Thursday, September 20, 2007

Today I was a lucky teacher. A very fine fellow Nicholas Santella came to give a demonstration to my classes. Nicholas is an armorer. He brought armor that he started when he was in high school.

My students were in awe. They saw a suit of armor and couldn't believe that someone their age started such a project. Nicholas demonstrated several metalsmithing techniques which was a good thing for my jewelry kids to see. Mr. Ray brought his sculpture kids, Mr. Derdeyn brought his drawing kids and Ms. Buzzzy brought her theater kids to see the fun.

What blows my mind more than anything is the open chain mail technique that Nicholas showed us. I've built any number of things with open chain mail and I did it the slow hard way. I'm astonished and enlightened to see a really easy short easier way that will build chain mail. I'm inspired and I want to build some chain mail pieces that are new and wonderful.

Thank you Nicholas for the demonstration. Thanks for engaging my students. Thanks for teaching me a new wonderful thing.

WOW. Today was a WOW.

Monday, September 17, 2007

We went to DFW to pick up Rachael. She'd been in Italy for six weeks. As we were driving into the airport we see a huge storm cell right over the airport.
Anyway we get to the terminal and find out that she can't land because of the storm. THEN we hear that they were about to run out of fuel so they rerouted to OKC to refuel. She was delayed about 3 hours.
We sat there by the exit of the International terminal and we talked to a lot of other folks waiting on the same flight. There was a family with two daughter and a boyfriend. Their girl was also coming back from several weeks in Italy and they were very anxious. There were Asian folks waiting on a huge group. We saw huge groups of African and Indian and Asian people going through with massive luggage. They must have packed every mobile thing they owned. It didn't look like vacation, it looked like moving to a new country. You should have seen the stretch vehicles that picked them up.
There was a group of about twenty. All dressed in Red White and Blue. This was on July 1. There were old people and medium people and young people and babies. They all had flags and banners and Old Navy 4th of July T shirts.
I don't know if you've ever had to clear customs but it takes a while....We knew Rachael's flight had landed and we went to the end of the walkway to wait for her and talked to more people. There was a very nice Swiss man who had been working for a month. His daughter was joining him to travel in the US for 3 weeks. Mark and he had a very nice conversation.
Folks would come out of the tunnel and the crowd got smaller.
The Red White and Blue crowd was getting agitated. The small children were restless. The big people were trying to entertain them and keep them calm.
A military Lieutenant or Captain comes through the gate. A little Red White and Blue girl screamed DADDY and took off running. She was followed closely by about a 3 year old boy. Dad scooped them both up and his whole crowd was holding up their banners and cheering. Mom made it to him and somehow he picked her up too and swung two children and a momma around. Mom lands and runs back to the crowd and takes an infant from another relation. She very reverently shows the baby to Dad who has never seen his new daughter before. He puts the other children down sweetly and takes his new daughter up in his arms and he breaks into tears.
At this point, everyone watching breaks into tears. I see him tell Mom that he will NEVER go away again. The crowd cheers.
Rachael is the next one through the gate. She's the prettiest thing I've ever seen. We hold her and love her and then she asks why we are crying. We tell her we love her. We share our happy tears with her.
A very moving moment.