Posted in Bones, Dreams, Life, Love, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Wake Up, Writers, tagged Archive 365, haiga, keys, letting go, Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back, life lessons, pensive days, reflective, Royal typewriter, senryu, the practice of poetry, the writer's life, turning the key, vintage typewriters on March 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Royal – 152/365, Archive 365, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
February 2011, photos © 2011-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Midwestern writer
pretending to understand –
what love left behind.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
Posted in Culture, Dreams, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Holidays, Home, Life, Love, Place, Poetry, Practice, Reading, Wake Up, tagged A Child's Christmas in Wales, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Dylan Thomas, haibun, haibun for Dylan Thomas, words to the close & holy darkness on December 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Santa At Holidazzle – 178/365, Archive 365, Droid Shots, December 2012, Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Christmas Day. Presents opened, eggnog half gone, phone calls East and West. Longing, joy, gratitude, loss. What to leave behind, what to keep. Emptiness. Love.
Reading Dylan Thomas aloud, Christmas Eve. The moon-buried sky over a village churchyard in Laugharne. The close and holy darkness must have haunted him. A child’s sugarplum dreams—tufted hooves flick mediæval snow off the rooftop Castle of Abercorran.
Waiting for Santa—
the frigid windless night
soothes and comforts me.
Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. –Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
Laugharne is a town in Carmarthenshire, Wales on the estuary of the River Tâf, and home to Dylan Thomas from 1949 until his death in 1953. Thought to have been an inspiration for the fictional town of Llareggub in Under Milk Wood, the Township was originally known as Abercorran. The name was changed to Laugharne after the English Civil War.
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
Posted in Bones, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Holidays, Nature, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged Ancient Trees, celebrating Winter Solstice, Christmas traditions, Christmas trees, circle of life, famous trees, future memories, memories of trees, navigating winter, shadows & light, value of trees, Winter Solstice, Yule tree on December 21, 2012 | 6 Comments »
Yule Tree, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012
by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
No snow buried the ground the day we cut the Winter Yule. Huffing and puffing, we took turns severing trunk from tangled roots. Last summer we had a landscaper install a French drain that streams into the concave hollow of a rain garden we will plant next spring. The energy company marked the lines before digging; that’s when we discovered the blue spruce growing over our gas line. It would have to be removed.
In mid-December, I said to Liz, “Let’s make the spruce our Yule tree.” The handsaw wasn’t far behind. The tree is almost 4 1/2 feet tall with a wide berth that tapers to a slight curve at the top. She grew from a seedling, probably dropped by a songbird that made a pit stop on the mature spruce nearby. Trunk rings indicate that it took six years for this tree to grow 52 inches with a one and 1/2 inch base. Trees are slow and deliberate. They are the slow walkers of the forest.
Growth Rings, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Tree lovers like Liz and I will travel great distances to see hardwoods, softwoods, evergreens, and conifers in their prime. We have visited the oldest red and white pines in Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota, birthplace of the Mississippi River. We have sweated under live oaks near Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home in Savannah, photographed an old gingko at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, and attended a community gathering celebrating the life and death of a 333-year-old Burr Oak near the Franklin Avenue bridge in Minneapolis. On a trip to New Mexico, I stood under the Lawrence tree painted by Georgia O’Keeffe at Kiowa Ranch. In Georgia, my mother and I talked family history under a ginkgo by the Old Government House that was planted in 1791 in commemoration of a visit by George Washington.
Saw, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Trees are important to the spiritual aspect of our lives. I can’t imagine a world without trees. Today we celebrate the longest night of the year, Winter Solstice. Tuesday we will celebrate Christmas. The blue spruce in our living room leaves an empty space in the garden. Though wistful when she fell, I am joyful that she gleams from our living room window at the darkest time of year. And that her summer-dried bark will be kindling for next winter‘s Solstice fire.
Home Grown Tree, Droid Shots, Minneapolis,
Minnesota,photo © 2012 by Liz Schultz.
All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Winter Solstice, December 21st, 2012
Posted in Architecture, Art, Art of Rebellion, Culture, Death, Dreams, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Photography, Place, Relationships, Structure, Vision, tagged Archive 365, building community through the Arts, Guthrie Theater, history of the Guthrie Theater, legacies, Minnesota history, modern architecture, new Guthrie, opening of the Guthrie, original Guthrie, Ralph Rapson, signs, tearing down the old Guthrie Theater, the value of the Arts, Tyrone Guthrie, vintage signs, visionaries on September 3, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Tyrone Guthrie Outside The Guthrie – 64/365, Archive 365, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2010-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The Archive 365 practice and collaboration continues with a photograph taken outside the Guthrie Theater in August 2010. With each new image, I feel compelled to look into tidbits about the subject’s history. It’s no secret that Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Midwest architect Ralph Rapson did not see eye-to-eye on the design of the original Guthrie Theater (the play Tyrone & Ralph was written highlighting this piece of history). The two fought over the thrust stage which Guthrie wanted and the asymmetrical design Rapson desired. They also disagreed over the color of the seats. Guthrie ordered Rapson to make sure the seats were all the same bland color; Rapson wanted brightness and vivacity and decidedly disobeyed. By the time the hundreds of multicolored seats arrived, it was too late for Guthrie to do anything about it.
