Struggle for Common Sense...conversation
A recounting of a Tuesday evening event I
attended on Capitol Hill - the Conversation. This is an art-oriented discussion
between invited guests and an audience, held in a round-table forum-like
environment where the guests give opening thoughts and then invite a
"conversation." Also, new photos of Fall in West Seattle (actually, Fall in my
yard - how's that!) and a few night shots taken Tuesday evening while I traipsed
up to and later down from Capitol HIll.
For about a year now I've subscribed to a local
group, dorkbot-sea, which is the local chapter of what started in New York -
dorkbot-nyc. Dorkbot's motto is "people doing strange things
with electricity," (see <http://dorkbot.org/> for links to the local
dorkbots). It's an umbrella organization which sponsors demonstrations,
exhibits, hosts speakers and in general tries to tie together the world of
artists - kinetic, light, sound, motion - and engineers and scientists and
anyone else who tinkers with "things" but whose product is generally considered
"art."
I must admit that I've never actually attended a dorkbot meeting. They're held locally in the space of another umbrella organization - the Center On the Contemporary Arts (COCA, which is yet another non-profit organization which fosters exhibits, helps with grants and tries to introduce contemporary artists to their public and the public to the various arts of contemporary Northwest artists). However, I've subscribed to the dorkbot-sea mailing list and have attended a few of the events which have been highlighted in the dorkbot-sea mailing. It's another of the seemingly ubiquitous arts organizations our here. I think one of the things which might set Seattle (and the Northwest in general) apart from other sections of the country is the overwhelming and early acceptance of technology and its use to keep groups of like-minded individuals linked.
I'm evolving, myself. But, one of they ways I'm evolving is by acquiring a sense of the pulse of the region through these mailing lists and by participating in those events which are cited and seeing for myself where I might fit in. I've really got no particular plans - as might seem obvious - but I do have this interest in stirring things up for the better, an interest in combining my various talents to create new "art," and in acquiring and honing even more skills in the creative fields. I'm also a civic activist, as has become apparent in the last year. It now seems that my civic activism might be acquiring some direction now that I've had a year's worth of events under my belt.
One of the dorkbot listings cited an event which apparently has been a long-running series here in Seattle. It's called the "Conversation," and is hosted by John Boylan, a longtime Seattle art activist, he's a professional writer and editor and was the former editor of the art magazine "Reflex" (I've not yet found enough about it on the web, will have to visit a book or magazine store downtown and do some more digging). Previously, as I understand the apparent ten-year history of the "conversation," the topic has always been "art" and something relevant to the particular time of the conversations (I'll drop the quotes from here out).
So, this dorkbot-sea listserve announces the "return" of the conversations. The topic for the conversation is called "the struggle for common sense in the world of tomorrow - what do we do now?" It's at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night up in the "art" quarter of Capitol Hill. The guests are artist and activist Mary Anne Peters; activist, poet, and teacher Bob Spivey; journalist Cydney Gillis; and artist and activist Lisa Bade. Their collective bios include working for civil rights in the '60s, working on women's issues here in Seattle, working with prisoners using art as a therapy approach, grass-roots efforts with both Nader and early Green Party activities, and lots and lots of activities with and without the ACLU working on arts issues such as the famous/infamous Robert Maplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnatti. This is a group of individuals ranging in age from about their late thirties through just a bit older than me. We even shared some common activities associated with the Vietnam War protests and the efforts to impeach Richard Nixon. Boylan appears to be in his late forties. The venue, though, suggested an audience more like the twenty-somethings who frequent the clubs up and down Pine and along the Broadway strip on Capitol Hill.
I didn't really know what to expect, to tell the truth. What was "the conversation," what was the purpose and what might be the outcome or the experience. Anyway, it seemed something right up my alley - a bit off-the-wall, a bit of activism, a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, and a lot of displeasure with the status quo. A full description of the bios of the guests is at <http://www.music.columbia.edu/pipermail/dorkbotsea-blabber/2004-November/000748.html> (which apparently is a Columbia University archive of dorbot-sea messages).
