Whale Killers

Grist has posted an article from the Guardian yesterday, to the effect that Japan has gained control of the International Whaling Commission. It has bought off small land-locked poor countires and seated them at the table. The goal is to lift restrictions on commercial whaling. Conservationists are appalled. So am I. I am so tired of mourning what greedy unscrupulous people do to the rest of the world.

http://tinyurl.com/mthy9

Reduced Carbon Emissions is Better Business

My good buddy Paul Challacombe shoots me these juicy urls from time to time as he data mines the world. Today his pick is from the NY Times business section: http://tinyurl.com/mjb6s on how from Timberland to Walmart, companies have figured out that strategies to reduce global warming and reduce the carbon emissions that produce global warming are good long range business planning.

Timberland has started with the cows that produce leather and the methane those cows make. They are changing their feed. The end of the article quotes one business leader as saying something to the effect that anyone whose thinking is twenty years into the future has long since missed the boat. How true how true. Their boat and OURS. It is NOW or never for actions to reduce global warming.

More evidence that this president doesn't know beans about good business for all his millionaire advisors. They are all dumb dumb dumb. But I give these other guys credit where credit is due. They have gotten it.

What is the Goal of Art?

This morning I received an email from the San Francisco Art Institute, widely recognized as one of the leading producers of cutting edge young contempoary artists. Speaking of the work of a faculty member, Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton, the press release referenced the school as follows: "an environment in which critique is the primary teaching tool, and subversion of the status quo is a core goal".

This is something some of us think about a great deal. What does an art education do to a young artist? What values does it privilege? One value it clearly inculcates is competiton for first place: to win. As my post yesterday indicated, the problem with this is that it privileges "winners" and identifies "losers". In that sense, art as we know it today, is an academic reflection of the society at large, in which celebrities are lionized and the impoverished masses yearn for a crumb from the tables of the privileged. It encourages us to confront, trivialize, demonize and degrade the values of the "other", who is the loser.

If art is a response to our times, is this a productive response to the problems we have? I wish I could see what Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton has to say.

Can We Move to Dialog on Global Warming?

I am always interested in new tools to address global warming. It seems to me that the most important may be those that effectively deal with how we can overcome fear and competition to confront threats together.

Recently I have read some inspiring articles of the Harvard Business School newsletter. The most recent was titled: Moving Beyond Debate: Start a Dialogue, about a new book, "Leading Through Conflict" by professional mediator Mark Gerzon.- HBSWK Pub. Date: May 22, 2006
The lead paragraph referred to the polarization of a culture of debate and closure vs exploring new options. It went on to quote from Julio Ollala, a Chilean coach who has worked internationally.

"What they yearned for was deep, honest, inclusive, and respectful dialogue"
"The source of power is our assumptions... in other words, our unexamined beliefs, preconceptions, biases, and stereotypes about each other and about the conflict itself."

"Trust," concludes Olalla, "is the precondition for coordinated action." This definition is particularly useful because it is not about what makes trust possible but what trust makes possible. It is about the relationship of trust to innovative results"
"Dialogue can only happen to the degree that the participants are willing to engage in the process. Only then can mistrust evolve into trust"

In retrospect, altho I had once thought that our crucial window of opportunity was 1990-2000, I now see that the regression of the past 6 years of this administration reflects how even the most aggressive work forwards can be cancelled by a few years of the opposite. Under Clinton, we addressed a variety of environmental problems. Under Bush we devolved dramatically. I think that is because Clinton was interested in dialog. Bush only wants closure.

The irony, is that despite how Bush promotes global corporate business interests these ideas about the value and difference of dialog vs debate are being articulated by global business leaders. Perhaps it simply reflects a narrow-minded over-simplification from this administration that misses the forest for the trees. Or a reflection of the inadequate business skills of the President.

But apparently other business leaders are smart enuf to learn and teach. If that is the case, perhaps unlike the old silk routes, we can trade not merely extractive resources and goods but actual ideas. We need a whole lot fo new ideas right now. Trade has historically opened intellectual frontiers. Perhaps is can also do that about global warming. There might be the hope that we are finally so globally interdependent that we must learn to negotiate differences rather than demand closure. If that might be the case, then we may still have a window of opportunity to deal with global warming.

