rus vanwestervelt

The Single Moment Holds Infinite Possibilities

Archive for the ‘The Nature of Things’ Category

October 4th, 2012 by rusvw

I’m An Artist, So Pay Me, Maybe?

Adam Byatt recently posted a piece about artists getting paid (or not), in response to a piece written by an artist named Amanda, who was responding to a letter that was sent to her by an artist named Amy.

Adam, Amanda, Amy… All artists. I’m thinking of changing my name to Arus (and it shall be pronounced A-roos, with a roll on the “r” if you can manage it) — at least for the purposes of writing this post.

I’ve been chatting off and on for several years about this topic with another artist, Cara. We both believe that giving abundantly provides abundant returns.

The question is: Where should artists stand when it comes to being paid for their work?

Before I even begin to answer that question, let me throw out a few particularly random, but relevant, thoughts.

The boom of the internet and the technology explosion have collectively oversaturated the market with good works at little to no cost. Nearly everybody with a smartphone can take a better-than-decent photo. Pretty it up on Instagram, Hipstamatic, or even iPhoto, and you can put together a great virtual album of photos worthy of their share of oohs and aahs, all of which will happen in a matter of seconds before friends and followers flip through their newsfeeds and move on to the next batch of artistic creations.

Never before have we been able to read so much, so immediately, and so efficiently. There’s a lot of good writing out there in the blogosphere, and virtually all of it is for free.

We are getting our “fix” of great art stuff — both making it and receiving it — and we don’t have to pay a dime for it. In fact, even when we want to purchase local artists’ works, we often have too many choices, and we simply cannot buy everybody’s books and photos that we would like to.

So where does that leave the artists who are trying to make a living through their creations?

We are being forced to rethink how we market our work (if at all), and to whom.

We cannot stop creating our photos, our sketches, our stories. It is a part of who we are; it is what we do, what we know, and what defines us.

We can choose other professions that sustain an income while we “dabble” with our art, but that’s not who we are. Our work suffers, and our contributions are never as significant as they should be. And, when we do invest a great deal of energy into a specific project, the returns are negligible, at best.

I have likened it in the past to CPR compressions. It’s getting harder and harder to create a product that isn’t on constant marketing life support. The minute we stop pumping energy into that product, it expires within a few days.

Very sad.

On Adam’s post, one commenter wrote that she has found a way around the “friends network” problem; she bypasses her local audience completely and sells her work in markets that are looking to buy high quality art.

This makes sense, and I think it’s worth a try to make that work if you are serious about making a living from your work. But it also saddens me to think that we need to go outside of our general community to have our work taken seriously. (For the record, I am ever grateful for the tight-knit group of supporters who has always purchased my stories and my photos.)

For me, I’m returning to some traditional means of publishing — sharing a little less online and through self-publishing, and submitting more work to reputable pubs and journals for consideration. It doesn’t mean that I won’t be blogging or posting through my social networks, but I will work harder on finding traditional markets to “accept” my work and build my credentials and clips.

Like Adam says, artists need to find their own path and walk it genuinely. For some, that’s the full-blown, make-a-living path. For others, it means giving, sharing, and submitting a little more generously while making some money in other ways.

I’m refining my own path, and it’s working for me. But I am, and always will be, an artist.

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Posted in 2011/365, business of writing, Philosophy of Writing, Photography, The Nature of Things, The Politics of Writing | 1 Comment »

September 26th, 2011 by rusvw

The Five-Minute Photo Shoot

photo: rus vanwestervelt, goucher college, towson, md 9/26/11

My drive home from school today took less time than I expected, and I had exactly ten extra minutes before I had to pick up my oldest daughter to take her to the gym.

Given the fact that I was still five minutes from home, that left me with exactly five minutes of spare time. What could I possibly accomplish in such little time?

I stopped at Goucher College (near my home), went in the direction of the pond on campus with camera in hand, and remained receptive to what might present itself to me. I was struck immediately by the brilliance of a single fruit dangling from a dying tree. After shooting five frames in under a minute, I wandered further down toward the pond. I disturbed a grasshopper in the tall weeds, and I followed him to a blade of grass (below). Fired off another 8 shots (took two of the tall grasses blowing in the wind), returned quickly to my Jeep, and headed home.

