Another Art Walk Just a Memory

One of my favorite things about living in a small town is that simple events are big deals and everyone comes out to support them. We wrapped up our eleventh annual Art Walk this past weekend.
Even in this rural area, every area of art was represented. Five published authors, two musical groups including chamber music, classical piano and down home folk/country, every kind of artist from oil painters to pencil sketchers. Quilters and sculpters, jewelers and actors…everyone respecting and appreciating everyone elses form of art.   Considering this is a town of less than 2,000 people, we have an amazing amount of talent.  Because I just can’t accept such a thing as coincidence, I have a theory for this phenomena that is totally unscientific.  

  This town started out like most other settlements in Ohio as just that, a settlement.  But we were settled by a savvy businessman who quickly started a lumber business, then began working the coal mines and shipped in all those people necessary to keep all that business going.  We are farming on clay here, so it wasn’t long before people were making pottery to exchange for food at the general store.  Pottery so popular it shipped out of here by the train load.  Time marched on, and somebody painted something on a piece of pottery to make it different from his/her neighbors.  That is where the unusually high concentration of artists comes in.  This was a pottery town in it’s prime.  In their boom days they needed many, many decorators so people who had that ability moved here, had families and by the time the potteries began to fail…I’m sure every household either had a painter living there, or had someone with a painters DNA coursing through them.  I imagine that explanation would also work for the abundance of truly beautiful people who populate California.  If you consider that the most beautiful people from every state flocked to the coast during the early days of the movie studios then ultimately failed as actors but stayed, married each other…ta dah, beautiful population. 

That’s my theory, I’m sticking to it.

Unconditional Love

As a mother, I’m familiar with unconditional love.  It is  the stony hearted person that can pick up a newborn baby and not feel like they’d throw themselves into the path of a speeding semi-truck rather than have this tiny child feel one moment of pain or sadness.  But even that all consuming love is trumped by the love of this dog for me and Pap.  Walker is my almost constant companion.  If I feel like sleeping, he’s sleeping.  Should I suddenly decide to take a run around the block, he’s all about it.  He has a basket full of toys, and full run of the house.  But none of that really matters to him.  He just wants us. 

I knew I was over scheduled last week when I came home from an appointment and found him sleeping on my pillow with one of Pap’s shirts between his paws.  Now that is just sad.  The difference between this dog and any one of my kids who may have been missing me is he was more delighted that I was home than mad that I’d been gone.  People are never that forgiving.  We can learn a lot from a dog.

Retirement is not for Sissies

Thanks so much for keeping me in your loop y’all! I’m sorry I dropped off the planet with no notice since March…holy cow, March????? All I can say in my defense is that retirement is not for sissies. 

Updates since then:  Pap managed to land that job he was interviewing for.  I’m still writing for the paper.  The Pirate play was a hit.  I managed to get the garden in, pick up two part time bookkeeping jobs and start writing another play.  Two of my short stories were rejected…this is a weird world nowdays.  I suspect that the editor for one of my stories is barely out of high school.  Her comment on a story about a woman with alzheimers was “ewww, this is creepy”. 

Mother’s Day rocked.  All the kids and grandkids made it home, we had nice weather and tons to eat. 

As you can see, we are girl heavy in the family and yes that is a Christmas wreath still hanging on the house.  Pap and I gave our ladder to one of the kids and we’re both too short to get it down.  The two handsome men in this picture are my one and only son (in the glasses), and my new son (Prince to my Princess) with the hat. 

This weekend is our annual Art Walk downtown.  

Okay, I’m all caught up and I’ll be around to see all of you post haste.