OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Fifty Five MEDIUM

Scanning through a magazine today I came across this word and thought it was referring to the intermediary between this world and that of the spirits.  Come to realize it was referring to the size of a coffee served up by a barista. 

Medium is the size in between.  Not too big.   Not too small like the Three Bears.  Medium is how we have our steak when we don't want it rare or burnt.  It's a place where we stand when we are in the middle of things.  It is medium which holds the pigment with which I paint.   The psychic holds the place between us and those who have passed.    It seems average.  Neither this nor that.   But it can be a place of centering and calm.

In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) they speak of the middle path; the ability to hold two extreme at the same time; to contain ambivalence.   A healing ability for those who live their lives in extremes.

So if you ask me, I'll have the medium.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Fifty Four BRAVERY

Today marks 60 years that the Little Rock 9 blazed the trail for all other African American students to attend all-white schools in the south.   President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to protect these brave students because the Arkansas governor had his National Guards blocking their entrance to Little Rock Central High School.

Segregationist lined their path and jeered as they made their way into the school

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Fifty Two MARIGOLDS

Marigolds are a flower which blooms well into the fall.  The words Mary's Gold derives from the flowers being placed at the feet of the Virgin.  The have also be associated with pain and grief.  Indeed the are the favored flower to bring round to the cemetery for the Mexican Day of the Dead.

In India, however, they have quite another meaning.  They are often eaten and are known as flowers of the sun because the bloom in the sun; symbolizing passion and creativity.  They're a staple of Indian weddings and often used in love charms. 

Marigolds are also natural repellents to mosquitos and even thought to ward off the plague.   In India the petals are a staple of the cloth and yarn dying industry making the most delicious shades of yellow and orange.

I have been coveting my neighbors' marigolds waiting for the day when I can dead head the blooms. 
Along with the dahlias from my garden and lichen collected on the Cape this summer, I'm ready for a winter season of dying yarns.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Fifty One ANCIENT GODS

Rage may be a natural reaction to insult, injury, or injustice, but Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles demonstrate the foolishness of celebrating those who indulge in violent rage.”
-Emily Katz Anhalt

 Emily Katz Anhalt is faculty at Sarah Lawrence.  She will be reading from her new book: Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths as part of the Writing Institute Lecture series.   Anhalt will discuss how classical Greek literature can teach us to recognize revenge as a marker of illogical thinking and poor leadership. She also promotes compassion, rational thought, and debate.  The study of myths can help us recognize tyranny and prevent us from becoming tyrants.

Most timely in these days.

Sept 26 at 6:30 - Sarah Lawrence Library

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Fifty Three WIND AND WATER

Today was a glorious day of wind and water.  90 degrees in an Indian Summer with brilliant blue skies.   My friend Louise and I were invited artists in the Haverstraw Riverarts and Music Festival on the shore of the Hudson in Emelin Park in Haverstraw - a sweet, culturally diverse village.

Louise and her shell midden

Frankie and Hector helped me hang the curtains. 

The Two Rows and the William Penn Wampum treaty curtains  

Add caption

Dean on his boat

The DPW crew were champs at helping us set up and we had a crowd of people admiring our work.
A whole crew of 10-12 year old boys came to help with a weaving and then they jumped into the water to play.   Then Dean appeared off the beach in his boat.  What a day!

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Fifty GRATITUDE PRACTICE

It works.  That's the truth.  I have been doing this gratitude practice now for 250 days in an effort to counteract the extreme negativity and hatred which has permeated our social fabric in the last 9 months.   My mind is lighter and clearer and though I wear myself with constant activity these days, I have the privilege of saying my time is occupied by things I love.

According to psychologist Richard Emmons, the daily practice of gratitude can increase positive emotions and quality of life including feeling more alive, sleeping better, improved immune system and an expanded ability for compassion and kindness which connects us to others.

Daily practice can shift the focus of our thinking so that we become more aware of positive events in life now matter how small.  That experience can motivate us to seek more.

Things I am grateful for today:

1) The abundance of fall flowers in my garden.  I can't fill enough vases.

