I tried to take a picture of the brief snow flurries that greeted us on the way home, but they were too sparse to be photogenic. The sounds of helicopters circling, too, defied documentation.
We offered our loving best energy as we practiced just steps away from the preparations for this ever critically important event.
My Grandma Rose (for whom the name of this blog is partly in tribute) was a very important part of my childhood. She had a small, but lovely apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and I spent about a weekend a month for most of my childhood with her. One day when the family was visiting and I was no more than seven or eight, I took a carton of her cigarettes and destroyed them. She was very angry, and I got in a lot of trouble with my parents for the deed. I had just learned in school about all the horrors of smoking (that was the very early years of starting to admit and warn of the hazards of smoking), and I wanted to protect her.
When my grandmother died at age 76 from her heart unexpectedly stopping, I was in 10th grade. They found she had advanced stages of emphysema. Occasionally I wonder how my life would have been different and think about how much she would have enjoyed seeing me grow up if the smoking had not shortened her life.
Although I was too young to know that we cannot change our loved ones by force or even by the force of our love, I hope she knew that my childish act of destruction was borne from love.
Never underestimate the power of ritual.
I found the 1934: A New Deal for Artists exhibit at SAAM quite moving. The exhibit was put together for the 75th anniversary of the New Deal; it is merely coincidence that paintings commissioned by the United States government to depict American life in a time of dire conditions happen to be on exhibit at this time. It is a good companion to view along with Robert Frank’s Americans at the NGA West Wing — also on view because of an anniversary, not because of its coincidental timeliness.
The art is not great art, and it is stuck in the period in which it was painted, in part because of the nature of the commission. The depictions of America show any resilience and beauty inextricably intertwined with hardship and struggle. In its very datedness, the art on exhibit raises questions about what are society’s priorities today, how we are responding to the crisis of war, environmental devastation, and economic crisis and how we could enhance and celebrate humanity and the planet rather than continue to decimate the earth and ourselves.
According to the Friends Committee on National Legislation, approximately 43% of your 2008 taxes will pay for war. President Obama’s proposed budget has a smaller increase than previous years, but does not lower in any way military spending. I’d rather my tax dollars were buying art.
