Retro Kansas: Solar Eclipse

  It was May 10th, 1994, and I was outside with my camera hoping to get decent pictures of the solar eclipse.  Surprised, I looked down and the sun's light had reflected through the leaves and created hundreds of miniature reflections of the eclipse on the ground.  I snapped 10 or 12 pictures in amazement!

New Shoes

I've been looking for a new pair of yakking shoes for some time, as I was sick of the crappy tennis shoes or plastic POS's I've been wearing for years. I wanted something that would drain water as well as dry fairly quickly, and definitely be tough enough to last for more than one season. I'd considered a pair of Adidas Outdoor Boat Shoes (vs indoor boat shoes?  Gahhhh...), as they had received mostly favorable reviews on Amazon. Trouble was, all of the not-butt-ugly colors were sold out in my size. I finally decided on a pair that were neon green, figuring after a few trips they'd be broken in and would lose some of that blinding new-car shine. This is what they look like after a couple of trips and a little drunken kicking logs back into the fire:


 

As can be seen in the second photo, there are holes in the bottom made to allow water to drain, and if you look closely there is a fine screen covering the holes. Surprisingly, no sand was able to make it through the screen, making them more comfortable in that respect than any of the shoes I'd been wearing. They are lightweight, comfortable, the water drains fairly quickly, and they dry fast too.  One strange aspect of these shoes:  They smell like fruit.  I thought it would go away after they got wet once, but oddly, it's still there.

It was only a few days after purchasing these when I saw that Adidas has a newer model called the Jawpaw Water Shoe. Once again, they have high ratings and look pretty darn cool. I'm not sold on the watersock look of the top, but the soles look beefier than the boat shoes I'd just purchased. No regrets buying the boat shoes, but if I were to do it over I might give the Jawpaws a try.

Morel Cherry Poppin'

"I found my first morel!" Derek said excitedly, grinning from ear to ear as he bent over to retrieve his camera from his kayak. "I'm going to take a picture before I pick it."

D's first Morel

We'd put in at Hughes Crossing on Fall River an hour or so before, and had been talking morels much of the time... well, I had anyway. After months of learning about morels from reading everything possible on the nets it's safe to say I was obssessed, and after last year's morel busting drought we'd both been determined to find some. Though I'd already managed to find a few in Oklahoma near the Kansas border the week before and some in Kansas, I wanted to find enough to stuff ourselves to the gills that night. We'd had plenty of rain, the temps were around record levels for late March, and it was an absolutely beautiful day.

I paddled over to where Derek had stopped, and ran with Trout up the bank where Derek was bending over taking a picture of a perfectly ripe morel growing from the side of the bank. I peered into the area above the morel and spotted several more growing mere feet away. "Holy shit!" I exclaimed, "Did you see those?!" Derek looked up and after staring into the grass for a few seconds affirmed that indeed he did! I climbed up into the weeds and saw even more, and we both got even more excited and began picking. We covered the area for 15 or 20 minutes and ended up with maybe a pound or so of lovely morels. "We'll be eating good tonight!" I said, and discovered I'd been infected with Derek's permagrin.

Were we happy? Damned straight we were!

Our morels

As I mentioned, I'd looked in Oklahoma the week before but had come up nearly empty. I had pulled up to a likely looking area where a woman and 6 or 7 kids were loading full plastic grocery bags into the back of her truck. I waved at them as they drove away, and realized with some dismay they'd probably cleaned them out. I decided to have a look anyway, and within minutes began seeing dozens of morel stumps where they had been cut off at the ground. After 30 minutes of walking I saw a dead elm tree and walked towards it, expecting only to find more stumps, when I saw my first ever morel hiding under a blanket of leaves. It was 8 or 9 inches tall and hunched over from the weight of the leaves on top of it, and as I cleared the area around it and snapped a few pics I saw another smaller one growing several feet away. They'd missed them because they were growing between two trees and were hard to see.

My first morel

Morel stumps

I went again the next day and found a few more several miles from that spot amidst scores of beer bottles and literally tons of trash. (WTF is wrong with people!) A few days later I discovered a spot very near my house that yielded nearly a pound of grays and blonds, and several more big blond ones a few days later.

The season for morels is almost over now, but I'm not quite finished yet. I'll be heading out today to try my luck in a few different spots, and probably to revisit a few of the "old" spots.


Wish me luck!

It's Alive!!!

Get Your "Art" Geek Shoes on for: Albany Slip Clay

When I first took a ceramics class many years ago, there was a plastic one gallon jug sitting on the shelf with an ancient tattered paper label titled: ALBANY SLIP. Curious, I asked the instructor what it was, and he informed me it was a rare slip clay from a pit that no longer produced it. (In other words: No, You Can't Use It.) Through my time at a different school students would sometimes speak of the magical Albany Slip as if it were made from the dust gently shaken from faerie wings, and many dreamed of a day when they'd actually find some and create the World's Greatest Art Piece, or some such nonsense.

It was actually very commonly used for 250 years, and in the days when clay was king it was used as a glaze for practically every utilitarian piece ever made of clay. It fires to medium to dark chocolate brown at cone 9-10 and creates a nice glassy glaze.

Albany Slip Glaze

Last night curiosity got the better of me and I decided to look on Google Earth to see if I could locate where it was mined. I'd heard houses had been built over the pit so it was unavailable, and I assumed I'd see rows of ticky tacky instead of a clay mine. After reading a little about it on the internets I'd discovered it was mined just a few blocks from the State Capitol in Albany New York, so I fired up Google Earth and within seconds was hovering over the city. After scrutinizing the area immediately surrounding the Capitol, I thought maybe the people were right; the place was lousy with buildings and no sign of disturbance. I slowly looked around the area and then something caught my eye: Across the Hudson River I could see what looked like excavation activity near what appears to be a high school. A closer look confirmed it was indeed a recent excavation, and looking even closer, I could clearly see a large backhoe filling the back of a truck! According to the information available the clay was originally dug from the west side of the river in the area known as Tivoli park, and I see no reason why the deposit couldn't be slightly to the east of the river also. After spending some time looking at Google Earth, it appears there are many small pits dug over the entire area, so who knows?

Albany Slip Pit?

Mining Albany Slip?

As some might imagine, this was somewhat a shock. Does this mean Albany Slip will be available for sale again? I spent more time than I'll admit searching for the answer to that question, and eventually discovered this page from 2007: Ceramic Industry Pottery Production Practices

After reading the entire piece (which was fascinating to a clay geek like me), I came upon this gem at the bottom of the page:

A 10-ton stockpile of original raw Albany slip clay is available and can be purchased in small or large quantities from The Great American Wheel Works, N.Y. The clay comes with an instruction sheet on how to screen the small pebbles that constitute approximately 1% of the total clay content.

(contact information at the link.)

I found a few more references to the Albany Slip Clay on a few other pages, and they inform me the raw clay sells for a whopping $5 a pound. It used to sell for less than that for a 50 lb bag! I'm considering buying a few pounds, though due to the fact I do only primitive, non-glazed pieces these days it'd likely never be used.

So all you people looking for Albany Slip, there you are. And if you clay turds out there do create the greatest work of art ever made using it, remember: You owe me.