the cassandra pages

Sketching & Drawing Basics: Paper

Recently, an Instagram friend asked me for some advice -- he wants to begin drawing more seriously and needed both artistic help, and some suggestions about supplies. It occurred to me that some of the readers here might also enjoy a really basic discussion of how to get started. So I thought I'd write a few posts,  expanding on what of what I told my friend.

Two things hold people back who think they might want to draw or paint. The first is fear of failure, which often prevents them from beginning in the first place (or starting again in later life).  I'll talk about that in a subsequent post.

The second obstacle is inferior art materials. Beginners often think they don't "deserve" to use artist-grade materials and tools, but unfortunately the result of using student-grade supplies, or those intended for children, is that your work will suffer and look far worse. Inferior tools behave unpredictably, pigments aren't ground evenly or are made of cheap imitation chemicals; cheap paper can be too absorbent or too slick, preventing you from getting the kind of results you've seen in other people's work, through no fault of your own -- except that the beginner doesn't know this. How frustrating and discouraging!

Investing in good materials will actually help you. You don't have to buy top-of-the-line paper and paint and brushes, but you do need to get decent ones. Then you have to actually use them -- even use them up! Fill up that sketchbook with drawings. Use more paint. Splash it around, have fun! Invest in good brushes and pens and learn how to take excellent care of them - they will last many years if you do.

It is almost impossible to make real progress in art if you have inferior tools, so buy the best you can, and try to use them freely. (I say this as someone who has a huge hoard of good paper, collected over a lifetime -- yes, I'm trying to use it up!) But my mother, who was an artist herself, always saw to it that I had good materials, even as a child. She let me use her sable watercolor brushes after I learned how to wash them and store them properly, and she bought me high-quality paper. This made a huge difference when I was learning to paint. So here are some suggestions about the first essential: paper.

 

Spiral-bound, hard-bound, and soft-cover sketchbooks.

My friend wrote that he was using his child's watercolor set, and a notebook which "might not be right for watercolor." I often see people sketching in little pocket Rhodia pads or other small notebooks. They're OK for a quick felt pen or pencil sketch, but first of all they're too small, and secondly, the paper is simply too smooth. When you try to use watercolor on paper that's too smooth and too light, it buckles, and the pigment runs. If you use it on paper that's too absorbent and fibrous, the pigment sinks in too fast and loses its brilliance; subsequent colors sink into each other and the result is muddy rather than bright and sparkling. Fine watercolor papers are available in pads or blocks from top manufacturers such as Arches and Fabriano; those papers will allow soaking without buckling, and endure a lot of repeated applications of color, as well as scraping and other surface abuse. However, you don't need a dedicated watercolor paper at all for sketching with pen and light watercolor washes. 

On the left: Fabriano "Misto" - a very smooth, thin paper with dots. Ink lines are sharp, and so are the edges of brush washes. The color stays bright, but the paper buckles. There is almost no absorbency or opacity, but for a smooth paper, it's a nice surface. On the right, Stillman & Birn's "Gamma" - a good cross between a high-quality drawing paper for various dry media, and a watercolor-friendly surface that's absorbent and toothy enough to accept light ink or watercolor washes without buckling, while still retaining the character of the brush strokes.

After a lot of trial and error, I've standardized on Stillman & Birn's sketchbooks. The Gamma series (what I use) has ivory paper; the Alpha series is the same paper, but in bright white. They come hard-bound (like a regular hardcover book) or spiral bound, which lies completely flat; you can also get a soft cover version in some sizes, and the company has recently released a new line with toned papers - grey, beige, and black. Many people also like Moleskine art notebooks. These papers are excellent for pen and for light washes, where you're not going to get it soaking wet.  What you want is paper that's not too rough, so your pen can make a clean line, but also not too smooth so it has some absorbency and what's called "tooth" - the ability to accept an ink or pencil line with a bit of drag or resistance, and a bit of texture so that the pigment catches in the little invisible irregularities on the surface. Many watercolor papers are too rough for a good pen line, so if you want to sketch in ink first, and then add some watercolor wash, you want a paper that is not totally smooth, and is designated for "light washes."

A page with heavy ink lines and quite a lot of watercolor - you want your paper to hold up this well.

