Don’t Ya Just Love The Holidays?…

Well, it’s bug day and then it’s Thanksgiving week so this is probably my last post before we go off the grid again. Those pilgrims were so thankful weren’t they? My favorite story was of the Jamestown “pilgrims” who actually were there before the Mayflower and after ingesting datura stramonium were said to have appeared coming out of the woods days later completely naked and a bit worse for wear (later after the effects were known, it was apparently used to poison the British soldiers). Jamestown weed became one of the common names along with thorn apple, devil’s weed and devil’s apple which after time was mispronounced into the current common name… Jimson weed. So how about a new holiday?… ThanksJimson Day? Sorry, still not quite myself, I managed to get a bit of work done yesterday and now another week before I get back in the studio again. Here’s a glamour shot in black and white…

I had lots of company again yesterday and we got out some colored slips for Sofia to continue “painting” her vase. I think it’s turning out a bit deKooning-esque…

Here’s a shot of the dynamic duo, Sunglasses has since had a bath to wash away the markers but there’s still a bit of yellow in places that makes her look like she’s might be coming down with a bit of jaundice…

So by the next post I should be well again (famous last words) and then only 3 weeks til more dreaded holidays… my favorite time of year, said the curmudge sarcastically. We watched “Food, Inc.” last night and although I attempt to stay apolitical here in blogtown, this movie is very disturbing. It is clearly not propaganda and although I believe everyone ought to see it, I know that mostly only the people who are already convinced will. It is absolutely deplorable in every way what these companies are doing to farmers, laborers and the public… if you intend to see it, you may want to wait until after the holidays because it will definitely ruin your dinner. Hasta luego.

Keep Me Hangin’ On…

Well Wednesday I thought I was better, actually I was better. Hit the studio with my helper and tried to get back up on the horse (the spinning horse). It wasn’t the most productive day but felt good to get back in the clay. That night went and had a couple beers and woke up the next day with either a relapse or a whole new cold. It doesn’t feel the same. I was super pissed and tried to work yesterday regardless but just didn’t have the energy to make a good go of it… had to cancel my big scrabble game last night. Anyway, I don’t want these posts to sound like I’m complaining because I’m not… merely reporting the facts. My helper, on the other hand, was quite productive. The cleaning of the studio and putting the love seat in there has somehow turned the space into Sofia’s favorite place in the house. She’s been there for days and I love the company. Two nights ago, while putting her to bed, she said… dad, I love your studio. Here’s how she showed up for “work” yesterday…

We’ve been having tea each day about the same time and she has all her markers on my work table. She started making cards and once she gets going, the production goes into high gear…

Then she moved on to decorating an old vase I had around that was bisqued but not glazed…

I’m looking forward to firing it. Then apparently when I went upstairs for a bit, she ran out of paper to make more cards and, ever resourceful, decided to mark up the nearest white thing she could find…

And of course, here’s the toenails… I have no idea how she got Sunglasses to sit still to paint her toenails. I could barely get her to allow me to take these pictures which I took a day later (as you can tell by the toenail polish already starting to wear off).

Linguistics…

If you have a child you are probably already aware of this and I’m sure in some deep distant neuron lost in my brain is the memory of myself doing this (Mom, if you’re reading, feel free to pipe in), but Sofia seems literally obsessed with certain words… the most fascinating one being poop. I do remember as I retold in this post getting my grandfather to tell me the Italian word for poop and also remember saying it for years but in my mind the frequency of it correlated to the novelty of saying it in another language that, in my mind, not everyone knew. Well, remember George Carlin’s act “The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV”… the funny part to me aside from the words themselves was the manner in which he rattled them off in one long string. Apparently Sofia has her own seven words and has been reciting them in much the same way over and over and over. The 7 words are as follows: poop, pee, throwup, diarrhea, blast, butt and… my favorite, trashcan. This string of seven really started out as 2, then quickly became the first 4 which she has said incessantly for months as well as inserted into the lyrics of songs. I guess I should point out that blast was my fault as I taught her this in place of the baby word poot because I imagined how funny it would be when she casually said it in front of the grandparents, it wouldn’t be vulgar but still much more powerful than poot. Then Sofia and her cousins must have tried to add others to the string and could only come up with butt and trashcan. Trashcan gives me a bit of insight into how their little brains are working, you know, what else is gross?… oh I know, trashcan! Oh well, on to other things… these are two of my favorite pots that my friend Ig has in his house along with dragon closeups. They are approximately 35″ tall….

There are quite a few of these at Ig’s house including some that I didn’t get any pictures of and they are all dreamy. I will post more later.

Cleanliness Is Next To, er, Something…

Whatever, my studio is usually bedlam probably because I never finished the construction all the way before I moved my clay stuff back in and started working… nah, it’s because I’m sloppy and maybe secretly because I cherish the idea that something beautiful might emerge from the chaos. Anyway Sofia and I decided to get some cleaning done and in a classic amateur blogger sort of way, I didn’t take a before picture. First I moved everything that was on the one half of the studio to the other half

and had to leave room for the real reason that I am doing this now… to move the loveseat that our neighbor gave us into the studio from the foyer. I accepted the loveseat because I thought it would be great to do my decorating on something with cushions as opposed to the lawn chair that I use now that cuts the circulation off in my legs. But the wee couch is not something I could just move in and while I’ve been “a’gittin around to it”, Sunglasses has not only claimed it as hers, she’s gone ahead and eaten about half of it. Next we swabbed the deck and got up all the glaze that’s been spilled, Sofia is at this wonderful age where she actually wants to help do everything and she was very helpful throughout the afternoon.

