How many national flags in the world? It depends on whom you ask. Maybe 194, or 197, and it can change at any moment as national governments and boundaries rearrange themselves. Add to that state and regional flags, organizational flags, holiday flags—the list is endless. In every case, a flag is just a rectangle of […]
29
May
May
Enjoy this story of Amalia Guë, a beautiful, steadfast earth mother of a woman, featured in Deborah Chandler’s Traditional Weavers of Guatemala: Their Stories, Their Lives. I cannot forget visiting her six years ago when we were working on the book: shafts of sunlight coming through cracks in the walls to illuminate the fine work […]
10
Jan
Jan
In addition to writing stellar books herself, Thrums author Deborah Chandler has recommended many a good book to me, from the novels of Miguel Asturias to Diné bahane’: The Navajo Creation Story by Paul Zolbrod. Last fall she gave me a collection of poems, Seated on the Bank of the Yichk’u River by Maya writer […]
11
Oct
Oct
Thrums Books has been a longtime fan of Friendship Bridge, the wonderful organization dedicated to empowering the lives of women in Guatemala. The San Antonio Friendship Bridge Circle will host its annual fundraiser trunk show and sale on October 19. In preparation for this important day, San Antonio Circle member Susan Albert sent us this […]
21
Jun
Jun
Author Deborah Chandler (Traditional Weavers of Guatemala and A Textile Traveler’s Guide to Guatemala) was a recent guest at El Museo Latino in Omaha, Nebraska. She shared with us a little bit about the museum, its current exhibition, and her time there. Thanks, Deborah! Thirty years ago, Magdalena Garcia was in graduate school […]
31
May
May
I’m continually impressed with our authors and their ongoing work. I shouldn’t be. I know how extraordinary they are, but when I receive missives from far and wide, apprising me of their activities, I have to marvel a bit. Deborah Chandler writes from her home in Guatemala City to say that on her way to […]
10
May
May
Teaching textile traditions is a gift mothers pass to their children generation after generation. Whether in Mexico or Morocco, Afghanistan or Laos, mothers have been teaching their daughters (ands sons) to weave, to spin, to dye, to embroider for centuries. Sharing these skills with the next generation is practical, of course, because it creates a […]
08
Mar
Mar
More than thirty years ago, National Geographic magazine published an issue with a young Afghan woman on the cover. Her intense green eyes were so unexpected, and her expression so loaded with hard-to-read emotion, that the photograph has become iconic. Just google “afghan girl” and there she is, after all this time. Kind of like […]
01
Feb
Feb
I’ve had the great good fortune to do quite a bit of international travel in the past couple of decades. There’s a shelf in my workroom of notebooks I’ve jotted in on various trips–Peruvian highlands, Amazon Basin, Oaxaca and Chiapas in southern Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala. Especially Guatemala, much on my mind these days as I […]
14
Dec
Dec
“Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand, Mine to yours, yours to mine.” Alberto Ríos Catarina spins with a touch that turns clouds into thread. Photo by Joe Coca from the book Traditional Weavers of Guatemala. It’s the gift-giving, and gift-finding, season. Enjoy the bounty of gifts so vivid in each of these […]
