New Work By Wings to Close Out the Year: Three Bands of Light

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

I've been trying to get these up for two days now, but maybe it's better that I couldn't (although the constant derailments have certainly been unwelcome in the process). Because it now seems like a really good thing to have new work by Wings to close out the year: Three Bands of Light, and if there's a better, more necessary metaphor now, I don't know what it would be, because here, at least? Things are very dark, and are going to remain so for a long time.

These are small, simple bracelets, slender cuffs, each other 6" long, each with a hammered outer surface and its own unique pair of stamps, one on each end of the inner band. All represent light in some form. These are stackable, and I should've gotten a shot of them on my own arm, but that whole time-and-derailments thing . . . .  Each is sold separately, but they work as a set, too,  Eighteen-gauge silver, nice and solid and substantial, but even stacked together, they won't weigh down your arm.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

The first, shown above, is An Interstellar Glow, with a Guiding Star motif in the inner band. You can read its description here.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

The second, above, is A Stardust Shimmer, anchored on the inner band by a pair of simple five-pointed stars. You can read its description here.

The third, just above, is A Sunrise Radiance, with a rising-sun symbol at each end f the inner band.  You can read its description here.

Wings's main page is here. Inquiries via the site's Contact form. We have made a grand total of four sales this holiday season, and in an economy wrecked by this pandemic, which is also about to get a whole lot worse here? That's not going to cover it at the best of times.  Unfortunately for us, January always brings a flurry of large once-yearly expenses that need to be covered, and this year, it's unusually high (natch); between those, our regular bills and expenses, and taking care of the pups' surgeries, it's going to be upwards of 3 grand, and we have a grand total of $25 available in the bank right now. Meanwhile, the pandemic rages unchecked, the economy is dead, we have a long winter to come to get through, and none of those is going anywhere. I really need to sell these, and another grand-plus of silverwork besides.  

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.

UPDATED X7: Everyone Needs Warmth and Light Now: Fundraiser for JoanMar

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Folks, we need to jump-start this effort. Donations are coming in slowly but consistently and she's closing in on the $2K mark now, but we still need to help raise $8,258 $8158, and time is short. Please share this post, share JoanMar's PayPal and CashApp addresses, and help us get her there ASAP!

I told you that I would be posting a fundraiser Saturday for someone very dear to us, someone a lot of you reading this know and love. She's been struggling for six months now, alone and in silence, in the middle of this deadly pandemic. 

UPDATE:  We're at $720 in one afternoon up to $953 now! up to $1,344 at $1,490 at $1,589 at $1,742 at $1,842 now!!! That means we have $9,280 $8,656 $8,510 $8,411 $8,258 $8,158 left to raise; not bad for just a few hours one day of getting the word out. Please keep sharing, and please keep donating!  WE CAN DO THIS!

BUT FIRST, the links:  PayPal address is nevfai [at] optonline [dot] net; CashApp is $ForYouMaria.

Most of you know this woman as JoanMar. She's JoanMarDK on Twitter, and JoanMar at the Great Orange Satan. We know her as a dear friend, a spirit sister of sorts. She is strong, brave, beautiful Black woman with a heart filled with love and a warrior's spirit, and she needs us now.

I said "strong," and there's no lie there, but frankly, she's been stronger than anyone should ever have to be. Some years back, she lost her daughter, a beautiful young woman, to a terrible example of medical malpractice. She's the one who's always there when someone in her extended family needs something: the one everyone goes to when the need money, or a hand, or a shoulder. But the same is not returned to her.

I said elsewhere this morning that Black and Indigenous woman know this burden well: We keep everyone else alive and safe and well, as well as possible and better than anyone could reasonably expect in this terrible colonial system. But we're so good at it, so skilled, so silent about our sacrifices and what it costs us that everyone has just come to expect it as the nature of things. And when we are the ones who need that help?

There's usually no one to be found.

None of us should have to be so "strong."

And JoanMar has been struggling to make ends meet for herself, as well as for everybody else, in the middle of this deadly pandemic where there's no work and no income and no help to be had, where too many this week are again being forced out onto the streets in the middle of this danger, and the more ordinary dangers of winter. And she's one of the "lucky" ones: Her landlords are a couple who understand well what she's up against, and who are not going to evict her. But she owes three months' back rent, she owes arrearages on utilities and every conceivable bill and expense, because that's what happens when there's nothing coming in even as the whole world continues to suck you dry. It's going to take a good $10,000 to cover everything she owes, and that may sound like a lot to you, but she lives in a place where this is very ordinary for cost of living — for 3 to 6 months? It's actually low. She also lives in a place where winter is both already here and also already cold and deep, and everyone needs warmth and light now.

Everyone also needs not to be alone, struggling through what's left of this god-awful year with no one to help shoulder the load. JoanMar hasn't had that; she's been doing it all by herself.

No more. Now that we know, it's our job to do something about it.

The breakdown is more or less as follows: About one-third of the $10K is three months' worth of back rent. The remaining two-thirds are a mix of state and local taxes still due (and federal taxes are coming up again in a few months), plus utilities like electricity, heat, water, probably garbage/recycling, too. Then there's vehicle insurance, maintenance, gas in the tank. And, of course, food, toiletries, cleaning supplies, other essentials. These are all sort of off-the-cuff calculations; we just threw this together last night and this morning. I can tell you that if it errs, it will be in being too conservative. I want her to have some breathing room.  A room with a safety net in it.

Look, we all know how terrible this year has been for everybody, us included. Sales are way down; we're struggling, too. But we're blessed: We have a roof over our heads, wood for the fire, food in the cabinets and the fridge; our power is on, and we have good clean water. With such good fortune, how could we NOT help? We have to. This is a friend, someone we love.

So we're giving $100 today, via PayPal. [Yeah, but I can juggle a few things; if we have to take a late-fee hit on the electricity bill, it's worth it.] Will you match it? If you can't, will you donate whatever you can spare? And if you're comfortably situated, will you donate more than that, to help get her $10K and beyond as fast as possible?