I was a little disappointed. I arrived home a minute early. I wondered what else would have presented itself if I had spent that minute at the pond?

photo: rus vanwestervelt, goucher college, towson, md 9/26/11

 

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Posted in Nature, Photography, The Nature of Things | 1 Comment »

September 20th, 2011 by rusvw

We Are Writing More Than Ever, Or Are We?

On the surface, I should be really excited about this ever-evolving global explosion with writing. In fact, the statistics are nothing short of staggering.

In February 2011, The Nielsen Company documented over 156 million public blogs in existence. In 2009, 1.5 trillion text messages were sent or were received (dhtech.com). According to Facebook’s statistics page (accessed at the time of this posting), there are more than 750 million active users, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, and they share more than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) each month.Twitter, by its own claim, boasts that members are now posting in excess of 200 million tweets a month.

People are using writing and social networking to communicate more than ever before.

Consider the following passage from Jeremy Norman:

If we go back to the end of World War II in 1945, the year in which telegraphic use peaked in the United States, Americans sent 236 billion telegraph messages that year, seeming a huge number relative to U. S. population at the time. With respect to the amount of information transferred, numbers may be deceptive since telegraph messages were charged for by the word, and tended to be exceptionally brief, while the amount of text, audio and video information that can be transferred or exchanged in one minute on the Internet is incomparably greater than the amount of text that could be exchanged in the same time by telegraph. Because of the availability of increasingly rich and diverse information over wireless networks, the nature of telecommunication has changed. As of May 2010, cell phones, used by about 90% of American households, were used more for data, such as text messages, streaming video and music, than speech, and during 2008 to 2010 the average number of voice minutes per user in the United States fell. In his book, The Information. A Theory. A History. A Flood (2011, p. 395), James Gleick quotes Jaron Lanier dramatically describing the scale of the ever-accelerating flood of electronic information we are experiencing: “It’s as if you kneel to plant the seed of a tree and it grows so fast that it swallows your whole town before you can even rise to your feet.” (“From Cave Paintings to the Internet” http://www.historyofinformation.com/narrative/index.php)

Finally! People are writing more than they are speaking to communicate! After all these years, the written word has become king of the communication hill!

Or has it?

It seems to me that quantity has nothing to do with quality here, and in fact — all this “writing” is actually working against the production of any meaningful and significant written correspondence or communication that will survive a cache-clearing data dump of trivial information. We’re so caught up in instant communication in under 160 characters that we’re skimming the waves of our life experience. We are losing our ability to kill the motor, sink in the waters of who we are and what we feel, and share that with others in a meaningful way.

One staff writer for the Independent , who wrote an article on the state of love letters in the 21st century, posted this question last February:

Do people send each other love letters any more? Or is the exchange of amorous declarations between partners now forever delegated to the insulting greetings card, the fluffy-bunny message in newspaper classifieds, the wholly unpassionate email, the economical salutation of the text message?

The documentation of our lives, as only we can accurately record it through our own experiences, is becoming nothing more than an eWhisper, a vanishing trademark of communication that leaves us with nothing but the news, so immediately reported that we have little time to think or react to an event before the next breaking story pushes the previous one from our memories.

I am not totally discouraged. I was reduced to tears this summer when a fellow writer/teacher taught us all the art of digital storytelling, and how we can empower our students to do the same in the classroom. The integration of writing and images can be a powerful thing, and such historical documentation in a simple, digital format was not possible just a few years ago.

But I think this is the exception and not the rule. Even before programs like iMovie came along, there wasn’t a whole lot of non-digital storytelling going on either, which leads me to believe that the technology explosion is not necessarily killing all aspects of writing; it is simply revealing the ugliness of our society’s negligence in writing authentically.

We can change that. We can help each other turn off our motors and sink into the genuineness of our being.

The first step is to recognize the absolute importance of our existence, as well as the documentation of our understanding of the world around us.

