the cassandra pages

Paul Revere and Me

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On the 18th of April in ‘75

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year

of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

These words from Longfellow’s poem came back to me this morning, as I read the speech that Heather Cox Richardson gave last night at Old North Church in Boston, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride and the start of the American Revolution. I didn’t have them quite right - the poem actually begins, “Listen my children and you shall hear/ of the midnight ride of Paul Revere” followed by the first three lines I remembered. That’s OK. What interested me most were the memories that flooded back as I thought about the poem.

My grandmother, Elizabeth, and her two sisters, Inez and Minerva, were all schoolteachers. They were all lovers of American history and proud of their early American heritage. I have Adamses on both sides of my family, maybe distant relatives of founding fathers John and Samuel Adams, or maybe not, but we do know that some of our ancestors were Revolutionary War soldiers.

My great aunt Inez never married, and taught American history in a high school in Endicott, New York, all her life. She loved words, music, and art, and could recite many poems and speeches by heart. Whenever she visited, I would sit with her in her favorite chair and she’d read to me, and tell me stories about the poems or prose and their writers. Sometimes we looked at art books, and often she’d set up her easel in her bedroom and work on a painting during an extended holiday stay with my grandparents and us; I was learning to play the piano and she’d often ask me to play for her as she read or painted.

When I was 9, Aunt Inez gave me a book of poems that she had written out, in her firm Palmer Method handwriting, or clipped from magazines. It was perhaps a peculiar gift for a nine-year-old, but she had seen me pretty clearly from the beginning. She’d be pleased to know that I’ve carried that book around with me ever since.

 

This morning I opened the book to see if Paul Revere’s ride was in it. It wasn’t, but there were others by Longfellow, Tennyson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emily Dickinson. I had followed her instructions and added to them: in the back, written or typed out by me, were adolescent favorites: Frost, Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare, e.e. cummings.

Today I stopped on the page where Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain!” was affixed, with ancient glue stains that looked like blood, and my great-aunt’s note at the bottom:

 

“The ship is the union, the prize is victory”, she wrote, meaning that the prize was the preservation of the Union, at a very high cost.

My great-aunt also gave me a series of books about American history for young readers, adding to them each birthday and at Christmas. One was a biography of Paul Revere, and I remember being fascinated by the descriptions of his trade as a silversmith. There was a story in it about how he suffered a very bad burn on his hand when he was an apprentice: I seem to recall binding up my own hand in rags, wearing a makeshift three-cornered hat and pretending to be him… Of course the main focus of that book was Revere’s role in the uprising against the King, unfair taxation, and colonial rule, that eventually became the American Revolution.

So I grew up, steeped in this history, as a little patriot, and not many years later became a vocal dissenter when Nixon tried to subvert American democracy. Similarly, I became a critic of Christianity when it deviates from the central original teaching of the Gospels: “love your neighbor as you would love yourself” and the State, as it has always done, co-opts and twists Christianity to suit its own purposes and power.

I am glad that my great-aunt isn’t alive to see what’s happening today, but, like me, she would speak out.

Earlier, I wrote here that I always hope for some clarity during Holy Week. One insight that’s strongly coalesced is this: it is primarily the responsibility of straight white citizens like me to carry the current resistance forward. So many members of minority and marginalized groups are terrified right now — and why shouldn’t they be? Should my friends who are people of color, obvious ethnicity, or of non-binary gender be expected to risk everything by signing a petition or a letter, or being identified at a demonstration? Do Black women have to continue to be the staunchest supporters and workers for the Democratic Party, when people of color are being axed from one federal and military position after another? Can we expect Hispanic people or Muslims to speak out when ICE agents are breaking their car windows with hammers in order to arrest the wrong man? The answer is no. Those of us with more security and less risk have to take up this cross and carry it, for all those who cannot.

You may think, well, that’s easy for you to say, you’re in Canada. It’s true, I am a dual citizen and I live here now. I have many ties that make me want to be able to travel between the two countries freely again. But it’s more than that: I care. A lot. The current trashing of democratic and human values is horrifying, even if the racism, misogyny, hatred and cruelty they represent have been predictable and brewing for decades. The whole world is affected: a world that has seen American excesses, wrong decisions, and hypocrisy, but has also admired the brightest and best aspects of the country, and expected the US to continue to lead and to be their partner. When I think of my family’s history as American pioneers, through centuries that include my father’s survival at Normandy and service during WWII, I am filled with shame at the present travesties, and feel a great sense of responsibility. I’m also, for better or worse, an optimist. It’s an American trait.

