Merry Yuletide

The longest night is done and the light and the sun are reborn. Eat, drink, and be merry!

This event has been celebrated with feasts and festivals in cultures the world over into antiquity.

My ancestry is weighted with Germanic and Nordic lines and Yuletide was the pagan Germanic/Northern European mid-winter festival that lasted anywhere from the solstice to the new year or mid-November to mid-January.

People gathered for the festival bringing food and ale. Livestock, which often starved in the fields during the winter, was sacrificed and the meat boiled and shared. Toasts were made to the gods, to the king, for good harvests and peace, and to the ancestors.

Wandering groups would go door to door singing songs of good cheer and blessings and were rewarded with cups of cider or ale.

Bonfires were lit and a large log or whole tree was brought into the houses and burned in the hearths to provide light and heat, representing the return of warm days and growth during the long festival. Evergreens, symbols of life since they stayed green and 'alive' all year, were decorated with fruits and small ornaments depicting the gods and boughs were brought into the house as was mistletoe, a symbol of fertility, the continuation of life.

Solstice was the time of the Wild Hunt when Odin would ride through the sky leading a hunting party on his horse. Children would set out their boots by the door filled with hay and other food for his horse and small gifts of fruit and nuts were left in gratitude.

If all this sounds familiar, it is because these are the ancient traditions and celebrations that have come to be associated with the celebration of Christmas. The fledgling christian church was not having much success convincing pagans and even it's early converts into abandoning it's heathen celebrations so it did what every conquering nation did. It absorbed the popular festival and rededicated it to their god.

For many of us though, it is still the pagan mid-winter festival that celebrates the end of the long nights and the coming of the light.

a major achievement

My youngest grandchild, Robin, was Bat Mitzvah last Saturday. Bat Mitzvah (Bar Mitzvah for boys) is the coming of age ceremony in Judaism which marks the celebrant as an adult in the eyes of god and the community.

Robin on the bima

They are not adults in actual growing and legal terms, but at this point in their lives and after years of study, they are old enough to know right from wrong and bad behavior is no longer excused as being too young to know better.

In Judaism, while the Rabbis generally lead the services as the very learned teachers they are, any Jewish adult can lead the community in worship and so to introduce and welcome a new adult to the congregation, the Bat/Bar Mitzvah conducts the worship service.

This is not an easy task. Robin attended special classes for 3 years twice a week and religious school once a week and in the 6 months preceding her date, that study intensifies. She not only learned about being a Jewish adult but she also learned to read Hebrew as most of the service is conducted in Hebrew.

Generally, because the congregation is so large, each Bat/Bar Mitzvah has a partner and the services Friday night and Saturday morning are divided between them but Robin's partner was going to be out of town all summer and couldn't start the intensive preparations so they gave her a different date. Which meant that Robin didn't have a partner so for her, they decided to forgo the Friday night service.

When my kids were Bat/Bar Mitzvah, they led the service for the entire congregation both days. Now, because the congregation is so large and there is a Bat/Bar Mitzvah nearly every freakin' weekend and they started getting complaints from members who just wanted a regular service on Saturday mornings, the congregation in general holds services in the Chapel while the celebrant and their family and friends hold their Saturday service in the Sanctuary.

The Torah (old testament to Christians) is read in it's entirety every three years (one third of every book every year). They start at the beginning of Genesis after Yom Kipper (Jewish New Year) and end at the end of the Days of Awe (the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipper). Every congregation no matter where in the world they are reads the same Torah portion on the same day.

And so Robin found a lesson in her Torah portion and spoke about the importance of forgiveness.

She did a great job and we are all very proud of her.

And then it was all over except for the partying!

Marc's immediate family and spouses minus 8...brothers, sister, children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, great nieces, great nephews.

ready for the party, all we need now are the guests

Robin

Robin and Thor

RobinThor

grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends

a little line dancing

her uncle's questionable taste in footwear

Autumn with her balloon headwear

dumb work stuff and a brilliant tree

It's been a very busy past two weeks, working in the city, preparing for and participating in the annual open house, and the big family event of my youngest grandgirl's Bat Mitzvah (post coming up) and I am woefully behind on visiting the blogs I read with (some sort of) regularity.

