Buster the Bead Thief

This is Buster the Bead Thief. Beads come in tiny little bags, sometimes as small as 1x1 inch. Most come in bags that are about 3x3 or 4x4. When no-one is looking, this cat will pick up the bags, one at a time off my work table, then walk off with them in his mouth like a dog with a bone, and take them to a couple of spots in another part of the house where he likes to stash them into a little pile. For the longest time I thought I was just going crazy not being able to find certain beads. Then my youngest daughter, who he has decided is his personal, private human, caught him doing it, and about once a week, she brings a collection of his contraband back to me.

I am a lifelong cat owner and lover. But I gotta tell you, he is the strangest cat alive, I swear to God. In a species of animals known to be strange, he is strange even among them. He’s scared of his own tail (which, I grant you, is unnaturally large), Walks away from roast beef. Howls at closed doors. Completely black except for some dark gray hair around his wanker. And he’s a bead thief. Buster the Bead Burglar. Weird, weird, weird...

They just seem to ask for it, don't they?

I love cats. I've owned one for 35+ years. I own two right now. Only a true cat lover can tell you, with a pure heart, how desperately cats just ASK to be humiliated, one way or another, for the evil pleasure of the humans who share their space. Here's is on example my 13 year old daughter just shared with me that made me laugh literally until I cried. It's nothing exotic, just purely, devilishly, CAT!

Xmas Tree Surprise @ Yahoo! Video

Bonaire

Beautiful Bonaire

(Click the pic to

make it much bigger!)

Another two minute vacation from these gray December days here in New England.

Impossibly blue water! But that's how it looked in February 2008 when we visited this lovely, scruffy island.

Hilarious SNL Skit!

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Lac Bay, Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles

(Click the picture to enlarge)

This is Lac Bay on the island of Bonaire, neighbor to Aruba and Curacao. We were lucky enough to go there in February 2008 and I have just recently (finally) put together a book of that trip for my family for Christmas and came across this and other photos too delicious to keep to ourselves. See how impossibly blue that water is out in the distance? There are a dozen windsurfers out there. We tried to "walk-swim" way way out there where we were told there was a drop-off full of stingrays, but we pooped out. Off to the left of the picture is Bonaire's nudist resort. It was the only thing that kept my husband going, but even he had to give up eventually! We were the only people there the entire time we spent at Lac Bay, which I guess was about two hours. Everywhere we went on the island we basically had the place to ourselves, with the exception of a popular diving/snorkeling spot where, remarkably, we met people who lived twenty miles from us here in Massachusetts! Bonaire is a lovely, scruffy island, renown for its shore diving. If you are going for tropical flowers and lush landscape, don't. It's all about the water.

CONGRATULATIONS

to morse code jewelry's neighborhood jeweler,

King Jewelers. The region's largest local newspapers

and the region's glossiest upscale magazine gave

them their props! Valerie and the the gang

over there are the best!

(visit them at by clicking here)

Experienced/Established Jewelry Rep Needed!

Click here for the ad I posted on backpage.com

Check out morse code jewelry's

groovy new authorized dealer map!

Click HERE to see it (BIGGER)

at morse code jewelry's home site.

Afghanistan calls...

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If you haven't met Ingrid & Patrick, they are the Navy/Marine couple that became engaged using morse code jewelry's "Marry me" bracelet. Click here if you missed it. Below is an email I just received from Patrick. They had hoped to marry in the fall of 2010 unless Ingrid got called up to serve in Afghanistan.

The call came.

Here's his unedited email:

Annie,

Some bad news....

Ingrid got a call last Tuesday morning from her command at her hospital. She has orders to augment an Army medical unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The US Navy often sends their personnel as Individual Augmentees (IAs) to Army or Marine Corps units engaged in the Global War on Terrorism in both Iraq and Afghanistan. She'll start a month of training in January and then deploy for about 6 months as nurse a trauma hospital in Kandahar. It's pretty intense work, but Ingrid has experience with traumatic cases working in the OIF/OEF ward on the east coast. This will just be a different part experience as she cares for soldiers and Marines a bit earlier in their road to recovery.

