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Suite 2, The Coal Shed,
402 William Street, Wiarton, Ontario

roguegoat@hotmail.ca

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This week has been truly overwhelming, but Tuesday night at Phish, I was blissfully unaware of what was unravelling and surrounded by friends. The past few days have reminded me of how important our friends are; that they accept and support us for exactly who we are, dark and light, but also believe in the best of us and love us enough to call us on our sidesteps and stand up to us when we are falling down. I’m grateful to have had amazing people in my life when I needed strong voices to lead me to better choices , I’m grateful for them now when I do not, but do need nudges to ask for help. So many people go through life trying to avoid responsibility, but our most real and constant and human one is to each other, always.

Yesterday - I took the train to Lewes (pronounced Lewis because ~English), and then walked the course of the River Ouse to where it meets the sea at Newhaven. Along the way, I stopped in Rodmell, where Virginia Woolf lived and worked for over 20 years of her incredible life before she ended it by stepping into the turbid Ouse, her pockets filled with stones. As I had followed the river south and then cut inland on a bridle path, it felt like I walked backwards into her life; the last views across the Downs, then back to the church that has stood since the time of the Domesday Book, through Leonard Woolf’s gardens, backwards into their low ceilinged and book strewn home, this house where her incredible mind conjured A Room of One’s Own, Orlando and Mrs.Dalloway. We insist on a magic to these places where great things were wrought in brains we admire. But it’s busy here and the extra bodies in small spaces only make me anxious to leave...it’s just a topography to a life, vaguely interesting signposts to inexplicable brilliance. The run of the river water, the twist of it twines time with the cadence of my feet; Virginia slipping beneath it as one, further back, men fishing, sustenance, further forward, industrialization and the slip of the rivers course westwards, Virginia again, parts of her as history flowing from its’ mouth into the sea and across, directly across the Channel to where lies Dieppe, the blood of Canadians on its’ shores, swept back dilute by tides, iron brine. But it was mostly a day of noticing small things and my own, very solitary experience of it, not terribly troubled by the weight of history. “By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.” From A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (of whom I have an eponymous lamb). 😜

Montreal sunsets. The process of leaving.

One walnut aurora borealis pieces available. 24x36, $1385. (18x36, $1025 SOLD)

I’ve been taking a silversmithing course with the best teacher ever @shellstrong (At the OS Workshop, which only exists at all because of another incredible woman! @moragbudgeon) Shelley is an amazing human, a very technical jeweller with a fidelity to traditional skills...but also has a great deal of understanding for more esoteric, fine art-y perspectives on design. Which means she has a fair amount of latitude for students like me who don’t really take to doing “projects” well and I hate “pat on the head” technical processes just to make something look good easily. I like doing everything the hardest way possible and tend towards making things even more difficult by only loosely following the rules and creating even more technical challenges then necessary. She only sighed a few times at me 😜 in six weeks. It’s hard to see in the photo but the bottom edge of my really thick-Shelley said it would make it harder -ring is textured to look like grass and then the blackened silver rabbit cut out is a riff on the animated Black Rabbit of Inle, which I’m guessing you would have to be English/Englishy and of my general age to have been traumatized by. It kind of turned out like a rabbit super hero belt for my finger, which is awesome. The necklace was made by cutting out the silver, sweat soldering the negative rabbit, resizing the cloud cut out to be a separate component, cutting out a raindrop and setting a pain in the ass tiny stone on it, stamping the words, blackening the baseplate and the storm cloud, filing, buffing and Shelley saving the day with custom jump rings to assemble the hanging components. The words are a reference to the Nayyirah Waheed poem and Vonnegut quote below and a personal reminder that strength is not hardness and vulnerability is not weakness. Also...rabbits that aren’t soft suck, so there’s that. stay soft. it looks beautiful on you. Nayyirah Waheed Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Duncan’s favourite napping spot...under the coffee table, in the middle of everyone, in a purloined dog bed. He sleeps with his eyes open 😳 but incredibly deeply.

