Honeybees and Ham

Waiting. No biggie. But waiting for the car. Yes, I am finally getting the snow tires off my car and it has been not the single hour that I was promised but it is going on two. I was going to go back to the office between my two Ithaca appointments today...and now It feels as is the two are going to blur. Ah, well. Thank goodness there are no crazy deadlines today other than the great meeting of the Farmers' Market. And thank goodness I have discovered and changed to Google Mail, Google Drive and Google Calendar and I can use a dumb p.c. here at the car dealership and actually get work done. I like how simple and portable things are getting. Nice change, that.

We are on the verge of Grassroots. The cherries have been picked. The raspberries and strawberries are going full bore. Garlic Scapes are on the outs--and bunches of delightful dill, cilantro and basil are in the future. It is the season of produce and fruit, and we can plot the course of the summer by their  appearance at the CSA and at the Farmers' Market. It has gone from mild to hot very quickly with many fans and cold showers before sleep marking the change in the season. We have been in the lake to start our summer drifting under the high cloud bowl.

 How is it that the sky over the lake is so vast, so high, so much part of the moment, when, even on our plateau, it doesn't seem to loom above us? The water must change that relationship as it is a constant--and mirrors the dome above it. The cloud bowl has been particularly dramatic in the last week with massive cumulus clouds--changing from puffy, angels sit on them, clouds to towering castles changing from white, to pearl, to grey. It has been the sky of full on Summer--giving us cloud bursts and within a half hour, scrubbed skies.  It is the mid point of the year...and such a sweet spot that we are all trying to hang on to the quiet moments together before being spun into our respective other lives.

My America. I have been worrying about another body of work- stressing that nothing was clicking. Well it did. Rob asked my why I couldn't do something like the Advent Calendar annually and it forced me to think about the triggers around the Advent work. I guess what I love about it are all the "knowns" like palettes, distinct traditions and expectations, the iconography, the ideas and the global aspects of the holiday. I have been mulling over all of that and somehow it just pinged, American things... my America. It has symbols and colors. It has traditions and  expectations. Plus, there is more...things that have been bothering me that I think is time to surface. There are womens health issues. There is Uncle Sam. There is the religious right. There are the Masons and Mormons. There are honeybees, and hams. There are guns and grain. And so it begins. The research, the prep, the sketches...and then we are going to load the cannon and start firing to see where we go. It will be a fun ride, with I hope good results and interesting learning. I am ready for another journey--and you will be coming with me. It has been 6 months since the last big push...so I am ready (as is my portfolio).

More on this later.

Ranting and raving.

I told Kitty that I would try to be more regular with my blog conversations than in the recent past. And so, to humor her, I am climbing back into the routine of  posts that will hopefully amuse both of us. As it stands right now, I am in a windowless room with three Dell computers with a cup of coffee with whitener (powdered creamer) waiting for my car to have it's constitutional 30,000 mi. check up. I am flashing back in this windowless space, illuminated by green light and hunkered down over a keyboard--to the hours and days I have spent doing exactly the same things during press checks for my clients or for my employers. The marvelous, stress laden press checks where I would wait in the "client room" for the color to come up to speed and a succession of press sheets to review, approve and or "move the color". These press checks were during the process of days (and often nights), weeks with many nights spent restlessly dozing on a less than savory brown corduroy couch (they were always brown or beige and covered in some miracle fabric that "wiped clean). If the print salesman said it was a day pressrun, bags were packed for a few days. When he suggested it was  a "quick one" which often evolves to a not so quick one as inevitably there were issues with fit, with ghosting, with registration, with a plate being "bad", with creep, with imposition, with the miserable compromises one must make in starving one image to benefit another. Time was not a measure or standard at all. Time was measured in dinner bells--in the windowless client room which was "furnished" as a cheap man cave (as so few of us who do this are girls) with chips, and ESPN on television. 

 My favorite issue was with paper. The sheet that was specified has the top of the sheet delaminate from the body of the paper pulling the sheet in half as it printed. Can you say DISASTER...and the fun we had with the paper rep claiming they would have to "look into it" before providing replacements and allowing me to meet my deadline with the client. The plate remakes. The tough designer that the press guys actually liked (and hugged) would make them make it right...which they were often not held to my standard...and it often took a day or so for them to realize that what they could get away with with others, they could not do so with me. I am not often on press checks these days. I am not sure people do that anymore. What with the high quality digital work, the price of the job often is less than the price of a designer on press for an hour, that perfection in printing is going the way of the typesetter. Ah. change.... More times for tattoos, illustrations and gifts to my farmers.

