with the Texas Sesquicentennial Wagon Train (1986).
12. I have a Hemingway Cat -- affectionately known as Cisco the 6-toed cat -- who has no tail to go along with all his extra toes, and is often thought to be a bobcat, and is the most loveable tom-cat I ever met.
13. I like hot tea (Plantation Mint or Constant Comment) . . . and raspberry iced tea . . . and I prefer vanilla (or caramel) to chocolate . . .
14. I was born on Forget-Me-Not Day (for real!).

be-not-forgot . . .