The Agenda

by Molly Booker

[This interview appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006, and previously in longer form in the glorious-but-now-defunct Providence Music Paper.]

This interview was conducted on a chilly October morning in 2004. Alec K. Redfearn invited me into his home and allowed me to ask him questions about religion, his family, music, and addiction. In the interview, Alec returns again and again (unbeknownst to him, I believe) to the theme of pieces and shards: his shattered leg, the somewhat schizophrenic state after sobriety, his lyrics, his influences. As I typed the interview, I was struck by the way he talks and thinks—it was largely pieces and shards as well; rarely a fully formed thought. I found Alec's speaking style to be just as illustrative of his creative mind as what he actually said.

Looking to Change the World, One Stitch at a Time

by Molly Booker

The South Lonsdale Quilter’s Guild, established shortly after the start of the Civil War, has been a staple of South Lonsdale social life for over a century. Since 1987, the Guild has met once a week at the home of Myrtle Shaw to quilt, teach, and socialize.

“I inherited the Guild from my mother’s next-door neighbor, Edna Black, back in 1987,” says Mrs. Shaw. “When Edna passed, her only daughter Marlee lived way out ’round Woonsocket. ‘Myrtle,’ she said to me, ‘seeing as how there were nothing else but boys on our street excepting you and my Marlee, it looks like you’re the closest thing to a daughter I got left around here. This Guild has been in South Lonsdale since 1863 and I ain’t about to pass until I know there’s someone ’round here that’s going to carry it on.’ At that point, I’d never quilted in my life, but seeing as how Edna has been near death with pneumonia a half a dozen times in the last year, I figured taking over the Guild was the Christian thing to do so that Edna could finally pass in peace.”