OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Six SPRING CLEANING II

So today I didn't actually go in the yard except to get the paper and walk the dog.   The rest of the petunias went unplanted and the weeds in the terrace are yet to be pulled.  But I did actually clean.  I picked up rugs.  I swept floors.  I pulled things off of shelves that have been there for years gathering dust.  I found an antique chessboard purchased by my father-in-law from a German during the second world war.  I changed sheets and hung damp pillows out to dry.

For at least three years now I have had a the luxury of several women cleaning my home several times a month and for their help I am forever grateful.   Before that for years I cleaned our home by myself.   The ritual began on Friday evening with the picking up of rugs and by Sat afternoon I had a clean house.   Nothing on this planet could lift my spirits better than that.   Now it is wearisome being the only one doing this in a large house with several people and a dog so I've relaxed a lot since hiring the cleaning crew, but I've forgotten what it feels like to set things to order, to sweep up the dust, to even notice the dust and to bring harmony to a home.

I was trained well I suppose because my mother insisted that we clean the house.  It has always been a way from me to clear my head.   Busy hands and purposeful action make for a happy heart.

This morning I found no desire to meditate, to stretch or to even walk.   There was nothing more compelling than my broom and dustpan.  In addition to that I completed a short story on the theme of cleaning up a house and putting loose ends to rest.  Then I sent several stories off for an end of April deadline.   Very satisfying.

So in honor of all those who work with their hands tomorrow is International Workers Day.

In solidarity.

OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Five SPRING CLEANING

An abundance of good things today.   Where to start?   Being able to actually stretch this morning without groaning for starters.  Then spring cleaning for sure.   There comes a time each April when the weather is warm, the grass gets long and the winter detritus and spring mud make the yard look like a poor farm in Appalachia.  Then it is time for cleaning and I always start with the front garden.

Despite the deer eating 3/4 of the 100 tulips I planted last fall, there is still a line up of rainbow hues dead center in my garden.  I spent most of the day weeding, cutting out old limbs in the roses and planting petunias.   

Speaking of rainbows: I went from the garden to the gallery to sit for a few hours for the new show of Mitch Goldberg and Susan Freidman - collage and photo work.  Opening is tomorrow at The Upstream 2-5 pm in Hastings.  You never know who is going to walk in that door and you can end up having the most interesting conversations.   A guy named Andy ended up talking my ear off about his years getting arrested as an activist.  He was kind of on the edge, maybe homeless, maybe struggling with mental illness, but highly entertaining.   Rather than get my hackles up and ignore him because I'm trying to get a story written by tomorrow, I decide to listen and he starts to tell me his adventures with the Rainbow Gathering.   For those who don't know the Rainbow Gatherings have been happening since the 70's and are loosely arranged groups of hippies, activists, yogis and others who gather in National parks for festival of love, music and sharing.  His encounters bordered on the mystical - chance meetings and minding reading.   Andy's a man who has been arrested many times for protesting environmental damages (e.g Standing Rock.)  

To that end thousands marched to day in DC and NY and many cities around the global to support awareness of climate change despite the current administrations denials.   I applaud anyone who marched and know we will do it again.

My environmental efforts were limited to my front garden.  I ended the day by going to hear Canadian David Boulanger and Dane Maja  \Jacobsen play a fusion folk fiddle set at Purpl a venue in Hastings.  It was a mixture of Cajun, Quebecquois, and Danish tunes that was delightful.  They are a charming duo complete with Danish folk songs about foxes stealing geese.  Makes me want to start fiddling again.

OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Four FOG

This morning I walked in a fog.   I mean a literal fog.   To be in a fog has such connotations.  Foggy headed, meandering, forgetful.  But the fog I walked in was beautiful, if damp, and the birds seemed to love it.   The moisture in the air means they don't need to drink out of mud puddles.

On the river here the fog settles in the morning and then rises as the sun does revealing its bed of water.    You can't even see the Palisades.   But I'm drinking up that fog and thinking about the Jesus Prayer for some reason.   "Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."    Early Christians from the sixth century on believed that its ceaseless repetition leads to inner stillness.   I tried for a bit on my walk, but became too interested in watching the brilliant cardinals darting in and out of the green in the fog.

