The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 320

In milder weather, the friendly staff might start a campfire out of doors and organize a sing-along. Ice skates are available for rental, and when weather permits, a lighted section of eight-acre Lake Homavalo, just outside the lodge, is open for night skating. The lodge has 36 rooms, all with private baths. Families are welcome, and with advance notice babysitting can be arranged for small fee. Lessons from a certified instructor, guided tours--including a photo tour -and ski rentals are available.

Snowshoes can also be rented and I snowshoe walks are sometimes arranged. Because of its altitude, 7,500 feet, the resort usually retains its snow and stays open for skiing through spring. Three-day holiday weekends are celebrated with traditional festivities and run from dinner on Friday night through lunch on Monday. Coming up are St. Patrick's Day (March 13-16) and Mother's Day (May 8-10).

Easter week runs April 12-26, and packages can be arranged to suit your schedule. As the snow begins to melt, MontecitoSequoia cases into its summer program of week-long vacation camps for families (couples and singles are also welcome). But after the first snowfall, it's back to skiing. Chapin Deacon Montecito-Sequoia Cross Country Ski Center is located 65 miles east of Fresno, between Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. Rates vary with time of year and length of stay.

Mid-week packages and weekly rates are least expensive. During ski season, two-day weekend rates (Friday dinner through Sunday lunch) run $130 per person double occupancy, $65 for children aged three to eleven when sharing a room with two or more adults; children under three, $32.50. For information and reservations, write to 1485 Redwood Drive, Los Altos, CA 94022; 800-227-9900 toll-free or 967-8612 locally. CAROLE TERWILLIGER MEYERS 34 1, 1987 COLOR! "The Power of A Potent Patchwork of Political Quilts he Euphrat Gallery at De Anza College in Cupertino is a small but plucky institution. Nestled in the shadow of its big sister, the Flint Center of Performing Arts, the Euphrat not only hosts faculty and student shows, but it also puts together exhibits from the outside events that usually have some bite to them.

This spring, as the days get warmer and the electric blankets get turned down, the gallery will line its walls with 22 quilts- quilts with political messages. "I know," laughs Jan Rindfleisch, the museum's director, who coordinated the show with guest curators Jane Benson and Nancy Olsen, "what are quilts doing in the Silicon Valley?" The world of high tech and hard sell hardly seems conducive to minuscule stitching and patient patching. But Rindfleisch sees textiles, and quilts among them, as a tangible connection to the daily lives of ordinary people. In the Euphrat show, "The Power of Cloth: Political Quilts viewers can trace some of the history of the political and social consciousness of American women- -from the Civil War to the present. "Normally people don't think of cloth as being powerful," Rindfleisch says, "but whether it has been used to keep people warm or as a means of art expression, cloth can tell us a great deal about the values of a 0 "The Civil War Quilt," a group quilt from Portland, Maine, was put together by one Cornelia Dow, whose husband was captured by the Confederates.

She got her friends to contribute patches to a quilt to be given to him on the day of his release from prison. The work alternates traditional stars in a red-and-blue pattern with quotes from Scripture, commentary on the war and political exhortations by her friends. "It really is very exciting to look at that piece," says Rindfleisch. "You can get a real feeling of what those women A crazy quilt from the late Victo7p rian period, by the wife of a Michigan Railway conductor, incorporates campaign ribbons Cleveland and Allan G. and labor union emblems.

The political commentary jumps out from bits of raised black velvet, shiny satin, luscious brocade, grosgrain and silk. The words and phrases are interspersed with pictures of butterflies, a frog, birds and fruit plates the whole thing held together by a network of elaborate stitching and fancy embroidery. Some of the quilts on display are as blaas any political poster today. A child's Simple hite quilt created by the Women's Christian Temperance Union is full of exhortations against demon alcohol. It features one panel with a sturdy bottle, captioned "Drink and die." A quilt made by Chris Wolf Edmonds in 1979 depicts the "Cherokee Trail of Tears," the forced removal of 16,0001 Native Americans from their homes in the 1830s.

Other messages are more subtle. You have to know that Sonya Lee Barrington's contemporary quilt, patterned with concen- Detail (top) from Cambridge group quilt, 1982; Hudson River quilt, finished in 1972..