Controlling Glaze Application Thickness on Porous Bisqueware.

Controlling Glaze Application Thickness on Porous Bisqueware.

Factors controlling the thickness of a glazecoat on bisque.

  1. Length of time in the glaze
  2. Density of the glaze suspension. That is how much water is there and how much suspended powder.
  3. (Apparent) porosity of the bisque, including how dry it is, how much pore space it has, how quick the pore space absorbs water, and how thick the bisque is.
  4. Rheologic properites.
    • a. flocculation
    • b. surface tension and viscosity
    • c. number of long molecules (might be covered in viscosity)
    • d. The amount of fine particles that can clog surface pores.

Length of time in the glaze

When you dip a piece in your glaze suspension the bisque ware starts to absorb water first making the glaze near the surface a more dense liquid and then turning it solid. So long as the bisque is absorbing water fast enough the glaze coat continues to thicken. As the absorption slows down there reaches a point where the coat of stiff glaze starts to get wetter again and slough off. The thicker the work is, the thicker the glaze can get and the faster it gets thick. In beginning thrown work the base of the pot is often thicker than the top making the glaze thicker near the bottom, just where running has the biggest likelihood of causing an issue.
Dipping the work in water before glazing decreases the availability of pore space for absorbing glaze. Right after you dip it the effect is greater. Because water without glaze absorbs quickly these have to be very fast dips. With work that is thicker near the bottom you can dip the bottom few inches in water before you glaze and if needed pour a little water on the inside bottom and pour it out. I do this with really runny ash glazes so that they will not run too thick on the inside.

How long a pot is in the glaze is perhaps the primary method of control of glaze coat thickness. If you imagine pushing a cylinder in for 5 seconds and then removing it for five seconds, the first part of the pot to enter the glaze will be in the glaze for ten sends and the last for less than a second. If you want an even coat of glaze, you will not have it. I use the words plunge, wait, pull. Don’t go so fast that you create a tidal wave or splash but do not take your time putting the pot in, or taking it out. After you pull it out you usually want to keep it in the same orientation so that you do not get drips down the side of the pot.
If you are doing two different glazes, the amount of time you wait between glazes controls the thickness of the overlap. The longer you wait, the drier the first glaze becomes and the more porousity it has avaialble to dry the second coat of glaze. Being ready with the secoond glaze saves loads of problems. As soon as the high sheen is gone it is usually safe to dip in the second glaze.

Density

More solids in the glaze means that the pot has to absorb less water to make a stiff coat. This speeds up how quickly a coat accumulates. Adding water can work to a point but it also increases the shrinkage of the coat as it dries. With too much water sharp edges of the clay become saturated and get little or no glaze. There are many ways to test the thickness of a glaze coat and to control it. The first measure of control is the density. How much does a given volume weigh? Adjusting that by adding water (it decreases the density of the glaze) is the first thing to do after checking if it is too dense.
Glazes should be stirred immediately before glazing. Some glaze mixtures are particulary sensitive to this. Further, since materials settle out at different rates an unstirred glaze is a different glaze at the top than the bottom. There is a particular watery look to the last part of a pot dipped into an unstirred glaze.

Rheology

The rheology of the glaze is the next issue to deal with. As you speed the absorption of the water needed to stiffen the coat and as you reduce the water needed to be absorbed you cut down on the space between the particles of glaze. At least this is the theory of Matt Katz, and it makes sense to me. This decreases the amount of air that will be trapped in the melted glaze coat and cut down on pinholes. Adding a deflocculant helps with this as it reduces the amount of water needed to make glaze fluid. Shorter dipping time also helps. Matt also favors low bisques because it increases the force and speed of water absorption decreasing the pore space in the glaze coat.
On the other hand flocculants seem to cut down the amount of thickness variation created by drips flowing off handles or bottoms of pots when they are pulled from the glaze slurry. Since you cannot deflocculate and flocculate at the same time, you have to do what is needed more depending on the glaze.

Fine Particles

Fine particles, especially bentonite, also help to keep drips from setting in thick streams. The fine clays clog the surface pores as the pot is held in the glaze. So once the glaze reaches a certain thickness the rate at which it absorbs water slows down decreasing the impact of drips as you are applying glaze. It is a good reason to add bentonite to most any glaze. Veegum does this too. Glazes with lots of ball clay do not need the addition.
Other additives such as gums, glycols, can slow absorption even further. Some of these materials affect the rheology in multiple ways. They can be deflocculants, or flocculants, they can affect the surface tension or viscosity so test them. Make sure that your kiln is vented regardless and avoid things that you should not have your hands in or are hazardous to burn.

Ways to check glaze thickness

  • Scratch through the applied glaze with a pin tool and look at the thickness of the coat.
  • Look at the glaze coat and see how it covers details,rounds off rims,  and look the thickness at the edge of the coat. This is harder than it seems and takes practice.
  • Make a thickness gauge out of a dial indicator. I am hesitant to give directions as I have not used one.
  • Make a thickness gauge out of a piece of metal with a series of teeth that will scratch into the glaze coat. I believe that I read about this in Cardew’s “Pioneer Pottery” but it could be Leach’s A Potter’s Book”

 

In order to do this you need some vocabulary, a mental scale of thicknesses. Although if you are using a dial indicator a numeric scale might make sense.

  • Light Wash. A thickness where you see more clay than glaze. The wash is only thick in recesses if anywhere at all. Likely it does not show at all on sharp edges.
  • Heavy Wash. The coat mostly covers the clay but you can see some clay showing through on flat areas of bisque. Usually it is thin on sharp edges.
  • Just Opaque. A little heavier than heavy wash, you cannot see the clay on flat areas at all although edges may show.
  • Photo Paper Thickness
  • Half the thickness of a dime
  • The thickness of a dime
  • Penny
  • Nickel (US or Canadian coin)

Drying of Clay, thoughts, experience, ideas, dynamics, principles.

Understanding the problems of drying thick work.
It would be easy to assume that drying work that is twice as thick takes twice the time. There are many confounding variables in this, and the simple picture is just not true.

It takes only a little heat to heat water up. It takes 1 calorie of heat to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree celcius. Just to get some comparison, scale in this, a kilowatt hour is 860 thousand calories. Just to avoid confusion, a nutritional calorie is 1000 regular calories.

But to evaporate water, to turn it to steam takes 540 calories for each gram. It takes time, or a big heat differential to transfer all of that heat to the water. As the water evaporates it absorbs heat from its surroundings, cooling them. This is why we sweat to cool ourselves. Evaporation of water absorbs heat.

Clay, especially dry clay is a reasonably good insulator. If you think of that 2 inch thick dinosaur as a bit of water surrounded by insulation, an inch of clay on each side, it is going to take some time for enough heat to penetrate the clay to evaporate the water. Remember, just heating it to boiling is not enough to evaporate it, you have to also get 540 more calories per gram to the water.

Below the boiling point of water at normal air pressure you can only evaporate water until the air surrounding it is saturated, until the relative humidity surrounding the water is 100%. So if you heat clay to say 90˚C or 194˚F and the clay is thick, water inside the clay will only evaporate until the air in the pores is saturated with water vapor. It may not all evaporate until there is time for the water vapor to move through the pores and be exchanged with air from outside the clay.

Explosions happen because the pressure inside the clay exceeds the strength of the clay to contain it. This part of the dynamic creates some compounding factors. As the pressure increases, so does the boiling point of water. This property likely contributes to the wide range of temperatures that we see explosions taking place at. Insulating properties of clay also contribute. the outside of a pot may be above normal boiling, but the inside might be colder from insulation and be at a higher pressure.

Fortunately, not everything makes getting clay dry more difficult. There are a few factors that speed things up. The first is that water wicks through the clay and presents itself, at least in part, at the surface of the clay where heat exchange and drying is easy. In order to understand this well you need to understand three terms, capilarity, surface tension, and viscosity.

