Sue's art show, "What the Weave"

Sue was a hair dresser before she retired about ten years ago. I'm sure she was a skilled and creative hair dresser. But retirement let her blossom. She began writing poetry -- very good poetry, good enough to win the Kathrine  Lee Bates annual poetry contest twice already. She has not given up poetry but has turned to collage and to weaving. At present she has a show of over 40 small-ish woven pieces at the Falmouth  (Mass - Cape Cod) Art Center. They are fascinating, most made of yarn, but some using other materials like paper, plastic, wire.  All are fairly small and I was delighted to see that some had red "sold" stickers on them when I went to the show about ten days ago. 

The first piece encountered is this one with the banana. Those who read about the big-bucks art world with their annual art shows in various cities in Europe and the US, will remember that last spring the talk of the show (Miami? Basel? somewhere) was a a banana affixed to the wall with a piece of duct tape. I believe it sold for $120.000 - and the purchaser ate the banana.  Sue's piece is a bit smaller and she replaces the banana every 3 days and has put a purchase price -- due to the fact that weaving takes more time and skill than smacking on a piece of duct tape -- at $1250,000. She doesn't expect it to sell but did ask that her friends do a selfie with the art. I had a regular camera but here I am with the immortal banana piece.  (Remember, if you click on the photo, you will enlarge it enough to see the weaving more clearly.)

Christmas book winner

(I love the Mandarin or Clementine oranges that are very much in season right now.)

As I wrote in the previous post, we've been giving one another books for Christmas. This year, as last, grandson Joel found the "hit" which this year went to his sister Cory but is making it's way around the family. I finished it last night after an immersing couple of days, finding myself in a world so clearly and perfectly drawn, but so truly dreadful that I couldn't read without breaks.  The book is Educated by Tara Westover who never went to school until she defied her fiercely fundamental Mormon father (as had two older brothers) and went to Brigham Young University having studied alone (as one brother instructed) to pass the entry exam. Eventually a teacher arranged for her to go to Cambridge  (in England) and from there another helped her get a Gates Foundation scholarship to get a Ph.D. at Harvard. That is the education part in the narrower  sense.

Her father was fanatically dominating, fearful, (bipolar in spades!), he owns property on an Idaho mountain where he collected wrecked autos and other junk which he stripped and sold. The mother became a very competent midwife and eventually an entrepreneurial herbalist. There were seven children, one brother was (to any reader but not to the family) severely violent. The larger story beside her very bumpy formal education is the emotional immersion and dependence she feels toward the family and how very slowly and very painfully she finally becomes a self-aware, individual. The family tie is ingrained so deeply she is in emotional pain (and sometimes physical pain) most of the time.

This sounds like a difficult read and it is. The difficulty comes from the reader's perspective (can't she see what's happening) but not from the writing which is amazingly vivid but without over-reaching.

Simple things, breakfast, Christmas gifts

Christmas season is here  and this is not a Christmas photo -- but it's a frequent breakfast time photo. I've long since decided to forgo the  added sugar and preservatives in juices and take my fruit plain. I'm not in a rush, can peel oranges or nectarines or whichever exotic variety of fruit I've chosen.

Simplify -- I don't consider canned or frozen orange juice simplifying. I consider it a typical way we complicate our lives.  A commercial way that involves factories, additives, plastics/ disposable containers. The fruit comes in a natural container that is biodegradable.

Our family is simplifying Christmas. The idea was tried last year and we were all happy about it. Although there are four children and they will receive toys that I consider dreadful but that they will be excited about ... for a week or a month, there are seven adults who do not crave electronic anythings. We have the electronics that we need or want and get along just fine, thank you very much.  We will once again gift each other a book -- a book we may or may not have read but one which we think the giftee will enjoy. The book does not have to be purchased new, it can be passed on. It may be prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, fat or thin but the giver will think it is a book the giftee will enjoy. So we'll all have a half dozen new-to-us books to read after Christmas gifts are unwrapped.  The idea was a success last year.  The most outstanding success was a dark horse of a book.
My oldest grandson gave me The Boys In the Boat by Dennis James Brown, a book about the sculling team from a small California college that eventually won the US collegiate championship in 1935 and then was able to go the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936. They had to work hard to find financial support, they trained hard. They discovered that they were give the least likely position from which to win the race. That year the Olympics were to be Hitler's great sporting success except two American competitors bested favored Germany athletes: one was Owens who ran the first one-minute mile. And the other was the scullers who, against all odds managed to win their race. The book was so  well paced, so well written that I, who has never been to a regatta, could ride in that scull with the young men, feeling what each of them felt and holding my breath as I read. 

I passed the book on, by summer all of us had read the book. Other books were passed around although some were of more specific interest to their recipient and not to others. I have been thinking about which books to give to whom for a couple of months and now have only to wrap them up. Wondering what books will come my way is as good as waiting for Santa Claus. Not that I have a need for more books. I just finished the 77th book of the year last night, I have two others partly read and started a new one -- I generally have at least two going at a time, and sometimes more. 

