the day-to-day

having two children, even grown up ones, is an affliction. they constantly love you, even when you are down or feeling under the weather. they are constant reminders that you love others fiercely. as i said, an affliction. the other day hannah took a series of photographs of me finishing a stump loom shifu piece. nothing special, just a page for a vellum book. but she was able to get me unposed and occupied, so i didn't make a face. or anything too weird.

my son, ian, is an artist, the kind that draws old buildings, and barns, and odd houses, and makes a weird music on an old pump organ that he calls dirges. ian spoke to me about the blog yesterday, complimenting me on it, remarking on what it evoked in his memory (he's been away for two years) of this old farm. below, the back door. where everyone enters.

we had a little new snow today after the big thaw. the watersheds are coursing everywhere, but the temperature has dropped and now it's returned to january cold. i'm back to health again, and hoping to get some real work done this week. today i started two students in the bookbinding activity (class). as i spoke to them about bone folders, i caught them both stroking their chinese-made  bonefolders with respect. anticipation, as we begin with star books.

this old truck is all that's left of the outside toys. ian's, probably; he adored his tonkas and john deeres into total wreckage. hannah's plastic horses survived in slightly better shape. oh, and the bricks? they came from my chimney, the cleanup after an ice storm that kept us out of the house for three weeks until electricity was returned. the old maple in the front yard fell down on it, saving the house, but not the chimney. imagine, trees and bricks raining down.