Christian Monasteries, Middle East

I heard a lecture this afternoon by William Dalrymple, a Scot, who is in the long line of briliant, and intrepid Brit travel and history writers. I read his first book quite some time ago, following the Silk Road. His current book is called THE LAST MOGUL, a messy piece of history of the British Raj. But what he was talking about was an earlier book called HOLY MOUNTAIN, which was about the many Christian monasteries in the crescent shaped geograhical arc from Istanbul to Southern Egypt -- the monasteries that were built during the Byzantine period when Christianity first became an accepted religion. He and a companion followed a pair ot traveling monks but he talked about what exists today.

Little understood by Americans is that Christianity is a Middle Eastern religion and the roots, its earliest writings and art and litergies were maintained in the monasteries of the Western Mediterranean. It is not a Roman or European religion at base although both have greatly changed it from it's beginnings. When the Dark Ages settled on Europe after the fall of Rome, the Byzantine Empire continued and was officially Christian until it fell to Islam centuries later. But even so, the Byzantine era monasteries continued and even today harbor texts from that time, the monks wear the same robes and beards and beleive the old beliefs. He showed pictures illustrating how a motif of saints sharing a holy waffer was almost the same in a 6th century Egyptian monastery and on a Celtic era chruch in Scotland.

Dalrymple offered two major points: One is that the Middle East is far more complex than American media portray it. Part of that is because Christianity has always been tolerated in the Islamic world, and Christians, until quite recently, have not at all been persecuted the way Europeans have persecuted Muslims [kicking all out of Spain and Italy, for instance] and Jews -- we know what happened to them! Bagdad, says he, had a sizable Christian population until the current war. But now almost all Christians have fled Iraq, mostly for Syria [Damascus] because an intolerance has been let loose that did not exist before.

There were many more points, lots of wonderful slides,great anecdotes about ancient monastics and current day dislike of Catholics. A very good talk, bringing together coherently various things I knew about but didn't grasp in the large picture.

Poetry

When I go to the Housing Works Thrift Shop [I frequenty three different ones] I always look through the book shelves for poetry books. I seldom fine even one. Today I found about four feet of poetry! When you consider most poetry books are less than half an inch thick, that's a lot of poetry. Actuallly many were poetry literary magazines {books really} . I bought seven, at $1 each! While I love bargains, it's a crying shame, even in a thrift store, that poetry is so cheaply available. I should probably go back and buy some more...

A couple days ago I read an interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti [picture above] who is 85 and still going strong. He was the publisher of the Beat poetry, a poet himself, of course, and still active in the San Francsico poetry "scene". He told the interviewer, from Poets and Writers magazine, that his recent book has not been reviewed by anyone. She checked this out on the internet and found it true and asked didn't this upset him:? He answered that there are two cultures: the media culture which is currently hyping every old and fledgling "celebrity" for their fifteen minutes of fame; and then there is the culture made up of wrtiers, artists, professors and serious readers [I'm paraphrasing]. He says that when global warming really hits and elecltricity goes off, people will go back to reading as the parallel culture always has done.

I love the idea. But unfortunately I don't think he's right. The fossil fuels will be used up but elecricity is so important the engineers will finally move in panic to use wind. solar and nuclear power so they don't have to turn off the lights and the gadgets. It's going to be a lot harder for the manufacturers who depend on plastic, which comes from the fossils too. They'll have to learn to recycle maybe all those dumps of cars and cell phones and Pampers. But they'll learn to do it, and in a hurry when the crunch comes. Still, yes, I beleive people will continue reading and maybe even reading actual books and magazines ... maybe.

Certainly people will continue writing. Words and actual ideas will continue to fascinate the few minds that manage to get educated, just as colors and shapes will continue to fascinate those with visual talents. And, of cousre, music will continue. Yes, I agree with Ferlinghetti that there are parallel cultures and that they will continue. I tried to read an essay on the computer screen that was sent to me in a email this week -- I just couldn't find the structure, the flow of ideas. I'm sure it was a fine essay but not in pixels! Not for my eyes. I have more than four feet of poetry books to read; I read poetry slowly [often reading a poem more than once] so that's going to take some time ... hurray! How many perceptive minds will touch me? What insights will I get? What appreciations will I understand? What questions will they ask? I look forward to finding out.

Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art

It is so easy to get into a rut, to think, oh, I want to get home to do this, finish that. Not doing the wonderful things that are on an amorphous "to do" list that just keeps getting set aside. Fortunately occasionally a visitor from out of town appears and we actually do those things. [I had lived in San Antonio for six months but did not visit the Alamo until my parents visited six months later! So typical People joke about not taking the Staten Island ferry until a visitor arrives.]