I arrived a bit before seven and went into the Capitol Hill Arts Center, which features a full-service bar-restaurant on the first floor and is located on one of Capitol Hill's "off" streets - 12th Avenue - sort of midway between Broadway and 15th Avenue, the Hill's two north-south major avenues. I asked where the "lower level" was, since the conversation was going to take place there according to the notice. "Down and around the corner of the building and you'll see it." Then, as an aside to another person behind the bar, "we ought to get the signpost out on the street." Indeed. I walked around and below the building into what was previously the loading dock and lower level. It's been converted into a small TV studio which opens directly to another bar with a large open space between them filled with round tables and chairs and an mid level against one wall which looks like the classic corner area of a 1950's era diner. Interesting space, indeed. The television set up is apparently for a cable show which is broadcast live beginning at eight o'clock. There are already about two dozen folks, from their mid-thirties through mid-fifties, getting drinks and standing around and chatting as if they'd known each other for half-a-lifetime. At just about seven, Boylan, who I didn't know and couldn't guess earlier, announces that anyone here for the "conversation" had better grab a seat and add to what was an already-large and forming circle of chairs around a central table.
I was lucky in that there was an empty seat open right next to the table, and as it turns out right across from the four guests and Boylan. I still had no idea what was going to happen. I expected these four would give some accounting of things relevant to art and perhaps the present course the country was on. Boylan gets things started by giving a bit of background on the conversations, how they're done and who would go first and what the time constraints would be. I'm getting a clue now. The conversations are just that. Boylan has a series of guests, who give some relevant and weighted comment on the topic (in this case, "what do we do now") and then anyone in the room can talk - in turn - essentially having a conversation with the guests and everyone else.
It should surprise no one that the collected group known as "the liberals," or "the progessives," or even a large constituency of the Democratic Party, are artists, scientists, and more recently, lawyers. Artists are very liberal creatures. Artists of all sorts. Their managers may be more conservative but the nature of art somewhat defines that person as one who takes risks, who steps outside and may even live outside the "norm." This conversation was about what was happening in America and how it would affect the artist community, the activist community, the individuals who had spent a lifetime fighting for civil rights, for equality, for a broadening of what had previously been called "local" standards of art. The arts have come quite far in the past several decades. There are still places which ban books, which ban certain art exhibits, which ban certain performers, which try and arrest these same types for infractions of local or state law. But, in general, the arts of America have evolved quite far. This group was concerned that the current administration and especially the evangelical bent of certain members of the administration would try and limit artists' freedoms and the freedoms of their audience. Or, perhaps even worse than that, would begin to sanctify an America which was more of a theocracy than a democracy. Artists come in all colors, flavors and creeds. None are as vanilla as what it seemed the evangelical community was looking for in what they would accept. It was almost as if the art community were in a discussion about a declaration of war against the direction it seemed America was headed.
It reminded me a lot of the presentation by Ursula K. Le Guin the previous week. Clearly, the politics of America were affecting the art of America and here were some sixty or so individuals who were active artists, active civil rights protagonists, active soldiers in the quest for continued and more freedoms and a broader and more diverse culture, not a narrower and more defined culture.
It would be difficult to capture the thread of the two hours of continuous and well-reasoned and occasionally impassioned comments made by the guests and the audience. The conversation went just as one might expect a well-stocked college symposium to proceed. I contributed with the story about the individual who had stolen away to his evangelical family's garage to read Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" and how that reading had opened his mind and given that individual a new life. There were others who decried the threat to freedoms and the control the media had over certain segments of the population. There were some who recalled their own experience - in one case as a Japanese prisoner-of-war - and how it taught them to fight oppression and government control. There was an evolving sense over the two hours as to how the arts could rise again to depict what the artists thought was going wrong with the evolution of their country's culture and how art itself, but more importantly, art as a social force, might be able to work into the situation in such a way that minds would be opened, ideas planted, a few narrow-minded individuals shown a larger universe. It was two hours filled with dark thoughts followed by bright opposing views countered by murky and depressing examples followed by enlightening and sustaining counter-examples. In the end, at least one of the speakers responded that her dark and worrisome view of the future was perhaps too dark and that some of what she had heard and discussed would change things and that she, herself, had come in with a pessimistic world view but would leave with at least a few ounces of hope and inspiration. There were a number of twenty-somethings who were there, not as many as most would have liked, but who spoke up and gave their personal stories, either as a local artist, or someone affected by the arts and how it was the art community which had given them hope and changed something inside them.