I am working on a new bag design for Farmer Ground Flour. Who and What is Farmer Ground? Well, Farmer Ground Flour is a local mill owned by Greg Mol, miller and Cornell graduate who buys his grain from Thor (local farmer) and sells it to Stefan (and the world) for Stefan's bakery, Wide Awake Bakery. Farmer Ground is going into Whole Foods--to all of our excitement, and we are developing a generic sack for the nine types of flour that they mill regularly. Very exciting. Very real and quite a kick in Farmer Ground's business.

This type of business is an example of solid, sustainable enterprises that are squarely landing left foot, right foot in the right direction. This type of business is the version 2 of the small farming community--and is the next (combined) big business that is developing in the Finger Lakes. Farmer Ground, The Piggery, Wide Awake, Forge,  Redbyrd Orchard Cidery to name a few are all excellently run companies that have roots here in the Tburg area--founded by mid career people who want to be viable in this local foodshed. However, though there is help here for farms, there is no help for farmers. There is no grange. There is no cooperative health insurance. There are no buying groups. There is no infrastructure. if someone cuts their hand or god forbid, gets pregnant....they are SOL. No help. No shoulder. No guideposts. They must, each and everyone of them, find a path and direction without collaboration or help from an entity (read my mind, Cornell Cooperative Extention?) who have the back office to help them keep farming without losing their shirts, and having resources we all take for granted.

 

Open season: Plans for Pies

View from Dalrymple Farms, Ball Diamond Road, Hector, NY. 07.01.2013

View from Dalrymple Farms, Ball Diamond Road, Hector, NY. 07.01.2013

This morning was the season opener for Cherries! Yes, you know the scene with opening day for Fishing Season. Cars parked all along the side of the street--solid-- with mommies and grandmommies (predomininately) scurrying around with buckets and baskets, gleaning red and golden fruit from all the heavily laden boughs. We were laughing and delightedly telling each other what we were going to make, how we were going to make it and coming up with new ideas. Pies were on the short list as were cobblers and preserves. My interest lies in the creation of infusions which we talked about at lengths. What to use as the base? how to treat the fruit? Different bases for different uses. Of course there are cherries for granita and ice. For conserve (for hams and salty meats), and of course there is the fun mix of fruit and savory.

Our friends ate quite a bit--tasting each tree and offering commentary on which was the best and why. They ate and ate...smiling and talking and at the end, patting their very skinny tummies and talking about the repercussions of too many cherries on a body. They were planning their assault of their pile of red fruit...what to make and when. How to parse the cherries into the now and future delight.  Kitty had a friend who sang quite loudly (tunefully!) and leapt into the tree like he was engineered to do so, pulling down fruit hanging from one arm. The Grandmommies had never seen anything quite like that. As it was a damp and humid morning with the hint of rain--and little spits of drizzle, it kept many of the less than hard core home--planning for the break in the weather.  No Amish at 7:30 a.m. ( I think the rain had them waiting)...and there wasnt a heavy duty use of ladders (quite yet).  We went up the hill to weigh our prize-- and we picked 45 pounds of cherries between three groups of us to work with. Could just be a starter...we will see. So, if we have a chance and need more cherries for the projects, another trip might not be for naught.

I guess a year off, for these trees (due to the cold snap in 2012 that killed most of the cherry and apple crops in the Finger Lakes), all the stored energy pushed out blooms to beat the band making the branches tip downwards with the amazing growth of big berries.

A second after the Solstice

Can you believe it? The 4th of July is in sight! The enormous moon we had this week which illuminated the evening from sundown at close to 10 p.m. to dawn was extraordinary. The gorgeous wet days, and dry evenings overlooking the lake are a treasure--each and every one of them.  What  a year of change, of transition, of growth, of query, of note. I am stunned each day. Stunned, I tell you. Not surprised, not charmed, not enchanted, not puzzled, nor intrigued. Stunned and shocked. More often negatively than positively. But then again, I should back out the time to see if this is a seven year thing.

