the cassandra pages

Cassandra is 10: Let's have a Party!

Blogging in Vermont, 2003

Yes, we've arrived at a definite milestone: ten years of blogging, ten years since that momentous day in 2003 when, dismayed by the invasion of Iraq, and encouraged by my Icelandic friend and neighbor, Helgi, and my husband Jonathan (both more familiar with a new phenomenon, the weblog, than I was) I decided to launch something myself that felt more positive and hopeful.

Good Lord, I had absolutely no idea what it would lead to, or how it would change my life!

Some statistics...The Cassandra Pages was originally on Blogger. In the first 2 years, between March 20, 2003 and April 11, 2005, I wrote 731 posts - almost one a day. There've been 54,456 pageviews to date on that archived blog -- it still gets about 50 a day, almost all of them coming from Google searches.

After moving to TypePad in 2005, I've written 1603 posts, received 10,008 comments, and 541,965 pageviews. Visits are down from their highest point, some years ago, as they are all over the blogosphere; mine average between 180 and 190 per day -- and I'm grateful for every single one.

In the end, I'm not sure statistics mean much, though without the awareness of a steady stream of readers, and the development of relationships with many of them through the comments, email, and my own visits to their blogs, I'm not sure I would have kept this obsessive project  (or is it a habit?) going this long.

On the other hand, though, what emerges is a body of work. It isn't conventional, or even graspable, and perhaps will be impermanent, but I know that it is, in fact, THE body of artistic work accomplished in my lifetime which most closely represents me. It's also taught me the most. Once upon a time I wasn't satisfied with that. Now, I am.

For as much as I sometimes have wished to be otherwise, I am not first and foremost a novelist or a painter, a writer of non-fiction books or a photographer or printmaker. I'm a reader, and observer, and an integrator, whose chosen form is the informal essay, illustrated with my own photographs or artwork, and whose perfect medium of expression is the blog. Being a blogger became an intrinsic part of my identity: like someone who works in watercolors or oils, I see the world and my daily life through an intimacy with this medium. It used to feel a bit weird, like constant translating; now it's so normal I don't even think about it, even though I've become a lot more choosy about what to base my posts upon. The change from pure writing to a greater focus on art has simply mirrored what's going on in my own life, too.

I'm a person for whom any artform is incomplete without relationship. This blog has given me that, too, in ways I never expected, and poured richness into my life in the form of friendships, discussions, online groups, collaborative projects from the Ecotone Wiki to qarrtsiluni to Phoenicia Publishing and so many others.

It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that while the world has hurtled toward heightened anxiety, clashing cultures, and greater misunderstanding, my own life, over the past ten years, has done the exact opposite, and continues  -- through this medium, friendships, travel, and daily life in a big multicultural city -- to open up more and more. I hope The Cassandra Pages always represents that journey toward greater possibility.

As a celebration of these ten years, my friend T.C. offered to write a few words, and inspired by his kindness I've invited a few of the people who've been blogging companions and/or longterm readers here to contribute short guest posts, which I'll be posting here over the next days. If any of you would like to join the party, you are absolutely invited -- please send me your contribution at cassandra (dot) pages (at) gmail (dot) com. And I'd be especially delighted to hear (either that way or in the comments) from the quiet but faithful readers who seldom or never communicate with me: what I do here is just as much for you as for those whose speak up regularly, and I often have you in mind as I write.

Thanks for being here!

Beth

 (2013)

jonzfoto

J. at MoMa, 2007

Perhaps it's ironic -- it's certainly poetic, as The Cassandra Pages enters its tenth year --  my partner and husband, the infamous J., has just started his own blog, as part of his professional website. Jonathan has patiently endured and supported my blogging obsession for a decade, and I'm happy to share a link to his new site, and encourage you to take a look.

Iceland, 2011.

As some of you know, Jonathan is a very fine professional photographer. The blog is built around his personal photos, but it's not a photo blog exclusively - he's using each one (they'll be published about once a week, he says) to explore and write about a particular subject. He has an unusual and creative way of looking at things, so it should be pretty interesting.

As for me, I'm reminded of a recurrent line in the book I'm reading now, a international espionage thriller called Istanbul Passage, by Joseph Kanon, where the Romanian spy keeps saying, "Turn the chess board. The game always looks different from the other side." Jonathan has always quipped that he reads my blog to find out what's happening in our life, but I will no doubt be rewarded with a different view of the same thing, from his perspective!

