• Category Archives Art and Culture

  • The Maker and the Made

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Tuesday gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Luke and Leo. Shadow. Happy to be with Leo. Cool night. The last for a while. Tom and Rascal. That Lodgepole leaning. Rain. Possible Monsoons. Traveler’s Insurance. Ruby.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art Green

    Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm. ?How do I reignite my enthusiasm for working out?

    One brief shining: I went and got coffee; it’s cool to be independent in a place that is completely new says American Ruth on the streets of Songtan, Korea;  a spot I knew well from my time with my son and Seoah.

     

    Ruth’s on day 2 of her Korean trip. Sleeping in the same bed I slept in two years ago. Probably jet lagged, but leaning way in to the new world, Asia, so different, yet fully human.

    Travel expands the range of the possible. Nope, knives and forks and spoons? Not everyone uses them. The language. The way of writing it. The gene pool. Sloping tiled roofs in the Asian manner. Food with all the sides typical in Korea. A world of difference. What the MAGA folks miss in their cultural chauvinism.

    Here’s to Ruth. Adventuress.

     

    A conundrum. Me, too, and art. And thought. And friendships. Do you still watch Woody Allen films? How about Roman Polanski? Attend Catholic mass? Do you admire Bill Clinton? How about Picasso? Art Green? Believe Anita Hill? Weinstein? Kevin Spacey? Bill Cosby?

    Here’s the conundrum. Do bad acts taint everything a person has done? Is Kevin Spacey less good in American Beauty because he’s a sexual predator? Is the Catholic church defiled in toto by its wayward priests? Does Picasso’s notorious philandering make his painting less than?

    I come down with confidence on all sides of this issue. Woody Allen slept with, then married the adopted daughter of his former wife, Mia Farrow. Does this make his films less funny?

    Can we separate the maker from the made? Yes. No. First of all, look at the long history of art now represented in museums. Most of the works in any museum come with little information about the artist’s private life. Especially those works from antiquity.

    Since we admire these works without knowing the peccadillos of the sculptor of the Doryphoros  or the carver of the Jade Mountain, the potter who made the roku tea cups, it is possible, probably likely that some of them were miserable human beings.

    Is that Greek athlete, a spear-bearer, any less magnificent if we would find his maker was a pedophile? Or, the potter a wife beater? Would the graceful and beautiful scenes on the Jade Mountain be less so if the maker were a thief?

    In other words in cases where we have no idea about this information we find no impediment to our appreciation of the work on its own, distinct from the hands and the heart that created it.

    This suggests to me that the work is independent of the maker, of the maker’s biography, whatever it includes.

    On the other hand. Bill Cosby. I can’t see anything he’s made without carrying to it his drugging women for sexual predation. Even Woody Allen. Though less so for some reason. Picasso? I don’t consider his private life at all when I see his art.

    What are the criteria we use? Do we condemn the bad act(s) and draw a clean line between, say, Polanski and The Fearless Vampire Killers, a favorite comedy?

    I guess I come down on separating the made from the maker. Yet a taint on it, a principled revulsion, a pulling away from the work made also makes sense to me.

    I do know this for sure. I would not want my work judged by the worst mistakes I’ve made in my life.


    Art and Culture Cinema and Television Commentary on the news Family Humanities Travel US History World History

  • All. All of it. Sacred.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Ramses II. By Djehouty – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

    Tuesday gratefuls: Needles into my spine. 11 am. Paul in Salt Lake City. Mary in Eau Claire. The wide world. The newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum. The National Museum in Taipei. The Frick’s renovation. The Isabella Stewart Gardener museum. The Phillip Johnson. The MIA. The Walker. Being a dramaturg.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: All the art in all the world

    Week Kavannah:  Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: So many museums, the quiet time early in the morning before the crowds come, walking into the Bruegel room at the Kunsthistorisches, or the Botticelli room at the Uffizi, even walking with the crowd into the Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Chapel!, my favorite moment to spend time with the Dr. Arrieta by Goya at the MIA, there are raptures and revelations there for those who can see what they are looking at.

