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I baked some more phyllo, ham, cheese and green onion packets to have in the freezer when tired of cooking something for one or eating out. They are quite delicious!

The sunroom is finished and is quite cozy on sunny days. A friend came over and hung the fish back up. I did not see it as a good idea to put them outside after a night of heavy winds. So I gave them a wash and waited for help. All the black shades I bought for the porch are going to a neighbor for her sun room and she will be taking me to our favorite restaurant as payment.

This week was a bit painful because I might have strained a rib in a coughing spell. My doctor is keeping a close eye on me…even took me over to her office to have blood taken. Seems I am all good there and in oxygen levels, and heart beats, etc. Just a hard time moving the right arm in certain positions. I think I am getting better each day, but after eighty, nothing is as quick as I would like.

Spring should be right around the corner and I am looking forward to some yard tidy up. Probably will remove the split bamboo poles at the front of the house. The one acting as a spout into the pond in the back is dried out and now badly split. So it could be replaced with a piece of those at the front entry.

Yesterday my first local came by to pick up sets of political postcards. I gave permission for an escort into a woman’s clinic in Michigan to use the design of the  trump/wrong one to be made into stickers and buttons. Another thousand of that image on postcards came Friday. I will need to sort them into sets of fifty to mail out to those asking for them.

There is not any more news from here right now. As soon as my doctor checks on me today, I might just have a lie down with my audiobook. It is a dreary day and I need to write an email to friends in Australia who will be gathering soon for the textile conference. I miss being there with them but I am better off being here close to those keeping an eye on me.

The cleaning lady had to cancel this week. Told her I would see her next month. It is an easy place to keep clean. I also need to write some poetry this week if I plan on going to the reading on Thursday.

So I had better get busy…..

Til later….

Just sitting in the late afternoon sun drinking a simple white wine and listening to yet another Elizabeth George novel. I love how the light came through the base of the wine glass. The cats sit in the window and put nose prints on the glass while waiting for me to get up and mention something about treats.

The sunroom, formerly porch,  is finished but I will save that for later after a friend returns to help bring the furniture back in and clean off the windows. So many stickers on new windows. I might not hang the six fish back in there. But instead put them outside. If I have a get together and five people can sit out there, no need to have them knock themselves out on those glass fish with rocks for anchors.

This time of day I am more tired and look forward to dinner and bed with the Dr. Blake mysteries. I like that it is filmed in Ballarat with all those gingerbread storefronts and vast flat lands outside of town. I would love to pop back into the pub there and have a dark beer. But the memories of that are enough now….and that lovely flea market outside of town where I bought my favorite oil can…a heavy low silver-colored can with brass bits attached. The fellow who took me there asked, “Don’t you have oil cans in the states?”….”Yes, but not like this!”

I have missed seeing political art works. It seems the time is so right for that now. And I can only stay quiet so long. The early nineties and four years of making work about the victims of Sarajevo, then on to the invasion of Iraq under the guise of “weapons of mass destruction”, which led to even more anti war work. Next we had that blessed eight years of Barack Obama. But while he was running for office his placards were trampled in my neighborhood. I rescued one to cut into pieces to make a small artist book. After that we were stuck in four years of a vile, bigoted swing that was welcomed into the Republican party with open arms. When that blessedly ended, there was the mending of a country suffering the ravages of Covid…and a very decent human being calming us down. I did art work to stay connected during the worst of all those years. One of my favorite was the Cultural Exchange board game where different cultures actually wanted to experience the lives of those at the opposite end and try on their shoes. When the two cultures needed an arbiter to settle stepped on toes, the Jimmy was sent in…named for the late Jimmy Carter. I will put a collection of images below this paragraph. What work I did not save for myself after it was documented and often exhibited, I buried.

 

None of this work was ever made for the market. It was my way of coping and expressing myself on the situations at the time. I thought it was what all artists did…take a stand visually against the wrongness of things. I had more company in the George W days than now in this impossibly difficult period in our history. So this weekend I had my own installation in the garage, complete with artist statement and a private drink for myself/by myself.

This is likely the last of my political artworks.

Til later with images of a very fine sunroom to think about things done with determination and passion.

 

My check out nurse just left. I am now cleared to handle my own recovery without constant checking from the Home Health Care services. It feels good to know I can be trusted to do that! All numbers emanating from their equipment are in the perfect range.

