more days in the life

That’s a picture of the peach cobbler I made from peaches that came off my tree. I’ll need to prepare some for freezing since they’ll go bad before we can eat them all. And I need to research how to prune my tree so that it grows out instead of up since I could barely reach the highest ones this year.

The mosquitos are horrid. As soon as you go outside, within minutes they are swarming you. Did I mention they are big, black, and aggressive? Nevertheless I had work to do outside so out came the deep woods Off which I hate, spraying the largest organ of my body with those nasty chemicals but whatcha gonna do; arms, legs, t-shirt front and back, shorts front and back. Better than West Nile I guess which has been detected. Probably should have sprayed my ball cap too. I worked out in the heat for an hour and a half mostly in the shade thank goodness because of all our trees but even so it was 90˚ with a heat index of 103˚ when I came in soaked and sweat dripping off me. Yay global warming on the Texas coastal plain. I finally got the little backyard mowed, deadheaded the zinnias keeping the seed heads for next year, transferred the two piles of cut up dead fallen branches into the truck for moving over to the burn pile, watered the plants in pots, and yeah, that was enough. Still have to get the big chainsaw out to deal with this which fell off one of the tallows a week or two ago. That limb has been dead for a couple of years.

SHARE started out fairly slow on Thursday with a handful of A (one person) food orders but then it got busy with mostly big ones Cs, Ds and an E (7 and up). We're having to buy more food from the local grocers as the offerings from the regional food bank in Victoria have gotten pretty slim with all Trump's cuts to food assistance so those poor millionaires and billionaires can get even more tax cuts. It's not like they pay much tax as it is but you know, they really need that third or fourth yacht or mansion and those poor people just need to get a better job. Fortunately we have the funds from grants to do so, for now anyway, and we get donations from the dollar stores and Walmart of their day old milk and meat and produce. 

I cannot express how much I despise that man and his sycophant butt kissers whose only concern is getting richer by grifting off the American people, declaring on Juneteenth that the working stiffs have too many holidays and the economy is suffering because they get a day off while he plays golf which he has done for a full 25% of the days he has been in office and charges it all to the national treasury that we working stiffs pay into with our taxes.

 

We had an unprecedented 11 people at the yoga class Thursday night. The Monday and Wednesday class is in El Campo, the next town over but the Thursday night class is here in Wharton at Hesed House, one at 5:15 (the one I go to) and one at 6:30. Usually attendance runs between 3 - 5 people at the 5:15 time slot but Stephanie has canceled the 6:30 class for reasons and last week we had 7 and last night 11 three of whom were first timers so that little room was full though it could have accommodated one more. Anyway, the 5:15 start is tough for some people to get to after work so we all agreed to a new 5:30 start time.

We finished watching the three seasons of Hamish Macbeth. Hamish is the local constable in a small village in the Scottish highlands who solves all the local problems and mysteries becoming an integral part of the village. Hamish has ‘gone native’ so to speak and tries to keep a low profile so the big wigs in Inverness won’t transfer him to another posting. It’s very good, a comedy drama, very sweet with all the local relationships and recurring characters. I highly recommend it. We watched it on Prime.

Another sketch of a woodland violet. I think I’ll start playing with composition now.

More outdoor work planned for today. Marc mowed yesterday and I really need to get the trimmer out and go around all the flower beds and trees, something I haven’t done since before my birthday party.

Some blooming things: the phlox Ms Moon sent me, day lilies, Mexican bird of paradise.

peaches, drawing, retaliation

I picked a dozen more peaches on Sunday and the rest last night, 45 in all. Peach cobbler planned for tonight.

I had a flat tire on the car yesterday. Coming back from yoga class Monday night, though it was daylight as the sun doesn’t set until 8:30 these days, still on the highway but closer to Wharton than not I ran over something I did not see but felt and heard when the passenger side rear tire went over it. Why just the rear tire I can’t tell you as I was going in a straight line. After I took the exit for the long stretch into town the low tire light came on. Great. Fingers crossed, I made it home before it was completely flat. I called AAA to come put on the spare. Marc and I both know how to change a tire and have done it but why are we paying for AAA road service if we’re not going to use it. As it turned out, the tire would not come off easily and the guy had to pound on it from behind to get it loose. Marc took the flat to the tire place where they plugged a hole and put it back on for $12.50.

I’m working on a new drawing/painting, preliminary stage. I’ve decided on subject matter but not composition yet. Right now I’m working on drawing different views of woodland violets, larger than life. Once I get the individual elements drawn I’ll play around with composition and size. I’m thinking I’ll do a colored pencil drawing before I try to tackle a watercolor. Here are two little sketches so far.

All that rain last week finally hatched a crop of mosquitos, big black aggressive ones. One of the bird baths was teeming with larvae. All three are empty now drying out so I need to go put fresh water in them.

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The retaliation has begun. Stunned by the now official count of 13+ million Americans rejecting him and his policies during the No Kings protests coupled with the low turnout for that poor excuse of a parade, Trump has reverted to form. Saturday night in a moment of weakness Trump ordered ICE to stop raids on farms, hotels, restaurants, and meat packing plants and put a halt on non-criminal arrests. Sunday night a post on his TS account stated ICE officers are herewith ordered to do all in their power to conduct the largest Mass Deportation Program in history doubling down on America’s largest predominately Democrat cities with his usual hate filled rhetoric against liberals, democrats, and the left ignoring the fact that even red states and red cities had large turnouts for the No Kings protests. Sunday US Marines accompanied about 60 ICE agents to a popular LA county swap meet questioning people, asking their names, and taking pictures and while only a few people were arrested, the point was intimidation. Monday he has ordered raids on farms, restaurants, and hotels to resume. And continuing Trump’s and his administration’s attack on his opponents, ICE agents arrested another democrat, NYC comptroller Brad Lander, as he tried to escort a migrant out of an immigration courthouse and Democrat congress members are being denied entry into ICE detention centers which is against the law as Congress has the legal right to unannounced oversight visits.

A woman I know is a card carrying member of the Trump cult and she often shares memes on FB that are if not outright lies then full of half truths. She posted one on Sunday maybe, 4 lies liberals are telling about Trump’s birthday parade. I don’t remember what the other three were but one of them was that our tax payer money did not pay for the parade, it was paid for by the sponsors. That is a lie. The money paid by the sponsors went to a fund called America250, a congressionally appointed nonprofit in charge of raising funds to celebrate the upcoming US Semiquincentennial and was tapped to handle spectator logistics and the attending ‘festival’ connected to the parade. We have a list of the sponsors but none of them have been forthcoming with the amount they donated and in 2022 a lawsuit was filed against the nonprofit for mismanaging federal funds, cronyism, and engaging in sexist behavior among other things. While America250 is reported to have paid for the auxiliary activities it did not pay for the actual parade; the movement of troops, equipment, and planes or the pledge to repair any of the damage to the streets of DC caused by the heavy equipment which the Army has estimated to cost between $25 and $45 million. Neither did the nonprofit pay for the security provided by DC for which the government is supposed to reimburse the city.  A link to the article here.

After being basically ignored, dismissed by the other world leaders, and laughed at, Trump left the G7 meeting early, ostensibly to deal with the Israeli/Iran war currently going on, to decide if he was going to send American soldiers to join against Iran or just heavier munitions to Israel since he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Iran and Iran ignored him. He has sent the USS Nimitz Battle G from the South China Sea to join the USS Carl Vinson strike group already in the Arabian Sea along with Air Force refueling planes. The ‘no wars’ president is about to get us involved in a war in the Middle East, desperate to engage in a show of strength to counteract all the humiliation of the past several days. And to that I saw a video yesterday by Anonymous claiming to have evidence that a false flag attack on the US is not only planned but imminent. I don’t put much stock in videos like that but it is an alarming idea and I’m not sure that that would be a step too far even for this administration.

peaches, assassinations, and Trump's parade trumped by No Kings

Friday night was one of my nights to fix dinner which I do twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. I usually tend towards seafood which I like to have at least once a week or vegetarian. Last night I fixed crunchy baked shrimp and a tomato, olive, spinach pasta. It was really good and I should have taken a picture but I did not.

More rain on Saturday, at least two inches on top of the 5” we got Wednesday night and Thursday. More lightning and thunder. The dog and the cat were driving me crazy. Minnie wanted in my lap as I tried to read an article on my desktop but she was a perpetual motion machine and Cat was constantly pushing at my hand, biting at me, walking in between me and the screen, getting in my face. I finally just gave up and went and sat on the couch. The rain stopped but the thunder continued for a while.

My peach tree is covered in peaches almost ready to pick. 

I picked six on Friday and eight yesterday and they are so good. Last year I got two and only two the year before. I guess my tree has decided to be a real tree.

Today I managed to get all the newly fallen limbs cut up, some thrown in the truck and two piles waiting to be thrown in the truck to dump them on the burn pile. Not only is it hot out there, now it’s steamy.

