I’ve been reading Jason Elliot’s book Mirrors of the Unseen, which is about time he spent in Iran (not long before the green revolution of June 20, 2009, was trampled).
He’s a lovely writer if a bit overwhelming with his ability to compress centuries of history. I liked his earlier book, too, on Afghanistan, An Unexpected Light.
In the car on Sunday I read aloud a section of Mirrors that describes Elliot’s extended stay with Louise Firouz, an American who married an Iranian in the 1960s and has lived in Iran ever since — despite stints in prison and twice having all her family’s property confiscated.
The part I read aloud was about how she had researched, rediscovered, and bred a small horse thought to be extinct, one that turned out to have an ancestor going farther back than the Arabian horse. It’s the little Caspian, which was finally found, in pitiful shape, near the Caspian Sea and in Turkmenistan.
Nowadays you can find lots of videos of these horses on YouTube. I thought I would include this video, which is from a Caspian stud farm in Sweden.
Did you read in the NY Times about England’s chewing gum artist?
“Ben Wilson, 47, one of Britain’s best-known outsider artists, has for the last six years or so immersed himself in a peculiar passion all his own: he paints tiny pictures on flattened blobs of discarded chewing gum on the sidewalks of London.” The article is sweet, and it shows that an original concept can delight people in large and small ways.
After he “became friendly with the workers in the discount general store that replaced the Woolworth’s, [he] painted a message of love on behalf of Syed Miah, a cashier there who had had a fight with his girlfriend.
“ ‘She thought maybe I’d stuck a sticker on the ground,’ said Mr. Miah, 32. ‘Then I explained that I’d had an artist come and do it. It was brilliant.’ “
A friend of mine has a new blog on economic education. He’s a very good writer with a great sense of history and how history repeats itself. Here he notes that there have always been vested interests in America giving immigrants a hard time. Those immigrants become integral to the fabric of American life, but sometimes their descendants forget the struggle and turn against newer immigrants. We need to remind ourselves of how well things have worked out when newcomers have gotten education, started businesses, hired people, run for office, invested in communities.
Personally, I love to think of America as built by immigrants. Besides, Erik is from Sweden and my daughter-in-law’s parents came from Egypt.
If you sign up to make comments on my friend’s blog, I know he will be happy. I myself am happy when people make comments.
Many of Suzanne’s college classmates went into careers that involve helping people. I think that for Liz, who works at the organization Facing History and Ourselves (helping classrooms and communities link the past to moral choices today), it just comes naturally. She has also been an energetically thoughtful friend, who noted a freshman Suzanne’s wistfulness over missing an Easter egg hunt and decided to create one for her. Every college year. Liz later managed the details and complexities of Suzanne’s American-Swedish wedding. (Liz said it was a piece of cake as she was used to Facing History and Ourselves events with zillions of participants.)
Now I am reading about the girls’ classmate Emily, who works for a group that assists people who are seeking asylum in the United States.
Writes Jesse of the hotel maid who lost DSK his job, “That she lied on her claim for asylum has been covered with partiuclar zeal. But experts and those familiar with such claims say that dishonesty is common when it comes to refugees—not because they’re intentionally trying to scam the system, but because the way such claims are processed and determined puts asylum-seekers in a position where they may feel they have no other choice.
“ ‘It’s hard for those of us who haven’t gone through those experiences to imagine what it would be like to continually relive something that caused you to flee your country,’ says Emily Arnold-Fernandez, of Asylum Access. ‘When the issue of potentially falsifying testimony comes up, it tends to paint all asylum claimants in black and white. Either you tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 100 percent of the time, or you’re not telling the truth and you have some sort of nefarious purpose. I don’t think that the reality is that stark.’ ”
I always like visiting the arts and crafts events on the lawn of the historical society.
Sometimes I come home and tackle my own crafts. The collage cards are generally for birthdays, anniversaries, and sympathy. If I remember, I make Xerox copies for future occasions. I’d be happy to post some readers’ photos of their art or their crafts. E-mail me your photos at suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.
While I was taking my morning walks elsewhere, The Greenway seems to have sprouted sculpture — and in the very spot where mere weeks ago, a sign warned “Grass is Resting” and invited me to hang my art on the rope.
The DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., is behind the transformation.
