the circle of life turned

Our world got a little smaller last Saturday morning. If you’ve been reading here since before covid you likely remember me talking about our glass blowing friends Kathy Poeppel and Dick Moiel and how every November was spent getting organized and working out my display for the open house they sponsored at their studio the first weekend of December. It is with great sadness that I report Dick passed away peacefully last Saturday morning at home. His health had been deteriorating for the past several years and his bout with aspirated pneumonia a few months ago depleted his already tenuous strength. 

We first met Dick and Kathy one year when they called the studio and asked if they could come visit. That was sometime in the mid 90s I think after we had started doing personal work in the pate de verre cast glass technique (the whole precise timeline is lost to the past). Dick, a neurosurgeon, and Kathy, his surgical assistant, had retired to reduce the stress in their lives and were looking for a new activity to fill their days. They were avid art collectors with a focus on glass art and were visiting the few art glass studios in town. They took their first glass blowing class in 1994 and built their glass blowing studio in 1995, Houston Studio Glass. We started getting a postcard in November about a glass blowing open house in December. Who the hell is this and tossed it aside. Maybe the third time we decided to check it out. When we walked in Kathy was demonstrating and Dick was explaining what she was doing to the crowd and when he saw us he stopped and introduced us to the audience as fellow glass artists. We stayed a short while and then left. In the year 2000, Dick called and invited us to participate in a hot glass casting workshop by an artist from New Orleans he and Kathy were sponsoring at their studio, inviting not just us but non glass artists whom they knew as well. It was a fun three days and that was really the beginning of our friendship with Dick and Kathy. As art collectors they participated in the Houston art scene, inviting visiting artists to stay with them, gave dinner parties, had visiting glass artists give demonstrations at their studio and included us in these events and so we started to become known locally; inviting us and other budding glass artists in Houston to participate in their open house every year. While we had a gallery in Houston and Oliver sold a lot of work for us, it was Dick and Kathy who, as Marc put it, made us popular. My joke was that they dragged us kicking and screaming out of our cave and into the light.

They were big promoters of glass art, took classes and workshops every summer at all the prestigious glass and craft schools; Pilchuck, Penland, the Corning Museum of Glass to name a few, and then worked in their studio in the fall and winter perfecting the skills they learned over the summer and were friends with many of the big names in glass art. On a state level Dick worked to arrange exhibitions showing their work and the work of the local glass community in which we were included.

The last open house was the first weekend in December 2019 and then covid shut everything down for two years. Dick started having health problems though not from covid and they worked in the studio less and less. We last saw Dick and Kathy in November. He was looking a bit frail but in good spirits. Dick went on hospice care Tuesday, September 9th at home and took his last breath the following Saturday in his 90th year. 

We owe Dick a lot, not only for his friendship but for his generous support and all the work he did to promote not only his and Kathy's work but our work and that of other local glass artists as well.

Fly high Dick. You will be missed.

 

a birthday with old friends, monster rose bush tamed

Sunday I vowed to myself to stay off social media and focus my attention on happier things or at least things that need attending to. The county lifted the burn ban Thursday so torching the burn pile was on the agenda. Also make more progress on the book I’m reading. Maybe put my sewing machine away even though I could start on the skirt hidden in the fabric I bought for that purpose over a year ago and maybe start a new watercolor. 

Saturday we went to visit our friend Gene who lives in Hockley with his partner Brian. It was Gene’s 77th birthday and they were having a gathering of friends. Gene is my second oldest friend. I met him in the second half of 1977. Sarah was still an infant and I was going around to the few stained glass supply businesses trying to make contacts for if they ever had anyone asking about etched glass. One such business told me to try Gene’s little stained glass studio he had with two other guys so I went there and introduced myself. Gene went out on his own shortly after and we’ve been friends ever since. We did the Renaissance Festival together for about 6 years early in both our careers, we collaborated on projects now and then, put on exhibitions together, started the Houston Glass Artists Association, we supported each other in many ways and became lifelong friends. This picture, taken in 1978 of Marc and I and our baby daughter Sarah and Gene, was taken in Gene’s studio for an article about us in a local little publication as I recall.

You might remember that when Gene and Brian decided to leave Houston he moved the contents of his studio into our shop for storage while he had his house moved, got a well and septic installed, fixed the house up, built the private deck out front, and finally, finished out the interior of the metal building erected for his studio, a process that took about three years. His place in the piney woods is so gorgeous, everything he does is done artistically, even his yard tools behind the studio are hung artfully. The man has an incredible touch, very serene with plantings and fountains scattered about on his acre, a small pond, bird feeders, a garden. He built a sweet little greenhouse for his tropicals and orchids and he did it, does it all himself, with found material and objects. He’s amazing.