In spite of their disagreements, Rapson’s modern design prevailed and the Guthrie opened on May 7, 1963 with a production of Hamlet directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie; it became one of the most respected theaters in the country. An idea that began in 1959 during a series of conversations among Guthrie and two colleagues—Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler—who were disenchanted with Broadway, sprang to life. They realized their dream to create a theater with a resident acting company that would perform the classics in rotating repertory with the highest professional standards.
Sir Tyrone Guthrie was the Artistic Director from 1963 through 1966 and returned to direct each year until 1969. He passed away in 1971. Architect Ralph Rapson died of heart failure in 2008 at the age of 93. The original Guthrie was torn down in 2006; the theater dimmed its lights 43 years to the day that it opened — also with a production of Hamlet. It reopened across town by the Mississippi River in a new, $125 million three-stage complex with the faces of Tyrone Guthrie, August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Anton Chekhov, Eugene O’Neill and George Bernard Shaw etched into its walls.
Guthrie Theater History – The Guthrie
Ralph Rapson, architect of the original Guthrie, has died – MPR News
The Old Guthrie Goes Down – photos at The Masticator
Guthrie Theater brings curtain down on original home – MPR News
Guthrie & Rapson battle again – MPR news
-posted on red Ravine, Monday, September 3rd, 2012
Posted in Bodies Of Water, Culture, Death, Dreams, Holding My Breath, Life, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Photography, Place, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden, bearing witness, bridges, community as witness, dealing with tragedy, honoring life, honoring the dead, I remember, I-35 Bridge Collapse, names, ordinary as extraordinary, rivers, slowing down, survivors, writing about names on August 5, 2012 | 6 Comments »
I-35 Bridge Memorial – 36/365, Archive 365, Droid Shots, 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden, Minnesota, July 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I passed by the 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden three times over the last few weeks. Wednesday, August 1st, 2012 marked five years to the day since the I-35 bridge collapsed. The third time I drove by, I was traveling home from the Guthrie with Liz and her mother who was visiting from Wyoming.
Ironically, on August 1st, 2007, Liz’s mother was in the air on her way to Minneapolis when the bridge collapsed. Liz and I were folding laundry and doing last minute preparations for her visit, when we received a phone call from my mother in Pennsylvania asking if we were okay. Confused, we quickly turned on the TV to see that one of the busiest bridges in the Twin Cities had fallen into the Mississippi and was a twisted mass of concrete and steel.
Thirteen people died that day; 145 were injured. They had been going about their lives in what was until that moment, an ordinary day; it could have been any one of us. The Memorial to the victims and survivors of the 35W bridge collapse sits on the west bank of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, next to Gold Medal Park. There was a dedication and opening ceremony for the 35W Memorial, August 1st, 2011. It is a quiet place where water falls over a granite wall inscribed with the names of the 145 survivors, and the words:
Our lives are not only defined by what happens, but by how we act in the face of it, not only by what life brings us, but by what we bring to life. Selfless actions and compassion create enduring community out of tragic events.
Last week, I listened to survivor Lindsay Walz tell her story from the perspective and wisdom of the passing of time (you can read her story at this link). On August 1st, she painted details on the back brace she wore for injuries sustained when the bridge collapsed. In addition to a broken back, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. She states that everyone’s recovery is as unique as their experience on the bridge that day. Some people are still dealing with ongoing crippling pain and can’t work. They can’t do things they used to take for granted. The survivors stay connected through a Facebook page; they are still there for each other.
The night I passed by Bohemian Flats, under the new I-35 bridge, and around the bend to the Memorial, I saw 13 steel girders lit in neon blue, one for each person who lost their lives. I felt compelled to slow down from all the busyness of summer, and remember their names. (To learn more about their lives, there are biographies at the links.)
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| Sherry Engebretsen Sherry Engebretsen knew how to take care of details, especially when it came to her daughters.
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| Artemio Trinidad-Mena Originally from Mexico, Artemio lived in Minnesota for about 10 years, and worked at New York Plaza Produce in south Minneapolis for almost a year.
