Slightly Off Center

We finally got to celebrate our anniversary!

The actual day fell on a Saturday Market, the next day was kiln loading, then there was firing and jury duty and Market again, and Denise led a book arts workshop on Sunday and holy cats, if we hadn't grabbed a day off with both hands, it wouldn't have happened at all. As is, I was up until 11 o'clock Monday night recycling clay that wouldn't keep until Friday.

But we packed up some snacks and bears and headed out for the coast, just for a day. Visited our favorite beach, just north of Florence, catching precisely the lowest tide we've ever seen, perfect for tide pooling. Drove back to Florence for lunch at Mo's, visited a local co-op gallery and picked up a little art, even swung by the local Farmers Market and bought some strawberries and a chocolate croissant.

It wasn't a perfect day--what started out as sunny and clear in Eugene turned out overcast, with occasional spitting mist on the coast, and Mo's never properly salts their fish-n-chips--but still pretty darn good, and we talked to some lovely people from SoCal and Cincinnati on the beach. Even discovered some work by an old grad-school friend in the gallery. Good times.

Thought I'd found a couple of whelks, but in fact they were both hermit crabs. Though I see a couple of limpets in the photo that I missed in real life.

The stars of the show!

You know what they say: Keep your friends close and your anemones closer.

...and sometimes, ya just gotta stop and look at cool things in the sand.

All in all, a day to celebrate.

 ...a handpainted sign in a field in rural Wisconsin, about halfway between Neillsville and Granton, reading "Put Trump In Jail."

Our trip to the midwest had only one fixed point: a wedding reception for my oldest brother, David, and his new wife Charlotte on Saturday, May 6. We were flying into Minneapolis, renting a car, and driving to the family farm in central Wisconsin, where we'd collect my mother, take her down to the Milwaukee suburbs to attend the party and visit her brother, bring her back home, then drive back to the Twin Cities and fly home again. I'd done everything possible to make it easy: booked a hotel in Brookfield for Friday and Saturday night, so we could break up the driving and arrive rested. Specifically selected a room designed for handicapped access. The rental company even cooperated, upgrading us without asking to a rather nice Toyota Siena minivan (hybrid, no less). And I had no idea if it would actually happen.

Right up to the day before we flew out, my mother was still resistant. She'd have to bring her walker, and the toilet seat booster, and her knee wasn't good, and sitting in the car all day and... Maybe she could ride down and back with my older brother and his wife, or stay with my younger brother, in Menasha or any number of possibilities that had my head spinning. So even though we had a whole week in the Midwest, Tuesday to Tuesday, and I have any number of friends in the Cities we could have connected with, I just. Couldn't. No room for planning left in my poor brain.

As it turned out, two things conspired to make the plan actually happen. First, she saw her doctor on Tuesday, got cortisone shots in both knees, which left a bruise (she showed it to us several times), but meant she was much more mobile, either with cane or walker. Second, my next older brother, Tony, had a few words: Frank and Denise went to a lot of trouble to do this for you. You should really let them give you this. Bless him, it worked.

So we picked her up late morning Friday, found her already packed and ready. Drove down to Milwaukee, getting some new stories as we traveled. US 10 from Neillsville passes by my late step-father's siblings, so their homes (and current attitudes and relationships) got a telling. Plover, where we stopped for gas, was where he'd lived with his first wife, and I think it was her first time back since he died. On the interstate, we spotted out-of-state license plates while Denise read in the back seat. I learned about borrow pits--the ponds you'll see every few miles along the freeway, where they dug up sand and gravel for the highway. (Iyron was a heavy equipment operator on that particular stretch of I-39).