The conversation was an amazing experience. Not something which was that different from myriad conversations I've taken part in myself with friends or colleagues at work or home, but amazing in that this was a group of people, a high proportion of whom knew each other, who were discussing with complete strangers some very fundamental feelings and expressing lessons learned from decades of practice in the arts and in the realms of art and social activism. Like so many things, this had a tremendously additive factor. Any single individual there might have continued with their view of how things are evolving and how they might change that, but the collective discussions enlarged everyone's perspective. These were really bright and uncommonly open-minded individuals, obviously liberal but not completely secular. One of the speakers was Mennonite and was committed to both the faith and the way of life of the Mennonites. Her comments and world view were as a teacher and as a pacifist in a world of individuals seemingly opposed to education and using extreme aggression and yet her outlook and comments were profoundly positive as was her experience with those she taught.
There is a lot anyone can do and the accepted notion that we could "not change" the course of the evolution of the country was turned around such that I believe everyone who was there left with some idea of how his or her art, or teaching, or activism could affect at least one other person and it was the collective effort of everyone which mattered the most. Not the directed efforts of everyone working together on a single manifesto, but the individual efforts of everyone working individually but with a knowledge of what was happening and what was meaningful to them and how much their art or teachings or music or writings might affect just a single person but the number of such affected individuals over time would be a large proportion of the population and that aggregate did matter. No, the arts couldn't change the course of the country in one fell swoop and it couldn't possibly be coordinated or run like the Karl Rove and evangelical church-directed "moral values" theme, but we were out to try and open people's minds, to show them a larger world, to expose them to culture from different elements of the human race and that effort - though the same as moving one grain of sand at a time - was going to ultimately be more effective than some media campaign or some political propaganda because it was the core inner-person the arts were trying to reach and the voter element of that inner-person would respond accordingly as the core beliefs of each individual grew and expanded.
This is another element of the city here which I've been taken by. I'll be at the next conversation and have added myself to John Boylan's mailing list and offered a bit of who I am and what I might offer to him. It's really hard to see where this might lead but it is clear to me that there are lots of opportunities to illuminate dark areas of the human soul without having to resort to trickery or well-worn media ploys or manipulation. Along the same lines I've recently offered some ideas to the local branch of the Seattle Public Library (they're about to close it for a year to completely revise and improve the physical space) and was really well-received by the library staff and members of the "Friends of the Library." Some of the ideas I presented had more to do with introducing people who walk by the library building all the time but never go in. Going inside a library is the first start in getting an individual to expand their own mind. The libraries here all have high-speed internet as well as books, movies, music and images of art and photography. There are just too many folks who get everything they know about the world from a handful of conglomerate media companies, all of which have as a root cause the desire to sell their audience something. Libraries aren't selling anything, they're offering free-of-charge an opportunity for the individual to explore their world on their own terms. It's clear that too many individuals in this country as well as a great number of recent immigrants have no realization whatsoever of the wealth of information and history and culture which is theirs for the asking.
Following up on the Red States, Blue States thoughts I posted earlier, I've moved in the direction of becoming much more active in the dissemination and outreach areas - clearly one of the things I have done and can do well and an area of human endeavor which really drives me. Also, it gives me some ideas of where and how to express myself through the various multimedia arts I'm playing with.