The fog of war seems to be mounting with this political regime, but I much prefer the poetics of fog. From T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

FOG

Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Three NESTS

On my morning walk today I saw again the red-headed wood pecker who is making a nest in the broken maple just south of us above the Hudson River.    You can't help but notice this bird because it makes a loud call just as you walk by.  This is what makes me think it's nesting, perhaps protecting its territory.   There is also a large hole hollowed out there, which leads me to believe the eggs are inside the tree.  

I happen to love bird's nests and collect them much to my husband's chagrin.   Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places devotes an entire chapter to nests.   "A nest, like any other image of rest and quiet, is immediately associated with the image of a simple home."   He speaks of nests as spaces we dream of; dream of returning to and how the image of the empty nest can fill us with longing and remorse.

Several years back a nest appeared in the overgrown honeysuckle on our front porch.   It was just far off the ground to be safe from neighborhood cats, but not so far I couldn't peek in at a distance.   The robin whose nest it was, was diligent and gave of warning cries if you approached.  Soon enough three perfect robin blue eggs appeared within this tightly constructed engineering of twigs and mud.
Over the course of two months I was able to watch the eggs hatch and the little birds grow from blind hairless chicks, to downy young robins ready to fly.  One day I looked and they were gone leaving an empty nest behind.

OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Two EXCEPTIONAL

Nothing, I mean nothing, was exceptional about today.  It was drizzly.  I woke late and cranky.  I couldn't even stretch because something aches in yet another new part of my body and I had about as much patience as a fruit fly for meditation which consisted of a few minutes of half hearted breathing exercises.  What is wrong with me?   I have no original thoughts; no particular inspiration and no real motivation to be writing today.   So no great expectations.   What is wrong with me today?   The answer to that is - life.

Joseph Goldstein speaks about this in Insight Meditation.  One can go through moments of ecstatic spiritual practice; seeing colors and visions and feeling the self/ego dissolving into the vast universe and then there are the days of cranky achey blandness, which is most of life.  Samsara - the condition of being chained to the world of ego and repeated lifetimes of un-enlightenment.   E.M. Forster speaks of this in his novel A Passage to India:   

“Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim 'I do enjoy myself' or 'I am horrified' we are insincere. 'As far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror' - it's no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.” 
― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

However what I must say is that I am happy today.   That in itself is a good if not exceptional thing.
I am happy despite the rain, because my lilies are beginning to push out of the ground. And even though the red beetles have pushed out too and begun eating them again, the Neem oil is on its way in the mail and I'll begin my daily rounds of tending them like babies.   This reminds me of my grandmother and her daily battle with the Japanese beetles on her roses.   That memory in and of itself is an exceptional thing.  These garden rituals are ones I treasure. The peonies will bloom next and are making strong statements already with their leaves and reddish stalks.   Even though the deer ate most of my tulips there are several blooms out front and I am determined they will not have my lilies.   Barbara Boryshenko reminded me in my morning meditation book that thinking of one's own woes should be a reminder to remember those who are worse off.   The surest way to move out of the ego is to think beyond it.

So remembering what makes me happy brings out what was exceptional about today.   The anticipation of the lilies is one.   The fact that my dentist told me that I will not need a root canal is another!   That is exceptional.   That my dear friend Janet is now cancer free and resting from her operation is the most exceptional of all.   Then I think of my classroom of students this evening - all of whom I will  say good-bye to soon - seven brave, intelligent, diverse young women - warriors really in the struggle to support: unaccompanied minors escaping the brutality of Central American drug cartels; psychotic adults with hoarding conditions; homeless women; severely neglected children; and adolescents with chronic diseases.  

I am grateful for the roof over my head as I think about families in Mosul and I pray for the peoples of Korea who must put up with the frightening charade between 45 and Mr. Kim.  Call your senators and congressman to say "no" to this dangerous game.

OGT DAILY -Day One Hundred and One AWAKENED

So there's this expression "woke" which means to wake up to social injustice.  It's millenial, hipsterish.  I would never use this expression personally but it's apt for today.   This is a purely political blog post by the way.  

