Category: art

art, coffee pot posts, fiber art, Slow cloth, Slow stitch

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

The latest stitchery:20230304_113105

I’m really enjoying stitching in this section. This piece has changed in my mind from purely abstract to ruminations about paths, choices, obstacles, and flow. What we do to stitch the fragments of our lives together while attempting to create balance. Sometimes you can, sometimes there is too much disruption in the fabric, but we still give it a try.

Now that I’m considering these aspects of it, it has become more meditative and much less frustrating. At the moment I’m thinking about mounting it on another piece of fabric and making it into a scroll. Next week I’ll probably have a different idea.

Last night I spent a lot of time looking through the different workshops that Stitch Club has to offer and making a list of which ones I’d like to do next. I’ll probably not stay subscribed to the service however. Not that it isn’t worth it but I need to mind my budget if I’m going to be able to travel and do the in-person workshops that I enjoy more.

I bought the program Deep Art Effects for my computer a while back and took a very simple photograph of water that I took during one of the last boat trips I took with my family at the lake through all the different filters. I loved so many of them and now considering – what if I warped up a long warp and wove the same design with all of my favorite versions. Separately or together? I think maybe separately, and hang them as a series. I’d weave them horizontally but hang them vertically.

This is a very good sign that I’m breaking free of my artist block.

Here’s the personal life stuff.

I pay attention here to the small cleaning tasks I get done around this house because after five years of serious depression and a spouse whose health concerns limits what he can do, it looked for a while as if it was too awful to ever catch up. Now that I’m feeling better mentally, I realize that we can do it in small chunks. So it’s a celebration when Sandy cleans out a closet, and when I clean a ceiling fan. When I look around and start to feel despair, I remind myself that it IS getting done, slowly, as is our style here. The deep kitchen cleaning is almost done.

Now our ants are invading the bathroom. Why? What do they find to eat? Honestly, it seems like they are just moving from one hole between the molding to another gap under the window. Sandy is going down to the basement to see if he can find clues. I finally got them out of the kitchen, and then the washing machine. ???

Here’s the thing. I am fascinated with ants. Especially when I go to the lake and there are still so many kinds hanging out on the beach. I can sit and watch them explore and maneuver around and over obstacles for a long time. I was about to write “hours” but I’m not that mindful. I do hate fire ants and now that they have finally made it to my street I hope that they don’t chase the other ants away.

Once I was stung by yellowjackets that had made a ground nest under a tree next to our driveway where we step out of the car. That simply won’t do, so I identified the hole, and waited until after dark when they had all returned to their nest. I put window screen over the hole and weighted it down all around with bricks. Then I poured a pot full of scalding water into the hole. That took care of that problem with no poison involved.

The next day, I witnessed the large ants who occupied the tree carrying boiled yellowjacket treats straight up the tree vertically. The yellowjacket bodies were more than twice the size of each ant.

I miss that tree, mainly for the ants and the woodpeckers.

If you read E.O. Wilson’s work about ants, you will discover an amazing world that no one ever notices.

Anyway, I had a busy workweek, and then I volunteered at the CVA gallery again yesterday morning. I noticed that now that my Achilles tendinitis is much, much better, my hips are protesting my lack of activity, so I’m going to get out for a long walk this afternoon.

art, fiber art, Slow stitch

Stitching

Laurie

Half of Sandy’s thyroid was removed and the nodules tested. It is cancer-free. What a relief! He was in a fairly jolly mood yesterday prior to leaving the hospital – he had to spend a night there. Today he is hurting more, but all he needs is acetaminophen.

He was in the recovery room for hours waiting for a room, and he called me to tell me to go home. I packed up my and his stuff and headed to the door, where a deluge was coming down, then turned around and headed back to the waiting room. It was actually pleasant once I knew that he had come through the surgery okay. I was sitting in an area with three people who were quite entertaining and I had this stitching to do.

Yeah. There’s a couple of reasons I call my practice and my blog “Slow.” One is that I really am quite slow-paced in my artwork, and I tend to choose projects that take time. If I make something in an hour or so, it is a shock to my system, but I can say that very seldom ever happens.

Anyway, people in the online class have posted incredible work. I posted a couple of photos of my slow progress, mainly to encourage others whose work isn’t so wonderful or quick that they have company. I’m enjoying playing with the stitching.

