more progress, 45 years, and republican hypocrisy

I started filling the first trumpet flower mold on Saturday. I know the glass in the leaf looks very blue but the colors will mature in the kiln to be more green (and there is a layer of darker green underneath that light colored layer) though I did select greens in the bluer range.

I think I mentioned that as the glass frit melts it reduces in volume as the air gets pushed out and so I have to build up the color at least as high as the void is deep. It's the gum arabic that I use that makes it all sticky and stick together so that I can build it up. There are other 'sticky' additives I could use like CMC, a cellulose product, or white glue or even corn syrup but I've always used a dilute solution of gum arabic to make my 'paste' or slurry with the frit.

We've been without rain long enough now that I have to start watering the gardens. I spied this pearl crescent on the rudbeckia on Saturday

as well as this little katydid on the althea, or rose of sharon.

While I'm still seeing a multitude of toads of all sizes, I'm not seeing any little frogs which is unusual especially with all this rain we've had but I do hear them singing at night.

Saturday was our 45^th wedding anniversary. Forty five years I've lived with this man, more than half my life. Our usual celebration is a movie and dinner out but that didn't happen this year or last. Instead we considered buying a new BIG TV which we ultimately didn't pursue, at least not yet. Getting a bigger TV would entail rearranging not just the pictures on the wall but the furniture as well in the living room. What precipitated the idea was that the screen on our current 32” TV (the largest one that will fit in our cabinet) died Friday night basically turning the TV into a radio. Out came the old 22” TV which still works fine and has a screen that diminishes glare, unlike the bigger one. We're just not big TV people. We were trying to remember why we bought the bigger TV when the small one still worked fine. I guess we just wanted a bigger screen, I said. That doesn't sound like us, he replied.

Sunday's progress.

After I finish this mold I'll need to concentrate on finishing the feather piece. It will only take a couple of sessions to finish the cold work, figuring out how to display them will take longer. I have to have the work at the gallery by the 10^th so I've got about 3 weeks to finish.

And the US is withdrawing from Afghanistan. Because unlike Trump, Biden honors agreements made by his predecessors, Trump's much ballyhooed by republicans peace deal with the Taliban, releasing 5,000 hardcore Taliban prisoners in exchange for them not killing anymore Americans with a withdrawal date of May 1^st this year (and let us not forget Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David 3 days before 9/11). Since Biden was a bit busy the first half of this year, the withdrawal is just now taking place. And the press and the republicans are having a field day, blaming Biden for Trump's mess. Even Trump himself has joined in while the republicans are trying to scrub the internet of their previous support for the end to our occupation in Afghanistan. Make no mistake, I'm in favor of this withdrawal. It's been 20 years. For 20 years we have protected Afghans, propping up their government, and training a 300,000 member army and outfitting them with our equipment. The time would come eventually for the Afghans to stand up and take responsibility for their own country, government, and society. Well, that time is now and what did the Afghan army do? They laid down their weapons and fled, they made backroom deals with the Taliban, they gave our military gear to the Taliban, they turned their country over without a fight. The videos widely circulating of the hoard of Afghan men running after and clinging to an air force plane as it takes off is wrenching, reminiscent of our departure from Viet Nam, but not for the reasons given, an abandoned people desperate to flee. What I see is a hoard of Afghan men trying to escape, abandoning their women and children to the hands of the Taliban.

This was always going to end this way. We have never learned that we can't import or impose western culture, society, government on a people whose religion, culture, and tribalism is thousands of years old and diametrically opposed to the West. We should have left long ago.