Summer Solstice, It was a good night!!!

First this year my Daughter turned 23 on the Summer Solstice. It is the perfect day of the year to have a baby girl. She is a ray of sunshine in my life.

(Nancy, Della, Stephanie, Jessica, Baby Hamlin, Linda, Lorraine, Diana, Katlyn, Patty, me and Terry)
Then my friends Nancy and Lorraine had comploted the perfect goodbye party at the Glacier Brewhouse private room. So eleven of us partied hard for a long time. They spoiled me with nice words, good food, good wine, beautiful flowers, a gorgeous whale bone native mask

, but it is the friendship that those women have given me for so many years that has made my life so fabulous here in Alaska without them I would have been a lost soul. Few of them (Denise, Ruth, Jennifer, Kathlyn, Pat, Debbie, Gail and Janie, I know I am forgetting some at the moment) could not present but are in my heart and found ways to be with us anyway. They have all helped me put my roots deep in the grown and those are going to be hard to pull because of them. So a huge thank you for friends in my life in Alaska. I love you all so much and will miss "hanging out" with you. Thank you. this is Bill

Five of us finished the evening with a double horse carriage ride downtown.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Just finished on the plane the little book "The Housekeeper and the Professor" by Yoko Ogawa. What a tender little book about three generations coming together into a beautiful equation. Many good information about prime numbers, relationship between caring people and baseball in Japan. Stir that up and you have a story that just cradles your heart. Those characters become real even if not everything makes sense: the professor looses his short term memory every 80 minutes. There is a lot of respect between the characters that is a lesson for today's selfish and greedy World. I don't want to give away any of the essence of this book so I will stay vague. Just read it, it will be worth the few hours. It didn't make me cry, it made me smile gently.
On another note I am back for my final days in Alaska. Tomorrow the packers are coming early and I am going to be busy for few days trying to make sense of 15 years in this strange and beautiful environment. We still don't know what our future location is going to be. I did fall in love with a beautiful home but without our home selling it is challenging to fall in love. Anyway I am confident that life in Tacoma is waiting for us in a good way. I took a long walk with Gaia at the Point Defiance Park, the sun was out, the smell of the salty water, the beautiful quotes embedded in the walkway, the light filtered through the trees, all this in one moment can make up for all the stress accumulated over the last year. So I am regaining faith in what will happen is meant to happen and I will start relaxing and let go of the fear. In the meantime I better get going...

More friends

Bunny and Mimi came down to Tacoma for few hours yesterday. We decided to meet at the Museum of Glass. There are two fabulous exhibits right now. If you have the occasion to go you will not be disappointed. First one is a body of work from Glass artist: Preston Singletary. Having a Tinglit grandparent has influenced this artist. He has reproduced usual artifacts from his ancestral culture with a new medium: Glass. He has mastered the sand blowing technique, the casting, the color and other innovative ways to work with glass. How interesting to see a row of regularly made with cedar some baskets that are now in glass and still showing the authentic symbols. There are panels depicting those of carving in the front of long houses. The only missing item is the totem. That would have been a bit challenging I suppose. Anyway the low light room brings lovely shadows that enhance the masterpieces.

The other exhibit is about very young children's drawing transformed into glass sculptures by the team of glassblowers from the Hot Shop of the museum. They show the original drawing and comment from the child and the sculpture next to it. Just fun, colorful and whimsical for sure.

We took a stroll to the sky bridge where the Venetian pieces from Dale Chihuly are showcased in permanence and it was good bye until soon.

Of course after seeing a house next to Jefferson Park in North Tacoma by the Proctor district I met old gorgeous trees. Firs and Cypress and other essences that I don't know. One looked like Van Gogh could have known him at some point. I would love to try to make a quilt depicting that giant.

Those are the fresh news from TACOMA, my new town.

New friends

I am already making new friends. They are very old and wise. They have survived many winters and windstorms and they are teaching patience and focus. They are solid and try to share their ever changing surrounding with a beautiful attitude. They are adapting to the restriction of life uncontrollable madness. I want to learn to let go and trust. Thanks to my new friends I have a better chance to get there.

Stop and Smell the Wood Pulp!

In Tacoma taking my husband to work in the wee hours of the morning... 8am! I am very focused on driving his car with the professional personal chauffeur attitude that characterize my conscientious self... so I do not use my brake in brisk jerking hits, I miss every single pot holes on the asphalt and I anticipate every potential problem coming my way. The only thing that will take me away from my focus is the smell. That sweet fragrance coming from the wet wood pulp large as a mini Mt Rainier. Hum yum what is that soo ooo oh soooo sweet. I would love to "stop and smell the wood pulp" but I just can't do it yet so I just drive by and smell it, just enough to make me want to take a walk in my dad's wood shed once again, to walk in the mossy forest where the mushrooms rest, to walk in the French newsstand and take a big breath. Sometimes wood can be sweeter than a rose.

Around the Studio in Few Minutes

I am ready to take down some quilts for the move and want to preserve the moment. Those are the quilts that I don' t want to sell. Those beacons that are helping me find the way to their new resting place. They are the cairns that people create to know where they are or were in their history. Stone after stone they have created my path toward the before uncharted territory. Few mementos along them amicably cohabit in the semi physical place. This studio has not been as real of a place as the kitchen for example. As soon as I step in I am sucked in a realm of fantasy mixed with hard work, love, time travel back and forth where the present can be sliced and eaten like a pie, sweet and juicy. Those ingested calories stick with you like cellulite and even when unwanted will eventualy help you with during future starvation.