“we need an urgent call to arms. . . to bring as much science as we possibly can to bear on the problem”

No, I didn’t make that up to make fun of using science like a blunt instrument against our problems. It came from this article about the troubles of American bee colonies, a staggering quarter of which have died (just in the last year and a half, I think, although tabulating different news articles complicates my maths, which were never very stellar anyway).

How do I know about this? Not because I was paying attention to the news, really. But someday my graphic designer/illustrator fiance wants to have an apiary. If he does, we will have a very well-pollinated garden. Supposedly every third bite of produce we eat was pollinated by bees (thank you, PBS!).

There’s also some interesting art coming out of the sad plight of the bees. Check out this website for some movie clips and podcasts (from venerable instituations like PBS’ Nature show) about bees and their disappearance, as well as photography of a fantastic-looking art exhibit.

I’ve never thought of myself as an artist who’s interested in the convergence between science and art or science and the humanities. I’m honestly not interested in close-up photography of cells or plants as art — as beautiful as it may be, it is simply not rigorously thought out, not engaging on an intellectual level. But I really respect artwork which is fully engaged with its surroundings, so if you are an ecologically aware person who does things like plant a garden in the city, abstain from manicuring your lawn in favor of letting nature take its course, or planting wildflowers so that bees or other insects have something to eat, then it’s natural for those things to show up in your artwork as you examine the world. So you can make fascinating art about science through both the way you live and the work you make, something beautiful, intellectually stimulating, and full of deep thought.

I don’t think I’ll ever smush a bee again.

And all this makes me think — earth/site art is all about going out into the world and taking what you see and making something impermanent and beautiful from exactly what’s around you. It doesn’t have to have an audience. It doesn’t even have to be recorded, although earth artists usually do take photographs. Remember Jim Denevan? Or Andy Goldsworthy? Planting wildflowers is a form of earth art. Refusing to use pesticides is a form of earth art. Planting peppers is a form of earth art. It’s all about loving the world around you, acknowledging that you affect the world you move through, and making sure that your movements are beautiful and pleasing to you, that they bring a kind of order instead of destruction, and recognizing that your entire life’s work is impermanent, that it will change into something else, as if we were never there, the moment we’re gone. It’s all about recognizing ways in which we can interact with the world that enhance both us and it, just for a little while.

SO BEAUTIFUL!

Beautiful in the sense of full of meaning, satisfying, not just pretty. Something soul-fulfilling.

Why am I not an earth artist? I’m not sure. But I have to say, it’s the kind of art that seems to me to be the most worth making, the most full of integrity, the one that really is full of belief, or an expression of belief. It’s certainly the epitome of everything I believe about art, the way it should function in an individual’s life to heighten their awareness, the way it should mimic our movement through life (finding unexpected tools to create beauty and stumbling upon something intimately beautiful, created by someone else, now and then; bringing to our attention the inherent worth of artwork and beauty and living in a beautiful way, whether anyone sees or acknowledges it or not; recognizing the impermanence of our life’s work, except in its residue, documentation, like relationships left behind when we die, leaving a faint trace; it seems so full of hope, that our efforts can make something good in the world that someone might stumble on; the purpose of the artwork seems to be to get the artist oustide him or herself and observing and interacting with the wider world).

It makes me wonder what an earth artist would look like in an urban context. . . does anyone know of someone doing earth or site art in a city?

middle-summer

Of all the challenges I would face in college, I simply didn’t expect to be so exhausted coming towards the end of all my classes. In fact, I rather doubt my vocation lately, because I have no energy to devote to being passionate or even interested in my fields of expertise.

You know what kind of art I love more and more, the more exhausted I get? Earth art. Site art. Extremely temporary art that’s just about being in the environment and experiencing it with new eyes. There’s an artist named Jim Denevan who does drawings in sand beaches at low tide. He’ll work for up to 7 hours and can walk up to 30 miles in service to his piece, which is destroyed not long after its creation by the rising water.

It’s so the opposite of what I’ve learned in class about art, and my own preservational instincts. Create something beautiful — put your whole self and energy into it, even if it lasts less than a day, because a beautiful thing is full of inherent worth, good in itself, because it brings you into full knowledge of the world around you, for maybe only one moment.

That’s the kind of art that speaks of continual renewal and refreshment in its creation, and the kind of art I’d like to make someday. . . .

Have a happy Friday. I’m going to spend mine doing things that rest and refresh me.

fleeting vacation, or: the Maine event (because who can resist a pun on Maine? Even the locals do it.)

