July Update

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since we chatted and I guess it is time to catch up a little. I am still making the slab dishes on the wooden molds. I sprayed them heavily with WD40 and the dishes are just falling away from the molds when I turn them over. Nothing is fired yet but I will show you as soon as they are. Several things have slowed down the pottery around here. Last week I had to have a tooth pulled and some bridgework started. A couple of weeks earlier, I had broken off a tooth that was mostly filling just about all the way to the root and there was not enough left to cap. The dentist also felt it was a bad spot for an implant so here we are. I have a temporary bridge while my gum heals and will have it about 8 weeks before the final permanent bridge is installed. It has been a bit uncomfortable and I have been uninspired. We also spent a day driving to Louisville to pick up our granddog so Tina could show her with our Audrey this weekend. Yesterday was pretty well consumed with clearing a site and building a platform for a small storage shed for Tina's camping toys. It's level and sturdy enough for me to dance on so it should be ok. Thanks to Mike Baum for helping out. I did fire a glaze load last week that had some big cups ( 24 oz) or vases ???? I like them but don't know which way to sell them. Customers always like suggested uses. Help me decide.

 

Oh yea, it's been muggy outside

 

Life Gets Tedious

 

 

The sun comes up, the sun goes down

Hands on the clock go round and round

I just get up and it's time to lay down

                                                            Life gets teejus. don't it?

                                                                                                    Carson Robison

 

 

Seems like I'm not getting anything done. Of course when you start about 10, quit about 3, and take a generous lunch break I guess that's bound to happen. In the mean time I've got to send in my Ohio Sales Tax, pay some bills, get my booth fee in for a Christmas show, mix glazes. glaze several loads, warm up my coffee, scratch Blondie's ears etc. It's always something, especially if you tend to let them pile up. With all this on my plate, I'm going to address it by going to a noon jam session for a couple of hours before I go to the evening jam session. And you thought I didn't have a plan.

 

In the studio, I have been heading off in a different direction. If you have ever seen my work, you know it is 99.99% wheel thrown. This week I got the wild hair to make some slab serving dishes and do some glaze trailing in them. I had some very old sugar pine from an old house I helped demolish 30 years ago. It cut like butter and after sawing the angles, a few strokes with a sharp plane made them ready to go . I also had a few blocks of hard Styrofoam. It cut very easily and I did not try any smoothing as it would just crumble. A finer grain foam would be better I think. This left some texture which might be nice on some pots but I smoothed it out with a rib on the one I did this week. I'll post some after firing pictures if they make it that far.

 

 

Roll a slab, rough size it, drape it, smooth it down, final trim. Next morning, off the mold, clean up edges with a peeler. Set aside to dry. Here are the results, molds and tools.

 

results from 3 molds
 

Styrofoam and wood molds

Handy tools



Stranger Than Fiction

They say you are never too old to learn something new. I've learned a few things from reading the internet this week.

1. Michele Bachman announced she thinks the president should be impeached for his crimes. What ever they are. Rep. Bachman could have written up a bill of impeachment and given it to Speaker Boehner for further action but she preferred using a microphone to using the constitution.

2. If you complain about fireworks ( mostly illegal) scaring the shit out of your dog you are unpatriotic and not much fun.Shortly after starting this post I also read a Blog from a disabled vet who was a combat medic in Iraq. All the fireworks were rough on her too.

3. If you sigh a rental agreement that says you cannot hang things on your balcony you should be given an exemption if you hang an American Flag there.

4. We need to return to being one nation under God. You know, like Iran.I guess religious theocracies are only bad if they are not of the Evangelical Christian variety.

5. Corporations are people too and even if they invest in pharmaceutical companies that make billions off birth control drugs and devices they can make the choice of which of these methods if any their employees use. The slippery slope is when employers of other denominations decide they will only cover prayer and laying on of hands.Well, I guess in the case of birth control prayer usually follows the laying on of hands etc.

6. By offering a $1000 reward for proof of voter fraud in Mississippi, Chris McDaniel is admitting that he has no proof of wrong doing by Cochran's campaign. Of course that doesn't stop him from making unfounded accusations even though there is no proof that Cochran broke any rules. This from the Constitution waving Tea Party. Rules are great until they give an outcome you don't like.

7. My buddy said he was going to call a gastroenterologist. I asked what he thought was wrong. He said it was just a gut feeling he had..

8. Plants can hear themselves being eaten. They don't like it!!

9. God has written a coded message in our DNA that is a recurring patten similar to ancient Aramaic . Translators at BOB JONES UNIVERSITY have determined that the recurring patterns spell out the first verse of Genesis. If I were looking for impartial unbiased code breakers I'm not sure BOB JONES U> would be my first choice.

 

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10. Students in a freshman biology class in Atlanta’s Grady High School were shown a PowerPoint presentation that linked evolution to Satan, abortion, divorce, racism, and homosexuality.
The Grady High student newspaper, the Southerner, reported that Anquinette Jones used the PowerPoint presentation to teach the theory of evolution to her students during a freshman biology class last spring.
One slide in the 52-slide presentation included an illustration that shows creationism and evolution as two sides in a war between good and evil. Creationism is shown to be from Christ, while evolution is from Satan. The illustration suggests evolution is the driving force behind euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, divorce, and racism — social ills that are all defeated by creationism and Christianity.

Yes folks truth is stranger than fiction and all of these except #7 happened this week.