What's the Story of the RadJoy Bird?

A friend asked me recently about our Radical Joy for Hard Times symbol, a bird, sometimes depicted flying into trouble spots, or a thorny graphic depiction of trouble spots. It's actually a wonderful story.

At our very first board meeting, right after RadJoy was formed in the spring of 2009, one of our members brought art supplies and we stuck pieces of paper together, then all worked together in silence for about an hour, moving around the paper, drawing, writing, adding to what others had done... with the intention of coming up with our collective vision in a non-verbal way. When we finished, we brought the painting outside to a little park across the street. We couldn't make any sense of it at all. Then one man stood on a picnic table, and suddenly exclaimed, "It's a bird!" And then we saw it: a crazy bird facing all the dark stuff of wounded places and flying into it, singing.

So that bird became our symbol. It arose out of our collective unconscious. On a more general scale, birds remind us of transcendence. They keep on singing no matter what's going on. They make their homes in all kinds of places. (Once in an abandoned weapons testing site in Florida, I saw swallows nesting in the artillery holes in the cliffs.) Also, the bird is a symbol that is recognizable and relateable to people of all cultures.

One Thousand Arms of Compassion

Dominique Mazeaud is an artist and ceremonialist who works with natural materials to interweave art, peacemaking, and deep attention to nature. One of her current projects, pictured here, is One Thousand Arms of Compassion, a spiral of forked twigs. Dominique writes:

One Thousand Arms of Compassion* is an installation continuing my work that began in 1987 with Earth, Water, Peace and the Alphabet. Working with the visible relationship between letterforms and nature, this project consists of thousands of forked branches in part installed in concentric circles in the tradition of the mandala.**

It all began with a powerful encounter with a tree some years back. This tree, shaped as a Y, spoke of arms raised in praise. Later, I looked at my wood pile and there was a small version of the Y-shaped tree. From that time on, I found this new "material" (Ys) in my many hikes in the Santa Fe mountains. Earth generously supplies the forked branches that are perfect Ys in abundance. This is a message of importance that I must heed. The Earth is my teacher and guide. By providing material that doubles as a universal expression of prayer, She strengthens the connection I have for the metaphysical/poetic side of life: Y-shaped branches have become a deep personal symbol of meaning and healing.

In forms reaching across art and the spiritual, this project celebrates the wonder of creation while mourning what has been lost or destroyed. One Thousand Arms of Compassion offers the deep reconnection with the wondrous miracle that is our planet. By standing within the circles of branches, by placing our center in the center of the greater circle of Nature, we open ourselves to receiving Nature's creative force through her tree emissaries. We can expand our understanding of life to include more of the infinite circle that is the Universe. If we stand under, we understand.

Art is a prayer supported by the Earth. 

 

* One Thousand Arms of Compassion refers to Avalokiteshvara, the Boddhisattva of Compasion in the Tibetan tradition, who is represented by a thousand arms with which to help the suffering multitudes.

** In the present struggle of the planet the mandala presents itself as the seed-symbol of a more harmonized world-order. “Mandala” by Jose & Miriam Arguelles.

 

 To read Dominique Mazeaud's blog, click here. 

Now Lie on Your Back Underneath It!

This traffic maze, located in Birmingham, England, is called Spaghetti Junction, and it is sometimes known as "Britain's most famous traffic black spot." The 30-acre site, which covers five different levels of roads, consists of 18 roads, rail yards, two rivers, and three canals. An estimated 140,000 vehicles stream over it every day.

Now artist Graeme Miller has created "Track," an experiential project in which visitors lie on a board beneath the junction. Assistants pull the boards, each of which is commodious enough to accommodate two people, along over a track, while they peer up at the mesh of concrete and steel above.

Miller, who has described himself as "a composer of many things that may include music," has transformed a blight into a curiosity, turned speeding straight ahead into an experience akin to gazing up at the stars, and introduced wonder into a massive feat of traffic and engineering.

Fracking Quilts

Virginia ("Gina"—pronounced Ginna) Kellogg, a life coach and founding partner of Leadership That Works of Troy, Pennsylvania, began quilting in 2006, as a way of expressing her deep grief after her brother died. Since then she has created dozens of what she calls "journal quilts," works in fabric that are creative responses to emotional states. Now she is sharing what she has learned with others.

Gina formed her "Fracking Quilts" workshops in response to the massive gas drilling that has invaded northeastern Pennsylvania in the past three years. Fracking is short for hydrofracking, a technique that entails blasting a mixture of sand, water, and toxic chemicals deep into the Earth, both vertically and horizontally, to release natural gas. The industry has invaded this quiet, rural area with noise, light pollution, contaminated water wells, exploding gas wells, and leaks in pipelines. It has also caused severe physical, psychological, and social damage to individuals, families, and communities.

So Gina decided to offer women in the area an outlet for their feelings through the process of making a quilt. Last weekend I attended one of her Fracking Quilt workshops. Caroline and I had never made a quilt, Lynne had experience quilting, and Leslie, who had already made a fracking quilt, assisted Gina and offered us guidance.

We began on Friday night by choosing a square of fabric from one of the antique quilts that Gina collects and had already cut up. We then "fracked" that one square and used it as the seed for the rest of the quilt. In the quilt pictured above, the seed pieces are the jagged green shapes that represent the fracking penetrating the land.

Gina has an enormous collection of fabrics that we could choose from. As we worked, she was there to answer questions and provide guidance, but as she frequently stressed, the point was not to make a "good" quilt, but to express our deep feelings . When we got stuck, she urged us to pick a fabric we "hated or would never consider using." It worked! An essential part of the process was to "frack" our quilts themselves—cut them up—after we had gotten the design just where we wanted it. Although most of us felt some reluctance to do so, cutting through the design helped us to realize that we did not have to hold on to what we were attached to.

For the backing of the quilt, which no one would see, we chose a fabric that represented what "has your back," what supports you. Most of us also took Gina’s suggestion to write words or prayers on fabric and insert them between the front of the quilt and the soft batting. Gina herself quilted our designs as we sat on the other side of her sewing machine, directing her about what kind of stitches to use and what color threads.

The quilt I made is above. It is called, "They are Piercing the Earth and All, All, All Is Falling into the Cracks." The yellow and orange bands represent the beautiful hilly landscape in this part of the state and the towns and farms nestled among it. The fracking process is cutting deep into the Earth, and the villages are collapsing. The large striped "crack" that runs from top to bottom symbolizes the extent of the fracking, which fractures not only the Earth but families and communities as well. The circular part on the lower right is still a bit of a mystery. It seems to token life and growth and wholeness, even at the depths, when everything around you seems to be irreparably broken.

All of us felt transformed by this remarkable event. We were able to express feelings about the gas drilling that we had been unable to articulate in any other way. Sharing our stories about both our experiences with the gas drilling and, as we moved through the process, the design of our quilts, made each of us feel less alone. And by transforming fear, grief, and anger into a creative act, we became empowered and ceased to be victims of an overpowering force.

For more information about Virginia Kellogg's Fracking Quilts, contact her.

Six Ways to Look Beneath a Wave

This wonderful image is from the Indonesian artist Ferdi Rizkiyanto. What it shows has a lot in common with Radical Joy for Hard Times:

• It's important to look deep into the "hidden" places where ecological devastation often goes ignored or undetected.
• When you do look there, it doesn't have to be with the eyes of an expert. You can bring a child's sense of wonder to the process.
• Beneath the beauty, the Earth is wounded.
• Beneath the wounds, the Earth is beautiful.
• You never know what you're going to encounter when you look beyond the obvious.
•  There are all kinds of ways that you can make beauty out of the non-beautiful.

How to Greet the "Enemy"

June 23, 2012 is the third annual Global Earth Exchange of Radical Joy for Hard Times. On this day, people all over the world go to wounded places to make a simple act of beauty: creating the RadJoy bird out of found materials. In this way, they give back to a place they love that has given so much to them and offer up a vision of wholeness, healing, and beauty.

Here's a story from Meredith Little, co-founder of the School of Lost Borders, the preeminent wilderness rites of passage organization, about her 2010 Global Earth Exchange near her home in the Owens Valley, eastern California. 