I am the queen of mumbo jumbo. I believe in ghosts and past lives, of tarot cards and the unexpected. I do not seek these things out, but I believe. I believe that there are points in your life that are significant "change moments" which, formerly, I thought were on (for me ) a seven year cycle. But now, I just believe there are "change moments" or "change years" that happen to pull your head up from looking at your feet or looking at the clouds to say, "Yo, pay attention, knucklehead (meaning me)!" Regardless of time, we are in a definite change cycle.

Adirondack face, Q. Cassetti, 2010

Adirondack face, Q. Cassetti, 2010

I have been quiet as I have been hurting. Hurting enough to pick up the phone and see if I could start talking and focusing on my hurt--allowing me to box it up, package it, and see if I could put a topic sentence around all of it to allow me to get on with my life without the noose or divers' weight around my neck.  This drag has driven me from talking to you, to talking at all. This drag has stopped me from my public self as I want to protect the soft, squishy me from the rest of the world as I have been hurt, hurt badly, hurt daily, hurt by clueless people who don't even know they are doing this. I do not resent, but are puzzled by why I am the focus of identity theft-- hearing my words, ideas, thoughts and hypothesis come from another person without the grounding of my thinking, experience and understanding.  But, I need to put this all to rest. Let things happen and settle out....and try to rise above it (as I was taught) and be "better than that" which, quite candidly, is a crock. Better than what?

Better than losing all your data and computer in one "electronic moment"?

Since the electronic melt-down, much has changed in my office. I have a brand new computer. I have newly recovered data. I have a wonderful new cloud back up. I have Dropbox and now I have the new Adobe Creative Cloud (which I was prepared to be puzzled by, but am DELIGHTED).  We are selling cards, pins and yes, little sets of nice little things at Sundrees and Etsy. We have just gotten a signed agreement with Cornell to be a certified vendor (a full year in the making). We are throwing work out the door in a passionate, volumetric way for our big client. Our distillery is rolling with the whiskey versions of their labels (and are happy). I am busy with a kraft bag design for our local flour mill soon to be in Whole Foods. My Bee Goddess is on a label for candles in Denver. A new copper bake oven pizza place has my illo on their teeshirts. And there is more in the hopper.

Tomorrow is day one of Cherry Season. Kitty and her friend Walker and I will be picking at seven a.m. to try to beat out the hoards that strip the trees in one day. I like to think of it as the opening day of fishing season for mommies....fresh cherries for pies, preserves,granita and more. We will see what will happen.  I love how gorgeous it is, and the moment in the early morning as the dew is drying and the sun begins to heat up, as the overcast clouds rise up up up over the lake--until at 8 a.m. the ground is dry, the sun is shining and the light is such that each sour cherry glows like a christmas light in the trees. There is quiet in the orchards as we are all focused down on each pick, each cherry, each moment of sorting and picking, gleaning the ripe fruit--a seasonal gift to each one of us. It is more like a holiday this year as last year the cherries and apples were ruined due to a late cold snap that killed every blossom. Not the problem this year...which makes it a bit more like Christmas, or your birthday eve....waiting the delight ahead.

 

Big moon

Cut paper owl, Q. Cassetti, 2013

Cut paper owl, Q. Cassetti, 2013

It was a big moon, a  huge moon actually....a blue moon, some say. But none the less it was significant. Maybe it was nature but maybe, just maybe it was to recognize a marriage of two beautiful and remarkable women. It was light out until around 9:30 and then the moonlight took over, keeping the sky radiant for the rest of the time until dawn woke us up...shining sun and overcast skies. 

It is fully spring, and emerging summer with garlic scapes and strawberries, fresh spinach and  kale, teensie japanese radishes, and spring peas ready to pick. The farmers market has been open for well on a month, with a good crowd each week --with each participant anxious with ideas to make it better and add to the positive experiences for each person attending. I had a nice time seeing people I haven't seen in well over a decade, and enjoying them as new friends with a great common base.

It's been a bit of a haul in the last few weeks with my computer crashing as well as two 2 TB hard drives. So, I shipped the hard drives off to Kroll Online and to the tune of $2M each had the data recovered (much of my illustration work). The computer was 9 years old (with two hard drives (of extra illo work) that just plain died. My friends at Baka Computing thought it might have had " an electrical moment" but with the age of the computer, they were not ready to confirm that. So, prior to all of this monkey shines, I started backing up to a cloud service, CrashPlan, so this will be part of the new scene with the new computer winging its way over from Hong Kong. It is a kick in the pocketbook, so I am feeling a bit shocked and saddened by all of this, but after a week working on a coworkers setup (on vacation), I realized how my productivity has been compromised, so though it is expensive, and though it is an uplanned change, I think it will be welcome and add to the stuff I can crank out. And, I now have CrashPlan, Dropbox, Evernote, Apple Cloud and yes, Adobe Creative Cloud-- the cloud has been embraced and maybe will be a bit less frightening in the future. Kitty, funny girl that she is, refers to my cloud use as the "Thunder Cloud". See, another reason why I love her.