After that dried, we spread the thick plastic that was left over from winterizing the windows upstairs over the newly claimed and cleaned floorspace. This will make future cleanups so much easier…

Right about then, Sofia decided that the floor was a perfect dance floor and I had to let her dance around for a couple of songs on the CD player before we could resume…

Here’s the love seat in place with an old blanket covering the lacerations. I couldn’t get Sofia to not have her tongue sticking out so here’s the pic, she loved it so much when we got it in place that we both had a cup of chamomile tea on it where she insisted on clinking our cups together before every sip and saying “slainte”. I think she was so excited about having a new look to the room that she would have slept there if we had let her…

Hopefully I can get the other half of the room to a workable state today but, as always, I have to find a place for a bunch of stuff that’s in the way and there simply isn’t any place to put it. When I take the dog out, I stand under our sweet gum tree while she finds the perfect square centimeter to pee on. In the fall most of the tree turns a beautiful gold and yellow but some of the leaves go to an almost black…

Get Back To Where You Once Belonged…

Get back Loretta. It’s 55 degrees and sunny and going to 66 today, what a November. Sometimes though, what you want to wear doesn’t match the weather or anything else for that matter. Sometimes it’s snowing out and you feel like putting on a swimsuit. Anyway, here’s Sofia’s outfit that she put together… “tres bien ensemble” just jumps off my tongue…

The most frustrating things about being sick and not being in the studio, second only to not being in the studio and making work is that this blog is a ceramics blog and most of its content is about making pots. I haven’t made anything in 2 weeks (that will change today) and it pisses me off to no end that this has even lasted that long. I find it interesting when people ask… what is the purpose of your blog? In other words, why are you taking the time? I usually stumble through the obvious reasons… to get my work in front of more people, to connect with other people doing similar things, to make friends and acquaintances, to learn about how other potters do what they do, to hopefully sell pots and by extension be able to continue making pots, etc. One thing that I never say but that has somehow become obvious in the past 2 weeks of inactivity is that the blog is additional motivation to get things done. I don’t mean to say that I need motivation but more accurately I feel obligated to have progress so I can report that progress on the blog. Michael Kline’s idea which I may steal in the near future is to take pictures of the same pots from different angles and in black and white but that just gets you through a day or two dry spell. Anyway, this will probably continue because the dreaded holidays are imminent and notorious for lack of productivity. Thanks for all the well wishes on the previous post… don’t feel bad about thinking it was funny, I really intended it to be plus who can deny that from very early on in life the pain of others is always a great source of laughter (I mean pain in the 3 Stooges slapstick sort of way).

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures…

February of this year marked the onset of my plantar fasciitis (PF) which has been referred to many times on this blog and along with that started my relatively sedentary lifestyle (aside from ceramics) that doesn’t include running, walking or really anything that requires being on my feet. This condition is marked by pain in both heels from rising in the morn till retiring at night. Activities that are particularly excruciating are standing in one place for any length of time like doing the dishes, preparing dinner, going to a ceramics opening and squatting to rinse out glaze buckets and such. I have taken the normal route to a certain point that includes special shoes, expensive orthotic inserts and steroid injections into my heels as referred to on this post. I’ve pretty much given up as I’ve heard it all and the only thing left for the podiatrist to do is surgery which I will not do because I believe that post surgery will just be a different kind of chronic foot problem. Anyway that leads me to these…

When I switched doctors and went to my first appointment last Monday, we went through the gamut of personal medical concerns and since he was a general practitioner and I had mostly given up on professional solutions to my PF, I fully planned on not even mentioning my feet. But after he remarked that we had covered a lot of ground, I blurted out… now if I could only fix my plantar fasciitis. He immediately replied… oh, I can take care of that for you. I diplomatically said… well, I’ll listen to your spiel but I’ve heard them all at this point. He interrupted and mumbled what sounded like “nicemints” and after I requested he repeat himself it turned out to be night splints. Although I have seen the commercial version of these (which he adamantly maintained do not work), I had never heard them called that. I was about to dismiss the whole thing (even though he claims an 85% success rate) when he appealed to one of my weak spots… he provided a plausible mental image of why they would work. According to him the tendons/muscles that are injured hurt because they have microscopic tears where they connect to the bone and when you sleep these tendons/muscles are in the relaxed (unstretched) state. While sleeping the healing begins but as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning that healing is immediately undone because standing up stretches the tendons/muscles out again re-tearing them and the endless loop starts all over. His solution… mold a strip of “air activated” fiberglass that’s inside of a soft cotton sleeve onto the bottom of the foot all the way round to the back of the calf while these muscles/tendons are in their most stretched position. At bedtime put your feet inside of them and wrap the “cast” against the foot and lower leg with ace bandages. So I got them made on Friday and after curing decided to try them last night. An added caveat to the process which the doctor says will or will not work in 2 1/2 to 3 weeks every night is that you cannot put your weight on them (the fiberglass will break) so getting up to go to the bathroom is not an option. I mentioned this to Mom who is also a nurse and she brought home one of those devices that allows you to stay in bed. I wasn’t sure I would actually use it but maybe just unwrap and rewrap the works but when I wrapped them up and found out how long it took, I realized that that wasn’t a viable option either. So here’s what the mummy looked like right before bed…