What Happened: 1913 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) began draining this large alkali lake, formally a sea bed, diverting the water into their aqueduct for the growing city of Los Angeles. When the wind blows, which is often, it lifts one of the worst dust pollutants (PM-10) in the country through the long, narrow Owens Valley. Incidents of asthma and lung disease are high in the towns up and down the valley. For decades the Valley has taken DWP to court to do something about the situation. For decades DWP has delayed action by spending millions on “studying the problem.” In 2001 the courts ruled that water be sprinkled onto small areas of the lake. Alkali plants have been planted here and there. But when the wind blows, clouds of dust still blanket the valley.

 

Act of Beauty: After smudging and crossing our threshold, members of the group separated out onto the floor of the dry lake, strewn now with ditches, puddles of water around sprinkler heads, patches of salt brush, and vast areas of alkali soil crunching under my feet. I notice my inclination to quickly look for the beauty here … the signs of life.

Beauty. Look for beauty. Of course somehow everywhere. And then I begin to feel sick and nauseous. I sit down in the dust. What’s this? It is anger … not so much at “the wound”, but at the feeble, chaotic efforts to “heal it.” Pipes sticking through raised banks in vain attempts to spread the little bits of controlled water. Hedges of dense salt grass. Lines of sprinklers scattered across the distance.

I’m angry for the pretending and false promises that this takes the wound away. I hear myself inside saying … nothing can “pretty up” the wound. First we must acknowledge that this wound is real. No more lies, no more false promises of “fixing” it … and I am constantly connecting this with what we do with each other and our own personal wounding stories.

I’m sitting now on a cement block where the water is regulated, looking down on one of the small pools being spilled a bit of high sierra water from the mountains. A chant of sound begins to spill from my mouth, a rhythm that is new to me. I sit softly following its voice, and finally feel like I’m here, just sitting and witnessing, giving company, being in the truth of this wound. For the first time I feel like I’m really seeing what’s here, with curiosity. I walk to the puddle of water and want to put my hands in and see what’s in the dark clay soil just under the surface. Thousands of lava, wiggling, rising up. I see dead or shed exoskeletons that pile above the waterline. I see the little miracles of beauty clinging to what remnants there are of possibilities. I build a very small stone pile of pebbles, and bend a very old piece of wire into the Radical Joy bird to leave by its side.

I look up, and down the road a DWP truck is coming slowly, stopping to make adjustments at the water regulators. I stand, and the sprinklers stop. I walk slowly back to the road. I recognize my tension around the DWP driver. Is he the “enemy”? I feel my resistance to him as he drives closer, then passes me with a blank face. I let in this feeling of “us and them.” The truck turns to return up the road, and I wonder what I’ll do. I suddenly break into a smile, and wave. His face transforms into a very big smile, and a very big wave. We share this wound and this wounded area.

I think how very loud a wounded area speaks. I wonder why I have avoided walking here before.

RadJoy has a new website!

Radical Joy for Hard Times has a new website! Thank you to our genius webmaster and designer, Munro Sickafoose, of Diamondheart Studio, for his imaginative vision and meticulous attention to detail.

We're especially excited about our new Earth Exchange Network, an interactive space on the site where you can post your personal info and news about the places you love and worry about... upload photos, videos, and stories... and sign up for the 2012 Global Earth Exchange on June 23.

Have a look and let us know what you think!

Wooed by the Not-Beautiful

The following is from Mike Beck, Navarre, Florida. He took the photo above during a week spent with three others at Carmanah Valley, part of the vast clear-cut area of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

The wounded places of the earth are great teachers, releasing us from the predicament of choices. They also have the ability to ruthlessly strip away your perfectly unfounded bias for ephemeral beauty and rip the words “ugly,” “unsightly” and “unattractive” right out of your mouth.

My first experience with attending to a wounded place was one of sadness at the grotesqueness of a clear-cut old-growth forest, followed almost immediately by free-floating anger, without adequate tools to catch it and ground it in reality. A perfectly reasonable response for a person without access at the time to what Mary Oliver calls the “heart’s little mind.” Four short days later, with the stump-studded hills and debris-strewn fields disappearing in the review mirror, I was surprised at the tug to go back: “Don’t leave, not yet, just a little longer.” 

