creeaaakk

My hands are so danged achy from the dank now that they feel about 90. I doubt I could get a jar lid off if you gave me $50 to do it- there is no way I could forge a piece of metal and progress on the Red Queen Crown has sadly ground to a halt. I’m so excited to fly home tomorrow and warm the hell up and MAKE THINGS.

I’m excited to see friends, a bit sad to leave all of the lads for so long. I don’t even know when I’ll be back- I haven’t yet got a grip on our schedule for the final wrap of the book, because it involves so many more people than me. I suspect that there will be a month-long session in Tucson starting Sunday, and then another push in France.

How long we have left to work depends on what type of flow we can create. Between Dustin Wedekind, Jean Power, Gabriella van Diepen, Teresa Sullivan, and I we are attempting to weave a satisfactory fabric of time and space that works for everyone; it’s gradually coming into focus. I’m also looking forward to collaborating with Jeannette Cook, Debi Nicholson, Gail Crosman Moore and others during the shows.

Since I seem to be quite untethered in time and space, I’ve decided to simply tie everything I am thinking about to the completion of the book; this ought to make everything come into focus fairly neatly. That and renting out my house- those are my humble yet lofty goals for February, March and April.

Red Queen Crown, an illustration of reversible Rick-Rack on top of a neat Modified RAW, from our new book in progress, Geometrics.

Have you pre-ordered your First Edition of the book yet? 

 

crossroads

The sun came out briefly this morning in St. Louis, and it was so lovely. I greatly appreciated it. I go home to Tucson tomorrow, and it doesn’t look like I am going to be back for a month. I’ll miss kitties and boys and Bill (who defected to Texas this morning, having a talk to give at SMU).

Oddly (or not oddy, I really don’t have the tools to sort things like this out) I am at a crossroads in every area of my life. I feel like a living Tarot card, standing at the intersections of times and spaces, with my feet in different pools, contemplating a hundred golden keys.

I have a different sense of my self at this time; I feel feather-light, like I am a series of transparencies. I have a deep desire to go inward, and do things like dig trenches by hand in the sunshine. I definitely do not want to manage or direct anyone, or pick up after them, or take on their dark depressions or their bizarre political or religious outlooks.

I just want to be small. I had a bad morning on Facebook, when I was up early and decided to have a look at my scrolling News Feed. I saw people’s surgery pictures (WTF are you people THINKING) and awareness-raising photos of corpses stacked up at Auschwitz, and I read comments from Teabaggers, birthers, and people talking about their illnesses, their treatments, jobs that they hate, and their fucked up family members.

I’m not quite sure how to comport myself. It’s an election year, and I feel an obligation to speak up for common sense, and carefulness, and to point out that if the Republicans say that they want a conservative with real family values, and someone who will not push a Liberal Agenda™ then they already have one, and he is Barack Obama. There is no reason on Earth for a Republican to object to him (unless their actual problem is racism) and in fact I can’t see why we are even having a conversation about crazy mofos and egomaniacs like Newt Gingerich or the soulless moneybag Mitt “The Raider” Romney. Surely no one really actually wants any of that action? Really?

I can’t quite figure out how much attention I should pay to the legions of possibly dangerous freaks that are apparently running rampant out there in the world, none of whom I actually know (or want to know) personally.

Hell, I can’t even figure out a sensible way to clean them out of my Facebook feed. I have made a beautiful bubble for myself, and I live in it blissfully. I’m as annoyed as I am mystified that I have put myself into Meta mode. I hope it passes. I greatly prefer my life as a dog.

 

Jasper in Evan’s sock drawer

AW.

a cold white ball of flaming gas or a yellow sunny sun?

I am developing a deep rage against weather sites; not really (despite my whining) so much against the weather. Weather simply… is.

Getting annoyed with St. Louis for having shitty weather is like getting annoyed with a yippy dog for barking, or for a gumball tree for dropping trippy gumballs all over a sidewalk. St. Louis is simply being St. Louis; just like Nova Scotia is, I’m sure, currently doing its thing. And rain isn’t so bad. It’s kind of nice, actually, especially if you are in the mood.

The only thing that makes me insane re the weather is when I check a weather forecast, and it turns out to be crap, or is revised again and again throughout a perfectly ordinary (and I am told) entirely predictable day. Really, I suppose at the root I blame the individual (Bill) who continually tells me what the forecasts are. On my own I generally take life as it comes, like a dog would. I would never have looked out at this gloomy, dank day this morning and expected it to stop glooming at noon, had he not informed me that it would do just that. I would have accepted what I saw out the window. I might have given it a woof, or some side-eye, but I would have said to myself, “Another rainy day!” and gone about my rainy day sort of business. I would not have foolishly lurked around that window waiting for the sun to come out.

Part of the problem is surely where the information is coming from. Neither of us enjoy checking the forecast on the (truly outdated) NWS site, even though that is where the data originates, because the site doesn’t feel friendly. The HTML reminds me of 1994 (well maybe 1999, to be fair) and the sun is expressed as a cold blue/white star.

This upsets me more than I can credibly explain. If it is going to be fucking sunny, then I WANT TO SEE A FUCKING SUNNY SUN.

This is the NWS graphic for a sunny day. What a cold-looking and unsunny thing it is to me:

I have complained to a senior NWS forecaster about this cold, dull, unsunny sun graphic, and I pointed out that yellow sunny suns are sunnier, and the sunny sun graphic is the entire reason that Bill and I (who, all things being equal, and half of us being scientists, ought to be on the NWS site) will go to Weather.com instead, which is cheesy. Because they have a goddamned sunny sun, and their site code reflects the Modern Day. See the sunny sun:

The NWS forecaster, who is otherwise a reasonable person, was notably unsympathetic, pointing out that our sun is actually a star, which is not happy and friendly and yellow, but is in fact a blazing white/blue ball of flaming GAS. Like this:

And that there was no reason to pretend that we were all in kindergarten, and have this:

But the fact remains that perfectly smart people (as evinced by my dataset of three, which includes another (retired) senior forecaster for the NWS) prefer the graphic of the sunny sun over that of the (perhaps more realistic yet totally buzz-killing) cold white ball of flaming gas.