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| Julia Blackhawk Julia Blackhawk had recently taken a new Indian name. The 32-year-old from Savage was given the name Thunder Woman during a pow-wow at Easter. Her uncle, John Blackhawk, is a Winnebago Tribal Council member. He says Julia was a kind person who always showed respect for her elders. And he says she had one attribute that was very special.
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| Patrick Holmes Patrick Holmes, 36, of Mounds View, was found dead at the scene of the bridge collapse that same night. He was on his way home from work. His wife, Jennifer, heard the news a little after midnight.
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| Peter Hausmann Peter Hausmann, 47, was a computer security specialist worked at Assurity River Group in St. Paul. The company’s president says Hausmann was a quiet leader and a man of faith.
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| Paul Eickstadt Paul Eickstadt drove a delivery truck for Sara Lee Bakery for 14 years. He was just beginning his shift, on his way to Iowa, when the 35W bridge collapsed. Eickstadt, 51, lived in Mounds View. He is survived by a brother and two sisters.
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| Greg Jolstad Greg Jolstad’s friends called him Jolly “because of his name, and because that’s just how he was.” Bill Stahlke remembers ice fishing almost daily, as teenagers, with Jolstad and Jim Hallin on Knife Lake, near the Jolstad family farm. The three haven’t missed a winter on the lake in the nearly 30 years since they graduated together from Mora High School.
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| Scott Sathers On Aug. 1, Scott Sathers left his job in downtown Minneapolis at Capella University, where he worked as an enrollment director, approximately 40 minutes later than usual. Sathers called his wife Betsy at 5:50 p.m. from Washington Ave. and 35W, where he was about to get on 35W to go north to his home in Blaine.
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| Christina Sacorafas Christina Sacorafas was running late, and called her friend and fellow dance instructor, Rena Tsengas, to say she would be late. But Sacorafas never made it the Minneapolis church where students in her Greek folk dancing group were waiting for her to begin class.
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| Sadiya and Hanah Sahal For Ahmed Iidle, the I-35W bridge collapse has brought a double loss. His daughter Sadiya Sahal, 23, and her 2-year-old daughter Hanah were headed to a relative’s house when the bridge crumbled beneath them.
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| Vera Peck and Richard Chit Vera Peck and her 20-year-old son Richard Chit were traveling in the same car when the bridge collapsed.
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Related to posts: 40 Days, 8 Flags, and 1 Mennonite Choir, Memorial — Day & Night, Bridge To Nowhere — The Great Connector, Fear Of Bridges, Thornton Wilder & Bridges, Minneapolis At Night, The Name Game (What’s In A Name?)
Resources: Hundreds turn out to dedication of 35W Bridge Memorial, New 35W bridge memorial honors those who died — and the community that disaster brought together, Remembering the Dead, Bridge survivor on 5th anniversary: ‘The day I got to live’
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, August 5th, 2012
Posted in Art, Body, Culture, Dreams, On the Road, Photography, Place, Politics, Practice, Travel, tagged a just & lasting peace, Abraham Lincoln, artists, artists as muse, bronze sculpture, Fargo, hands, Lincoln's second inaugural address, Mark Lundeen, North Dakota, Scheels, sculptors, sculpture, surprises, With malice toward none on July 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Abe Lincoln’s Hand – 14/365, Archive 365, Fargo, North Dakota, July 2011, photo © 2011-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
On a road trip to North Dakota, we stopped at Scheels, a family owned business that has been operating out of Fargo since 1928. It was a new experience for me, but not for Liz, a native North Dakotan. On the way in the door of the 196,000 square foot building on 45th Street, off of Interstate 94, I was immediately drawn to the bronze sculptures to the north. I had to sit down on the bench next to Abe Lincoln and read the note in his hand. It contained words from the last paragraph of his second inaugural address given on March 4, 1865 (read the whole speech in its entirety here):
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves and all nations.
Lincoln is a life-size bronze sculpted by native Nebraskan Mark Lundeen. He now lives in Colorado.
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ARCHIVE 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, July 15, 2012. Related to posts: In Search of Letters & Artifacts On Abraham Lincoln
Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Growing Older, Holding My Breath, Life, Love, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Practice, Relationships, Wake Up, Writing Practices, tagged Accept loss forever, animal spirit guides, caring for chronically ill pets, courage, dogs, Elizabeth Statmore, Fromage, going nuts for a while, letting go, Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back, losing pets, love & loss, Mary Oliver, Mother's Day, mourning pet loss, peaceful warriors, pets, precognitive dreams, the difficult work of grief, the practice of writing, writing as healer, writing through grief on July 9, 2012 | 8 Comments »
By Elizabeth Statmore
Fromage died on Saturday, May 12th 2012 at 11:30 p.m. at All Animals Emergency Hospital, surrounded by us and our love. He was dehydrated and disoriented, with a temperature of 105.6. Normal temperature for dogs is 101-ish, with 102 being in the high fever range. So Fromage had a raging fever, probably from a combination of a brain tumor (or nervous system tumor) and end-stage kidney disease.