We got into Brookfield around supper, tired, a little cranky, and hungry, having missed lunch. Didn't have the spoons to join a big pre-party dinner at a local Italian place, so I tracked down fish sandwiches (though, sadly, no sweet potato fries) and we ate in the room. Had a little difficulty with the hotel's definition of "accessible." Though the bathroom was big, with grab bars and a wheel-chair accessible shower with fold-down chair, the bed was a standard hotel model. Very high box spring, with even thicker mattress. Mom literally couldn't get into bed. I shared the problem with the manager, who was able to find a folding two-step stool in the breakfast bar that he loaned us for the weekend. It was still a challenge getting it in the perfect spot to use, and I caught her on a slide to the floor once, but we managed.

The next day dawned a little cool and gray, so I traded my Hawaiian shirt (they'd gotten married on Oahu) for a flannel, and Denise guided us over to the house. David's son and daughter-in-law met us at the driveway with hugs and directions to the backyard, where they'd set up a big tent full of family, friends and co-workers. Charlotte's brothers and sisters came from as far afield as Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan, and her daughters, grand and great-grandchildren were all in attendance. It was a big, boisterous crowd, and I probably retained about three or four names in total. Hoping to get a wedding picture with captions at some point.

Mom got so many hugs, got to meet her new great and great-great grandkids, and marveled that nobody was fighting. (Which says a lot about her family, I guess?) The food was fabulous, David found a rib place that could do soul food, so we had fried chicken, brisket, pulled pork, mac & cheese, beans, cornbread and collard greens. Plus many kinds of cake and cheesecake and Mom brought a potica, so the Slovenians were represented.

All of the brothers made it down, though I just realize Val is nowhere to be found in the photos, the turkey. Party broke up a little after five, and we rolled back to the hotel, skipping supper.

Sunday morning we breakfasted in the room again, then found the nearest Catholic church for mass (I suggested Denise's home church, Brookfield Lutheran, and was scowled down). As it happens, we were there for First Communion, so got to see fifteen little ones in best suits and dresses, hair slicked back, get their initiation. Kinda adorable.

After church, we made our way one suburb east, to West Allis, where my Uncle Franklin lives. He's 100 years old, still living at home, probably more mobile than I am. He's also sharp as a tack, reads the Milwaukee Journal and has thoughts about what he reads. Seeing him explain the post-pandemic labor shortage to my mother (Who said, Nobody wants to work anymore) was a thing of beauty.

He also shared pics of grand and great-grandkids, told us about his neighbors, asked us about our lives, and was generally delightful. Said how much he appreciated our annual Christmas letter, which was nice--I always feel like I'm intruding, a little. And my cousin Dennis managed to drop by for a bit, after his grandson's little league game.

We left around five, had another round of fish sandwiches (Mom likes them because it's something she doesn't make at home), and hit the road. Got back to Willard around 9 pm, turned down a late supper, and stumbled down to Tony's for bed. All in all, a successful excursion, not the least because it gave Tony and Cindy a weekend where they weren't responsible. Living across the road, they're on the front line for grocery runs and doctor visits, so they got to sleep in, go fishing, and sit around the fire pit watching fireflies.

After successfully shipping all of my Christmas packages before the end of December, we decided we deserved a day off. Since it looked like January 1 would be the only dry day for about a week, we drove down to the coast for a day. Had fish and chips in Florence (kinda meh--why doesn't anyone ever properly salt their fish?), then drove up to our favorite beach at Heceta Head.

Was very busy--New Year's, of course, nice weather, and apparently it was a free day at state parks as well--so I had to drop Denise off and go back under the bridge to park. Getting across the cobbles onto the sand was about all she could manage, so we found a nice boulder for her to sit on while I went and poked around in tide pools.

Saw the usual lots of mussels, some sea anemones hunkered down to ride out low tide, and a whole bunch of tiny hermit crabs. Found a place were the basalt dike was parallel to the coast that had acted like a gold sluice, lots of shells trapped in the rift. I picked out a dozen olive shells for Denise, a few whelks. Picked up one nice big one, the size of my thumb, turned it over to see tiny crab claws in the opening. Sorry, buddy, I said as I returned him to the water.