Because this is supposed to be the season of peace, and there's been precious little of it anywhere. JoanMar needs warmth and light, and the peace that comes with knowing she can cover the bills the pandemic has turned into insurmountable obstacles. So let's do this. I'll update as I have info. First hundred now:

Here's that donation info again:  PayPal address is nevfai [at] optonline [dot] net; CashApp is $ForYouMaria.

And Wings and I would consider this a personal favor.

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.

         

At least somebody's happy.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

At least somebody's happy. 

That was the scene that met us out the upstairs door at three o'clock this morning. As I said yesterday, we let the elk eat here because the drought has decimated their habitat, too, and we have old hay that's no longer suitable for horses to eat, but is perfectly good for ruminants. Wings hauled all of it down to the south field yesterday morning and spread it around, because like the wild birds, they'll starve without help. That is, as it happens, what they think killed all those thousands of wild birds here in that massive die-off a couple of months ago: starvation, because climate change has so thoroughly fucked up the food supply on their migratory routes, Which undoubtedly explains why we have whole clans of spring and summer birds here now. Clearly, the whole herd found it.

Which reminds me again just how brutal next month is going to be financially for us, and how badly I need to bring in sales to cover everything. And how angry I am to have learned last night that an Internet-famous (harmful and utterly mediocre) white male, whining about cancel culture, has not only a lucrative new full-time gig but a side hustle consisting of a crappy online newsletter that is bringing him $27K a month. Over $300K a year for lousy writing, and even lousier thinking, and as of last night we had $47 in the bank. But because I forgot about a fee I needed to pay, it's down to $15 now.

But again, I'll get to us in a minute. First, thank you to everyone who's shared the fundraiser post I put up here on Saturday for a woman very dear to both of us (and frankly, to a lot of y'all), one who has been struggling, alone and in silence, these last six months as the pandemic has made everything worse for her by the day, and even as people come to her routinely for help. Such is the lot of Black and Indigenous women; we keep everyone else alive and safe and well, while no one notices as we slide ever closer to the outer edge of survival. Special thanks to all of you who've already donated or are going to donate.

My work for this weekend and the week to come is to help her get the resources she needs to come back from that dangerous edge. This will be the site for the fundraiser; she doesn't have a GoFundMe, but I'll post her PayPal and CashApp info; she'll update me as she can, and I'll bump the post to the top of the page when I do (as in a few minutes from now). I'l also probably throw up a whole new post tomorrow to try to keep it fresh. Look, I know everybody's feeling stretched really thin, especially with Christmas over and a new calendar year just around the corner. But it's winter (serious winter where she lives), and it's the middle of a deadly pandemic, and she has been fighting this battle alone for half a year now. No one should do this alone, and no one should have to fight just to live. So we have juggled some things, and with a lot of prayers and not a little faith, we gave $100. I'm going to ask y'all at least to match it. Some of you won't be able to, and we get that; but if you can spare $20, $10, $5, it all adds up, so please toss it in the pot. If you're completely tapped out, you can share the post and her cash links. And for a few of my friends on here who I know read this site who I also know have more resources, I'm hoping you will step up for this woman who does so much for so many.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming:

This has been one of our leanest, lowest holiday seasons ever. Only four sales total, and not a single sale this week or last. Not one, and no visible results for the work, even though I've been putting in 18-hour days and doing mostly without sleep, STILL. I'm still running the Twitter hashtag trying to help folks who are at risk of losing everything now get what they need. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped, because we are still losing people unnecessarily to all of this ::gestures around at a world in flames::. I have no patience with colonial standards of "charity" and "giving" and the respectability politics inherent in them, nor do I have any patience with the colonizing and colonized mentalities of those who continue to perpetuate them, leaving folks to die.

And all the other stresses, of course, are all still here. This has been such a ghastly year, and this winter's going to be very, very bad for our peoples. It's bad enough for us, with only four sales total this holiday season, and given that Christmas is over, I'm guessing that's it for the year. But it's been a lot worse for a lot of other folks in our community here. And so on top of the donations we've been making at least weekly, whether to our community health center's matching funds campaign last month or direct donations to individuals, we've been giving out of every sale we make, quite literally. We bought and had delivered the firewood yesterday; we sold my old jalopy at a fabulous loss to a young man who desperately needs a vehicle (it was a jalopy, but a really well-maintained and well-running one, with new tires, battery, and front end, including axle, rods, and joints, and we sold it for a third of what we could've gotten, because he could afford that); we gave away a substantial number of items from our half-hog share; and a few days ago, we gave [what we thought was] the last of our cash donations to an elder who needed help. Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind; there are others. None of this is to make us out to be saints of any sort, because we're about as far from it as it gets, and unlike some folks, we have never pretended otherwise. We're both impatient, don't suffer willful fools, and are fucking profane. None of that makes a damn bit of difference to what we see as the work. My point is that, in this world? With circumstances as bad as they are? People die if we don't help. So, yeah, only four sales, and we're down to our last dollars, so to speak, but we have food, shelter, warmth, and now I'm going to be able to do my work properly. So there really isn't a choice. No, we don't get a tax deduction for any of it. I'd rather give directly to people who need than ever get a deduction for charitable giving ever again in my life. Because if you had any doubt? It's BAD here. We're the lucky ones. And with that kind of good fortune comes responsibility.

The rest is no longer entirely cut-and-paste, and if you take one thing from it? Please share our links. January is always the worst moth of you (followed closely by July), because it contains a bunch of one-off annual or biannual expenses, none of them cheap, and they all have to be paid. I'm staring down the need to pay out easily a couple of grand over the course of the month, starting on the literal first, and we have made almost no sales all season. So if you're in the market for gifts, consider Wings's work. It's what keeps us alive, byes, but we also always make sure that whatever we bring in, we send out to help others beyond ourselves. I've posted one new work already yesterday; I'll have three simple cuffs a little later today.