The evolution of society continues. The evolution of individuals continues. My evolution continues. I am beginning to feel reasonably comfortable in a much wider array of local activities and with a broader group of individuals. I'm also becoming somewhat better known. There was a local exposition of community activities including volunteer, government, and non-profit organizations at the local high school this afternoon, They had three hours of local music, food, and discussion at tables set up by about fifty local organizations (by local I mean West Seattle, particularly Delridge neighborhood). I spent all three hours there engaged in discussion and conversation with a variety of these organizations. Adam and a neighbor and her son also came with me and were separately engaged as well. We sat through several of the musical performances but each of us sort of went our own way in between. What surprised me was how many people there I already knew or had had previous engagements with, how many my neighbor knew and had some previous shared activity with, and surprisingly, how many Adam knew and had done something with - either through the YMCA (where he works as a lifeguard) or through South Seattle Community College. Seattle - and as I said, the Northwest in general - is a very inviting climate and culture for people to share and create common spaces and common futures. There are issues of getting consensus and some things - like Monorail - seem to take forever, but this place actually fits my style very well. I like discussion. I like hearing new ideas or even opposing ideas. I like creating common goals and working towards them and I especially like the congenial style of the West Coast in approaching something like this.
The really great element of all this for me is that I've finally got the time to devote myself to some of these things with a gusto which is uninterrupted by work-related politics. All those decades of working for NASA I knew how much the agency was tied directly into and affected by the national political will and, in particular, the partisan politics of the party in power, but I don't think I realized how much of a toll on me personally this national political will was taking. One reason I voraciously consumed news so much was it was obvious to me that even the tiniest elements of local politics somewhere else in the country were going to affect NASA somehow and through the agency, me. I'm completely freed of that relationship now and though I may be distressed by the direction the country is going in or by the policies of the President or even the Governor, it doesn't affect me twice - once through my personal self and once through my professional self. It's amazing how much of a stress the professional self took through political actions. I can see that now because I can detach my passions from my concerns and look at things from a synoptic view whereas previously the synoptic view was impossible to achieve because I was enmeshed inside the fabric itself.
Minor additional point, I got my SIFF card in the mail today. I'm now a member of Cinema Seattle, the mothership for the Seattle International Film Festival, so this coming May 19 - June 12, 2005, festival will be even more of a kick-in-the-butt because I'll get the schedule a bit earlier and have a moderate discount on blocks of tickets. There's ticket books of 6, 20 and so on up to the full listing of three-hundred or so flicks. Last year I saw just shy of a dozen, this year I'll probably up that number to at least two dozen. Some of the SIFF screenings I saw last year are now making the rounds in regular cinema such as Dig, Open Water, Haute Tension, Primer. It's become one of the things I look forward to now. So, even though it's six months away, expect even more reviews.
Chas
Fall in my front and side yards in West Seattle
A one image macro photo of the leaves on one of the two maples on SW Monroe Street - the front yard. Yes,
the grass is still green and growing.
A two-image sequence taking shots of different trees in the yard from different angles and distances. The
single, floating, leaf was actually hanging from a single spider thread. The following images show a variety
of additional two-image sequences shot in the front - SW Monroe Street - and side - 39th Avenue SW yards.
The corner of SW Monroe St. (left) and 39th Avenue SW (right) with one of my maples and the plum (right) as
well as a rhododendron (left near) and something (??)(center near) - I'm still learning the plants in my yard.
Space Needle in moderate fog taken from corner of 3rd Avenue and
Wall Street in Belltown, Seattle.
Same street corner, this time not including overhead trolley electric wires.
Looking across 1st Avenue near Denny Way at the Pacific Science Center's filigree lattice arches. The Pacific
Science Center is on the southern boundary of Seattle Center right on Denny Way.
On 2nd somewhat east of Pacific Science Center at Denny Way. Time was about 10:00 pm on a Wednesday.
Denny Way (right) crossing 2nd Avenue (front) on my way to First Avenue to catch the bus home. I was in
Belltown for a meetup and decided to walk north for a change, rather than south, to catch the bus nearer the
Seattle Center rather than my usual catch-spot near Pike Place Market. Downtown Seattle is absolutely
wonderful for anyone who likes to walk - it's accessible, easy distances, and has such great visual points of
interest - nearly everywhere. It's every bit as eye-catching in a modern, stylized manner as Washington, DC
is in a neo-classical manner. And the streets here have the same number of odd angles with circles, triangles
and odd-angle intersections as does DC - Pierre L'Enfant would love this town were he alive today - there
are end-points along every avenue and distant visual scapes from nearly every location in town.
