The
library conference was held at what I call Urban Desert--a motel
surrounded by malls and freeway. I only took photos on the plane
coming and going. The trip back was beautiful sunny skies all the
way to Seattle. The photo above is of the Snake River wending its
way north through some of our Idaho ruggedness... The recent
snows highlighted the mountaintops nicely.
I remain not a fan of conferences in general. I did take the
podium briefly twice. The first was in response to one of the
presenters who talked about FRED, an acronym for Fathers Read Every
Day. After she was done it inspired me to go up and testify to the
importance of fathers reading (as the only father there), and how I
read daily until the kids were in HS, and that really led me to my
interest as a children's librarian. (The other
male in the group is
from a local college there to evaluate some of our reading programs).
Later back at the table one of our consortium was wondering if we used
that slogan and acronym if we'd have to get permission. She was
thinking out loud--maybe instead use "Daddies Read Every Day". I
laughed and said that would be DRED, not the message we want to convey.
The other time I spoke to the group related to our puppet program.
Thanks to modern technology I could show them a puppet video on the
projection screen after describing the program. I'd prefer to
have had time to pick out the video, but selected one pretty much at
random (The Lion and the Mouse) and it was well received. I
figured out that even having the kids do the puppets was not something
common, and videoing them to Youtube was a real stretch for their
imaginations. (I later dozed off during a program introducing us
to new concepts on using the Internet in our programming, though I plan
to revisit the presentation online later so I can click on the links
and not just hear a brief description of them--such things as this make
the whole travel hundreds of miles to see a presentation on using the
Internet seem a bit silly).
March 8
Winter's
making a last ditch serious attempt on us here--the ice is still thick
and we got another 3 inches of snow with cold temps overnight and highs
below freezing. At least March weather holds hope (within a month
or two). Yesterday Jonathan and I recorded a few more
songs--they're posted at Youtube and listed at the bottom of the list on the Sondahl and Hawkins page.
March 11
We
hit 0 F this morning, a record low for this date, awfully late to have
such cold. With the clear skies it's warming... I
came down with a cold yesterday, which had me teeth chattering in the
night, so I didn't work at the library today, not wanting to spread the
germs. That didn't stop me from pottery work--unloading two kilns
and loading two kilns in the deep freeze temperatures.
March 14
The cold has stuck with me. I skipped skiing today in favor of
sitting around... This week Emil got his hair styled in a
Mohawk. He's always been into appearing trendy, and this is the
version he currently is trying. He sort of resembles a blonde
zebra (since their manes stick straight up). It takes him about a
half hour in the morning to get it standing up straight, with gelatin
and hairspray. I think that will get old pretty quick.
A couple weeks ago the septic line at the pottery house got plugged,
and the act of cleaning it out (by professionals) caused part of it to
fall apart (due to never being glued together in the first place).
This was a problem, as there is no crawl space to access the
pipe. Finally we hit on a plan to make a larger hole in the
floor to access it, and were able to restore it early this week.
Sometimes life is good if everything you take for granted is
working...
March 15
We
were the first to come upon a car rolled onto its side on the way to
church this morning. The road was slushy. The sole
occupant, a woman, had just climbed out her window and was sitting at
the top of the car, which was a largish truck type. The area is
fairly isolated--no cell phone coverage. So while we ascertained
there was no phone, I asked if anyone was hurt or still in the vehicle.
She said no. (I could probably still remember some first
aid from my years as an EMT, even though mostly it consisted of giving
them oxygen and checking their vital signs). By that time two vehicles
headed towards the nearest town had stopped and offered assistance, and
since we were headed away from there, we left her in their hands.
The
weather went from snow overnight, to rain during the day, to strong
winds this evening, with a chance of thunderstorms. This is Idaho
spring...
Emil already tired of the zebra mane
look. Instead he's spent 45 minutes per day clumping his top hair
into geometric cones resembling the spikes on the Statue of Liberty's
crown.
March 18
I made a few globe vases yesterday, so today I made a thrown chuck to
trim them. In this case it was a thick walled bowl shape that I
could set the vase on upside down and it would hold it steady to trim
and add a coil foot. Usually I just use some water on the wheel
bat, or some pats of clay to secure these vases, but this secured them
a lot better.
I'm down to a couple hundred
pounds of clay, but fortunately a friend is bringing me a shipment from
Seattle on Friday. When I ordered the clay, the line to the
supplier was busy repeatedly, and the clerk said it had been a busy
day. Given the economic news, it's good to hear that something is
busy, besides bankruptcy attorneys.
