clay: bone-dry candelabra and crafting questions

It’s been a week. A professionally busy five days of teaching, open house, chairing a meeting, reading and writing for book talks and moderating a panel of young adult authors for a convention at the public library as well as personally losing my shit. No comment on that. 

But I managed to roll a slab for a porcelain plate, made a tree-textured porcelain plate, and refined the edges of two Obsidian salad plates that are all on the green ware shelf. Yesterday in the community studio, I moved my candelabra from a studio shelf to the green ware shelf into a shelf in the kiln room. Nerve-wracking. And before that I crafted delicate candleholders from round shaped cookie cutters. Too delicate. I know next Saturday I’m going to throw those clay cutouts into a bucket to rehydrate and start over. I’m going to make the slab at least three times thicker. And burnish the circles and apply white glaze maybe to parts of them. 

And then I had to leave and get to the public library. What a whirlwind of an afternoon. I was starving and had bought a teriyaki salmon bento box at the Japanese grocery. Got to the library, checked in, returned library books, picked up schwag as a thank you from Carla, the youth librarian at the San Mateo Public Library, and learned from Susan, a librarian at the San Bruno Public Library that the panel I was moderating had switched out one author for another. Wha-wha-what?!? And so Susan was then googling the synopsis of the author’s novel and my mind is trying to take it all in and figuring out what fucking questions I’m gonna be asking these three authors as well as trying to tie them altogether into a theme about identity and courage. And whew I got through those 40 minutes. I did the usual and had the authors introduce themselves and if I could do it over again, I would've asked these 3 questions: 1) To what extent does YOUR identity inform the identity of your protagonist? 2) Can you explain if and how an event, experience, something you read or heard impelled your book? 3) Side characters and foils are so essential to the challenges and fears that hindered and helped your protagonist find the courage to meet and conquer them, please describe the friends, family members, and maybe even enemies in your novel. I rambled and sort of asked those questions and generally flailed around as a moderator, but I'm glad I did it.

Afterward, I collected signings from 4 authors and stood on the sidelines, trying to decompress.

And the authors were all so gracious, and I was so grateful for them being themselves.

And wow did it take a while to get Randy's signature on my books. After the event, I was invited to Wursthall for a drink. I left the library and parked and got to the restaurant early. I walked around downtown San Mateo to see close up the changes to businesses and the city in this pandemic.

My favorite Japanese restaurant had new signage, but I didn't venture in to see if there were also changes to the interior. At Wursthall, Susan split her currywurst, which was just okay. However, I loved my beer.

 

I had still a headache from the day before, and so I pondered just sipping wine and drinking a lot of water with it. Susan suggested that I drink the radler, which is like a shandy. Only the lemon in my radler is brewed in the IPA. Twas delicious and I wanna return to Wursthall. And eat a wood-fired pretzel or a Cubano or preserved lemon slaw or chicken schnitzel or porchetta. Sign me up.