About Children, Creativity, Park, Family, Celebration, Rain...

I wrote a new blog! Hive is a social blockchain, i.e. a place where we socialize by writing blogs and commenting on each other's writings, as well as their comments, i.e. we give feedback. In fact, I'm writing a new blog right now that I hope to publish tomorrow morning, since here, where I live, in Eastern Europe, it's now Thursday evening. That means tomorrow is Friday for me and I want to have a new post in #MarketFriday, the challenge, and community shepherded by @dswigle.

I said "shepherded" because it is an expression in Romanian, my mother tongue. I don't know if it makes sense in English. Pastorit has the meaning of care for, taken care of something (a flock, but not necessarily a flock of sheep). "Noi, ca niste oi!" in Romanian really rhymes, it means "We, like sheep!"..., in English, it no longer rhymes. Rambling, rambling, please excuse!

Time is ticking, it's getting later, and that gives me certainty but also regret that I won't finish this blog tonight.

I say blog and suddenly I realize that I don't even know what a blog is, or rather, I don't know if what I've been posting here for over five years, on average once every two days, can be called a blog!

Because I write almost exclusively about myself. I mean not explicitly about myself, I don't go into the most personal details but..., I write about my travels, my holidays, about the city where I live, about my garden, about the things I like, about my passions, about my family, about my friends. About how I perceive these things and I wonder if that interests anyone. Actually, I know how many people are interested, because I know there are ten to twenty people who read and comment, maybe another ten to twenty who only read but don't comment (I think there are, because I also read a lot more posts than I comment on). There is also the aspect that not all people who comment are really interested in what the post says.

Let's say there are 15 readers. Will that be enough? If I were to make a living from blogging I'd starve after a week. But we don't make a living from it...

The lady who "shepherds" us told me we should write as long as we have fun!

Is that right?

The lady I'm talking about here must have over a hundred readers (all numbers are from my observations which may be wrong, so I apologize if I'm wrong). I'm referring to loyal readers, of which I'm proud to be one.

Of course, the notoriety and number of readers are given by the value of the blogs, but also by the ability to interact, and here the lady I'm talking about is a master! Rambling, rambling, I apologize, I don't know what I've been through!

I mean I know because there are two questions I've been asking myself for a long time, but I've never expressed them here. The questions are: Is what I write a blog and if what I write is of interest to anyone? I mean, why would it matter what I do, how I live, what I like, etc?

The answer I find alone should make me give up writing immediately but there is something that keeps me here and tells me to continue...

Because most of our colleagues here do exactly as I do and have similar results to me and I guess that's the way the game is!

Alas, I'm late into the night and I haven't even started writing what I should for #MarketFriday. I guess I'll have to cut my blog short this Friday.

Market means everything that is sold and bought, everything that is produced with the intention of being sold, that is a very poor and schematic definition I think, but that's all I can think of right now.

Everything that is sold and bought, no matter where it is bought and sold...

Very, very close to my house there is a park, not too big but beautiful, with centenary trees and several buildings, the most important and spectacular of which is about to collapse. It is the park where I like to walk with my granddaughter, Ilinca.

Walking is the wrong word because it's more of a run!

As you can see, my phone is shaking in my hand when I run after it. I'm not complaining, I like it a lot and it's also good for my health and loosening up my old bones.

Well, while running through the park I came to a place where I could buy something. In the past, there were a few stalls in the park where we could buy sweets or small toys, but they were abolished by the new mayor, rightly so because they were not legal.

What we saw now was not only legal but also useful. An activity with beneficial effects in many directions. A place where children learned something and where pottery made by disabled people was sold.

What this is about...

The Nazarcea Group Decorative Ceramics Workshop has been given a small building in the park where they hold introductory courses for children in ceramics and where they sell objects made by members of the group. This place is right at an entrance to the park, next to the subway station, and is at the busiest alley. A very good position for as many eyes as possible to see the exhibits.

The objects are displayed on small tables and even on the ground. In general, pottery pieces are displayed in this way at various fairs.

The objects are very diverse, they do not follow certain fashions or influences, they are made at the inspiration of the modellers, people with different disabilities who are thus integrated in useful actions, both for themselves and for the community.

The beauty of these objects is that they are all one of a kind, no two objects are the same, even if they look alike. They differ from the traditional pottery in Romania, where different models and canons have to be respected, and they differ from the pottery of established ceramic artists who have studied at the Institute of Fine Arts. The objects produced by this group can be called naive art!

Another aspect of this group's activity is to attract children to this artistic activity, organizing both theoretical and practical courses. They even brought a potter's wheel so that children could understand the process by which a piece of clay becomes a pot or other decorative object.

Getting the skill of modelling clay is harder, the children start these courses by learning to paint ceramic objects. I have seen with great pleasure that all these children are passionate and love to paint.

Another "child" is my wife who is passionate about these ceramic objects and every time she passes by this place she wants to buy something. She doesn't always succeed, but now she found something she really liked and bought two small objects, a mug and a small box!

These two small items cost just $9 together.

I chose a long title for this post, when I started writing I didn't know I would make such a long introduction. Now it's hard to write about everything I mentioned in the title, it would be too long and I think I would lose my few readers, however loyal they may be. I should stop here, but I still want to respect the title, so I will show very briefly what it meant. What's left untouched...

Family, Celebration, Rain...

In our family it was a celebration, because at the end of August in Romania is celebrated St. Alexander and my son's name is Alexandru. Alexandru is a fan of barbecue and always expects me to make barbecue for his party, only now... it rained. That didn't stop the celebration and the barbecue.

Family..., a small but important part because is the line to the future, a slightly blurry photo, both because of the water in the sky, the long-awaited rain and the liquor in the glass that made my eyes blur.

Rain... and the smoke I covered my neighbors with.

Celebration..., a small but important part because it expresses our common passion for Greece.

And since everything must come to an end, here we have an ending with a flower, #alwaysaflower! "Splendor in the Grass", I like to remember movies.