Doors, Walls, Signs etc.

When you find a door closed, perhaps you'll find an open window.

But if the window is closed too, maybe you can see if there's one of those dog doors left carelessly open. And if you're small of hip and shoulder and don't mind crawling on your knees, it would do fine.

Otherwise, there's the mail slot. Maybe. I grew up in a house that didn't have one. And the mailbox really wouldn't serve the same purpose, being as it is, both away from the house and out by the street.

But the mail slot has it's impractical side as well. The most you could hope to slip through a mail slot is your hand. And your hand couldn't even look around on the inside if you are outside wanting in, nor outside if you are inside wanting out. Unless perhaps you have one of those lucite flexible periscope type jobbies that would allow you to look in or out through a mail slot. But ultimately even that would be sort of cosmically cruel. A tease. You could see where you cannot go. Yet.

So you look around yet again.

Chimney? It works fine for Santa. But if legend is to be believed, the guy's an elf. There's that size/mail slot thing again. And here even the lucite periscope thing isn't long enough to tease a view from the roof.

Maybe time to go back to the door. Try the knob this time. See if the door's unlocked.

Sentimental Me

My old Pacifica....

I was 20 years old and had never driven into Chicago. I was going to go to Lill Street Gallery to buy my first wheel. So I looked at a map and figured out the most direct route -- across highway 30 and up highway 1. This is where I would insert one of those emoticons with the rolling eyes if it were available in this comment box, because obviously that route was not only ridiculously long, but dangerous as well.

Nevertheless, I arrived and bought the wheel. I stuck it and 500 pounds of stoneware into the trunk and back seat of my '66 Buick Skylark. I went home via the route the Lil Street folks wrote down for me!

When I got home I broke in the wheel by throwing a two quart pitcher (as I remember it, I liked the shape and then went and pulled a too-thin handle for it).

Sometime along in the late eighties or early nineties I bought a new Pacifica. Curious thing though -- I use the old one for throwing and the new one for trimming.

The new one has a system of belts that are nothing more than glorified rubber bands. They consistently break and stretch and don't have enough holding power to continuously throw big pieces.

The old wheel has a serious belt. Of course, over thirty years I've replaced it. I've also replaced the bearings twice, and put a new pedal on it. But it's held up quite well.

I guess I'm overly sentimental about my tools (if you read my "Kiln" piece, you know that about me!).