Summer 2008
This last winter was pretty casual compared with the deep snows of '06/'07. We had a cold snap or two and the normal blizzard winds from both North and South, but the digging was reasonable. I was, and am still, recovering from my rather traumatic bout with the "Evil C" so was monitoring myself carefully as I dug snow & hauled wood and water. There is no rest when living on the fringes of civilization! As Jesse,(the Bod) said in "Predator", "I ain't got time to bleed!"
We cranked through the winter on all our art mediums as usual, preparing for the Summer, which came all to soon! My experimentation with "frit" painting on glass has been both exciting and educational. Glass has no bounds and would require a lifetime of devotion to master it's many variations, so in the less than half a lifetime I have left I'm tending to focus on perfecting the picture tiles and marbles. Along with Woodblocks and watercolor painting I have enough to occupy my time.
Sharon has been spending alot of time completing commissions and trying to fill our own gallery. Raven's are popular so she can't even get her "bird" mosaics into the walls before they sell. This is good but she can only work so fast, generally not fast enough! "Original" art is a hard product to supply if the demand is high.
The garden is in and producing. Spinach, kale, Peas and strawberries. We're putting in a big potato patch and greenhouse with probably a chicken coop. The very real threat of staple foods not getting to Alaska in the near future due to the awful mess the world is heading into has us Alaskans scrambling into survival mode. Our prime concerns are, heating through the winters, having enough food and being prepared to hunt for what we can't buy. and surviving with no stable income once the tourism and art markets decline, which is already the trend. The panic and mayhem will sweep through the masses in lower 48 before it hits us. It's strange because we up here are tending to see what's coming with clearer eyes. It's probably because we're used to being on the "edge" as a life style and are conditioned to "look ahead", which our sad leaders tend to lack the ability to do!
On to cooler stuff! Although there is less traffic we are having many nightly dinners around bonfires with friends and keeping our fishing, adventure and home steading systems up and running. All fun and the very reason we live up here in what we consider paradise. My old climbing friend from the "hard rock" days in California, Jim Barker is moving to Haines from Wasilla with his wife Suzie. We plan to continue having adventures both on steep Sierra rock and epic Alaskan landscapes. Sharon and I did have a bit of an epic last month when we almost ran out of gas 20 miles south of Haines in our 16' skiff on our annual spring beach camping trip. If you've ever tried to row a heavily loaded "Lund" you'll know what we were faced with! As it was we rowed about 6 miles with the incoming tide and got home with 1/2" of gas in the tank!
That's it for now. Whoopi is still a happy poodle, and Simon is continuing to slowly chew the studio to pieces. Moose are everywhere and eagles are squawking overhead! Come on up!
Ja mata! John