I need to wrap this up now as we need to get Kitty down to her job--but as I have promised Kitty that I will attempt to get back into the blogisphere a bit more....despite my recent quiet. 

 

3x3 Professional Show Merit Winners.

This collection of five guys are from my annual (2012) Advent Calendar project, "Gingerbread Advent". They were, just today, accepted into the annual, juried competition that 3x3 Magazine has to celebrate illustration. They were accepted as a group. Hurray and Thank you to 3x3. It is wonderful to know that the freakish stuff that flows out of this brain onto digital paper has some bounce in the real world beyond the happy high (when I get the cogs and gears rolling) that this December project can give me. Double the holiday gifting for this girl. To see who else got in>>

Five Advent Guys from 2012 Advent Calendar project, "Gingerbread Advent", Q. Cassetti, 2012, Adobe Illustrator CS%

Five Advent Guys from 2012 Advent Calendar project, "Gingerbread Advent", Q. Cassetti, 2012, Adobe Illustrator CS%

Summertime

Cut paper owl,  Q. Cassetti, 2013, Trumansburg, NY

Cut paper owl,  Q. Cassetti, 2013, Trumansburg, NY

It really feels like summer. I am here in my princess tower...a hardwired princess tower, listening to the birds, and feeling the breeze on my feet from the window anticipating the need to blow warm air around with my turbo fan which currently is tucked in my closet.​

Spring has been such a gift this year with the long cool, wet coming on....allowing all of our trees to develop, flower and grow. With this natural prosperity comes a thick coating of bright green pollen that lays on the porches, windowsills, and any surface (even a car sitting for an hour or so) this is shocking in its abundance.​

As you can see, I am cutting paper these days. For real paper...not the digital kind with real live scissors and then scanning them in to digitize them. I am making a little collection of thises and thats...and as they are all cut from full sized, half sized or quarter sized pieces of paper, they are all in the same zone building blocks sized.​ I am getting the paper from this great teacher store called Hygloss who have a thinnish, origami weight matte black paper that really does the trick. I am just feeling so creatively out of it, at least this gets me making stuff that I can use now/ later. With these big black shapes, I can strip textures/color etc. into them and I have translated them all to vectors, so they are scalable as well. I just feel like a creative flat tire these days. The whole Jack is a dull boy thing. Lots of projects sailing through the office...very much beach volleyball with a lob to our side and then back, and back again....all in one day. Not much breathing...lots of moving.

Alex is in NYC taking photography courses. His new work is quite good...and though I am a proud momma--you can see for yourself.​ He is truly taking in the city and enjoying every minute of it. So exciting to see this little flower begin to bloom. Kitty is with us--working on trying to corral ideas, impressions and direction for her Division 3 project next year. I am coaxing her along though I think Rob is probably a better coach for her at this point in her development. I tend to shut things down too quickly. My harshness works with Alex...matter of fact, he actually likes my directness and was humored last weekend when I sat in the car with him and critiqued the Sunoco logo at the gas station. He was stunned that I thought that way. We also had an amusing conversation about symbols and what things mean in imagery. It was cracking open a door he didnt even know existed...and was surprised by the results. I can work with Alex on ideas and thinking and with Kitty on process, editing and expanding beyond the ordinary. What a few months of talk we will have.

​I sold 5 dozen brooches last week (sushi and banana splits) at wholesale to a family friend. This is the way to really do the business with pins versus the onesies twosies. The bill actually looked like something. Funny though I thought the pins would really rock, it turns out that my cards are far and away the more profitable and more requested around here. Maybe I should climb out of the creative hole and just design some cards. Simple, elegant, commercial cards. That seems doable? Right?

Later.​

Pfft

Doodle, Q.Cassetti, 2013

Doodle, Q.Cassetti, 2013

Rain...or at least that is what is planned. The pollen is thick. The trees brilliant...and spring is full bore. Nigel suggested that his grandmother hinted that a frost could happen...but we are all pretending that this cannot nor will not be an option.

