Artists seem to think differently from people who aren’t artists, which is why Renée Loth likes the idea of embedding a few in government.
“Imagine a dancer working with police officers to better interpret a suspect’s gait,” she writes. “Or a musician teaching a city parking clerk how to listen deeply. Or an abstract painter rearranging a tangle of contradictory street signs. That’s the idea behind Boston’s new artist-in-residence program, which will embed local artists inside city departments to promote creative thinking about municipal government. …
“ ‘Artists are all about asking questions,’ says Julie Burros, Boston’s cabinet-level chief of arts and culture. ‘They bring a unique set of tools to solving problems.’
“A jury of seven arts professionals and partners from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design [met in February] to winnow a field of 10 finalists to three artists, who will each receive a $20,000 stipend for a six-month residency. …
“Boston is in the throes of a comprehensive planning process that is working to inject fresh ideas into city transportation, housing, and zoning policies. Burros is directing the city’s two-year cultural plan, Boston Creates, and is a prime force behind the artist-in-residence program.
“But Boston is hardly in the vanguard of this approach. The concept dates back to at least 1976, when activist Mierle Ukeles accepted a nonsalaried position as the first artist in residence of the New York City sanitation department.
“Over the decades, Ukeles created artworks that engage questions of nature, class, and culture; her ‘Flow City,’ a video installation at a Hudson River transfer station, confronts visitors with their own role in the massive waste management task of city government. Environmental education is a dull, dutiful business — until it’s in the hands of a performance artist. …
“In 16th century Europe, wealthy rulers of church and state often commissioned artists to live and work in their courts — you might say that Michelangelo was embedded in the Vatican. Today’s artists in residence may not paint the ceiling of City Hall, but they will surely contribute to Boston’s renaissance.”
A friend on Facebook clicked “like” on an American Museum of Natural History story about youthful doodles covering original Origin of the Species pages. So I have to admit that Facebook is sometimes good for leads.
The museum reported, “We may have Charles Darwin’s children to thank for the surviving handwritten pages of the naturalist’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ manuscript. Most of the original 600 pages are lost, and of the 45 pages that exist today, many were repurposed by Darwin’s brood of 10 children as art supplies.
” ‘Darwin was done with those pages — he was throwing away sections of his draft and not caring about it because the book was published,’ said Darwin Manuscripts Project Director David Kohn.”
McKenna Stayner at the New Yorker magazine has more on the Darwin story, adding that the family lived at Down House “in rural Kent, England. … They had ten children … and Down House was by all accounts a boisterous place, with a wooden slide on the stairs and a rope swing on the first-floor landing. …
“What may seem like sacrilege now—turning the only handwritten copy of a seminal work of science into scratch paper—appears to have been normal then. Once Darwin had sent a fair copy of the manuscript off to his publisher, John Murray, he made the rest of his changes to the book directly on the galley proofs, and evidently he wasn’t precious about the originals. Paper being a hot commodity, the children co-opted the pages for themselves.”
And that, O, Best Beloved, is how some of Darwin’s original thinking got preserved for posterity.
Pretty talented children, if you ask me, with some of their father’s interest in animals and birds. Check out these pictures.
Art: Darwin’s children
From the American Museum of Natural History and Cambridge University Library.
Easter is on the early side this year. I’m never quite sure what kids make of it. John’s children seemed to tune out at last year’s church service, but they liked having a hunt. The big brother was considerate of his sister, who was only 2 then, and made sure she got a reasonable share of goodies in her basket.
Today I colored eggs with the two of them. Since they know that they (and not the Easter Bunny) did the work, I told them I would be hiding the eggs when we all go to Suzanne and Erik’s Sunday but that the Easter Bunny was likely to come hide other goodies. I hope that division of labor sounded plausible.
I already had a conversation with Suzanne and Erik’s son about Easter. He told me that the Easter Bunny runs very fast, and he told my husband the Easter Bunny rings the doorbell. I suspect Suzanne has read him her favorite Easter book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, in which a girl bunny grows up to be the wisest bunny and the fleetest of foot and is chosen to head up the delivery operation.
