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.

wherespalin

here is a new game... where's palin? as one who peruses the news every day looking for items of political interest, i find it interesting that sarah palin has recently become invisible. after a few weeks of photo-ops and one (ONE) seriously edited interview, she has dropped off the radar. a side note in today's NY Times tells us why. the press, CNN included apparently, are so sick of only being allowed the most superficial of access to palin that they have pulled their coverage. (i confess. i did not check in with fox news or limbaugh. i am sure that they are still running full coverage of every bat of her beaded lashes. ) very little in this campaign has made me laugh out loud, but the thought that the mccain campaign has so committed themselves to this political pig in a poke (ooo, there's that pig reference again!) that they are going to have to spend the rest of the campaign hiding her from the press while simultaneously convincing the american public that she is "ready on day one" tickled the daylights out of me! considering mr. mccain's unsteady health, it is entirely possible that a palin vice-presidency could become a palin presidency. and they can't even let her do an unscripted interview! okay, so maybe that should have scared the daylights out of me... but i refuse to believe that my fellow americans are stupid or racist enough to elect a man who believes that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," or a woman who can't be trusted with the national press corps!
call me naive.
just don't forget to vote.

toolate

dang. i wish i had the power to edit everything i have ever said in public. especially if i had said it on national tv! sarah palin does. if you go to the abc website to watch the sarah palin interview with charlie gibson, you can no longer see the potential veep-er tell charlie gibson that she is "ready from day one" on foreign policy because "you can see russia from parts of alaska. it's right over there, charlie." and saddest of all, she no longer has to worry about not knowing what "the bush doctrine" is. we don't even get to hear her call mr. gibson "charlie" twice in every sentence. so... anyone still in a knot over a so-called "liberal media" can rest their collective sphincters. the interview has been white-washed. she still looks like a vapid twit, but the really good parts have been removed. the bits about holy war, and other little foibles that would illustrate what a dangerous nut we are being offered.
i must say that i am disappointed. the last thing we as a country need to do politically is buy a pig in a poke. even if she is wearing lipstick.
and yes. i did just call sarah palin a pig. obama didn't.
update: conservatives are squealing across the board that the interview was edited to make her look stupid by excerpting parts that make her look like she has a grip. maybe we'll get to see the whole interview and can make up our minds.

brief

MASSIVE OUTRAGE...
in a back page story in the NY Times today, i learned that there is a bill in the senate offering the republicans, i mean the oil companies, an offshore drilling package. it would allow drilling 50 miles off shore in states that embrace it, and 100 miles off the coast of ANY state in the US. excuse me for a moment... WHAT? oil companies and republicans are insisting that it is just an election year token. democrats are surrendering what is a MASSIVE issue for a great deal of their base... how the hell will that help them in the election? first "clean coal" and now off shore drilling. why would we do this when we know that there will be no benefits for a decade? rrr. i am mad as hell and i'm not going to take it any more.
repeat with me:
what do we want?
renewable energy
when do we want it?
NOW!
lovepeace
heather

calltoaction

dear nation,
it occurs to me that we need a champion in our media. we need a high-profile, notably non-partisan anchor-type who will take it upon him/herself to keep track of the daily BS of the campaign trail. we need a tough, intelligent person with the juevos to publicly call out both candidates and say, "there IS NO clean coal. despite the fact that they hugely subsidized the DNC and RNC, you simply have to admit that coal is destructive and filthy." or to step up to john mccain and tell him that palin was only "command in chief" of the alaska national guard while they were actually in the state, and that they were the smallest brigade in the nation. and that alaska's proximity to russia does not give her "foreign policy" experience. hmmm. we need someone who will compare tax programs, social programs, and energy policies. i confess, i long for such a brave soul not because i fear that bad ol' barack will tar and feather poor oooooooold mr. mccain, but because the republican smear machine is so good at the politics of divisiveness and flat out lying. and i DO want the obama-biden ticket slapped when they make mistakes or LIE. we need honest leaders with transparent funding sources. let the closed door remain the legacy of the bush administration. to that end, please brainstorm with me over who would make a decent defender of the nation. as good as they are, stewart and colbert are seldom taken seriously. i had hopes of lehrer, but as he is moderating the debates, i doubt he'd take the job. think with me, friends, and let us together appoint a champion of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. (where is clark kent when you need him?!?)
lovepeace
heather