I took Dave up to the lake today for the spring shakedown of bug debris, winter detritus, cobwebs and the layer of dust that builds up just by sheer disuse. The house is so much nicer after last year's battle with mildew which would welcome you upon entry...and hang in the air. No olfactory memory there.​ However, I think that Jimmy the groundhog may have a guest, a skunk, under the porch with him. I love the spring and skunks as they give you a little pffft, or a little spritz to say..."Hey there" whether it is when you are out there walking the dog in the nighttime, or enter the kitchen from being away for a while.

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Pfffft...a tiny little hi and hello. I hope this stinker is not rabid (as many skunks are around here)...and will just "sashay away" when we start taking up residence at the lake soon. Somehow having poor Shady sprayed by our porch guest or Eesah...our other dog friend get the treatment just isn't right...particularly as they are not angling for trouble. Eesah has a thing for Jimmy though, and maybe we will be lucky for Jimmy to tangle with our other canine friend.


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Jawbreaker

​Jawbreaker

​Jawbreaker

Did you or do you love jawbreakers? I used to. I would walk to and from school and was given a little allowance for making my bed and trying to be nice, and so once a week I would go to the Reynolds Street Market and buy a treat on the way home from school. The Reynolds Street Market was half way home on the longer but more neighborhoody walk home. It was one of those small, dark, neighborhood grocers that popped up next to a beauty salon or a dress shop in the middle of a residential area, offering the full range of food from bunny bread to milk, canned goods, and a butcher case. These grocers all worked on cash at the register and or handwritten bills which allowed a family to charge to their account. Very exotic to my thinking.
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​Reynolds Street also had a wonderful assortment of candy, penny candy, and promotional candy that whimsically appealed to me (and surprisingly, though I dont like to eat it, to me today for the sheer glory of its decorative quality, its design and packaging, for its humor and promised fun). Whoever was picking out the candy knew their audience--and had us in their thrall with candy cigarettes and pink gum cigars, lollipops and licorice, caramel bulllseyes with a chalky sugar center and turkish taffy which was advertised on teevee --encouraging kids to "smack it" before eating it.  How indulgent to have a little change and a load of choices all chocked with sugar, color and artificial flavor. One week it would be fireballs, another would be wax bottles with really gross and artificial syrupy brilliant liquid. Some weeks (around Halloween generally) wax teeth, wax lips and even wax fingernails. At one point, I was crazy into these packs of collectible cards with buttons that had Mad Magazine style illustrations of popular culture things or prepackaged food with a twist. I thought these buttons and cards were the hottest thing...and I, by having them, also was the hottest thing. Did I mention, no one else knew how cool I was? No...because I never shared this with anyone until today, with you.
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​Now, when it came to jawbreakers, Reynolds Street Market had the small ones in the mode of Fireballs (hot cinnamon jawbreakers), but they also had my favorite, the giant Jawbreaker. This baby was a bit less than 2" in diameter, like a golf ball--and one would hold it and lick it until it got big enough to fit in your mouth. The cool thing beyond it just being a big hunk of sugar was that it was layered in color, so as you ate it...or salivated on it or whatever, the temptation was great to pull it out of your mouth and observe the glory of the color change. Plus, if you are the talent I am, you would either drop it, roll it on your sweater, or gum it up in some way that it would be covered in dirt, hair or sweater wool before popping it back in your mouth. Oh, so lovely.

Now why all this talk about candy? Am I nostalgic for a time gone by? No. Another thing entirely. I subscribe to this wonderful email alert which is the Visual Thesaurus.
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​The Visual Thesaurus is a remarkable site which introduces new words (never can have enough words, right?) and displays them in a very interesting, visual, diagramatic way... which is inspiring to me from a design standpoint, but also is an interesting place to brainstorm ideas and words  (when I am helping someone name a product or service). Love this tool. Great timewaster. However, today was a glorious jawbreaker of a word:

​ A U T O C H T H O N O U S

​Take that! Glorious Autochthonous (ah talk then oos). As the Visual Thesaurus neatly describes:

"No Place Like Home Word of the Day:

The adjective native serves many different purposes. Today's adjective autochthonous provides an opportunity to give one meaning of native a rest so you can employ a fifty dollar word in its place. Autochthonous is used to characterize rocks or organisms (including people) that are found in the place where they originated."

