Celebrate Peace – 18/52, BlackBerry 52, Golden Valley, Minnesota, May 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s Memorial Day 2011. The skies over Golden Valley are green and gray. Rain pelts the freshly splashed grass seed. The lawn has been mowed. The cedar branches that bent to the ground in the last snowstorm are trimmed. I’m cleaning the rust off my writing pen. Where to start?
I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial site and left Uncle James a message. He is not forgotten. One day I will take the time to go back through my film archives and locate the negatives from the day I photographed the Wall in 1984. It was an unplanned visit, a stop on a road trip back East after I moved from Montana to the Twin Cities. Unknown to me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was being dedicated that same year. Veterans dotted the landscape of Washington D.C.; I found my uncle’s name and did a rubbing on a thin strip of paper.
A few years ago, I reconnected with my aunt, his widow, and told her I had never forgotten James. She told me that the day he died, he visited her and asked about the baby, his son. The baby was not yet born. He never met him. She swears he was there with her, standing in the same room. She would not get the official word until the next day—he had been killed in war. I feel somber inside, remembering. But it’s not like me to forget. Some think I live in the past. Sometimes the moment is the past. The same way it is the future. To understand war, I try to celebrate peace.
It feels good to be writing again. Art-A-Whirl was a big success. The Casket Arts Studio space was my home for the last month. The Writers Hands Series is up on the wall. The cards and postcards are selling well. Liz has her Found Frame Series up; her Landmark Series makes beautiful postcards. Thank you to all who visited during the crazy rain and tornado skies of Art-A-Whirl. It means a lot to us.
A haunting aspect of art and writing is that you have to burn the candle at both ends to see projects through. I was sick during Art-A-Whirl week but just had to keep going. Once I got to the studio, the energy of art and the people who love it carried the day. But I had to give up time in other areas, like the unplanned hiatus from red Ravine. I appreciate you, the readers, who keep coming back. I checked in but did not have the energy to write and prepare for the long hours of Art-A-Whirl. Something had to give. I missed the community.
The photograph of the PEACE sign (part of the BlackBerry 52 Series with Lotus) is made of seashells sent to me by Heather, a friend I met through red Ravine. She often tweets about her life by the California shoreline. One day, she asked if we wanted her to send a little of the ocean our way. In a landlocked Cancer stupor, I said, “Yes!” She mailed a box of shells the next day. When they got here, they were filled with sand and smelled like salt air, crab, and clam. I laid them out on the deck table under Minnesota skies to air out. Peace flowed from the backs of ocean creatures. Thank you, Heather.
And thank you for listening. I am off to Studio 318 to work on a piece about May Sarton. It’s time to get back to my practices. It’s time to write again. It’s time to post on red Ravine, to journal and print more photographs. This week is First Thursdays. Stop by and see us! What I really want to say is that I appreciate the community that visits here. Art and writing are not created out of a vacuum. We are all in this together.
-posted on red Ravine, Memorial Day, Monday, May 30th, 2011
Lotus and I will continue to respond to each other’s BlackBerry Jump-Off photos with text, photography, poetry (however we are inspired) for the 52 weeks of 2011. You can read more at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration. If you are inspired to join us, send us a link to your images, poetry, or prose and we’ll add them to our posts.
-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC — DEATH & DYING, PRACTICE – Memorial Day – 10min, PRACTICE: Memorial Day — 10min, May Day Self-Portrait: Searching For Spring, The Yogi (Cover Page) — 14/52, Nesting & Resting, Pulling Out The Sun (By Day, By Night), BlackBerry 365 Project — White Winter Squirrel, Flying Solo — Dragonfly In Yellow Rain, Searching For Stillness, icicle tumbleweed (haiga) — 2/52, The Mirado Black Warrior, Waning Moon (Haiga), Alter-Ego Mandala: Dreaming Of The Albatross (For Bukowski), EarthHealer — Mandala For The Tortoise
Wonderful post, QM. I love the peace sign made of shells. So beautiful. 🙂
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Wow! Love the peace sign & the post! What a great Memorial Day post!
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Great post, QM, and what beautiful art you created from a friend’s gift – sea shells of peace 🙂
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Glad to have you back, I was wondering what happened. I think breaks are good though, for you and us as readers and participants. It helps us to see what we miss when it is not there and reminds us of the value.
I love the sea shell picture and also the idea of sending that type of a gift. This week I am trying to focus on small acts of kindess, something each day. Maybe I will send a package of artisan roasted coffee (Seattle style) or a bottle filled with rain to a friend out east. Rain and coffee seem to be the distinguishing characteristics of the Northwest right now. Let me know if you want any!!
