Longfellow Writes

The Depression

2009-02-15T11:18:00.000-08:00

I got a great email the other day why a good friend of mine thinks that this depression we are going into is going to be very different than the last one, regardless of all the doom and gloom. He said he didn't need to be credited by name and didn't mind my sharing, but I just want to assure you this isn't my own work. I'm not that economically savvy! However I thought his thoughts on our current situation and his prognosis was worth sharing.

As we discussed, we are already having a depression.

But this depression cannot play out like the last one for the following
reasons:

- We do not currently have a drought causing dust bowl conditions and a
mass migration of agrarian workers ("Okees").

- The proportion of our economy dependent on an agrarian work force has
been vastly reduced.

- The national highway system did not exist then.

- The rural electrification program hadn't happened yet.

- We did not have our modern transportation systems.

- We did not have our modern communication systems.

- We did not have the Internet.

- We did not have such an interconnected global economy (it existed but
nothing like today).

- We did not have the general level of affluence that most people can
take for granted today (hot and cold running water for everyone, flush
toilets, a highly efficient food production system).

- None of those things are going to break down to any significant degree
under current economic conditions, no matter how bad things get.

- It would take a war of some kind to produce the type of conditions we
had to endure then.

- Remember, Europe was bombed to rubble, and recovered within 20 years
(really less) and is on par with the U.S. today in terms of general
affluence.

- By the way, the "Marshall Plan" to reinvigorate the European economy
after WWII cost about 1/4th of what we are spending today, in today's
dollars, for us to bail out our financial institutions, car company's
etc. AND the new economic stimulus package that has just been passed.

- Sadly, the Bush administration has already spent as much on the war in
Iraq, as we are now spending on the above two packages (over 2 Trillion
dollars, more or less).

- Currently Japan has a larger national debt with respect to their GNP
than we do.

- Currently England's financial crisis and bank failures is even worse
than ours.

- The whole world is in this together, so whatever happens, we'll have
to do it as a world.

- The biggest question is... how bad are governments going to fuck up
what needs to be done?

NOBODY knows the answer to that.

The Sky is Falling

2009-02-01T09:55:00.000-08:00

I believe that even people that believe in global warming don’t believe it.

I believe the world is in deep environmental doodoo up to our haunches and yet here I am sitting around drinking a cup of fair-trade organic joe while blogging away. If I really truly believed in the imminent demise of the world I should be running around like Chicken Little screaming “the sky is falling” because it, very probably, is. I am surrounded by many people just like myself: liberal, believers in sustainability, local, fair trade, and organic and not only are they not running around tearing their hair out or huddling under the darkening skies like the poor hapless citizens of Pompeii as they saw their world ripped apart in fire and ash, but they are debating FDA organic food standards, whether they should buy tropical fruit in winter, or unbleached diapers for their infants. Some of them are swelled with pregnancy.

If there is one thing that all humans share in common, from hippy organic farmer to greedy corporate CEO (stereotypes are like keyboard shortcuts), is the love of their kids. We want the best for our children. We want them to live long lives and give us grandkids. There is no better proof that even some of the most hardcore far to the left liberals don’t actually believe in climate change than the fact that they are breeding like mad.

I think it’s akin to the belief in death. We all know about death, we all know it will happen to us one day, and we’ve seen it happen to the people around us, but no matter how true we know it to be, we spend the greater portion of our life believing it will somehow skip us. Seriously I think more people well and truly believed in the Y2K bug and the idea that the world would collapse in the ensuing chaos than believe in global warming today. Billions was spent to upgrade computers. People stocked up on food and water.

Instead of acting like Chicken Little we’re all acting a little like the proverbial ostrich over climate change, sticking our heads in the sand, hoping it will go away. Of course a lot of that might be due to the immensity of the problem, but I do believe, considering how people are still bitching about the price of gas while popping out more kids that we, collectively and worldwide, simply do not believe in climate change.

Memory

2009-01-29T12:07:00.000-08:00

Memory is a pretty trippy thing. I'm not really sure why I remember what I remember or how my brain chooses stuff that is unimportant and dumps it like yesterday's trash. I have had a lot of cause to ponder the issue because I have a classically bad memory and have had since high school. At first I attributed it to all that pot smoking back then (yes, I inhaled, but no I don't smoke it now), but as I have gotten older and have that much more to remember I am still pretty selective about who and what I remember even once I passed my little hippy drama crowd stage.

I have had reason to reconsider this question of late because I got all hooked up on Facebook. My mother made me do it because until recently I didn't see the point. She was all excited because she'd managed to bump into some old acquaintances online and wanted to add me as a friend so I wandered over and lo, there were a lot of people there I hadn't seen or connected with in ages. There were the people from Middle School, the ones from High School, and then, thanks to the mater, the ones from my twenties in England. Holy cow! More alarming, however, was the fact that clearly there were tons of people I just couldn't remember.

And yet I can remember lots of obscure little events. I was listening to some folk music today and I remembered about the time I went to see a band with my friend, Nick, and what he was wearing and who was the lead singer in the band, and their weird little detail of having a member of the band who was into this crazy freestyle dancing in front of the band but no other musical contribution. Why do some details just stand out in your mind and others slip away? I never followed the band. I didn't meet anyone special that night. I also saw a lot of bands and acts and many of them I forgot and others I remembered.

Sometimes I forget good stuff and sometimes it's bad stuff. Some people I have forgotten until I met them again and was forcibly reminded who I was quite close to. It took me five weeks to remember one woman's name who had been quite a buddy for a while when I first moved back to Vermont. What makes something stand out and another thing slip entirely away? I suppose they have done studies on it, but I have never read anything that satisfies me as to the vagaries of my own weird selective memory.

Green is Good

2009-01-21T09:46:00.001-08:00

I have always considered green to be the color of God. I’m not talking about some particular vision of God, but my sense of the divine All That Is. It seems to me, like Darwin said about beetles, that God really must favor green. Science calls it chlorophyll but whatever the biological dynamics involved the result is great swathes of green, immense canopies of green, a blue-green incandescence of sea, and a planet like a great blue-green marble with soft swirling swatches of white.

I think that might be why I love stones like chrysacolla or the wonderful mix of malachite and lapis lazuli. I have collected a particularly lovely couple of pieces of turquoise, probably dyed, that are gorgeous grass green. Grass green that reminds me of Northern California in the spring when the winter rains have soaked the soil and the spring sun awakens new life. It’s a truly amazing green that jumps to your eyes with electric vitality. Or that soft emerald carpet of Irish green grass in Eire that is the result of a wet mild climate. Or that tired eluvial green of dry peaks and ridges, or the dark green of pine, or the beautiful alluvial green of rivers and valleys. Think of the Nile with the banks rich with life, reeds and papyrus. I would love to see the green of a tropical rainforest for myself. That’s one green I have never seen in person.

Green is the color of life. I think of that every time I see a little seed burst forth from the dark loamy earth, just two delicate cotyledons breaking free on their tender stem. Green is the color of many of my favorite foods.

Green is good.

Longfellow in Twitterspace

2009-01-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

I have been on Twitter for a couple months now. I heard about it from Etsy.com sellers on the Etsy forums as a great way to get the word out about your online craft shop and promote your business and blogs. I was looking at various tools to increase my visibility as a jewelry maker. Desperate to improve views at my Etsy shop I immediately signed up for Twitter, using my shop name, and plunged in, adding hundreds of other Etsy users over the course of a couple weeks as we all posted wildly about the new ‘get rich’ tool at the Etsy forums.

That’s now I started: tweeting away about my treasuries (collections of items from various Etsy sellers), my new jewelry listings, and then I read the feed. I dutifully clicked away at new treasuries, new items, and so forth, feeling a little more desperate each day as no sales resulted and the subsequent views from each tweet dropped lower in lower. No instant sales were generated, no instant success for my blog. I quickly decided to look at it from a different POV.

Did I really enjoy spending half my day clicking to everyone’s latest pair of earrings or soap set? Did I even need more soap? (I love soap and can recommend my favorite Etsy soap sellers but that’s another topic for another day) I am already swimming in handmade jewelry because I make it myself. In fact the more I thought about the more totally reasonable it was that no one was buying my jewelry from my Twitter contacts. The fact is they were ALL in the same boat as me, all trying to sell their stuff on Etsy, and consequently we were just tweeting desperately to each other: “please won’t you buy my stuff?”

