Time To Make The Baskets

Dating as far back to the 3rd millennium and based on available evidence, the most significant and primary characteristics of basket making has remained the same up to present day.

The symbolism of the basket in ancient cultures has been seen as representing many things, the feminine, part of the creation myth, or even symbolic of the Creator. Perhaps this is why so many feel a deep connection with the basket.

I have been a lover of baskets, as far back as I can remember.  When my family would visit my grandmother, her house was full of different baskets, woven from reeds, and wicker that she'd bought from Mi'gmaq women who would go from house to house selling their beautiful work. Some of these I still have, and I love them so much.

Winter has a way of causing me to gear down. There are positives and negatives to this, but I have come to accept that it is part of my natural rhythm and creating baskets is a comforting and I think life affirming activity to do in the dead of Winter.

I started making baskets again after recently seeing a photo of one particular basket, and I thought I can make that. Ooo big job! Basket making can be taxing and time consuming, relaxing but Winter is a good time to be creating baskets or doing anything creative. Thing is for me, I have to find the right materials and the best technique, which I haven't quite found yet, but I keep exploring and practicing my skills.

Here's a picture of the basket I found online. This one will be my next big project. It'll take me a while I'm sure!

Customize-able  Rope Basket - By Esther Chandler

In the meantime this is what I've been working on over the past couple weeks week using float rope and crochet to assemble.

Dwayne Betts - From Prison To Poetry

Dwayne Betts is a poet, teacher, and 2016 Yale Law candidate. His latest collection of poems is called Bastards of the Reagan Era. (Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

I worked with adult and young offenders for many years and volunteered in prisons as a recovering 12 Step member. It will always give me great hope seeing individuals that make 180 degree positive changes in their lives through creativity.

In the 12 Step fellowship we are told we can't keep what we have unless we give it away. When I heard Dwayne Betts talk about his life I can see he is much more than a poet, he's what I would call wordsmith,  activist, teacher and a changer of lives, giving hope to those of us who might seem or feel hopeless.

I heard him interview yesterday on CBC Radio.
His interview was inspiring and powerful.
I especially took note of how his letter writing over a period of eight years of incarceration was what gave him his voice. It exemplifies the power of the written word to change lives, and to change the world.

Chic Gamine - A Feel Good Post To Help You Shake Off Your Worries

Chic Gimine

This is simply a feel good post to help you shake off your worries.

Music soothes the soul. This time of year many souls need comfort. This group sure comforts and soothes mine, and helps me to shake off my worries. I heard them the other day for the first time ever. I never knew they existed. So happy I know about them now. I'll certainly be listening to more.

What's In Your Dirty Sock Drawer?

Paramedic Rob Gladney - " Sock Drawer Portraits"Artist - Teresa Coulter

The relationship between art and mental health issues have long been very important to me, being an artist and someone who has been affected by friends, family and the troubled youth I worked with as a youth Care worker for 20 years, and watched them suffer from PTSD and mental health issues.


Today I listened to White Coat Black Art on CBC Radio with Dr. Brian Goldman, which I regularly do. His program is so insightful, and refreshingly honest, that gives an inside look at the medical profession, and all that it entails. Myths surrounding physicians and the world of medicine are dispelled and he shines a light on the darker and often troubling side of the medical profession. It's a wonderful show that I never miss listening to.

There are many positive and significant aspects of Dr. Goldman's show, and today was no different, but it was a stellar program. Although he has had a few programs about Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, today's particular show entitled Sock Drawer Stories was exceptional, and really caught my interest because it was about art, PTSD, hope and healing.

Artist and Emergency Service Worker Teresa Coulter created 12 powerful portraits of her fellow paramedics which are intimately and powerfully moving. 

John Trudell - Rich Man's War

Rest in Peace John Trudell - February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015

rich man's war
john trudell


hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey......


rich mans war,
industrial streets, class lines
money talks, turning language to paper pieces
rich man's war free man's society.
raging violent insecurity
nuclear man, nuclear woman
unclear how to act.

rich man's war
Persians cruising Europe.
America Russia
governmental nuclear views
industrial allies cutting the world
as though they cannot see blood flowing
.
rich man's war
Central America bleeding
wounds same as Palestine and Harlem
Three Mile Island in El Salvador
Pine Ridge in Belfast

rich man's war
the poor, starving for food
starving for land, starving for peace,
starving for real.

rich man's war
attacking human, attacking being
attacking earth, attacking tomorrow

rich man's war
thinking of always war
thinking of always war.

