MotherPie

Hands...

Hands -- our symbols of friendship, love, creativity, blessing.  Our hands metaphorically cup our interests, hold our passions.

My hands have been busy raising children (and typing on this blog).  As my youngest heads towards adulthood, my hands are creating in one sense, and letting go in another sense.  And perhaps, pushing others on, pushing myself into new stages.

Motherhood is a process of transitions and now, with my youngest flying the nest with her feet strongly on the ground, I find myself at a good place and new stages.  I'm pleased with how my children have turned out.  I'm happy in my marriage.  I'm content with myself. I am rich in my friends.

Blogging has been a mainstay as I've transitioned for these 3 1/2 years: retooling with a master's degree in media studies; moving from NYC to Santa Fe; getting two children established in college; getting one child out of grad school, married and established in Dallas; settling into empty nest; enjoying new projects, time with my husband (which is like dating all over again!). Life is never dull; transitions never end.

Like all transitions, this one here will wind down.  If I've more to add, it will be little here, or not, or maybe elsewhere, in which case I may post a link. Thanks to all who have become my blog friends and faithful readers.  

I remain alive on flickr as MyEyeSees.

Life, Time and Significance...

Sometimes it takes literally years and years and years to understand or even know what has been significant.  Time must pass to understand the larger meaning of a thing, to put perspective on life, to see how beginnings actually end.

That has certainly been the case with the inspiring and true story of 12 Mighty Orphans. 

I'm in Dallas/Fort Worth working on the story which might have died with the characters had it not been turned into a book, now in its 20th printing, by Jim Dent.

It is truly a wonderful story for our times or for all time.  I hope it is made into a movie so it can touch the hearts and minds of others.

African American History in Art and Photographs...

Strength to Love.  That is the book he authored (a collection of his sermons) that was in Martin Luther King's briefcase, right, open as he packed it, in his hotel the day he was shot.  These never before released photos from the day he died by Henry Groskinsky for Life magazine.

Earlier this month I saw Dan Budnik's photographs of, Marching the Dream: American Civil Rights Photography which included many photos of Martin Luther King in an exhibit at Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe. 

I'm headed to my hometown, Oklahoma City, and will just miss the Harlem Renaissance exhibit at the Oklahoma Museum of Art. Darn.  But oh well.  It is the week of the Arts Festival, which is a great event in that town.

African American Art is a hot genre, as I covered earlier.

Ramble: I am Turtle...

Like a turtle, my home has been on my back, almost literally. But as a mother, we often think of how we give our children roots and wings.  There is nothing turtle-ish about that. Or is there?

Like a turtle that comes back to the same beach to lay the eggs, my husband laments he couldn't have his offspring hatched in Texas so they would be seventh generation Texans.  Seriously this is his only lament in life.  Instead they were born in my native state of Oklahoma,  the fourth generation born there and actually, I'm half Texan myself.  So my children have mostly been raised in Texas where they have a 3/4 heritage.  Have I lost you?  That's ok. With my moves sometimes I have trouble keeping up with myself.

So a turtle does have a sense of place and, with a slow and steady sense, keeps home as a personal encasement.  At this stage in my life I am seeing all of my children return to a home base, in spite of our moves and relocations.

I'm roaming around slowly, at this stage of my life, free of the burdens of children.  With the youngest two in college and two years of empty nest under my belt, I'm having the pleasure and freedom to pick up threads of old friendships and to pursue personal interests.  I'm in Oklahoma and Texas having a great time both for business and pleasure.

Because I'm on the road, and also because I'm recovering still from shoulder surgery, and because I'm picking up on other projects and such, I need to blog less (ergonomically, especially). 

I am turtle. Hear me roar. A little less here, more on flickr.

photo

Even Traditions Transition (The Easter Parade)...

Make a parade! Life is all about creation!  It is yours to do. Inventing traditions and making memories is part of motherhood.  Now that my children are grown (the youngest will soon turn 21 and it has been a long time since we've all come together on this weekend), I'm realizing that life itself is a transtion: even traditions transition.

If you've been following me lately, I'm immersed in the theme of transition. It is the arc of my life, and probably yours, too, but mine just seems to be full more of change than routine.  And, so, I write.