Conservatives on Board re: Global Warming & Gore

My pal, the Chicago writer Paul Challacombe, regualrly sends me articles about the discussion over global warming. As he wrote, Gregg Easterbrooke, of the Brookings Institute is a conservative. But even he is now feeling the heat of global warming.

In the article he wrote for the Times, Easterbrooke urges President Bush to do something: http://tinyurl.com/zc23j. His idea is a credit system, similar to past proposals from others. It is also remarkable that he opens with a reference to Gore's new film on global warming.

Of course from his point of view it's mainly a farming problem (supply Western resources) vs. dying human indigenous land based cultures and other species. But hey, you gotta start somewhere. If it takes the pocketbooks of a few selfish men to address global warming, who am I to argue?

Today

Let us start with a laugh from Al Gore on global warming via my friend, ecological artist Susan Steinman: http://tinyurl.com/elyd9.

Laughter makes the serious stuff palatable again.

I planted a white and red columbine on my dog's grave. It is accompanied by yellow pansies a friend gave me for her. White for Justice, red for Introspection, yellow for the Illumination that comes at the point of welcome, at the entrance to my home. The grave is in the North West section of the garden I made. That is the uplands riparian zone and watershed for the Ghost Nets project. It was originally modeled on my interpretive understanding of the Native American Medicine Wheel. It is a site for me to meditate on "Giving Back" to life in general.

Planting the flowers on her grave made me think about the nature of love. At the end of her life, my dog, who had been the most devoted animal I have ever had, was frequently in withdrawal, as tho she had had enuf of responding to the world around her. I did not take it as a rejection but it was still sad and painful for me.

It was instructive about how ever close the affinities, there are always profound differences that must be respected. And that, perhaps, is the essence of love she had to teach me.

I also completed what will be my contribution to the memorial for my friend, Allan Kaprow. I read it to our mutual friend, Tony Ramos, who is now a successful painter in Paris. I told him I felt inadequate to what needed to be said about Allan Kaprow. Had I been an adequate friend or student? He replied that it was enuf that I had been his friend and that in friendship, we are always each others students. Furthermore, I should stop "fatigueing" the salad as they say in France.

Finally, I completed a report on the workshop I had attended last month at Wood's Hole for greenmuseum. The workshop was attended by fourteen scientists from eight countries. The New England Workshop on Science and Social Change was organized by Peter Taylor. 2000 words later, I concluded that it had helped me to examine, "how to bridge differences towards more successful restoration work as an ecological artist ." The bridge I'm trying to cross is the one that spans global warming, a very long span that requires more than good ideas.

As I have learned from each of my dogs and from Native Americans and all the friends I have been blessed with.

I suppose the Justice part of my meditation today is about valueing the heart and spirit of everything I encounter as I cross the global warming bridge. The Introspection is in examining my own heart... without fatigueing my salad. The Illumination and welcome is for all the differences I know I have yet to encounter.

If it is true that at the heart of all environmental problems are the human ones, then I will need a lot of that Illumination to welcome into my heart... millions and millions of pieces of the puzzle that are all the beating hearts of the world and a few good laughs for what might have been (thank you Saturday Night Live and Al Gore) about our oresent "climate change" crisis, as the administration prefers to call it.

Mothers Day Lessons from Beauty & the Beast

On Mothers Day, I do think of my own mother, passed away almost three years ago now. I think of my sweet-tempered lab who passed away Thursday. I think of the earth, which may need some mothering these days, if we want it stay alive in the ways meaningful to most people, in the face of global warming.

My friend Paul Challacombe just sent me this url for an excellent explication from the WSJ about how scientists have come to think that's true, by Sharon Begley: http://tinyurl.com/fd6ny (at least re: climate change).

What makes an idea, Mothers Day or global warming accessible and actionable?

The local Union Church service today, conducted by Michelle Wiley was about the nature of love. The famous passage from Corinthians was read, to the effect that nothing is worth anything without love.

Is that what makes an idea accessible? The lesson from my mentor, the artist Allan Kaprow, was context, context, context. The lesson from Mothers Day was: love, love, love. The Begley article offers demystification. The Beauty and the Beast story offers magic.

Recently, I have been writing about how to convey the message of ecological crisis. The question is, how do you help people see something important and unpleasant? I watched how you do that with social values, here on the island last night. The how part was both context and love.

The occasion was the island production of Beauty and the Beast. This island has a long and consistent tradition of amusing itself with wonderful music, dance and theatrical productions whether or not Summer residents are here to swell the ranks. There is something extraordinary about watching friends & neighbors transform into Princes, sorcerers, monsters and French peasants.

Beauty and the Beast is a parable about the power of shame. It is a story anyone can relate to, of making a terrible mistake, paying a heavy price, being forced to live as a social outcast and finally, redemption thru generosity (and love). We can all relate to it because to err is human. To know embarrassment is fundamental animal behavior. It is the observable cornerstone of social living for wolves, monkeys and humans. The desire for love and acceptance is universal amongst sane people.

Watching exactly how obstacles are overcome in pursuit of that end goal is instructive.

But none of that is why hundreds of townspeople came to see the local production of the version based on the book by Linda Woolverton, music by Alan Mencken, directed by Karen Burns from our local school. The cast was a mixture of local adults and children with music direction by Charles Brown. Charlie directed the music for the John Wulp-Edward Gorey version of The Mikado last summer on Northhaven Island. It was an unexpected pleasure for me to see and hear him last night. Sitting at the piano, his fingers carried our emotions like a clear stream of water, from the peaceful, to the ominous, to elation at the end, when everyone lives happily ever after in the performance.

The other reasons we came included, to listen to Bill Chilles sustain a French accent for two hours, to watch Pam Alley become an unwieldy round teapot and for all of us to say hello to people we had not seen in a while.

It was impossible to separate the performances from personal knowledge of the actors. In fact the experience would have lost a great deal had that been possible. The sweetness of listening to Belle sing, played by Anna Osgood, has the context for me of first meeting her and listening to her music while Wendy did my manicures in the salon her mother Lisa ran in their home. That was years ago, when Anna was a talented young teenager.

When Richie Carlson, whom I first met working out at the one-room fitness center here, Aerofit, years ago, becomes a posing Gaston, flexing muscles for the adoring country maids, our local school girls, the audience laughter has special context. When a Beast becomes a Prince again, the most important suspense for me was over trying to imagine how they were getting all the make up off as he lay with his head over the edge of some of the staging, since we all knew that he was the handsome fisherman & musician, Jamie Thomas.

Every possible device to gain and hold our attention was generously pulled out of the collective hat. The amateur voices were wonderful at times, earning my admiration, as in solos by Jamie, Anna and some choruses. The show was larded with delightful musical moments. There were times when I was close to tears from the acting, suspending all my disbelief. The costumes, lighting, choreographed shrieking peasants and cookies at intermission were all part of the magic of the evening, whether or not they might work on Broadway.

As Michelle pointed out about the show, in her service today, what made it all work so fabulously was love: love of the children who participated, love of the music, love of the community, love of the sheer fun of it all: the magic of life.

What does all that have to do with global warming and ecological art? It is that anything that concerns public policy is grounded in private values: the personal is political and ultimately we protect, cherish and celebrate what we love. The same desire to conform to public approval and seek love can destroy or sustain a small community. It can also create the context to sustain a large one.

It is not necessary to present in an international venue, to conduct an expensive ad campaign to succeed in making people come out to pay attention, to reach the hearts of people with basic truths. What IS necessary is to connect their experiences to a higher ideal and a more primitive mandate. In this case, the ideal was to discern what is good and right. The mandate was visceral: community survival depends upon love.

The appearance of ecological life for many Americans is that all is well or alternately that we are individually helpless. Neither is true. It is not pleasant to admit that appearances are deceiving, to take responsibility for a serious mistake, whether it is social or environmental. In the end, now, they may be the same thing. Because ultimately we all love the nature and resources we are seeing destroyed. especially the Polar Bears. It is also difficult to see right now how solving some of the problems ahead is going to be fun. We need magic.

I believe the magic is going to happen when those of us who care about all this, find the ways to pull out all our stops to address global warming. Then we can bring the largest possible community together to pay attention to the lessons we are all learning. And we can demystify how we can start applying them. Some of that might even be fun.

Report from The Drop at Exit Art

When I did my installation for Exit Art, there were three things that were important to me. One was to implicitly make the point that just as I had spent 70 hours (despite a ballet-fractured broken foot), to paint the elaborate wall mural about Arctic Melt and Global Warming but it would all be erased when the show comes down, just so might a great deal of Global Warming erase much we have labored to create on this planet.

The second concern was that the indigenous trees, bushes and forbs I had assembled be sold (at low prices and with profits to go to the NY Botanical Gardens) and planted by viewers. Those plants would hold back some flooding when sea level rises in response to global warming.

Third was that the show get critical attention for critical issues about water in general and climate change in particular. The curators are still working hard to make that happen, concentrating now on the science writers. But I know from experience that scientists can feel ambivalent about artists on thier idea turf, unless they are safely under control as illustrators.

So far, few seem to have cared whether the work will be erased and none of the plants have been sold. Rather, they have languished, some expiring, some hanging in there, others rescued and whisked up here to my Maine gardens. That tells me people can not take the options they are given when the price is low to address global warming. This is a no-blame observation and no new news. But can they take those options when down the road, it may be more expensive and difficult?

Allan Kaprow taught me well that everything is context, context, context. Urgency can only be experienced in the context of urgency. If we close our minds to imminent danger, then it is simply not urgent.

The third desire, critical attention, for critical issues, is so far is unmet. All the artists in The Drop show did great work, as did the curators. So where are the writers to tell everyone about it? How can any of us create the context in which people can give themselves permission to see, hear, act in their own best interest?

This is the account I wrote the night after the opening:

The opening for The Drop at Exit Art went great, even if the critics were not there. I know the curators hit every base there was to hit, inc all the writers of the recent Vanity Fair "green" issue. I also know someone who is going to be writing for a major architecture/design newsletter (circ. 20 000) and have heard of at least one other publication in the works.

The writing obstacle I have heard is that the Times reviewed Exit Art's last show and therefore policy may make it difficult to see anything major on this one, tho this show is arguably far more important.

My hunch is that NYC does not do important.

It was a dreary rainy day and evening but by all accounts, the opening was well-attended, people seemed excited about the show and there was general agreement that whatever the writers do, this IS an important show.

The work looks great and the whole show together tells a coherent story about current serious issues about water- inc "artists formerly known as women" who did a compelling piece on the ecological devastation of bottled water. Next to that is a glass of water on a pedestal, circled by a ring of gold chains, by a Venezuelan artist, about the effect of gold mining.

It is all installed well, so there is a sense of how each idea and process relates to the next. Large projection time-lapse video of Arctic Melt (Andrea Polli) is interspersed with paintings of bottled water labels.

The two striking things to me about this show, besides that most of the work is superb, is, first, the depth of apparent research behind each project, grounded in a lifetime of interest & work. Technically, generally, the presentations hold up elegantly to the weight of that content.

Second, the diversity in the work & the presentations are a refreshing contrast to some other shows of this nature, where there was a sameness of style- very conceptual use of text, heavily photo reliant, deadpan, etc. This show employs a huge range of media. Photog is a relatively small part. Text & content is passionately delivered, very intense.

The cumulative effect is powerful. As one friend put it: this is a traumatic show.

As, I believe, it should be with this material. In response to my own installation, which I had spoken about to the board (as did we all who were present), saying something to the effect that all the technology is there to deal with our problems, but I suspect people are paralyzed with fear (besides an American administration actively making things worse). Someone took me aside later and said, that was exactly the problem he saw: the "fear that paralyzes".

