Laurie Kain
Almost forgot! 11/06/2009
 ...on our hike yesterday, we saw another coyote. Yay! He was beautiful, and he was checking us out the whole time, before he disappeared over the hill. On the way back, we found coyote tracks imprinted in the mud right over the top of our shoe-prints. 1 Comment Sheep Trauma, Flu-head, Identity Theft 11/06/2009
 This week: Began with me getting whalloped with some amazing flu-like symptoms. Continued with getting jangled awake at seven-thirty in the morning by a call from Fraud Prevention Services, informing me my "financial data had been compromised", which is basically a nice way of saying someone acquired my debit card information and booked a fabulous trip to Ireland, all expenses paid! By me! No, I was not invited. <sigh> Aaaand came to a crescendo when I pulled in the driveway and found a Dead. Sheep. On its back, legs in the air. It was so cartoony, so much like what little kids do when they're "playing dead", that I had to stop and stare at it for a while. I don't know what I expected, for it to jump up laughing, maybe? Janie and Rob, uh, processed it right there in the field, while I looked on as the light went queasy and faded to twilight. Turned it right inside out. It was sad and strange, all of it. Compounded, too, I think, by the weird hallucinogenic head that having a flu and a fever gives you...Disassociative, exaggerated...the light feels too bright, even at night. Colors seem simultaneously too garish and yet at the same time muddy, subdued, like you're seeing them from the end of a tunnel. Sounds are flat, like a basketball being bounced in an empty gym. And mother of god, the headaches, the stiff neck...  Rob, Sybil and I are driving to Peshastin tomorrow to pick out some Shona sculptures for Confluence Gallery. We do an annual show of these beautiful stone and wood sculpures each year, the net profit of which returns to Zimbabwe. The project is spearheaded by Dan and Heidi Dittrich...Here's a little bit about the project: “Every year we go to Zimbabwe, there are more and more people who come out of the bush and ask us to buy their stone,” Dittrich said. He purchases thousands of pieces each year to support the artists. Dittrich said sale of the sculptures “means everything” to the Shona artists, many of whom have been displaced from farms that were their livelihood. “There are people in the world who have no other means to do anything for a living, and they create beautiful art.” Shona stone sculpture is a relatively new art form, originating in the 1950s, and is continually evolving. Often working with crude instruments, such as sharpened spoons and pieces of rebar, the artists carve dense, colorful stone found in Zimbabwe into highly polished, graceful sculptures. Shona sculpture is included in museums and private art collections around the world. Dittrich first went to Zimbabwe (called Rhodesia before gaining independence) with his family in 1997, when his wife received a Fullbright Scholarship to teach English there. The country was comparatively stable and prosperous at that time, but has become increasingly troubled economically and politically in recent years. Millions of Zimbabwe’s professionals have fled the country, which has an unemployment rate of about 90 percent and is patrolled by troupes of teenage soldiers with guns. Dittrich hopes to make his annual trip to Zimbabwe this winter, but is weighing the risk of going with his desire to continue helping his friends. “The people of Zimbabwe are the best. They are warm and loving and open, and just trying to do the basic things of life and support their families.” Dittrich encourages anyone who can spare carving implements to bring them to the gallery during the exhibit to donate to the artists. Zimbabwe's current economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed in varying degrees, to a drought affecting the entire region, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the government's price controls and land reforms. Life expectancy at birth for males in Zimbabwe has dramatically declined since 1990 from 60 to 37, the lowest in the world. Life expectancy for females is even lower at 34 years. Concurrently, the infant mortality rate has climbed from 53 to 81 deaths per 1,000 live births in the same period. Currently, 1.8 million Zimbabweans live with HIV." (from the Confluence Gallery website)  ______________________________________________________________________________________ Rob and I took a bike ride yesterday to clear our heads (he's been a little under the weather as well). It wound up taking all day and was amazing. We started doing the Carlton-Twisp loop, but shot off onto State Land, abandoned our bikes, and hiked just below the foor of Mount McClure. Fantastic, and good for the soul. I got a new strange stockpile of tiny bones and vertebrae...and we saw what may be the final brillant splash of autumn colors. I'll close with a few pictures from there. Here's hoping next week is better...setting up the Shona show and the Holiday exhibit at the gallery all week, so it should be busy, but fun.      | Laurie's Journal...what's new in my work... ArchivesApril 2011 Categories |
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