These leaves, by the way, have a "pinnate" leaf venation pattern. In case you're interested.

I forgot to post this the day of, but I guess it's better late than never... Just a reminder that on the night of June 3 into the morning of June 4, 1989, the Chinese Army rolled into Tiananmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) Square in Beijing and put down the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations that had been going on over the previous several weeks, killing an unknown number of unarmed students. I remember watching tv and seeing the clip of this unknown businessman standing in front of the tanks as they tried to exit the Square. It's one of my favorite pictures. It makes me kind of sad that it seems the youth in China today have forgotten Tiananmen, and have swallowed American-style capitalism to such an extent that their aspirations are no longer to change the world, but to have things - jeans and cars and etc... I guess once we try to change the world and fail miserably, we lose hope quickly, then we need to find something to replace the hope we lost. Look at me - I have never thought of myself as an activist - there's more sides to every issue than you can fit on a bumper sticker or can be yelled in a catchy slogan at a protest march - and those details are what's important (the difference between a neighborhood of Jerusalem and an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank), but three and a half years ago I marched on Washington because I still believed it was possible to avoid a stupid war (There ain't no power like the power of the people 'cause the power of the people don't stop) if enough of us stood up and said we didn't want it. I no longer believe anything the people of this country can say or do will have any affect on a president who, when asked about protests, says "That's whats so great about America - the people can express their opinion." At least some of my faith in Americans has been restored by the Presidents plummeting poll numbers and the number of people who are beginning to realize it was a mistake in the first place. I am rapidly losing hope in any peaceful resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. With the US all but backing the new Prime Minister's brilliant plan to cut the West Bank up like a puzzle with the Separation Barrier and graciously grant the Palestinians a "State" on the six or seven little left over pieces and the International Community pulling funds from the democratically elected Hamas government and Hamas and Fatah going at each other as if a little more violence was all Gaza needed...

So what do I do? I watch the season finale of LOST. I putter in the garden. I read poorly written novels. I go out to eat. I make pots and sing songs.

I put new pictures up of some pots I've gotten out of the kiln in the last couple of weeks... We had a somewhat rough firing and most of the work has to be refired. Hopefully it'll come out nicer the second time around.

1 June, 2006
Happy Birthday Erin!

For any of you who are interested in Children's Lit, I just read an excellent book by Kate DiCamillo called The Tale of Desperaux. I found it because she wrote another book (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane) that I saw in the book store in hard back with beautiful illustrations, and because I'm cheap I naturally gravitated to the paperbacks right next to it... (Which were also gorgeous, by the way - nice paper with deckled edges) It is essentially the age old tale of the animal who seeks beauty and meaning in life, and is therefore ostracised by his peers, but it adds several other characters that add a bit of depth and interest to the plot. What convinced me to buy it was the page after the title page, which read:

"Life is dark and light is precious.
Come closer, dear Reader.
You must trust me.
I am telling you a story."

This is a good representation of the tone of the whole book. The narrator speaks directly to the reader often, asking questions about plot points, what we think about the motivations of the characters, or meanings of interesting words, but in a very un-pretentious manner.