I’m proud to live in Canada, which will have a much greater role now in championing democracy and freedom — values we must protect at all costs. But, encouraged by the pushback I’m starting to see, I don’t think it’s too late to fight, not just to preserve 250 years of American democracy, but hopefully for reform that results in a better and fairer system for all the people. Each one of us who can needs to do our part, and that will be enough.

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One Brushstroke at a Time

 

Saturday street market in Buenavista, CDMX. Oil on linen canvas, 18” x 18”.

I don’t know what you’ve been doing to keep your wits about you, while madness rampages over the globe, but I’ve been painting.

Working on this painting of a Mexico city neighborhood for a few hours every day, over the past two weeks, has not only been absorbing and challenging, but has also plunged me back into the joy of oil painting. I love watercolor, but it comes with frustration and tension. Oil painting, for me, is a sensuous pleasure even when it’s hard. Unlike watercolor, it’s forgiving — you can always wipe things out, repaint, or make corrections, as I did many times in this painting. Here’s the process it went through.

 

This was the original drawing done on location, from a balcony on the top level of the Biblioteca Vasconceles in Mexico City’s Buenavista neighborhood. A garden runs along the side of the library building, which is on higher ground overlooking the city to the east. I took a number of photographs in the same direction as this drawing but taking in more of the city beyond. Those formed the basis for the painting, while the drawing was a touchstone for what attracted me in the first place. It came down to the unusual vista of the trees, especially the contrast between that tall cedar and the deciduous trees on either side; the white tents of the street market peeking through them; and the city buildings beyond, mostly white and grey and shades of pink, with that strong diagonal street running kitty-corner across the scene.

 

Here’s the initial monochrome drawing in thin oil paint on the canvas, indicating the basic values and structure.

 

Working on top of that monochrome drawing, the first color strokes set the basic chromatic palette for the whole picture. I’m using a very limited set of pigments: Ultramarine Blue, Brilliant Green, Viridian, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow, Hansa Yellow, Quinacridone Red, Burnt Sienna, Indian Red, and Titanium White. The support is heavyweight raw linen that I stretched myself and double-primed with gesso — a lot of work, but you end up with a wonderfully receptive surface.

 

My goal was to capture the sun-washed, slightly hazy atmosphere of Mexico City’s urban landscape on that day, maintaining a palette of greyed greens and pinks, with touches of yellow and aqua. Almost all of the greens contain some ultramarine blue. All the shadows are based on a combination of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. The sky is ultramarine blue and titanium white, greyed with a slight bit of quinacridone red. Using limited pigments in this way, and mixing colors very carefully rather than using them directly from the tubes, helps maintain color harmony throughout the picture.

 

In the stage above, the cityscape is filled in, the foreground is more defined, and I’m starting to work on the trees.

 

With the trees in this state, the painting felt close to finished. However, I decided to simplify and focus the foreground, taking out the bushes at lower left and lower right, defining the scrubby grasses and rocks and adding some to the left side. I also emphasized the diagonal which runs perpendicular to the receding street in the center of the scene.

 

This was much better. Eventually I deleted the right-hand bush, added a reverse-curve walkway in the shadowed right-hand area, and improved the dappled shade. (It was interesting to note, just now as I write this post, that the foreground diagonal and reverse curve are in my original sketch on the canvas, but had gotten obliterated as I worked.) I’ll leave it in the state below for a few weeks and then decide if I want to change anything else.

 

A few details:

 

 

Making something from scratch — whether it’s a chocolate cake, a poem or a plant you grow from seed — stands in opposition to those whose modus operandi is destruction and chaos, and heals our wounded spirits. This is where we have to start: with ourselves. The efforts to create, and to appreciate created things, bolster our recognition that destruction and its desired effect— paralysis — don’t have to prevail. Even in the worst situations, no one can take away our ability to look for the beauty and complexity of our world, and make something from it, even if it’s just words or a melody or the idea of a drawing that we hold in our head during a time of suffering or fear. I hope a lot of you are participating in demonstrations today. And I hope tonight, or tomorrow, you’ll write some words or play some music, read a good book, walk in a park or natural area or garden, or make a good meal. Let me know how it’s going with you. Sending love.

Reflections on an Anniversary

 

On March 20, 2003, deeply distressed about the outbreak of the Iraq War and intrigued about the new medium of blogging, I began my blog, The Cassandra Pages. Those two polarities — an abhorrence of humanity’s tendency toward destruction, and an attraction to all types of creativity — have motivated what I’ve posted here, as they’ve also motivated my life.

