ode to brown

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It's possible that one reason I am drawn to old treasures, the earth included, is a love of brown. Ah leather-bound book, let me feel your moist density, antique clock - your wormholes, crinkled white pages - your age spots.

Many colors are enhanced when paired with brown, have you noticed? Pink and white petals edge closer to appear more beautiful.

Bare branches against a blue sky, yellow forsythia blossoms on a khaki twig, a chocolate calf saddled in white lace teetering in a grassy field.

There is the glow of polished mahogany, copper, brass and hand thrown pottery, or the fleeciness of pussy willow buds, striped feathers, fur and corduroys. How about the smooth shine of knotty pine, or a button? Crisp texture of dried leaves or timeless yet changing shades of rock formations, the depth and layers of a squirrel perched on a tree hanging over a silty river. The deep, rich stripes of a farmer's furrows.

In the popularity of all things vintage, sepia photographs enjoy a major comeback. Is it because in the proliferation of technology we crave nostalgia?

Ironic, isn't it, that new technologies such as Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom help us turn our images back to an aesthetic created within the limitations of older technologies, before color photography was available to the public?

Our son Peter, in the middle above, in an image he processed in Lightroom, and his grandmother (my mom) below in a Bachrach portrait.

Dear brown, you recede and calm me, belying the life moving in you.

~ ~ ~ ~

Don and I are off to NYC Thursday for five days with our Lesley and Brian - HAPPY DAYS. I'll catch up with you soon!

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Grandpa Sidney, part 2

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In February I wrote a post about my grandfather, Sidney Bennett, aka Wynn the Astrologer, with Harold Lloyd. After that a friend asked if I would post the other photos I have of Sidney in Hollywood. So here you go.

In the top photo my mother's father is on the film horse Silver King, star of 1920s and 30s Westerns. Silent movie cowboy hero Fred Thomson (not to be confused with another actor and Congressman Fred Thompson), stands next to his co-starring horse. If Fred Thomson hadn't died of tetanus at age 38, he might have had a more lasting legacy than Tom Mix. He's pretty much forgotten today, but in his day Thomson was known as "the World's Greatest Western Star." This photo had to be taken within a few years of his death in 1928, since my grandparents divorced in 1922, after which Sidney moved to Hollywood. Thomson created controversy when he played Jesse James in 1928, because of his sympathetic portrayal of the villain. There were still people around who remembered the not-so-good-old days of the James Gang!

Below is a dilapidated publicity photo of Grandpa Sidney with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Again, as in the photo of Sidney with Harold Lloyd, he is holding Fairbanks' astrological chart. I don't know who wrote on this photo, but on the back is also written "why men leave Bayonne" - alluding to the city in New Jersey where Sidney had settled with my grandmother - Grandma Olive, and where my mother grew up (though like Sidney she was born in Chicago). I assume this was for a newspaper piece about Sidney in a New York or Bayonne newspaper.

Fairbanks Jr. was the son of silent film swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks and apparently never intended to take up acting like his father, but he did and acted in 100 films! But that wasn't enough for Douglas Jr., which you can read at his bio in his name link above. For instance, he launched a London hospital for war refugees during WWII and became quite a philanthropist by the end of his life.

I don't know who the director on the left is, as there were several different men who directed Fairbanks movies in the 1920s.

I leave you with a montage of still images of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. At about minute 3:15, has a woman ever been more gorgeous than Rita Hayworth?

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It's not so hard being GREEN

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My University is a flagship institution in the Earth Hour event, scheduled tomorrow (subject of my last post) - Saturday (always the last Saturday of March) - at 8:30pm local time worldwide. Earth Hour has been linked to the upcoming 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December. Regardless of whether you agree that human activity has been one of the main players in climate change, prioritizing and cultivating a respectful attitude toward our gorgeous planet and the natural kingdom can't be bad, can it? And to anyone who scoffs at being green as trendy . . . Huh? Isn't this the kind of trend we want? Trends can become habits that after a while we don't even think about. Cool!

Today at noon Inge and I shut down our computers and lights and walked with about 40 others from Spartan Stadium to Beaumont Tower as part of the DIM DOWN "be green" walk, to bring attention to tomorrow's event and to climate change.

Ashley, Yvette and Lauren planned today's walk.

Inge and I were surprised at the turnout. On a campus of 40,000 students and almost as many employees, we hoped for more.

Another GREEN event: Tonight the MSU Spartans men's basketball team plays Kansas in the "Sweet Sixteen" (16 teams left of 64, plus a couple of wildcard teams) round of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) championship tournament. Hope I can stay awake - it's on TV late. As long as Tom Izzo has been coach, every player who has played four years on the team has gone to the Final Four (this year right here in Detroit 8 days from now), the final showdown of the last four teams standing. This is the one and only sports team I care about. Give me college sports any day over pro!

Ok, sorry to all of you who couldn't care less! :D

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"Mother" Earth Hour

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Let's turn off the lights, the computer and TV

and sit in the dark for an hour Saturday at 8:30pm (wherever you are)

and feel the power of our precious Mother Earth.

If outside, even better!

VOTE Earth. For more information, visit the Earth Hour Web site.

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melancholy, and comfort

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Funeral Blues

(Song IX, from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

- W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Listen to John Hannah read Auden's poem in the film "Four Weddings and a Funeral."