What size? Your ideal sketchbook will be small enough to carry with you, but not so small as to constrain you. You don't want to draw with cramped fingers and little tiny lines. My standard S&B sketchbooks are spiral-bound hardbacks, 8.5" x 5.5". In my studio I also keep a larger one, 9" x 12". I also use small Global Art Hand Book journals when I have to go smaller and lighter for travelling - these have very nice fabric-covered covers, with an elastic band and a plastic pocket in the back. I like their small square (5.5 x 5.5") and the horizontal landscape format; you might also try the Moleskine art notebook line. I prefer a spiral notebook (because it lies flat, I can work horizontally or vertically, and sheets can be removed) and am particular about the paper, but many people love the Moleskine journals and there are many different formats to choose from. Personally, I think the pocket notebooks in a 3.5" x 5" page size are just too small to allow for free hand movement; they tend to make me work too tightly. On the other hand, if I don't have a sketchbook with me because it was too big to fit in my pocket or bag that day, I often regret it!

The S&B spiral-bound sketchbooks have become my "regular" choice because they are easier to work in and simply nicer than the less-expensive Strathmore or Canson pads found in most art supply stores. There is an undeniable psychological and emotional element to artist supplies. I have used many, many types of journals and sketchbooks, with good paper inside, but have failed to "bond" with them and therefore didn't use them consistently or happily. The S&B sketchbooks suit me, but once I bought one that was hard-bound instead of spiral, and with white paper instead of cream, and I absolutely hated it. The drawings I did weren't as good, I didn't enjoy working in it, and I eventually abandoned it in disgust. The paper was identical! So there's just something extremely personal about the paper we work on, as well as the format and style of sketchbook we use. The paper needs to be good, with the right quality and attributes for the type of work you intend to do (wet, dry, light wash or whatever), but beyond that, it is up to you. 

Note: I don't receive, and will never accept, compensation for endorsing any manufacturer's products; these recommendations are completely without strings, or benefit to me!

Write!

How is your handwriting these days? Mine has really deteriorated, like any other skill that is seldom used. I didn't even know there was a day set aside as "handwriting day" -- sounds like a marketing ploy -- but, as I wrote recently, I've just ordered some new inks and a new fountain pen. I got my ink today, so it felt like the right time to write a bit, and think about handwriting.

My "normal" handwriting is the fast, right-leaning scrawl you see above. It's embarrassing to me to look at letters written by my mother, my grandmother and her sisters, or my great-grandmother, all of whom had beautiful penmanship, and -- I'm afraid -- more patience than I do when writing a letter or a journal entry. Here's the beginning of one from my grandmother, where she excuses her poor penmanship -- as if! -- because she's writing on her lap.

I miss those letters and those correspondences: the anticipation, the thoughtfulness of composing a reply, the slowness of the exchange. I miss finding a real letter in my mailbox in college, or from a faraway boyfriend or close friend. Here's an envelope from my grandmother, addressed to me in Vermont in 1983. Gosh.

It's so beautiful!

I actually made my living for a while as a calligrapher. Those pages of carefully-formed calligraphic scripts don't resemble my handwriting, and they represent a lot of slowing down and patience and slow breathing. For me, handwriting like the examples above is more like talking, and it moves a lot faster. But when I look at the way I write now, i'm shocked. It feels to me like it's time to do some of those breathing exercises, slow down, and write somebody -- maybe myself! -- a letter.

Not that what we write now, by email or even by text, is any less sincere or thoughtful. I still carry on long correspondences with a number of people, and we don't have the patience or the time to do it by snail mail: those days, I'm quite sure, are long gone. But our brains are connected to our hands, and writing is part of what makes us human. We lose those manual dexterity skills at our peril, I think, and I bet that one day scientists will discover that the near-overnight loss of writing by hand, and related skills, affected our brains in some significant ways. I know some of you keep handwritten journals, or write "morning pages" each day. Others draw or sketch. But the time most of us now spend with a pencil or pen in hand is really minimal - for some of us, it barely exists anymore. Do you think it's important? Do you miss it? What takes its place in your life these days?

 

Some recent drawings

Clementine peels and Mexican ceramics.

I'l get back to the travelogue soon, but wanted to share a few drawings from the past month or so.

Succulents and a bowl of green almonds.

 

Although I didn't manage to do a lot on the trip, I've been drawing pretty steadily since we returned.

 

Succulents and Knitting.

Yesterday I ordered a new fountain pen, my first in a long time -- it's a Moon Man M2 eyedropper pen. These are pens with barrels that can be filled with an eyedropper, rather than a cartridge or piston system. I've never had one, and thought it would be worth a try at only $20; other users praise the extra-fine nibs on these pens.

Embroidered purse and desk objects.

My favorite pen for drawing or writing is a now-vintage Shaeffer 580 with a beautiful, responsive gold nib, but I'm becoming reluctant to take it with me when I travel. I've never been completely happy with the Lamy Safari I bought as a low-cost alternative: it's easy to fill and use, but the nib is too stiff for me. And while I'm quite happy with my usual Noodler's Lexington Grey ink, I'm also eyeing some other possibilities from Noodler's range of bulletproof (entirely waterproof and bleedproof) inks: possibly a blue-black ("54th Massachusetts"), and a dark khaki ("El Lawrence").

 

 

Two versions: Still life with pomegranate, pears, and orchid.

 

Finally the Christmas tree made its appearance, the pomegranate got eaten and was replaced by persimmons. It's all really very mundane, I just draw whatever's in front of me.

 

And, below, one more of the tree in front of the fireplace. Montreal has forbidden wood burning and none of us want to pay for the expensive conversions required for gas, so for now, there will be no chestnuts roasting on this one.

We took the tree down yesterday, and there was a snowfall. Outside, the world is white, and inside it looks pretty bare: midwinter has arrived. It would seem like a good time to do some watercolors, just to put some color into life! But I don't mind the monochromatic, graphic quality of winter. Drawing with pen or charcoal often seems more appropriate now, and I think my mood and vision become more focused in response to the weather and the starkness. We'll have at least three more months of it, so it's important to find a way through that embraces the season.

Book List - 2018

In the past year, I read fewer books than usual, but if anything I thought about them more. The year began with a big project: reading Homer's Odyssey chapter by chapter with two other friends, each of us reading a different translation and discussing them online. As the only one of the three readers with any ancient Greek, I was the one who looked up and struggled through passages we wanted to compare. This not only revived my interest in the language but rekindled my desire to go to Greece, which came true at the end of the year. The final book I'm reading, Mary Renault's Fire from Heaven, is a novelistic treatment of the life of Alexander the Great, whose Macedonian birthplace we visited. There were a number of other classical books, or works inspired by them, in the early part of 2018 - specifically several by Seamus Heaney; Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire, a version of Antigone with an immigrant heroine and her brother, a suspected ISIS terrorist; Alice Oswald's Memorial, a poem that lists all the deaths mentioned in the Iliad, and Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey, about teaching the book to a class that included his own father and then going on a trip with him that recreated the ancient voyage.

Besides this focus, books I particularly enjoyed in the past year were William Finnegan's Barbarian Days, an autobiographical book about surfing that held me riveted from the first to the last page; Cesar Aira's bizarre and miraculous Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira, Michael Ondaatje's luminous latest novel, Warlight, set in post-WWII London,, and Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami's most recent collection of short stories, many of which appeared first in The New Yorker.

The book that impressed me the most was probably The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, Vol 1: The Formative Years, by Ricardo Piglia, one of the greatest of all Latin American writers. When diagnosed with a terminal illness, he spent the last ten years of his life compiling, revising and editing the huge volume of journal notebooks he had kept throughout it under the name of his alter-ego, Emilio Renzi. They are just now being published in English.  The concept is monumental, and the writing extremely compelling; for someone like me who has kept journals off and on all her life (including this blog) it was a mind-bending project. Vol 1 covers the years when he was beginning to want to be a writer, through university, and up to the time his first book was published that brought him acclaim -- so it is the diary of a writer becoming a writer. It was a great contrast to last year's mammoth project (Knausgaard). Volume 2, The Happy Years, came out in November, and I look forward to reading it. I followed Vol 1 with one of Piglia's novels, which was great, but confess I liked the journals better. If you like Bolano, you will appreciate these.

Finally, in the fall, Jonathan and I both read William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, a memoir of the writer's pilgrimage in the footsteps of 6th-century monk John Moschos who visited Orthodox monasteries all over the Byzantine world of his time. Dalrymple's journey begins on Mt Athos, Greece, takes us to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank, and ends in the Egyptian desert. The book was written in 1997 and chronicled not only where Moschos went, but the lived reality of the same monasteries fourteen centuries later, most of which were, or had been, under attack by other religions and political groups and were currently inhabited by only a handful of monks; his own visits sometimes alerted the authorities and endangered the present monks, who could be accused of harboring a spy. But it was exactly the right book for us to read before our own first trip to see the Byzantine world at closer quarters; I'll be writing about our trip to the ancient monasteries at Meteora, Greece very soon. 

