Leaves like copper pennies.
That was from yesterday, but they still kind of glow, even though it's cloudy and windy and all of forty-four degrees outside. The animals love it, but I just had to build a fire in the smaller woodstove, too, because the wind chill is somewhere around the freezing mark.
Feeling a little better today, less feverish (it's so weird to feel like you have the worst fever ever but with no, you know, fever), but still the baseball-sized injection site, still the headache and scratchy throat, still the body aches and fatigue. I can't believe I have to do this again in two months. I think I'm going to have to put off my flu shot until the end of the year, because I cannot have my body in full systemic autoimmune rebellion all the time.
I'm so far behind it's not funny. I also have to spend all of this week chasing pennies of the more literal sort. If I could make a couple of large sales, I could feel fairly confident that I've got October covered, but not until then. Which means that, no matter how sick I still feel from this vaccine, I've got to get on it.
There's also a new positive COVID-19 case here. At IHS, natch, which makes it all the more dangerous for everyone. Tomorrow night would normally be San G vespers, and Wednesday would be the Feast of San Geronimo. Not this year. It's been canceled for the first time not only in living memory, but ancestral memory, too; no one alive today has ever heard any stories of circumstances requiring cancellation since its observance was instituted hundreds of years ago. And still I feel the need to keep pointing this out, because people truly do not understand the ravages of the last four years, or the last six months, on our communities: Among the wider community of people Wings is related to, friends with, or simply knows, he's lost at least an average of one per week since the first week of May. In one really terrible week, there were four in one day; then another four two days later. Since the state is busy reopening everything in defiance of all care and common sense, we can expect winter to be not merely brutal but positively deadly And we are at particularly heightened risk.
It will also mean that we can expect sales to continue to be terrible. As I said, thanks to a friend, we've got September completely covered. If my Patreon clears properly (yes, it's still down by ~$110 a month, but I mean the rest of it), then I'll pay the quarterly taxes on Friday. I still, as I said, need to make a couple of good-sized sales to make sure we make it through October, and I'm still delaying the tow and the car repair because it's going to be many more hundreds of dollars than we can afford. Selling Wings's newest work would do it: It's the "Summer" entry in Wings's limited series of necklaces, The Four Seasons ("Winter" sold back in, well, winter; "Spring" is still available here; and "Fall" is, of course, yet to come). You can see it here, and it's incredible.
We're still going to need help to make sales through the rest of this awful year. I'm not asking for donations; there are too many people worse off than us, people who don't know where their next meal is coming from, who very shortly may not have (or already don't have) a roof over their heads. But this pandemic has killed tourism for Indigenous artists like Wings, and has killed everyone's sales. Businesses are closing left and right here, and we're blessed to be able to work out of our home, but still, sales are, in relative terms, down to nothing.
You can help by sharing our links. You can especially help if you're in the market for high-end, Spirit-infused Indigenous wearable art, for yourself or as a gift, by considering Wings's work for purchase. It's also back-to-school season, even if remotely in some places, with all the events that that entails; birthdays come and go year-round; Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas especially will all be here before we know it.
The links are here:
And making sure everything's covered? That part of it is all on me, no matter how sick I am, no matter how much pain I'm in, no matter how little sleep I get. And with this hanging over me, I'm getting precious little sleep now. We need to be able to continue to help folks, and we're going to keep on doing it. But to do that, and to keep our own heads above water, we need to bring in sales closer to normal rates. Please help us do that if you can. Thanks.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
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