It seems like a good time to ask readers, some of whom have been coming here since the beginning and some of whom are quite new, what you find most valuable about this blog, what keeps you coming back, and what you’d like to see more of. The Cassandra Pages has changed over time, especially after I retired from fulltime professional work and was able to focus more on my own art, but it’s always been a personal space where I’ve tried to make sense of the world through a lens of creativity, as well as sensitivity to nature, place, spirit, and the work of both contemporary writers and artists, and those of the past.

In 2003, I had recently turned 50. I hadn’t gone through the deaths of all of our parents and their generation. We hadn’t moved to Canada. I hadn’t yet written a book, though I was working on it. I hadn’t had the experience of singing in a cathedral choir, or of riding a bicycle for most of my transportation in an urban environment. I hadn’t met all the people who’ve become dear friends of mine either in Montreal or online, all over the world. I was doing very little artwork, and hadn’t even thought about starting the publishing company that would become Phoenicia Publishing. We’d never travelled to Mexico City, or Greece, Rome, or Portugal. I hadn’t had two decades of dental problems, and didn’t yet understand, on a personal level, the complexities and challenges of aging…one could go on and on.

Over those years, I’m not sure it would be right to say I’ve “changed” as much as that I’ve become more and more myself. Some of that experience is valuable, and it’s both a pleasure and serious responsibility for me when younger people ask my specific advice, which is the only time I venture to give it. And even then, I think we, as elders, do best to talk from our own experience rather than saying “you should…” As my old New England friend Jerry Burt used to say, “be careful with your ‘shoulds’” — which also applies when talking to yourself.

Here, in March of 2025, we find ourselves in a particularly dangerous, draining, and anxiety-filled time, and it’s hard to know what to say and what not to say. From my perspective as a dual citizen who spent the first 50+ years of life in the U.S., there’s a lot I see that many Canadians may not, and it’s clear to me that many Americans have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be a Canadian right now. Protecting democracy in both countries has become a top priority for many of us, and obviously I intend to do whatever I can toward that goal.

How this blog fits into that current reality is a question I’m mulling. One thing I know for certain is that many readers have told me they come here for quiet, solace, beauty: some moments of sane respite from the craziness of the world. Even if I write about politics, I don’t want anyone to come here and leave feeling worse — I want you to feel better, more hopeful, and with some renewed energy for living your own life.

For me, balance comes from the spiritual wisdom of Contemplation and Action as two sides of the same coin. “Contemplation” is a broad term that comprises many forms, from sitting meditation to knitting to walking in nature, but it is not quietism or turning away from our own problems or those that surround us. “Action” also takes many forms, suited to each individual, but always stems from the recognition that we do not exist alone, but in an interconnected web of relationship and responsibility for one another. Achieving balance —whether in one’s own personal life or in the more public ways we interact with the world — is not easy, and especially not in times like these. To the extent that I can help others, I want to try.

Thank you so much for visiting these pages over the years, whether as a longtime or relatively new reader. I’d be very happy to hear your comments, suggestions, or requests.

 

Mexico City, February 2025

Covid Finally Catches Me...and Forces Me to Think.

After 4 1/2 years of dodging the inevitable, I was still surprised to see the pale red line forming on the test kit. I had thought I was coming down with a cold, but it rapidly seemed rather worse than that, so I tested… and less than 24 hours later, my husband also tested positive. The next few days were not pleasant: a foggy blur of aches and fever, staring off into space, and deep exhaustion along with coughing and congestion. We’re coming out of the worst of it now, with the help of recent vaccinations, Paxlovid, and a lot of sleep.

It was perhaps a fitting time: our illness coinciding not only with the surreal run-up to the American election but my own re-reading of The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann’s epic novel, published exactly 100 years ago, is about tuberculosis patients in the rarified confines of a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps during the years just before the outbreak of the first World War.

Canada is not as removed from U.S. reality in 2024 as a snowy mountaintop was from the political machinations of Europe a century ago — modern media has made sure of that -- but it does feel one long step away. I voted several weeks ago, in Vermont, but most of my Canadian friends are only able to anxiously await the results from a country they once thought they understood, but which has become increasingly incomprehensible. When they ask me, “How is it even possible that this man might win?” I hardly know where to begin.

I’ve been reflecting not only on the election and its potential ramifications, but on the pandemic which is offically “over” even though there’s a major wave of infection in my city, and perhaps in yours too. Capitalism is always ready to seize the opportunity. In the U.S., the anti-viral treatment Paxlovid stopped being free when the COVID emergency was declared over; now a five-day course of treatment costs $1400, which is covered by some but not all insurance carriers. Medicare will cover it for most seniors through the end of December 2024; after that, who knows? Here, the treatment is covered by the province of Quebec with a small co-pay if you meet certain criteria (such as being over 60) but it sounds like hardly anyone even asks for it. Vaccinations are still free in Canada, but uptake is low. Basically, people just don’t want to think about it anymore.

