Vitalia was my paternal grandmother's name. She was a short, tiny actually, about 4'10, dark skinned, slanted eyed, Indian woman. She died quite a while ago, I must have been about 15 years old. When I think of her, memory flashes come to me: the small muu-muus she preferred to wear, the loud pitched voice she used to yell at my cousins with at their house next door, her 'arroz guacho' - a chicken soup that she would boil until the rice plumped up big and mushy, -- it was salty and delicious and to this day I try to copy it every so often --, and her patchwork blankets, we would call them 'colchas', made out of scraps of fabric that she would cut into even sized squares and sew together. Those weren't fancy patchwork blankets like those one can buy at the store. Hers were blankets made out of old shirts, skirts, worn out 'real' throws, etc.
I was thinking of a format in which to gather information about places and things that I would recommend to folks. Not necessarily events with big commentary, perhaps just enough information as to what and where they are. I thought of creating a table divided in small squares, and while thinking of it, somehow my grandma's blanket came to mind, and with it, the idea for this section.
So... below is my 'quilt' of fun places and things, a little in honor of my grandma Vitalia, who taught me that, with dedication, one can create large pretty things even if out of small square pieces.
