Memento Mori

My last *musing* was in April of 2020. It’s now November. It has been an “annus horribulis” (terrible/horrible) year for all of us. 

We have all had to deal with lockdowns, shortages, store closures, family separations, masks and had to forego doctor visits, worship, family get togethers, other abominations & interruptions to our lives as we expected to live them.  It sometimes seems like life, as we knew it just a few short months ago, may never return to normal. But, life does go on…. In spite of international intrigues, plagues & governmental edicts. And we adjust. But should we?

As those of you who follow me on Facebook know, my youngest brother was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, inoperable and terminal, in May of this year. He is homeless. Because of his symptoms, it is imperative for him to be near a bathroom at all times. My dear sister Anne and I have done all we can to raise funds to keep him housed in a motel until he is moved into hospice for his final days. And we appreciate SO MUCH all of the prayers and those who have contributed to this effort by buying the dolls I have posted on FB. (It’s just shocking how expensive motel rooms are!) 

I have had to take a look at my own collection of artwork and mentally prepare to let go. The first things that came to mind were some of the bronzes that were already featured in the shop on this website. I have reduced the prices by half on two of the bronzes and will be adding more bronzes shortly, as well as some of my early porcelain dolls and some of my sweet Maggie Made children.

And it’s all good! It’s time for me to let go of the past! Perhaps this will release me mentally & emotionally to begin sculpting the things that are in my heart before my hands fail me. The sudden death of Dianna Effner has chastened me, reminding me of the reality that this life is a gift - with a time stamp on it. Memento Mori. God rest her soul.

As always, you are all in my heart. You have supported me and lifted me up through so many years. May God bless each and every one of you. 

Paralysis on the Contemplation of the 'Divine Artist'

I have hit a wall. You might callout the sculptor’s version of writer’s block. But that’s not quite right. The ideas are there, as is the desire to realize them. Something else is keeping me from wedging that first ball of clay; other than the freezing temperatures of the last few days.

I have the clay - stocked up before the Governor ordered all non essential businesses closed. Tamas made me a wedging board and smaller platforms on which to build. Sculpting tools'? no problem. There is access to water.

All of my other obligations have been met. So, what is the roadblock?

It hit me today as I was contemplating the passion of Our Lord, the ‘Divine Artist’, who created everything that was created. But even the most prodigious, masterful sculptors create a mere shadow of the real thing. And I consider my own gift, as thankful as I am for it, as infinitesimally small.

Then a memory surfaced of a 12 year old me who decided to ‘make’ a light bulb for my 7th grade science project. My teacher, an imposing figure of a man, approved my project with a wry smile. And I went to work. I don’t recall at what point I realized that I was not going to create a light bulb, but merely a ‘model’ of a light bulb, hollow and without the spark to illuminate.

In writing this down, the answer has presented itself. God does not ask me to sculpt perfectly or to compare my abilities with those whose gifts were or are greater than mine. He simply asks me to take care of the garden he gave to me.

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

“In return for the odor of my jasmine, I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

“I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself: '“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

Antonio Machado

No More Excuses

After close to five years without it, my kiln is now hooked up to electricity and ready for its maiden firing in our new surroundings. 

I have no more excuses.

Now comes the time when what is ‘in my head’ has to be made manifest in clay. This is terrifying. What if I have lost the ability to sculpt? What if I can’t remember how to fire? What if my inspiration dries up? 

Who do I think I am?

ENOUGH! It matters NOT who I am. The niggling voices that make me question myself are not just unwelcome and unhelpful - they are malicious, perhaps diabolical.   

God gives every one of us a gift. It is up to us to develop that gift and then get out of the way! 

Stop thinking, thinking, thinking and just get to work!

Eye on Eternity

I turned another year older in the time lapsed since my last post.

It’s been quite a ride. Sculpting is still my passion and creating beauty in small packages still my calling.

Is it possible that I have been making dolls professionally for over 35 years now? The changes in my life and in the business through these years has been truly astounding. 