I love that the creator of the toothy beaver and the literary opossum is called Otter-Something. Tom Otterness.
Summer concerts on the lawn in front of the library mean lawn chairs and group participation. Toddlers in pajamas gradually get up their courage to dance. Young gymnastic girls do sudden cartwheels and back flips, then walk away casually, pretending not to check if anyone was impressed.
Last Wednesday, the featured band, PanNeubean Steel, consisted of steel drum, electric guitar, drums, and saxophone.
The band played some New Orleans jazz. “The Saints Go Marching In” brought back memories of my brother Will playing his sax every New Year’s Day to family acclaim.
Caroline A. and Suzanne met during the senior year of high school, when Caroline left her home in Sweden to spend a semester in the U.S. After graduation, we took Suzanne on a trip to Stockholm. We hit the tourist spots, hung out with Caroline’s family, and helped celebrate her birthday with a pig roast.
Sweden made a big impression on us all, especially Suzanne. Later when she was attending business school in Switzerland, she met Erik, and that was that.
Nowadays I have Swedes as Facebook friends, which forces me to rely a good bit on Google Translate. that can be fun but puzzling. When Caroline writes —
“Tack så mycket! Nu ska vi bara ta kål på det förbaskade viruset som belägrat min kropp och sen fira lilla mig. :)” —
I can sort of understand Google’s “Thank you very much! Now we just kill the damn virus that besieged my body and then celebrate the little me. :)” — I especially understand the universal emoticon.
With “Finsk midsommarsoppa: häll upp vodka i en blommig sopptallrik,” I barely need Google Translate to tell me it means “Finnish midsummer soup: Pour the vodka into a floral soup plate.”
But more often than not, I find myself skirting the edge of a dark intrigue. Consider “och inte lär de sig. Plattsättaren la ner jobbet direkt då uppdragsgivaren lämnade landet. Nu är det hot som gäller eftersom vädjan inte fungerar,” which means, says Google, “rather, they learn. Flat assembler put down the job immediately when the client left the country. Now is the threat posed by the appeal as not working.” Hmmm. I believe an international crisis is brewing. Hard to say where, though.
The first art opening of the season at Jessie Edwards Studio is great not only for the art but for catching up with friends after the long winter.
I greeted David and asked why he hadn’t been at the 350th anniversary festivities, given that his family goes back so far on the island. He said he had been putting in lobster pots that day. He has put in 30 this year. Last Saturday he pulled 11 lobsters, which he doesn’t think is much for 30 pots. His extended family eats them all.
Another friend is writing a biography of his parents, which he intends to self-publish. He hopes the cost doesn’t keep him from getting the words that he wants on his tombstone: “I broke even.”
Given the crowds at openings and all the catching up, you have to be pretty determined to see the art. I nudged my way through temporary gaps and checked out everything.
Kathleen Noonan Lang was showing her island monotypes. See them here. I especially liked her “Sailor’s Delight,” with its rosy evening sky reminiscent of the weather rhyme “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”
When my cousin Sally had a show of her monotypes in Connecticut, I asked her to describe her approach. She wrote:
“To make a monotype, you basically create an image on a sheet of plexiglass and run it through a press. There are dozens of techniques but my tools of choice are primarily paper towels and Q-tips; very sophisticated. I roll on a layer of ink on the plate and then push it around with the paper towels and Q-tips, run it through a press and then work on the plate again and print another layer. Often I’ll develop several prints at one time, working on the ghost impression left over on the plate, rolling on a transparent base to raise the viscosity of the remaining ink (as my father would have said), and print it again. That’s the short version. Most of my monotypes have 3-4 layers. It is a very exciting process and there is always an element of surprise as when the paper is pulled from the plate.”
I like that sort of surprise. It’s kind of like writing a blog post and being surprised by where your train of thought leads you. In playwriting class we are encouraged to surprise ourselves that way.
I wanted to include some clay art from Suzanne here, but she says she hasn’t been taking pottery long enough to have anything to display. Her brother said, “How about the shell she painted for my birthday?”
In case you find yourself with too many lobster pots, consider this approach, suitably embellished with the U.S. flag for the Glorious Fourth. (If you don’t live in the U.S., you could skip the flag.)
There is quite a variety of flowers here. The blue ones on tall stems in the front are called chicory by most people but Ragged Sailor in Rhode Island.
