A Warm and Fuzzy Project

Mother Teresa would not have shopped Hallmark.

If she sent Christmas cards--a gesture that seems oddly inappropriate for one close to sainthood--they might have been like the ones they are turning out at the Assn. of Retarded Citizens in Ventura.

For if the season is about anything, it is about the beauty of humble things--and no materials can be humbler than shreds of old paper and gobs of dryer lint.

They make the cards in a big sunny room in an old building that used to be a school. They work at rates ranging from glacial to frenetic, but all shook my hand and made me feel welcome when I visited.

Miguel, who explained he was “20 and nine,” manned the blender. He dumped in some water, scraps of red construction paper, and a handful of the dryer lint that ARC staff members had brought from their homes. After a couple of minutes on puree, the cranberry-colored stuff was ready for the straining process that would turn it into coarse paper.

Under the leadership of psychiatric technician Karen Reilly, dozens of people have worked on the cards in the last few months. Their abilities vary wildly. Some hold part-time jobs on the outside. A few even had gone on a Hawaiian vacation with the woman who runs their board-and-care. Others would never go far.

Rosita, a pretty woman in her 30s, ran in to give Reilly a hug. Then she dropped down on all fours, crawled under a table laden with paper and ink pads and glue sticks, and stayed there, moaning.

“You want your crown, Rosita?” an aide asked. “You want to go to Sizzlers on Friday? Come on, come on, be a good girl now. . . . “

From across the room, Miguel barraged Reilly with questions: “Is this red enough? Do I need more water? Is it done? Karen? Karen? Karen? Karen?”

Like others in her field, Reilly is blessed with a towering patience. Even as she tried to calm an agitated older man who had mistakenly grabbed someone else’s walker, she made sure everyone else was flattening sheets of paper beneath ancient National Geographics, or gluing it to folded cards, or lifting little paper Santas from their molds.

People who couldn’t work their hands well enough for such tasks also were put to work. Reilly showed me the Christmas tree balls they had rolled in various shades of paint. No Abstract Expressionist could have done much better.

Reilly has worked at ARC for eight years and at Camarillo State Hospital before that. At a quiet moment, I asked if her work ever depresses her.

“With all the hugs?” she said. “It’s sometimes frustrating--but never depressing.”

She read about papermaking a few months ago. She and her crew experimented, adding rose petals and eucalyptus bark to some batches for texture and aroma.

So far they have turned out 500 cards. Selling them at 50 cents to $1 each, they are barely keeping up with demand. It’s a lesson they will take to heart as they plan for Valentine’s Day and Easter.

If sales keep going up, Reilly might have to find outside sources of dryer lint--a commodity she called “totally useless.”

Of course, it isn’t.

A Long Beach artist has achieved critical success with her dryer-lint sculptures. You can set clumps of dryer lint in your yard and birds will swoop upon them for their nests. Crafts books show how to make little pets from dryer lint. On the Internet, an anti-terrorist consultant advises embassy personnel in war-torn countries to keep Baggies of dryer lint in their survival backpacks; it’s great tinder for the emergency campfire.

And what can be better for cleansing the soul than stuff from the bottom of a dryer?

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer.