In the case of Russia, I was quite familiar with both its history and culture before I arrived the first time, but I hadn't yet linked that knowledge to the more intimate understanding one gathers on the ground and in person. There is an amazing story of the poet Anna Akhmatova, standing in a line of women outside a prison during the Stalinist purges, all of them waiting in the remote hope of possibly seeing their jailed husbands. The women beside her knew she was a famous poet, and one whispered to her: "Remember this for us." Perhaps more than any other country, Russia is a place where history weighs mightily, and every individual's memory is laden, if not burdened, with the past. So I would say that despite what I knew of the country's history before I went, the most crucial and enlightening ideas were gathered from the stories people told me.
A collection of kids' letters to President BHO, Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country, includes such sage advice as:
"If I were president, I would help all nations, even Hawaii."
"1. Fly to the White House in a helicopter. 2. Walk in. 3. Wipe feet. 4. Walk to the Oval Office. 5. Sit down in a chair. 6. Put hand sanitizer on hands. 7. Enjoy moment. 8. Get up. 9. Get in car. 10. Go to the dog pound."
Some of the special advisors read their counsel to President Obama on this YouTube treat:
The World Beach Project, an online gallery of art made by all kinds of people, features stones gathered on beaches from around the globe. The project was devised by artist-in-residence Sue Lawty in association with the Victoria & Albert Museum. Building on the experience many of us have of creating patterns on beaches and shorelines, the WB Project combines "the simplicity of pattern-making with the complexities of shape, size, color, tone, composition, similarity and difference." It is open to anybody, anywhere, of any age.
Have a look. It's gorgeous. And if you want to participate at a beach near you, here are the rules. Yah man.
State-run China Central Television was broadcasting President Barack Obama's inauguration speech live—an extraordinary event in a country that usually adds a delay of several seconds to every broadcast, just in case—when President Obama said: “Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism….”
The simultaneous interpreter proceeded smoothly with her translation but her voice faded out with the rest of the President’s sentence. The picture cut from the Capitol to an awkwardly smiling news anchor who seemed unprepared for the camera to return to her. Apparently, she turned to a reporter in the studio for comment on President Obama’s economic challenges. The cutaway seemed to misfire. While many Chinese may not have noticed, the more alert were soon commenting on the Internets. One said: “Why did CCTV do this? Too timid.” Replays of the moment are available on YouTube:
Anna Quindlen recently wrote that "there are moments in history when a leader needs to be much more than a manager. He needs to unite, to inspire and to challenge. There's no better way to do that than by delivering a great speech about great matters."
Today, after an interminably long, dry season, eloquence is restored to the White House. Here's a sampling of fine words from former orators-in-chief:
The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. - George Washington, the nation's First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
Employed in the service of my country abroad during the whole course of these transactions, I first saw the Constitution of the United States in a foreign country. Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads prompted by good hearts, as an experiment better adapted to the genius, character, situation, and relations of this nation and country than any which had ever been proposed or suggested. - John Adams, 1797
Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. - Thomas Jefferson, 1800
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. - Abraham Lincoln, 1865, in the last days of the U.S. Civil War
Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. - Theodore Roosevelt, 1905
These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933
So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. - John F. Kennedy, 1961
:(photo) the crowd surrounding the east front of the nation's capitol, still under construction, during the first inauguration of president abraham lincoln, March 4, 1861.
The night before he was murdered, Martin Luther King warned, in his famous "I See the Promised Land" speech in Memphis, that "if something isn't done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed."
In "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," broadcast on Christmas Eve 1967 on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as part of the Massey Lectures, Dr. King acknowledged "that not long after talking about" the dream in Washington in 1963, "I started seeing it turn into a nightmare."
He spoke of the nightmarish conditions of Birmingham, where four girls were murdered in a church bombing a few weeks after his speech. He spoke of the punishing poverty that he observed in the nation's ghettoes as the antithesis of his dream, as were the race riots and the Vietnam War. King confessed that while "I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes," that "I still have a dream."
By 1967, Martin Luther King had stretched his dream to include the desire "that one day the idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the end of prayer, but rather the first order of business on every legislative agenda."
These speeches place Dr. King's dream in the broader context of his spiritual and moral evolution over the last three years of his life. Set free from the ideological confines of his "I Have a Dream" speech, King's true ethical ambitions were free to breathe through the words he spoke and wrote as he made his way to the promised land. Perhaps even more so than when he dreamed out loud in Washington in 1963, Dr. King's act of dreaming in 1967 was a courageous act of social imagination and national hope:
Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
Mes enfants listen to "Shed a Little Light," James Taylor's tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., every other day, on average (i.e., today we're listening to it nonstop).
