This is from CNN, and very exciting since it highlights  Croix-des-Bouquets, the town of metal artists, and also features an interview with great all around woman, Jacqui.

Of course, the US Department of State still  “strongly urges avoiding all but essential travel” to that country.

That said, Three Stone Steps is heading to Haiti again in about two weeks to stock up on more of the great artwork from that always fascinating country.  Please let me know if you’d like to join me!

(Oh, and no, I’ve never played tennis under the mango trees, or even seen a tennis court in Haiti!)

[cnnvideo url=’http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/06/22/velton.haiti.image.problem.cnn’ inline=’true’]

Another photo from the archives, this one from November 2008, from my very first visit to Haiti.   I must admit to finding it hard to think or talk or write about Haiti, and my experience with Haiti and Haitian art without going off on tangents about poverty and humanitarian aid and NGOs and church groups and travels in other developing nations and history and how being in a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince brought back an image of poverty I remember seeing as a child in my parents Look or Life magazine.

Anyway, I will spare you my jumbled personal Haiti dissertation, and provide some background.  During my first trip, I went to meet with drapo vodou (or voodoo flag) arts in the Bel Air neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.  (By the way, I’m close to having great, small, and relatively affordable pieces of Haitian beaded art up on the Three Stone Steps site very soon.)  One of the people I met was this gentleman below.  I could kick myself for not remember his name.  I look at him and think about all the history he’s seen, but mostly I see his sense of quiet pride.

One from deep in the archives:  Photo of scarf–specifically the Khmer kroma– seller in Cambodia, I think.  (My travel partner swears I took this in Laos, but these are most definitely Cambodian scarves.)

I had forgotten about this photo, taken in 2004, until my laptop had, as the folks in the Genuis Bar like to say, “issues,” and I was forced into the depths of my ancient PC.

I liked this image so much that I made a postcard out of it.  If you buy from Three Stone Steps, either live or online, you’ll get a copy of this image with text that reads “Three Stone Steps carries scarves and other great fashion and decorative accessories.”  I thought that quip was pretty funny at the time.  And, well, I still do.

I don’t usually think about love.  It’s not that I’m anti-love or anything like that, it’s just that I have plenty of other things on my mind.  And, I do think about stuff, quite a lot in fact, since I’m pretty much in the business of finding and designing great, ethically made stuff and then selling it.

And, just recently, yesterday, in fact, I began thinking about loving stuff.  I had a wonderfully high number of great customers–and I do have the best customers–at The Under the JFX Farmers’ Market who were either buying stuff that they loudly exclaimed that they loved, or had come back, after buying something a week or month ago to say that they had a Three Stone Steps bag,or key chain, or bit of recycled metal art from Haiti that they loved.