I found that not only was I not that interested in blogging about each and every treasury I appeared in or every little beading session, but I wasn’t interested in reading about other people doing it either. I had already shared the magic of Twitter with other friends of mine, those with different interests and I was already seeing that there were other ways to use it, and in fact the best way to use Twitter didn’t involved endless adverts. I started studying why my second Twitter account was more fun, and more useful to me. It had diverse content from a diverse bunch of people that were genuinely interested in sharing, talking, and learning from each other. I was there when the terrible news in Mumbai hit and it spread over Twitter with everyone sharing, making it a personal event even if it was on the other side of the world.

I still love to hear about what my fellow Etsians are doing, but I urge you all – if you are reading this to expand what you are doing on Twitter, to reach out to all sorts of different people, and to really fully explore the potential of Twitter.

And please don’t put Magpie in my Twitter feed. :)

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

2009-01-18T11:32:00.000-08:00

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

That is the message that is everywhere today. If it’s not global warming, terrorism, or plane crashes it’s salmonella in your peanut butter.

Right now hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs and the economy seems to be taken a nosedive as sure as Flight 1549 splashed down in the Hudson.

What am I doing about it?

I quit my job, am taking time off, and relocating!

It seems madness. I have had a lovely job, live in a great town, have lots of great friends, and enjoyed both a studio and an apartment, but I wanted something different. I have been planning and thinking about this life change for a long time, but when I started taking steps towards achieving it, burning bridges if you will, that’s when the news about the economy started getting bad enough to even get through to a hippy dippy artsy-fartsy type like me. Even wrapped up on my creative little worlds I got the picture. It’s been coming on for a long time.

I briefly thought about changing my plans and hunkering down, but then it occurred to me: the only thing to fear is fear itself.

I’m not going to stop living my life the way I want to because of dire predictions. I will eat peanut butter and spinach (I might prefer organic though just to feel a bit more reassured) but I also have to take leaps when I want to take leaps and trust in my belief in myself, my ability to create my own reality, and that ultimately whatever will be will be. At least I’ll have fun trying.

Artistic Update

2009-01-04T09:28:00.001-08:00

Since my show I haven’t done quite as much painting as the rest of the year, and then the holidays put a crimp in my style when it comes to painting and my etching workshops. Of note however I have just completed a commissioned portrait that I’m very pleased with. I’ll take a photo of it before it goes to its home and share here. I’m also working on a portrait of a couple, another painter and his wife. It was a trade for a portrait of me and my partner. This one is significantly harder to do. Not because either of the subjects are difficult but I’m doing it in their home, which means I’m not in my element, and because of the complexity of the image. It was very important to the couple to be seen in their own environment, including details. I tend to be a simplifier that likes to concentrate on the figure.

One interesting part of the painting that does seem to be working well is that I’m using an old unwanted landscape of the sitter to paint on and it appears that elements of his original work will be left in, making it a bit of a collaboration as well as creating an unusual space. Again, before I release it to the owners, I’ll try and get a picture to share.

My jewelry creation has been on total hiatus since the Christmas shows I did, lack of sales there and on Etsy discouraged creativity. I am about to start work on a new necklace though, a choker of coffee beans using vintage beads and copper findings and chain. I think it will look very good when it’s done. I am definitely moving away from thinking about my pieces in terms of sales and looking at them as works of art in themselves. This is definitely better artistically but won’t help pay the bills!

Ok, artistic update is over.

Getting Older is Hard to Do

2008-12-29T09:44:00.000-08:00

Science still doesn’t fully understand aging. While it’s often suggested that it is simply a wearing out, much as a car engine wears out over time and use or a rock weathers and grows smaller, the fact remains that certain biological organisms don’t age and it seems to be built into our genes. The simplest story of the human body is that our cells have a lifespan and before they die they replicate themselves. Over time their replications decrease in quality, so to speak, and quantity, until we are worn out and old and then finally we just break down completely.

I have just stepped onto the path of confronting my own mortality and my own aging. I have been blessed with excellent genes and even though I’m in my middle forties I look younger. Right up to a couple of years ago I could easily pass for my twenties and could find myself carded buying a bottle of wine. Superficially I still appear to be a young woman.

My own mother has the same fabulous genes. I remember well how people always mistook her for my sister, or later on assumed we were a lesbian couple (amusing dinner party stories in there!). She always spoke of age as being immaterial when I was growing up and I believed her because she was living proof, and of course she was my own personal deity. Her own crisis with aging and its effects hit her around fifty years old and all the smug belief that aging didn’t matter flew out the window like a brick.

It’s a chicken and age question, literally, whether her crisis was assisted by her beginning to see a man ten years her junior or whether she started seeing him because she was having a crisis. All I can say for sure, from a personal viewpoint, was that her crisis of faith shook me. My own, however, still lay in the future. I approached it with less sanguine self-confidence after my mother crashed and burned on the altar of impending mortality and all the loss of beauty and vigor that it implied, but nonetheless it was a shocking surprise those first signs of age. No, I lie. The very first sign of aging on my part was the first silver hairs to start sprouting out of my scalp and it was my mother that dealt with that crisis as a personal affront to her own battle. She plucked them out of them top of my head before I could even open my mouth to protest.

My own inklings might have started with the contact lens a couple of years ago. My job came with some benefits and I decided to succumb to vanity. They didn’t last long. Besides the fact that they felt weird and didn’t improve, something about the shape of my eyeballs having changed with age, but when I looked in the mirror for the first time I could see my middle-aged face staring back at me. Friends will laugh at that comment, strangers envious of my apparent youth will sneer, but the reality is that my skin is no longer young. It has lost its elasticity and while I don’t have wrinkles the delicacy have my features has been changed for a sort of stodgy solidity. My neck is beginning to sag, my teeth are not what they were, and my joints ache.

As I said I am just on the beginning of the path, but I’m not so far away from the same age my mother was when she had her crisis and then spent years trying to come to terms with it. If I were to bring it up casually in conversation most people don’t want to talk about it. They divert the topic by telling me I look young, as if being young was the most important thing in the world. They tell me that old trope “you are only as old as you feel”. I don’t feel that young anymore, and I don’t believe I should. I like being a grownup and I don’t mind all the experience, knowledge, and hopefully wisdom that the years bring with it. I’m not even that vain over my looks anymore that I will start wearing turtleneck sweaters to hide my incipient chicken neck (or those weird big collars that Candice Bergen wears in Boston Legal all the time). In fact from a scientific viewpoint it’s actually very interesting watching the inevitable decline of the human machine that is the body – if only it weren’t my body I was watching decline.

Crazy or Not? Hiccup Remedies

2008-12-23T13:16:00.000-08:00

Get a glass of water, double up a paper towel and put it over the mouth of the glass, and then sip the water through it.

Hold your breath.

Hold your breath, pinch your nose, and push down on your diaphragm.

Stand on your head.

Drink a glass of water backwards.

Breathe slowly into a paper bag.

Squeeze tightly on the soft fleshy part of your earlobes. (?)

Drink a glass of water slowly without breathing.

Take a mouthful of water or other beverage then bend over from the middle and swallow (sounds like a recipe for choking if you ask me).

Bite into a lemon.

Drink a shot of vinegar.

Eat a spoonful of mustard.

Get a mouthful of water and then press your fingers into your ears.

Going Bananas

2008-12-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

The history of banana eating goes back at least as far as Roman times, and it is supposed to have originated in East Asia or Oceania. The botanical name is Musa acuminata where Antonius ‘Musa’ is the physician of Octavius Augustus and ‘acuminata’ means tapered. The word ‘banana’ is Arabic for ‘finger’. The ancient banana is not the banana we eat today but really a plantain, a fruit that needed to be cooked to be enjoyed. Our banana, the sweet banana, is actually a mutation discovered by Jean Francois Poujot on his Jamaican banana plantation. All sweet bananas would be grown from that original sport, as bananas are cultivated by cutting and not by seed (though not in direct line as there have been a few banana variety wipeouts). They would have been eaten with a knife and fork back then. They were all the rage at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and sold for a whopping ten cents each.

Now, on the other hand, they are one of the cheapest foods in the US and the UK and are also one of the most popular foods. From that original little mutation an enormous industry has been born, as well as wars been fought. The United Fruit Company started life as the Boston Fruit Company by Massachusetts sea captain Lorenzo Dow Baker, railroad builder Minor Keith of New York, and then Boston businessman Andrew Preston. A subsequent merger in 1899 created the United Fruit Company that dominated the banana trade until it literally controlled the governments of countries like Guatemala and Costa Rica, hence the term ‘Banana Republic’.