Hard? I guess so. As Tom Hanks says in A League of Their Own, “It’s supposed to be hard; the hard is what makes it great.”

So who’s with me? Let’s accept that challenge, turn off the tweets and the updates, and sink a little. Then write.

I wonder what we’ll begin to discover . . . .

 

 

Posted in 2011/365, Philosophy of Writing, rus uncut, The Nature of Things, The Politics of Writing | No Comments »

September 6th, 2011 by rusvw

Are We All A Little Weakened At The Roots?

Trees down on Cowpens Avenue, Towson, MD, August 28, 2011 (Hurricane Irene) Photo: amy vanwestervelt

Eleven days ago, an earthquake rocked the Mid-Atlantic region. Then, five days later, Hurricane Irene moved through the area, bringing down trees and power lines that disrupted service to over four million people along the East Coast.

And now, looking at the weather forecast, we’ve got rain and thunderstorms predicted for every day through next Saturday. The ground is already saturated, and many trees weakened by the first two natural disasters in the last two weeks will struggle to survive the constant rains and winds that will trudge through the region at some ungodly slow pace.

These trees can take only so much before they surrender and fall to the ground — a life of 100+ years ended by the forces of nature.

Or maybe not. Perhaps all of our development has led to the rapid erosion of the areas surrounding our trees, making them more susceptible to oversaturation and high winds not buffered by a tough, surrounding terrain untouched by man.

This vulnerability — this quick breakdown of once-mighty oaks and evergreens — reminds me of what is happening to both our youth and our older generations alike.

We were, not too long ago, a tough breed. We had to move to live, to survive and thrive, both as children and in our adult lives. We were not coddled, over-protected, over-booked with too-safe activities. We took risks out of both necessity and desire. At any age, we didn’t expect anybody to do anything for us. As well, we didn’t think twice about helping others, because we had a basic respect, a faith and trust, in the people comprising our community.

The real tragedy here is this: Not that we’ve all been weakened by the lack of risk-taking movement and survive-and-thrive mentality; it’s that there are fewer and fewer mighty oaks and evergreens standing tall in our society. Tragically, we’re becoming nothing more than a conservative ground cover, staying close to the surface and being a little too territorial, pushing away others and seeing little of what the rest of the world has to offer.

We do our best to teach our kids to take those risks, but we’re now fighting an uphill battle. They have many expectations of what they believe is due to them, and they resist the challenge to move and take control of their lives, of their personal growth.

And let’s face it. They’re not the first generation of coddled kids; we struggle with this ourselves because, like it or not, we’re an MTV generation of remote controls, speedy drive-thrus, and pizzas delivered in 30 minutes or less. We are now desperately trying to reverse the direction in which we were raised. Not an easy task for any of us; so who are we to blame our own kids for expecting a little too much, and daring a tad not enough?

It seems to me that, if we expect a change in our children, we need to strengthen the roots in our own lives so that they have a few mighty oaks in their upbringing to show them how brave they can actually be in their own lives.

 

 

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June 25th, 2011 by rusvw

Proclamation: There Will Be No More Proclamations!

There’s a particular scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where Dolores Umbridge takes over as High Inquisitor at Hogwarts. In a flurry of images depicting rules and restrictions being created and enforced, Argus Filch stands atop an old, rickety ladder and pounds proclamation statements into the school’s storied walls. Most noted in this montage are Educational Decrees 24 (“No music is to be played during study hall”), 30 (“All Weasley products will be banned immediately”), and 45 (“Proper dress and decorum to be maintained at all times”). The climax in this relatively short scene is when Umbridge is dismissing Professor Trelawney from Hogwarts, and Dumbledore challenges her on the dismissal.

Prof. Trelawney: For sixteen years I’ve lived and taught here. Hogwarts is my home. You can’t do this.

Umbridge: Actually, I can.

(Professor McGonagall enters to comfort Prof. Trelawney, and after a brief exchange with Umbridge, they are all joined by Dumbledore.)

Dumbledore: Professor McGonagall, might I ask you to escort Sybil back inside?