And people continue to leave us at an alarming rate; a new record two Thursdays ago of 48 officially-reported deaths state-wide due to COVID-19. But the ski resorts are open and the tourists are here, and the governor continues to talk about reopening the state even as she's running an official state TV ad campaign four tourism, urging people to come and spend Christmas in New Mexico (and worst of all, I'm positive she's using a Native voice actor to do the voice-over, even as our peoples die disproportionately from this folly). Unfortunately, we are not expecting things to improve over the winter, vaccine or no. Nothing rushed like this is ever reliable, and we already know better than to take something that already has so many reports of serious adverse reactions. There's also the question of whether it actually works over the long term, and people are already behaving as though it's a magic bullet that means no one needs to mask or distance, and we're being flooded both with tourists and with jackass locals who won't do the minimum to keep from killing us. And prices continue to skyrocket, and an artificial scarcity remains the order of the day.

Meanwhile, the need to bring in a bunch more sales this week and the next two to avoid us being thoroughly screwed going into 2021 hasn't changed. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I bring in a significant number of sales over the next week and a half. And I'm still tired. Tired from this stupid shingles vax reaction. Tired from the stresses of this year. Tired in ways no one will ever understand. "Can't hold your own head up because the physical fatigue is too much" tired. I don't care about any of the rest of it. Yeah, our craven and cowardly governor is willing to let us all die. Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference, but I still have to keep us alive, and other folks, too. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And this will sound selfish, but we've spent the whole year working to help other folks survive in the face of some very ugly [and wholly unnecessary] odds, and . . . you know what, we're just done. Not done helping others, but we gave away the last of what we could a few days ago. There's nothing coming in. No sales. I have to come up with a way to get us through this winter, and it's looking grim indeed. So while we will continue to do what we can to help other folks less well-situated? Do not ask me for political support for any of the people whose cowardice and venality put us here. And if you want to help? Please share our links, because we are staring down the barrel of 2021 up very close now, and after this holiday season and with outsized one-off expenses looming for January? I don't know how we make it if I don't start bringing in more sales.

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.

         

#ThrowbackThursday: A Night Sky Beaded With Cold Fire

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

It's #TBT at The NDN Silver Blog, with throwback work that dates back just over a year ago, one of a series of seven bangles from a deeply personal collection of my own. This one was created with the simplest of bands and all the icy crystalline flash of aquamarine: a night sky beaded with cold fire; the ancient and minute magic of stardust, fallen to earth on the arc of its own light.

The post is here. Wings's main page is here. This work obviously will never be duplicated exactly, but if the style speaks to your spirit, simply inquire via the site's Contact form; Wings can create a version uniquely your own. We were able to cover December's monthly expenses and some additional costs, like the hay for the horses and one load of firewood for us (but no plumbing repairs until the pandemic recedes; it's too dangerous to bring people into close quarters like that here now). But there's more firewood to cover before winter gets really under way (and it's here today, with a wind chill of 2), and there's still the process of figuring out this water/well-drilling problem, and January always brings a flurry of large once-yearly expenses that need to be covered. Meanwhile, the pandemic rages unchecked and the economy is dead (a grand total of four holiday sales this year, which will not get us much past the opening days of the new year, never mind the first six months of it), and we have a long winter to come to get through, too. And since neither the drought nor the pandemic is going anywhere, we are still going to need consistent sales to make it through the whole winter (one that has already been bitter indeed for our communities), so shares of the site links are much appreciated. 

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.

  

Unexpected gifts.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Dangerous cold also brings unexpected gifts. Okay, maybe not exactly "unexpected." Just not necessarily expecting it right at that moment.

I had gotten up briefly about 3:20 this morning, then went back to bed. I had apparently already fallen asleep again by the time Wings got up 20 minutes or so later. He shook me awake, telling me that the elk were here, and he went downstairs and got my camera. yes, it's fuzzy; it's taken through the window, at night. But click on it, and it'll enlarge. We had the whole small herd down from the mountains. I counted forty, if I managed to get them all. They came trotting from our south boundary through a place where the neighbors cattle had trampled the fence last year and then their own herd had finished it off. Wings has been putting old hay out for them down that way, but apparently it was all gone, because they came right up to the big bales stacked behind the studio and in front of the pen, looking for food. The two in the center left? Young bucks rising up on the hind legs to compete for dominance. Not violence; this was play among two not fully grown into bull elk yet.

We let the elk eat here because the drought has decimated their habitat, too, and we have old hay that's no longer suitable for horses to eat, but is perfectly good for ruminants. Wings hauled all of it down to the south field this morning, because like the wild birds, they'll starve without help. That is, as it happens, what they think killed all those thousands of wild birds here in that massive die-off a couple of months ago: starvation, because climate change has so thoroughly fucked up the food supply on their migratory routes, Which undoubtedly explains why we have whole clans of spring and summer birds here now. 

Which reminds me again just how brutal next month is going to be financially for us, and how badly I need to bring in sales to cover everything.

And again, I'll get to us in a minute. First, thank you to everyone who's shared the fundraiser post I put up here on Saturday for a woman very dear to both of us (and frankly, to a lot of y'all), one who has been struggling, alone and in silence, these last six months as the pandemic has made everything worse for her by the day, and even as people come to her routinely for help. Such is the lot of Black and Indigenous women; we keep everyone else alive and safe and well, while no one notices as we slide ever closer to the outer edge of survival. Special thanks to all of you who've already donated or are going to donate.