We originally planned to go from the farm across the state to Menasha, to visit my brother John and connect with Denise's cousin Jim (who, oddly share's John's birthday). But John was already on the farm, and Jim was... somewhere in Europe. His family owns several hardware stores in the Oshkosh area, and when he took over the business from his folks, they started a retirement sideline leading group tours all over the world. Since they've passed, Jim has taken this on, and was currently somewhere in Bavaria, bound for Oberammergau and Oktoberfest. So we went down to La Crosse, instead.

I lived in La Crosse, Wisconsin from 1977 until I left for graduate school in 1985. Got my degree, cartooned for a Catholic weekly newspaper, told children's stories on the radio. Recorded two albums of children's music. Met my future wife in a science-fiction reading group, eventually came back and married her there.

Because we had only about a day, we packed it full. Visited my alma mater, Viterbo University, poked around the Art Department, met the new department head and finally figured out why her name was so familiar. Turns out Sherri and I were freshman together at Viterbo, though she finished her degree in South Carolina. Had a lovely chat with her, got introduced to the ceramics professor, may even be coming back for a visiting artist stint.

We also went down to the Pumphouse Regional Arts Center, a gallery and performance space in a big brick-and-wood structure that originally housed the water works. I'd seen plenty of concerts there over the years, even performed there a few times. Twice with my children's music partner Hans, and once with the Heart of La Crosse comedy improv theater. Saw a couple of really nice exhibits, one featuring work by retired art teachers, the other a children's art show, where I saw this great piece. I could totally see her animated.

Had supper at a place new since we left, Hmong's Golden Egg Rolls. Entrees were really good, but the sausage was spectacular! Really wish this was available around here. I'd go there often.

The next morning, we met Hans and Carol, his wife, for breakfast in a new hotel near the Mississippi. I'd met Carol when she was producing a children's radio show for WLSU public radio, and I was writing and telling stories. Her partner, Hans, had written the Earticklers theme song, but claimed not to have any ideas for more songs. Out of frustration, she put us together, and we finished two new songs in our first meeting. I tend to write most of the lyrics, Hans writes and arranges the music, and we tweak each other's work as necessary. We recorded our first album, My Brother Eats Bugs, before I left in 1985. When I'm Feeling Silly came out in 1987. Hans has been doing children's music ever since--along with half a dozen other projects, including his brother's reggae ensemble, a bluegrass band, and touring bassist for a Native American singer-songwriter. He's scaled back a little of late, but still joins the fiddler from our albums to do drop-in gigs at local nursing homes and care centers.

He showed us their new house, his shop and Carol's studio, and then we just flopped in the living room, visiting. Eventually, his guitar came out, and we sang a bunch of our old songs. And then something he said sparked something in my head, and we wrote a new song. While I was working out the first verse, he was noodling on the guitar. I don't know what this is, he said, But I kinda like it.

Actually? I said, I think it's this song. And proceeded to sing him the first verse.

We eventually completed the whole thing, with a little help from Carol looking up rhymes for me. I don't think kids know 'dispel' she said. I don't think this is a kid's song, I replied.

You judge.

Rainbow

Be a rainbow in somebody's storm
Be a cool breeze on a hot summer's morn
On a cold winter's night, be a blanket so warm
Be a rainbow in somebody's storm.

Now the dark clouds they won't always stay
The storm it will pass and the rain go away
The sun will break through and dispel all the gray
Now the dark clouds they won't always stay.

When your life is a drought, be the rain
To the parched barren land bring the waters again
If you water your heart you can wash away pain
When your life is a drought, be the rain.

When the wind whistles wild, huddle close
Be a shelter together in cold and in snows
In the dark days of winter, we need others most
When the wind whistles wild, huddle close.

Be a rainbow in somebody's storm
Be a cool breeze on a hot summer's morn
On a cold winter's night, be a blanket so warm
Be a rainbow in somebody's storm.