Since Mom had to get up early and go to work (it’s bug day here and I’m writing this in a hurry), I decided I would go solo downstairs on the couch so if my tossing and turning made a big commotion it wouldn’t wake her. Here’s where the fun starts. The next door neighbors decided to have a party and were on their porch in the balmy 58 degree evening jabbering loudly til who knows how late so this was inhibiting my falling asleep. After an hour or so that seemed like about 6 hours, both my feet were numb and I decided I had wrapped them too tight and I was probably risking a blood clot if they weren’t redone plus the wrapping smooshed my toes together on the left foot forcing the edge of a toenail into the side of the adjacent toe. I finally just undid everything and started over. I settled in, really sleepy now, and felt like the re-wrap was pretty good. I was trying to ignore the cacophony from the porch next door and then… I hear another damn mouse and it’s trying to get into some kind of plastic bag. So dammit now what? Well I decided since the re-wrapping session took so long and I thought I had it done correctly this time that I would crawl to the kitchen and find a mouse trap and set it and crawl back to the couch. It started ok because there’s a rug in front of the couch but when I hit the wood floors, my patellae hurt like hell. So there I crawled and froze at the portal to the kitchen to echo-locate the mouse but just as I stopped, it stopped. Did you ever look up from something you’re doing as if noticing it for the first time and wonder how it ever happened and if you could go back in time a year (or in this case, a week) and tell your younger self that it was what the future held, your younger self simply would not believe it? This was one of those times. After being totally motionless on my hands and knees for about a minute, my kneecaps insisted a return to the couch. My feet went numb again an hour or so later and when I finally drifted off, Mom came down to stick her head out on the porch to tell the neighbors to be quiet. Do my feet feel better this morning… well, no but the grand experiment has about 3 weeks to go and if last night is a litmus, it’s gonna be a fun ride.

Crawlin’ King Snake…

No, not referring to John Lee’s song. You know after a long 9 or 10 days of the flu or whatever it is, it’s nice to get back on your feet again. I could tell the night before last that I wouldn’t be completely better yesterday but well enough where I could go into the studio and start putzing around, wedging clay, straightening up to start throwing, cleaning the glaze off the floor. Well, instead of telling you what happened, what does this picture elicit in your mind… my reward for toughing it out,

This is the snake in question although it’s official name is the Electric Eel. You may remember this post where I describe one of the most awful things a homeowner has to do… well, not sure if it’s because we had so much rain that the roots grew back extra fast or that 3 months ago I didn’t quite get it done sufficiently but either way I have endured my punishment and I’ll do everyone the favor of not having any pictures of myself drenched. Uuuuugh! I’m starting to develop a complex as the ceramics blogger with the most and most disgusting plumbing problems. When the realization set in that that’s what I was going to have to do yesterday, I just thought… go ahead and shoot me now. I’m still not quite better but good enough to start getting some work done today. Michael Kline over at Sawdust and Dirt blog commented about a folk flu remedy and instead of me paraphrasing, I’m just gonna paste it in here…

The Power of the Old Remedies of days Gone By;

A friend of mine told me a story about how when he was a kid he was in the hospital & near dying. His Italian grandmother came to the hospital & told a family member to go buy her a large onion & a new pair of white cotton socks. She sliced the onion open then put a slice on the bottom of each of his feet & put the white cotton socks on him. In the morning when he awoke they removed the socks. The slices of onion were black & his fever was gone. The following story that someone sent to me might have some truth in it & we are going to try it this winter.

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people there was this Doctor that visited the many farmers to see if he could help them combat the flu. Many of the farmers and their family had contracted it and many died. The doctor came upon this one farmer and to his surprise, everyone was very healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was doing that was different the wife replied that she had placed an unpeeled onion in a dish in the rooms of the home, (probably only two rooms back then). The doctor couldn’t believe it and asked if he could have one of the onions and place it under the microscope. She gave him one and when he did this, he did find the flu virus in the onion. It obviously absorbed the bacteria, therefore, keeping the family healthy.

Now, I heard this story from my hairdresser in AZ. She said that several years ago many of her employees were coming down with the flu and so were many of her customers. The next year she placed several bowls with onions around in her shop. To her surprise, none of her staff got sick. It must work.. (And no, she is not in the onion business.) The moral of the story is, buy some onions and place them in bowls around your home. If you work at a desk, place one or two in your office or under your desk or even on top somewhere. Try it and see what happens. We did it last year and we never got the flu.

If this helps you and your loved ones from getting sick, all the better. If you do get the flu, it just might be a mild case. Whatever, what have you to lose? Just a few bucks on onions!!!!!!

Michael, next time I’m going to try this thing with the socks… sounds a bit squishy and icky but after you fall asleep what does it matter? I also really like any suggestion that calls for bowls in every room of the house and if you’re gonna put a bowl of onions in every room the bowls should probably be decorative, don’t you think?

