The View From Kalamazoo

I love Makita grinders (I still have fond memories of 4-foot lovely waves of sparks off of steel. ooOOoohh) but I do not look like this when using one.

I laughed so hard I coughed up lung gunk. (I hate asthma + a bad cold/blossoming sinus infection.)

this evening’s expectorant brought to you by the color yellow and the letter T.

And take a moment to enjoy this strangeness. [like I needed to be motion sick just before bed, sheesh.]

In addition to the calipers I want to get (which, I discover, also come in a set of really nicely-made tools that I can buy through the ceramics dept – and I think I may really need to get that set, now, since the cheap-o set I originally bought is partly disentegrating/roughing to the point of uncomfortable. less than $30, Brian!) I think it might be useful to have a level – you know, one of those pen-style pocket numbers. They’re pretty cheap at the hardware store … and also a plastic ruler. And some brushes for detailing stuff with slip – I’m ever artsy fartsy.

Currently I have everything in a little open-style art bin, but I’m beginning to think I need to re-visit my old tackle-box-art-student days. I had given some of my stuff away years ago (all of my oils and a really fantastic set of brushes, which I now regret), but I may have a tackle box around somewhere I can repurpose. Lord knows except for giving things away to people who express a need, I throw nothing out (Bri can attest). It’s genetic. (this, also, Bri can attest)

I recently stumbled across:

Farmer digs up mystery of tunnel network under field

Ruins of 1,000-year-old palace discovered in Nepal

Experts’ joy over Iron Age relics

Bronze Age shipwreck loaded with jewellery is found off Devon


[thanks to mirabilis.ca for the last 3 links]

Discovery of 3000-year-old Artist in Espidej
(I’d like to buried with my Niermeyer and ceramics tools, ok?)

And I need my own set of calipers, darn it all!

Ah, this weekend was a glorious orgy of dishes, whining children, laundry, whining (coughing and runny-nosed) children, homework…and did I mention the whining? (No, not that sort of orgy – that’s much more fun than I had this weekend.) Oh – and the Cleaning of the Room ritual with Em. *shudder* I think I still need a beer.

3 hours at the studio yesterday, however was sehr gut. I’m cranking to get all my projects finished – fresh clay will be no more* in a week and a half, class ends in a few weeks (already!) Yikes! Yesterday I made a large casserole, a lid for same, and a handle for lid. Made a few mugs, handles for mugs. Must get crackin’ – and I still have no idea if the sectional piece I started last week will actually come together OK tomorrow night, so I may have to make up for that one (we pick 5 projects out of a list. 10″ Lidded vessel – check. Set of 6 mugs – working on it. I’m planning to make a 10″ bowl, and either a reasonably tall vase or a teapot (the body of which will be part of the sectional if I deem it not workable…so then tomorrow night I’d have to wrangle a lid, handle, and spout), and then maybe a set of 4 5″ bowls (which I figure I can crank out in pretty short order). Arrgh! Darn surgery/recovery put me behind!

*[that means they will be making no new clay to begin projects – so the remaining time is spent finishing things up, getting everything through the kiln processes, yadda]

And I’m still quite behind on everything else. Bugger.

This looks fabulous – I haven’t the moolah to make the trip, so no abstract from me. Damn – I have the material, too.

Call for Papers: Charms, Charmers and Charming

A two-day international conference 23rd-24th September, 2005, at the Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London organised by the Folklore Society

Papers are sought on any topic relating to verbal charms (Segen, incantations, loitsut, zagovory, trylleformler, scongiuri, etc.) and especially the following:
charmers¹ books and charmers¹ repertoires, the transmission and memorisation of charms, international charm parallels, variation in charm texts and its motivation, the performance details of charming, charms as an expression of vernacular Christianity, the Œlife history¹ of particular charm-types, and (re)assessments of the classics of charms scholarship.

The conference follows on from a joint Warburg/Folklore Society event in January 2003, the proceedings of which were published by Palgrave as ‘Charms and Charming in Europe’ (2004). As with that event, it is intended that a selection of the papers will be published in book form.

Presentations should be 20-25 minutes in length. And while the working language of the conference language will be English, there are no geographical
limitations on the subject matter of the papers.

There is no conference fee for speakers, but potential speakers are advised that they are responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Please send proposals consisting of a title and a paragraph-length abstract to
Jonathan Roper
by e-mail: [email protected]
or by post: Jonathan Roper, Natcect, 9 Shearwood Road, University of Sheffield, SHEFFIELD, S10 2TN, England.

The closing date for proposals is April 30th, 2005.

Library Is to Launch Digital Gallery Today [yesterday, that is] The NYPL has opened its new Digital Gallery of some 275,000 images (the collection will grow to 500,000 images over the next several months) “digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more” – here is the complete list of collections. Its western MSS collection “approximately 2,340 manuscript pages, and associated illuminations, based upon NYPL’s contribution of 259 manuscripts to ‘The Digital Scriptorium,’ a multi-institutional image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts.”

Knocked two more tree tiles off this week. And an espresso cup. And I’m working on a three-piece sectional piece, but I don’t know how well that will work, but we’ll see. I’m goofing around with trying things and learning this and that moreso than focusing on production, production, production. I had glazed several bowls before my surgery, and they haven’t made their appearance yet, so I’m hoping the kiln that was tick, tick ticking away as it was cooling down (Wed. when I was in) is holding the lot of ’em.

(And in case all of the recent angst-less postings weren’t enough to wind your clock:)
I feel like the last 14 or so years of my life have been an exercise in Los Hermanos Penitentes.

So why can’t I move on, as some advice suggests? Why am I still enjoying a weekly tear session out of frustration?

Yet I also can’t continue the flagellation move forward – at least not for a time, if at all (knowing the chances grow slimmer with each passing minute year), because my logistics are just more and more bollocksed.