great leap forward

Today I have a day in the studio.  My first etching sprint is done.  I got the machine about a month ago I think, and set it up on my main downstairs working table, the table I use for making scrolls and frames and even banjos.  The press had the table for a month.  Last weekend I had precious little time, teaching all day Saturday and everybody coming at me on Sunday, art buyers, friends and family knocking on doors, creeping around the windows, scratching at the sides of the house.  But I muscled out one last print, as I knew it was the end of my sprint, my first burst of etching energy.  Now today  I must change the room over to other things, year end paper working and the like.  It is time to pick things up, put them into some form of order, in boxes, jars, and the like.

I will still be able to etch, but in moderation, not letting it take over the whole studio as it has been for a month.  It is the end of my first great leap forward.  Got half a dozen, maybe a dozen if you count all, more than that with all the wrong turns and and dopey starts, and maybe 2 or 3 good ones.

occupy

I was surprised to see the occupy tent in Kasumi-gaseki, right on the corner of the METI building.

They looked like serious people.  Most signs in Japanese.  One in English that caught my eye about Urban Elitism, sacrificing the rural areas for the cities.  It must be pretty frustration in the countryside these days, especially up in Tohoku, blasted by a terrible Tsunami and then and still peppered with radioactive poison that will stay 2oo plus years.  In a way it is worse that the old Roman trick of destroying a chit and then salting the land.

Folks in Tokyo will be enjoying a string of Bon-en-kai, Year end parties.  Up in Tohoku I expect it will not be a cheery this dark season.

I found the Occupy movement in Japan have a facebook page in addition to a web site.