Mr. Tolson, I need your help...

I am still trying to "take back and keep my righteous mind".  I have been decluttering since 2016.  Household is pretty much done, except for books.  Remember back in the 70s how paperbacks looked.  They were much smaller than today's books classified as paperbacks.  I really should send them on to Goodwill.  But its hard to part with them for the sole reason they are African American literature and our books are the least to go into reprint or even digital availability.  Also, its hard to part with them for what they represent to me in my development as a teen-ager and young adult who struggled to be aware and conscious or as they young admonish today "stay woke".  That is an emotional attachment.  I will never reread those books (my aged eyes can't handle the print).  My oldest son reads and I have been passing some on to him.  I thought about just giving him most of them and let him pick  and choose what to keep and what to pass on.  That sounds like a sound plan...I think I'll go with it.

A friend who is a volunteer at an Art House in Louisville's West End took some art supplies.  I'm trying to keep a minimum.  Today I returned to the basementm (I had been avoiding the space for month and months), to move some things around.  Oh mercy me! More is more.  If I had my phone down here I would snap a picture and let you see all the stuff that has ended to one side of the room.  I want to go through and make a keep pile and a giveaway pile.  This pile includes more art supplies and art instruction and quilt instruction books.  No, I do not want to have a yard sale, (although, I might do Half-Price books).

The wall next to the pile in the floor is an old Elna system of wire drawers (that I found on CL for 20 bucks!  I was happier than a pig in slop!  I'm channeling my Mother with that one.(  I want to get back to quilting...contemporary and art quilts; but I do not want to keep a large stash.  Not that I have a huge stash, but I still think I can go through what I have and let go.  For contemporary quilting, I want to buy as I make and for my art quilts I want to keep a a couple of different rolls of PFD and paint and dye as I go.  I want to create more slowly and with intent.  Which means my blank art journals are definitely a keeper.  Its better to make crap in a journal then with fabric.  Restarting a journal practice can translate to a masterpiece in cloth.  Right? Just say sure and lets move on.

I want to be a good steward of the spaces I have to create in but to tell you for true, my creativity was higher and more productive when we lived in an apartment where I used the wall in the hallway and the kitchen table and cleared it up daily before my kids came home from school and we ate together as a family.  The next morning after everyone left I hauled my projects back out to the kitchen table and hallway.  To dye fabrics I rented out space 2-3 times a year at Mary Anderson Center (is that now defunct?) for the Arts on the grounds of Mount St. Francis (a peace/piece of heaven on earth).
 in southern Indiana.

But whenever I glance at the chaos on the other side of this room (I'm still in the basement) I envision Mr. Melvin Tolson placing his hands firmly on my shoulders and looking me in the eye and saying with conviction "I'm trying to help you take back and keep your righteous mind".

Until next time, Peace.