     

    Imagine a street in any major city. Bangkok. Kuala Lumpur. NYC. A busy street filled with pedestrians on their way. Somewhere. Vehicles in the street. Bicycles. Taxis. Private cars. Delivery trucks. Businesses fronted on the sidewalk. With offices above them.

    All those vast inner worlds. As vast your own. Never to be known. Not by you. Not by anyone else. Unless. Perhaps. A lover or therapist. Or, if one of them is an artist. Doesn’t matter what kind. Painter. Writer. Musician. Dancer. Playwright. Sculptor. Artisan. Any.

    Artists need to, have to reveal themselves, their inner worlds. Can’t help it. It’s not quite the same as conversation between lovers, but it can be pretty damned close.

    That Goya above? That’s the painter himself being treated. For what was apparently a not very serious ailment. Did he know that at the time of his treatment? Doesn’t look like it, does it? Vulnerable. Needy. Confident doctor.

    Or, that statue of Ramses II. The sculptors, I imagine there were many, knew they had to give this work all the power and majesty they could find within themselves. Only then could it meet the demands of their God-King.

    Doryphoros

    I cherish those times when I can be with an artist and their work. Why? Because then like speaks to like. Inner worlds connect. Oh, yes. Anguish. Despair. Shame. Grief. Joy. Celebration. Deep contemplation. Reacting to surface beauty. Or, the lithe musculature of a Panther, the mystery of time caught forever in the Doryphoros as he steps forward.

    Reading. Listening. Seeing. Tasting. The artistry of a well-made meal. What a wonder, the world of the arts.

    And even so. My Lodgepole companion. My friends at CBE. Black Mountain after a heavy Snow. Maxwell Creek filled with Snow Melt. A bull Elk in the rain. Yes. These, too. Reveal the inner world of the whole wide world. In those moments before a painting or listening to an orchestra or sitting on a Rocky overhang in the Arapaho National Forest. When a newborn Fawn looks up from its first meals of tender new Grass. We get that jolt, that moment of knowing. Oh. Yes. It’s all sacred. I remember. I’ve known this all along. The press of life sometimes makes me forget. But I know it. Again. Now.

     

     


    Art and Culture Bees Cinema and Television Fungi Garden Mountains Plants Wild Neighbors

  • Morality Plays

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Marilyn and Irv. Snow. March, our big Snow month. Shadow. Difficult nights sleep. Ramadan. Elon Musk, a real Bond villain. Mussar. Hana Matsuri. Torah study. Men’s group. Smart phones. The internet. The cloud. Clouds. NOAA. National Weather Service. Critical government services.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The sound of Shadow eating

    Week kavannah: Netzach with zerizut and simcha

    One brief shining: Driving up the hill Tuesday after lunch with Alan, Denver temperature 66 degrees, climbing on 285 past the Hogbacks, past Indian Hills, past Windy point, temperature in the low 50’s, by the time I reached Shadow Mountain Home the air was 47 degrees, 19 degrees cooler than Denver.

     

    60 years ago I was a freshman at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In my first semester I joined the Scarlet Masque, a group of actors who put on plays for the town of Crawfordsville. Guerilla theatre had a moment in the mid-1960’s and we decided to perform medieval morality plays on the main commercial street of Crawfordsville.

    Medieval morality plays convey straightforward messages about good and bad, sin and redemption. They present difficulties for actors because the lines rhyme. Here’s an example from the Castle of Perservance:

    MANKIND:
    What need I toil, or sweat, or strive?
    Why should I labor, while I am alive?
    Gold and silver will serve my will,
    And I shall do what I like still!

    BACKBITER:
    Well spoken, my jovial lad!
    Hold fast to pleasure, be never sad!
    Why fret and fast, why should you care?
    Eat, drink, and make good cheer,
    For life is short, and death is near!

    MANKIND:
    Ha! By my soul, thy words are sweet,
    And thus my heart shall take its seat.
    A lordly life shall I pursue,
    And bid those beggarly monks adieu!