Here’s the vase I posted to Etsy last, first click to Etsy and the other enlarges…

Fighting Vainly That Old Ennui…

Gotta love Cole Porter. My biggest problem with being ill aside from the being ill is the absolute boredom. I’ve always been reduced to a total wimp… I can’t read, work, watch TV, certainly not play with the dog or the bug. My energy gets completely sapped. I suspect that this is not the case with others as I see other bloggers blogging away or Facebooking away when they’re sick and I can’t even bring myself to sit in front of the computer. Sofia actually said that she wished had “powers” (not sure where that came from) and that if she did, she would make it so I never got sick. My certainty about how wimpy I am when I get sick has been cemented by and always makes me think of Michael Jordan playing in a game 5 against Utah while he was sick. I’m not a big sports person anymore but I always loved watching Jordan and just happened to catch this game. He was so sick that he had to be helped off the court (way sicker than I’ve been) and still he somehow willed himself to outplay his opponents. It made me physically drained just watching it. That being said I must be on the mend because blogging has resumed but still yesterday I was unable to make it into the studio and it’s been calling me for a week now. The weather has been unbelievably pleasant for November and it would have been a productive and wonderfully comfortable week to have worked in the studio and I fear that once I get back to it I’ll be facing that winter clay phase with cold air, cold water and cold clay. So anyway, a whole day of boredom is equal to nothing but the boredom itself to acknowledge. I designed a new business card and signed up for Netflix and although I think I’m finally coming out of this thing, I’m not sure I will get to the studio today. There was one interesting thing that falls under the heading, “Things I Never Thought Would Be A Problem Even With A Child”… I have a relatively strong little magnet that’s in the shape of a disc that I’ve used for years (especially when I was remodeling all the time) to find studs in the old plaster walls of the house. I would just slide the magnet around on the surface of the wall until it stopped and that’s where a nail head would be just under the layer of plaster. Anyway, Sofia found the magnet and a screw and she’s been experimenting with them for a couple days, putting the screw on one side of a board or tabletop or rug, etc. and the magnet on the other side and making the screw move by moving the magnet. So after putting her to bed, going back downstairs and finally going back up to retire for the evening I saw a glint of shiny metal at the top of the stairs in the middle of the pathway from our bedroom to the bathroom (a path used at least once a night). Here’s what it was (photographed in daylight)…

Is this or is this not a plantar fasciitis sufferer’s worst booby trap nightmare? As Kurtz said… “the horror”. Here’s the latest cups posted to Etsy, first click to Etsy, the others enlarge…

Speak No Evil…

I guess judging by my last post, one might think that I had recovered from my “cold” but I felt worse Friday, much worse Saturday and by Sunday I was completely exhausted and could speak no evil nor anything else for that matter as my laryngitis had reduced me to a mere whisper. Friday I figured it would be gone and felt in a terrible funk all day and that night went to the “One Of A Kind” exhibit of the Louisville Clay Club over across the river in Southern Indiana. The next day my niece (Leeann) and nephew (PJ) arrived from Lexington and DC respectively. I was really bummed out that my ability to be a host was compromised by feeling like dog doo. Anyway because of typical college student life (locking keys in the trunk) they did not arrived until around Sofia’s bedtime. This pushed back our pizza plans and we ended up having pizza, beer and conversation until well after midnight. The weather was in the 70’s and it was really beautiful so we ate out on the sidewalk in front of this pizza joint where all the colorful people of Louisville walk and drive by in a constant parade. The conversation was very good and I feel like I probably talked more to Leeann than I ever have in my life and was very proud of the young woman she’s become. PJ is in graduate school in DC and I haven’t had a good long talk with him in some time too. All in all, it was a very good outing save my ignoring that I was sick. As I’m sure they both felt I talked too much… the proof was in the tasting as my throat hurt terribly and I was barreling toward laryngitis. So out too late, up at 7 with the dog, then an over excited kid and dog until PJ’s friend Maria met us and we went to the Vietnam Kitchen for lunch. Here’s the gang wearing out the dog (thank you)…

I tried to get a picture of everyone but Sofia was so wound up that she wouldn’t cooperate and my picture taking tenacity was severely compromised. Consequently, all I have are blurry pics but this is actually how it all felt to me anyway…

They finally were able to control her enough to get a picture with her head not blurred or eyes not closed but they practically had to hogtie her to do it.

Anyway, it was really great to see them and to meet Maria and I hope they had a good time and they didn’t catch my H1N1 (just kidding). They all left about 3:30 or so and I crashed and burned. Went to the dr. this morning and still not feeling all that hot. I’m in the process of changing my dr. from my old general practitioner to my new one and this was my first visit today. It’s a coincidence that I’m ill because I made the appointment before I got sick. The reasons that I’m leaving my old doctor are way to long to try to explain here… maybe I should start a series called, “The Healthcare Crisis: A Poor Potter’s Perspective”? Not sure many would be interested except other poor potters… suffice to say (or suffice it to say) when I get chest pain, I have to bet whether I’m gonna pay 10,000 for an ER visit because my heartburn is acting up or if I’m actually dying. So far, I guessed right every time. I would also like to thank Charan Sachar over at Creative With Clay blog for featuring one of my cups on his “color of the week” feature. Please give the link a click and check out Charan’s blog… he makes beautifully slip-decorated ceramics that are Bollywood inspired,

He does this once a week and gets quite a bit of traffic to peoples’ Etsy stores. It’s difficult with my limited palette to have a color come around that I actually have a piece in and lucked out this week with olive green.

