Tilting at windmills

Like Don Quixote sometimes I feel like we're tilting at windmills. Starting an etsy shop was a dream for so long and now that it has happened it seems like a case of "hurry up and wait" for someone to find us in the hundreds and hundreds of shops. This polymer clay Don Quixote and Sancho may make their way to the etsy shop or they may just stay right here on my worktable to remind me that things are not always as they seem. I want to sculpt more characters from literature. Anybody have a suggestion?

Ghostly Barn

You can almost see the ghost of a farmer peering out the door of this beautiful old barn. We originally stopped because of the rock fence, but learned quickly that the fences make good hiding places for snakes and varmints. Sam's painting captures a part of the South that is quickly disappearing. Moving forward doesn't mean you shouldn't also look back.

Knoxville bridge

Remember that wonderful poem by Nikki Giovanni, Knoxville Tennessee? If not, here's a link:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/knoxville-tennessee/. We visited this bridge with some family who live there and ate lunch at a restaurant on the water near the bridge. The poem is carved in stone in the waterfront park. Sam immortalized that day in a painting. Every picture is a poem. Every poem is a picture.

The summer of Chanticleer

Walking in the early early morning is the only way to exercise in a humid Tennessee summer. The park near our bookshop joins some neglected farmland complete with chickens and tumbledown barns. What a delight it's been on the hottest mornings to huff and puff up the hill and hear the first morning crow of a rooster we've named Chanticleer. At first the sound is faint then louder and bolder; he calls up the sun. It's August now and crape myrtles the color of raspberry ice cream flank the park entrance. Young runners who flew past as we walked the trails in June and July are back on the asphalt track in front of the high school. And Chanticleer? He's been uncharacteristically quiet these last mornings. I'd like to think he's on a well-earned vacation, but we're afraid he's gone on a dumpling cruise in somebody's stewpot.