Liaise

The Director leaves me notes taped to the kitchen door. Loves the signage wall color. Needs me to pick up a base for the sculpture that was stored in the vault for many years and has now been given to us. The board will accession it at the next meeting. The base is granite, at the tombstone yard. Amazing equipage. Heavy rocks and neat ways of dealing with them. Watching for a few minutes, I know who's doing what, but I don't know why. Polished black granite is bad about fingerprints, after I put it atop a pedestal in the niche at the top of the stairs, I wipe it down with alcohol. Later Sara and I go to a patron's house to retrieve the actual piece, "Daphne", a lovely head and top of torso of a lovely woman with big hair. Carved from a large piece of Slippery Elm. Don't think I've ever seen a slippery elm large enough to have supplied the blank. Very nice piece. I think it needs feeding. Note for Sara to ask Marsea (in California) what, if anything. Wood checks, eventually explodes. New technique for wood-carvers is to soak green wood (before checks) in poly glycol until the anti-freeze has replaced the water in the cells. Never checks but can only be finished in epoxy. The patron, who is either 97 or 98, spry, sharp, doesn't look over 70, requires attention and conversation and we administer same, then also given a lovely much used hammer-stone, several pounds, maybe five inches in diameter, with a nice ground grove running around the middle for attaching a handle. Excellent artifact. We can't put it in our permanent collection, which is closed and complete, but we can let interested people touch, which will add to the experience. She also gives us a tramp art jewelry box, flat sticks glued onto a surface, geometric, folk art, but the hinges are very cool, fingered wood with a tiny rod ran through. Those of us that live out often find it necessary to reinvent the hinge, I've found many a set of natural hinges, walking the woods, they're not uncommon, one thing fits into another, or old shoes make great hinges, either just leather, or, for a self closing twig gate consider the soles from a pair of old sneakers. Old iron single-bed head pieces and foot pieces make great gates. I made dozens of gates in Missip and Colorado, and at the end, finishing the goat dairy, buying sturdy uniform welded things from the co-op, I should have realized the jig was up. I wasn't jigging, I was more the jigee, but who's to throw rocks. I have my irritating habits, I'm too calm and resist panic, I smoke and drink, I worry things to death ahead of time. It bothers people that I'm always early and almost everyone is always late, it doesn't matter to me, I always carry a book, in case there's waiting time, and I'm not making a statement of any kind, I just like to allow an extra cushion in case something interesting takes my attention. Maybe even a step beyond that, I want something interesting to take my attention, I go out of my way to see things. Or hear them, the tugs and barges that I can't see in the fog. If you arrive at 8:05 to catch the 8:07 you'll hardly have a chance to see the dogwoods. I allow time, that's the only difference. If you just stop and watch the spider for five minutes, everything is revealed. Spider now locked in three-space. The spider is spinning web, what, exactly, are you doing? I fall back on performance reviews, pretty sure I'm holding up my end of the stick. If she does that then what are we doing? The romantic hero dies a hero in a video game. I don't have time for this, what I thought I meant. It happens too often. Not this but that.