A Fun Project

Those who know me know that I am passionate about local farming and have been involved with CSAs in Lincoln MA for the 20+ years since we moved back here from Seattle. I was first introduced to CSAs and local farming in Seattle and was thrilled to find an Organic CSA with a tight community feel in the town of Lincoln, MA. During Covid that farm wound down. The head farmer was getting up there in years and farming is physically demanding. So I moved down the street to Mass Audobon’s Drumlin Farm and gradually became more involved. This winter they asked me if I would be interested in painting their new Donation Box. I said yes but I wanted to use eco-friendly paints and avoid acrylics which are plastic. I asked if they would be OK with me using Milk Paint and gave them a budget (I underestimated the cost…lesson learned…but they bought most of the paint I needed.

When I saw the box which was about the size of a honeybee hive box, I suggested that I paint the inside with honeycomb and bees and the outside I would paint pollinator plants. I originally thought I would paint a landscape with pollinator plants but as the project evolved the outside morphed as I thought about how much I love The Little Golden Book Field Guides. And so I researched and put pollinator flowers all around the outside of the box. I had never worked with milk paint before and the company “The Real Milk Paint Company” was very helpful answering all my questions about mixing colors and preparing the surface and what to use to seal it. The paint itself is magical. It doesn’t smell and cleans up easily. There was a bit of a learning curve getting the paint to mix properly and the need to sand between coats so I didn’t end up with streaks or cracks. But overall I was quite happy with how the box turned out. I delivered it today and I can’t wait to see how it looks all assembled and installed in the barn. They wanted it for GroundHog Day because they have a big even this Sunday and they even managed to get a GroundHog (LOL).

Want to buy some Jill's Art?

Want to own some Jill’s Art? Consider buying one of the Geli prints for $100 to help me fund more print-making and experimentation. All prints are $100 plus shipping. I can choose one for you or you can let me know if there is one you are specifically interested in. All prints are on BFK Rives paper that is 13.5” by 19.5”. Just send me me a message through the contact on this site.

Grief and processing

Funny how when you loose someone close to you everyone around you shows their true colors. Two people who are on my list of “difficult” people were true to form. And those I love and find special really showed up and continue to show up and have made me feel supported and loved during this challenging time.

OK so many in my peer Art Group posted self portraits last week. I gather they were doing self portraits in class with Joel. I have not done a self portrait in a while and since I had to clean up my still life because my daughter and family and my father were over for dinner on Sunday I decided it was time to look in the mirror. What I was not prepared for was the picture I created. When I stopped I looked at it and thought, “Wow that looks like my mom.” I showed it to Roy who said, “Yeah that kind of looks like your mom. I showed it to my daughter who said “Yeah it sort of looks like Grandma but it also looks like somebody with liver disease” (LOL…she is a nurse practitioner). I showed it to my dad who agreed it looked like mom. Then Roen (age 6) showed up at our apartment, walked in saw it on the table and said, “Grandma this is AMAZING. It looks just like you!!!”

I suppose something in me was processing my own face, my mother’s face, existence when I was painting this.

Naughty or Nice?

Mean people suck. Selfish people suck. People who seem “blind to the suffering of others” suck. And if we have learned anything from events in the world there is no shortage of moral confusion. One person can cause harm to millions of people by his actions running a company, but is called a good man by the media. A man can berate a murderer for writing words on bullets while signing bombs that will be sent to kill and mame innocent children under the pretext that we are “saving the world from “bad guys”.

Thankfully there are also people with just unbelievably big generous hearts and souls as well in the world. I marvel at those who work tirelessly as advocates and activists to make the world a better place.

Right now I am so grateful for small acts of kindness and in this case a fellow artist who has given me time at Turtle Studio to work so I can experiment with Akua Inks and print making. What fun. Thankyou Sally Casper.

Back to Drawing

It was a long summer as my mother took a fast turn for the worse with her health. Dementia is a beast. And the type of dementia my mother had progressed quickly. She went from being able to walk and communicate to being in a wheel chair and unable to get even the simplest of words out. She died mid-October right before the Jewish Holiday of Sukkoth. We had a graveside funeral during the middle of Sukkoth. It was beautiful. All six grandchildren and their partners were present. We all miss her but it is also a relief to know she is no longer suffering.

October and November were a whirlwind of family, friends and the usual time invested in the CSA in Lincoln. And then there was the Election and the grief around the Middle East and the grief associated with the climate emergency. I feel like my emotional jar is overflowing with Joy (from the grand babies), Stress (from everyone’s work situation), Anger (over the state of the world and politics and genocide) and sadness (when I think about nature and climate and all the suffering).

On the day after the election I was doing CSA distribution. One by one members arrived to pick up their produce with shock, despair and sadness on their faces. Some wanted to talk about it, others did not. When I got relieved from my post I went down to the fields. I had an ulterior motive when I headed down as I was hoping to find the head farmer to see about getting some sweet potatoes as I had forgotten them the previous week. But I also needed the walk. And imagine my joy and surprise to show up and see an Anselm Keifer painting come to life. The sunflowers captured the mood that day perfectly, but they also provided me with material to take home to use in my own work. I collected a bunch of dried flowers thinking they would be just what I need artistically moving forward.

One benefit of not celebrating Christmas is that now I have time and space to focus on “me time”. I am only babysitting my daughter’s youngest one day a week. I have started up the Peer Support Group again and I am happy it is still going strong. It excites me each week to see what everyone is posting and how they are evolving as artists. It is also motivation for me to produce my own work and because I trust everyone in the group so well and they know me I am comfortable knowing that I might not be making masterpieces but what is important is that I AM MAKING!!!

I have had to give myself grace and allow myself to just create and play. I started by making these square watercolors with some handmade watercolors I had from India. Just having fun putting color and water on paper and pushing it around.

When I am stressed (which I am these days for a variety of reasons) I tend to fold Origami. I took some of the my failed Origami and started to draw it.

And finally I felt ready to handle something bigger. And I cut a large sheet of Canson Drawing paper and placed my still life on the floor and forced myself to work big despite the arrival of our son’s dog for the next six weeks. And I am so glad I did. I don’t know yet where this idea will take me but I am engaged and pleased with the outcome. Hopefully more to come. It is big for me 36” wide and 20” tall!!!

Protesting youth

Plenty has been written about the college protests. I really feel for these kids. They lived through Covid and saw how the adults blundered and fumbled resulting in many deaths. They saw how nothing really got fixed afterwards and watched in shock as everyone talked about returning to normal. They face a massive climate catastrophe in their lifetime and they see that the adults are doing nothing to deal with it. They watched a a helpless man be murdered by police on their screens. They then heard stories of others being murdered by police and protested only to see nothing really change. They have lived with the fear of school shootings their entire lives and seen nothing change. They are told their water and food has chemicals in it that will put them at increased risk of cancer and other diseases.

