• Tag Archives Northern Clay Center
  • Clay Days

    Mid-Summer                                                                                   Waning Honey Flow Moon

    Five days of clay.  Whew.  What did I learn?  Well, I’m not holding my breath for that National Treasure for potting position when I turn 80.  Maybe by that time I’ll have learned how to center, raise a cylinder and throw a bowl.

    We’ve made some new friends, including our instructor and I learned a lot about the craft of pottery making, a lot that will be useful when touring at the MIA.  Kate developed enough confidence to move forward with the work.  I learned enough to tag along, though with low expectations.  It was an intensive process and a good one.

    We had a potluck today.  Kate and I took my two iron tea-pots and an assortment of tea cups.  Two Japanese potters on fellowship joined us, so I asked Rena what the bottom of my red, larger tea-pot said.  She looked at it, fingering the kanji, smiled and said, “Made in Japan!”  Oh.  I asked Naota what he thought of the U.S. and he said, “Comfortable.”  He comes from Tokyo and likes the slower pace of life here.

    One of the women in the class, Claire, has 25 years of pottery experience and a studio in the Northern Clay Center, another, Alisha, teaches pottery making in high school.  And so on.  Kate and I were at the opposite end of the learning spectrum.  We didn’t know enough to recognize that the class was for way advanced folks.  Still, seeing others with skills working and taking lessons from a master potter was a learning of its own.  At this level a lot of the instruction was on small technical aspects like really focusing on centering, or learning how to cut a tea-pot spout so the uncoiling of the clay in the kiln will move the spout to the right position. (You cut it at a 4:30.)

    This was an immersion in another world, the world of potters, molding clay as our mutual ancestors have done for several thousand years.  A craft and an art tied to the earth and seasoned by fire, to know those who make pottery is a window in to our deep past, yet an activity still very much in the present.


  • Steamed Dumplings Stuffed With Yak

    78  bar steady  30.03  0mph ENE dew-point 56  Summer, warm and sunny

    Waning Gibbous Thunder Moon

    A trifecta.  In to Minnehaha.  Back to Andover.  In to Kenwood.  Back to Andover.  In to Sierra Club and the MIA.  Back to Andover.  Geez.  As I said, I gotta check with my scheduler.

    Katarina is an intern from east Germany, Jena.  We folded letters and surveys to candidates for Minnesota House races.  She’s a bright young lady whose lucky boyfriend lives here.  They both study political science and enjoy comparing US and German culture/society.  She gave the example of her parents:  “They have never worried.  They have no debt.  They live modestly.”  She said her mother was not allowed to finish high school in the old East German regime because her husband was a mathematics professor.  If you had an intellengentsia in the home, you also had to have a proletarian.  Odd logic, even for Marxists.

    After doing the mailing, I called about half a list of candidates who received the survey by e-mail last Friday.  This was just a reminder call.  Margaret Levin cajoled me into making phone calls and I’m glad she did.  It wasn’t so bad.  Of course, these were all friendly folk, too.

    Across the street from the Sierra Club is the Himalaya, a Nepalese restaurant.  It was noon, so I stopped in for steamed dumplings stuffed with yak and a tasty sauce.  The next course was a soup with potatoes, black-eyed peas and bamboo shoots.  Nan accompanied this dish.  Hmmm.  I enjoy finding these small ethnic places and sampling cuisine from countries I have not visited.  Food is one of the fastest ways into a culture, even faster, because more immediate, than language.

    I discussed purchasing a Nepalese thangka with the owner.  When I said I would like a Yamatanka, he said, “Oh, you like Yama?” He stuck his tongue out and down, Yama’s typical presentation. “Yes,” I said.  “Scary.”  I’ll speak with him about it again when I go in to the Sierra Club political committee meeting next Wednesday.

    Before I went to the Sierra Club, I stopped at the Northern Clay Center and picked up a small plate.  It is my intention, over the next few years, to replace our Portmerion with unmatched pieces from many potters.  This is the fifth or sixth acquistion so far.

    Each quarter I define a retreat.  It can be brief, three days or so, and it can be long, like the stay in Hawai’i.  I find I need to punctuate my normal routine with these caesuras or I get stale.  This habit began when I was in the ministry and I’ve found it a good carry over, so I’ve continued it.  Here’s my retreat for the fall quarter:

    7/22/08   No traveling for this retreat.  I will take two weeks and stop writing, stop using the internet (except for the blog and e-mail) and study books on novel craft.  In this retreat I will create a reading program and a writing program that will guide my work for the next ten years.