This may be a reason that writing may be hard to come by. The personal is political. The political is VERY personal.

Speaking briefly about some of the work in the show by artists I know well, Mary Arnold referred to the piece by Ann Rosenthal & Steffi Domike as: Cassandra's in Betty Crocker aprons, about their wonderful performance of dissecting a fish and using a microscope to illustrate their effective points about fish toxicity. Brandon Ballangee did a gorgeous piece on vanishing fish species in a tier of endangered fish collected from the Chinese markets, embalmed in large jars stacked in the light that was just visually stunning as well as poignant. Jackie Brookner did a great, sobering floor map of how many countries water usage (in stencil form) could fit into the water usage of the United States, combined with her "Hands" sculpture of moss & steel. Christy Rupp did a piece inviting people to compare water quality samples from tap water from the various boroughs of NYC to prove there is no difference in taste.

Eve Laramee's was arguably the most "conceptual," documenting the devastation of radioactivity on New Mexico water. Sant Khalsa did a wonderful, understated grid of black & white photos of storefronts with signage relating to water that conveyed a wistful, nostalgic sense of something lost to me. Lillian Ball did a beautiful video projection of endangered blue flag and other species onto a pool of sand, combined with notes from the "salvage" of a wetlands system.

I did a 16 x 10 foot labor intensive wall map of Arctic melt coming to NYC, with the building design elements & live indigenous plants that need to be planted to forestall flooding. The plants obligingly flowered for the show: columbines, a yellow magnolia, a PJM rhodo, crabapples, etc.

The show is up till June 10. Global warming goes on a lot longer.

Death & Life

One of my two elderly dogs died today after a lingering decline that was mostly peaceful. She went to sleep at my side and didn't wake up this morning. I will shortly bury her.

In the email, I got the announcement of the memorial service for Allan Kaprow, 3:-6: pm June 3 in the Visual Arts Facility, at UCSD La Jolla, CA. for those of you who knew and loved or simply admired him. Several museums internationally are now planning retrospectives. Many other people died today or had their lives celebrated. So did many other animals & plants.

My other dog came over to sniff Bambie, the dog who died, when I carried her downstairs, wrapped in a flowered sheet in which she will be buried. Then Brittany walked slowly over to the couch and asked me to help her up so she could lay down . Now Brittany, my Dobie, is asleep on the couch, mourning in the ways of dog culture. Shortly a friend will be by to help me bury Bambie. My cat doesn't seem to care, even tho she lay all night against Bambie. I have always been struck by the apparent willingness of animals to acept death, even as I have watched them grieve. My cat, however, in the ways of cat, may just be better at hiding her feelings.

And already, I have smiled at two emails that came in today and considered various plans ahead, some I anticipate, few of which include my animals. I confess to being relieved not to worry about Bambie any more. I have heard many people say that about a parent who passed away, even tho they loved them well. Death makes way for life.

I have heard or seen something that gave me a flash of anger about global warming or some injustice in the world. I have considered my friends today with warmth and what flowers I might plant over her grave with pleasure

I sent in a decline on a professional situation last night, received a rejection for a professional plan I didn't really want to do someplace else in the world this morning and considered whether I really want to do another far-flung project even while I put my mind to new deadlines for due work enthusiastically requested, in the next couple weeks. All that flying doesn't help solve the global warming issues.

This is all to say we are all very small & vulnerable in the larger scheme of things. And yet we are very large at times and in special places. And what does that have to do with global warming and ecological art? Well, I think you can figure that out for yourselves.

I can concentrate better now on work I want to do. I can give Brittany more attention. Life continues. As I learned in a performance I once did on the nature of grief, after my father died, it is in the balance between joy & grief that we find sanity.

The Drop at Exit Art first review

For those of you who want to glimpse some visual context for all my talk about global warming as well as another person's text on it, please go to http://tinyurl.com/gvyhp

Gore Goes Forward on Global Warming

An interview with Al Gore is up at Grist http://tinyurl.com/qdq7z, with a link to a trailer for the new film on global warming in which he stars. Among other things, I noted that Davis Guggenheim, the producer of the HBO series, Deadwood, also did this project. It opens May 24.