Where had the grotesque gone and why were the barren hillsides passing from view unfathomably, wonderfully and perfectly—“not beautiful?” The only explanation I still find satisfactory is that someone had come while I was sitting quietly in the clear-cut one of those days and staring at an eagle-head shaped stump and that “someone” had rearranged all the environmental furniture in my head, graciously taking away my sense of quilt at not being able to do something big to save the natural world. 

An unfortunate side effect of that hooligan’s shenanigans is that now, I’m forever being wooed by the “not beautiful.” 

Nipun Mehta's Gift Economy

One day Nipun Mehta and his friends were sitting around talking about pranks. What is a prank composed of? “It’s challenging, it’s creative, it’s collaborative,” Nipun reflected in an interview with Richard Whittaker in Parabola Magazine. “We went through a whole list of motivations for what, at the end of the day, is essentially destructive. So we said, how about we reframe this? We leave all these motivations in, but we make pranks constructive. What if you just blew somebody away with kindness?”

That was the beginning of a remarkable organization called Charity Focus, “an experiment in the joy of giving.” Charity Focus, which recently changed its name to Service Space, depends entirely on the work of volunteers. It does no fund-raising, but relies upon the generosity of people who are moved to help. Services include website design, collaborations with other organizations, daily emails containing positive and inspiring messages, and weekly stories about people who have taken an unusual approach to some problem or seen a delightful possibility where most would see business as usual.

One surprising result of what Mehta calls the “gift economy” is an upsurge of honesty in the way bills are paid in Indonesian cafés. In the past, widespread corruption meant that customers, especially young people, would walk out of the café without paying for their meal. Now “honesty cafés” invite customers to determine what the meal and the service were worth and to pay that. Some of the cafés don’t even have cashiers, just boxes in which people can deposit their payments.

The gift economy starts with single, selfless acts, says Nipun Mehta. “I’m going to support you just because you’re a fellow human being and someone else comes and supports me in the same way.” In the long run an attitude like that results in “generosity entrepreneurs.”

Repercussions

The steps of an Earth Exchange are simple to describe:

1: Go to a wounded place

2: Sit a while and tell your stories

3: Spend time on the land and find beauty in surprising ways

4: Make a simple act of beauty

However, since we encourage each community to enact these steps in ways that reflect their own place and people, the events themselves and the ripple effects are very different. Steve Brown, an active member of a conservancy group dedicated to protecting Red Lily Pond in Craigville, Massachusetts, recently described a couple of interesting ramifications that their 2011 Global Earth Exchange had for both people and the pond. 

One of the participants at the event, Avis Strong Parke, is an artist. After the Global Earth Exchange, she was inspired to invite other local artists to join her every Tuesday morning at 10:00 to paint the pond. For several weeks a group that ranged in size from nearly twenty to about eight regulars set up their easels at different sites around the pond and created a variety of water colors, acrylics, and oil paints. At the conservancy’s annual dinner and auction, one of these works sold for $900, and in total the group raised thousands of dollars more than they ever had before. (The painting above is by Avis Strong Parke.)

 

The second surprise came about from an unexpected source. A man who was known to be vocal about his conservative political leanings arrived at the pond for the June 18 event, but immediately made it clear that he didn’t like the word “radical.” Steve suggested he read the Radical Joy for Hard Times manifesto that was taped to a card table on the dock and that explores our philosophy that damaged places are worthy of attention and beauty. A few minutes later, the man returned to Steve. “Well, I believe those things,” he said. “That’s right up my alley.” He ended up staying for the day’s celebration.

A few weeks later, when the development corporation that owns a condominium at one end of the pond put forth a proposal to construct a giant illuminated dock over the water, Steve and other activists were present in force at a State Commission hearing to discuss the plan. They were surprised when the conservative neighbor walked in the door, especially since he did not usually get involved in local issues. The man stood before the commission and announced, “I’m a Republican and I don’t believe in regulations, but this pond is too valuable to destroy.”

All kinds of people love the beautiful places that  they live amidst. And often we have more in common than we might suppose.

