Excuse me, is this my home…?

 

I have been away for so long that I am not sure I am in the right place.  Here I am, a bit worse for the wear but happy to see your faces and happy to be here. Hello my sweet blog peeps, it is so nice to see you all.

It has been a struggle – and I am sure it is going to be some still – but the complications leave one wondering about why hundred story buildings are built on toothpick foundations as a friend of mine used to say. My two year old laptop decided to commit suicide and it did. No warning, no announcement, just took a flight out of its Windows and my tooth that has been cared for gently and lovingly with organic toothpaste, gentle brushes and a king’s ransom of dentist’s visits about which my late Father used to joke saying that my dowry was in my mouth, for no reason or rhyme as well parted ways with the rest of its kin without a word or a provocation via a piece of candy or any other offensive weapon.

Friday was the last day of the second cycle. At my request we will not start the third until after Thanksgiving. It would make for some iffy Holidays at the end of December, but I would rather be feeling semi-normal when the whole family is here for Thanksgiving instead of waiting for whatever may be the last part of December.

To thank you all for your kindness and care would need words I don’t have. Thank you seems such a paltry way to return a gift for a gift as is the law in our home, but lacking the erudition needed to find the proper way, I give thanks for each and every one of you that has brought a ray of sunshine in an otherwise clouded set of weeks. Lori wrote to me some time ago “I hope your friends are rallying and I hope beyond hope that people you thought were friends are not showing their true colors” and I have to say that yes to both answers is proper. But the sting of finding that some friendships were just made of my own wishes was more than taken away by those who are taking my hand and feeding my spirit in this journey that I pray none of you will ever have to take.

So, now it is on to work on the ungrateful tooth, try to make some jewelry that I am anxious to create and to show you what my dearest Lori sent to keep me warm, something I simply fell in love with because it is from her – she commissioned a local artist to weave it and I have no words to describe the softness of the wool, silk, angora, and the talent that created this interpretation of a Japanese kanji according to her own vision - but also because it reminds me that I have now a physical way of feeling the love when the cold comes to visit. You, and you and you, all of you who care so much, are dear to my heart and fill me with a form of gratitude that is different than any other. For that, I am humbly grateful. Now let’s enjoy this three weeks of freedom together. I will be back soon, I promise and I do keep my promises.

Of broken tooth and broken computer

She is resting. We had a rather very complicated few days. She broke a tooth. Because of her heart problems nothing could be done until antibiotics were taken to avoid a problem with endocarditis. Of course she had a negative reaction to the chosen antibiotics. Her nearly 2 year old computer had a catastrophic failure. So I just got her a new one. Arrived yesterday and once she is feeling better I am sure she will try and keep everyone abreast of the situation. I am sorry for not updating all of her friends. Time gets away around here before I know it. Thank you all for the emails and comments. I know she misses you and visiting. Keep a good thought.

Barry

Some days are better than others...

Tomorrow must be better...it must...

Silent Saturday

Who has known heights and depths shall not again

know peace -- not as the calm heart knows

low ivied walls, a garden close,

the old enchantment of a rose,

and though he tread the humble ways of men

he shall not speak the common tongue again.

 ~

Wilfrid Noyce

Mostly reading...

since I have a hard time writing right now. I just wanted to say thank you, send love back to all of you who care about me and show it. This has been a very difficult week but it reminded me that pain is nothing more than another way to remind us that we are alive and even for the pain we should be thankful then.
Go to my dear Elizabeth's blog and read in someone else's words what I believe in from the bottom of my heart and that it may express in ways I could not the joy that should not be denied.

Have a great weekend, enjoy every minute of it and remember that you are appreciated more than words could convey from someone who loves her friends as their extended family. Love to you all with my gratitude as always to each and every one of you.

News from the front

Many thanks for all the emails and messages concerning Allegra's health. She is going through a hard time right now. She had some unexpected reaction to one of the medications and things are not as smooth as we have hoped for.  She is mostly in bed, and very quiet. Please keep a good thought for her during this difficult time. Thank you.

Barry

Silent Saturday

In the haunted house of life, art is the creakiest stair.

Tom Robbins 

The Universal Joint Garage and Body Shop ~ For Elizabeth ~

"The way it is at the U.J. is like the five of us, Sully, Bill, Butch, Duke, and Bud, we're totally together because we stay high together and when you come in with your car, say the car is really bummed out and won't even start, before we even touch that car we're going to sit down with you and get you up there together with us.