It didn’t just happen overnight because when the banana first arrived in North America it was an oddity to say the least. It was necessary to educate the public and many recipe instructions were given. Much of the success of the fruit lay in it being available, much like the orange, in the winter months, but that’s not the whole story. They come in their own handy packaging but even more appealing they are full of dopamine and serotonin and so give the brain a ‘feel-good’ sensation. All of this goodness packed into just 69 cents a pound or less? And shipped from across the world? How can this be? It comes at the expense of the workers in the countries where bananas are grown, workers who are low paid, exposed to highly dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, and live in squalid conditions, and as I said wars fought and paid for by United Fruit. In 2007 Chiquita Banana brand paid out a $25 million settlement after pleading guilty to funding terrorist activities in Columbia before it sold its interests there in 2004.

Whenever possible I have chosen not to supplement unfair practices against workers, or terrorism, or unsustainable farming, and I look out for the Fair Trade sticker on my bananas. Just by paying ten to twenty cents more for this already cheap fruit I can help to make a difference.

Sources and more information:

We're All Going Bananas - The Observer

Bananabook.org

Banana History at About.com

Fair Trade Bananas at Coop America

Chiquita and Columbia Terrorism at MSNBC

Introduction to Cooperatives

2008-12-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

I have worked in the coop world now for five years and it’s been a really illuminating experience. By working for a coop and being an active director of a coop board for three years as well as attending the CCMA, an annual conference for Food Coops, I have learned about a great alternative business model that stands tall in comparison to the corporate model. The corporation is basically handicapped from the start by the emphasis on profit as the end all and be all. Profit is the bottom line of most business enterprise and that does not, most of the time, translate to social or environmental responsibility. It’s also about a few getting rich on the labor of the many.

Coops on the other hand are organized in an equitable fashion: one share equals one vote and equal responsibility. They are democratic organizations where profit is not the bottom line. They have a set of guiding principles, first drafted in 1844 by the Rochdale Equitable Pioneer Society in Rochdale, England, that were revised in 1994 by the International Cooperative Alliance. These principles are standard throughout cooperatives whether they are wholesale and supplier services, food retailers, credit unions, or employee owned cooperatives like Equal Exchange, the Fair Trade company.

The Seven Cooperative Principles
The co-operative principles are guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice.
Principles taken from The International Cooperative Alliance web site.

1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership
Co-operatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.
2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control
Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organised in a democratic manner.
3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation
Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by the membership.
4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence
Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organisations controlled by their members. If they enter to agreements with other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.
5th Principle: Education, Training and Information
Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of co-operation.
6th Principle: Co-operation among Co-operatives
Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.
7th Principle: Concern for Community
Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.

To participate in a cooperative by buying a share and becoming an owner is to take a certain amount of control. You are no longer passive. When I opened my account with my local credit union I became an owner of that business equally with all other shareholders, even if they had more money in their account than me, because the share amount is exactly the same. I have the same vote as every other credit union member.

Cooperative history is rich and goes back a few hundred years. The oldest surviving coop in the United States is the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from the Loss by Fire. Benjamin Franklin founded it in 1752, and while a cooperative it operates a little differently than cooperatives formed after the Rochdale Equitable Pioneer Society. Coops are equally important for their contribution to the Civil Rights movement, the electrification of rural America under the New Deal, and they continue today with their work in the arenas of Fair Trade, both internationally and domestically, as well as social equality.

Learn more about coops here: Go Coop.

Short and Sweet Update

2008-12-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

What a week! Even now as I type this the snow keeps falling and falling, but what a lovely snowfall it is. It's the kind where every individual snowflake is quite distinct, a tiny piece of ephemeral art cast upon the air, most destined to be lost in the white, melted by morning.

I ended up selling a number of paintings from my show; not for a spectacular price but an anonymous benefactor wanted to make a gift of several of them to the sitters and since I have no need for twenty portraits I was happy to offer a bulk discount. That was followed by a commission for another portrait. Again it was not exactly for a great deal of money but at this point I would rather have some of my children out there in the world than worry about undercutting my competitors or selling myself short. After all we're talking portraiture!

On an equally happy note I'm still adoring my etching workshops and here is the completed portrait of my mother. Please see earlier post for the first pull. I hope to be able to set up my own print studio one day such is my enthusiasm for the medium.

Can You Make a Difference Really?

2008-12-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

I work, currently, for a food coop. I love the cooperative business model because it puts equity, responsibility, and accountability of the owners and the owners are the local people that use the coop. I love that we are primarily geared to natural foods with an emphasis on organic, local, and fair trade, but over time I have come to feel that fundamentally, while coops are essential and should be promoted, the whole natural foods industry has some inherent flaws as a plan to save the world: well certainly as it is applied to our country. I’m not talking about cooperatives operating in third world countries that really are doing groundbreaking work in getting poor subsistence level people empowered.

One of the biggest problems with the natural foods industry as a tool for change is the very fact it is an industry, and we have been convinced that the solution to our problems is in the ‘marketplace’. So many of us jump on the organic, local, and fair trade bandwagon because we care about things like what we put in our body and what is sustainable for the planet, and one of the biggest reasons to care is the very real possibility that climate change will make this plant much much harder to live on, not just for exotic species or some type of frog no one has ever seen in their lives except in National Geographic, but for billions of human beings. But can the marketplace is an inadequate tool for change. It’s all too willing to lie to us with marketing tools that insist that a certain car manufacturer is really green when you and I know that the very fact of burning petroleum products or owning an SUV or four-wheeling over endangered terrain is simply non-sustainable.

But even more than that the marketplace doesn’t care ultimately. As soon as you can’t afford it in your budget because of a recession in the economy they’re going to go back to polluting because it’s cheaper. And to keep profits high in processed organic foods they’re going to look to cut corners and they have already. Just look at the case of Aurora and the scandal of factory farmed milk produced oftentimes by cows just transferred from conventional farms and then denied pasture, or the case of Cascadian Farms where their CEO, once the poster boy for organic Gene Kahn, is now a vice president of General Mills, which owns Cascadian Farms. Kahn regularly lobbies the FDA to undercut organic additives standards in order to make organic food more palatable as processed food.

He also said, in defense of his decision to become part of the system: “We tried hard to build a cooperative community and a local food system, but at the end of the day it wasn't successful. This is just lunch for most people. Just lunch. We can call it sacred, we can talk about communion, but it's just lunch."

I find this statement from one of the pioneers of organic farming to be both ideologically scary and yet profoundly true. When I first read it I was horrified and stopped buying Cascadian Farms products; particularly the pickles as they contain road salt, but he’s really talking about something quite fundamental to my point today. The marketplace doesn’t change because of us – we change because of the marketplace. The solution doesn’t necessarily lie in how we choose to spend our hard earned dollars. Frankly even standing in the middle of a natural foods coop I have no idea how to ‘vote’ with my dollar because behind every label is a hidden history and hidden agenda. I simply don’t have time to research them all.

And as I explained in an earlier blog even choosing to buy from a local farmer doesn’t always equal the right choice if you can’t afford it.

Really when I get right down to it the basic issue of changing human behavior becomes much more complicated when you realize that the majority of people on this planet don’t even have the luxury to worry about whether or not their toilet paper is recycled and unbleached, or whether they should by organic free-range chicken or save a couple bucks by getting the conventional stuff. They just need to get enough to eat, and for their children to eat, or not be tortured or bombed, or be able to get clean drinking water. Ultimately my choice not to eat tortured animals has no worldwide significance on the role that animals play in human lives. And it’s not just ‘somewhere’ else like Africa or India that I’m talking about. A vast number of Americans do not have the financial luxury to even contemplate many of the choices I make every day in the coop when buying my groceries. Most of those Americans don’t have the educational opportunities to even enter the discussion. There is a huge and vast divide in this country and it’s not just about red and blue.

Somehow, somewhere, there must be some sort of solution because if we don’t think of one soon it might well be that nature solves the problem for us.