Well, I’m back from Maine — lobstered, crab-caked, cabined, oceaned and fished out. And, although I truly enjoyed the trip, I have to also say I am relieved to be in a largely bug-free environment again. For a few days, the ceilings of our cabin were swarming with flying ants, whose prevalence made it a little hard for me to sleep with ease of mind (and also caused my flip-flops to be christened as battle-axes-without-peer-and-baptized-in-the-flames-of-combat in the war against things-with-two-many-legs).

Although I object in principle to the thought of swimming where things live — i.e. the ocean, the lake, or the river: any place which is not heavily chlorinated — I did go to the ocean and meet with my friend Liz and her boyfriend Jordan and we swam in the ocean and hung out at the beach. Even though I could not see my feet and there were super creepy amounts of seaweed and I saw a crab and some kids caught a lobster which definitely means that things were living under my very feet as we swam and possibly swimming around and contemplating taking a tiny nibble out of my calves — I swam. So. One fear faced on one day, who knows how many days and fears to go? I can do it. Also, I ate a lobster roll, which is highly delicious.

Lobsters “in the rough” (as artist Kim Villard dubbed them) require a complicated coordination to eat. But are also as delicious as their simple lobster-roll brethren. It takes a lobster 7 years to reach eating size, and the entirety of Boothbay Harbor, ME, is carpeted with colorful markers to lobster pots. Also, did you know that the largest lobster ever caught weighed 44 pounds and stretched to 41 inches long? That’s nearly 4 feet! Somewhere out there, in the ocean, there may be lobsters as tall as a 10-year-old, and weighing as much as my golden retriever.

If this monster lobster, about half the size of the largest ever caught, is estimated to be 50 years old, then that huge lobster, the nearly-four-feet-long one? It must’ve been nearly a hundred. Those Canadians, way back in ‘77, did they eat the largest, most ancient lobster? Can you stuff and mount a lobster? ’cause that would make one AWESOMELY WEIRD wall decoration.

Meeting artist Kim Villard and seeing her Maine studio (she and her husband, Phillipe, partner to create artwork, spend the summers in Maine, and the rest of the year in the south of France where he’s from) comprised another highlight of Maine. I learned about white-line woodblock printing, which uses watercolors instead of oil-based inks, many many colors, and creates prints that are one-of-a-kind. Because of the way ink is applied, the process is much more painterly, and there are variations to every piece they create. Pretty sweet. I can’t wait to try it!

Although I have to admit, after those few weeks of “go to my full time job come home eat dinner go to the studio and work until 11 p.m. go to bed get up and do it again” to finish our joint show for Cafe Beracah in Lebanon, I’m tired. I’m ready for a summer of playing around with ideas, looking into new processes or materials, sketching, and taking silly digital photographs. And less time spent on intense production.

Can it be that the summer is nearly half over? Dear goodness. Where did it go?

weekend adventure: Over the Teacup

First, on Friday afternoon, before the weekend even properly started, Greg’s room flooded, due to summer thunderstorms, and now smells like mildew (don’t worry, he lives off campus in a basement — Messiah’s dormitory rooms do not flood!) and. . . well, wet, dank basement.

Greg was understandably distressed.

To remedy the happenings of Friday (or at least make ourselves feel better), we settled on a good old-fashioned dress-up date to a tea house, one Over the Teacup in Camp Hill, Pa. (behind the Colonial Mall).

You should go.

We had so much fun! When we came in, one of the proprietors greeted us and led us to a table with a welcome note with our names on it. Next to us were three teenage girls in sundresses having what looked like their first formal tea party (my first, too). And across from us were four elderly patrons and a young married woman enjoying one in a long series of life-long Tea Excursions (worthy of capital letters).

One of the elderly patrons, the only male in the party, was truly hilarious. “The good thing about Alzheimer’s,” he said at one point, “is that you get to meet new people every day.” Clearly he had not passed his romancing days, either, because he told the young married woman with them that if she ever wanted to get away for a weekend, she should call him. She just laughed.

The tea was great, the atmosphere fun (in a very quirky way), the finger sandwiches very good, and they served a chilled strawberry soup that is now on my list of things to absolutely learn how to make at home. Oh, and scones! And tiny little pastry desserts. Mmmmm.

I’ve never done a formal “high tea” before, but I am now convinced that multiple forks and spoons always lead to a good time.

