Slip Sliding Away

There was an article in the news this week stating that 60 is the new 40, as if the Birthday Fairy waved a magic wand and erased a few decades of aging.  That's ok with me, as long as I get the knees back that I had 20 years ago.  The people who live on an island off the coast of Italy are some of the longest lived in the world, with the men even having great longevity.  The study found that it isn't just diet, and a select gene pool that granted these people long lives, but hard physical labor all their lives and another detail that really made the researches pause.  The people were all from the same biological descendants over a 10,000 year period, and because of this heightened connection, they acted as a family.  Every one knew they could count on their friends and neighbors for help during the entire course of their lives, and this assurance added years to their lives.  What a great feeling it must be, to have such connectedness to those around you that it enhances the quality of life so profoundly.

Here on the edge of the Prairie we're embracing SPRING!  It must be hard for our southern friends to understand the positive giddiness we northerners embrace as the trees budding and the birds' cacophony of song signal the end of our winter of deprivation.  As the trees leaf out into that soft chartreuse canopy we have shade again, the hard edges of the woods soften and we can relax having made it through another season of cold and snow.

The rabbits prospered and are fat things, hopping through the grass as they make meal plans for my tender tulips and sedums and hyacinths.  Without our sweet Pippin to give chase they are bold and saucy and have no fear of us at all.

I had a productive week in the clay studio, making mugs and experimenting with different handles.  What feels good in the hand, what makes for a nice balance, what shape complements the negative space created between handle and mug.  The devil is in the details, in all things.  The community studio I attend is always humming with new ideas, and we're working on a technique that applies colored slips to clay, or underglazes to slabs which are scraped to reveal the colors underneath much like we did as kids with many crayon layers that we covered with black and then scraped through for a stained glass effect.  I took mine a step further and used a rolling pin to give it a watercolor blending, and this might be a lot of fun to explore.

 So anyway, now that I've bored you silly, I'll slip away and putter some more in my studio.

Namaste friends.