Some months ago my friend and fellow poet Debby Mitchell commissioned a coffee cup from me, to be given to her wonderful husband Gary in celebration of their birthday. I accepted the commission but missed the birthday deadline; Gary did get a photo of his cup, which was then at the greenware stage:

A new deadline was set: August the 14th, their wedding anniversary. Last night I regretfully told Debby I would probably miss that deadline, too. Gary did get an updated photo of his cup, still in the greenware stage but personalized with his first name in blue mason stain:

Why the missed deadlines? Here, with Debby’s gracious permission, is the substance of my Facebook message to her, by way of explanation:

*****

Debby, here is a story with seven sides:

In the mid-70s I took my first Ceramics class. The instructor was the excellent Maurice Grossman. He was supportive and encouraging to all his students, including me, but I had no talent, and the C he gave me was charitable. I never raised a cylinder during his class, though if I’d tried 500 times, I would have. My handbuilt work was mostly shoddy.

In spring of 1989 my then-wife and I took a ceramics class via Rio Solado Community College. It was held at North High School and taught by Calvin Tenney. After around 500 attempts, most failed, I started to get good at wheel-throwing, and I bought a potter’s wheel before the end of the year; and over the next twenty years I took junior college classes off and on, taking advantage of the kilns, equipment and glazes to get my money’s worth. But always in the back of my mind I hoped to wean myself from this arrangement and become independently ceramified.

One day during this time my then father-in-law presented me with a small octagonal kiln he’d found in a yard sale. I took the kiln to Marjon’s Ceramics, the main source of all things clay in the Valley of the Sun, and they repaired the “kill switch” and I did some firings. I liked the process, but the kiln had its issues and one of the misfirings that completely destroyed the ware the kiln contained compelled me to discontinue its use and to go back to Phoenix College classes.

When I moved to the Verde Valley I got involved with the Sedona Arts Center and took a ceramics class there. It was too expensive, though: for example, the Center required that students use their clay; and they were buying the clay from Marjon’s for about ten dollars a twenty-five-pound bag and selling it to the students for $28. So I looked for a place I could fire my clay without going to classes, and I thought I’d found one with one of my fellow artists at the Village Gallery, who said I could use her kiln for $35 per kiln load. But then I enrolled in a ceramics class at Yavapai Community College; that was this spring. They only charged students $10 a bag for clay. It was there that I fired the mug I made for Bill Campana. Not long after that, but after the last firing day at Yavapai, I accepted the commission for Gary’s cup.

Meanwhile, I got full-time work at Sedona Winds Independent Living Retirement Community, and my shift was 11pm to 7am, five nights a week. I found that having to go to class, go home, change, and soon after, go to work, was too onerous; consequently, I didn’t sign up for summer or spring class. But I needed to get Gary’s cup fired. Thus it was about two weeks ago I called my fellow artist at the Village Gallery. She said she did not want to fire other peoples’ ware any more; she’d had too many bad experiences. So I did what I’d wanted to do for many years: I found a used kiln online and bought it. Unfortunately the man who sold it to me had not been using it for ceramics (He heated horseshoes with it, and his wife melted glass in it.) And, let the buyer beware: it was far older than the ten years he’d implied it was: the ID plate Paragon Industries put on it had “Dallas 7, Texas” for the city/zone/state. You may recall that “zones” haven’t been in use since the advent of zip codes, which I’ve just Wikied and found that zip codes have been mandatory since 1967 for second- and third-class mail, so it’s pretty safe to say that this kiln I bought is at least 48 years old.

Yesterday morning I went to Marjon’s and showed their kiln guru Dean a photo of my kiln, asking him to fix me up with whatever it would take to make it operational. He sold me kiln shelves, supporting posts, pyrometric cones and glazes to get me what I needed to fire Gary’s cup. He also recommended an analog-display thermometer, but my budget was already just about spent.

I said this is a story with seven sides. That refers not to the seven paragraphs that comprise it, but to the fact that the kiln I now own is not the (nowadays) standard octagon shape, but septagonal, like sheriff’s badges and little else, including modern standard kiln “furniture.” I tell you this story because I feel bad that Gary’s cup is taking so long, and I want you and Gary to know that I don’t take my commitments lightly, and it breaks my heart when I break (or maybe, in this case, bend) such a commitment as the August 14 deadline I’d given myself for presentation of Gary’s cup to you two. You have been wonderful about that, and you deserve an explanation. Thanks for your attention!

*****

I should also mention that another step to getting the kiln operational was to get an outlet to match its four-pronged plug. The outlet was installed by Greg Huntington, my girlfriend Denise’s brother, licensed contractor and prince of a fellow, who accepted an inexpensive breakfast at a local restaurant as full and final payment for this task. If you need a remodel, a floor installation, or a home built from scratch, Greg is your man.