My work for this weekend and the week to come is to help her get the resources she needs to come back from that dangerous edge. This will be the site for the fundraiser; she doesn't have a GoFundMe, but I'll post her PayPal and CashApp info; she'll update me as she can, and I'll bump the post to the top of the page when I do (as in a few minutes from now). Look, I know everybody's feeling stretched really thin, especially with Christmas over and a new calendar year just around the corner. But it's winter (serious winter where she lives), and it's the middle of a deadly pandemic, and she has been fighting this battle alone for half a year now. No one should do this alone, and no one should have to fight just to live. So we have juggled some things, and with a lot of prayers and not a little faith, we gave $100. I'm going to ask y'all at least to match it. Some of you won't be able to, and we get that; but if you can spare $20, $10, $5, it all adds up, so please toss it in the pot. If you're completely tapped out, you can share the post and her cash links. And for a few of my friends on here who I know read this site who I also know have more resources, I'm hoping you will step up for this woman who does so much for so many.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming:

This has been one of our leanest, lowest holiday seasons ever. Only four sales total, and not a single sale this week or last. Not one, and no visible results for the work, even though I've been putting in 18-hour days and doing mostly without sleep, STILL. I'm still running the Twitter hashtag trying to help folks who are at risk of losing everything now get what they need. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped, because we are still losing people unnecessarily to all of this ::gestures around at a world in flames::. I have no patience with colonial standards of "charity" and "giving" and the respectability politics inherent in them, nor do I have any patience with the colonizing and colonized mentalities of those who continue to perpetuate them, leaving folks to die.

And all the other stresses, of course, are all still here. This has been such a ghastly year, and this winter's going to be very, very bad for our peoples. It's bad enough for us, with only four sales total this holiday season, and given that Christmas is over, I'm guessing that's it for the year. But it's been a lot worse for a lot of other folks in our community here. And so on top of the donations we've been making at least weekly, whether to our community health center's matching funds campaign last month or direct donations to individuals, we've been giving out of every sale we make, quite literally. We bought and had delivered the firewood yesterday; we sold my old jalopy at a fabulous loss to a young man who desperately needs a vehicle (it was a jalopy, but a really well-maintained and well-running one, with new tires, battery, and front end, including axle, rods, and joints, and we sold it for a third of what we could've gotten, because he could afford that); we gave away a substantial number of items from our half-hog share; and a few days ago, we gave [what we thought was] the last of our cash donations to an elder who needed help. Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind; there are others. None of this is to make us out to be saints of any sort, because we're about as far from it as it gets, and unlike some folks, we have never pretended otherwise. We're both impatient, don't suffer willful fools, and are fucking profane. None of that makes a damn bit of difference to what we see as the work. My point is that, in this world? With circumstances as bad as they are? People die if we don't help. So, yeah, only four sales, and we're down to our last dollars, so to speak, but we have food, shelter, warmth, and now I'm going to be able to do my work properly. So there really isn't a choice. No, we don't get a tax deduction for any of it. I'd rather give directly to people who need than ever get a deduction for charitable giving ever again in my life. Because if you had any doubt? It's BAD here. We're the lucky ones. And with that kind of good fortune comes responsibility.

The rest is no longer entirely cut-and-paste, and if you take one thing from it? Please share our links. January is always the worst moth of you (followed closely by July), because it contains a bunch of one-off annual or biannual expenses, none of them cheap, and they all have to be paid. I'm staring down the need to pay out easily a couple of grand ver the course of the month, starting on the literal first, and we have made almost no sales all season. So if you're in the market for gifts, consider Wings's work. It's what keeps us alive, byes, but we also always make sure that whatever we bring in, we send out to help others beyond ourselves. I've posted one new work already, just below this; I'll have three simple cuffs a little later today.

And people continue to leave us at an alarming rate; a new record two Thursdays ago of 48 officially-reported deaths state-wide due to COVID-19. But the ski resorts are open and the tourists are here, and the governor continues to talk about reopening the state even as she's running an official state TV ad campaign four tourism, urging people to come and spend Christmas in New Mexico (and worst of all, I'm positive she's using a Native voice actor to do the voice-over, even as our peoples die disproportionately from this folly). Unfortunately, we are not expecting things to improve over the winter, vaccine or no. Nothing rushed like this is ever reliable, and we already know better than to take something that already has so many reports of serious adverse reactions. There's also the question of whether it actually works over the long term, and people are already behaving as though it's a magic bullet that means no one needs to mask or distance, and we're being flooded both with tourists and with jackass locals who won't do the minimum to keep from killing us. And prices continue to skyrocket, and an artificial scarcity remains the order of the day.

Meanwhile, the need to bring in a bunch more sales this week and the next two to avoid us being thoroughly screwed going into 2021 hasn't changed. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I bring in a significant number of sales over the next week and a half. And I'm still tired. Tired from this stupid shingles vax reaction. Tired from the stresses of this year. Tired in ways no one will ever understand. "Can't hold your own head up because the physical fatigue is too much" tired. I don't care about any of the rest of it. Yeah, our craven and cowardly governor is willing to let us all die. Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference, but I still have to keep us alive, and other folks, too. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And this will sound selfish, but we've spent the whole year working to help other folks survive in the face of some very ugly [and wholly unnecessary] odds, and . . . you know what, we're just done. Not done helping others, but we gave away the last of what we could a few days ago. There's nothing coming in. No sales. I have to come up with a way to get us through this winter, and it's looking grim indeed. So while we will continue to do what we can to help other folks less well-situated? Do not ask me for political support for any of the people whose cowardice and venality put us here. And if you want to help? Please share our links, because we are staring down the barrel of 2021 up very close now, and after this holiday season and with outsized one-off expenses looming for January? I don't know how we make it if I don't start bringing in more sales.

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.

         

To Dance With the Dawn, a Song For the Sun

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Now posted at The NDN Silver Blog, it's an all-new masterwork by Wings, wrought entirely freehand and honoring old designs and forms of Indigenous silversmithing. It's a traditional concha belt buckle created the old way and set with a little natural fire, a reminder that to dance with the dawn, a song for the sun is required of us.