As I was getting sicker, feeling the virus taking hold in my body, I remembered the fear of the early days of 2020, when we had no treatments whatsoever, when we were washing and wiping everything that came into our houses, and, on the news, seeing morgues filling with bodies. I thought about the people I knew personally who succumbed to the disease. I felt immense gratitude to the medical community of researchers and providers who risked so much and worked so hard to save lives. And I wondered how long it will be before we are willing to look back and see this period of time clearly.

In Mann’s book, illness is both an everyday reality and a metaphor. The residents of the sanitarium, who have come from many different Western and Eastern European countries and from Russia, are preoccupied with their health but also with triviality and pleasure. They eat five sumptuous meals each day and live in luxurious, hotel-like surroundings, completely removed from their previous lives and responsibilities, whether career or familial. They dress up, play games, wander in the mountains, gossip endlessly, drink and smoke, and take their rest cures wrapped in fur robes. When someone’s disease progresses to “the horizontal state”, they are confined to bed and disappear from view. Meanwhile, down below, Europe edges toward war. Two of the patients, the Italian humanist Settembrini and the Jesuit champion of traditionalism and authority, Naptha, have removed themselves from the sanitarium to live out their days in the neighboring town, and there they engage in philosophical debates about the great questions facing civilization and every human being. They battle for the mind of the young, unformed protagonist, Hans Castorp, who, before starting his planned engineering career, had visited his cousin at the sanitorium and taken up, after a somewhat dubious diagnosis, permanent residence there himself.

Mann’s book shows us human beings as primarily short-sighted and self-interested, drawn to the pursuit of pleasure and superficialities, and prone to ignoring and forgetting the lessons of recent experience — but also looks at other possibilities of how to live one’s life.

He began The Magic Mountain before the war, after visiting his own wife while she was a patient in a Davos sanitarium. He put the manuscript — originally intended as a short story! - aside and finished it after the war. His book was widely read and talked about at the time, and it has a lasting reputation as one of the greatest novels ever written. Today, not only do we seem to want to forget a worldwide catastrophe as devastating as the pandemic, and pretend it doesn’t still exist, we certainly do not want to read literature about it. As democracy is eroded by far-right ideologies and billionaire fortunes, as fascism arrives on our very doorstep, and war rains down on other people’s heads, we can still easily spend much of our time scrolling, shopping, and being entertained.

It’s taken me a while to read Mann’s long book, for the second time in my life, and it struck me with the force of truth much more than when I was young; I’ve seen a lot more of life by now. If someone writes a definitive novel about our own time, I wonder how widely it will be read, and by whom — both in the coming years, and 100 years from now. However, when the overriding question of the present day is, “How did we get here?”, it seems worthwhile for each of us to grasp that moment and give it some thought, as individuals who are living through a pivotal time in history.

Mourning, remembering, and hoping

Today is a day of reflection for me. I am mourning every single life that has been lost or shattered because of the senseless, cruel violence of the past year, and I am reflecting on our part in it. I am thinking about the great frustration and helplessness that so many of us feel who have protested government policies, not just now, but going back thirty years and more. These policies have contributed to a war that now seems to be spiraling out of control, harming any chance for a lasting peace, making the entire world less safe, and harming the reputations and integrity of all the countries that are involved. What a complete tragedy. Although I have strong opinions, as well as fear for our own family members in Beirut, today is a day to reflect on man's inhumanity to man, not to point fingers. Why are we the way we are? How do these same tendencies affect life here in Quebec - because they do? What can I, as an individual, do better? How can I amplify my power as an individual to encourage the institutions to which I belong to stand up and speak out for justice and peace, when so many are being silenced? And finally, in such a world, with so much suffering, fear and darkness, how can I be a person who gives hope?

So here are some flowers to lay on this makeshift, virtual altar. They were a gift from close friends on our birthdays, have brightened our home and our days, and last night I finally painted them before their petals start falling. The beauty of the earth stubbornly persists, and if we look, we find it everywhere. Thank God for that. And I'm thankful for every way in which I'm able to experience such things and mirror them back to the world.

A year ago, I was in Edessa, Greece, a small city in a mountainous northern border region that has been torn apart by ethnic warfare for centuries. After reading the news, I went into a large Orthodox church to light a candle, and sit quietly for a while with the icons and the smell of melting wax and incense. Later I walked in the church garden, and looked out over the valley at its orchards, vineyards, and fields. I no longer pray to God to end human wars and suffering; I haven't believed in such an omnipotent deity for a long time. I pray for us to come to our senses. I pray for strength, and to see what I need to do.

