Looks Like We made It

      No, we are not totally out of the woods yet, and yes, we still need to wear our masks, but my darlings, we are starting to see that there is a light in the distance.  Vaccinations against this dreaded virus are well underway.  With the exception of our youngest, who is not old enough to receive the shots yet, my family has all had at least the first jab.  I have never been so relieved to get a needle in my arm!  We can do this! 

We need to do this.  So many have lost so much.  

I look forward to the day the theaters open. It is very hard to be a theatre artist and a theatre professor and not be able to create live theatre.  

Most of all, I look forward to hugging everyone I have had to be distant from for so long.  If I see you, and you say you are  fully vaccinated, do not be surprised if I give you a bear hug! (I may also burst into tears with relief, so just hand me a tissue!)

What is summer without theatre?

      I can barely remember the last time I had a summer that did not include theatre.  College, graduate school, and most years since, summers have meant theatre in some of its most concentrated forms.  There have been summers filled with musicals, or Shakespeare, or modern comedies and dramas, or some combination of all. I have done theatre on showboats, in heatwaves, during hurricane or tornado warnings, while seven months pregnant, inside and outside, with casts of two to thirty.  

     This summer, with theatre closures due to the pandemic, I am not racing to sit in a darkened theatre for tech or dress rehearsals. It is very weird, and oddly, I am getting less done this summer than I normally do.  With no pressure to work around fittings and rehearsals, it feels like I have all the time in the world, and yet, my living room is still not stripped of its old paper, the dining room floors are still not refinished, and the bathroom still not repainted.  But books have been read, and conversations had, marshmallows roasted over wood fires, wine sipped slowly in the warm evenings, and family dinners have lingered long after the food was consumed, so I would call this a success.

       We have tended our sheep, hayed  the fields,  eaten fish caught from our pond, created paintings and collages, taken walks and had long talks. So much of this would have been bypassed with our normal frantic schedule.  Do I miss creating amazing productions with my theatre family? Of course.  I would have had five shows in two different theatres, but  I would have missed the evening the boys and I went fishing in the Susquehanna, watching the sunset over the swirling water.  I would have laughed with my actors friends, but perhaps missed hugging my youngest son as he navigated the first rough patch with his first real girlfriend. 

       Now, as one of our children heads off to law school in two weeks, we are happy for the gift of family time that COVID-19 has afforded us by forcing our schedules into a lower gear.   With all the sadness and anxiety brought on in this dark time by this virus, we are grateful for the silver lining.  

   Be well, my friends.  

It's been a long time!

     It has been over a year since I wrote anything for this blog - too long, my dears, too long!  The last year was filled with the second semester of the new job, writing grants, traveling to Italy to spend two incredible weeks in Commedia delle 'Arte workshops - clowning and mask making during the worst heatwave Europe had seen in a century,  as well as having a glorious weekend in Genoa and Rapallo.  I designed seven shows, mentored theses, designed and taught several new classes, and still managed to keep children, dogs, cat, chickens, and sheep alive.  I am finishing my second year at Hartwick College, where I taught an intense Asian Theatre class in the three week J-term, and was knee deep in the Spring semester and show designs when the pandemic closures started. Switching to online learning has been both fun and frustrating but my students and colleagues are wonderful and have stepped up to the challenge.
    We have been lucky that the immediate family is all together and healthy.  The birth of lambs on the farm keep us busy and have been keeping our spirits up.  Life is good.

    So let's see if we can do a bullet point of the past year.

 .     .    Took a  collage painting workshop at Snow Farm in Massachusetts in June.  Wonderful teacher and great place.

      

Took Danny to NYC to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,

Took Danny and Nick to NYC to see King Kong and watch my former student, Eric William Morris, in the lead - only to find that we had gotten tickets at the time he was on vacation.  Still, we LOVED the puppet work on the ape.

The Three Musketeers of Drew, Barby and Todd were together again when Todd and his family came north for a visit.

 


Spend two glorious weeks in Florence. 

My flatmates and I in the Florence studio with some of our mask creations.

Paints, wine and a view to die for! My special weekend at my friend, Kiara's villa on the Italian Riviera.

Saved many sheep from barberpole worm while Drew was away at conferences.

Had normal farm chores that happen in summer - like haying.










Designed some shows like
Silent Sky

Billy Bishop Goes to War

Managed to spend some family time together on the farm.

A busy 15 months or so, but as always, when I write it down, I realize that I am a very lucky lady.

Where are you Sam?

Can we talk about gasoline?  When I was a kid, there were two kinds of gasoline that my father put in our car – regular, or regular that he pumped himself.  Oh yes, this was a special money saving aspect of the gas station back then.  Gas was a couple cents cheaper if you did it yourself.  However, there was still always the option of letting the gas station attendant do it.  Daddy would pump the gas on trips to the hardware store or lumberyard, but if, for example, we were heading out to Long Island to my grandparent’s for Thanksgiving, he let the attendant do it. 

These men fascinated me.  When we drove into the station, the car would roll over the long, black air hose, dinging the bell somewhere in the repair bay, and we would sit and wait for the man in the grimy uniform (with a name like Bob or Sam embroidered on the left breast pocket) to come loping across to our car. 

“Filler up?” he’d ask, picking something unknown from his perpetually blackened fingernails. 

“Yes, with regular” Daddy would answer.  What did we care about unleaded gas – we were driving a Volkswagen bus – hardly a high-performance car, but one that fit all seven family members with six of them getting window seats.