We have to delay our wedding a bit and push it back to January 2011 instead of October 2010. This will be a bit of a role reversal as I'll be home in California and Ingrid will be deployed to a combat zone. Ingrid has made it through 2 of my deployments, so making it through one of hers shouldn't be that bad.

Just thought we'd keep you updated. Ingrid's going to keep the bracelet on through this deployment too. It fits over her latex gloves well...her engagement ring might stay home for the deployment though.

•UPDATE•BeSt UsE oF mOrSe CoDe JeWeLrY® eVeR•UPDATE•

Step into the wayback machine! Last Christmas (2008) I sold a "marry me" bracelet to a young Marine about to ship out. He wanted to give it to his girl, who is in the Navy (stateside) but NOT tell her what the code of the bracelet meant until AFTER he was home safely. He is now home safely, they are engaged, and their identities can now be revealed! Here they are, with excerpts from his emails below. Meet Patrick and Ingrid!

From an email from Patrick's mom to morse code jewelry

"Patrick carried the card with the Morse code "translation" of the bracelet with him while on deployment knowing Ingrid was wearing the bracelet everyday! That sparkling circle has provided a story for them to tell for years to come!"

From emails from Captain Patrick Mahoney to morse code jewelry

Been back for a few months from my deployment...sailed from San Diego to Hawaii to Guam to Malaysia to Oman to Qatar to Bahrain to Djibouti to Thailand to Japan to Hawaii and back to San Diego, got hit by a American Nuclear Submarine http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/21/navy.vessels.collide/index.html , had an outbreak of swing flu on the ships, and fought some pirates.

I proposed to Ingrid on Sept 8th on the beach in Carlsbad, CA. She said "yes".

Ingrid wore the bracelet the entire deployment and when I had her meet me down at the beach I explained what meaning behind the bracelet.

We'll be getting married next fall as long as Ingrid doesn't get selected for deployment to Afghanistan, so we're keeping our fingers crossed. Here is our "Knot site" http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/PatrickMahoney&IngridGarrett

I am humbled, honored, and tickled pink (!) to be a (small!) part of the story of these exemplary young Americans. May they stay safe and unharmed and secure in the knowledge that there are millions of people just like me who are grateful beyond words for their sacrifice.

Annie Fields, Founder, morse code jewelry

Hiccups in my Giddyup...

My autoimmune system has gone insane, my carpal tunnel is inflamed, my arthritis HATES this time of year and my 79 year old mother is in better shape than I am lately! For those of you who may be thinking, "Hmmm... things have been rather quiet from Annie lately..." That's why. It feels a little icky to share the details of my aches and pains, but I feel I owe it to you if you are wondering where I've been...

"boston" with baked beans and cranberries! The "beans" are sterling silver and the "cranberries" are Swarovski crystal, and that's just as well, because the only place you should ever see those two things together is in a sentence or on a bracelet, because the surely don't taste good together! It will be up on the website some time soon. Solid 14k gold is part of the design as well.

Suggested Retail: $165

Nantucket red is sooooo last century....

... meet "Provincetown Copper." This bracelet "spells" PTOWN in the dot & dash pattern of Morse code in solid 14k gold, solid .925 sterling, and blue, green, sand, and copper Swarovski crystal. Available now by calling 781.929.1639. Want YOUR town or resort made up in Morse code? CALL.

Okay... Letterman & Palin

Remember Nixon? "It wasn't the crime, it was the cover-up?" Now, a week into this mess with Palin and Letterman I am sufficiently motivated to register a complaint. Watching Letterman squirm and make un-apology after un-apology, someone needs to be told that he either needs to grow a set and not apologize for something he is obviously not sorry about, or do some serious reflection and ask himself if this is how a gentleman comports himself. It was a cheap, low-rent shot and anyone who isn't cheap and low-rent knows it. Funny or not funny is beside the point. Making jokes for a living is besides the point. Any grown man who would attack a politician by picking on one of their children, grown or not, on the cover of People or not, and to do it by sexualizing her is a pig. No way around it.

Scratch that!

WHAT was I THINKING?

