About once a week I get an email from somebody claiming they want to buy my art. It all seems too good to be true. They ask the price and tell me they have some large budget. But at the end of the day when I start prodding and doing due diligence they vanish. This is what recently happened to me when I got so far as asking the potential buyer (who said they were buying the art work as part of some charity) to give me the charity’s EIN number. They have me a number but the charity that belongs to that number does not have any program where they buy original art as far as I can tell. It sucks that this is something artists have to watch out for. The NYTimes just ran a piece about a successful artist who was duped into thinking she was selling to Lady Gaga only to find the piece she sold at an Auction House.
OK so in addition to art I got my HAM radio technician license. I confess I am not nearly as into it as my husband is. But at the same time I am reluctantly curious. We went to a field day event and they had a set up where you could contact people all over the US. There is something called “Contesting” where you try to contact as many stations as you can. And these field day events are also practice for if there ever was an emergency situation where HAM radios were needed so people could contact each other. Think “Station Eleven”. I confess it is fun seeking out a station signal among all the noise and it was fun after making my contact to have the guy on the other end call me a “Young Lady”. But we also learned that we can volunteer as Ham Technicians for Head of the Charles. It is tempting. Although if the weather was bad like tie as two years ago I am not sure I would be happy. But if the weather were like it was last year well then how cool would be it be to have a front row seat to all the action and the drama.