Quilts, books, and a charming author

The book club meeting on Friday was fun and noisy. We discussed two books; Jean had chosen Three Cups of Tea for the meeting, and as I've already said, I thought it was a marvelous book. Everyone seemed to agree. Mary is hostess for the March meeting, but she'll be out of town, so we also discussed her March selection, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, by Ann B. Ross. This was also good, a rather short novel, mostly humorous.

Then we decided that on the day the March meeting is supposed to be held, we'll bring refreshments and watch a movie in the meeting room.

On Saturday at 10:00 a.m., Ramey's friend, the author Irene Latham, had a book signing in the library for her book Leaving Gee's Bend. This book is a novel based on the women of Gee's Bend, a small isolated community in Wilcox County, Alabama, who are famous for the primitive/ antique-looking quilts they make and have made over the years. Irene's book is set in 1932 and concerns a young girl who leaves the community for the first time in her life, on a quest for medicine for her sick mother.

I worked in Camden, which is some distance from Gee's Bend in Wilcox County, when I worked for Social Security, and Mable is from there and knows a lot of the history, so we were especially interested in Irene's story.

Irene Latham is a lovely young woman whom I'm very glad to have met. She told us practically the story of her life, showed us a little "book" she wrote as a child, and related how she came to write Leaving Gee's Bend, including the six-year process of writing, rewriting, and getting it published. I think everyone at the book signing bought at least one copy. I bought two, one for myself and one to lend before the April book club meeting, as Mondretta only bought one copy for the library.

Ramey had arranged a group of quilts along one wall, including one that Irene brought which was made by her grandmother-in-law. One of the quilts was made by Ramey's daughter India when she was a child, one by our mother Mary Ramey, and one made by my daughter. Another quilt Ramey brought was a beautiful crib quilt made of tiny squares, which was given to her by Mable when Reed Daniel was a baby.

Saturday evening, in a fit of pique, Ramey and I moseyed over to the Big Saver thrift store. I came home with an armload of books, most of which I listed on Amazon.com for good prices totaling about ten times as much as I paid for them. I also got a lovely tall glass candlestick which is pictured above, and a pretty china coffee mug for me.

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I've got six items that I've sold on eBay that I have to mail tomorrow. They should have been mailed last week, but I was having problems getting PayPal to print postage. I finally got a clue from their customer service and figured out how to fix it. So today I've got to finish packing five items and print the postage. I've also got some bills to pay. If I get all that done today, then tomorrow I can have some fun. Or do some cleaning and laundry.