My work is inspired by sacred geometry, which is thought to convey sacred and universal truths by reflecting the fractal interconnections of the natural world. By reiterating these ratios, my work unlocks the language of abstraction through the collective recognition of geometric perfection that is evident in ethnic patterns all around the world. This commonality creates connections. As such, my work is a perfect conduit for cross-cultural conversations that embrace our shared humanity through mindfulness and mutual respect. My research actively explores the physicality of materials and the haptic through intense process-based abstraction. Whether … Continue reading Reni Gower Shows at Chroma Projects→
It’s just a stupid old oak tree, I keep telling myself, while I sit at the kitchen table and watch the white winter sunlight bathing its branches. It’s dying, I say, as I wipe away tears and busy myself with numbing, necessary tasks. Its branches are dropping and it’s trying to tell us and it’s going to kill someone in the process, I think, on frigid, windy nights when its massive canopy creaks and arches over yards humming earlier in the day with shrieking children and yapping dogs. It’s necessary, I explain to a … Continue reading Stupid Old Oak Tree by Kathleen McKitty Harris→
I’m not squeamish about getting my hands dirty, knees soiled, but I never thought I’d be writing about garden club ladies. The county Garden Club (founded 1935) recently donated their records to the local Historical Society of which I am a member. By happenstance, I began reading the Minutes book for 1937-1939 and was immediately taken by the many and varied activities of the group. Beside the flower growing and arranging and public space beautification that you would expect, the club took on many civic causes such as supporting rural dental and immunization clinics, sponsoring … Continue reading The Garden Club Ladies Visit the Historical Society by Fred Wilbur→
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.–Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” 1861 Solvitur Ambulando. Since Wordsworth logged his 175,000 miles in the Lake District of England, much has been suggested about the relationship between poets and walking. I am a compulsive walker and I cannot imagine writing poetry without first walking the poem, letting it spin into a kind of worthiness on wooded footpaths and open meadows. This is a modern luxury, however. Virginia Woolf aside, walking poems have generally been the province … Continue reading A Habit of Walking II by Sharon Ackerman→
Hello Book Lovers! I’m happy to share that my novel, The Book Lovers, will be published in October 2023 by Regal House Publishing, a small, highly congenial press that specializes in literary fiction. Set in Gilded Age Boston, The Book Lovers tells the story of an author of romance and adventure novels who becomes a champion of the working women who are her faithful readers as she takes on the male literary establishment. It’s also a love story—about people and books, and about how revision on the page can mirror revision in life and vice … Continue reading Book News and More . . . by Virginia Pye→
Meditation has been proven to manage stress and anxiety, increase focus, and interrupt negative thought patterns. For a variety of reasons, however, many people don’t feel that traditional meditation is for them: it feels “too woo-woo,” or counter to their practice of faith, or seems connected only to the practice of Buddhism. It needn’t be any of those things. In its simplest terms, meditation is the use of a technique to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. Still, whatever a person’s reluctance towards meditation, no practice … Continue reading Mindfulness Without the “Meditation” by Renee Branson→
The sound of rain. It gently taps on the roof. The blinds are closed, but you can see that outside there are a few other green apartment buildings surrounded by an evergreen forest. The branches are dotted with white frost that can be mistaken for snow. But it’s not snow. It just looks exactly like it. You pull up the blinds just to make sure. No, it’s not snow. On the forest floor below you can see great big puddles welling up over dead leaves. The rain starts slowing down. It stops. The world … Continue reading This Mouse Drowns by Mercury-Marvin Sunderland→
Twenty years ago, a reporter called me with bizarre news, so bizarre that I instantly wrote him off as a prank caller. He claimed he was from a town out West, maybe in Colorado? I am fuzzy on the details. I didn’t write down a word he said because I didn’t believe he could be serious. He asked if I was the author of Rats, Bulls and Flying Machines: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation. I replied in the affirmative, wishing he’d get to the point. At the time, I worked from home, a home … Continue reading Bonfire of the Vanities: Coming to a School Board Near You by Deborah M. Prum→
There is a 1990s concept, or perhaps an older concept made new and currently gaining currency, called “re-wilding.” It is the prospect of making tamed and domesticated things wild again. Since 2008 or so, this concept has skyrocketed in book titles, and I imagine other places. It was originally used by Michael Soulé in the 1990s to capture the idea of restoring a landscape to its original wild state by introducing keynote species, native plants, and thereby allowing the natural environment to slowly return, restore itself. The major example was returning wolves to Yellowstone. But … Continue reading Re-Wilding by Laura Marello→
Lynn Coleman has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2021 Art Contest I moved to Southern California in 1962 from central California. The first wildfire I remember was in 1967 and started near the Chatsworth Reservoir. My girlfriend was up there with a boy (we were sixteen) after telling her Mom she was spending the night with me. They barely made it out alive. In 1970 the Chatsworth to the Sea fire burned thirty-two miles from the Santa Susanna Pass to the Pacific ocean in Malibu. Friends lost their homes and art studios. When … Continue reading Lynn Coleman: Honorable Mention in Art Contest→
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