What do you think? Do you check forecasts? What site or app do you use? Do you find forecasts generally reliable for your area?

Do you give a rat’s ass what the picture of the sun looks like? Do you go to Weather.com just for their sunny yellow sun?

Our gorgeous home

photo NASA/Goddard

meow

I’m looking out the window at more rain, which I’ll be saying an enjoyable goodbye to on Saturday morning. Or sooner if it ever stops. The Tucson forecast is for relentlessly gentle weather; mid- 70s with lots of lumens and mid- to low 40s at nights. God’s weather, at least for me. I wouldn’t mind it hotter. I’m thankful on behalf of everyone who is traveling from winter to come to the Shows- it was so hard last year, when everyone froze solid and all of Tucson’s pipes exploded.

I can’t wait to see people who are coming in; I’ve got a Beady day planned at my place on either January 31 or Feb 1- plans are forming. Please email me if you are a beady person and have been wanting to come over.

Miss Fish! Gird your loins! In two hours, Gail Moore will be entering your building!

more photowerkshop

This is a photo that Diana Cannon took of me coming out of my house in a blue beaded gown and a fuschia opera cloak, barefoot, looking pensive.

I did some digital painting on it, and quite like the effect. It reminds me of a Queen with something on her mind, walking out, thinking hard. Click for larger image.

Photo by Diana Cannon, digital manipulation by Kate, photo taken during the portrait session of our Kyle Cassidy photo workshop

this is not our beautiful house

But how we would love it if it were. It’s a 1905 English Tudor (and on the historic register) for sale right now in Kirkwood, our town in St. Louis, and it’s affordably priced, huge, vintage, absolutely beautiful. Heartbreakingly beautiful. And peaceful. And gentle. And on almost an acre of lot.

It’s currently divided into a duplex, which is actually rather nice, if you think about it. And it’s nicely done. Two families could easily live side by side and have complete privacy, or it could be the ideal place for an artisan who wanted a studio with guest space and also a private residence.

A person might get it for a song, considering it’s been on the market for a few months. The worry, of course, is that it will be bought for a tear-down as the huge lot is very valuable. People do this all of the time here, and it sucks. I think the owner loves the house, and I’m sure (or I fantasize that) preference would be given to someone who loved the house.

Both Bill and I extended our hearts to this beautiful space. If it made the slightest sense for us to be starting over on a house in Kirkwood, we would do it, in a heartbeat, without a backward thought. And in total joy.

However… we are really ready to go back to being urban creatures as soon as Evan fledges. We’re officially short-timers now, if five years counts as short-time. And we are really (or at least I am really) on the hairy edge of too old to take on owning another big house. It’s more the sort of time in our lives when one thinks of smallerizing, and travelling.

We had a hot water heater like this in one of our houses- it’s both terrifying and excellent. What we never had, though, was DRAWERS under CLOSETS!

Above, a beautiful blue room on the second floor of the North side, and a detail of the intricately patterned radiators. If you want to see it, and you should, email Bridget. And if you buy it, and want to hold workshops there, I will come and teach for you. And we can prance about in ball gowns, and serve each other cocktails from vintage martini glasses.

This house is so beautiful, peaceful, elegant, historic and deserving that it made me think crazy thoughts. Like our little fairy cottage is finally almost perfect. Perfect! We could probably sell it, and maybe instead of buying it we could RENT the Tudor, and gently and lovingly help clean her up, and make her beautiful again, so that in five years, when the market recovered, the owner could sell her for a fair price.

Crazy, stupid, sweet and noble thoughts, like “I’m SURE can find a way to find homes for those ten kittens shivering under that bridge” or “I’m going to run for Congress so I can bring peace to America and build a real train system…”

Christ. Just look at that hardware, on that beautiful, solid, seven foot tall door. My heart turns over, thinking of seeing it torn down.

Surely Someone Can Do Something.

my lucky Millard

Although I want to bite a hole in the sky I also badly want to bite Bill on the arm or something (in a good way) and so I remain in place. I have been offered the fried chicken lunch (how Britney Spears of me to go for this) at the Farmhaus restaurant, a place run by geniuses who give a great value for lunch (ten bucks a head including sweet tea, which is directly from the Lord) but charge the Earth for dinner, and do things like make foams and cocktails involving bitter herbs, and serve bizarrely small portions of brilliant and sometimes bizarre food. It’s like Reverso World for lunch, huge portions, tiny price.

Bill also replaced my lucky Millard, which was sweet of him. We’ve become attached to carrying Millard Fillmore coins with us, believing (as he either is or I just SAY he is) our Luckiest President. There really isn’t any way to tell, but the feel of the Millard in my pants pocket feels just right, and it must be admitted that he has bailed me out before.

We had an exciting morning- we went to see a beautiful old house for sale (and in danger of being demolished) and we opened all of the closets and marvelled over the woodwork, the high ceilings… so glorious. Sadly we are not the ones for that house, not anymore, but I’ll write about it later, and maybe someone who actually lives here will become inspired, and buy it.

It will likely sell for a song; I only wish I’d had a shot at it 15 years ago, but of course it would have been twice the price and unpossible.

More pix later.

I’m trying to act normal

But inside I’m going absolutely batshit bonkers. This classic video of a “modern spiritual” as done by the Lawrence Welk Singers is just right. Sweet Jesus!