$8499.00

From 6 a.m. until noon, today I received eight email solicitations.  Each of the eight promised they could help promote my book for a fee.  Added up, the total cost of all these helpful solicitations was $8499.00 and there were no guarantees. 

Who is Ringing My Chimes?

I do not own an Ipod, Ipad or smart phone.  I own a dumb phone.

Along with 24/7 phone availability, I mothballed my sophisticated cell phone and expensive contract a couple of years ago.  Then, contrary to my politics I went to Wal-Mart.  For about fifty bucks I bought a TracFone.  You can buy minutes, at 30 cents a minute and you pay either way for incoming or outgoing calls, basic service, no contracts on this one-way street.

The problem is the Fone has gremlins.  It will go off in the middle of the night, louder than a smoke alarm chiming out that I’ve missed 58 text messages…and the Fone is not even set up for text messages.  Or, the Fone will ring with wrong number after wrong number so many times I don’t answer it which defeats the purpose of a mobile phone.

To address these Fone inconsistencies means calling a toll free number and talking to someone in Honduras with an accent thick as his or her inexperience at working the phones and resolving Fone problems.  The resulting two hour conversation brings no results.  So, the Fone takes its place in my office drawer filled with similar phoniness in this cellular evolution.

From the Ground Up

Horse tail, steel wool, seaweed.  Pit-fire, sagar, raku.  Porcelain, stoneware, clay hunting.  Centering, burnishing, wax resist.  How sweet the sounds of these words to the ears of this dormant ceramist.

“From the Ground Up,” an exhibition featuring 14 central and Eastern Washington ceramists, opened yesterday at Larson Gallery in Yakima, the “Palm Springs” of Washington state.  My ceramic breast plates were among the featured work.

Half way into the reception I found my self in a group of exhibiting artists sharing not so secret, trade secrets.  Like how the minerals in kelp, depending on the season it was harvested, change the flash of color on a primitive fired vessel.  How horse hair leaves fine clean lines on a raku surface and copper key shavings thrown onto wet red glaze turn green at cone 06 but burn off at cone 05.

We talked about the merits of pit, salt, wood, gas firing, about the malleable world of clay until the exhibit closed.  We went out to dinner and continued a conversation, natural and unpretentious and one I didn’t realize I’d missed so much working to center myself around this writing business.

One of my breast plates, “Jason,” sold.  It is made from clay I dug at low tide on the Strait of Juan deFuca.

Read to Rover

Every Friday morning my main interests come together for an hour or more…dogs, kids, books and art.  Henry, my 10 pound Chorkie and I are members of Read to Rover, a volunteer program that helps children with reading difficulties. 

The program is simple.  Dogs who pass the AKC  Canine  Good Citizen test and a basic obedience  test are then eligible to go into schools, libraries, etc. to listen to kids read books.   The theory being the dog is not judgmental and the child feels more comfortable to read.  

Years before dog reading programs were implemented, 

I was doing a similar program of my own.  I called it Lunch with Bucky.  During my lunch break, I invited kids with special needs into my art room at school so they could eat lunch and talk to Bucky, my 10 pound Yorkie, who came to school with me every day in a basket.  I just sat at my desk and listened and on one occasion I heard a six year-old girl say to Bucky, “Daddy came into my bed last night with a pair of scissors,” which led to a long story now in CPS files.

Every Friday morning I brush Henry’s teeth, and hair and we go to elementary school.  Some days there are eight or more dogs in the library.  Henry sits in the same basket Bucky left behind, and he listens to kids read for 15 minutes at a time.  After an hour, kids who want to stay in for recess an we draw pictures, an added treat since there is no art program in the school.

Dogs, kids, books and art; a perfect picture.