If you have any creative ways you have retired your own lobster posts, do leave a comment.
James is an Irish poet, widely considered part leprechaun. Every few years he comes to stay with his cousins for a couple weeks, across the street from my house. James is on the left in this photo, which I took at the Fourth of July parade.
James has two main modes of conversation: storytelling and poetry recitation. It is a pure delight to chat with him. As we waited for the parade, he narrated pages of Irish history, including dates, and recited from W.B. Yeats and our own Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others.
Earlier, he was sitting on his cousins’ front porch and saw a young woman he knows coming across the street. He was moved by the way she walks, as he told me, and with a kind of poetic spontaneous combustion, intoned on the spot:
Meran, fairest maid art thou,
Lovely is thy stride.
My heart goes out to thee
As ebbs the great sea tide.
But, ah, my kind Meran, I’ll not forget thee.
Nor the kind words you said unto me.
James has self-published a couple books of lore in his unique style. He and his brother, both lifelong bachelors, sell peat. On certain Sundays, James bikes 18 miles to the ruins of an old monastery, where he narrates the history for visitors. Then he bikes 18 miles home. In any kind of weather. James is 73.
I must have spaced out in the ’80s because I had no idea that Suzanne loved watching a cartoon show called “Jem and the Holograms.” The TV was in the basement, but still …
One of the great things about going to the beach with your toddler grandson is seeing it through his eyes and remembering your own early experiences.
I remember the first time I went to Fire Island and played in the tide pools on the broad, sandy beach. My brother and I didn’t want to leave, and my parents also seemed relaxed and playful.
This morning I asked my in-law children whether they recalled any early beach memories. My daughter-in-law remembered an overcast week on Cape Cod, where she and her younger sisters liked climbing on a rocky jetty that stretched out into the water along the sand.
Erik, growing up in Sweden, didn’t see a lot of sandy beaches but has lovely summer memories of the islands of the Archipelego — climbing on the rocks and exploring. He also spent a lot of time on the water in boats and remains an avid sailor.
Here is Erik’s nephew climbing the rocks on the Swedish seacoast as Erik did at that age.
Here is my grandson with his mom yesterday. He was crazy about the ocean. And although he is not quite walking yet, he held hands and ran like mad along the sand, shrieking for joy.
Suzanne began her retail career working summers just a few hours a week at a tiny toy store called Mouse House where her brother, John, had worked before. Between Mouse House and leaving college, there were at least two clothing stores and many restaurants. When she graduated from college, she worked for a popular clothing manufacturer in New York, in the merchandising group. One of her tasks was to make up names for lingerie colors. A particular color she remembers was a shade of pink that she called “flirt.”
The NY Times just published an amusing article on the accelerating trend of naming colors to evoke an idea or a mood. There is an art to it.
“At Valspar, located in a Chicago high-rise near O’Hare airport, colorists can meet in ‘vignette’ rooms that encourage storytelling. One resembles an outside deck, replete with a porch chair and mural of Wrigley Field. Ms. Kim assigns the colorists homework, like browsing certain magazines and blogs. One, called colourlovers.com, allows users to create and share their own palettes; among more than one million offerings are I Feel Sorry for You and When Time Ran Out. They also watch movies and visit stores. And a few times a year, they head downtown for a big brainstorming session at a loft building called Catalyst Ranch and its brightly colored meeting spaces, which are intended to help employees think creatively. …
“Taryn Look, 25, an actress, who was checking out Home Depot’s Behr collection the other day, rolled her eyes at some of the names. ‘I wonder how much these people get paid,’ she mused, glancing at Genteel Lavender, a color
she said she would rebrand My Gay Best Friend. But she did pause at a color named Lightweight Beige, and soon she was telling a story about when her parents met. Her father told her mother that he liked her in beige, and so she swapped her once-colorful wardrobe for one that was all beige. Ms. Look said she would rename the color My Mother, After She Met My Dad.” Read more.
This reminds me of the poet Marianne Moore being asked to brainstorm names of cars. She came up with Turtle Top, but the idea was not adopted.
Use the comments feature to suggest a name for a color? I’ll start. How about a sparkly blue called “Tanya Running through the Sprinkler”? Or a dark purple called “Black Fly Season.” Or a gold-orange called “At Last the Missing Manuscript.”
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