Prepare for Thanksgiving, it's only 12 days away. I've already put in our order for
one pumpkin and one apple pie (Great Harvest breads - Ballard, West Seattle, Shoreline)
and 2 dozen classic yeast rolls. Turkey is next to get.
More drama, long theses, and photographs coming your way shortly...
I must admit that I've never actually attended a dorkbot meeting. They're held locally in the space of another umbrella organization - the Center On the Contemporary Arts (COCA, which is yet another non-profit organization which fosters exhibits, helps with grants and tries to introduce contemporary artists to their public and the public to the various arts of contemporary Northwest artists). However, I've subscribed to the dorkbot-sea mailing list and have attended a few of the events which have been highlighted in the dorkbot-sea mailing. It's another of the seemingly ubiquitous arts organizations our here. I think one of the things which might set Seattle (and the Northwest in general) apart from other sections of the country is the overwhelming and early acceptance of technology and its use to keep groups of like-minded individuals linked.
I'm evolving, myself. But, one of they ways I'm evolving is by acquiring a sense of the pulse of the region through these mailing lists and by participating in those events which are cited and seeing for myself where I might fit in. I've really got no particular plans - as might seem obvious - but I do have this interest in stirring things up for the better, an interest in combining my various talents to create new "art," and in acquiring and honing even more skills in the creative fields. I'm also a civic activist, as has become apparent in the last year. It now seems that my civic activism might be acquiring some direction now that I've had a year's worth of events under my belt.
One of the dorkbot listings cited an event which apparently has been a long-running series here in Seattle. It's called the "Conversation," and is hosted by John Boylan, a longtime Seattle art activist, he's a professional writer and editor and was the former editor of the art magazine "Reflex" (I've not yet found enough about it on the web, will have to visit a book or magazine store downtown and do some more digging). Previously, as I understand the apparent ten-year history of the "conversation," the topic has always been "art" and something relevant to the particular time of the conversations (I'll drop the quotes from here out).
So, this dorkbot-sea listserve announces the "return" of the conversations. The topic for the conversation is called "the struggle for common sense in the world of tomorrow - what do we do now?" It's at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night up in the "art" quarter of Capitol Hill. The guests are artist and activist Mary Anne Peters; activist, poet, and teacher Bob Spivey; journalist Cydney Gillis; and artist and activist Lisa Bade. Their collective bios include working for civil rights in the '60s, working on women's issues here in Seattle, working with prisoners using art as a therapy approach, grass-roots efforts with both Nader and early Green Party activities, and lots and lots of activities with and without the ACLU working on arts issues such as the famous/infamous Robert Maplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnatti. This is a group of individuals ranging in age from about their late thirties through just a bit older than me. We even shared some common activities associated with the Vietnam War protests and the efforts to impeach Richard Nixon. Boylan appears to be in his late forties. The venue, though, suggested an audience more like the twenty-somethings who frequent the clubs up and down Pine and along the Broadway strip on Capitol Hill.
I didn't really know what to expect, to tell the truth. What was "the conversation," what was the purpose and what might be the outcome or the experience. Anyway, it seemed something right up my alley - a bit off-the-wall, a bit of activism, a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, and a lot of displeasure with the status quo. A full description of the bios of the guests is at <http://www.music.columbia.edu/pipermail/dorkbotsea-blabber/2004-November/000748.html> (which apparently is a Columbia University archive of dorbot-sea messages).
