November 18 2005
Unbelievably, things are getting done! Huge things. We don't have TRENCHES in our yard anymore, for one thing. That's excellent. I am still behind on my email and my digital life but the actual, real, warm life is coming on. Class tomorrow.
Hey, isn't this all of our worst nightmares? Hidden cameras in places like public restrooms? My personal policy is to assume that I am always being watched, and then it all works out. Grandma always said don't do or say anything you would feel uncomfortable with having published in the paper. Or watched by repressed freaks from spy cameras. There really isn't any suitably harsh punishment for this man, except to have all of his mail, email, and comings and goings monitored constantly and to have to clean that restroom, personally, for the next ten years.
November 17 2005
WELL it's still pretty nuts here. You know how some weeks are just like that? Everything needs attention, even things that shouldn't? I am still behind in my email, my web site, my everything, and I'm still waiting for my casting order to come in. Still working on finishing a ton of projects, still building things in the studio. The boys are on half days this week and Bill is in St. Louis, and it's just amazing. From the second I get up until the second I fall, stiff and whining, into bed, busy. But happy. And f-n glad that I am healthy and strong and can work this hard. I love hard work but wish that I was current in my dratted paperwork. As usual.
Look at this gorgeous bracelet that Jean made with Anne's XOX kit and one of my fine silver clasps.
Below, a cute garden down the street.
November 15 2005
Things are wack crazy here! Nothing serious, but everything happening at once and taking up all of the minutes in each day. Plumbers, lights, trenches, parent-teacher conferences, shipping, anniversaries. It's just nuts and all I can say is that I hope to be back on track within a day or two. I haven't yet sent out my email to my mailing list about classes, or my postcard to St. Louis about Open Studio, or done all manner of things like that that need doing. Life is hectic but beautiful.
I can report with extreme pleasure that Amy Johnson and Cynthia Archer will be joining us in our fabulous booth at Bead and Button. It's going to be great.
Hey, Michele Goldstein has a beautiful new bead boutique up. Have you seen it?
November 13 2005
Class dates for Spring:
Metal Clay Workshop: Saturday and Sunday, January 14 and 15 & April 8 and 9, $400, materials included, all levels.
Low-Tech Metalsmithing, with Anne Mitchell, Saturday and Sunday, February 11 and 12, $425, materials included, all levels.
Design Workshop, Saturday and Sunday, March 4 and 5, $400, materials included, all levels.
Email me if you know that you want a space in class. I've got a ton of stuff to do tomorrow, but will send out a mailing and get class details and PayPal buttons up pronto. Basically, classes can challenge and excite you at any skill level (more advanced students will get more out of class, but won't feel held back by beginners, and the beginners won't feel like they are holding anyone back, either, cause it's MAGIC and we have a great time.) The studio is almost finished, which is astounding. Nothing ever gets really finished around me, but Anne has a way of making things keep happening until they are done. We hung the big doors yesterday, and I painted them dark orange. They are gorgeous, perfect, and the sink went in today. Now where is our elusive plumber?
Bill O'Reilly wishes that terrorists would strike San Francisco and that the president would withhold federal funding. And defends his remarks. He says that we are in World War III and people like us have no right preventing it from escalating. I know how he feels, it's hard when you just don't like some people. I can see how satisfying it would feel if funding was withheld from Bill O'Reilly and he experienced discomfort, or even suffering. But I don't fool myself that it would change his mind. It would just make me feel better, briefly. What a freak. Remember the "falafel," and his idea of obscene phone calls? Leaving messages on an answering machine? Warning, the link is graphic and disgusting, beacuse it contains Bill O'Reilly's idea of hot sex. I need a shower. But without a falafel. We think he meant "loofah."
above, a nice old board.
November 10 2005
November TENTH? How did that even happen? If you know tell me. Life moves so fast, and things just rocket by. Already my sons are almost as tall as my shoulders and my knees are getting creaky. Can it be that I am on the way out? You know that feeling you get when people that you love die, lose it in some way, or become ill? That feeling of creeping mortality, of inevitability? I have those thoughts now.
It can be a hard feeling or it can be a sense of incredible freedom; we can only do what we can do. Time is short. It's easy to identify what really matters, harder to shepherd your time successfully to reflect that. I try to keep out the pointless and keep my face turned toward the real stuff but it is a constant thought process. My phone rang at least fifteen times yesterday, making me wish for a cabin by a stream in the woods. I do a good job of lowering the Cone Of Don't Mess With Me over my life and behaving as if I live in a remote mountain cabin, and still be in a relatively urban setting. As Larry said to me on Monday, "if you had to crawl on your hands and knees to the Thai restaurant you would totally make it."