So it was a nice gathering seeing friends we haven’t seen since our last open house at Dick and Kathy’s glass blowing studio right before covid. Bill and Larry for whom I did my very first etched glass commission were there, Dick and Kathy who were very involved in the arts and who were instrumental in dragging us our of our cave and into the light of the public, various other artists we have known and associated with over the years like Liz, Lesley, Michael, and Daniel.

And when we left I stuffed the car with 6 huge bags of pine needles, had to lay down the back seats to get them all in, to put around my azaleas instead of the pine bark mulch I’ve had to use.

Sunday I did not read, did not sew, did not start a new painting but I did stay off social media. My grandson Mikey came and got the original heavy plastic formed stairs that came with Pam’s house that we never got rid of after Rocky built the little front porch and steps on the house to use for the travel trailer he and Audra and Paisleigh are living in. While he was here he torched the burn pile for me. Since I had been waiting to heavily prune the monster rose bush over there until we could burn I got my baby chain saw and worked for the next hour and a half. The days of the monster rose bush’s unrestrained growth are over. What is left is about one fifth or one sixth of what was. No before picture of course.

Trees and wild grapevine and virginia creeper had grown up in the solid thatch and had to be cut out. I’m going to keep it pruned and cleared from the ground so that Joe can mow and trim under it. I tried to find a recent picture but to no avail, apparently I didn't keep any of the pictures I took of it this year. This is what it looked like two years ago when I pruned enough of the bottom out so that I could get under there and clear out the trees and virginia creeper and had gotten even bigger. 

Later I spread out three of the bags of pine needles. Still have the other azaleas to do but they can wait until next weekend.

The sky Friday evening.

blast from the past

My last river trip working as a guide was October 2002. The last time I was in a canoe on the water was an overnight on the Colorado River as a guest on a trip the following spring. My first canoe trip with Don Greene's Whitewater Experience was on the Rio Grande Memorial Day weekend May 1991, the 3 day wilderness canoe camping trip through Boquillas Canyon in Big Bend that later became the trip I guided on four times a year.

My second canoe trip was 5 days on the Pecos River in the fall of 1991, also as a guest and I was hooked. Nineteen ninety two was a busy year for us in the studio and so I wasn't able to go on any trips but in '93 I went on the Memorial Day weekend Boquillas Canyon trip again and at the end Charles, one of the guides, asked me, well, Ellen, when are you going to become a guide and with the encouragement of the rest of the guide staff I did. I signed up for a Red Cross first aid and CPR class during the summer and Labor Day weekend I went on the Boquillas trip as a helper. In February '94 I took the Advanced Wilderness First Aid class that Don sponsored every other year and got my guide certification in March and worked three trips that year and it just ballooned after that. Working trips on the Rio Grande (Boquillas Canyon, Lower Canyons, Mariscal Canyon), the Colorado, and Buffalo Bayou day trips in Houston, private trips on the Brazos, the Pecos, the Rio Grande (Boquillas and Santa Elena), the Guadeloupe and the San Marcos in the Hill country. I took lessons and assisted others in giving lessons. I eventually acquired a 16' canoe, a pedestal play boat (an open canoe, rounded on the bottom, with a pedestal that you sit on while kneeling, strapped in across your thighs, the boat becomes part of your body responding to hip movements as well as a paddle), and a kayak.

I'm a little fuzzy about when I first met John, could have been the second trip I took through Boquillas Canyon in '93 if he was on guide staff for that trip or maybe the Labor Day trip, I'm pretty sure it was sometime in '93 though. At any rate he became a very close friend and over the years we worked together most every trip and took private trips with other friends as well as many weekends up in the Hill Country. John helped see me through a very rough time in my marriage when I wasn't sure if Marc and I would make it. He listened to me talk, he provided me with some safe time away doing something I really enjoyed, was never inappropriate, and helped me hone my paddling skills and later when he and Elise were going through a rough patch I was able to return the favor.

At some point Elise joined the guide staff and he and Elise hit it off and eventually married and even later Marc joined. But all good things come to an end. Don's health started to fail, drought conditions were pretty severe in Big Bend and not enough water to float a raft and in some cases a canoe. He stopped doing the open to the public trips, the last trip I did was a 5 day private trip through Boquillas Canyon which may very well have been his last outfitted trip out there. My guide friends scattered; John and Elise moved to Tennessee in 2004, Charles and Renee moved to Rochester NY, Dee moved to Utah, and the rest we just drifted apart though I'm still in touch with Charles and Renee and John and Elise.