We knew it was serious when he couldn’t do anything with a Beggin’ Strip — his favorite treat in the universe. And I’d dreamed Wednesday morning that he died. I knew it was a precognitive dream, but I didn’t know how or when the end would happen.
He did his utmost to stay alive for me — to support me and love me through this disorienting chapter of my life. He showed the same heroic courage and love he had shown us all his life. He was an impeccable warrior to the end, but in the end it was time to let him go.
It was the night before Mother’s Day.
It’s the little things that really punch me in the gut — the moments that interrupt my conditioned habits, such as automatically tucking the newspaper bags into the plastic bag collection next to the front door, only to realize that I don’t have a need to save dog poop bags any more.
I put his sterling silver tag on a chain and started wearing it around my neck last night as I went to bed.
He was the only being who has ever called me his mother. On our first Mother’s Day he bought me a pair of dog socks.
He was the dog of my life.
He was the dog of my heart.
I somehow left my favorite fountain pen at school on Friday, but I was too stressed-out and worried yesterday to deal with it. But this morning, all I wanted to do was write, so I drove down to school and back to retrieve it.
When we got to All Animals, Fromage had a fever of 105.6. This was a raging brain fever. He couldn’t even walk down our front stairs. I carried him in my arms down the thirteen front steps — all 60+ pounds of him. David carried him into the car. He was dehydrated and disoriented and scared. He was dying.
I held him in the back seat while David drove. He lay quietly on the back seat, watching where we were going.
He had kept himself alive so he could support me. And now I knew it was my turn to support him by letting him go and by easing his passage into the next world, into his next life.
Fred always said that Fromage was my spirit guide.
Now my heart just aches. David’s too. Fromage loved David so much, even though David felt hurt that Fromage was always so freaked out and demented these last few years. David hugged him and loved him too, even though there was so much dog hair. By last night, no one cared.
I can’t put away his old beds or mats yet. I am still processing the fact that he is gone. There is a giant Fromage-shaped hole in my heart — one with one stand-up ear and one flappy ear. The stand-up ear is his right one. It has a bite taken out of the tip. My lips and fingers know the shape of that missing spot instinctively. Completely. Like a fingerprint.
He’d been staying alive to get me through this tough time. On Wednesday night I got the word that my layoff notice had been rescinded. He went downhill fast from there.
I loved that dog so much.
He loved me more purely and wholeheartedly than I had ever been loved before. It was a healing kind of love. He healed me. He made me whole.
When Crystal and I saw Mary Oliver the first time at the Herbst a few years ago, Mary had recently lost her longtime partner, Molly Malone Cook, and had been writing about it for some time. A woman in the audience asked how she’d gotten through the devastating loss. “Well,” she said, first you go a little crazy. You go nuts for a while.” That thought comforts me now. I am going to have to go a little nuts for a while while I grieve.
The loss feels cavernous.
It’s also tinged with fear and shame that I might not be experiencing appropriate gratitude for the gift of his life. I *do* feel a bottomless gratitude for his life. It’s just that right now, this is the part where I have to take in and let out the hurting — the loss and the groundlessness of impermanence.
In legal terms, I rescued him, but the emotional truth is that he is the one who rescued me.
He was a magical dog, a magical creature. In mythical terms, he was my magical helper-being.
“A dog lives fifteen years, if you’re lucky,” Mary Oliver writes in one of her dog poems. In so many, many ways I’ve been very, very lucky. Fromage was in good health and good spirits until this very last week. He enjoyed long walks and Trash Night and giving David five and ten and eating Beggin’ Strips until the very last day of his life. He watched for my return through the glass in the front door every single day of our life together.
As we left the hospital room after it was over, I kissed him behind his flappy ear — where, even in death, he still smelled like a puppy — and I whispered to him, “Okay, Puppity, guard the house.”
Then we left the treatment room and closed the door behind us.
I did not look back.
Fromage at the Dog Garden, Dog Garden, San Francisco, California, April 2004, photo © 2004 by Carlos Hillson. All rights reserved.
About Elizabeth: Elizabeth Statmore is a San Francisco-based writer and teacher of writing and mathematics. She is a long-time practitioner and teacher of Writing Practice, which she learned from Natalie Goldberg. A frequent contributor to KQED-FM, Elizabeth’s last posts for red Ravine include Seed Starting, a piece about writers as gardeners, and Writing The “Remembering Grace Paley” Piece — a step-by-step tutorial on how she turned a raw piece of writing into a finished radio commentary. Elizabeth was also one of our first guest writers, contributing the post Abandoned Is… Fromage was her dog and spirit guide of almost fourteen years.