Now, a lot of folks can't dig that. They say, "Here's my car. When can you fix it?" or some other kind of linear crap.  Well, we just got to talk that person loose. Because we are not in that fix matrix at all. We say, "We're not there yet.  We're here." Or we say, "You on a wrench trip? O.K., here's a wrench!"  But that's not where he's at or the car either, and on a simple planetary level they both know it. The car and him are one circuit, one continuum, and the ignition switch is right there in his head. Like we say, "The key is not the key!  Tools are not the tools!"

So what we do is get very loose and very easy and very high. The afternoon goes by and the whole shop is like suspended up there in its own holding pattern, we're all sitting around listening to the leak in the air hose and digging it, and slowly that person gets to copping to that car through us. It's tremendous, a stone — you feel the energy really flowing. So we're all sitting there revving on that and then the car starts to get off on it and pretty soon that car gets going. Sometimes it starts by itself, other times we got to do some laying on of hands, but it's going. Wide open, you can feel it vibrating.  So all that comes right back to us. Like the car is going rmmm-rmmm-rmmm and we're going rmmm-rmmm-rmmm, and the next thing you know that person gets in the car and he just like takes off! Which was his Karma all this time — to go. Like he was in this place, now he's in another place, pretty soon he'll be somewhere else, and so on, but you know, it's all one road."

— Garrison Keillor

(B.Loved and I have always wished he was our neighbor)

Climate change and jewelry design

Hello? what is she talking about now? Climate change and jewelry design? does she mean season's change and jewelry design? No, she means Climate change and jewelry design. Or how Climate change has truly changed her approach to jewelry design.

Just as Shakespeare never wrote "Vanity, thy name is woman." ( Hamlet's line is actually, "Frailty, thy name is woman,") I would not try to define the usage of jewelry as vanity. Oh, it may be vain now to use jewelry although I suspect that carries within the same purpose for which perhaps once a woman wore a tooth from some mastodon wrapped around with a twisted piece of grass and hanged it around her neck to show the rest of the gatherers what her hunter would bring home. A status symbol that evolved with time and hunts. But there are as many facets to wearing jewelry as there are to a well cut diamond. While to some jewelry represents wealth and position (think Queen of England) to others there is an investment that rarely will lose the value invested on (think the jewels of The Duchess of Windsor, the sale of which provided the Institut Pasteur with the largest gift ever received by them, fifty million dollars in 1987 ) and yet to others who received pieces of jewelry from someone they love, it represents permanency, history, ancestry, the past, an expression of love to be treasured regardless of the monetary value. I am speaking of most of us here.

The problem with all this is that the price we pay for these beautiful and often valuable trinkets has a very hidden cost, one that often the public if aware of it at all, notices perhaps for a short time and keeps on shopping with little memory of the importance of understanding the source of the product. Understand I have nothing against shopping - well I do have some things against it but that is another post. I am sure most of us have heard about blood diamonds. Enough publicity for the whole of...say a week and then nothing. And then, there is gold.

The shiny spectrum of the sun, the mining of which is helping to destroy the environment in such secret ways that the consumer unknowingly continues to benefit those who in fact as a result of their mining practices are not only destroying the environment but are responsible for a great deal of the climate changes in many regions. Think "dirty gold". Dirty gold? What is dirty gold? Dirty gold is the child of greed, willful ignorance and disregard for the consequences of tampering with the  balance of Nature that destroys the ecosystem in which the gold is often found. The practice of mining for gold is as ancient as time, yet it has never been more destructive than in the present.

• "Of all the gold in use or in storage today, two-thirds is newly mined—it came directly from the Earth. (The other third came from scrap or recycled sources.) Of that newly mined gold, two-thirds was extracted from immense, open-pit mines. Several of these craters have grown so large that they are now visible from outer space.

• An open pit mine generates huge piles of waste rock, which leach toxic metals and acid. Mine waste has turned groundwater thousands of times more acidic than battery acid. 