​Don't you love it. LOVE autochthonous. And, Dictionary.com had a sensational quote that captured it...that somehow prompts me to love folkloric art even more.

Screen Shot 2013-05-07 at 10.06.05 AM.png

"Folk Art grew from below. It was a spontaneous, autochthonous expression of the people, shaped by themselves, pretty much without the benefit of High Culture, to suit their own needs. Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by technicians hired by businessmen; its audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not buying.... Folk Art was the people's own institution, their private little garden walled off from the great formal park of their masters' High Culture. But Mass Culture breaks down the wall, integrating the masses into a debased form of High Culture and thus becoming an instrument of political domination. "

Dwight MacDonald (1906–1982), U.S. journalist, critic. "A Theory of Mass Culture," Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, eds. B. Rosenberg and D.M. White, Free Press (1959).

So there you have it. Whimsy. Candy and a brand new word that means local....native, vernacular. So you can have your local candy and sound smart saying it....Well, you know what I mean.

Off to the salt mines. Lets see if we have something to talk about tomorrow. I hope so.​

 

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moment, just a moment

​Barn Owl, Q. Cassetti, 2013, Adobe Illustrator, CS5

​Barn Owl, Q. Cassetti, 2013, Adobe Illustrator, CS5

It has been solid...and I have a minute to say hi. The past few weeks have been solid work with kids packed in (Spring Vacation for each), a funeral with out of towners, food planning and serving and more work. The work has been mammoth with both Rob and me working nights (seriously) and weekends with a window of a morning or an afternoon unprescribed/ unscheduled.​ It was quite a moment that we had to be able to get Rob a haircut last weekend. Monumental...a haircut, right?

It is still grey and rainy. My farmer friends are delighted in the mucky cold. Nothing is too hot, too fast so our lovely cherries and apples are going to have a slow birth this year to promise us buckets, bushels and barrels of fruit.  It was great to pick up our spring greens from Good Life Farm yesterday to watch sweet Melissa doing funny pet trick with her white goosy turkey, strutting about all rigid and shaking, clucking and chortling. This pet turkey is named, Bonecrusher...and to see the Bone being wrestled to the ground by bouncy Melissa was very cute and funny. She held him tight so that our friend Eric could touch Bonecrusher's (from Roald Dahl's BFG)​ wattles.

Rob is home. I have to go. Tomorrow, I will catch up more with you. He is working and so am I...but I will make a little time for us.​

Ice Cream Castles

Ice Cream Castles, Q. Cassetti, 2013

Ice Cream Castles, Q. Cassetti, 2013

​Yep. It snowed again. I am the April Fool. To think I was hoping that this was the end. The End of the snow, but instead, the spring promise on Saturday was just that, a promise. No commitment. Just a teensie bit of hope. And the idealist in me took wing, filling my heart with the just maybe...and now we are back into it. Hopefully, the apple trees/buds and the same with our glorious cherries will not be as romantic as I am. But weather shouldn't be the beginning and end of inspiration. It can be the prod, and I am feeling that tingle that maybe a new something is going to burst and I will be back in the picture making business again.

A girl can hope.

It is also really good to have our Saturday deadline behind us so that we can look forward to spring and change leaving the darker days of this winter behind us.

As you can see, there  are new things afoot with this blog. I have migrated my blog, recipes, about Q and other things to the upgraded Squarespace 6 which has other bells and whistles that allow one to have a magnificent shopping page ( to come with the gemeralds,​ cards, and prints). The only thing I am struggling with (right now) is the gallery feature with thumbnails so I can bring Q.Cassetti.com over to this page as well as Luckystone Partners.com and have all of me under one web roof. I am plodding through learning this new tool (sans XML, HTML code) so it will take a bit of time, but I have patience and love SS...so it should work out.

I am taking over picnic baskets to Diane at Sundrees. We are working on a fun project to sell vintage baskets and then all the fun stuff to go inside as part of the Summer/ Bridal merch offering. I bought a bunch of baskets (Hawkeye and Redmon)--each different with some having pie racks, some having flatware attachments, a few green, a pink one, a tan one, a caramel one. I am in rapture over this beauties. There is an idea here.​

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New normal, at least for today