2) The light show at Grand Central celebrating women scientists who have made discoveries in the fields of medicine, quantum physics and astronomy.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Nine MIDWIVES

Both of my babies - now adults - were born under the care of midwives.  I was lucky that way.  No complications; quick and efficient both - the only incident being a chord wrapped around one of their necks necessitating a rapid intervention by the midwife to reach inside (me! - ouch) and speed things along plus a bit of oxygen to pink the baby up, on arrival, after the stress.  Neither I nor the baby were the worse for the wear, but we could have been had it not been for the midwife's experience and knowledge and what she could do with her hands.  Not that doctor's aren't sometimes necessary, but there were none present in that room and had they been  might have been whisked off to the operating room and would now have a big scar across my stomach.   We have midwives in the family.  My sister-in-law Jill is one of the leading lay midwifes in the country - meaning she has non-medical, but traditional training.  All of her children and grandchildren were delivered at home.  My husband's cousin Suzanne is a nurse midwife and works at a birthing center.   My father and all of his sibling were born at home via a midwife in Belgium.  My mother's mother was alone in her kitchen in the Bronx and gave birth to her two children there so the story goes.

I've been enjoying the Netflix series "Call the Midwife" where all of these various scenarios play out.
It's about birthing babies to be sure but also about a history of women's health and reproductive rights and poverty and the rise of national health in Britain.  All timely subjects at this moment.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Eight STANDING STONES

Along the Hudson just below the George Washington bridge mysterious stone sculpture have been appearing.  They're created out of the rocks - Manhattan schist, granite, quartz - that line the river banks.    People began to notice that they would disappear and then reappear in different formations.

These are all thanks to artist Uliks Gryka, an Albanian immigrant who has no idea who Andy Goldsworthy or Robert Smithson are.   He began stacking the rocks as a form of meditative healing.  He is a follower of Sufi philosophy.

When he found his sculptures torn down the first time it upset him, but he took to building them again and they grew is size and scope.  Some visitors to the site have dubbed them the "Sisyphus Stones" after the Greek myth of the man constantly rolling a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll on on him.

Uliks sees his sculptures as figures like a conductor with a group of musicians, a warrior, and a madonna.   The New York Times quoted him as saying they looked like a scene from Dante's Inferno:

“all the souls waiting on the Styx River for a boat to take them to the other side.” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/nyregion/a-mystery-solved-why-the-sisyphus-stones-rise-and-tumble.html?mcubz=3


There is something reassuring about his continual stacking of stones at a time when buildings are tumbling in Mexico due to earthquakes and in Puerto Rico due to hurricanes.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Six WEAVING AGAIN

Today was spent entirely in the studio and most of it weaving large strips of grosgrain ribbon in shades of blue and green... Weaving again took me into a rhythm.  It was a body cognition involving counting, tension and release.  I have been thinking a lot about the therapeutic benefits of weaving lately and now wonder what cognitive repair could be done with the brain by training a person to engage in the embodied cognition of weaving???

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Seven NO STIGMA

Today was an early day and a long drive out to Long Island to learn about early prevention for psychosis and schizophrenic disorders.   The presentation was done by two psychologists from Zucker Hillside Hospital part of Northwell Health Corp on Long Island.   For many years now new treatment approaches have emphasized catching the prodromal phase of psychotic disorders - or the phase before true psychosis occurs.   This may instead just look like bizarre or extreme behavior and could indeed be something else like autism or PTSD etc... When the disease is caught before it occurs then the brain does not learn to go into a psychotic episode and less damage occurs. According to Drs Kristin Candan and Kristen Risola this can be done with a combination of talk therapy, correction of distorted thoughts (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), medication and family and community supports.

They were also more hopeful about first episodes of psychosis and how many people can recover from these, and with the right support can go on work and lead normal lives.   Really amazing progress for a insidious, degenerative disease.  Zucker Hillside was one of 4 initial hospitals where these programs developed in the US.   There are now 22 programs nationwide.

