Details from the making of "Chesapeake" mural for North Beach, Maryland, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals

seanettle tile piece, work tables (built by Son specially for me!) with glaze, seanettles with test tiles, seanettle part of clay slab before they were cut into tiles

Click for larger view.  In final piece, seanettles are in lower left of the photo.

"Monday was the day I had planned to begin…but I had a difficult time getting started.  The reason was simple.  After writing steadily last week, I spent Saturday at my computer updating my mailing list.  Sunday, after searching online for places to stay on an upcoming trip, I talked with my sons, a friend and my parents on the telephone and spent some time with my husband.  It was a productive and enjoyable weekend, but it was too full.  I did not leave enough empty time."  Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Yes, well, empty time.  It hasn’t affected my studio time-in fact I’ve had a grand week of creating and casting new tiles and loved every minute of it.  But it is definitely affecting my writing as I am having a hard time deciding what to put in this space.

So you’re getting pictures.  Because they fill up space.  Let you know I am thinking of you.  Are quick enough that maybe I will actually get some quiet time (not likely on a Sunday – Daughter and Grandson coming for their day.  Should be fun – we are working on the deck.  Hoped to stain today but it rained, so we will do the rails and maybe the front walkway in preparation to stain later, when it’s dry.  4 days of dry and all of a sudden wet.  That’s life!)

"People ask me if I always wanted to be a writer and I usually answer yes, because I know that’s what all the Language Arts teachers hosting the school visit want to hear me say.  The truth is, I don’t recall ever particularly wanting to be one, and even now I’m not sure I want to be a writer.  However, I have always been a writer and I’m not sure it’s something you can escape."  Janice MacDonald

Ah.  Yes.  Just go ahead and try to run from the creative streak in you.  Let in the world and it’s requirements for money and the life you see people on tv living every day.  Think you can be normal.  Go ahead, try to define normal for me in a way that I’ll believe you.  Be miserable.  Because that creative streak in you is your soul speaking as clearly as you’ll ever hear her speak.  Ignore her at your own risk.  Do the "right thing" at your own risk.  Or be quiet and listen and see where it takes you.  If amusement parks could bottle it and sell it, they would.

Here’s to all of us who can’t figure out what wants to be written right now, or wants to be born under someone’s fingers in clay, or wants to be spread out in technicolor across a canvass.  We are the ones who show the rest of the world that way it really should be.  A view into "what if,"  thoughts of possibilities.  Really scarey stuff.

Ain’t if fun?!