Today Arthur and Gloria McDonald from Charleston, S.C. met me at the Rubin Museum for lunch and to see the exhibits there. I met Arthur on my trip to Mongolia. I had not met Gloria. I am SO glad they came to town. We had a lovely visit, I enjoyed their almost-British accents. Plus, I got to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art which is only four blocks from where I work and I am a member, so I have free entry any time. Fortunately the Mongolian exh ibit was still on display on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The wonderful show on the 4th and 5th floor I will write about in a few days when I go back and take even more time to enjoy it. I ABSOLUTELY promise myself I will do that, it's a great show.

The Mongolian exhibit had modern photographs as well as artifacts, all interesting and the exhibit was, as their exhibits always are, highly inforamative. The Rubin is one of the most people friendly museums in the city.l Arthur and I assured Gloria that the inside of the gers we stayed in in the tourist camps were much like the ones in the photos -- only with better beds. What a wonderful, fascinating and, yes, exotic place Mongolia is. I am enormously happy I was able to take that trip. My roommate, Kay, was a wonderful companion. Kay and Arthur and I often played Hearts with a changing variety of other players -- one long midsummer night in the Gobi when the temperature had been in the 100s all day, we sat at a picnic table under the enormous sky, with the desert changing from beige to orange to gray while a jillion stars came out overhead, playing cards in the relative cool of evening. Traveling is among the most wonderful experiences! As Arthur, Gloria and I talked we discovered that, on separate trips to Morocco, we had had the same wondeful, personable guide.

The pictures, of course, are from Mongolia -- thet top one is a ger camp ["yert" is the word the Russians used for gers, which is the word the Mongolians prefer]. The second is a scene from the archery competition at the Nadam festival. Sometimes I am almost overwhelmed at the richness of memories stored up there in my gray matter!

Spring!

The temperature soared to the 70s today. People were wearing parkas with the fur lined hoods up, other people were wearing spathetti strap sundresse -- in short everything was on the streets. No, the dandelions didn't shoot up as high as the ones in the picture, but they're on their way.

I was lucky to have a short day of work and so indulged in two, no, three of my favorite things. I stopped at Barnes & Noble for a couple of my favorite magazines, then went on up the street five blocks and stopped at Ollie's Chinese restaurant for a $6,00 lunch -- which, will, in fact, also be lunch or dinner tomorrow since I brought half of it home. That's two favorite things, then I came home, changed to flipflops as a short sleeved t-shirt and went out to Riverside Park to sit on a favorite bench full in the warm sun and read for an hour. I know the pundits say to start with a mere fifteen minutes of sun. But this is a northern sun, not a hot Caribbean or Florida sun. An hour did not even turn my arms pink. it just poured vitamin D into me with the wonderful warmth. Lovely!!! And the week is supposed to remain warm and sunny. Lovely, lovely!!

More on the Quit Show - the New York Attitude

Above #13, by Mary Anne Ciccotelli, one of the ribbons on it is for best use of color. The picture doesn't even show how very colorful it is for the border fabric has all the colors of the main body. {The woman in the photo is unknown, it's not the quiltmaker.] When I go to a show I try to find the motifs -- even when there is no curator, when it's open to all as this show was, usually there is one or more motifs -- reflections of the time, the place, the ideas floating in the air. One of the motifs of this show was COLOR -- lots of it, bright, bold, aggressive, color sometimes for its own sake. A couple of years ago I saw a show in Brooklyn where many of the members were also in the Quilters of Color organization; then too I noted the use of color. But in that case much of it was inspired by African fabrics. In this case, the color is very similar but only a few quilts were full of African fabrics. More, I think, were full of Japanese fabrics -- not the recent Japanese quilters' love of taupe, but bold colors, lots of orange koi and other motifs.

Below are a couple more quilts, "Stars and Stripes" by Maggie Williamson and "Tropical Fantasy" by Margaret Morris. I took the photos mainly because they were quite close to each other and at that particular time the crowd was not too thick. But I tipped the camera, as you can see. I do not know any of these women [the guild is very large, and I'm not awfully active]. I felt, throughout the show the color was brilliant, aggressive and unexpected. It's an in-your-face feeling. A New York feeling.