View southwest from the old city of Edessa, Greece.


Today, as I look out my studio window here in Montreal, the trees are beginning to turn to their fall colors, and the dark clouds to which we woke are giving way to sunshine and blue sky. A light wind ruffles the leaves of the plants on our balcony. I can hear faint sounds of construction in the distance, because here, homes are being built, not destroyed. For today, for right now, this moment, I am secure and aware of how fortunate I am. I can use this moment to become even more aware, to tune into all of my senses and consciously take in their input. I need to do this several times every day: otherwise I might miss the gifts that are still part of the reality and mystery of being alive. 

 

What is Real?

Snow-dusted fields near Lourdes-de-Joliette, Quebec. Watercolor, 6" x 9" in sketchbook.

Whether we feel like we're gradually sliding, or hurtling, into the new year, I think most of us agree that it is not without trepidation. It's hard to think of 2024 with some sort of glittery, jovial anticipation - not after the year just past, and not with our awareness of how rocky the next months are likely to be. I, for one, feel like I'm hurtling headlong, with very little control over external events. Which makes me feel like it's more important than ever to slow down, look around myself, and do some thinking. Not making resolutions, which I generally find unrealistic, but considering some ways to approach life in these unstable and uncertain times.

The first thing I'm trying to do is think about what's real, and that's probably why the first painting of the year is the one you see here -- a Quebec landscape in winter. We saw this scene from our car window when driving out to see friends in the countryside the day after Christmas, and I painted it quickly, from my photograph, on New Year's Eve. The snow is probably gone now; the effects of climate change are undeniable this year - we've had very little snow at all and the temperatures have been right around freezing, which is unseasonably warm. But the landscape itself -- its flatness, the small copses of trees in the plowed fields, the low foothills of the Laurentians in the distance -- remains very real and very much itself.

I'm still comforted by nature, even though the warming climate is frightening. I'm comforted by the clods of earth in the fields, the winter clouds, the shapes of trees and the wind blowing through them, the tiny branches and black trunks of trees, the tall dead grasses in shades of ochre, russet, beige and brown, the way the cold bites my cheeks, the taste of the apple in my hands. All of it is beautiful to me, and real, reminding me that I too am a natural being, I too am alive, with the capacity to observe, feel, and think.

The world inside my computer, which reflects the outer world of human beings and their actions, tells me what is happening, and I pay attention to that and think about it a great deal, sometimes taking actions as a result. But I don't have to scroll very far to see that my reality is quite different from that of many other people. Around the holidays, I was literally bombarded with posts by people who wanted to sell me something, or were striving to say "look at me!," with no apparent awareness that 22,000 people who four months ago were also eating, breathing, putting on clothes in the morning and making something to eat, changing their babies or going to work, going to school, and loving their beloveds, are no longer able to do anything at all. They are gone, dead, many not even properly buried. And the rest of the world is divided between those who are deeply aware of this, and those for whom it mean next to nothing. How are we to think about reality in such a situation? And as extreme as it is, this is just one area of deep concern affecting our lives and our futures.

To make things even more absurd, when the news (let alone social media) attempts to "move on" from these difficult topics, what they offer us becomes ever more bizarre. Yesterday the New York Times ran a piece about the danger of not cleaning one's navel; all the stuff that collects in there, the writer claimed, can build up to a point where surgery may be needed. "Have we really come to this?" I wondered. As if we don't have enough to worry about -- or maybe because we do -- does the news have to manufacture such absurdities for the already-anxious to obsess about? Have our powers of reasoning become so distorted and weak that no one even calls such drivel out for what it is? But of course it is only a short distance from our culture's obsession with celebrity and wealth and consumption to its hyper-anxiety about health and mortality amidst great privilege. Many of the institutions we once had more faith in, from the judicial system to universities as a bastion of free thought, to women's control over their own bodies, are under constant attack. Meanwhile the extinction of species continues at a staggering rate, almost unnoticed.

Many of us are struggling with the resulting dissonance between what we know to be right and true, and how much of the society around us, the government, and the media are acting. I don't think this is going to improve anytime soon; it is a feature of our world as we enter 2024.

Therefore I think it is a time to gird our loins, as the saying goes, and prepare for a long haul. Our armor needs to be whatever is the most real to us -- the people we love, books, art, music, our communities of friends, nature, animals, our faith if we have it -- and in continuing to do our deepest and most heartfelt work. We need to be prepared to take care of each other, to find hope in unexpected places and to share it, and take a very long view of the future.