It's a breath of fresh air to hear that Elijah Cummings, D-MD and Jason Chaffetz, R-UT, the ranking members of the House Oversight and Reform Commitee are getting ready to subpoena the White House for Michael Flynn's confirmation and firing paperwork.  Sean Spicer apparently was doing a real "the dog ate my homework" routine today for 45's administration by claiming there was no paperwork.   This is the same Jason Chaffetz who at a town hall meeting in Feb claimed that 45 didn't have to release his tax returns because the law did not demand it.  Guess how the crowd in Utah reacted to that?   Jason Chaffetz also announced earlier this month that he would not seek re-election for his congressional seat.   Someone getting tired of intractable and corrupt Republicanism?  
Perhaps he is now woke.   I think Elijah Cummings has been woke

for a while.

It's just a great thing to see two members of the house take a strong stance against the lies and hall of mirrors this crowd of clowns posing as politicians has been throwing at us.   That's all really.

OGT DAILY Day One Hundred INCONVENIENCE

Look at me - I'm at 100.  Five days ahead of Trump and I'm doing pretty well.    There are life's little inconveniences though.  For instance the yearly ritual of the air-conditioners, all six of them which need to be hauled out of the basement and installed in the windows.   This happens in stages.  Our son comes up from Queens and carries them upstairs, then they sit on the floor or wherever for several weeks before Dean gets it together to hoist them into the windows.   Where was our bedroom air-conditioner sitting?   On our bed when I went to lay down last night.   Am I complaining?  No not really - a minor inconvenience which means I will be cool at night when the really hot weather rolls in.   No gains are made without minor inconveniences.   No baby learns to walk without a few bumps on the forehead.   A large part of what I do is counsel people - students, young clients - about the choices they make.  Doing the extra work to find a summer job, taking an internship that is an hour commute each way in order to get a richer clinical experience, being patient with the paint brush or pencil to get the picture they want.  

You can't always get to the dessert without eating the spinach.

Inconveniences, minor ones, are the speed bumps that cause us to slow down and do right sometimes.
Other times they are just a pain in the a**.  In keeping with my positive psychology bent I  am choosing to see them as learning moments en route to life's gains.

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Nine SWEETNESS

So before I drift off to sleep let me meditate on sweetness.  A sensation with which I have a complex relationship.   As s child no meal was "live" for me unless it had a dessert.  Ask my sister.  She'll tell you.  There had to be jello or Pepperidge Farm refrigerator cake or gingerbread or something in order for that sense of completion to set it.   I am a natural born sugar addict.  In junior high with no one policing me lunch was most often three dixie cups of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.  Much better than sloppy Joe's which had about as much sugar.  By my late twenties, working long hours in the film business, five cups of coffee and cookies for lunch was not an unusual routine.  I could put away an entire package of Nutter Butter cookies in a single sitting.  No one taught me to cook much beyond spaghetti and nutrition was something I had to learn about the hard way.

Now so much as a glass of wine or one Mallowmar can be my undoing.  By this I mean I turn into lobster woman.  Ridiculous rashes in the worst places - palms of my hands, my shins, the tip of my nose - Gack!  I will gladly give up the Girl Scout cookies to avoid the cortisone.   The white death, as I now call sugar, is something I try to avoid like the plague.

But I do cheat now and again.   The red velvet cake I bought at Zaro's for dinner at friend's last night was hard to resist.   Red dye # 40   - how yummy.

Sweetness is something to be enjoyed in small doses I realize and its value can be fleeting.   Even though some of my ancestors made their living by selling sugar processing equipment to the sugar can plantations in the West Indies, and the sugar industry is still cranking out the "white death" right here in Yonkers at the Domino Sugar factory down the river, it something I have pretty much sworn off and must seek sweetness ( or good things) from events and memories in life.

Sweetness is my husband sitting in my studio all day for me Sat to receive visitors, so I could attend a training.

Sweetness is Jon Ossoff coming first in the Georgia special election this past week even if he still needs a runoff.  After the continuing trials of 45's admin, and the horror possible in France with Marine LePen and the far right - Front National, it is sweet to see our phone calls bear fruit and see one small wave turn the opposite direction of this negative government.  Let's hope this sweetness lasts and grows.

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Eight EARTH

Okay so I'm a day late, but I'm keeping with my contract.  I started this on my i-Phone because my computer had been absconded for other purposes so I do have an excuse!

In celebration of Earth Day what could be better than the New York Times' front page photo of our planet from the Cassini Orbiter through the rings of Saturn?

