Category Archives: The Arts

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Mensch sighting!

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In my post a few days ago, (Oh!  The Humanity!) I sent out a plea for examples of admirable human beings as an antidote to the kind of internet sensations who fail to inspire and instead make me nauseated.   You know what I’m talking about, right?  The rampant  dumbing-down of our species, “urgent” stories of greed and fear and violence and stupidity and pettiness and the like are probably a dangerous toxin to our culture.  Where are the role models who will help us do better and why aren’t we using our advanced media to promote them more often?  For every “Who Wore It Better?”, we could be viewing 5 “Who Lived It Better?” stories.  Why not?

I have enjoyed a morning at work in the kitchen and with the book business while listening to the music of my Mensch of the Day.  This is an artist who has inspired me since my pre-adolescent days, and I’ve only just discovered this live recording from 2 years before his death.  He is the recipient of the 1993 Albert Schweitzer Music Award and the only non-classical musician to be so distinguished.  His humanitarian efforts supported the National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, The Cousteau Society, and the Windstar Foundation.  The CD I have was a concert for The Wildlife Conservation Society’s 100th anniversary.  Ladies and gentleman…….John Denver: a singer and songwriter whose lyrics ring with authenticity and passion, whose music spans genres from country to pop to blues to rock, and whose commitment to peace and preservation permeated his career.  As a cultural ambassador for the U. S., he visited China, Viet Nam and the Soviet Union and recorded a duet with a Soviet artist, becoming the first American to do so.  In my mind, he follows in the footsteps of another hero of mine, Pete Seeger, who, at 93, is still active in the same kind of musical ambassadorship that promotes cultural tolerance and environmental responsibility.  I did have the privilege of hearing him give a concert for children when I was in my single digits. 

Who will carry the torch when he passes away?

To read more about the Schweitzer Award, see http://www.anchor-international.org/07.html.  For more about John Denver’s career, see http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper349.html.  For a good listen, go to “You Say the Battle Is Over”.

 

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Blog Of The Year – one star so far!

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Blog of the Year Award 1 star jpegNaomi Baltuck of Writing Between the Lines has nominated me for the 2012 Blog of the Year Award!  Apparently, this is an award which can be conferred multiple times.  I think Naomi has gotten nominated 7 times in the year she’s been blogging.  I’ve been blogging for a year and one third, and this is my first star.  Naomi is a published author and professional storyteller.  How cool is that?!  Her blog is a delightful place where family, food, twinkly lights, travel adventures and costumes all blend into a magic world of pictures and words that reminds me that the real world is actually that enchanted kingdom where our dreams come true.   In her Blog of the Year post, she cites a list of nominations that is currently serving as my map to blog exploration.  I have already discovered a poet to follow from her recommendations, and I’m looking forward to that enrichment!

To read more about this award, click here.

I just nominated a few bloggers for The Wonderful Team Member Readership Award, but I follow another whom I will nominate for this award: Elena Caravela.   Elena is an artist who shares her imagination in the form of sketches, watercolors, photographs, oils, and digital blends of all these techniques.  I am awed at her skills and humbled by her collaborative spirit.  When I write stories and poems for children (which I plan to submit for publishing as part of a New Year’s goal), I imagine her illustrating them because she is all about encouraging the artistic talents of others (see her blog & book: Portrait of a Girl and Her Art).   

So, blog on! all you artistic, creative souls out there.  “We are made of star stuff.” – Carl Sagan 

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Surprise!

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Life continues; a new cycle begins.  It’s the shortest day of the year.  Imagine our ancestors noting the the diminishing of  light and wondering anxiously if the sun would return…and it does!  We are so used to “knowing” all this that we can grow so jaded and incapable of surprise and awe.  But why not retain the ability to be surprised, delighted, bowled over by the wonder of Life?!  And also to include Death in that cycle.  One of my favorite passages from Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself”):

“What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

Looking through my files of photos, I found two that I remember as being surprising moments of serendipity, both of which are of birds.  Birds are surprising.  They alight and fly off at their own whim, so catching one on camera is a gift.  The first shot is one I took with the little Lumix when a hawk landed in the maple tree right outside my bedroom window.  To have this elegant wild predator just a few feet from my hidden wide-eyed face was a real treat.  I had to take the shot through a dirty window, but still…

hawk surprise

This second shot is one I took the first time I went to a State Park with my brand new Canon Rebel T3i in hand.  Sandhill cranes were flying overhead, and I took a chance that perhaps with this new camera, I would actually get a clear image.

cranes

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Dance like it’s the last night of the world

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A song from “Miss Saigon” is running through my head… ‘a song, played on a solo saxophone…so hold me tight and dance like it’s the last night of the world’.  Not that I seriously think the world will end tomorrow.  Aside from the darkness and the rain (instead of snow) here in Milwaukee, all seems fairly normal. 