Etching My Mother

2008-12-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

Last night was another etching workshop. This time I worked on a doing an etching from a portrait I did of my mother. The image is from one of my test pulls from last night. I still plan to aquatint this image to create volume in the face. The original is an oil painting about 18inches by 24inches done on linen and the likeness is very good. I had attempted to capture my mother at least three over times through the years and always failed. She wasn't the best sitter in the world. She had a tendency to fidget and worry that I was making her look too old. This time she didn't worry and promised to sit still, but also I think it was better because I was really warmed up when I did this painting. It was in the middle of about twenty-five different portraits I did in six months. I don't work with sketches but use a live model, sketch onto the canvas in charcoal, and then start painting right on top of that.

For the etching I shrunk the image in Photoshop and then converted it to grey scale to simplify the line and the volume. I was still quite worried that it wouldn't translate or that my inexperience as an etcher would render the piece unrecognizable from either the original or the model, but I needn't have worried! Here is the original painting for some comparison. Once I do the aquatint next Wednesday I'll do an update on the process.

New Blog Manifesto!

2008-12-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

After a reasonable period of time (since late August) I feel I have to spend my time in better ways. To that end I’m revamping my blog over the next few weeks to better reflect my personal interests and beliefs. I hope those of you that have found me even the slightest bit interesting will continue to do so or maybe even find me more interesting as I let fly with subjects dear and close to my heart without regard to whether or not you will visit my Etsy shop. I’ll still be selling my art and jewelry, as always, but after having immersed myself in beginning marketing for the last four months I’m fed up!

This is not a sob story, don’t get me wrong. It’s actually an exciting change for me because I think I’ll get in some good writing experience and make new friends and that’s what it’s all about for me, ultimately, when it comes to the internet.

I might even delete all my older posts once I fully know what I’m up to.

Topics I’ll be writing about: art, history, writing, food and the environment, social issues, and changing the world one blog post at a time.

This, That, and the Other

2008-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

*Yawn* It's been a good morning to a weekend with good points and bad points.

Let's get the bad out of the way first. It was hideously cold! So cold it could chill you right through several layers of warm winter clothing, and I had to stand outside in that for 45 minutes waiting for my local farmer's market to jury my jewelry for their winter fair only to be turned down. To be fair they said they loved my stuff, but sadly they just had too much jewelry already and I was a Johnny come lately. Still it was sad and disappointing to be rejected. Thankfully I still have the other two fairs to do the weekend end before.

Happier news is I sold my lovely snowflake earrings featured in the last bloggerie, and so I made another pair so that I can still make the matching necklace I have schemed. But first I'm making a very different piece. It's a necklace and instead of beaded I'm doing all wire coils for the chain and danglies and stuff. I'll post a photo as soon as I'm done. It should be very nice.

This morning I have lots of lovely new hearts and over 6000 page views at my etsy store because my very latest treasury (pictured here) made the Etsy front page around 1 a.m. or so. I wish I had seen it. When I checked my email last night I had noticed that one of the pictures had been swapped out for an alternate and I KNEW I hadn't done it so I figure it might make the front page but it was late and I was tired so into bed I went. However Adorn Me Jewelry left me a nice message so I knew I had hit the front page. That was very sweet!

So that's three front pages I have made now. I feel warm and fuzzy about that achievement and hope to hit it more often. Now if I could only get MY stuff on there! Hehe.

Oh and I'm sooo looking forward to Thanksgiving this year! Now if I can only get my son to come with me instead of sulking by his lonesome.

Oh oh oh oh… after viewing my show William H. Hays has suggested swapping portraits. I do one of him and he do one of me. Very exciting. William is a great guy, very enthusiastic about the arts, as well as a talented painter, and he runs the Artist's Loft here in town.

Artistic Update

2008-11-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

I had a lovely dinner at a Thai restaurant last night with my mentor and professor Gary, from when I was an undergraduate at Smith College, and his wife Deedee. It was really flattering because I had sent him a show card for my show this month and he had made the effort to come and see it and have dinner with us. It was so nice and refreshing to look at my paintings with him and hear his insightful critiques once again. He is really such a warm and yet forthright teacher, and he remains my favorite critic to this day. He made sure to let me know how much he enjoyed the work (comparing me to Alice Neels, a comparison I often hear), but also to have really useful and interesting things to say about what specifically worked or didn’t work for him in various pieces.

Then he asked me what was next and I told him about my etching class and that was great too because he’s a printmaker as well as a painter himself and so we talked about that and he encouraged me to work on some of the same ideas I had been working on in the paintings – which is, actually, one of the things I had been thinking about doing!

And just to show how productive I have been in general here is a photo of one of my latest creations that I’m selling at Etsy. I love these elegant winter themed earrings in silver, kyanite, and pearl. I have more of these snowflake charms in a couple different sizes so I think I’m going to work on an earrings and necklace set.

Learning to Etch

2008-11-16T13:07:00.001-08:00

Oh my god, I'm absolutely pooped. I spent this weekend at an etching workshop (had to time off work but sooooo worth it). I have wanted to learn to etch for twenty years and it was everything I thought it would be and more. I'm already a copperholic. Truth be told I'm also a little sore.

The class, taught by two women at Twin Vixen Press, started right at the beginning with the preparation of the copper plate for etching. This included filing the edges to a 45 degree angle so that the roller on the press could easily catch the edge of the plate during printing. That part seemed tedious but I was assured that if I was doing it all the time I could use a belt sander! Once that was done it was on to sanding the plate to make sure the surface was smooth and free from marks that would show up in the print. Some do anyway but there are some lovely random accidents that happen in etching on occasion that I quite like.

I had brought some images, as requested, to the workshop and after seeing the size of the plate I selected one of titled Undine from my Female Monsters series (part of my graduate thesis). It was a painting that I actually sold and so rather missed, but fortunately had a good digital photo of on my computer I could print. I then traced the outlines of the image onto tracing paper with dark graphite rich pencil. Next we put hard ground on the plate which is a sort of waxy medium that resists acid. Laying the tracing paper on the dried surface of the ground rubbing with your fingernail actually transfers the graphite drawing to the ground - then using an etching tool you just draw into the ground. You don't have to press hard or anything because you're not dry pointing etching into the copper. The acid bath will do the work.

After that I cleaned off the ground and prepared the plate for a quite test run - to see what I had made. It was pretty neat right away, but lacking in detail that would make the image stand out. I have always loved the quality of line in etching though. It seems to me that it just makes line so much more beautiful. After that I laid down a new hard ground in order to work more into the plate.

After that stage and seeing what the print looked like I then decided to try the aqua tint process. Basically they have this sand box where rosin is dusted onto the plate, then the plate is heated, and after it has completed cooled you can paint another medium onto the plate called stop out (I might remember that wrong) and block out areas you don't want the acid bath to etch. Aqua tint lays done these tiny specks and so when the plate is in the wash these little specks are eaten out of the copper plate. Varying degrees of timing produce lighter or darker tonal ranges. It's a cumulative process so you have to do a bit of arithmetic, working from your lights to your darks as you add more stop out (stop it?) to the plate until finally you feel you're done.

Then wash it all off again, apply the ink, and print. Amazing. I include a scan of my final print. I made quite a few of these today. I look forward to seeing one framed.

Just some final notes about the image: Undine is a mermaid but in keeping with the whole theme "Female Monsters" I was thinking about the early sailor stories that made out mermaids to be fearsome creatures luring sailors to their death. The body of the undine is a moray eel. She is swimming through kelp.

I Stapled My Thumb

2008-11-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

I have some new pieces to photograph, and I'll be doing that in just a little while, but I decided to take some time to write a little update in my blog.
I stapled my thumb yesterday.

Yes, I was exceptionally stupid and while checking a stapler to see if it was full of staples I pushed it closed with my thumb right under the opening where the staples come out and of course managed to fire one staple right into the pad of my thumb. There was a sharp and instant pain and then there was the equally shocking sight of a staple embedded in my flesh. Fortunately I didn't need one of those thingies that look like jaws with metal teeth to extract it, but I still had to pull it out, just like you do when you remove a staple from paper. It bled a bit, but more it felt bruised. Last night I even managed to work on some earrings, coil wrapping the wire, but it was kind of painful.

This morning I have a fat bruised looking thumb! Eek.

Still I don't regret working on the earrings last night. I intend to do more tonight if my thumb allows. While I have lots of stock - sales have been light - I want to make sure I have some stunning pieces for a show I'm going to be juried for which I really really must get into for Christmas. Wish me luck!

