Endless Knots

And speaking of Bucky

Today is the 25th anniversary of Bucky Fuller's death. Wrote about it last year here so ... click.

Glory in the morning

By this time on a typical Monday (6 AM), our street is rumbling with cars rushing people to work and people rushing their dogs on their walks. Today it is quiet, as if Newton is in the country and the farm animals haven't yet woken. I've always been an early riser, in love with this kind of quiet but rarely is it as still as today. I just snapped a few pictures in the garden. I hope you like them.

Spyrea

Petunias and friends

Lavender making a comeback

Peonies near bloom

Champions of Freedom (House) 2008

Freedom House, which will be sixty next year, names "Champions of Freedom" each Spring. We celebrated last Thursday night here in Boston.

Pam Cross served as Mistress of Ceremonies,
here with her hubby, Ron Ancrum

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE

David Goodman (middle) received  a special award in honor of his mother, Dr. Carolyn Goodman, who, in 2002 was the first recipient of the Freedom House History Maker Award. Cynthia Bell (left) and Sarah Cleto Rial (right) accepted the History Maker Award on behalf of My Sister's Keeper. 

Paul Grogan accepted the History Maker Award on behalf of The Boston Foundation, where he serves as Pres and CEO

Dr. J. Keith Motley, Chancellor, UMass Boston, received the Ellen S. Jackson Award for Excellence in Education, as did the Boston School Reform Initiative.

And Richard Mintz, who worked with Freedom House founders Otto and Murial Snowden, accepted the Adrienne Williams Spellman Diversity Award on behalf of Mintz Levin.

And here are Freedom House Chair Emeritus, Gail Snowden, whose parents founded Freedom House, with her daughter, Lee Snowden Trimmier

 

Read this book: Incantation by Alice Hoffman

Many years ago, my literary agent at the time invited me to a party in Cambridge at the home of "Alice Hoffman," whose work he also handled. I put her name in quotes because she was already a phenom and I was still a long year away from seeing a book with my name on it in print. Memories of that party have stayed with me over the years, including a conversation I had with Alice that night. In retrospect, it was really nothing extraordinary but as a young writer in the company of another young writer who'd already made a mark, what she said left an indelible memory such that I can even quote it today. But I never read her work.

Then serendipitously, a friend who occasionally sends a note to someone saying "meet my friend, Jessica" sent such a note to Alice last week. In the volley of emails that preceded it, I'd mentioned that I was reading People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks's new novel about the Sarajevo haggadah, the order of service for Passover, that survived for centuries even as the Jews it belonged to did not. Alice replied a short while later, saying that if I were interested in the Inquisition, I might want to read her book, Incantation.

Which I just finished and which I implore you to read. It's short, gorgeous, gripping, grotesque, and, in large measure, true. Not true in the way that the characters were historical figures but true in the way that evil sweeps through cultures, insanely, burning books and bodies and believers of the wrong faith. The intimacy of young girls, inseparable friends, smashed by jealousy and betrayal; sudden immutable love; ancient rituals practiced in secret; the genesis of genocide; and what would otherwise be called magic but instead is deep reverence for the beauty of the natural world and its ability to transport us even in moments without any light to luminous higher realms ... all this in 150 pages, beginning with what must be one of the strongest openings in the history of the novel:

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.

My name once meant daughter, granddaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out: Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Thank you, Alice. Now on to more of your work. And seriously, friends. Read it.

Eliza Stamps: Being and Nothingness

From the invitation:

Petra Projects is pleased to present new drawings and textiles in a second exhibition by Eliza Stamps at Mehr Gallery.  Entitled Being and Nothingness, this body of work features an expansion on Stamps' earlier designs in detailed ink drawings, which mimic complex and elaborately embroidered linen and thread textiles floating in thick walnut frames.  Through both mediums, Stamps employs her signature seed form to become one entity among thousands, together making up the cohesive whole.

Referencing Jean Paul Sartre's treatise in the exhibition's title, Stamps' ink drawings on paper visually exemplify the writer's viewpoint by using a single outline to counter this 'nothingness' and choosing to hearken a particular allusion, whether it be art historical, scientific, representational, or entirely imagined.  Stamps aims to remind the viewer that 'each whole entity, no matter how complex, comprises much smaller entities, whole in themselves, which is the basis of all existence.'

Stamps' textiles represent the 'multiplicities of form and definition within both organic structures and the art practice itself.'  Akin to the principle of existence preceding essence, these textiles demonstrate a highly developed technical process in which a resulting sculptural element is meticulously created by intricately overlapping and weaving the fabric, forming, and installation.

Observing the aim of ens causa sui, or completion, Stamps' drawings and textiles both demonstrate her technique in allowing an image to reveal itself as the first marks move across the paper or linen.  'When working with the sewing machine, the ebb and flow of the needle create the rhythm of the piece.  In drawing, both with the sewing machine and with the pen, I am dancing with the mark I make, sometimes leading, sometimes following. Ultimately, I am creating work that has multiple forms and references, while being, at its core, an artistic exercise in shape and composition.'

Stamps spent her formative years in Newton, Massachusetts, and pursued a Bachelors Degree in Visual Art and Art History at Bates College.  From there, she went on to receive a Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Pratt Institute in 2006.  Stamps also works as an art educator in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan middle schools integrating visual arts into curricula ranging from ESL to Social Studies.  She most recently exhibited in group shows at Sam Quinn Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and NurtureArt in Brooklyn, NY.

For additional information or images please contact Anastasia Rogers at 1.917.679.5496 or Anastasia@PetraProjects.com.