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The violent rhetoric of Trump and the Republican congressional politicians have finally born its poison fruit. Hardly a day has gone by without Trump or a Republican congress member conducting press conferences or on SM calling Democrats dangerous and unAmerican, calling for them to be arrested or shot or tarred and feathered. Early Saturday morning a man portrayed as a cop, in uniform with all the right gear and what looked like a cop car assassinated Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband and attempted to assassinate Minnesota state Senator John Hoffman and his wife. After the report of the shooting at the Hoffman’s police did a wellness check on the Hortmans who lived nearby and confronted the shooter coming out of the house. They exchanged gunfire and the shooter retreated back into the house and escaped on foot out the back. No Kings flyers were found in the suspect's car and officials investigating the shootings recovered a kill list of about 70 names of democrat politicians and abortion advocates, including Saturday’s victims. This was a well thought out and planned attack by a man who ran a security company and has ties to evangelical ministries. Trump eventually made a short statement …“Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America.”…this from the man who pardoned all the J6 criminals who violently attacked the Capitol police as they surged into the building to hunt down Democrat politicians. Reportedly not just Democrat politicians are alarmed by this assassination but also Republicans and yet I doubt that a single Republican will admit their rhetoric was a contributing factor. 

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image via https://www.nbcsandiego.com/local/in-photos-no-kings-protest-around-san-diego-county/3848096/

Millions of Americans took to the street nationwide on Saturday for No Kings Day to peacefully protest Trump and his overreach, his power grabs, to protest the unreasonable and intentionally cruel roundup of peaceful hard working tax paying undocumented residents, to protest his ridiculous $50M military parade while cutting millions of dollars from veterans’ care and food assistance. Fortunately my fears that he would use this as an excuse to order violence against the protesters was unfounded but not, I think, because he had a change of heart about what he wanted to happen but because the protests were massive even in red states and  he was afraid to. His approval ratings are already in the toilet. 

Just before midnight on Saturday Trump issued a statement that he has ordered ICE to stop raids on farms, hotels, and restaurants presumably from pressure by the farming, hotel, and restaurant industries which are losing their workers and unable to replace them because white American citizens won’t do those jobs but I can’t help but think that the rising resistance from community members against these ICE raids and the millions who turned out for the No Kings protests had an influence. It remains to be seen though if the raids actually stop.

I haven’t been able to find a trustworthy estimate of the attendance at the parade but one report said it was well below the expected 200,000 and videos taken during the parade show a sparse crowd. There was another report that said a surge of people leaving early created logjams at the only two exits from the Mall before Trump made his remarks. The most common estimate on SM is less than 10,000 but nothing official to back that up. Videos of Trump during the parade of old equipment and soldiers walking instead of marching proudly show a bored and unhappy man. He finally got his parade but it was not the spectacle he wanted.

 

dark days of one kind or another

Woke up to dark and rumbly this morning, raining off and on. The dog is, of course, a mess.

I’ve been working on the pomegranate painting following the suggestions of Codex who offers excellent advice on ways to improve my skill level and I’m grateful that he takes the time to help me with technique but I did not like where it went at my hands. I liked the painting much better before this last revision and spent much of yesterday trying to undo what I did, trying to move the light source back to the left, which is not easy. I’m definitely overworking this piece and will probably ruin it before I’m through. I have a hard time putting the brush down and walking away. I tell myself to just let it dry and then five minutes later I’m dabbing a little more on or trying to lift some of the color off.

I went to take a shower yesterday and when I looked in the tub I saw this. 

This tiny little gecko had to be just hatched, maybe an inch log. Took some effort to catch the little thing so I could release it outside and managed to break off a bit of its tail in the process but at least it didn’t get drowned. And I have no idea how it even got in the bathtub. I’m just glad I saw it as I turned the water on. It’s taken years for the geckos to recover from the flood in 2017.

The rangoon creeper is starting to bloom.

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I wrote the above Wednesday morning. Wednesday night a storm came through full of lightning and thunder and rain and a couple of tornados in the county. It rained all night, was still raining when I left for SHARE Thursday morning. All the low spots in the yard had standing water and the rain gauge had nearly 5” by the time it stopped. It cleared up a little for sunset and the air was pink

although the color had faded a bit when I took this picture of the eastern sky.

I did a little more work on the painting Wednesday afternoon, declared it finished and painted in the background. Dwarf pomegranate 4" x 4".

