Bad Plaster Disaster, the Sequel

Just after I wrote the last entry, I visted my friendly neighborhood potter, who is also a saint.  I told him my whole sad story of bad plaster and he very kindly loaded a 50 lb. bag of Potting Plaster into my car.  On my next available day for casting, I opened the bag of plaster, ready to start mixing.  I plunged my hand into the bag and discovered another bag of horrible lumpy plaster.  This one was actually worse than the last one.  Just to be sure, I mixed up a little test batch, and it was grainy, chunky and lumpy – not at all suitable for a sculpture mold.

This was my last possible day for mold making.  I’m down to the wire with six weeks left before I leave for the East Coast.  There’s no time left to wait for more plaster to arrive.  I did the only thing I could do.  I hauled out the lumpy stuff from NY, got the seive from my kitchen and started to sift out the lumps.  Mixed up a test batch and it was beautiful.  Made a shell coat and it was also beautiful.  Finished the mold, waited for it to set and separated the mold from the sculpture.  Beautiful mold.  Phew.  Rome is saved.

So, I talked to my saintly potter friend and told him about the bad plaster.  He responded with a story about a friend of his, younger than we are, who unexpectedly died this week.  A feature of being sixty and seventy is that about once a month, an old friend, aquaintance or enemy abruptly checks out early.  All very sobering.  The bell doth toll for him who thinks it doth.  It’s enough to make you take your vitamins, floss your teeth and exercise daily.

  

“Just remember, in Heaven, there’s no bad plaster,”  my potter friend said.

“Yeah,” I snapped, “that’s because all casting is done in Hell.” 

 

Good plaster

Bad plaster

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Bad Plaster Disaster

This morning I planned to make a mold of a sculpture I worked on for a long time and have big plans for.  This is not a test piece, or something I was just goofing around with, but a sculpture I’m counting on turning out well and that I need for shows immediately.  I’m also running out of time.  I have a solo show coming up, I leave for the East coast in two months and I need to get this cast and finished. 

So, I opened a new bag of plaster, which I ordered at ridiculous expense from a big sculpture supply place in NY.  I figured it would be worth the extra money to have good plaster shipped if it was the right stuff, since I ran into problems last year with some plaster that wasn’t sculpture grade casting plaster.  That's a whole other story.  This morning, I was horrified to find that my new plaster was full of lumps.  I don’t mean one or two, but lots and lots of big horrible chunks.  I decided to go ahead and try to make the mold anyway, and break up the lumps the best I could.  I slowly sifted the plaster into a casting bucket of water, crumbling up the lumps.  I ran into some lumps I couldn’t even break up with my fingers, so I set them aside.  When the batch would accept no more plaster, I let it sit until small cracks formed on the plaster on the surface.  All textbook plaster mixing.  When it seemed ready, I plunged my hand into what should have been a thin batch of silky smooth, runny plaster, but instead the plaster was already thickened and setting, grainy and lumpy.  Bad plaster!  Old plaster!  Aaaarrrrgggg!  I washed my hands, wrapped up my sculpture and called NY. 

I’m so proud of myself.  In a twenty minute phone call, I didn’t use any foul language.  I’m getting a refund or a new batch of plaster, I don’t know which.  At this point I don't even care.  I have no idea how I will get everything done on time, but I'm thinking maybe I’ll send the sculpture supply place my bucket of plaster.  I’m going to go water the tomatoes.

Never was there a tale of such woe
As this of a sculptor and bad plaster, Oh!

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Fawns

Shy Fawn

This morning I took my walk an hour earlier than usual, thanks to an insomniac cat (see previous post.)  The good thing is that I saw what I think are the twin fawns I saw a lot last spring as newborns, now yearlings.  I think they are the same two because of their personalities.  One came walking towards me, and the other skittered away to vanish in the tree cover.  One is curious and intrepid; the other is shy and afraid of everything.

I met them last spring when I almost stepped on the shy one, so perfectly camouflaged in the tall grass that she was almost invisible.  She was maybe a week old, curled up totally motionless, in the grass.  I backed away from her and then I saw her sister, who sat up and looked at me.  All that spring, summer and fall, they visited my house, walking the path from my studio, which is tucked away at the edge of the deep woods.  And one fawn always trotted right up to the house, almost to the back door, looking right at me, while the other paused at the cedar trees, haltingly picking her way forward until something startled her and she bolted back to the cover of the trees.

I was so happy to see them this morning!  I’m so glad they survived hunting season last fall, as well as the awful winter, which was tough for everyone, bird or beast, flora or fauna.   

