Current Events and Random Stuff

Current Events

Remember Katrina Victims!

Giving Back

10% of the sales from our website items is donated respectively to the following organizations; Feathered Friends Forever, tropical bird refuge, The Mexican Textile Project  & The Komen Foundation every year as a token of gratitude for supplying the inspiration for many of the creations you will see here.

The Mexican Textile Project

Mexican textiles have existed for more than 5000 years, but now in many Mexican villages traditional embroidered blouses (huipils) are worn only by grandmothers and Mexico's indigenous textile culture is in danger of fading away.

I've had an unusual affinity for Indians for as long as I can remember.  As a kid, I secretly thought of myself as Cherokee until an elementary school classmate unceremoniously burst my bubble with a lesson in genealogy I couldn't argue with. We attended the same church and knew my parents and grandparents. The notion may actually have originated with our family's sporadic Summer excursions to the Cherokee Reservation in The Smoky Mountains.  this odd sense of kinship rekindled itself in later years as we made daily use of ancient trails along the nearby Savannah River.  The trails lead to down to the River alongside Indian mounds that  overlooked a more-often-gentle-than-not cluster of rapids. Our "neighborhood swimming hole, complete with its permanent campsite, was an area where Creek and Cherokee settlements once thrived.

 Savannah River Rapids 1978

Dad and Jessica Savannah River Rapids, North Augusta 1984

My Brother, Marc on a wast walk down the old river trail. 1984

A sublime air of the sacred permeated our little patch of forest on the Carolina side of the River and we felt protected there.  It was the sort of place to give a kid his first inkling that God was present even outside the church building's walls. Sadly, ours was to be the last generation allowed unfettered access to this place of subtle power and beauty. There now sits a large and exclusive subdivision consisting of prime river-view real estate and a much smaller Indian mound. It has been deemed off-limits to all but a very privileged few.

A few decades and several homes later, even though I'm in a neighboring state, what's left of that stand of forest lies within sight distance of my door once again as do the waters of the Savannah river.

 "The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues—self-restraint." --Edwin Way Teale (1899 - 1980)