Today from noon until 2:00 p.m., catch Edgecomb author Lea Wait at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens' event, Books & Blooms! She and twenty other splendid Maine writers will be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Rain date will be tomorrow, the 29th, same times.
Some people knit while watching the evening news. Andrea and Joe Ford build superb intricate high relief vases. Chickadees on wintery branches woven around a tranquil oval vase, for instance. The Fords operate the Cabin Pottery, just up Fairbrother's Hill from me, formerly the P.O.D. works. I now know where I will do my Christmas shopping! Andrea and Joe make functional stoneware pottery, hand thrown, and they develop all their own glazes from scratch. No molds, "We like to have our hands in the mud," says Joe, who, in another life, has been auditor, comptroller, lately an accountant at Miles Health Care and St. Andrews Hospital.
Andrea is the designer. She paints graceful dragonflies, robust lobsters, feathery trees in winter, on the unfired objects with wax, the same technique used for batik textiles! The glaze is then applied – its consistency is most important, since you don't want it flowing down the object, obliterating the design. When the objects (mugs, platters, tiny tubular "posy" vases) are removed from the kiln, the design remains the grainy quality of the clay, surrounded by luminous color.
Cabin Pottery also hosts outdoor raku firings, open to the public. The next one is scheduled for August 10. The apparatus -- a high-temperature insulated kiln and several galvanized garbage cans – is set up in their driveway. The objects are put into the kiln, then heated gradually to a maximum of 1800 degrees. "You have to keep watching," warns Joe. "This is not as precision firing as most ceramics." When the glaze, applied as a powder, starts to shimmer, then the kiln is opened, the objects brought out and placed in the garbage cans with wood chips. The magic of the cooling process brings out coppery highlights and other unexpected, unpredictable beauties. "It's fun to do at night," they told me, "especially in the winter." We agreed it was too bad we don't have a skating pond nearby, so we could warm our hands over the raku.
Higher Education News: Enroll at the Boothbay Region's new community college! Three college level courses will be given in the Boothbay region starting the last week in August: English Composition, College Algebra, and Introduction to Psychology. They will meet on weekday evenings at 6:45 p.m. in various Boothbay Harbor locations. Courses are open to all area residents for tuition, but totally free to eligible high school students. Learn more at 633-0570; call 386-0013 to register.
Also, at Lincoln Academy from Sept through Dec, Central Maine Community College, based in Auburn, will be offering courses in Small Business Management, College Writing, Medical Terminology, Intro American Politics, Intro Psychology and Intro Sociology. For information, contact Scott Knapp, President, CMCC at 755-5230 or sknapp@cmcc.edu. To register for classes call 800-891-2002, ext. 292, online at www.cmcc.edu, or Ellen Dickens, Director, Union #74 Adult and Community Education at 563-2811 or L.A.'s Guidance Office, 563-3596, ext. 17.
Miles Memorial Hospital's grand tour of the River Road featured our nascent co-housing group on the Salt Marsh Cove Road, #8 on the Trail. Elegant finale to the visits to some of Lincoln County's "stately homes!"
Dropping this column off on my way to my niece Kendra's wedding in Napa, California, from 234 River Road, 633-2978, bonesukl@midcoast.com. This column appears in several local papers, and at www.Edgecomb.org.