Montreal, 2012

Self-Portrait in a Blade

The Cassandra Pages will be ten years old in March, 2013. That is a lot of words, a lot of photos, a lot of comments, and a lot of time. Perhaps it's not surprising that I'm feeling like I have nothing new to say these days! However, I've been curious to look back at what, and how, I was writing then, in 2002 and 2003. Over the next months I may post some things from the archives, and from my personal journals.

Here's one, written on December 10, 2003, with a photo taken today. Not long ago, I gave the mezzaluna, that shiny, dangerous, double half moon, to a friend and excellent cook here in Montreal, who, so far as I know, hasn't repeated my mistake.

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Mezzaluna

"When he seats himself at the little writing-desk before the window looking over Bristol harbour, his hand feels as clumsy and the pen as foreign an instrument as ever before."

I cut myself yesterday on the mezzaluna. We don’t use it often, this sleek kitchen weapon with its ebony knobs and stainless steel blades. I’d taken it out of the back of a drawer in order to chop a bunch of cilantro, and as I pried the hard black plastic guard off the curved double rocker-blades I said to myself, this is a dangerous thing, and just then my little finger came up along the back blade, just so, more swiftly than a thought. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a deep cut or shallow, only that it was clean and bloodless and a quarter of an inch long. I waited, staring, in that shocked space after a sudden injury, and then ran my finger under cold water. Stinging, then nothing. I began chopping the cilantro, and then a large drop of dark red formed and I instinctively raised it to my lips. It wasn’t deep, this cut. I was lucky.

Later in the afternoon I stopped working for a while and read J. M. Coetzee’s Nobel Prize address. Somewhere around the third or fourth paragraph, another blade descended. This one was radical, entirely bloodless. It sliced through rosy pride and accomplishment, and then through the fat yellow layers of self-doubt and apathy, right down to the white-blue bone. I’m not finished with you yet, it said. I’m not after bone, but marrow.

There’s always something to write about in the back of a drawer, and always better writing out there, waiting to cut us open, to reveal more of the stuff of which we’re made. We can squirm at the last minute, letting the blade stop in those middle layers, or give ourselves up to the knife, rejoicing in language used so well it leaves us panting, avid.

"All of this news of Lincolnshire his man writes in a neat, quick hand, with quills that he sharpens with his little pen-knife each day before a new bout with the page."

(The two quotes are by Coetzee, from his Nobel address.)

NaBloPoMo Blues...and Yellows

I guess it's obvious, but I seem to have decided (crazily, foolishly) to do NaBloPoMo this year. That means trying to post something every day this month, but I'm upping the ante and committing to writing a daily haiku or tanka, or other micropoem. Needing some sort of prompt to make the project a little more focused, I decided to try to have each one include a color word, or some observation proceeding from a noticed or felt color. So far, it's been going pretty well. Please let me know if one strikes you particularly, and why!

Another reason for the commitment is that I am just so damn busy right now, with professional work, Phoenicia projects, and lots of choir gigs,that it's been hard for me to write much here, though I've tried. A little poem once a day? No problem! -- or so I thought. Of course they often take a lot of work, but I can also work on them in my head as I walk, and manage to remember those few words.

Probably I chose "color" because I can feel it draining out of the landscape, out of the cityscape. Up here inthe north we're heading into the season of monochrome, when everyone puts away their bright clothing and spends the winter in black, grey, and brown, at least in terms of the outerwear in which we're all publicly cocooned for five months. I reluctantly got out my own black hooded coat the other day, but at least I always wear it with some sort of bright scarf...Already I find myself hungry for color and finding most of it in odd places, where someone has splashed a coat of bright paint, or hung up a flag on their balcony. With the leaves down, too, I find I see things that have been there all along, but obscured.

A lot of people find November depressing, but actually I've always liked it. I like the clarity and low angle of the light, and the way the colors that do exist are intensified against the often-grey skies. It's not cozy inside yet, and not bitter cold outside either, so I find I want to get out and walk, and see what's to be seen: today, a black and white cat high up on a yellow plexiglass balcony, watching a little black-and-white dog below. Fortunately, I'd already written my poem for the day!