And then we went to the mall and I found the most Divine Shoes (and I never rave about shoes and I never really like shopping for shoes). This leads me to a tangent about how fantastic it is to have a fiance who doesn’t mind shopping with me and who loves drinking tea, and the whole ritualized high tea experience.

And on Sunday, to top off the adventure, we celebrated the wedding of two friends (to each other). A good time was had by all. Much dancing happened, including the bride and groom swing dancing so energetically that the bride’s train came un-bustled, and she continued to dance through throws and twirls and also in high heels (I have never been so impressed in my life).

And then today a pipe in Greg’s laundry room is leaking profusely. I hope the landlord fixes it ASAP, before there is a man-made flood in his room.

Conclusion: Go to Over the Teacup. Or A Perfect Blend in Lititz, Pa. (I’ve never been, but that’s apparently Greg’s favorite). And while you’re at Messiah, look for some unexpected out-of-the-way weekend adventures. It just may be delicious and well worth your while. . . .

“there once was a man, he lived and he died, the end.”

If you’re like me, every week contains a moment of evaluation, particularly since my literary analysis classes: is the way I’m living my life worth it? Are all these responsibilities ones I want to keep? For how long? What do I want my life to look like when I am grown up and outside this college?

Tuesday I had an evaluation moment. I thought about the homework I have to do over this summer: finish a research paper, write a story, read six books, read a magazine. I needed to clean the house, I needed to find time to finish a few pieces of new art for a coffee shop in Lebanon, Pa. I wondered if my post-college life would continue on this same pattern: work all day, come home, work for several hours, allow a little reading or baking cupcakes, a little talking with Greg, and then sleep to begin it all again.

For the past month I’ve been house-sitting, and to get to the house, I drive on some very country roads. It’s a beautiful route, but a little scary around dusk or after dark. In every field there are deer, including baby deer that panic and careen across the road when they see my headlights coming. All the deer work to keep my eyes trained on the landscape, and I notice things:

The tree at the corner of Alpat and Chesnut Grove roads which has a forked hollow at its base, through which you can see the sky, and inside someone humorous placed a small garden gnome. The horizon line through this gap is so much lower than anywhere else — if I knelt there, the grass could be a tiny sea and the sky limitless.

Late-afternoon sun resting on fields and leaves, a golden glow that seems like another dimension lurking at the corners of our vision. It calls out unexpected hollows and curves in faces and the earth’s surface.

It made me think: the real sin in assignments, in responsibilities, in filling your life with things like “The Best American Short Stories,” research papers, or assigned reading is letting them narrow your vision of the world. If you cannot take time at least once in your day to take in your surroundings and observe the minutiae of daily routine (or deviations from it), then you are oblivious to the fabric of real life, its silk-fine or linen-thick threads, the sheen of a square foot of plain-colored fabric.

Of this summer, will I note only enough details to write, “There once was a man, he lived and he died, the end”?

There are plenty of people and organizations quite willing to give anyone responsibilities, tasks, assignments (including self-created assignments). And the desire to complete all of these assignments well and in a timely manner is admirable. But is it worth it?

No. Not if there is not time to contemplate a little, every day.

College coursework has given me a lot of knowledge, the examples of wise professors and a few surprisingly wise classmates, and self-discipline in abundance. So as I begin the part of my life where I am completely self-determined, my self-created assignment is this: learn to do less. Depth of craft and internal dialogue with wisdom cannot happen in a frenetic life.

The end.

and people wonder what we’ll do with English degrees!

The answer is: speak precisely, with words that really mean something. We’ll communicate effectively. I know it sounds easy enough, and most of us claim to do that every day, but I recently stumbled across a BBC news article about the horrible business-speak that’s killing language in our modern centres (it is a British article after all) of commerce. And this list of 50 blunders makes me wildly optimistic about my job opportunities, since I can, after all, tell people what I mean in a tactful, professional way that actually manages to use real words in a complete sentence.

Here are a few gems from the BBC article for your consideration. Read them, potential English majors, and take heart, because you are the next generation to go out and combat linguistic ambiguity and slackerdom!

“Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I’ve got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed ‘NO! You don’t have problems, you have challenges’. At which point I almost lost the will to live.”

“We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can’t turn a tanker around with a speed boat change. What?”

“My employers recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers. I think that says it all really.” Goodness knows I can never wake up in the morning without my idea shower.

Several people complained about this little bit of linguistic imbecility: “The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?”

“The new one which has got my goat is conversate, widely used to describe a conversation.” This one doesn’t even save you any time. When the real word is only two letters longer, and is a real word, why settle for jargon?

