wherein I'm reminded how much work it is to have work

first mountain wall panel, with black cloth behind and stencil still covering the clear portion, uncertain over whether or not it's finished

Three days in the shop is about all we can take. This week was not as productive as we have been. It was cold for one thing and I don't work well when I'm cold. Then we realized we had left the stencil material for the last panel at the other shop so there was a delay while we went back and got that. Then we dithered for most of the day over whether or not the first panel was finished. We touched it up about four times (it has to be incremental because there is no erasing, if a tone gets too dense, it stays that way). Finally we just took it out and removed the dusty protective film on the back and still dithered about it so I barely got started on the last stencil. That was day 1.

Day 2 in the shop, getting adjusted to the cold, we draped black velvet behind the first panel and could see very clearly then, finally, that it still needed some touching up but the next panel was already in the sandblast booth so we recovered the clear side with the protective plastic film and Marc got started on the carving for panel 2 while I worked on the stencil for panel 4. Ah, but then another delay. The regulator on the sandblaster, which hadn't been working well from the get go finally just quit altogether and had to be replaced.

Day 3 wasn't much better. The people from Invesco are very excited about this project and decided that they wanted to document its making so at times a guy comes out to the shop and takes pictures and short stretches of video while we work. That's kind of fun and we will have a great promotional tool at the end, but it does slow things down while he is there. And then I had to leave to go pick up our cast stuff that was left at our home town gallery as they are retiring at the end of the year so by the time I got back, I didn't have enough time to finish the last stencil. We wanted to get all the carving done on the second panel this week, but didn't accomplish that either.

We're trying to get done by the middle of December. It seemed doable last week. Now, Thanksgiving is next week and we will only work for two days in the shop but we should be able to get caught up and finish the first two panels. That will give us 3 weeks to do the sandblasting on the last two panels. Still seems doable.

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Making a living as an artist is hard work. Not just the brain part where you are thinking of what to do and how to do it or the promo part where you are calling people and making presentations to get work but the actual physical part of fabricating the project. I'm always amazed at how many people don't actually comprehend that.

I have a proposal out and it has been accepted though no money has changed hands so far. This is for a project that is for 4 panels 30” x 40” with very specific imagery, photographs of people that they didn't send until the end of October, that to tell the truth I'm not really sure how I'm going to manipulate the images in a way that I can actually do the work, and the client is moving into the space mid-December. I explained to them that we were quite busy on another project and we would not be able to start until after the first of the year at the earliest.

Yesterday I got an email asking me if I thought I could have them installed by the end of the second week of January. Seriously? They think I can manipulate the images, do the full size art work, get the materials, do the fabrication, and have them installed in two weeks? It'll take me longer than that just to get the art work ready.

This is the part of having work and being busy that I don't like. Unreal expectations on the part of the clients. Parties scheduled before the work is commissioned. Attitudes that art is not really work and we ought to be able to just knock this stuff out. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they truly don't know what's involved in producing a one of a kind piece of art.

But two weeks? Really?

balance

I stopped shelling pecans about two weeks ago. My hands just couldn't take it, cutting stencils for 3 days and shelling pecans for 4 days, and since I already have 10 pounds worth of shelled pecans, I figured I would wait til I finish all the stencils for the mountain wall.

I'm still picking them up though, almost three boxes worth and still when you look up in the trees you can see pecans.

One day, several weeks after the pecans began to fall, when I leaned down to pick up a nut, I felt a twinge in my back. I'm right handed and I carry the bucket in my left hand leaning down and slightly sideways to pick up the nuts with my right hand.

After doing this over and over for several weeks, my body was telling me that it was getting out of balance. So I decided to switch the bucket to my right hand and pick up pecans with my left hand. Voila! No pain. Only my right handedness is so entrenched that I would notice after a while that I had, unconsciously, switched the bucket back to my left hand.

That first week, I had to make a conscious effort to be aware of what hand I was using. After a couple of weeks, it didn't matter which hand I carried the bucket in as things had balanced themselves out so long as I periodically switched from one side to the other.

It reminded me how important balance is not only in the human body but in life.

One of the guiding principles for my life has always been 'all things in moderation' and I seemed able to apply it towards all things except my work. When I am working on a project, I tend to become totally absorbed and work for hours on end with no breaks.