But it raises a good question.  What would you do on the last night of the world?  What would you want to be doing any or every night of the world? 

My husband sang that song from Miss Saigon on a recital one February, a snowy scene visible through the plate glass window behind him.  The tune was a tad high for him; his sweet tenor voice seemed a little strained.  He lived only another 7 years after that day. 

I would want to dance with him and Steve and my children and my mother, to hold them tight and look into their eyes until there was nothing else to see. 

scan0037

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Delicate

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The first thought I had about this Weekly Photo Challenge word was of Simon Schama in “The Power of Art” DVD describing Bernini’s sculpture “Ecstasy of St. Teresa”.  The delicate touch of an angel, the intense and spellbound concentration of presence, distills the vulnerability of human existence.  It is a very spiritual moment of intimacy in which the soul is liberated and comes to the surface.   Bernini illustrates it masterfully in his sculpture.  I have not photographed the sculpture, nor have I seen it, even though I have been to Rome.  The best I have to offer is this shot, taken one luxurious morning at a historic hotel in West Virginia.  Yes, those are my legs. 

delicate

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Two-Minute Cosmic Worship Break

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My mother serendipitously re-sent me a video that I had been searching for amongst my 4,000 saved e-mails.  I am in need of this video on a regular basis, and once you see it, you’ll know why.  I think I may have posted it before, but like looking up to see the horizon, it must be done often to stay sane.  Enjoy, re-blog, share…repeat.  (Not like shampoo instructions, which are entirely bogus.  Who lathers twice in one shower?)

I can’t seem to get the screen posted right here, so click this link until I figure it out.

Well, okay, it seems that WordPress requires a space upgrade to get the screen to show.  Please click the link, though.  I promise your two minutes will be rewarded!

 

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Cyber Monday

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Scholar & Poet Books is the online book business that Steve & I run from our home.  We shelter books that we have rescued from Good Will, library sales, church sales and rummage sales.  We clean them up and put them up for adoption on Amazon, Alibris, ABE Books and eBay.  We find new homes for old standards, eclectic oddities, and arcane tutorials.  Pulp fiction with vintage cover art, lots of spiritual topics, Christmas and cookbooks and CDs and children’s books…you name it, we probably have it or something related to it.  So, if you’re in the mood for some cyber shopping today that supports the U.S. Post Office, a small business, and the non-electronic world of all natural BOOKS, you can browse our collection through this link.  We have a 5-star rating, but neither of us has a Facebook account.  If you like what you see and want to share the link with your friends, though, we would be very pleased!  Happy hunting, bookworms!

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A Peace-lover’s War Hero

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Veterans’ Day.  A very forgettable holiday for me.  If it weren’t for the bloggers who have mentioned it, I might have been altogether oblivious of its passing.  I am unemployed at the moment, so no schedule change would have reminded me — except for the fact that the Post Office is closed tomorrow, so we won’t be preparing packages for Steve’ book business.   The truth is, I don’t really know what to do with Veterans’ Day.  I don’t know any vets.  I don’t have any family members who have been in the service.  And I am absolutely opposed to war.  It seems like we should have figured out an alternative long ago.  I’m truly puzzled that we have computers relaying information from Mars right now while we have yet to find an effective way to live together down here.  Learning should lead to understanding, which ought to lead to compassion.  At least that’s the trajectory I’m hoping for in my life. 