As always, I look forward to hearing what you've been reading too, so please post your lists in the comments as well as your reactions to any of what I've said or listed here! And best wishes for happy reading adventures in 2019! I'm anxious to read the next Piglia, as I said, and the new Murakami novel, Killing Commendatore; also on my list is the Alexandria Quartet of Lawrence Durrell, and The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel about Sicily. How about you?

 

2018  (**=favorites)

Fire from Heaven (Alexander the Great trilogy, Vol 1), Mary Renault

**Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami

A Sort of Life, Graham Greene

**From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, William Dalrymple

Artificial Respiration, Ricardo Piglia

**The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, Vol 1: The Formative Years, Ricardo Piglia

The Sense of Sight, John Berger

Transit, Rachel Cusk

**The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira, Cesar Aira

Quarantine, Jim Crace

**Warlight, Michael Ondaatje

Memorial, Alice Oswald

In the Night of Time, Antonio Munez Molina

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

Unreasonable Behavior, Don McCullin

**Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan

An Odyssey, Daniel Mendelssohn

No Time to Spare, Ursula LeGuin

**Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie

Aeneid Book VI, Seamus Heaney

The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney

The Foliate Head, Marly Youmans

**Burial at Thebes, Seamus Heaney

**The Odyssey, Robert Fagles, translator (rereading with friends, each a different translation)

A Byzantine Christmas

An Annunciation, second half of 16th C.

The Benaki Museum, in Athens, houses an immense personal collection of antiquities and Byzantine art, especially icons from the so-called Cretan School. Although I'm very interested in Byzantine art, I'm starting from a point of knowing very little about it -- it's our trips to Rome, Sicily, and now Greece that have made me want to learn. I apologize that the photographs aren't better - the combination of the lighting in the galleries and gold leaf on the icons made it really hard to avoid reflections and shine.

Annunciation, by Emmanuel Tzanfornaris, late 16th-early 17th C.

For today, though, I'm just going to post some of the icon paintings we saw at the Benaki that had an Advent or Christmas theme, and include a paraphrase of online articles about what this Cretan School actually was.

The Volpi Nativity, 1st quarter of 15th C. The baby is laid in a strange coffin-like box with a reclining Virgin and pensive Joseph -- but who are all those other characters?

Virgin and Child Enthroned, by Andreas Ritzos, one of the most famous Cretan painters. Second half of 15th C.

In Greece we repeatedly encountered bitter accounts and evidence of the destruction of Christian art, architecture, and artifacts that occurred when the cities of the Byzantine empire fell to the Ottoman Turks. After Constantinople was taken over by the Turks in 1453, a number of Byzantine scholars and artists fled, especially to Venice.

"The émigrés were grammarians, humanists, poets, writers, printers, lecturers, musicians, astronomers, architects, academics, artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians. They reintroduced the teaching of the Greek language to their western counterparts, and brought with them Classical texts that were printed on the first printing presses for Greek books in Venice in 1499. Orthodox Christians in other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean gave money to endow monasteries and allow them to continue their work. One major example was on the island of Crete, which was occupied by the Venetians from 1204 until 1669, and was one of the last Greek islands to have fallen to the Ottoman Turks. The Cretan School of icon-writing became the predominant force in Greek painting during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and helped to supply the demand for Byzantine icons throughout Europe. The Cretan artists developed a particular style of painting under the influence of both Eastern and Western artistic traditions and movements; the most famous product of the school, El Greco, was the most successful of the many artists who tried to build a career in Western Europe, and also the one who left the Byzantine style farthest behind him in his later career.

By the late 15th century, Cretan artists had established a distinct icon-painting style, distinguished by "the precise outlines, the modelling of the flesh with dark brown underpaint and dense tiny highlights on the cheeks of the faces, the bright colours in the garments, the geometrical treatment of the drapery, and, finally the balanced articulation of the composition", "sharp contours, slim silhouettes, linear draperies and restrained movements". (Wikipedia:the Cretan School, and Patrick Comerford, The Cretan School of Icons and its Contribution to Western Art.)

With these beautiful, enigmatic images, I want to wish a Merry Christmas to all of you!

Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Ioannis Permeniatus, first half of 16th century

Origins of an Obsession

Apollo and Athena look down on Troy. Alice and Martin Provensen, The Iliad and the Odyssey (Golden Books)

When I was 8, my parents went on a trip to Kentucky, leaving me in the care of my maternal grandparents, who lived downstairs. I don't remember the circumstances; it must have had to do with my father's work, but this trip was exceptional. Except for visiting my father's dying brother in Florida, fifty years later, it was the only time my mother ever flew on an airplane. She was asthmatic at a time when that disease was not well-controlled, and travel was difficult and anxiety-provoking for both my parents. But that one time, they went. I remember feeling confused and nervous, but trying to be good about it. And I remember when they came back home, both because I was very glad to see them, and because my mother brought me a special present that she had found in a city bookstore in Louisville.

It was The Golden Book of Myths and Legends, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, and I was instantly captivated. The book also included the tales of Beowulf, the Battle of Roncevaux, Tristram and Iseult, Rustem and Sohrab, and Sigurd of the Volsungs, but the entire first half was devoted to the Greek myths. I pored over the paintings: Prometheus stole fire from heaven; Theseus faced the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth; a helmeted Jason fled with the Golden Fleece, Daedalus stood on a rooftop studying the birds. I was already a good reader, but my mother helped me with the text and unfamiliar words, and together we studied the pictures and talked about the stories. She had studied Greek art in college, and showed me how the illustrators had adapted the style of ancient vase paintings to a modern idiom. She pulled out her copy of Bullfinch's Mythology when I wanted to know more. Although she didn't know how to read Greek, she taught me to recite the letters of the alphabet, and how to write the characters, and we talked about the Greek origins of many English words.

That Christmas, my parents gave me the Provensen's illustrated Iliad and Odyssey. My mother read it to me when I was sick in bed, and again we pored over the pictures -- these were even more closely linked to Greek vase paintings. She talked to me about the use of positive and negative space; I traced and copied some of the illustrations. The story and the characters got under my skin and into my head, and stayed there, while the gods and goddesses, in profile, looked down on the warring camps of Greeks and Trojans from the heights of Mt. Olympus, their feuds and jealousies mirroring the behaviors of people I knew. I identified most with grey-eyed Athena, who remained above the love-quarrels by staying a virgin, and encouraged wisdom, intellect, and music as well as being the patron goddess of the Athenians. We read the story countless times, and in spite of my preference for Athena, I always went against her and rooted for the Trojans, knowing it was fated for them to lose, but somehow hoping that my wishes would make the story turn out differently. It was the same when I got to university and enrolled in ancient Greek classes, and, in the second semester, opened my student edition of Homer to the first words of the Iliad. And it's been the same every time since, in every translation: the inevitability of defeat battling with my desire for a different result, as if human fate itself could be held suspended or reversed by the force of my own free will. Much later, I would come to see that the Greeks themselves were concerned with the same questions of fate vs free will, and that it would play a large part in the development of their tradition of tragic drama and exert a profound influence on Christianity, and later western drama and philosophy. 

I can't explain the hold that this art and this particular story has had on me, all my life; all I can do is trace it back to its origin. I became a classics major; I almost decided to teach art history or become a conservator of antiquities, but instead became a graphic designer and artist - and I'm convinced to this day that my early study of those vase paintings, and their positive-negative harmony, and the beautiful carved inscriptions of perfectly-balanced Greek letters, had a lot to do with why I became a designer and careful typographer myself, and why my own art has always been concerned with line, and with volume.

Laying Out of a Young Man in the Family Circle, Attic Greek, around 400 BC, white-ground polychrome lechythos (Altes Museum, Berlin)

One day shortly before J. and I left for Greece in mid-November, I began thinking about my mother, and my eyes suddenly filled with tears: how she would have loved to go! Yet in 83 years, she never left the continental U.S. and, like many people in my travel-averse family, hardly ever traveled far from her rural home. But she traveled the world vicariously through me, and through books and the pages of The New Yorker and New York Times, often sending me clippings about some new archaeological discovery. Now, all these years later, I was finally going there, and she was gone from the earth; I wouldn't even be able to tell her what I saw. That particular morning, the prospect seemed unbearable, and I wept. But later, while packing, I decided to wear one of her silver bracelets throughout the trip, and I spontaneously pulled out a favorite black-and-white photograph of her, and stuck it in the back of my sketchbook. When we arrived in Athens, I put the photograph on the table in front of the mirror, and went up to the roof, and saw the Acropolis and the Parthenon for the first time. She was there with me, then, and in my heart, I told her all about it.