with machines for ancestors
new unborn generations
chemical umbilical chords are only wiring
in your electrical progress
human lives burnt offerings to the god greed
with lies for ancestors


there is no truth in some futures
rulers of minds feeding next generation's souls
to the control machine.
sacrifice ritual for the proper technology
with isolation for ancestors

there is only the present bought by the credit material uses
forging chains binding you to destruction
compliments of your deities
the industrial priest.
.
hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey......
.
no more than neon flash
trying hiding in neon mask
have to face who we really are
at some point we had no choice.
distant star distant light
.
in real world we are human being
in shadow of real world we are
being human.
.
neon mask for neon flash.
distant thunder distant cloud
passions reign
drenched in possession
what we take is hard to do
what we do is hard to take
some ones are crazy or maybe we take turns
dreaming about some kind of life we say
"it could have been different".
but it wasn't because we weren't
no matter what, it turns out the same
a lot of things we said weren't true
industrial stories in an electric instant
neon mask neon flash neon flash.
.
thing is nihilistic desires
civilized gone insane
didn't imagine it turning like this
some things start good and go bad
some things get bad and stay bad.
are we caught in between living a lie or
not living at all?
eliminated choices lost in dreams we let go
memories we never got to have
something else to think about...
waking up in industrial society
surrounded by angry days,
going through motions
of not being.
wanting the best but not expecting it.
surviving paid for in dreams
feeling like a world alone
serving god with the devil to pay.
feeling like something in no place
what goes on in hell anyway?
.
thing is, it has to do with heart.
we have to understand what hearts are for
before we can get back to heaven or paradise
or the power in OUR MIND.
.
hay ah iy a hey e ya hay........

" Follow your bliss but be prepared to live your nightmare" - Mark Reay

Mark Reay and Thomas Wirthensohn

Many of us experience hard times, some more so than others. We decide how we are going to cope. Some of us make it, and cope relatively well, some don't. It is often a secret we keep from others, for a long as possible in order to keep up appearances, because poverty and homelessness in our society is cloaked in shame, guilt, and judgement.

It's easy to sit in judgment of others who don't match our preconceived notions of normal, and so I will say, if you haven't walked in their shoes, refrain from judgement. Truth is, there but for the Grace of God go I.

I thank God I have never been homeless, but many years back I was sleeping quite regularly in my vehicle because I worked two hours away from home, and couldn't afford the gas to travel at one point in time. Hitch hiking and food banks were a regular thing for me, when I returned to University at the age of 56 in 2009.

Mark Reay is a remarkable individual. He kept the secret of being five years homeless living in New York City, sleeping under a tarp, on a friends rooftop at night, and living an entirely different life by day, keeping up appearances, which to all appeared to be glamorous and successful.

Mark Reay is very obviously an individual with great tenacity, courage and resilience, and he doesn't match our notions of the stereo typical homeless person.

This documentary Homme Less is insightful, a revealing real life film by Thomas Wirthensohn about how Mark Reay lived in one of the most wonderful cities for artists, and simultaneously, one of the worst if you are homeless and poor.

 Mark was interviewed today on CBC Q with his long time friend Thomas Wirthensohn, who directed the documentary. I am certain this film will help to break down the stigma and misconceptions surrounding what it means to be homeless and poor, who should not be invisible, nor judged.

"We All Need a Home and a Journey" - Gloria Steinem

Amy Schumer & Annie Leibovitz

A few years back, I got to see Anne Leibovitz give a talk at a book store in New York City about one of her last books, called Pilgrimage. This was truly the highlight of my trip to NYC, because I have always admired her work. She is a great speaker, a philosopher, an amazing photographer and I could listen to her for hours.

Today I learned that the Parelli Calendar has recently published a feminist depiction of numerous women that are clothed, a far departure from how this calendar portrayed women in the past, always glamorous, nude portraits.

Annie Leibovitz had free rein to create the kind of portrait photographs she wanted when she was asked to do this project. It broke with the Parelli stereotypical tradition of objectifying women. It will be interesting if this  project marks a permanent change in how the Parelli calendar will be presented in the future, but it certainly is a hopeful change from the mindless concept of a hyper-pornified culture to where we are "agents of our own bodies" and the conversation  about sexuality shifts, and is defined by our own terms.

Simultaneously it may be a sign of change when you see Playboy magazine no longer engaging in nude photos of women. More than an indication of Playboy developing a politically correct social conscience, I think perhaps this is more about having to compete with a pornographic material so readily available on the internet, and how this has made the Playboy rather redundant.

Pioneer feminist Gloria Steinem who in 1963 went undercover as a Playboy bunny, was interviewed today on CBC Radio. She has previously addressed this topic when she said, " For Playboy to stop publishing nude photos of women, (of course, it never published nude photos of men) is like the NRA saying that it's no longer pushing hand guns because machine guns and assault refiles are so easily available. "

 " Playboy would have to change it's little heart and brain cells in order to express the full humanity of men or women. "

When I heard what Gloria Steinem said about how we all need a home and a journey, it rung so true with me.  And like Annie Leibovitz and all the women she photographed, we all do need a home, that is found within ourselves, on that pilgrimage to find where it is we belong, and where  and how we reclaim our power and our strength.