Tea with Crescent Dragonwagon

2008-11-11T10:42:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I had a wonderful opportunity to have tea with noted cookbook author and children’s book author Crescent Dragonwagon. I have known Crescent for a couple of years. I met her before I knew anything about her amazing cookbook Passionate Vegetarian (because I’m an unabashed Passionate Omnivore), but I soon figured out she was a pretty interesting and amazing lady. Yesterday, however, I got to know just how amazing she is.

I was at her lovely old farmhouse in the Green Mountains to interview her for the newsletter where I work (circulation 5,000) as Crescent had enthusiastically agreed to be our featured local producer. I have interviewed about 30 people since I have taken on this job and I have to say that Crescent was one of my favorites. First of all she was such a wonderfully gracious hostess. She prepared a southern-style cornbread for us in a skillet, one of the recipes in her newly published cookbook The Cornbread Gospels, and then made shortbread out of it by slicing it in half, filling it with her homemade from her own organic garden green tomato mincemeat (a recipe that can be found on the Passionate Vegetarian Cookbook) and served with fresh whipped cream. She served this as a dessert to follow little egg salad sandwiches on rye bread or something herbed and creamy amazing on oatmeal bread; cut into little squares, of course, as it was a tea party.

Tea was Assam or this very lovely kind of smoky Russian black tea which I forgot the name of (yes, and I was taking notes!) so I guess I’ll have to email her for that information and it was brewed in a gorgeous antique china teapot that she bought when she was eighteen with a gorgeous dragon for handle and spout. She was meticulous in her tea ceremony, warming the pot before she added the tea, and even warming the milk. I let her be ‘mother’ and pour. I confess I haven’t had such a nice tea since I lived in England.

Conversation was lively and entertaining and I mostly eschewed the time-dulled practice of interviewing her by asking questions. I let the conversation flow freely, and I’m sure it was far more fun for everyone that way. After tea Crescent led us on a tour of her home, which was the same one she’d spent every summer in as a child, including her wall of photographs where I learned that Crescent had dined at the White House with the Clintons, but even more impressive to the artist in me had been photographed by Annie Liebovitz! What was really remarkable was that this fascinating and multi-talented woman who wrote novels as well as her cookbooks and kid’s books, was so wonderful forthright about herself without ever seeming boastful or vain. She is truly a special and unique human being.

Oh and another notable was the fantastic paintings in her dining room done by her grandfather or great-grandfather I believe.

(photo credit: Walter Fogg)

Portrait Anyone?

2008-11-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

It’s not been a stellar month for me at Etsy.com, but I can tell you that I was star of my show the other night at my opening. I include a small sample. I’m wondering about including some of my paintings on Etsy or making some cards or ACEO or whatever, but I always hesitate because if I think my jewelry is a slow mover I have to admit my artwork is like sludge. I think I’m a good painter, don’t get me wrong, but fine art paintings are not exactly on the top of anyone’s list in this economy and paintings of still living people are generally only interesting to their relatives! That said I did sell a couple of the portraits at my show, but at pretty discounted prices. I would rather they had a happy home among the people that love the sitters than they sit in my attic, basement, or studio gathering dust.

I do actually hang my own art in my own home and several of my favorite pieces are portraits of people that I don’t even know anymore. I actually had to look up the name of one woman. I had forgotten it, but an intriguing portrait is more than just an individual. It takes on a broader connotation after the person is no longer known and becomes a universal: Madonna, whore, mother, daughter or vanity, wisdom, folly, vision. I have become friends with my portrait paintings in a way that I never expected. I put up some older ones at the show and then was shocked that I didn’t want to sell them. I put up ridiculously high prices for them! I figured if it would help pay the rent it was worth it, but otherwise forget it.

Blackbird Morning!

2008-11-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

It's a really busy day today, a pretty big day, and I will be just fried by the end of it. I am throwing a party for my friends and it's really the first time I have had a party in a very long time. There is a reason of course, quite a big deal for me as I have an art show opening tonight in town. I'm very excited about how people will receive it, but I have a feeling it will be very well attended. Thank you to Dan for getting me inspired and motivated and helping so much with everything, and of course thanks to my Nome! It really helps to have such wonderful artists around me who understand just how important and scary something like this can be, and then to have a party too! What was I thinking?

The piece of jewelry I have posted a picture of is a fairly recent piece and a little bit of something new for me. As usual I have combined elements, including new and old, but in this case I have created some more dimension to the necklace. The black beads are very old, brought back by Nome's grandmother from some exotic wonderful place (I suspect South America from the looks of them, if anyone can help me comment away!), and then I used a vintage clear plastic gold-etched bead for the center piece. I've posted a couple views so you get the idea. It has matching earrings which I have listed separately but I think it would be awesome if someone got the set. The earrings are featured in a treasury right now - and the curator commented that she was inspired to create the treasury by my blackbird earrings! I love stuff like that. I think this set has a very Frido Kahlo look. I should have put that in the tags right? It would be great to do someone's portrait wearing it too. I love the color and shapes. Now if you were sitting right here with me I could let you handle the necklace because it has very different textures too, something else I find really interesting. The red sponge coral beads are very light and like a very soft pumice, but not abrasive at all, while the birds are smooth clay and then, of course there is the textured metal. I hope to find more interesting beads like those birds to inspire unusual one off designs.

I have slowed down on the number of pieces I have been making lately because I'm definitely feeling a stirring of desire to make things that are really distinctive and a little different. Many of my previous pieces are very lovely and I would and do love to wear them, but I think I want to jump into something like metal clay or lamp working to really bring out my distinctive style and individuality.

Bread Blues

2008-11-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

The scent of warm fresh baked bread drives me into deep waves of longing, and there is simply nothing I can do about it. I posted about a great bread company Against the Grain in a earlier blog of mine, but much as I endorse the wonderful products they produce nothing can, for me, replace crusty artisan crafted baked wheat flour bread. I can prefer Sesmark rice crackers with sesame seeds to regular crackers, I can live with quinoa pasta, I can cope with Against the Grain pizza crusts, I can live without cookies and cakes, or occasionally treat myself with flourless chocolate cake, but nothing is as gorgeous to my senses both olfactory and gustatory as good bread.

I have never tested as allergic to wheat or as having celiac disease but I’m pretty sure I have it now. I been on the Atkins diet since June, my second time on the low carb regime. Each time I basically just cut out things like bread, pasta, sugar, etc. I don’t go for the substitutes generally. Just as if I was a vegetarian I wouldn’t eat tofurky, I don’t really buy the whole substitute thing. If I don’t want to eat meat why would I want to eat bean curds shaped to look like a turkey with all sorts of weird flavor and texture additives? Don’t even get me started on how odd I find that. So you won’t find me eating all those high priced and over-processed Atkins brand carb substitute products which actually have a lot of carbs, well more than if I simply didn’t eat it in the first place. Yes, I’m eating piles of delicious healthy veggies so fret not.

Anyway, that was the point of this? Oh yes, so I accidentally cut wheat out of my diet 6 years ago and then again this year. I lost weight, felt better, stopped having headaches, and was relieved of some uncomfortable and embarrassing personal health issues that I don’t feel like elucidating for you here but if you are familiar with some of the symptoms of gluten intolerance I’m sure you can guess. Both times. And the day before yesterday I cheated. I had a little lasagna. I was at an event where I needed to eat and there were no low carb options that would have satisfied me as I had been moving tables and chairs around for 150 people. I needed food. Yesterday all day I paid the price with that little problem of mine – the one I haven’t experienced since June.

Big sigh here. I have finally had to come to terms with, as I walk down the bread aisle smelling my favorite food, that I will never ever again be able to enjoy a crusty loaf with butter and brie, or a delicious just out of the oven chocolate chip cookie, or have my beloved toast and marmalade.

I mourn.

The Night Before Election No One was Stirring...

2008-11-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

I feel like the world is holding its collective breath. It bustles around me and yet I can’t focus, can’t really sit still. Is everyone feeling the same way? On the surface it wouldn’t seem if anything momentous was taking place, but underneath there is a little tension. Jokes are strained. One of my coworkers agreed that he was all nerves and little attention span.

Since I wrote the first paragraph I have had the same conversation over and over again with plenty of lame jokes about emigrating if things don’t go well. I just want it all to be over and start to work on whatever is coming next. I want to be celebrating life instead of holding my breath. I want to feel my creativity well up inside me and share it with people. I want to see a little optimism around me because whatever party you vote for the deep and abiding fact is that we are still a fortunate people, us Americans, for the standard of living we, most of us, have, and the freedoms that we have come to take for granted.