As long as I was young with a resilient body, I never suffered any ill effects from this tendency. About 12 years ago though, we were working on a job that consisted of 10 panels approx. 5' x 6' each that made up two 25' long walls. It was a beautiful job and we were elated to be done and have it installed. After months of working intently, intensely, and non-stop, I was finally able to relax. And a week later my back clenched up so badly that I was all but immobilized. I had, for months, been stressing muscles, holding positions in one direction, without ever engaging the opposing muscles and now I was paying the price.

I'd like to say that after a week or so all was well but it was not and I feared it was perhaps a permanent injury. Sitting, standing, bending, lifting anything was extremely painful. Working in the yard was impossible for more than 5 minutes. It did, over about a year, get incrementally better but it did not heal until I joined a gym and worked on strengthening my core muscles, front and back.

So.

I was out there a couple of weeks ago, feeling pressed for time, a little stressed. There is so much I needed (and still need) to get accomplished by the end of this month, and by the middle of December as well. That's our target date for finishing up the mountain wall.

I was feeling guilty and thinking, as I wandered around enjoying the temperate weather and idly picking up the fallen nuts, that I should quit wasting my time and get in there and get to work on the waxes or filling the molds or whatever particular task awaited me.

Fortunately, my previous thoughts about balance reminded me that this activity was just as important as the intensely focused activity of work in regard to my personal and physical well being.

I have tried to keep, in the conscious part of my brain, the warning of Spider Woman when she was teaching Wandering Girl how to weave:

"But there is one danger that you must always be aware of. The Navajo People must walk the Middle Way, which means that they must respect boundaries and try to keep their lives in balance. They should not do too much of anything. You must promise not to weave for too long, or a terrible thing will happen to you." from The Magic Of Spider Woman by Lois Duncan

For Weaving Woman nee Wandering Girl, that was becoming trapped in her most perfect blanket. For me it was a grave injury to my body.

I was led to this story, I believe, by Spider Woman after she made herself known to me on a vacation through the Navaho Nation several years after we finished the job that got me so out of balance.

It was one of those light bulb moments.

moving forward

We've been nose to the grindstone around here for the last month, in the city during the week, so this is the first opportunity for me to express myself about the election.

The election is over and Obama won his second term. I admit I was nervous and concerned, fearful even at times, but after I voted early, I tried to put it out of my mind. After all, I had done everything I could by voting.

We are happy and relieved that Obama was reelected. In fact, this is 'no whine' week around here in celebration. We flipped back and forth between the election results and Escape From New York with long time heart throb Kurt Russell, staying up late enough to know that Obama had in fact beat the pants off Romney/Ryan.

I have been reading with interest Republican reactions to their defeat. Stunned disbelief pretty much sums it up. Lots of trying to understand what went wrong and the things they are coming up with are so far off the mark it's no wonder they lost.

No matter. I'll help them out.

It could have been the over 600 outright lies the R/R team told about Obama.

It could have been Romney's refusal to show that he was in fact a tax paying citizen.

It could have been Romney's refusal to discuss his past as governor or his stint as Olympic Committee chairman in Utah or his business dealings at Bain, his lack of any kind of plan or details to back up the things he said he would and could do, and most especially his repeated refrain of 'trust me'.

It could have been their desire to defund public education.

It could have been their intention to get rid of the Great Society's safety net at a time when so many people are still out of work or the jobs they have won't pay a living wage much less provide benefits.

It could have been their complete lack of understanding that older Americans deserve the benefits that they paid for all of their working lives.

It could have been their refusal to return the tax rate to pre-Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest among us, a hike that would not affect the wealthy's lifestyles one little bit.

It could have been the fact that they sold themselves and the country to corporations and the ultra-wealthy whose only goal is greater profits at any cost.

It could have been their intention to give more tax cuts to the wealthy and return to the economic policies that got us in this mess in the first place.

It could have been their intention to immediately repeal the Affordable Care Act.

It could have been their desire to force government control over the reproductive rights of women.

It could have been their attitude that women were second class citizens and didn't deserve equal pay.

It could have been their desire for Latinos to engage in 'self-deportation'.

It could have been their belief that the LGBT segment of society didn't deserve equal civil rights.

It could have been their arrogance and obvious and utter contempt for anyone who wasn't a rich, white, hetero, christian male.

It could have been that they think half the population of this country are lazy shiftless moochers.

It could have been their complete lack of understanding what the working poor and the struggling middle class have to endure on a daily basis.

It could have been their flagrant attempts to restrict the voting rights of the segment of the population that generally votes against them.

It could have been their desire to take this country back to a time of social repression where the white christian hetero male reigned supreme.