The post is here. Wings's main page is here. Inquiries via the site's Contact form. We were able to cover December's monthly expenses and some additional costs, like the hay for the horses and one load of firewood for us (but no plumbing repairs until the pandemic recedes; it's too dangerous to bring people into close quarters like that here now). But there's more firewood to cover before winter gets really under way (and it's here today, with a wind chill of 2), and there's still the process of figuring out this water/well-drilling problem, and January always brings a flurry of large once-yearly expenses that need to be covered. Meanwhile, the pandemic rages unchecked and the economy is dead (a grand total of four holiday sales this year, which will not get us much past the opening days of the new year, never mind the first six months of it), and we have a long winter to come to get through, too. And since neither the drought nor the pandemic is going anywhere, we are still going to need consistent sales to make it through the whole winter (one that has already been bitter indeed for our communities), so shares of the site links are much appreciated.  

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.

Not all of the work shows up publicly.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

Not all of the work shows up publicly. That's true of Wings's work, and just as true of my own. The two pieces above are ones he's had in the works over the last couple of weeks, along with several others. One of the others is a classic, and it will be tomorrow's feature.

In my case, the work is always less visible, and therefore easier for folks to pretend it does't exist (even as they mine it, copy it, steal it entirely and erase me from the picture; yes, I'm seeing more of it again, and you know who you are, even if you do fuck it up every single time, because such is the case with work not your own). And my task list gets longer by the day, because much of my work involves trying to help keep folks alive. That's your work, too, by the way, EVERYBODY's work, but in a colonial culture, most people pretend it's not. We still observe older ways, and it requires a lot from us. You wonder why Native people don't get rich, even those who seem superficially to be a little more comfortable? This is one of the reasons.

Which reminds me again just how brutal next month is going to be financially for us, and how badly I need to bring in sales to cover everything.

And again, I'll get to us in a minute. First, thank you to everyone who's shared the fundraiser post I put up here on Saturday for a woman very dear to both of us (and frankly, to a lot of y'all), one who has been struggling, alone and in silence, these last six months as the pandemic has made everything worse for her by the day, and even as people come to her routinely for help. Such is the lot of Black and Indigenous women; we keep everyone else alive and safe and well, while no one notices as we slide ever closer to the outer edge of survival. Special thanks to all of you who've already donated or are going to donate.

My work for this weekend and the week to come is to help her get the resources she needs to come back from that dangerous edge. This will be the site for the fundraiser; she doesn't have a GoFundMe, but I'll post her PayPal and CashApp info; she'll update me as she can, and I'll bump the post to the top of the page when I do (as in a few minutes from now). Look, I know everybody's feeling stretched really thin, especially with Christmas over and a new calendar year just around the corner. But it's winter (serious winter where she lives), and it's the middle of a deadly pandemic, and she has been fighting this battle alone for half a year now. No one should do this alone, and no one should have to fight just to live. So we have juggled some things, and with a lot of prayers and not a little faith, we gave $100. I'm going to ask y'all at least to match it. Some of you won't be able to, and we get that; but if you can spare $20, $10, $5, it all adds up, so please toss it in the pot. If you're completely tapped out, you can share the post and her cash links. And for a few of my friends on here who I know read this site who I also know have more resources, I'm hoping you will step up for this woman who does so much for so many.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming:

This has been one of our leanest, lowest holiday seasons ever. Only four sales total, and not a single sale this week or last. Not one, and no visible results for the work, even though I've been putting in 18-hour days and doing mostly without sleep, STILL. I'm still running the Twitter hashtag trying to help folks who are at risk of losing everything now get what they need. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped, because we are still losing people unnecessarily to all of this ::gestures around at a world in flames::. I have no patience with colonial standards of "charity" and "giving" and the respectability politics inherent in them, nor do I have any patience with the colonizing and colonized mentalities of those who continue to perpetuate them, leaving folks to die.

And all the other stresses, of course, are all still here. This has been such a ghastly year, and this winter's going to be very, very bad for our peoples. It's bad enough for us, with only four sales total this holiday season, and given that Christmas is over, I'm guessing that's it for the year. But it's been a lot worse for a lot of other folks in our community here. And so on top of the donations we've been making at least weekly, whether to our community health center's matching funds campaign last month or direct donations to individuals, we've been giving out of every sale we make, quite literally. We bought and had delivered the firewood yesterday; we sold my old jalopy at a fabulous loss to a young man who desperately needs a vehicle (it was a jalopy, but a really well-maintained and well-running one, with new tires, battery, and front end, including axle, rods, and joints, and we sold it for a third of what we could've gotten, because he could afford that); we gave away a substantial number of items from our half-hog share; and a few days ago, we gave [what we thought was] the last of our cash donations to an elder who needed help. Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind; there are others. None of this is to make us out to be saints of any sort, because we're about as far from it as it gets, and unlike some folks, we have never pretended otherwise. We're both impatient, don't suffer willful fools, and are fucking profane. None of that makes a damn bit of difference to what we see as the work. My point is that, in this world? With circumstances as bad as they are? People die if we don't help. So, yeah, only four sales, and we're down to our last dollars, so to speak, but we have food, shelter, warmth, and now I'm going to be able to do my work properly. So there really isn't a choice. No, we don't get a tax deduction for any of it. I'd rather give directly to people who need than ever get a deduction for charitable giving ever again in my life. Because if you had any doubt? It's BAD here. We're the lucky ones. And with that kind of good fortune comes responsibility.

The rest is no longer entirely cut-and-paste, and if you take one thing from it? Please share our links. January is always the worst moth of you (followed closely by July), because it contains a bunch of one-off annual or biannual expenses, none of them cheap, and they all have to be paid. I'm staring down the need to pay out easily a couple of grand ver the course of the month, starting on the literal first, and we have made almost no sales all season. So if you're in the market for gifts, consider Wings's work. It's what keeps us alive, byes, but we also always make sure that whatever we bring in, we send out to help others beyond ourselves.

