Hail, Poetry!

Listen.  And  follow word by word...the full-cast quatrain from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, "The Pirates of Penzance" Hail, Poetry!

DAZZLING, entertaining work created by designers in the M.I.T. Student Art Association's LineStorm Animation consortium, and supervised by PELL OSBORN, who teaches the  LineStorm classes. 

Recently I've been researching how to create VIDEO POETRY, and came across Pell's work. I emailed him and he warmly responded, offering encouragement and sources on the how-to's of animation. Over the years, he has guided students in creating personalized group animation projects in the public schools and at the college level on topics important to the community, such as conflict resolution, diversity and social responsibility.

Pell's breath of experience in digital technology reaches all the way back to 1982, when he founded MotionArt Studios in Boston. MotionArt  is an "association of designers, animators, and technophiles," who collectively have produced many award-winning animation projects for companies such as American Airlines, Honeywell, OceanSpray, Save the Children, and others. In 1991, while working for UNICEF in Nepal, Pell co-founded the first animation studio in Kathmandu!

"MotionArt champions animation as a profoundly compelling medium that clarifies, influences, entertains, inspires and occasionally CAUSES FIGHTS IN BARS!" 
I think Pell would fit right in here in Alaska, and I'd like to invite him to submit his work to the Anchorage International Film Festival, held yearly in December (first call for submissions occurs in June). We would love to host you in our home, Pell, should you chance the Alaskan deep-freeze, which I'm sure is quite similar to Boston. 

We are inspired.  Once again.  Thanks to Pell Osborn.

An Icon: The Care Package (tm)

Remember the Care Package?  It is now a trademark and has recently come out of
retirement to honor the 100th anniversary of 

International Women's Day.

The first Care Package was introduced in 1946, when life-

saving food and supplies were sent to Europeans after World 

War II. The Care Package quickly became an icon of American 

generosity and increased our awareness of global 

communities in need.

My first memory of the Care Package dates back 
to 1963.

As a young girl, I lived in a small farming community 

in Michigan. One summer the kids on our block decided 

to have a carnival and donate all the proceeds to 
CARE. 

I remember the fun we had putting together the various 

activities: go-cart rides for 25 cents, a nickel to read your fortune (that was me), throwing darts at balloons,

an iced cold lemonade stand, a craft table where you could make pictures (using glitter & glue--whoo hoo!), selling popcorn and decorated bags of chestnuts (I don't know the reasoning behind the nuts; after all, you could pick them up right off the ground!) We didn't know much about CARE, except that our efforts would help other children in the world who were very poor, far poorer than us in our scuffed up shoes and hand-me-down clothes. We had houses and food and toys and books, whereas these kids had nothing. And we were rewarded for our efforts. CARE sent each of us a free ticket to the local public swimming pool! How rich we were.

Then came college, when the Care Package again floated into my life. Chocolate chip cookies, my mom's infamous fudge, LifeSavers, toothpaste, a warm pair of socks. My roommate (from California) got olives and crackers and caviar (I'd never heard of caviar before). We pooled our goods and shared our mini-cultures (the middle west and the west coast). Years later, my two boys in college, one in Montana and the other in California, got their share of Care Packages from me: my mom's infamous fudge, cookies, toothpaste, beef jerky, socks. We had our own definition of Care Package in our affluent society that has endured through the generations.

"In the 65 years since the first CARE Package was delivered, CARE's anti-poverty mission has changed. Instead of delivering items in a box, CARE now delivers tools and resources that help empower poor girls and women around the world to create positive change in their lives. The Care Package has changed, too. Like its predecessor, the new Care Package is changing the way people invest in helping others." The new Care Package has gone digital. You can still send your own Care Package of life-changing gifts, in just one click. 

Maybe it will bring back some memories of a tradition that still lives on in all of our lives. 

Loretta

A poem inspired by a quick write on the topic of "first love."

Loretta

She told me one night behind a bush,

Sitting in the moist grass

How parents do it to make babies.

I sat dazed under a dome of stars

feeling dizzy and sick to my stomach.

“Liar,” I yelled.

The very thought of it was unreal

As unbelievable as Death
More incomprehensible than God.

That you call Love?

I hate you, Loretta.

