The glads are as stubborn as I am. I planted them in . . . what? June? and here they are, in October, yellow and lavender already in full flower today, and a garnet-colored stalk about to open. Yeah, I may give up for a day, or a night, when things are so bad that there's nothing I can do to fix it. But as Wings always says, I never give up, not really. I always come back to fight.
And we have a fight ahead of us now, on all fronts. The pandemic conditions and the drought are not going away. 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.
It will also mean that we can expect sales to continue to be terrible. As I said, thanks to a friend, we got September completely covered. If my Patreon clears properly today (yes, it's still down by ~$110 a month, but I mean the rest of it), then I'll pay the quarterly taxes tomorrow. 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 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. 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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