And people continue to leave us at an alarming rate; a new record two Thursdays ago of 48 officially-reported deaths state-wide due to COVID-19. But the ski resorts are open and the tourists are here, and the governor continues to talk about reopening the state even as she's running an official state TV ad campaign four tourism, urging people to come and spend Christmas in New Mexico (and worst of all, I'm positive she's using a Native voice actor to do the voice-over, even as our peoples die disproportionately from this folly). Unfortunately, we are not expecting things to improve over the winter, vaccine or no. Nothing rushed like this is ever reliable, and we already know better than to take something that already has so many reports of serious adverse reactions. There's also the question of whether it actually works over the long term, and people are already behaving as though it's a magic bullet that means no one needs to mask or distance, and we're being flooded both with tourists and with jackass locals who won't do the minimum to keep from killing us. And prices continue to skyrocket, and an artificial scarcity remains the order of the day.

Meanwhile, the need to bring in a bunch more sales this week and the next two to avoid us being thoroughly screwed going into 2021 hasn't changed. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I bring in a significant number of sales over the next week and a half. And I'm still tired. Tired from this stupid shingles vax reaction. Tired from the stresses of this year. Tired in ways no one will ever understand. "Can't hold your own head up because the physical fatigue is too much" tired. I don't care about any of the rest of it. Yeah, our craven and cowardly governor is willing to let us all die. Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference, but I still have to keep us alive, and other folks, too. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And this will sound selfish, but we've spent the whole year working to help other folks survive in the face of some very ugly [and wholly unnecessary] odds, and . . . you know what, we're just done. Not done helping others, but we gave away the last of what we could a few days ago. There's nothing coming in. No sales. I have to come up with a way to get us through this winter, and it's looking grim indeed. So while we will continue to do what we can to help other folks less well-situated? Do not ask me for political support for any of the people whose cowardice and venality put us here. And if you want to help? Please share our links, because we are staring down the barrel of 2021 up very close now, and after this holiday season and with outsized one-off expenses looming for January? I don't know how we make it if I don't start bringing in more sales.

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.

         

Red Willow Spirit: A Flowering of Shadow and Light

Photo copyright Wings, 2020; all rights reserved.

Now posted at The NDN Silver Blog, it's an edition of Red Willow Spirit for the fast-changing patterns of winter weather and the season's promise of renewal and rebirth. It's a remembrance of unseasonal rainbows, of silver-limned clouds and cobalt skies, and here at Red Willow, it's a way of living, of being — of all the magic and mystery and medicine of the spirit of winter, a flowering of shadow and light.

The post is here. Wings's main page is here. As always, his photos are available in any of the usual three formats, and the silverwork is available immediately; simply inquire via the site's Contact form. We were able to cover December's monthly expenses and some additional costs, like the hay for the horses and one load of firewood for us (but no plumbing repairs until the pandemic recedes; it's too dangerous to bring people into close quarters like that here now). But there's more firewood to cover before winter gets really under way (and it's here today, with a wind chill of 3), and there's still the process of figuring out this water/well-drilling problem, and January always brings a flurry of large once-yearly expenses that need to be covered. Meanwhile, the pandemic rages unchecked and the economy is dead (a grand total of four holiday sales this year, which will not get us much past the opening days of the new year, never mind the first six months of it), and we have a long winter to come to get through, too. And since neither the drought nor the pandemic is going anywhere, we are still going to need consistent sales to make it through the whole winter (one that has already been bitter indeed for our communities), so shares of the site links are much appreciated.  

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.  

Sideways.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

That work-in-progress photo from Saturday? That's what the piece looked like at the end of the day yesterday. He's almost done with it; I'll like have it posted on Wednesday.

No work on it today, though; this day went sideways from jump. Nothing catastrophic, just a complete and utter derailment of everything we had planned and scheduled. There was snow, though (only a couple of inches, but anymore, snow is snow, and beggars can't be choosers), so there's that. But I was reminded again today of just how brutal next month is going to be, and how badly I need to bring in sales to cover everything.

And again, I'll get to us in a minute. First, thank you to everyone who's shared the fundraiser post I put up here on Saturday for a woman very dear to both of us (and frankly, to a lot of y'all), one who has been struggling, alone and in silence, these last six months as the pandemic has made everything worse for her by the day, and even as people come to her routinely for help. Such is the lot of Black and Indigenous women; we keep everyone else alive and safe and well, while no one notices as we slide ever closer to the outer edge of survival. Special thanks to all of you who've already donated or are going to donate.

My work for this weekend and the week to come is to help her get the resources she needs to come back from that dangerous edge. This will be the site for the fundraiser; she doesn't have a GoFundMe, but I'll post her PayPal and CashApp info; she'll update me as she can, and I'll bump the post to the top of the page when I do (as in a few minutes from now). Look, I know everybody's feeling stretched really thin, especially with Christmas over and a new calendar year just around the corner. But it's winter (serious winter where she lives), and it's the middle of a deadly pandemic, and she has been fighting this battle alone for half a year now. No one should do this alone, and no one should have to fight just to live. So we have juggled some things, and with a lot of prayers and not a little faith, we gave $100. I'm going to ask y'all at least to match it. Some of you won't be able to, and we get that; but if you can spare $20, $10, $5, it all adds up, so please toss it in the pot. If you're completely tapped out, you can share the post and her cash links. And for a few of my friends on here who I know read this site who I also know have more resources, I'm hoping you will step up for this woman who does so much for so many.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming:

This has been one of our leanest, lowest holiday seasons ever. Only four sales total, and not a single sale this week. Not one, and no visible results for the work, even though I've been putting in 18-hour days and doing mostly without sleep. I'm still running the Twitter hashtag trying to help folks who are at risk of losing everything now get what they need. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped, because we are still losing people unnecessarily to all of this ::gestures around at a world in flames::. I have no patience with colonial standards of "charity" and "giving" and the respectability politics inherent in them, nor do I have any patience with the colonizing and colonized mentalities of those who continue to perpetuate them, leaving folks to die.

