Gentle Spiders,
I've been postponing the writing of this message for the past couple of
hours, hoping someone else would be the bearer of the bad news, since
I'm more suited to clowning around.
When I opened my personal inbox today, I found in it a message from an
American friend who's on a lacemaking-pal visit in UK at the moment.
She wrote:
Dear T,
I'm visiting with my friend M.W. (she came with me when I visited you
once) here in the UK. She has asked if I would let you know that Jean
Barrett died this week. Jean was president of the Cleveland Lace
Guild here in this area and also was a contributor to Arachne. M.
thought that Jean might have visited you, or that you were friends.
I wasn't sure if the news might have been posted to Arachne yet -- you
might like to let them know if it hasn't.
I do not like doing this; I'd much rather write about anything else...
But Jean _had_ been a friend, even though she never visited here, in
the civilised wilds of rural western Virginia.
We'd corresponded, off-and-on, for many years. And, in the
spring/summer of '04 we finally met, in Prague, at the OIDFA Congress.
I took her picture there, to put in my addressbook alongside the
e-address, as I always try to do with more-or-less regular
correspondents, so that I can see their faces whenever they write.
A couple of months ago, there was a flurry of messages about
lace-related magnets (starting with Ilske's discovery of one of a
lacemaker by Netscher, and Barbara's tracking up the producer and
availability in the US), and I mentioned that I collected such. A
couple of weeks later, I was the happy receipient of two lacy magnets:
one with the logo of the Cleveland LG, and another, with "Millie, the
millenium hedgehog" (the "spikes" are individual BL leaves -- not
tallies -- made by the members of the CLG) on it. The magnets were
accompanied by a lovely card, of a table set up for a tea party, on a
lace tablecloth (Greek lace "Mosaic", from the book "Lace in Chios")...
I e-wrote Jean to thank her and the message was returned, undelivered
-- address unknown. Since we have not corresponded privately in a
while, I wrote to Arachne asking if anyone knew of an address change --
and got no response. I kept thinking I'd write a "real time" thank you
letter, but never got around to it and, the more time passed, the more
difficult it got to write, and the easier it got to put off... So, she
never got to know how much I enjoy my magnets and my card, and how
sorry I am to have been -- yet again -- "deficient in friendship"
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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