What Do We Do Then?

You know very well how many dedicated people are working hard to save the Earth. They're fighting Congress to protect the deserts, enforce clean air standards, make corporations disclose the toxic chemicals used to blast deep into gas-rich shale. Talented, passionate people are writing books about climate change and polluted seas, rivers, soils, and air. They take children on hikes and offer to adults wilderness trips in pristine places so people will remember how much the natural world means to them.

And still the forests are being cut, the oceans are being clogged with oil and scarred with plastic. Still mountaintops are being exploded and wetlands filled in.  Still wilderness is plowed up to make housing developments and malls. Still poor communities of color are the ones slated for the most toxic projects of incinerators and mineral extraction.

Still, people who are proud to be environmentalists tell themselves they need the latest iPhone and iPad and have to dye their hair and use beauty products to make themselves young. and going on vacations to eco-paradises like the Gallapagos.

Still babies are being born, here, there, and everywhere, and when they grow up they too will want a place of their own and they will believe that they need the newest gadgets to survive. And how will they survive?

It is not going to get better. The places we love are going to continue to disappear.

Then what? Will all the work of the environmental educators and litigators and preservers be for naught? Does their success depend solely on staving off the inevitable?

Or does real ecological activism come from a new kind of realism? Not just realizing the world is changing and "we're to blame," but the realism of being with and attending to the places in our midst that are a part of us still, no matter what has happened to them?

Radical Joy for Hard Times says: When the places we love are damaged, we humans hurt too. And tempting as it is to ignore both damaged places and our own difficult feelings of loss and grief, it is by encountering these places and feelings with openness, compassion, and curiosity that we blaze the way forward. It is by telling the stories of our relationship with the place and above all making beauty there until we fall in love with the place all over again... that we become citizens of the future of Earth, not just surviving, but loving where we live and empowered to live with it with wild, bold creativity and community.

"Wounded Places on Earth Are Like Wounded Places in People"

“We have physically created wounded places on the Earth, and that is exacerbated by us ignoring them. Becoming whole in ourselves and in the way we approach existence is the beginning of healthy, dynamic systems. It’s exactly a parallel to our own inner psyche. The parts we cut out and don’t want to look at are the ones that cause us the most trouble. And if we look at them and pay attention to them, they shift.”

This comment by Kinde Nebeker (standing in the center in the photo above, at her 2011 Global Earth Exchange in Salt Lake City) of Salt Lake City zeroes in on one of the subtle but vitally important aspects of the practice and the path that is Radical Joy for Hard Times Earth Exchanges: that actually going to wounded places strengthens the bond between person and place, brings new life to the place, and empowers people to act with more energy and more compassion on behalf of what they love.

We all wish, naturally, not to be uncomfortable. Hence we avoid the things that we fear will make us sad or angry or embarrassed or guilty—or any of a host of other emotions we’d rather avoid. Avoidance, of course, doesn’t make the shunned thing vanish. It only makes it grow and fester there in the dark where we try to hide it. It grows bigger. It pops out of its hiding place when we least expect it, causing problems and making us even more determined to keep it hidden.

When we decide, once and for all, to take a look at what’s wriggling there down unseen, we’re often surprised to see how mild it is. How, instead of sinking us in despair, the attention we give it actually liberates us. Dealing consciously with what we discover enables us to bring to the problem new understanding, peace of mind, and creative solutions.

As Kinde observes, the same is true about wounded places. When people go to polluted rivers, eroded hills, farms torn up for gas drilling, or abandoned industrial sites like the one Kinde and her friends honored in the 2011 Global Earth Exchange, they discover that, far from depressing them, the encounter fills them with a sense of community, creativity, empowerment, and even joy.

Tree of Life Blooms in Palestinian Refugee Camp

Photo by Teresa Yeh

Lily Yeh founded Barefoot Artists in 2003 to bring the transformative power of art to people whose communities have been buried in poverty, dilapidation, and despair. In the past twenty-five years she has worked with people all over the world, from her native China to Kenya, Ecuador, Italy, and Rwanda, to North Philadelphia, where she lives today and where Barefoot Artists was founded. At Radical Joy for Hard Times we are honored to have Lily Yeh on our Council of Advisors.

