...to hell in a handbasket

At the end of a big, bad rainstorm, the last day and a half have been full of the the kind of bad news that makes an old fogey say that the world is surely going to hell in a hand basket. The horrible shootings at Virgina Tech ... I've just read a bit from someone who was in a playwrighting class with the shooter. He and others from the class immediately thought of him as the possible shooter because of the plays he had turned in. Two were available on the website I saw but I didn't read them, I read the comments about them and that, with the brilliance of hindsight, people wondered why someone who write such adolescent violence in plays had not at least been referred by the teacher to a counselor. Was there a teacher who didn't want to get involved? Aren't many of us wary of the sullen, silent person who may need help but who we feel so distant from that we prefer to say and do nothing? Some students it seems did try to at least talk to the guy. It's too late to ask if the tragedy could have been avoided. The only thing to ask is whether we'll pay attention to those around us and not do the knee jerk thing of saying we should put metal detectors on every door way.

At work I found myself educated about another depressing situation. In an interview a hedge fund manager whose specialty is agricultural commodity futures talked about the way our government and some others are subsidizing the development of biofuels in a rush to lessen our dependence on oil. This means, in the US, mostly ,ethanol made from corn [in Brazil it's made from sugar cane]. The man spoke of crops being subject to weather, as this farmer's daughter knows. He said that when there is a drought, there could come tough choices between food for people, for animals [the many animals being raised to feed people] and for transportation.

There will be droughts -- we know that from past cycles and even more so from recent global warming reports. The scary thing is that big, resource gobbling countries like the US have the money and power to shift the acreage in needed production not only within the US but anywhere else in the world that can grow the crop. This is truly scary. Already the percentage of people who do not have enough to eat is horrible; but if we're grabbing their fields to grow fuel for our bioenergy ... and then there's the matter, too, of fertilizers and pesticides and their run-off into rivers and ground water and what that will mean ... It's all such a horror ... it feels like we are at the gates of hell and about to be pushed into the pit.

The fund managerf was a brilliant analyzer, he outlined these problems ... very dispassionately. He goes on day after day playing his modeling games to discern what to buy and sell and how to keep his clients earning money ... clients of hedge funds tend to be pension funds, endowments, private corporations and what the financial world calls "high net worth individuals.' Where does that leave the normal American? Outside the loop. But where does it leave most humans on earth? Well most people don't have a clue that these financial/political manipulations are happening and may mean greatly increased food prices for those who have money, and almost no food at all for the rest of the world.

Kiran Over Mongolia

Yesterday was a day of deluge in NYC so I knew there would not be a crowd at the Rubin Musuem of Himalayan Art. I was definitely right. I wasn't in danger of feeling drowned a a fairy tale scene.

"KIRAN" means golden we are told and describes the attributes of a perfect hunting eagle. The movie follows the young man's education from catching his own eagle through training it. He becomes a part of the family although there is really no other story than that of the young man being taught how to train the eagle. This is not a Saturday night in the mall movie. The movie shows great respect for the eagle without any preaching, and respect for traditional life, although the young man assets he will marry a Mongolia girl, not a Kazhak. That's really all the movie is -- beautiful and respectful of a culture about which we know nothing. There are a few short scenes in hip Ulan Bator youth hangouts and a couple of traditional singers just pasted in, and simple life in the teacher's ger with his family. It was a wonderful afternoon break from the gray skys and pouring rain.

It's still April, still poetry month and here is a short piece from a fairly long poem by Tess Gallagher's poem "Behave"

...once we feel deeply we begin to behave.
The notion of right action proceeding
naturally out of right feeling --
poetry the witching stick,not only
to what was felt, but now the abiltiy to feel a thing
is already something some to the good.

Me and Some of My Quilts

I've been modest, even retiring and generally pretty quiet, keeping a low profile -- you know, all those things -- at the Empire Quiltes Guild. I know, having chaired/president-ed volunteer organizations in another life, as I think of it, that every squeaky wheel gets noticed in such organization and will soon be asked to do some job. My feeling is mostly "been there, done that. Paid my dues." But I'm afraid some squeaks are part of my mechanism. At one of my rare show-and-tell appearances I mentioined doing series quilting and before I could get my coat on and escape down the elevator the Quilter of the Month Chairman had me by the lapels. There's a lot I can say about quilting in series, why not share some of those thoughts with others? Yesterday was the day to tell all [Really? Not by a long shot, you can bet] and show off some of what I've been doiing, lo, these very many years of quilting

Turns out I was more in the spotlight than expected -- the only "speaker" in a day of playing a Bingo derivative game after quilt show congrats and other announcements. I began with my travel memory quilts with some photo transfer. Rather than dig through the shelves and boxes of quilts, I took the Mongolian three-partr. Detail above from The Steppes, the damosielle cranes dancing and a horse.