• Once it’s extracted, the ore is crushed, piled into huge heaps and sprayed with cyanide, which causes the gold to leach out of the ore. Some mines use several tons of cyanide per day. A rice-grain sized dose of cyanide can be fatal. The cyanide-contaminated waste ore is usually just abandoned. To produce enough  gold for a ring, about 18 tons (20 short tons) of waste ore are created.*

• 120,000 tons of toxic waste spilled from the Baia Mare gold mine in Romania in 2000, contaminating the drinking water of 2.5 million people and killing 1,200 tons of fish.

 Awareness should lead to action on the part of the jewelry industry as well as the consumer. Big and small jewelry companies and designers such as myself have signed the pledge not to use dirty gold. I use very little gold and what I use is mostly from vintage recycled pieces. What many years ago wouldn't have even been a thought about the provenance of my materials is now of the utmost importance to me. Those who cause climate change because of ignorance make me think that perhaps there is hope to help them by education and commitment to a better future for their children and their children's children. But it will be much harder to effect changes unless we are all aware that greed and disregard for the environment are powerful motivators for those who think little about erasing the native forests, polluting the rivers, poisoning the land that for centuries have fed entire cultures in fact destroying their way of life and perhaps as well by our choice to  continue to ignore the effect that buying a gold ring may have on everyone's future.

                                        Satellite Image of Freeport Mine, Indonesia

*courtesy of www.nodirtygold.org

The Queen and I

 

"There is no use trying" said Alice, "One can't believe impossible things.""I dare say you haven't had much practice" said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!"

Lewis Carroll

Some days I think it would be better not to get out of bed. I don't know that in doing so anything would change, but there is always the possibility of getting a nap, something I am not good at it at all, although I envy with a purple envy those who can and do. Naps for me are like spicy food, love them but they come back to haunt me a little while later. Age and comfort have taught me avoid both.

So what I am rambling and ranting about now? News, from everywhere. Reading them, listening to the talking heads with sawdust for brains trying to make their non-sense sound like something logical. Good luck trying to make sense of the pretense of  impartiality concerning a report commissioned by the insurance industry stating that any change to the present structure would mean an increase in premiums for instance. They should be tarred and feathered and run out of town, every single one of them from every town, any town. As soon as yesterday.

And then I got some personal news. Things are not as good as we expected which means that I will probably have to have another chemo cycle after the next one if things don't take a real turn from the numbers now present. Here is where the Queen and I need to have tea.  I do believe so many impossible things that only six makes me feel like a slacker. Does she have a priority as to which impossible things one needs to believe and in which order? For instance:

Should I believe that once again I am going to beat the odds and defy the old foe? I do believe in that and yet...never been so tired, so lacking energy, so...tired of fighting not really knowing what is it I am fighting this time, or maybe I should say, where and why I am back fighting the same old foe, new weapons and all.

Should I believe that the day will dawn when lobbyists would be kicked out of Washington and the government for the people and by the people would be returned, somehow frayed at the edges but with hope for full recovery to us? I do believe that it is possible even if now just about any intelligent person I talk to thinks that it is impossible.

Should I believe that money now wasted in wars and death will be instead put to work on research and ways to save lives, our environment and our planet, with all its inhabitants giving the same chance to one and all for respect regardless of creed, race, color or any other totally absurd reason to separate people? Yes I believe that this impossible hope is completely possible.

Should I believe that the medical profession will stand up with courage and dignity and tell the insurance companies to go to hell - sorry nanny - so they can go back to be professionals and not business men? I do believe that too.

Should I believe that everyone should shoulder their share of responsibility for the climate change even if we believe that we have done little or nothing to create it and regardless of what we think we must, must do so in order to leave this planet better than the way we found it, for generations to come? Oh, yes. I do believe that with all my heart. Yet listening to people like the Chamber of Commerce I some times wonder how really impossible that may truly be.

So you see? I have so many more impossibles I think possible that I feel confused about my own personal impossibles.

I don't know. Maybe I am sad because we had to turn the heater on on the little greenhouse and that signals the true end of the summer and its riches, because I cut the last stems of the lilies of the Nile, and the gorgeous blue hydrangeas, because I looked up on my way back from the garden and way up there there was this perfect bloom of one of my favorite roses, Belle de Londres and I couldn't reach to cut it and bring her in so she won't die in tonight's frost.

So I will believe in another impossible tonight, that tomorrow morning, wind, rain and frost will be totally ignored by that bloom, and that somehow she will survive, in spite of the fact that I was unable to spare her from the storm.