Recently Lily received an invitation from Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, to come to Balata, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, located near the city of Nablus. Balata is currently home to 23,000 people, all living in an area of less than one square mile. There are only two schools, the unemployment rate is very high, and the young people are homesick and without hope.

Lily worked with volunteer artists, members of the Balata Women’s Center, students at the Balata Girls’ School, and local participants to create art that would reflect their deep pain, their intense longing to return to their homeland, and their hope for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. This mural they made is called “The Palestinian Tree of Life.” It depicts an old and rugged olive tree filled with blooms and upholding the sacred Dome of the Rock. Doves, symbol everywhere of peace, fly through a starry sky. Amidst the cramped streets the mural is a sign of creativity, resilience, and yes, even joy.

 

Cross Bones Graveyard Honors Medieval Prostitutes

It was desolate patch of ground in South London, long abandoned, its original purpose forgotten, before Transport for London slated it for redevelopment. But poet, author, and local historian John Constable knew the history of the place, and he was determined not only to preserve it, but to shepherd it toward designation as a world heritage sight.

Now, on the 23^rd of each month people gather at the iron gates of Cross Bones, the small plot of land that, from medieval to Victorian times, was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes and paupers. Participants in the monthly ceremony include office workers, prostitutes, artists, and witches. They sing songs, read poems, and tie on the fence offerings of ribbons and the kinds of gaudy baubles a woman of the night might appreciate.

In the Middle Ages the prostitutes in the area were known as “Winchester Geese” for the Bishop of Winchester who granted them license to ply their trade there in the Liberty of the Clink, beyond the jurisdiction of the City of London. When the women died, however, the church wanted nothing more to do with them, and they were buried in unhallowed land.

In 1996 John Constable suddenly received a visitation from what he calls the “spirit of a medieval whore”—or “the Goose,” as she called herself. The result was a long poem written in the voice of this spirit, along with Constable's determination to revivify that forgotten piece of land and the people who once inhabited it.

Hearing about Cross Bones from my friend and colleague Eugene Hughes, who lives in London, was one of the things that inspired me to start this blog in the first place, and the story of Cross Bones was the second piece I wrote for it. Here is a place that for hundreds of years was associated with crime, shame, and immorality and for hundreds of years more was forgotten. Now it has found new life thanks to Constable and the other people who see the beauty of the place not despite but because of what it was. What is particularly important about the re-sacralization of Cross Bones, moreover, is that it lives on not just as a little community park that has been beautified, not even as a series of poems written in the voice of a prostitute from long ago, but through ongoing ceremony, regular community gatherings, and the making of ever new and thoughtful offerings. Cross Bones is an active exchange of stories and gifts.

Delight!

My last post was about the wonderful Beauty Amid Destruction project in Tuscaloosa, which put works of art all along the swath of devastation left by the tornado that devastated the city last April. The post before that was about Juliana Santacruz Herrara's playful "patches" of colorful yarn, which she fitted into the cracks of Paris's sidewalks.

But acts of beauty for wounded places don't have to be big. They don't have to take a lot of time. They don't even have to involve more than one person. And sometimes you get a surprise burst of beauty and delight in the process.

Last month a family in our small village of Thompson, Pennsylvania cut down the three beautiful old catalpa trees that lined their front yard. One of the trees clearly had heartrot, but the others were perfectly healthy, and I was very sad to see them go. Their big heart-shaped leaves and dangling mahogany-colored pods looked very elegant, almost whimsical, on this block of small homes.

After the tree surgeons and their shredding machine had left, I went over to the house with a bag of birdseed and started sprinkling offerings on the stumps for the birds that had lost their home. This was my simple act of "making beauty," which Radical Joy for Hard Times suggests as part of every encounter with a wounded place.

A sudden movement startled me. I looked up and saw nothing. Then the movement flashed again. This time a chipmunk popped up from the tree with the hole in its core. The chipmunk had immediately adjusted to the new situation. Now it had a place to hide, both itself and its store of food. Its appearance was a delight, proof that nature invariably and persistently will find a way to prevail.