And all the other stresses, of course, are all still here. This has been such a ghastly year, and this winter's going to be very, very bad for our peoples. It's bad enough for us, with only four sales total this holiday season, and given that Christmas is over, I'm guessing that's it for the year. But it's been a lot worse for a lot of other folks in our community here. And so on top of the donations we've been making at least weekly, whether to our community health center's matching funds campaign last month or direct donations to individuals, we've been giving out of every sale we make, quite literally. We bought and had delivered the firewood yesterday; we sold my old jalopy at a fabulous loss to a young man who desperately needs a vehicle (it was a jalopy, but a really well-maintained and well-running one, with new tires, battery, and front end, including axle, rods, and joints, and we sold it for a third of what we could've gotten, because he could afford that); we gave away a substantial number of items from our half-hog share; and a few days ago, we gave [what we thought was] the last of our cash donations to an elder who needed help. Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind; there are others. None of this is to make us out to be saints of any sort, because we're about as far from it as it gets, and unlike some folks, we have never pretended otherwise. We're both impatient, don't suffer willful fools, and are fucking profane. None of that makes a damn bit of difference to what we see as the work. My point is that, in this world? With circumstances as bad as they are? People die if we don't help. So, yeah, only four sales, and we're down to our last dollars, so to speak, but we have food, shelter, warmth, and now I'm going to be able to do my work properly. So there really isn't a choice. No, we don't get a tax deduction for any of it. I'd rather give directly to people who need than ever get a deduction for charitable giving ever again in my life. Because if you had any doubt? It's BAD here. We're the lucky ones. And with that kind of good fortune comes responsibility.

The rest is no longer entirely cut-and-paste, and if you take one thing from it? Please share our links. January is always the worst moth of you (followed closely by July), because it contains a bunch of one-off annual or biannual expenses, none of them cheap, and they all have to be paid. I'm staring down the need to pay out easily a couple of grand ver the course of the month, starting on the literal first, and we have made almost no sales all season. So if you're in the market for gifts, consider Wings's work. It's what keeps us alive, byes, but we also always make sure that whatever we bring in, we send out to help others beyond ourselves.

And people continue to leave us at an alarming rate; a new record two Thursdays ago of 48 officially-reported deaths state-wide due to COVID-19. But the ski resorts are open and the tourists are here, and the governor continues to talk about reopening the state even as she's running an official state TV ad campaign four tourism, urging people to come and spend Christmas in New Mexico (and worst of all, I'm positive she's using a Native voice actor to do the voice-over, even as our peoples die disproportionately from this folly). Unfortunately, we are not expecting things to improve over the winter, vaccine or no. Nothing rushed like this is ever reliable, and we already know better than to take something that already has so many reports of serious adverse reactions. There's also the question of whether it actually works over the long term, and people are already behaving as though it's a magic bullet that means no one needs to mask or distance, and we're being flooded both with tourists and with jackass locals who won't do the minimum to keep from killing us. And prices continue to skyrocket, and an artificial scarcity remains the order of the day.

Meanwhile, the need to bring in a bunch more sales this week and the next two to avoid us being thoroughly screwed going into 2021 hasn't changed. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I bring in a significant number of sales over the next week and a half. And I'm still tired. Tired from this stupid shingles vax reaction. Tired from the stresses of this year. Tired in ways no one will ever understand. "Can't hold your own head up because the physical fatigue is too much" tired. I don't care about any of the rest of it. Yeah, our craven and cowardly governor is willing to let us all die. Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference, but I still have to keep us alive, and other folks, too. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And this will sound selfish, but we've spent the whole year working to help other folks survive in the face of some very ugly [and wholly unnecessary] odds, and . . . you know what, we're just done. Not done helping others, but we gave away the last of what we could a few days ago. There's nothing coming in. No sales. I have to come up with a way to get us through this winter, and it's looking grim indeed. So while we will continue to do what we can to help other folks less well-situated? Do not ask me for political support for any of the people whose cowardice and venality put us here. And if you want to help? Please share our links, because we are staring down the barrel of 2021 up very close now, and after this holiday season and with outsized one-off expenses looming for January? I don't know how we make it if I don't start bringing in more sales.

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.

         

Monday Photo Meditation: The Prism of Winter

Photo copyright Wings, 2020; all rights reserved.

Now posted at The NDN Silver Blog, it's a photo meditation for some magic on the last Monday of a terrible year. No, there was no ice-cold rainbow today, but there was beauty and mystery to be had, a snow globe showing us our world through the prism of winter.

The post is here. Wings's main page is here. As always, his photos are available in any of the usual three formats; simply inquire via the site's Contact form. We were able to cover December's monthly expenses and some additional costs, like the hay for the horses and one load of firewood for us (but no plumbing repairs until the pandemic recedes; it's too dangerous to bring people into close quarters like that here now). But there's more firewood to cover before winter gets really under way (and it's here today, with a wind chill of 3), and there's still the process of figuring out this water/well-drilling problem, and January always brings a flurry of large once-yearly expenses that need to be covered. Meanwhile, the pandemic rages unchecked and the economy is dead (a grand total of four holiday sales this year, which will not get us much past the opening days of the new year, never mind the first six months of it), and we have a long winter to come to get through, too. And since neither the drought nor the pandemic is going anywhere, we are still going to need consistent sales to make it through the whole winter (one that has already been bitter indeed for our communities), so shares of the site links are much appreciated.  

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.  

A long hard road ahead.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

They say the first of the snow should be here tonight now, instead of tomorrow. Which is good, because what's left of the last one is now essentially packed down and frozen into solid ice. Which seems like an unfortunately apt metaphor for the end of this god-awful year and the start of a new one that's not going to be very new at all for a good long while.

We've all got a long hard road ahead of us.

I'll get to us in a minute. First, thank you to everyone who's shared the fundraiser post I put up here yesterday for a woman very dear to both of us (and frankly, to a lot of y'all), one who has been struggling, alone and in silence, these last six months as the pandemic has made everything worse for her by the day, and even as people come to her routinely for help. Such is the lot of Black and Indigenous women; we keep everyone else alive and safe and well, while no one notices as we slide ever closer to the outer edge of survival. Special thanks to all of you who've already donated or are going to donate.

