Favorite Lines

"Israel was Flint's gunner," said Gray hoarsely.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island --
the favorite book of my youth, a volume I still respect and enjoy.

Pedagogical Clay

For strict pedagogical reasons, I asked my college students to work with clay.
Here are some of the results of the experiment.
Aren't these cool?

Wael-Seax: The Slaughter-Knife of Beagnoth

A replica of the famous Anglo-Saxon weapon fished from the Thames.

To give you a sense of the size of this mere "knife", my hands are of a fair size and both of them fit handily on that hilt.  Beowulf used such a long-knife on the dragon; Grendel's mother attempted to use such a long-knife on Beowulf.

Moya Cannon: "Who Conducts the Music of Our Dreams?"

ALMA,

I woke up saying the word,
just as, a few mornings earlier, I had woken up
saying 'The Silk Road'.
Who conducts the music our our dreams?
leaving us with only one clear note -- a word for 'soul'
or a name for the most sensuous, the most tortured, of early roads,
a name given at a distance, in hindsight,
by someone who had never travelled it --
not even once clear road either, but several,
a web of camel routes through thorn and sand and storm,
mule tracks over frozen mountain gaps
to where silk worms chewed on mulberry leaves,
spun from their bodies the strong filaments of dreams.

--Moya Cannon

Therapy: Clay / Hands / Soul

I allowed myself an hour or so in the studio today.