More On The Trip Report Along With Thoughts About The South

There are still some camellias blooming and it would be a sin to leave them all outside on the bushes. At least that's how I feel about it. Some of them should definitely be left for the bees but I figure that if I don't bring some in to put in vases in order to be admired, I'm not doing my job. 
Of course flowers want to be noticed and appreciated and in return, they give those of us doing the noticing and appreciating joy. 
Or so it seems to me. 

Thank all of you so much who commented yesterday. I have not answered comments. I spent quite a bit of time trying to catch up on other blogs and I think I have but I did not comment on all of those. I have no apologies. Time is of a limited quantity and believe it or not, I do try to get certain things accomplished daily, always feeling guilty if I decide to concentrate on one thing, leaving another left undone but then again, I'd feel guilty concentrating on whatever I have left undone due to trying to get something else accomplished. 
I cannot win and once again I am reminded that guilt rarely does anything but fuck us up. 

I am tired tonight. I had pottery today and when my alarm went off, I realized it was raining and oh, it was so hard to get out of that bed. Maurice was holding me down and I had to move her. She was not happy. But pottery is pretty sacred as to something that I WILL do if at all possible. And so I did, picking up Jessie on the way and getting some love from Sophie. 
It was the first class of the new season and seven of us who go back a ways were there along with two new people. The studio had been slightly rearranged and so there was some confusion as to where things were but for the most part, things looked the same. Always comforting. 
There were hugs. We have some EXCELLENT huggers in this group.Truly A-1, Primo, Top Of The Line huggers. It's just about worth getting up early just to go get those hugs. And it was so good to see Jessie too. We haven't seen each other in a few weeks due to their spring break camping trip and then our little travel adventure. So all of that was good. 
Lizzie, she of the "Is He Dead Yet?" t-shirt with the gentleman caller just got back from Italy yesterday and I, of course, had just gotten back from my trip to Tennessee which was pretty life-altering in some ways and both of us just sort of wandered around a little bit, trying to figure out what we were doing. 
I had brought home a dish and Billy's spoon rest to glaze-paint over the break but of course I did not even get them out of the bag I tote things in. So I figured that I'd get to work on those today. I started with the dish which I think I began at the beginning of the session's classes and had just sort of set aside. It was more of a last second thought as a way to fill up a last forty-five minutes of class than anything else. It looks like a little pie plate and I have been calling it my "individual chicken pot pie dish." I had already applied a white glaze to the inside of it but really had no other ideas about what I wanted to do with the rest of it but then the idea occurred to me to paint a little chicken on the interior bottom with Stroke and Coat, and so I did. I did this with two different techniques- one by applying the glaze with a very thin brush, the other applying it with a clever little device made just for this purpose. I didn't have any of these fine-line applicators but Jessie did and loaned me her set of them. And here's what I ended up with.

I am no artist at all and I have no idea how this is going to turn out but we shall see. It's a bit rude to put a picture of a chicken in something intended for use as a chicken pot-pie dish. 
Perhaps I shall just use it for quiches, none of which will have chicken in them. Or perhaps it will come out so poorly it will go the way of all discarded pottery. Whatever happens, I had fun doing it and if it fails miserably due to technique, it will have been a learning experience. It is on the shelf to go into the kiln. That top rim is a braided affair which is hard to tell at this point. I wonder if it will show up after second firing. 
And above all- I have moved on, for a moment at least, from fish. 
Don't worry. I shall return to them. 

I thought I'd post a few more pictures and words about our trip. The Event was so overwhelmingly important and life-altering that the rest of our little adventure has sort of been ignored here with the exception of the eerie experience I had at the house in Cave Spring. But I'll start there.

Glen and I walked to the restaurant where we ate dinner there as it was just a few blocks away and on our way back to the quite-possibly-haunted place we were staying, I noticed our shadows. 
There we are. Me and my baby. As oddly proportioned as the picture is, I could tell without doubt who that couple is.

Here are some pictures of our stay at Fall Creek Falls. 
This first one is not the actual Fall Creek Falls but another fall in the park called Piney Falls. That's where the lady took the picture I posted last night. She was the mother in the family who came down the trail right after us. There was also a daddy and three children, including the youngest whom they introduced as "the leader." And that is how I addressed her. I offered to take their picture and I did and that's when Mama offered to take ours. 

This is the actual Fall Creek Falls. Of course you cannot get a sense of water falls from a photo. Not really. You cannot hear the sound of all of the immense amount of water as it rushes over the rocks and empties itself into the seemingly infinitely deep pool beneath it. 

These are cabins you can rent right ON the lake at the park. 

And this was our view of the same lake from our balcony. 
YES! Balcony! 
You can see, down by the water, a sidewalk type of path that encircles the entire lodge. Many people walked it and I walked some of it just for fun. It was such a sensible, accessible place to stay in all regards. 
Well, except for the Continental breakfast which I guess is about standard but Lord help me...NO.
What a small and petty complaint. 

Speaking of NO, here's where we stayed on our way back. 

I am a huge fan of vintage mom and pop motels and the online reviews were mixed but there was nothing horrible in them and so I booked us there when we were on the road headed south. 
Sigh.
It is cute, isn't it? But I think that I am truly a fan of RESTORED vintage mom and pop motels and this one was not. I could write an entire post about this place and starring in it would be the woman whom I think was the partner of the man who seemed to be the owner. Both he and the probable partner really, really were trying to do what they could to make their guests happy and comfortable but...

Whatcha gonna do? He had some sort of disability and she seemed to have another sort of disability which was not a physical one but more of a on the spectrum situation. She was trying so hard to be helpful that in the first half hour we were there, she came to our door about five times (or perhaps more) to offer what she perceived were necessary instructions, helpful tips, and...oh, other things. For example: their ice machine was broken (I'm going to fix it tomorrow!) but she brought us a cup of ice that she had "found" in their living quarters. 
Not even a full cup. 
But bless her.
The room had a smell that was as not-found-in-nature as was the fabric the sheets were made of. 
I seriously doubted we would sleep a wink there in the Valley Inn. 
However. 
The bed was pretty decent when it came to comfort and we had our own pillows and although I looked, I found no bedbugs, and quite honestly, I think we had our best sleep there of the entire trip. 
So there you go. 
And the grounds of the motel had been planted in azaleas and hydrangea and many, many beautiful shrubs and it was peaceful and beautiful on the scarcely traveled road between Pine Mountain and Hamilton, Georgia. We ate supper that night in Pine Mountain in a Caribbean-Fusion place that seemed to be entirely run and owned by Black women and I had a shrimp curry there that could not be beat. It was such a strange and yet not-untypical southern experience in that the couple eating next to us who were from Pine Mountain and sounded like they were from Pine Mountain praised this restaurant to high heaven and said they eat there at least once a week. 

The south is a pretty crazy, often seemingly and no doubt racist place, filled with signs that say "Jesus Saves" and churches beyond counting, actual Confederate flags flying in yards, and so much evidence of poverty. 
And yet, the races do live together, depend on each other, do business with each other, and have known each other's families for eons. 
Yeah. All the way back to slavery and sharecropping in some cases. 
It is also a place filled with incredible natural beauty, farms and fields that feed our nation, new schools that offer a promise of hope, and people so kind and sweet that you'll almost fall over with their sincerity. 

I'm not defending this part of the country where I live. I'm just giving you the truth of it. We can do so much better and I know that. 
But damn. 
There is evil everywhere and I do not think Stephen Miller is from anywhere near here. 
I just looked it up. He's from Santa Monica, California. And as we all know, DJT is from NYC. 

It's complicated. 

I talk too much. 

Love...Ms. Moon