Memorie Italiane (part 2)…

I loved my stay in Firenze back in 1999 and you know how hedonistic everyone became because of the Y2K meltdown that was gonna be the end of economies all over the world and of course the mandatory jumping off of roofs because of the certainty the world would end… yada yada yada. We were just rompin’ around Firenze eating good food, drinking cappuccino, walking miles and miles, looking at beautiful frescoes and slowly wishing there was someone that spoke our language. The initial isolation of not being able to communicate was refreshing because you can’t understand what you overhear other people saying. So whilst enjoying my 3rd coffee of the morning, instead of overhearing the 18 year old seminary student from down the road pontificate about his certainty of all things holy to his companion or the clutch of young women at a nearby table dishing the dirt on their coworkers, all I could ascertain was an endless stream of Italian babble that could have been espousing the meaning of life or the intricate details of their cel phone plan… who knows? The apartment that we rented was upstairs and directly below was a coffee shop. Angelo was the proprietor and I started the day every day with coffee there… of course the Italians weren’t much for sitting at a table and drinking like us Americanos, they just pop in, order an espresso, chat for about a minute, down the espresso in one swig and leave. I would sit at the only table nursing my coffees and reading. There was a young girl that worked for Angelo and eventually she revealed to me that she was American and she had come over on a summer art program and went native. I had already been there for weeks when I found this out and she went on to tell me that Angelo was a communist (oh dear! just like Obama) and that he thought Ig and I were gay… so I guess this rampant homophobia is not restricted to the good ol’ USA. Anyway, I started thinking of my past attempts at conversations with Angelo, who I had figured out was from Sicily originally (like my grandfather), and I tried to relate in my broken Italian that my grandfather was from Palermo. Later on I got out my dictionary and it seems I may have used the word for boyfriend instead of grandfather (not sure) but even so Ig is Chinese and it was very unlikely he was from Palermo. I found out that what I did have in common with Angelo was Van Morrison. He loved Van more than anyone I had ever met and he had a few cassette tapes that he would play over and over but he seemed to be limited in where/how he could get more. I managed one day to get out of him that he had the ability to record a tape from a CD and the next day loaned him about a half dozen Van CD’s that he didn’t have. From then on we were tight and his demeanor toward me changed. Of course if he had seen me around town with my teeth he might have changed his mind back…

Here’s some mugs I posted to Etsy yesterday, first click to Etsy, the other enlarges…

Tattoo You…

There comes a time in everyone’s life now where they face the conclusion that they can’t just go through life without a tattoo. This decision has had me agonizing for many years because of the permanency (relative permanency now) and because I like to look at tattoos and there are some really bad ones. I always imagine myself as an old man with white hair and sagging wrinkled skin (this part is getting easier to imagine by the day) trying to explain to my grandchildren why I have a stretched out portrait of Van Morrison on my spare tire with his mouth right where my belly button is or whether I should tell them that the large iguana on my shoulder just happened to be the best thing to cover my ex-wife’s name. I know that when scientists found one of those frozen icemen on some mountain years ago they were fascinated by the tattoo on his lower back that was merely 3 sets of vertical lines about 2 inches long and I thought that’s more up my alley…

Of course a copy of a Kandinsky or Matta painting on my whole back still beckons after a few beers. That being said I’ve been under the weather and am on the mend (maybe some beers would help) but yesterday I actually went to bed during the day. I really cannot remember ever doing this in my life as I have always loved the idea of a siesta but can never fall asleep. Sofia came to visit me and decided that coloring my fingernails and giving me a tattoo would make me feel better. Fingernails are brown and the tattoo is a narrative of pots that from wrist to elbow that goes thus… her making a bowl, then a teapot, then a coffee mug, and last me making one of my bowls with the squiggles on it. Too bad it’s in washable markers…

I posted a couple more mugs yesterday (first click to Etsy, the other enlarges)…

Black Beauties…

I believe these are 10th century black beauties. They’re all from China and I snapped pics on my trip to my friend Ig’s house in Iowa. Sorry about the last pic but I shot it twice without my glasses on and it’s a bit blurry. The first one is the tallest one, probably around 30-32 inches tall and the rest are maybe an inch or two shorter but they’re large pots all the same. My fave of these is the first one because the black glaze is either matte or has had something happen in the past 1000 years to make it matte.

Apparently the collectors of these pots refer to the ones that have a rounder, fuller form as the females and pair them up with the less rounder, fuller ones that are supposedly males. I’m sick and pretty pissed about it… I haven’t been sick since last November and was just starting to get uppity about going over a year without getting sick. Anyway, not sure how long it’s gonna last… it’s not as bad as I’ve been on other occasions but I’m not sure it’s full on yet. Here’s a couple fat mugs I posted to Etsy yesterday, first click goes to Etsy… the other enlarges.

Rode Hard And Put Up Wet…

I guess I should’ve been prepared for the whirlwind couple of days that is Halloween followed two days later by the birthday hullabaloo but it must have been easier when Sofia was younger. It was all fun for her but too many “special” events packed into 3 days, plus candy, plus presents, cake, parties… it all wore her little butt out and of course I was worn out before it even happened. Thankfully today we resume our ordinary existence until the Thanksgiving rigmarole… there’s still the sorting of the booty, candy and presents but we don’t have to be anywhere or do anything. Well, I have to get some work done. Here’s the dynamic duo… Gwyneth is her twin bat on Halloween. They’re eating pistachios…

Here’s last night’s birthday party with her cousins. Trying to corral these three for a picture is where the expression “herding cats” comes from…

And check this out, days after returning from my Iowa adventure where I discovered the new sculpture park, this appeared in the NYTimes with many of the details I forgot. Here’s some cups I posted to Etsy yesterday… the first one goes to Etsy and the others enlarge…

