October 26 I taught a one day stained glass class at CCA Kinston. The students, Ruth Ann and Jolene, were wonderful. They came from New Bern just to take my class!  We had a fun day, lots of laughs and stories. Of course, lots of hard work. 

I love teaching at this venue. The building is huge and full of wonderful art. Their Gift Shop is loaded with great gift ideas for others or yourself! Well worth the trip to Kinston. The staff is top notch. They take such good care of their visitors.

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I would love to take a PMC (Precious Metal Clay) class with Celie Fago  at her studio. Dream... actually I would love to spend a week with her ad learn as much as humanly possible. I love her work, style and her easy going attitude.
Here is a link to her website so you can see her work.

I have taken PMC classes with other well known PMC artists: Jeanette Landenwitch (could not find her website), Catherine Davies Paetz and Gordon Uyehara . You might want to check out their work, it is amazing!

I am a certified PMC Instructor and have taught a few classes here in NC and quite a few when I was in Virginia at Star's Beads In Vienna, VA. I plan on adding PMC classes back into the schedule after the holidays. 

​Would you be interested in learning how to work with PMC?

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I keep hearing people stay they can't wait for life to be normal again.  What was normal? Do we really want to go back to how things were before COVID came?

During the first few months of shelter in place/lockdown, did you notice how clear the skies looked? How the air did not smell like car exhaust? Did you see more birds and wildlife? I was amazed at how the earth was healing. When things opened up again I was saddened to see its affect on nature again.

Societal changes did have an impact on nature. Maybe we should use this time to build a better future, where we care about the environment and other people. Though the take out packaging did end up on the streets in the neighborhood. Why? Why can't you take it home and throw it out? Do you really have to throw chicken bones out your car window so my dog will find them and eat them before I can get it out of his mouth. Chicken bones are horrible for dogs. 

There are several elderly people or single people in my neighborhood and a core group of us checked on them during the first year of COVID. They were so appreciative and all it took was a phone call to check in and see if they needed anything. When I was little that is how everyone acted, looking out for others.

I used this time to change many of my habits. I Shop with cloth bags and mesh bags for veggies and fruit, I replaced plastic bags for garbage and dog poo bags with compostable vegetable based bags. 100 billion plastic bags are used in the US per. It takes 12 million barrels of oil to make those bags. They degrade but only photo degrade which means they breakdown into micron plastics which end up in the bodies of water and our water source,

I shop with packaging in mind. I buy glass bottle items over plastic and canned goods over plastic container items. It is still crazy how much plastic wrap and plastic bags are used for produce. I replaced tube toothpaste with toothpaste tablets. 900 million tubes go to the landfill each year. Those tubes do not degrade.

2.7 million tons of electronic goods waste a year. Only 1.04 tons of selected electronics are collected for recycling, which is a 38.5% recovery rate.

Sorry there was no glass in today's blog, the trigger was a bag of take out scattered all over the road. 

How do we create a better stronger society for everyone?