The next couple of weeks are going to be just as busy as I get the current commission finished and get all the design work I promised out by the end of the year. I also promised samples for two of the upcoming commissions but it doesn't look like that's going to happen until the first week of January.

I have been working on one job with a sketch provided by the architect, a project sketch to show the client whose house they are restoring. I usually do my own design work but the client is really adamant about me reproducing the original sketch as closely as possible.

That's fine. I don't really have a problem with that but it makes it harder. I have to translate a pencil sketch into a drawing for glass. I guess the real problem has been how far am I allowed to deviate from the architect's sketch in an attempt to make it make sense. I think I've finally got it figured out.

That couple of weeks of bitter cold weather that has put us behind in fabrication and thus these sketches turned the remaining deciduous trees that still had their leaves into colorful torches. We have a lot of evergreens here, many types of trees that never loose their foliage so we tend to get the isolated brilliantly colored tree when we get any at all.

two more amazing artists

I mentioned Kari Minnick in my last post.

One of the great things for me, having a kiln glass center here in the Houston area, is getting to meet artists, whose work I have admired, when they come in to teach a class. I'm not always able to get out there, as it is out in the Boonies, and I missed Kari when she was here last year but this year I did make it out there.

Kari creates beautiful fused glass panels using powders and frit. While her past work used some images of a recognizable nature and verses, her new work is very abstract and though I'm not much for abstract, I love Kari's work.

You can see much more of her work here.

Another artist I've had the pleasure of meeting and whose work I also love is Richard Parrish. It's been a while since Richard came to teach. He also does abstract fused glass panels and vessel forms but his technique is very different, involving kiln carving (slumping over cut out fiber paper shapes) and sandblasting.

Richard's work falls in two styles...pieces that look very geologic to me and others that remind me of woven fabric.

You can see more of Richard's work here.

Well, we are headed into the city today to work on the peacock panel and sketches and will be in residence through Saturday.

open house and other winter things

Not our best open house and if it weren't for the hosts and one of the participants, it would have been our worst with only one sale to the general public. But...for the other participants it was good to great so, good for them. I'm glad to see people buying from artists even if they aren't buying from me.

Gene Hester fused glass

 Gene and Marc

Miguel Unson fused glass

Jennifer Barnds glass bead jewelry

Lisa Klein Addison enameled jewelry

Kathy Poeppel and Dick Moiel blown glass, our hosts

Kathy and Jennifer doing a demo

So now what am I going to do with all those window/garden ornaments? Maybe I'll drill more holes and hook them all together into a long column and hang it from one of our trees. The bowls we can send to one of our galleries. The rest of the little pedestal sculptures will become gifts.

But sales aside, it was freakin' old home week for me over the weekend. Four people who I had not seen in 15 – 30 years came to the open house and the most amazing part about it is that I remembered their names! I can't even remember the names of people I see with some sort of regularity. So that was fun, getting caught up.

It was a long week in the city last week and another bitterly cold one at that. Marc got in the sandblast booth anyway for two days and worked as long as he could stand it on the peacock panel. We have to go back this week to try and get it finished. Fortunately, it's not supposed to be quite so cold.

I managed to run out to Hot Glass Houston to visit a short while with Kari Minnick who is teaching a workshop there. She is an incredible artist and her glass panels look more like paintings. More about Kari in my next post.

looking down the street in front of the city house

After Thanksgiving week and temps hovering in the 40˚s, the city looked quite winterish 

the Big Back Yard

and coming home late last night after another week of temps ranging from 30˚s to 40˚s, it is looking downright winterish. 

the Little Back Yard

The two ginkos which had held onto their leaves far longer than I would have thought, which were still greenish when we left last Wednesday, had turned completely yellow and shed most of them by the time we returned.

I'm taking the day off today but we are going to try to return to the city tomorrow to finish the peacock panel though it may be Wednesday.