It could have been their desire and attempts to turn this country into a right wing christian theocracy.

It could have been their complete and total extremism to the point of marginalizing the moderates in their own party.

It could have been and was all that and more.

Republicans are beating their chests and wailing the loss of 'traditional' America, they are losing their country, America is done for.

What?! Like their opinions on marriage and the family and patriotism, they think that they and only they know what that is.

This may come as a shock to them then when I say that far right wing republicanism does not get to define America, it does not get to define patriotism, it does not get to define what women will be allowed to do, it does not get to define marriage, the family, or even 'christian' values.

America is moving into the future with a true diversity of population and inclusiveness and continued stonewalling and obstructionism by the Republican party will only make them obsolete.

money...keep your hands off my stash

One of the contentions in this election is the 'redistribution' of wealth in this country. According to the conventional wisdom the wealthy take that to mean that the poor want to gather the town folk with torches and pitchforks and storm the bank accounts of the rich, although the rich didn't seem to mind so much the redistribution of wealth from the hands of the middle class to theirs.

Personally, I don't know anybody in the working poor, the working class, or the struggling middle class that feels that way. We don't really resent the rich for having money but we don't like the well being of the rest of the population being held down by the unrestrained greed for profit at any cost because that cost is born by the lower classes.

So, yeah, everyone wants to be rich, to not have to worry or struggle but regardless of whatever myth you grew up with, there is no such thing as a level playing field in this country. The kid who is born in the barrio or slum to a mother addicted to drugs with an absent father, who very likely is a gang member, has so much more to overcome than the kid born into a wealthy family that never knows what it means to go to bed hungry night after night and while they both have access to public education, the poor neighborhoods have poor schools while the rich neighborhoods have rich schools. It doesn't really matter how brilliant the poor kid is if he or she is hungry and abused, if the schools he or she has access to aren't well funded. There is no escape when these children have to drop out of school to take care of their younger siblings.

But, back to being rich. How much is enough? At what point does wealth stop being sought after or acquired for ease of living and start being greed? If, as conservatives say, the government can't just manufacture money, then there must be a finite amount of money in the economy.

If there is a finite amount of money in the economy, what purpose does it serve to hoard millions and billions of dollars? Obviously, if you are making 10 or 20 million dollars a year you left need behind long ago. You've bought your mansions around the globe, you've got a private jet and a yacht or two and still you are making more money every year than you can possibly spend.

So the hoarding begins. It's money for money's sake and it seems the more a person has, the more fearful they are that someone wants to take it away from them so they hide it in off-shore accounts. How is that being patriotic?

If there is a finite amount of money in the economy, how does the hoarding of great wealth, the removal of that money from circulation, benefit the country as a whole? If the people who have the money aren't spending it, then there is less in circulation and less that is available to the rest of the population.

This country saw a massive movement of money in the last decade from the hands of the people in the population that spend it into the hands of the 1 or 2 percent of the population that don't spend it. This hoarding of money by the very few has impoverished the nation.

I think there does need to be a redistribution of wealth in this country but not by robbing the rich. The rich need to put that money back into circulation instead of continuing to accumulate it for no other reason than that.

A billionaire who thinks nothing of donating millions to some charity balks at donating the same money to the government, money that could go to funding our schools or to rebuilding our infrastructure. Instead they see it as a virtue to avoid paying the taxes they legally owe, taxes that would not impact their standard of living one bit if they actually paid them.

I read an article today that talked about how all those billions sitting unused is preventing entrepreneurs and small businesses that want to expand from getting financing. The capitalists seem uninterested in capitalism. The people who have the money to invest in the country and the economy aren't doing it, perhaps because they are personally unaffected by the recession.

I read another article recently about a study on compassion. The conclusion was that the more you have the less compassionate you seem to be. People with little will willingly share whatever they have with other people who have less but the ones with more than they can possibly use, hoard it and live in fear that someone is trying to take it away from them.

What the working poor want, what the struggling middle class wants are not free handouts but jobs and decent wages for the work they do and some sense of security that the investments they make in their retirement funds won't be lost by Wall Street, sucked into the hoard of money some billionaire already has. What the country needs is some investment in its infrastructure which is crumbling.

I don't think that's too much to ask for from the people who gained so much from this country.

confederate rose in bloom

Another week in the city working on the mountain wall which leaves me little time to compose and post (or read and comment) especially since my remaining time is being spent trying to get this dozen or so small pieces cast for the open house coming up the end of November/first of December.

So.