These are not kids who see a future with a 2 car garage and 2.5 kids and a green lawn. They know that something has to change and if anything the earth IS CHANGING.

So when they see the destruction of Gaza on their screens and they see the many child amputees and the death and blood and famine all caused by a country whose power is funded by the military industrial complex, they are understandably outraged willing to stand up and say ENOUGH.

Should they also be saying Hamas is bad? Well yeah maybe. But they are not protesting about the existence of a terrorist organization. They are protesting that there are weapons being used that have a label on them saying they should not be used in urban settings because of the collateral damage they will inflict being used in urban settings. They are protesting the use of AI and Drones to KILL out of fear of where that is going to lead. They are protesting rationing health care and food and clean water as a tool to try to control people. Do they misspeak? YES. Do they all fully understand why they are so passionate about this? NO. Do they understand the complex history that got us to this part? NO, but no more than they understand how the industrial revolution and capitalism has landed us in this mess right now.

I wish Universities would use this as an opportunity to teach these students. Maybe if they learned about all the forces at play they would morph into adults better able to change things.

This is what education looks like

Kudos to MIT and the MIT Police for allowing protests and counter protests and creating an environment where real dialogue was happening around the encampment. Israeli, American Flags, Palestinian Flags and Keffiyahs all mingled. Super inspiring to hear one young Jewish person talk to a variety of people so eloquently and with knowledge they said they learned from teach-ins that occurred within the encampment. Also Kudos to the MIT faculty who stood around identified by pink arm bands to just be a support for the students. Their neutral presence created an environment which for the most part meant that people regardless of who they were, were respectful. I only saw one guy act disrespectful....He was wearing a Kippa and seemed more interested in impressing his girlfriend by trying to create a scene. He was surrounded by MIT police and the faculty and the situation quickly de-escalated. This is what EDUCATION looks like!!!!

Back to the young man wearing a Kippa and a pro Israeli t-shirt. I first noticed him when he was leaving the encampment and shouted angrily at those standing at the entrance to the encampment “F—-k YOU”. A few minutes later I overheard him literally bragging to a young woman about what he had just done telling her that somebody accidentally touched him and so he shouted back at them. It was clear he was quite roused by having done that in front of so many spectators. 20 minutes passed and then I heard him sound all pumped up again and told the girl he was going back in. He walked toward the entrance of the encampment with the female following him. He sounded like he was heading back into a boxing ring. As an outside supporter he seemed more like a young animal trying to impress a potential mating female than a thoughtful college student. It was almost comical except it wasn’t because he clearly was eager to engage with others physically if allowed. I have to say watching the way the police and faculty create a circle around him and make it clear his testosterone and desire for physical conflict had no place was inspiring and a wonderful example of how policing should be done. I didn’t see where this young man went after that but for the next 40 minutes that we stood around he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps embarrassed he went back to his dorm. I wonder what the girl he was trying to impress thought?

Meanwhile there was a woman, probably about my age, who spoke about her grandchildren and her grandmother and great-grandparents who had suffered horribly during the Holocaust. It was clear she was still carrying generational trauma related to those years because when the impressive young person, who I had mentioned at the start of this post, started talking about how MIT receives US and Israeli money to do research for military drones used to kill in Gaza, the older woman accused the young person of lying and making up facts. The AI and Drone technology that is resulting in the killing of so many innocent people (including aid workers) comes from institutions like MIT and these young people are right to protest. The young person was calm and collected and pointed out that the IDF funds MIT receives for research into drone technology is all on the books and available for anyone to see.

Tony Kushner and "Munich"

We watched Munich after hearing an interview with Tony Kushner (author of “Angels in America” which I have written about before) on a Haaeretz podcast. Interestingly there is a production of Angels in Tel Aviv right now that is supposedly amazing. Munich is a movie from 2005 directed by Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner about Mossaud’s attempt to assinate those involved with the deaths of Israeli Athletes on black September 1972 Olympics. The lines could be lines directed toward all of us today. Like all good art it reaches across space and time to speak to us about our own condition.

Ali: Eventually the Arab states will rise against Israel. They don't like Palestinians, but they hate the Jews more. It won't be like 1967. The rest of the world will see by then what the Israelis do to us. They won't help when Egypt and Syria attack. Even Jordan. Israel will cease to exist. What?

Avner: This is a dream. You can't take back a country you never had.

Ali: You sound like a Jew.

Avner: Fuck you. I'm the voice inside your head telling you what you already know. You people have nothing to bargain with. You'll never get the land back. You'll die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine.

Ali: We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.

Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them... and thinks you animals.

Ali: Yes. But then the world will see how they've made us into animals. They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.

Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs.

Ali: You're a Jew sympathizer. All you Germans, you're too soft on Israel. Well, you give us money, but you feel guilty about Hitler. And the Jews exploit that guilt. My father didn't gas any Jews.

Avner: Tell me something, Ali.

Ali: What?

Avner: Do you really miss your father's olive trees? Do you honestly think you have to get back all that... that nothing? that chalky soil and stone huts? Is that what you really want for your children?

Ali: It absolutely is. It will take a hundred years, but we'll win. How long did it take the Jews to get their own country? How long did it take the Germans to make Germany?

Avner: And look how well that worked out.

Ali: You don't know what it is not to have a home. That's why you European Reds don't get it. you say, "It's nothing," but you have a home to come back to. ETA, ANC, IRA... we all pretend we care about your international revolution... but we don't care. We want to be nations. Home is everything.

And then this scene

Avner: If these people committed crimes we should have arrested them. Like Eichmann.

Ephraim: If these guys live, Israelis die. Whatever doubts you have Avner, you know this is true.

[Avner walks away]

Ephraim: You did well but you're unhappy.

Avner: I killed seven men.

Ephraim: Not Salameh. We'll get him of course.

[Avner continues to walk away]

Ephraim: You think you were the only team? It's a big operation, you were only a part. Does that assuage your guilt?

Avner: Did we accomplish anything at all? Every man we killed has been replaced by worse.

Ephraim: Why cut my finger nails? They'll grow back.

Avner: Did we kill to replace the terrorist leadership or the Palestinian leadership? You tell me what we've done!

Ephraim: You killed them for the sake of a country you now choose to abandon. The country your mother and father built, that you were born into. You killed them for Munich, for the future, for peace.

Avner: There's no peace at the end of this no matter what you believe. You know this is true.