And then my youngest grandgirl Robin is getting Bat Mitzvah on Saturday. Then hopefully things will settle down and I can get these sketches and samples done.

busy

Busy busy week. Busy busy month. I am always so glad when December is over. And this December is going to be worse than usual.

It starts with the annual Open House with other glass artists at our friends Dick and Kathy's glass blowing studio which is late this year. It usually falls on the 1^st weekend in December but this year the 1^st was on a Sunday and since Thanksgiving was so late this year we bumped it to the next full weekend.

The following weekend is my grandgirl Robin's Bat Mitzvah. The weekend after that, my sister goes out of town to spend christmas week with her daughter and family in Albuquerque and we get the little dogs. In there is christmas and two days later, Marcmas (if you are new around here, that's Marc's birthday and yes we are irreverent) and finally New Year's.

And in there somewhere, I have two sets of designs to do and samples to make and I just got confirmation that another proposal is ready to send us a deposit.

Fuck. I am never going to get the Erotica Botanicas finished.

Not that I am complaining. I am very happy for the commission work. For as long as we can do it.

Monday and Tuesday I got the cold work done on the three small bowls that Marc did. He loves this property and the view of the sunsets over the vacant 13 Acre Field and so he used the spectacular sunsets we get for inspiration and he did a fabulous job even if I do say so myself.

Also got the window/garden ornaments wired up for hanging last night and dug out the left over cast pieces from last year.

So now I'm trying to get everything assembled, packed, and loaded up for the work week in the shop and weekend. I have to bring my model making stuff as we are going to be 'working at our table' throughout the weekend as a sort of on-going demo.

All right. That's enough, still got plenty to do before we head to the city this afternoon.

fall reading list

This is probably my shortest list so far. Just haven't been reading as much lately. I've had my current book for 3 weeks now and am not even half way through. Just haven't been able to settle into it. Some good ones here though I think.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht – A young woman and her friend and colleague, both doctors, are en route to a small village to bring health care to the children of the orphanage when she receives a call from her grandmother informing her of her grandfather's death. Upon learning that the clinic where he went to die after keeping his cancer secret from everyone except his granddaughter, is in a nearby village, she makes the trip to collect his things. As she works with the children and observes a family dig up grape orchard looking for a body buried during the war in an effort to stop the sickness that has infected the whole family, she remembers the tales her grandfather told her of The Deathless Man and The Tiger's Wife, stories from his childhood and life that shaped the man he became, and weaves them into the narrative. The stories are full of small village peasant tales and superstitions and history and background of the characters, sort of a cross between folk tale and personal history. A good read.

The Stonecutter by Camilla Lackberg - One of the longer books I've read lately but it pulled me in early on. Two story lines, one about a young stonemason and the other about a police investigation of the murder of a young child, the daughter of someone the detective knows. It seems a simple accidental death until the results of the autopsy come in and the search for the murderer, with no leads, begins. Other crimes are uncovered during the investigation. A lot of characters are woven in and it kept me guessing until very near the end when the two story lines finally come together. It was a good story and was told well and moved at a good pace.

