Author Archives: wendywelch

Friends Indeed

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Jack’s Wednesday post is very late, but here’s the reason – –

We had lots of difficulty finding reliable trades people when we first moved here, but – –

As is often the case, after a while we have eventually used our new network of friends to connect with a couple.

A few of months ago we noticed that our kitchen sinks were slow to empty and then we saw water appearing in the ground outside. I got a long ‘snake’ and that helped but the problem came back. Wendy asked a friend if she knew any plumbers and – lo- a couple of days ago Thomas arrived with a couple of helpers and within an hour had worked out the probable culprit! Our sink had been connected to an ancient steel pipe that had corroded and that’s where the leak was coming from. But that doesn’t explain the blockage, so more investigation required.

We decided that in the event of a power outage we should have a back-up source of heat and got a small wood stove. But finding someone to fit it including the necessary chimney piping was proving difficult, until we discovered the very competent Nate who lives nearby. He first mended the fence in our back yard and then took on the wood stove job, sourcing all the needed stuff and came yesterday to measure up.

Before that we had invited our friend Leroy to come for an overnight with his guitar to play some music with me. The fact that he’s a competent electrician and we need a double outlet fitted beside our freezers is a pure coincidence!

I know from experience and from both sides that finding reliable trades folk can be very frustrating. I was Head of Construction Trades at a Scottish college for many years and ran a painting business before that. My Dad, who started the company, always said that the flow of work was “aye a hunger or a burst”. Nobody wanted painters in the winter and everybody wanted them in the spring.

My impression, though, when I was working in that college was that plumbers were very conscious that much of their work was dealing with emergencies and they took that seriously. When our friend contacted Thomas on our behalf he arrived within two days and made sure things were under control. That must mean he pushed other work back by a day, so someone had to wait.

The secret is simply good communication and Thomas was on his phone frequently during his time in our yard, as well as explaining constantly to us what he was doing and why. So his other clients knew about our emergency and we were re-assured!

The Monday Book: OLD IN ART SCHOOL by Nell Irvin Painter

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Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Irvin Painter is reviewed by Janelle Bailey this week. It’s not her fault it falls on a Tuesday.


Having now read this book through once in its entirety but read to read it and not stopped to do all of the research I considered doing or could have while reading–looking up the name and art of every artist mentioned with whom I was not familiar but not wishing to stop reading every time that urge hit–I am strongly considering reading it all a second time very soon, checking into all of those details, now that I know Painter’s “story” or its general “flow” and premise in essence and have the sense of all of that. 


For now and in hindsight I wish to learn, through research and deeper analysis, more about the numerous references she makes…but I might first read at least one of her historical works as well. Maybe her biography of Sojourner Truth. Maybe <i>The History of White People.</i> Maybe something else.


I am curious to see how Painter addresses race–specifically her own–in her historical works, given her aim to incorporate that and more of her own experiences in her art. I am not certain how to feel about all she says and does not say here, for at times she definitely seems to be saying–please pardon me if I have it wrong–that it is socioeconomics more than race that fuel or do not one’s success or failure–but then in other breaths conveys experiences of having been mistreated or questioned solely for the color of her skin. It’s a little confusing to me at times, but it sounds like she has lived a life of privilege in many ways.


Ultimately I am awed by Painter’s actual process: she retired from Princeton after a very successful career in education and publishing written works, and then at 64? 67? (I have seen both, and she really does not like to be asked about her age) pursued first a BFA and then also a MFA, and aimed at beginning a new career.


She talks much about and processes that being and/or becoming “An Artist” is different from being and/or becoming “an artist,” and she certainly addresses how the younger folks who are expected to be in college and/or graduate school, by their ages, when she is in college and/or graduate school with them face a number of aspects of their lives much differently from how she does. And while she aims, it sounds like, to point out these differences just as “differences” and not one perspective or approach having greater value and/or merit than the other…she does, indeed, sound critical, especially since she feels labeled and judged and separated for being the age she actually is at the point in time of the book’s action.


I ultimately enjoyed this book much…and enjoyed discussing it with not one but two book clubs this summer.