putting some good out in the world, new stuff, and banshees

Wednesday night, full dark, coming back from yoga from El Campo about 12 miles down the road, I was almost home, within blocks, when I passed two people walking down the dark road which runs between the highway and business 59, not quite the middle of nowhere but close, and as I moved over to the left and passed them I noticed waving arms, so I stopped. I fumbled around in the dark for the window control and when I finally got the window down two young adult Latina faces, late 20s, looked back. They had been left high and dry in Hungerford, lived in El Campo, had been walking for about 3 miles and faced at least 12 more, wanted to get back to their kids, both mothers and could I give them a ride at least to the Bucky's on the highway, they could pay, they had $25 trying to give it to me through the window. So I questioned these young women about what had happened, did they not have a phone, where were their children, was there someone they could call with mine who could come get them. Please could I just take them to the Bucky's they asked. I considered all the danger, the conservative narrative of fear and loathing that I despise and told them to get in, called Marc and let him know what I was doing and I would be awhile yet and turned around, drove back to El Campo, and took them home. We didn't talk much. It was one of the young women's birthday, she was 29, crying quietly in the front seat while she conversed softly with her friend, the one who kept trying to give me the $25. She had just wanted to do something fun for once to celebrate her birthday, the person they had arrived with left without them and no one else would give them a ride. I was not the first person they had tried to wave down, I was not the first who stopped but I was the first to help. I delivered them to the door of the house they directed me to and I got home about 40 minutes later than usual. They were still trying to give me the money as they got out of the car. Just pay it forward, help someone else in need I told them.

I could have misjudged and ended up in a ditch or stranded myself but I refuse to live in fear, regardless of Trump and Republican politicians running around shouting 'Danger Danger Will Robinson' about anyone who isn't white when it's the white people causing fear and danger to people of color and as an older white woman I was probably safer than these two pretty young Latina women. The next person that pulled over might have done them real harm instead of just refusing to help.

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It occurred to me that I never wrote a post about this new glass working technique, the one I took the class in last August. If I did, I couldn't find it in my brief overview of posts since then. So briefly, it involves glass powder, a binder (something sticky), and what the artist, Lois Manno, who developed this technique, calls a 'liquid medium' all mixed together in certain amounts and in a certain order to get what looks like a ball of modeling clay, only it's glass. She calls it modeling glass. You can roll it out like pie crust, cut it into shapes, sculpt it, texture it, however you want to create whatever you had in mind. Our main project in the class was a bluejay feather (14”). 

We also did birds on a branch and a raven head (4 1/2”).

I have several feathers in mind (and plan to roll out the base color for one today), a great blue heron feather for the box if I ever get back to it, an owl or hawk feather (not sure which bird it belongs to), and a flicker feather that a friend sent to me. So I have rolled out sample pieces of the colors I've so far mixed up (all opaque colors) to see what color they will be after firing, blending some colors to try and achieve a grayer brown, and also to experiment with overlaying opaque and transparent glass powders.

Yesterday, it got up into the (very) low 70˚s and last night a cold front came howling in and by howling I mean everything from moaning to shrieking like a banshee. The dog was not happy. Temperatures plunged into the low 40˚s and will only rise to the mid 50˚s today and it's still very windy and moaning out there. The weekend should be nice though, chilly but clear for our last weekend of the open house.