First, I turned sixty! Wow. I seldom think of age but this one crept up on me and really couldn’t be ignored. Several months ago I considered just shoving the whole thing out of my mind but thought that really wouldn’t do. It’s something to be celebrated! Sixty years and all the people and places, all the phases of good and what seemed like not so good but was good all the same, everything with its purpose to bring us a little closer to ourselves, to real life and laughter. I thought of throwing a big party to celebrate all of those years only to discover that several friends would be away traveling at the time. I didn’t want to postpone. A birthday must be celebrated on the day, don’t you think? Anyway, I’m not really a thrower of big parties. I’m a thrower of many, many little parties so that’s what I did. I was very happy that my brother and his wife could join us from New York—so good to have them here with us. We all celebrated with a few fine friends in a fabulous South American restaurant, Casa de Pedro—the band played, the food was great and the wine flowed! A great night! And my beautiful children gave me a brand new bicycle and a helmet! It’s great to be sixty! To know who I am—who you are, that we’re all so fine. Onwards!

We’re just back from Montreal where we visited my dear old Mom who is still laughing at the age of eighty-nine. I think she’s laughing more than ever, truth be told—the bright side of senility, if you do it right. God bless her. She grows sweeter and sweeter. We had dinner with my childhood friend and her husband—many, many laughs as usual as well as crazy memories of our childhoods. I like to live in the present but with an old friend like this the past jumps in once in a while—so long ago but part of who we’ve become. I had lunch too with another old friend, aged 85, who was spry enough to come out to eat after getting out of hospital only a couple of weeks ago. Here’s to friendship in all its permutations!

We saw Leonard Cohen in concert at Place des Arts—truly, truly great and he’s 73! He’s from Montreal and expressed his thanks to that wondrous city which has been, he said, such an inspiration for him. It’s a city that loves art and artists, a very fine thing and not at all common, I have to say. It allowed those of us who came of age there to conceive of lives that might not otherwise have seemed as sublime as they actually are! Anyway it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen—so interesting to see him in the awareness he has now performing songs he wrote many years ago which are still brilliant, sharp and moving. His voice was strong and clear and the band was superb. Tears streamed down people’s faces when he sang Hallelujah. And did you ever think you’d see Leonard Cohen skip on stage? There was a big smile on his face the whole night. He was one happy man and we were happy too. I’ll never forget it.

And now home. The wee garden is bursting with life—lilies in bloom alongside nicotania, impatiens, geraniums and all sorts of other colorful things. And my five big pots of herbs and vegetables are surprising me everyday. Tomato plants are well over four feet tall, beans and peppers well over a foot and herbs all filling out. We’ve already had several salads with our own city-grown lettuce! And we installed a compost bin. It’s black plastic which holds the heat and composts matter more quickly than an open pit—very good in the city on a small plot. Between that and our town’s newly expanded recycling program we’re hardly putting out any trash at all now. Another hallelujah.

Just before we left for Montreal I got the inspiration that I need to get a studio. I’ve worked as a graphic artist and done a lot of writing for many years. I’ve also made paintings and been in numerous exhibitions. Curiously I sold a painting last week to a Boston collector when she saw it on the site of one of the venues where I’ve twice shown my work. I love it when things happen like that, without effort. It was a wee kick in the pantaloons! Not that I will change what I do. I will continue to write but a studio will give me more opportunity to do art too. No reason we can’t do both. So we’ll see if I can find one soon. Meanwhile I carry on.

So, my friends, wishing you happy summer adventures! I’ll be back here August 1rst after a trip to New York City. In the meanwhile please take good care of yourselves and don’t forget your sunscreen! And happy Canada Day! A fine and gentle country it is—another birthday to celebrate! Canada is now 141 years old. Just a baby as countries go but a wise one, precocious really. One day ll the countries in the world will take care of their people. They’ll see the baby had it right.

JK did not talk about Harry Potter, except obliquely. What she did speak about was failure and imagination. When she wrote Harry Potter she was in the midst of what felt like a massive failure. Her brief marriage had failed, she had no job, no home of her own, only an infant daughter whom she adored. She had nothing but a big idea and decided to go for it. Failure, she said, was the firm foundation underneath her feet. Though she had nothing, she was still alive, still carrying on. And, I think it’s true, if you’ve not gone out into the wilderness on your own, you don’t get to find that amazing strength that we all have within. What I found inspirational though was the way she didn’t second guess herself, she didn’t come up with Plan B—she hunkered down and wrote the first volume of what became the largest selling series in history.

And it’s not the sales numbers that matter but the fact that she got kids reading and thinking about the presence of evil in the world and how to deal with it. In her speech she said imagination was something only humans have and it’s the ability to see ourselves in the situation of others. She urged the newly minted Harvard graduates to take this to heart as they stepped into the world.

