Help us help a Native artist and elder, please?

Photo copyright Aji, 2022; all rights reserved.

Starting this post off a little differently today.  All our usual stuff is at the end. You'll see how chaotic (and costly) all of that is in a moment. But it was all interrupted this morning by one of our own needing help.

Some of y'all know who Frank is — Wings's "brother," and fellow artist; they grew up together. He's a Vietnam vet, and a brilliant painter. Some of you own some of his work, and more of you have gotten miniature versions on the thank-you cards we've enclosed over the years. That's one of his paintings up there, one of my favorites, that we bought from him a few years ago; he's also given me a couple outright as gifts, and Wings, too. 

Anyway, he needs some help.

Between the pandemic and the economy, things are tougher than ever for Native artists. Having Internet access and the ability to print your own stuff and flog it from home is basically essential now. Frank lives on the other side of tribal lands, where the only way in is through the main gate (closed to outsiders except emergency vehicles and utilities and so forth). And he has none of those things. 

He's spent a frustrating morning trying to print some of his work from his cell phone, with no success; he can't get the two (phone and printer) to talk to each other. He called IKT, and they quoted him a price of between $800 and $900 to set him up permanently with wireless. [This is like what we have, that we paid about double that for six or seven years ago. They have to dig. And no, the tribal broadband initiative won't help him because he doesn't have the infrastructure; that's what all the cost is about.] Anyway, we're trying to raise the money for him. 

Since we don't know the actual total once taxes and everything else are added in, I figure $900 for the dig/set-up/service, to be on the safe side. He'll also need cabling and so forth. And he's doing everything with his phone! He needs a little inexpensive computer of some sort to make this part of his work easier.

We're trying to raise $1,250 for him, hopefully enough to cover it all. That would let him get back to his real work, which is creating incredible art rooted deeply in his and Wings's shared community and culture and history. He doesn't have the ability to do it, obviously, with no computer or Internet access, so we're using our PayPal account . DONATE HERE. Put "For FRL" in the Notes section. Every penny goes to Frank. [We'll eat whatever fees accumulate.]

This pandemic has brought home to us in the starkest terms how truly fortunate we are to be able to do all our work from home. Frank deserves that chance, too; he and his sister are Native elders, and they are at heightened risk, as well. Help us help a Native artist and elder, please?

I've spent the last couple of hours on this when I was supposed to be doing other stuff, as it happens, but it needed to be prioritized. For all the rest of it, it's proving to be an expensive and also a really chaotic day. The earth-moving/berm building (for the dual purpose of preventing erosion problems while keeping the dogs from getting out by going under the fence) is done to the tune of $400 cash, and the guy's arrival nearly an hour early this morning. The electrician still has not shown up, so who knows; that involves the generator, and it's going to be a process, because we'll need to pour a slab and build a housing for it. The chimney guys are due in another hour-plus for the annual chimney cleaning/fire prevention work.

So it's back to flogging sales as constantly as possible. Wings has several other new pieces in the works, although given our workload this week even now, I don't know when they'll be finished and ready to post. I need more time, more hours in the day, fewer interruptions. I need to ability to chase sales. 

So, yeah, we need to make sales consistently, always. All the links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities are first and foremost, the other ladder and the Gorilla tape);
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

We're still hoping to put aside enough for a new well when the ground thaws enough to drill in the spring, too, Nah, we've given up on the well. No one's available to drill before the latter half of summer, and the tax burden means we would never be able to afford it anyway. But it's perhaps even more of a good time to make a purchase, because Uncle Sam is a vindictive colonizer, and my current stress levels about paying it all are off the charts. And there's lots of fabulous work, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.