John and Elise are both retired and now they RV around the country in their Airstream and were staying the weekend at the RV park on the beach in Matagorda on their way to San Antonio to see their youngest grandchild for the first time and then on to points west so I headed down on Sunday to spend the day with them. I really really enjoyed it. It was...comfortable and really wonderful to see them again.

I know I have a lot of pictures of John and Elise though towards the end I stopped taking cameras on our trips. These are a few pictures that floated to the top via a cursory rummage through some of the pictures I took over the years. None of them do my friends or the places or the experiences justice. And as for the quality, they are pictures of pictures because I'm too lazy to scan them.

John, Boquillas Canyon

Marc, Elise, John on the Pecos

John and Dee, Rio Grande

John and Elise, not sure if this is Boquillas or the Pecos

Marc and I, John and Elise, Dee and Bob putting in for a week long Pecos River trip.

when friends meet for the first time

I have known Kathy Barnard's work, we have known each other's work, for decades, I have admired hers, been a bit envious, loved her aesthetic and style and skill, looked closely to see if some of it would rub off on me but we never met since she worked out of Kansas City MO and I worked out of Houston.

We started communicating a little bit a few years ago via FB (her page) and earlier in the year we discussed getting together when she would be in San Antonio for the Stained Glass Association's annual conference in June. How far are you from San Antonio, she asked.

So it turns out, we are friends who just hadn't met face to face yet. I had offered her to stay with us but also gave her the contact info for a nearby motel because you never know how these things will go but when she drove up Sunday afternoon I walked out to greet her at her car and she opened the door and there was my friend who I hadn't seen in years. It was like that, lots of hugs. We talked etched glass and work and life stories and stayed up late and just hung out. Kathy spent two nights and got on the road back home Tuesday morning with us promising to get together again in the future.

Kathy's shop is much like ours, or was when we were doing architectural etched glass except that we were working out of a jumped up garage and she works out of her huge studio building and she also does stained glass and small items, glassware and tableware and ornaments and panels. She had brought four small panels for the display area of the conference that were so sweet. 

           

    

She asked to buy one of my small pieces before she left but I wouldn't let her instead telling her to send me something of hers in exchange. So she's going to make me a piece with one of the little mice with wings.

rain, yay! rain, boo!

I dropped my friend Helen off at the close airport, the one that's only an hour away, yesterday. It was a great visit though we didn't do much besides just hang out for a few days; 

nosed around a couple of the shops, bought the paint for the little bathroom, rented a movie, played with the dog, made a pie.

We are finally getting some rain! In fact it rained lightly off and on the whole time she was here. It's hurricane season once again and I still haven't got all the repairs done from last year. There's a storm system in the Gulf which was supposed to bring us 4 to 5 inches of rain over as many days which didn't happen so now they are saying 8 to 10 inches over the next several days and yesterday the general area between Houston and us just got pounded off and on. Drove through some of that heavy rain on the way to the airport, you know, the kind where even the fast speed on the wipers are useless and you can barely see the car in front of you and just forget about the lane markers. Fortunately it was only about 10 minutes or so. Well, at least until the drive home. Didn't hit any hard rain coming back and stopped at Costco for a few things and gas and they had a great recliner for the back bedroom for just $200 but I'm not buying any furniture for there until all the work is done and then between there and home through Fort Bend county which is under heavy construction with those barriers on both sides that give you zero wiggle room and 18 wheelers hauling ass beside you it was mostly through that heavy blinding rain. But I made it home safely and Marc came out to the car with the umbrella to get me. Hopefully we are getting all this rain at the right time to ensure a good pecan crop this fall since the last three years have been pretty pitiful.