OKAY.... I admit. Sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach... FOR ALL OF US. This lunatic idea I had that I could work part time AND run morse code jewelry AND take care of “The Pink Mafia” at left. Last night I abandoned the idea of working as a traffic reporter for ‘BZ. Honored as I was to be deemed good enough to grace that historic slice of air space, the hours were a killer, the commute into Boston insane, and the job itself, deciphering Boston traffic, IMPOSSIBLE.... So I am happy to report that I am fully back in the captain’s chair at morse code jewelry and ready to work it ‘til it begs for mercy!

BIG news... LITERALLY. I'm getting back on the radio. I can't quite believe it, because I honestly thought I was done with it, mostly because there seemed to be no good fit for me here in Boston, but out of the blue, an offer to do news for WBZ came through, and when one of the biggest terrestrial signals in existence comes a'callin', who am I to say no?

I'll be doing news for 'BZ, starting around the last week of May or so, Tuesday through Friday nights from 8pm to Midnight, and Saturdays, either Noon-6 or 6-Midnight (sometimes one or the other). WBZ, at night, if you don't know, reaches 38 states, two Canadian provinces and the Bahamas... This happens because back in the early 20th century when commercial radio was born, no-one foresaw how it would proliferate, so when the FCC was handing out slices of the audio band, it gave away AM1030 to WBZ with exclusivity, meaning that no-one else could broadcast on AM1030, thus making it "clear channel" thus, at night, when AM radio waves travel best and furthest, those 50,000 watts go booming across this great nation of ours stopping just beyond the Ohio valley!

Strangely, this position will allow me to grow morse code jewelry with some certainty, now, as the radio money can now be a reliable source of revenue for it, so I can hire some more help! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I've been busier than a one armed paper hanger! And as my friend and customer Norm says, "morse code jewelry can be grown organically" as opposed to going out and borrowing capital, so whenever we can avoid owing anybody any money, that's a good thing, huh!?

The irony in all of this is that my very first job in radio, straight out of college, was for 'BZ! I used to answer phone and push buttons in Master Control for the likes of Dave Maynard, Norm Nathan, and David Brudnoy, may the last two gentle giants of the medium rest in peace, bless them.

So be listening! If you are anywhere east of the Rockies, try tuning in AM 1030 once it's dark, and if it doesn't work in your house, try your car radio, and maybe you'll be able to hear me in Boston!

morse code jewelry's premiere jeweler, King Jeweler's of Cohasset, pointed out the big, honkin', flat screen tv they have hanging in their showroom and how in all the time it's been there, it's never been used for it's intended purpose: vendor videos... So, being the closet geek that I am, I locked myself in with my MacBook and '09 version of iMovie and made one! It's silent, and meant to be glanced at, not watched all the way through, though you could, of course. There are trivia questions embedded in it in an effort to keep it interesting to all the husbands who are sitting, sitting, sitting, while their wives are shopping, shopping, shopping...

Sunglasses, Philosophy, and Angst

It's Friday night, late, and I'm tired but not sleepy; EXACTLY the kind of time people shouldn't be committing ANYTHING to print in a public way, but this seems pretty harmless, and maybe sort of relatable.

I lost my sunglasses about a week ago.  With the sun glaring on the snow around here, I've really, REALLY missed them.  Now, surely, you must think, I must have ANOTHER pair of sunglasses lying around that I could use, right?  Right.  But I don't like them as much as the pair I lost.  I had them for three years.  That's a good long time to have a pair of glasses and not lose them, isn't it? I paid over $100 for the damned things, too, as I've come to appreciate good lenses.  And part of why I liked them is that they didn't shout "This face paid over a $100 for me."  They were just good, attractive glasses with no distinguishing marks.  They fit my face and they kept hair back and they didn't pinch my temples (I have wide set eyes, and thus, I guess, and broad brow, so glasses are often too narrow for me) so they were all purpose utility glasses.

Now I am faced with rack after rack of sunglasses which are ALL hideously ugly or worse, completely useless.  In the intervening years since my last sunglass purchase, fashion has made them either big and round, or square and pale with gradient lenses.  I am doomed to look either like a bug or a pretentious fashionista in a Subaru.  This can't stand.  Saks or Marshall's, they ALL s*ck.  All of them.  So I am now faced with the choice of spending $10 on something hideous and functional, or $300 on line for something I really like.  Neither option appeals to me.  I could wear an old pair, but there's a reason they became an old pair (lenses, size, etc...).