Bill Cunningham captures NYC's Easter Parade. It isn't even now at all what it once was.  I wasn't there to see it when I lived there, but it I've seen other street performances for this holiday and know how they change and evolve.  I've seen the parade of pilgrims to the chapel at Chimayo in New Mexico where penitentes once lashed gashes in their bare backs and carried huge crosses, Christ-like along the way.

I know that our traditions transition, from age to age and year to year and place to place. I did see a really cute monogrammed Easter basket this year thought hmmm. I'm far away in my motherhood from baskets. Only one child actually got a basket with something in it. Yep. My youngest.  My children out grew egg hunts the year I altered the routine and didn't put out plastic eggs with surprises inside and instead, put out real colored hard-boiled eggs.  That was the end of that. Their baskets were tossed in one of our moves.

Baskets, since my days of doing them up for little children, are quite something now. I love this one, above, with such cute fabric and a monogram.  I bet a grandmother made it.  Transitions. Motherhood is the biggest one of all.

Grey Gardens, HBO Tonight...

Grey Gardens is on HBO tonight. Starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie (Barrymore, left with the real Little Edie at right in photo) and Jessica Lange as Big Edie, it is based on the true story of the odd ball mother and daughter (aunt and cousin to Jackie Kennedy) who lived out their once-high-society lives frozen in time and seclusion in a decaying house in The Hamptons.  The Broadway version in 2007 was based on the Maysles brother's documentary which really, is a classic with great quotable lines. 

What happens when women are raised to do nothing but be debutantes and high society matrons and the path shifts in front of them?  This story can be mined for all sorts of topics but the main one is the relationship between the two, sharing a life of once-was, or might-have-beens.  The week that the unusual never-been-kissed 47 year-old Scottish Susan Boyle stunned the world with her singing, we have a chance (if you have HBO) to see other unusual characters on the screen.  

It is a cult classic that keeps coming back in many forms. It first captured my attention in 2007 when I was sojourning in NYC for a time. Just wait  -- as Little Edie's fashion sense with scarfs inspired designers, the movie might cause another resurrection.

Update after watching:  There were times when we couldn't tell if Lang and Barrymore, who seemed to perfectly capture the Big and Little Edie, were acting or it it was cuts to the real characters from the documentary.  The only thing missing were many of the fabulous quoatable lines.  We did like the new line, though: "You are an aquired taste" uttered by Lang as Big Edie, referring to her daughter.

Stand By Me (Altered Time, Altered Boundaries)

This mash up of the classic song Stand By Me puts together a new  new version with musicians from all over the world-- pretty interesting. 

After spending a day in Dallas with a daughter, old friends and a cousin, getting around a city I moved from in 1981 and found GPS navigation a real help all these years later, I was reminded once again how important it is to keep our ties, and to stand by those we love -- even if separated, as these musicians are, by many miles.

Artist Spotlight: Fort Worth Main Street Art Festival...

  Two artists stood out at yesterday's opening day of the Fort Worth, Texas Main Street Arts Festival. 

Probably the loudest commentary from passersby was that heard around the booth of Artist Michael Brown.  People would pass by, stop, back up and take a second, third and fourth look and then go to all the works on exhibit by Brown.  Brown, a photographer, has used an old technique in a new way to make a photo reflect two seasons from different angles.  His website has an example of this work, at right, showing winter and spring.

Brown takes a photo using a tripod from the exact position a second time, in a different season.

Another artist worth mentioning is Katherine Allen Coleman who has a studio in Georgia. She takes the dresses of children, or ladies' gloves from yesteryears and using an acrylic method, layers them onto canvases. Sometimes she uses old patterns or buttons, but her works combine a sense of fashion and dimension as well as paint. Women of all ages seemed drawn to her booth.

Ramble: Just Loverly...

Just back from witnessing spring come to Asheville, North Carolina and am posting my pics on Flickr. Everything from tulips, redbuds, cherry trees and daffodils were blooming a few days after snow had graced the area.  My oldest daughter and I enjoyed a trip to the spa (one of the best, ever) at Grove Park Inn.  It was most loverly.