Umbridge: Dumbledore, may I remind you that under the terms of Educational Decree no. 23, as enacted by the Minister–

Dumbledore: You have the right to dismiss my teachers. You do not, however, have the authority to banish them from the grounds. That power remains with the Headmaster.

Umbridge (after a long pause): For now.

As much as this scene in the movie represents the ridiculous power that Umbridge has been given (and misuses) at Hogwarts, Umbridge herself is a strong  representation of the equally ridiculous misuse of power right in our own communities.

Don’t see it? It’s everywhere, and once you begin to notice it happening in one part of your life, you suddenly recognize it in nearly every other aspect, too.

Not that this is anything new. It’s not. These demonstrations of the misuse of power accompanied by subtle-to-blatant intimidation (fought aggressively in our schools today and labeled as bullying) can be traced back (even just in the United States) to the days of colonization. Even 150 years ago, Native Americans were bullied into acculturation as we stripped them of their customs, rights, and freedoms. We forbade them to speak their native language, and families were separated as children were put in “civilization” schools. We created rules, regulations, and proclamations to steer them in a specific direction, solely for the purposes of our own benefits and desires.

It makes me wonder if this is in our blood, in our nature, in our internal drive to dominate, manipulate, and control any situation that we possibly can. It’s as if all common sense, all sensitivity toward other human beings, is shelved until a more selfish pursuit is fulfilled.

Why is this such an issue today? The dangerous mixture of this desire for power and a post-9/11 society hell-bent on creating controlled, positive experiences is threatening the mental wellness of every child in our society.

A Rule Is A Rule

Long before terrorists crashed airplanes into buildings and changed our lives forever, my terminally ill father-in-law was given 30 days to move out of the house he had been renting for over a decade. My wife and I were moving bags of trash to the curb for pick-up, and a woman in her mid-twenties, well into her third trimester of pregnancy, stopped her car and approached us. As we had put out a few lamps, I thought she was interested in taking them. When I greeted her and explained what had happened, she pulled out a camera and started taking pictures.

“I’m not interested in that. I’m the president of the Community Association, and I am documenting this direct violation of the Association’s contract with your father-in-law regarding trash disposal before 6 p.m.”

Any assistance offered, at least in the kindness of others because of her pregnancy? Any question about why the landlord would do this? Any effort to understand? None. In many small organizations like Community Associations, where people act more like dictatorial mayors than helpful and supportive neighbors, the entire purpose of the organization is lost in battles that border the ridiculous. Tell me, why does it really matter if the color I want to paint my front door is two shades lighter than your Association-approved chartreuse? Can’t we just say the paint faded years ago and move on to other, bigger issues? You know, like how many swings to place in the community playground? (Oh wait– I forgot. The Association deemed them too harmful in all ways to include in the playground blueprints.)

I remember thinking how detached from reality the whole experience seemed. I was glad that I was not part of that Association, and I vowed on that day to steer clear of such groups. I did not want my life dictated by such power-hungry individuals who had lost sight of what it meant to be human, to be bigger than a bunch of black-white rules that blocked all conventions of common sense.

I Don’t Like Your Tone

I failed in my attempts to steer clear. It becomes inevitable, I guess, when you have kids. Most recently, I have found myself in the middle of an organization that is more Umbridge-like than any other I have experienced. Within this organization, I am supposed to sign a contract that notes, among other things, zero tolerance toward personal expression. In the section titled, “Contract Termination,” I must agree to a statement (written in first person, oddly enough) that I have paraphrased here:

We understand that if there is ever a time that we cannot be a positive force to this organization, we will forfeit our place in this group immediately.

This clause was exercised earlier this year when one community family expressed concern about the organization’s direction. Because they did not exude a “positive force” in the community, they were blackballed in unprecedented fashion from all end-of-the-year festivities.

In other words, if you express anything but positivity about the organization, you will be punished severely. And that’s a proclamation you can bet on, ladies and gentlemen.

Is the Pursuit of Positivity Pushing Us Over the Edge?