So now I'm sitting here wondering where the hell Rocky is. He was going to work Saturday and Sunday and this week too if I didn't mind while my guest was here (I didn't). He did work on Saturday but was gone by the time I got back from the airport with Helen. He had finished everything he could do til I got back and I haven't seen him since. Well, it was Father's Day on Sunday so I guess he gets a pass for that but I'm ready to be done and I think it would only take a dedicated week. OK, so I talked to Rocky and there's not much he can do with this high humidity since grout or thin-set or texture won't dry properly and everything that can be done involves one of those three so as soon as we have a dryer day he'll be here.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get my studio room straightened up, things hung like this sweet little watercolor Helen did and gave me 

and birdhouses repaired (they all need perches) and hung, 

but it's one of those days that makes me just want to sit around and read. Not currently raining but totally overcast and heavily humid and wet outside and the couch looks comfy and I have two books on my side table.

a visit from the land of Blog

House clean, mostly, by Wednesday evening, still need to do the floors and wipe down the kitchen cabinets which maybe I'll do this weekend. It's so sparkly! So, ready for Joanne's and Laura's visit Thursday when Bill the plumber and Rocky descended on the house yesterday morning. Bill wasn't supposed to get to me til next week at the earliest but Wednesday afternoon Rocky dropped by to say Bill had had a cancellation and slipped me in the open slot. Water off, water on, water off, water on, water off (I'm hoping it's on by the time my guests arrive). Marc asks how long til the water is on again, Bill hollers up to Rocky in the attic...you almost done up there, the man has to take a shit. So water back on and they actually finish up and are gone before Joanne and Laura arrive.

gone are the old galvanized pipes replaced with flexible plastic tubing

And the weather also cooperated, the big rainstorm with attendant lightning and thunder (and a trembling dog) during the night gone by morning leaving us a cooler but nicely warm day with a blue sky and flowers in the yard intact.

I don't remember how long I've been reading Joanne's blog, Cup On The Bus, but it's been years. Joanne is a small feisty woman in her 70s who took on raising three of her grandchildren, rescuing them from certain dismal futures, the last of which is Laura still in residence, the other two having gone on to college and their adult lives. For some unknown reason, Joanne and Laura decided to take a road trip from Ohio to Texas during Laura's spring break to visit Joanne's cousin and a commenter on her blog and me. Her cousin and Rose live outside Dallas which is a near 5 hour drive from here and they arrived around noon.

This is the third meet up I've had with fellow bloggers, people I have read for years and feel like we are good friends but still, you never know how these things are going to go and so I was a little anxious. Silly since the other two meet ups were like seeing old friends after a long absence and meeting Joanne and Laura was exactly the same.

After lunch at the house I showed off my work, we checked out the shop, did a little driving tour of this Podunk town, and then sat out in the big back yard enjoying the weather and talked and talked and talked until it was time for dinner. 

16 year old Laura entertained herself wandering in and out of our conversation 

picking up rocks and looking through the pots of seashells which she was really interested in that sit outside having told her to pick what she wanted to take with her and to pick one of the glass totems scattered about the yard for their garden as well.

I had invited my sister to go to dinner with us so 6ish we went to get her and Laura took pictures of my sister's extensive shell collection acquired during the 5 years she and her husband lived in the family beach house before we sold it. When we dropped her off after dinner she had us wait a moment and came back out with a 4” spiral shell and a shark's tooth for Laura. Joanne told her she made out big time or, as we say down here I said, you made out like a bandit. Bandit?, Laura queries. Yeah, you're making off with all the goods. 

So back to the house, Joanne and Laura headed back to their hotel and off early this morning for their long drive to get home in time for Laura to get to school on Monday and Joanne to go play cards with the Methodists.

Once again I have a good friend who lives very far away. Would that she and I lived closer and could get together regularly.

anxious days and sleepless nights

I've been sleepless for two nights. Or mostly sleepless. Probably around four hours or less a night, if someone was paying attention which this someone is not. I only know that I wake up at some point and then am mostly awake until dawn when, sometimes, I can grab a couple more hours. I've been pretty good lately about getting myself back to sleep after I wake up but not so the last two nights if I managed to sleep at all. My body has been on alert, mind whirling, adrenaline coursing amid fight or flight.

Sounds like something serious is going on, right? Nope, just faced with putting my money where my mouth is.

Last late October I got an email from a friend about spending the month of May in Portugal with another friend and some assorted strangers and did I want to join in, to which I replied with an enthusiastic yes, I could do two weeks in Portugal, which grew to three weeks in my mind as time progressed. Three weeks away from home on the other side of half the country and the Atlantic Ocean with friends. Well, two days ago I got the information, two weeks in Porto and two weeks in Lisbon, and it was time to fully commit to days I will be there and buy my tickets. You'd think that would be easy, right?, especially since I had every intention of going; that I wouldn't suffer two days of anxiety before I could commit to dates and buy the fucking tickets. But I did, and I did, finally, and I will leave on May 1^st and return on May 23^th. Fourteen nights in Porto and 7 nights in Lisbon.