It’s All Over But The Sugar Mania…

It didn’t rain last night like they said it would which was good… low 50’s, clear and crisp with a not quite full moon. Sofia was on pins and needles all day and her and her neighbor friend had the exact same bat costume so they went out together and raced from house to house screaming, we’re twin bats! As pleasant as the weather was, Halloween was not designed for the sufferers of plantar fasciitis… by time it was over my feet felt as though I was one of those skeletons hanging from the tree, all bone and no flesh. Here’s the bat who insisted on getting an upside down picture for authenticity’s sake…

And of course I had to get a shot of Sofia’s proper bat footwear, fortunately she didn’t try to wear these out on our sortie last night…

Man, That Dude Is A Total Pothead…

I was coming home from running some errands yesterday and Mom snapped this picture of me wearing my new hat. Actually, there’s a store in town called the Spice Merchant that Sofia and I go. I like it because it has tons of spices, teas and teapots and Sofia likes it because the owner, Linda, gives her a tea mint whenever we go in. Anyway, she asked me to put some pieces there and see how they do over the holidays and she asked me to make one of those little “table tents?”, you know a piece of paper folded in the middle to set by the pots with a statement, a picture and “Made in Kentucky” on it. I don’t have any good pictures of myself mostly because I don’t have Sofia’s photogenic-ness (photogenicity?) but also because I’m the only one in the house that doesn’t struggle with the focus of the camera. In addition, I’ve made the mistake in the past of posing in a studio setting and they always come out looking stodgy. Some of my friends refer to the picture of me that’s on the AKAR site as “the child molester” picture. Anyway I didn’t use the one above because at best it seemed a bit obtuse and at worst the racially oversensitive might think I was making fun of the Asian workers that built our railroads. Here’s the one I did use and Linda giggled and said it was cute so that’s probably a good indication of how it will be received…

And People Think I Decorate Too Much…

I have to restate that I’m not much for holidays… that being said Halloween is the least unpleasant for me and of course now that I’m a Dad of a 4 year old the fun is watching the bug have fun. I can tell from some comments that some may thing me more clever than I really am by suggesting that I concocted the tale in the previous two posts like a Halloween zealot might do… but I didn’t and I have nothing more to report and hopefully will not have anything more to report. As far as what I can do, I have no idea as no one has seen any foul play, we’re just putting two and two together. Remaining vigilant is all I can do at this point. There is a street near my home named Hillcrest which is a mere 3 blocks long and it is the location of a certain Halloween insanity that runs amok every year now. Not sure how long ago it started but it seems to grow every year. The people on this street go all out for Halloween decorations much like some neighborhoods get a bit carried away with xmas decorations if you live in the city. The participation rate is unbelievably high and I’ve often said in recent years that probably many people don’t (or do) buy houses here because of the felt obligation to participate. Two years ago we took Sofia in a stroller over there on Halloween and the police had closed off the streets and we literally could barely move in the crowd. Last weekend and the weekend before I took Sofia over during the day and here’s what we saw… this first house, the owner was out front and I asked him how long it took him to prepare each year. He said 6 weeks, to which I said… you mean 6 weekends, Saturdays and Sundays? He said, no, all day, everyday…

Six weeks… all I could think was that if I were him, I’d dread mid-September and decry how quickly it came around. He actually built a false, rickety facade to his house that matches the house proper… where does he store all this stuff? I don’t even have closet space at my house. Here’s some more…

Here’s a closeup of the previous house’s front yard toilet to hell… the light was too bright out but there’s actually a pump in the commode that pumps red liquid out of the skeleton’s mouth.

Here’s a plane crashing into a house…

Someone had the alien abduction theme…

Here’s one of Sofia’s favorites… the pirate skeleton has a motion detector in it and when she got close it started dancing and singing a perverted version of Rick James’ “Superfreak”.

This other person has a stage built off of his house with 4 of the same type of automatons as the pirate. His theme is disco and when we went a couple years ago disco music plays loudly and these 4 “robotic” dancers go all night long…

Finally, here’s pumpkin butt, another of Sofia’s favorites. She kept yelling from the other side of the road, there’s punkin’ butt, there’s punkin’ butt.