Viscosity is the rate at which a liquid will flow. Honey and molasses are much more viscous than water. Acetone has a viscosity that is less than water, but most common liquids have viscosities that are higher. Viscosity of water decreases substantively as temperature increases. This increases its ability to move through clay towards the surface as temperature increases.

Surface tension is a nice term. It describes the tension on the surface of a liquid. When water beads up on a waxed surface the beading is because of surface tension. Without surface tension it would spread out. Surface tension is what holds bubbles intact. In mold making and in bubbly glazes a light spritz of alcohol can cause bubbles to burst. This is because even small amounts of alcohol radically lower the surface tension of the water allowing it to spread out and the bubbles to burst. Surface tension of water also decreases quickly with the rise in temperature. This allows the water to spread across surfaces, say clay particles and present more surface area for drying.

Capilarity, the property of water to up thin tubes or pores decreases slightly with increases in temperatures. The decrease is small enough that in most engineering problems the decrease can be ignored. Due to the increase in speed that this happens due to the decrease in viscosity, in our case it is more ignorable.

The loss of viscosity and surface tension presents us with an opportunity. Clay held at a high temperature maintains a more even wetness because water more easily transfers itself from wet to dry areas. Clay, in general, can be dried more quickly with few problems at high temperatures than at low. The phrase “high heat high humidty drying is used in an old text on brickmaking in the Archie Bray Foundation library and is the place I first encountered the concept. A few years later I needed to dry a thick carved mural quickly and dried most of it at 180˚F in a kiln with the lid propped over night, and some on a table with a fan. The ones on the table all cracked, those in the kiln all did not crack. I was convinced.

In this there are other confounding factors. Almost all electric kilns with the doors open tend to have colder floors. Even with zone control, unless there are floor elements this is likely to be the case. This is because cold air is denser than hot air so it settles pushing the lighter hot air out of the way. The more a kiln leaks, the more trouble there is with cold floors. Drying with the door open is an extreme case of a “leak”.

How wet work is changes the amount of time needed to dry below boiling temps significantly. It conspires with thickness to make thick objects often seem impossible to fire successfully. We have all heard the untruth, “You cannot fire thick work”. Having successfully fired kiln pugs as counterweights, I know this to be an untruth.

While I am still a believer that convection leaves bottoms of kilns colder than tops much of the problem with cold kiln bottoms seems to be the shelf near an uninsulated floor adding to the thermal mass . Work loaded on the shelf with the bottom down adds even more to this. It is not a duplicate of the area near the lid of the kiln. Dispersal of heat at low temperature has to be from convection because radiation is not very effective at the low temperatures.   Since none of these factors are very effective with low temperatures or small differences in temperature the added density at the bottom keeps things wet longer. Keeping thick work off the bottom and when possible placing it rim down vastly improves the situation by getting more of the clay higher in the kiln.

Most dispersal of heat at low temperatures in kilns is from convection caused by the differences in density caused by air temperature. The colder air heats at the elements near the bottom. This often leaves a cone of colder area near the bottom of electric kilns. So when you are preheating at 180˚F the bottom of the kiln, especially towards the center can be several tens of degrees colder. The colder it is, the less heat is transferred to the water and the slower it evaporates. Most often it seems that explosions happen in the bottoms of kilns that are fired with some, but not enough care.



Optimal conditions are unachievable. We have to fire in real situations. But if you had a piece of clay that was slightly wet, you could heat it above boiling for a short time. The water near the surface would evaporate quickly, but being near the surface would not create any pressure within the clay. The evaporation would prevent the water further inside the clay from heating as it would be absorbing so much heat to evaporate. After that surface water evaporated you would need to lower the temperature. The question is what temperature to lower it to? Optimally this might be above boiling. We only need to stay beneath the pressure that the clay can withstand. Under perfect circumstances we could even do this with leather hard clay. I believe that under normal circumstances we almost never achieve perfect drying and some water is always expelled from the walls of our clay under pressure.

Kiln pyrometers, even type S are imperfect. Even a few degrees around boiling could likely create problems with explosions. Because of this I usually used large margins. I started at 180˚F (82˚C) moved to 190˚F and as I got surer to 200˚F (93˚C). As I got close to retirement I started to use a slow rise time through boiling and shorten the hold. I believe that fine tuning this would result in quicker firings. Because there are differences in our many clay bodies and firings are mixed, “optimal” will vary even beyond considering thickness.

Sometime when I first started teaching at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, The Island University, The only university in the US on its own island, surrounded by salt water, I decided that I needed a goal for speed of bisque kilns. How many pieces was it acceptable to explode in a semester? If you fire too slow you waste student time, and some electricity. If you fire too fast you either have not allow thick work or you blow stuff up. I decided that blowing up two pieces a semester was enough. Five was way too many. I also decided that this was true regardless of thickness. I started holding back thick work for special firings.

I dried kilns at 195˚F roughly 90˚C. How long the kiln was held depended on the wetness of the work, and how thick it was. I avoided loading thick work near the floor of the kiln. As things got busier and there were more classes, kilns were loaded less reliably. Work on the bottom started to explode more. I added time, a slow rise and then a short hold at 20˚F above boiling to try and get the bottom of the kiln to not explode. This was effective.

I started to think about the slow rise and the ability of clay to contain some pressure. I think that the optimal technique for getting work dry might be a short hold below boiling to get the work hot throughout and then a slow rise past boiling keeping the rise slow enough that the water remaining can boil without creating too much pressure. I think that this would be worthy of study. Knowlege of optimization of brick drying could likely inform what we do and save us time, money, and carbon.

Boat Duck Noodle Soup

ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเรือ Boat Noodles

“Louis, What do you want for dinner?” This was the question my Thai friends, for all intents and purposes, family, asked me.  I requested Duck Soup with noodles. It was special, I was just getting to town. The only places they were sure had Duck soup were not open yet. Once I said duck soup it became the objective. Two hours later, no matter how much I said, “lets find something practical”, we were still looking for duck soup. My family there is 180 degrees out of phase with “practical”.

Soup with rice noodles ก๋วยเตี๋ยวเรือ kwuaytiyo rya  is a common street food throughout Southeast Asia. In Thailand it is often sold by vendors with pushcarts, and folding tables and chairs. I particularly like the duck variety although I often eat the pig variety or chicken. เรือ Rya means boat and these were traditionally served from boats on the canals and river in Krung Thep. The first part of the name appears to be Chinese or Malay, I am not sure.

It is hard to understand how important food is in Thailand. Even a rushed lunch location is an important decision. There is almost always a sauce, or three, available and often there is customization, do you want innards or not? Extra meat? The special version or regular? And then in places you can ask for all sorts of things. Some dishes always come with the same garni and/or condiments. A few dishes always come with clear broth.

But kwauytiyo is relatively simple except that I can never hang onto how to say it. You can order it without liquid, but it normally is with broth. You get to choose the kind of noodle in most places.  Normaly you would get rice noodles. But even these come in three plain varieties, wide, small, and round, There are flat 2 inch square noodles served in other dishes. Then there are bha mii, a wheat noodle with egg, woon sen, a bean thread, and mama noodles, the instant ramen noodles.

Where I stay in Thailand there is a noodle cart permanently parked on the sidewalk by the bridge over the highway. These bridges are called floating spans. Anyhow this cart is only open nights. I suspect that the owners use it to suppliment income. They only serve the pig variety. In my opinion it is pretty plain, but makes a great 10pm snack.

The meat is usually inexpensive cuts sliced thing. In first quality beef soup there is usually some tendon. It helps make a great broth. There are often “fish balls” or other protein concoctions, usually round. There can be liver. Since it is not broiled, this is something I usually do not have a big problem with. A friend commiserates with me about liver, he says he would rather eat the oil filter. I can relate. If the dish is served in a fish variety it is usually with luuk chin pla, Thai gefilte fish.