I'm enjoying a poet new to my awareness by the name of Jack Gilbert; born in Pittsburgh and twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. From his book, The Great Fires...Poems 1982-1992:

Highlights and Interstices

We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? Our lives happen between
the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual
breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about
her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.

She-Fish

I've been experimenting with different art materials lately and came across Pan Pastels, which are loaded with lots of pigment and are fun to use. They come in small discs of color, each called a pan. You simply rub the pan in a circular motion with a Softt (Tm) Art sponge (I use sponges bought in the cosmetics department of my local store, which work just fine). It's sort of like applying make-up; you load up your sponge and drag it across your surface (in this case, stretched canvas).  You can block in large areas of color, build layers, and work in fine details.  They are compatible with conventional pastel fixatives, and can even be erased from the paper using any artist's eraser.

For She-Fish I used collage, Pan pastels, markers and acrylic. When my boys were little, I used to decorate their bedroom with photos and art that would last over many years and still be age appropriate (animals, nature, sports). I think this would be perfect for a child's bedroom, adding color and whimsy!

Pan Pastels

Check out Pan Pastels on YouTube for more detailed instruction on their use, and have fun creating.

Memoir Excerpt #3: When Mountains Agitate the Wind

Flying 2,000 feet above the tundra on a partly cloudy day, the slant of the sun breaks across my face, and the proximity to the earth below is tangible and intimate. In good weather, everything below is visible. 

The muted greens and yellows of grasses and small shrubs rise up slightly over the land; land that is not chopped up and taken over by the muddle of roads, buildings, and power lines; ground that still exists as unclaimed space, unconquered in a way, stretching out for miles and miles in every direction. 
Flying this low is a sensuous activity, whirling out over the earth, close enough to see colors and patterns sketched into the land, far enough to detect movement of animals in migration. There is breathing room and a great sense of freedom in the experience of flying over  vast, seemingly empty space. Wide-eyed, I watch a herd of caribou glide in a northerly direction, then gracefully shift like a wave toward the east, coursing toward a boggy pond to drink.

The engine’s hum sounds like a lawn mower motor, typical of the Cessna 180, a small, high wing aircraft with ample horsepower and capable of many different arrangements of space. Today, the four seats behind me are removed and the space filled with cases of soda pop, mail, peanut butter, Pampers, and straw for sled dog bedding, all herded under thick nylon nets. For villages only accessible by air or water, short stops in quick planes are vital to the commerce and communication among residents. 
On a typical jaunt, you never know who or what will share the space: a family attending a birthday celebration 50 miles upriver; evangelists with opened Bibles in their laps setting out to “save” a village; a petty criminal on his way to town for a court hearing; or, on one occasion a body was laid to rest in a coffin directly behind my seat.

I am the only passenger on this flight and the monotony of the engine drone becomes a soothing comfort to my senses. 
We are aloft on a draft of wind that feels like waltzing or being lifted up on a swing and gently set down, rolling on the pitch and lull of soft air. The movement of clouds is reflected on a string of boggy ponds below, and a flock of snow-white trumpeter swans skims the surface before delicately touching down. My mind strays into emptiness, as open and expansive as the unencumbered geography below. In good weather, flying is the one place where clarity of mind becomes effortless. I can think up there; a sentiment I imagine is shared by many passengers and pilots who enjoy the intimacy of flying in small planes.

A fascination with flying first took root in my late teens when I saw the ocean for the first time flying over the Atlantic on a back-packing trip to Europe.  As a young adult, having never left the Midwest, the experience was incredulous. Soaring through cloudbanks and seeing sky meet water in all directions was daunting and to my young mind, simply miraculous. That was and still is, an indelible image with a powerful message: the whole world lay before me and anything was possible. Travel for the sake of travel; explore for the sake of exploration. Doesn’t the sky have as many tangible mysteries as the oceans? Isn’t it embedded somewhere in our genes the desire to explore and understand the natural world below, as well as above our beautiful earth?

The strangeness of proximity and separation experienced from an airplane, noted Charles Lindbergh was this: a destination is thousands of miles away and your proximity to the ground, only seconds away. Stranded between heaven and earth, romancing the air currents like birds, there is another world, with waves and vortexes of wind creating an invisible topography of the sky. I wonder if pilots see the elegance of this topography from their mind’s eye, when they are negotiating mountain passes or climbing to escape a band of turbulence, searching for calm air?

To be continued.....