Earth below the rings of Saturn

Certainly puts perspective on things. Our daily battles are so small in the splendid vastness of space. The Cassini Orbiter is a joint project of NASA and ESA the Italian space program.  It launched nearly twenty years ago in October 1997 and reached Saturn July 1st 2004 after doing fly-byes of other planets including Mercury and Jupiter. It has been circling Saturn and it's moons for years now collecting data and spectacular photos. Remember my previous post about Enceladus and the possibility of earth like life forms?  Cassini is now in its final phase.  By September it will have run out of fuel and will be pulled into the gravity field of Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, where it will vaporize into nothingness.

I'm reminded of the Morrison and Eame's book The Power's of Ten which explores the universe in increments of ten thru high power telescopes and regular camera lens and electron microscopes.   The revelation being that the structure of stars and galaxies at a distance are almost identical to molecular structure of cells at the microscopic level.

Earth is the tiny speck to the right.

Thinking of the big bang theory and how particles that were once tightly bound together in the beginning of time may now be billions of miles apart and yet according to quantum theories of the multiverse (multiple universes) it is mathematically possible that there are life forms out there that exactly mirror each one of us. Particles that might be drawn together because of their resonance or which could be engaged in mirror actions even light years apart because of their molecular similarity and joint origins.   Physicists call this "spooky action at a distance."   I think of another me sitting at an identical computer typing these words in reverse.

What draws us to each other in our own dimension?   I witnessed a wedding couple in the throngs at Grand Central yesterday having their photos taken among hundreds of absolute strangers.  What draws them together?  How might they be seen from outer space - 85 light years away?

It is quite something to be given this perspective to imagine ourselves 2.2 billion miles away, 85 minutes at the speed of light, observing our home as if we were some where else.  But we are not somewhere else. We are here and we must take care of it.   Thousands marched yesterday in defense of our planet - for the benefit of those whose vision is too small to see how fragile and remarkable our earth is.

A poem in honor of earth day:

ON THE FIFTH DAY
by Jane Hirshfield

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.

In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/04/18/jane-hirshfield-on-the-fifth-day/?utm_source=Brain+Pickings&utm_campaign=bf344a7af3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_20

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Seven PRESSURE

There is nothing like a hard line to motivate.  Tomorrow is Open Studio day.

All the fuffutsing around is over.  It's show time!   Sometimes I function better under such conditions. Call it traumatic conditioning. Call it procrastination, but as with word limits I do better sometimes with those finite bits of creative time rather than in large free form blocks or days of unstructured time. More often than not I find myself spacing out, reading Facebook, reading and daydreaming - all important aspects of the creative process, but it's amazing to me how I will suddenly get wrapped up in a project when I know I only have about twenty minutes to work.   Maybe because its finite. Maybe it becomes like a sprint with a short burst of concentrated energy.

I think of the Toots and the Maytal's tune Pressure Drop.  It was a favorite song for me in high school from The Harder They Come album from Jimmy Cliff, but it seems to fit this sort of pressure we apply to ourselves, as well as pressure imposed by our culture.

Hmm hmm hmm, yeah [x3]

It is you (oh yeah)
It is you, you (oh yeah)
It is you (oh yeah)

Cause a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah pressure drop a drop on you
I say a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah pressure drop a drop on you

I say when it drops, oh you gonna, feel it
Know that you were doing wrong
I say when it drops, oh you gonna, feel it
Know that you were doing wrong

Hmm hmm hmm, yeah [x3]

I say a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah, pressure drop a drop on you
I say a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah, pressure drop a drop on you

It is you (oh yeah)
It is you, you (oh yeah)
It is you (oh yeah)

I say a pressure drop, oh pressure
Oh yeah, pressure drop a drop on you

My brother-in-law Tom made a sculpture that I have on my dresser by the same name:

Pressure Drop by Tom O'Flynn

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Six REVIEWING

Today was spent cleaning up my studio in preparation for Open Studio on Sat and Sunday.  It forced me to review all of the work I have done in the last two years.  This has been mostly weavings with plastic mesh and ribbons - the wind curtains which were installed up at Catwalk Institute in the Catskills as part of the Kobbe Project in 2015.   Cleaning out and hanging them up makes me realize how much work I actually have and how great they look hanging together.

Please drop by:  11am to 5 pm both days at 465 Broadway, Hastings on Hudson, NY

Jewel Fence at Catwalk

Wind Curtains being made in studio

Wind Curtains at Catwalk

Labyrinth in field of Catwalk

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Five NO MORE CABLE

Ok faked you out - I was too tired last night to do anything but watch reruns of LAW & ORDER.  So two posts today.

While we were watching Dean said, "That's your last LAW & ORDER!" and he meant it.  We are switching off of cable to internet service for phone, internet and data.  How will this change our lives?  TV withdrawal, but not really.  We will just have to be more purposeful about choosing what we want to watch rather than floating thru 300 channels.   As Dean says, "I'll do more reading."  Honestly that's a spectacular thing.  

The other difference will be no more robo-calls.  We literally do not receive real calls on our landline anymore.  So all day long and at certain specific times like 8:52 every morning it will ring and the caller ID will say "private caller" or "unavailable" or some out of state number.   Like dystopian prospective fiction we are living in a world where no one else seems to be out there but telemarketers and IRS tax scam artists.   "I'm calling to tell you you've just won an all expenses paid...lower your interest rates by....last chance for chimney cleaning and...."

It was creepy when we were watching TV and an ad for a lower back pain remedy came on and the next day I received a call that which announced, "This is a follow up call for the lower back brace you ordered last night."   Creepy - especially since I do have lower back pain, but then so do 75% of people my age.  Even so it seemed someone was monitoring us even though we don'w own a smart TV.

We've taken to picking up the calls some times and just letting them sit and stew on the other end. The other day it was an anonymous California number, so I did this leaving the phone in the cradle and then walking across the room.  But then I heard a faint, "Mom, mom, pick up the phone its me your son."   He'd called from his girlfriend's number.  

OGT DAILY Day Ninety four IMAGINATION

Nothing much except that I got to play for work today.  That's what happens when you work with four year olds doing play therapy.  Puppets with cell phones - who hide in the dark and then pop out of the dark.  Puppets who fly and share candy and take breaks so the puppet master can have sips of juice and drink little yogurts or have Easter peeps dipped in chocolate.

Fantasy and imagination, bouncing and rolling on a couch and taking my glasses to wear upside down and checking her watch even tho it always reads 9:34.  The realms of the four year old.  Pure magic.

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Three LINEAGE

This morning I went to get my snow tires removed and had a chance to catch up with my friend Billy at his garage.  Always a pleasure.  He reminded me of very important point.   Our generation grew up with civil rights as its clarion call.   Our children's generation has seen Same-Sex Marriage be legalized by the highest court.   No matter what the current pendulum swing is bringing in terms of reactionary politics, we cannot go backwards and we wont.  Seeing Malala Yousefsai speaking in front of the Canadian parliament about empowerment for young girls reminds me that there are strong voices and brave souls out there fighting for what is right.  Seeing Republican Congressmen Tom Cotton and Jeff Flake being flailed by their constituents heartens me.  

We come from a lineage of freedom, even with all the inequalities of American society, the injustices done to people of color and native peoples, we are still a society where the hope of justice can be voiced and is not silenced as it is in many countries.

I have been thinking of lineage as I think about my mother this week after Easter.   Every lineage passes on its negative and positive attributes.  My mother was far from perfect, but so am I.   In reiki practice there is not only the lineage of your teacher, but there is the influence of a whole host of guides both from your past and future.   Energy being energy it is not bound by the rules of "kronos" or chronological time.   Working with reiki can help to heal the sins and illness of the past as well as the future.   "Chyros" is the word for deep time; a concept of contemplative time, when the watch stops and time slows due to the quality of experience.   This seems almost an aspect of quantum physics.   Reiki works in that principle of time not being barrier or finite, but rather a boundless, infinite and bendable.

OGT DAILY Day Ninety Two GHOST STORIES

Peeps, chocolate eggs, daffodils, roast lamb and Alleluias all around.  A lovely Easter with warm weather, flowers and trees blooming, both children home for mass in the morning and an afternoon meal.  

The crucifixion story sung by the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar was on as we cooked Paschal lamb with garlic and rosemary.   This is our Broadway musical loving daughter's tradition.  We all know the words by heart.   It was a day full of old family stories and traditions.

The resurrection story is the ultimate ghost story:  Mary Magdalene finds Jesus had rolled back the stone from the tomb where he had lain for three days after death and then encountered him on the road.   During dinner we talked about encounters with spirits of those who have passed.  Dean has a toffee tin he found after his mother's death which appears to bear her image.  It may not be her, but it does resemble her late in life.  Quite mysterious.  

Sharps Toffee tin

My own father seemed to mark the day of his death in a small date book I found in his room after he was gone. Dean and I recalled the time we went to a spiritualist church in a summer community in Skowhegan, Maine. This was simply out of curiosity with his friend Julie from college who does anthropological research.  But the medium, a man from up north in Rangeley, managed to describe a woman standing over Dean who said, "You work too hard," which is what his mother used to say to him.  For me he described someone holding rose clippers and a basket of raspberries.   That would be my grandmother in her garden in Newport, RI.

So maybe its a stretch to believe in such things, but I like the notion that those we love and have lost to age and time are still present for us.   For me this can be as simple as using my grandmother's recipe for rolls or singing the hymn my mother liked so much, or for Dean to see the tin with his mother on it or her paperweight collection.

The cherry blossoms have almost past; the ultimate symbol of transience and fragility, but the quince blossoms are just ready to burst.   Their turn in the season of our yard will forever remind me of my mother and her love for the garden.   Happy Easter!

Rose and quince blossoms 

OGT DAILY Day Ninety One NO MISTAKES

Ninety one days.  I am five days ahead of the administration and could things be any stranger?
Today is April 15th Tax Day - and many protested the Trump Regime.  Really why should we pay taxes when the Trump Family does not? They call that smart business.  And they spend our money covering their family security during golf trips and skiing trips, dropping bombs, terrorizing the immigrants who very often clean our homes, pick our vegetables and do all the jobs most Americans wouldn't consider.  

At any rate I did not head to the protest today.  Instead I headed uptown on the Lexington Avenue local to 87th street for another weaving adventure, despite having papers to grade and an open studio next weekend to prepare for.   My destination?   Loop of the Loom between 3rd and 2nd Avenues.   Here I was to meet Yukako Satone who was going to show me the Saori Weaving studio she founded with a friend.  Saori is Japanese weaving art which was started by Misao Jo, a woman who believed disabled persons should be respected for their artistic abilities and facilitated their use of this traditional but simple wooden looms to make products for sale.  "Sa" means having dignity and "Ori" means to weave.  In the philosophy of Misao Jo, now 104 years old, there are no mistakes in this form of weaving only discoveries.  She allowed her artist weavers to discover the process for themselves and make "beautiful mistakes" or innovative improvisations in the process.  The craft weavers supporting the "so called" disabled found they were influenced by these innovative discoveries - snarls, loose ends, weaving in unusual and textural elements.   In other words anything goes with Saori weaving and in the company of several other women I made my own discoveries.

Misao Jo at her Saori Loom

First I had a full pallet of yarns at my disposal: cotton, wool, silk, linen and the entire spectrum of colors.  Yukako was not there when I arrived, but her assistant was told to put me right to work at the loom.   That's what I did for the next two hours:   Pedaling the heddles up and down, shooting the wooden shuttled back and forth and threading spindles with new colors.  I was shown how to incorporate two colors into one line of thread and how to use the scraps of various materials into the weave including fluffy pieces of colorful raw wool.   Getting into the weaving rhythm can take a bit of time and just as with learning to knit things can get snarly and loose.  I would loose a loop over the edge of the loom or forget to switch my feet on the heddles.  None of it mattered, because it was considered part of your process, your discovery in your weaving. It was pure pleasure and I was loath to leave at the end of my two hours.   I will surely be back soon.

www.LoopoftheLoom.com

My first Saori exploration

OGT DAILY - Day Ninety WORD LIMITS

Once you get me started I can just go on and on so a word limit is most definitely a good thing.
I'm going to set a word limit of 100 tonight.  Let's see if I can do that.  Last week I edited and sent out two stories, which was helped by the imposition of word limits.  When you are cutting down by a 100 or 200 words its amazing what you can do without.  Focus and economy make for a better writer all around.  I have fifteen more words.  Now ten and I will call it a night. Bye!

OGT DAILY Day Eighty Nine ALCHEMY

Like the explorers of the 16th century the alchemists too sought a formula for eternal life as well as the cure for all sorts of disease and the formula to turn other metals into gold - the King's metal.
The word derives from many sources, but one is "kmhi" the Egyptian hieroglyph for black earth and the Greek word for mixture "chymeia."

It was practiced in all cultures around the globe, but most well documented in early European history. It has in it the origins of much of modern scientific practice and combined mythology, technology and philosophy.  I have had interest in alchemy because of Carl Jung whose experiments with mandalas and whose psychological concepts, such the collective unconscious, draw on alchemical ideas. I think of alchemy in terms of the transformations ,which occur in the therapy relationship which are often mysterious and transformative.  I also think of it in the artistic process, which  can be equally mysterious and transformative.

An Alchemist in his Study by Egbert van Heemskerk 17th century

The conference at Columbia University this past weekend had elements of alchemy and synchronicity for me.   The conference was sponsored by the Center for Science and Culture as well as The Learning and Knowing Project.  Both were founded by historian, Pamela Smith who chaired this conference and brought the various participants into a fascinating weaving of many disciplines and interests.   Not only did I meet many persons with whom it turned out I had various shared interests from weaving to violins to neuroscience and alternative medicines, but I realize Pamela Smith is actively using a medieval scientific text to recreate alchemical experiments at the Learning and Knowing Project. This is compounded by the fact that my father Professor Andre J. de Bethune received his PhD in Chemistry from Columbia in the forties.  The medieval text (BnF Ms. Fr. 640) used by the Learning and Knowing post-doc researchers to recreate everything from pigments to fake coral to making molds for plaster is a sort of "how to" recipe book for the 16th century.  Its author is unknown, but appeared to be a master of all trades and kept this hand written notebook with detailed illustrations like Da Vinci.   Here's where it gets really weird.   This manuscript which is the focus of the activity at Learning and Knowing Project was the property of a Phillip de Bethune who was a member of the French aristocracy - no doubt a relative no matter how distant.

From Making and Knowing Project website:

http://www.makingandknowing.org/?page_id=23

BnF Ms. Fr. 640 resembles most closely “books of secrets” that began circulating in the Middle Ages and then were printed in large numbers from the last decades of the fifteenth century. Lacking a clear title, the manuscript text was bound in the seventeenth century with the title of Choses Diverses, and then as Recueil de recettes et secrets concernant l’art du mouleur, de l’artificier et du peintre by the BnF. Although “books of secrets” sound esoteric, they are, in effect, books of techniques, which, while practical and useful, also hint at the tacit dimension and initiation process of much craft knowledge.

OGT DAILY Day Eighty Eight IMMORTALITY

Enceladus and other moons of Jupiter 

The quest for eternal life.  The fountain of youth.   From Herodetus to Ponce de Leon in the 16th century age of exploration many have sought the legendary waters which, restored the aged and weary to vigor.  The diary of one early explorer in the West Indies described a river called Jordan and Ponce de Leon took up that search without much success except for to discover Florida and the American continent.

For me meditation practice is a fountain of youth.  It slows me down and gives me energy and vigor. So does walking which clears my head.   But its probably my violin teacher who sets the best example. At 95 years he plays every day and does scales for hours. You cannot argue with its success in his case. He drives his own car to the Conservatory everyday and has never missed a lesson with me. So playing the violin, I realized just the other day, acts as sort of preventive barrier to aging for me as well. My own personal method of extending my telomeres (the gene function which can prevent aging.)   How does this work?  I have been playing the violin since 4th grade when I heard my teacher, Mrs. Sleigh, playing "My Wild Irish Rose," on the auditorium stage.   While other kids like the trumpet or trombone teachers, I was taken with the violin and started lessons with Mrs. Sleigh in the storage closet outside the 4th grade corridor among the extra black boards, boxes of chalk and erasers.   My parents bought me a $100 violin and I squeaked along (literally for years).
I have never been a natural musician, but I love to play and with every scale I play; every new piece I learn, I get a incrementally better.   But I also know I will never, ever be very good, no matter how much I practice.   Thus I will never really reach any finality with my playing.  It will always be a process of learning - "a work in progress."   That process of always striving keeps me future oriented and in the role of beginner.   How can I get old if I'm always a beginner and a learner?


Speaking of immortality how about those moons of Jupiter? Enceladus and Europa both show evidence of ice formation and plumes of hydrogen that are likely water.   Scientists suspect that these are the perfect conditions for the growth of bacteria and perhaps forms of life similar to earth.