After all the bright quilts the quilt below, "Heart-a-flutter" by Shirley Clark was a rest for the eye -- black and white with tiny hits of red! but it too is a bold design. We know different parts of the country, different cities have their own parochialisms, their own attitudes and tones. I felt the strength of design and color in this show was very New York. Also very New York was the excellence of execution. I've been to smaller quilt shows, both on Cape Cod and upstate, and found neither design nor execution so strong. It's the competitiveness here, the feeling that one MUST do an outstanding job and most make a statement people will remember.

Empire Quilters Guild show

This is the" best of the show" quilt, "Where Is the Quilt Show" by Anna Faustino, seen here in pink sweater. Anna is a fairly new quilter who has devised a quilting/fabric weaving method all her own [which she teachers]. She is so hooked on quilting, has such fertile imagination and bold graphic sense that she's getting into national shows and winning prizes and attention. She show so many quilts at the Guild Show and Tell one wonders if she has time to eat or sleep or maybe employs a Santa's workshop full of elves to make the quilts she keep producing. It's wonderful to see someone throw herself heart and soul into an edeavor and succeed!

The show was a success. The weather cooperated and the aisles were so full of people it was sometimes hard to see the quilts because so many people were around. The quality of quilts was very high. The venue was not ideal, it was somewhat too crowded and quilts had to be shown on two floors. Lighting was adequate on the main floor but not very good on the lower level; I felt lucky to be on the main floor. Here are my quilts being looked at by show goers. I listened for comments -- not many about the butterflies which sort of surprised me. But I heard curiosity about the diary quilt and several people took time to read the captions. I felt they held their own without being in any way particularly outstanding.


A full day of volunteering in the somewhat disappointing members boutique where I sold only a few things but had a nice opportunity to chat with people I have not had a chance to meet otherwises, has left me tired -- especially since I was wearing new shoes which seem to have crunched the toes of my right foot -- and they were flats, not heels. Still, I love the shoes and will keep wearing them because I think they'll "give" before my foot is damaged. Ah, what pain a woman suffers for vanity!

The Martha Mitchell Play

Last night at the tiny, claustrophia-inducing theater space in the basement of the Drama Bookstore, the International Center for Women Playwrights produced an evening of eight exerpts from plays. The final piece was an exerpt from Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro's MARTHA MITCHELL. A one-woman play about that maligned Watergate victim, wife of the corrupt John Mitchell, Attorney General under Nixon. I have known of this play since its first performances because my friend Geralyn Horton, Boston based as is Rosanna, is a playwright, actress, director, singer, played Martha and has done so in various venues including, most successfully at the Edinburght Fringe Festival to excellent reviews and full houses.

This was my first chance to get a taste of the play and I loved it. It should be a classic. It should tour the country and be produced at colleges and community theatres everywhere. It remains very relevant. Long before Hillary spoke of a a "vast Republican conspiracy" Martha Mitchell was caught in such a web. She was not ladylike about finding herself trapped. The play is made up of monologues and songs of which we got only a brief taste last night.

I've had many discussions on the topic of "does the cream rise?" Here is an instance supporting my belief that, no, the cream sometimes does not rise. The play has been done several places but it should be known like many other one-person bioigraphies are, TRU, for instance, or the Holbrooke Mark Twain, or THE BELLE OF AMHERST. Those are all a bit easier on the stomach of conservative [male] theatre producers. An angry woman, an alcoholic, who proudly admits that when her husband hit her she fought back and "gave as good as I got." And she's still fighting, with the telephone and the press -- this is not "feel good" theatre. This is asking what's rotten in Washington, back in the '70s and now in '07.

My contention is that cream cannot rise if it is uncomfortable -- and many women's subjects remain uncomfortable to society at large. Our entertainment is so homogenized, so controlled by the first readers who reject anything they can't handle, and then by the money-men who reject anything they think they can't sell, that works like MARTHA MITCHELL are not given consideration for major production. For years it's made me sad to go to events like last night's, where playwrights have to put together their presentations -- and these all incomplete, just shavings off the whole -- to be shown mainly to other actors and their friends. Some put together too quickly with inadequate rehearsal, some inadequately acted. This is not communication with the public, it is a sad attempt to believe someone's work can reach others, but it's never more effective than preaching to the choir.

Geralyn said to me when we had a long talk Friday, that she wonders if live drama can exist much longer in the face of 21st century media, especially the internet. I said yes, people will always want to act as people will always want to make music ... but Geralyn might be right. That acting impulse can now happen on videos that are instantly put on the web, or on podcasts. Not an optimistic thought -- for real acting and drama, like good music making, requires discipline and personal commitment and the work of acquiring superior skill that goes beyond innate talent. Will that continue? I sure hope so.