Great Art and "Zone of Interest"

I think “Zone of Interest” by Jonathan Glazer is a brilliant and important piece of art. We watched it a second time because I knew I had missed important details. The second time I was able to focus on details. The way the Grandmother puts her hands to her ears, the clearly problematic smell that causes people to cover their nose, the father hearing a rare bird song over the sounds of the “machine”, the dancing dead bodies in the laundry of the polish woman, the looks on the faces of those at the party and more. I would watch it again. What it says about today and our ability to block out the suffering of others while we remain comfortable, is beyond profound and since watching it I will have moments where the movie reminds me of my own complicity in the suffering of others. Most of us our guilty of this to some extent whether it be the inexpensive clothes we buy or ordering from Amazon or our turning a blind eye to the plastic we use.

With Passover just a few weeks away I often think about my attempts at family seders to connect the story to our current world system. It never went over well with my more religious family members. There is a lack of imagination that many have that I fear is why people do not want to make connections from the past to today. Those who watch Zone of Interest and just see it as a movie about the luxurious life of a Nazi family are missing the point. Or those who feel it is not really a Holocaust movie because there are no Jews physically present on the screen are failing to see why this movie matters as much as all the movies made before that are explicit about the abuse and suffering inside the camps.

The vitriol that was thrown at Glazer after his Oscar acceptance speech upset me. That people who I thought were kind and thoughtful and progressive joined in the chorus of those criticizing him was even worse. And it is crazy because the movie premiered in September before the events of October 7th.

Meanwhile I read an essay and listened to a podcast with Israeli and Tel Aviv resident Mushon Zer Aviv. The title of the opinion piece was “Israel Commits Suicide of Biblical Proportions and America is there to assist” So when another Jewish friend who has strong ties with Israel and Judaism posted a NYTimes article by the conservative Bret Stephens, which was at it’s core the simple Israel=Good and Hamas=Bad so Israel needs to keep bombing Gaza, I felt compelled to just post the alternative opinion piece by Mushon Zer Aviv in the comments and made a point of pointing out that it was written by somebody living in Tel Aviv. The friend immediately blocked me on social media. I sent an email asking to meet her for coffee so we could talk in person about this. I promised to listen to her. I know her views are partly shaped by her Israeli connections relating to her daughter. This woman is a devoted mother. But I have not heard back from her.

I sent an email to my relative asking her read Naomi Klein’s Guardian piece about the movie and the Oscars. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/14/the-zone-of-interest-auschwitz-gaza-genocide?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Perhaps I am foolish in thinking I can change anyone’s mind or help them see what is happening. Naomi Klein and Muson make a strong case for why Israel is engaged in a fool’s errand. I keep thinking how for every Hamas militant IDF kills how many more boys and girls will grow into adults filled with rage and hate due to the trauma they have suffered . And this is already happening. Israel claims to eliminate Hamas from Al Shifa Hospital and a few weeks later the place is filled with young men willing to fight the Israelis. When you have nothing to loose or have lost everything than it is easy to go to battle.

The New Yorker had an article about the child amputee’s from this war. This war has created more child amputees than any previous war. Trauma is not something that just goes away. It persists and poisons generations that come after. And yes Israelis suffered a horrible trauma as well. But if as a country they had only paused and allowed the world to grieve and support them. Maybe then those who envision a better world could have gathered and come up with a solution to the endless cycle of violence and hate that encompasses both sides.

On the positive side we watched a SKY news segment about a young Israeli woman who was choosing to spend time in Jail rather than fight. I admire her strength and the strength of her supportive parents as they stand up for LIFE. It gave me hope.

Silence

It seems when it comes to war those in the privilaged west who are comfortable, well fed and busy consuming have a remarkable ability to move on from crises. It’s not that people have forgotten or are not troubled by what is happening but the ability to sustain a heightened state of indignation seems to wain and people move on. The phrase “Silence is Complicity” has been used a lot in the past few years and then over time almost all of us go silent because what else is there for us to do. In the wonderful book “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder he talks about how those in authoritarian regimes eventually just give in and go silent. And although the US is not quite an authoritarian regime, at least not yet, it is well on the path to becoming one.

I am not one to be a community organizer. I am not particularly good at politics and participating in group activities to protest. I am only mediocre at going to marches or events.

As an artist I don’t think of myself as being particularly political. But given how my emotions and ideas find a way into my art, my art becomes my voice. And right now I am particularly proud of where that voice has taken me. I have as mentioned earlier found great comfort and pain in drawing the folds of the Tallis. I ordered a Keffiyah from Amazon. I was hoping to get one made in Palestine but sadly they are all sold out so I got one made in India that many reviewers said was a good alternative. Given India’s relationship with Islam and Muslims it is a bit odd. But it works.

Then my son and his wife, who were visiting with us for a week left and they forgot their daughter’s (age 3) puffy coat. It is adorable with rainbow Unicorns and mushrooms and stars all over it. I decided to draw it with the Tallit and the Keffiyah and as I drew the drawing became about the grief for all the children who are suffering from this conflict. I am happy with the drawing. I am not sure how others will perceive it or if somebody might find it offensive. The Tallit is less obvious as a Tallit. The Keffiyah is also less clear. The one identifiable object is the puffy jacket . But I like the way the stripes and embroidery make an abstract pattern. I love that the Keffiyah and Tallit both have fringes but they are different.

It is my voice and my voice will always always side with the children. They are the innocent and sadly too many are dead, or maimed or starving or ill or left without parents or relatives. Too many are traumatized. This war will have reverberations for generations to come and that makes me profoundly sad.

GHOSTS

I was visiting my mom in the long-term memory care facility. She has two friends who she sits with when she has her meals. They are lovely ladies. Every time I visit I am a new person to them and my mother introduces me as her daughter. Sometimes I can get the chatty one to talk about Boston in the 70s. She raised her kids in Hyde Park. She told me how it was hard when all the neighbors were fighting over the busing issue. But when I ask her about her four children and what they are doing now she struggles and can not remember. It is quite sad. The other day after leaving from a short visit as I drove back on the highway, it struck me that my mom and the other’s in her unit are ghosts. There are echos of who they were before dementia set in. They live in a space between life and death. In some ways many of them in my mom’s unit seem like they are just waiting to die. They are stuck in this bizarre space forced to wander in their minds with what memories are hardwired in their brain and unable to make new memories or learn new skills. For some the body is also no longer working and they need help eating and moving around. The sounds they make can be haunting at times.

Every time I visit with my mother she mentions my hair. This past visit I had a hat on covering my hair and my mother ran the program she has in her brain and said, “I like your hair”. It is not my mother commenting on my hair but rather the ghost of my mom who is saying she likes my hair. And that is the pain of dementia.

Because she is still very much alive there is no gathering or Shiva right now. But at the same time there is grief. And to be around her is to be haunted by the echos of who she was as a person.

2024

What a year so far!!! The war in Gaza continues. The war in Ukraine continues. Equador is taken over by drug lords. And it seems every time I turn on the radio I hear about Trump, and not that he is going to jail but about his campaign. Meanwhile icebergs are melting. Extreme climate events are happening. And it seems EVERYONE is continuing to shop. Imagine my amazement the other day when I learned that with a push of a button I could get a plastic Ariel-Little Mermaid Doll complete with accessories delivered by the end of the day for $12.00. But meanwhile people are having to set up go-fund me pages to get necessary medical care.

Roy and I have been playing a cooperative climate game called Daybreak. The cards for Daybreak all have special abilities and require certain resources to be activated. They represent real things that can be done to help with the climate emergency, such as planting trees, investing in solar, public transportation etc… One also must build resilience because there are crises cards and if you do not have infrastructure, social or ecological resilience you can get social unrest which limits your ability to draw project cards. All the project cards have QR codes so you can go and learn about the various projects and how they help with the climate crises. Interestingly one of the most powerful cards when it is in play is “Tax the Rich”

As for art…I did something I have wanted to do for years, which is to somehow address my complicated relationship with Judaism. Many artists have used their Jewish Heritage in their art. And there is a certain aesthetic that Jewish art tends to have, which is not my aesthetic. And It was not clear to me what would happen as I tried to make a drawing that not only engaged me as an artist but also captured the nuance about what it means to be a Jewish American post October 8th. As always I started with a still life. And after many failed attempts I finally found my voice when I took the Tallit out and started drawing the folds. I have an obsession with folds. They show up in my drawings of knitting, my drawings of Bernini’s clay angels and my drawings of origami. I can get lost in them. And somehow it is always through drawing tangles and folds that these emotions emerge unexpectedly in my drawing.

I honestly did not know how my Tallit drawings would be seen by those who are Jewish and by those unfamiliar with Judaism. Could one tell the Fabric and tassels belonged to a Tallit? What do non-Jews see in the image of the folded fabric. When I showed the initial idea to my critique group where there are many who are not familiar with the imagery of the Tallit, they were enthralled by the abstraction and told me they could sense it was about grief. So with that encouragement Itook out a larger sheet of paper and went to work. You can see the first sketch and the final drawing below.

The second drawing started off as a sketch as well. In fact I almost gave up on it. But something in me kept on working and then at one point I realized I had created a drawing that scared me. The hooded Tallit is stabbing a body or itself. Bodies are underneath. It is looking at both. Too many are using religion as a cloak to hide their nefarious behavior. A perfect example of this is Hebrew Senior Life where my mother is in Long Term Care. The whole facility as luxurious as it is, was donated by Sheldon Adelson, a Trump supporter and a person whose politics are very questionable and damaging. And yet he and his offspring hide behind a religious cloak that makes them seem charitable and moral. What happens when rich people do bad things that harm people and then donate money and so they can look charitable? Were the Rockefellers as bad as the Sacklers and Adelson? What about Gates? Too many questions.

Trying something new

I don’t know why I had not done this before. I have been thinking about my struggles to work bigger and post-Thanksgiving I set up one of my chaotic still lifes yesterday to try to capture all that I am feeling about the constant stream of crumbled buildings and lost lives. For some reason I picked up a small-isn pad measuring 14x17”. I was also focused on trying to draw the crumbled oak leaves accurately and was using a red film to help me see the dark and light areas better. And then it hit me!!!! Joel once had us do an exercise where we just drew 1/4 of a still life on a sheet of paper and then put them all together. In some cases the order of the 1/4’s was mixed up and resulted in better more interesting compositions. We made our drawings in Ink so nothing could be moved or erased. And I loved the result of this exercise. Everyone’s drawings were more interesting than if they had just tried to draw the still life as it was on one sheet of paper. And it dawned on me that this could be a great way to start working bigger and make my work more immersive. And so I have started. Below you can see the process. It still requires a lot of work and I am very unsure of the overall composition of all four sheets. But I am also learning and getting experience in doing this and the outcome is less important right now.

On a separate note I wanted to give a shout out to a TV series that has had an impact on me as an artist. Scavenger’s Reign on HBO max is an unusual animated series for adults. Although not quite as beautiful artistically as a Miyazaki the imagination that went into creating an alien ecosystem blew me away. And made me think about the role of imaginary landscapes in my own art.

Collage and Children

The grand-girls now expect to do an art project as soon as I arrive. Sometimes it is just drawing with the “woodies” that I have. After the Stabilio Woody set I had bought for Roen got dispersed and many were lost or thrown away, I decided if I bought a set I would keep it for myself and bring it for the girls to use when I am there. Woodies are thick wood pencils with high pigment water soluble crayons in them. They are better than regular crayons because you can get very deep colors if you wet the pencil. You can also spread the color around with a paint brush if you use the right paper. And they are indestructible and they are for the most part washable.

I showed up to babysit my granddaughters and a pile of catalogs and junk mail was on the kitchen table. My daughter knows me and knows I would do something with it. And sure enough before she could even get her coffee and go upstairs to her office we were setting up to make collages. I got out the scissors. I put the some Elmer’s glue in a top of a yogurt container and cut up some rectangles of cardboard and showed the girls how to spread a thin film of glue on the back of what ever piece they wanted to stick on to their collage. Much to my surprise they both mastered the technique and best of all we did not end up with a massive glue mess. The 2.5 year old needed some help especially when her pieces were tiny. But the 5 year old quickly became very good at using just the right amount of glue. Now between negotiating the bickering about who got to cut out the gingerbread house and helping the two year old find a star or doggy of her own to cut out I worked on my own collage. And when I left on Tuesday it was not particularly interesting. In fact I used the top half of the paper and woodies to explain “complimentary colors” to Roen. We worked on the collages some more on Thursday when Mae went down for her nap. And as Roen worked so did I. And much to my surprise something started to emerge. Roen must have thought I was pretty silly because once I realized I had a successful art piece I became increasingly excited and focused on it. And then, because our peer-art group was meeting that evening I found a spot that worked and took a photo of it to post to Padlet. Roen of course wanted me to take a picture of her collage as well. At first she asked me if I could take a talking picture with her not moving in it. We played around and finally she ended up with a video she was proud of.

Back in my so-called studio

I don’t currently have a studio. Since the pandemic all my work has been created at my dining room table in our apartment. It is not ideal. But plenty of artists have created wonderful work in cramped settings.

For the past two weeks I have been trying to re-start my life. I have been grieving. Grieving for the children of the world, grieving for the planet, grieving for my mother and grieving for the future. The overwhelming grief and despair I have been feeling has resulted in me being very “present” with my granddaughters. I am more able to just shelve my thoughts and enter into the fairy or mermaid world. Me and my daughter’s girls have been doing science experiments and craft projects and we even made “Witches Stew” the week of Halloween.

For the past few months every time I tried to pick up a piece of charcoal or a brush or a colored pencil the depression and grief would result in me quickly giving up. And instead I would choose to do something mindless. I started folding origami again. This in turn resulted in us taking my oldest granddaughter, Roen to MIT where we had an amazing time learning to make a bat with Michael Lafosse. Michael is one of the best origami teachers around and he did not disappoint. Roen had a great time and it is amazing to see how her understanding of Origami has improved after that class. She can now almost follow origami instructions from a simple origami book entirely on her own.

Even making loose marks or playing with paint resulted in me feeling empty and devoid of joy. I had no patience for mark making. I went to the Natural History Museum and tried to see if drawing in the whale room would give me inspiration but I only left feeling frustrated and discouraged.

I restarted the Peer Art Group after having to cancel for much of the fall due to the crises with my parents and it feels good to see my peers work, even if I did not have anything to share. And it is always fun and helpful for me to find artists for us to discuss that relate to our work.

It is day 36 of the war in Gaza. I have seen too many tears and funerals and death on the TV. My heart breaks every time I see a mother cry for their baby. I have often thought about how unbearable that pain would be.

And so with that thought in mind I return to the dolls. The dolls that my kids loved and the dolls that my granddaughters adore. The dolls that embody children and play and life and diversity. And I throw them at the chaos of my dried flowers on the table and draw and today I finally was able to move beyond the shutdown that I have been in for the past few months and for the first time found I could sustain a dialogue with the page. The work is not done. Maybe I will stop working on this and start another. But it feels good to have charcoal smudged on my face and to look at something I created. It feels good to know that I can still speak through my mark making.

Opposites

It has been quite a few weeks. My parents had an elder care crises and a new grandbaby boy was born. My parents are fading and new life has appeared. It is a lot emotionally.

Then there is Israel. It is interesting having read Isabella Hammad’s wonderful book “Enter Ghost” this summer and also Naomi Klein’s book “Doppelgänger” this fall. Klein’s chapter on Israel and being a Jew just captured everything about how I feel about Israel. Because of reading these books I have a stronger context for understanding recent events than I have ever had before. Not that that makes it any easier.

Yesterday we walked into Harvard Square. There was a protest. The organizers main message was for humanitarian support for the people of Gaza and a plea for Israel to stop bombing innocent civilians. But one could see how the Palestinian flags and scarves people were wearing could be a trigger for those who feel threatened by antisemitism and Hamas. And sure enough there was a young woman with brown curly hair shouting at the protestors that she lost her cousin in the attacks. She was angry. She was upset. And I found my eyes welling up with tears and sympathy. We are fellow Jews. I can only imagine that I might know somebody like her or her cousin. And then a young male protestor started to harass her. I could not believe it. He actually called her a “Bitch”. Seriously? What hope is there if that is the way people are? Imagine a world where this young man acknowledged her grief and they shared a moment.

I am no military expert. I can’t say I really understand what is happening. In my heart I keep wondering if there is another way to deal with Hamas. A way that would not harm innocent civilians and would create more unity among those in the middle east. Maybe I am naive. Since college I have always felt naive about the situation in Israel. As Naomi Klein said in her Guardian editorial I will ALWAYS SIDE WITH CHILDREN. If it had been one of my babies at that music festival you can be sure I would want Revenge. And if it had been one of my children injured or killed by Israeli rockets I would want revenge. No mother should have to deal with children being taken from them because of foolish adults.

My letter to Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an author whose newest book is titled “Doppleganger”. Last week my husband and I went to hear her talk as part of her book tour. I came home and read her book. I had a lot to process reading it as there were many chapters that hit a cord with me. And so I found myself writing a “letter” to her. Here it is.

I heard you speak in Cambridge MA.  To be honest I was not in the mood to go.  My husband has read your previous books and despite his encouragement I avoided reading them, preferring to spend my energy reading light fiction for escape, such as books by Eleanor Lipman.  I was tired after babysitting my two active granddaughters (ages 5 and 2) all day and was tempted to tell my husband I did not want to go.  But my husband suggested we get dinner in Harvard Square and the thought of not having to cook and clean up pushed me to step away from my computer and make the 25 minute walk that evening to see you.

Afterwards as we walked home we spoke about how nice it was to be in a room filled with others who were saying many of the same things we had been saying about the world.  We are in our 60s and many of our peers, especially those who attended the ivy league college where we met, are enmeshed in the neo-liberal mindset and it has become increasingly hard to talk with them and hear them go on and on about their travel woes or remodeling projects or debate about what new car to buy.  We try to talk about “Tescreal” or the threat of fascism or even the severity of the climate crises and eyes glaze over.

Afterwards I immediately started reading your book. I have been on a reading binge this summer.  I am artist who has been avoiding making art after being super productive during the active phase of the pandemic.  I had just completed a set of drawings about Marcescence and how nature has it’s own plan.  The work was not understood by curators resulting in rejected applications for residencies so I could continue working on the project and rejected entries for shows.  The rejections put me in a bit of a funk, which normally I can ride out.  But I am also dealing with elderly parents who have had a disastrous move to an independent living facility.  And my mother’s struggles with depression triggered by this move has only contributed to my feeling too emotionally exhausted to make art. My reading binge has made me a stronger and faster reader allowing me to consume your book.  There was only one sentence about how elder-care is not really about care,  yet it captured how frustrated I was by the the marketing that sold my parents on a place that looked more like a hotel than a home, provides institutional meals that seem short on nutrition and as it turned out offers limited services if one is in independent living.  

So why did I hint you might be MY doppelgänger?  Well I am short and Jewish and have shoulder length hair and wear similar style glasses.  I am older than you and in many ways we are not at all similar.  You have a public persona and brand.  Despite having made what I feel is a large body of work as an artist, being praised and respected by fellow artists and mentors and even twice short listed for London’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,  I am mostly unknown outside my personal circle.  You have had a long successful career.  I have spent the majority of my life devoted to being a “carer” for my children, husband and parents.  Your father exposed you to all the nuances and details of birth.  I probably did the same to my own three children as a La Leche League Leader and home birth supporter. You entered motherhood with indifference, I entered hyper focused on the desire to be a good mom convinced all children have something magical to bring to the world.

We both have neurodivergent offspring.  I have three neurodivergent adult children, but our middle son  is more divergent than the others resulting in us investing a lot of time and energy trying to pull him through.  And now I am pretty sure at least one of our grandchildren will be neurodiverse.   My children are not on the autistic spectrum.  They each have a complex mixture of learning disabilities and mood disorders.   It sounds like your experience and my experience of parenting a child that does not quite fit into the system led us to the same conclusions about education and the pandemic.   My experience navigating K-12 education exposed many myths about education. My middle son struggled horribly in our top rated public school and barely graduated from high school.  He failed Algebra five times and we ended up in a legal battle with our school system to try to get him educated.  He is now a professor of mathematics at an ivy league university.  As an aside when you spoke about the impact of the Individual with Disabilities Act on American special education it touched me.  Larry Kotin and Bob Crabtree were two of the lawyers who who helped create that law.  Larry Kotin was our lawyer when we had to take on the Lexington Public Schools to try to get our son educated.  He was an amazing kind, intelligent and passionate man who is missed by many.  Sadly he died of Parkinsons during the pandemic.  Larry had even tried to help my neurodivergent Sister-in-Law after she graduated from law school and was floundering in her late 40s to land on her feet. He was a special person.

My experience left me wondering why we were not using the pandemic to rethink our prison like educational system. For a few years after helping our son through the system I was an educational advocate and I observed how widespread the problems were.  It used to drive me crazy when people would tell me our son was “unique”.  Isn’t every child unique?  But more importantly I knew from conversations with other parents that his struggles were shared by many.  When you wrote about schools and your experience as a mom of a child who is neurodivergent,  so much of what you said resonated with me.  And more than once when I was reading the chapter you wrote on autism, I wished I could reach through the book and give you the hug us moms give to those “get it".  I found my eyes filling up with tears remembering our journey raising our kids in an upper middle class neo-liberal community, especially after your story about your son at the park playing with the “perfect child’.  The community I raised my kids in was the same community I was raised in and it happens to be the same community Bill Mckibbin grew up in.   My brother (Marc Pershan) was a good friend of Bill many many years ago.    it was not easy having children who clearly were following their own unique path to adulthood and not checking off all the boxes expected of them.  More than once I felt judged as a person by other parents because of who my children were.    My husband and I would often comment on how our fellow upper middle class parents would act like their child’s achievements were their achievements and judge us for our child’s struggle.  After one particularly bad day someone said to me, “Jill you are raising Diamonds”. It was the perfect thing to say to me on a day when I felt like I had coal smeared all over my face and hands.  But sadly not all children are destined to be diamonds.  And some parents are raising other less shiny minerals that will require them to work as their advocates and carers after they age out of the system.  I have a friend who has an adult son with Smith Meninges Syndrome.  Her child will never grow out of his troubles. Another mom I know lovingly cares for her adult son with intellectual disabilities.  These women are lucky to have resources and money to continue to support their disabled adult children but what about the single mom working low wage jobs whose son ages out of our education system?  How do they navigate a world that dismisses caregiving as being of little economic value?

Like you I wondered why we did not use the pandemic as an opportunity to give children more exposure to nature by using the outdoors as a classroom, fix unhealthy school buildings and finally address what was an already evolving mental health crises among our youth caused by a goal oriented education system that leaves little room for failure.   Instead everyone jumped on this bizarre Zoom virtual learning bandwagon without thinking critically and expansively about pandemic education.  I cringe when I remember how on a beautiful fall day in 2020, a mom in our neighborhood park, who also happens to be a pediatrician, tried to reign in her two very active, bright, creative twin boys so they could do Zoom Kindergarten.  It didn’t make sense.  The boys were zooming around the playground like Tasmanian devils. There were a few close calls when they threatened to crash into my toddler granddaughter or another small tot.  But it seemed a shame to discount what they were learning about their bodies and physics that morning.  I tried to convince the mom to just let them skip Zoom, but she felt they would miss something although I can’t remember what specifically.  Why could the money that was spent trying to outfit low income children with technology for virtual learning be spent  on staff and transportation to take them outdoors and into nature?  Wouldn’t that have been healthier for everyone?  The children would be out of the house.The teachers would be able to care for the children in person and do what they do best and the exposure to nature would be invaluable. Meanwhile much needed maintenance and repairs could be done on the empty school buildings making them more pandemic friendly.  Instead of using the pandemic as an educational portal we stuck a band-aid on a gaping wound, turned our backs and then allowed the issue to become “food” for those in the mirror world.

 I was infuriated by Emily Oster’s insistence that the covid crises had triggered a mental health crises among parents and kids and it was vital we reopen day-cares and schools well before vaccinations were introduced.   Her failure to consider the health of those who work in schools including the janitors and lunch ladies,  was callous, but also in her writing she indicated that all that mattered was getting the children out of the way so parents could work.  I confess to being disappointed in your not mentioning Emily Oster in your book.   For me she, and others like her, are a dangerous products of our neo-liberal late capitalistic system.  She claims to use data to support her own neo-liberal desires while totally ignoring the larger global system she is part in.  She feels comfortable and entitled to comment on public health as an economist and often ends up making claims that promotes her own economic well being and fails to consider the larger landscape.  Her most egregious declaration is that it is fine to have the occasional glass of wine during pregnancy.  A declaration that has the potential to do considerably more damage than good.  And I understand she probably did not fit in with your doppelgänger narrative but I do think if there is going to be a conversation about Shadowlands and Mirrorworlds we need to talk about the opportunist academics like her.  Increasingly there is a whole class of academics who value book deals, Ted Talks, YouTube videos and influence over actual academic integrity, such as Prof Gino at Harvard Business School.

Returning to parenting a child who is different.  We were very lucky to land in the office of a unique child psychiatrist who said to me early on, “Nothing you did could have caused this.  Even the worst parenting does not result in this.”  Unlike most child psychiatrist this doctor believed it was important to treat the whole family and not just the child.  Over the years he became a marriage coach, parent coach, mentor and somebody we consulted anytime we were prescribed any new pharmaceutical.  He himself as you will see later on in this email made a diagonal move as a doctor.  But this diagonal move was one that the entire psychiatric world should make.  Sadly in my years volunteering for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance I saw how insurance companies had made it almost impossible for most parents to get the sort of psychiatric care we were receiving.  

 I suppose since our son did not have autism we fell into a different category in terms of hope about “fixing” his challenges.  I knew from my own experience as an ADD/Dyslexic that there were better ways to learn and I did not want him to be limited by his disabilities. I had spent years as a LLLI leader having mother’s call me in tears after their doctors failed to diagnosis simple things like Thrush or Mastitis or the doctors would confuse the two and make the mom worse by treating the wrong illness. Turns out most doctors are only given 1/2 a day of education about infant feeding in medical school.  And this has resulted in a whole new industry of lactation professionals who are able to charge for their services. As a La Leche League leader I read about birth and by the time I gave birth to my third child I did not trust the hospital system to give me a birth that respected me and my vagina.  I had a home birth with the midwives who founded Seattle Midwifery College and had no episiotomy and almost no tearing.  I felt normal after just a few days.  With my two previous births it took months to recover.  This experience resulted in me having a healthy dose of skepticism and distrust around modern US medicine and extra sensitive to how it puts profit over patient..

