The Nibs are Packed

I’ve weighed my bags, two fifty pounders. I’ll be paying 50 dollars for an extra bag. That is $1.00 per pound. Like the cost of what, organic carrots perhaps? My quest will be to unload all the items I am dragging with me. How do I unload it? Who wants them? I’ve got seeds, books, shoes, snack bars, plastic balls, and those dam pen nibs. Yes, I said pen nibs. If I indeed find a home for them then I will rest in peace. Really. Today they have changed my view of writing. At least the chore of writing doesn’t seem like “cursive cursive” anymore. Alas, I can say this because I have a year off and when I teach I never teach penmanship anyway. I teach keyboarding (thank you Mavis Beacon).

Now, I’m bringing 20 boxes of 141 nibs to Tanzania, and nobody asked from them. They asked for nail clippers, pens, globes, shoes, sheets, and Parmesan cheese, but not nibs. Well, I never get what I ask for (does my sabbatical count?), so these folks will get Esterbrook school medium firm nibs. Like it our leave it.

"Put your pointer finger..

...on the equator," I told the boys.

I didn't have time to say much more about my trip as I rifled through the enormous reading selection housed in the mediation room on the second floor. Liam was reading and Shane was smiling with a wet head. "We are going on a two part journey to Tanzania. See if you can find it, 'cuz it is there where I'll have my next swim", I yelled as I left.

Actually, I was thinking about tsetse flies and bug nets and weighing my bags each day not swimming. I get 50lbs per bag, and I'm hoping to use it all. I have a tent, a pad, powerbars and wetones, and I've frantically making art. It is a portable type of art and I'm thinking I can share some of the pictographs from our trip to the sierra de Guadalupe in (Baja California) with our future friends in Arusha, Tanzania. I started with making patches for backpacks and now I'm framing little pieces of cloth with pine needles and bark(riveting isn't it Jack?).

So, two 50 pound bags for what?? First we will be heading to the "bush", as Seppo calls it, and visiting sites near Kondoa. A well know place in the Rift Valley full of pictographs of people and animals. Reports of vandalism have reached our ears, and we know how faded images get, but it takes seeing it, and we are ready. Jon is armed with cameras and battery packs and his secret weapon, dstretch. We are leaving everything up to our email correspondent John Cavallo (Rock Art Conservation of Tanzania) . He is researching and documenting the sites, and lucky us, we will be joining him.

Part two includes a visit to the coast, to a place near Bagamoyo. I've signed on with Earthrising to create a natural, sustainable, home. This project is the passion of our leader Elke Cole, a builder/architect living in an eco-village in British Columbia. She is incredible talented and I've decided to join the group for 6 weeks.

That is all I know. I've been told the beer is 2 bucks a bottle and that there is a great place for Indian food in Arusha. The big T......... is still a big question mark????

Start counting..week one

I began counting my weeks when school let out in June. Then I stopped, or the days simply escaped from under my barefooted feet. After awhile I would just make up a number. Now it is real. I am on the real week one. My friends have drifted back to West Portal for a few days of hubbub followed by a year of teaching without me and I'm spending my days collecting berries and chanterelles in the wet north woods. Yes, berries and mushrooms!!! Jon proposed a hike to find the beavers, and we managed our way through cedar swamps and bogs to look at a pile of sticks in the rain. The delight was in the getting there. We were shoulder deep in ferns and under a canopy of maples and low and behold berries. Crimson little gems. They were not hidden they were just dangling there in the drooping wetness of it all. Jewels.

This was a place unlike any berry patch I had ever encountered, not like the Himalayan berries of the coast, cascading into the Russian River. (Those hairy little beasts were discovered when teacher friend Debbie and I paddled to the Guerneville bridge and back this summer. ) They are not at all like the blackcaps of New York, where long-sleeves and armor are required to tackle the brambles and the bees. It was field, and meadow, and gully after gully of dripping red raspberries like I have never seen before!!

And to top that off, I moved a leaf only to uncover a bush, right next to the thicket of berries, blueberries. Tiny, easy, tumbeelina sized blue balls trickled into my hands and into my mouth.

Oh, I have never been so unprepared for berry picking. We managed to get a few mouthfuls, a few handfuls and then we needed room for the golden chanterelles we had spied near the car.
I prepared a North Woods meal, complete with brats and no mustard. Truly delicious!!

into the clay

I'm into the primitive thing and ever since the passing of our summer program along the Mighty Onesquethaw, (circa1999) I’ve been outta sorts, disconnected. Luckily for me, hubby Jon (pictographs) is an old flint knapper and rock art hound. This means we spend hours searching and documenting ancient sites with pictographs and petroglyphs. We keep our noses to the ground for flakes and rock aliments. I do get my fix. I find mud and fire and all sizes of hiking trials here in California each spring, summer, winter and fall, but nothing like the freedom of an open field, a woodlot, a riparian area and a few stonewalls during a New York heatwave to remind you what it’s all about.

I’m reminded of long “upcreek” walks where we unearthed crayfish and slid on limestone slides. We lifted moss from the creek’s pools and draped our hot bodies with green bikinis for fashion shows. The days were sweltering, so any excuse to stay soaked was fine. Often we took the newly formed blonde clay from the curvy banks and pinched pots only to discover animal tracks covering our creations the next day. For refreshments we picked blackcaps and wild onions and declared ourselves worriers of a firebreathing clan. And on the those few fortuitous, yet still steamy afternoons, we searched for the mother of all snacks, a watermelon we had left floating in the shady depths of the creek, near the old Sycamore bridge. We did everything.

So, at one point this year Joann and I decided a substitute was needed. We found a place with life, a history and a person with natural charm. This is how we met Priscella Queen of the Desert. I liked her first off. We talked on the phone and she provided an unsolicited weather report. I relayed one back. This was going to be the place for Joann and I to have our little rendezvous, the one no one gets invited to. I was excited for the workshop (3 days, but we missed one). We coiled and recoiled the micacous clay mined on ancestral property in the Galestio Basin in New Mexico.

Priscilla’s (www.priscillahoback.com) pots were all cured and ready to be fired in a pit and each one survived the process with special black cloudbursts embedded inside and out.

I learned that it is all about hand-building and structure. Joann’s pot clasped (which only means she should get one of mine). Someday I want to actually cook with mine. The clay casserole styles are popular but I’m thinking about outdoor fires and cooking in the adobe or cob oven just like our wondrous host Priscilla did for the final day’s feast.

DArjit it!!

This is the stuff. It is the bomb (www.darjit.com). Having never attempted any 3D work, and certainly having no experience with cement or concrete (oh, well I did spend a summer jiggling the side of pools with Steve the pool builder), means this is a gigundo learning curve for me. I made mushrooms some posionous some edible and all made out of darjit.

Others had very clear ideas of what they wanted and they created large animals and birdbaths, and even a butterfly chair. TFace made a water/splash sanctuary for me. She used our specially hand collected oh-so -long- ago shells and now it sits outside and she has returned to her college bike riding art school life. And me..well stuck in Fogland.