Finally, we have snow. Though wet and only two inches deep, it is white and beautiful. Christmas was all rain, and I admit to envying my Minnesota friends two feet of powder, view across the lake, and Mass in the Abbey Church. After exchanging Christmas greetings over the phone, I hung up and switched my computer wallpaper to last winter’s photo taken out the apartments back window. Blue tree shadows fell across the snow-covered lake and patio; January at the Institute was breathtaking.
This year I was in Ann Arbor for the holidays. I did not have the view and was careful as I stepped over water flowing beside the curb when getting in and out of the car, but I had my three daughters, a good friend, and time: Better than snow.
We ate homemade oxtail vegetable soup and snacked on imported cheeses and crackers washed down with spiced red wine. The apartment was crowded; one daughter had to excuse herself a few times to complete marking final papers and posting grades. Another daughter had switched to her break schedule: up until early morning, asleep until early afternoon, but we had a good time playing Apples to Apples and catching up.
Most gifts were simple this year, many were practical with a few surprises thrown in. One of mine was unexpected and extraordinary: A hand-thrown mug from The Soft Earths potter, Joan Lederman. The form is beautiful and organic, but what makes it unique is the glaze. Joan uses core samples of the ocean floor taken by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. When they have finished with the sediment, it is given to Joan who uses it for her glazes.
On my Christmas mug, the words Deep Down, Far Out, Earth Crust, Space Dust encircle the bottom, written on bare clay. The predominant glaze color is deep brown, resulting from sediment from The Kane Fracture Zone, rich in manganese, peridotite, serpentine, basalt, and olivine gabbro. A small band of lighter brown divides the glaze about one third of the way down the mug. This strip of glaze is what merits the words Far Out
Space Dust.
In a core sample taken at the K-Trace Boundary, scientists found a small deposit of 65 million year old remains of an asteroid, truly star dust. Was this left from asteroids that collided with the earth raising enough dust to block sunlight and lead to mass extinctions of plants and animals, including the dinosaurs?
In response to the sudden death of a pioneering geologist, Joan offered to make a piece to celebrate his life. She was given sediment from his work discovering the first core that demonstrated the iridium anomaly from the K-T Band. Later she came to appreciate it alongside samples from drillings into Earths crust these became the earth crust & space dust pieces. When I first found them on the Internet, I emailed my archeologist daughter to share the amazing find. As a young child, she had been interested in dinosaurs, once taking a survey at a local mall to determine what most people thought caused the extinction of dinosaurs. An Asteroid strike was among the choices.
Knowing my spiritual response to all things cosmic, she and her younger sister decided to purchase one of Joan Lederman’s last two Space Dust mugs for me. Now, when I drink my tea in the morning, I will be cradling earth crust and stardust in my hands, contemplating the glory of the universe and my small place in it.
Visit The Soft Earth website: http://www.thesoftearth.com/
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