My latest from Wings: bright golden-yellow mum and brown-eyes Susans, deep scarlet mini mums and roses. It was a bright spot in a tough day yesterday.
It's going to be difficult day again today, first and foremost because where we are, the smoke pall is hideous. Constant headache, sneezing, hard to breathe. And I'm not entirely over this vaccine reaction yet (this is day 8, if you're counting), so it's doubly miserable.
I'm not much impressed with yesterday's so-called news. I see plenty of glee, no appreciation for karma, and absolutely no indication that most of the country realizes that this doesn't make us any safer at the moment. The supposed day of salvation is exactly one month away, and things are going to get very much worse in the interim.
Here, we have a fight ahead of us now, on all fronts. The pandemic conditions and the drought are not going away. The pandemic is spiking in NM again, including here. They're now officially forecasting a drought-ridden winter, so this will be the hardest kind of winter it's possible to have here. Give us three feet of snow and subzero temps any day over this. But nope; our water woes are only going to get worse. We have to be able to drill that well, and soon, but I don't have $15K lying around to make it happen. Add to that the fact that I still have to put off the car repair, the propane tank rental is due this month, and a better farrier (the one who put us on track with Cree; he's not local) is coming out to look at Miika on the 22nd, and I've got a lot of expense to cover yet this month. I paid the quarterly taxes yesterday. There's not much left; nowhere near enough to cover the bills, much less anything else.
And we can expect sales to continue to be terrible. As I said, thanks to a friend, we got September completely covered. If I could make a couple of large sales, I could feel fairly confident that I've got October covered, but not until then, because there are still all the regular bills, plus allowing for medical and other stuff that's bound to crop up. Which means that, no matter how sick I still feel from this vaccine, I've got to get on it. I'm still delaying the tow and the car repair because those two alone are 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. He has other new work in the Bracelets and Earrings Galleries.
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. Items from the wishlist help, too. But the big thing is bringing in sales, so 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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