 

Someone said to me recently that one advantage of getting older is having the perspective of years. I find that to be true. The world has gone through many dark times, seen many despots and dictators, seen wars, famines, plagues, and natural disasters, and the accompanying tragic, devastating losses. And then things change. In my own lifetime I've seen many pendulum-swings in politics; I've seen conservatism and progressivism and conservatism again; I've seen greater justice and the backlash against it. At the same time, there have been enormous advances in science, technology, and medicine that have saved and improved countless lives. The Cold War didn't become a nuclear apocalypse. Children don't die of polio and measles; far fewer adults are dying of AIDS than we once feared. The story is not entirely dark, even when we seem to be in dark times.

So I refuse to believe that humanity is doomed, even though I may not live to see the breakthroughs that help turn the tide of what we're living through now. I don't know what will happen, be lost or irrevocably changed, before that happens. But I am going to choose to be a hopeful person while not being an unrealistic one, and to try to see what I can do in my own small corner to keep hope alive. Being more mindful of my senses is one way to immerse myself in what is real and present in each moment of life -- and it's the best way I know to keep despair at bay.

 

A Word

We returned to Montreal from three weeks in Greece yesterday afternoon. This was not an island vacation, but rather a self-directed road trip during which we hoped to go deeper and learn more than we had in our previous two trips to the country. I have studied the language for a while, and though I knew that I didn't have any real facility, I hoped even a little bit of knowledge and effort would help us engage in conversations we might not otherwise have. 

We had left on October 5, and on October 7 Israel was viciously attacked by Hamas, with many civilian and military casualties, hostages taken, and horrific accounts of death and dismemberment. Since then we have all seen what has transpired, with Gaza, already the largest open-air prison in the world, cut off and under constant bombardment, with huge numbers of civilian casualties, very little food and medical support, and a ground war looming. It is a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions, and the United States in particular, with a Democratic president no less, is supporting this unequal and massive military response. It has done so for a long time, because the history of what has happened to Palestine is now a very long one. It was around the year 2000 when a Palestinian mother told me about being strip-searched in front of her young daughter by Israeli border guards for no reason other than humiliation. If you don't know the history of what has happened to the Palestinians since 1947, but particularly since the current rightwing government has been in power, please educate yourself before taking a position.

Greece is a lot closer to the Middle East than North America, and it's close to the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Ukraine. It's a country whose people have often been victim to terrible governments, civil strife, and war, and their memory of those wars, of fascism and rightwing oppression, are very close to the surface; some of this is still happening today and we saw evidence of that - huge vans filled with riot police waiting to attack students demonstrating on behalf of migrants, for one example; squads of  police on motorcycles with bullhorns driving through the student neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens at 9:00 am, just to intimidate. Political opinion there is not a "theory" or a "position" that you can take from relative safety; it comes from lived experience. As one fifty-year-old woman told us, "Under the junta you couldn't speak out. Now you can speak; that's the difference." 

I was very willing to listen to what ordinary Greek people had to say. I heard no anti-semitic comments. There is an ongoing economic relationship with Israel, and Israelis are one of the largest groups of tourists who support Greece's economy. But I did hear great sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians, just as there was for Armenians during that genocide in the early 1900s, when it was Greece who took in so many Armenian refugees. (As of the end of this September, 100,000 ethnic Armenians had been forced to flee Azerbijian -- and this is now a non-news story, because who knows or cares about the Armenians?) So we also heard a sense of helplessness in the face of countries with enormous wealth, weaponry, and power -- which you always hear when you talk to people who themselves have often felt powerless.

Our travels continued and we had many memorable experiences -- life goes on, and thankfully we don't lose the ability to feel pleasure and appreciate beauty even when we're hurting. But I cannot start talking about a trip here, or art, or beautiful places we saw, without acknowledging the backdrop of suffering that is happening in the world. I don't have any intention of diminishing the suffering of innocent Israeli victims in the process. I am sick at heart that there has not been a ceasefire, that humanitarian aid in massive volume has not been delivered to Gaza, that there seems to be no intention of the part of Israel or the West to search for a solution that will minimize more casualties, either now or in the future, that progressive Jewish voices are not being heeded, and that in effect a genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes. And I am particularly sickened that certain lives are counted as more valuable than others, by people whose religions teach that every single life is precious and that killing is wrong.

My mother-in-law was Armenian; I know what a genocide is. As a young girl whose father had fought in WWII, I remember the day he asked a Jewish man, his friend, to show me the numbers tattooed on his arm, so that I would see them and always remember. I know was a genocide is.

Those of us who see the present situation have to speak up, for our own consciences if nothing else. History repeats, and repeats, and it seems like we learn nothing: the strong crush the weak, and find reasons to blame the victims. Then they try to whitewash the facts, and if possible, bury those facts in a mass grave of forgetting; if the displaced and crushed people are then dispersed and homeless, with the victors taking their land and homes as their own, then it's far easier for them to be forgotten and their memories questioned. It's happened so many times.

