Halloween Pictures

Halloween. It always seems like time speeds from October first to the thirty first in a flash. One moment I'm talking with the guys about what they might want to be this year for Halloween then suddenly I've got five minutes to make two costumes. Sometimes that works out okay. And other times it really was just plain bad planning. Like this year. That Samurai costume took sooooo long to make. Thankfully Max wanted to repeat his Ninja costume - otherwise who knows what would have gone down. The Samurai was part of Coleman's homeschooling experience. Coleman spent a lot of time researching Samurai armor and chose the Edo Period (sounds like Ed-oh). He found the symbol which  I used to make a stencil, he chose the colors, design and he spray painted, gold leafed and did some duct taping. I have to say, it was a lot of fun to make together. The labor was heavily weighted towards me, but it was so great having a willing helper once things started coming together.

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! What were you all for Halloween?

School Auction Project: Inspiration & Plans

These little beauties are made by artist Meagan Chaney. I adore them.

Kapaa Middle School students made these! (Kawai)

In a couple weeks I will start this year's auction project for Max's class at Tara Redwood School. We're using clay as our medium this year. The theme is Northwest Native American Totems. The lovely thing about this subject is it coincides with their studies of North America as well as the Essential Education which is the foundational philosophy of the school. We will be building Spirit Totems, each child will choose a spiritual quality they feel they either embody or wish to work towards - the quality will have an animal connected to it. Salmon, Bear, Dragonfly, just to name a few. Each child will then make that animal in clay. I will make clay hollow forms, formed over small inflatable balls which will be the foundation of their animal.


This week I will:

Gather the clay, cone 5.
Gather inflatable balls, 14 (twelve kids and two teachers).
Gather old towels and blankets.
Gather plastic containers to hold the clay forms.
Gather used plastic bags and such to loosely cover the clay forms.
Make lots of clay slabs.
Purchase spray vegetable oil (3 cans).
Start making hollow forms.

Wow, now that I've made my list I'm feeling a bit nervous. :) I am going to have to get Coleman and Max to help out in the building phase. Maybe I'll even have Max work on his at home.

The following week, Tuesday and Wednesday I will work with the children in groups of three on how to build their animal totem.

I am not certain how I will guide the kids to design their totem. In other words will I guide them to create in the style of the NW Native American tribes? Will it be their own design, without too much guidance? I will be thinking this through more thoroughly while I go through more and more images. Here is some more inspiration, for your viewing pleasure:

Artist Robert Davidson

Artist Robyn Gordon

Stephen Fabrico

Artist Mardi Kearney

Artist Gary Jackson

Gray Days

The skies may meet in sadness,

The blustering winds may blow;

But if our hearts are cheery

There's sunshine where we go.

–anon

Words from my new/old book "When All is Sun Within". I love this book, Coleman and I have read through many of the prose and verse within. Some of them make us giggle a little. They are from another century, after all. I imagine they were first written in pen and ink on stiff, lovely paper. Careful marks placed on the paper, with a rather scratchy sound. The sound I hear as I write is the satisfying click-clack of the keyboard. And with a swift click of the mouse I can publish these words. I wonder how Adah Louise Sutton got her collection of prose and verse published. She was a woman in 1913, I don't imagine it was an easy task. They were not her own words, though the ones without credit for authorship, perhaps were. Certainly it took more effort than it takes me each week to collect my scattered thoughts and arrange them on the computer monitor and click-bham! I'm published.

My friend Phylis requested images of the gray skies which she knows exist here: frequently. I'm happy to oblige, we've got them aplenty, my friend. It is certainly more sunny and reliably comfortable up and over those Santa Cruz Mountains in Sunnyvale. . . Enjoy

This is the prose that made us giggle this week:

You owe cheerfulness to yourself, to your friends, and to your God; without it you are a bore and a procrastinator, and had better make a companion of yourself, because others don't want you.

I think we giggled because it was so frank. A blunt instrument, though not as blunt as some commonly use language we hear these days. I liked the sentiment, and read it several times over to Coleman. For good measure, as we both could use some more cheerfulness in our days. An infusion of cheerfulness would be a good thing right about now. Sun Within.

Tell me what this trio is doing alone on the beach?

It can be very difficult to get out of bed on those gray mornings, indeed. Especially with a fuzzy warm dog to keep you cozy.

{this moment}

a friday ritual: a single, special moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

{these words}

What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

–Geo. Eliot

{this moment}

friday ritual: a single moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

I had to play with the image I really wanted to put here, my pictures this week were mostly blurry - just one of those weeks, I guess. It doesn't feel like a picture any more, but the moment is there. Grandma and Coleman in the woods.

{these words}

From a 1913 book of poems, When All is Sun Within:

Friendship is not a plant of hasty growth;
Though planted in esteem's deep-fixed soil,
The gradual culture of kind intercourse
Must bring it to perfection.

–Joanna Baillie

{this moment}

weekly ritual: a single, special moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

"Valley of East and West"

Saturday evening my two boys and I went to see Watsonville Taiko perform at the Cabrillo College theater, just down the street from us. It was the Watsonville Taiko's 20th Anniversary performance, entitled "Valley of East and West". There was choral singing as well (West) which was lovely, but we came for the drums. This was an awesome performance. Unfortunately there was no intermission which made it really difficult for the boys and we ended up leaving a little early. I could listen to this drumming all day and night, but watching the performance along with the sound, mmm. I'm happy we went, though I had to let go of my desire to stay, no matter how they were feeling. I want to take them to move events like this, after all, and didn't want it to become a torture session.

Here's a description of Taiko from Wikipedia:
Taiko (太鼓^?) means "drum" in Japanese (etymologically "great" or "wide drum"). Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums (和太鼓, "wa-daiko", "Japanese drum", in Japanese) and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming (sometimes called more specifically, "kumi-daiko" (組太鼓)). The performances can last between 5 and 25 minutes and typically follow a jo-ha-kyū (beginning, middle, end/rapid, sudden, urgent, and emergency) structure, which means the performance will speed up significantly towards the grand finale.

The approach to the theater has a number of lovely sculptures which we enjoyed.  Along with the moon. And the pretty sky.

waiting and waiting for it all to begin. and then waiting and waiting for it to end...:)

{this moment}

a friday ritual: a single moment from this week, a moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

{this moment}

friday ritual: a single, special moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

 

 

In Our Classroom Today

We had a pretty fun day at school Monday, Coleman and I. We went shopping at 99 Ranch Market in Cupertino. It was a drive over the hill. We were excited, so it didn't feel as interminable as it can at times. The night before, we looked through The Enlightened Kitchen, a Japanese cookbook (yard sale, $1). Coleman had chosen three recipes to try out and we had our list of ingredients with us to purchase. We found most of them, lost track of some, veered off course many times. We bought things we didn't need just because they were novel. We then went to a Japanese "dollar fifty store" called Daiso to round out our purchases. We decidedly got carried away. Rather. Fun.

We learned a little about the Japanese foods from our cookbook, which is a vegetarian one, based on recipes from a Buddhist temple. We learned how very different the food choices are at the Asian market, and that people are very friendly and willing to help. Coleman did a little bit of preparation for dinner this evening of a fancy cucumber salad. For dinner he had rice, vegetarian dumplings, noodle soup, salad...Max had the soup and cucumber salad. After I got home from my metals class tonight I tried my hand at making sushi - let's just say it got done. I also made little rice bunnies and fruit flowers for Coleman's lunch. Max got some fruit flowers in his new bento box, he's informed me he will never in his life, ever eat rice, so no sushi for him.