“That is your privilege, and your burden,” she said. “If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better.”

“We do not need magic to change the world,” she continued. “We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: We have the power to imagine better.”

We came home chilled to the bones, made cups of tea and put on our wool socks. It wasn’t until I’d thawed out that I thought how fantastic it is that when real magic happens on this planet it’s because we hold fast to our dreams and act on them! Dream on! And now back to work!

The sun is shining, the temperature is now in the stratosphere, five huge pots of tomatoes, beans, peppers, lettuce, arugula and herbs are planted and sitting quite happily on the patio. Peonies and roses are blooming. Summer is here.

Forty years ago, Yoko and John Lennon created a series of events to bring awareness to peace. John Lennon wrote the gorgeous anthem, Imagine, and invited us to imagine what a world in peace might be like. As necessary to do now as then.

I lived in Montreal at the time that John and Yoko spent a week in bed in a hotel there for peace. It was incredibly exciting—imagine that! It was exciting that two artists would spend a week in bed in the name of peace and the media hovered around like lightening had struck. Funny and great. It felt that peace was within our grasp back then but the people in power are still living in fear. Last fall Yoko created the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland, in conjunction with the Museum of Art—a beautiful beam of light that arises out of a wishing well and shoots towards the heavens. We’re all invited to send in a wish for peace that will be planted in the ground around the well. This is art.

For the last six or seven years a whole segment of humanity who dreams of and desires peace has remained more silent than we might have imagined possible. The Buddha says that everything is perfect and even in this most discouraging moment something new is being born—a new consciousness, courage, art. We’ve been reflecting and gathering steam. There’s so much that’s changing on the planet right now, so much that needs our care and our courage. Sometimes one radical emblem—a song, a book, a peace tower—shifts attention to the truth of our infinite capability and generates both energy and change.

The lights are on in the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik to announce that so many on this planet love and respect each other. Maybe we can each beam a little light up.

Check it out—Imagine Peace.

As I’m not going to be posting for a while I’d like to leave you with this video about consumption on our planet and how we might all contribute to making this a green planet again. The video is by Annie Leonard and she does an amazing job of explaining the straight-line model of consumption we have had for the last fifty or sixty years, a pattern that must now change if our children and children all over the world are to live on a non-toxic planet with the possibility of happiness. There is so much that each of us can do right now, as she explains. So, this is a happy video and gives us all a way to contribute to the planet and create a new earth. Thanks for watching!

The Story of Stuff

Right from the start my wondrous students proved this and more. They did things that far exceeded their actual skill levels when given a set of parameters to explore. We worked together and gave ourselves room to do whatever it was we were going to do without judgment. We looked for the good in everything we did and found it. We also looked for just what it was we were doing and teased it out from a million possibilities and in the process came to know ourselves a little better, I think. Everyone’s skill levels increased rapidly because they weren’t splashing around in shallow waters but diving into the deep end and realizing that they could at least float if not swim a huge distance. But learning to swim is easy once you realize you can float.

It’s been so amazing for me to witness this and so affirming of what I think life is all about—becoming people of peace and joy. It’s been fun too and fun to me is a high art as is anything that creates good energy here on the planet. But class is out now for the summer and I’m going to take a break from blogging. There will be other things to write about, I’m sure, in time. Right now though there are many things that need doing—a writing project nearly done and another one in the works that involves art, a tiny garden that needs tending and which now includes pots of vegetables, and some greening of our old house. The latter involves starting a compost, installing a new side door to insulate better from the cold, even installing a stone panel in front of the living room window that will act as a passive solar heater when the sun pores in and the temperatures outside are frigid. There’s travel coming up too and visitors arriving from out of town.

So, for a while, I’ll be gone fishin.’ I’ll report in at the beginning of each month. Many things are changing and Artwala Road may or may not morph into something else, I’m not sure yet. I’m so grateful that you’ve shown up here and for your comments. They’ve been so interesting and fun. I love to hear from you so please email to stay in touch and wishing you all a happy, productive and relaxing summertime!

When we did get to drawing we each did something totally different. We worked large again and, curiously, what had been so energizing the previous couple of weeks seemed a bit daunting, even draining, this time. None of us did stellar work. We weren’t that focused and I didn’t give direction. Often direction really does help but it was good to see just what we would do without it too. On person did a kind of narrative drawing that told the story in a visual way of things she was thinking about. Another felt that her first attempt at a piece simply didn’t work so she stopped and started on something else. My own piece was the beginning of an exploration I will likely continue but in its first expression was way too busy and muddy. I’ll do some new things next time and the director of the center has offered to give us a model which will be great to draw from too.