The Mad Curmudgeon/Mystery Deepens…

Last night while I was making dinner two things happened, one funny and one strange. I was cutting up vegetables with my favorite big 12″ knife and I had my reading glasses on because I got tired of cutting my fingers. Sunglasses started jumping on the front screen door and barking. The neighbor’s cats have taken to sleeping on the porch and I figured it would be either a cat or a squirrel. It was a squirrel, so I squeezed out the door and the squirrel hardly moved… I clapped and made a loud noise to scare it and it only retreated 2 steps down. I tried again and it only went to the sidewalk right in front of the first step so I ran down the steps and chased it yelling to the end of the sidewalk where it leaped onto the dogwood tree. I looked up just in time to see a guy slowly riding his bicycle by and trying not to laugh… only then did I think of what my neighbors might be thinking of the knife-wielding, bespectacled codger out chasing squirrels in his front yard. Only minutes later a young couple knocked and I headed out again. At first I thought that they might be evangelists and was gonna take my knife for effect but decided I had better not. I squeezed out again and they were new neighbors that live across the alley in back of the house. I have a large pile of bricks out there from the “chimney to nowhere” I removed last summer when adding on to the studio and they were wondering if I’d be willing to part with them. After I said they could help themselves, I blurted out… “did you see that puppy in the alley yesterday?”. The young woman said, “what puppy?, a little tan one?”. Halfway through her answer I said… “the dead one”, and followed quickly with “yes, it was tan”. She immediately looked horrified and I felt like maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Then she went on to say that the night before Mom found the puppy, that her “neighbor?” had brought the puppy to her home wanting to know if they wanted it and that “there was something wrong with him (the neighbor not the dog)”. This is where I have to have a bit of a back story as I have lived here for 19 years and in a previous life with my ex there was a teenage boy who lived in one of those houses that we were unsure what was going on with… only that he couldn’t speak very well. He was kinda like the character Bo Radley in “To Kill A Mockingbird” but not in a good way. What I remember mostly was that he would skulk up and down the street in front of our house on his bike (if one can skulk on a bicycle) and if I got in the car to go somewhere without my ex, he would be at the front door trying to get her to let him in within seconds of my rounding the turn. It got so that when I left I would merely ride around the block and come back down the same street and he would see me and tear off from my porch and get on his bike and ride as fast as he could. For a good period, he was not around and I hadn’t given it much thought only that I have seen him recently, still riding his bike around town except by my calculations he has to be around 35 or so. This morning when I told Mom that when I went to get the puppy it was gone (see previous post), she mentioned that as she was chasing our dog down the alley, she had seen this guy (we’ve talked about him before) near our fence and I had dismissed it as a coincidence. So… what? Bo Radley found/got/stole/something a puppy and offered it to his new neighbors, then the following morning the puppy is no more in the alley and cold, meaning it had been there probably through the night. Who knows what really happened but I’m very uncomfortable about a something-wrong-with guy who kills animals in close proximity. All in time for Halloween too. Gonna have to think about this some more.

Well on to Halloween preparations. We decided to carve the pumpkin last night and let Sofia draw the design that I would cut out…

Next came the gutting of said pumpkin and you can tell by the look on Sofia’s face that her participation in this step of the process didn’t last long so Dad scraped the insides out for about 15 minutes.

I’m not too sure of the structural integrity of our jack-o-lantern this year but decided to try and remain faithful to the drawing Sofia had made… I think it came out fine.

Mysterious Goings On…

Yesterday Mom and Sofia were getting ready to take Sunglasses for a walk and Sofia let Sunglasses out the front door before Mom could get a leash on her. This is usually bad because she just runs away and doesn’t respond to calls as she criss-crosses the city streets. Anyway, she caught up with the dog in the alley behind our house and wrestled her to the back door, which was locked. I ran downstairs when I heard her knocking and upon entry she said almost crying… there’s a dead puppy in the alley. I asked where and she said it was right between the fence to our yard and the alley. I went out to investigate and sure enough a little pup was there so I reached down to see if maybe it might still be breathing but it was cold and had blood on its nose. I looked around and there was no one in sight so decided to get a trashbag and put it in our trashcan because the alley is the route that Sofia and Mom take the dog on and I didn’t want Sofia to see it. I went in the house and got a trashbag and returned (total time, maybe 45 seconds)… no dog. I again looked up and down the alley, in the neighboring yards, all around and not the slightest movement anywhere. I cannot imagine who would have come up during my brief trip to get a bag, seen the dog, and picked it up and taken it away. Oh well, mystery unsolved. Here’s some pics I took yesterday of one of the bowls I’m delivering to a show over in Indiana…

Here’s a bowl of Ig’s that is one of my favorites from his collection. I’ve always loved this bowl ever since he first got it, it’s about 6-7 inches in diameter. I believe that it was found in the ocean which accounts for the matte finish… it almost looks as though it’s been lightly sandblasted.

Iowa Trip (Day 4)…

Day 4 was my final day in Iowa if I don’t count the following day that only included driving home. But the night before after everyone left, I noticed a large electrical device on the counter in the kitchen and asked Ig what it was… it was an electric rechargeable corkscrew, just what everyone needs. After I got done kidding Ig about how he might save some money on his kickboxing workout class if he’d go ahead and open his wine with a manual corkscrew he said, ah, the damn thing’s got a piece of cork stuck up inside it. After all the wine we had, this seemed like the perfect project as Ig tidied up the kitchen. My first attempts were merely jamming things down inside and trying to pierce the cork piece with metal objects. I was nonplussed at the difficulty and then I noticed six screws holding it together. After fishing around for a wee screwdriver, the screws were unscrewed. We were drinking more wine, talking and seconds before the last screw came out I said… hope there’s no springs in here, followed quickly by… why would this thing have springs? And of course there were and after removing the cork and trying to re-situate the damn thing’s innards, I could only get it almost closed. I inserted 2 of the screws thinking that the screws would get it to close the rest of the way and this was correct except that as it seated it shorted something inside and would only work in one direction (it toggled back and forth between uncork and cork). I disassembled it again and tried to find the bare or unattached wire but to no avail. Here’s how it looked when I left…

Ig had a meeting in the morning and I made my morning drink (not alcoholic though it sounded that way when I reread it) and decided to see if I had gotten any email. The dsl was acting snarky and whilst futzing with it I knocked my full drink over completely inundating the keyboard on his computer. The panicky cleanup of that prevented me from getting an action shot so no pics. Sorry Ig, what a klutzy houseguest… talk about a bull in the china shop. Ig got home about noon and we were off to A-Dong again to get some 14C. I guess I need to say what 14C is because apparently I inadvertently created a mystery and I’m afraid those that have been curious will be let down. 14C is merely a vegetable soup with rice noodles much like Pho but without any meat in it. The broth is very good and I took a shine to it years ago when I was trying to make it myself at home. I made it last night in fact but mine doesn’t taste like theirs. Post lunch we returned home to hang this painting that I had seen sticking out from behind the door of Ig’s studio…

