keep centered

You all know what a good guy Duke Styrkarr is. He went above and beyond yesterday in a small thing.
I was walking Amby at Honor War in a crowded spot and Amby pooped. I was prepared, but may have done a bit of awkward juggling holding Amby's leash, getting the bag out of my pouch and holding another bag. His Grace came up to me and I thought he was going to offer to hold my extra bag, but he took the poop bag and cleaned up after the dog, then took the poop bag somewhere to a garbage can out of sight. Not many people would offer to help by doing the nastiest job like that. I was so impressed, what a good guy.

Working primarily on pottery for the Moscow (Modern) Renaissance Fair. Especially I am working on hoping for no rain.

The PWA isn't associated with the Ren Fair at all, meaning they scheduled a gallery opening the same time. I will have to give the opening a miss, which makes me sad as they are always fun, even though it is mostly our own members who show up for them. The theme for the show is "A Stitch In Time", and I have (what I consider) a funny, non-functional, pottery entry. I will miss hearing my friend's comments on it. I was also going to have an appliqued bog coat and bag, but in spite of the huge amount of time I have spent on it, it is still far from being done.

I always enjoy the Fair, it's a good place to connect with people I haven't talked to for a long time. And is uplifting.

I am going on the Climate March tomorrow too, or at least starting out, I am a little gimpy and may not be able to travel far. But starting out, or ending up, is what counts.

My Artist in the Schools Residency has begun. I was a little unsure of how it would go, but now that we are into the swing, it feels pretty good and I hope the kids and teachers feel the same way. I feel a little more comfortable showing these pictures since they involved my Residency.
The signs all over made me feel legit:


Is there anything on earth cuter than a child focused on their art? These pics are of second graders.


ISB has children from around the world although most are Chinese. Classes are taught in English, but many younger kids come to the school with no English at all. These kids have been doing really nice jobs because their powers of observation are how they make their way in this school while learning English:

Writing about the Great Wall of China is like writing about the terra cotta Warriors, but moreso. It is so epically, immensely big, that photos can't possibly do it justice. It can be seen going over and a little down the mountainside, sometimes taking great dips down a valley. But we can only see a small portion at a time.

So here are some totally inadequate photos:


My son says that if someone walks the entire length of the great wall they are awarded a gold medal. Some of the areas look quite impassable.


This is the area where I spent the most time, it was close to the road so we were able to park nearby. I wanted to do some drawing in my travel journal, but it was so cold I could only get some preliminary sketches done then finished back at the apartment from my photos. Not what I had hoped.

This village was picturesque, beautiful every part of it we saw had pottery everywhere.

Wall of pottery, one of many:


This walkway didn't have one of the more intricate designs in the set in pottery. Those were not only lovely, but gave good traction on the clay-y mud paths.


Some of these paths were built on top the cave houses:

We did get to see (by accident) sections of an old dragon kiln. We were just walking down the street. The bricks look like they are still in decent condition. Never have I wanted to break down a fence more than I wanted to break down the flimsy fence that kept us from walking in and through this kiln:


The arches are in excellent shape:


It was another happy accident to see another kiln chamber of the kiln with most of the chimney stack. This was about a block away from the chamber we saw a street above it. It must have been a gigantic kiln in its day:


A close up of the top of the chamber. Those bricks look like they are ready to fire another load:

We contacted a tour company and arranged to have a tour guide and driver take us to Chen Lu, an ancient pottery village which is not a common tourist destination. We were told our tour guide had knowledge of ancient ceramics, the village, history, everything we wanted to know. The village was on top of a mountain and the road up the hill was windy and slick with clay. We saw terraced hillsides everywhere where corn and wheat was grown for how many eons?

On the way up, I spotted what looked like an outcropping of purple clay that may have been like the Yxing clay, my son spotted what looked to be a kiln built into the hillside. We asked to stop to take photos, but the guide said we would soon see hundreds of them. I clapped my hands in trusting anticipation.

The village itself was so picturesque it was beautiful. It had been carved into the hillside, as terraced as the gardens. All the walls were either completely made of ceramic jars, or a combination of jars and bricks. The streets were vertical and had set-in ceramics. The houses were all cave houses, carved into the hills. (I will post photos of those next time). Although we had emphasized handmade pottery, the first place he stopped was a porcelain factory, where he boasted about it all being machine made. He wanted us to go inside, I refused, which wasn't hard to do since the factory looked like it had been mothballed for 10 years. We stayed there standing in front of it for a heck of a long time, we didn't know why.

Then he directed us to what he said was a completely handmade pottery shop, he even demonstrated using his hands. We walked inside to find it was an old lady's home. After a bit of us being bewildered and she being bewildered by our entrance, she graciously invited us into her home. We kept looking around for the pottery the tour guide told us was there. None. The Lady served tea and her even older Auntie came over to as she said (through some interpretation) she had never talked to foreigners before. They really were very kind to us after we burst into their home so we felt we had to stay and be sociable for awhile.