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20230127_133619I was surprised how long it look me just to stitch the pieces together and get rid of those pins. I flipped a few pieces by the time I settled down and decided to accept the challenge of pulling this busy background together. My main intention is to treat this as a learning exercise and a creative jumpstart with rules to help me along. I have pieces of cloth and lots of buttons and beads to include as I feel appropriate.

One of the rules I made for myself was that I have to use up all the pieces. Hmmm. Considering how slow this is going, it might be a year-long project, but okay. I divided them up into smaller groupings, and two of the squares are going on the covers of my stained needle book.

Here are the other groupings:

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Will I continue with this? I don’t know, really. I’m not super enthusiastic about what I’ve done here. I might get a couple of interesting book covers out of this. The main thing is that I know that I will have little stitching projects in my bag everywhere I go, and doing that is better than whipping out my phone to play a game or check social media.

art, dyeing, fiber art, tapestry, weaving

Saturday Morning Coffee Pot Post

Laurie

Oh my god, I can’t believe that WordPress just ate my entire post without saving it. I really have to reconsider using this platform. I’m paying for it and it can be such a pain. Maybe I will have to start writing it separately and pasting it in.

Anyway, hmmm. I was writing about the past week, which started in Lake Waccamaw at my sister’s house, traveled to Greensboro then Asheville mid-week, then back to Greensboro. I spent the last several days of 2022 finishing up my tapestries for display at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville. It’s called “Follow The Thread” and will be there from January 14 to May 3. After that, the show goes to Elkin to the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center as part of the Tapestry Weavers South retreat.

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This is a photo from just after cutting it off the loom. Originally I had planned to mount “Cathedral on a frame. So I planned ahead to hem it on all sides, and I did that. Since I waited too long to get someone to construct a canvas frame the exact size, I sewed the longer slits and backed it with fabric and a sleeve in which I inserted a wooden slat with a hanging wire attached. The way I did it means that I can go back to my idea of either mounting it on a canvas or frame, or hang it from a limb or piece of driftwood from the bald cypress tree it honors.

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^^^ “Cathedral” today

I forgot to bring the fabric to wrap the foam core boards that I wanted to mount “Mr. Blue Sky” on, so my sister came to the rescue with this perfect paper. The top board is wrapped with red, but you’d only see it if you looked at it very closely, which I’m diggin’. It’s like a little secret. Originally I was going to attach a blue jay feather to it, but it looked better without it. Now I’m thinking that when I get it back, I’ll attach a bottom fringe with beads and feathers.

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The other one was blessedly ready for display – this was the “rain on the lake” tapestry that took a direction of its own. I renamed it “A Place You’ve Never Been” from a friend’s suggestion. It was woven with naturally dyed silk.

lake tapestry for web

Now I’m going to wrap up this post and hopefully save it before I lose it again.

art, fiber art, tapestry, weaving

Weaving update

Laurie

Finally cut two tapestries off their looms.

First up, the “O” postcard tapestry for the Tapestry Weavers South collaborative project for the “Follow The Thread” exhibition, scheduled in January 2023 at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, NC.

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Secondly, I finally, reluctantly, cut a dog off the loom so that I could set “Mr. Blue Sky” free. I feel better now that I’ve done it.

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Here’s the dog. I’m going to recycle the yarn if I can stand unweaving it for very long. I think this would have been a good weaving, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to finish it.

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Now, I have to trim the backs, hem them, and design the “H” tapestry.

art, art retreats, dyeing, fiber art, tapestry, Tapestry Weavers South, weaving

Tapestry Weavers South Retreat 2022

Laurie

Playing a bit of catch-up here. I was in Elkin, NC at the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center for the 2022 Tapestry Weavers South retreat a couple of weekends ago. I drove up there on Saturday morning, stayed in a hotel, and left on Sunday afternoon after a very relaxing, fun time.

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^Beverly Walker’s work in progress

We welcomed a new member, Beverly Walker, whose tapestry includes mixed media. (She’s a teacher, also.) Betty and Terri shared some of what they learned in Fiona Hutchinson’s pulled warp workshop at Convergence. We all had little looms or projects to work on or show and tell.

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^Betty Hilton-Nash’s work.

