porcelain

CONTROL

/ janpriddyoregon / 7 Comments

On Monday, Gary and I covered at least ten miles. I ran two of them. Wednesday I ran three miles and we walked. I scheduled a 3-mile run for this morning, but Gary wasn’t feeling well so I went out alone. I’d decided to run two miles instead of three. How many did I run? One. I came home and worked for a while, and then I lay down. I felt rotten too. We tested for Covid and that was negative, and we’re feeling better after hot showers.

I generally introduced assignments with a story, so here it is: Before we married, and while we were both students at the University of Washington, Gary and I managed a once-notorious apartment building in the University District known locally as Big Pink. The FBI and the Seattle Police came several times while we managed the building, but the last of the prostitutes had just left before we moved in, and the last drug dealer accidentally set fire to his kitchen soon after, so he was gone soon enough. This was in the early 1970s, and my memory is not entirely reliable, but what I’ll write what is still vivid and accurate.

One of two knobs I put on the bottom drawer of a pie chest we bought out of an old barn—made by someone who did the Bellevue Arts and Crafts Fair beginning in the 1970s. The other has a woman’s face. These porcelain works combined simple shapes with molds of antique pieces and applied bits. Our first grandchild was fascinated as a toddler. I remember the artist’s name as David Keenes, but that seems to be incorrect. I’d hoped that the sugar bowl I have, also made by the same artist, would be stamped with a name. No such luck. It has TAR and KSM. Then I checked the parrot coffee cup I got for Gary back in the day and it is stamped DK.
Continue reading →