#BLM Art and Former Statues

#BLM Art and Former Statues

Not only have there been gorgeous murals going up around the world in support of Black Lives Matter, but they are also painting the streets themselves. Black Lives Matter in huge letters, visible from space, or at least from small aircraft.

And the statues, ALL the statues seem to be coming down, all the ones which lack compassion.  And even the ones of old men, who might be on the good side of history.  In these days, it is better to rethink everything.  Even those who fought, did they not fight hard enough?  Did they do everything and we are still stuck in this world? Would their ghosts be fighting for change, along with the protesters? 

I imagine the ghosts on the better, more equitable side of history, cheering on the living.  All the energy (both living and dead) are contributing to the new world.  And even the ghosts with regretful pasts, are changing their minds.  Even they can change their minds, even they can fix things for the better from the grave.  

All the souls in the world want mercy for the future.

Even in Portugal,there is a sense of reckoning.  The idea that "Portugal is not a racist country" has been brought up again-how can the country which started the slave trade and commissioned histories to define the hierarchy of races- Prince Henry the Navigator has lots of statues-but we must now understand who he really is.

https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/06/06/black-lives-matter-movement-to-hold-more-rallies-across-portugal/

https://lithub.com/ibram-x-kendi-how-racism-relies-on-arbitrary-hierarchies/

America is on Fire!

Plenty of virtual ink has been spilled about the horrendous treatment of African Americans at the hands of the American police.  Those who are supposed to protect and serve will easily kill anyone with non-white skin.  This also applies to immigrants, those with accents and those with mental health issues. But African Americans were brought to this country illegally, forced to work, and have never been freed of the social idea that they can never have respect, especially from "authorities".

This has been an issue for the past 400 years, but after 2 months of being locked up, America is bursting at the seams in trying to get the attention of the non-leaders, calling for justice for a man who was choked to death on video over a long period of 8 minutes. Earlier in the week was a black man who was birding in Central Park who videotaped a white woman who called 911 on him.  She knew to call out race, to say that an African American man was threatening her life-even though she was the one who had her dog off leash in one of the few areas in the Park that requires a leash at all times.  She was committing a crime, and knew that if she called the cops-he would be the one to face consequences.  Her name was Amy Cooper, his name was Christian Cooper-at some distant point in the past it is likely that her family OWNED his family.  She lost her job and her dog and her reputation.  NYC was proud that it turned into a non-issue. But in Minnesota, everything else went wrong.

So the peaceful protests started.  And the out-of-state white supremacists began to incite violence.  Agent Provocateurs set fires, egged everyone on.  It is again an excuse for white expression during continued black oppression. NYC is being destroyed, the police are being supported by the military and very soon we will be living in a police state. All to create chaos in a country, in a world that is beset by a pandemic.  To keep the idiot in chief in power. And who knows what else?

Saving Jericho Hill Forest

Saving Jericho Hill Forest

A few weeks ago, just before this crazy pandemic got started, the mayor of Waltham put forth a resolution to take some land to add to a new development for a high school. 6 acres, to add onto another 46 acres already purchased, so that they can build a parking lot.

The whole project will also include a tremendous amount of blasting, to create a giant stone wall which will cause the costs to increase to $400 million, in the best case scenario.  It will be the 2nd most expensive high school in the history of the US, just behind LA.  And all this for half of the number of kids in the graduating class than the numbers they had 30 years ago.  Very little of this overall budget will actually be for resources for the students.

Additionally, the construction and attitudes in this whole process demonstrate a tremendous lack of respect for the open spaces in the town.

Ironically, the forest has never been more beloved and visited as it has in the past few weeks, thanks to the quarantine. All the Waltham Parks and Playgrounds have been closed since the middle of March and everyone has been out exploring this forest, one of the last pieces of open land left to us in the city.

The World Has Stopped-Corona

Broadway shut down on March 12 and the rest of NYC and MA on Friday the 13th.  People began hunkering down, schools closed, colleges, businesses. Staying home in quarantine is now the new norm, and it just got extended from Easter, to April 30 to May 4. Some theaters are trying to go online-AEA is stopping some productions bc they don't know how to frame it in a contract.

ALSO-Jericho Hill Forest is going to be torn down (maybe?) I'm trying to fight against it, using every trick I know how to use.  Yesterday, I sent emails to the City Counsel Members-asking if I could walk the trails with them, only one said yes. Indeed, I'm resorting to being NICE-although I can't tell you how much my blood boils when I see how they've already begun destroying things to measure it all.

Henry DThoreau was a surveyor, he felt guilty.

I've started an Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jerichohillforestwaltham/ for pictures and am posting on Twitter, Nextdoor and FB.  The ironic thing is that my town has shut down the parks and playgrounds, so these trails are the only open space left to engage with nature. The Forest should be renamed Sanity Park-for keeping everyone's sanity up.  Even the governor yesterday said it was good for people's mental health.

I can't quite describe yet, how beautiful the forest is. How it's like a cathedral, and also a cemetery.  A future cemetery, all the trees and animals about to be taken from the earth.  Its as if the trees are the souls of Waltham, the ones who have come before.  And it is my duty to keep them there, awaiting and vigilant, for the future generations (especially for the very high school students that the area is being given for-to be made into a parking lot)

How all these stories seem so far away-the rainforests of Brazil, the virus in China. And then it comes home. And it changes everything in your life.

Hospital Food and Bookmarks

This month I spent too much time in hospitals.

I wonder why the food in the cafeteria is NOT healthy. Its because most cafeterias are run as cafeterias and not as health centers. You don't want to scare anyone, and want to make sure there is a comfort food option. Who are we kidding? They are run by the cafeteria paradigm-basic food. Ideally not terrible. Put cheese on everything, this is America, dammit. The sawdust cheese, they won't even notice!

I also sketched out the idea for a children's book, called the Bookmark Lady. It is about performative moments in a hospital, and being able to overcome your own emotions by being kind to others-and handing out bookmarks as gifts. Sometimes people need to be distracted by their own simple humanity-just long enough to get out of their own heads about being scared at a hospital.

MIT Reality Hackathon

Attended the MIT Hackathon about XR, actually called a Reality Hack.  I crafted and scripted the narrative about Desegregation in Miami in 1957-specifically a story about Frank LeGree and how his family had picketers outside his house, threw rocks and eventually erected a cross on his front lawn-all in order to get him out of a neighborhood.

The video of the AR experience we created is here: https://youtu.be/C6w3e4wqwfk

Our team would love to do more with AR and explore this and other stories of America's growing pains further. Desegregation of schools, different neighborhoods in large cities i the 1950's. Life for a growing country and how that time period brought forth change that is still unresolved today. 

Connect that period with When They See Us-and #OscarsStillSoWhite and you will see how America still exists in black and white for so many people. The best part of the Hackathon was the idea that so many different people could come together to build a new reality. One in which the only judgments issued are on a lack of imagination.

Mark Twain in the Azores

I've been doing some research on Twain's visit to the Azores. He stopped in Horta on his way to Palestine-a series of correspondences that would become his book,  Innocents Abroad.

Most of what he wrote about the Azores in that book was not kind, he was trying to create jokes-and also created a cynical sense of the superiority of the American traveler. He made himself the joke of an ugly American-especially viewed from the perspective of today.

In the Book about the Dabneys, there is evidence that he was in their house. Below is a quote from one of the female residents.

“At 10 the parlor was quite full….One young man had his note-book out all the time and remarked as I gave him some verbena,’I am taking notes as I am a correspondent of a paper’. 

‘Horrors;, writes CPD, “how we may appear in print,’