Inspire me (from yesteryear)

Repost from 2012...and I had to see if the links were still good. Not for the article that seemed interesting, but the others are.

Inspire me

Good advice I've picked from blogs, periodicals (magazines), books, and other sources I run into - mainly about working in clay.  (I do enjoy other avenues of visual art and foods)

At San Jacinto Monument, the Battleship Texas behind my father and sis and myself. I'm the one with a bow in my hair!
A commenter said the dolls are Baby Bunting dolls, and she had made one herself. 

"There is no one so dangerous and powerful as those who receive empowerment from the wisdom of others and seek to prove its validity in their own lives... " 

Dr. Richard Jacobs, in letters to Christa Assad published in The Studio Potter, June 2004.   

(I got the hard copy of this magazine in a batch of free magazines on pottery from another blogger who was about to move to the west coast.  I had to go pick the magazines up in Bakersville, NC.  It was fun, and eventually I bought my wheel from that potter.)   http://shambhalapottery.blogspot.com/ 

NOTE 2023, this link is still working! And the ware cart that was sold to the Black Mountain Clay Studio is still in use there.

Look at the blogs being followed by someone's blog you haven't read before.  This is a great off-shoot activity which can take you anywhere.  It's better than a raw search, at least in my experience.  I'm sorry my blog isn't listed in many people's "blogs I follow."  But since I'm an introvert, I'm ok with my anonymity.

Note 2023: I still haven't put "following" gadget on my blogs!

Today I explored here: http://marianwilliamspottery.blogspot.com/

Thank you Miriam Williams.  I saw a few blogs that I already am following, and added a few new ones to my own long list.

Note 2023: This link is still working

Today I enjoyed reading this article also.  Lana Wilson's Advice on Developing Your Own Style   Would you do this, or did you ever do this exercise?  I'm awestruck that this is the way pinterest may well have started.  I do like the way brainstorming is taken into a three dimensional format by using clay.

Note 2023: that link doesn't work now.

I would love to share with you some pictures of pottery by other potters, or photos by industrious people with better eyes and equipment than I have, but don't have time to ask for permissions.  Just know that I do look, and my eyes feast upon the beauty that others create.  You'll have to go see them yourself.  I can give you links to their posts...just look at my list in the column to the right.  ( I have no idea why my blog list that's on "my profile" is so sparse...I follow about 100 blogs at least)

And back to Lana Wilson's most important piece of advice.  To go to work in the studio.  Yep.  Bye for now.

Note 2023: I gave up making pottery at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, 2020. So I had practiced that craft from 2008...12 years total.

I'm in high school and get to wear high heels for a piano recital. I'm the skinny girl on the right, wearing blue dress and fake shells necklace.

Sharing again with Sepia Saturday! 

Today's quote:

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. -George McGovern, senator and author (1922-2012)

Grey days

 

Feb. 7, 2021

Feb. 13, 2021 - the lavender plant (center) doesn't look like it's still alive...but I keep watering it and hoping it will come back. In a month or so I'll give up probably.

I was trying to capture the clouds in the middle distance before the Swannanoa Mountain chain...

It kind of says what the day was going to be like all day, with times when the clouds came right down to our rooftops. But there is now a hint of green-yellow on the ground, if you look closely!

 

Trying a new phone's camera to get a pano from the bedroom. No - our balconies aren't quite that close together!

Blog reading, and commenting, then creating more blogs and hoping folks comment on them. What a life!

I water my plants on the windowsills and the dining table. I actually cut away a few of the dead violets the other day...and will remember to share some pictures soon.

After getting my eyes checked, I tried walking with my friend on one partly sunny day, not very cold. But apparently just having dilated eyes made me feel pretty washed out, even though I had my big sunglasses on...so I turned around about 1/4 of the way along the path. The good news was that I am now taking blood pressure medication which apparently helps with the pressure in my eyes, so I'm being taken off the list of pre-glaucoma. Good to know I won't need to come in to get my pressure checked every 6 months. I am getting new lenses for the same frames...so hope to be able to see a wee bit better soon.

With this getup I look like I could rob a bank!

Today's quote:

I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death. -June Jordan, writer, teacher, and activist (9 Jul 1936-2002) 

So 10,500 bots can't be wrong

Or can they?
I posted about my son's engagement.  Maybe the title caught someone's eye (an algorithm probably)
One commentator said they were probably bots.

Wikipedia has information about bots:

SOURCE: Wikipedia.

So the announcing post got about 2000 hits (is that the right term?)  Blogger says these are pageviews.

My other bog about pottery is the one that got 10,500 pageviews, the same day.

And the blog about living in Black Mountain NC got 1500 pageviews...same day and time.

My kind-of inactive blog about my ancestors did have a spike on the chart, of 54 pageviews.

Does anyone know if there's a problem? I worry.  I'm 76, I'm allowed to worry.

But I haven't been in a computer class, like most of my grandkids have.  

Blog updates

Last night I revived the family tree blog.

That meant shifting the postings about the ancestors that I've added to this blog in the last month.  I've got a whole lot more over here, from last year going back 6 years or so.  I don't think I'll shift them all!  The family history blog can be the place I store information (and pictures and documents) that I want available without going to the Ancestry site (which is a leased site).