I got to see some pretty cute videos this week. Suzanne and Erik had just returned from taking the the kids on a trip to warmer climes, and my one-year-old granddaughter learned to speak “goat.” How great to be able to capture her conversation on a smartphone!
Goat, as you may know, consists of a one-word vocabulary delivered with varying degrees of urgency: “Baaaaaaa.”
I’m thinking she and her brother will relate to this June 2015 story about some baby goats in Maine.
From WPTV.com: “Winifred and Monty are three-week-old Nigerian dwarf goat siblings who love to play together on Sunflower Farm.
“In a few weeks they’ll be moving to a new home as pets and milking goats, so their current owners like to spoil them.
“On this particular cold day, they were treated to some new pajamas!
“They had no interest in going out in the rain though. They preferred to keep their new clothes pristine!” More here.
The radio show Living on Earth recently reported how negotiations among environmental activists, the timber industry, indigenous people, and the British Columbia government protected 85 percent of a huge Canadian forest.
“Eighty-five percent of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia is now protected … Steve Curwood discusses [the compromise] with reporter Andrew MacLeod of the magazine The Tyee, who explains what’s been protected and what’s open for logging.
MACLEOD: “It’s an area of 6.5 million hectares between the top end of Vancouver Island and the Alaska Panhandle. So it’s an area, about the size of Ireland, and it’s quite remote. There are only about 1,400 people who live there. So much of it has never been logged. This is usually described as the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, a very lush, mossy, moist year-round ecosystem. … We’re talking trees that five or six people put their arms around. Some of these cedars can be in 20 feet in diameter …
CURWOOD: “Tell me what is the [forest’s] Spirit bear?
MCLEOD: “They are a subspecies of black bear. They are a genetic variant that comes out white, so it’s a white black bear. There are also Grizzly bears there, there are whales, wolves, and just a relatively pristine ecosystem up there.
CURWOOD: “And who calls them Spirit bears? …
MACLEOD: “My understanding is that it goes back through the First Nations, there have always been these genetic variant bears there and they’re seen as special.”
When Curwood asks why the timber industry agreed to the negotiation, MacLeod explains that the campaign to protect the forest helped to avoid extended confrontation.
“Lots of First Nations people will tell you they’ve been on the land for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and it’s been sustainable, it’s been healthy, that it’s really only last 150 years of colonialism where you’ve seen clear-cuts and destruction and species driven to extinction. On the other hand, there are lots of people from First Nations who are working in the logging industry today as well. Over time, First Nations have sort of reestablished their rights. There have been some precedent-setting cases just in the last few years that have recognized aboriginal title does exist.” More here.
Of possible interest: Read how Wabanaki diplomacy smoothed a similar negotiation process in Maine, here.
Photo: Elsen Poulsen/Animals Asia, Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0 A white Spirit bear fishing
Something reader KerryCan said in a comment one day got me thinking that I’d like to see if I could get a photo of Providence that could make a part of the city pass for rural. At first, I found only bland vacant lots left over from the rerouting of route 195. Then I went to Blackstone Park, where a treehugger tree and an ersatz teepee caught my eye.
The soccer-playing kid is in a suburban-looking area on the East Side, and the glowing tunnel is right downtown.
I thought the sandbox looked lonely.
In Massachusetts, I went looking for skunk cabbage and jack-in-the-pulpit plants, but it was too early. Not spring yet. I did hear peepers. And I saw gracefully rotting tree stumps, a bird on a mailbox, and a wonderful rainbow.
Shared interests can bridge cultures. The Guardian‘s Jim Cable offers up a nice example in his report on “two plantsmen in Israel – one Jewish, the other Muslim – [and their] mission to save their region’s rare native species.”