So—Saturday was just a low-key kind of day. Now we break for summer and, as luck would have it, summer arrived today, right on time! So beautiful to be outside in the warm sunshine today. I pootled around the North End, the Italian area of Boston, with my wonderful daughter and had a great lunch at a tiny little place on Hanover Street. So many visual treats, especially the new park that now stands where that ugly overpass used to be. And tomorrow I’ll get some more soil and plant the last of my tomatoes and a few beans in pots on the patio, maybe even have dinner outside. It’s time to chill a little here!

But the others all did brilliant stuff and amazed themselves, I think.  Something about working big has liberated everyone from excessive care and fiddly obsessiveness, especially when we are working with time constraints.  This time we spent a couple of hours just drawing on our usual pads before attacking our larger piece so that left just an hour to spend on that.  There was no time to worry.  Besides we’d already immersed ourselves in the flow by loosening up on the smaller paper.  It’s always a question of getting out of the way of the mind and just relaxing into whatever is happening without judgment of the work or self.

One of our members said—”This is art yoga.”  It is!  We’re drawing but not forcing, not pushing beyond our limits.  We’re just going as close to our edge as possible, each week nudging ourselves just a little further.  We’re accepting ourselves just where we are.  It’s all perfect, all fine.  And we’re smiling.  Amazing things happen when we get out of our way.

Next Saturday is the last class then we break for the summer.  I hope the class will continue to work on their own until we meet again in September.  To me it’s not about producing art but actually practicing.  The practice is just as great as any object we make.  If we’re doing this in a yogic way we develop presence, being totally in the moment.  We develop non-judgment, total acceptance of what is— the messes we make and ourselves where we are.  And if we make messes we get to see where our edge is and  discern where we might go next time.  Plus, and I think this might be the best of all, we develop a little humor, which really is delight just being who and where we are.  All this from drawing!  These are pretty cool things to be able to take with you into whatever your world is.

I’ll report next week on the last class.  I’m in the final, final leg of my writing project which I hope to finish by mid-June.  Then it’s onto something new and I’ll report on that as the summer goes on.  Meanwhile the wee garden I envisioned is now being planted in pots.  With luck I’ll get the tomatoes in today then sit back and wait for the harvest!

I had that freedom once, as a kid, we all did. I had it as a very young artist, for a very short time. For all sorts of reasons I side-stepped away from the open declaration of whatever it was I cared about then. I became an observer, a studier of life, and that’s okay too. I like to think it’s all perfect and I’m thinking about it a fair amount because I will soon be sixty and that seems like so many years. Yes, it is a little odd to say it. It will take practice and I am starting here. I want to be open about who I am even if women were not appreciated for so long as they aged. I feel more creative and alive and centered now than ever. I do not think I’m too old to do the things I am doing. I still want to do things! It feels vital to me to contribute somehow to this world, especially now. And I still think, as I did in my twenties, that when I get up in the morning I get to make art and write about things that matter! I still think how I might send these things into the world as little tokens of lightness and I still send them. I think it’s all just right even though it is not quite as I thought it might be back then. Like every other artist I envisioned a rather grander kind of success than the one I achieved which has been fine and well-rounded and a little cagey. And I know, now that I’m almost sixty, just how lucky I was not to get the kind of success I envisioned back then! And when I really think about it I know I envisioned the big bucks rolling in rather later in life. Ahem. Well, never mind—now I feel rich anyway. I have so much that’s good in my life!

But I’m aware too that what I do now can never have the innocent freedom of my younger days. I feel a little nostalgia but can’t stop there. It doesn’t take us very far to dwell on or in the past. I’m just giving it a small nod as it sails by—like, it was nice knowing you, you wild, sweet, crazy girl!

Which brings me back to Cy Twombley. He’s even older than I am, for one thing, twenty years older, and he’s doing this amazing art still. Imagine. Art is fabulous like that—the gift that keeps on giving. If you give to it it gives back, over and over. We are very, very lucky those of us who have these things we love to do.

There were times when people thought Cy’s work was just scribbles, that it made no sense. He just kept doing it and, in fact, he used bigger and bigger canvases. Let’s take note of that. He was bold and brave. What an inspiration! If we’re going to try something new do it big! Make big mistakes if that’s what they’re going to be or maybe there’s no such thing as a mistake. Maybe there are just experiments. Maybe every honest gesture of our hand is worth something. I think Cy may be saying that too.

Because of this I’d really like to see this show. My mother-in-law lives in London so I go most years to visit. But now the exchange rate has become so unfavorable it seems almost prohibitive even when we have a place to stay. I will ponder a little more. There is work to be done here. Even if I don’t actually make it over I’m very excited because there will be a catalogue. I gave a Cy Twombley book I once owned to a dear artist friend some years ago and now it sells for $300. on Amazon. There’s nothing else affordable in print but soon there will be!

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.

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!!