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Hello again. It is a depressing week here in the Un-united states. Ignorance still reigns. With the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Right to Vote acts that were established sooooo many years ago, and the march across the famous protest bridge in Selma yesterday, I was reminded of how I wanted to march in Selma all those years ago. I assumed that I would be safe because I had white privilege, but that misconception and my mother’s firm stand against my going, I stayed home and watched appalled. Then when it was over and voting rights firmly established, I thought it was finally settled. But no, we are still the most racist modern country. Still easily frightened by the different, and still easily cowed by blustering blowhards given a daily platform to spew their venom. I would move if I could just to avoid what is coming. There are days when it seems I am caught between hatred and despair.

I visited my dermatologist this week for my semiannual check up. He still has the expensive Trump coffee table books strewn around his waiting room. He asked how I was and I told him I wished I had left the country earlier. His comment was, “See you in six months, and I hope you are feeling better.”

Please continue to boycott this country. And keep the influences of BS and billionaires out of your own. We are the roadmap for self destruction of democracy.

This is what I see when I leave my hair dresser’s. Tall, tall trees with lots of kudzu.

And just down the road to the right is a Mexican/Italian restaurant with margaritas and a very good white veggie pizza.

In my own yard I am watching birds. This mockingbird has decided to come often but only sings when in the top branches of tall trees.

I like their big feet and long twitchy tail. Then one of the many song sparrows came here to collect for his/her nest. So well camouflaged!

I watch birds and draw in my sketchbooks. Here is the latest couple of pages with the new maple tree I bought for the yard.

I need to get back to my book with letters as the focus. In the second letter where the woman is leaving her husband for all the bullet pointed reasons, she returns from the car to scrawl “FUCK YOU” on a post-a-note. Some messages need the order and disconnection of an email-type font, and others demand the hand-formed letters of emphasis. The husband has just passed up taking out his cold beer to read what she had to say. I am going to enjoy writing her reasons for being long gone.

Next maybe a child’s letter to a favorite teacher. It will have drawings that need to be there…because what else would a child do with all those margins of blank space.

It is a lovely day today. Sunny and near 80. Maybe I will get onto that fabric that needs over-dying. I might even toss it over a bamboo fence out back to let it dry. Why not? Maybe a complaint will come my way, maybe not. I am not in the mood to care that much.

Better go and heat my tea in an rust filled pot.

Til later….

This will be short. Friends are taking me out for a nice meal today in another town. Actually over the line into another state. I shall dress up for the occasion!

The other night I took a neighbor with me to totally indulge in a dinner of oyster shooters, no less than two Eucalyptus bitters old fashions, two lobster tails, three sea scallops, mashed potatoes, broccolini, popovers, followed up with a cappuccino and this very decadent dessert of a super thick chocolate mousse under whipped cream.

It has been a beautiful Spring-like week here. I am doing some writing but not much drawing/painting. It is hard to keep my mind focused with so much deterioration of rights and values in this country. My advice is to simply stay away until common sense and decency find their way back into our government.

There was a visitor to the back yard the other day.

I need to get changed. So I had better go. Good company, food, and adventures of going out are waiting for me to be ready.

Til later…

I was just plain stuck into thinking about the friends in Tasmania, all gathered together to make baskets, dye cloth, and stitch. I had drawn one of the stones I had covered in patched cloth and then saw their balls of cloth scraps of material. these would be so much fun to toss back and forth in a nursing home…not the rock ones I make, not those! Anyway, I only have two or three pages left in this book so will make another one to keep up with my pretending I am there when they gather. I don’t know why I thought this one book would be all that was needed. They are never going to stop their gatherings and I am never going to not want to pretend I am there. I have enough of all the papers used for this book and can easily make Vol. II.

There were some new leaves in the yard. And they needed to be added to the leaf section of the six way book.

I don’t remember dogwoods having these seed pods in Spring.  But they were interesting to draw. these latest drawings seem a bit weak, but there is always the next leaf to do. Just keep at it.

I have been working on my book about the importance of letters and how different the words are when hand written versus text or email. Letters are so important, to write as well as receive. But are becoming more and more infrequent. Some words just need to be hand drawn out while others can be rushed into the ether in anticipation of immediate responses.

Another thing that has been on my mind is do you notice how many people are tattooed? Some cover their whole bodies without a thought as to how hard it will be to see bruising in an emergency room. Or how all those tiny dragonflies and butterflies will look like they flew into a tree trunk years later. Why do people want to make the marks of decorative bruises on their skin? I remember one fellow who during his Navy days long ago had a sexy buxom girl in very short shorts tattooed onto his forearm muscle. I would ask him over and over to make her move in a very flirtatious way. Over the years she became slower and then gave up altogether. I still smile at the memory.

