Sunday, June 29, 2014

The Week that Was

This week has been more pickin' than potting. I made that ridiculously large coffee cup that I posted last time, a crock, and some small bottles but really just fooled around finishing up some stuff. Things are stalled a bit while waiting for clay to dry. We have had storms almost every day this month and it is so humid a cup takes a week to dry. The studio is shaded and has a lot of insulation so it is not really hot in there but I'm going to have to get the AC in the window and running just to dry things out..

Tina was getting ready to take the new bus on a shakedown trip so there was a lot of time spent getting ready for that. We had to take the bus and the car across town to get the brake system that links the bus and the car when she is towing checked out. Then there was the tire pressure monitoring system, a blown fuse to trace down and assorted odds and ends to secure.She reports all is well and everything is working as it should.

I know I posted a song just a couple of weeks ago but if this blog is a record of what I've been doing, I should include the one I have been working on this week.I cut the size of the file so it should load quicker. Let me know if you have problems viewing. Or you can leave now. You've been warned.

If anyone is interested, it is AIN'T NO ASH WILL BURN by W. Aldridge. The chords are pretty simple if you want to play along.  I  Capo II

                                                     C           F           G    
                                                     C           F           G
                                                     Am        Em      
                                                     F            G            C
Thanks for stopping by.















Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Just One Cup

Hi kids, I'll keep this one short. The doctor says I should only have one cup of coffee a day sooooo...




Wednesday, June 18, 2014

One for Tony

Last week, Tony Clennell posted about how much he liked Guy Clark's music. Here's a sweet little song that Guy wrote but you never hear. If you go to YOUTUBE, you can hear Jerry Jeff Walker do it better than I can. Thanks for listening.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

This Little Piggie

Well, I did it again. I applied for a Christmas show this year. Sometime between now and Dec.6, I need to make some items that will fly off the shelves in 6 hours or less. I make a few piggy banks every year so I went to work on those first. Everybody had a piggy bank. Nearly all potters make some of them but mine don't need to look like yours and vice versa. The last thing I would want to do is infringe on someone's design. I went through a period of making a lot of jugs and my pigs reflect many of my jugs. Narrow at the foot, fat at the shoulders, and quickly necking in for the spout. Not an easy form to get right. The ears have a little attitude to them and the bulbous cartoonish eyes are always a little crossed. You will see two notches on the right ear. When my grandfather raised hogs down on the mountain, they let their hogs free range in the woods. Fences were more to keep animals out of the crops than to enclose the animals..In late fall they would take the dog into the woods and he would find a hog a drag it to the ground. The notches were a code that told them if it was their hog or not. So a pig from Whistle Creek should have notches. Thanks for all your comments.



 
 

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Just the Facts

Big thanks to those of you who commented last time. It's good to know there are actual live readers out there. Well, either that or AI has really advanced.

I know some of you detest politics. Some of you love politics. Can we agree that we all hate stupidity? PLEASE !!! I've been seeing too much mouth foaming knuckle dragging stupidity since this internet thing got popular. Just because someone posts a statistic it doesn't mean their conclusion is true.I want to quickly thank Dr, Josephine Phillips one of my college( I went, really!) mentors for this simple saying "Figures don't lie but liars always figure."  A dear friend shared a link yesterday that included the alarming news that 1 in 912 people who got a certain vaccine died. If you wait long enough, they all will !!! There was NO evidence that the deaths were linked to the vaccine but it didn't stop the author from making that huge leap from coincidence to causality and rousing the rabble by spreading the alarm all over Facebook.There have been pundits claiming that college women are getting raped to get special benefits and congressmen questioning the link between carbon emissions and the death of the dinosaurs.Get out the torches and pitchforks. Seems like it might be time to post some facts of my own.

Over 90% of people who died last year had eaten chicken in the months preceding their death. Don't eat chicken and you won't die.

More people die in hospitals than at home. If you have a heart attack, be safe, stay home and a doctor won't kill you. This is 100% true unless you have a resident doctor at your house.

If you drink Coke there is a 100% chance you will die. (eventually, of something)

Climate scientists predict with 100% certainty that the drought will be followed by some rain. Plan accordingly.

Half of all Americans have below average  intelligence. There is nothing we can do about this. They do seem to cluster in certain groups and geographic regions. A significant subset will be elected to public office and think they can do things like ban talking about fracking chemicals or convince people they are better off with an $8 an hour job than a $10 an hour job.

If someone agrees with you 100% of the time, they are probably lying 50% of the time.

Here's the obligatory pottery picture. I visited a little show last Saturday and saw a friend who bought this big jar last year. So glad it has a good home.




One other thing. After reading Tony Clennell's book I'm considering writing one of my own. It's about a 16 year old boy's dreams for the future.., titled "A Wang and a Prayer". Thanks for stopping.




Friday, June 6, 2014

A Little Show, A Little Rant

I started my pottery addiction at The Middletown Art Center and still teach the kids classes and take a Wednesday morning class. Every year we have a student show from all the disciplines and there are some very talented competitors. This year I took second with a big jar and was thrilled that my friend Gloria Fraley took first in ceramics with her handbuilt bowl. Another friend Jan Holladay took best in show with her watercolor.

Best in Show

Gloria Fraley
1st in Ceramics

My Second in Ceramics


Another by Gloria

Judy Schnieder





That's it for the good news. Now allow me a little rant. Last week I posted about measuring lids and received a few hits. Actually, as of this morning it had been visited over 950 times and checking my sources, they were legit visits, not some spammer. I received a couple of comments on Facebook and 3 on the blog itself. Four if you count my response.
Comments are the currency of the Blogosphere. If you wouldn't go to a restaurant and not leave a tip you shouldn't go to a blog and not leave a comment occasionally. This works best as a conversation instead of a monologue. Most bloggers I know have this same problem and it really feels like you are SETI broadcasting radio pulses into space waiting for an answer. We are not asking you to buy anything, give us your personal secrets, or admit to past crimes just leave a trace of your passing so we know who is reading. Thanks.