He writes that Oron Peri, a Jewish garden designer who lives halfway between Haifa and Nazareth, has long partnered with Mansour Yassin, a Muslim, on landscape work. Now they are collaborating to share a large collection of Eastern Mediterranean native species with other plant enthusiasts. He says their affiliation is perfectly natural in the part of Israel where they live.
“Yassin adds, ‘We have the same ideas about relationships between Christians, Jews and Muslim people. We don’t hold to stereotypes about where you come from.’
“Peri realised the time had come to formalise the way he shared plants with other enthusiasts. So Seeds of Peace was born; a scheme where seed sales of garden-worthy bulbous plants support conservation of rare species. Yassin is gradually matching up botanic names with the Hebrew he naturally uses for plants he has known since playing in the mountains as a boy. …
“For Peri, the collection represents 20 years of travel and botanising, specialising in plants from the Mediterranean and Middle East. Indigenous populations have suffered due to tourism (particularly on the Greek islands and Cyprus) and illegal harvesting for the bulb market. Some plants are endangered in the wild, with no conservation scheme to protect them in their native country. They give these refugees, as Peri refers to them, a place to thrive and set seed.” Read about the work here.
Photo: Yadid Levy
Oron Peri, left, is Jewish and his Seeds of Peace partner, Mansour Yassin, is Muslim. Here they examine cyclamen in their beds in Kiryat Tiv’on.
There are people who like to cook and people who like to fish, but if they are not in the same family like John’s in-laws, the caught fish may never get eaten.
Fortunately, there are now a growing number of services that will enable you to catch your fish and eat it, too.
Diane Bair and Pamela Wright describe a few at the Boston Globe.
“Fishing charters are wildly popular along the sunset coast of Florida. The Gulf Coast, from St. Pete Beach to Clearwater, has some of the best deep sea fishing in the country and plenty of days of sunshine and calm seas. It’s dubbed the ‘grouper fishing capital of the world,’ but mackerel, snapper, barracuda, tuna, dolphin, wahoo, hogfish, and more are also plentiful.
“Most charters guarantee that the boat will bring back fish, and they often include free fish cleaning and ice. But what do you do with your catch if you’re staying at a vacation resort or local hotel? These restaurants in the St. Pete Beach area will gladly prepare your keepers: You catch ’em, they’ll cook ’em.”
The reporters list these spots: Friendly Fisherman (150 John’s Pass Boardwalk, Madeira Beach, 727-391-6025, www.gofriendlyfisherman.com); Sea Critters Café in St. Pete Beach (2007 Pass-a-Grille Way, 727-360-3706, www.seacritterscafe.com); Conch Republic Grille (16699 Gulf Blvd., N. Redington, 727-320-0536, www.conchrepublicgrill.com); and Maritana Grille (3400 Gulf Blvd., 727-360-1882, www.loewshotels.com/don-cesar/dining). Descriptions of the delicious preparations here.
My husband and John have often brought back bluefish after going out on G Willie Make-It’s charter. G Willie (Bill) cleans the fish you want and sells the fish you don’t want to local restaurants.
Not everyone loves bluefish, but the first one of the year says summer has arrived.
Photo: Pamela Wright for the Boston Globe
Eating on the outside deck at Sea Critters Café, where you can get the fish you caught turned into a meal.
Here’s something fun from the reliably intriguing website This Is Colossal: playful chalk drawings on Ann Arbor, Michigan, sidewalks.
Kind of makes a person want to try it.
Christopher Jobson writes, “Michigan illustrator David Zinn (previously) has brightened the streets of Ann Arbor with his off-the-wall (or technically on-the-wall) chalk drawings since 1987. The artist works with chalk or charcoal to create site-specific artworks that usually incorporate surrounding features like cracks, street infrastructure, or found objects. Over the years he’s developed a regular cast of recurring characters, including a bright green monster named Sluggo and a ‘phlegmatic flying pig’ named Philomena.”
Update 10/10/17: John sent me another link to this artist. Check it out for more great pictures. And the coolest part is that he learned about it from his son’s Highlights for Children magazine, which my husband has beeb sending.