I had not known this project was not initiated by Gore. Gore commented on criticism that he is over-stating the imminence of danger in the film. He replies that, in effect, the pendulum has to swing back the other way to get to the truth and constructive action.

In the interview, Gore advocates cellulosic, rather than corn-based ethanol as a solution for the fuel problem. I ahve heard a lot of good argument against corn based ethanol myself, ranging from the danegr of monsanto style monoculture to the motivations of lobbyists. I'm glad Gore is running this campaign for the earth as we know it. I have a lot to learn from him.

Linda Weintraub Question

The essays in the catalogue from the exhibition Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art differentiate the two movements, associating Eco-art with Land Art and Environmental Art. They imply that Sustainable Art is the newest iteration of this legacy. Is the differentiating factor increased cultural engagement? -Linda Weintraub

Linda asked a very provocative question about the difference between sustainable and ecological art. I do associate Land and environmental art and do see ecological art as distinct but perhaps not entirely distinct from what they define as sustainable- except in so far as the cultural aspect.

There is a further comment on this, re: what is cultural? Cultural, in the context of ecological art, until now, has been primarily defined as activist, interventionist, teaching. I think it must go further. The pitfall I see in the activist parallel as the model for the cultural element is the assumption of otherness. There is also the temptation to a presumption of authority, the authority to proscribe. For that reason, I think some deeper investigation is useful based on earlier feminist models.

In so far as we all subscribe to a green agenda, our definitions must grow and expand over time, supposing a sustainable process of inquiry. Are there boundaries to that investigation? I believe there are profound distinctions to consider.

Aren’t sustainable personal politics key to sustainable anything human over time? How does one design such safe parameters that the unsafe can be investigated by non-professionals? To what extent must personal politics be an ecological investigation? The NEWSSC workshop (which i shall report on later) investigated that in some detail. Interesting if science is ahead of art on this.

I have stated very openly that I think there is a direct connection between personal issues and public ones and there are environmental consequences. I didn’t initiate that idea and it is not new. It has affected generations of thinking since the seventies. I consider that a basic feminist premise that has infiltrated public discourse in every way from Oprah to transparency in corporate bookkeeping. I believe it is still an essential question to answer about ecological art.

I recognize that it is a tricky thing to explore personal questions dispassionately, without blame and with plenty of self-reflection. I also accept that for many, with a wonderful practice, these are irrelevant questions. And for still others, it is a closed book they choose to keep closed. Finally, it may be impossible to investigate virtually.

Opinions about and the understanding of motives for discussing what I consider at heart, an abstract philosophical difference with real world practical implications can make such openness "virtually" impossible. Virtual (email) communications give a false sense of intimacy. Being open with people who truly don’t know us, opens us to being filtered & judged on the basis of their own private experiences.

I equally question whether this genre can fully flourish without that investigation, if it is to be wholly ecologically sustainable.

Global Warming & Heathers

I have been gardening for days. I am behind on several posts I have written but not iploaded. Instead, heathers are on my mind.

A part of my garden is heathers. The logic, in terms of indigenous species, is a bit convoluted. The islands where I live broke off from Scotland several million years ago. There are ericaceous species on both sides of the pond but on mainland America,, which was never part of Scotland, there are neither calluna nor carnea, the two species that survive in our difficult winters (or at least my site, which is open to the full blast of winter wind straight off the deep ocean).

I am very fond of heathers. There are rich in color, texture, shape and bloom and above all, look pretty in mud season. Once established, they live forever, inc thru the summer drought months without water. I have an entire section of my garden for alkaline plants and another for acid. These are in the acid section and no doubt acid rain has done them a world of good without any additional help from me.

