Why Wouldn't You?

Read, read, read.  

P.S.  The second International Dorothy Dunnett Day will be this November 10, 2012.  For details, consider this link, please.  

Medea: In Clay

Medea: stoneware; transparent brown glazing, layered; copper wire.

Druid

Druid, A Mask: 
sculpture mix; jade green, transparent brown, and clear glazing, layered and dripped.

When I hang the piece on the wall or from a tree, I'll use a leather cord (or four).  That somehow seems fitting here.

Neruda's Loaf: "The Writer's Task"

"My first book!  I have always maintained that the writer's task has nothing to do with mystery or magic, and that the poet's, at least, must be a personal effort for the benefit of all.  The closest thing to poetry is a loaf of bread or a ceramic dish or a piece of wood lovingly carved, even if by clumsy hands."

--from Pablo Neruda's Memoirs--

Notebook entry: 2008, I believe.  (I'll have to hunt up the specific edition.)

Wild Parrots!

On Friday morning as I drove under the 80 overpass on that street by the cop-shop heading to the 280 freeway, I heard some parrots, the wild parrots of San Francisco . . . and yet I forgot to tell my students in the class in which we'll be reading Mark Bittner's book on those exact birds. I was also slightly late to and somewhat off-balance in both classes. Friday was one of those days . . . .

The Duck's Luck

Isn't there an old English folktale or folksong with that title?
If there isn't, there should be.

Not that all luck runs downstream . . . .

The ebbs and flows, 
The floods and shoals . . . .

I now tend to consider carrying such a luck piece a worthwhile wooing of Fortuna.   This wrought clod-of-clay gives me something to turn in my hand -- a talisman, a worry-stone --for when I grasp at a bit of boost, that palpable push, from the web-footed luck of the big-billed duck.

Grape Jellyfish

Grape Jellyfish: aquatic beadwork from my friend CL.

You may recognize her work here as well in Octorina, the jaunty octopus.