But it's not coincidental that people who do remember those histories and who have been powerless victims themselves are the ones who see what is happening now, and are protesting against it or seeking solutions within the world bodies that exist to try to promote peace, like the U.N. Those who block these efforts, and those who are complicit, will have to live with themselves in the future, and perhaps they will be judged by a higher court than exists in the world of human beings. Right now, let us all do everything we can to help the victims of war, on every side, and to promote peace. 

 

And the fight for rights continues...

It's a beautiful fall day here, and I went downtown with J., who had a dental appointment. Just as we exited the metro, we encountered this demonstration on St-Catherine Street. It was a counter-protest, in response to today’s anti-LGBTQ2S+ demonstrations by the far-right, taking place all across Canada. Hateful, strident, well-funded and well-organized far-right protests such as this are spreading across the US border and infiltrating Canada, and this makes me extremely sad and upset. So I was glad to be able to cheer the mostly-young people in the counter-protest from the sidewalk.

As the close friend of many people who do not identify as straight, and particularly having followed the journey of the trans son of a longtime friend, I am horrified for anyone whose life is being impacted negatively by the current wave of protest, legislation, and rhetoric ranging from misunderstanding to hatefulness. No one should have to live in this kind of fear, or have their basic human rights denied.

Today is also my 71st birthday, and I can't believe that not only are we still having to protest these issues, but in many cases society and governments are going backwards. Women's rights; LGBTQ2S+ rights; protection from discrimination because of one's race, ethnicity, or religion, or the language one speaks; the right of all people to have healthcare; the right to clean air and water; protection from police brutality and profiling; the freedom to read and teach the literature you want as a university professor...all are endangered, and I could go on and on.

Here in Canada we have been complacent, thinking that we generally have shared values, and that most rights such as these are enshrined and could never be repealed -- but we can't continue to think that way. I grew up with hope for a better world in the 1960s, and I don't want to live my remaining years watching as human rights are eroded rather than expanded, and the climate destroyed. We have to be vigilant, we have to speak out, we have to hold the institutions to which we belong accountable. But perhaps most important, we need to patiently and continually educate people who are afraid of difference that human beings are human beings. It seems to me that this is best done one-on-one or on a small scale, through the stories and examples of real people who we know and love as our children, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues-- and it can create a lasting change of heart. That process has to happen alongside the legal struggle to gain human rights and equality. We have seen the fruits of this process, for example in society's greater acceptance and equality of gay and lesbian people over the past twenty years, and the rights and dignity that women have painfully won over the past fifty -- but the struggle is not even close to over, people's lives continue to be in danger, many rights have already been taken away, and we can never, ever sit back and think the work is done, even in countries like Canada and provinces such as Quebec.

Cassandra at Twenty

Today this blog celebrates its twentieth anniversary. I almost forgot, because I was focused on it being the first day of spring: an event we're eagerly anticipating up here but about which there's been precious little evidence, other than the maple sap running, and brighter, longer days. However, I'll post these grape hyacinths in the hope that we'll be seeing real ones -- in about a month.

The craziness of living in, and enduring, such a northern climate may be matched by the craziness of having blogged here for twenty years. Or perhaps I'm just stubborn. Social media was supposed to be the death of blogging, and it did do-in most of the blogs that started when mine did. Other platforms were touted as the next best thing, but I think most bloggers just got fatigued. Keeping up a blog, trying not to repeat yourself, and finding something personal to say is hard enough over years and years, but when the readers and commenters start to go away, it's even harder to remember why you began it in the first place.

But I do remember: I was a journal writer and determined letter-writer, with a well-established practice, and blogging fit me to a T, not only because it satisfied those same urges, but because it also added the possibility of a visual component. The latter, of course, became the raison d'être for Instagram, and I have loved being part of a community of artists and photographers there. But for those who want to write regularly and seriously, nothing has really worked as well as blogs, and for someone like me who's a visual artist as well, and wants to own her own website rather than be data-harvested at every click of the mouse and keyboard, blogging has continued to be the best choice. I guess stubborn perseverance has just kept me at it, because first of all I write and make a record of my art for myself -- I'd do this anyway -- but how much better it is to share it with you, communicate with you, and get to know each other.

Jacaranda blooms in Mexico City, back in March, 2017.

The doubts I was having about blogging a few years ago have mostly disappeared. It's clear to me that this is where I belong, and that it works for me. Adding an art education component will satisfy another strong urge in me: to teach and encourage others who may have always wanted to draw or paint, or who want to do it better; or encourage those who loved making art when they were kids, only to get discouraged or distracted along the way.