In my weeding, I examined several new varieties I had planted early last fall. They did not look happy. So I called my supplier and we discussed what could be wrong. After a long conversation, she mentioned that in some parts of the world where snow cover isn’t consistent, as England, there is center browning and die off on this variety but if there was any green at all left, they would recover. She asked me if we had consistent snow cover. I replied, morosely that we DID, before global warming.

This particular species is a deep, dark green with vivid heliotrope bell flowers. Bees love them. They are cheerfully dramatic in otherwise subdued times of the year without being inappropriate.

Sure enuf, when I went back to the garden, there were a few hopeful sprigs of green. Otherwise, they looked pretty sadly brown. Now, I know they will come back & be as beautiful as their neighbors in another few weeks, but I find this a difficult thing to accept.

It is difficult only because flowers are such a delicate and lovely part of creation. They offer such innocent joy. Heathers ask so little of the gardener. They blend so willingly and politely with other species, esp the conifers of a boreal forest such as I am have been part of- at least till global warming pushed that too further North. They never invade another plant’s boundaries and in my garden, tolerate the crocuses among them as graciously as they do the traffic of my animals passage.

Heathers are not as spectacularly dramatic as polar bears, but it somehow seemed as sad to me that global warming has marred their gentle glory as it has put the fierce polar bears into the status of endangered species.

Wars, Panels, Memorials and Rythymn

The war on poverty has long since been supplanted by a war in Iraq (and perhaps imminently Iran) and on the environment. Arguably, the latter goals were provoked by abandoning the first, the former goal, in favor of abundance for a very few.

Recently, one wise person who has written a wise book I did not take notes on (I was driving) commented that America suffers from a culture of deficit of empathy. Might not there be a relationship between that deficit of empathy and the other deficit in the budget now plagueing the party in power in the service of these wars? I suspect there is.

This past Saturday, at Exit Art, in New York City, a small group gathered to address the environment anyway. The event had to compete with a march against the war in Iraq taking place en route to Foley Square.

Amy Lipton Neill had put together a panel for Exit Art including three of the artists from The Drop show, Brandon Ballangee, Bob Braine and Jackie Brookner. They were joined on the panel by Glen Abrams, future-looking Urban Watershed Planner for the Philadelphia Water Department, Eric Goldstein, Senior Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Franco Mantalto, hydrologist and civil engineer. The six presenters gave inspiring accounts of the progress of realizing their ideas. What was inspiring to me, was the persistent desire to collaborate and the variety of strategies, to work across disciplines.

So on that day, there was another sort of abundance for a few available rather than that promised by this administration. This small group was self-selected, as is the group so radically benefitting from the labor and death of so many, even across species at this time. In the former case, benefit may acrue in the very trickle down theory that is promoted as the economic goal by the latter few.

In fact, artists have always historically made dramatic economic contributions to society. Nor do I know of any deaths to people or species as a consequence of that work.

Tuesday and Wednes I attended two memorials for artists. One was for Al Hansen, Fluxus artist at the Andrea Rosen Gallery. The other was for Nam June Paik, also associated with Fluxus and with Shuya Abe, the father of the video synthesizer. The Nam June memorial was at the Guggenheim Museum, in view of the exhibition of David Smith sculptures. As museum leaders and artists from across the world eulogized the gracious manner and generous brilliance of the personality of Nam June Paik and his work, the sculpture work of David Smith floated above us like steel clouds.

In June, I plan to attend and briefly speak at the memorial for another art hero of mine, Allan Kaprow. An era is passing and changing in the art world as I know it for me. Consummate city planner and thinker Mary Jane Jacobs also passed away recently. These losses are happening at a time when the natural world as I know it is threatened as never before.

At the panel, I commented that I see a problem has arisen because human nature changes so slowly but the problems we face are so urgent. Bob Braine replied, in effect, that urgency is opportunity, look at what happened with 9/11? Well, I thought Katrina was pretty urgent and nothing came of that except a lot of talk and protracted misery. Last I heard, it was being used to set a precedent of further voter registration problems.

My Mother always told me to slow down under pressure. So today, I shall take a deep breath and consider how I might slow down so that things might accelerate, in the right rythmn with life.