So when it came time to seeking help for our son after trying conventional medicine for a few months and reading about the medications the doctors wanted to use on our son (my husband and I both have math backgrounds equipping us to evaluate the clinical data and probabilities) we came to the conclusion that given the state of pediatric psychiatry our son was better off untreated than treated.    Thankfully we were here in the Boston area and the doctor did not boot us out but instead suggested we contact her professor from Harvard who was also the founder of the Journal of Child and Adolescent psychophamarcology.  Apparently he was researching a micronutrient treatment that seemed to help children like out son.  And even if we decided to not use the treatment she felt my husband and I would get along with him.  And we did and the rest is history.  We worked closely with him and he helped us pull all three of our children through to adulthood.  It was not easy but we did it.  During that time many who believed the only thing that would help our son was conventional pharmaceuticals felt we had become alternative medicine hippies and expressed skepticism about our “little experiment” (as one person called it).  Meanwhile this doctor and his fellow researchers who were in Canada were struggling to get clinical trials up and running.  Their goal was to make it so doctors could prescribe these micronutrients as they might prescribe a pharmaceutical.  But neither government wanted to set a precedent for treating supplements as pharmaceuticals lest they take away from the huge supplement industry.  And so despite working closely with the FDA Dr Charles Popper and others were simply never able to get enough money and resources to run a clinical trial and make the treatment which helped all three of my kids available more widely for use in clinical settings.  I always cringe when I hear people go after the supplement industry because although the supplement industry is filled with quacks and scammers the division between lab made products and supplements has created a landscape where doctors claim pharmaceuticals are more powerful or better than they are and those who sell supplements make dangerous claims.  But the reason for this division has nothing to do with patient health and everything to do with extracting capital from those who are in need.

 Right around the time Trump was elected in the US we were in London and saw “Angel’s in America” at the National Theater.  We also saw a talk balk with Tony Kushner the author of the play.  After that talk back I desperately wanted to sit down with him at a pub.  If only to commiserate and share how unsettled we felt.  And that is a bit how I felt after reading your book.  I just want to sit and have coffee and commiserate.    I lost one of my closest mom friends who said she found I exaggerated the climate situation too much and she did not want to be friends anymore.  I want to scream as I watch all my peers fly all over the world to make up for their lack of vacations during covid.  Why must everyone suddenly feel entitled to a vacation in Italy suddenly?  Can’t they see the world is burning?  

Turning 60, Summer's End, Climate (as always) etc....

So today I am 60. It is hard to believe I am 12 times as old as Roen who will turn 5 in a week. I want to be able to say to myself that 60 is the new 50 or that age doesn’t matter. But my body is telling me otherwise. I continue to struggle with my back and tendinopathy. The shockwave helped but I am still far from being where I want to be.

60 also feels different. When I turned 30 I was a young mother and life was exciting and I thought I was exactly where I wanted to be at 30. When I was 40 I was so focused on helping our middle son it seemed nothing else really mattered. When I turned 50 we had an amazing summer. I attended Origami USA In NYC and we trained and cycled Ride London riding 107+ miles in one day. I felt physically strong. I had been shortlisted by the Royal Academy for the summer exhibition and although the work did not get hung I knew it was good and I felt excited about my own art creation.

But my 50s were filled with big changes. I lost a dear friend who was close to me in age to breast cancer. And every time I experience a graduation, a marriage, a birth I am reminded that this friend did not get to see her 5 children morph into the adults they are today or get to know her grandchildren. It is a reminder to be grateful.

And how grateful I am for the blessings that happened in my 50s. My kid’s significant others are amazing incredible people. Each one brings something essential to our family. And those grand-girls. Well if you have read any of my blog you know how much they mean to me and how much I enjoy them. Even if they do exhaust me. This weekend at the Norwich VT Farmer’s Market Roen and I looked at the crafts and saw somebody selling necklaces made from paper beads. We bought a tool to make paper beads at Learning Express and I was helping her make them on Tuesday. While making the beads Roen just stopped and said, “I love you Grandma” and my heart melted. The 2 year olds are both so different and yet so similar. I love the way Nikko who is obsessed with mermaids calls boobies “seashells” and the way Maeve is a little clown. Maeve had an ear infection this week and told me she had a “Witch” in her ear. I love the way Nikko recites and sings “Cat Problems” while running around and the way Maeve recites songs from school. My kids are in interesting careers and I respect and marvel at what each one has achieved already professionally.

I am grateful to not have lost a parent yet. Many of my peers lost their own parents during this decade and I need to be grateful that Roy and I still have all four of them. But it has been hard watching our parents age and it is hard not to look at them and their choices around aging and think about our own aging and what we want and even what will be available to us. I once asked Roen to get off the running board* on the stroller so I could more easily push her sister and stroller up a hill. Roen complained. And I joked that someday she might have to push me up a hill when I am old and frail. Without missing a beat, Roen said, “No I won’t, my mom will.”

*For those who don’t know running boards are these little standing platforms that attach to strollers so an older kid can stand and be pushed.

But back to me. The problem with this new decade is frustration. The return to “normal” after covid left me despondent that humanity is going to be able to address climate change. I never imagined staring at an existential crises that is going to define the future for ALL moving forward. And I am fearful of what the state of the planet will be like in the decade to come. Are we not supposed to leave our children a better world? What have I done in my 60 years to contribute to this crises? The cars I drove? The flights I took? The meals I ate? The stuff I bought? Everyone who is an adult living who participates in capitalistic practices has their share of blood on their hands but how are we to make a difference? What responsibility do I have, do my peers have, does anyone have? Should I lie in front of traffic, get arrested, throw paint in protest? So much needs to be changed to make things right and yet too many in power don’t seem to care or have the will power to change it.

I have been involved with local farming since the time my children were born and I have seen the changes especially here in New England due to climate change. Farming likes predictability. But climate changes means there is little predictability to be found. This summer was catastrophic for some farmers and it breaks my heart. This time of year when the harvest peaks and it is a time of so much joy for somebody like me who likes to cook. I often freeze what I can so I can have a burst of summer in February. But this year with the tomatoes being lousy and expensive it is just not worth it and that makes me sad.

This is 60!!!

The Spaces we Inhabit, lost art and friendships

So a friend sent me a real estate listing for the town I used to live in and my stomach started to hurt. The listing was the house of ex-friends’ of ours. For years this couple’s boys and our boys played together. Our youngest were close friends until high school when they went their separate ways. Our eldest boys stopped being friends around the time our middle son started to struggle. But I remained close friends with the mom until suddenly she ended our friendship. My husband and I both respected and liked her husband. We enjoyed hanging with them as a couple. There was some tension around this because another couple they were friendly with had for totally inane reasons decided he disliked my husband because of the company he worked for. I would often talk with the mom several times a week. And she was somebody I felt I could share almost anything with. She was the first person I called after my parents when my granddaughter was born and I felt like she was a sister of sorts to me.