Today I'm getting into shifting my activities as well.

I'm volunteering in different venues for the rest of the summer.  Instead of spending time (and money) daily to make pottery, I'm going to work as a docent in the Swannanoa Valley History Museum.  I think I need to focus on my interest in history and genealogy for this wonderful little town of Black Mountain, and the area around it in western North Carolina.  The Western North Carolina area is so distinct that most people use Capital letters to designate it, or just say WNC.

It's mainly mountains, and wonderful valleys, and a few towns with Asheville as one that gets to city status.  It has enveloped several of the smaller towns around it, but Black Mountain stays distinct.

This morning I sip my coffee as I listen to Marina Raye's flute music, and birds out the open windows...and a bit of traffic away in the background.  Occasionally a train rumbles past and toots its noisy whistle at the crossing of Blue Ridge Road.  Yes, who knew that I'd retire and actually live on a road by that name...which elicits the nearby parkway which is a national park.

So that is where my thoughts are this morning.  I'll also go sign up to volunteer at the Old Depot in Black Mountain, where I already have my pottery for sale.  It just makes sense!

While reading my blog list

I'm so glad to have beautiful music to listen to while reading blogs, and eating breakfast.  You all out there in blogland don't care if I'm sitting here in my jammies.  And yet, there's the missing element which a shared breakfast used to have.  Pass the funnies.  My turn for "this section" of the paper.  We always waited to read "Parade"...I wonder if the Sunday paper still has it.

I haven't purchased a newspaper in probably 20 years.  But I do look at various news sites on line.  Not as often as I first did.  I hope they survive as on line sites, because that's where local news is archived.  What would genealogists do without the local listings of obituaries and weddings?  Do they still list the newborns also?

I'm pretty much addicted to these luminous screens for information these days.  I still like the funnies and go to Comics to read my favorites.  Sundays are special still.   I stopped reading Yahoo's news page long ago.  But I don't get much of the international news unless I stop by BBC or CNN.  How do you get your news?  Is it broken up by commercial messages on the big 4 networks on a TV?  Or do you select which things to read on your computer?

Thanks for being part of my life...and you didn't even know it.

How do you read your blogs?

Oh, my music is either streaming through iTunes (free internet choice of several thousand broadcasts with NO commercial messages besides support for NPR kinds of yearly things) or right now listening to "Elder Music on Time Goes By" which is published Sunday mornings with humor by Peter Tibbles from Australia.

Blogs I like

blogs are the best!
Come over to another one of mine to find out what I've been reading about!
If your blog isn't listed, please let me know, or make your own recommendations...
Thanks

diminishing posts

I dearly love you, all my blogging buddies.
But I won't be putting something here every single day.
Maybe just once a week.
we shall see.

Blog reading is for...

I really enjoy the friends I read/visit on their blogs almost every day.  These are real people talking about their very real lives.  Vicki Lane had her car side-swiped on the way home from teaching a writer's workshop the other day.  Gary Rith amuses me with his creative pottery and dog and cat pictures, and strange vegie gluten free recipes.

Ronni Bennett is one that never fails to give me insights and/or amusement...at Time Goes By

Saturdays she offers a pot-pori of lovely items, and this week I laughed out loud watching this video...Mental Health Hotline.

Hecate Demeter lets everyone know all kinds of things about our old religion, the one before patriarchy became so popular, the one that has goddesses including Columbia who stands atop our Capitol building in DC, which is named after Columbia after all...anyway, I like most of her blogs. 

So now I'm going off to Sepia Saturday to catch up on a lot of interesting trivia.  When you say you never stop learning, this is definitely a great way to prove it.  (Plus there's no test.)

The rest of my blogs that I read are more for the fun of sharing other's lives.  Just look at the blog list to the right, and you can click on their titles to go see if you're interested in their stuff too!

Christmas to come

Sending a whole passel of wishes that you have a happy one.
Since I wrote this several days before Christmas, I'm actually thinking of the future...while you're reading this after it's posted on the actual day of.  So I sent my wishes forward from your past, and you're receiving them in the now!

Black Mountain, NC, Jan 29, 2010

Borrowing an old photo of my front yard during our white winter several years ago.  Don't know if it will look like this again.

But when we don't have a white Christmas, we have an opportunity to make it a special Christmas for other reasons. 

What, you may ask, am I doing special this year?  My youngest adult  son and girlfriend will visit for a few days.  I'll talk on phone with grandchildren that are thousands of miles apart.  I'll talk with friends closer to me.

We will eat well.  We will visit places with groovy art.  We will laugh at corny jokes.  We may get a bit tipsy with eggnog or other potent drinks.  I for one will not worry about calories or fat content for at least a week of delectable goodies.

And throughout all these wonderful activities over here in Black Mountain, NC... I'm sending you best wishes for a happy Christmas, with all your loved ones.

And for my blog friends, I'm not taking off for the next few weeks.  I may post a few things in advance, but will probably check to see what you're up to when I get a chance.  You are now part of my life, and I'd really miss you if I didn't see what you and your animals and families are up to.