It’s been a cold week in Appleton. The past few weeks have been brutal in their various forms of winter - snow, ice, gloom, subzero temperatures. Three weeks ago, a polar vortex made the temperature drop to 24F degrees below zero for two days - days when I couldn’t stay home from work because we had an important live video conference, so my sister and I were both out in it. After that we had several big snowfalls, adding up to a record for any February. Then, we were saying today that it was just one week ago that whiteout conditions caused a 131-car accident on a stretch of highway that all of us drive all the time. It seems much longer than one week ago that it happened, and sort of cruel that today only a week later was sunny and brilliant blue, although still crazily cold and icy in patches.
It was a great day for doing comforting work with fabric with your Mom, and that’s what I did all afternoon. My Mom and Dad moved here in July, and in her old home Mom was very involved in the rug-braiding community. She has made probably more than 100 rugs of wool strips, following the techniques laid out by her teacher Norma Sturgis in her instructional book. Dad always says that Mom has one of the best senses of color in her rugs. So, convincing her to move here to be closer to her daughters meant tearing her away from all of that, and we haven’t replaced that community, but I am learning to braid, and I hope to go with her this summer to the annual braid-in in Salida, Colorado. She is taking me through the steps - choosing colors, tearing strips, making the “T”, starting to braid. Today we worked on lacing, and splicing the lacing cord, and how to add a new color. We worked for about two hours, and were both weary at the end. The wool is a bit hard on your hands. It irritated my sister’s skin, so she prefers quilting with cotton fabric. It can be hard keeping the sides of each strip folded in just so. I felt like I was wrestling with the fabric for every loop. But braiding is one of the most forgiving crafts. Bumps and twists will work themselves out as you walk on the rug, and the process doesn’t change the materials so you could in principle take apart and redo anything without any loss but time (and with the gain of practice).
We sat in Mom’s sun room, with the blinds tipped a little because the sun was so bright off the snow piles outside. She was working on a round rug with light blue, grey, and a grey-purplish plaid, a gift for a cousin. Mine is dark forest green, tan, and green-and-cream plaid. Neither of us exactly has a plan for what colors we’ll use as we go along. I asked Mom how you decide, thinking she would quote some principle like that you always start with light and then do a dark band, but she answered with a question, “How much of that green plaid do you have left?” Not that much. That’s how you decide, or at least one way.
I had to leave before dinner to go to a show at a bar and occasional music venue downtown. My sister and her friend had seen it and got tickets, and I got one for me and one for my significant other. The show was early, since it’s Sunday night, and featured two bands who became familiar to our town through the Mile of Music Festival, a summer celebration of original Americana music that will be in its sixth year this summer. Appleton in a music town, with a Conservatory at one end of the main street and a big performing arts center and bars featuring live music at the other. So we know how to pay attention to a musical performance and how to listen, and we’re not shy about whooping and dancing and singing along. So the bands that come to play the Mile notice this about us and express their appreciation for us from the stage, and many have starting returning between festivals to play single gigs.
Tonight was one of those, with two acts - Jamie Kent and Wild Adriatic. We got to the venue not long before it started. We got very good parking spots in the next block, and I was rugged up in my big calf-length down coat and lots of wool, but it was still fiercely cold walking from the car to the bar. There was the slightest little breeze but it was enough to drop the four degrees down to a chill I could feel through the sleeve of my coat.
The bar was busy when we got there, packed but not uncomfortable. Jamie went on first, a solo acoustic set and then joined by a second guitarist. He sings catchy and sincere songs that are right in the Americana genre of the Mile of Music. The crowd gave a warm reaction, and it was so nice to be out among other people. It felt normal, and fun, after weeks of extreme and treacherous weather, when even the simplest things like walking out your own door felt dangerous (wind chill, icy steps, crazy big icicles overhead).
The rest of the group I was with hadn’t seen Wild Adriatic before. The crowd filled in a bit when they took the stage. They play in the nexus of rock, blues-rock and soul, and they’re not a band whose records I would put on at home to listen to, personally, but they are a very good live act. Very loud, but strong, not blarey. Strong beats, and a good drummer, but so relaxed. They are all completely confident on stage, and seem not to take themselves too seriously. We stayed for about five songs, including one they said was written about Appleton, which then morphed into a medley of a number of different soul hits, and then back, with a rhythmic riff played on guitar and bass in unison that got the crowd jumping up and down, and when it stopped we let out a roar, a sound you only hear from a crowd when band and crowd have joined together.
It was a little bit of summer in our winter. A gig you would walk to in sandles during the fest in August, which a big room full of us struggled through the cold to get to tonight. I feel grateful to the performers to have come play for us. We’ve had a few difficult weeks, and really needed this show.
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