Well, this is a new one on me: a bookstore that sells only one title at a time.
Amy X. Wang reports at a website called Quartz that in September 2014, “Yoshiyuki Morioka, a bookseller who had been running a store in Tokyo, Japan, for 10 years, had a curious thought. Lots of customers, it seemed, dropped in during book launches and other events to buy the same title; others often appeared overwhelmed by all the extra variety. So why not start a bookstore that only sold one book at a time?
“Now, Morioka Shoten — Morioka’s new venture that threw open its doors in Tokyo’s trendy Ginza shopping district in May 2015 — operates around that very principle. The store stocks multiple copies of only one carefully selected tome each week …
“Takram, the design engineering firm that helped Morioka put together the look of his new store, says the experience highlights ‘the importance of a physical venue in the era of digital reading.’
“Books that have been displayed so far include Swedish-Finnish author Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver, Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, and works from well-known Japanese writers like Mimei Ogawa and Akito Akagi. Each title is displayed for six days in a row—Tuesday to Sunday—and then swapped out for a new book.
“And things are going quite well at the quiet little store. According to Morioka, Morioka Shoten has sold more than 2,000 works since it opened. Proof, then, that readers seeking deep, personal relationships with physical books are still around across the world.” More here.
You know, that last sentence strikes a chord. I was just explaining to a friend today how this blog resulted from my daughter asking if I would apply my love of blogging to support the vibe of the jewelry company she founded, which emphasizes deep, personal relationships.
If you’ve never clicked on the Luna & Stella site (or even if you have), please do now. Suzanne and Erik have posted a steady stream of new birthstone-jewelry designs and charms over the five years I’ve been blogging. Each one is full of meaning.
Photo: Takram/Miyuki Kaneko The one-room bookstore Morioka Shoten in Tokyo
Several civic-minded design and construction businesses have once again entered the Rhode Island Community Food Bank‘s annual Canstruction contest. The display at the Providence Place mall combines fun with a message about hunger in the state and the need for canned goods.
LLB Architects of Pawtucket and Shawmut Design and Construction of Providence are the geniuses behind the display featuring the Left Shark, an Internet celebrity since one of singer Katy Perry’s backup dancers at the 2015 Super Bowl went rogue.
I remember seeing another Canstruction event last year, at the Boston Society of Architects. It’s easy to see why this sort of work needs to be done by designers and builders: it’s really hard to make cans look like anything but cans. The BSA cans were donated to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank in Lowell.
Here’s an idea that could give a welcome boost to underprivileged children: a free connection to the Internet at their home.
It seems that Google, in the spirit of its discontinued motto “Don’t be evil,” is piloting a new public service.
Matt Hamblen at Computerworld reports, “Google Fiber [recently] announced free gigabit Internet service to residents of selected public housing projects connected to its fiber optic service in U.S. cities.
“The program was launched at West Bluff, an affordable housing community in Kansas City, Mo., where 100 homes have been connected to Google Fiber. Across the Kansas City area, Google is now working with affordable housing providers to connect as many as nine properties that could reach more than 1,300 local families.
“Google described the program as an extension of its work with ConnectHome, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Obama administration. …
“In addition to free Internet, eligible residents will work with ConnectHome partners like Connecting for Good and Surplus Exchange to be able to purchase discounted computers and learn new computer skills, Google said.” More here.
Depending on what the housing developments are like to live in and whether they provide supports like the Family Self-Sufficiency program to move people to independence, this could be a useful piece of the difficult poverty-reduction puzzle. So, good on Google!
Photo: ConnectHome A resident of West Bluff in Kansas City and her son are among the first of 1,300 families in area affordable housing units to receive Google Fiber gigabit Internet service at no cost.
I love thinking about sunlight and shadow. Dickens uses them a lot for Richard and Ada’s story in Bleak House — maybe my favorite book of all time.