Long is Part I in a series of three Writing Practices about the love and loss of Fromage.
Posted in Architecture, Culture, Dreams, Food, Music, On the Road, Photography, Place, Practice, Structure, Travel, tagged 18th & Vine, American history, cafes, Elnora's Cafe, Jazz District, Kansas City, Kansas City history, Missouri on July 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Elnora’s Cafe – 8/365, Archive 365, 18th & Vine, Kansas City, Missouri, April 2009, photo © 2009-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
When one of my writing groups met in Kansas City, Missouri in April 2009, Bob took us on a tour. This photograph of Elnora’s Cafe was taken from the car when we were moving through the area of 18th & Vine, the place where Kansas City’s jazz legacy was nurtured and sparked. In its heyday, 30 nightclubs filled the district. Celebrities like Duke Ellington and Joe Louis stayed at Street’s Hotel. Everyone ate at Elnora’s Cafe, a popular gathering place with a national reputation for good food and service. Elnora’s, located next to the Subway Club, stayed open into the wee hours of the morning to accommodate the many late night revelers in the district.
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ARCHIVE 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, July 8, 2012
Posted in 13 Moons, 25 Things, Art, Body, Bones, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Holding My Breath, Home, I Don't Remember, Life, Love, Personal, Place, Practice, Wake Up, tagged back in the saddle, coming home to yourself, feeling exposed, out shooting the Moon, practice feeds practice, red Ravine turns five, taking a break, the artist's life, the creative practice, the creative process, What does writing teach us?, work life balance on May 31, 2012 | 11 Comments »
Liz Shoots The April Moon, Minneapolis at night, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s hard to get back into the practice of writing for red Ravine after two months away. Where have I been? The business of life. And love. Art and passion. Mr. Stripeypants was sick for a time, a bug he contracted during surgery. He’s fine now. I was sick for three weeks, then it was time for Art-A-Whirl. Liz and I spent hours in Casket Arts Studio 318, talking art and writing and authors. Explaining panoramas on brushed metal and the latest installment in the Writers Hands Series. After Art-A-Whirl, I am so energized by the people that stop by that I want to spend every waking moment in my studio.
My mother went to Georgia without me this year. I missed traveling with her; she continues to research the family tree. I take it up, too, in my spare time. I will never lose my passion for history — the people, places, and things that lived before us. While I was away, the seasons changed. Quickly and without apology. What would normally be Spring has bloomed as Summer. We lost a few limbs on the two cedars in an ice storm. An arborist is coming to give the oaks and cedars a trim on Monday.
Where have I been? I went to see Anne Lamott at a bookstore. And Leslie Marmon Silko at the downtown library. I photographed the clouds with my Droid. I stood on a bridge and shot the Moon with Liz. We are working on a business together. It’s slow and steady, like the Turtle I am. I am working on the project plan. Liz digs into business details. We will meet with a designer soon to begin work on our website. More to come.
I can say I missed you. I did. When I come back to this place, it is like coming home. I have a guest piece coming up soon. And a new Writing Topic. While I was away, red Ravine turned five. Five years and a million hits. I didn’t know when I started writing and posting my art here that years would fly by. That I would be exposed for the gaps in my practice. One year, I took a photograph every single day. Another, I wrote Writing Practices all day long. One year, there was a haiku a day. In 2012, I take time to breathe. And expand within my own absence. I have not lost my gratitude for you. There is no way to explain where the time goes. I always come back to the things Natalie taught me. Continue. Continue. Continue. Get up. Jump back in.
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, May 31st, 2012
Posted in Art, Art of Rebellion, Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Dreams, Film / TV / Video, Gratitude, Holding My Breath, Jugular, Life, Love, Nature, Place, Relationships, Secrets, Vision, Wake Up, tagged Academy Awards ceremony, bearing witness, Civil Rights, courage, documentaries, documentary filmmakers, fear & fearlessness, film as art, foot soldiers, Incident in Baghdad, inspiration, movies, Oscar Nominated Short Documentaries, paying attention, peaceful warriors, Saving Face, support Independent film, survivors, The Barber of Birmingham, The Oscars, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, transforming fear, war, war & peace, warriors on February 22, 2012 | 15 Comments »
Documentary Shorts At The Riverview, Droid Shots, original photograph edited with Paper Camera, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
When Liz was asked what movie she wanted to see before a belated birthday dinner at Blackbird, she chose the Oscar Nominated Short Documentary films at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis. The filmmakers took us around the world, Baghdad to Birmingham, Pakistan to Japan. The presentation included four of the five films nominated for an Oscar in the Short Documentary category for 2012: Incident in Baghdad, Saving Face, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, and The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement. (The fifth nominee, God Is The Bigger Elvis could not be shown due to licensing issues.)