I want to start the healing and the return to the faith of our founders in a free society of equals. Of course I understand that their definition was a little different from mine. I get the differences between their mindset and mine, but fundamentally I still feel proud when I read the stirring words of Thomas Jefferson:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —

If you haven’t read the Declaration of Independence you should – and if you have you should reread it. It’s an incredible document and can be as stirring today as the day it was first penned.

Song For Change

2008-10-31T12:58:00.000-07:00

My friend Tom just put this out on YouTube and so I have to share. I like to spend Wednesday nights listening to him play his guitar and sing his songs with a glass of good red wine and the good company of friends. Watching this little video made me feel a little teary, just thankful for having good friends to hang out with.

Dark Side of the Moon

2008-10-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Moon and stars, sun and distant worlds, that is celestial bodies, have always had a powerful draw on me, but I have tended to avoided them in my adult art as I try to find expressions less used. However no matter how many times I gaze at the moon it never fails to fascinate or draw my gaze from crescent to pink and fat.

I felt free to call this series of necklaces after the moon because I feel they are abstracted rather than direct representations. This latest piece, Dark Side of the Moon, is created with black onyx and with a beautiful floral coconut button stained black. I kept it very simple and celestial with orbiting silver planets. If the button should turn in its orbit a silver line appears reminiscent of the rings of Saturn.

The other symbolism of the name of this necklace, of course, corresponds with Pink Floyd’s seminal concept album Dark Side of the Moon that was first released in 1973. I would have been only ten years old, but I’m pretty sure I was listening to it by eleven or twelve so the incredible evocative sound texture of that album has been with me a long time and is appropriate as inspiration to my art of adornment. When I was on the Searchlight on the Thames in England I remember wearing ‘cans’ over my ears to fall asleep to the sounds of footsteps running from ear to ear over the top of my head or the clinking of coins in a ceramic bowl. I believe there is some connection between the fact that my necklace can show more than one face and the textures of that album. It’s perhaps tenuous, possibly indescribable, ineffable, but it’s not non-existent in the landscape of my inspiration.

Ramblings on a Dark Morning...

2008-10-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was exciting at Etsy in that my latest treasury, the one I mentioned in the previous posting, made it to the front page for about half an hour. I garnered some hearts which was nice - means that people do visit the curator of a treasury, and I noticed that three of the items I featured sold, which makes me feel all puffed up with pride for being a good Etsian. I can only hope such good fortune is contagious. So last night, with an another packet of new beads in hand, I fashioned four pairs of earrings - or was it three and a half as one had been begun previously but abandoned when I ran out of jump rings. Anyway they are all sweet and attractive but all derivative of earlier designs so no new inspiration hit, but I was productive.

I have to play domestic goddess today, but hope to get some time to work on some writing. I particpate in a writing/roleplay community site called Panhistoria and tomorrow when I have time to log in there, I will need to be posting as there are big happenings in one of the stories I write in. It's a fun site, quite addictive (if you like to write or you used to love to play dress up or pretend as a kid) once you get the hang of it, and I have always had to learn to restrict myself timewise there, or I would never get my work done, or my jewelry made, or my paintings painted!

You know I had some big thoughts about what my next blog would be about, like the environment or music or some incredible inspirational insights I had, but I've just rambled. If you have read this far, I salute you. Oh! Breaking news, my work is featured in another treasury this morning, yah! I must be doing something right because that's the third in a row.

And just to be sure I have some substance here is a little video for you to watch:

All the Birds Are Leaving...

2008-10-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

Let's just get it out of the way straight away: yes, I managed to snag yet another treasury at Etsy today. This one was inspired both by my own recent swallow themed chandelier earrings and by the falling leaves. The name of the treasury is "Where Does the Time Go?" and was inspired by the wonderful soung "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" by the late great Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention, a folk singer extraodinaire. Swallows arrive with the summer and leave with it - and so it's perhaps very apt that I have been inspired to memorialize them in my jewelry this autumn. Now it would be quite something to see Sandy wearing those while singing, but that is, alas, never to be. She's largely forgotten I think by the fact that she died so very young but her voice is quite remarkable and pure.

I also received some lovely new beads from one of my favorite Etsy sellers Carrodar and once again I'm excited to start creating something. I have made three orders now from Carrodar and each time been very happy with the gemstones and with the wonderful service. My latest purchase begs for a necklace and earring set, this time far more rugged and chunky than my more recent creations. You know I do actually sit around and think I should stick with one style or unifying theme but it just can't happen, not to a Gemini on the cusp. I just keep thinking of new ideas and inspiration comes from so many different places. One thing I do want to do is start an ideas journal/sketch pad (just like I have encouraged past students to do! I'm so bad at taking my own advice).

New Age Cynicism

2008-10-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

Please understand from the outset of this essay that I am totally in support of organic, local, and fair trade. I even work in the sector and have helped advanced the cause in my area. But, and I have a big but here, but how is it that I have a choice between an organic cucumber for $3.99 from Mexico or .89 cents each from Mexico or California or Florida. That means that my organic cuke would cost from 3 to 4 times the conventional one. Now I get that the price of a conventionally grown cuke is held down by mass production, cheap migrant labor, and government subsidies but the disparity is crippling. I can’t afford a $4 cuke no matter what my values are. Now I would be prepared to pay twice as much to ensure I didn’t consume toxic chemicals, pollute the groundwater, pump more greenhouse gases into the ozone, or further the exploitation of poor migrant works, but FOUR TIMES as much is out of my reach.

I’m a ardent believer in eating my food fresh and local rather than shipped from New Zealand – unless of course it’s a banana in which case I would prefer fair trade and organic – but what is with $5.99 for local organic tomatoes from a guy that farms up the road from me and still uses migrant labor? I know - I have been on his farm. Why are organic tomatoes from further away $3.99 or $2.99 a pound in comparison? I personally believe, if I were to pay $6 a pound, someone is ripping me off. And since I know for a fact the mark up at the store I shop at that means Mr. Farmer up the road is actually exploiting my desire to eat locally.

Of course one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bushel basket, but it seems to me, particularly after visiting Expo East this year (natural products exposition) that more and more profit-only minded people are muscling into the natural foods market and taking advantage of people who are genuinely concerned for the environment and eating right. It’s becoming big business with the major corporations snapping organic natural labels and even the smaller vendors becoming jaded and greedy. I do understand the rising cost of oil increasing the cost of agricultural and transportation all around but should organic and local be almost immune from the issue of oil costs? After all they aren’t shipping long distances or using petroleum based fertilizers. At a time like this I would have expected organic local foods to drop in price relative to the conventional. It sickens me that it’s going to continue the reverse with everyone wanting the bigger price tag of ‘trendy organic, natural, and local’ labels.

Meanwhile people like me with a limited or low income and no access to my own garden find themselves filling their baskets with conventional foods when their heart belongs to organic.

This That and the Other

2008-10-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was sort of weird and screwed up so I ended up not doing anything in the evening like I wanted to. I still have to create the second of a pair of shimmering swallow chandelier earrings (see previous blogging for the first pair I made) but this time in sterling silver and it's more like a jellyfish with a swallow. I'm using moonstones and aquamarine as well as the vintage iridescent swallow focal. I think they are really lovely but quite time consuming. I'm making this pair in silver because some people felt that the copper wire ones didn't lend the ears enough real value in materials to justify the cost. I'm not sure about that as I think that the combination of elements is pretty interesting actually. I love the whole magpie thing of grabbing from different sources materials that might not always be deemed to go with each other. It's perhaps a little art college of me, but I think that I need to go with my gut. However I love silver so I have no problem creating some shimmering dangles in silver.

On a happy note here is the latest treasury I created. This time I just picked out items from my favorites without regard to theme, color scheme, etc, though I did try and produce something harmonious. My previous treasuries had an eye on the Etsy front page, but neither were picked, which is hardly surprising considering the numbers vying for attention, so this time I just wanted to honor some great items from Etsy artists. And if any of those items sell because of the treasury that is one less thing I have to worry about tempting me into spending! I also, for the second time in a row, was featured in a very colorful treasury with the pictured earrings. These are getting some attention! I'll have to make some more. I like doing them and they are simple and effective.

In December I do a few Christmas craft shows and that's when I'll really get an idea which of my jewelry ideas are most successful. I'm very excited, but I sure wish I had something a little earlier as money has been tight - just as it is for everyone these days.

