Three things from DAH.

DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I pen, promote, and make change (not the coin kind). 

First up this week, Quilting …  
I have several talented quilting friends (we have some lovely quilted works on our walls at home). It makes sense, too, that quilting, and other fabric arts, have experienced a boom in popularity during our year-plus lost to various levels of COVID quarantine. In honor of quarantine quilting, I'd like to introduce you to The Rajah Quilt (check out the link below to see it). The Rajah Quilt is named for the Rajah transport ship that carried female prisoners to Australia in 1841. During their journey some of the women worked together to create a quilt. Learning about this forced-quarantine quilting experience inspired Hope Adams to write her recent mystery novel Dangerous Women. I'm thinking I should be cautious of quilters. 
Check out the quilt, now hanging in a museum: The Rajah Quilt

Second up this week, Quick-wit …  
We all have quirks. We might not always recognize them until they are pointed out by others. When we do see our quirks clearly we can choose whether to quash or cultivate them. I've always had a quick wit. I've generally cultivated it because I thought it made me look clever. There have been periods of quashing when looking clever didn't serve me or those I served (ah, the working life). Generally, though, I enjoy quick-witted quipping by myself and others. It's not a competitive thing. It's a whimsical way of looking at life. Plus, apparently, it might make me more popular (according to the below-linked article). If only we weren't quarantining so much. My dogs don't find quick-witting amusing unless rubs or snacks are included. 
Why You Should Be Quick-Witted (If You Want To Appear Charismatic)

Third up this week, Quarto …  
We're talking book size. Printing two pages on each side of a sheet (or leaf) of paper, then folding it in half, yields a Folio. Print that same leaf with four pages on a side and fold it twice? That results in a Quarto (and doubling up yet again gives you an Octavo). The successive foldings make the books smaller and smaller. When I read "Quarto" I think "Shakespeare." I have a lot of books about Shakespeare, but I'll never own a First Folio (the 1623 collection brought to print ten years after The Bard's death by Shakespeare's friends and fellow thespians Heminges and Condell). Before that big book a number of Shakespeare's plays had been printed in the smaller, less expensive (less paper) Quarto size. I'll never own any of those, either. Thinking about them in Quarto makes me happy reading Shakespeare in pocketable paperback (Quarto size). We're so blessed with affordable and available printed and digital works it's sometimes difficult to imagine how rare books once were, and how essential were the oral traditions of the theater. Why am I thinking about this? Because I'm awaiting delivery of a just-published book: North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar's Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard's Work, by Michael Blanding. The plays aren't just words for me. They're expressions of collaborative storytelling from the stage to the page (or, perhaps, from page to stage to page). 
Publishing Shakespeare

And a bit more, a poem published in The New Yorker (January 3, 2016). I'm ready for a beach-trip and steaming clams with friends … 
Quahogs
by Frank X. Gaspar
It was for the wind as much as anything.
It was for the tidal flats, for the miles of bars
and the freezing runs between them,
blued and darkened in the withering gusts.
For the buckets, for the long-tined rakes.
For our skin burning and the bones
beneath, all their ache. For the bent backs,
for the huddle toward warmth beneath
our incapable layers, how we beat
ourselves with our arms. The breath
we blew, the narrow steam that spun away.
How we searched their tell-draggle marks.
Then the feel of them as we furrowed. Then it
was surgery and force together. Like stones.
Opal or pearl or plain rock, ugly except
they were beautiful, their whorls and
purple stains. The bucket’s wire cutting
with their weight. For the sky blazing, its
sinking orange fire. For the sky’s black streaks
with night rising, winter-sudden. Back,
shoreward, home, the tide creeping like a wolf.
For the little stove warming, its own orange fire.
The old pot, the steam, the air in savor,
the close room, the precious butter, the
blue fingers throbbing, our bodies in all
the customs of weariness, the supper,
succulent of the freezing dark sea come up,
and hunger, its own happiness, its own
domain immeasurable. It was for the hunger.

And that's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver’s poem "Sometimes" …  

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. 

Please share any or all of this newsletter. It's Free every Friday!
If you’re seeing it for the first time, you can subscribe and browse past issues HERE