The chipmunk would have moved into that hole in the stump anyway, but because I happened to be there attending to the broken trees, I got to witness it... a little joy for hard times.

Beauty Is Healing

When a tornado tore a swath a mile wide and seven miles long through the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama last April, killing 239 people and leaving thousands homeless, offers of help poured in from around the country and around the world. People gave freely of blankets, food, clothing, the basic necessities of life, and many generous services. However, as Tuscaloosa resident Jean Mills thought about all these much-needed contributions, it seemed to her that one thing was missing: beauty. People needed some beauty to lift their spirits.

Thus was born Beauty Amid Destruction, a remarkable response to a large-scale calamity. Jean set out to invite artists to contribute digital images of their original work, setting only two criteria for submissions: that the work be beautiful and that it not challenge anyone’s idea of what was appropriate (i.e. no nudes). Photos of original paintings, drawings, sculpture, quilts, metalwork, and photographs began to arrive. With donations from individuals and suppliers and the support of the Tuscaloosa city council, Jean and the other Beauty Amid Destruction team members had the images copied onto vinyl banners measuring 4 by 6 feet. They then hung the banners between poles and placed them free of charge in front of homes, public buildings, and lots whose owners requested them.

The result is a gallery tour unlike any other. Brightly colored art works stand like gateways in front of empty lots, skeletal houses, and on chainlink fences in both residential and business neighborhoods. Right after the tornado, when people drove or walked through the damaged areas it was to stare at the devastation; now they go to admire the art works and the spirit of compassion and generosity that put them there. "Garden Play" by Kevin Irwin is pictured above.

“The main message about putting paintings in front of the destruction is that art can help with recovery,” Jean said recently. “There is the recognition that one’s surroundings impact one’s emotional response and how one feels about life. Putting art out there where the tornado had done such damage was a way to acknowledge that and to try to provide a counter to all the negative stuff that people were being bombarded with.”

Reflecting on the long process of trial-and-error that the Beauty Amid Destruction team went through to find the best way of reproducing the art works and placing them, Jean has volunteered to make the group’s expertise available to any other community wishing to mount a similar project. See BeautyAmidDestruction.org for more information.

Guerrilla Knitting

Tired of stepping over all the cracks in the sidewalks of Paris, artist Juliana Santacruz Herrera decided to take action. To make her repairs she chose not concrete and asphalt, but a much softer material: yarn. Weaving together brightly colored pieces that fit each of the broken places like their own cozy sweaters, she set to work, embedding the fabric in the cracks and holes. Instantly have become magically transformed.

Whimsy is a gift, and it's relevant and welcome under all kinds of circumstances, including trying and difficult ones. By exaggerating the ubiquitous cracks, Santacruz Herrara actually transforms them into something friendly and delightful. She points to the problem, but without blame or judgment. Her work and that of other street artists bring beauty to the city in an unexpected way.

To see more great street art, visit StreetArtUtopia.com.

The Importance of Shouting NO!

This is a photo of Benny Zable, an Australian street artist, who has had a visible presence at Occupy Wall Street since almost the first day. Wearing his long dark cloak, which he usually tops with a gas mask that completely covers his head, his hands hidden in white gloves, he stands mutely as passers-by read the dire pronouncements his costume urges on them: WORK — CONSUME — BE SILENT — DIE and I RELY ON YOUR APATHY. Benny’s presence at Liberty Park (its original and far more fitting name than Zucotti Park), in the hub of the American financial industry, brings visible spectacle to the art of saying NO, which Occupy Wall Street is doing so magnificently.

Yet even many people who support the aims of Occupy Wall Street and the rest of the Occupy movement spreading across the United States raise a consistent criticism: Why aren’t the protestors making up a list of demands? Why don’t they have a clear focus? Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times even tries to “help” the protestors by coming up with the agenda he feels they’re lacking. According to this point of view, you don't have a right to protest unless you know exactly how you want things to be different and can express it,

Many great revolutions have been launched with a loud, collective, passionate NO. “No taxation without representation,” shouted citizens of the thirteen American colonies in the 1750s and 60s. NO was the battle cry of the people who gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, because they’d had enough of military rule, high unemployment, police brutality, and low wages. “Dites non!” (say no) is often the call to change that leads demonstrations in France.