©2022 Frank Gosar & Hans Mayer

My mom still lives on the family farm in central Wisconsin, so that's where we went next. Nobody's actually farming the place anymore, the barn is empty, but she rents out fields and pasture to neighbors to graze cattle. This gets a little income against the property taxes, but mostly just keeps the grass down. She had a grass fire a few years back, does not want that happening again.

Mom's 87 years old now, living alone, although my brothers are available when she needs help. Tony and his wife built their house on former pasture land across the road, Val lives about 30 minutes away in Chili and comes weekly to mow the lawn and do chores. John lives in Menasha, but since he retired, he's been available to drive for things like family funerals, class reunions and Amish weddings. (She's an adopted grandma for the neighboring clans.) I got to see all three of them while we were there.

I also got to hang out more with Tony and Cindy than previous years. Because of Denise's knee, we couldn't stay in the upstairs bedroom at Mom's, so we slept in their guest room. Tony's working nights at a cheese factory, but planning to retire at the end of the year. He was actually throwing a 65th birthday barbecue the weekend after we left. Sorry to have missed it; he does really good 'cue.

He's already got a retirement "hobby" lined up. Grandpa Gosar was a butcher's apprentice in Slovenia, and was the go-to guy when the neighboring farmers needed to butcher a cow or pig. Dad took over when I was growing up, and now Tony continues the tradition. He still has Grandpa's skinning knife, although the blade's worn down to a needle, so he had a knifesmith friend make him a new one. He built a walk-in cooler in the basement years ago, but he recently bought a refrigerated trailer. I asked if he planned to do mobile butchering, but he said no, it would sit on blocks here. He just needed more capacity. He's already got orders for six pigs and a goat for their new Ghanaian priest.

Learned most of this in the dark, watching the flames from his enormous firepit. He built it out of the rims of a dual-wheel rear tractor tire, and it's about four feet across. "Hillbilly engineering," he calls it, like when he converted a restaurant rolling hot case/oven into his barbecue smoker, using old box springs to hold the meat. I'd half like to see what he could do building a kiln.

We actually got to visit some galleries on Sunday--I know, I'm shocked too. Who know extremely rural Wisconsin had an art scene. There was actually a Clark County art tour happening every weekend in September and October, and two of the stops were a few miles from the farm. There Once was a Barn is a converted barn featuring fine woodworking by Pat Plautz and fiber art by wife Kay. Pat's sister, Mary Jo, and her husband Randy Fox have converted their barn into a gallery/workshop/studio as well, with Randy's woodworking and equipment on the ground floor and Mary Jo's studio, where she does drawings, paintings and mixed media, upstairs. They're about two miles apart, and we visited both. Picked up some nice fall-colored ice-dyed cloth napkins from Kay, and a print of milkweed pods from Mary Jo.

Mostly, though, we hung out. Visited. Watched the bird feeder and met the cats. Caught up with John, who was up to take Mom to a funeral on Monday, and played with his friendly doggo, Misty.

It was nice.

I think my Garmin is jealous.

It's a satellite navigator we bought about ten years ago, after trying one out on a vacation to Arizona. It immediately became my new favorite thing, allowing me to find my way to shows, galleries, gas stations, without having to unfold a map or print out directions. Aside from a worrying fascination with ferry boats, it was simple and reliable, and we used it in both the car and the pottery business van.

Then we got a new car--inherited it, actually--that had its own, built-in Navigator. It took a little getting used to--used different phrasing when announcing turns, for instance, and the LED screen was hard to see with polaroid sunglasses. But it was always there, didn't have to be plugged in, and wouldn't fall off the windshield if summer sunshine overheated the suction cup. The Garmin was relegated to van use only.

Where it sat, neglected, through a year and a half of pandemic.