When we finally left, my son saw a sign for "The Kiln God Museum". The guide said it was up a steep path, which I didn't think I could climb, but Deva was quite interested so the guide led him. It was to another person's home. After our first experience he knew this wasn't going to get any better so he left sooner than we managed to previously.

Guide also tried to get us to go down a steep path where he said there were potteries everywhere, but looking over a fence to the spot, we could see that there were none. Just more homes to barge into.

At this point the tour guide confessed that he had read many books and had a lot of knowledge about the pottery in this area, but had forgotten it all.

The next stop was when he dropped us off at a Mall intended for locals, not tourists. I wondered into a Chinese pharmacy and got scowled at. Then a floor covering store which sold mostly contact paper. Then we couldn't find the tour guide, so we called his main office.

We did have some clay experiences. (which I will write about later), but it was as much a surprise to the guide as it was to us. And we found them because I knew a little of what to look for.

Driving back home, we were tired, disappointed, and feeling like we had been cheated, when the Tour Guide turned to us and began to tell us that he supported Donald Trump. His support was shown by pumping his fists and shouting that name.By this time I had no patience and snapped at him, which he ignored. Deva tried engaging in a reasonable discussion, which he also ignored. He would not stop. I wish China had the equivalence of Yelp, but it does not. I can kind of see the humor in this, it was a bit like a sitcom. However, on the positive side, we got to meet two wonderful old ladies, and see streets and walls that were memorable.

This is the Lady's cave house cooking area and bed. The two metal lids are where she cooks over coals, when the cooking is completed the coals are used to heat the bed. She was certain I didn't have a warm enough jacket on so insisted I sit on the coal-warmed bed to warm up. I could tell where the coals were under the hard surface.


This is a shot of the Lady's pillow. The ceramic rectangular, glazed piece on the bed. I had seen pictures of Chinese ceramic pillows from ancient times in books, but it was a surprise to see they are still used daily.

Next stop is Xian. My son and I will see the terra cotta warriors. Wednesday night we are going by sleeper train, we will have two strangers in our sleeper with us, which is a little disconcerting for me. There is also a nearby pottery village and an ancient dragon kiln.

My residency doesn't start for a couple of weeks, but will go in tomorrow as an extra day they requested. Also 4 extra days next week, although one is a volunteer as a chaperone for Wee Beatrice's field trip

We went to a HotPot restaurant. The noodle maker made noodles at the tables, it was kind of like watching a hula hooper with a slack hula hoop, only faster. Maybe like a cowboy with a lasso doing rope tricks, only faster:

Jenny said that a Chinese National who is her colleague told her that every child in China is told "You are the most important person in the world, you are number 1, but you have to fight to get what you deserve." (This may be a result of the One Child policy). This is probably very hard to deal with when a child starts school, and they start early.

So often, I have seen friendliness and courtesy in shops, etc. that it doesn't seem to have a lasting effect....except standing in queues, in which the Chinese will get ahead of you and push, plus other such behaviors. The other is driving. For being a society that follows rules so assiduously, they drop all pretense of civilization when driving. Stop lights are not stopped at, unless forced to by the car ahead, speeds are ignored, following the car ahead of you, bumper to bumper, driving with a tire on either side of the lane, never-ever stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks, creating an extra lane where there is none. But the very worst is merging, cars force their bumpers in a space of about 3 feet in front of the car in the lane they want to merge into, and continuing to do that when the car behind is just as determined not to let them. They never purposefully let a car merge in front of them, just when they are moments from a collision. Friday night where we wanted to turn, so many cars from the far side of the highway to the closest to the turn, going both North and South all tried to turn, would not let anyone go in front of them, or would not back up a little to undo the knot of cars until there were 20 cars at a standstill. The center car had cars holding it in the center from front, back, and both sides. Then they all started screaming at each other. Wow! If each car had cooperated, by backing up or letting another car go before they did, it would have been solved. But they didn't and we ended up driving perhaps 20 miles out of our way to find another, less crazy, place to turn.

Jenny drives a bubble car, basically a tuk tuk. It is not powerful. The front can go all the way down so that it looks bubble like. There are bicycle lanes she drives in, but sometimes had to go on the highway.
Jenny said "I really need to get braver about going through intersections. I begged her: "No No, caution!!!!"

Computer is strange, but I got another pic at least.
My son is in the foreground, Wee Beatrice and Miggy, our translator, are on the far camel. I was amazed at how brave Bea was getting up on that camel and then our ride and getting down again. After we got off the camels the adults all walked in a stiff-legged, inverted "V", Beatrice ran to play with her little new-made friend Star.