    This is, I admit, a long winded introduction to my real point. Over the last six months or so, I notice I’ve drifted in my reading and in my television watching to contemporary morality plays. I’ve read mysteries and thrillers. I’ve watched police procedurals, movies about assassins, the FBI, science fiction movies about alien invasions.

    What do they share in common with the medieval morality plays? They present clear messages. Good Bond. Bad villain. Good police, bad criminals. Bad arms dealers, good assassins. Over the course of 45 minutes to an hour and a half, though the battle goes back and forth with the outcome often in doubt, in the end good triumphs. The vanquished bad actors get what’s coming to them.

    Ah.

    It took me until last week to realize why I felt soothed by these works. So much in the world and in the U.S. seems an inversion of values I hold close. US friends with Russia. Extorting Ukraine for precious metals. Gutting NOAA and the National Weather Service. Finding money for deficit increasing tax breaks in programs like Medicaid and food stamps. Not only are the bad guys not getting punished, they’re making front page news daily.

    Not so in NCIS: New Orleans. That wife who poisoned her husband and brother with polonium. Behind bars. Or, FBI. The three terrorists who tried to bomb a baseball game in Central Park? Foiled and arrested.

    BTW: Whose name could I have replaced Mankind’s with in the excerpt from Castle Perserveance?


    Art and Culture Cinema and Television Feelings Fourth Phase Politics

  • Mondays at the Museum

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century 4% crescent Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Blackbird. Ginny. Janice. Annie. Vince. Diane, healing. Mark, teaching. Mary, waiting. My son, traveling. Cold night. Another full night’s sleep. Shrimp po’boy. Breaded catfish fillets. Chinese AI. Oh, my. Deepseek. Cousin Donald, America firsting. New computer. Ready to engage. Chiefs-Bills. Quite a game.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hawai’i

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Chesed (loving kindness)

    One brief shining: The Blackbird in Kittredge has an outside host, even in the winter, though yesterday I was glad to see she’d been given a tent in which she could work in her shirt-sleeved Blackbird t-shirt, a tent where those of us waiting for seats could rest on white metal chairs or wooden crates.

     

    Got a little way laid yesterday on seeing. Important, yes. But I really intended to write about art, the Docent years. So.

    A person alone in an art museum looking at an earthenware coil built pot from China. In the style of Durer

    Those Mondays at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Every Monday for a long time, years, I would drive in from Andover, listening to a Great Courses lecture while coming south past the ring road, crossing the Mississippi, eventually leaving the freeway. Parking in the parking lot near the museum.

    Maybe the lecture would be on Chinese Silks. Or, the new Pre-Raphaelite exhibition. Could be Song Dynasty ceramics or the Armory Show. Whatever it was I filled a thick blue notebook with careful notes, soaking up the information, storing it away like a squirrel with acorns.

    The Museum excited me, so many cultures, so many artistic disciplines, so many artists. From the early Mediterranean carvers of Venus Figurines to Van Gogh’s Olive Trees. The Chinese Jade Mountain to the Doryphoros. Three floors. Two buildings, connected.

    No wonder that after the lecture many of us took full advantage of the museum on a day no outsiders were let in. Mondays were days when the registration department moved art from one gallery to another. Hung new art. Cleaned the art. I liked the scissor-jack platform in the lobby which carried a cleaner to the yellow horn like pieces of the Chihuly glass chandelier. They used small vacuums and feather dusters.

    Mostly I wandered. I had my favorites. Goya’s Dr. Arrieta. The smooth, ancient Chinese pot, unglazed earthenware of perfect proportions. One Corner Ma’s painting of a Taoist scholar standing under a pine tree, admiring a waterfall. To have as I long as I wanted with a piece, no pressure to move a group along, no one to intrude on my, yes, I’ll call it reverie.

    Each work that spoke to me was direct revelation from the artist’s inner world to mine. It was not like a spiritual experience. It was one.

    Delicate works that had survived thousands of years after their creation. Some Chinese ceramicist built that beautiful earthenware pot over two thousand years ago.

    The gratitude of the ailing Goya to his Doctor exposed in his vulnerable pose in the Doctor’s care. Kandinsky playing with color and form, moving away from representation.

    I loved those Mondays and they remain precious in the memories of my life.

     

     


    Art and Culture Fourth Phase

  • Seeing, not looking

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Snow. More. Another full night’s sleep. In a row. Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar. Mysticism. Art. Lascaux. Venus figurines. Minoan. Grecian. Phoenician. Early Christian. Egyptian. Hittite. Babylonian. Roman. Celtic. Norse. Anglo-Saxon. Qin, Han, Tang, Song dynasties. Goryeon. Kang school in Japan. Ukiyo-e. Nayarit. Jalisco. Benin. Early Hindu. Nepalese. Tibetan. Nahuatl. Mayan.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Chesed (loving-kindness)

    Rachamim practice: Listening for the melody of others

    One brief shining: Love that kid, my now 43 year old son, seeing him across 9,000 miles, his hair a bit longer on top, a fade on the sides, talking about Seoah at the gym, Murdoch staying on base for their trip, Hawai’i-a mutual dream, his transition to command, the nod to the Vikings living up to expectations, a visit to Minnesota to see his mom, old friends, skiing and his racing turns, sore legs.

     

    No. Got that out of my system yesterday. Mystical me. Today, let’s talk literature. Nah. How about art? Haven’t gone on that ancientrail for quite awhile. Chatbotgpt and I have had fun over the last few weeks co-operating on image making. I provide the idea, 4o provides the image. With wildly varying results, as you’ve already seen.

    Here is the depiction of a 60-year-old version of you in a room filled with traditional Japanese teaware, capturing a serene and tranquil moment.

    A bit of nostalgia. Trafficking in the past these days as I continue to write stories in the Storyworth app. 14 so far. Story is too grand a word for these 500 words or so excursions on roadways back into the last millennium. The last century. More like lightning flashbacks, brief illuminations of moments of a life.

    Thinking this morning about those Monday mornings as a guide, a docent in training, then a docent when I could go in for a lecture in art history by an expert in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts lecture hall. After. I loved the in depth, detailed way of looking that art historians and curators brought to specific objects.

    Never thought of it this way before but a lot of my life has been about seeing, really seeing, what was in front of me. Yesterday I discussed the revelation I find in each and every instance I encounter. Sometimes I see clearly, sometimes, most often, through a glass darkly. Perception clouded by bias, distraction, assumption, all those ills to which the human sensorium is heir to.

    Anthropology offers a sort of x-ray vision into human behavior, how culture shapes us, defines us, supports and limits us. Philosophy sees questions where others see answers.

    Here is the portrait inspired by our conversations, rendered in the dramatic and textured style of Francisco Goya, reflecting your life and connection to the Rocky Mountains.

    Radical politics means looking into the truth of our economic and political relationships with one another and seeing the patterns, the flaws that create distortion, inequity. Gardening opened my eyes to the language of plants, how they express themselves, tell us what they need. Our long interrelationship with them. Having so many Dogs over the years opened my eyes to their distinctiveness, their majesty as fellow creatures, my deep love for them.

    Living in the Mountains has turned me toward Wild Neighbors, toward Rock. Pines. Aspens. Fox and Moose. Beaver and Marmoset. Toward Mountain Streams in their dramatic seasonality.

    Judaism has given me new lenses for viewing friendship, metaphysics, history, tradition, and myself.

    Kate. In a true love affair which helped her understand herself in new ways, to see herself, not just her profession as she helped me see and be my whole self.

     


    Art and Culture Fourth Phase Memories Mountains Tea Wild Neighbors

  • The Demon of Ignorance. In the long view

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Jamie. Frederick Posner. Mindy. Ellen. Janet. Ginny. Janice. Luke. Findlay. Leo. Gracie. Murdoch. Warmer night. Still cool. My son. Rich. Seoah. Living will. Estate plan. Affairs. Light. Dark. Tao. Light in the dark. Dark in the light. Wu wei. Chi. Ohr. Shiva. Creation and destruction. In the long arcing spiral of existence.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shiva

    Kavannah 2025:  Creativity

    Kavannah week:   Appreciation of Opposition

    One brief shining: Two brown paper bags at a time, crunching the snow on my driveway, I moved my Safeway pickup order from the back of Ruby, into the kitchen, yes you need to do these things, keep the muscles working, placing the bags on the  counter; after, I drove Ruby into her stall, gave her fresh oats and a quick rubdown, and returned to the house to put away my groceries.