Support their efforts on Twitter and Facebook at: #StigmaStopsWithUs.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Five COOL THINGS

Today was filled with too many good things to recall but I will describe a few.  First the remarkable weather must be mentioned.  A bit muggy, but bright and warm for a mid September day during hurricane season.   Then there was an entire morning free to write and prepare for my show with much accomplished before I head into the city for my friend Aze Ong's opening in Woodside, Queens.   On the way I listened to this American Life on the radio.  The source of my first good thing: the wind phone.   After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan so many families were mourning the loss of loved ones.  A man installed a phone booth in his yard overlooking the ocean.  He used the phone to call his cousin who had been carried away in the tsunami because he said, "I wanted the wind to carry my message because there was no other way to reach him."   News spread across Japan about the phone. Families traveled from far away to speak to their dead family members.  It brought them a calm relief and sense of closure.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go?act=1

On the theme of airwaves, this is about radio.  I reached the Topaz Gallery in Queens one half hour early and sat in my car to check e-mails.   On Facebook I found a post from my son who had launched a new show - The Cabin Radio Show - every Saturday from 2-3 pm - blues and American folk music.   I managed to catch the last 15 mins before heading into the gallery.

https://www.8ballradio.nyc/ 

Aze Ong and Ged Merino are Phillipine fiber artists from Manila who have been collaborating for a number of years.   Ged wraps objects and Aze crochets room size sculpture.

Aze performs with her sculptures allowing the art's form to suggest the movement as she goes.

My day ended with a performance of the Trisha Brown Dance Troupe at Untermeyer Park in Yonkers - at fantasy Persian garden in the middle of the city.   Sun set as the dancers did their amazing moves with dirty feet on the green lawns.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Four CASSINI

I am seriously infatuated with the saga of the Cassini Orbiter which plunged to its death as burning meteor in the atmosphere of Saturn today, with much celebrating and crying among the NASA scientists and support teams who sent it up there and received its data for 13 years.   They even hired a bereavement counselor, so a rumor goes, because the attachment to this unmanned spacecraft was so strong.   People literally built their lives around its regular down loads of imagery and data from the inner and outer reaches of our solar system.  It apparently spent some time in the atmosphere of Mercury on one of its orbits.   Kind of like a real life Wally, Cassini seems to have taken on a personality and virtues associated with its functions, reliability, and the fact that it went places we humans can only imagine and dream about.  Now thanks to Cassini we can see these places more clearly: The Rings of Saturn, and its moons Titan and Enceladus.    Cassini was reaching the end of its orbital capability and would have fallen sooner or later, but scientist actually planned its demise hoping to avoid having it land on Titan or Enceladus which have shown signs of pre-biotic states with possible oceans and rivers.  Cassini could have carried microbes from earth, which would alter the biology of any emerging life.   A series of orbital maneuvers sent it to a fiery death as it descended toward Saturn.

Hurray for Cassini - a fallen hero.

The Cassini Spacecraft orbiting Saturn 

Cassini launching in October 1997.

The orbits of Cassini's Grand Finale 

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Three HILARY

No matter how you feel about Hilary Clinton - disappointment, sadness, disgust, admiration, gratitude -  I am grateful to finally hear someone with leadership calibre skills speaking about North Korea, Russia and other areas of grave concern with intelligence and authority and with measured words.

I would imagine that even Jeff Sessions would have preferred his former senate colleague to the raving lunatic, who called him an idiot and said he should be fired.

Hilary seems to be ready to be political again now that she no longer needs to run for anything.  I'll be watching with interest.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty Two FASHION

Tonight I played hookie from preparing for my class tomorrow and went to a fashion runway show!   One of the advantages of being a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) graduate is that I get invited to Fashion Week for free!   The new RISD fashion design graduates get to display their clothing collections and get all their art school friends to model.  It is really varied and wild and a lot of fun.   I went for the first time last year and enjoyed it so much I signed on again.