Thoughts on Old Office Chairs

2008-10-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Walking to work this morning I noticed a couple office chairs parked up on the curb. I was contemplating nabbing one or two (great for the studio!) but I was going the wrong direction and had no place to stash them all day. I gazed longingly at the chairs as I reluctantly moved past without snatching. I was wondering what was wrong with them they needed to be thrown out. The answer was blindingly obvious: the fabric had worn under the knees and was now showing off the foam padding. This is the normal place for such chairs to wear and in every other way they looked entirely serviceable.

It occurred to me that nothing in the world would be easier than for the manufacturer to add some reinforcement to that part of the seat. Then, just as quickly, it occurred to me that no modern manufacturer would do that. Why not? Because they want stuff to wear out and be thrown away so you’ll buy a new one. I would bet you good money that they even research the exact length of time it’s acceptable to the consumer that a product wears out within so that they still buy the manufacturer’s crappy-built-to-be-redundant-quickly products.

Remember when ever town had a machine shop where you could take things like the toaster for repair? Can you even imagine doing so today? And of course there were cobblers. I loved the cobblers. You didn’t just throw away your shoes when you got a hole in the heel – you had them repaired! These days it just costs more to have something repaired than the thing is worth… BECAUSE they are made to be cheap and disposable. We, as consumers, are programmed to prefer the low price points and assume we’re getting better value and stretching our dollar. But once you bought something ONCE in your life, not every three years or less. Count up the amount of times you had to fork out for a toaster, total up the cost. Bet you one in good materials guaranteed to last would have cost you less in the long run.

I won’t even go into the cost to the environment and landfill we are paying so that we can buy cheap disposable goods.

Anyone reading this I’m probably preaching to the choir – particularly to those who are proponents of HANDMADE excellence like all my Etsy friends, but I just want to add that I’m as guilty as everyone else. I’m trying to change my ways and buy good quality stuff that will last and last, even if I have to start with the small ticket items and do without for other things. It’s not easy being green as beloved Kermit told us so many years ago (how psychic was that?).

Goodies, Treasuries, Beautiful Fall!

2008-10-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

I'm extremely proud of my latest pair of chandelier earrings in my Victoriana Collection. Each piece I do is one of a kind, though I can do a 'series' like I have been doing with the flower drops and the Victorian inspired pieces. However I have to say that this last piece (shown here) with its cascading moonstone dangles was a lot of work! It's probably just going to remain very much One of a Kind. Still it was fun to do and showed off some skills.

Other great news is that I created a new treasury: Ultraviolet and Hot Pink. I'll take a screen shot of it before it expires to capture the moment but while it's live I hope plenty of my readers check it out. One person messaged me to say that they thought it was front page quality which I thought was very very sweet. I'm not sure about that, but it was a lot of fun to curate!

At the same time I was creating my treasury Pied Crow Press was featuring me in theirs! How very cool is that: Pumpkin Pie and Chai Tea. Now this treasury I DO think is front page worthy. It's got some great products too. I have the coffee bean earrings that are on the bottom row - and those sold yesterday! So good news all around. Let's hope this is a portent for things to come. Feeling extremely positive today.

And yes, it's stunningly beautiful outside my windows. I might try and capture some of the fall foliage this year and post it here.

Handmade Showcase!

2008-10-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

I'm so incredibly chuffed by this wonderful feature in Handmade Showcase. I will be excited to create the winning earrings for the winner of this give-away and I really hope that a lot of people respond. Not only is this a great showcase for my work, with a good interview, lots of photos, but it's so much fun too! I'm very pleased with how well it has been presented. Kudos!

I'm also very happy to have put up some new earrings at my shop this morning. I made six pairs last night (yes, ever so industrious) and managed to get three of them online so far. I'll do the rest later, maybe this evening because I'll be at a trade show tomorrow. Most of the earrings I did last night are a slightly new direction for me. Even though I have put them in my "Victoriana" collection they are a little more creative in my use of the filigree elements and also very much more time consuming. I'm particularly pleased with a natty little pair that I'll try and list soon made with little vintage coffee bean beads. Look out for it.

Treasuries and Accolades

2008-10-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to memorialize the treasury I was in knowing that soon it will be gone forever.

So here it is. I think it looks really stunning and I'm very happy to be part of it. Of course it helps that nomeworks is good friend of mine. I featured her in my first blog and I'm sure I'll pick her out again. If you don't know her work you should take a look. She's a very a very innovative artist jeweler.

I'm find myself very inspired by her work and I'm always exceptionally flattered when I see her wear any of my pieces.

Optimism

2008-10-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

In a spirit of great optimism yesterday I decided to be wild and crazy and just buy something on etsy! I'm a new seller on etsy and while I do great when I'm selling in person I have yet to really break into the online marketplace. So I've been holding myself back a little on spending any money, but then I decided to just put the energy out there and see what comes back to me.

So I bought these adorable little guys as a gift for someone what they would totally suit. She doesn't know about it so I hope she doesn't read my blogs, but you never know. I preferred yellow monsters myself (featured them in one of my treasuries) but she loved pink (such a girl!) and so I got the pink ones. Besides they'll match her outfits better.

Personally I feel like I'm waiting for after the election though to see if things pick up for me. It's like the whole nation is holding its breath, just waiting to find out what our world will be like. Those of us that truly desire change, I see that possibility in Obama, are, I think, afraid to get our hopes too high. Whoever wins, however, I do hope that people start breathing again and we can continue with the good life. We're so lucky in this country and I think, often, people lose sight of that. We need to keep that vision and remember, and fight for our rights!

Black and Silver Dreams!

2008-10-12T09:12:00.001-07:00

Nomeworks (who I featured in one of my earlier blogs) has included me in a stunning treasury of silver and black arts and crafts at Etsy.com with my Etsy Elephant Walk necklace. I'm really pleased and it's such a lovely collection. Later I'll get a screen capture and post it here so it won't get lost and forgotten.

The piece of mine that is featured I can picture. This is one of my very favorite necklaces and if I don't sell it this Christmas I might just keep it all for my own. One of the really fun things about this necklace for those that love Etsy is that I got all the supplies for it on Etsy. I actually do a little shopping on the site, but I get my stuff from all over, including gem and mineral shows as well as other wholesale sources so I was a bit surprised when I realized, without intending too, that all the components I had gotten off of Etsy!

Anyway here is hoping that everyone enjoys this lovely treasury!

Frustration: Mother of Invention

2008-10-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

Frustration can actually be a source of inspiration. Last night I started working a little on my flower garden series and since I was all out of sterling silver ear wires (I have them on order!) I made a couple of pairs using the copper wire I ordered a while back and then didn’t get around to using because it was bright and shiny (not patina’d). I think it’s actually pretty neat and I had already started incorporating the brass filigree caps to a pair in silver and so naturally that extended the vocabulary used in creating these little gems.

This inspiration followed several days of very satisfying work in the painting studio so all in all I feel it was a good creative week. Now if only I could persuade others that I’m as good an artist as I want to be and get some solid sales under my belt I can feed my creative addiction. I need more precious metals and fabulous gemstones. I would also like to stock up on some lamp worked beads. I’m thinking about training in that field. I think I could totally get into glass.

Presenting The Flower Garden

2008-10-10T05:18:00.000-07:00

Wandering around etsy I see variations on the theme, but I think each one of us that crafts handmade jewelry is bringing our own uniqueness to it and so I'm proud to present my flower element earrings. This one, in particular, I feel is fairly unusual. Simple, feather light, but soft and elegant. It's the exact polar opposite of the stuff I do with some of the earthier gemstones I am fond of, but that's my nature as a Gemini. Some days I wake up all flowers and air, and other mornings I want the rich deep veins of ore and earth.

I can say that my consistent inspiration is nature!

Finally!

2008-10-10T05:11:00.001-07:00

Whew. I got my blog back. I was 'flagged' as spam for three days. It felt kinda dirty to be flagged like that when all I had written about was bread and and jewelry!

Anyway, I'm back, and I have more people I want to feature in my blog, and more stuff to scribble about.