I know where some of the anxiety stemmed from but now I think a lot of it was the thought of being gone for three weeks, away from my nest where everything is comfy and reliable and I speak the language. I could barely choke down half a hamburger for lunch yesterday so I finally sat down and selected dates and found the flights and bought the tickets. Within 30 minutes I was already more relaxed. It helped that as luck would have it I will be taking the same flight out of Toronto as my friend and we will be arriving together.

And now committed, I slept well last night.

party 80s style

Service over, we all mingle over lunch and catch up until time to head back to the hotel and free time until the party that evening. Marc and I went to visit the gallery there, which fortunately was in the general area, that has some of our work, Kittrell/Riffkind. They have joined forces with another fine art gallery in the area and their new space is really nice and they have some excellent work in there and we had a really nice visit with Barbara.

So this part of the family is Marc's older sister, same mother different father, Lisa and her 4 kids, twins Jeff and Greg and Andy and then Carly. Carter is Jeff's son. They are all as Jeff said, 'wannabe comedians', or something to that effect and there is always entertainment and it will always be fun. And so the 80's themed dinner deejay dance floor photo booth open bar party commenced so dinner and dancing and drinking and utilizing the photo booth and being with sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins and sons and daughters and grandchildren and friends happened.

the Bar Mitzvah boy

Cousins - Andy and my daughter Sarah. Andy went to law school, became a lawyer like his twin older brothers, and then decided he didn't want to be a lawyer and opened a very successful Vodka bar with his two partners in Tulsa OK.

a hula hoop contest

the Cagle clan

Sunday morning all the out of towners convened over at Jeff and Marianne's for brunch, swimming, and zip line.

yes, that's me

heart to heart

Last Thursday I made the 2 and a half hour drive to Austin to meet up with my friend and spirit sister Reya who lives in Washington DC. Reya, massage therapist, reiki master, shaman, was in Austin for a workshop on bones to further her education and ability to help her clients. I drove to the little 'carriage house' as she called it what we call garage apartments where we came face to face for the first time, both of us wearing pants, t-shirts, and canvas shoes, wild haired and no make-up.

“Reya”, I told her, “you are so much bigger than your pictures”. I wasn't referring to her physical size. We hugged hard and long and started in as if we had known each other all our lives. Maybe we have, this life, past lives, we knew each other.

The neighborhood where she was staying reminded me a lot of my old city neighborhood before the gentrification, only more affluent. The house had pecan trees front and back and a fabulous crop of nuts lay on the ground. I couldn't believe it that they weren't collecting them. It was all I could do to not start picking them up myself.

It was lunch time when I arrived so we walked a short seven blocks or so, stopping repeatedly to take pictures, talk, hold hands. Of course we talked about the election but we didn't dwell on it as we had so many other things to say and stories to tell.

After lunch we had coffee at the carriage house where she reikied the mark of the chicken though she said it didn't need it as the energy was moving off to other parts of my body, though I swear that last hard numb part really feels much better, and continued to talk until it was time for her to prepare for and walk to her class.

It was tough to leave the warmth of her energy and the pool of serenity that we found in the midst of all the angst of this election.


edit: I guess I neglected to say that I met Reya through blogging and while she doesn't blog anymore we remain connected via FB.

doing what I don't do

I don't do commissions in the pate de verre. That said, I'm doing a commission in the pate de verre. So, for the better part of last week, well, for the better part of the last two or three weeks, I've been working on model making though for the last week I've been working on a day lily flower as a gift for someone. A friend of hers contacted me months ago...months!...that she would like to purchase one of my small bowls for this person who has told her how much she loves my work. Of course, I didn't have any of the small bowls and you might remember earlier this year when I agreed to make three for the gallery show in Florida that I swore...swore!...I would never do one of them again. And I'm not. But, I did agree to make a piece for this person however it would be something that I was currently doing. Hence the flower, a ming porcelain day lily, one of her favorites.

As it turns out, the person the gift is for also happens to be the person who I have known the longest in my life outside of family, which is the only reason I agreed to do it. And by longest, I mean my whole life. We were born 6 months apart to mothers who lived on the same block and we became childhood friends and while years will go by with no contact, we always manage, so far, to reconnect. And because it is for Anne is the only reason I agreed to do the commission. It was supposed to be for her birthday which was last month. She might get it for Christmas.

I won't go into the details of Anne's life. Suffice to say that she should have died several times over. The most recent life threatening ailment required a heart transplant. She had to live with an artificial heart pump for months before she got her new heart and she has become a source of support and advocacy for others in the same situation. Hence the request for the gift.

Now it's ready to have the mold made.