On Saturday, lunch was from the Barking Coyote Kitchen, and I HIGHLY recommend their sandwiches. That night several of us went to Southern on Main even though we knew we were going there for brunch the next morning, because there are never too many times that you can go to Southern on Main. It is that good.

That afternoon, Leslie brought out the indigo buckets and we had a great time dyeing yarn, fabric, paper, and bamboo socks that Betty brought to share with us. I mostly overdyed some cotton yarns which I have way too much of but don’t particularly care for the colors. I also dipped some papers and found out which ones won’t stand up to dip dyeing (hint, it was the recycled ones that I had pulped in a blender).

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On Sunday morning we socialized, worked on our projects, then had a great brunch on the patio of Southern on Main. That afternoon we had our annual business meeting, but there was really very little business, mostly enjoying each other’s company.

Here’s my O postcard for the collaborative postcard tapestry project we are doing for our upcoming exhibition at the Folk Arts Center in January. I’ve almost finished it now and I’ve been given the letter H to weave.

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art, art retreats, book arts, dyeing, Nature printing, North Carolina beaches, Topsail Beach

Riveted by Nature on Topsail Island

Laurie

Friday morning I set off on my own to drive to south Topsail Island, near Wilmington, North Carolina. I’ve been there a few times before, and the last few times I’ve been there to take a class from Leslie Marsh. This class was similar to one I’ve taken from her before, but this time we riveted a leather spine onto the soldered, stamped metal covers. We leaf printed the inside pages in a nature dye vat for the inside signatures, and bound them with a variation of longstitch.

Molten metal scares the crap out of me, otherwise I would fully embrace this technique! I enrolled in Leslie’s wearable metal book class during the pandemic, and I have all the supplies, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it without someone knowledgeable standing by. My first go on these covers were kind of pitiful, and I almost settled for them, but after I saw the other covers in the class, I went back to the soldering station and I resoldered and stamped the covers on my own, so, yay me!. I plan to find a cool bead or shell or other natural object to attach to the top of the spine. I liked this cabochon that Leslie provided because it reminded me of the little turtle I rescued earlier this month.

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If I ever do this again with the rivets, I will not solder or stamp with a lot of texture on the sides next to the spine or anywhere else that the rivets go. That presented a problem for me in drilling and inserting the rivets. My drill kept slipping and my holes got wonky and I messed up the leather in places. I also dyed all my pages instead of inserting white pages in the signatures, which I think made the other text blocks pop after I saw them. Still, I’m quite happy with the result.

I didn’t follow directions very well this time either. I placed the cabochon at the top, so my leather binding had to be shaped differently. Plus I was ready to bind before everyone else so I did my binding a different way. HA. If you’d like to see the other books from the class, you can see them on Leslie Marsh’s Instagram page. 

The pages and the felt bag were dyed in Leslie’s dyepots by rolling them onto copper pipes with leaves and tightly binding the bundles to the pipes. One of my discoveries in this round was redbud leaves. Also, the leaves from my eucalyptus tree didn’t give the reddish oranges that the silver dollar eucalyptus leaves do. I wish I had used more of them. I didn’t get good definition on my wool felt so I’m going to embellish it with embroidery, and next time I am not going to bundle paper with it on the same pipe.

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If you are interested in taking any of Leslie Marsh’s classes or buying her fabulous work (she is a multi-talented artist!), her website is www.leslie-marsh.com/.  I must warn you that her classes sell out very quickly!

I’ll make another post for my other photos from Topsail Beach.

art, Oregon, Portland

Portland, July 16, 2022

Laurie

After we arrived in Portland, Susan and I decided to see if there were spaces available in Jill Berry’s Layers and Lines workshop at her studio there. We didn’t expect there to be, since there was a limit of 6, but there were! So on Saturday morning, we got a Blue Star Donut and then called an Uber to take us to Jill’s house.

I had taken a very satisfying three day workshop with Jill at FOBA in 2015, so this made up a little for missing out on our art retreat.

One other student joined us, and we had a lot of fun playing with mark-making and Golden acrylic paints. Jill mixed the heavy body Golden acrylics with methylcellulose to use on Arches text wove paper. This mixture made the paint bond with the paper fibers better, allowing many layers to be painted and best of all, it dried fast without stickiness!

