friends and mentors...via web

I've been thinking I should close my blog since I have been so unfaithful to posting...but it is my passport to such a great country! I don't know exactly why I began this blog. I was keeping a journal of my work in the studio and it seemed more interesting to put it into a blog. Through it I've met some of the grandest people--potters, all. I'd never have known them except through my blog and theirs. That has made it--blogging--a real treasure for me. Beside the pleasure of these friendships, the help and stimulus they've given so freely has been tremendously valuable.

Today a blogging friend, Linda Starr, wrote about receiving the "Silver Lining Award" which she was passing on to some of her blogging friends and asked us to pass it on to our silver liners. So that is the impulse behind this post. [When I opened this post and put in the title--which would be 'friends'--from somewhere else, "and mentors...via web" was added without my participation. At first I erased the extra words but then I realized that was exactly what I was intending to post about. Still don't know where the extra came from. PS I just discovered that I had used that title in August '09--so it was remembering what I did not remember! Not so unusual around here at home!]

I met Linda first through some comments she added to my blog and stimulated me to look at her blog which led to following her and her husband's motor-home trip across the southern US looking for a new home--which they found in Florida. What brave souls they must be! I loved reading about her potting experiences during that journey! Had even hoped to meet them as they drove through San Antonio but weather and circumstances denied us that encounter.

I think my first blogging friend was Ron Philbeck. His was the first blog I found and followed when I discovered there were blogging potters. I suppose we made contact through comments on his posts. I loved his work and how he wrote about what he was doing. I remember seeing pictures of him pouring glaze over plates and platters ala Japanese pottery style and then reading about his drawing explorations in his journal--long before they appeared on his pottery. Ron has always been so supportive and generous of my struggles. He is a real friend that I'd love to meet for real!

Through Ron I met three English friends that I'd love to meet someday outside of my daily readings in their blogs: Doug Fitch, an incredibly hard working potter who, like Ron, takes the time to maintain a steady flow of blogging in spite of a very busy schedule. Another Englishman I followed regularly, Andrew Douglas, seems to have given up on his blogging--though I keep checking to see if it might just be a snag in the system. And through Ron I encountered Hannah McAndrew who might be the brightest blogger around--bright in the sense of sunny, cheerful. Ron, Doug and Hannah are all 'slipware' potters from whom I've learned about that long and rich tradition.

Two other bloggers that I consider real friends and mentors are Tracey Broome and Judy Shreve. I've not met either but feel as if they are real friends--like next door neighbors that you can run to for an extra cup of flour when needed! And each has always generously responded when I've asked for a bit of help.

I have a long list of blogs that I read most every day and am enriched by so doing. But these few mentioned I consider very special friends. You know the old saw, "If you could have dinner with anyone from any place or any time, who would you choose?" Well, these folk are ones I'd want to be sitting with if only I could!