Timely Poem by my friend Arlene Corwin

The times are fraught; too much of my reading and listening time -- indeed too much of my brain time -- is spent with news about the impeachement proceedings in Washington. And whenever I turn pages in the NYTimes or read The New Yorker or other magazines I discover other ways in which the world is badly awry. I believe there were four shootings in the past ten days and that's only in America.

Several years ago I began a correspondence with Arlene Corwin, poet-proflict with 13 books in print and her own very specific style which I think springs in large part from the fact that she has been a professional jazz pianist (and sometimes singer) since the age of 16. And she is now a wee bit older than I am, has been living in Sweden for quite some time and sends me her new poems, often hot off the laptop several times a week. She's just had a bad couple of months when her body seemed to announce it was giving up, but Arlene has also been a practitioner and teacher of yoga for most of her life and her mind/body said NO,  IT'S NOT TIME TO GO. She is recouperating and back to writing poems, which have mostly take a somewhat move serious look at the world and life in general. I am especially in agreement with today's poem and have warned her I will quote it here. She doesn't mind at all.

   Mysteries That Never Cease

There are mysteries that never cease,

Will always be:

Because of, not in spite of.

Look at progress:

Despite progress, we are more at risk than ever.

I fear, not ‘in spite of’, but ‘because of’, progress never

What it seems,

All the reams of information,

New advances, dancing in our eyes and ears

Dependent on who sees or hears,

Every positive a dormant negative

Dependent on whose hands it’s in.

Then the secrets of infinity:

What, where, how, why, when; 

A mystery most definitely.

And music, art 

The part that improvises and creates

Out of a place inscrutable,

Wondrous, wonderful.

To never understand?

Dependent on whose hand it’s in, 

Whose talent, aptitude, inborn mind

Is interested at all to find

The answers.

Mysteries That Never Cease 11.21.2019

Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin 

The little gang

Four great-grandchildren on an autumn day posing for their Mom who likes taking photos and does a very fine job of it. The girl who seems to have decided not to wear a jacket is Stella, now in first grade, the tallest boy, with the reddist hair is the eldest (if someone who's 9 going on 10 can be called "eldest" at all) is Phineus  (Phin/Finn), who is in the 3rd grade.  In the red plaid coat is second son, Cole, and down front, littlest but not at all willing to be least is Silas who has started pre-school this year.

The golden trees in the background were lovely for a while but we've had very serious wind and rain and even a dusting of snow since the photo was taken. So autumn is turning toward winter.  (And Stella will have to put on a coat).

November already!! Working on Reflections

Middle of  November already -- hard to believe! With a half dozen wonderful women I'm deep into editing the next issue of Reflections which will be the 20th issue--a special landmark. This one has more content (and it seems to me a higher caliber) than the previous ones.  I am not a believer in the all-American motto that "Bigger is better" but in this case I think it's true. It's also more work and I'm grateful to have the  "comma crew" go over every submissions.

Indeed, we're add a great many commas, also hyphens and corrected much grammar. One committee member, Cathy holds her cell phone ready to check many spellings and facts on Google. It sounds awfully nerdy, but I really have enjoyed the sessions for the past six weeks. One more meeting on the editing and then a subcommittee will work another three or four weeks and lay out the anthology. I enjoy the discussions and decision making about what can follow what, where we need to add in a lighter poem, what photos works where.  Perhaps I missed a career that would have been satisfying, not getting into publishing. But then most people miss many possible accomplishments. I'm happy with this bit of work at this stage in my life --- and especially so because I'm not alone, I have compatible and trustworthy and admirable help.  How often can people in business say that? 

Sign and photo

Many months ago I noticed this sign on  two-lane street that is a connection to downtown Hyannis and popular Rte 6A which runs along the north side of Cape Cod. It comes shortly before a railroad crossing where only one train a day crosses. I told Rachel about it and we've thought of taking a photo but it's never happened until today when we also had Rachel's friend Paloma with us as we were all going for a walk at an Audubon reserve. I visualized a photo of a couple of old people bent over canes, their backs to the sign. But that was not the idea the others had so here we are ... I'm the "Old person"  being guided by Rachel. The sign is the focus which IS what I visualized. I drive that way frequently but I have yet to see a person, young or old, actually walking along that stretch of the street.

Our walk through woods and down to the harbor was fairly long but perfectly wonderful on a sunny, slightly cool autumn day with many fallen leaves beneath our feet.  We passed an enclosure with about ten goats, the sign identified them as "working goats". They are apparently taken to weedy areas where they are allowed to eat all the weeds and such (even poison ivy, I'm told). They are an ecological preference to the use weed killer in places like the right-of-way beneath power lines. They're attractive animals to watch  ... unfortunately they have in inevitable goaty perfume.