Jill’s renovated house and gardens were filled with artwork, flowers, herbs, vegetables, recycled materials, great style, and a cute little dog named Poppy. She served us a delicious salad with bread, cheese, cookies, and fresh fruit.

Okay, here are the photos of the workshop, then my finished papers.

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Here are most of my finished papers. We did three other exercises as well.

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The one on the left was stamped with silk flowers and leaves in my gloved hand (until I absentmindedly removed my glove and then got acrylic paint all over my hand). The one on the right had salt sprinkled on it and brushed off.

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The one on the left had my original marks in black gesso. The one on the right was a ghost print of the one on the left. Then the paints were added.

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My intention for all of these are for collage and book covers and pages, but Sandy wants me to frame the one above. I don’t know. We have a whole stack of artwork on a chair that we need to find places on a wall to hang.

Jill graciously drove us back “home” and we got take out sushi from a place a few blocks away, ate it in the garden, and called it a good day.

art, coffee pot posts, critters, dyeing, Nature printing, tapestry, weaving

Sunday Rainy Morning Coffee Pot Post

Laurie

While Portugal and other places in the world burns, we have a sweet reprieve from the oppressive heat since a cold front with rain came through last night. Diego and I are sitting on the front porch. The rain is pattering and gurgling, wind is wafting, a cardinal is chirping, and a train horn is blowing. Now a mockingbird sings. We have many mockingbirds in the area.

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This weekend so far I have not left the house except to pick a couple of hot peppers for our chili last night. An ancho and a poblano. They didn’t seem so hot after I did a test nibble, but after I minced and seeded them, soap and water did not clean my hands and I wiped my itchy face with my hand. I remembered a tip from my sister and dabbed some sour cream on the stinging areas. (Cream cheese works too.) It worked and the chili turned out perfect.

I’ve been concentrating on finishing “Cathedral.” I know that I have been saying that for years. But I actually have the top edge of the left side finished and it’s a matter of weaving up the right side and middle to match it, then weaving a hem. When it is cut off, I’ll ask Sandy to make a video. Standing at this loom is not good for my body and I will probably sell the Shannock loom when I finish Cathedral. I have many looms to choose from, mostly small tapestry looms. I have reworked the section on the right of the top photo several times. It is time to let it go now. I’m content with it.

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Last weekend I needed to do something that was easy on the brain and would give me a dopamine hit, so Susanne and I did a couple of natural dye pots and rolled up paper with various leaves on copper pipes to make prints. This time we dipped the paper in an alum/water solution first. I experimented with three different papers and I had no expectations. We didn’t have much in this particular dyepot other than some rusty iron bits and a few old pecans with hulls that I found. It was also still dirty from the same time I used it. Susanne also did a dyepot with avocado pits but I haven’t seen her results from that one.

The first papers were Susanne’s handmade “dream” paper, speckled with herbs. It didn’t hold the leaf prints as well but I think that the yarrow leaves that I put in one of the bundles dyed everything a brilliant yellow. The texture is very nice.20220709_114441

The second paper bundle was a thin commercial paper that may have been too delicate for the dyepot, but I was experimenting. I did get prints and one section near the top of the bundle that was torn is so pretty that I’ll do something with it. This paper will be good for collage.

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The last set of papers just floored me. I was so pleased and surprised when they came off the pipe bundle. These were heavy cream colored watercolor papers that I had torn down to make book signatures with. They turned out so beautiful and vibrant that they will have to go on covers, I think.

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Leaves used were sweet gum (called liquidambar in the rest of the world, I think), black walnut, pecan, redbud, oak, willow oak, swamp bay, and the black/purple areas were from dried petals of black hollyhock flowers. I grew one several years ago and it didn’t do well, but I dried and saved the petals. There are a few strawberry and rose leaves in there too.

People always ask about the lines. Those are the string marks from tying the paper bundle tightly. It is on the outside of the bundle so that part picks up the dye in the dyepot – in this case, the iron bits and probably residue from the last time I dyed with black walnuts.

art, butterbeans, coffee pot posts, collage, consumerism, Coronavirus Chronicles, Mixed media art, Reading, voluntary simplicity

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

And, OH! This coffee is so good. I put a big scoop of Trader Joe’s salted caramel hot cocoa mix in it. Divine. I’d really like to go back to Trader Joe’s today and buy more of this and a bunch of frozen dinners to take to work, but I considered what it would be like to go to TJ’s on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I think I’ll wait on that. I’m pretty new to Trader Joe’s since my first grocery shops were always the farmers’ market then Deep Roots then a local grocery. We listened to a story about Trader Joe’s on NPR and were fished in…it was a lovely experience. It’s good that it is on the other side of town.