     

    Here is the Shiva Nataraja depicted in the style of the intricate bas reliefs at Angkor Wat

    Hinduism helps me at a time like this. Tom reminded me of Shiva the other morning and I’ve stayed with that thought. Vishnu stabilizes the world; Shiva engages in constant acts of creation and destruction. Both acting over unimaginably long periods of time*, heading toward destruction, then renewal.

    Seen in the context of a kalpa, what is the four year presence of an avatar of the id, guided by fear and lust and greed, not unusual attributes found in humanity. Especially in the Kali Yuga, a portion of the kalpa under the destructive, yet cleansing influence of Kali.

    I suppose you could see this as the opposite of living in the moment. This way of understanding the cosmic cycle insists on embedding ourselves not in the here and now only, but also in the extended experience of kalpas and yugas. From this lofty perspective cousin Donald and his Clown Posse present as bit players, foils in a cyclic dance between chaos and order, a just world and an unjust world. Just as you and I do.

    Here is the depiction of Shiva Nataraja dancing atop the demon of ignorance, styled in the intricate and symbolic manner of Hindu temple art.

    In the Shiva Nataraja I have here at home Shiva dances on the demon of ignorance. We can imagine cousin Donald beneath Shiva’s feet. I’m even willing to imagine this demon of all thing’s petty as a cautionary tale in the oh so finite history of our United States. From the next century: Never again.

    When we focus on the moment, we lose the breadth and depth of history, of time in the sense of kalpas and yugas. This can be a serious problem in that we may universalize what’s happening in the moment and fail to understand the much, much larger context in which all events occur. A French historian looks at the longue durée. The long duration of history. I prefer the Hindu version because of its cyclical nature, but my primary point this morning?  As bad as he has been and will be cousin Donald does not write the long arc of history. None of us do.

     

    *The Cyclical Nature of Time (Yugas and Kalpas)

    • Hinduism views time as cyclical rather than linear. It is divided into vast cosmic cycles called Kalpas, each lasting over 4.32 billion years.
    • Within each Kalpa are Maha Yugas (Great Ages), consisting of four Yugas (epochs):
      1. Satya Yuga (Age of Truth) – the golden age of righteousness.
      2. Treta Yuga – a slightly diminished moral and spiritual state.
      3. Dvapara Yuga – further decline in virtue and wisdom.
      4. Kali Yuga – the age of darkness and chaos, characterized by moral decay and ignorance.

    The current era is believed to be Kali Yuga, considered the final and darkest age before renewal.

    End of the Kali Yuga

    • At the end of Kali Yuga, it is believed that the world will undergo a period of destruction and renewal.
    • Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, will appear. Kalki is described as a warrior on a white horse, wielding a sword of divine justice. He will restore righteousness (Dharma) and end the cycle of Kali Yuga.

    3. Pralaya (Dissolution)

    • After the end of a Kalpa, the universe undergoes Pralaya, or dissolution.
    • Pralaya can occur on different scales:
      • Naimittika Pralaya: The end of a day of Brahma (the creator deity), where the physical world is dissolved but the subtle world persists.
      • Prakritika Pralaya: The dissolution of the entire cosmos into its primordial state.
    • After Pralaya, Brahma begins the process of creation anew.

    4. Shiva’s Role: Tandava Dance

    • Shiva, as the cosmic destroyer, plays a crucial role in the end-of-the-world concept. His Tandava dance symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction.
    • This dance is both destructive and regenerative, reflecting the cyclical nature of existence.

