An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
To put this into perspective: We have lived in our family house since 1979, and in that time I had found only three glass floats before this week. We have many floats in the house because my family summered here since 1911, and my grandfather lived here year around since the mid-1940s. So most of the floats we have are not only very old, but old in their finding.
Gary has always been lucky about finding things. He has found floats the size of basketballs. But that was years ago he last brought home a float. Yet, twice he’s said, “Wow, you found that! I’m so glad it was you.”
We walked north all the way around Hug Point and into the next beach last week. All the wave-swept stone was coated in green, like matching jackets. I would have walked to Arcadia, another half mile, but we’d have had to come home on the highway and there are a couple of dangerous stretches I know too well from when I was running.
I meant to share photos. It was an accomplishment to walk that far on the beach before the end of March.
The seaweed will begin to go once the sun is high enough to burn it during low tide.
These two are nest-mates, we think, not pair-bonded. We see them every day in about this place on the power lines, near the Fentons’ home.
“I think deep down inside children are all the same,” she said. “They want two loving parents and they would prefer a house with a neighborhood they can play in. They want teachers that they can like. I don’t think children have changed that much. It’s the world that has changed.”
Gary was after me to post today. It’s π day, we missed our walk, but entertained ourselves watching the tarp peel off the remodel next door.
The pie is made from what I found in the freezer: organic mango chunks and wild blackberries with a generous amount of cinnamon and a couple tablespoons of brown sugar. The crust was beautiful. All butter and baked close to the bottom of the oven. Crispy and delicious.Continue reading →
A friend asked me the other day about our beach walks. How far, how long, how fast? We basically walk north on the shore and then home, sometimes south too. If we can get over or around enough creeks and headlands, we might manage to get two miles north, four miles round trip. But it’s not that simple; we also walk into the rocky edges of the shoreline, east-west, up and down, over and over. I told her that when tides force us to walk on the highway we manage better than 20-minute miles. That’s not fast, but good enough. When I log distance, I mostly count North-South distance because it’s impossible for me to accurately record what our zigzag path covers.
Life is like that, isn’t it?
It is the sky I love. These cool colors ended a bright sunny day on 11 March. It marked more than a year in mostly-isolation. Most of our friends have been vaccinated, many have been ill.Continue reading →
Vicious, viscous, victorious, vitreous. That last word has been humming around in my head for a week. Vitreous describes a material such as ceramic which has melted into itself, creating a glass-like and waterproof material. Clay molecules “stick” to one another as they are heated to liquid and taken to a high enough temperature the molecules melt into a solid mass. Vitreous porcelain, as one example, has been fired so hot that the clay molecules melt into one another to make an impervious whole. Thin enough, you can see through some china.
In about 1973, Bob Sperry gave all the Ceramic Art majors an assignment to collaborate—the throwers he worked with would pair with the hand-builders who worked with Howard Kottler and Patti Warashina. Together they would create something. As a hand-builder, I paired with a thrower, Sam Scott, whom I had known since we both hung out most of the day in the ceramics room during high school. I gave him my low-fire white clay body to substitute for his usual stoneware on the wheel, and a design profile for a covered casserole dish.
The result of the experience changed Sam’s work. Turned out he loved white clay and began throwing with a porcelain clay body as he had previously thrown stoneware—thicker than people generally throw porcelain but a perfect canvas for his iron and cobalt brushwork. (Another friend threw stoneware thin as porcelain.) My family was hard on the many pieces I bought from him, but I managed to hide a few survivors. A massive platter and some bowls. They are handsome pieces.
Eagles are doing well. We see the mated pair that live on the cape nearly every morning.
Gary complained I had not posted. It is barely raining a little drizzle, there is sand, and we will have our walk. Lately, we find we cannot get more than a mile north because Shark Creek’s runoff is too high for us to cross, but we will go out as soon as there is light. Gary is dressing in the dark, and I will have a last sip of coffee. Neither of us have yet been vaccinated and we miss our family.
In the mean time, like so many others, we listen to music and hope for comfort, conversation, and more communal days.
Today is a bread-baking day. I will make two loaves and a few savory rolls, I think. Usually I start first thing in the morning in order to have bread for lunch, but today I am still winding a warp and typing away.
Pussywillows are out but the place where I have been picking them the last few years was pruned back hard last fall. There are other places.
The daffodils are in bloom too. In our yard, “February Gold” is a small, early variety. They are only about eight inches tall and ours have been blooming their fool heads off for most of the month. The escalonia has given up its last carmine blooms, but rosemary is all over tiny blue-violet flowers, the rhubarb is coming up, and the primroses never stopped.
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