Whine.

New Product Pictures

Posting the inventory is such a HUGE undertaking (Which is why I am considering some deep architectural changes to mcj's web presence... and, in fact, tinkering with them this weekend) that I have decided to throw a few pix up here just to get them seen! I WILL post them for sale at some near date, but here is where they are for now. Above, in solid gold & pink, is "daughter," and below in garnet (literally - that's semi-precious garnet) is "mom." You may, of course, email me, annie@mcjusa.com, to purchase or inquire.

"Try"

Another product of the creative run I've allowed myself to have in the last week. This bracelet spells "try". It's remarkable how little time there is for jewelry in the jewelry business. I've got a taxes to prepare, a trade show to prepare for, all kinds of other marks to hit and commitments to keep and I actually feel guilty creating the thing that got me here in the first place!

"Try" is made with solid sterling, Swarovski, and imported glass rings (stuffed with the sterling). It's a concept I've been playing with for months; the idea of "stuffing" these little rings with sterling or crystal. The whole idea of how materials could fit together like it was meant to be, when, in fact, they came from completely different manufacturers from completely different cultures and points on the globe, eastern Europe (glass) and Austria (crystal) or America (sterling) just fascinates me. It's almost like I'll have a little bit of the answer of how we all fit together as humans, maybe just a glimpse of the answer... just briefly whispering, just out of earshot, every time I successfully complete one in that concept.

Colorado Rocky Mountain High....

ABOVE: "Family" is "spelled" in bronzite (brown), agate (hot pink), sterling, and two other minerals (the blue & purple) that I have to ask my gem lady how to spell and pronounce! (The blue looks like turquoise but isn't.) The focal bead is the most fascinating sort of pale flourescent green mineral called chrysophrase.

Gift Shop Magazine ran morse code jewelry as a "Fab Find" and as a result, I've been getting some phone calls from some interesting area codes. The one that has kept me the busiest has been a new client by the name of Gloria who owns a boutique half way between Colorado Springs and... I forget where, but it sounded lovely! Anyway, she filled my head with ideas and here is the first result. I haven't even emailed her yet with all the buying information for this necklace! She told me that her clientele, quite unsurprisingly, liked turquoise and purples and the colors of nature and such, and though she didn't specifically ask for a necklace to be made, I just couldn't help myself. I don't typically work in "southwestern" typed themes, and I don't think that is exactly what was achieved here, but I think it speaks to what she was looking for.

In between answering the phone and bouncing from client to client, I've been to the pediatrician three times since last Friday with one or another of my girls with one or another very ordinary ailment, but one that needs attention... When I showed up today I thought they were going to give me my mail and slippers!

I'm also sorry that I have not taken more pictures of the ridiculously beautiful snow covered world I'm living in here in south coast Mass. The branches have been hanging onto the snow that has been falling on them on and off over the last week and it's a wonderland.

King Jewelers TONIGHT

Yikes. Kinda late notice, but I will be at King Jewelers tonight from 5:30 to 7:00 at the gracious invitation of Valerie King. Hope to see you there. King Jewelers, Route 3A, Cohasset.

This story just keeps getting better...

This story just keeps getting better... Remember the serviceman who bought the "marry me" bracelet for his girlfriend before he shipped out but decided not to tell her what it meant until he got back? Link to that post is here. Now I hear from his Mom, who was with him when he purchased it, that the first she'd heard about his intentions was the moment he bought it. In essence, he walks in with his Mom to buy the bracelet and says, "Hi. I'm so-and-so. I'm here for the "marry me" bracelet." I thought his Mom was just tearing up at the whole situation. Turns out, she had NO IDEA until he showed up what his plans were...

Wow.

That's the "marry me" bracelet, above, in case you haven't seen it, and a link to details about it. You see it in person and purchase it at King Jewelers, Cohasset.