    5. Philosophical Perspective

    • The “end of the world” is not feared but is seen as a necessary phase in the eternal cycle of creation and renewal.
    • From an Advaita (non-dualist) perspective, the physical universe is ultimately illusory (Maya), and the dissolution is a return to the unmanifest reality (Brahman).

    Hindu eschatology emphasizes the impermanence of material existence and the eternal nature of the soul, offering a profound perspective on time, change, and cosmic renew


    Art and Culture Asia General Politics US History World History

  • Herme’s Journey

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Sunday gratefuls: Tom’s safe trip. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch coming January. Then, a trip to Korea in May. Followed by the Jang family visit here in late summer. Snow. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. German Wirehairs. Akitas. Breeds I love. Asia. Korea. Malaysia. Australia. Thailand. Cambodia. Saudi Arabia.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leftist politics

    Kavannah: Perserverance

    One brief shining: A Mountain retreat, a home on granite, gneiss, and schist, raised above sea level by 8,800 feet, overlooking Black Mountain with its ski runs, Lodgepoles and Aspen colonies, in the Arapaho National Forest and drained by Maxwell Creek to the north and North Turkey Creek to the south, home to my day-to-day life in these middle years of the 2020’s.

     

    On a lighter note today. Current TV favorites: Tracker, Sealteam, Fire Country. Reading anew Nexus by Harari. Also, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad. Best movie I watched recently: hmm. None come to mind. Oh, Late Night with the Devil. Weird. I can no longer understand dialogue in movie theaters so I have to watch what’s available on streaming services with closed captions. Favorite meal last week, filet mignon with Tom at Evoke 1923 last Friday.

    Herme’s Journey. Still on this path. I’ve finished another reading of Ovid. Also, the Odyssey. Am in the fourth book of the Iliad. I’m reading the parsha of the week most weeks along with commentaries. Also books that challenge me like Nexus. Keeping mental knives sharp.

    My commitment to regular times with family and friends has increased. I zoom, breakfast, lunch, and on the rare occasion eat dinner with them. Also expanding my circle of friends, not by much, but adding Veronica for example.

    The lunar calendar of Judaism meshes well with my pagan sensibilities and my focus on the Great Wheel. Trying to integrate the two in meaningful ways. An ongoing project.

    Am working on a new meditative practice, focusing on a work of art for ten minutes or more, then reading art historical material about it. An NYT idea.

    And more. All this is to stimulate, reinforce my lifelong journey. See what bubbles up.

     

    Just a moment: Talked with my son and Seoah yesterday. There is a sweetness, a visceral joy in seeing them, hearing them. My heart lifts and my sense of well-being, already good, increases. Murdoch hears my voice, but does nothing. Nothing to smell here, so meh.

    That sense of well-being. I’ve noticed Luke and Jamie initiate hugs when we see each other. There’s something about that that fills my soul, too. Ron and Rich. Tom. Ruth, Gabe. I hope the others feel the same way about my participation. Hugs are a way of claiming intimacy and saying yes to it.

    Will not know for some time what the most abhorrent of adventures will look like, feel like. Cabinet picks? An unserious man taking an unserious approach to the job in the whole world that has the most economic and military power.

    Committed to the seeds of decency, honesty, love for the other. Still and always.

     


    Art and Culture Asia Family Fourth Phase Friends Great Wheel Judaism Korea Mountains Shadow Mountain

  • Seed-Keepers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Friday gratefuls: Tom. Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Ginny. Rick. Great Sol. A blue Colorado Sky. The West. The Rocky Mountains. No Bike Park. The Mountain Meadow remains. Colorado. Livin’ in a Blue State. Mark. Mary. Diane. Riley. Richard. Cut Throat Cafe. Happy Camper.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eagle at Tom and Roxann’s

    Kavannah: Friendship

    One brief shining: Why did you put on what you’re wearing today, Mindy asked, and we went around the room, learning one wanted to cover her stomach, another takes a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so she had on what she had on Wednesday, another wore brown jeans and a green t-shirt to look like a tree, and when it came to me I said, I bought a pair of Keens, a lot of white socks, a bunch of jeans, and several plaid flannel shirts so I don’t have to think about it.

     

    BTW: I asked chatbotgtp to create An American themed image of a group called the Seed-Keepers whose role is to honor the spirit of liberal America. Anti-racist, anti-misogynist, and anti-homophobic. I’m more interested in the Seed-Keeper theme than anything else

    Seed Keepers, Chatbotgt at my request

    Seed-Keepers. Who among you might become a Seed-Keeper? If you take on this role, expect it to last at least four years, perhaps longer. You can be a solitary Seed-Keeper, dedicated to remembering and speaking who we are as a country and as a people when not driven by fear and demagoguery. One of our Seeds, there are so many, lies in our history. Perhaps you will be the one who goes back to the beginning of our nation and learns in even more depth how we came to be. Warts and all. 3/5ths clause and fugitive slave clause and white, propertied men as voters, the electoral college and all. Enslavement, too. Jim Crow. The Indian Wars. Yet, too, the Civil War. Checks and balances. Federalism. The Federalist Papers. How we became a city on a hill attracting new citizens from afar.

    Or, you might choose to have a Seed-Keeper group. Perhaps one interested in the American Renaissance (as I am) when American thinkers and artists began to tease out the distinctive features of living on this amazing land. Reading together the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, Whitman, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Mary Fuller. Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Not to ignore either painters and sculptors like Mary Cassatt, Bierstadt, Henry Tanner, Church.

    Seed-Keepers #2

    What might you do as a Seed-Keeper? You might gather those close to you for story evenings, perhaps around the fireplace to discuss questions like what does it mean to be an American? What has it meant? What does it mean in a time dominated by reactionaries and autocrats? You might write essays, letters to the editor about how the other half of the 2024 electorate sees things.

    You might locate yourself in the work of a state Humanities council and help them introduce American Seeds through their speakers and book groups.

    I’m sure you have more and better ideas than these. A Seed-Keepers primary role is to hold the liberal to radical ideas that make America a nation in which all want to live and to pass those ideas along to family, friends, and others in a digestible manner.

    I’m gonna keep spinning up this idea, see if it can gain traction. No where near done with it.


    Art and Culture Fourth Phase Politics

  • Knowledge Gaps

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Saturday (Yom Kippur) gratefuls: Teshuvah. The Book of Life. Almost sealed. Sukkot starts on October 16th. Kol Nidre. Gaza. The West Bank. Palestinians. Israel. Israelis. Hamas. Hezbollah. Lebanon. Iran. Egypt. Syria. Jordan. Saudi Arabia. AI. Yetzer hara. Yetzer hatov. Yin. Yang. Polarities within the Unity. Darkness and the dawn. Solar storms. Auroras.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Magnetosphere

    Kavannah: Patience  wait for it

    One brief shining: As the darkness gives way to dawn and dawn to full day, I watch Black Mountain throw off its night time cloak, stretch its Rockiness up to the light as Great Sol appears again in the East, Mother Earth having spun round once again, this ritual of rituals, light to dark, dark to light, matches and feeds the turning of the Great Wheel as this tilted Earth dashes through space around our Star.

     

    Cousin Diane should be in Tashkent by now. On tour with Overseas Adventure Travel after spending a few days with her Uzbeki friends. Sounds like quite a journey. A lot of it focused on the Silk Road, then and now. Bought a standing globe this week, something I’ve always wanted. Found Uzbekistan. Central Asia remains mostly a blank spot in my knowledge, its history and its contemporary, post Soviet Union reality. Perhaps Diane’s time there will educate me on her return.

    Reminds me of where I was with China, Japan, and Korea, Southeast Asia before my trip to Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia in 2004. Stimulated by a lecture in my Southeast Asia guide program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Bob Jacobsen showed slides of Angkor Wat, including the quarter mile long bas relief on the most well known temple there. It had the churning of the sea of milk.

    Bas relief from the 12th century Khmer civilization
    Another rendering

    That next year I entered docent training, a two year every Wednesday series of lectures on world art history. Given my recent trip to Southeast Asia and a trip with Joseph and Kate to China in 1999 I chose to focus a lot of my learning on Asian art, especially China and Japan. What I don’t know about Asia is still much vaster than what I have learned, but I do have a good baseline knowledge of Asian history, in particular the various arts of China and Japan.

