Skin deep

No pain, no gain. Philosophically, I guess that's true. You hold dear what you've had to work for, struggle for. Things that are given to you without effort (or money) are easy come, easy go. I spent a total of four hours – two hours each session – enduring an odd discomfort verging on pain so that I could gain a gorgeous, full-color feather wrapped around my right arm. The buzzy whine of the ink applicator morphed from background noise to grating annoyance by the end, and my arm burned, as though branded. One wall of Sink the Ink studio is covered with a giant National Geographic map of the world; after spending all that time staring at the South Pacific – the area of the globe nearest where I was seated - I think I have memorized the name of every island in Polynesia. Rikitea? Suwarrow? Serendipity led me to gentle Ben Harris, the ink artist who loves nature. He liked the challenge of creating a peacock feather armband even though his true passion is insects: He has a centipede crawling around one shoulder and a black widow spider on one arm, plus a gnarly raven and a kneecap skull, among other, visible tattoos. When I was vocal about the discomfort, Ben was amused. Yes, he acknowledged, the inner arm is a tender place, but the chest, he said, "hurts like hell." I can think of other body parts that would also make me wince when the needles dig in. For my next bit of ink, I just might go with an insect. How about a scarab beetle? I'm thinking of the bug in the Poe tale, the golden beetle that looked remarkably like a human skull...

Something to crow about

The faux rooster caught my eye – a bantam with coppery feathers and a tail that curved in a long arc toward his head. But he was the lure not the merchandise; he was NFS outside the Tinicum Arts Festival's White Elephant tent. I wasn't the only one smitten with him. Adults and kids alike stopped to stare at this lifelike bird before sauntering past tables laden with used curling irons, out-of-season ornaments, glass candle holders – and my favorite in tackiness, a 16x24 cross stitch of a paint-by-number rural landscape. Framed, even! But that rooster ... I wanted to take him home. I don't have any chickens, not even fake ones, although for about a year, I contemplated getting a flock of Rhode Island Reds for the back yard. Fresh eggs, I promised my husband. Too much work, he countered, adding that the red tail hawks and foxes would help themselves to chicken dinners and we would be out of eggs. During that year of fowl arguments, I met a Nockamixon woman who kept chickens and was also a talented nature photographer. A close-up Natalie took of a fuzzy-feathered hen won a ribbon at the arts festival this year. I don't have her eye for form and color and composition; my photographs are snapshots. But if I'd brought my camera to the festival I could have taken home that rooster – the NFS rooster – in pixels even if I couldn’t have him to hold.

O'er the ramparts ...

It is twilight on the flat expanse of grass at Tinicum Park in Erwinna. I am listening to a July 4 pops concert that would otherwise put me to sleep, but I'm having too much fun watching the crowd: the kids wearing glow sticks ... around their heads, their arms, their legs, or waving them for a strobe-like effect. The red-white-and-blue-ness in shirts, dresses, hats, and hair. The energy of the families spread out on this vast lawn is building, in anticipation of the 1812 Overture and the salute of fireworks that will provide the accompaniment.

Wispy clouds are stretched against a sky of deepening blue after days – weeks – of rain. The evening is just about perfect. (The cigar smoke is a minor dampener.) I am remembering that two years ago on this day I watched fireworks while perched on a curb in suburban Detroit, oohing and aahing as the starbursts rose above a golf course. It was three days before my best friend got married. Three years before that, I saw the bursts of flaming color in the distance, from a camp nestled in the Four Corners area of Colorado, where the night chilled to the upper 30s and I could see my breath. In July!

Growing up, I watched a much more modest display from a parking lot laid down over a former farm field once owned by Harry Truman. My father never liked fireworks – the crackles and blasts were reminders of a war he was lucky enough to return from. This year, I am celebrating a moment of peace amid the economic turmoil that is 2009.