The prize for sheer sarcasm comes from a British bank’s equivalent of a problem call-line: “Apparently, what we’re doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It’s a call centre, not Hogwarts.” Scathing.

“My favourite: we’ve got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule. Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside.” What on earth would possess you to use language so oriented towards bodily fluids in the wordplace? It really makes me gag (haha, that pun was just waiting too eagerly to be made).

“Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition.” This one brings to mind the classroom experience of a good friend of mine, who was witness to a student saying that something was “almost, if not nearly” the same as something else. Excuse me? Don’t they mean exactly the same thing? So watch yourselves, English students. If you get cocky, it could happen to you, too, before you even graduate!

“I once had a boss who said, ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.‘ It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil.”

“At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set.” Points to this complainer for the word neologism — also known as a coinage, nonce word, synthetic word, or vogue word. If you can use that word naturally, then in my mind you’re well entitled to occasionally point out the. . . odd diction choices of your co-workers.

“Working for an American corporation, this year’s favourite word seems to be granularity, meaning detail. As in ‘down to that level of granularity‘.” Well, we are called to be the salt of the earth regardless of our profession, right? So let’s share our granularity, as well as our attention to detail, with the business world.

“After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: ‘Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center…”

“Lately I’ve come across the strategic staircase. What on earth is this? I’ll tell you; it’s office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It’s not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be?”

“Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I’m afraid we’re stuck with biz-speak.”

Speaking of the way in which things like the internet changes our cognitive functions, what better way to celebrate your work week than with a realization of what an odd sort of language a closed business system can foster in our minds?

Sure, really communicating and spending time crafting appropriate language takes more time, but to me, it seems to be an activity that’s inherently worthwhile. I was listening to the Weepies this morning again, to their song “Simple Life,” which discusses a few simple things (like making a cup of coffee, knowing all your neighbors by name, and all the stars in the night sky) that make life good and full. Taking the time to communicate well, whatever my sphere of life or role happens to be (the office, the classroom, home-body, author, artist), is definitely on my list of things that I aim for in a good life, along with eating well and sleeping a lot.

And laughing? Laughing is definitely on my list, too.

don’t wake me, i plan on sleeping in.

My friends, I gather you together with a sad tale. Peary Manilow has disappeared from our office. He’s been missing for two days, and the pear police are not optimistic, since the first 48 hours are the most crucial in bringing back missing persons without harm.

And Dan also speculates that a pear doesn’t last more than a few days before reaching an irreparable state of ripeness. So. . . even if we got him back, it’s likely his tour would be truncated.

In other news, it’s Friday, and I’m planning on sleeping way the heck in tomorrow morning. Heck yes. And maybe throwing in an afternoon nap today, too. Mmmm. . . napping, my favorite.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s summer. Yet I’m beginning my studies of Arabic love poetry for the fall a little early. It’s extremely interesting, particularly as I’m a poet just discovering that not all love poetry is tripe. Listen to the beginning of one of the books I’m reading:

“Amazing! How could it be that the one pierced through the heart by love had any remainder of self left to be bewildered? Love’s character is all-consuming. It numbs the senses, drives away intellect, astonishes thoughts, and sends off the one in love with the others who are gone. Where is bewilderment and who is left to be bewildered?”

I think it might be a pretty intense class. But hopefully it will deepen and broaden my own attempts at poetry with another cultural perspective, and another genre with its own requirements and desires.

the problem with the internet is that you actually have to remember all those passwords.

The awesome things about it are blogs or magazines filled with humor, recipe blogs, and photography blogs. On its best days, the internet really sparks my creativity and makes me want to find a way to create something poetic, profound, or playful (or alliterated).

Today I fulfilled the playful imperative by brainstorming with Dan Custer, following up on the genius of Brandie Stonge, who invited Peary Manilow to tour the Office of Marketing and Public Relations.

As artists and writers, that’s what we need more of, every day — sites that spark something, that give us a new view into ways to spark our readers or viewers to interest, new ways to approach puns, topics of conversation with other sides.

It’s a good point for the internet, to balance against this article, which makes the claim that the internet is stunting our brains. The author of the article is speaking about our growing inability to read long things deeply and thoughtfully due to the way the internet is structured. (You’ll notice that he makes this point within an extremely long article. Preaching to the choir, as it were — people who already value reading long pieces deeply.) I think it’s a deeper issue than that, though. Rather than changing the way we read (although it might do that, too) the internet simply creates many, many distractions from meditation and contemplation.

You know, being able to take time to watch the sun setting, or the rain, and think about it without feeling impatient, without feeling like you need to rush off and click on the next link. As much as it feels odd to me, I am sort of appreciating that the house I’m house-sitting this month does not have internet. I spend more time outside, more time playing with the cat.

So as an artist, the tricky balance to seek after is possibly, “how do I keep the inspiration, variety, humor, and portent that can be found in places like the internet and yet still spend time in contemplation and immersion in the present moment?”

Maybe?

yesterday i learned that you can purchase coffins from costco. weird.

I had trouble thinking of a good topic for blogging this week. So I decided to turn to my no-fail entertainment website: The BBC News. No, the state of the world is not generally entertaining. But after I read the BBC I feel informed, and it’s just plain fun to hear the news scrolling through my brain in a British accent. There are also sometimes fun little puzzles, like “try to tell if the British person who wrote this article is being funny or not.” (British humor sometimes still eludes me.)

Without further ado, here are a few things you can go check out at the BBC news website:

Cuttlefish apparently can learn to recognize their prey while still in the embryo. Sweet! Who knew? If we had clear glass stomachs, could our baby embryos learn to recognize the alphabet before they’re born?

The top story for NASA is that the astronaut’s toilet is now fixed. While I think that’s hilarious, I also think it could be good PR for NASA. When I was in third grade, learning about how astronauts slept and ate and used the bathroom IN SPACE was the coolest thing ever. I bet there are a lot of 3rd graders out there who are even now, as we speak, learning some aspects of space engineering because of NASA’s broken toilet.

Some lady in Sussex hatched a baby emu. Sold as a novelty food at some local store, this lady bought three eggs and put them in a chicken-egg incubator. Two were duds. Apparently this lady is all about rescuing animals, especially unusual ones, and she’s already on the look out for potential mates for her new, baby emu.

Also, this is not on the BBC, but Greg’s house got a new baby kitten this week. It is so cute and tiny! When it purrs, its entire body shakes. And it is very, very curious.

Margherita pizzas get protected by international law? It’s true. And I can attest to both the amazingness of a great Italian pizza and the plastic imitation variety being prevalent. . . although I’ve never been to Naples itself. Maybe next time I visit Italy? Or maybe not, as everyone who visited there said it was a very scary, dirty city.

And last but not least, a man in a wheelchair got caught on the front end of a semi. He was held into the chair by a seatbelt, and who knows how the wheelchair was held onto the front of the semi. (The BBC version of this story was fantastic, because it used the word “lorry” instead of “semi.” Lorry!) Anyway, eventually the truck stopped and the man wasn’t hurt. A sort of modern-day stoic, he only complained that he had spilled his soda pop.

And if those stories don’t inspire you to go out and have a fantastic afternoon and enter your weekend with gladness, my name is Jerry.

in which i write a girly blog post about choosing a career

Dress shopping is a fascinating and personality-revealing phenomenon. You browse through store after store, finding all the dresses you think are beautiful. Then you try them on, one after another, discarding all the ones that don’t fit quite right.

Then you are left with the most difficult task of all — determining which of these beautiful dresses suit you. Which one is actually your style? Which one reflects your personality, your understanding of the way clothes should function as self-expression? Maybe this one pushes your style a little bit but is undeniably you, maybe that one is classic you, and maybe that one over there (yes, the green polka-dotted one) fits well but isn’t right at all.

Choosing is hard. Because you want to choose something you’ll love until it wears out, possibly years down the road.

Career options are the same way. It seems logical to think that once you’ve chosen your major (or in my case, majors), your career will just follow. But no, choosing a major is like choosing all the dresses that are beautiful. Then, throughout your classes, you figure out what, specifically, within that major fits you well. Like photography or printmaking, creative writing or literature analysis.

Then the hardest part. You have to figure out which, of all the things you loved about your (possibly multiple) majors suits you. Does art or English suit me more? Photography or printmaking? Editing or writing? How could I most happily spend my life, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week?

And if you’re lucky, the things that suit you will also fit you (i.e. you’ll be able to find a job opening in that area). If not, well, learn to make your own clothes I guess.

The good thing is, there are plenty of stores and employers out there. . . .

And that ends girly metaphor hour with Mackenzie. Tune in next time, to hear me compare marriage to the process of doing your nails.

(Just kidding. I don’t know anything about marriage and I never do my nails.)