Then I talked about the picture window series and showed my favorite -- the Tang horses. [The photo won't transfer for some reason.] The point is that the pictures turned out well partly because I did not have a whole piece of fabric, just some large scraps that Lynn sent me. If I'd had a big piece I'd have carefully cut out whole horses. But I couldn't so the piece becomes more "creative" and actually interesting because we don't have all whole horses. A lesson I didn't emphasize as forcefully as I probably should have. I admit I was nervous enough to use the actor's trick of taking a tranquilizer some time before -- unfortunately I had planned to take a bottle of water and didn't and the side effect is dry mouth. But I got through fairly well.
Finally I showed this hand quilted piece that was goiing to be part of a series but once finished I never cranked up the ambition to make the two I had planned, I wanted one to be about DNA and another about travels. I still could, of course -- the DNA one won't leave my brain. So then I went on to the year long diary quilts I knew would be the most unusual and interesting. I could have gone on and on about them but managed not to.

To my mild surprise and considerable delight, I managed to make people laugh a few times. I'm definitely not a humorous speaker but there are various things a lot of middle aged women share, like not liking themselves in bathing suits -- I remarked that this was the last such picture I planned to ever make public -- laughter and understanding. And talked about the diary piece with a sign "one mile to outlet mall' and the caption, "why I missed the plane." So, now that I've got my feet wet, I'd like talking about the series in other venues ... but I'm not going to pursue it. I'll be content with once.

Adding a note later: the Empire Guilds' wonderful web master and photographer, Cindy Russell, has already posted some of the most flattering pictures of me and the quilts from yesterday's talk on our web site. Click Empire Quilters in the sidebar and when there click "show and tell" then March or my name. Cindy and her husband are also doing a CD of all the quilts in the show we had; I can't wait to see it. When I get a link I'll post on the blog.

Jim Harrison, Returning To Earth

The end of February [27th to be exact if anyone wants to go back to that post] I wrote about having read Jim Harrisons THE ROAD HOME, which was written about ten years ago. I told friend Gary Hill and he had just read Harrison's newest book RETURNING TO EARTH. He sent it to me and I've just finished it. The parallels between the two novels are startling; I've never known a really fine writer who actually wrote the same story twice. It must be a story of great importance to Harrison, maybe something he's working through. The characters are different, the newer book is cleaner in a way which is to say less cluttered with incident. The outline is exactly the same: a man who is part Native American is dying, he effects a peaceful death after touching base with the important people in his life and satisfying his emotional needs. The death occurs in the middle of the book, then comes four or so sections in the voices of people who were close to him about how they deal with the death, how their lives go on. This seems to me a very unusual outline in today's world. The many Native American references are not at all sentimental or touchy-feely but the traditions are powerful. It is satisfying to know, or hope, some Native culture continues -- the white world sure tried like hell to eradicate it.

Harrison's people are upper mid-weterners, they travel all over the area a lot, they are involved with the outdoor world, one or more characters have a lot of inherited money that they disdain and spend without ostentation, and often with quiet generosity. There's a lot of drinking, a lot of sex and a lot of animals. The combination and the good sense writing and story, even when some characters are "goofy" or "difficult" is so unlike the self-conscious writing of urban/suburban/academic sensibilities it's more than refreshing -- it feels real and substantial. I am a midwesterner and I know about people driving all over the place; but otherwise i don't know these people but I totally believe them. I'd be happy for them to be my neighbors. Many urban readers would lose a little of their narrow, egocentric atitudes if they read Harrison ...

For a moment of levity, I received a refrigerator magnet today with a quote from Studs Terkel: "I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Nobody dares contradict you."

Might as well be spring

Surfing the Artful Quilters Web Ring, I see that people are showing off their spring flowers in many parts of the Us and even in England and Europe [not, of course, Australia] Feeling a little jealous, because we had a week's hint of spring and a fierce return to chilly weather I went to Macy's annnual Eastertime fllower show. I took pictutres with my non-digital camera and haven't developedthem yet, but here's one from the digital camera. It was spring inside and the crowd was larger than I expected on a weekday afternoon. Walking home yestertday along West End Ave., I fouind a real example of NYC spring trying to unfurl -- this magnolia is a couple of blocks away. So, there's my contribution to the spring flower show!