Against the Grain

2008-10-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

I don’t have Celiac Disease, but I do seem to suffer from gluten-intolerance and so I try and avoid wheat and other grains that contain gluten. It’s a little bit of a sacrifice for the sake of my health as I absolutely adore crusty artisan bread full of wheat and yeast and nothing can really replace that for me. Since I’m also currently doing the Atkins diet (it works for my body chemistry and blood type) I’m just avoiding all carbs anyway, except the green leafy buddy kind (i.e. broccoli, cabbage, kale, chard, salads, etc), so it’s not been an issue of late. I find avoiding carbs means I don’t crave them.

However I did just recently meet these folks and I can tell you that their product is delightful: Against the Grain. They are makers of excellent baked products to replace wheat-based goods. I think their bread tastes like Yorkshire Pudding but that’s not a bad thing in my mind; particularly as most gluten-free breads taste like cardboard or Styrofoam. They also do pizza crusts for those of you who just cannot do without pizza! I tried a slice of their crust with some yummy toppings the other day and it was darned tasty and really close to the real thing. They are a small company operating out of Brattleboro, Vermont, but they are starting to distribute to a larger and larger audience so look for them coming to a food store near you soon. If you’re lucky enough to live in their distribution range right now and unlucky enough to have Celiac Disease or be gluten intolerant check out their web site for stores near you.

Ooooh Thanks Juliafinucane!

2008-10-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Just a nice little promo here: For the Love of Jewelry

It's so nice to be noticed - thanks Juliafinucane!

More of Julia.

2008-10-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

It was an interesting weekend – productive, but perhaps illuminating as well.

I talk about being a magpie a lot in that I am attracted to all sorts of bright shiny things and hence I have started stringing beads on string (there is a certain lesser status to the combining of elements already in existence if you didn’t have to hammer, bend, weld, cast, or otherwise get physical I have recently discovered), but my magpie nature goes beyond my desire for acquisition of lovely objects whether they be stones, plants, books, artworks in general…

I have a tendency to do a lot of things too. So my weekend consisted of a street fair where I took my jewelry to the sidewalk and was roundly ignored. Not really surprising in October in Vermont. It was terribly cold outside and even the band hustled off early, as did I after zero sales. I did manage to force one business card on a doughty tourist so maybe she’ll discover Etsy from my efforts.

I also worked in my studio painting – which is always good on the mind and hands and terrible on the wallet. I know I’m not supposed to think about such things, but I do. Bills must be paid and where is the justification in a canvas for thirty-five dollars and all that oil paint when no one will want to hang the finished work, let alone pay me for it. Oh… I’m not whining. Really. I’m being realistic. How many of us can afford to buy art just to hang upon the walls, and if we do we want something that will go with the décor. I just can’t make myself paint that stuff. But I don’t blame anyone for wanting it – I want stuff that is soothing to the eye too! After all when you’re home you want to relax, not think. Like one of my favorite painters is Francis Bacon, but hang one on my wall? I think not! I might for Lucien Freud but even then it might be pushing it… his nudes are so heavy, vulnerable, and confrontational; really in your face, mister.

On Etsy I managed to get a bunch of photos done of a bunch more of my stuff (some of the re-shoots after learning all the stuff I did wrong the first time) and so I have my listings in my shop up to a reasonable number finally – and at the same time I finally got some interest from browsing shoppers (rather than people I sent to etsy, which is fine, but I’m trying to increase my exposure, obviously). That was very exciting and encouraging. I hope to get another set of photos done soon, particularly as I created two more pairs of earrings in my floral series. I have some more ideas around that whole series and so need more supplies…

I sell to make money for supplies! I’m an addict. We need a support group.

I Took the Pledge...

2008-10-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, of course. Not only do I make handcrafted things, but so does my partner and half my friends, and this year I plan to make the holiday resplendent with beautiful handmade things. I have encouraged family and friends to either shop at local galleries, crafts shows, or go online to www.etsy.com. I also support Fair Trade and will allow items made by craftspeople in other countries as long as it's fair trade.

Featured Fellow Etsian : Mildoo & Moss

2008-10-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

I came across this artist in a treasury, an excellent Etsy.com treasury, and I am now coveting one or more of these delightful creatures for my own (that's Hortense on the left). One of the appealing things about what this artist does in their listings is to show the little critters in a natural habitat peeping above the flora. It really brought them to life for me and made me laugh - out loud.

This is a new seller on the craft site etsy, but I sincerely hope that Mildoo & Moss becomes a successful one, if only for the very selfish reason that I want to be able to shop there for one of the little creatures when I can afford to indulge myself. These are not toys for kiddies, but toys for the young at heart, toys for artists. Each one has a unique and distinct personality that is engaging. Apparently you can hang them, but I think a spot on the couch would work just fine if I could just make sure that the cats didn't deposit fur on those lovely designer fabrics or hook a claw in the cloth! Ah, maybe the top of the dresser... I'm visualizing the spot now.

Featured Fellow Etsian : Nomeworks

2008-10-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

I love this particular piece, a slice of pink tourmaline framed with a tendril of sterling silver, by Nomeworks. The jeweler behind these one of a kind individual crafted and silver-smithed pieces is a personal friend of mine, but also a fantastic jeweler that really doesn't need me to tell you how original she is. Just looking at her original artworks gives you an idea of the creative juices flowing in that fertile mind. She finds inspiration in a number of difference sources but nature must number one. In this series of works that she has listed for sale at Etsy she is inspired by the twists of the Banyan tree.

She also works in gold, and her work is shown in Brattleboro, Vermont at the Gallery in the Woods, a wonderful cornucopia of delights - local artists and outsider artists, local furniture makers, painters, designers, as well as folk arts from around the world. For those of you that don't know Vermont Brattleboro is one of those places you should go for the weekend and check out all the great art. Every month they have a Gallery Walk on the first Friday and many of the downtown shops, galleries, restaurants, etc., participate in the event. The streets fill with people wandering from exhibit to exhibit.

Meet a Fellow Etsian: Dirty Sanchez

2008-09-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to tell you all about Dirty Sanchez because, let's face it, her product descriptions do all the work for me.

I love handmade soap. I used to think it was a frivolous luxury (like expensive scented candles that you just burned down to a wick) until I tried a bar and now I'm a handmade soap addict. It's not a hard thing to get hold of where I live nor on Etsy where there are probably hundreds of sellers creating all sorts of wonderful soaps for every taste and budget.

Dirty Sanchez, however, clinched the deal just with her writing. I look forward to receiving my first bars and I'll let you know how well I like them, but I can't imagine being anything other than ecstatic so I'll be a repeat purchaser. This time I ordered "breakfast club" and "pollinator", both scents that Dirty Sanchez swears to abhor due to the fact that they are floral.

Dipping My Toe in the Water

2008-09-30T06:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, this whole blogging thing has been a mystery to me right from the start. I have tried to do some personal blogs before and ... oops failure. For a person that likes to talk about themselves I sure don't like to write about myself!

That's not a bad thing, but I'm going to stretch my wings here a little and hopefully give you a taste of my creative side, my magpie side (to share things I like with you), and my gustatory side. Yes, there will be some food art with my art here.

So herein you will find art, arts & crafts, food arts, food issues, and the odd observation about life, love, and the universe (but nothing icky gooey cheesy).

First and foremost I have taken up jewelry design, beaded jewelry work, and am creeping into the more esoteric realms of technique. My primary interest when I do art is color and texture, so technique is not important to me until I need it. Fortunately I have a wonderful mentor/tutor and can work with my hands so whenever I need to learn something new it will magically appear.

The fun for me, so far, in jewelry construction and design is combining my deep magpie longings with the urge to create, and the result is shape, color, and texture that can be worn. What could be more satisfying?

I used to satisfy this urge with knitting, a foray into weaving, but the fiber arts ultimately lost me due to a series of frustrations (I don't need fifty zillion sweaters, the acting of knitting is too repetitive for my tastes, and it costs a fortune to knit even one sweater!).

Introducing Longfellow

2008-09-27T11:39:00.001-07:00

Artist and activist, writer and dreamer.

I have a Masters in Fine Art, have taught art at college level, and recently began to make handcrafted jewelry because my partner is also a jeweler and it spread to me like an infection! I love working with all the different possibilities of beads and metal elements to concoct something unique, one of a kind, my primary interests are color and texture when I work. I am also learning more about metalwork and already some of my findings are handmade, handforged. I also like to shop so I seek out cool items on Etsy, antique stores, gem shows, and more for my work. I need people to buy my jewelry to feed my new obsession! Jewelry is definitely even more expensive than oil painting!

My etsy store is http://www.longfellow.etsy.com