The other place we shopped heavily during the pandemic was Costco, and we had a lot delivered. Once vaccines became widely available I stopped doing grocery delivery, realizing that between the mark-up on the products and the tip that I gave the shopper, I wasn’t saving any money. Sandy and I are – gasp, I’ll say it – hoarders and we got ahead on groceries at some point several years ago and our closets are generally full enough that we can get by for a few months if needed. I also have water stored in sterilized glass apple juice bottles. At first it was prepping in case of civil war or some other calamity. Little did we know how useful this would become so soon. I have to remember to rotate out the food, though. I donated some to the graduate student food drive for the food pantry this week.

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I have most of my grocery shopping for Thanksgiving already done so I’ll go to Deep Roots for my coffee, bread, yogurt, etc. today. My sister provides the turkey and cornbread dressing and dessert and lots of casseroles since she is the primo chef in the family, and retired, and enjoys it. I’ll bring my asparagus/mushroom/almond casserole and marinated goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy and butterbeans from Smith Farms. We have our assignments and that has always been mine. Usually I grow the butterbeans, but I let that go this year.

One thing that we WON’T do is go shopping. I’ve celebrated Buy Nothing Day for years now, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving. It blows my mind that anybody actually enjoys that frenzy. We stopped giving physical Christmas gifts a long time ago. We still give each other presents, but they are not tied to any one day or obligation. It happens by whim when we see something that we know that someone would enjoy. I strongly believe that is the way gift giving should work.

Frugality is much on my mind, as I spin toward the goal of early retirement. I never thought that there was a chance that I might be able to do it, until my financial advisor at work told me that if I could live on 11% less, I could. Well, I have cut out a lot of fat during the past twenty years, but there is still 11% that I can cut. One thing that I did was I started putting a lot more in my retirement account. So now I know that I can live on what’s left.

I just don’t know how people can rent these days. We are so lucky (and smart) that we bought our house in a decent neighborhood at a good price and paid the mortgage off. Sandy rented his condo out so much more cheaply than the surrounding apartments. He said that he always remembered that when we first moved to this street the landlord said that he wanted to provide young people with an affordable place to live. I really liked that guy and it sounded really noble but we also had leaks and a hole in the bathroom floor. It wasn’t totally altruistic – he didn’t want to fix the problems. Then he sold us the house really cheap! Still, rents are insane these days and I don’t think that I could afford to rent an apartment on my salary if I had to do it.

Yesterday I broke down and decided that I had to take some allergy meds. I had stopped them when I realized that they were triggering my restless leg syndrome. It has been rough. Sleep was weird for the past 24 hours. I slept well on Friday night and late on Saturday, took the 24 hour Allegra-D, then Sandy and I went out for lunch and checked out Jerry’s Artarama. I came back and sat down on the sofa looking at my Kindle, and each cat settled down on each side of me and purred. I was so content and relaxed, I didn’t have a headache, and I could breathe! Then out of the blue I got really sleepy and took a three hour nap. The kind where you lay your head down and don’t move for three hours. These two things totally screwed up my sleep last night, so I spent from 1-4 a.m. stretching my feet and legs and back and cracking my toes and knuckles. At some point I turned on the light and started reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and wow. That was hard to put down. So it was another late sleep this morning. I’ll try to make it through the day without meds and a nap until bedtime tonight.

Jerry’s Artarama, which I didn’t even know was in Greensboro, y’all. It’s in a part of town where I never go any more. I need a source of inexpensive framing supplies for my artwork that I plan to sell, so I joined it. I bought a cool little device that you pour acrylic paint into and it has a marker tip – I chose the inch wide one. I hope that it will work well with stencils. I also bought a cheap stand-up easel for Sandy, black gesso, and a clip on glass panel for a matted print that we had bought from Ireland back in 2012.