It is such a beautiful day, I might treat myself to a longer walk about the neighborhood.

The remodeling fellows have needed to take the past two days to fix damages on a house with broken pipes. So this is where they left off. White trim inside and outside to finish off. Next tile and put everything back where it goes.

It is going to be a cozy place for coffee and a nice back and forth in the rocking chair. I probably will not hang the fish back up in that room…could knock out a visitor with their rocks attached. So likely will hang a school of them from the pergola.

I did more stitching on the small panel and am willing to call it over. Just need to tack it down to the gauzy back panel and then figure out what to do with it.

And the past two weeks have been absorbed with printing postcards to send in bundles around the country. I am very grateful for the requests from Minnesota, Utah, California, Washington State, Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri,  Illinois, Arizona and finally from my own state of North Carolina via a small book club type group who heard about my efforts and asked to have some mailed out to them. It was reaffirming to see that order come from a very small town in the center of the state with probably a majority of MAGA residents. And still no one locally has asked for any.

I designed a new one with Musk controlling trump and the republicans. There was a small swastika arm band that the printer drew the line at and asked me to redesign the image. I replaced it with a non descript band but added a Hitler mustache. My image has been approved now and I wait for the order of 500 to show up at the door.

This week I received another amazing linoleum print from Patsy in Australia. This time rabbits! When I can get back into the cupboards in the garage that now have porch furniture piled in front of, I will frame it and find the perfect place to hang it. For now it is on the mantel.

I did have a visitor come this past Thursday. Judy Zugish from the Seattle area comes once a year in February to teach basketry at the folk school. She makes a point to get to my house to share a scotch and a meal. We have known each other since the 80s and can easily pick up where we left off. Judy will be part of the National Basket Conference this September in Tasmania and would be open to teaching in other venues while in the country. I am thinking of Toni Rogers place in Queensland as a possibility since few from that far north will be heading to Tasmania. If you are reading this Tony, I can send you her contact information.

I was getting 8,000 steps in each day before my lung operation. Now after just five weeks of recovery, I am able to do almost 4,000. Going to the gym seems a bit silly as all I can do is the bike or treadmill to get steps. No weight lifting allowed just yet. So I might as well stay home and get my steps in here and not have to explain my absence to those who were used to seeing me there at six-thirty a.m. three days a week.

Not much else new going on here. But I did have an idea to do a political art installation. Since I see so little of it nowadays, remember the George W era where most artists needed to make a statement? Well, since there is so little interest in doing that type of work now, I decided to make my own private installation in my garage, have my own opening reception…attended by myself alone. Then I will stand around, drink some wine and document the exhibition. I rather like the idea of it being totally private. Someone told me that if I wanted to see political work to just go on youtube. It is not the same thing as being confronted in person. So I will let you know how it all works out. A completely solo show in the planning stages now.

Til later….

I looked out the front door to see a carton that was delivered…not an Amazon order. Inside was like Christmas.

Filled with gifts of soothing…teas, lotions, sweets, socks. A lovely thoughtful gift from a dear old friend whom I met during my MFA graduate exhibition reinstalled locally in 1999. Thank you Cyd. So very much!

Now I am sipping some Sambuco. It is soothing and perfect for a cold dreary afternoon.

Yesterday it took most of the morning to paste messages and addresses on my postcards. I have more to ship out tomorrow…none, of course, to my own state of North Carolina. We are still too red or worried here to make public statements.

I do not think it is possible for the Republican Party who supports this insanity to realize the unforgivable damage that has been done to those of us without enough years left to see corrections in the course they have put us on. We will only live through the untold damages happening each day. Some of those I talk to feel entirely hopeless and full of a despair that makes it hard to get out of bed. I truly hate what the greedy reliance on ignorance has caused so many who have spent their lives thinking it would never happen.

To hide in my house and remember the better times is what I have left. It is all that makes me smile and I am grateful for the life I have had and the amazingly brave, intelligent people that were part of it. I join the sanity of the world finding it necessary to turn their backs on America. We are no longer worth the respect and admiration of anyone other than those preferring to stay ignorant of how much they are manipulated into this new world order. I can find peace in my own surroundings.

And soon there will be a finished sunroom. Just the tile flooring and painting to go.

I am off to pop a frozen pizza into the oven and sip what is left of my Sambuco.

More postcards are heading out tomorrow…to states other than my own. I thank them for making me feel it has been a worthwhile effort.

Til later….