spending most of his working hours putting together fire

spending most of his working hours putting together fire bricks. He kept his fingers in clay, however, through teaching classes in pottery for the Smithsonian Institute. When approached initially by that prestigious institution, Robinson recalled that his first reaction was to say no because the financial returns from teaching didn’t justify the hassles, particularly when compared with the profits from the kilns. “But they stroked my ego and then stroked it some more until I couldn’t resist. I set some ridiculous price for my services and they agreed!”

There Went

The Neighborhood

Robinson might have remained in D. C., teaching at the Smithsonian and making kilns and a few pottery pieces at his Georgetown shop if the D. C. government and his landlord had been more cooperative. When he opened his business there, Georgetown hadn’t yet become a fashionable address. But as the in-crowd discovered the neighborhood, prices skyrocketed. “My rent went from $300 to $1,000 in one month!” reported Robinson, still outraged at the 333 percent hike.

“And industry is not one of the things that the D. C. government supports. They really try to make it difficult,” he reported. According to Robinson, local bureaucrats plagued him with requirement after requirement and form after form for keeping sales tax records, all for a ridiculously insignificant amount of money. “They even sent some guys down from the Labor Relations Board. They were mean looking, scarey, with three piece polyester suits. They looked like Mafia. They started reading me the riot act about this long list of regulations covering employees. I finally told them I didn’t have any employees. They just said “Oh?” and left.”

The attitude of city government coupled with the steep rent increase combined to make Robinson decide that Georgetown was no place for a craftsman. “I was the last on Capitol Hill. AH the artists have left D. C. At