Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Just a little insite to the Nevada City show for those of you poor souls who've never been:

The show is held in the Miner's Foundry, a building over 100 years old with all of the oddities that go with it.  The best weather show is hail....on a METAL roof....it can be quite noisy!  It is a wonderful facility tho' and its come a long way from the portapotties in the parking lot of 15 years ago.

In the past we've had "thunder snow" and all other varieties of weather.  The worse thing about bad weather is that it discourages folks from the Reno, NV area from coming over the pass to visit us.

We're just about down to counting the hours!

"Trust your instincts, close your eyes and LEAP!"

This topic brought me to mind of a story that another bear artist (Kelly Dauterman) told me:

When we show our bears there will be lots of folks that will see them and comment about how wonderful they are.  The may be one person that will see your bears and say "it looks like a monkey", and that will be the one you remember.

I think that like any artist, everytime we make a bear and put it out somewhere, we are putting a little piece of ourselves out there and it is discouraging when no one instantly falls in love with the creation.  Its hard to be thick skinned about it (almost harder than when someone makes a comment about one of your children).

I haven't yet found the solution to the "how do I get noticed" problem either, and I've been doing this for 20 years....I do know that I can't seem to make the little critters stop popping into my head, so I'm going to keep at it.

"trust your instincts, close your eyes and LEAP!"

Thank you for all of your messages for my dad.  I have been printing off emails, etc., that I get and "papering" his hospital room with them, a little reminder for him when he's having a rough time that LOTS of people are pulling for him.

As of right now, we are planning to be in Nevada City (about now, I really need that time with my bear making "family") as my daughter will check up on her "g-pa" every day while we are gone (she's such a good kid!).

Thanks again to you all, and God Bless

"Trust your instincts, close your eyes and LEAP!"

Dear fellow bear lovers,

I know many of you also belong to other email lists that I do, and you may have already seen this, but I can't stress enough how important this is.  I'm hoping that my warning as many people as I can will somehow make all the suffering my dad is going through serve a purpose by helping someone else.

As many of you may already know, for the past month I have been spending much more time in hospital rooms than the studio because my dad has just had surgery for esophageal cancer.  The surgeon removed half of his esophagus and 1/3 of his stomach on February 28.  Three weeks plus later, he is still hospitalized and can not yet have anything by mouth.  The good news is, his cancer was caught early and he will probably be ok after this long recovery from the surgery.

He had suffered from persistent heartburn for years.  We used to tease him about getting heartburn from a glass a water....we're not laughing about that any more.

A recent article in our local paper explains that the heartburn is a major warning of this fast growing (in number of cases) and extremely deadly cancer.  I have created a PDF file of that article and posted it on my website.

PLEASE!  If you or someone you care about has persistent problems with heartburn, go get tested!!  It could save your life.   Because there seems to be a familial link, I'm going next month.

The link to the article is:  http://www.esmerldas.com/cancer.pdf

Thanks for your time reading this.

Bev Haring
http://www.esmerldas.com
http://esmerldas.blogspot.com/
"Trust your instincts, close your eyes and LEAP!"