Loss overpowers you, and the world as you have known it has ended. Annoyingly, the sun rises the next morning.

A sister is laid off after 25 years when retirement was just on the horizon; but the moon still waxes and wanes, the tides move in, and out.

Your high school best friend's husband is imprisoned for embezzling senior citizens out of their retirement savings, just when your friend's two younger daughters are in high school and the eldest begins college - yet the maples bud red after the long winter.

Another friend's entire family - his wife, children and parents - are killed in a single car crash. That night the Big Dipper shines in exactly the same formation, full to the brim with midnight blue.

When it feels like the world has stopped, what consolation is there? Truth is, your heart isn't open to comfort.

But then it comes suddenly in spite of yourself. Something ridiculous makes you laugh. A flower turns winter to spring. A piece of Art opens a vent in the fist of your heart. A color, or two colors juxtaposed, breathe life into you. Musical notes take you by surprise the way they are strung together, and their melody and rhythm defy time and space. They dance when you couldn't. A loved one's words of praise after a long silence soften the harshness around you. Or a stranger's words speak your mind and heart so precisely you find comfort that someone, sometime, has felt your anguish and was able to speak it for you to find one day.

I say to you and to myself: Receive it. The constancy of some constant thing. It is there, just as real as all the hardship. Don't deny either. Let them co-exist and mingle - then, like yin and yang, like death and life, let them create a new reality.

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Our cousin's military funeral

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He signed up for the Marines when he graduated high school in 1973.

He served a few years. No one in the family knows what he did, he couldn't talk about it. He was a Marine on undisclosed missions in the Pacific.

Now, just before his 54th birthday, Don's cousin is gone, from congestive heart failure. What secrets were better left unsaid, that didn't take him to his grave, but he took them there?

Good night, David. Time to rest.

This was my first military funeral, though I've seen them on TV and in movies.

I was feeling sheepish about my camera until one of David's sisters met me going inside with "Thank you, none of us thought to bring one. I want the kids to have something to remember this by." From that point on, I felt complete freedom, with a purpose. If you know me, you know my protests against militarism. But it was time to set that aside and do something for the family.

Arriving at the cemetery we were greeted by a row of seven Marines holding rifles by their sides, poised in readiness for the 21-gun salute to come. I snapped several shots of their fixed faces before I went inside the mausoleum for the ceremony. Like the guards at Buckingham Palace, they were stoic and unmoving, barely breathing it seemed, in their stillness.

Inside, as the other three Marines fulfilled their ceremonial charge - one playing "Taps" on his horn outside the door, the other two marching up the aisle, then folding the flag in meditative precision - I felt calmed. When the rifles rang their 21 shots outside - each Marine firing three times in sync - and David's daughter burst into a sudden wail, I realized this is why we offer ceremony, why we turn to it in times of great sorrow and joy. In the silent, slow folding of the flag, how carefully they caressed it with their white gloves, how tightly they held it between them in their task of transformation. And I saw, as if for the first time, how beautiful our flag is. In those moments I didn't see borders, or patriotism, or war. I saw stunning, vivid colors in a bold design unlike any other flag in the world, and it had become a blanket covering a soldier at rest. A thing of comfort. And when the Marine handed David's widow the red white & blue fabric triangle I felt its power. Ah - the American flag, an instrument of healing!

I remember how I felt at age 7, perched on the floor in front of our black and white TV, watching Caroline Kennedy - one year younger than I - holding the hand of her mother dressed in black, in a veil. They walked up and touched her daddy's flag-covered casket in the vast Capitol rotunda - first her mother's black-gloved hand, followed quickly by her own small white-gloved hand - this girl with hair and white anklet socks like mine. Then her mother's kiss on the flag. They were us. We were being healed by ceremony.

If you're interested, you can view David's military honors in this YouTube slideshow.

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the color intensifies

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In the dense green of August 2003 we fell in love with the farm in one moment. We pulled into the drive for the realtor's open house after nearly giving up finding it, and stopped, speechless. The property enveloped us with itself and asked kindly to let it take care of us.

Then, after weeks completing the sales of our old house and the new one, in November we moved. Since that first August visit, autumn winds had blown maple leaves against the house in thick piles. The ground was hard and the grass gone dormant. Simple lines of land, barn and outbuildings, and bare trees that had billowed with green when we first met them, presented an altered scene.

Was I wistful for the lush green of first love? No, I was glad for the change.

Something had already shifted in me. We had wanted more of Nature, close up, which was why we were moving to the country. At the same time I was going inside too, the way you do in winter. With the light opening to me through the quiet winter landscape, looking back at it through the window was just the thing for contemplation, letting it in slowly, as if suspended. It felt like a relief to get to know the farm in its unadorned state.

Now, each year after winter's span from Thanksgiving to Christmas and past the frozen calm of January and February, the next season comes in degrees, thankfully. Before spring shivers and erupts into full riots of color - iris tongues sprout an inch, and the birch sapling sheds its tissue skin, igniting into sunny orange flames (the color was really that saturated).

I'm ready for warmth, but am I ready for the riot? If I get outside often in these warming, lengthening days, I can slow down the transition for myself. Something I want:

- - - S - l - o - w - - - s - p - r - i - n - g - - -

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