I arrived a bit before seven and went into the Capitol Hill Arts Center, which features a full-service bar-restaurant on the first floor and is located on one of Capitol Hill's "off" streets - 12th Avenue - sort of midway between Broadway and 15th Avenue, the Hill's two north-south major avenues. I asked where the "lower level" was, since the conversation was going to take place there according to the notice. "Down and around the corner of the building and you'll see it." Then, as an aside to another person behind the bar, "we ought to get the signpost out on the street." Indeed. I walked around and below the building into what was previously the loading dock and lower level. It's been converted into a small TV studio which opens directly to another bar with a large open space between them filled with round tables and chairs and an mid level against one wall which looks like the classic corner area of a 1950's era diner. Interesting space, indeed. The television set up is apparently for a cable show which is broadcast live beginning at eight o'clock. There are already about two dozen folks, from their mid-thirties through mid-fifties, getting drinks and standing around and chatting as if they'd known each other for half-a-lifetime. At just about seven, Boylan, who I didn't know and couldn't guess earlier, announces that anyone here for the "conversation" had better grab a seat and add to what was an already-large and forming circle of chairs around a central table.
I was lucky in that there was an empty seat open right next to the table, and as it turns out right across from the four guests and Boylan. I still had no idea what was going to happen. I expected these four would give some accounting of things relevant to art and perhaps the present course the country was on. Boylan gets things started by giving a bit of background on the conversations, how they're done and who would go first and what the time constraints would be. I'm getting a clue now. The conversations are just that. Boylan has a series of guests, who give some relevant and weighted comment on the topic (in this case, "what do we do now") and then anyone in the room can talk - in turn - essentially having a conversation with the guests and everyone else.
It should surprise no one that the collected group known as "the liberals," or "the progessives," or even a large constituency of the Democratic Party, are artists, scientists, and more recently, lawyers. Artists are very liberal creatures. Artists of all sorts. Their managers may be more conservative but the nature of art somewhat defines that person as one who takes risks, who steps outside and may even live outside the "norm." This conversation was about what was happening in America and how it would affect the artist community, the activist community, the individuals who had spent a lifetime fighting for civil rights, for equality, for a broadening of what had previously been called "local" standards of art. The arts have come quite far in the past several decades. There are still places which ban books, which ban certain art exhibits, which ban certain performers, which try and arrest these same types for infractions of local or state law. But, in general, the arts of America have evolved quite far. This group was concerned that the current administration and especially the evangelical bent of certain members of the administration would try and limit artists' freedoms and the freedoms of their audience. Or, perhaps even worse than that, would begin to sanctify an America which was more of a theocracy than a democracy. Artists come in all colors, flavors and creeds. None are as vanilla as what it seemed the evangelical community was looking for in what they would accept. It was almost as if the art community were in a discussion about a declaration of war against the direction it seemed America was headed.
It reminded me a lot of the presentation by Ursula K. Le Guin the previous week. Clearly, the politics of America were affecting the art of America and here were some sixty or so individuals who were active artists, active civil rights protagonists, active soldiers in the quest for continued and more freedoms and a broader and more diverse culture, not a narrower and more defined culture.
It would be difficult to capture the thread of the two hours of continuous and well-reasoned and occasionally impassioned comments made by the guests and the audience. The conversation went just as one might expect a well-stocked college symposium to proceed. I contributed with the story about the individual who had stolen away to his evangelical family's garage to read Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" and how that reading had opened his mind and given that individual a new life. There were others who decried the threat to freedoms and the control the media had over certain segments of the population. There were some who recalled their own experience - in one case as a Japanese prisoner-of-war - and how it taught them to fight oppression and government control. There was an evolving sense over the two hours as to how the arts could rise again to depict what the artists thought was going wrong with the evolution of their country's culture and how art itself, but more importantly, art as a social force, might be able to work into the situation in such a way that minds would be opened, ideas planted, a few narrow-minded individuals shown a larger universe. It was two hours filled with dark thoughts followed by bright opposing views countered by murky and depressing examples followed by enlightening and sustaining counter-examples. In the end, at least one of the speakers responded that her dark and worrisome view of the future was perhaps too dark and that some of what she had heard and discussed would change things and that she, herself, had come in with a pessimistic world view but would leave with at least a few ounces of hope and inspiration. There were a number of twenty-somethings who were there, not as many as most would have liked, but who spoke up and gave their personal stories, either as a local artist, or someone affected by the arts and how it was the art community which had given them hope and changed something inside them.