I cannot speak to to the seafood version of kwautiyo I never order it. I seem to be the poster child for food poisoning from clams. I stay away.

Namtok, meaning I believe “waterfall” at least literally refers to adding blood to the broth. This makes it much richer. It is not always available.  If you are European they might assume that you do not want it.

Once you get it on the table you have condiments to fix it up. There is Naam Pla Phrik or Fish sauce with peppers, usually there is some coarse grind of red pepper, sugar sometimes, salt, plain fish sauce and ground white pepper. Chopsticks and soupspoons are stored on the table in a long stainless box. After you add your customization you stir it by picking up some of the noodles breaking up the wad of them.

After a couple of hours of driving around we finally got to a chicken noodle place. It was on the route home which is good. They were great.

 

rice noodle  ก๋วยเตี๋ยว Ǩwyteī̌yw
boat เรือ Reụ̄x
duck เป็ด Pĕd
fish sauce with pepper น้ำปลาพริก N̂ảplā phrik
fish balls ลูกชิ้นปลา Lūkchîn plā
waterfall น้ำตก N̂ảtk

Red Curry Mildish

Basic Recipe from https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/red-curry-paste/ Hot Thai Kitchen, a great site for Thai recipes. They also have a nice Facebook page.

I wanted to turn down the heat, and still have it reddish.
Dry Ingredients ground in my coffee grinder (spinning blade type). I clean it out by grinding some dry rice twice.
1t. Salt
1/2 t black pepper
1t lemon zest
4 makrut Thai lime leaves
1 ancho pepper
3 dried chinese store peppers  They look like ripe serannos but dry. You can use Thai chillis or anything other than red sweet pepper. If I had ripe serranos or Thai chilis I would use them.
1T Korean pepper powder.
1t Dry cilantro seed

Wet ingredients, if not already chopped I turn them into 1/4 inch size pieces first then process them in a food processor until smooth. This takes opening it and mixing many times.
3T chopped lemongrass. I buy this chopped and frozen.
1t frozen or fesh Galangal (aka Laos or Ka)
1t fermented shrimp paste
1T vegetable oil (aids food processing)
2T Cilantro leaf
Add ground dry ingredients and process until well blended and smooth. Sometime I have to blend by hand.

Nonthaburi นนทบุรี

Khun Doris, then head of the Fulbright was also interested in Pottery. She told of the Pakred and Kohkred potteries. She may have also given us the idea to visit Khun Pisarn Boonpug. I am not sure of this. The potter was also listed in a small book I had managed to purchase on Pottery in Thailand before I left the US.

Koh means “island” and Koh kred is an Island in the Chao Praya river, the river that divides the old Thai capital of Thonburi from the new Thai capital of Krung Thep, City of Angels, known in the west by the little village that the city ate, Bangkok which likely meant village of makok, a fruit. Krung Thep is much more interesting. It could maybe be said to have a mirror in Los Angeles, also City of Angels, but Thep refers to Thai Angles and Krung Thep is only the abbreviated name. The full name, Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์ translates as, City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of g-ds incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra’s behest.
Anyhow, Kohkred Island is upstream of there, a nice day trip.

Likely I will get some of the dates wrong, but I visited Koh Kred and Pakred on the  eastern bank of the river in 1989. It is not that far from Don Muang airport.  On the first occasion we took a boat upstream to a dock near Pakred and walked downstream to the earthenware potteries. We then took a boat across the river to Koh Kred and were met at the ferry by someone who appeared to be a tout.  Really he just wanted us to enjoy the Island. He showed us the temple, the murals inside and described some history. The mortars on the island were stout, with very heavy rims and bases. They had more clay in them than any other mortars in Thailand. They were made by the thousands. While the mortars of Dankwian make the worlds most delicious green papaya salad, these mortars held up to the pounding of the pestles. They were durable. I do not know if they are still made.

The fuel in the kilns was palm fronds, the leaf stems. The mortars, fired hot, showed the orange peel texture of salt glazed ware. I asked the locals how much salt they were putting into the kilns. They said “salt doesn’t burn”. I thought

The wheels on the Island and in Pakred were single speed with many wheels run on separate shafts driven by long pulleys. Each wheel had a belt tensioner that acted as a clutch. The technique did not involve centering. The pot was thrown from a large piece of clay on the wheel, but that piece was made out of a pug. The large piece was coil thrown out of the pug. It was an amazing process, there is a little footage of this in Beyond Dankwian, the second hour of my movie on Thai Pottery.

Clay and fuel was brought to the island on boats. We were told that digging clay on the Island was not smart as the Island would sink. It is only a few feet above river level. The Island is small and there are no roads, although there are a few motorcylces that operate on the sidewalks.

The potteries were working hard with people throwing at each kiln site we visited, pots in all stages of production. Back then, the land was cheap, labor was cheap, clay was cheap, and fuel was not too expensive. They were burning palm fronds.

In 1994 I had the honor and good fortune to be invited to be the “Presenter” for a group of potters at the Festival of AMerican Folklife on The Mall in Washington DC.

In 1998 in Ceramics Monthly magazine an article said that the potteries were dying out. Between the visit of the author and the publication in Ceramics Monthly, His late Royal Highness King Bhumipol The Great visited the island and said that it was a beautiful place to visit. I do not have an exact quote. The next weekend the Island was over run with visitors. I visited a month after that and there was hardly room to walk. Not only were there almost no pots, there was no water for sale. You could buy colas and other drinks and knick knacks.

In around 2004 I visited the Island again. It was under stress. There was a lot of pressure for land to be sold for high rises. There has been pressure to build a bridge across the Chao Praya river using the Island. The locals like their quiet life without cars and so far they have been able to protect it.

 

Check CM for article on Failing pottery.
Check date for visit of HRH King Bhumipol The Great and try and get a direct quote.
Check date of my next visit. Try and find an article on the bridge plan.

Soda or Potash,,, salt does not burn.
offer of a job.

Food Topics

Mae and the Green Snake with the Wood Tale.
Louis, Cashews, Urishol.
Jum, Naem,
UHT Milk
Miang Kam, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miang_kham

This topic, miang, along with phat pai kaprow, and Choke Chai probably should get attached to Jum.

The VFW in Korat and the Siri,
The Courtyard near Kun Ying Mo with the hot spicy food and the quiet.

HS9DEK Nam Voodoo, and Joy,
Maybe quotes from the journal and insidious intestinal irritants.

Som Tum,
The half life of Kai Yang at bus stations

How to avoid food poisoning

Ghost Gate Market, Talaat Nat today, and The Chicken Lady ,
The old woman and the roasted bananas , paper bags from used paper,

Ease of starting a business, Japan,

 

 

 

 

 

Uncle Bernie

 

Version 2 2024-06
Bernie

I woke up this morning. I became distraught somehow, maybe it was wifi withdrawl but I don’t think so, and it occurred to me that I should write about Uncle Bernie, while I could, while there are those younger than me that also remember him.

Bernard Katz, Uncle Bernie, could not be contained by these few names. He had pseudonyms. Likely there were many more than I can remember, but among them are Fatz Katz, used for his jazz, boogie woogie persona and music and El Gatos (a name I have also taken up, although mine is spelled L. Gatos), and Thumbs, for his imaginary second left thumb.

Uncle Bernie always valued my presence. It did not matter where or when, how busy he was, how many adults were near. At the very least I got a smile. Often when my parents failed to introduce me at his house to other guests, he took the time. While I miss others in my family who I have lost, I think that the space he left is the biggest and most profound.