In the July/August ’11 issue of The Atlantic, Lori Gottlieb explores the dangers of enveloping our younger generations with purely positive and supportive comments and opportunities (the front-cover headline, “How the Cult of Self-Esteem Is Ruining Our Kids,” is just as attractive as the article’s title, “How To Land Your Kid In Therapy”). She interviews a Swarthmore College professor of social theory, Barry Schwartz, who takes a big risk in proclaiming that creating an insulated, 24/7 Happy World for our children can lead to a very unhappy adult life. “Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing. But happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster.” Gottlieb then poses the ultimate question: “Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?”

The Point

I’ve said this for years now. The Post-9/11 mentality of most parents is, understandably so, one grounded in protection and security. We can no longer push our kids out the front door and tell them dinner will be ready when the porch light goes on (You better be back in this house 5 minutes later with hands washed and at the dinner table, mister!). We’ve felt guilty about this, as our childhoods were filled with adventures in exploration, experience, success, and failure. We took risks that our parents never even knew about (nor would they ever, we swore up and down). Our kids don’t have that necessarily, and we fill this need to fill that time with controlled experiences. We choose events and activities where our children will succeed, where they will experience happiness (or so we believe), and we will sacrifice nearly anything and everything to provide them with such opportunities.

In essence, we’re doing the very thing that I absolutely loathe about the above-mentioned Associations and Organizations. We are constructing guilt-freeing Truman Shows for our kids, controlling the outcome of every “risk” they might take.

I can’t do this. I can’t hold my tongue in fear of popping this happiness bubble that we’ve created with sharp words that might offend in this fragile time. Thoreau wrote many years ago, “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.” We need to return to this toughness. We need to stop worrying about our kids’ happiness being derailed by anything that’s missing a soaring rainbow or happy heart.

Those of you who know me might see this as a deviation from my positive approach to living life. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe in living your life fully and authentically. Thoreau also said that we must corner life and experience it fully–it’s greatness as much as its meanness. We, as parents, cannot remove that truth from a life lived authentically. As Schwartz said in The Atlantic article, happiness should be a byproduct of living genuinely, and not the ultimate goal.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in 2011/365, Ramblings, rus uncut, The Nature of Things | No Comments »

April 23rd, 2011 by rusvw

Stay in the stream?

Distractions, distractions, distractions….

I am guilty of inviting them, these distractions. I interact with Facebook friends on an hourly basis at times, especially when I am engaged in a rather exciting experience. Earlier this week, My wife and I took our two younger children for a Light Rail tour of Baltimore, stopping on three of the stops and exploring coffee houses, museums, and the lure of Camden Yards and the Inner Harbor. Along the way, I updated my Facebook status, “checked in” at each location, and uploaded pictures of each site.

In many ways, I felt as if my Facebook Friends were with us during the entire day-long trip.

I was the one who invited you. Nobody asked me to take them along. I just jumped in the stream and paddled with the current.

I am so happy and disgusted with this stream for so many reasons. I am not a black/white person; I believe in variations of gray, where flexibility and participation runs on an experience-by-experience basis. But I don’t think I have ever faced such a love/hate relationship with two extremes in my life.

I click on any of the news feeds, and I am bombarded with unspeakable tragedies–all in my own back yard. I click over to Facebook and agonize over status updates and how others are doing. I am both comforted by being in touch and overwhelmed by the stream of information that sustains this pulse with the rest of the world.

By doing this, though, I lose my own pulse and struggle with le seul mot juste, that one precise word that I can no longer find to capture my dizzying thoughts that have lost their ability to just slow down enough to appreciate the simple movement of the Earth.

Just the other day I had breakfast with a good friend, and I expressed to him the agony of trying to wrap up my book and get it out to the public. I have wrote and rewrote and revised and edited and changed and destroyed and recreated the ending dozens of times. And now, I find myself right back where I started when I had first drafted the ending. All of that rewriting–and for what? Was my motive to find the right words for me? For what I wanted to say? Or was it to please my readers? To give them what they wanted?

