A PIG COLLECTION

I had occasion to visit my Public TV Access Group’s bookkeeper and she is a collector of pigs. I’m not sure what the fascination for pigs is, but, here they are:

Maybe it’s a reminder of the political pigs feeding at the public trough. Oh, that was ugly. It’s just a pig teapot.

Eileen’s pigs are mostly decorative knickknacks. Just cute little critters.

The site is having a problem and providing me with this miniscule font. So, pictures seem better than words. Besides, I was awfully wordy yesterday about the contention, I mean the convention.

This pig is straight forward and sweet. When we arrange our collections, do we make sure they are all turned the same way?  Facing right? Or left? Hmm!

Most of Eileen’s pigs were facing right.

When placed against on a  table with other things, left facing was necessary to see the character.

The room, table  and walls configured  for the one above  to be arranged facing left.

And this bold Harley Rider is multi-dimensional and faces forward.  Not that any of this matters, but if you decorate your office with your collection, they have to look appealing.

They are cute and  most knickknack collections have cute appeal. And, I always appreciate other people’s collections being a collectiholic myself.

My daughter-in-law collects non-political elephants and the form and function elephants can take goes way beyond knickknacks and is fascinating. Always the object turned art.

But, this one was my favorite. It has a message with  just the right touch of truth and humor.  Oh, boy!

LAST DAYS IN DEMING

This little desert ground squirrel was cavorting near the motor home just before I hauled my backpack out to the Bronco. It was leaving day for me, but Jim has friends in Deming I wanted to visit before I caught my train.

At the Hi Lo Ranch we spent a short fifteen minutes with Jim’s  long time friend Bob Gambol, who took his motor home to the Panama Canal and back with Jim and Bud Kuball in 2004.  Bob was just out of the hospital so we didn’t stay long.  Bob has  traveled  the world over with nothing but a back-pack, an interesting  story I’ll blog another day.

Jim agreed to supply lifetime pizza to a woman who edited his book on that 2004 trip to Central America and the Panama canal.  (She  prefers not to be named or pictured in our blog.)  Her little dog Pixie didn’t mind having her picture taken.

She took us to the Senior Center to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with two of her closest friends, Mary Berg and Pat McKay.  Pat is a person Jim and I  specifically wanted to meet-more on that tomorrow.

Since we both love museums, we went to the Luna County Museum.  We arrived  late in the afternoon and the museum is huge. The collections and variety are among the best we’ve seen.  From  many beautiful china cabinets, how do you pick one item? I  like unusual  the tea pots.

An excellent gallery of beautiful paintings.

An excellent collection of home-made lace.

A hand cranked bell wheel caught my interest, but even more their extensive bell collection.

Three cases of bells, I estimated to hold 1000 bells in each case, with bells from all over the world.

One of three beautifully designed church pews.  I couldn’t take it all in. I expect to return to this museum some day. And, I will post more pictures I took as well.

 

From the museum we headed for the local Moose Club which just happens to be near the Amtrak kiosk. I changed into my traveling clothes  and we had a beer in the bar. And, doncha know, we ran into two women full-time RVers Jeannie and  Leah both from  the LOW’s, a Singles  RV  Club, Loners On Wheels.  Jim had met them in the past at various functions shared with his singles club, the WINS.  They thoroughly enjoy the lifestyle on the road and handle their own rigs. Single women on the road amaze me.

Jodie, (missed her last name)  came whisking through the bar and gave everybody a kiss both males and females.  She is a happy distant cousin of Jodie Foster and looks a bit like her as well.  Jim delcared, “Wow, this is the friendliest club I’ve been to.”  Truth to tell, we find many, many friendly people on the road with wonderful stories to tell.

 

 

REDUCING THE LOAD

A collectiholic, such as myself, finds it difficult to reduce the “stuff” we collect. I’m a paper nut and many of my collections involve paper. But, on-line, with this blog, I get to collect “stuff” that doesn’t pile up, such as cures for hiccups or favorite poems, and strange-sounding names. Yesterday Elaine May from Canada sent me another sure cure for hiccups.  “I take a few drops of balsamic vinegar. It works every time,” claims Elaine. And a neighbor reminded me that a cure for poison oak grows all around us. Simply make a tea of manzanita leaves and drink it once a week in the spring and you won’t be affected by poison oak. Another neighbor swears by delicately biting the leaves off a poison oak plant (only in the early spring) and swallowing it. A sure preventive if it doesn’t kill you.

And from my other blog comes this old remedy from Homer Maas. “I smashed my thumb in the car door. It swelled like a mini-balloon and I lay in misery all night with it throbbing, and throbbing. In the morning my dad carefully took a paperclip, half unbent it, and heated the pointed end red-hot with a torch. While I cringed with fear, he carefully “drilled” a hole into the top of my thumb nail with the heated end of the paperclip until blood spurted out of the hole. The pressure was immediately relieved and the pain was instantly gone.”  Homer was only 12 years old then and he lived through it.

I’ve been asked how long I’ll be staying in Murphys by so many people, I thought I’d explain. I rerouted away from the Motor Home to attend, graduations, my family reunion and business at home. Most of that business involves paperwork and ridding myself of collections.  I’m simplifying my life to handle everything from the road. Lining up accounts for bill paying on-line and doing neglected projects. Then things like a Jury summons and other responsibilities intervene.  I removed propane tanks at one rental because they don’t use propane anymore. Supervising yard work that needed to be done. Small repairs made. Reducing the load. It’s a small epiphany when I can find a home for old sheet music which a piano teacher friend,  June Foster gladly took. A table and lamp and kitchen stuff for my daughter’s new apartment. I off loaded my old vinyl record collection, and so on. I’m far from finished, but making steady progress. Simplifying and reducing the load FEELS SO GOOD. Jim is encouraging me to bring some of my paper projects aboard.  (He knows not what trouble he is getting into, and, I still don’t know when I’ll be leaving Murphys.)

 

 

A LOOK BACK AT MARYHILL

Yesterday, we left Stephenson, WA and drove to Vancouver.  I spent two hours at the Maryhill Museum and thought I’d display some of their ceramics and glassware. The collection is not massive. They also have a crafts collection. The beaded vase above is the only item that “spoke” to me from the collection which had a mix of furnishings, jewelry and other objects.

One case contained a collection of antique glassware like the vase above. Some beautiful stuff worth a trip out if its your favorite “thing.” I have a friend who collects antique glass and its lovely, delicate, highly prized stuff.

Ceramics are among my favorite things. The collection here isn’t extensive and I may have snapped a picture of  every pot and bowl they had. What’s nice is they are all originals.

A sculpin fish teapot was my favorite.

My friend Donna Voorhees makes similar lidded bowls and I own one. I use it for one thing, to make bread pudding. Somehow, the bread pudding, my own recipe, turns out best when baked in this type of  bowl.

I own a yellow bowl, not as pretty as this plate. Yellow is one of my favorite colors and not all that common with ceramicists. Mine I use for pasta dishes with a cream base and a sprig of bright green garnish.

This piece has a lot of character and appears to be Adam and Eve enjoying the fruits of their table.

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Glass work I know nothing about except that it takes a special type of furnace to work with it. The results are beautiful. The Maryhill collection was quite conservative. I’ve seen spectacular fused glass in galleries all over the U.S. that appeal to me.  The vase, (below) was wonderfully iridescent, fused, my favorite from the collection and I’d like to take it home.

The next couple days, I will be visiting with Damiann Kegney, a friend of my son’s.

E-MAIL AND CHRISTMAS CARDS

 

I love e-mail for one very good reason. We’ve moved from one place to another and many of our friendships and relatives have been reduced to a Christmas card per year. They are the people we know and love, who have busy lives as we have. We rarely see them, never forget them, but time displaces the closeness you once had.
E-mail changes that. You can zap off a quick note once a month, or once a day, like neighbors over a fence. You can share a cute picture or send a joke and keep more personally in touch. I’ve cursed this machine, but I’m grateful for its ease of communication. I just relocated old square dancing buddies, Dave and Sandy Barron and we exchanged about 10 years of catching-up. 

The Post Office, once the only profitable government institution, has suffered because of e-mail. People don’t send as many cards as they used to because of e-mail. E-cards are animated, beautiful and enjoyable. But paper cards, especially Christmas cards, have their own appeal to me.
Over the years I’ve collected every greeting card and post card ever sent to me. And, those of my parents, friends and anybody who was willing to share theirs. I have a huge collection of greeting cards in scrapbooks, and I never get tired of them.

Many of them are themed, such as dog cards, or cat cards, or Santa cards. It started when I was a 2nd grader. My mother was writing out her Christmas cards. In the stack was a Santa card with a fuzzy red suit, both his front and back, with the famous poem, “T’was The Night Before Christmas,” on the inside. Oh, how I wanted that card to be my very own. Mom wouldn’t relent, no matter how much I begged. But happiness was assured when I found the card on the Christmas Tree Christmas morning addressed to me. I was hooked.

Now, I never let a card get away.

We are the rat-packers of the world. Without us, much of history would be lost. Some say we are insane. But, I care not. I love my old cards and letters, Christmas and otherwise. Merry, Merry!