Also just loverly:

• The stunning performance (you must have seen it by now, like the rest of the world) by the never-been-kissed 37 year-old Scottish lady, Susan Boyle, born ninth of nine children, who struggled in school as a child and  lived with parents to help care for them as they aged, got up on stage in London and wowed the talent judging panel with her song from Les Miserables.  It had over 11 million views by this morning on YouTube.  I'm getting a bunch of emails with the link -- my first one, Sunday, had only 2 million views then.  The judges faces as they witnessed her talent were just surprising and sweet as her performance.  Other iterations of the video are also getting millions of hits. 
• Knock Out Roses: This advice from a professional gardener in Dallas for my new-to-Dallas married daughter - "knockout roses are bullet proof.  they are green all year, bloom from march to november.  You can let them grow into 6 foot tall shrubs or cut them to 18" and pretty much do the cutting whenever you want to....They are pretty much disease proof and they like a little fertilizer from time to time. They can be used as specimens, hedges, or backdrop."  I'll be planting Russian sage in my Santa Fe xeriscape.  Looks like lavender.
• Carolyn Wharton Caladiums, xtra large out of Sebring, Florida -- my favorites.  The most loverly of caladiums in my opinion. I've planted them in three states.  I've lost the form through moves of the place that my mother and I both use but they are also here.  Great in shade and porch pots. Oh, I love them.
• Change, though difficult, can be loverly: empty nest, for example, is quite delightful. It is like dating all over again.  Visiting with one of my new docent friends from Santa Fe, who also moved there full-time when I did, told me of how she finds herself in loverly good places in relationship areas of her life which would not have happened had she not moved.  Or maybe it might have happened with years and years of therapy.

Loverly Loverly Loverly Cheers.

Moving, Stretching, Changing, Staying the Same...

Or, When Change Happens in Terms of Place: the flip side. Not really the Sancho Panza to the Quixote in my lifestyle of grownup uprootedness, but rather more like the pepper to the salt, even though pepper makes me sneeze at the same time I love it, is the way that the relationship of my moving about should be framed. 

This post is the follow-up to what I think was a quite lamenting list of what is perceived as losses from a life of (a lot of) moving. I've memories of living in five states, eight cities, eleven residences just since my marriage in 1980. This is in great contrast to the rootedness of my existence since I was 5 - my parents still live on the same street; my grandparents lived and died in the same house; 40 of my 63 classmates were together k - 12.  I guess I had strong roots and therefore big wings. (sigh). Roots and wings.

What does one gain from going from one place to another?  Lots.

My list of what has been gained through moving:

1. Becoming an outsider and appreciating insider/outsider status
2. Learning to embrace change.
3. A honed sense of how to make and keep really good friends and what makes ties that bind
4. Knowing how to start from scratch, embracing new opportunities
5. Creating a sense of place, wherever
6. Learning about culture and regions
7. A heightened sense of priorities
8. Existing in a state of creating, becoming
9. Living in the present and becoming future-oriented
10. Developing the ability to toss and move on
11. Knowing how to go out of bounds, to stretch, to reach
12. Being able to be comfortable with discomfort
13. Discovering and appreciating new and different perspectives on life
14. Fostering a sense of adventure
15. Knowing that although Home is Where the Heart Is, Home is also a sense of Place.
16. Learning how to go into new environments and new places
17. Expanding my personal metaphorical backyard and belonging on a broad basis to more places
18. Developing flexibility and adaptability
19. Applying a spirit of adventure continuously
20. Wiping the slate clean again and again
21. Learning how to land on my feet
22. Understanding what defines me
23. Having the time to blog, for free. here. ha. Maybe the most irrelevant. or not.

And, I'm still transitioning.  More on that, later.

When Change Happens in Terms of Place...

Changes can force alterations and take one in interesting directions on uncharted paths.  We can't live life in terms of "might haves" or "ifs" or in looking backwards.  But sometimes, in the midst of transitions, we can't help but look back as we move forward.   Moving from here to there, I'm still in the place of between.  The (subjective) future is understood through the lense of the (subjective) past. Between is ok, by the way.