We finally used it last weekend for our trip to Anacortes, and it seemed to go out of its way to be difficult. We break the trip up into two parts, driving to Seattle on Wednesday, overnighting with Denise's cousin, then continuing on Thursday. As it happened, Diana's folks were in town as well, so we got to see three relatives, but had to stay in a motel overnight, as the sofa-bed was taken.

That was the first problem.

The motel was on a major north-south thoroughfare, half a block from the stoplight, and Aurora had a concrete median in front of the driveway. Kerensky (named for the hapless navigator in a John Scalzi novel) kept trying to direct us into impossible left turns out of or right turns into the parking lot, and got increasingly strident as we tried to U-turn around the problem.

Thursday morning, we were meeting Kay, Al and Diana at a pizza place in her neighborhood that had pivoted to outdoor dining. Driving south from the motel, we followed nice, wide avenues; then the traitorous machine directed us west on 8th Street.

If you've ever driven Ballard, you know streets like this, barely wide enough for two cars to meet under ideal conditions. That morning, there were cars parked solid on either curb, and barely enough room for one van to squeeze down the middle. I was making good progress, could even see my cross-street up ahead, when with a blam! I clipped the side mirror of a FedEx truck. I pulled over and parked at the next available space, walked back to check the damage.

Turns out her mirror had just folded forward. Mine popped out of its frame and was lying, broken, in the street.

I took it back to the van, and managed to pop it back together, though it was like looking through a kaleidoscope. I was prepared to live with it, when it occurred to me to ask Google for an auto parts store near me.

As it happens, O'Reilly Auto Parts was two blocks away, around a corner. And Chevrolet/Cadillac used the exact same mirror style from 1988 to 2004. My 1994 Astro was right in the middle of the range, and I was able to buy a replacement mirror for sixteen bucks. Pried off the old bits with my pocket knife, laid out foam tape on the new glass and presto! Better than new.

Birthday cake!

It's a recipe I got from my older brother, decades ago, for Roman Apple Cake. It's got whole wheat and white flour, lots of sliced apples, and a cinnamon-brown sugar-walnut crumble topping. Perfect with ice cream, or, in this case, a scoop of Greek yogurt. (Hey, breakfast, right?)

Denise normally makes my birthday cake--the only baking she does for the year, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting--but she overdid it yesterday, whacking blackberry canes, and I really wasn't in the mood for chocolate, anyway.

Oh man, I must be getting old.

In any event, we made it together. I mixed up the batter while she cored and sliced apples. While I was folding apples into batter and greasing the pan, she mixed up the crumble topping. Baked up moist and fragrant and yummy.

We've both been feeling a little confined lately, Denise in the house, me just generally in Eugene. I really wanted an escape, so we decided on a day trip to the coast. Nothing fancy; drive down to Florence, head north up 101 to our favorite beaches. Poke around in tide pools if we could, walk and look at flotsam if not. I took my sketchbook, for my drawing challenge, and we took a few photos as well. Visited Heceta Head, Stonefield Beach, Washburne State Park.

We missed the tide pools--two hours past low tide--and the fog steadfastly refused to lift, but we still had a lovely time. Lots of interesting seaweed and shells on the beach, plants growing out of the cliff face. Flocks of gulls at Heceta, down where the creek meets the beach, and a whole bunch of mussels washed up on the sand, still closed/live. Thought briefly about taking them home to steam--we'd done it once before--but wasn't sure I wanted the enormous barnacles that came with. Stonefield beach was littered with crab carapaces, all sizes, with the occasional plastron or legs. Don't know whether they were victims of the seagulls, also thick on the sand there, or washed up already picked clean. At least one had suspicious-looking holes in the back that might have been sea urchins? Fisheries biologist Denise couldn't venture and opinion (she specialized in salmonids). Walked down to the beach at Washburne--full of crows, rather than gulls. Who knew Oregon's beaches were segregated?