palinausea

it did not take me long to figure out why sara palin makes my skin creep. it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that she looks like skipper barbie. i even made an outline to make sure that i wasn't just having a knee-jerk reaction in election time.
these are some of the points that seemed most pertinent. first... i have the same issue with her that i have with so many "pro-lifers," which is: now that you have a new life, who is going to be responsible for it for its entire life? why is life more important before birth than when you are, say...19 and in the national guard? or afghani? or iraqi? or 48 and on death row? or on the other end of one of those guns that she likes so much? what about a little infrastructure for the little bundle of joy? her party has gutted the education department and nearly every department in the child welfare administration. hmmm. (do you know why you have never seen a t-shirt saying, "pro-life and pro-gun?" because it would explode from sheer hypocricy. ) if you look at her own family, there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect from i think of as "family values." good on her for keeping the most recent baby. that said, down's syndrome babies take a hell of a lot of resources to raise. they need a stable, loving, attentive environment to thrive. studies show that breast-feeding positively affects the development of a new-born baby's brain. i can only imagine that it is even more crucial in a special needs child. three days is not enough. and where is trig palin now, while mama canvasses the country? no, i would never dream of suggesting that a father cannot be a primary care-giver. i am privileged to know several. but none of them have off-site jobs, 5 kids, or a special needs infant. how can someone run on a family values ticket when their family has no primary care giver?
and what in the name of heaven was palin thinking when she OUTED her pregnant 17 year old? yes, teen pregnancies happen; especially in areas where "abstinence only" health education is the standard. yes, "abstinence only" works great as birth control. it's keeping teens from screwing that is the problem. as for their decision to keep the baby, again, good on them. but... it is a private matter. her mother should have had the common decency to turn down mccain's offer to spare her child international scrutiny. and what is worse, MARRIAGE?! what? she is 17! they are handing their daughter off into a teen marriage and motherhood?! and people are lauding this as noble? WHAT? what is wrong with a party that elevates teen-aged marriage and excoriates consenting adults of the same sex who want a legal life-time commitment?
sigh. it is going to be a long few months. listening to this woman and her presidential candidate cast the obama-biden ticket as elitist and against the common citizen while slurping at the corporate/ defense industry trough and violating the very family values they laud is going to be difficult. but i will. and i will vote.
and so must you.
read. listen. think. and vote.

louisiana1927

What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds rolled in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away all right
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

CHORUS
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man, isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."

Randy Newman "Louisiana 1927"
photo credit: Tyler Hicks, NY Times

evolution

this, i suppose, is what friends are for. yesterday, at the wonderful funeral march for my friend john payne, i got the chance to talk to a friend that i have not spent much time with for some months. in telling him about the new things i am thinking and doing in ceramics, i mentioned "this machine kills fascists." he laughed at me... and called me pro-capitalist. continuing to laugh, he said that he was surprised at me, wanting to kill anyone..." sooo violent!" he mocked me. i choked. sputtering, i was unable to defend myself. it might have had something to do with the fact that there were several other friends present, i had an armful of four-year-old, and we were about to start a march across the haywood street bridge. sigh. i have just never been glib under pressure. it speaks well of my sincerity, but not so much for my intellect. at any rate, the thought that this provoked has fermented and bourne the following.
i love words. i always have. they are for me the first blush of creativity. new forms are created in my mouth before they are drawn on the page. if i can't describe it to myself, i can't do it. but, even more than their effect on my internal processes, i am fascinated by the effect that they have on the masses. any masses. all masses. think barack obama. kennedy. MLK. hitler. woody guthrie. all of their words moved tremendous numbers of people to action (for better or for worse.) if anything has been missing in my asheville experience to date, it has been a powerful, passionate discourse with my own work. don't get me wrong, i love my work. it speaks volumes to and about me. but where it fails is in speaking to the greater issues that move me. oppression of women and minorities (be they traditional minorities, or the the urban poor.) mechanization. job loss. war. nuclear proliferation. the manipulation of american culture and legislation by corporate factions. (okay. keep laughing. how much did that last tank of gas cost? how much high fructose corn syrup do you imbibe on a daily basis? why can more kids identify ronald mcdonald than george washington? why are wild fish not safe to eat? who is actually profiting from the wars in iraq and afghanistan?) in putting brief, powerful statements paired with striking/unexpected visuals on my pots, i risk being dismissed as the ceramic equivalent of a bumper sticker. could be. or, in juxtaposing phrases like "canary in a coalmine." with a raven sitting on a nuclear warhead, perhaps i am releasing into the viewer the visual equivalent of a brain worm. (that piece of song that gets stuck in your head.)it will squirm and rankle until the possessor exorcises it by learning more about the issue at hand. and perhaps acting.
and as for the violence inherent in, "this machine kills fascists," passionate speech is not peaceful. not in the sense in which i so long embraced peace and non-violence. my own ideals created in me a stagnancy and helplessness and bitter silence that cankered and chafed. so, now i speak. loudly. using words that i eschewed before as too harsh. but in the din of pop culture, i have to shout to hear myself. but yes, i will study the great peace makers, too, to relearn a vocabulary of peace that moves mountains.
lovepeace
heather