My contribution to poetry month today is the first stanza of a Tess Gallagher poem called "Orange Sutra" from her 2006 book DEAR GHOST, [Yes, there is a comma in the title] -it's not about spring, but is about nature

I wanted to take you in, peel and all,
with the mind's all-swallowing.
But the mind prefers unoranging
the orange until a segment unhinges
to shine upright
in the night sky, unaware
of the nght or of its own shining.

Kiki Smith and Mary Oliver

Last evening Vanessa mentioned how grim Grimme's tales can be. They're inspiring her to do collage/sculptures. The conversation went on and I didn't have a chance to tell her about the Kiki Smith painting above that is in the Brooklyn Musuem. It is not in the Sackler gallery but in a large space on the way there. I've found that in museums, as in the streets or elsewhere, there is much to see when you are on the way to where you plan to go. I'm not sure which tale, I think the blurb mentions "Alice"- definitely a little girl but she's watching or following a flock of birds ... but look closely, there's are wolves there too. One can look at this painting a long time. Kiki Smith is the younger sister of sculptor David Smith, she does all sorts of art, lately several "environments" were shown and I believe there were several wolves in that exhibit. Sometimes I am astonished at the amount of creativity we are apt to hurry past because we have some objective that seems more important than paying attention. That is how we fail to live large portions of our life.

As I keep saying, it is poetry month -- already a third elapsed. Spring is supposed to be coming, but temperatures are as chilly as they were large parts of the winter, 'tho the sun is very nice. I want to quote a little of a Mary Oliver poem because even the things that scare us -- I think most of us are somewhat afraid of snakes -- are worth paying attention to. I will quote only the first stanza, about a quarter of the poem, the title is SNAKE

And here is the serpent again,
dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,
his cave under the black rocks,
his winter-death.
He slides over the pine needles,
He loops around the bunchs of rising grass,
looking for the sun.

This is from "HOUSE OF LIGHT' published 1990 by Beacon. It is full of wonderful, observant, accepting nature poems.

Brooklyn Museum, Judy Chicago's Dinner Party

Yesterday I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the new Sackler Gallery of feminist art. But I got distracted when I noticed they had an Asher Durand exhibit. This pictures is actually Knessett and is more "golden glowy" than Durand's wonderful woods with great trees in the foreground, but it's contemporary and I looked at a few Hudson River school paintings too. I try to be unsentimental and "sesrious" about my tastes in art but that whole bunch of painters always make me feel good. The Hudson IS such a magnificent river. New York state has much gorgeous scenery. And I am always pulled into the trees when I'm in parks with trails. The grove of magnificent elms in Central Park gives me a hint of what those forests must have been like. So all that softened me up for the more cerebral experience of Judy Chicago's DINNER PARTY.

This is probably the most ambitious, best known and maybe most important work of art from the feminist movement of the '70s. I had never seen it. It was shown widely and then went into storage for many years. Now it is permanently installed in the new gallery in the Brooklyn Museums. HURRAY!! This is an elegantly conceived work; a banquet table with place settings for three dozen women starting with mythological godesses and moving into the present era. Each place setting has a large ceramic plate and an elegantly designed table cloth. Plus plain goblet and know and fork.
The plates originally caused a stir because their designs are often sexually suggestive. Not a lot was said about the cloths but I found them sometimes more interesting and beautiful than the plates. I once was assigned a roommate at a conference who was one of the embroiderers who worked on the cloths. Altogether about 120 different women constructed this piece. It attempts to be inclusive with many women's names in gold on the white ceramic floor tiles. The installation has a lead-in and an exit exhibit, a time line presentation names many, many more women. My only negative feeling is that, like almost all cannonical modern art, it is Euro-centric. While Astarte and Biblical women are not strictly speaking European, the Hindu godesses Kali is the only Asian "woman". We simply know about few others because of our Euro-centric educations.

The Brooklyn Museum has given New York City an imporant piece of art. Much else is wonderful in that museum, it is always a great satisfaction to visit it. Not as crowded as the Met, and without the huge collections, it mounts very good shows, like the Durand -- in fact, some of the favorite shows I've seen in the past 15 or so years have been there. I had thought I might go into the botanic garden which is half a block away but the day was cold and gray and from the museum windows I could see no blooming trees.