This painting is by Jules Kirschenbaum who, before he passed away, was the head of the painting department at Drake where Ig now teaches painting and is the chair. The painting is owned by Tom, who also teaches at Drake (Art History I think) and was one of the dinner attendees from the night before. This painting is unfinished and is really something to see. From talking to Ig and seeing several of Jules’ paintings, I’ve come to believe that he is way under-appreciated as an American painter although he has a painting in the Hirschorn Museum in Washington D.C. and that he is a painter’s painter. The paintings I’ve seen in person are sublime and I’ve been assured and believe that Jules was one of very few people that knew color, light and how to see to the extent needed to execute said paintings. So Tom’s going to Venice to live for part of the year I believe and said to Ig… instead of storing it in the basement, maybe you’d like to hang it at your home. First, we unwrap, then measure and then it’s hung…

Here’s three detail shots moving left to right…

After hanging the painting, our friend Sarah came over and they made fun of the other people in their kick boxing class for lack of enthusiasm which was funny. Then we went to a photoshoot. Ig has 5 friends (2 of the 5 make a couple) and they meet periodically to swap soup. Every week (I think), they all make a big batch of soup and decant it into 4 one quart containers and meet at a bar for a drink. There, each person brings 4 identical quarts of soup and leaves with 4 different quarts. This has come to be known amongst the group as their “sou-wap”. After mentioning this to someone that works at the magazine that covers all things Des Moines (like our very own Louisville magazine), they were asked if they’d be up for an article and because one of the group, Edwina, was moving back to California to be near her Mom, the photo shoot for the magazine was moved up and that’s where we went. Here’s the group posing for the shot for the magazine. The funny thing was that the art director for the shoot mentioned that usually when they try to take shots like this and the group is supposed to act as though they’re talking at a party and it’s time to shoot, the group kinda freezes up because they are unaccustomed to pretending to talk but that this group wouldn’t stop yakking even after the shots were all taken. Sorry about the quality as I was trying to take the pic surreptitiously so as to not bother the real photographer that was there but I liked this one the best of the ones I took because it looks like Frank is saying to Steve, the host, … how’d you like a knuckle sandwich?

Anyway it was fun and the wine flowed again. Later we went to a brew pub and had dinner. In the morning I hit the road… end of trip.

Iowa Trip (Day 3)…

On day 3 Ig had to go in for a meeting so I read in the morning and when he got back around noon we went to A-Dong and I had another delicious 14C. Little did I know whilst enjoying that 14C the culinary treat that awaited us later that day. We went and got some groceries and decided to go to a matinee. There was only one movie that started early enough for us to get back in time for Ig to prepare dinner. So my first movie in the theater in a very long time was not worth mentioning but there were a couple previews that looked like they might be good. We got home and while Ig started preparing for a small dinner party, which was the highlight of the trip for me, I ran around the house taking pictures of… pottery. These are just impromptu shots of the pieces in their natural setting so some leave a bit to be desired as far as lighting and crispness. I will probably pepper future posts with some of these shots but today… two Ming Dynasty celadon bowls, this first one is quite large, really heavy (I’d guess it’s 15 or 16 inches diameter) and has a subtle sgraffito design around the rim and on the inside…

Here’s a shot of the bottom which i found interesting because they apparently used a thrown ring to elevate the piece and allow them to glaze the foot. You can see a the remnants of said ring in a wee circle of glass in the middle of the bare section…

Ig has assured me that the value, although substantial, would be significantly more if it weren’t for this white mark in the inside which looks to me like someone handled the dried, glazed but unfired piece with either another white glaze on their fingers or some other contaminant. Still it’s a beautiful piece…

This bowl is the sole piece sitting on a bowl stand in the middle of an unbelievable carved table. I would say the table is about 7 or 8 feet long and 3 and 1/2 wide probably 15″ high. I shot the carved top on either side of the bowl (sorry about the shadow of the camera)…

Here’s another Ming bowl, slightly smaller with a sweet floral sgraffito design on the interior. After that a similar shot of the bottom which really shows a beautiful crackled celadon…

After running around the house, intermittently checking on the roasting red peppers (my small contribution) and interrupting Ig to ask about pots (all of which I’ve almost totally forgotten), my Pavlovian response was starting to kick in as the house filled with the aromas of garlic, onions and mushrooms… here’s the soup.

Here’s a shot of the set table awaiting the guests. This gratuitous shot’s table isn’t all that impressive compared to the previous shots of the other table but it’s a table that I made in my woodworking days and traded Ig for a large painting he did that is my prize possession.

The guests, Loulou and Mark and Tom, arrived around 6:30 and unfortunately had to leave before midnight because of everyone having to work the next day. Although Ig has known all of us for many years, I had met Tom before only once and have become fast friends with Mark and Loulou over the past 4 years or so and have seen them on my last few visits to Des Moines. The dinner consisted of roasted red pepper soup followed by portobello mushroom ravioli with a 3 mushroom sauce, then ended with a tasty insalata. Ig really outdid himself and we all drank wine, ate and partook in sparkling conversation that ended… All Too Soon as Duke Elllington would say. After dinner I started thinking about how and when I was going to manage another trip and how much fun it would have been to have had Sofia dine with us. A testament to the wonderful company was that it never once occurred to me to grab the camera and snap a pic.