World of Pets Expo, Timonium, Maryland 2009
Fair trade has arrived at the World of Pets Expo. This is Heathcote Earthings’ first year at the Expo, in its eighth year. and I’m glad we took the plunge! This is a huge, hoppin’ event! What fun to serve customers walking all manner of dogs. I’ve been offering a “sheltie discount” in honor of my own, but no shelties have taken me up on it yet!
I’m in a huge room of mostly pet related vendors, many of whom are giving away free samples. A neighbor gave me vegetarian dog treats, which Tuatha, Echo and Chance enjoyed so much that I can’t currently find the package, to tell you the brand! Besides vendors, the organizers have set up agility shows, comedy shows and interesting workshops.
There’s even a food vendor here with lots of vegetarian and vegan choices. I recognize them from the Spoutwood Fairie Festival!
I’ve moved many of our animal themed crafts to the front of the booth. I’m featuring our popular clay cat trio, pictured here. And I’m discounting some purses and ornaments and other crafts left over from the holiday season.
So come on out to the Timonium Fairgrounds and look for our tent hoops over the crowd, decorated with batik flags of dragons, fairies, etc. See you there!
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Save the Sea Kittens?
I’m grinning like a Cheshire cat! PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has launched a new campaign to “rebrand” fish into sea kittens, presuming people will be less likely to eat them. I guess the memory of that book, 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, is long past…
Let me know how the campaign goes, kids!
I often like the slogan, “I don’t eat anything with a face,” but friends take me to task on oysters. I insist they count as having a face–They’re just all smile!
Pausing to Honor Wyeth and Christina’s World
Any artist knows that once s/he shapes the ink, the paint, the words, the clay, the movement, the meaning is made by each new observer and the life that observer has known. I’ve always read that Christina’s World, Andrew Wyeth’s most popular painting, was inspired by a neighbor who was paralyzed, probably with polio. I could identify on that basis, because my biological father had polio and later post-polio syndrome. I could extrapolate something of what the world was like for him, with his weakened legs, based on the powerful image. But the bare, vaguely rolling hills have always reminded me of my family’s farm in Kentucky. And the image of the crawling woman, eying a homestead that appears telescopic on the horizon has always spoken to my gut–I’m outside of my family, my history, my home; So far to return and a body that’s broken…
The amazing thing about learning of Andrew Wyeth’s death yesterday is that I was just holding a postcard of this painting on Sunday, dancing and shouting around my partner Iuval’s parents’ house in Queens, New York. I had discovered the card on a night stand and the painting is one of my favorites. Iuval had just finished reading my screenplay Bacca Blooms the day before. And because of my strong connection to the image and Wyeth’s emotional treatment of it, I had written the painting into my story of a mother and daughter who are returning to the family farm from which they’ve been separated a generation. Like other observers, when I look at Christina’s World, I’m seeing a little bit of me, a bit of others I know, and an experience of the human condition. Andrew Wyeth, kind soul, thank you for the gift of your art and the way you speak the language of forms!
Noon Adder
Noon Adder reclined on her beige Goodwill couch, her bags from the nursing home partially blocking her view of the basketball game on the brand new tv. “I’m home. We’re fine,” she monotoned into her cellphone. Her pudgy legs lined up like logs, crinkling copies of Southern Living and Mother Earth News. She hadn’t regarded her face and body in a mirror since the accident. But she knew if she had, she’d see her mother’s flabby, atrophied arms, her father’s gray hair showing in the roots below her dye job and her aunt’s haunched, frail frame.
Bare, fingerprinted walls ping ponged light from the one den window. As the tv crowd cheered a basket, Curtie shuffled from the bathroom, tracking a diagonal path past Noon Adder, grazing her suitcases. “Sorry-I’m sorry.-Not-used-to-stuff-being-there.-Glad-you’re-home,-though.-Let-me-know-if-I-can-help-you-unpack.-Sorry.”
“Curtie, don’t apologize,” Noon Adder rolled, annoyed. “I’m on the phone.”
“Sorry.-Ha!-I-did-it-again!” He pivoted and marched to his room, so as not to be underfoot. But what did that mean if Noon Adder never left the couch? Although he was nearly her age and still wealthier, he could not figure out how to act like anything but a timid pup.
Noon Adder pointed her lazer sights on the game, the only stimulation in the drab room. “I’m home. We’re fine,” she nailed the words to her receiver as if she were hanging a shingle. After some seconds, she said goodbye, clipped the phone closed and upped the volume on the game.
Open for Business.