The conversation was an amazing experience. Not something which was that different from myriad conversations I've taken part in myself with friends or colleagues at work or home, but amazing in that this was a group of people, a high proportion of whom knew each other, who were discussing with complete strangers some very fundamental feelings and expressing lessons learned from decades of practice in the arts and in the realms of art and social activism. Like so many things, this had a tremendously additive factor. Any single individual there might have continued with their view of how things are evolving and how they might change that, but the collective discussions enlarged everyone's perspective. These were really bright and uncommonly open-minded individuals, obviously liberal but not completely secular. One of the speakers was Mennonite and was committed to both the faith and the way of life of the Mennonites. Her comments and world view were as a teacher and as a pacifist in a world of individuals seemingly opposed to education and using extreme aggression and yet her outlook and comments were profoundly positive as was her experience with those she taught.
There is a lot anyone can do and the accepted notion that we could "not change" the course of the evolution of the country was turned around such that I believe everyone who was there left with some idea of how his or her art, or teaching, or activism could affect at least one other person and it was the collective effort of everyone which mattered the most. Not the directed efforts of everyone working together on a single manifesto, but the individual efforts of everyone working individually but with a knowledge of what was happening and what was meaningful to them and how much their art or teachings or music or writings might affect just a single person but the number of such affected individuals over time would be a large proportion of the population and that aggregate did matter. No, the arts couldn't change the course of the country in one fell swoop and it couldn't possibly be coordinated or run like the Karl Rove and evangelical church-directed "moral values" theme, but we were out to try and open people's minds, to show them a larger world, to expose them to culture from different elements of the human race and that effort - though the same as moving one grain of sand at a time - was going to ultimately be more effective than some media campaign or some political propaganda because it was the core inner-person the arts were trying to reach and the voter element of that inner-person would respond accordingly as the core beliefs of each individual grew and expanded.
This is another element of the city here which I've been taken by. I'll be at the next conversation and have added myself to John Boylan's mailing list and offered a bit of who I am and what I might offer to him. It's really hard to see where this might lead but it is clear to me that there are lots of opportunities to illuminate dark areas of the human soul without having to resort to trickery or well-worn media ploys or manipulation. Along the same lines I've recently offered some ideas to the local branch of the Seattle Public Library (they're about to close it for a year to completely revise and improve the physical space) and was really well-received by the library staff and members of the "Friends of the Library." Some of the ideas I presented had more to do with introducing people who walk by the library building all the time but never go in. Going inside a library is the first start in getting an individual to expand their own mind. The libraries here all have high-speed internet as well as books, movies, music and images of art and photography. There are just too many folks who get everything they know about the world from a handful of conglomerate media companies, all of which have as a root cause the desire to sell their audience something. Libraries aren't selling anything, they're offering free-of-charge an opportunity for the individual to explore their world on their own terms. It's clear that too many individuals in this country as well as a great number of recent immigrants have no realization whatsoever of the wealth of information and history and culture which is theirs for the asking.
Following up on the Red States, Blue States thoughts I posted earlier, I've moved in the direction of becoming much more active in the dissemination and outreach areas - clearly one of the things I have done and can do well and an area of human endeavor which really drives me. Also, it gives me some ideas of where and how to express myself through the various multimedia arts I'm playing with.
The evolution of society continues. The evolution of individuals continues. My evolution continues. I am beginning to feel reasonably comfortable in a much wider array of local activities and with a broader group of individuals. I'm also becoming somewhat better known. There was a local exposition of community activities including volunteer, government, and non-profit organizations at the local high school this afternoon, They had three hours of local music, food, and discussion at tables set up by about fifty local organizations (by local I mean West Seattle, particularly Delridge neighborhood). I spent all three hours there engaged in discussion and conversation with a variety of these organizations. Adam and a neighbor and her son also came with me and were separately engaged as well. We sat through several of the musical performances but each of us sort of went our own way in between. What surprised me was how many people there I already knew or had had previous engagements with, how many my neighbor knew and had some previous shared activity with, and surprisingly, how many Adam knew and had done something with - either through the YMCA (where he works as a lifeguard) or through South Seattle Community College. Seattle - and as I said, the Northwest in general - is a very inviting climate and culture for people to share and create common spaces and common futures. There are issues of getting consensus and some things - like Monorail - seem to take forever, but this place actually fits my style very well. I like discussion. I like hearing new ideas or even opposing ideas. I like creating common goals and working towards them and I especially like the congenial style of the West Coast in approaching something like this.