This year's show displayed a lot of the male form particularly the black male form as well as the female form and the black female form.  It was a diverse show.  Started off with a lot white on white over large slouchy silhouettes, but my favorites where exquisitely tailored menswear with multiple collars in odd places and extra sleeves all made of chiffon and quilted fabric in shades of peach.   There there were the body hugging women's and menswear lines celebrating African American culture and style.  There was one collection of lingerie which used chords and line to obscure faces and bind hands while barely covering anything with sheer fabric - a comment on sexual slavery?   Very political show.    Lots of fun and they fed us afterwards with hor d'oeuvres and cocktails.   

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty One ROSES

I have become aware of a regular practice carried out by the staff of the 9/11 Memorial Museum in lower Manhattan.   They receive white roses each day donated by a local florist and these are placed at the name of each person listed on the memorial who would have had a birthday that day.   Volunteers request to have this job because of what it means to family members who come by the memorial on such anniversaries.   There are plenty of places where donations of money are needed today (Houston, Florida, the Caribbean, etc...) but you might consider a small donation to support the rose at the 9/11 Memorial.

Preserving humanity through such small actions preserves us all.  It reminds us that these were human beings still loved by their families as are all victims of war and violence.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Forty WELCOMING STRANGERS

I want to pay tribute to the town Gander, Newfoundland who welcomed 6000 stranded passengers on Sept 11, 2001, because their planes could not land at airports in the Northeast United States because of the planes which toppled the Twin Towers in NY and crashed into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.    A town of just 10,000 residents, but with an international airport usually used for refueling jets making the transatlantic flight, it was not prepared for the influx of planes redirected to its location that day.

But the citizens of Gander stepped up to the task, cooked meals, brought blankets and pillows and provided a warm welcome to bewildered travelers who had no idea what was going on and when they might be allowed to go home.   They called it Operation Yellow Ribbon and the people they helped are still telling the story of their kindness.   Some have returned every year for visits.   NY city gave Gander a piece of steel from one of the towers and director Christopher Ashley memorialized their low-key heroism in a Broadway musical called Come From Away which won him a Tony Award.

But their generosity didn't stop there.  In 2015 the town took in a family of Syrian refugees.
They truly took the words from the gospel of Matthew to heart:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.... (25:35).    

Matthew 25:35 was posted on the billboard for our church this morning.   New York's Cardinal Dolan said it best in his response to self-proclaimed racist Steve Bannon: "The Bible is so clear, so clear, that to treat the immigrant with dignity and respect, to make sure that society is just in its treatment of the immigrant is a Biblical mandate."

I can't think of a better way to commemorate 9/11.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Nine FLOCKS

Birds have and amazing way of communicating and coordinating.  I arrived home to my parking space on the grass across form our house to see the grass alive with house sparrows pecking at the soil.  "What were they after?" I wondered  It was freshly mown and they may have been more able to reach for bugs and worms.  Maybe they were collecting seeds from the goldenrod and mugwort in the garden.

If we used lots of fertilizers and pesticides on our lawn there would be no such sight.   Birds will avoid the perfectly groomed lawn where all the fauna they need to survive on (grubs, worms, insects) have been killed by chemicals.   As it is that is what the birds do for your lawn naturally.

According to James P. Johnson, sparrows will huddle together as colder weather begins to approach.  With hurricanes down south we gusts of wind all day.  The winds of change are upon us.


http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/nov/01/sparrows-in-my-yard/#/0

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Eight LOCAL POLITICS

Thank God for local politics - where we can all make an impact and see the impact of our own choices; where the candidates are people we know and who know us and our needs.    Nothing more satisfying than participating, running, campaigning or just voting in town and county level races. Its real, concrete and understandable unlike the distant and abstract rankling of a national bipartisan congress.  

So make sure to get out and vote on Tuesday.   These local races can make a big difference now in local governance.  This can have a big impact on national races for congress/senate in a year's time.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Seven FOCUS

So do you ever bite off more than you can chew?  

I do and sometimes I have trouble swallowing it all.    Today I buckled down in the studio and said "no" to all those fun things I wanted to do - yoga class, fiddle jam, parties....