Runner by Thomas Perry – Jane Whitefield, now in her late 30s, makes people disappear. Or she used to until she retired 5 years ago. Now, a former runner has sent a pregnant 20 yr old to her who needs to disappear because life with the father has become too dangerous. Not only is he physically violent, she knows too much about his business dealings to be allowed to leave or live and he has sent a team of 6 to find her and bring her back. More pressure is added by his parents who have finally accepted that their son will never be the kind of man they want and have placed all their hopes on raising their grandchild, threatening their son with disownment if he doesn't get them their grandchild. Jane is kick ass and takes no prisoners and her adversaries are no match for her while they consistently underestimate her.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – Ursula is born on a snowy February day in 1910. She's early and neither the doctor nor the midwife can get there because of the snow. She has the cord wrapped around her neck and is stillborn. Ursula is born on a snowy February day in 1910. She's early but the doctor just manages to get there despite the snow and slips the cord off the baby's neck and she lives...for a short while. Ursula is born several more times before she survives infancy, dies many more times before she survives childhood. She's beginning to have feelings and dreams and so starts to try and prevent her death even though she does not yet realize that that is what she is doing. She starts experiencing deja vu. She is born and dies and is reborn immediately in the same circumstances to the same family in the same place. Through her many lives and her march through childhood and adulthood we read the same familiar passages with subtle and not so subtle changes as she grows and manages to avoid earlier pitfalls, as her life changes with her survival so the lives around her are affected. Eventually she survives WWII and one day it comes to her what the purpose of all this is, her purpose. Ursula is born on a snowy February day in 1910. She's early but the doctor just manages to get there despite the snow and slips the cord off the baby's neck and she lives... I enjoyed this story a lot. I didn't get tired of reading about the same events as the details and outcome were always different in sometimes big ways and sometimes small ways. Plus the author doesn't make us go through every event of every life. At times, Ursula is born and then jumps her straight to a young adult. It's a longish book, 500 or so pages, but it kept me engaged to the very end.

Dance For The Dead by Thomas Perry - Another Jane Whitefield novel.  Jane is half Seneca, which I don't think I mentioned about the previous book, and she draws on her heritage a lot which I like.  This book precedes the first one I read about her by more than 5 years since she is not married yet in this one.  She is called to 'disappear' an 8 yr old boy and his nanny after his parents are murdered.  Two years later, she is back to get him safely in the hands of the court when the firm that controls his inheritance tries to have him declared dead.  A simple mission that ends up getting Jane arrested and the boys two guardians killed.  On her way home she is approached by a woman who knows who Jane is and what she does and asks for her assistance in the airport.  When Jane sees the men following Mary she reluctantly agrees to help her.  The two instances finally become connected as Jane faces an opponent that seems outthink her at every turn.  He under estimates her though, and Mary as well, in the end.

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry – And another Jane Whitefield novel. A later novel that follows Runner. Jane executes a daring escape of a convicted murderer, James Shelby, from the courthouse where he had been brought to testify against the inmate who had stabbed him in the back two months previous. Innocent of murder, the real murderer is trying to get him killed and so Jane is contacted by his sister to try and save him. Before she can meet up with him at the pre-arranged location, she is accosted by two 'police officers' and kidnapped by the hired goons of the real murderer. Before she can escape, she is shot, beaten, and tortured in an attempt to find out where Shelby is. When they discover how many bounty hunters and other undesirables would like to get their hands on her they decide to auction her off to the highest bidder. She manages to escape while they are waiting for the bidder to arrive and once free, she sets out to join Shelby, picking up an abused woman trying to escape her abuser on the way. Jane is pretty ruthless herself when it comes to protecting her runners and herself and she sets a trap for those who are still pursuing them.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn – essentially a murder mystery. 30 year old Camille, a reporter for Chicago's fourth largest newspaper, is sent back to her small hometown that she escaped from to write a series of stories about the disappearance of a 10 yr. old girl nine months after the disappearance and murder of a 9 yr old girl. She shows up to stay at her mother's and step-father's house and returns to the Pandora's box that is her dysfunctional family. Dysfunctional is putting it mildly. Camille is the illegitimate product of a one night stand who doesn't even know her father's name. Her mother was immediately married off and a younger sister, Marion, is born who sickens and dies at 13, an event that the family never gets over. Camille internalizes her rejection by her mother by cutting herself. Words. Words that buzz and tingle underscoring her emotional state. Her body is covered with scars written with a knife, a compulsion she has only recently been able to resist. Camille also drinks a lot, it helps keeps her skin 'quiet'. She has another younger sister, Amma, who is 13, born after Camille left. She's ill a lot. She can also be cruel. Unable to get any information or cooperation from the police, Camille uses her connections to her past to get the story and in the process learns some very disturbing things. The wrap up of the murders at the end of the book happens fairly quickly because this isn't about the murders so much as it is about this family in this small town. Camille does, I think, begin to get her redemption at the end. At least I hope so.