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It's been a lovely few days, having a friend up from the Bay Area and sharing our small but growing art scene with her. The vegies cooperated, too, so we were able to ply her with two types of fresh tomatoes and even send her home with a couple.
The studio is in a transitional state. Next week, the sliding glass door from the studio to the courtyard is being replaced. Half the room is being reconfigured to allow painting. Things are in a mass of temporary boxes and piles. However, it did prompt the completion of the most recent quiltscape. At last I figured out what I was doing wrong when it came to "freehand machine quilting": as soon as I put the darning foot on the machine, everything changed! Much more practice is needed, but at least its working as a technique.
My machine pieced and quilted quilt for the Grapevine Guild Show in mid September is done, but I'm not posting pictures until after it's delivered to them on a very eventful weekend: Friday, Sept. 12, deliver quilt. Saturday, Sept. 13, attend both the quilt show and the antique car show in downtown Ukiah. Sunday, Sept. 14, head over the hill to Boonville for the County Fair, especially the sheepdog trials and the parade, getting back in time to retrieve the quilt from the show. Looking forward to another guest that weekend, too!
The north end of the street where the Saturday Farmer's Market takes place is anchored by a stand from the nearby Robinson Creek Bed and Breakfast, featuring their freshly grown flowers. Most of the time it isn't too hard to resist. We have roses flowering for months on end, the peonies in the late spring, and since we use them as companions for our vegetables, there are lots of marigolds. But this past Saturday I was brought to a dead, slack-jawed stop by a ten foot long display of dahlias, all shapes and colors, any 13 for $10. Some things I can't resist. For ten bucks, I have dahlias in four rooms, making me smile.
We also had to stop at the Lover's Lane table for another quart of honey and to find out if they sell their delicious eggs after the Farmer's Market closes (although there is talk of trying to make the Market a year-round enterprise). Not only are the eggs super-fresh, they keep a variety of hens, so each dozen is a lovely mix of white, brown, and green shells. And the answer is, yes, while of course egg production goes down over the winter, they keep their surplus in cool storage and regular customers can come fill a carton and leave money. Reason number 349 why we love small town life...
Similarly, a tree service I've never done business with came out a couple of weeks ago to take a look at our big blue spruce. I've been concerned about it growing into power lines, and PG&E won't do anything because no high-voltage lines are involved. The fellow explained how it would have to be done in order to avoid butchering the tree, which I really appreciated. He had talked about the one hour minimum when we first spoke on the phone, but once he got here, he decided it could be done sort of on the fly en route between larger jobs, and might just be a half hour. It also didn't hurt that our next door neighbor pulled up and the two of them hollered hello-how are ya's at each other. Bottom line: from the tree's appearance, the work has been done, at some point, unnoticed by us, and we don't yet have a bill.
Today after work I drove over to the Ukiah Players Theatre to do a walk-through of the exhibition space with curator Tom Johnsen. The theater itself is a well designed 100-seater. Their website doesn't say so yet, but apparently their first offering this fall is "The Hobbit." I mapped out the lobby and hall space, and we discussed doing an artist reception on an evening the show is dark, so that folks can come see the art separately from attending the show. I'll be hanging an assortment of landscapes and seascapes, and am in the process of designing a postcard for the reception.
I am continually surprised to find folks I knew from the Bay Area up here. Back in the 1980s, I'd bought a wonderful mixed media piece by Mary Case Dekker at a show she did at Simple Pleasures Cafe (at the time, the regular hangout for Stu and I). She lives a couple of towns south of here now, and has been showing locally for some years. I'd met Elizabeth Raybee in the early 90s when we were both doing SF Open Studios, she at her home studio in Project Artaud. She's been up in Potter Valley doing her mosaics for quite a while. This evening, while checking the Farmers Market website, I discovered that Nikki Ausschnitt, with whom I'd served on the SF Open Studio Artists Advisory Committee back in the mid 90s, is now running a farm in Yorkville and selling at the Boonville Farmers Market.
Finally, for those cat fanciers out there, another look at Leo and Lily.
(DOES THIS GARDEN MAKE ME LOOK FAT?)
The natural furnace turned back on yesterday; temperatures are to be climbing back to triple digits this week. Mercifully, the overnight dip is a good 40 degrees, so the early mornings are cool. Unfortunately, with the heat came the return of the wildfire smoke from the distant northeast.
Projects coming up during the next four weeks include putting black plastic over the front lawn and a couple of areas in the back, in preparation for fall plantings; reconfiguring my studio space (while a new sliding glass door goes in between the studio and the courtyard) to create space for painting; building some small quick and dirty semi-raised beds (mounds, really) in anticipation of getting some fall vegie starts at Occidental Arts' fall garden sale; finishing the quilt challenge; getting my work together for a show I've been invited to put up in mid-September at the gallery of the Ukiah Players (I still don't know what their production will be, nor exactly which paintings they want).
Lily is coy, hiding out in the paper burrow she created; Janet is simply tired after a day at work.