I'm re-reading one of my favorite books by my favorite authors- Folly, by Laurie King. Everything Laurie King has ever written is on my all time favorite list, but Folly stands out as unique in her work. It's a novel set in the San Juan islands, and the main character is a woman in her fifties, headstrong and quirky and a fine woodworker by profession. She has been dealt a tough hand and is struggling to make it, and she chooses to rebuild a quirky house on an island by herself. By hand. I can identify with that.
Below, the Cynthia Toops polymer moss pin, set in silver. We are going to make a couple of rings, and I am pondering various ways to make them come apart and turn into pendants. I have some serious ideas about that.
November 9 2005
Some really good news: Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives abandoned, at least temporarily, a drive to open Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling after concluding on Wednesday the initiative was threatening passage of a huge bill to cut spending. The Senate Republicans didn't have what it took, I guess, to do the right thing. I'm deeply grateful to those in the House willing to step up and say no to this.
Below, a piece by Cynthia Toops, titled "Conversation", fashioned out of tiny little threads of polymer clay. I haven't photographed my Moss pin yet. Life is intruding in unpleasant ways today, technical difficulties and cold grey weather. Whoa, the sun just came out! Excellent. Class schedule for Spring will be up soon, I will have a weekend in St. Louis as well as at least three in California.
Election notes: California voters struck down every single one of Arnold's propositions and would likely have struck Arnold down himself if he was up for reelection yesterday. It's a shame to think of the money he wasted trying to turn the state Republican, but at least it energized our electorate and was a good test run of the system before the 2006 elections. I feel more confident that we will get a fair vote count in California next year. Ohio had "voting irregularities" again yesterday. That state....Diebold, vote fraud, coin scams. Kansas voted, God love them, to include "intelligent design" in its science curriculum instead of teaching it where it belongs- religion. That's what Pennsylvania plans to do, teach it in a comparative religion class, offered as an elective. Texas ratified a gay-terror amendment so hateful that all Texas marriages might be rendered invalid by it, and Virginia and New Jersey selected Democratic governors. News reports are now painting Dick Cheney as the real power in the White House, with evil designs and a dangerous and foolhardy master plan, and George Bush as an ego-driven figurehead who doesn't know what's going on. Sounds like they are getting ready to pin the whole mess on "Cheney" and try to move on with another shadow cast of rogues, puppeted, no doubt, by Cheney. I wouldn't feel safe from Dick Cheney even if he were in JAIL.
Above: Sarah Thomasson's Eyeball ring with Dustin's button and a lot of spines.
And, as I've mentioned before, the United States is using banned chemical weapons (worse than napalm) against Iraqi civilians and somehow, it isn't news. Remember the Republican Talking Point, "Saddam Hussein gassed his OWN PEOPLE!?" Well that was mild compared to what we are doing (burning them hideously with phosphorus) and anyway, Rumsfeld and Cheney gave him whatever weapons he used in the first place and told him to go ahead and do it. It's insupportable, what we are doing right now in Iraq. Why won't the world stop us? We have secret prisons scattered all over the globe, we are torturing "detainees", violating the Geneva convention, using banned weapons, throwing elections, you name it. We will be paying for this in blood, money, and shame for the next hundred years. Three more years of these policies? How can we or the world take it? Perhaps someone who voted for Bush can explain it to me. Terrorists, bad! We must kill them! is all that they seem capable of saying. Never mind that in our tidal wave of violence, hate and destruction, we are creating a desire for venegance against America (that would be you and me, personally, and our innocent children) that spans cultures and country lines and will last for generations. The waste of it all astounds me...
November 8 2005
I'm home! Portland was beautiful and the Portland Bead Society show is really a lovely thing. I'm so glad I went. I met quite a few people who came up to me and said "hey, I read your web site every day," which was great. A real treat was being across from Cynthia Toops and Dan Adams. It was my first chance to really get a good look at their work. And I went a little farther than that, I bought one of Cynthia's moss pins (pix tomorrow) and we made plans for a collaborative piece. That's over the moon cool. And I saw into Teresa Sullivan's bead box, which was full of the most incredible things. We are trading some of my metalwork for two of her Flame Cuffs, Wonder Woman kind of things.
Above, Meesh taking a photo of her coffee. Below, Larry Brickman and Jenny Newtson. Jenny was the voice of NPRs Morning Edition in EUGENE (I said Portland) for years and was extremely cool. She was next to me. In the back you can see a sunlit Kristen, maker of most excellent boro beads. It was great to see everyone.
Want to see the Rio Grande ad featuring Kate for the 2005 Saul Bell Award?