Home from a Journey

Dear Readers, apologies for my long silence. I've been away on a trip to Greece, a place I've wanted to visit for an entire lifetime. As the title of this blog implies, I've felt a personal identification with ancient Greece and its stories, gods and goddesses, art and thought. It's what I studied when I was young, and for a while I thought I'd either be a ancient art history professor or a conservator of antiquities. That's not how my life turned out, and part of the reason for this trip was to revisit that earlier self, as well as the place, and see what I thought from a different point in life.

It was a marvelous journey, filled with surprises and adventures not only in the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki, but in the mountains of northern Greece; and not only concerned with ancient history and art, but also with a quest to see and learn more about the Byzantines. We were gone for sixteen days, and started our travels in Berlin, where we visited one of the best collections of ancient Greek vases and sculptures in the world, at the Altes Museum, as well as going to the Reichstag, taking long walks, trying to stay warm (it was almost as chilly as Montreal) and eating some excellent German food. Then we flew to Athens, where we began and ended our travels in Greece.

I have a lot I want to write about, but it's going to have to wait a bit because...Christmas...and singing, and friends and family, as well as some significant responsibilities here at home. The jetlag in this direction, back home, was really fierce, and I've been really busy besides. Today is the first day since returning a week ago that I've had any time to work on my pictures and videos, and I did get them transferred to my computer. So, eventually, there will be more to share here.

Travel completely engages me when I'm there, and then feels almost unreal when return to my own space. And yet, flight makes those sudden shifts in reality possible. I wouldn't call it disorienting, per se, but it is certainly strange to find yourself inhabiting an image like the one above, that you've seen in countless sources, from textbooks to travel videos. We don't go on tours but figure out our itinerary and plans completely from scratch, and unexpected things happen, so during the trips we always feel like we're very heads-up, paying sharp attention; there's a high level of intensity. I try hard to really be in a place -- to feel it and engage with it with all my senses as well as my mind -- and not just be a person behind a camera, capturing moments like trophies. It takes time to think about a significant journey and to see what I've learned and how it has changed me; I'm doing that now and will be doing it for quite a long time. And I already want to go back. There were good reasons why, as a young girl, Greece got under my skin. I see that better now, and am glad I wasn't disappointed by being face to face with the real thing. Yet I also see that I made the right decision to live a less linear and more personally creative life; it was a better fit with who I really am, but in many ways, it has been a reflection of the values and ideals that attracted me to the Greeks in the first place. As a woman, I'm lucky I live now, though, instead of back then.

So, more to come, soon. 

 

Complicity: The FB Scandal and Our Individual Responsibility

I haven't yet finished the entire investigative story about FB in today's NY Times, but have read the articles in the Guardian and recently watched a documentary about the company's troubles. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg come off as even worse than I thought. And I wonder how, in good conscience, any of us can stay here on this platform that touts liberal rhetoric about openness and connecting the world, while actually being capitalist and self-serving to the point of hiring conservative firms to spread fake news against its detractors, let alone ignoring information about Russian hackers and fake-news farms and hacking of their own users' "secure" information, and failing to take action until after the damage was done. They have turned into what they say they hate, and are using all of us for one primary purpose: to make billions of dollars.

My activity on FB has never been great, but it's decreased, quite deliberately. I rarely write direct posts there, and only occasionally "like" something my friends have posted. Its main usefulness to me, other than allowing me to see some family and friends who don't keep in touch any other way, is in publicizing events for the cathedral (which, if we really looked at it theologically, has no business being on FB at all) and cross-posting links to new blog posts. As I've written before, most of the comments I get at The Cassandra Pages, and a lot of the traffic, now comes via social media. I have fewer problems with the way Instagram works, which FB owns, and with the community there, because I am not constantly peppered with ads (they can be blocked), news, and opinions and the community where I interact is much quieter and more concerned with the same values as I am.

But the bottom line is this: what FB is doing is wrong. George Soros is right when he says it's a threat to democracy. Yet we have all become hostage to it because it preys on all our deepest insecurities and desires. I don't want to lose the blog traffic I have. I don't want to lose the ability to publicize events, or a new book from Phoenicia -- though buying paid advertising is a business transaction, and I am more OK with that. And I don't want to lose touch with certain friends -- but, you know, email still exists. It just takes a little more effort.