Let us turn our thoughts today To Martin Luther King And recognize that there are ties between us All men and women Living on the Earth Ties of hope and love Sister and brotherhood— That we are bound together In our desire to see the world become A place in which our children Can grow free and strong. We are bound together By the task that stands before us And the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound.
I was checking out these excellent photos from Martin Kay and they had me waxing all nostalgic for the original The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), the film that gets my vote for the best sci-fi flick ever. (BTW, I've not seen the remake and I don't plan to, even though it features the luscious Jon 'Don Draper' Hamm. But again, why bother? Nothing could compare with the original. Care to disagree?)
The title of this post, Klaatu barada nikto, is a phrase from the film (the original!). Klaatu is the name of the humanoid alien protagonist (Michael Rennie) who arrives in Washington, DC, via flying saucer accompanied by an awesome silvery-foam-clad robot, Gort. We learn that Gort is a member of a race of super-robot enforcers invented to keep the peace of the galaxy. Gort will destroy the Earth if provoked.
Klaatu befriends Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and commands that, were anything to happen to him, she must utter the phrase, "Klaatu barada nikto," to Gort. In fact, Klaatu is taken to be a threat and, subsequently, he's hunted down and fatally shot. Helen reaches Gort (see YouTube clip below) and utters the three key words in that inimitably seductive voice of hers. Gort aborts his attack on the Earth, retrieves Klaatu's body, transports him to the saucer and revives him from death. Phew.
After Klaatu is "brought back," he steps out of the saucer and delivers the following ultimatum: I am leaving soon and you'll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. ... It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.
I think Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano should have a girls' night out and share a private screening of the film (the original!) in the situation room. Just sayin'.
:martin kay, UFO images, modelled in modo, lighting by environment only, comped in photoshop; klaatu & gort image via virgin media
A red wool suit in the wardrobe of Peter II, dating from 1727-1730, is richly embroidered in silver thread, characteristic of fashionable men’s dress for royalty and aristocracy throughout 18th-century Europe. Peter II was only 14 when he died. Most of the young ruler's clothes were made in France, as Russia had not yet developed the tailoring and textile-making expertise required to make western fashions. Many of the fabrics — silks, wools and linens — were imported from well-known European textile manufacturing centers. The coat bears the Star of the Order of St. Andrew, also worked in silver thread.
The underside of this snuff box (1754-61) bears the portrait of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich, later Peter III, and comes from the collection of the Shuvalov family. An art collector and founder of the Russian Academy of Arts, Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov was a favorite at the court of Empress Elizabeth Petronova. In 1917, a descendent of the family gave the box to the Moscow Armory.
Both pieces are part of the current V&A exhibition, Magnificence of the Tsars, on view through March 29.
What you see isn't necessarily what you get when you take photos with a Holga camera (as you probably know). For the most part, this is a good thing. Much of the fun is discovering where the Holga's trademark distortions and light-leaks take you. When Paris-based graphic designer Stephanie Kac is doing the shooting, the Holga produces intriguing, evocative images. Stephanie took these striking shots of NYC last spring. Aren't they swell?
I was shooting up some Selby last week and landed on images of Daniela Kameliotis's wondrous workshop. The gorgeous gold-drenched multicolored plumage (above) is but one piece (albeit a remarkably beautiful one) in her collection. (Sadly, I can't access The Selby today. Did I OD? Have I overstayed my welcome? What's happening? When it's all back up and I elbow my way through, I'll snag some more pics of Daniela's space. It amazes. I aspire to that level of creative exuberance and visual splendor in my surroundings.)
I have a notion that my primary visual cortex is overdeveloped; I tend to follow a string of visual associations when I see something that really strikes my fancy. Case in point: Daniela's feathers took me to Art Gray's shot of Jon Eric Riss's tapestry. And then on to the YSL multicolor feather coat that you see in both close-up and top-to-bottom below.
Please enjoy, come back for more ... and do let me know if/when Mr. Selby's place opens for business. 'Preciate that.
what do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
- george eliot
nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
- rumi
to me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.
- walt whitman
swoond projects in the works (click pics to link)
apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
- mark twain
tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- mary oliver
my favorite thing is to go where i've never been.
- diane arbus
you've gotta own your own days and
name 'em, each one of 'em, every one of 'em, or else the years go right by and none of 'em belong to you.
- herb gardner,
a thousand clowns
doubt is not a pleasant condition,
but certainty is absurd.
- voltaire
the world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
- w. b. yeats
sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes.
- tom robbins
enjoy your life. no curse hangs over you, nor did it ever. no devil chases after your soul. sing and dance and
be merry.
- christopher pike
...feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where we're holding back. they teach us to lean in when we feel we'd rather collapse and back away. they're like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we're stuck. this very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are.
- pema chodron
the relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.
- rollo may
we want to take it all in, for one last time, we want to eat the world with our eyes.
- margaret atwood
the same dream returned each night until i dared not to go to sleep and grew quite ill. i dreamed i had a child, and even in the dream i saw it was my life, and it was an idiot, and i ran away. but it always crept onto my lap again, clutched at my clothes. until i thought, if i could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps i could sleep. and i bent to its broken face, and it was horrible . . . but i kissed it. i think one must finally take one's life in one's arms.
- arthur miller, after the fall
i watched titanic when i got back home from the hospital, and cried. i knew that my IQ had been damaged.
- stephen king
they were nothing like the french people i had imagined. if anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgeable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.
- david sedaris
sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
- miles davis
to begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.
- diane ackerman
life is too precious to waste on fast reading; i bet neruda says something like that in his memoirs, but i haven't gotten to that part yet.
- teju cole
sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.
- pema chodron
b e a u t i m u s e
everybody needs beauty ... places to play and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
- john muir
have compassion for all beings,
rich and poor alike;
each has their suffering.
some suffer too much,
others too little.
- buddha
mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card i was dealt.
- kay redfield jamison
if there is one thing i've learned in thirty years as a psychotherapist, it is this: if you can let your experience happen, it will release its knots and unfold, leading to a deeper, more grounded experience of yourself.
no matter how painful or scary your feelings appear to be, your willingness to engage with them draws forth your essential strength.
- john welwood
experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. my God, do you learn.
- c. s. lewis
before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
- naomi shihab nye
confidence is ten percent hard work and ninety percent delusion.
- tina fey
our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.
- vladimir nabokov
we must have the courage to allow a little disorder in our lives.
- ben weininger
one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
- carl jung
let me keep my mind on
what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still
and learning to be
astonished.
- mary oliver
to emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
- paul klee
meditate.
live purely. be quiet.
do your work with mastery.
like the moon, come out
from behind the clouds!
shine.
- buddha
secretly, i wanted to look like
jimi hendrix, but i could never
quite pull it off.
- bryan ferry
no, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.
- stephen king
it is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.
- d. w. winnicott
what a mess we are, i thought.
but this is where any hope of improvement begins -
acknowledging the mess.
- anne lamott
i think oprah expected me to cry or something. she asked me if i wanted a hug. i said, "get away from me, you loon. i'm english."
- lady sarah graham moon
choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability - and that way, you may change the world.
- charles eames
YIN AND JUNG
who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.
everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.
when we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. we wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. but to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer.
- carl jung, the stages of life
the only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.
- eleanor roosevelt
the complexity of things - the things within things - just seems to be endless. i mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
- alice munro
art is the highest form of hope.
- gerhard richter
life is not easy for any of us. but what of that? we must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. we must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
- marie curie
in the matter of furnishing, i find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
- colette
love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
- sigmund freud
when you're arguing for an unpopular idea, there are three stages of truth: first, your opponents say it can't be true. next they say if it's true, it can't be very important. finally they say, well, we've known it all along.
- jonas salk
remember that you call on me today.
be near me, that i may remember you.
- shakespeare, julius caesar
you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
- spoken by atticus finch,
to kill a mockingbird
intense creative episodes are, in many instances, indistinguishable from hypomania.
- kay redfield jamison
here is the deepest secret
nobody knows.
here is the root of the root
and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky
of a tree called life;
which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide.
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.
i carry your heart.
i carry it in my heart.
- e. e. cummings
every day, every day i hear
enough to fill
a year of nights with wondering.
- denise levertov
hope begins in the dark,
the stubborn hope
that if you just show up
and try to do the right thing,
the dawn will come.
you wait and watch and work:
you don't give up.
- anne lamott
i try to lead as ordinary a life as i can. you can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.
- meryl streep
1 . 2 0 . 0 9
What a day.
What a country.
MLK 1 2 3
a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- martin luther king, jr.
labor to keep alive in your breast
that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
- george washington
if you hear a voice within you say
"you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
- vincent van gogh
certainly it's not just a visual experience - it's an emotional one.
in an informal way i have seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive to words and disoriented and out of it. i think
that recognition of visual art can be very deep.
- oliver sacks
temper zeal with human kindness.
- robert jackson
transcendentalese
i should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom i knew as well. unfortunately, i am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.
- henry david thoreau
if your ship doesn't come in,
swim out to it.
- jonathan winters
wished
i want to lead the victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.
without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. this is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
- albert camus
poof
and above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