I've posted a few pictures of the confederate rose that has been in full bloom the last couple of weeks. I've been taking so many pictures of it because it has been exceptionally beautiful this year. Amazing what a little rain will do.

I leave you with these.

touching the earth

When I went to bed Friday night the fan was on and the windows were open. Sometime in the hours before dawn, a cold front blew in. Roused from sleep, I reached down to the foot of the bed and pulled the quilt up. At some point I became aware of Marc getting up to turn off the fan and again to close the windows.

It was overcast, cold, and blustery all day. 57˚ at the time I wrote this with a predicted low of 49˚ for that night, it was a winterish day. Today, Saturday, it is still overcast, cold (currently 50˚) and blowy. It looks like it's clearing up though.

I've been in the habit of picking up pecans once a day, getting anywhere from half of a gallon sized bucket's worth to a full one, but Friday was the first chance I had since Monday. I picked up two full buckets and then later, when I went out to water the garden, I stuffed my pockets full to bulging with the ones that were in my path that had fallen since. My one full box of pecans has become two.

I've abandoned my careful criss-crossing of the yard. I'm bored with that. I used to think of it as my pecan labyrinth. Lately I cover the yard in a more snaky fashion, wandering whither I go but eventually covering the entire field of interest. I think. It's still a labyrinth of sorts, I guess, though it has no structure at all.

I still contemplate stuff while I walk and I look forward to it not only for the goodness of the pecans that I'm collecting but also for the contact with the earth. I walk barefoot letting that energy flow up and into my feet. I need direct contact with the earth. I guess that's why I like to garden, to get out there and dig.

This lack of contact with the earth, the trend of living ever cleaner and more sterile lives, lives that are spent more and more indoors completely cut off from the planet that we sprang from, is, in my pet theory, one of the main reasons the human race has gone insane. And surely we must be insane considering all the damage we do to the ecosystem that we depend on for our very lives. Not to mention all the damage we do to each other.

Walking barefoot, digging in the dirt, wandering the woods and prairies, paddling the rivers, sleeping on the ground under the stars, these are the times when I have felt most serene. Being in touch with the earth, being covered in the earth, breathing the earth, absorbing the life and energy and magnetism of the planet keeps me centered. It's why, I guess, whenever I am unhappy or angry, my first impulse is to go outdoors, to let all that negative emotion drain away.

So while I am not sad to see the intense heat of summer fade away, I am less than excited about the cold winter days to come when I must, finally, for comfort's sake, put on shoes and limit my time outdoors.

poop...literally

This adventure in country living continues.

Being out in the county as we are, we are not hooked up to the sewer system of the town so all our waste is taken care of by a septic system. In case you are unaware of what a septic system is (I, myself, only had a vague idea), it is the means by which your body's waste products are dealt with as well as the water from your sinks and bath.

There are several types of systems. Our elderly neighbor Frank of the Bountiful Garden, who built his house himself lo those many years ago, has a single pipe that goes from his brick 'tank' and loops around the house. My sister had, when she lived farther out in the county, a single tank with a drain field.

We have a three tank system, three 500 gallon tanks that are buried in the Little Back Yard. The first two tanks contain the effluvium and the third pumps it out to the drain field which in our case is twelve 70' perforated lines. That's the back half of the Big Back Yard.

We had no idea how long it had been since the system was 'serviced', a euphemism for pumping all the shit infused water out, so now that we are employed again (for the moment at least) we decided it might be a good idea to 'get 'er done' as it were. We've lived here full time for a little over 2 ½ years, owned the place for about the same length of time before moving permanently, it was vacant for a year before we bought it, and I think the system was put in five years prior to that so I think maybe it had never been serviced since it was put in.

Anyway, these guys showed up at 7:30 Saturday morning. I had arranged for them to come but I guess I should have asked what time they thought they might arrive. Fortunately, Marc had just gotten up and hearing the commotion outside, I did too.

the Little Back Yard

the truck

getting the hose in place

emptying tank 3, finding tank 2

tank 2

sucking up tank 2

finding tank 1

ewwww

sucking up tank 1

covering it all back up

They hauled away 1200 gallons of shit infused water. Took them about an hour from the time they drove up til the time they drove off.

When we asked about how often we should have this done, he sort of hedged his answer.

It depends on how much you generate, he says.

I loved that.

Apparently, people 'generate' different amounts of shit depending on many factors including your size and what kinds of food you eat.

But basically, every 5 to 8 years so I guess we're good to go for a while.

Generate. That still amuses me.