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We are getting our first cool nights of fall. The confederate rose out at the country house is starting to bloom. It should be magnificent in a week or two. The ginger here, those that survived the battering of Hurricane Ike, are still blooming and the angel trumpet just put on a huge burst of blooms. The red hibiscus survived a terrible infestation of white fly this summer and is starting to bloom again.

And speaking of Hurrican Ike, it has been about a month since it blew through. The city is starting to look normal again although there are still some piles of tree debris and now and then you see a fallen tree that hasn't been dealt with yet Also, almost every tree left has small dead branches still up in the canopy. There are still blue tarps on roofs nearly everywhere you look. We fared well. The storm blew in Friday night in the wee hours. It started waking us up about 1:00 AM with the sound of the wind like a freight train, the trees thrashing and the occassional thump as something hit the ground or someone's house. All through the night, whenever I would hear that sound, I would get up and look out all the windows to see what I could see. Not much though. We finally got up about 2:30 AM and turned on the news. The lights started flickering about 3:30 and we finally lost power. There was a little lull as the center passed over and then the thrashing started up again just as bad or worse than before. We have a pecan on the other side of the driveway across from the bedroom window and I watched those limbs sway through an impossible arc of degrees. It made it through without the loss of any major limbs though. We were mostly worried about the 70 foot tall sycamore across the street from us but couldn't see what was happening to it because of the other trees in the yard. By 6:00 AM, the worst was over. Didn't get much rain but it was still raining lightly with some pretty good gusts until about 10 AM. I walked around the block with our grandkids to see the damage. The sweet gum on the corner of the shop lost about a third of it's branches with one fairly big one landing on the roof of the shop and the roof of our neighbor's garage. No damage to the shop though. Several medium size branches were down in the space between the back of the shop and the fence. One small branch was leaning against a window of the house but nothing fell on the car or the truck. The driveway and yard was completely littered with small branches of all kinds. The neighbor behind us had a tree that broke in half with the crown landing on the roof of his next door neighbor. That same house had a big oak in their back yard that fell on top of their house as well doing considerable damage to their roof. Across the street, the sycamore was still standing but had lost two 40 foot branches. The cedar tree between them and the house next door fell on their neighbor's porch roof but didn't really damage much. Further down the block, a large limb from a pear fell on their jeep and several houses down from that, a major trunk fell on the roof of the house and they later told me they also lost all the trees in their backyard, but those mostly fell into their neighbor's yard. A tree across the street was leaning at a 45 degree angle which also lifted up their front porch. The park at the end of the block lost two oaks, one of which fell on the baseball diamond backstop. This was repeated all over the city. We lost tens of thousands of trees. 95 percent of the city was without power and water. Several of the pumping stations were down. The next night there was a heavy rainstorm not associated with the hurricane that flooded the city because there was so much debris down that the storm drains couldn't drain. The water went into people's houses and the roadways. The bayous were all the way up and even breaching their banks in some cases. We got about two inches in the shop. The city got the pumping stations on line within a day or two but it took over three weeks for most of the electricity to be restored. For two weeks, most of the traffic lights were down and traffic was horrendous. We were fortunate in that our neighborhood got the power back on after 6 days.

Our main concern, after the storm blew through and we were relieved that there was no damage to our house, was whether or not we would be able to make our flight out on Monday. The airports were still closed on Sunday but were supposed to reopen on Monday. The freeway we needed to take to get to the airport was still flooded on Sunday as well. We were scheduled on a 7:30 AM flight to Maryland to teach a 6 day workshop there. With no power, no TV, no radio, we just hoped for the best and packed by candlelight. We got up early Monday morning and headed for the airport. The flooding had receded and the airport was open. Our flight was only delayed by about 30 minutes while we waited for the rest of the flight crew to arrive. So we did, indeed, get to Vitrum to teach our pate de verre workshop. Judith and Kevin hava a wonderful facility there and they are, themselves, wonderful people. We had a great time and then took two extra days to sightseeing in D.C.

Our first day in DC, we did the monuments. We went to look at the White House, past the Washington Monument, through the World War 2 monument, along the reflection pool to the Lincoln Memorial. We paused here to read the two innaugural speechs. Very moving. From there we walked along the Vietnam Memorial, the the Korean War Memorial. These are very sobering memorials, each very different. Then on to the Roosevelt Memorial. It was astounding. And the Jefferson Memorial. Incredible. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson, three amazing men. We would do well to pay attention to them even now.

Our second day in DC, we spent touring some of the museums. The American Indian Museum which was pretty much, as Marc says, the American Indian Holocaust Museum. It starts with the arrival of white men and chronicles their decline and demise. Another area deals with their lifestyles and beliefs. The Botannical Gardens were wonderful and I would have liked to spend more time there. We walked through the sculpture garden and then went in the Museum of Natural History. We saw the big elephant, the Hope diamond and other gems and minerals and we walked through the fossil record from the beginning of time to the present.

On our return, we finished up the tea box for the show at Morgan Contemporary Glass, Steeped in Thought, the 3rd annual teapot show which opened earlier this month. Coming up is the SOFA Expo show November 7th - 9th with a preview on the evening of the 6th. Once again Riley Galleries will be showing our new work, the wall pieces and boxes. Also in November, the Texas Chair Project, in which we have a piece, will open at the Austin Museum of Art, Friday, November 15 with a Meet the Artists on Saturday, the 15, from 3 - 4 PM.

We are still diligently working away at the commission work. The bamboo design walls and doors for the Colorado Springs house are complete and installed. We're now working on a series of local bird designs for interior door panels in a high rise condominium here. Other projects wait although the church has OKed the first part of their proposal, the entrance doors and side panels to the new chapel.

Our impending move is still escaping our grasp. The painting of the house goes slowly with so many things going on. I'm telling everyone we will move between Christmas and New Year's come hell or high water. The furniture at least. Until we get the shop built and the appropriate amount of electrical power, we will have to work here.