Straightening Up

For the first time in years, maybe encouraged by the clearing-out we're doing in our studio, I've overhauled the design of this blog, trying to clean up, organize, simplify, and update the content. I'm not done yet, but done enough to make the changes "live" and try them out on you...so please tell me if the background color is too dark, or the type too small, or whatever. I'm still undecided about a fixed-width main column or whether to keep the width variable. I really like being able to post large photographs - what do you think?

The blogroll and category lists have disappeared for now because the former was woefully out of date, and the latter just too long a list; I've substituted a category clou, which is pretty interesting, to me at least! I'll be revising the blogroll and re-posting it in the sidebar soon, along with the new Search feature, the Online Shop, and a link to Phoenicia Publishing. My "author" photo and website have changed too - the ABOUT tab now links to my author's page at Goodreads, where my books are listed as well as a bunch of reviews, some cross-posted from here.

I also realize, somewhat to my chagrin, that much of this design work will rarely be seen by the many readers who follow the blog through an RSS feedreader...but that's OK, I'm glad to have you with me however you receive the content!

Doing this work, I felt once again how behind-the-curve TypePad is as a blogging platform, but I'm reluctant to leave because I know it will mean a drop in readership. For other purposes, I use WordPress and I greatly prefer it, but here we've been for nine years and counting, and here in this familiar, slightly faded velveteen box, for the time being, we'll stay.

What's happening with comments?

First of all, this is not a complaint, but simply my musings about commenting here and my own beahavior as a commenter. I love and appreciate everyone who reads and who comments here. Thank you for visiting and reading my words, whether you ever add a comment or not!

--

Most of us who've blogged for a while have observed a gradual decline in the number of comments. Many of us have also noted that we, too, don't comment on the blogs we read as often.

Social networking is often blamed for siphoning off a lot of the interactive energy that used to happen on blogs, and that's probably true to a large extent. We chat and interact elsewhere, and long-form exchanges, whether on blogs or by e-mail, are a lot less common than they used to be.

I think there's a definite "taken-for-granted" factor: certain blogs, like mine probably, have been around for a long time and readers assume they'll continue to be, with or without the encouragement and conversation that comments add. That may or may not be true: it depends on the blogger. Perhaps it's even assumed that the writing is more important to the author than the conversation. In my case, yes, I'll probably continue the blog, but no, what I write is not at all more important to me than your own thoughts. I write and post images in order to share things I'm interested in, but primarily because I hope others will have a reaction or be moved somehow or think more deeply about that subject. It's a happy bonus when I hear back: when a reader has a thought or story or experience of their own to share with me and with the other readers. So for me the posting will always be about sharing. While there's a certain amount of esoteric stuff here, I try to write about subjects that concern all of us, not just me. It's great when that leads to a conversation.

My husband was saying the other day that as we've become more and more used to the internet being a big part of our lives, we've gotten used to the idea that content is free, and that it's simply going to be there for us to find, and to consume. Society pays for objects, but expects and consumes a great deal of free content, especialy artistic content. I'm reminded of public radio on-air marathons, which usually convinced me to contribute a little bit so that the shows I loved would keep happening. Blogs are free, so readers don't even have to contribute except by indicating once in a while that they're present! I'm amazed and deeply appreciative of the generosity of near-daily blogs like Language Hat, Via Negativa, or Marja-Leena Rathje -- longtime friends who just keep going, giving away intelligent writing and beautiful images, without the expectation of any particular return.

As a commenter myself, I know that I don't leave comments as often as I used to. When I ask myself why, the above justifications come up -- along with the fact that my online life is spread out over many more sites and many different types of interactions now. But there's also another factor that prevents me from commenting as often. It drives me nuts to have to jump through a routine of captcha-entries or elaborate sign-ins designed to prevent or reduce spam and potential hacking. So many times I've written a comment only to have it disappear after some sort of failure in the authentication routine. I tried to sign into a blog I love today, in order to leave a comment, and finally I just gave up! Have we perhaps gotten a bit too paranoid about this? At Cassandra I require only an email address and don't moderate comments; I have advanced virus software on my computer. Spam is extremely annoying, but I don't get excessive amount at all; I delete it and add spammers and their subjects to my "block" list. My site has never been hacked; perhaps I've just been lucky, perhaps that's a function of TypePad -- I'd like to know.  I've always felt that I wanted to keep my site as friendly as possible, and have probably erred on the side of less caution, and convenience for the readers rather than for myself.

