Return to Philly

     I left North Carolina, it was a short but great visit.  There was a tremendous showing of support there that would follow me through to my next destination, Philadelphia. This would be my first time back since I left the previous November.  It was now the first of June.  My brother lives between NC & Philadelphia, and his son happened to be visiting - so I made a point to stop by for an overnighter.  The topic of hood ornament came up over breakfast, sooo....

By the way, I'm not always this safety conscious!

    Meet Speedy.  He is a flying snail puppy born without wings in 1999.  He developed a rocket pack in order to keep up with his family as they would fly around with their naturally developed wings.  He was one of a series of pieces made when I worked for Greg Leavitt 1999-2001.  The puppies were something that Greg made periodically, and I happened to be there for this batch - one joke led to another & Speedy was born!

    With my mascot finally attached, off I headed.  We had a workshop planned for East Falls Glassworks, another along the lines of what I have done before, but no takers.  Fortunately, I had had a couple of conversations with Nikolaj Christensen (manager extraordinaire) about this prior to my arrival, and he set up a series of shorter lessons for me to teach.  This was a combination of some of the folks that I had as regular lessons prior to my departure, other regulars who had an interest in what I am up to, as guest teacher for beginning classes, and instructor for some newbies.  All in all I had a very busy schedule for five days made up of 2 to 3 hour sessions.  Perfect.  This new model seems like a much better direction to go in with the public access glass studios. This is really the type of thing I would like to develop in other locations as well. Shorter lessons & a variety of experience levels.

    Being back in the city that took so much for me to leave, a lot of strange things happened, psychologically.  I finally straightened out things with my old studio (I was still on the lease up until this point - a major stress).  I had this nagging fear that I was not going to be able to leave, that I was somehow going to get "stuck".  I started to feel strange stresses of the stuff that I left behind there, the ghosts around the corner, so to speak.  I tried out a couple of the old patterns just to see if they still fit - which of course, they didn't.  This intense manic feeling came over me. The oddest thing to me was that I tried to see everyone that I knew, and actually made plans to be in different places with different people AT THE SAME TIME!  I'm still not entirely sure about what was going through my head, I know that I am past that now, and that it won't happen again. Whew!  I didn't take very many photos, but here are some that I did take - Click!

    I left town relieved, but a little confused.  Enter one of the blessings of the Road.  Lots of time alone to think about it & sort it out.