My work for this weekend and the week to come is to help her get the resources she needs to come back from that dangerous edge. This will be the site for the fundraiser; she doesn't have a GoFundMe, but I'll post her PayPal and CashApp info, and she'll update me as she can. Look, I know everybody's feeling stretched really thin, especially with Christmas over and a new calendar year just around the corner. But it's winter (serious winter where she lives), and it's the middle of a deadly pandemic, and she has been fighting this battle alone for half a year now. No one should do this alone, and no one should have to fight just to live. So we have juggled some things, and with a lot of prayers and not a little faith, we gave $100. I'm going to ask y'all at least to match it. Some of you won't be able to, and we get that; but if you can spare $20, $10, $5, it all adds up, so please toss it in the pot. If you're completely tapped out, you can share the post and her cash links. And for a few of my friends on here who I know read this site who I also know have more resources, I'm hoping you will step up for this woman who does so much for so many.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming:

This has been one of our leanest, lowest holiday seasons ever. Only four sales total, and not a single sale this week. Not one, and no visible results for the work, even though I've been putting in 18-hour days and doing mostly without sleep. I'm still running the Twitter hashtag trying to help folks who are at risk of losing everything now get what they need. I'm grateful to everyone who's helped, because we are still losing people unnecessarily to all of this ::gestures around at a world in flames::. I have no patience with colonial standards of "charity" and "giving" and the respectability politics inherent in them, nor do I have any patience with the colonizing and colonized mentalities of those who continue to perpetuate them, leaving folks to die.

And all the other stresses, of course, are all still here. This has been such a ghastly year, and this winter's going to be very, very bad for our peoples. It's bad enough for us, with only four sales total this holiday season, and given that Christmas is over, I'm guessing that's it for the year. But it's been a lot worse for a lot of other folks in our community here. And so on top of the donations we've been making at least weekly, whether to our community health center's matching funds campaign last month or direct donations to individuals, we've been giving out of every sale we make, quite literally. We bought and had delivered the firewood yesterday; we sold my old jalopy at a fabulous loss to a young man who desperately needs a vehicle (it was a jalopy, but a really well-maintained and well-running one, with new tires, battery, and front end, including axle, rods, and joints, and we sold it for a third of what we could've gotten, because he could afford that); we gave away a substantial number of items from our half-hog share; and a few days ago, we gave [what we thought was] the last of our cash donations to an elder who needed help. Those are just the ones that come immediately to mind; there are others. None of this is to make us out to be saints of any sort, because we're about as far from it as it gets, and unlike some folks, we have never pretended otherwise. We're both impatient, don't suffer willful fools, and are fucking profane. None of that makes a damn bit of difference to what we see as the work. My point is that, in this world? With circumstances as bad as they are? People die if we don't help. So, yeah, only four sales, and we're down to our last dollars, so to speak, but we have food, shelter, warmth, and now I'm going to be able to do my work properly. So there really isn't a choice. No, we don't get a tax deduction for any of it. I'd rather give directly to people who need than ever get a deduction for charitable giving ever again in my life. Because if you had any doubt? It's BAD here. We're the lucky ones. And with that kind of good fortune comes responsibility.

The rest is no longer entirely cut-and-paste, and if you take one thing from it? Please share our links. January is always the worst moth of you (followed closely by July), because it contains a bunch of one-off annual or biannual expenses, none of them cheap, and they all have to be paid. I'm staring down the need to pay out easily a couple of grand ver the course of the month, starting on the literal first, and we have made almost no sales all season. So if you're in the market for gifts, consider Wings's work. It's what keeps us alive, byes, but we also always make sure that whatever we bring in, we send out to help others beyond ourselves.

And people continue to leave us at an alarming rate; a new record two Thursdays ago of 48 officially-reported deaths state-wide due to COVID-19. But the ski resorts are open and the tourists are here, and the governor continues to talk about reopening the state even as she's running an official state TV ad campaign four tourism, urging people to come and spend Christmas in New Mexico (and worst of all, I'm positive she's using a Native voice actor to do the voice-over, even as our peoples die disproportionately from this folly). Unfortunately, we are not expecting things to improve over the winter, vaccine or no. Nothing rushed like this is ever reliable, and we already know better than to take something that already has so many reports of serious adverse reactions. There's also the question of whether it actually works over the long term, and people are already behaving as though it's a magic bullet that means no one needs to mask or distance, and we're being flooded both with tourists and with jackass locals who won't do the minimum to keep from killing us. And prices continue to skyrocket, and an artificial scarcity remains the order of the day.

Meanwhile, the need to bring in a bunch more sales this week and the next two to avoid us being thoroughly screwed going into 2021 hasn't changed. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I bring in a significant number of sales over the next week and a half. And I'm still tired. Tired from this stupid shingles vax reaction. Tired from the stresses of this year. Tired in ways no one will ever understand. "Can't hold your own head up because the physical fatigue is too much" tired. I don't care about any of the rest of it. Yeah, our craven and cowardly governor is willing to let us all die. Nothing I do makes a damn bit of difference, but I still have to keep us alive, and other folks, too. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here;
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And this will sound selfish, but we've spent the whole year working to help other folks survive in the face of some very ugly [and wholly unnecessary] odds, and . . . you know what, we're just done. Not done helping others, but we gave away the last of what we could a few days ago. There's nothing coming in. No sales. I have to come up with a way to get us through this winter, and it's looking grim indeed. So while we will continue to do what we can to help other folks less well-situated? Do not ask me for political support for any of the people whose cowardice and venality put us here. And if you want to help? Please share our links, because we are staring down the barrel of 2021 up very close now, and after this holiday season and with outsized one-off expenses looming for January? I don't know how we make it if I don't start bringing in more sales.

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.