oncemoreintothebreachgoodfriends

(oooo, i hate that title glitch!)(harrumph.)
so today guthrie and i had our first culinary science class. he learned:
one quarter cup= 4 tablespoons,
one Tablespoon= 3 teaspoons,
how to grind flour,
why to grind flour,
how to combine water, yeast, and sweetener,
the origins of sorghum,
why yeast needs sugar,
how to knead dough by hand,
that kneading dough by hand is harder than it looks,
that a light bulb in the oven really makes it warm enough to rise dough,
how to punch down a risen ball of dough,
why to be gentle with dough when forming a loaf,
what egg white does for the top of a loaf,
why i spill water in the oven after putting in the bread,
how to divide a single drop into four parts,
how to curdle goat milk with microbial rennet and yoghurt culture,
and not to end a sentence with a preposition in front of his mother.
all valuable lessons that ended with two loaves of bread and half a gallon of milk on its way to chevre. and we'll do it all again next week! (or when the bread runs out.)
lovepeace
h

...

and then the dogs ate them.
damn it.
h.

flourpower

after several years of considering it, i finally bought a grain mill attachment for my kitchenaid. it is on its maiden voyage, grinding 6 cups of hard red winter wheat for my favorite oatmeal bread. my hopes are high, but my expectations are low. remembering years of doorstop loaves as i learned to bake edible bread, i figure that there is a learning curve here, too.
and so there is... i have ordered a cookbook on whole grain artisan breads. but this bread rose well and tastes good and has a crumb much like that of my good old oatmeal bread. sadie can't stop eating it. that is a good sign.
excelsior!
lovepeace
heather
ps. and it really isn't as dumpy as it looks. i forgot that my loaf pans take a pound and a half loaf. i should have tripled the recipe. (oops.still yummy.)

conversionexperience

yep. this is me. nose-deep in a sweet, succulent, o-so-fragrant little canteloupe from the city market.(i confess that i have forgotten which farm it came from.) the pony-tailed and bearded purveyor of deliciousness smelled their little belly-buttons and smiled knowingly. my years of hating melons would soon be over. as i walked home from the market with the basket on my head the prevailing breeze kept tickling my nose with the delicate perfume of sweet basil and baby melons. it brought to mind the almost pornographic enthusiasm for them shown by a peripheral character in the "toujour provence" books. living here makes me want to write food porn, too. of course, the moment sadie and i got home, we sliced up a juicy pale green orb. the flesh was... melon colored... and delectable. i even tried it with basil. ooooo.
next week: watermelon.

thankyouwoodyguthrie

THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.
though originally woody guthrie's, this idea comes from sadie, who wrote this on her computer. whereas i am not sure that i agree with that entirely, i like her idea about communication and information making good old-fashioned fascism impossible. my own idea, however, is that corporations are the new american fascists. in the abused names of security and convenience we have allowed ourselves to be vastly separated from our real sources such as food, family, and community. if we take back control over our food supplies and means of production, opting for local and handmade sources over imported goods and engineered foodstuffs, we draw closer to our families and communities. food is not junk. your coffee mug is not a nameless cog in the machine. where did that coffee come from, anyway? as these things become objects of thought, there is a shift in the mindset. we sit down for dinner. we meet our neighbors and our farmers. it becomes easier to make decisions that are good for all of us and not just based on fear, speed, or what will buy us that mercedes benz.
(note: i am not really advocating killing anyone. not even dick cheney. but with their means of control eradicated, they can adapt or die. ideologically, anyway.)

happybirthdaytome

[yes, it is a little late. my birthday is still the 7th day of the 7th month, but michael (having been in honduras for a month) gets a dispensation.] isn't it lovely! this is the beautiful cedar and mahogany box that michael made for me. it is even more exquisite in person, especially as it is full of fascinating things that he found on the shores of honduras. there is a nautilus carved on the front, and the inside is segmented in the proportions of the fibonacci sequence. most wonderfully of all, he made it with his very own hands, learning most of the skills as he progressed with the help of folk he works with on the farm. it is a labor of love, and i am so proud of it. and him.
lovelovelovepeace
h.