I know too little of him, but it all comes rushing forth. Not a great editior I know that I must put these thoughts down in some sort of order or the editing will not take place. There is so much to say, likely I could write for days and work on it for month. I am going to leave out all the other great relatives I was lucky enough to grow up around. This includes my Aunt Grace who said I chased tennis balls like a gazelle, and my Aunt Charolette who seemed to understand who I was and always had a smile for me.

Bernard was the youngest of three children. The oldest was Bill, William. William was also the tallest. Bill was a biology teacher in the city of Detroit. But before that he was the eldest child of two immigrants. By the time he was in his teens his mother had become bedridden, I do not know the extent of this. As a child I was told that Bill raised my father (Joe) and Bernie. Most of what I have been told about Bernie’s life came from my parents.

There are always more resources for the eldest. You can be bitter about if you want, but it is the way of the world. The youngest tends to get the benefits of parental experience with children. That too, is the way of the world. Bill got piano lessons. He also became a cello player, something he carried into adulthood. I only remember hearing him play once. I remember it sounding good. I also remember him playing piano. But I have no memories of its sound. He could not possibly have been as fun to listen to as Bernie.

Bill had dry humor. Often when he was funny it was a play on words. He had fun with them. I remember in my early teens hours after he sad something finally getting the joke. I think he worked a lot of puns and other word humor into what he said and that for me this was always baffling. Unlike my brothers, and most the rest of the family I am not particularly gifted in English. I have to work at it in order to be able to write. People that pun all the time, sarcasm, other play with language easily gets by me. This is true at least to the standards of my family. His brother Bernie had what I call “wet humor”. Nothing was hidden. It could be crude but it was always right there. Between them in age, height and humor was my father.

Bill walked into the kitchen as a teen. Bernie, five years old or so was playing on the piano. Bill’s father ( my grandfather) said, “Bill, I thought that was you. Who is playing the piano?” Bill answered, “Bernie.” Bill’s father said, “Well we can’t afford lessons for him too. ” Already a prodigy, Bernie’s playing had been mistaken for Bill’s.

The next lesson, or at least at some subsequent lesson Bill took Bernie down the street to the piano teacher to show him off before his lesson. The teacher said, “He needs piano lessons.” Bill said, “We can’t afford them. ” The piano teacher said, “He’s free”. She stayed his teacher at least until he was 18.

Sometime around the time Bernie was 13 a friend of his father’s took him to a bar where there was a piano. Bernie played and earned tips. He went back frequently. His father was at first jealous that Bernie was earning as much money as he was. After a while he figured out that the family income had doubled. This was more important than his jealousy.

By his late teens Bernie had developed a problem with alcohol. He told me that it was affecting his playing. He gave it up. He kept playing in bars. I remember seeing him at “Scotch and Sirloin” a place near our house. Over his career he had several gigs where operatic singers would come and sing while he played. I did not like opera as child, but still liked to go and watch him play. Given a chance I always requested Kitten on the Keys by Zez Confrey. He seemed to enjoy playing it for me. He liked Zez Confrey. Zez’s music calling it “mad”.

When Bernie came over to our house he frequently brought food. He introduced us to “chocolate flavor licorice” also green licorice. He came over once with strings of dried Okra, dried on threads.He bought a can of French Truffles (the mushroom). My memory is that they tasted like dirt. He was not impressed either. My memories of this visit are very distinct. I am not sure that they are real. Some parts of the memory cannot be. He frequently came with Ice Cream. Often it was Neopolitan Flavor which had three stripes in the box, chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. On rare occasions it was Spumoni another layered ice cream but with candied fruit and pistacios. I expect it was expensive. He knew we kids liked it. He bought my brothers a subscription to “Mad Magazine”. I expect that I was not named because it had bits of adult humor disguised in it and I was the youngest. That did not keep me from reading it. That it was not also a present to me was not comfortable. But it was Bernie. With Bernie I knew. I was not deeply hurt by this.

Bernie would hold large parties for his friends. There is a video on youtube that has a sequence at its end from one of his parties. It features the legendary singing Allesandra Marc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmH_-fLX49E&list=PLetZ5oCPmuekqO3hhElbguorQmS9Qeh-n&index=3 . He would cook for days for some of these parties. Once I was taught to make espresso on his machine and given the job of doing it. Usually children were not invited to these parties. I don’t remember much. He cooked gourmet food for the parties. Once it was steak tartar. We were amazed. He made us souffle for lunch one. He also taught me to make Turkish Coffee. We only ate dinner at his house a few times. I remember his mad dining room chairs being uncomfortable. But you know, “Who cares?’. It was at Bernies house. His friends were boisterous, smart, fun, interesting people.

At Bernie’s funeral, Dorothy Paul, who was a few years older than me said, “Bernie was everyone’s uncle”. I have no doubt this was true. He was a fabulous uncle. There was enough uncle in him to share widely.

I have no idea how or when which of his abilities developed but Bernie devoured music and internalized its sounds, patterns and emotions. There is a music show I sometimes listen to where you are supposed to determine the what composer’s style a piece is written in, and what the original piece of music it is based on. With Bernie, this sort of thing would happen on the fly. You could ask him to play a cartoon’s theme music in various styles, the one I remember doing this with was The Jetson’s theme song. “Bernie, how would The Jetson’s theme sound through the ages?”. He might start in some sort of chant style, working through composers like William Byrd, Pergolesi, Batch Beethoven, Brahms, boogie woogie and ending in Rock and Roll. He had no respect for Rock and Roll.

There were few things in life as exciting as visit from Bernie. Its so few that I can think of nothing like him visiting. One of our parents would say, “Bernie is coming over”. If it was soon we would get into the front hall closet, grab my dad’s felt hats and put them on. We? Ralph, David z’l Louis, the proceeding generation of three boys. We would run around like maniacs when he came with the oversized hats pulled down as far as they could be and still have our eyes poking out. He had a peculiar knock. Three loud flat hand thunks, about a second and a half apart. We would open the door. His eyes would be closed and his hands out. He would enter the house as Frankenstein. I loved it. Mad!

In about 1962 Bernie bought a Zuckerman Harpsichord Kit. Bernie, unlike most other members of my family, he was not “handy”. He got frustrated with it and gave it to my father to build. By the time “The Adams Family”, a single page New Yorker Comic, became a TV show in 1974, we had a Zuckerman harpsichord in the living room. I liked hearing him invent and play variations on The Adam’s Family theme music, normally played on the harsichord, but I prefered his boogie woogie to anything else.

One of Bernies skills was sight reading. You could, as far as I know, put any piece of music in front of him and he could read it. When I was playing often in my teens I asked him how he did it. He essentially said “eye hand coordination” but then started telling me tricks using music theory terms I was unfamiliar with on how to predict what was going to happen. But his eyes were always several measures ahead, as was his ear. I was his page turner once. I was young, I could not follow the fast music. He could talk to me while he read music. “Louis, the page turn was 10 seconds ago, turn two pages. ” This was while he was improvising or playing from memory from his read through earlier in the day. Best I could tell he would read, hear in his head and his hands would play what he heard. His memory for music was fantastic.

My theory is that he had a severe case of ADHD. People that are firm in thought of personal responsibility and consequence tend not to like a diagnosis of ADHD. I am not a psychologist, or psychiatrist. I have been told that I am a psychoceramist, a crackpot, but that is a different story. But what happens with ADHD is that many things with low short term motivation fail to stay in your thoughts. Say you have to clean up after dinner. But what comes into your head is Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 , or some other piano work. The signal saying “wash the dishes” then fails to stay active. The nuerotransmitters fail to carry it to the next neuron. It is gone. If the original motivation was stronger, more short term, maybe more fun, or the costs of not doing it bigger, maybe the strength of this signal in your brain would have had more power and it would have stayed up there, active. Instead it was lost in the sauce, gone.
On the other side of this, tasks with high motivation, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, but strong, stay active. If you have ADHD and you are involved in a task, thinking about art, or say, Einstein thinking about relativity, you can do so with less distraction. Someone might start talking to you, and until they rattle your shoulder or shout, you don’t hear them. ADHD can in some cases and at sometimes, be thought of as hyper concentration disorder. It is a tool of many highly creative and productive individuals. It helps allow you to be completely focused on the task at hand. It keeps distractions from even being perceived.

Performers have to be able to be “in the moment” This is a space that keeps the distractions that are handled by executive function. You cannot perform worried about taxes or any other long term concern. You have to be in the moment and stay there. It is something not often talked about in music, at least not in my experience, but is in theater. In the visual arts, we don’t even grunt about it much. But we should. Theater instruction often brings up how you get ready to get on stage, to let the world go and bring the stage, the place in. Sometimes relaxation exercises are used. It seems actors often talk about their process. What they are doing is letting most of the concious controllable, logical, plodding part of their facilites go and get intuitive. Intuition is a very fast process. Logic is slow., too slow for on stage. It can be used in analysis, in preparation, but onstage things need to flow.

Its not like other fields do not need this state, that actually is called flow. They do. Some fields name it as do computer programmers. While you may need logic to lay out a great scheme for a complex programming task, it is intution that brings the method to it. It may also finish with logic, but middle is the creatiuve part where the code gets written. Intuition, like reading music, playing, runs in the intuitive part of the brain.Things happen too fast for anything else.The reason the task of playing complicated works, say even my bad Ragtime seems so amazing is that things happen faster than we can even dream of our concious brain working. It just does not have that kind of speed.

Visual artists often could use instruction on entering this state. Some stay up late at night. Executive control is dampened by fatigue. Some drink. Alcohol also dampens executive function. Some use other drugs. Better would be to find a routine that gets you into that state. For me, loud music often does, but so do noise cancelling head phones. Fatigue also use to work. In some ways it still does, but many of tasks need all my wits. Staying up late is no longer a good strategy for me.

The ability to keep long term needs, concerns, tasks, without short term motivations in our thoughts is at least part of what psychologists call “executive function”. If you divide what we think into two sorts of things, those that get our concious attention and those that happen “behind the curtain” as Malcolm Gladwell puts it, those we cannot directly delve into, much of what sight reading does, how it uses the brain happens without concious control. Our eye sees the music and our hands on the keys respond. This does not happen without practice. Done over and over again our brain decides when it sees an eighth note at middle C we should depress the key, deciding when and for how long to press and hold it. If we have to say to our self, “Aha! its a middle C, press it now, medium hardness and now hold it, hold it, we cannot even do that much thinking during the eighth note. We are lost. Sight reading has some conscious control, but that control is more like an orchestral conductor, “a little louder , faster, hold”, but even what this internal conductor says happens behind the curtain to. Our conscious control of it is less frequent and more generalized. You want to be a good musician? Practice Practice Practice you must pursue.

According to my father, Bernie would go to the Detroit Public Library and check out piano music, take it home, play through it, and then go get more. He had book cases of music when was a child. He had a “music room”. This was not the room he played in until later in his life. It was where his music was stored. He consumed new music like people breath. I believe that it was twice when I was growing up my parents got phone calls from him. “I am playing with the symphony tonight, there will be tickets waiting for you at 7:15 pm. We would get dressed up and go. Seats would usually be somewhere near the front and center.

What would have happened is that the scheduled pianist with the symphony could not make it. Bernie would get a call in the morning, “So and so’s plane could not take off due to snow. Can you play ‘yadaydadyada’ difficult piano music”. Bernie would respond, ” can you get me the sheet music? I will need my tux laundered, someone to go my Chinese restauarant and pick up my standard order and I will need a ride to the rehearsal at 6pm. “What ever the piece or peices were, he could play it. Where the scheduled pianist may have worked on it for a month or longer, he would have an afternoon. I doubt it was as good, maybe not even ever, but the show had to go on. Being a concert pianist was not where his talent or interest or ADHD layed. However, this talent did allow him to fill in at the last minute in a way very few people on the planet possibly could have.

I had music lessons kitty corner from that library, piano. The teacher was not right for me. To say I was not right for him, or maybe piano would also be accurate. Had he engaged my interest in learning ragtime it might have worked out better. But each week the library was there. When I ended up in Ceramics class in 11th grade, I started checking out books on ceramics from the library. Over the year I read one every few days, and scanned hundreds more. I should have seen what was happening, but I was still thinking “Architect”. When I got to the U of Michigan and transferred to the Art School I had read more books on Ceramics than anyone in my classes. I had a powerhouse of technical information, not really organized or that functional. That organization took longer. I transferred from Engineering school to The School of Art and Design, my second month in college. It was a good decision.

AS a child I loved visiting Bernies house. First, he always had some time for me. He would ask how I was doing, what I was doing. As I got older he would ask about music. He was not critical of my playing. He would ask me to play for him. Even at the time, I felt honored. He had a magnificent piano. It had belonged to the first conductor of The Detroit Symphony. I can still feel the keys, their weight, the action, and still have some sense of its sound.

But that was only part of what a visit was like. His house was, in his words, “Mad” as in wild and crazy. He lived in an old Duplex. It was in downtown Detroit near Bell Isle on East Grand Boulevard. All of the trim was hardwood as were the floors in his house. It had a split staircase with the stairs to the second floor splitting towards the front entrance to the house and into his kitchten. One wall had a large single piece sink with drainboards, maybe 7 or 8 feet long. He had an old gas stove. It was old enough at the time to look exotic to me. He had an espresso machine with a long hardwood handle and lots of chrome, with red enamel. I think that the handle was ebony. His kitchen always smell of exotic spices. There was no sign that said, “don’t leave your children here. We will feed them espresso and cookies.” Leave your children or not, they would get coffee and cookies. It might be Turkish coffee.

He had a wondrous beaded lamp that hung over his reading chair opposite the piano. It was cool. Like much of the rest of his house it could have been featured in “The Adams Family”. The scenes in the living room of The Adams Family could have been shot in Bernies living room. We used to be able to go into the attic. “Be careful up there, the floor is not in good shape. Don’t fall through”. This was not hyperbole. The roof was leaking or for a long time a window was broken. Up there he stored some treasures. I was heartbroken when he sold his old Edison Cylinder record player. I have his all mechanical Victrola. He also had a windup music box with a flat disk metal “record” and the funkiest wind up piano anyone has ever heard. Occasionally he had pump organs. These often ended up at our house where my father would restore them Ralph, my brother, still has the pump organ I first learned to play keyboard on. It was not my first piece, but nearly, I played William Byrde’s The Earl of Salsbury Pavana on it. It took me a month to learn.

In the 1990’s Bernie had a stroke and lost much of the use of his left hand. He could not walk. In rehab they told him that they were going to teach him to walk. He said, I need to learn to play again. They said,”no, we need to teach you to walk”. He told them to “F-off”. They cam back the next day with the same schtick. Bernie was desperate to learn to play again. I am sure he wanted to flip them the bird and say something clever, but instead he said,” I will do anything you want in the morning. In the afternoon we have to work on my piano playing”. They had reached agreement. Stories if you tell them often enough become replete with imagery. Memories you could not have witnessed develop images, sometimes with viewpoints that are too high, above the ceiling, in walls, and often in places you have never been. So take this with a grain of salt, except that the piano did happen, and a friend who is a tuner, is a true friend and great guy. He also brews a mean cup of coffee.

So, Bernie is doing everything they want in the morning. In the afternoon he has hand therapy. Slowly he is learning to walk, but he needs a real keyboard. To the therapist he says, “the recorded music to walk to is fine, but wouldn’t it be nice to do this to live music. We could use a piano player. The therapist humors him, thinking maybe, “the old man is delusional” and says, “Where would we put it?” . Bernie, “over there in the corner”. Therapist, “fine”. Bernie calls his therapist, ” Hey, I need a piano delivered to my rehab place so I can learn to play again.” Tuner, “Where do I bring it?” Bernie, “I’ll meet your at the loading dock and open the door. Hence, live music for therapy.

ADHD untreated and even if only partly dealt with with drugs and therapy is debilitating. Bernie could not take care of cars. Once after a wreck he could not get the hood open so he stopped checking the oil. I am sure he intended to get the hood fixed but it kept slipping his mind. The engine got destroyed. It was his last car. When Bernie was in the last few weeks of his life I was told to visit. I remember crying on the plane to Detroit. He was in a nursing home near my parents place. It was a place with loads of patients with dementia. He had a variety of problems. He had become diabetic, likely because he ignored advice. He had a hernia that could not be operated on because of diabetes. But what got him was late stage breast cancer. Likely he ignored the signs. But I do not know this, it just fits what I do know.

The last time I saw Bernie I visited him in the nursing home. I walked over from my parent’s house. He was perfectly there with his full self. He told a few funny stories. He said to me, “Louis, I am totally f—ed. I had passed a crappy piano in the dining hall on my way in. I asked if he wanted to go play it. I think he said “yes” only for me. I hope not. But afterwards I thought of him playing that crappy piano very said. What was not sad was that as he played the people in the wheel chairs who had been staring into space, seeming dead to the world, livened up, looked over and watched him and moved around some. One of the nurses, probably a gem of a human looked over at me and smiled. Bernie could not see any of this. After ten minutes he was tired, or sick of the piano. I really enjoyed hearing him play, but it was nothing like hearing him on a real instrument.

 

 

Version 1 (march 2021)
Uncle Bernie was everyone’s uncle. This was told to me by the child of one of his friends at his funeral service. It rang true. My friends called him “Uncle Bernie” my  parents, aunts and other uncles called him that, at least in our presence. It would not surprise me if they called him Uncle Bernie in his favorite restaurants.

Bernie was a pianist, but to call him that seems thin, it does not contain him. His house was “mad” a favorite word of his to describe things that are “over the top”. He had beaded lamp that could have been used to upscale the set for “The Adams Family”. He lived in a duplex across Jefferson from Bell Isle in Downtown Detroit for most of his adult life. The duplex was all hardwood trim and floors, the lighting insufficient. It was full of antiques. It had the smell of old hardwood, antiques, must, and cooking. There was an aroma of coffee that hung around and I believe I can still imagine the smell of his sink and dishwasher.

When I was young my brothers and I would go into the attic and play a cylidrical record player. It was scratchy and a lot of fun. He also had a Victrola. It was cool, but not like the Edison record player. For a while we were told to be careful in the attic.The floor was insecure. This was from roof leaks. Rent was inexpensive. There was not money for repairs unless he paid for them. At some point when my parents were helping to care for him my mother insisted on increasing the rent so that the owner would participate in upkeep.

He had a a canopy bed with curtains. It was short. It was a copy of a much older bed. It looked like it was from the 1500’s. His house was full of paintings and prints, tableware, pottery, and Mason Hamlin grand that was built special of Ossip Gabrolovich. It was a glorious piano. It had a bass that to my ear sounded both rich and brilliant. It was a dream to play. The action was smooth, and not has hard as Yamahas or even Steinways. My fingers could sail a bit more. It was the first piano that seemed to draw expression from my fingers without effort.

Bernie was generous. It was not just things or money. He wanted to hear me play each time I came over. He played for me and let me sing. But he also showed me how to do things when I was young. He had me make espresso at one of his parties and introduced me to Turkish Coffee.

There was nothing like Uncle Bernie coming to visit, nothing. He would pound on the door, Boom Boom Boom. The three of us Katz Boys would put on our father’s felt hats and run around like crazy as we fought over who would open the door! Bernie would be standing with his arms stretched out and wiggling slowly like Frankenstein and then shuffle in. He almost always had something special. These are the gifts that I remember. But you have to think back, this was in the 1960’s exotic food, was.

He came with Okra dried on thread. A few times he came with green or brown licorice. It was decades before I saw licorice in these colors again. He came for dinner and had a can of truffles (mushrooms), I was maybe 8 years old. I hated mushrooms but I tried these. I remember thinking, “These taste like dirt.” We probably ate the truffles with plastic silverware and on paper plates as they are hunted by pigs. In 2024 I had some truffle oil unknowingly. The food had an unusual taste, I thought it tasted of dirt. Then I found out,,, truffle oil.

He gave my mother a pound of paprika. My brothers once got a five year subscription to Mad Magazine. Spumoni Ice Cream was a frequent treat. Occasionally we ate at his house. Once he made us pizza. I do not remember what was on it, but it was unusual. For all I know it could have been a frog leg pizza. He often made souffles. Our house was full of paintings and antiques, mostly because of Bernie.

Bernie served us Steak Tartar. I wish I remembered more. He had great spices. He ate at fun restuarants. The owners knew him. He shopped at the large Eastern Market. His coffee was luscious. It was the first coffee I enjoyed drinking.

Bernie’s big brother Bill had piano lessons Bernie was about 5 or 6 years old.  Bill was in the kitchen talking with his father. “Bill, I thought that was you playing the piano. Who is it?” “Oh, that’s Bernie, he copies me.”. “You know Bill we cannot afford more piano lessons.”

Bill took Bernie down to his piano teacher to show him off. The piano teacher asked if he had had any lessons. Bill said “no”, we can’t afford them. The teacher said, “he is for free”.

When Bernie was 12 a friend of his father’s took Bernie to a bar to play. Bernie came home with more in tips than his father made in a day. The first day, dad, whose name I have, Louis,  was mad. After a week he got his head screwed on straight and realized that there was now more money.

About the time Bernie was 22 he recognized that he had a problem with alcohol and stopped drinking. It was affecting his ability to play.

Some people read music. Bernie devored it. He developed an incredible memory, and could fake anything, in any key. He could count seven against nine or any other odd combination of rythms with two hands.  A couple of times when I was growing up we got to go the Detroit Symphony and hear him play. The phone calls informing us went like this. I am playing with the symphony tonight at  7:30. Be there by seven and ask for my tickets at the box office.

At his end it would go like this. The phone would ring. “Bernie, the pianist got stuck in a snow storm, can you play XXXXXXXXXXX?. Bernie would say “yes”. Then he would say, “someone has to get my tux to the cleaners”, I need the music delivered, and dinner picked up at the Chinese Restauarant. It was near his house and had booths with walls and I think doors.  I at there a few times when I was young.

My parents were going on an international trip. They were working on a will in case something happened to them. The got the Katz brothers together and asked us, “If something happened to us which aunt or uncle would you like to live with. We had three choices. In unison we said, “UNCLE BERNIE”.

I tried out for Fiddler on the Roof. Bernie was the music director. I did not get selected. But during the tryouts he would accompany people. One person kept switching keys. After the second time Bernie would play ahead of the key switch modulating so that it sounded intentional.

Sometime, and I am not certain of the year, Bernie had a stroke and lost most of the function in his left hand. They told him that they would give him physical therapy. He was elated.
They came to take him and told him that they were going to teach him to walk. He said, I need to learn to use my hand. They said you have to learn to walk first. He told them to “xxxx off”.

They came back the next day and said that they would take him to learn to walk. He was prepared. He said, “I will do anything you want all morning long, anything”. In the afternoon you teach me to use my hand. ” They agreed.
After a few days of this he said, “You know, this is really boring around here, you need some music, What about a piano? They thought he was joking and said, where would we put a piano. He said “over there” and pointed. To get him off their case they said, “ok”.

Bernie could be a pain. But Bernie has friends. They are still his friends even though he is no longer with us. He called one of them up, met them at the back door in his wheel chair and suddenly, Physical Therapy had live music.

I was told to come into town. Bernie was dying. I talked with him for a while in a nursing home. It was a dismal place. I said, “Hey Bernie, do you want to play the piano in the cafeteria? ” He said , “yes”. It was a piece of junk. I move the bench and rolled up his wheel chair. There were about five people in the cafeteria just sitting in chairs staring off into space. He started to play. They started to act alive. Bernie played for about 15 minutes. I flew home. A few days later I flew back in for the funeral. Its been over 20 years. It is still a beautiful memory. I tear up.

There was no one in the world like Uncle Bernie. The lives of all that knew him are richer because of it.  He was a devoted musician, cook, friend, and an incredible uncle.

This video of am extravaganza at his house when Alessandra Mark was posted by one of his devoted friends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmH_-fLX49E

 

 

 

 

Glues

Today I needed to glue some PLA plastic from my 3D printer together. The 3D forums all talk about how this is difficult, and I have had troubles. Unless you have a lot of surface or no need for strenght, everything I had tried up until today did not work.
PVA, polyvinyl alcohol, white Elmers® glue, requires porousity. Epoxy works sort of if you sand first but still is not very stuck. Plumbing cement does not work.
Just yesterday for another application I bought some Duco Cement. It is very similar to a “clear acid bottle varnish” recipe from “A Handbook of Chemistry and Physics” 1947 which suggests “dissolving ordinary toothbrush handles in acetone”. The question is, “What was an ‘ordinary toothbrush handle’ made of?” The answer is nitrocellulose. It makes a great finish and is still used on guitars. It is also, with less acetone, the basic recipe for Duco. It seems, at least at this short try, to work really well.
Given this success I thought that I should also try “Juice”. Juice is a mix that is used to stick ABS plastic to its build surface when 3D extrusion or additive printing with ABS filament. It is ABS filament dissolved in acetone. I am using this mix in a thicker consistency than I use for juiceing my build surface.
Please, please, acetone is not innocuous, vent the fumes and minimize exposure, use appropriate protective gear. Both of these glues are flammable and have low flash points when wet. Nitrocellulose is highly flammable even when dry and not safe to store dry. I am not convinced that the recipe using nitrocellulose is safe. There are many varients of this plastic. My suggestion for this sort of glue is to just buy Duco or another brand. But the Juice recipe seems great, and if you have filament in colors, you can have glue in the same colors.Just follow the warning label on the acetone and practice good hygiene. I am not a safety expert.

PVA Glues
Modified PVA Glues
Hide Glues
Epoxy
Polyester Resin
Weldwood Plastic Resin type glues Calumite.
Wheat Paste
Sodium Silicate

 

 

Glass ลุงแก้ว

พอเพียง Paw Pieng translates as “enough”, or “sufficient”. It is one of the mottos and goals for the Thai People put forward by Rama IX, HRH King Bhumipol The Great. When he came to power there was a great deal of poverty and he wanted development projects that would provide enough for the people. His plan calls for reasonableness (or wisdom), moderation, and prudence. He said that the underlying conditions for this must be knowledge and moderation. Over the years before and during his reign its often been clear that there must be an economy of self sufficiency, that the country should be able to live without the outside world, be able to shield itself from the valleys of the world economy. In my mind I have decided that the word “sufficiency” is a better translation of this idea than “self sufficiency” because it stresses “enough”. Learning a little about this philosphy gave a new context for an old friend of mine, one of my personal heros, ลุงแก้ว Uncle Glass .

Uncle Glass is a very funny, joyous man. He is fast to smile, crack a joke, pull your leg, and smile again. He is not “well educated” but is very smart, and it would be mistake to underestimate him. He has a bad leg. I do not remember how his leg was hurt, his calf broken, but it was when he was a young man, maybe in his teens. He was put into a cart and taken to the doctors. The doctor said that his leg below the break would need to be amputated. The monks from the local Buddhist temple said that they could heal the leg. They took care of him, bathed him, changed his clothes, and fed him. I was told how long this healing took, but I remember only that it was most of a year. Lung Gaeow (Uncle Glass) can walk, but for most of his life he found a bicycle a better mode of travel at least for distances more than about 20 meters.

Until he retired, Uncle Glass lived in what in the US we might call “a shack”. It had a tin roof over the old one made of leaves or grass and short posts, and a wood floor. The walls did not protect from the wind much. His first wife got ill and he cared for her until she died. He remarried someone that he knew from school. I think he was in his fifties when this took place. She developed diabetes and became bed ridden. He cared for her until she died. His third wife he married only so that the village would not talk. She was already in bad shape and he could not care for her without there being gossip unless they were married. She was still alive in 2008 if my memory is correct. The world could use more people like him. He is a mensch, a great human.

When I visited him back then he was going to the river every morning on his bicycle, maybe about a 1 km ride. He would park and climb down the banks. At the river he set some hooks with bait and then wash. He carried water up the bank (maybe 20 feet down) and watered his garden. After several loads he would pull out the fishing gear. When I was there he caught about 5 skinny 4 inch fish. Up on the bank he put them directly on some leaves he set on fire. Then he sat down, got out some glutinous rice and spicy vegetables, and a shot or two of whiskey his son in law packed for him. The fish, now cooked dry, were packed in paper and he rode is his bike off to the pottery to make water jars. A good person helps people in need. A great person does this again and again. I had hoped to make a video about him, but I started just as his physical productivity was failing from age.  As I write this he is still a joy to be around.

Lung Gaeow appears in my Thai Pottery Video in the height contest( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi_t0y5jFxM&t=409s 02:57 ). After I returned to the US I was asked to write for grants to bring Thai potters to The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference in 1991 in Tempe Arizona. Suwanee was to deal with all the arrangements in Thailand. I first asked for Uncle Good. I thought that he was nice, and had a love for making pots. He had a nice way with the traditional forms. He decided that he could not come because he was afraid that we would not have rice in the US and he could not eat bread. The word “eat” in Thai is really “eat rice”. The bread they sold in his part of Thailand was used as a desert dish, sort of like ultra-sweet Wonder®-type bread. The second person on our list had no birth certificate so they could not get a passport. Suwanee asked around. Finally two men agreed to come, “Craftsman Shotglass” (Chang Jork), and “Uncle Glass” (Lung Gaeow).

Lung Gaeow and Chang Jork (now deceseased) had a problem with alcohol. They were not anyone’s first choice but they were brave enough to come. Had I known more Glass would have been first on the list. My sole job at the conference was to take care of the 5 Thais, Suwanee (who could take care of herself) her sister (who stuck close to Suwanee), Mae (mom), and Chang Jork and Lung Gaeow. My Thai was rotten back then, but things worked out. So the morning after they arrived I went to see them. Gaeow says, “Louis, great to see you!” We are talking,,, how was the flight etc. “Louis, the flight was very nice but the airplane was cold, they brought us blankets.” “And you know Louis, they do have alcohol on the plane, I was worried. But it is so expensive and bottles are so little. Is it that expensive everywhere in America?”. I said, “no” .”You know Louis, we have alcoholism. Could you take us to buy some?”

So, I took them to the local alcohol store about a mile from their apartment. They walked in behind me. Gaeow grabs my arm kind of hard, it hurt a bit, “Louis, (he swings his arm to point across the store) Is all of this alcohol?” I answered, “No, that case over there is soda and Coke”. He said, “Louis, America is a great country!”.

He said, “Which type should be buy?” We finally settled on cheap beer. I picked up a six pack. They picked up two each. I showed them how to pay for it and we took it back to the apartment.

A couple of days later I stopped at the apartment. “Louis, we need more beer.” So we went back and got more. Gaeow told me that Jork could not read. Jork said,”Gaeow can’t read”, show us how to do this, then we won’t have to bother you.”
A few days went by. I was looking for them. They were not at the studio, not at Kurt Weiser’s house and not at the apartment. Then it dawned on me, “They are at the liquor store”. So I drove over to get them.