It does occur to me, though, that I have been acquainted with a veteran whom I admire very much.  I have read two of his books and have now embarked on a third.  I’ve also seen a DVD documentary about his journey home from Auschwitz.  His name is Primo Levi.  I was attracted to him first because he’s Italian.  In high school, I was the Vice President of the Italian Club.  I was learning to speak Italian because I love opera, and I wanted to meet Italian guys…or at least Italian-American guys.  I finally married a Galasso.  Now that I’m (ahem!) more mature, my love of the Italian culture is much more broad-minded.  Primo Levi’s writing is truly astounding.  He was a chemist by trade, not a writer, but his experiences during and after WWII compelled him to share the intimate details, disturbing observations, and profound insights he hoped would prevent similar events from ever happening again.  He could not let his story go unrecorded, even though its horrors caused recurring bouts of depression.  I think that makes him a very brave soldier and a heroic humanitarian. 

Here is an example of his extraordinary insight:

“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.  The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.  Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day.  The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief.  The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.  It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the void of bottomless despair, both during the journey and after.  It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation: for few are the men capable of such resolution, and we were but a common sample of humanity.” – from Survival in Auschwitz

Thank you, Signore Levi, for your service to all of us through the horrific war you survived and the work of writing your story.

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Peaceful Sunday

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Placido Domingo.  Quiet, tranquil Sunday.  Ah, me.

Last night, we saw our first Lyric Opera of Chicago performance of the season: Simon Boccanegra by Verdi.  An appropriate story for an election month, dramatic and political.  Two opera megastars were featured in the leading roles: Thomas Hampson and Ferruccio Furlanetto.  The story and the music are captivating.  (This performance was rather a disappointment, stiff and unimaginative.  I much prefer the La Scala production starring Placido Domingo in the title role, even if his voice is not as resonant as a baritone.) The point is that Simon Boccanegra is a man who spends his life and loses his life in the pursuit of peace.  The Italian political scene is characterized by vendetta, family feuds, curses, treason, and rebellion and peopled with villains.  The story shows, though, that everyone is a villain.  We all harm each other in one way or another.  Forgiveness and reconciliation is the only way to make a difference.  How many people must the Doge pardon by the end of Act III in order to die peacefully in his daughter’s arms?

                                                                                       

This morning, I logged on to the internet and began a conversation with my blogger friend, Helen, of 1500 Saturdays.  Her post was about brutal killings in Nigeria, titled “How did humanity get so lost?”.  How do we respond to suffering, to the villainy that surrounds each of us?  Which stories do we listen to; which do we tell?  How do we make a peaceful Sunday in our world?  Please click here to read her post, the links, the comments and spend some time considering your own response.  “May all beings be happy; may all beings be free from suffering.”

 

 

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Earth Work…Trip Phase 5

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After a delicious Sunday breakfast buffet and a quick photo walk in downtown Parkersburg, Steve and I headed back into Ohio toward the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park.  Steve has always been drawn to Native American archaeology and has experience working for the National Park Service at Wupatki National Monument.  The information we gathered at the Hopewell site was truly fascinating.  The native Americans in the Scioto River valley constructed enormous earth works, mounds and borders of giant proportions, geometrical shapes duplicated exactly many miles apart.  The burial mounds contained artifacts made with materials from distant regions.  The scope of this culture, the complexity of the ideas they represent, is amazing.  Of course, our conjectures about the meaning of the clues they left behind will never be verified.  Mystery will always surround this place.  The sense of a sacred reverence hangs in the very air, though.  It felt, to me, very similar to what I felt when I visited Chichen Itza in Mexico.  Time, space, geometry, astronomy, mathematics, religion, life and death coming together in physical art.  These were a people who understood the interconnectedness of all things and represented that in a conscientious way.  To say that it’s “primitive” misses the mark completely.   It certainly seems more primitive to plow over the entire area time and time again to plant corn or bulldoze the hill to quarry gravel…which is just what the white settlers did and still are doing.  

We spent the afternoon slowly embracing the place and then drove home in the dark on speedy Interstate highways.  We were back by 11pm.  On Wednesday, we continued our research on Native American mounds and early Wisconsin history by going to Madison and visiting the Historical Museum on Capitol Square and the UW Madison Arboretum (which has an impressive bookstore!).  We are still in the process of discerning how we will contribute to the conservation of this sacred planet on a local level, to what work we will devote our energy, and how we will live in awareness of the impact we make here.   It’s a time to stay open to possibilities and opportunities and to be ready to move with a purpose when a specific vehicle of conveyance appears pointing toward our goal.