 

Very good Karma

Photo from Boldfacers site

Our friends Phuni and Wangchuk Meston, author of Comes the Peace: My Journey to Forgiveness, are the Boldfacers in this week's edition of the Boston online publication. The article is touching and so is the video - not to mention the beautiful pictures of the two of them. Here's a little excerpt but be sure to click through for the whole, incredible story of these two inspirations:

By the time Daja and Phuni Meston met and fell in love, they had been through slavery, monasteries, abandonment and war; in short, the stuff of epic films. But this was not fiction but fact, not plot but destiny.

They own Karma Boutique in Newton, far away from the south Indian refugee camp where Phuni spent her childhood and what might as well be a planet away from where Daja grew up—in a Nepalese monastery, where his mother left him as a toddler and where he became an ordained monk at 16. No, Newton, draped in double-mocha lattes, Range Rovers and couture cocktail sheaths, is easily the last spot Phuni and Daja imagined finding meaning. But there you go. Life’s a trip that way. 

The Majesty of Your Loving

Many years ago, we had the chance to become friends with Olivia and Hob Hoblitzelle, beacons of clear thinking in the fields of psychotherapy and spiritual development. I liked them immediately when we met - Olivia's calm presence even when everyone around us seemed to be going nuts, Hob's sense of humor.

To my young eyes, their home was everything an abode should be - simple, beautiful, and with a Japanese garden, this before everyone had a couple of bonzai in the kitchen and a Buddha or two in the backyard. Their children were close to adolescence; ours weren't even born. I truly admired them. Then, as is the case with so many who influence us, our lives drifted off into our futures.

About five or so years ago, I was in a yoga class at Kripalu, the yoga center in Western Massachusetts, and noticed a beautiful woman, intent on her practice, a few mats from me. It was Olivia. We spoke briefly, long enough for her to tell me that Hob was quite ill, that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and that she had come to the yoga center for rest and retreat. Some months after that, I read in the paper that Hob had died.

Now the news that Olivia has captured their seven-year journey in a book whose title promises many gifts: The Majesty of Your Loving: A Couple's Journey through Alzheimer's. And there's a website that summarizes their story, gives information on how to arrange a reading or workshop with Olivia, and, of course, provides additional resources.

Giving

Yesterday, we stopped by Karma, the beautiful shop run by our friends, Phuni and Wangchuk Meston. We were there to buy some gifts for a family of friends. Four of their five (wait, now there are seven of them with marriage and birth) birthdays are within this two week period so, for as long as I can remember, we've been attending parties at their house on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. They are so wonderful they deserve their own post but ... this is about Phuni.

Phuni has a great sense of style and exquisite taste - and always looks terrific. Yesterday, she was wearing a beautiful long brown sweater wrap with light cabling, just the kind of piece I've been considering knitting (Vogue Knitting has something akin to it in the current issue). "Phuni, that's so gorgeous," I said. Whereupon she took it off and put it on me. "Take it," she said. "It looks so great on you. Look in the mirror."

We can dispute whether what she said is true but it was one of those moments that causes you to look deep inside. A torrent of quick questions and a mouthful of rejections. Does she really mean it? How can I take it? I can't take it. People don't do things like this. I can't take anything from Phuni - she's younger than me, has had a harder life, blah blah blah blah...and then I just looked in the mirror and realized what she had done. Literally the shirt (well, almost) off her back, given without registration in the great book of "I did this for you" and "you did that for me."

I wore it all day, will again today, and for many days to come.

Thank you, Phuni. Being wrapped in the love of a friend is magnificent.

"This little machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender"

Photo by Karl Rabe/The Poughkeepsie Journal, December 5, 2004

My friend Jane rarely makes prescriptions but when we talked last week she gave me an Rx: Go see the Pete Seeger movie, this after I described the time we recently spent with the Dalai Lama. Now, to my knowledge, the Dalai Lama doesn't play the bango and Pete Seeger doesn't wear saffron robes but having seen Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, I understand the connection. Jane's preface to the advice was this:  clear light comes through both men, the power of conviction.

Documentaries of this sort can easily slip into paeans, genuflections to the great. This one doesn't. First, there's the music, the songs so familiar that they evoke sensations like those of your favorite childhood meal or, pushover that I am, tears. Next, there's the example of a person who believes in a way of being in the world and pursues it, not by stepping on people but by simply continuing. And there's the honesty: his wife of forty-million years, Toshi, says: "If only Pete had been chasing women rather then causes,  I could have left him." Anyone with a purpose-driven spouse understands.

Politcally persecuted (HUAC came after Seeger; he was blacklisted; and his career was ruined more than once), Seeger just kept singing. This post's title, "This little machine surrounds hate and forces it surrender," is lettered on Seeger's bango and explains what five strings and a big heart can do.

Children have been his greatest audience, a truth I must have absorbed without realizing it. I wrote a scene into a novel where Seeger gives a concert at the summer camp attended by the main character. (Truthfully, I've never heard him in person.)

Watching the film, an image kept recurring: To hire a bus and drive around to the houses of all my friends, load them in, and circle back to the theatre to watch this together. How old-fashioned when I can simply post here, have you click on the trailer and at least get a flavor. Don't miss this film--and don't be surprised if I show up at your door.

Personal note: Just as the singing was to begin at Carolyn Goodman's memorial service, her son David said that Pete Seeger had been planning to attend but was not feeling up to it. I never inquired what the problem was so I cannot report whether he is truly ailing or only had a cold but, at 88, this man has the strength of ten or a hundred.