Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Hand Rising





Im not sure where Norman Haddow was when this photo was taken, but this is apparently a picture of his hand. In the email he writes that it was 'taken' 25 years ago by his friend David Wallace. No other information.

I know that he must have found it again because he had both of his hands and was using them building a beautiful dry stone wall when I saw him last at our Dry Stone Wall A. of C. Festival in Grand Valley Ontario last October.

I was delighted to get this picture as it represents a new phase of feedback for the Thinking With My Hands blog. It's great to see people adding their comments on certain daily entries, and while there have been no checks in the mail (just joking) it's encouraging to see lots of checks in the 'funny', 'interesting' and 'cool' boxes.

However except for this one, no other pictures have been sent in. The idea of picture submissions has put an new spin on the content of this blog. Perhaps people will begin to send in all sorts of thoughts and clever 'hand-responses'. Wallers, especially, please feel free to send in any interesting pics of your hands, with or without any body ( ie. accompanying text).

As I look at Norman's younger hand and try to read between the lines, so to speak, I see
a delightfully funny man. Just as his hand appears here coming out of the humus, humour is always coming out of his hands. If you have ever met him you will know he has humour to spare. His walls too are not just well built and beautiful, they often express a kind of creative whimsy that makes you smile. You might like to visit his blog at http://www.wallswithoutmortar.blogspot.com/ where he documents some of his work as well as all kinds of wonderful walls and stonework from all over the world.