My son is
here visiting (and skiing daily, which is his preferred way to go
through the day). He's planning to compete (but not win) in the
Stomp Games this weekend at Schweitzer. He prefers to do
technically difficult tricks that aren't quite as showy as, what he
calls, "Spin to Win," where the most spins successfully landed on a
jump will about guarantee being a winner.
In the
library preschool this week, I brought a monkey doll and a bongo to
help with "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb," an old early reader favorite of
mine. Then for a project we copied hands with markers and made
them look either like dogs or bunnies, depending on how the hand was
held. One kid said he wanted his to look like a dinosaur...
I had to tell him hands don't look like dinosaurs...
March 21
The conditions at the Stomp Games competition were bad today, as they
frequently are. It snowed and rained, making visibility and
sliding conditions bad. Birrion competed without winning, but had
a good time with the other contestants and visiting old friends.
Now that Spring has sprung, birds have started coming to the feeder I
put up in front, as well as the little pan which had been the sole
feeder for a sparrow. There was a rufous sided towhee there the
other day, and a varied thrush and townsend's solitaire were looking for mountain ash berries in
back. The feeder in front, totally ignored all winter, now has
chickadees and nuthatches. And the bird calls are highly
noticeable as I walk around town. There's still a foot of highly
condensed snow in most places, but it gets soft every day.
March 22
I pruned some apple and pear trees from the ground today (actually
standing on pieces of plywood on about a foot of very wet snow).
This led me to check previous March blogs and realize that I'm behind
again this year (it just shows this blog is good for something).
It's time to be planting bedding plants, but until recently there
have been very cold temperatures that would freeze our greenhouse.
Interestingly enough, I planted some spinach last fall in the
greenhouse that has hibernated through zero degree weather and looks
about ready to start eating.
March 24
We had to get another cord of wood to last until warm weather.
When you heat with wood, it's easy to visualize your carbon
footprint, compared, for example, to natural gas, that's invisible all
the way. The forecast for the next few days is snow and slush.
I think it helped bring people in the Library today.
Emil tired of taking care of his Mohawk, so he got his
head uniformly trimmed today. I asked if he wanted to be called
"Butch" or "Baldy." He said neither. The weather was a
factor--with a Mohawk he couldn't wear a hat, and the snow would reduce
an hour's work to mush. He has some leftover cans of hair spray...
My skiing son returned to fresh powder in Colorado today.
It was a nice visit, if a bit complicated by his two days of
competition.
March 25
Some friends asked us to sponsor their baby for baptism, which
included my wife doing the service. Due to scheduling
difficulties, it happened this morning in Spokane. It was a small
group of family and friends. I played guitar for it. The
father is a church organist and plays oboe in the Spokane Symphony, so
I'm always a bit humbled to play in his presence. But it worked
out well. Then my schedule got me back to the library with two
minutes to spare. In the last week with the preschool groups I've
worked up a puppet version of Hansel and Gretel, where the father
leaves them in the woods because the bank he runs fails, and after
they dispose of the witch they are received happily back home because
the father got a federal bailout... We must keep up with the
times...
March 26
It's been a short pottery week with the baptism and all, but I managed
to glaze a couple kilnloads this morning and throw about 25 pots.
In the library I hid mystery clues under stuffed animals around the
room and had the kids find them and read them. The puzzle was
about where the stuffed White Mouse was (he was under the sink eating a
pretzel).
The weather was sunny for
a change. I managed to get the garden seeds started in a
half hour between lunch and library... But the tomato starts will
have to stay in the house for weeks.
March 28
I've been saving up kiln shelves with glaze drips on them, since the
hand held grinder was at the other house. But I finally got
around to grinding and adding kiln wash to 4 round shelves today.
I don't know if it's the grinder abrasive or the glaze, but there
is a surprisingly strong smell given off from the grinding, which
lingers for hours. Its reminiscent of the smell when a dentist
drills on tooth enamel. Anyway, the only glaze I have that drips
is the crystalline glaze. I've taken to firing many of those pots
on short stilts so they won't stick to the shelf and crack. The
drips still form, and mostly just hang down over the bottom as a frozen
tear drop shape. Usually I grind them off with a bench grinder,
but today there were about 6 on each of two mugs, so I left them on as
an insulating feature, so you can set your hot mug down on a surface
without worries. I'll probably just grind them off in the end,
but it's worth a try.
Meanwhile another slushy
storm is coming in tonight, starting with current drizzle... Ahh,
North Idaho Spring...
March 29
I saw a mountain bluebird the other day, another harbinger of spring.
But the day started out a lot like Christmas, with over an inch of
fresh snow covering everything. I considered going skiing, but
the weather report called for high winds (which never materialized
here), so I doinked all day.
I arranged to give one of our 3
cars to National Public Radio). I fixed a wheel barrow. And
I watched some videos and relaxed.