Things I might have had, if not for so many moves:

1. My Barbie doll (but really, I'm glad I threw her out).
2. A Pair of Staffordshire dogs, discarded for $100 in my Atlanta garage sale, that turned up in the New York City Armory Antique show with a $14,000 price tag.
3. Roller skates in boot form, a wooden tennis racquet with a warp-proofer thing on it
4. Insider status
5. My Nancy Drew books
6. A couple of paintings, good or bad
7. Letters I should have kept
8. Perhaps still a bridge group, a stitch n bitch group, several reading groups, a dinner club
9. Unaltered routines
10. Invitations to things from acquaintances
11. A lot of obligations -- showers, funerals, friendship rites
12. A circle of old friends with not much room for new friends
13. Knick-nacks and what-nots, of little sentimental value or no value
14. junk and full closets and habits that should have ended
15. An attic too full to consider
16. A garden dug deep into routine and subconscious
17. Knowing what is kept where
18. A present infused with the past
19. Comfort and boredom
20. Generational memory of place

Next...things gained and the enrichment of life through the process of uprooting...

Skate Keys...

My mother loved to skate and she made sure I loved to, also.  I would wear the skate key around my neck.  The skate grips would make blisters, even through my thick saddle shoes.

My mother shared this experience but by the time I had my own daughters, they had new kind of skates, lace-up boots and anyway, in-line skates were the thing.

My mother and I would wink with understanding.  The next generation? My girls will remember Smurfs, Cabbage Patch kids and Beanie Babies, not Jiffy Pop popcorn, I Love Lassie, the Lone Ranger, Dale Evans, Green Stamps or Chatty Cathy dolls.   

SKATE KEY. This is a SKATE KEY.

Ramble: Still - Hoping, Trying...

This week my childhood friend comes in for a visit to Santa Fe. We were so close we could communicate telepathically.  We could fill in the blanks without having to spell out the words.  I'm thrilled she is here.  This is our fourth time together since she moved away at sixth grade.  Let's see.. once at 23, then at 35, again at 42 and now in our early 50s.

Who says you can't keep up, with a little effort?

Which makes me  bring you to our Lola, that red-tailed hawk from the mate-for-life pair in NYC, sitting on a new nest of eggs on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park.  If there is anything that I keep going back to, after leaving Manhattan in 2007, this is it.  Why this old pair keeps trying to hatch progeny every spring...well, it is a thing of hope, of love, of life, even when it is a tale of annual failure.

Now I'm doing facebook, surprising my children with knowledge of their lives, but yet... being with a friend, like Lola sitting on a nest, is life itself.  Real. Life.

500 Years Ago A King Rose (and so did the codpiece)...

Henry VIII ascended the throne as King of England in April 1509 and he is credited with bringing to great prominence the codpiece, a fashion element that rose in stature as Henry did, and fell out of favor not long after his death.

At left you see the big piece right out in front on his suit of armor, on display in the Tower of London. Below, right, you can see it as a flourish on his costume front.  Why would he want to have such large, elaborate and fancy cases made for "the family jewels"?

Maybe it is true that the English, under a former monarch, intimidated the French with the power of the prominent armor piece and the soldiers, so suited with this item, terrified their enemies.  Or, as some have theorized, Henry VIII suffered from syphilis and some sort of bandage protection was needed, or it was a large pocket for actually carrying things like real jewels.

Knowing that the man beheaded wives for failing to produce sons, set himself up as the head of the Church of England, and otherwise ruled with fierce force, he had to choose his symbols of power.  Some kings or queens would require certain obeisance such as never turning a back on the monarch, always approaching or leaving on knees, bowing or whatnot. Now I've not studied this in-depth but you would think probably that wearing a codpiece as big or bigger than the King would be a bold way to threaten the king.  It was probably an unwritten rule of dress, fashion and behavior, to, like the king, wear skirts and codpieces.  Imitating the king would be a way of showing obedience, worship, acceptance of authority and acquiescence to leadership.

Anyway, his attempts to prove his worth, exercise his power and to fulfill his duty of establishing a male heir to the throne today may beget all sorts of questions of psychology, culture, fashion, power, sociology, hegemony...

What a Wee Queen?

She sure looks small and tiny, doesn't she -- she being the Queen of England.  I never thought of her before as being bitty. 

Stately stature.  She loves the crowns, the scepter, the pageants, the parades, the hats, the handbags, the footmen and horsemen.  

The take-away?  It's the moms in the middle.

TV Test Patterns...

You have to be of a certain age to know what this is.  To know that the Indian in full headdress at the top and this pattern came on when programming was off-air.  Those hours when most everyone should be sleeping. 

Adjusting the vertical and horizontal buttons to make the picture perfect. The "ant fights" of the static dead time.