My friend reminded me that I cannot be bothered by any of that. As artists, as writers, as creators, we must work with and share what is the most authentic and genuine reflection of ourselves, whether it be fiction, fact, watercolor, or pastels. I nearly ripped out my hair when he said these words, the very same that I have been preaching for the last 20 years to writing students and colleagues. Why is it so hard for us to follow our own advice?

I know that if I unplug to find and retain my own pulse, then I risk losing that other pulse of the stream that feeds me.

But is that so true? Spending so much time in the virtual world has cost me time with one of the best people I know, and I miss our unplugged meetings at the Bean Hollow in Ellicott City. Facebook has reunited me with another wonderful person in my world who now lives in Maine, but would it be so hard for us to write letters? Call each other? Actually make plans to travel north for the first time 17 years?

When I visited the Walters Art Museum a few days ago, I thought of the time, energy, and commitment–discipline–it took to create those paintings, statues, and sculptures. We treasure these findings because they represent those individuals’ unique perspective on their time period–but collectively, the lot of them gives us a greater understanding of the struggles, the imperfections as well as the interplay between life and love, between love and war, between war and peace.

Do we have such depth anymore? What will be in our museum in 2,000 years? Status updates and cool pictures that have been rendered and manipulated by high-tech, low-cost apps that do all the work for us?

Where is the individuality? The hard work? The unique perspective that is not being filtered by some money-making program created by some individual who, like every other developer, is just trying to make our lives easier.

I don’t know if I want your help going down the stream. I don’t know if I want you to make my paddles of the finest wood or plastic. I don’t even know if I want your 21st-century kayaks and canoes that have been tested, thousands of times, to ensure my journey will be both thrilling and safe.

I don’t even know if I like this stream at all. But O! The pressures to stay with the current! To keep up and swim with the masses! I know Emerson wrote that the Great Man is he who can keep the sweetness of solitude with him in the heart of the city. But really, Ralph–did you ever imagine it would be this crazy? Thoreau would walk into town daily to meet with friends and buy his day’s groceries, but he never did his writing immersed in such travels. The distractions were isolated by physical spaces and distances. Today, we are tracked (and we track ourselves) by technology. Any lapse in response to text messages, emails, or the antiquated phone message casts immediate concern and inquiry. Where were you? Didn’t you get my message? Why didn’t you respond? You didn’t have 20 seconds to reply? What was so important that you couldn’t have answered?

Distractions, distractions, distractions.

We are living lives tied by the needs and desires of others, stuck in this whirlwind of what-do-you-thinks and why-didn’t-anybody-responds… (Guilty. Right now. Wondering who will comment, if anybody, and whether this post will click with my intended audience. Whether I will get support and encouragement to leave the stream. Whether this will be a popular decision. Absolutely guilty.)

Hey–I’ve already damned my connection with my reader at this point. I’m over 1,000 words, and most people won’t read beyond the 25-word blurb posted on Facebook’s status feed anyway.

(Have I offended thee, reader? Are you feeling insulted that I have lumped you in with the masses that I am railing against now? Please, do not be offended. I do none of these things. I merely write to understand this struggle within to stay with the masses while staying in my own waters.)

Even with these words, I am concerned with my reader, concerned that I have offended in my own struggles to understand this raging battle between the desire to please and the necessity to create.

I do not believe that an authentic life is possible blending these two. The Sweetness of Solitude can only come when one has learned fully who he is.

Distractions, distractions, distractions.

Will I (or any of us in this new era of distractions) ever be able to accomplish such a feat in our lifetime?

 

 

Posted in Anatomy of a Writer, Philosophy of Writing, rus uncut, The Nature of Things | 2 Comments »

June 22nd, 2008 by rusvw

addendum to my six people I’d like to meet

…and I think you’d like to meet her as well.

Her name is Christine Kane, and she’s an inspiring artist who does a phenomenal job of keeping in touch with her fans and friends through her blog and through email.

She’s a reminder to me of just how important it is to stay grounded in your relationships. Taking the wild, great trip to stardom–even in your own little community–means little if you don’t remember that it’s people who bring love to you, to others.

I often find myself “too busy” to keep up those contacts. I see people like Christine and I think that, if she can do it with the schedule she has, I can too. Really, there’s never a good excuse to not put people first.

The other day I was at the pool and I heard “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin. I remember when my first daughter was born, how I swore that I would never be that kind of parent to my children. Hearing that song again made me do a 12-year check on my promise to always be there for my kids. For the most part, I’ve kept to it. But I realized something that saddened me a little. In my efforts to be there for my own family, I cancelled too many times with my own mother because the “new job’s a hassle and the kids got the flu.”

It’s hard. No doubt about it. I’m not beating myself up about this, because Mom and I had plenty of wonderful times together. But there’s a danger in not keeping in solid touch with your family, your friends, and yes–your fans.

We’re all striving for more love in our lives, and the recent economic challenges are putting us all in a situation where, if we’re not careful, we’ll be hamsters on the wheel (thanks, Christine) doing everything we can to stay afloat, driving ourselves crazy in the process.

I, for one, would rather be driven crazy with love. :)

Posted in love, The Nature of Things | 2 Comments »

December 12th, 2007 by rusvw

Slaughter in the Back Yard

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When we moved into our new house last May, Spring had already consumed our small, quarter-acre lot. The azaleas in the front were in full, brilliant bloom–an explosion of pinks and reds and whites that distinguished our home from all others along our quiet street. In the back yard, where our property line kisses the Goucher College woods that extend deeply, well beyond any vanishing point discerned even by the tallest of rooftop dwellers, early-summer greens greeted us, a curtain of colors rich in nature’s hues. A few deer, rumored to be part of a population exceeding 200, were in our yard grazing as we did our best to silence our grunts, lugging box after box from our hatchbacks and minivans.

To put it simply, we were enveloped by nature’s childhood quilt, so young, so new, so alive.

Autumn’s demise has left us with a different view of our yard. For the first time, we can see the dead azaleas once covered by the other, thriving bushes. And in the back yard, we have learned that there are no evergreens. The Goucher woods are completely deciduous, and it takes little effort to see completely through the bare branches to the other side of the woods, where the hustle and bustle of campus living is still in full swing as students prepare for finals. When you stand still at the fence that separates civility from the wild, the faint rustle of the remaining leaves clinging to the brittle branches finds you, whispers to you, that even in all its dulled grays and browns, an energy remains that cannot be whistled away by the coming winter winds. The deer seem unaffected by all of it, though; they come and go as they have all year, bringing a sense of calm to the community. In these woods, we are reminded of the things that are most important.

And in these same woods, soon the hunters will walk.

Last week, Goucher announced that an aggressive campaign would be launched to “thin the herd” of wild deer on the campus grounds (you can read the carefully worded press release here). According to Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, the size of the campus grounds can provide a healthy habitat for 40 deer. A deer kill of 160 over several years seemed to be the logical solution, not taking into consideration the births of two fawns per doe (on average) every year. MDNR and Goucher president Sandy Ungar agreed on an initial hunt of about 50 deer soon after finals conclude.

I am reminded of several literary works where a society functions on a strict management of its community and its population. The Story of B, the sequel to Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, addresses this issue in a disturbing way where he writes about people as a food source. Ungar, who has talked about the importance the deer have to the entire Goucher community, using words like “family” when he talks about them, follows his comments with how the meat of the deer will be donated to homeless shelters.

I find this both disturbing and somewhat cannibalistic that he would suggest enjoying the deer’s presence on the Goucher grounds to create a more friendly and natural collegiate setting. But every year or so, we’re going to slaughter 25% of that family and share their flesh with those who are hungry.

This is the problem, though, when we interfere with the natural life cycles of the animals that are native (or once were) to our region. We don’t manage the lives of rabbits or squirrels. We don’t need to; there are larger animals to take care of any concerns of overpopulation. We’ve scared off the bigger predators, though, and because the deer remain very high on the food chain, we’ve created an unfortunate situation where we want to keep them around for their cute factor, as long as we assume the role of their predator.