When Sam (or Bob) had checked the oil, washed the windows, and topped off the tank, Daddy would hand him a credit card, and Sam (or Bob) would disappear into the depths of the gas station, and we would wait for him to return with a little plastic tray with the charge card and several pieces of tissue paper all held together. As he’d pass the tray through the window, I could see the creases in his skin were filled with grease as black as that in his fingernails. Daddy would sign the papers, rip one off and keep it, and thank Bob or Sam who would look puzzled for a minute, then say, “Oh, no, this is just Sam’s shirt – I’m Tommy.”

Where, oh, where are Bob (or Sam or Tommy)?  How I long to see one of them with their grimy hands, as I pull into a gas station, dressed for the theatre, wearing my expensive perfume and velvet skirt.  But no, Sam or Bob or Tommy has departed along with the other heroes of my childhood, Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers.  So, after pumping the gas, and washing the windows, I return to my car, no longer smelling of  “Obsession” or “White Shoulders” but of unleaded gasoline and windshield washer fluid.   I miss you Sam, Bob…

Of keys, and greenhouses, and dye plants.

     A key.  That's it, yet it is a key that will lead to so much!  My college campus has a beautiful greenhouse attached to the back of the science building.  Every day I walk past it as I go to and from my car.  Not a lot of plants are in it; some bromeliads, some ferns, and some geraniums.  There are some random other plants - perhaps from faculty offices, trying to stay alive over winter?  I never see anyone in this greenhouse, which has had the benches removed some time in the past due to asbestos, and never replaced. Hence the lack of activity.  Still, it is light and warm and has windows that open, and water.  And I now have a key.  I have permission to use this greenhouse for my research, and I am thrilled.  Giddy, one might say.
    There is more to this than just growing some plants.  Years ago, we lived in a beautiful house in Baltimore next to a not so beautiful house that had a GORGEOUS, yet abandoned, greenhouse on its property.  I longed to get into that greenhouse.  We even discussed buying the lot next door (the not so beautiful house was situated on a double lot) so we might have the extra land, and the greenhouse.  Alas this was not to be.  So, like a kid with their nose pressed against the toy store window, I would watch the greenhouse sit there with no one entering it, nor loving it.  I watched its slow decay: ivy breaking through the windows and letting water to rot the floor, birds and rodents nesting in the office above the growing rooms, the furnace turning red with rust, the pipes green with patina...
    Now, I work on a campus with an under-used greenhouse - there was a budget crunch after the renovations were begun on it, so they came to a halt.  Since some of my research has to do with plants, I thought I would ask if I might have a small corner of the greenhouse to use.  After all, what's the worst that could happen?  A no?  I'd be no worse off than before.  I asked and got a yes!  I am finally going to have a greenhouse.  Not mine, shared with others, not perfect, but a greenhouse.
     The other cool thing was the Chair of the Biology Department, with whom I have not had interaction since the first week of school, when my mind was reeling with dozens of new names and faces, remembered my name.  It is a little thing, but it made me feel good.  It is nice to be working on a small campus again.
     So I am off to plant my indigo and woad, calendula and madder,  lady's bedstraw and others.  Expect to see me with dirt under my nails and a goofy smile on my face!

Merry Christmas, Dear Ones

   Wishing you all a Merry Christmas.  As we prepare for this special day,  remember to reach out to each other.  That smile at a stranger, or the little bit of help reaching something from a high shelf for a vertically challenged shopper has a huge and positive impact.
     I am a person who hates shopping (ironic with the job I have) but I love going to the store the day or two before Christmas.  Everyone is so helpful.  We were in Walmart yesterday.  I needed to get more vanilla extract and tee shirts.  I went into the baking supply aisle - which was very crowded.   I overheard a woman searching for condensed milk.  Having just passed it, I told her where it was.  Her husband saw me scanning the shelves, and asked what I was looking for, then told me the vanilla was back where I had just sent his wife.  It is the little bits of communication that make this such a special time.  The tiny moments, not the presents, are what we will remember.
    Family, friends, and memories can help everyone have a better holiday season.
   Wishing you all friendship, and love, and days of laughter, and moments of quiet.

PEACE

I Have Achieved Leather

   So after putting the salmon skin in the tannin solution last Sunday, and taking it out yesterday (Sunday), I have learned a few things.  First of all - I think I may have left it in the solution too long, as it is still stiff in places, even after working it.  Second - acorn tannin makes the skins much darker than the Maiwa powdered tannin I learned with.  The finished skin is dark brown, and very pretty,  but it is very different from the  burnt sienna of the Maiwa product.  Third - I need to find some fishermen and have them save skins for me after they have filleted their catch.  I love this process.  I now have to decide what to do with the leather.  The last thing I learned (AGAIN) is that I have a very tolerant family.  The fish skin and tanning solution sat on the kitchen counter in a big bowl for a week, and they just worked around it. Fish in the bathroom?  All heard was, "When will it be done so I can shower?" My husband and boys are kind of awesome.

Here is the rest of the process:

making the protein  solution with egg yolk, oils and detergent

Adding back some of the oils removed in the tanning process

Letting the oiled skin drip dry a bit - again in the shower
If you shower at our house ANYTHING might be in the tub - salmon leather, nettles, felt, anything!

The outer side of the skin - 

The underside still retaining the lines from the drying rack!

I may sand the back of the leather to even out the surface, and I may need to get a touch more scientific in the measuring of the tannins (I think my solution was quite strong) but leather was made and I am pleased with the result.