In 130 minutes, I swept through a full range of emotions. Saving Face moved me to tears one minute; the next I was smiling with the big hearted doctor who traveled to Pakistan to reconstruct the acid scarred faces of women attacked by their husbands. Incident in New Baghdad horrified me and reminded me how sheltered most Americans have been from the ravages of two wars.
The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom had a visual yin and yang quality. Grief, destruction, devastation, and loss following the tsunami in northern Japan; delicate blossoms of centuries old cherry trees restore hope in ways “beautiful but not showy.” James Armstrong, The Barber of Birmingham, walked steady and strong through decades of the Civil Rights Movement, and listened closely when he cut the hair of Dr. Martin Luther King. His mantra: “Dying isn’t the worst thing a man can do. The worst thing a man can do is nothing.”
The men, women, and children in these documentaries survived against all odds. They are impeccable warriors who teach me to pay attention, find my voice, and not be afraid to speak out. They teach me to show gratitude for the gift that is my life. They teach me about courage. Through hardship and injustice, they show up and tell their stories to filmmakers who ensure their stories are heard. I hope you take the opportunity to see these films. They will inspire you to live life to the fullest, to take risks with your art and writing, and walk the way of the peaceful warrior.
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Incident in New Baghdad – 25 minutes – USA – James Spione
One of the most notorious incidents of the Iraq War – the July 2007 slayings of two Reuters journalists and a number of other unarmed civilians by US attack helicopters – is recounted in the powerful testimony of American infantryman Ethan McCord whose life was profoundly changed by his experiences on the scene.
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Saving Face – 40 minutes – Pakistan/USA – Daniel Junge, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
Every year hundreds of people — mostly women — are attacked with acid in Pakistan. The HBO Documentary SAVING FACE follows several of these survivors, their fight for justice, and a Pakistani plastic surgeon who has returned to his homeland to help them restore their faces and their lives.
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The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom – 39 minutes – Japan/USA – Lucy Walker
Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan’s most beloved flower.
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The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement – 25 minutes – USA – Gail Dolgin and Robin Fryday
Mr. James Armstrong is an 85-year-old barber, a “foot soldier” and a dreamer whose barbershop in Birmingham, Alabama has been a hub for haircuts and civil rights since 1955. The dream of a promised land, where dignity and the right to vote belong to everyone, is documented in photos, headlines and clippings that cram every inch of wall space in his barbershop. On the eve of the election of the first African American president, the Barber of Birmingham sees his unimaginable dream come true.
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, February 22th, 2012. Read more about the films at the links and watch a trailer at the Riverview website.
-related to posts: And The Oscar Goes To…, Eloquent Nude At The Riverview
Posted in Art, Books, Dreams, Personal, Photography, Practice, Vision, Wake Up, Work, tagged artists as muse, black & white photography, film photography, following the Muse, I remember, illustrations, inspiration, libraries, love of photography, photo books as inspiration, photography as Muse, places I find inspiration, Twin-Lens-Reflex Camera on February 18, 2012 | 7 Comments »
Twin-Lens-Reflex Camera, illustration from Black & White Photography: A Basic Manual by Henry Horenstein, Droid Shots, original photograph edited with Paper Camera, Golden Valley, Minnesota, February 2012, photos © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
One of the goals that came out of my last writing retreat with the Midwest writers was to focus on organizing, storing, revisualizing, and selling my photographs. I took a photojournalism class this week from a journalist who makes a living from her stories and photographs. I spent much of this morning perusing old photo books while sipping French Roast (I have a Twin-Lens-Reflex in my collection just like the one in the illustration above).
Old print photograph and design books are inexpensive and inspirational. It is exciting to view the work of the photographers who came before us and to learn from their art. At MCAD, I focused primarily on black & white photography, along with alternative processes. I’d like to do more along those lines with my digital photographs. I remember…
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, February 18th, 2012, with gratitude to Liz (one of my Muses) who consistently brings home tons of books from our local library
Posted in Art, Dreams, Food, Gratitude, Laughing, Life, Love, Personal, Photography, Place, tagged desserts, inclusive love, loving kindness, rituals of love, sharing chocolate, St. Valentine, The Art of Love, the joy of chocolate, the power of love, Truffles & Tortes, unconditional love, Valentine's Day, Valentines on February 14, 2012 | 7 Comments »
Valentine — My Bad Hair Day, Valentine dessert from Truffles & Tortes,
Droid Shots, original photograph edited with Paper Camera, Golden Valley,
Minnesota, February 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Imagine my surprise when Liz came home from grocery shopping armed with a large paper bag full of desserts from Truffles & Tortes. We wandered into their specialty chocolates and cakes cafe a few years ago before catching a movie at nearby Willow Creek, and have continued to stop by when we get a longing for gourmet chocolate delights.