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Thank you, Robin. I liked your Memorial Day post as well. Cool about the flags.
diddy, I’m so happy you stop by here again. I have missed you so much! Hope things are going well up on the mountain.
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annie, thank you. I should mention that Heather also creates works of art out of the shells she collects. She drills holes in them and strings them together. Have seen a few photos that she has posted. Light, airy. And I bet they sound like shell chimes! One of the shells that Heather sent still had a little creature in it. I’ll have to ask her if she knew that. It was one of the larger, more beautiful shells. I noticed when I put them out to dry that the creature that had dried up, disappeared. I wonder if it became food for the birds or squirrels?
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Teresa, thanks so much. Good to be back. I find that if I stay away for too long, it feels easier and easier to let things slip. I wonder why that is? The more I stay connected and posting, the better I seem to do. I appreciate what you said.
I love your idea of sending rain to a friend out east. What a great idea! I hope you do it. The rain and the coffee seem like a perfect mix. We’ve had the wettest, cloudiest May in Minnesota, too. So, so many cloudy days. I was really surprised when Heather offered to mail the shells to us. It took me by surprise. To most, it would have been a figure of speech. But there it was, the box in the mail. And so many shells! I kept pulling little baggies out of the mailing box, all different colors. It was a real treat. Especially since we’ve never met in person; only on red Ravine.
Rain and coffee…sounds like the makings of lyrics to a new country song. All I would need to do is add a book in print and a couch under my butt and I’d settle in for the Summer. 8)
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Wonderful post, qm! After looking at the PBS tour of Military American Cemeteries in foreign lands, I got so depressed! All I kept thinking was, “And when will they ever learn?”(Peter, Paul & Mary’recording.) The narrator, of course, told how many thousands were in each cemetery. So, your post made me feel a little better. Only a little, though, as I went to a Vigil at the Catholic Church last night, for a friend, a gentle, sweet man, gone at age 63…too young. It was my first time to attend a vigil. The funeral was this morning, but I had to work. The vigil was nice…more intimate and personalized than a Ritual Mass.
The Priest’s words were comforting and reassuring in stressing the eternality of life.
Sea shells…when I was in the 6th grade, our Girl Scout Troop learned how to make sea shell jewelry. It was all the rage. Hobby shops were a treasure trove of shells, and they had all that goes with making jewelry; round, clear plastic disks in sizes for earrings or pins. We giggled a lot, gluing the shells, (and sometimes our fingers,) to whatever we touched! Or was the giggling due to the fumes of the rubber cement, which made one feel rather light-headed? Our first contact with “accidental” glue sniffing…no one thought of doing that on purpose in 1948!
But, tiny, pastel colored shells did resemble the petals of delicate flowers, and many moms, (the good ones,) wore their daughters’ carefully crafted gifts with pride.
Thanks for another good childhood memory!
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I think it has something to do with Newton’s law of motion, “something at rest tends to stay at rest, something in motion tends to stay in motion”.
You reminded me that there is a novel I’ve been meaning to read called, “Rain and Coffee”, can’t remember who it is written by, but i will look it up. Not sure how to transport water in the mail, but perhaps a picture of rain or a poem of rain would suffice. Fun idea though.
t
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oliverowl, so was the vigil at night? I imagine candle light in quiet darkness. I like your seashell story. What good mothers, to wear the jewelry. It reminds me of that Billy Collins poem “The Lanyard.” You have such clear direct memories of your childhood years. Maybe we’ll get another installment about your parents soon!
Teresa, is there really a novel called Rain & Coffee? I had not thought of the problem of transporting liquids through the mail. Hmmmm. Might not work these days. It stopped raining here in Minnesota. Blue skies the last few days. Very, very green and lush here. Everything is blooming. 8)
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Heather’s shells reminded me of a childhood tongue twister:
She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I’m sure she sells seashore shells.
Imagine the treat the inland squirrel or bird had for breakfast!
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annie, that is quite the tongue twister! I remember it, too. I just tried to repeat the whole thing with much difficulty. I had not thought of that — that squirrel or bird really did have a sealand treat. I bet it’s not often they taste a bit of California sea life. 8)
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[…] I only know of one family member who died while fighting a war—my Uncle James. When I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at its dedication, I did a rubbing of his name (Panel 20W – Line 32). And when I started blogging, I discovered […]
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