amoebas are us

Listened over night, as I couldn't sleep, to Obama's speech about changing the American Health Insurance System.
Now, this afternoon he is commemorating 9/11. Both depressing, tho hopefully something good will come out of both.
We were on holiday in Cornwall when we saw the TV when we returned from a happy trip out in the sunshine - to see, what at first, i thought was a disaster movie.
When I realised some of what was happening, looping thru again and again, we made frantic phone calls on our poor little mobiles, such a seemingly fragile connection, to our kids in the States. Neither were in New York but at the time no-one knew for sure what was or was going to happen.
I note Coffee Spoons is reading old magazines about the Second world War. We have g'dads big red mock-leather books here [badly flood damaged] binding together magazines about the First World War.
I have started and now stopped reading a book about Churchill/Stalin/Roosevelt at Yalta; too much detail of unbelievable cruelty as armies crushed and re-crushed Poland, to want to continue.
But, although it is all ghastly and we may end up wiping ourselves out as Margaret Atwood suggests in her new book, I still think in the main we try hard.
We are just animals, in the paper today it says even amoeba betray each other!! so each time one of us does a generous thing it is a tick and I will cherish it as long as I can.

making a mark

Arrived safely in Cambridge, the gallery looks quite nice but not on the main drag, so we may have to "drag" people off the buses as they trundle past. Saw plenty of passengers peering out of the top deck windows down into the brightly coloured gallery windows.
initially we were made to feel very Female/useless as there was no electricity,the fuse box looked forbidding and there was a note about the air conditioning having blown a fuse the previous day so we called for the electrician.
Fortunately he was the jolly artisan sort, made it work and left clutching a poster. I nearly said "for your wife" i was so mired in the little woman role.

This lion was a protective male symbol for the rest of the day we ladies stewarded. I remember I once as a kid drew a card for my parents anniversary where my dad was a lion and my ma was a thistle. Hmmmmmmm.
I really like these "vessels" and actually have her book, but so far haven't managed to read the instructions sufficiently well to exploit the idea.

M was stewarding with me, but became incensed very soon when she spied that they had hung her four pieces in the wrong order and charged the wrong price. Whoops. As work was screwed to the wall it wasn't something that could be rectified. Goodness knows what happens if someone wants to buy something and take it home. Fortunately there was little danger of that as we took 50p [postcard] before the lights were turned on and about a 310 I would reckon for the rest of the day.

We were closed in the afternoon tho, for a Private View to be opened by Mary Cozens Walker, textile artist, easily recognised as her husband and she are both members of the RA and he paints her and himself in "amusing" situations.
She said some nice things about being true to ourselves as artists which is all very well but I would guess that many of us feel we are so many people/roles fighting or conniving for survival, especially of the identity that makes time for "making" as opposed to making do.