Goucher is not unique. Several companies in and around Baltimore have welcomed deer herds on to their land for the natural and caring image they bring to their corporations. Eventually, though, slaughters are scheduled there as well to “manage” the herd.

We can’t have it both ways. The Goucher president was wrong when he commented sarcastically to a local paper that we’re not dealing with a bunch of “Bambis” on campus and that the general population shouldn’t view them as such. We’re not doing any animal a favor by providing a nice, secure habitat for them solely for our conveniences, only to hunt them down and kill them when they’ve procreated to sustain the existence of their species.

In the meantime, I have to figure out what I’m going to tell my children when they see the hunters in the trees, just on the other side of the fence, the one separating civility from the wild.

Posted in The Nature of Things | 4 Comments »

May 29th, 2007 by rusvw

The Fragrant Evening

Last night, as I made my usual 9:41 p.m. Starbucks run (grande soy chai latte, if you were possibly wondering), I was stung by the sudden fragrance of fresh honeysuckle that has just bloomed in the middle of our yard.

For the longest time, we wondered what that bush might be. Well, last night, it let us know in a full fragrant song that filled my night with a whirling merriment I have not known since I lived on a farm in southern Maryland.

Smelling that honeysuckle reminded me of so many things in my own life, but as I inhaled deeply time and time again, I tripped well beyond my own years and knew–just knew–that what I was experiencing was exactly what William Wordsworth or Henry David Thoreau had experienced so many years ago when they wrote their poetry and their prose about the romantic beauty held timeless in a newly blossom’d flower.

These are the moments when I get a greater sense of being a part of something much bigger than the world that surrounds me today. Such scents as bursting honeysuckle on a late spring evening connect us to something that we can only begin to appreciate if we take the time to inhale deeply, let the fresh scents fill us fully, and see the possibility of what beauty flows in the air, unseen to the eye, timeless to the mind, yet strongly passionate with the heart.

I shall keep these windows open to let the sweet smell of honeysuckle and the other dewy flowers fill this house, this soul, this heart with a song sung for centuries that reminds us all what glorious miracles are ever-present, if we awaken enough to let them find us.

Posted in The Nature of Things | 2 Comments »

May 28th, 2007 by rusvw

I’m Back (in black)

Greetings, all:

First, let me thank all of you for your kind words, your emails, your cards, your everything. I am honored to know all of you, whether it be in person or online. All of you have made this passing much easier to bear, and I am very grateful.

With each day that has passed since the funeral, I have felt the rush of emotions coming and going with no rhyme, no reason, no warning. But today, I immersed myself in myriad projects that made me feel good. I constructed the trampoline for my kids. We bought various yard ornaments and bird feeders to bring some new life to this once-tired yard.

In other words, I began my return to living fully with my family, to writing genuinely for me, to working on the final production needs for my book.

I’m emerging from the sorrow and am living my life a little more simply, a little more purposefully, a little more beautifully.

It’s a good feeling.

I’m taking a step back, though, and taking inventory of a few things. My health, my career in education, my general workload, what brings me energy and what takes it away….I’m taking a step back and thinking about how all of these things work together–or don’t.

I don’t know. It’s a good time to do this, though. It’s not like when I was 24 and my father died and I went charging through this life barbarically yawping Carpe Diem up and down the east coast. Times are different now. I’ve got a family, and I’m 42. When Dad died I could have thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Today, I struggle to make it around the block without feeling some kind of pain in my back or my legs due to my excessive weight.

So, times have changed, and they continue to change. But, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late to make a shift in my thinking and in my actions to bring about a better life for me and for those around me. I’d like to think that I still have a lot of living left to do, and taking care of myself is the first step in making it easier for me to do everything else.

So, I’m back. Back to the blog, back to the daybook, back to the classroom. I’m back to living, and I’m back to loving. I’m resurfacing with a new look on life, and with a greater appreciation for this time we have here on earth.

Let’s all enjoy it together as peacefully and as fully as we may be able to do in the coming days, months, and years, God willing.

Love to all,

Rus

Posted in Blessings, fitness/health/nutrition, love, The Nature of Things | 1 Comment »

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