Media.  The old days.

Big Step: Future of the News...

Typepad won't load my picture, but I've put up big news today on the future of the news but it is on flickr.  Go there for the in-depth. You might think the big media news is the start-up announcement of Fox Nation, but it isn't.  It is the announcement by Arianna Huffington that investigative news will be privately funded by a non-profit and the the first subject to be tackled will be The Economy. 

From HuffPo's announcement:

Huffington Post Launches Investigative Journalism Venture
 it will bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation's economy.
The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. ...Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said. The Huffington Post venture is reminiscent of ProPublica, a nonprofit independent newsroom funded by The Sandler Foundation and headed by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. ProPublica works with a $10 million budget.

Another way the news is shifting: Slate launched "Shoot the Recession," a project in which readers have been asked to help document the economic crisis in photographs via submitting images to the group page Slate set up on the photo-sharing site Flickr. I've added some of my shots.

Surviving the Downturn...

This was the front page from February 10, 2009 for the Santa Fe New Mexican.  I liked the headline and took a digital shot for my study of the economic crisis and media.  Newspapers are dying and there is not a reason for me to buy this daily paper except to get the inside special edition Pasatiempo published on Friday. And I do like the ads for that special issue.

The newspaper business is dying fast with death throes and rattles and I'm bored even trying to report the dire bad news of the news. I knew when I could easily do desk top publishing way back when in the early 90s that the gatekeeper mode was breaking and anyone could publish to anyone at a much reduced cost.  Whenever we pick up a newspaper here in Santa Fe we lament that it is already news we've seen online.  But over the weekend we had three papers delivered to our driveway and we'd not subscribed at all.  How do you get rid of papers you don't want, besides using them to start pinyon fires?

Naomi had commented on my post earlier about NYU professor Jay Rosen's article, Flying Seminar In The Future of News, which I had read. Go read it.  It is a great March 2009 wrap up of links for mindcasting on the crashing of the newspaper industry and imagining a new news system.

The latest data from the Newspaper Association of America shows that the current economic climate has only exacerbated the already dire state of the American newspaper industry. Specifically, total newspaper advertising revenue fell 16.6% in 2008. Classifieds advertising, which is under a lot of pressure from online ventures like Craigslist, fell almost 30%, and real estate classifieds fell 38%.

March (Internet & Connective) Ideas...

Seven inches of fresh snow fell overnight, making an odd spring image looking over the vase of daffodils on the desk outside the window. Just like looking from here to there, inside to outside, seasons juxtaposed, let's look at our present, much changed, from our times past.  Things are now linked beyond what we could have ever thought possible.

March 2009 marks 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee first proposed a project that would become the World Wide Web. It took until 1993 before the public became aware of the creation and the general public didn't really come online until the mid-1990s with the commercialization of the AOL and Netscape browsers made navigation of the web easy.

Google officially launched in September 1998 and Facebook launched in 2004. Facebook has about 180 million users Facebook has 275 million users (57 million in the U.S.), as of the end of February, while Twitter only has about 10 million and is just three years old. The number of Facebook users over 35 has nearly doubled in the last 60 days.

Good things the internet has ruined forever? Well, newspapers are dying but we still debate if that is a good thing or not.  Our economy is in a disruptive state, so are we.  Ah.... the Ideas of March.

Tar Baby...

It is just a tar baby. There isn't a way to get involved without becoming stuck in a not-healthy way.  It is sort of agonizing to go there, knowing what will happen.

That is how I described a situation to my mid-20s daughter.  She didn't understand the term.  Huh?

I had to stop and explain it.  How if you touch something, you can sometimes never get unstuck and you become tied down, unable to freely carry on. The entanglement, bound up as tar will cling and not let go (ever sat on a tar-blotched beach? I did, in Corpus Christi -- ruined the beach towels). It is a nasty thing... to go there.

Tar Baby.  It was not used in any pejorative, racial or other manner.  Just a way to describe that any engagement with a situation leads to an unpleasant obliged relationship of a no-win set-up. The tar baby image I conjure is a black bush-like blob, nothing like the image I tracked down, which might make it seem racist and with a personification of the tar baby.  My thoughts take me back to the idea of Brer Rabbit.

Some things are better left well-enough alone.  That's the idea.  Gee.  Do I date myself that much?