My favorite of the four desserts Liz purchased was the torched meringue over thin layers of sponge cake, lemon curd and caramel sauce — Bad Hair Day. Liz fell head over heels for Nirvana, the velvety chocolate mousse with the hidden dome of creme brulee on a bottom of milk chocolate hazelnut praline. If Nirvana with Bad Hair doesn’t strike your fancy, there is always Concerto or Red Velvet Cake. Perhaps someday, we’ll have Truffles cater our wedding.
To all, young and old, single or coupled, I wish you a day full of loving kindness. And I hope you get to share a chocolate with a friend, or even a complete stranger. Because I believe unconditional, inclusive love is what St. Valentine really had in mind. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Red Velvet Valentine (bottom), Chocolate Nirvana, Concerto (top), Valentine desserts from Truffles & Tortes, Droid Shots, original photographs edited with Paper Camera, Golden Valley, Minnesota, February 2012, photos © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Valentine’s Day, Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC — CHOCOLATE, WRITING TOPIC — HAIR, WRITING TOPIC — KINDS OF LOVE, Goodnight Valentine’s, valentine haiku
Posted in Poetry, Life, Politics, Books, Relationships, Photography, Culture, Creative Nonfiction, Place, Dreams, Secrets, Death, Reading, Life In Letters, tagged Abraham Lincoln, American history, bearing witness, black & white photography, books about Abe Lincoln, bookstores, excavating memories, history, Lincoln historians, Lincoln's birthday, Noah Andre Trudeau, photographs of the Civil War, Presidents Day, R, Ronald C. White Jr., support Independent bookstores, the Civil War, the last week of Lincoln's life, The North, the power of words, The South, the value of history, the value of old letters, what's left behind on February 12, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Lincoln’s Birthday, Indie bookstore window photographed with Canon Powershot & edited with PhotoShop Elements, Wayzata, Minnesota, February 16th, 2009, photo © 2009-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
A few years ago, Liz and I went to see Ronald C. White, Jr. at the Bookcase of Wayzata, an independent bookstore on Lake Minnetonka. He was there to discuss his new book, A. Lincoln: A Biography. I had heard him interviewed earlier in the morning on MPR; Liz and I decided to be spontaneous and go hear him speak. The little Indie bookstore was packed.
White talked about how Lincoln loved words. And because of that, his words were like poetry. White wrote his book for those who might be reading a Lincoln biography for the first time, or to introduce Lincoln to a younger generation. He also spoke about how Obama started to shine a light on Lincoln, and how he (White) was booked for speaking engagements in Mississippi and Alabama, and also in Europe where many think Abe Lincoln personifies the American Dream.
More than 16,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Yet not all of his story has been told. At the end of the Civil War, between March and April 1865, Lincoln went to Northern Virginia to meet with his generals. He shook hands with thousands of Union soldiers and visited the former Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia. But little is known about the last week of his life before his assassination on April 14, 1865.
Historian Noah Andre Trudeau thinks that in their rush to get to Ford’s Theater, historians have overlooked this important part of Lincoln’s life. After the Civil War, the President of the United States met Generals Grant and Sherman in Virginia to talk about the surrender of the South and its impact on our country. Lincoln visited Richmond, then considered enemy territory, as an observer. He was looking for ways a torn nation could begin to heal.
Having spent my childhood in the South, and most of my adult years in the North, I am compelled to follow literature about the Civil War. One of my ancestors was a courier for Robert E. Lee. When we moved to the North, one of the first places we visited was the Gettysburg battlefield. I am fascinated by the work of photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan who took this photo, one half of a stereo view of Alfred R. Waud, artist of Harper’s Weekly, while he sketched on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in July of 1863. (See links below for the rest of the Atlantic series on photographs of the Civil War.)
Last year marked the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. Trudeau is known for uncovering its secrets. His previous books, Bloody Roads South and Gettysburg, have unveiled information about General William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea in 1864, and the legacy of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Now, in preparation for the book about a largely unexamined period of President Abraham Lincoln’s life, Trudeau is in search of witnesses.
He is seeking diary entries, letters or stories of people who encountered Lincoln at the time. During the NPR story, I was surprised to hear several people call in with leads to family scrapbooks and letters relating to Lincoln. (To share information, contact him at lincoln65@earthlink.net.) About his quest for truth, Trudeau states: “My one nightmare is that I’m going to do a very good job of discrediting all the good stories.” I think it’s quite the contrary. The more stories revealed, the closer we are to weaving together the textured layers of the past, and unraveling the sometimes painful chapters in American history.