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Things are getting bad out there which is exactly what Trump wants. Police in LA are responding with violence, batons, tear gas, and the ‘less lethal’ rubber bullets, to unarmed protesters who have finally had enough of Trump and Stephen Miller’s round up of law abiding hard working contributing members of society, family men and women and their children, sending them to detention centers under deplorable conditions and deporting them to whatever country will take them. There is video of an Australian journalist who was intentionally shot, of an unarmed woman shot at point blank range just trying to get home in the building cops were standing in front of, of a woman shot in the head and left laying on the ground by police until one officer tried to render aid but they refused to call an ambulance, of another protester beaten with a baton by a cop on horseback and was trampled by the horse when he fell. Trump has usurped the governor’s power to activate the National Guard in California against Newsome’s wishes and sent Marines against American citizens on American soil (unsupported of course, he did not send food, water, or shelter). California Senator Padilla was forcefully removed from Kristi Noem’s press conference, thrown to the ground and handcuffed for wanting to ask a question. Trump has had a federal judge arrested, the mayor of Newark arrested for attempting to visit an ICE detention center with members of Congress to conduct oversight one of whom, Rep. LaMonica has been arrested and indicted over ‘trumped up’ charges. Trump is sending National Guard to other big cities in advance of Saturday’s planned No Kings Day protests against his ridiculous military parade and has promised harsh retaliation against any protesters who show up for it. And now, on Saturday he is going to have all kinds of military personnel and equipment in DC with an unqualified toadie in charge of the military ready to support Trump if he declares martial law. 

This is scary folks. What will the people of this country do if he declares martial law and turns the American military against Americans on American soil? 

addendum, oppressive heat, flowers

Sort of an addendum to my last post. It wasn’t easy this path we chose. At first there was no market because architectural etched glass wasn’t a thing. We had to create the market by cold calling interior designers and architects and doing presentations to introduce them to the possibilities of this medium. We often worked seven days a week. There were plenty of times when we would go several months with no work. We never had health insurance and are fortunate that we and our kids were basically healthy. We lived hand to mouth. Any money we managed to save was always spent. It was very stressful either because we had no work or too much work at one time but even so we were making one of a kind original art that had/has the possibility of enduring long after we’re gone and the satisfaction of seeing a commission go from thumbnail sketch to finished installed work never got old so at no time did we ever really consider quitting and getting jobs as some self employed artists eventually did. But then there came a time when we did. The stress from doing two enormous corporate jobs back to back was too much, our relationship was in the toilet and we were headed for separation if not divorce. We had enough money saved from those two jobs to last about a year and we just couldn’t do it anymore. Of our two employees, one had already quit and we let the other go. We focused on getting our shit together for the next year and a half until our financial situation became dire and then we started over, just the two of us like in the beginning because really, we had become basically unemployable in our own minds by that time. This time we kept it small focusing mainly on high end residential and some corporate work. During this time we also developed our pate de verre technique, a lost wax glass casting process but that’s another post. We retired from the etched glass at the end of 2017 when the house flooded from Hurricane Harvey. There were other reasons; our contacts were aging out or dying, architectural decorative glass had really evolved offering other alternatives, it was physically demanding on our own aging bodies, and we were just plain tired of the whole thing; but that was the impetus. It still amazes me how much we produced out of our little two car garage studio.

If you are interested in seeing more of the work we did, here are links to two pages on our website (which btw is seriously outdated and contains broken and missing links that I was in the middle of renovating when I got the new computer two years ago and the program I used to upload images and text no longer worked and I’ve lost interest in buying the updated software because we’re not doing glass at all anymore). This one links to images and information about those commissions. The list of residential work is only a tiny fraction of what we did. This one is just a portfolio of images that shows a lot more of the residential work. Some jobs I don’t have pictures of, most were really hard to photograph because my only chance was right after installation and either too much or not enough light.    

Ok, enough of that.

It’s been so hot. July hot. Highs in the mid 90s with high humidity which pushes the feels like about 10 degrees hotter though we're supposed to get a little relief later in the week. Still stuff has to be done. I set the sprinkler up Sunday, hand watered Saturday. I cut the wisteria back one day and hauled it to the burn pile another day, cut back the low hanging branches of a tree and wild grape vine in back of the shop. That stuff is still lying where it fell. Another big branch fell from the pecan tree that was so heavily damaged last summer in the hurricane which took me two days to cut and pile up and then today I saw another big branch had fallen out of the farther most pecan tree.

But it’s not all sweaty labor. I've been working on the dwarf pomegranate painting (4" x 4"). It would help if I could decide on where the light source is and stop changing my mind.

I got to spend time with Paisleigh and Harrison on Sunday and put up another 18 ears of corn. That should be enough for the year. And stuff is blooming. The double orange daylilies are in full bloom, the crinum lilies seem to have popped up overnight, and one of the yellow bells has a cluster of flowers.

