A Belated Earth Day Message from Rilke

Earth Day Quote

From her acceptance speech upon receiving the John Burroughs Award in April 1952. Collected in Lost Works: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, edited by Linda Lear, 1999.

Rachel Carson for Earth Day

Here's an excerpt from Strength in Words for Our Times for Earth Day. The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement by Mark Hamilton Lytle is an excellent book about Rachel Carson's life and influence.

Words For Our Time posters and the Words For Our Time book are for sale in my etsy shop.

A Book to Make for Earth Day

A lot of the book samples I made when I was working with children don't translate into books for adults to make for themselves. I think this one does. The accordion is made from a front or back panel of a brown grocery bag folded in half like a hot dog. There are directions for folding a four page accordion book at makingbooks.com. Because the folded paper gave it thickness, I didn't bother adding a cover. Lately I prefer reading paperbacks (larger format not the smaller mass market size) and am appreciating handmade books without hard covers as well. The book was inspired by the children's book (again not just for children), Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message by Chief Jake Swamp.

Thoughtful Thursday-Tonic of Wildness

Two visits to Plum Island Wildlife Refuge in one week is a cause of celebration for me. It's pretty ridiculous that it should be such a big deal as it is so close. Here is an image from Scratchy Slides Archive of a quote from Thoreau—We need the tonic of wildness.

Books in Bloom-The Gift

This is my arrangement for the Books in Bloom event at the Newburyport Public Library tomorrow evening. A fundraiser for the Friends of the Library and the Newburyport Horticultural Society, it pairs flower arrangements with books. I first heard about it at a Horticultural Society meeting and immediately knew that I would base my arrangement on The Gift by Lewis Hyde and that it would include seed pods and the words of the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart that were quoted in the book.

The Gift has been an important book to me. Here is what I said about it in my Artist's Journey Reading List:

The Gift is the most recent book of influence I have read. At this point, I am particularly interested in the intersection of my work and the larger world. Hyde draws distinctions between gift and commodity economies and addresses the difficult place of art, which is fundamentally a gift, in the world of commerce. He draws on fairy tales, anthropology, and literature in an enlightening but sometimes dense conversation.

Lewis Hyde describes art in the creation stage as a gift in two ways—the natural talents of the artist and the gift of inspiration. He sees a third stage, when the art leaves its maker's hands.

The art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift received.

And in relation to the Meister Eckhart quote:

Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum. Counsels Meister Eckhart, the mystic: "Let us borrow empty vessels."

It is hard to summarize everything in this book. For a casual reader, there may be pages to skip. A wide range of subjects, including usury in the Middle Ages, is presented. However, I believe what Lewis Hyde says to say about the gift has great value not just to artists but to the creative impulse that is within us all. He is such an eloquent writer that it seems best to let him speak for himself.

...we are sojourners with our gifts, not their owners; even our creations—especially our creations—do not belong to us. As Gary Snyder says, "You get a good poem and you don't know where it came from. 'Did I say that?' And so all you feel is: you feel humility and you feel gratitude."

The arrangement of pods, both local—horse chestnut, rose of sharon, sweet gum, hosta, wild cucumber, dawn redwood, beech—and from my travels—southern magnolia from South Carolina and cotton from Texas, rests on a piece of bark which rests on a piece of papyrus. The quote was written with a Pentel brush pen on Lokta paper from Nepal.

Methinks...

Yesterday's walk at Battis Farm in Amesbury, MA was wet but wonderful. Each glistening drop was more magical than the one before. I've had this quote from Thoreau for a long time and this circle created from one of the photos seemed the perfect place for it.

You can see the collection of photos in flickr.

Trees of My City by Roberto Mighty

Yesterday I went with friends Meghan and Trudy to see Trees of My City, a film and exhibit by Roberto Mighty. Here's how he describes his project:

Trees of My City is an original multimedia installation about the beauty and science of dormant, dead and decaying trees in one American city over one calendar year...and how we can expand our ideas about the cycle of life by contemplating how nature deals with death.

In the film we join him in his travels around Newton, MA looking at dying and decaying trees. He is a friendly and enthusiastic guide. I loved the way he interwove personal reflections and interviews with scientists including an ornithologist, a plant physiologist, an ecologist, and an architect. It is a reminder that there is poetry and art in learning and wonder in the world around us. He hopes that this is the beginning of a great adventure where he can give others a forum to tell their tree stories. I wish him the best.

Visit Roberto Mighty's blog for more information about Trees in the City.

Bee Accordion

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

I always read John Keats's poem To Autumn at this time of year. My favorite lines are the first two, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun", but bees are on my mind this year. Our summer trip to Utah brought us images of old fashioned beehives as they are the symbol of Utah and appear on every state highway sign. My mother-in-law gave us a a jar of delicious honey from her hive along with tales of its retrieval. And I love watching the collection of bees and pollinators of all sorts on our flowers.

I made a four-page accordion from the back panel of a grocery bag cut in half the long way. I then cut the folded pages into the shape of a hive, leaving the two sides untouched until about 2/3 of the way up the side of the book. (You can make all kinds of shapes but always have to remember to keep some of the sides intact. Otherwise, you'll have four separate pieces instead of an accordion.) I used a cereal box panel for the covers and made them just a tiny bit larger than the pages. I then covered the covers with pieces of grocery bag.

Written directions

in Spanish

Video

A closer look at My Book About Honeybees


LINKS

Tales from the Hive
NOVA page on the honeybee.

Honey Bees Life Cycle Video
Excellent youtube video with lots of close-up views. And on TeacherTube.

Life Cycle of Bee PDF
Life cycle of bees illustrated with photographs.

Busy Bees
A website by students at Heard Elementary Academy.

Beekeeping and Children
Information on beekeeping from the Liberty 4-H in Petaluma, CA.