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Tree frog and mindfulness

Tree frog with spruce needles

This morning Pete the Wondercat woke me up at 3:30 and 4:30 with his howling.  I checked his water bowl at 3:30 and refilled it.  He has a special bowl that must, at all times, be filled with clean water or life, as we know it ends.  But then at 4:30, more howling in spite of the fresh water.  I turned down the fans thinking that they might be hurting his ears, because they were starting to bother mine.  More howling.

I finally got up at 4:45, which is at least an hour earlier than I wanted to be awake, but sleep was not coming back.  I did my morning things – get dressed, take medicine, start fans going again to air out the house, feed cats, eat banana, check email, start a load of laundry, wash dishes, open back screen door, open windows, and voila!  A little tree frog had been stuck between the window and the storm window.    

Peter doesn’t sleep through the night except in deepest winter.  His paces and prowls around, checking on everyone and everything.  I have to keep the window shades down in one bedroom or his sits up all night watching the deer, skunks, groundhogs and rabbits in the front yard.  My land is apparently Grand Central Station for wildlife.  Sometimes he’s up all night catching mice.  Sometimes, he just patrols the house and periodically goes back to sleep.  But last night on his rounds, Pete must have noticed the tree frog stuck in the casement window and had been looking at him for hours.  Hence the howling.  And I had been unmindful.  I had not noticed a little life form hanging out on the window. 

Note to self:  check windows more carefully for frogs before shutting them.

Tree frog with spruce needles

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Children, language and poetry

"Bella Principessa" red and white chalk

I’ve never known a child who didn’t love to rhyme.  Toddlers have a special affinity for poetry because they’re really listening to the sounds of words, having just learned them.  With the magical thinking of childhood, it’s possible that the more beautiful and fascinating the words are, the more powerful the child believes them to be.  And the child would be right.  Words can be magical.

I always sang or said children’s songs, nursery rhymes and poetry to my children when they were babies. I sang when I was changing them and dressing them.  They listened with great attention, little bodies quiet, eyes huge, and I thought they were fascinated with poems and songs.  Now that my children are grown, and I know who they are as people, I realize that my infant neurosurgeon and baby genetic research biologist were probably thinking, “What’s she talking about?” and “That makes no sense at all!” 

It never occurred to me that not everyone sings to their babies and toddlers, so when the grandchildren came along I naturally sang to them, too.  Possibly they are listening with the same skeptical thoughts my children had, but the babies seem to like it.  I remember lying in a hammock with my oldest grandchild one morning soon after her baby brother was born, and singing each and every song of our repertoire.  She wanted to hear them all.  I also remember my grandmother singing to me the same songs.    

A couple of months ago, my granddaughters and I were talking discussing something I no longer remember.  What I do remember is this.  “Are you telling me the truth?” the older one, a stickler for details, asked me incredulously.  “Yep,” the younger one said emphatically.  “She’s a thruther.”  I love the exquisite logic:  someone tells lies = liar; someone who tells the truth = truther.  I wish it were that simple. 

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Mental Furniture and Necessary Poetry

I’ve been feeling starved for poetry, so I’ve decided to post one poem a week on Facebook.  Don’t worry, not my own!  Real poetry.  Different people find different things necessary in their lives – art, music, kitten videos.  I’ve found that I need really good poetry to chew on mentally.  I feel very sorry for the children growing up today who don’t have to memorize poetry.  The poems and Bible verses I had to memorize as a child are part of my mental furniture.  And how often do you replace your furniture?  I don’t know what a plane ride would be like without John Donne, Swinburne or T. S. Eliot.  I used to know a whole lot more poetry than I can remember now, which is why I’m posting poetry.  Maybe somebody else would like to refresh an arid memory. 

Until I was 17, I shared a bedroom with my sister.  As long as I can remember, my sister and I both loved poetry.  When we were very small and neither of us could fall asleep, she would demand from her bed in the dark "Say a poem!"  One of the first ones I remember "saying" (this was before we could read) was Wee Willie Winkie:

Wee Willie Winkie

running through the town

Upstairs and downstairs

in his nightgown

Crying at the windows

Crying at the locks

"Are all the children in their beds?

It's now  8 o'clock!"

Years later, just before her first child was born, my sister handwrote out her favorite poems on index cards in her beautiful handwriting so that she could read them to the baby while she was breastfeeding.  Eight years later before my first child was born, she gave the index cards to me so that I could read them to my baby, too.  One of the poems was "Innisfree” by Yeats, which I have always loved.  I always associated Yeats' love of Innisfree with my wanting to go "home" to our childhood summer home in Ephraim.  When my sister was in the hospital, shortly before she died, she was having a bad time.  She felt physically awful; her son hadn't arrived yet from the airport, she was restless and uneasy.  "Say a poem!"  she said, too exhausted almost to speak.  I "said" Innisfree.

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.”

"That sounds like Wee Willie Winkie!" she said indignantly, and fell mercifully asleep. 

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