The local 6-plex shows mostly mainstream crap - action pix and sophomoric comedies. When Stu and I were planning our move up here, we figured we'd be heavy Netflix users. As it turns out, we opted for a DirecTV dish, because that's the only way we can get channel 54 (Silicon Valley's PBS station), who airs the one and only TV show we watch regularly, East Enders. Well, we still haven't signed up for Netflix. For under $60/month, we get a lineup that includes Turner Classic Movies, Independent Film Channel, and a HDTV Net movie channel. All three show films without commercials, and the variety is staggering.
During the previous five years, we averaged 49 movies a year, including video rentals, what was on TV, and going to the movies. So far in 2008 we have watched 90 movies. Many are old favorites we are happy to see again - classic comedies or noirs. Some are revisits of more modern movies we have not seen since the original theatrical release. Today, for example, "Adaptation" was on in the mid afternoon - perfect for in between doing errands (yes, we finally did the dump run) and cooking dinner. I had forgotten both how hilarious this movie is and how marvelous the acting is, especially among the three leads (Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper) but also the minor characters. Two other movies we revisited this year and found really held up include "Midnight Cowboy" and The Player." There have also been a few very pleasant surprises along the way, movies we'd either missed upon theatrical release or hadn't heard of until they showed up on one of our channels. These include:
"Bride and Prejudice": yes, a Bollywood version of the Austen classic, set in a modern day small Indian village, with Darcy an American yuppie.
"Away from Her": Julie Christie magnificent in a story of Alzheimer's and love.
"Juno": which I actually caught on the spur of the moment at a bargain matinee during the moving process and found a very funny and real portrayal of teen angst.
"Ripley's Game": from a Patricia Highsmith novel; John Malkovich at his chilling best.
"Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada": Tommy Lee Jones' directorial debut was no doubt why the Coen Bros. put him in "No Country for Old Men;" his movie has way more soul than their's.
"Vatel": a historical costume drama in the era of the Sun King with the ever wonderful Gerard Depardieu in the title role as a man caught in the system.
"The Illusionist": a truly lovely story, and it made an Edward Norton fan out of me.
So. The dump run. There is nothing that says "I live here" quite like a dump run. It makes you feel as rooted as growing vegetables or adopting cats. It has rural cred. So I found myself dropping it into conversation a lot this week.
"So, whatcha doin' this weekend?"
[pause]
"Ah, nothin' much....gotta do a dump run."
[pause]
(knowing nod)
It has more cachet then "Nothing much...hanging around watching old movies and baking healthy whole grain coffee cake." Actually the baking is tomorrow, along with buying a big canning kettle because somebody laid a whole lot of little cukes on us and they are in the fridge calling out to be pickled.
Today marked six months of living our "new" life here. Looking around the house, a lot of things have changed. But things as basic and necessary as a dump run remain undone (we don't recommend looking alongside the north wall of the house or inside the shed).
We have been quick to set up some routines. The NY Times is in a bag down the driveway when I get up in the mornings, and the plants and cats demand attention while I listen to the news on KOZT radio. The New Yorker arrives mid-week, the Anderson Valley Advertiser on Thursday. I'm usually at the aikido dojo two nights a week. Friday after work we meet for the antiwar vigil, then go out for dinner. Saturdays, at this time of year, its the farmer's market and a stop for coffee and muffins at Local Flavor. Sunday mornings we do some yardwork while its still cool, then take the newspapers and head to the Coffee Critic.
Housecleaning, sewing, computer time, reading and watching movies takes up pretty much all the rest of the time; we do get out to look at art especially, like tonight, on "First Friday" evenings. We haven't been doing much random exploring of the type we enjoy, partly from the price of gas and partly from the wildfires (which in this county are pretty much contained now). The routine is broken from time to time by houseguests, which we greatly enjoy. We don't see much of the folks we'd known from the years of coming up here intermittently, and do miss having regular local dinner companions.
After five months, the job is starting to feel familiar (today I finally met the last client on my caseload) and I'm comfortable in the role.
Unfortunately, we are facing cutbacks - like all agencies that rely on State funding, especially MediCal funding. The Governator seems to really have it in for the elderly and disabled; maybe he's contemplating making the state over to match "Death Race 2000"? or he just really really loves his rich Republican buddies too much to ask them to fork over a pittance of their obscene incomes to cover some of the basics of a civil society?
Within my program, which is two nurses, two social workers, a secretary and a supervisor, the only person still working a full 40 hour week is the social worker on my team. My position seems unlikely to be cut as, as I was hired at 24 hours a week and we can't really do less. But our clients, who are facing less coverage (no more dental, maybe no incontinence products or nutritional supplements either) will be looking to our program to help pick up some slack, and we won't have the money either.
But all things being equal (that is, if the state continues to see the logic in paying us to save them money by keeping folks out of nursing homes), I feel like I can do this job as long as I'm able to work.
Living in a small town I'm very aware of living as if I'm on the mat, training, all the time: what I say, how I say it, how I am to the people around me, is very important, maybe all-important. It's a long way from being a 19 year old with a Brooklyn attitude and just somehow feels "right."
