Artwala Road

A chore-based day here and now almost supper time with absolutely no work done save for cutting the grass and planting a few blooms which does not count as work work. The soil test report came in this morning from U Mass regarding the quality of the earth in our back garden where I had grand visions of a small vegetable garden this summer. It was not good. Our plot has a medium lead content and our friend and neighbor Sally’s is even worse. The note said that it was recommended we NOT plant vegetables unless we want to grow an extra nose or something.

I emailed Sal who is on her way to China for work. Then I went to a fabulous Italian vegetable / plant market in our town called Russo’s to do some food shopping. It makes me happy just to be in that place because they have varieties of vegetables and fruits that I hardly recognize, all piled high and oh so fresh. AND it’s half the price of Whole Foods Market which has become so ridiculously overpriced. Why do they have to charge more for something than another place? Well, beats me. Anyway, back to Russo’s. They have almost but not quite everything that Whole Foods does, even goat’s milk and a wondrous cheese counter with hand-made tortellini stuffed with various cheeses and spinach etc. They have fresh baked bread too, whole grain, and sweet little tea cakes which are extremely yummy. I bought a tiny banana-pineapple one and had a slice with a cup of green tea late this afternoon just to make a good day even better. (I’d been for a long walk so the guilt factor did not intrude too much.)

AND outside at Russo’s they have rows and rows of pots and trays with herbs and veggies and flowers. I needed to buy a few geraniums and other annuals to put in pots around the place but, given the news about the soil, I did not expect to end up buying little parsley plants, cilantro, mint, basil, sage, several varieties of tomatoes and even lettuce—but I did! Tomorrow I will buy big pots for them and fill them with organic matter then hope that they’ll thrive. Gardening is a tad challenging in the city and after a winter indoors I just need to get out into the dirt. I’m hoping that a container garden on the patio will satisfy this yearning for nature and the desire to grow some of our own food. With luck, we’ll get to pick our own salads and even get a tomato sandwich or two!  Could be a $500. sandwich by the time I’m done with all these pots etc. but whatever.  All part of the fun!
Sal called from the airport in Chicago after she picked up the soil test news on her laptop. I was out at Russo’s so missed the call. I do hope she isn’t too disappointed but really it will give us lots more opportunities to support our local farmers at the markets this summer and that too is pretty damned fine. So, on we go. Tomorrow I’ll pick up a few more pots then post a photo or two next time when things are planted. It’s a rainy day here and looks like the weekend is meant to be the same. Perfect for my little plants! And maybe it will force me to do some work work tomorrow after the drawing class.

I scooted out to the art store after tea and bought some really big paper for everyone on sale at $1.29 a sheet. (Amazing price.)  Can’t wait to draw big again tomorrow. It’s our second to last class then the summer off to tend the plants and other things.

May 17th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (4)

Eliza Petrow, who put on the wonderful fundraiser for AIDS orphans in China last week in Cambridge, wrote to give me accurate details about the project. This is the project where they are working to care for AIDS orphans from a small village in China where the adults were infected by HIV when they gave blood to make money and the needles used were unsterilized. I thought some of you might like to know and also to hear that Eliza received a gift of $1,300. yesterday from a woman who was not even at the fundraiser.

Here is what Eliza wrote—

“The organization in China is called the AIDS Orphan Salvation Association (AOS). Because they do not have NGO status in the States, we borrowed another NGO, The Alliance for Children Foundation of Wellesley, who agreed to take donations on their behalf and not take any overhead. They have done that for AOS in the past so they agreed to do it again.

AOS was founded by a Chinese woman, Zhang Ying in 2004, but Dr. Kay Johnson gave Zhang Ying funds from her first book as a way to help Zhang Ying have the finances to start AOS. Kay has been working with AOS as kind of a volunteer since then, helping to get meds for the kids from the states as needed, and linking up other student volunteers to the organization.

My project, the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Treatment Support Project, is part of AOS- kind of a program within a program. It just focuses on the 36 HIV+ kids currently in AOS (there are over 500 kids in the organization but the others are not HIV+). Since they are the most vulnerable and needed the most support, I decided to focus my work on them. Kay has been a great help to me since she is the one who has the contacts to get the second line AIDS medications from the US and so I have left that part of the job to her.

There are two websites for the AIDS Orphan Salvation Association. The English version of the organization’s Chinese website is:

faaids.com

The organization in the US handling the donation also has a site and has some information about AOS on this site:

afcfoundation.org

Neither site has been updated in a long time to include specific information about the medical treatment support project, but they have a lot of information about the organization in general for those who want to read up on it. There are also some great photos and they explain the history of doing AIDS work with this population.

For those who would like to make a donation, the best way is to send a check to:

Alliance for Children Foundation
55 William Street, Suite G10
Wellesley, MA 02481

May sure to mark 5/8 AOS fundraiser on the check memo so that they will give 100% of donations (and take no overhead) to this project.

Alliance will send a letter to you for tax purposes once they receive the donation so be sure to include your address.”

So, this gives an idea of the way the support is structured and how you can make a donation!

The $1,300. Eliza received yesterday will care for 1.5 children for one whole year—that is housing, food, education, and medical supervision. The medication is provided by the Chinese government unless second line drugs are needed should resistance to first line drugs develop. In this case the drugs are provided by the U.S. With proper care they will be able to live full productive lives. If any of you, my fine, good readers, wish to make a contribution, small or large according to your means, it will be most welcome, for sure.
Eliza’s email ended with a little poem from Emily Dickinson—

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Such a nice gift to read those words. Sometimes it’s the small simple things we do that so enrich our own lives as well as those of others. Thanks Emily! And Eliza!!

May 15th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Leave a comment

Well, one thing for sure, I’m learning more in my drawing class than I’m teaching. On Saturday I brought in a roll of large white paper and cut off a piece about 3′ by 5′ for each person to draw on. We taped the paper onto the walls so we could actually look around and see what our fellow artists were doing as we drew. I brought in some new photographs culled from magazines—innocuous stuff like room interiors, landscapes, objects, people. Something for people to use to get going if they needed to.  But I told the class that we’d continue with our efforts in going towards abstraction—even if they proved to be efforts towards pushing a ‘realistic’ drawing towards expressive style. Too often we get caught up in thinking that drawing is about putting down some realistic image of something when, really, it’s just making marks and seeing what those marks might convey.

One thing the class has shown me is that when we see drawing as making marks then everyone can draw. And when people stop thinking about realism they free themselves to play around and appreciate their own hand in whatever it’s doing. It takes that appreciation to free ourselves from the awful constraints of judgment that really inhibit artistic development. I love realism in, say, an Edward Hopper. He could not have achieved what he did with a photograph or without the skills that he developed. He found something vital and moving to express with realism. He gave us something to think about with it and marked a moment in the evolution of cities and urban living, perhaps a universal moment. He saw a beauty in loneliness—that the person, in whatever state, can be dignified and may be perched even on the edge of communion with something larger than self. I feel that in his paintings.

But, unless we are called to express something in terms of realism it is not necessary to master it. Not to my mind anyway. We don’t need to get hung up on it. It is useful to practice drawing but I think it’s most useful to practice the pleasure that comes from doing. That’s where the creative process really works its magic.  The pleasure is something that fuels all of our lives.
Anyway, I ramble, but what really amazed me on Saturday was that working really big with just the suggestion that we consider moving towards abstraction opened everyone right up. Amazing drawings emerged. This is the second time this term we’ve worked really big and the same thing happened both times. I’m kind of gobsmacked. It’s making me think that we need to always think bigger and act bigger. It’s more freeing and more fun.

We also noted how great it was to be able to wander around the room and see what each person was doing, take a little inspiration and go back to our own work. We noted that none of us would have done the drawings we did if we hadn’t been working there together. There is a synergy that comes from working together that takes you further as Picasso and Matisse proved in their artistic friendship. It totally doesn’t matter that we become Picasso or Matisse. What matters to me is that we come to know our own free, fun selves. And, on Saturday, we did. Thanks to the wondrous artists in my class!!

May 14th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (4)

Last night we wet to a screening of a documentary film, ‘The Blood of Yangzhou District,’ about Aids orphans in China. The film won an Oscar for best short documentary on 2006 and tells the story of an impoverished rural village in China where residents sold their blood for money. The needles with which the blood was extracted were not sterilized and soon most of the adults in the village were infected with HIV/Aids. Some of their children were infected at birth and are, sadly, now orphans. When American aid workers arrived in this village they encountered squalid living conditions and people dying without any medical help at all. It was mostly children who were left and no one wanted to care for them because they have Aids.

It was heartbreaking to see these stories and to see the truly distressing conditions in which these people live. Although the Chinese government now provides medicine so that these children may become healthy and live normal lives there was still no one to care for them properly and to oversee their medical regimen until the arrival of the American organization, The Alliance For Children Salvation Association, founded by Dr. Kay Johnson in Boston. They designed a program in which the children were placed in foster families in cities so they might be situated near a hospital should they need help. They are each assigned a health worker to oversee compliance when it comes to taking the regular doses of medication they need to stay healthy. Their lives are vastly improved now from when they were first discovered in their villages, neglected and ill.

The film was presented as part of a fund-raiser for the kids by my daughter’s childhood friend, Eliza Petrow, who was instrumental in designing the program for their care. I felt so proud to know Eliza and to see the way she has grown into such a compassionate, wise and effective advocate for these kids and others. It’s the kind of thing that gives me a great deal of hope for this world. When I was a young woman few people thought of service careers. I’m truly in awe of what so many young people like Eliza and my own daughter, who is a teacher, are accomplishing.

There are so many worthy causes, it’s hard to know sometimes which to give to. I’ve decided to give to the ones that come my way as this has done. 100% of the donations go to helping these children. If you’d like to contribute please go to The Alliance For Children Foundation website. Pretty amazing to look at those smiling little faces.

May 10th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader, Spotted / Art on the Planet | Comments (2)