King Jewelers, Cohasset

In the next days and weeks, morse code jewelry will be expanding its relationship with King Jewelers of Cohasset!  Here's a quick little slide show of just some of the items which are/will be for sale there. Valerie King and I have all kinds of exciting projects in store! Please visit them at their website or mine for updates, directions, and hours.

Captiva

I took this photograph in May of 2007 on Captiva.  I have strict rules about photographing nature.  Ready?  Here they are:  Don't touch it! &  Don't touch it!

Photoshop it all you want, but when the camera is in your hand, it is verbotten to manipulate the scene.  It feels dishonest.  When someone looks at a photograph I've taken of something outdoors, I want them to not only like it, but be impressed with how lucky I was to find it looking like that, or arranged like that, or frozen like that in that moment in time.  Maybe that one journalism class I took in college got through to me (back when they actually taught ethical journalism) about never manipulating a photo or a story.  I suppose it shouldn't apply, as this is just goofing around, not reporting, but the guts of it spoke to me:  find the remarkable truth and share it.  Though, I would add, "and Photoshop it 'til it begs for mercy!"

About Captiva:  My husband Mike and I were lucky enough to get a week down there without children.  It was an incredibly relaxing vacation.  We travel really well together, which, I've come to discover, is not true of many couples.  Maybe it helps that we like each other, but I digress...

If I weren't so Yankee practical, thus finding the prospect of losing my real estate in a hurricane distasteful to say the least, I could see the appeal of having a condo and wintering there.  Not Florida in general, but on the outer reaches of Captiva, which is still untamed on its fringes.  "Old Florida," as they say.  January through April would be a my choice.  Escaping the dreariness of a New England winter as it drags on and settles into your bones sounds really, really good.

There seemed to be a "Captiva uniform:"  A convertible PT Cruiser and a visor sporting gray hair.  There must have been a run on them at the rental place because that was how we were outfitted and discovered quickly that we fit right in. 

Other than the ghastly $6 toll to cross the bridge from Ft. Myers into Sanibel & Captiva, making the trip over was a gas, if only for watching the bad-ass pelicans!  I love those guys!  They just dive bomb right into the water, or hang out, completely non-plussed by humans, and just seem to have a swagger that really appeals to me.  Just love 'em!

Love all the other critters down there, too, winged or not.  Of course, the shells are what the area is famous for.  The "Sanibel stoop" is what it's called, bending over to pluck a shell from the shore, and the shoreline is a treasure box.  I defy even the most hard-hearted to stroll along a beach down there and not be completely seduced at the beauty at your feet.  If you find a junonia, they will take your picture and put you in the paper, as the junonia shell is the rarest and most prized find.  We got a laminated trifold "shell map" to help us identify all the shells we were picking up.  Every day when we got back to our hotel suite (it had a kitchen), I put them on the stove in a pot of water and boiled them.  It seemed weird, but as soon as I did it I could envision myself making it a regular habit in my dotage...

A Call to the Sovereign Bank People I Met...

Okay... Clearly I need to get out more, but I've wondered about everyone I met while at Sovereign Bank in December. There were so many interesting people. So much human drama! Send me an email, will you? You know who you are. Here's my email: annie @mcjusa.com

After the Storm

Happy New Year!

Here's the same view of the front yard as the previous post.

That's the Atlantic Ocean way out there, beyond the peninsula of land belonging to neighboring Scituate known as Humarock, The South River, marshland, and Tilden Island on the left.  

If you click on the picture, you will see a much enlarged view, and you will see the row of all the houses on Humarock, which, during the Great Blizzard of 1978 were swept out to sea.   When we moved here we asked the neighbors who had been here for it if they "Sipped martinis and watched Humarock wash away," and they said, in essense, "Yeah.  What else would one do?"  (They're not that callous, really!  But that was the sum and total of what happened!)

Sometimes we hear rifle fire from hunters coming from the island.  I didn't know what it was!  I had to ask Mike, who grew up in the mean streets of Stockton, CA, to tell me what the sound of gunfire was!

In any event, as stated in morse code jewelry's literature, it was just off the the right of the frame of this photo, just a little further along the coast where Reginald Fessendon made his historic radio exchange.  morse code jewelry really is made within sight of the waters where that forgotten piece of radio history was made.  It's not jive!