With the horror of the current government's tearing apart of environmental protections for our planet and its blatant war mongering now verging on a nuclear war with Korea, there is something reassuring about the existence of life like ours in the universe.  We may bomb each other into oblivion with "Mother of all Bombs," but life exists beyond our petty ugliness.

Ice plumes on Enceladus

OGT DAILY Day Eighty Seven CHERRY BLOSSOMS

Tied to the Buddhist themes of mortality, mindfulness and living in the present, Japanese cherry blossoms are a timeless metaphor for human existence. Blooming season is powerful, glorious and intoxicating, but tragically short-lived — a visual reminder that our lives, too, are fleeting.

Why don’t we marvel at our own passing time on earth with the same joy and passion? Why do we neglect to revel in life when it can end at any moment, or in the grace surrounding us everywhere: our family, friends, a stranger’s smile, a child’s laugh, new flavours on our plate or the scent of green grass? It is time, cherry blossoms remind us, to pay attention.

Taken from: http://notwithoutmypassport.com/cherry-blossom-meaning-in-japan/

Cherry blossoms on my tree this morning.

There is nothing more transient and fragile than the bloom on our cherry tree.   I remember when we planted it 20 years ago and how the deer stripped its bark so it almost died; no doubt savoring its sweet flavor.   But it has grown tall -30 feet or more - and is now sturdy and wide.   Yet its blossoms are quiet and fleeting like the snow fall this winter.  I looked up this morning and realized it was in full bloom without any awareness when that had occurred.  There was bright cardinal flew up to sit in its branches.  I savor that image knowing that no matter what oppresses me, beauty and particularly the gifts of nature, can quickly elevate me.   That is no minor thing and something to be cherished.  The cherry blossoms will not last more than a few days.  I'm happy to have noticed them when I did.

How many, many things

They call to mind --

These cherry blossoms!

BASHO

A world of grief and pain
Flowers bloom
Even then

ISSA

OGT DAILY Day Eighty Six ROUTINE

What does one do to come down from a weekend of brain cramming and total over stimulation?  Go into a stuporous crash?   No.  Back to routine.

Okay I'll admit to wandering around in a disorganized daze yesterday, but this morning it was back to those habits which keep this almost 60 year able to roll out of bed in the morning.   Up by 7:00 am, stretching out those achey sciatic limbs, Vipassana meditation, and walking. I had forgotten what a five mile walk can do for your head.   Mostly it takes care of the body so the head can settle down.   Wonderful.  

Oh and of course pancakes - blueberry pancakes with applesauce.  That's my routine.

OGT DAILY Eighty Five MAKING

Perhaps this is what is wrong with our country in part - the loss of a manufacturing emphasis in schools.  Unless they choose to go to an art or trade school children are no longer taught to make things.  Home economics as it was called is now called "technology" and is mostly computer based and taught along with health.  Cooking and sewing must be learned at home if at all.

The resurgence of the "maker movement" in everything from felting wool to brewing beer seems to defy this, but also speaks to hunger for "making" as if it were a need.  And it is.  Our brains need to engage kinesthetically using hand eye coordination to do more than study, read, watch TV and manipulate phones.  What happens to a brain when it engages in the process of manipulating materials is the building of new neural pathways. One of the doctors at the conference stated something that I already knew: seniors with memory loss do better when they are given something to do especially if it is something that revives old skills - embodied skills.

As a review one of the psychologists noted the tension between all of these binaries, which seem apparent in the discussion of weaving:  explicit versus implicit knowledge, academics and craftspeople, economic gain versus sustainability, art versus craft.   But I loved the response of a weaver in the audience who said, "The loom holds tension in the warp so that all these variations in the weft can exist." Meaning that the tension between binaries is the stuff of life.  To use another weaving metaphor ,Dr. Ko, historian at Barnard College, noted that binaries can exist without hierarchies being created, which exclude people if we are able to "shuttle" between art and craft, profit and sustainability etc...

I loved what another very old weaver said as a closing statement for the whole event:

"When I was weaving in the 60's it was becoming an academic discipline in colleges, but that all stopped because computers came in and things became so mechanized.   I am excited to see weaving re-emerging with language and scholarship that acknowledges the many importances it has in

life."