What's been happening?

Back at the old blog after my stay-cation.  Hi everyone!
I've rested, relaxed, done a few things I don't usually do, and skipped quite a few that I do usually do.

But first let me say how wonderful it felt just to say, no, not going to spend all that time on computer doing things.  I'm getting a lot wiser about my time these days.

However, I also want to report on my potting.

The above ladybug mugs are special order, and may or may not be exactly what they had in mind.  I'll find out Saturday at the Tailgate Market probably.  Yes, 2 of them look like pitchers, because my friend wanted to be able to pour the water without it dripping into a single cup coffee maker.  One of these pitchers is really good at that, the other not so much.  They also wanted a huge mug that could hold 16 oz (the one in the center will hold 20 oz.) I got a bit carried away.  I'll let you know what my dear patrons decide.

I also tackled a very big project which I've postponed till I retired, and since now I am starting the 8th year of no longer having salaried work, I decided to actually do it. 

Scan old photos of family, and then sort them and provide them to my 3 sons and their families digitally.  I've got a couple of hundred sorted by where and approximately when they were taken, and I've now spent about 10 hours work on them, and what do I have to show for it?  Maybe 1/3 of the sorted photos have been scanned, and labeled so anyone will know approximately when and where, and who.  I have decided to just do about an hour a night, as it's a good thing to do once the sun goes down, and when I've got the air conditioner humming away to make me happy.

Today's Quote: (note, I like having these little bits of wisdom at the end of my posts, that way I can leave you with good wishes that someone else was smart enough to come up with.)

Grief and gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing to the beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace.

Patricia Campbell Carlson
(Letter to a friend)

My blog-cation

Next week I won't be joining you here.  Going to be off doing whatever...not going anywhere special, but will not be on the computer (or phone) giving you the questionable benefit of my musings.  But I'll be back soon.
Barb

Selfie with giant right next to me...it's now over 7 feet tall

The giant sunflower is about to bloom!

Saturday market is just around the corner

Marsha Cozart

Cathy Babula

Pat Levi

Bette Potter Jones

Barb Rogers

And in case you pick out something from this selection on line and it isn't there when you get over to the Black Mountain Tailgate Market - it's because some of these pieces have already sold.  We five Mud Buddies bring new things every week, however!

See you between 9 and noon behind the First Baptist Church where the trees and all the tents are on Saturday morning!  And please mention if you saw this post, either on Facebook or my blog.  I have actually met one person who reads my blog, (that said so.)

And of course the market is THE place for all the best organic locally grown food, as well as beautiful flowers and other arts and crafts!  Please come join a community of people and well behaved dogs and children!  We have fun!!!

The ocean beckons

Taken on April 21, 1948
Galveston beach, TX
Top photos have Uncle Chauncey on the left, smallest sunbonnet is Mary Beth, and I'm the blond with bangs, then my dad, George Rogers.
You can see the water was barely getting our feet wet.

In the bottom 2 photos I'm on the left, Mary Beth in the middle, and Gummy, my grandmother Ada Rogers is wearing not only a dress as we sit on this driftwood, but gloves!  What a lady!

Mother or Poppy must have been doing the camera work for this visit.

We spent about a month of that summer traveling to St. Louis, MO and Stevens Point, WI, going through the Smoky Mountains for my first view of mountains.  We then moved to St. Louis.  After I grew up my first job was in Miami...

All my adult life I've had to think whether I wanted to live near the beach or the mountains.

When I lived in Knoxville TN, I'd go visit the beach for vacations, but once a month would go hiking in the Smokies.

I would yo-yo between mountains and beach almost yearly.  If I lived in the vicinity of one, I'd go visit the other.

Then I moved back to Florida for about 12 years (in different cities).  I just recently found a post card which actually has the house in which we lived in St. Augustine, FL.  Sorry I didn't scan it, but just took a photo with my phone.

At the top of this photo is Anastasia State Park, which not only has a beach, but a campground.  In the middle you see the fishing pier. There is no entertainment.

Close-up view of Hampton Inn and our apartment

The four story red brick hotel (Hampton Inn) to the lower left was built while I lived there (1996-2000.)  The little street just above it going toward the ocean is 15th Street, and directly across that street is the small 2 story grey house with dark grey roof which was our apartment (ground floor). This photo even shows one of our cars in the parking lot.  We were the 4th house from the Atlantic Ocean.  As you might notice, we didn't exactly have a swimming beach unless it was low tide, as there was a pile of rocks making a sea-wall next to those waves.  I would walk up to the state park and wade in that water between the rocks, or drive to one of the beaches further south where you could drive a car and swim.

And the reverse side of the post card is as follows:

Thanks to John Nyberg for the great photo!

The apartment was empty and for sale when I last drove by the area a few years ago.  I hope the real estate market has improved and others are enjoying by now.

I have some really great memories from my living there.  But now I'm happily retired and living in the mountains of North Carolina.

And I contribute this to Sepia Saturday, where you may also visit other posts from bloggers all over the world.  Come check it out!


 Sepia Saturday says..."It's alright for us up here in the northern hemisphere: it's summer and the chances are that - if you are anywhere else but West Yorkshire - the sun is shining. It's time for holidays; time for the sea and the sands. To illustrate this I have chosen a picture of one of the most iconic beaches of all, Bondi Beach, but you will have probably noticed that it is in the southern hemisphere which is in the middle of winter at the moment. So your theme can be summer, sun and sands or winter, snow and cold or old postcards, or waves or the Bondi Vet (I have included that last one in for my wife who is madly in love with the Bondi Vet). All you have to do is to post a post on or around Saturday 25th July and add a link to the list below.