It seems like another life when I turned a fun little way of making gifts for family into a small, one woman business. Still another life ago when I had a staff and a studio in a beautiful historic building. There has been an ebb & flow of the popularity of our dolls, but our core collectors have stayed with us throughout it all. And We Love You!  Many people will be astonished to hear that I was so shy in the early years that I stayed away from public venues, like conventions and Toy Fair. Then, my friend Robert Tonner told me that I needed to ‘get out there!’ that people wanted to meet me. And I have met so many wonderful people, and made lifelong friends by putting myself into the public sphere.

Uncertainty, which is life after all… is upon us. After 18 years of working with our partners (and friends) in China, our ability to produce an affordable doll there is in question. So, what do I know for sure today? 

We are still working with our wonderful Chinese friends, making the necessary adjustments and we wish them well!

After nearly 49 years of marriage and taking our health for granted - I am fortunate to be alive and to have my husband of 49 years with me.

Today, new (or are they?) concepts are working their way to the surface, begging for attention.

Today, I have the desire to get my hands back in earth clay and make one of kind figurative pieces.

Today, I have my eye on eternity.

May God bless you all.

A Wild Ride & a Sweet Ending

In December of 2018, my husband and long time business partner Tamas and I had a ‘moving sale’ as we were vacating our commercial business space. The first person to show up to our sale was Rachel Hoffman, who snapped up all of the undressed Zoe’s immediately. She already had an idea in mind. Shortly after that, I met with Rachel to discuss being the souvenir artist for her June 2019 Virtual Doll Convention. Could we produce more Zoe"? What about a special costume just for the June convention? What about doing a class on say…. painting or sculpting? Why not both? You should make kits for both classes for people who don’t have access to the supplies…. No website? No problem, I’ll help you set one up. Oh, and we need to have a paper doll because it will be the real convention doll available to everyone who registers…

To say Rachel is a ball of fire is an understatement! Her enthusiasm and certainty of how good this alliance would be for both of us was…. intoxicating.

(I should mention here that I have never been a good judge of time, particularly of how much of my own time to allot to any given project. It just takes the time it takes!) This importance of this tidbit will become apparent later in this story.

Nevertheless, I jumped in with both feet - heedless of the time that would be needed for all the projects I had just agreed to…. ‘Keep calm, and just get on with it, ‘ is what I told myself, with Rachel cheering me on at every opportunity and Tamas, the skeptic, just shaking his head.

The first order of business was to design a special costume for ‘Zoe’ and get them made. Both Rachel and I were on tenterhooks waiting to hear back from the factory about price and delivery time. Once we got a commitment from them, I was at ease but I don’t think Rachel stopped worrying until the package arrived just weeks before the convention started. The project that worried me the most was the paper doll, with several costumes and backgrounds. Sketching on paper is not something I do often and when I do, I worry about it incessantly if it going to be published.

Next came the website. Alleluia! Things have come a very long way since our last commercial website (now defunct) that cost us upwards of $10,000. Rachel introduced us to an affordable, sophisticated website builder that we can control ourselves. Beautiful. I spent some time populating the website and getting the shop set up. But now, I had to design the roll-ups for the painting and sculpting kits that we were going to offer to attendees of the Virtual Doll Convention and order the contents of same. (And here is a little secret, I made each one of those roll-ups myself.)

Then, the pre-orders started to roll in for the two special edition dolls we offered through the Virtual Doll Convention. But before I could take the time to begin producing those special editions, there was a painting class AND a sculpting class to prepare for. Now, for someone who does not like to be photographed, in addition to the fact that I work in solitude, without thinking about what I do - all of that had to change for this to work. And boy, was I nervous. But once those classes were ‘wrapped’ thanks to Rachel’s uncanny knack of asking the right questions to keep things moving along, I could take a deep breath. And pray that something I said or did in those classes ignited a spark that will burn brightly for another artist.

No time to rest on laurels though. There was Virtual Doll Convention salesroom to prepare for! Photos of all the items we offered needed to be taken, descriptions written and then figure out how to get them to Rachel to post (for the tech challenged - that would be me). I had, of course, begun preparing the special edition dolls for painting, dressing & wigging. Tonight I am happy to say that I have finished both editions and every order will be shipped out in the next few days.