A recent change is that I have begun mirroring this blog on Substack. The content will be exactly the same, but if people want to subscribe there and receive a notification via email when there's a new post, that's an easy way to get one. (I know some of you don't use feed readers, which is another possibility. While I do always post a link to new posts on Facebook, you may not be there either.) Substack posts also receive a link on my Twitter feed. Many Substack writers are trying to get people to subscribe for a monthly or yearly payment. I'm not going to do that; the content here has always been free, and I see no reason to change that. The only possible exception would be if I decide to offer formal online art courses, but that's a ways into the future and won't impact the blog at all.

Red bottle-brush tree bloom, from the same Mexico City trip.

Whether you have been reading my words and looking at my pictures for twenty years or have just found me recently, I want to say thank you. It's humbling to know that people come here repeatedly, looking for some solace or calmness in the difficult days we are all facing, and I'm glad that the writing and art which help sustain me also, sometimes, help to sustain you. After all, that's why we think deeply, why we create, and why we are here together. Thank you for visiting, and for encouraging me with your presence. If you've never left a comment, that's absolutely fine, but please don't be shy -- I try to respond personally to all comments, and will be really glad to hear from you. And for those of you who've become my friends over the years, whether virtually or in real life, and in so many corners of the globe -- how amazing it is that we found each other, and how everlastingly grateful I am for the ways in which we enrich each other's lives! 

In Praise of Women, and in Fear for Them

Sculpture by Jiménez Deredia, Mexico City 2016

On this International Women's Day I am grateful for the strong women of my family who raised me to be confident in myself and my intellect, and with high expectations of what I might accomplish. Without them, it's hard to imagine what would have become of me. And I'm grateful for growing up at a time when women's rights were at the forefront of American consciousness, because it meant that doors opened for me that weren't open previously, and I was able to benefit from the fight waged by women ten, twenty, thirty years older on so many fronts, from access to education and a broader range of career choices, to contraception and abortion, better pay (even if not equal), the option not to have children and stay (or become) single without stigma, and so many other areas of life. In the late 1960s and 1970s it felt like the world was finally opening for us, and that equal rights -- enshrined in a constitutional amendment --were certainly around the corner.

We can't dismiss how much has been accomplished, but I'm dismayed to reflect upon how wrong we were on the political side of things. Fifty years later, and there still hasn't been a woman president, while political leaders from Hilary Clinton to Nancy Pelosi have been mocked and vilified by the conservatives. Young women today have less control over their bodies than we did, less access to female health care, and even run the risk of being prosecuted in some states for their choices. The number of female victims of gun violence, domestic violence, rape, vicious attacks on social media, and death from opioid addiction, depression and suicide, are staggering. These statistics are not just shocking, they're despicable.

And the plight of many women of minority race, ethnicity, non-hetero identity, or who are simply poor, is far worse. This is true in every developed country, and of course even much more true in many other places in the world. How can we possibly begin to address the great injustices these women face when simply to be female continues to place one at a disadvantage from birth -- at best -- and in actuality means that our risk of everything from marginalization to oppression to physically harm is greater, just for the fact that we are female? And yet, that is exactly what we must do, now perhaps more than ever. Because the women who "won" some of the advantages back when I was young, and have been able to have better lives as a result, were more likely to be white and economically privileged, like me.

I'm thinking today of the courageous women I met in Mexico City on this day four years ago, demonstrating against the violent "disappearance" of so many Mexican women. I'm thinking of my friend Shirin and what she has told me about women today in Iran. I'm thinking about refugees I have met from Africa -- women who escaped terrible situations and survived journeys toward a hoped-for freedom; some of whom were able to gain asylum and some who were deported to an uncertain fate. I'm thinking of women in detention centers, or whose bones now lie in the desert near the US/Mexican border, or at the bottom of the sea.

And I am thinking about women in general: our strength, our resilience and resourcefulness, our endless ability to do what we have to do to care for those around us in spite of everything that life throws at us, our ability to form enduring and powerful friendships, and, most of all, our ability to love. What would the world be without us?

So for me it's a day of renewed commitment to help the women who are younger than I am in whatever ways I can. To try to help them find their way and their own strength in a world that has more opportunities than we had, but is harsh, hostile and frightening in ways we never had to experience when we were their age. How I hope that, in fifty more years, equality of all people will be much closer to a reality! But it will never come if we sit on our heels waiting, or ask meekly, or expect change without fighting for it, because this is a fight that will never be over, so long as the powers-that-be are in charge of the world.