We wore masks when outside, packed a picnic lunch--cold pizza, cookies and fruit--to eat in the car, watching crows scavenge leftovers from the picnic table we were too cold to use. We'd planned on picking up fish and chips to go in Florence for supper, but by 3:30 we'd hiked ourselves out, so we put some podcasts on the car speaker, drove home, and took a nap before warming up leftovers for supper.

It was a good day to be 61.

Roman Apple Cake

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or shortening
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 large or two small baking apples (we used Liberty today, because I bought a bag of "lunchbox apples" at Farmer's Market)
2 T butter
2 T all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Cream sugar and butter or shortening; mix in egg and vanilla.
Sift together flours, salt and leavening. Add to batter alternating with milk. Beat several minutes on high.
Wash, core, but do not peel apples. Cut into quarters, then thinly slice. Fold apples into batter, then transfer into a greased 9x13" cake pan.
Mix butter, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts until crumbly. Scatter evenly over top of batter.

Bake 30-35 minutes at 350° F.

So Denise is home from our vacation already, back in Eugene. I'm taking the long way around. Driving.

She inherited her mother's car back in January, and was also in Wisconsin in February; neither are good times to drive a nearly-new car cross-country to Oregon. So here I am in Billings, Montana, two days out from Milwaukee, with another two to go.

Didn't expect to run into anything ceramic to write about (though this little fella, found at a rest area just into Minnesota, has a fairly convincing raku copper luster).

But a little past Jamestown, ND this morning, I answered the call of excess hydration, and found this at the rest area. The display inside is devoted to the building of North Dakota's stretch of the interstate highway system, which apparently they finished ahead of everyone else (possibly because they had to do so little earth-moving to achieve a level grade).

The facade of the building continues the theme with this lovely, carved-brick relief sculpture featuring crane, jackhammer and the first piers of a highway overpass. I suspect the bricks were made in Hebron, ND (self-proclaimed Brick City), just a short drive west. Denise and I camped there once on a trip west, and were surprised to find that the very red gravel roads weren't granite (as in my home region of Wisconsin) but clinker, naturally fired chunks of red clay. They're created when layers of lignite--soft coal--ignite in the ground, and fire the surrounding strata of mudstone, naturally occurring clay.

You can see this writ large on the landscape at Painted Canyon, part of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a little further along my way. Red tops of the mounds are the fired clinker, which resists erosion better than the still-water-soluble layers of clay underneath.

Less than a week left until Ceramic Showcase, and we're counting down. Sunday being the only day Denise and I could both work on preparing, we dodged rain showers to sort and box pots, loading up the van.

We had a couple of shortcuts figured out. First, we still have a pretty accurate inventory of the van, starting with our Beginning-of-Market list, with sold items crossed out. Second, we reversed the packing order of the van when we loaded up from Market on Saturday.

Normally, I load the restock boxes in first, so the load-in booth pottery is immediately accessible. That way during set-up, Denise can start unboxing pots as soon as I remove them, while I continue stowing restock boxes under the counter in back. Keeping the two segregated also means I know where everything is bound without stopping to read the labels.

As we were packing up, however, I realized all our work on Sunday would be in the partially emptied restock boxes (plus whatever ware we added from the storage shed). Thus it made more sense to stack the load-in boxes first, so everything else was reachable one box at a time. And since they'd already been inventoried, we didn't have to unload and count everything, a huge help on a day of chilly, intermittent showers.

So all the pots are now in the van. Today I need to switch out some display hardware, figure out how to box and load my sculpture, print out my road shows checklist and start ticking off boxes, make up a folder with motel confirmation and move-in packet. Go down to the bank and get some trip cash. Call the cat-sitter.

I'm hoping tomorrow's weather prediction holds--sunny and warm--so I can repaint my shelves and load them up on the roof rack. Pack my clothes for the weekend, bake cookies. Gas up the van. Wednesday I'll pick up Denise at noon and we'll be off to Ceramic Showcase. Wish us luck...