Is that naive? What's your experience been, and how do you feel about this whole subject?

Note: There are so many comments on this post that they are split into two screens. At the bottom center of the first set of comments, look for a teensy-tiny double arrow. If you click it, lo and behold, there are the rest of the comments.

Parmanu's New York Diary

"Man with Hat" (c) 2012 by Parmanu

"I do not know what it is like to live there, but as a visitor, no matter how many times I’ve been to the city before, New York does not fail to impress. Like Venice, Paris, or Mumbai, its character assails you the moment you step into the city. Arriving by train into the New York Penn station, the same passengers who were relaxed and laid back when they boarded the train in the suburbs spring into motion, like toys with wound up keys, and march with an infectious purpose through the station into the maze-like streets of Manhattan..."

Highly recommended reading and seeing, from one of my favorite writers and blogger friends.

 

NINE

It's Cassandra's birthday today: nine happy years of blogging! Thanks for being here with me. I'd be delighted to hear from you and know how long you've been reading here. I've loved writing this blog, but it's the readers who've kept me going -- thanks to each and every one of you.

And since it's a glorious warm day here in Montreal, I feel like everyone is celebrating. J. says, "as soon as you see girls riding on the handlebars of their boyfriend's bikes, you know it's spring!" I watched a big puffy male pigeon courting a female who was trying her best to ignore him, and as I walked through the park this morning the redwing blackbirds were singing like crazy in trees full of buds, so those special spring behaviors seemto be bursting forth and spreading across all the kingdoms: green, furred, and feathered. In the country there are probably froggy choruses already too, but that seems as amazing for this time of year as it is for me to be without a coat and hat. I hope it's nice where you are, too.

 

 

Swimming Upstream

Great poster, isn't it? I love their eyes.

I've been thinking a lot about the human schooling behavior better known as social networking. or, to be completely accurate, about my own participation in it. I go onto Facebook several times a day, for little reason, really, except that I get bored doing other stuff and it feels more interesting to see what my friends are saying or doing. But I often leave feeling disagreeable. Annoyed at myself for wasting time. Annoyed at the corporate culture that manipulates us and uses our flocking behavior, our desire for social interaction, for its own ends. Depressed by superficiality, phony "friendship,"and by our collective loneliness. And at other times I'm caught up in something positive, glad to hear news from a far-flung friend, happy to follow a good link, amused by a witty conversation or challenged by a debate.

I've had an active online life for almost a decade now. This blog will be nine in March. As I've written before, maintaining a serious blog these days definitely feels like swimming stubbornly in an opposite direction while everyone else streams off to a party. I feel, and have sometimes succumbed, to the pull of the current: I've written micropoems on Identica and Twitter, I've got my FB page and another one for Phoenicia Publishing, I've got Phoenicia's website and blog; I've posted a profile and a lot of books and reviews on Goodreads, a site I like a lot; I wish I could spend more time with Ravelry. But I realized a while ago that I just can't keep up. I don't do Google+ or LinkedIn; I'm rarely on Goodreads anymore. My activity on FB and Twitter are minimal. And you know what? I don't care.

What I do care about is depth, and perseverance. Without being critical about social networking, which obviously meets a fundamental need for a huge number of people -- and especially, not being judgmental about the creative use of those mediums -- I think it just comes back to being true to myself. I'm miserable when I feel scattered all over the place. I'm happy when I feel like I'm learning, stretching, being disciplined, and accomplishing something. Blogging does that for me. Working in my studio on artwork; reading; creating books for Phoenicia; having good conversations with friends; practicing and performing music; cooking for the people I love -- all those things do it for me too.

Loretta, at Pomegranates and Paper, wrote an intensely honest blogpost about these things recently, too. We all get caught up in behaviors and patterns sometimes that end up with us getting kind of lost. That's OK; that's part of taking risks, doing new things, exploring. The thing is, I may feel lost in the same place where lots of other people feel found.

Believe me, this isn't a lecture I mean for anyone but myself: I need to remind myself of who I am, and keep my eye on the ball. A certain amount of solitude is necessary for that, and yet -- like most people -- I find solitude difficult after a while. Still, the bottom line has to be, who am I and what do I want? And then making some decisions and buckling down.