The really great element of all this for me is that I've finally got the time to devote myself to some of these things with a gusto which is uninterrupted by work-related politics. All those decades of working for NASA I knew how much the agency was tied directly into and affected by the national political will and, in particular, the partisan politics of the party in power, but I don't think I realized how much of a toll on me personally this national political will was taking. One reason I voraciously consumed news so much was it was obvious to me that even the tiniest elements of local politics somewhere else in the country were going to affect NASA somehow and through the agency, me. I'm completely freed of that relationship now and though I may be distressed by the direction the country is going in or by the policies of the President or even the Governor, it doesn't affect me twice - once through my personal self and once through my professional self. It's amazing how much of a stress the professional self took through political actions. I can see that now because I can detach my passions from my concerns and look at things from a synoptic view whereas previously the synoptic view was impossible to achieve because I was enmeshed inside the fabric itself.
Minor additional point, I got my SIFF card in the mail today. I'm now a member of Cinema Seattle, the mothership for the Seattle International Film Festival, so this coming May 19 - June 12, 2005, festival will be even more of a kick-in-the-butt because I'll get the schedule a bit earlier and have a moderate discount on blocks of tickets. There's ticket books of 6, 20 and so on up to the full listing of three-hundred or so flicks. Last year I saw just shy of a dozen, this year I'll probably up that number to at least two dozen. Some of the SIFF screenings I saw last year are now making the rounds in regular cinema such as Dig, Open Water, Haute Tension, Primer. It's become one of the things I look forward to now. So, even though it's six months away, expect even more reviews.
Chas
Fall in my front and side yards in West Seattle
A one image macro photo of the leaves on one of the two maples on SW Monroe Street - the front yard. Yes,
the grass is still green and growing.
A two-image sequence taking shots of different trees in the yard from different angles and distances. The
single, floating, leaf was actually hanging from a single spider thread. The following images show a variety
of additional two-image sequences shot in the front - SW Monroe Street - and side - 39th Avenue SW yards.
The corner of SW Monroe St. (left) and 39th Avenue SW (right) with one of my maples and the plum (right) as
well as a rhododendron (left near) and something (??)(center near) - I'm still learning the plants in my yard.
Space Needle in moderate fog taken from corner of 3rd Avenue and
Wall Street in Belltown, Seattle.
Same street corner, this time not including overhead trolley electric wires.
Looking across 1st Avenue near Denny Way at the Pacific Science Center's filigree lattice arches. The Pacific
Science Center is on the southern boundary of Seattle Center right on Denny Way.
On 2nd somewhat east of Pacific Science Center at Denny Way. Time was about 10:00 pm on a Wednesday.
Denny Way (right) crossing 2nd Avenue (front) on my way to First Avenue to catch the bus home. I was in
Belltown for a meetup and decided to walk north for a change, rather than south, to catch the bus nearer the
Seattle Center rather than my usual catch-spot near Pike Place Market. Downtown Seattle is absolutely
wonderful for anyone who likes to walk - it's accessible, easy distances, and has such great visual points of
interest - nearly everywhere. It's every bit as eye-catching in a modern, stylized manner as Washington, DC
is in a neo-classical manner. And the streets here have the same number of odd angles with circles, triangles
and odd-angle intersections as does DC - Pierre L'Enfant would love this town were he alive today - there
are end-points along every avenue and distant visual scapes from nearly every location in town.
Prepare for Thanksgiving, it's only 12 days away. I've already put in our order for
one pumpkin and one apple pie (Great Harvest breads - Ballard, West Seattle, Shoreline)
and 2 dozen classic yeast rolls. Turkey is next to get.
More drama, long theses, and photographs coming your way shortly...
Posted: Sat - November 13, 2004 at 10:13 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM