Loose Leaf Notes

1. This is the time of year I like to sunbathe on the porch because it’s cool enough to soak it up. Letting all that good warmth and Vitamin D penetrate my skin makes me feel like a solar voltaic panel storing sun for the winter.

2. Golden parachutes? How about being fired and fined instead?

3. While Joe and I were visiting my Asheville potter son Josh last week, we watched the first presidential debate with him at one of his friend’s house. Our favorite part was when McCain talked about the bracelet he was wearing and then Obama showed his and said “I have a bracelet too.” McCain’s bracelet was given to him by mother who lost her son in Iraq and who asked him to make sure her son didn’t die in vain. Obama’s was also given to him by a mother who lost a son in Iraq. She wanted him to make sure no other mother would have to go through what she did.

4. While in downtown Marshall, I saw a shop called MY SISTER’S PLACE, but my mind added two little strokes to the L in the word PLACE and I saw it as MY SISTER’S PEACE.

5. Josh recently had to update his resume for a ClaySpace press packet, but he’s been so busy with the tasks at hand that he forgot some of the shows he’s done past year. “I had to google myself to find out what I’ve been doing,” he said.

6. I think Josh, whose father is English, has a Cockney Rhyming Slang gene. The lingo he uses fascinates me to the point that I write it down when I hear it. This past weekend I learned that “spitting game” had something to do with a pick-up line and that calling someone a “bag of hammers” was another way of saying they were screwed-up.

7. At his BFA thesis show in December of 2006, Josh’s eight foot handmade brick wall art installation with the word INDIVIDUAL stamped on each brick conveyed that a single person isn’t as powerful as when they join together with others and build community. Another installation at that show was an interactive piece made of bricks stamped with the word COMMUNITY, which people moved around during the show. Some took the COMMUNITY bricks home after getting Josh to sign them. See one HERE.

8. Josh has a friend who, on two different occasions, tried to take a brick home to Arizona, but each time the brick was confiscated by airport security.

9. But you can mail a brick "as is" without any packaging, as blogger Naomi found out when Josh mailed her an unwrapped brick with her address written on the surface.

10. I have to wonder if Josh was the first person to mail a single brick.

11. I google Josh’s name when I want to find out what he’s been up to, too. Most recently I found THIS photo of him presenting a COMMUNITY brick to fellow North Carolina potter and pottery blogger Michael Kline. After that, I found THIS blog with another picture of Josh on it. It was authored by Rob Cartelli, a potter who took the two month Penland class on woodfiring clay made of local materials that Josh assistant taught this past spring.

12. We take bricks for granted, but the oldest ones found date back to 7,500 B.C., and from Josh I became aware of how important they have been to civilization, as this excerpt from a story I wrote for the Floyd Press called Building Community in Floyd says: Josh opened my eyes more fully to the role clay has played in human survival when he stated that the conceptual basis for his BFA Show was a pipe, a vessel, and a brick and then explained the significance of early ceramics: a pipe moves water and sewer, a vessel stores and transports food, and brick is used to make shelter. More HERE.

13. And then there is THIS. Do you remember it?

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