 

 

Meeting Marly, and some memories

On Monday, J. and I drove two valleys east from my father's home, which took us from the Chenango to the Unadilla, and then to the beautiful valley which holds Otsego Lake, from which the north branch of the Susquehanna arises. That's a mouthful of Iroquois names, isn't it? All I can do to convey the beauty of the'se places is to post a few photographs, but this piece of earth is the landscape that's forever imprinted on my mind and soul.

Our first stop was a field not far from my father's. We needed photographs of sheep in fields that looked somewhat like rural England, for a theater poster we're designing. The sheep obliged.

On the way, I wanted to take a photo of this abandoned general store in South Edmeston, NY, one of several tiny villages we passed through on the way -- and home, in recent years, to a thriving yogurt factory that's providing desperately-needed employment in this hard-hit rural area.

Then we continued over the hills to Cooperstown. The town, as usual in the summer, was crawling with tourists, especially on the main street where we parked, not far from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Parents with kids, little league teams in uniforms, nostalgic elders...and a street of historic buildings containing shops selling baseball souvenirs and memorabilia of every variety.

We ate lunch at a small cafe, where there was a pile of magazines on the table. I opened up a copy of The Christian Century, a liberal magazine I used to read, and was pleased to see a poem by Jill Alexander Essbaum...After lunch, J. took off to take some photographs, and I walked down to my favorite landing to gaze out at the lake for a little while. This is the site of Council Rock, a famous meeting place for the Iroquois. No one else was there. I stood and watched the lake, and then walked around the shoreline a short distance. The north branch of the Susquehanna River is the outlet of Otsego Lake, and begins right here as a mere brook.

 

I thought about my own history in this town, Cooperstown, named for its famous writer, James Fenimore Cooper, who called the lake "Glimmerglass." We came here fairly often when I was a child, to visit the Farmer's Museum or Indian Museum, or have lunch at the Otesaga Hotel. Here's a photo of me there, taken, um, a lot of years ago!

Later, as a naturalist/artist/exhibit coordinator for one of New York State's environmental education centers, I came here to take a summer course given my the New York State Historical Museum, in Fenimore House, and met a man I'd later marry: he was an artist/blacksmith working at the Farmer's Museum. for the next two years I travelled back and forth over these hills very often, deepening my affection for the landscape and Cooperstown itself, and enlarging my familiarity with the trickiest spots on the icy, drifted winter roads. With him I moved to New England; my transplantation there would survive, but our brief marriage did not.

 

Much more recently, J. and I had spent long days and nights here, in and out of the Cooperstown hospital -- a teaching hospital that's the best in central New York -- during my mother's surgery and final illness. There was a lot going through my head as I looked out at the lake.

But then I climbed back up to street level, and rang the bell at Marly Youmans' house. Within minutes, we were talking like old friends. The reason for the visit was to meet face-to-face, and ostensibly, to talk about Marly's book-length epic poem, "Thaliad," which my press Phoenicia will be publishing at the end of 2011. We got to that after, well, a couple of hours...

Marly, who -- no surprise -- is delightful, intelligent, articulate, funny, and warm, introduced me to her children, and showed me her house (which is very old) and some brand-new books (by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and a group of poets including herself and Dave Bonta -- on the floor in this picture). Clive's original artwork for Marly's book, Val/Orson, hangs in her front hallway.

Jonathan arrived, and after tea and bowls of freshly-picked raspberries with cream (whipping cream!) and sugar - what a treat! - we inscribed and exchanged books (a copy of my biography of Bishop Gene Robinson, and Marly's latest poetry collection, "The Throne of Psyche) and walked to the Episcopal Church, where J. took pictures of the Tiffany windows and Marly told me the history of the building, in which James Fenimore Cooper and his family figured heavily. They're all buried in the churchyard, and commemorated in stained glass.

Then sadly, it was time to leave, for we had further destinations and many miles to go. We gave Marly three ripe Pennsylvania peaches - she's a Southern girl, after all! - and took a few pictures to commemorate the first of what we hope will be many future get-togethers. We liked each other a lot. Can you tell? And although we don't really look that much alike, we sure do in this picture. Kind of uncanny. Thank you, Marly, and thank you, Cooperstown, for being the catalysts for this journey backward and forward!

(Marly has another photo, and some local lore, on her own blog today.)