On Saturday, the sun shone and there was gladness in all of our hearts.  We walked to the little Episcopal Church a block away soaking in the rays, and breathing in the cool, fresh air that we have been so desperate for in this season of gray.  Mary, Rob and Gloria had planned a small service with Rob, Peter, Jim all giving beautiful speeches about Ron, and Peggy delivering a sublime poem which wove the talk of poetry, music, architecture into a beautiful memory quilt.  They all touched on Ron's reach as a creative person who embraced the idea and ideals and rendered them in his friendships and his architectural work. Alex played the bass with Sevi on the piano. There were Cassetti friends and family (my sweet brothers came--both round trips from Boston and Philadelphia in their grey suits and spring ties), Alex's friends, our friends and our dear community members. We convened back at the house for food and drink with wonderful, Django Reinhardt inspired music by Eric Aceto. The doors were open to the outside, and our guest spilled out on the big back porch and into the yard with little children running around, Shady Grove happy to be catching little bits of cheese off the table, and happy people talking and enjoying themselves. I think Rob, Mary and Gloria had a good time and felt embraced by all.  I think Ron would have approved of how simple and yet tastefully done the whole production was. It was a perfect day.

​Kitty went back to school early this morning and I have Alex to put on the bus at noon after we fiddle around with trying to get some paperwork completed for him to have an affordable summer at FIT studying photography. Must go, but wanted to say hello and try out this new blog format which I will talk about soon once I have an opinion, which you know I will.

This journey has many stops

left to right, Kitty, Gloria, Ron, Alex, Mary, Rob, June 2012, Trumansburg, NYTomorrow we celebrate Ron Cassetti, my father-in-law. The place is buzzing after a month of planning and talk. All the stars in the process of lining up, and it should represent him well—and to his liking. The flowers are bought and parsed into vases. Mary is  ready with a new dress, better health and the strength to take on this push. She is in command of the program, her guests, and the pacing of the day. Gloria, Rob and I have taken some off her plate so she can be on top of her game tomorrow. Gloria is welcoming her cousins (here from California) and friends—embracing that community. Alex and Sevi are planning and practicing their music. The guest book (a discrete matte black number) is purchased. The programs, printed. Rob is busy moving furniture and fluffing here and there. David is prepping and making the house look as good as it can. I am plating a bunch of food I ordered from the Regional Access and the store—so there is minimal cooking and maximal opening and styling. Nigel is being the wonder he is and helping in every vein including psychological. It should all be good.

I have been thinking about Ron’s last few days with us. He was sleeping a lot, but when he was awake, he was cheerful, comfortable and in the zone with us. However, as he got closer to the end, he would take little naps in between eating and getting up to sleep again. He was roused by Rob from one with his coming out of his haze saying that “this journey has many stops”. As Ron transitioned from one plane to the other, there were many stops—many stops we did not see and many we did. If we take that simple thought about our personal journeys having many stops—it is indeed true from the big ones of birth, death and that moment of awareness of yourself to the simple stops of coffee every morning, to the many trips to the grocery store or to the beach on vacation. The analogy of travel is lovely, linear and like time as we live it —but is that the trip Ron was on. Was he traversing the gradient, gradually moving from one place to another— leaving one behind, accepting the transition and finally understanding where he was moving to, accepting that new place and gradually letting go of the old to grasp the new?

My grandmother, Mrs. Eddy, had trips as she aged, quietly leaving us and living in her mind— mentioning travel with here long dead sisters, and did we see the trunk at the end of her bed, ready for the adventures ahead.? Did we see her sisters who had been there?  She was prepared and ready to go—leaving the dreary dullness of today for the new. Her life in her old body was not where she wanted to be, but free to travel on a boat with her two smart and chatty sisters, a trip for fun, a trip to be together a trip away from the here and into the next or the hereafter.

That journey with many stops is something we are on right now…and will continue either locked in the shells we inhabit on this plane, or in some other guise. We should embrace the adventure of simple things like coffee and conversation, to visions and vistas, to true travel both here to the store or out to the bigger world…registering all the little stops that make up a day, a week, a month, a year, a life…but not anticipiating the beyond—but taking comfort that this forward motion is something we need to accept. To go with the flow.

Creative Quarterly Winner (CQ31)

Frankenstein, Q. Cassetti 2012 Adobe Illustrator.Mr. Minty, (the piece that is the winner, CQ31) from 2012 Advent Calendar series, Q. Cassetti, 2012, adobe illustratorNice! One of the halloween illos got into Creative Quarterly 31 in the print and digital issues of the publication. Need to go through the inspiration images from my pix. Who knows? I was lucky last year!