that has been my focus recently, and we've had a delightfully clear winter, for the NW, so I have been outside building deep beds and filling them with black gold, and then dear mama spotted me some extra cash to put in a dwarf fig tree, some artic kiwi vines (!?), a new graft of apple that grows only up, a mini guava- really, I could plant a banana tree if I had the space, it's crazy!
but my heartthrob at the moment is this little jewel- a hellebore...
this was a small project- this is a rambling (?) tea rose that just won't quit growing- I've never delt with roses before I moved to rose city. I didn't know that fancy roses are grafted onto a root stock. if there's a hard frost, the graft dies and the indestructable root stock takes over. well, it's flowers are so numerous. solution? a tunnel.
acquiring the steel for this arch took me to the steel scrap yard. Read: me, maneuvering a 64 chevy with an exhaust leak and no power steering through the jam of contractors trucks down a muddy one-way tight turn drive. (he did a fine job, thank you very much). then hobnobbing, like all the guys, with the hot brusque cashier all fresh and tan from vacation, with her uhgs, and her corn-row hair extensions and her "honey,...." ... then bent the tubes and did the welding with my neighbor. so this is one of those situations where getting to know your neighbor is a particuarly interesting process. My neighbors have included a crack addict behind us for a while, and there are accountants too. There are boys down the street with glass-packs on the little blue sporty spoiler thing (it's funny- there are now two of these blue cars at the same driveway- it makes me wonder if there will soon be little baby blues, but that's homoerotic, so we're not going to say it in public, hehe) (I accidentally had glass-packs on my 4x4 diesel pickup in MN for a few months after I'd first bought it- jesus was that loud!) (I kind of loved it) ...right, so my neighbor has a bicycle version of those redneck yards, where the weeds grow out of the hoods of car skeletons. except he's always in his huge garage welding and angle grinding and banging and lord knows what he's doing, it reminds me of that tom waits song "what's he building in there?" and for the longest time I just stayed the hell away because he would wander around with his fly open and his housemate decided that I was cute and started whispering at my door at night and I'd hear arguments and there would be police, the whole nine. well, turns out that despite his wandering eye (I have one too, somedays), he's really just this poor, absent-minded old dude whose standards of decency are a little wacked but basically good man whose wife died- he's lived this fascinating life as a mercenary in the bloody Congo and I found all this out after the whisperer and the police left because there was a time when I was building the kiln when I really just needed a welder and I didn't want to spend yet another two hundred dollars to rent one so I offered him some money to borrow his. Ever since, we've (mostly he's) been talking about his Samian ancestry, the coming energy crisis and the glory of bikes and windmills and how we all need to be better neighbors to each other. preaching to the choir. So grumpy arthritic old dude and I bent the steel and welded an arch for my roses, and I picked up some steel for him so he could keep making noise making bike trailers.
A recent highlight was hearing Angela Davis speak. I had no idea that it costs $40,000 to keep someone incarcerated for a year in Oregon. No wonder we're spending more on jails than education. I did know that it is obviously because we are profiling minorities that we end up with a hugely overrepresented black population in the prison system. Another thing I learned recently, from Democracy Now, is that in New York as in many states, the prison population is counted as residents of that county (ususally upstate), even though they can't vote. This brings disproportional funding up to those counties, among other injustices like unfair representation. sneaky. I disagree with Davis that we should close the jails altogether but I agree that if we put all that money into therapy and treatment, we would break the cycle of abuse. I have had my experience with the law, and it was fucked. I remember the cold sweat when I read up on mandatory minimums. I'm lucky, though, I could pay for an advocate. I don't even see the point in targeting poor people and minorities. It's systemic racism, that's the only reason. it doesn't make any kind of economic sense, nevermind the social destruction. it's insane.
What else?a nice dinner party- french onion soup with many dear friends the other night. and I'm finally honing in on a totally new drape-moulded oval bowl and plate design, which took for flipping ever. the quarter is nearly done at the college and I will have completed that project and so many others and so soon there will be uninterrupted day after glorious day at my wheel doing nothing but making pots in preparation for a firing in early may. that's the goal.
ah, but after that long story, this is what got me back on my blog to start with: carbon hydraulic hybrid.
In Minnesota, I was delighted to reconnect with some old friends, teachers, and firing partners- Simon Levin, Lloyd Cledwyn, Linda Chrsitianson, and Anna Metcalf (a peer currently in grad school in MN). There were many wonderful conversations all around, and wanders through memory lanes. all of mudlovers with a bunch of their kids had a fun excursion to the St. Paul science museum, and this is where I learned more thoroughly about the incredible potential of hydraulic machinery. So I was very excited to run across that article about the hybrid today. Of course I am pro-hybrid vehicle in any form, but as my airplane mechanic friend explained to me, the basic reciprocating engine (car engine/ diesel) is incredibly wasteful. only something like thirty (?) percent of the potential energy of the fuel is actually transferred to the wheels. so incorportating a hydraulic system into a moving vehicle seems like a brilliant idea. and if it has to look like a corvette, the older the better, in my book. I think its hot!
ok, I give in to the overly long post. here's one last story. I had a frustrating New Year's Eve. and about two weeks later I fell into a fucking great party at a small club here in pdx. DJ Dara, an old pro. I pretty much went there not giving a shit how I might be judged/ categorized, and proceeded to get sweaty to jungly beats. lovely... towards the end of the night, this ultra-hot young lady, this is not exaggerating, literally pushes me into the corner where the bar meets the wall. pushes me, in the sense that it became impossible to maintain six inches of space between us. this doesn't happen very often, so I didn't take it seriously. but hell, the world is strange, maybe she actually does want me, I mean, the chick is petting me and her clothes are falling off. ok, I bite. who knows. I brush my nose against her cheek as we talk about horticulture (?!), music, travel, and how she's new in town (I heard that twice that evening). she wasn't serious, but damn she was hot, so I give her my card, told her to write if she wanted to, and resumed dancing. about two weeks later, I'm with a few lady friends at a popular strip joint. and who should come to the stage.............. she saw me. ............... she did not meet my bemused gaze twice, though I had my dollar out for the collection plate.... (a small internet search tells me what the problem was- braces seem to be back in style- who knew?)
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