It is time to focus and barrel through.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Six UNPREDICTABILITY

Well here we go - 100 days left in my commitment to One Good Thing Daily.
Let's hear it for Mr. Trump's unpredictability and the fact that he actually might just have an empathic bone in his body.  Maybe the tip of his pinkie finger??

This is all brought on by the unpredictability of nature - hurricanes - earthquakes - Harvey - Irma - Katia - Juan and an 8.1 ground shake in Oaxaca and Tabasco in Mexico on Guatemala's border.  
Trump appears to be making deals with the Democrats to grant hurricane recovery monies as well as raise the debt ceiling.   He even seems to be waffling on the DACA decree announced the other day.

He is unpredictable, but if the unpredictability of hurricane season is schooling him on the need to humane leader that's a good thing.   That hundreds of people need to become displaced, homeless and possibly dead is horrific, but maybe he'll become more honest about the whole climate change thing.

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Five BATHTIME

I am super stressed.  First class tomorrow and I haven't even looked at my lecture.  Gosh its been eight years I should know it by now!   Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines and the hurry up and wait of Sept have all hit me hard and we've barely left crickets and the fireflies behind.  Not sleeping enough and I'm over tired and a bit cranky.

One thing my mother taught me is you bath a cranky child to get them to relax.   I always did this before bed with my kids starting when they fir in that little plastic tub with the foam pad to support them.  Aaah bliss!  And then bubble baths.  I still love bubble baths.  I'd take one right now but I'd sleep my way right through tomorrow's class as well as the next two hurricanes to hit our shores.
Batten down the hatches and take a bath!

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Four EMPATHY

Children as young as 15 months will spontaneously give to one another even though it is often difficult for them to share.  Babies will burst into tears if they hear another child crying.  Empathy is a deeply engrained human quality.   Of course it must be supported by loving relationships and the security of safety within the home.   Sadly many children do not know this security.  Many that I have known and worked with  It becomes harder for them to feel for others because they lack an inner sense of safety and must always be on guard.  It becomes very difficult to think about others when you are always worrying about yourself.  

Empathy is another quality which can however be cultivated and it is sorely needed right now.
So many displaced by the rising waters in Houston.  The possibility of more of the same in Florida with Hurricane Irma.   The hundreds of thousands displaced in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and now the Rohingya in Mynamar being burned out of their villages.    The world is entirely too filled with cruelty.

I had prayed that small act of kindnesses shown by our president to the victims of Harvey over this weekend would develop some capability for empathy.   I still pray this.   Kindness builds on itself, just as cruelty does.

I take those small acts of kindness as a positive - a gift - and I hope they spread despite of "himself".

OGT DAILY Day Two Hundred and Thirty Three LABOR DAY

The first Labor Day was celebrated Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 in New York City.  The proposal for the holiday was to have a street parade that exhibited "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" followed by a day of recreation and enjoyment for working people and their families.  In 1894, after 23 states had instituted Labor Day laws, the US Congress passed a bill declaring the first Monday of September each year a legal holiday.

With its perfect blue skies and cool, but temperate weather Labor Day is always a bittersweet reminder of the quiet days of August before we jump into the tumult of the fall.

We have a Labor Day tradition in our family started some twenty years ago when I felt the need to escape for one more road trip before summer was over.  I literally pulled out the Rand-McNally atlas, closed my eyes, and jabbed a finger at the map of NY and NJ.   The kids and I piled into my blue Dodge Caravan and headed in that direction.   Two and a half hours later, after driving over a mountain and around a giant reservoir, we arrived at the edge of a beautiful lake in northern New Jersey just as the sun was lowering in the sky.  There was a sandy beach and little islands in the distance.  We dipped our toes in the water and watched the sun disappear and wished that the next day and school would never come.  On the way home we found apples and ice cream and a petting zoo, at a local farm stand.   A perfect Labor Day and end to summer.

We've tried to return there every Labor Day since and today is no exception.

We canoed to our favorite little rocky island and had a picnic dinner before sunset.   Another perfect end to the summer.