I walked in and they were not there. I turned to ask the cashier. He recognized me, “Its you!Where are those to guy’s from?” “Thailand”. “What language do they speak?” I answered “Thai” although really talking with each other its the local dialect. The cashier asked, ” Do you know what they did?” I am half already amused and a bit fearful.
“The rolled a big cigar with newspaper and a bunch of tobacco I think. The do smoke tobacco right?” I nod. ” You know, you can’t smoke in here” . I said that I would tell them. “After they lit that cigar, they squated in the back of the store in that language, What language did you say that was?” “Thai”. “Yeah, thats it. After a few minutes they came up to the counter, put thier hands on it and said, “Alcoholism, Alcoholism”. “I sold them some cheap whiskey. “You might want to tell them that they can’t drink in the store”. I thanked the cashier. As I was leaving he said, ” tell them the should not drink on the street either”.

So I head back to the apartment. “Louis!” Gaeow says,” I guess you were looking for us” . I said, “yes”. “Did you go to the liquor store?”Gaeow looks at Jork. “Yes” I said.
“I guess that the clerk said to tell us not to smoke in the store” I said, “Yes, it might explode”. “And we’re not supposed to drink in the store either?” “yes”. “Why not?” . “They don’t want drunk people in the liquor store”. Gaeow says something like, “how do they expect to make any money”. I tell them not to drink on the street. “They ask, “If we do, how much do we pay the police?” I explain that it is probably a mistake to try and buy off the police.

Chang Jork stopped by at Umdang Pottery when I was there in the early 2000’s. He gave me his Saw Duang ซอด้วง. This gift was probably the most significant of my life. He was not long on possessions. This was a return gift for bringing him to the US. He died a few years later.

I see Lung Gaeow nearly every time I go to Thailand. He is my elder. If I am to visit him I need to bring a gift. Normally this would be fruit, but he is an alcoholic so whiskey is what is expected. I no longer bring a full bottle.
Anyhow, I went to visit him about 15 years after his trip and he said, “Louis, Thanks for the whiskey. The neighbors don’t believe I ever was in America. Do you have any pictures of me there? And can you bring them here tomorrow?

I did not really understand this request until I stopped for another bottle of whiskey on the way the next day.

Lung Kaeow is retired. I saw him a few years ago.

Pastime

There are manythings that might get listed as the Thai national pastime. It could be chit-chat พูดคุย. It could be music. But to me, the quintessential Thai Pastime is eating. It is an activity central to everything. Eating in Thailand is an art form. How to eat? What to eat? Where to eat? Why eat? With whom? When to eat? The topic was brought to mind by a Facebook friend whom I have never had an eyeball with, never met face to face. She is quarantining in Bangkok, on day three of fourteen. She has been posting pictures of her food. They deliver it to her room. I have been looking at it and it has been making me sad. It seems inhuman. The first question that comes to mind”How can you serve that kind of food to a Thai person?” Then when you realize that they are doing so in Bangkok, City of Angles, the impregnable city of God Indra, city of the 9 gemsฯลฯ. How can it be true that you serve cold breaded cutlets of some sort with gloopy sauce from a bottle? The pictures she has been posting on Facebook have been provoking a Thai response from her family, homemade food delivered. Half way around the world I am relieved. How could this happen? I teach at a university. We often have Thai students. I want to meet them. I cannot tell a Thai person from someone from Cambodia or Vietnam. But I want to meet Thais. In general they are happy to meet me. I have friends of over ten years now that I met on campus. We have helped each other. The first Thai I met was while I was in school. For various reasons, I have no way to meet them. Sometimes I don’t know that there is a Thai student until I see their name during graduation. But about five years ago it dawned on me. I can tell Thai people or at least often can by how they eat. It is rare to see a Thai person in our cafeteria eating alone. You eat with a pyan เพื่อน , a companion. You share food. This might be dipping sauces, it might be the main dishes, it might be fruit. Food is generally eaten by pushing it onto a spoon with the back side of a fork. That is, unless its Chinese food, in which case its eaten with chopsticks. Exactly what food is on the spoon, each spoonful, is likely arranged. A small amount of sauce might have been gathered first, there might be a piece of a vegetable, there will likely be rice unless its a noodle dish. Spoonfuls are not too big. As this happens you see hands moving around the table, like a dance. It can be quite graceful. Things are shared. Foods have very specific sauces, often have vegetables that accompany them and side dishes. One of my favorite dishes, in some ways a simple, plain dish, is Kao Man Gai. Kao Man Gai is served with some cucumber slices. The rice is cooked in oil and broth of the chicken. The chicken is served on top of the rice. There is some cooked chicken blood on the side and a sauce that is very flavorful but usually not too spicey. This sauce is specific to Kao Man Gai. Cucumbers are a frequent side in street cuisine. I think that this is because they keep well all day. The soup that is served on the side is usually very mild thin broth. It reminds me of my mothers’s matzoh ball soup. The broth for Kao Man Gai has very little yichus. Yichus are the solids in soups, like vegetables or lentils. But Kao Man Gai broth does have Chinese winter melon or in the US sometimes cooked daikon radish or something mild like that. There are often fresh vegetables at the Thai table. These can be quite exotic tasting, bitter, sulphury, astringent -like or just crunchy long beans and cabbage. The taste “bitter” is important in Thailand. Bitter foods are often seen as good for the health, maybe like cod-liver oil in the West. I would not know. I have never had cod-liver oil. I have had many of the bitter vegetables in Thailand. They are “interesting” to eat. It would take something to get Gail to eat any more of these. And she is an adventurous eater. Some times of the day ask for certain foods. Where I lived, at Chez Umdang, late afternoon was time for Som Tum, Green Papaya Salad, the favored dish of Isaan, the Northeast region of Thailand. Who made the Som Tum varied. Usually it was one of the wonderful young women helping around the house, Gaw Wow named for the song of a bird, or Fon whose name means rain. These women were helpful and gratious in a way that cannot be overstated. They made awful days bearable, and had thier hands in making our good times in Dankwian magical. Green papaya salad is an exercise in balance of flavor, spicey, sour, fishy, garlic, and some textural variety. It is hard to get right, but Som Tum varies a lot, and there seemed to be people whose Som Tum was prized. But usually Som Tum was made by Gaw Wow or Fon. Green papaya is full of enzymes, and papaya juice is used as medicine in parts of the world and my thoughts about it are that its daily consumption might be a way to keep intestinal parasites under control. They are a problem in the Northeast, and Som Tum is endemic. Some som tum each day keeps the doctor away. If you are leaving me food to eat when I am buried or a ghost, skip the alcohol and leave me som tum. I will be grateful. I got picked up at the train station. It had been a long day and there was no food on the train. I was hot, tired, thirsty, and there were 4 adults and two children in the car. There was no air conditioning but fortunately it was in the cool part of the day, ตอนเย็น, interestingly named “cool time”. I was asked what I wanted to eat, I said “Duck Soup”. Its one of my favorite forms of street food. This question being asked of me was in some ways an honor, a choice like this having some real importance. I don’t think I would have picked up on this on my first trip. Duck soup. “Oh duck soup is very good” . “Jum, who makes the best duck soup?” . “Certainly its the vendor on the Dankwian Road”. “I like the stand in the old market”. “There is a new place by the Seven (11) by the mall, Its pretty good”.” Well the Vendor on the Dankwian Road does not open until 10pm. But its really good. Maybe we should see if he opened early”. “No its too far to turn back, lets try the place by Ghost Gate Market”. We turn and drive towards there. “Jum, do you really want to eat that soup? The flavor is weak” “Maybe there is some by the night market, Some vendors open early”. We drove around for two hours looking but not finding. My “lets eat something else” was not apparently acceptable.