It's like so much else that's wrong with our world. We choose convenience and connection and take the easy way out, even when it makes us complicit in data-mining schemes or the spread of fake news, even when it enriches unscrupulous people, even when our actions harm the planet. We are sheep. Human beings don't seem to have the will to do what is right in large enough numbers to make the differences that needs to be made, or to send the message to both government and business that we won't tolerate their behavior any longer. If I delete my FB account, it will be a useless gesture that will have no effect other than making a statement like this one; I'll only be hurting myself. But it still may be the right thing to do.

Bright Faces of Hope, and a Long Uphill Road Ahead

The first two Native-American women. First two Muslim women. First Somali-American, a former refugee. Youngest woman ever, a Latina. First black female congresswoman from her state...They are the hope for me today: the brown female faces of those who won seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with many white women who also won races, and the first gay male state governor. These are the faces of the future — though their majority power may be very far away, beyond my lifetime even.

When I look at the map, the polarization is depressingly clear, and I can’t even feel smug about Quebec being better, after our last election. It was just the same: most of the rural, homogeneous French-Canadian areas went conservative, while the diverse metropolitan areas (chiefly Montreal) were solidly progressive. The real question in so many places today seems to be: do you want someone who will actually work for the things that benefit all people, or do you want someone who looks like you, expresses the same fears, and wants to go back to the past?

There were a lot of “firsts” yesterday. That’s very significant, though it made me simultaneously weep with happiness at seeing those faces, and rage that it’s taken so long and come with such a hard fight –- which will, of course, have to continue. And I'm not naive. These are modest gains, and even a Democratically-controlled House will, at best, create a stalemate with the executive branch and Senate, that will of course be blamed for blocking legislation and starting investigations. I'm appalled at the support this president still enjoys, and in some parts of the country, it seems more solid than ever, with a looming possibility of re-election in 2020.

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Looking at the Senate and House electoral maps today caused me to reflect on the election of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church of the United States, ten years ago. The church’s polity is set up the same way as Congress, with a House of Bishops, one from each diocese, and a much larger body made up of lay delegates and clergy, equally represented by four of each from every diocese. In every single step toward inclusivity — allowing the ordination of the first black priest, the first woman, the first openly gay priest, and then bishops in each of those categories — the House of Deputies voted positively years before the House of Bishops did, and in exactly that order: blacks, women, gay. And of course, representation in the House of Deputies was itself reflective of that diversity long before there were black, female, and gay bishops. But it did happen. The people in the churches elected the delegates and changed those bodies; the lay delegates pushed the clergy to be more progressive, and eventually even the House of Bishops changed. It's inevitable, but it took a long, long time even in one of the most progressive religious denominations in the United States. Ten years later, however, a great deal has changed in attitudes toward homosexuality in the general population, friends and colleagues, and forced them to confront a choice between love or rejection of real people. We should see this as an indication that change is absolutely possible.

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I've been on the side of immigrants and non-whites all my life, and especially so since marrying into an Arab/Armenian immigrant family, with multiple personal histories of genocide and narrow escapes from persecution to begin life again in new places. Twelve years of being a Canadian-American, and having opportunities to travel, especially in Latin America, have only made me MORE sympathetic and more identified with migrants and refugees. I’m grateful for my life experiences and fervently wish I could share them with a lot more people, because I think if you don’t live it, or have very close relationships with people who do, it’s hard to really get it. Thus, the map we keep seeing, and the fears that keep being exploited.

Besides this endemic hatred of "the other", the environment is the other issue that creates ongoing despair for me. There is so little time, and so little will on the parts of governments -- in fact I believe we've already passed a critical window where reversal was possible.  So much of what I have valued and loved about the Earth is in danger of being lost forever. To me, this is the fundamental issue of our time, and even here in Quebec, where many people say they do care about the natural world and live close to it, the new government feels it is not important, and secondary to economic concerns. How shortsighted can we be?

Today is a day to rejoice in a first step back from the precipice Trump's presidency has placed us in. Frankly, though, we can't let up for a minute. 

Why the hell are we still blogging?

