There’s been a gap in my blog writing while Al and I try to recover from a nasty Summer flu. What a waste of time! Starting with 5 days of a fairly high temperature it’s now been over two weeks. I find myself very tired. But I do think we’re getting better. Yesterday I shopped for groceries and then spent a couple of hours cutting off finished California poppies – and then slept for about 10 hours!
But today I finished terra sigging the bases of all my earthenware pieces, sprayed blue and red slips and titanium dioxide on 6 stoneware pieces ready for salt firing and have loaded the kiln. The bisque firing will go overnight. I must fire my kiln 2/3 full because Soly, the buyer for YVR Crafthouse phoned me again to ask if I’m home from Italy yet. AND she wants 12 not 8. I’ll get these 8 to her asap. Plus there’s a large special jugbird which is intended as a wedding present – wedding was last week.. I’ll try to make more earthenware jbs for the airport and also about 10 more stoneware pieces for the soda/salt firing I’ve registered for at Shadbolt Centre July 21-25. My resolution to pace myself so I don’t feel pressured will have to be ignored for a while. Damn the flu!
While I was not able to pot or garden I picked up the book that I was sent from Medalta; a gift for being a ‘friend of Medalta’. It is Joseph Boyden’s ‘Three Day Road’. I have no reason to mention it here, on a blog intended for potters, but I enjoyed it so much that I think it’s worth sharing. I had thought that a tale of two young Native Canadian soldiers shipped off to fight in the trenches of World War I would be harrowing and it was. But right from the start I wanted to see what would happen to them, from their Residential School experiences away from their traditional trapline territory on James Bay, to their training in Ontario, their voyage across the Atlantic and then two horrific years in France. We are taken back to Northern Canada and see life for the aunt who is left to trap alone and join her as she meets the train bringing one of the boys home again. This taught me more than I thought I’d ever want to know about that awful conflict and it made me so proud of the expert snipers they turned out to be.
Joseph Boyden was interviewed on CBC Radio this afternoon. He is a Metis writer and is one of a group of writers who’ve been asked to write about other famous Canadians. His book in the series is a history of two important Metis, Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel. My mother grew up in the part of Saskatchewan where the 1885 ‘Rebellion’ took place so I have a good reason to pick up that book too.