And the plumerias are blooming. 

my life in 100 objects...# 6

Carved and etched glass (not a single object but many) or rather my carved and etched glass studio, Custom Etched Glass, from which I/we made our living for over 40 years.

Oklahoma Heart Hospital meditation room

I married young the first time, 21, because that’s what women did back then, found a man and got married. This was at the cusp of things changing for women, before we could get our own bank account or a loan or purchase a house without having a father or husband cosign, before we could get credit cards of our own, back when many jobs and professions and opportunities and the education needed for them were denied us. That marriage last 3 1/2 years before I divorced him for various reasons and even though I had expressed myself in art and craft my whole life, majored in art in college, I spent those three and a half years at whatever job I could find to pay the bills because the man I had married worked for about six months and then sporadically if at all after that. 

After the divorce I moved back in with my parents because I had no resources and was between jobs and I spent those months trying to decide what the fuck I was going to do with my life. I started drawing again, working with pen and ink mostly. I knew I did not want a dead end job as a sales clerk and commercial art, ie drawing illustrations for the yellow pages phone book, just wasn’t appealing and I had no idea how to go about getting a commercial art job anyway. During this time I met a guy, a self employed artist/craftsman with his own studio/shop who got by with whatever job he could get. He wasn’t much older than me at the time and I would drop by now and then and visit. Two things happened, one when I expressed my envy that he was a self employed creative he responded that anybody can do it. Those few words hit me like a spark going off. The other thing that happened was I dropped by one day while he was sandblasting a crudely stenciled rose on a piece of plate glass, experimenting for a remodel job he had. I watched him do that and when he had finished I told him "show me how to do that". The second spark had ignited, I could make a living doing that I thought. 

So I took the plunge and decided to make my way as an artist as opposed to getting a ‘real’ job and started my etched glass studio. I chose to focus on commission work instead of making stuff and then trying to sell it. Even though that was my first step, making small framed etched glass pieces to be hung in windows the goal was always to engender interest in using etched glass in architectural settings…door lites, side lites, windows, window walls as it seemed infinitely wiser to sell the work and then make it and as soon as I started getting commissions I stopped doing craft/art shows. 

During these first seminal years I met and married my husband and partner. At the time he was working in the machine shop at Hughes Tool Company but when I got pregnant in 1977 he quit and devoted himself to my artistic endeavor and took over the actual etching and carving part of the glass and taking care of the business end (taxes, payroll, etc.) leaving me to do sales, design, stencils, and some of the fabrication. We did this work until we retired at the end of 2017. We did residential, commercial, and corporate commissions with work all over the US and a few overseas.

residential front entry

residential master bedroom clerestory windows

residential master bath window

corn and art

Friday night one of my neighbors who works on a local farm knocked on the door. He had a truckload of freshly picked sweet corn and wanted to know if we wanted any. He did this last year too. He refuses money, just spreading around the goodness. We got 2 dozen ears so Saturday Marc and I shucked them and Sunday I processed them for the freezer. Blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, dunk in cold water to stop them cooking, cut the kernels off the cob (you can freeze the whole thing but we don’t have room in our freezer for that), and bag up in vacuum sealed bags. I got 11 2/3 cups out of 18 ears (I kept six back for immediate consumption).

He’ll have more in a week or two and I’ll repeat the process so that we have corn for as long as it lasts. I don’t buy corn at the grocery store. I don’t know the farmer, I don’t know where it’s grown, I don’t know how long it’s been picked, and most the corn grown in this country is genetically altered. As the farmer who I used to buy my corn from said, if a worm won’t eat it neither will I. Turns out he was the brother of another neighbor and he died. The same neighbor has another brother who grows corn but I missed his harvest this year.

I did finish the zucchini part of the painting. I don’t know if it would pass for a botanical illustration but I’m happy enough with it (so she says but I may darken one area) and more than ready to be done with it. 

I did the flower part first in glass as part of the botanica erotica series and then I did the drawing where I included the zucchini.

And I started on a new little painting, a pomegranate, 4” x 4”. It is also from the botanica erotica series. I thought some of them would make nice little paintings to put in the market at Hesed House.

Here’s the glass version. 4 1/2" x 4 1/2".

I got the proofs for the notecards. There are 7 designs but I’m going to package them in groups of five. Ten copies will give me 14 sets of cards. The bee will be turned so it’s horizontal on the card.

I have another follow up appointment with the ophthalmologist today and I hope that she will discontinue the drops.