Seeing the space in real estate photos brought a wave of emotions. I had spent quite a bit of time hanging out in that space. I have memories that used to be positive but are now tainted because I still do not quite understand what happened that resulted in her decision to eject me and my husband as a friend. Although I do know based on our last conversation that she disagreed with me about the climate emergency, which continues to baffle me since she liked to think of herself as somebody who was scientifically literate and we had brought her to hear Al Gore speak at Harvard years ago. I imagine politics also played a role. With Trump’s election I was adamant that those who were voting for him because of their political ideology were turning a blind eye to the racism and sinister aspects of the party. Which historically has led many a nation and country down an ugly path. I imagine my language around this was difficult for somebody who had family and friends who were Republican or Libertarian. But because this person was unwilling to have “hard discussions” it will always be a mystery.

When somebody decides to cut you out of their life and not communicate with you it leaves a strange void. It also left me with a lot of distrust around her past actions. We had been very generous with them as friends. In fact I had given her quite a bit of art and furniture over the years. Often it was art she expressed an interest in. We paid for numerous meals out knowing they were not quite as well off as we were. When she cut me off I thought about asking for the art back. I did ask for some chairs back. I didn’t really want the chairs and instead she sent me a check for them, which we cashed. But since the art had no clear monetary value and I did not necessarily want to store it, I let it go. Now I imagine that art ended up in the trash and I am incredibly sad about it. Friend’s and fellow artists in Lexington said they happily would have collected it if they had known. Last summer as my work was gaining some traction and recognition I probably would feel bold enough to email her and ask what happened to the art. This summer I am not in as confident a place again but also I fear that what is done is done and there is nothing I can do.

Meanwhile what am I working on artistically. Well I have sunk into craft and reading as a distraction. Right how I am embroidering a denim jacket for my granddaughter and reading a lot. I just finished “AfterLives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah which was an epic and beautiful novel. Back to reading something fun and light I am reading Eleanor Catton’s “Birhmam Wood”. And we are walking and cycling. And I am trying to still deal with my back.

We saw a monarch laying eggs. Could it be one of the monarch butterflies we raised? We took an egg on a leaf home and now it has hatched. We have a baby caterpillar. Not sure if it will make it but it is very cool.

Reviews: Bedlam's "Angels in America", "How to Blow up a Pipeline" (the movie) and "Enter Ghost" by Isabella Hammad

I have not been making a lot of visual art these days. Not sure why. I have suffered shut downs before and I know I always return. I made an interesting small watercolor/charcoal piece the other day but it is not worth posting, But it has some good parts to it. I keep reminding myself that sometimes in the summer my creative energy seems to be directed elsewhere and to be patient.

But I wanted to use my blog to talk about art that is impacting me. Two weekends ago my husband and I saw Bedlam’s production of Tony Kushner’s Masterpiece “Angels in America”. The thing about Tony Kushner’s script is that it touches upon big issues of humanity, capitalism and religion. The script is every bit as relevant today as it was when Aids was dominating the news. And in a post-Trump, covid world the messages in the play seem even more significant than ever. Bedlam, whose artistic director Eric Tucker, is known for doing a lot with very little, managed to pull off this epic play with a small cast and minimal set. And one thing I love about such productions is that one is not distracted by the bells and whistles and lights and costumes but can really focus on the language and what is being said. And although I missed Russel Tovey (he played the mormon in the NT production we saw several years ago and I adore him) I felt like everyone in the cast was strong and did a great job.

Yesterday we saw “How to Blow up a Pipeline” based on the Andreas Malm book of the same name. The premise is a group of young people who are so despondent about the failure of anyone to address the climate and environmental crises decide to blow up some key oil infrastructure as a way of sending a message to world that something needs to be done. And having listened to Andreas Malm in a podcast this idea is perfectly rational given the number of lives that are at stake if we do nothing. The movie was thrilling and a fun 2 hour ride. But I found the “Disney-esque” casting of the young people very distracting and it resulted in me feeling a bit of distance between them and the real young people I know who are struggling with these issues today. Roy and I disagree on this one. He felt the casting was fine and probably a result who who came together to make the film. But for me when everyone looks like a model, or an ex-child star who is living a very privilaged existence it is hard to accept them for the complicated people they are representing. The one exception being the Native American Cast member. Still I think it is an important play for anyone thinking about the current state of our inaction around climate change. What are we morally responsible for? If by inaction many die then doesn’t that make us complicit.

The other review is the book “Enter Ghost” by Isabella Hammad. As an American Jew with parents who were immersed in the conservative movement in Judaism I had my share of Zionistic propaganda thrown at me in my childhood. I grew up attending Hebrew school and being fed a diet of romanticized images of Kibbutz and Israeli life. I am not sure why it made me uncomfortable. I was just a child with little knowledge of life beyond my own privilaged upbringing. I suppose in a weird way I was more drawn to the colorful diversity of Sesame Street and the deep green rainy world of England and the vibrant exoticness of India than I was to a land that seemed to my child like eyes unaesthetic and very dry and brown. As an adult my knowledge of complexities behind Israel has always been very limited. I do remember questioning right wing Israeli politics and settlements in college. Even as a young Jew in college who was hanging out at Hillel I found the demonization of Arabs and the assumption that the Israeli Jews were superior to be abhorrent. I have tried to educate myself and I often end up thinking there are no heroes and plenty of guilt on both sides. I find myself asking “Why and How did this happen?” I realize in a post WWII world decisions were made in reaction to horrors but struggle to understand why those making these decisions did not see the problems they would create. “Enter Ghost” takes place in the West Bank among a group of Arabs who want to put on an Arabic Hamlet. The main character is a 35 year old London Actress named Sonia who is returning to visit her sister in her parents ancestral land. Sonia at 35 is confronting being a childless middle aged divorcee and no longer a young woman. She arrives in the west bank as a European but with a family who has a history and relationship to the crises that she herself must confront. And Isabella Hammad delivers a compelling story about Sonia’s journey using Hamlet as a backdrop for her to confront all these issues while also educating readers about what life is like for educated Arabs living in the West Bank, including the theater of propaganda that gets sent out into the rest of the world from the region. I am so glad I read this book because in addition to giving me some interesting insights into Shakespeare due to the Shakespeare being translated first into Arabic and then back into English, it educated me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the struggles of those who are living with it every day.

Now the question is 3 works of art that all deal with issues I am passionate about: Capitalism and the problems it creates; how we ignore those who we deem as other and allow them to suffer; The failure of religion to provide any true moral guidance and minimize suffering; And the persistence of Angels and Art and Spirit despite all the horrors in the world. So what is next for me? I need to find a way to express this on paper? HELP….Well stay tuned.