Sometimes you have to shout out NO before you can articulate a more clearly defined YES.

And it’s been a long time since Americans have said no with any great conviction, almost forty years, by my count, when protests against the war in Vietnam finally helped bring an end to that conflict. Since then we Americans have mutely submitted to a whole slew of injustices perpetrated by those in power, including a war against Iraq launched wholly upon lies; shenanigans by the mortgage and housing industry that seduced hundreds of thousands of people into believing that they deserved a home they could not afford; a financial system that has brought many people to poverty, joblessness, and despair, while wealthy perpetrators continue to earn obscene amounts of money; and a war policy that defies the Geneva Conventions by permitting the practice of torture.

It is high time we shouted out NO! NO! We will not be victims any longer! NO: We object to being treated like this! NO: You may not carry on as if you the ruling elites represented the “99%” of the rest of us. NO: We will not be silent!

Occupy Wall Street is saying YES in many ways that the news media has ignored. They are being scrupulous about the way they handle financial contributions. They keep the park where they live and protest clean and free of litter. They compost. They drive the generators in their media tent through stationary bicycles that are constantly pedaled by volunteers. They are trying to imagine a better society and to live it. But the fact that the world perceives them as proclaimers of NO is really not a problem. They are speaking for many of us.

“I call attention to the dark side,” said Benny Zable when I spoke with him last week at Liberty Park. People who encounter him are shocked by his physical presence, his cloak weighted with dire messages. “They react,” said Benny. “They have to ask themselves: Where do I stand?”

Seeing the darkness and reacting to it is not a problem with the Occupy movement. It is their great gift to America. Saying no, we invite expanded consciousness of where we are and ask ourselves how we got there. Then we can say YES to something new and better that we will create more equitably together.

A Win for Salmon

When you think about a big, long, arduous environmental struggle, you are likely to picture legislation, lobbying, education, late nights spent strategizing and stuffing envelopes... but you don't typically think of art, theatre, and children.

Those elements played a big part in the twenty-year struggle of activists in southeastern Washington to get the 100-year-old Condit Dam torn down. When the dam was constructed, it blocked not only the White Salmon River, but also cut off the run of wild salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds.

And from the start, salmon have been big players in the efforts of the activists, including Daniel Dancer, an artist (and member of the Radical Joy for Hard Times Council of Advisors). Frequently, the group held "Salmon Pageants," where children, carrying large, colorful cut-outs of the fish, would "breach" a wall. Part-ceremony, part-theatre, the pageants kept the vision of an undammed river a reality for the activists.

Repeatedly the officials in charge of the dam insisted that they would not remove it. By 2011, however, they determined that the cost of repairing the century-old structure would be higher than tearing it down, so, thanks to the persuasiveness of economics, the activists and the salmon won.

On October 26, 2011, when the children who enacted the first pageants had become young adults, the dam was exploded. Daniel Dancer has made an engrossing short (18 minutes) film, "The Art of Dam Removal". It includes footage from newscasts of the first protests, interviews with activists along the way, and the exuberant salmon pageants. The pay-off is exhilarating. When the pent-up river bursts through the breach, you can't help feeling it's a wild creature jubilantly bursting out into the world it remembers from long ago and can't wait to get back to. Even the guys in hardhats are exhilarated. "She's free!" one of them exclaims!

"Pilgrims of Place"

Powers of Place Initiative is a remarkable (and gorgeous) website and cyber-meeting place for those who recognize that places and people have a vital, living, flexible connection with each other. One of the best features of Powers of Place is "The Field," a terrain of the website where you can sign up and be in communication with others doing interesting things to delve more intimately into the question of place... spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and artistically.

A recent article on the site by Maila T. Davenport describes three different ways to be a "pilgrim of place," in this case the Love Creek area of Santa Cruz, California, which underwent a terrible mudslide that killed a child. Davenport joins two other healers, each with a different experience, approach, and perspective. Her story shows how "we live in layers of lived experience and each one operates from a particular kind of intelligence, telling a vital part of a place's Story."