So, it has been a wild ride! And I wouldn’t change a minute of it! For Tamas and I, this was a life affirming event after a very challenging year. So, I will end this with the words I used to thank Rachel Hoffman for all that she has accomplished, not just with Kish & Company, but in orchestrating this entire beautiful symphony, with a quote:

“Music heard so deeply

That is no heard at al, but you are the music,

While the music lasts…”

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (the Dry Salvages)

Six Boys & Thirteen Hands

My friend Annie sent me this story. It’s long, but worth the time to read as we remember our veterans and our troops this Memorial Day weekend.

“Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, WI where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation’s capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.   

On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history -- that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, during WW II.   

Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, 'Where are you guys from?'

I told him that we were from Wisconsin. 'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.'  (It was James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, DC, but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night .)

When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.)  My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin My dad is on that statue, and I wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers'. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.    

'Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called 'War.' But it didn't turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it. (He pointed to the statue) 'You see this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph...a photograph of his girlfriend Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.    

'The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the 'old man' because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or 'Let's die for our country' He knew he was talking to little boys.. Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.'  

'The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima . He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero' He told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?'

So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken).    

'The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.' Yes, he was a fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into 
the morning. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away. 

'The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not 
here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press.    

'You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.      

'When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.'    

'So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.'    

Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.    

One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is . . that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.    

Words, Birds & this Virtual Thing...

I began the day on my knees, praying that God would give me the grace not to make a fool of myself in the videos scheduled for the afternoon for the Virtual to Doll Convention with Rachel Hoffman.

Then, I just happened to click onto a YouTube video about how much * Words Matter*. Now, you would think someone of my advanced age might already know this, and I thought that I did; but the framing of this video in addition to the scientific experiments that were highlighted within, simply rocked my world. I want to share thIs with all of you, but am technologically insufficient to figure out how to embed this in the blog - so I will just have to give you the name of the video. Please look it up and give it a few minutes of your time. Here it is:

“You will never speak bad words again after watching this! The Power of Words are HUGE” A & Ω Productions

The next thing that happened was this: Tamas urgently called me to the window to see a bird in the neighbor’s tree. We have many little brown birds - so what was the big deal? Well, this bird was brilliantly colored, with a bright red head, almost neon yellow body and black wings. Gorgeous! It took us almost till late afternoon to discover what this beautiful bird was, having never seen it before.

In the meantime, it was showtime with Rachel Hoffman! Rachel came to my studio, dressed adorably in a polka dot floor length garden party frock to interview me about the special edition dolls and the kits for the classes for her June 19th Virtual Doll Convention. You know you are dealing with a professional when she makes everything seem so effortless, including putting her ‘interviewees’ totally at ease.

This ‘virtual thing’ is all new to me too! But what a wonderful opportunity Rachel has opened for all of us to share and learn. I am truly humbled to be counted among the presenters at this upcoming convention!

After Rachel packed up her equipment and was off to the next exciting interview…. I was enjoying a glass of wine with my sister Anne, when her husband Mike spotted yet another one of those brilliant birds. Then a second, and a third. A precursor of beautiful things to come? I think so!

This is the bird (pictured above -right) the Western Tanager.

God is not called ‘THE Creator’ for no reason.

Western Tanager

Rumors of My Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated...

Several years ago, someone shocked me by asking if was was enjoying retirement. Looking back, I think rumors of my retirement were spurred by the disappearance of our Kish & Company website. It didn’t just disappear, it died! And we had so much going on at that time - we moved from our beloved building in the Highlands to be closer to my Dad. Then there was the cost of putting up a new website. We had spent tens of thousands of dollars on several websites previously, and that was just not in the cards.

We despaired of ever getting another one up! Then, we got involved with Rachel Hoffman’s June Virtual Doll Convention. Rachel kindly offered to help us set up this new website! She is wonderful!

And the tools that are available to design one’s own website today are nothing short of amazing.

It will take us some time to fill out the empty pages as we learn how to navigate these new waters. But bear with us and hopefully it will one day soon be complete.

I never ceased creating new dolls, although the number of designs certainly diminished greatly over the past five years. Now that prices have skyrocketed in China, we wonder if we will be able to produce our designs there much longer. But, even that doesn’t mean the end for us - it is merely a bend in the road.

I still have dreams about getting my hands in earth clay once again.