But now, the goal seems to be to cover yourself with symbols that shout out who and what you are or hope to be. Think of the creepy Secretary of Defense here in the US. Years from now his body will be a documentation of unfulfilled aspirations.  I did know a bartender who showed me her leg-long octopus once. By the time she enters the nursing home it will likely have fallen into seaweed.

Other than writing someone’s phone number on your palm, body marks, and permanent ones at that, totally escape my appreciation. And it is that color, too. the color of fresh bruises. Yes, I know there are all types of color tattoos now. I knew a diner cook who sported a frying pan with yellow-yolked eggs on her upper arm. I never dared ask if they flipped over when she flexed.

So that is all I had to say about paid for marked up bodies. I will return to writing about things I understand.

Here is a shot of Sadie on her chair this week.

She is such good company.

I bought more fabric for shirts recently and the green that looked more sage in the picture turns out to be a pale mint color. I am going to tie it up and toss it into a bath of black tea and iron just to see what happens. Might just do that today after my workout. There is no way I would be allowed to hang it out on a line in this neighborhood but there is the garage…and it is only two yards.

Should stop, find some lunch, do my workout and start cooking up that tea in the dye pot.

Til later…

On my way to meet for breakfast. We had not tried eating from the deli at our local grocery store. Now I know why…pretty bad when the only thing on offer was tiny biscuits with sludge gravy. I went for biscuits and asked for jam since they had no butter. In the box was two packages of jam that was hard and a fork to spread it with. Bought the smallest coffee (latte) I could at the Starbucks and it was just under $5. Think we no longer have to wonder what deli breakfast is like there.

Since Anzac Day was coming up, I baked the cookies for the Australian bike shop owner. The rest will go to the men for breakfast tomorrow morning.

I was thinking about the artwork I have around the house. The work I made myself. It seems that what I see on the internet or in person is more about learning some sort of technique or made to be a decoration. Nothing there to make you wonder why certain elements were chosen…what the placement means, why those colors…

Here is a piece, or rather details of a piece I made years ago and hangs over my bed. It started with a piece of bark from a tree that had worm tracks all through it. I could not put it back on the ground. I wondered if I was trying to read a secret language of something instructional. A message made by one species to be translated to another.

What if bugs were communicating to, say moths, on where and how to fly to find something important. I had a tissue paper covered with moth images that were much brighter years ago. And carefully cut them out to “follow instructions” left by the insects. Brass wires twined fine branches and palm inflorescence waiting to be used in my studio. I had an abundance of imagination back then. I even put a gold metallic thread on my sewing machine to pick up the shine of the brass wire and look like more markings along the “trail”. I never get tired of looking at this piece. I never lose interest in figuring out what one insect tried to communicate to another.

The moths and I have grown old and faded together. There is nothing on my artwork and my body that is not without layers of meaning and experiences.

Here is the last of the Curiosity Boxes that hangs next to the Moth piece.

I titled it The Witches Daughter’s Box because I found a poem with that title in an old, very old, book. The poem is bound into the long narrow book to the right side of the tall opening. The background is a scrap from test collographs I made in undergraduate school while learning various printmaking techniques.  This gave a dark mysterious pattern that fit the mood of the box. Next an odd shaped and colored foundry mold placed next to the book, a basket I wove from grasses I found in the yard (I think a witch would have woven these to hold small bits). Mine holds a feather.

Under the floor is a brass bird, nut shell, and a shaped ball from a piece of shifu spun paper containing a hidden message.

Then above is another space filled with bundles of important papers on a shelf. And above that an attic space containing bones and some symbolic dial in the background, a clay bead and glass vial of shards next to another coptic bound book.

And finally laying on top is a hunk of wood that contains all the techniques I learned in a metals workshop taught over two days by a Native American. It is like a rattle and makes the most pleasing sound when gently shaken. Nothing went into this piece without careful consideration as to why it was needed.

I wish I could see more work that told stories, held secrets, and had some kind of meaning that took looking and imagination to decipher.

In the meantime, the last couple of days of the basket gathering in Tasmania inspired me to share long distance time with them in the Gathering Book. I have lots of spaces to fill and a stitched section to do before these two pages are finished.

I might go take a nap. It is too late in the day for me to go back to my writing and too early for some Aussie red. But just the right time to stretch out with my cats.

Til later….