    Of course brother Mark and sister Mary’s long residency in various parts of Southeast Asia, mostly Malyasia and Singapore, Mary, and Thailand and Cambodia, Mark, meant I already had a face turned toward those countries. And India, too. Though not as much. Then Joseph got stationed in Osan, Korea, met Seoah, married, and returned there a year and a half ago. Kate and I went to Korea and Singapore in 2016 for Joe and Seoah’s wedding.

    As China has rapidly developed, the world’s attention has belatedly turned toward Asia, too. When Joe, Kate, and I were in Beijing, the traffic was largely people on bicycles carrying charcoal briquettes and even refrigerators by pedal power. No longer. And only 24 years later.

    Not sure Central Asia will ever have such a moment. But. Things change in geopolitics and they’re changing at a rapid pace right now without a world hegemon.


    Art and Culture Asia Family Travel World History

  • Wish me joy and persistence

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mabon and the Harvest Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers on Ode’s art. Art. Painting. Water color. Cut paper. Paper marbling. Computer aided. Charcoal and pastels. Oils. Acrylic. Sculpture. Furniture design. Architecture. Music. Chamber music. Jazz. Writing. Novels. Short stories. Poems. Poets. Writers. Painters. Sculptors. Musicians. Movies and television. Story and image.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Uffizi

    Kavannah: Teshuvah

    One brief shining: Today I’m pulling out the 3/4’s finished first draft of Jennie’s Dead, plan to read it, red pencil in hand, waiting to reinsert myself into its flow, the story as I started it so many years ago, wanting to reclaim my life as a creator of worlds, of characters, of ideas expressed in things that would never have been and never could be without the mysterious work of creation. And, it is work.

     

    Probably time, too, to print out Ancientrails from the point where I stopped the last time. Not sure how long ago it was, but it was awhile. Easy to check since I have the plastic tubs filled with the first printing, some two million words, stored on wire racks in the loft. I want, so badly, to get my mojo back. My writing mojo. I let it slide as I let myself get overwhelmed by the world of illness, hers and mine. The long, slow process of Kate’s dying. Didn’t have to let it go, but I did and I’ve sunk a bit since then, a light in my heart dimmed.

    Going through the outer world of friends and family, Mountains and Streams and Wild Neighbors, of Judaism and the pandemic, of wrestling with back pain, often with little success. None of this bad or shallow or wrong. No. Necessary, kind, fulfilling. Yet the stream from which I had drunk so giddily for 20 years, the Andover years, dried up. The aquifer that fed it drained and not renewed.

    Writing and my current worst ailment, a back preventing me from walking more than short distances, making work around the house often more than I can do, fit well together. I can do it like I’m writing this. And, I can keep at it, like Ode, until I reach the end. Why would I do that? For the same reason my brother-in-law, Jerry the painter and maker, is in a spasm of creativity knowing his heart could give out at any time. For the same reason Ode believes his best art is ahead of him. And now, ta da, a sports metaphor! To leave it all on the field. To have held nothing back. To have gone as far as I can. Not sure I know why beyond that. Please wish me joy and persistence.

    This is then, a matter for teshuvah, for a return to the land of my soul. Yes, there’s that word again. Soul. Where is it? Don’t know. Is it a metaphor for the whole of me, an ensouled body and lev? Yes, but more, I believe. The something more is that which links my ensouled body and lev to the other ensouled entities like my friends, family, my Lodgepole Companion, Great Sol, Elk and Mule Deer, Shadow Mountain. We are together, moving forward in constant creation, unique and separate, yet whole and infinitely connected. Perhaps that which is there to bond with all does not die, but rolls on, moving with the rest toward an unknown future, probably one bound tightly to a known past.


    Art and Culture Feelings Fourth Phase Letters Literature Myth and Story Painting Shadow Mountain Wild Neighbors Writing