Best Things in Greece

In early June, Amy and I, and Rebecca's friend Philip, joined Rebecca in Greece, where she had been singing with her college choir. I had never been there before -- what a varied and marvelous part of the world! A few highlights:

Above: the Parthenon, sitting atop the Acropolis, at night. I had no idea how sprawling Athens is, or the way in which the Acropolis rises above the city, visible almost from everywhere. One imagines that 2000 years ago, above a smaller city with smaller buildings, the Parthenon must have seemed even more immense than it does now.

Below, one of the alleys that winds from old Athens up towards the Acropolis.

The olive trees (these in Crete) were growing everywhere we went in Greece. I love the shadows below the trees in this grove.

We spent three days on Santorini, an island in the Aegean Sea. The island is a C shape, the remnant of an ancient submerged volcano; the white houses and blue-capped churches sit on the rim of the island, looking from the distance like snow.

The tourist industry has kept some handcrafts alive in Greece. This woman, like most people we met, was incredibly friendly.

The bright sunshine and hot weather brought out beautiful flowers in every hue. This incredible flower is usually "nipped in the bud;" the capers we eat are the pickled buds of this plant.

There were street cats and dogs everywhere. They weren't exactly wild; while they didn't have owners, they were surviving on food and water put out for them by many Grecians.

Most of all, what caught my attention about Greece was the colors. The water, the sky, the flowers, the buildings, everything was blue and white and dotted with yellows and reds and greens. The gemstone reflections we occasionally saw in the sea seemed a reflection of all of Greece.

Playing With Fire

At our last ceramics class of the year, we did a raku firing. Usually once our pots have been low-fired ("bisque" fired), we slather them with the goop that will be melted into glaze, and then place them on shelves to wait. Anonymous ceramics apprentices will later place the pots into the big high-fire kiln, and a week later remove them to the closet that holds finished pots.

Raku firings are our one opportunity to run a firing ourselves. Under our teacher Debi's supervision, we load the pots into a primative kiln, light the propane torch, and later carefully remove the pots.

This year's class has been a really wonderful group. We chat through each Monday night -- sometimes about our pottery, and often about children, movies, books, pets, and politics.

While the first set of pots are firing, we put the next round (including my candle lantern) on top of the kiln to warm.

When the pots are "cooked," they are shiny and translucent. We remove them using tongs and great care, and place them in trash cans filled with paper, which catches on fire and makes a smelly mess, in the process giving the glazed pots more visual texture. From there, we plunge the pots in water to crackle the glaze.

This year we had two retired firefighters in our class; we thought they might report us to authorities when they saw the raku firing! But it turned out they liked playing with fire as much as the rest of us.

All told there's about an hour or more when the pot is firing and then still too hot to touch. The result is unpredictable. You never know what color or texture is going to come out of a raku firing. But some of the best things in life come through the fire, and their wonderfulness cannot be predicted.