bestoftheday

this morning's bumper sticker sighting was the best yet.
I LIKE MY COFFEE LIKE I LIKE MY PRESIDENTS, BLACK!
my response was, "me, too!"

and on the weather, it snowed today. as this is only my third fall here, it is unremarkable that i have never seen snow before halloween, but i have heard that it is unusual. it's cold, too.

fall

fall has arrived in style, dropping walnuts and iron-stained leaves, flinging branches in the wringing winds that sweep through my little woods. as much as i love it, it breeds in me a deep melancholy. it is a dying and a sleeping that saddens me, making me miss those whom i have lost and those who are far away. i dreamed last night of spring, of laying in the sun on pale green grass with my sisters and daughter and friends. pale paper butterflies fluttered in the breeze and landed on my face. i blew them away with laughter. i woke to find my trees more bare, and my smile a little sadder. but i will recover. a few hours spent in company of trees, nodding into their annual nap, will wake in me the ganas to laugh through winter.
lovelovelovepeace
heather

o, and i voted! have you?

dinnertiming

i am in the throes of listening to "in defense of food," by michael pollan in such snippets as i may snatch while tootling about town in the auto. that is to say: a mouthful at a time. the content is excellent, even if the reader sounds a little too like someone trying to sell me something. today he compared the time taken to prepare, eat, and wash up after the average american meal over the last several decades. it apparently only takes most families less than twenty minutes to make dinner, less than an hour to consume it, and less than twenty minutes to clean up. i am not certain if i am living in the wrong country or participating in the wrong polls. tonight it took approximately an hour to make dinner. we had corn bread, black eyed peas, and turnips and radishes braised in olive oil and butter and then steamed with their greens. with hot sauce. the only thing not from scratch was the hot sauce. though it is my favorite meal, it only took me as long to eat as it took me to read an article about groucho marx on the NPR website.(about 8 minutes.) and as a teenager will be doing the dishes, if they get cleaned in under two days it will be a bona fide miracle. and as it is time for me to urge on said miracle, i must go get the bullwhip out.
godspeed.
don't forget to vote.

goodgrief

Men have done plenty to mess up the country, he said. “The sexual drives and big egos of male leaders have gotten in the way of politics in this country.” Mr. Hawkins said he talked to fellow truckers, and a lot of them feel the same way. “They think it’s time for a woman, too,” he said. “This one. Palin is our kind of woman.” New York Times 10/18/08
the preceding quote is from this evening's times in an article about the affection of "joe sixpack" for his girl sarah. it felt odd to read words that have dropped from my own lips being repeated by a palin-loving trucker. it took a woman with big hair and a small vocabulary to convince the conservative, blue-collar male that "a chick" could run this country. we have officially gone from electing a man "you'd want to have a beer with" to attempting to elect a woman you'd like to have... well... anyway... i don't think that this is progress.
don't forget to vote.
please.

kilnside

(i wrote this in the kiln yard last friday while firing the soda kiln for my class. it has been riding in my notebook since.)
it is my favorite season again. i can think of nothing negative about fall. harvest is here, bringing in all my favorite starches; potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squashes of all varieties. it is cool enough to grow tender greens. fennel, kale, and even the dreaded rainbow chard decorate every stall at the market. radishes of every hue look like unseasonably early christmas baubles. all of the colors of fall delight, not just the edible ones. sassafrass and tulip poplar are turning gold, while sourleaf, poison ivy, maple and dogwood ignite in red and purple. bluejays never looked better than in such a setting.
i am firing at odyssey today. it is the second firing for my class. sarah made me do it. she has an opportunity to be in ceramics monthly if she gets a photo made in time. good for her! i would have made me, too! the advantage is that i made so much stuff that i nearly have enough to fire again. all i have to do is made a few tea sets, but i can do that in a week. even with a weekend guest, birthday girl, homeschool, puppies, fixing plumbing and studio duties... sometimes my optimism astounds even me.
and it could not be a pre-election blog post without some political something or other. first, i saw the man himself! OBAMA in asheville! granted, i was one of 20,000 people, but i was still in the presence of greatness. however, while i was out in Bandana, NC (east of the sun, west of the moon, and across the great ocean at the end of the world) firing with Naomi Dalglish and Michael Hunt (who are, incidentally, really wonderful people) MELISSA AND MATT MET OBAMA AND GAVE HIM POTTERY! apparently, not having a date with the david letterman show, mr. obama stayed in asheville overnight to rest up and eat the best barbecue NC has to offer. which is, of course, at 12 bones(or so i am told... being a vegetarian and all.) and is right around the corner from my studio. i hear he is very tall...and extremely gracious. i am unsurprised, and more than a little jealous.
lovepeace
heather

round1

see sunday aug.31st...

basiceconomics

do you remember your high school economics class? no, the one where you made brownies and a stuffed bunny was home economics. the other one, where they made you make a budget and learn to write checks. it seems as though our elected representatives have forgotten this class, even if they have remembered how to write checks... really...big...checks. there is a basic, and i mean BASIC, tenet of economics that can bail us out of the current "crisis." when you have a recession, put money into the middle class and the poor. it really is beyond simple. the middle class and the poor spend money. they buy stuff because they don't already have everything that they need. they pay off debt (mortgages! credit! hello!). they buy products/ services that create jobs. all of which puts money back into the economy. do you want to fix the shakeup in our economy without succumbing to the national shakedown proposed? call up your elected representative and suggest that they give all of this suddenly available flow to the taxpayers. if we guess that there are 200 million people over 18 in this country, we could each reap 3,500 dollars from a 700 billion dollar bailout. if we restrict it to the middle and poorer classes (those of us earning less than 250 thousand a year), it would be even higher. i am all for it! let those who suffer the most when the economy is troubled rebuild the economy from the bottom up. reaganomics is a sham that has cost us our shirts. start dialing, folks.

by the people, of the people, for the people... don't forget to vote.