One thing that I learned from this trip and the Dick Blick catalog, is that I need to get away from the 8×8″ size work. I bought a lot of wood panels in that size and I can make those hang-able, but there isn’t much choice in pre-made mats or frames in that size. When I make my prints this winter, I’m going to pay attention and cut my papers to standard sizes before I print them. I want to mat or frame my collages and prints and paintings for sale, but I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. I’ll use a local frame shop for the ones that I want to keep or put in a show.

I spent in the wee hours of the morning thinking about what I’m going to do with this…thing…I made last weekend. And, as often happens, my inspiration took off when thinking about Lake Waccamaw. This is going to be the base for a real mixed media piece, with painting and leaf printed cloth and driftwood and maybe bones?

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I worked on this collage some last week and I like it. It will probably be part of a book, though.

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art, coffee pot posts, collage, Printmaking

Sunday morning coffee pot post

Laurie

I’ll head to the studio after lunch, but in the meantime, I’ll do a catch-up post from this week. Which ain’t much, but this is my journal written to my future self to read.

Last Sunday afternoon when I went to the studio I decided to do much of the same thing – gelli plate printing – but on dictionary pages and with leaves that I found tucked into the dictionary. Thank you, past Laurie. It didn’t go as well as I expected, but the idea here is that I’m going to go to the studio at least weekly and do something, no matter what. Then I spilled a bottle of Golden raw sienna paint and so I spent the rest of my time painting everything in reach with raw sienna because I can’t stand to waste paint, especially Golden paint!

I pretty much ruined a lot of what I had done, but I picked up this monoprint from the mess on bookboard from an old book I had stripped down for parts and it reminds me of a weaver. There was one sheet with leaf prints that was pretty good.

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I’ve pronounced this collage finished before but since its inspiration began with a song and then the death of our parakeet Liz, I started feeling like Liz would not actually enjoy eating bugs in heaven and had the bright idea of gluing down pearled barley over the bugs at the bottom. Well, that did not work out at all. So I scratched off the pearled barley and painted acrylic glass bead gel over the bugs to blur them out with something sparkly. I’m happy with it and I’m leaving it alone now.

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Man, my brain and body this week – hoo boy. It’s hard for me to even write this post. I typed it’s when I meant its previously and that is one of my biggest grammar annoyances. I hope that I continue to catch them all. Yesterday when I went to the studio I had a persistent headache just bad enough to keep me from thinking clearly so I spent a couple of hours just painting bookboard and wooden panels for later use. I’m not sure what I’ll do later today.

I came home on Wednesday afternoon so exhausted that I lay down and took a three hour nap, got up for three hours, and then slept hard for another eight hours. When I got up for work I was STILL fatigued so I called in sick and got a covid test that afternoon. It was negative, as I expected because I am pretty feckin careful, but my co-workers encouraged me to get it. These allergies are getting to me and I know that I should go get a blood panel done soon. However, it’s not that unusual for me for my battery to suddenly run out of juice and have to recharge for a day or so. I have to get a new doctor soon because my doctor is retiring and I dread that. So far I feel fine today and I have definitely had enough sleep for once.

We went to the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market yesterday morning for the first time in a long time. I was able to snag a jar of marinated goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy, which is usually one of my contributions to Thanksgiving weekend if I can get it. I bought some bath salts from Carol at Mimi’s Soaps because it is cool enough for me to enjoy my old clawfoot tub again, and I bought shelled butterbeans and zucchini from Smith Farms, and a pound of jumbo shrimp from whats-his-name – damn, I cannot remember. Then I went to Deep Roots twice because I forgot all I needed the first time. We had our favorite dish last night – shrimp with broccoli and onions and garlic and basil with a light cream/feta/parmesan sauce over fettucine. We have bought a ton of food in the past two weeks so I hope that we are stocked for a while.

I was talking to Jim (another artist in the print co-op) about my past local food activism yesterday and it reminded me that even though in the two big local battles I was on the winning side, I am very glad to let that go and concentrate on art now. It is interesting watching the global food supply bottlenecks – which prove the point that local foodies were trying to make all along. We need to strengthen our local food systems here and all over the world instead of relying on global trade for products that we could make here. (I just wish we could produce coffee here.)

It’s noon, time to quit writing, although I have more to say later.