Historian Seeks Artifacts From Lincoln’s Last Days : NPR Talk Of The Nation (LINK)
A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr. at his Official Website (LINK)
Abraham Lincoln and Slavery | Minnesota Public Radio News (LINK) – historian Eric Foner examines Abraham Lincoln’s complex ideas about slavery and African Americans, casting fresh light on an American icon.
The Civil War, Part 1: The Places, the Atlantic – February 8th, 2012 (LINK) – First installment of amazing b&w photographs of important places in the Civil War. (Some images in the three Series are graphic.)
The Civil War, Part 2: The People, the Atlantic – February 9th, 2012 (LINK) – Second installment of b&w photographs of the Civil War. Includes a photo portrait of Abraham Lincoln taken by photographer Alexander Gardner on February 5, 1865.
Traditionally called “last photograph of Lincoln from life”, this final photo in Lincoln’s last photo session was long thought to have been made on April 10, 1865, but more recent research has indicated the earlier date in February. The crack comes from the original negative, which was broken and discarded back in 1865. The entirety of the American Civil War took place while Lincoln was in office, starting a month after he was elected, and ending just days before his assassination in April of 1865.
The Civil War, Part 3: The Stereographs, the Atlantic – February 10th, 2012 (LINK) – Third installment of the Stereographs of the Civil War with the work of photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, February 12th, 2012, birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Related to posts: Abraham Lincoln & Nikki Giovanni (On Poets & Presidents), Presidential Poetics — Elizabeth Alexander, President Barack Obama, Book Talk — Do You Let Yourself Read?
Posted in Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Life, On the Road, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Silence, Wake Up, Writing, tagged composting, craving silence, excavating memories, haiga, sit-walk-write, slow walking, the practice of gardening, the practice of writing, the value of process, the value of slowing down, the value of staring into space, writing friends, writing retreats on February 5, 2012 | 7 Comments »
Sunrise Undercover, Droid Shots, original photograph edited with Paper Camera, sunrise at a writing retreat in a small town outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, February 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The Fallow Field
The master gardener
tithes and tills,
never forgetting to bury her dead—
broken bones rise from the fallow field
odorous compost, grist for the mill.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, February 6th, 2012, at a self-propelled silent writing retreat outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. With gratitude to my writing friends. For more on composting and how we structure these small silent retreats see: Sit, Walk, Write On Lake Michigan, I Write Because…, and Make Positive Effort For The Good.
Posted in 13 Moons, Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Haiku, Life, Photography, Poetry, Relationships, Seasons, Skies, Vision, Wake Up, tagged Bear Moon, birthdays, black bears, call of the wild, Ely, gogyohka, January Full Moon, January in Minnesota, Jewel of the Northwoods, Jewel the Black Bear, Jewel's Live Den Cam, Lily & Hope, Lily the Black Bear, live birth of black bear cubs, MN Black Bear Den Cam, Wildlife Research Institute on January 19, 2012 | 13 Comments »
January Bear Moon, Olympus Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Jewel of the North Woods under the waning Bear Moon — will you birth your cubs on Lily's birthday? Or three days later, when Hope's Spirit comes to play.
NOTE: Jewel the black bear is in the early stages of labor (you can watch at this link: Jewel’s Live Den Cam or check out the links in the poem to see Jim Stroner’s photographs of the bears). Jewel is a wild black bear, the sister of the famous Lily the Black Bear who gave birth to Hope on January 22nd, 2010 (we lost Hope last September during the 2011 Minnesota hunting season). If I remember correctly, it is Lily’s day of birth today, January 19th. I wrote the poem before I read the Wildlife Research Institute update tonight stating that it will be biologist Sue Mansfield’s birthday on January 20th (Happy Birthday, Sue!). The mystery remains, on whose birthday will Jewel of the Northwoods have her cubs?
The photograph was taken a few weeks ago at the Full January Moon. Liz and I went out into the urban Wild to photograph the Moon as she rose. Depending on your background, the January Moon is known as the Wolf Moon, the Cold Moon, and the Bear Moon (among many other names). It’s the Bear Moon all month long, not just at the Full Moon, and is usually one of the brightest Moons of the year. Stay warm, Jewel. It’s -6 in the Twin Cities and -15 in Ely, Minnesota. We are watching your every breath.
-posted on red Ravine, , Thursday, January 19th, 2012, with gratitude to biologists Lynn Rogers & Sue Mansfield
-related to posts: haiku 4 (one-a-day) meets renga 52, MN Black Bear Den Cam: Will Lily Have Cubs?
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