Train at Bryson City, NC

The Depot

It's been a couple of months since I had lunch here in Bryson City, NC.
An active train community, which attracts tourists by rail still...

The Great Smoky Mountain Railroad rides into town once a day

With a little help from another engine in front of the older one...

This train ride is between Bryson City and some scenic locations, where it just stops and goes back.  I don't know the details of cost, but there were several kinds of cars, which gave me a pretty good idea of first class vs. tourist open-air car.

The dining car was well populated

An open air car for the comfort of fresh mountain air

Many passengers went into the Nantahala brewery, others to the pizza place we'd just left, and others to the shop and museum.

I would have liked to tour a train museum, but not at $9 a ticket.  I dare say a few folks do keep it in business.

Here's info about the route the train takes.
 

A test glaze tree

Yesterdaay I shared the long awaited glaze test tiles (well they're really cubes).  But before they came out of the kiln, I was waiting and curious about some of our new glazes, and didn't only wait.

So I just did a few wild and crazy tests on one piece.

Base is glazed with Matt Black (which doesn't look matt here)

I poured Raspberry over several of the limbs...and at the end dipped them in Plumb

Raspberry (the purple berry kind) over black at bottom, then with Matt Bronze Green poured over it

Some of the Matt Bronze Green over Raspberry

Matt Bronze Green does have a matt finish

The little speckles are from the clay, not the glaze

Nutmeg with Matt Bronze Green over it

NOTE added after comment about how to keep track of these tests:
I used the same photos to send in 'text messages' to myself on my phone, complete with a text describing what was in that photo.  My friend Teresa at the studio taught me this trick.  So all my glazes are recorded both before and after firing that way.  Neat trick, and don't have to write them down and draw sketches like I used to in my sketch book!

Test tiles fired!

Merry Christmas to the BMCA pottery studio!

There are most of the tiles finished that were eagerly awaited.
Results are mixed on at least one of the glazes, so re-testing might be a good idea.  It looks like it's pretty thin and didn't behave like a blue should...some of the tests show it as brown.  Oops.

But here are the ones that worked!

Our new Matt Black glaze, with each of the other studio glazes over it.
I'll list them in order from l to r, and on each row I'll show below, the same 11 glazes will be shown on a different base glaze, which was dipped once, allowed to dry over night, then dipped in the "over glaze."
plum, black, white, glossy green, celadon, black mountain blue, clear, floating blue, eggshell, matt bronze green, and nutmeg.

 Our new Plum glaze (which is terribly runny, but does great to accent things)

Satin White base

Glossy green base

Nutmeg base

Celadon base

Black Mountain Blue base

Clear base

Eggshell base

Matt Bronze Green base

Galveston to Fort Worth

Why would my grandfather, George Elmore Rogers, move from Galveston TX to Fort Worth, with his wife, Ada Rogers and children?  He was the bookkeeper for a Wholesale Fish business at the time of the census of 1910, and had built a lovely home for his family. 

Rogers home built by George Rogers, Sr. Galveston, TX

In 1916 there were two events which were pretty momentous...his oldest son, Elmore (10 years old) died of an accidental drowning just 3 weeks after Ada Rogers gave birth to her only daughter Ada Mary.  My own father, George Junior (called Junie) was 2 years old at the time.

But little Ada Mary's life was short and by records that exist today on Ancestry, probably had a tragic ending.  For a family which relied upon prayer and not medicine, according to the death certificate, her having glaucoma for at least 8 months probably affected her brain.  Whether medicine could have offered anything besides pain relief, I don't know.  She died in 1919 just short of 3 years of age...in Houston, TX.  That was where my grandmother's mother was  living and offering healing as a Christian Science practitioner.

I think my grandmother and her daughter probably spent a lot of the last months of Ada Mary's short life in Houston. 

I believe my grandfather worked as a bookkeeper at a meat packing plant in Fort Worth for a Mr. Dumble.  The Rogers moved from either Galveston or Houston between 1919 and 1920 so were living in Fort Worth, TX by the census of 1920.  My father was only 6 at the time.  And two years later their youngest son, James, was born in Fort Worth.

Beef in a meat packing plant in Texas

My cousin, Patricia Rogers, has posted on her Ancestry site the following about the George Rogers Sr. family.  Her source was probably her father, James.

They resided in Galveston until 1918, at which time they moved to Meadowbrook Drive in Fort Worth, Texas, where he (George Sr) was employed by the Fort Worth Packing Company as office manager. This began a friendship with the company Manager, Norman Dumble that lasted twenty-five years.

I believe the Dumble ranch was a favorite place for the young men to learn how to hunt.  My father (Junior) is pictured above, and there are also pictures of him and my mother before they married in a similar setting.

My parents before they married, probably at the Dumble Ranch

The Rogers home

There's also a story about the Fort Worth home that burned and how my grandfather once again built a brick home for his family, while they resided in a garage.

The Rogers family endured hardships, which weren't unusual for that time in US and Texas history.  But as I knew my grandparents when I was young, they always had a positive attitude, and were cutting jokes at every opportunity.

So this is my contribution to a meme dealing with butchers and packing plants.
 
This week's Sepia Saturday post...click to see more!