Climate Change is Real. Mad love for this lone fellow protesting at the lights in Hepworth today...unfortunately when I was in too much of a rush to stop and ask his name. If you are interested in climate change activism in Bruce/Grey/Owen Sound...please consider attending the Round table discussion at the Harmony Centre/OS tomorrow night at 7 (a follow up to the @resiliencedoc premiere) and/or The Green New Deal Town Hall in Wiarton May 23, 7 pm at my studio.

Guys, I HAVE SO MANY LAMBS!! Mrs.Dalloway, middle, was born last Wednesday without fuss or warning and is a little on the tiny side and having troubles nursing. So she’s getting little bottle top ups and there is seriously not much that can diminish the joy of today’s lunch hour break cuddling a lamb in a sunny pasture. Totally worth the heart squeezes in the middle of the night worrying about her. Walter and Waker Glass, either side of Mrs. D, were born last night. Waker is quite big and had one foot turned back and seemed to get hung up inside on his mum’s pelvis. He hung part way out for quite some time, his head was swollen and his tongue protruding, so I (gently) slipped my hand in the birth canal to rotate his leg and after what felt like forever, he finally slipped free. Closely followed (without difficulty) by his tinier brother, Walter. I have a.) never been more thoroughly soaked in viscous bodily fluids b.) appreciated a hot bath and c. ) FELT LIKE I CAN DO ANYTHING BECAUSE I HAD MY ARM IN A SHEEP.

When I think of my mother, I think of gardening and classical music. Because of her, the Latin and common names for plants are a music as familiar as those of the great composers to me. Last night she came to visit so we could go see @interroquartet across the bay in the tiny, beautiful hall cared for by The Colpoy’s Bay Women’s Institute. As soon as she arrived, after unloading plants for my garden, she wandered the yard, looking to see what plants were up or changed and stood quietly within the radius of the bird feeder and I could hear her voice softly greeting birds as “handsome” or “hello mister” and then quickly telling the dogs that they too were handsome, in case of any hurt feelings. And I do exactly this, my mother’s words falling from my lips. “Hello, my love. Hello, my little love”, through the garden, through the barn. Things we don’t say to adults but only to the tiny wild hearts; beasts, birds, children. My mum kept ringed journal after journal, year after year, filled not with schedules or emotions, but with the minutiae of the garden and the backyard denizens. In a handwriting that I will always know as hers, she chronicled the variables in growth of the different species of plant, the changes in season, the character of the weather, the names of the birds at the feeders and when they appeared, in numbers greater or smaller than the year before. She’s always been an early riser and the sound of her routine this morning was also as familiar as her cursive; the stirring of the dogs, the quiet steps on the stairs, the kettle boiled, the intent silence when I could tell her to be reading or watching the birds or geese or cows through windows. The running of water and gentle noise of dishwashing, something no one but my mother or I would be doing at this hour, in this home. She called her goodbye and left early, the dogs settling back around me. And when I got up, this...so quintessentially my mother. And also now, me. The birds of the morning noted in her hand on this date, a paper slipped into the guide book I keep at the window with the binoculars, on this Mother’s Day.

An afternoon foraging excursion on a beautiful day in Harrison Park with the amazing Chef Zack Keeshig! @keeshig90 Zach is super personable, knowledgeable and passionate about foraging paths, forests and river banks to infuse his signature Objiwe fusion creations with a literal taste of place. We found wild carrot, ramps, trout lilies, watercress, wild marshmallow, fiddleheads, wild ginger and more and Zach carefully described how each flavour could enhance different dishes, how to respect nature’s produce and responsibly forage, and each species’ unique growing conditions. We finished with a seriously magical forest picnic of cured salmon with ramp pesto, pine nuts, dill, whipped cream & trout lily flower on bannock with the perfect fallen tree for a communal bench. 😍 Zach will be doing more of these guided walks culminating in an outdoor feast of his creations...give him a follow for updates on his walks and pop up dinners. #chefzachkeeshig #harrisonparkowensound #explorethebruce

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