LOIS’S DOLLS
The day after Halloween Susie took a bag with her on a walk along the French Broad River in Marshall. She was hoping to find objects with which she could make an installation of objects as a response to the terrible flooding that had happened. There were huge piles of debris twenty feet high along the river that she inspected for objects. In one huge pile she found a little cloth doll and a ripped up box that had sheets of paper with hand writing. Then she found another doll, and another and finally realized that all of these objects had come from the house of Lois Simbach, fashion designer and artist, whose entire house and studio at the upstream end of Marshall had been washed half a mile to this pile.
She texted Lois who wrote back that she had been spending the whole day filling out form after form for FEMA describing her losses and that she was dizzy from the effort and that the existence of these dolls was the first good thing that had happened since the great flood.
There must be many stories like this, many rays of hope, that have come out of this flooding. But this is the one that I have heard.
Asheville Citizen Times articles about Lois Simbach.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 