My good friend Rachel Barenblat of The Velveteen Rabbi wrote recently, saying she was celebrating (like several of us) fifteen years of blogging, and wondering if we might like to do some sort of collaborative observance. She also invited Dave Bonta of Via Negativa, Lorianne DiSabato of Hoarded Ordinaries, Dale Favier of Mole, and Natalie d'Arbeloff of Blaugustine. We all met way back then, and have been good friends and readers and supporters of each other's work ever since -- so of course everybody said "yes." Here are some excerpts from the first installment, which was in answer to the question posed in the subject line of this post.  After you've had a look, I'd like to turn the question around and ask you: Why are you still reading blogs?

Buried Temple, by Natalie D'Arbeloff. Acrylic on paper, 37cm x 37 cm.

Why the hell are we still blogging?

Rachel: Writing is one of the fundamental ways I experience and explore the world, both the external world and my own internal world. I think it was EM Forster who wrote, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” Blogging as I’ve come to understand it is living one’s life in the open, with spiritual authenticity and intellectual curiosity, ideally in conversation or relationship with others who are doing the same.

Dave: At some level, it's easier to keep blogging at Via Negativa, the Morning Porch, and Moving Poems than it is to stop. Basically I'm an addict. Writing poetry is fun for me — entering that meditative head-space required for immersion in writing. As for the social aspect, I've been in, or on the periphery of, several distinct blogging communities over the years, and at one time, we all commented on each other's sites, but with the rise of social media, most blog commenting went away — and I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing. Writing and responding to comments did take up a lot of my time ten years ago, and now that I can scratch that conversational itch on Twitter, or in real life with my partner, I'm OK with most interactions on my blogs being limited to pings. But I must immediately qualify that and admit that Via Negativa is a special case, because for well over half its existence now I've enjoyed the virtual companionship of a co-blogger, the brilliant and prolific poet Luisa Igloria, and a small number of occasional guest bloggers as well. I wouldn't say I'm competitive, but Luisa's commitment to a daily poetry practice has definitely forced me to up my game. Then there's Mr. Pepys. My Pepys Diary erasure project grew directly from sociability: my partner and I wanted to read the online version of the diary together, and I worried I might eventually get bored with it if I weren't mining it for blog fodder. 

Lorianne: I am not attached to the medium, but I am attached to the message, and the process of creating/sharing that message.  There has been a lot of hand-wringing among bloggers over the “death of the blog,” with long-time (and former) bloggers worried about attention divides between blogs and social media.  Where do “I” live if I post in multiple places: on blog, in a paper notebook, on social media? For those of us who do all three, the result can be confusing, distracting, and frazzling...or it can be creative, collaborative, and synergistic.

Dale: I didn’t really expect ever to have readers, so in a way, having readership dwindle is a return to the early days... I’ve outlived some of my personas -- I’m no longer recognizeably very Buddhist, and my politics have morphed in some odd ways. I don’t think I’m as salable an item as I used to be :-) But the inertia, as Dave said. When I do have something to say and my censor doesn’t step in, the blog is still where I go. It’s been home for fifteen years: my strand of the web… The community that was established way back when is still important to me, and still a large part of my life. And there’s still a lot of value in having a public space. The act of making something public changes it, changes how I look at. I become the viewers and the potential viewers. It helps me get out of myself. It helps me work through my favorite game of “what if I’m wrong about all these things?”

Natalie: Why the hell still blogging? Not sure I am still blogging. I put something up on Facebook whenever I feel like saying hey, listen, or hey, look at this. Then I copy/paste the post to Blogger where I keep Blaugustine going, mainly out of a sense of imaginary duty. The idea that there are some real people out there who may be actually interested in some of my thoughts and/or artwork is undoubtedly attractive, even necessary. I live a mostly hermit life and don’t get much feedback of any kind. But my interior life is very active, all the time, and having a tiny public platform online where I can put stuff is really helpful. To be perfectly honest I think that’s about it for me and blogging at present. I don’t do any other social media, it would all take too much time which I’d rather devote to artwork.

Beth: I think a lot of it has to do with a sense of place. My blog is like a garden or a living room that I’ve put energy and thought and care into as a place that’s a reflection of myself and is hopefully welcoming for others.. The discipline of gathering work and talking about it coherently has been extremely good for me and for my art practice. And I’ve also really appreciated and been inspired by other people who do the same, whatever their means of expression. There’s something deeply meaningful about following someone’s body of work, and their struggles, over not just months but years. In today’s climate of too-muchness and attention-seeking and short attention spans, I feel so encouraged and supported by the quiet, serious doggedness of other people like me!

So...why are you still reading blogs? Are you a writer or artist who's still blogging yourself?