“So young, so beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through the sunlight … So they passed away into the shadow, and were gone.”
Many of you know what the decades-long case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce did to Richard and Ada’s bright hopes. I’ve come to think that it was not so much Richard’s fevered expectations of an inheritance that brought the most sorrow, but his need to fix blame. Blame is corrosive.
When I interviewed a formerly homeless Marine last week and he started telling me about how upset he was that something bad had just happened with his benefits, I was touched by how he kept reminding himself how to cope, saying, “I believe in fixing the problem — not the blame.” Words to live by.
The first three photos were taken early Saturday morning, when the effects of sunlight and shadow were especially breathtaking. (I can never resist that old graveyard. You’ve seen it here in all weathers.)
The next three were taken at the playground near John’s house. Every few months, new creatures appear on that tall tree stump. (You’ve seen previous creature photos, too, on this blog.)
When I was growing up in Rockland County, New York, my parents liked to buy art from artist friends and, when possible, offer other kinds of support. They hired the Hungarian-American artist André Dugo, for example, to paint a portrait of my brother Bo and me sitting in an armchair and reading one of the artist’s children’s books. We often read his book Pete the Crow or the books featuring a cardinal and a blue jay, or the one about the calf that ate the wrong kind of grass and puffed up like a balloon.
One day, Mr. Dugo came to our house to watch television with us. (We had one of the first TVs because my father was writing a story on Dumont for Fortune magazine.) We kept asking Mr. Dugo what he would like to see, and he kept saying he just wanted to see whatever we ordinarily watched.
As we worked our way through several programs, Mr. Dugo noted our reactions, sometimes asking questions.
Not many months after, a children’s book came out. It was called Tom’s Magic TV, and its premise was that a boy traveled through the TV screen and into adventures with sharks, circus clowns, puppets, cowboys and spacemen. Bo and I were not mentioned. The mother didn’t look like my mother. This was an early exposure to children’s-literature research — or poetic license.
I’m pretty sure that Gene Autry was the model for the cowboy adventure.
Last Sunday, Pam and I walked over to the library to hear an acclaimed poet read at the poetry series. Ross Gay, who lives in Indiana, had just published his poetry collection Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude and was doing readings around New England.
Glenn Mitchell, who organizes the library’s poetry series, was able to publish an advance interview with Gay in the local paper.
She wrote, “Gay says his inspiration for writing poems is a determination to practice joy as a discipline. He is a finalist for the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry and the NAACP Image Award in Poetry.
“Gay also works in the field of literary sports writing. He is a founding editor of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin’, a publication of reflective essays written by well-known poets, essayists and fiction writers along with podcasts of contributors.
“An associate professor of poetry at Indiana University, Gay is residing in Cambridge while a 2015-16 Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.”
Here is what Gay told Mitchell about the poet that inspired him to write poetry: “[Amiri] Baraka’s poems were such a clear articulation of the kind of alienation I was experiencing when I went off to college — a kind of racial alienation and class alienation — that I had no idea how to begin to talk about other than wanting to break things. I knew I was full of rage (which I later knew was a version of sorrow, too), but I didn’t know how to put it into words, which Baraka’s work made it possible for me to understand was possible.”
To her question about gardening coming into his life and the difference it made, he says, “I think close looking, paying attention, going slow, a kind of training in receptivity — I think those are things I learn from the garden … I approach poems like that, usually. I like to listen to them as much as I try to impose my own will on them. … A garden or a poem is potentially a device for pulling people together, they are both food, I’m saying, which we might feed to each other.”
In his Sunday reading, Gay included a poem about strangers sharing figs from a tree unexpectedly flourishing near his Philadelphia home — a poem that expresses some of his thoughts about our history of racism and the possibility of goodness.
He says, “The poem ‘To the Fig Tree at 9th and Christian’ gets at it—gets at what it means for us to come together despite the brutal history we’ve inherited, or even enacted. I think that fig tree is a kind of mercy.”
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