Havana

This has been a difficult blog entry to write. The most difficult EVER!

My usual process is to sit down at the computer in the early morning, when I feel that I need to write. I don't know where my words and sentences will lead me; I just begin.

I read the first few sentences out loud to feel how they sound and then carry on, reading my emerging blog entry aloud from time to time.

Well, first of all, I began this entry last evening.   One strike against me.

Second of all, I had something I felt I needed to say. Two strikes.

And the third strike was that I intended to insert some political thoughts into the posting.

And, changing the fundamental rules of baseball, allowing a fourth strike,  I can't seem to transfer many of my photographs from my laptop to the desktop where I write my blog.



So, Ive trashed the entire post and I'm starting again. Or, rather, I will be starting again tomorrow morning!

And I will use just the photographs that I am able to transfer.

Body image issues, especially in Habana, drew my attention nearly every day of this, my 3rd trip to Cuba.  The popular clothing for women, except for the most elderly, is tights worn usually with a closely- fitted top. Wide hips, big asses and rounded stomachs are not camouflaged.

There seems to be an acceptance- no, rather a pride- in a woman's physical being. A sensual energy that I have not experienced for many decades.

There was an image I had wanted to print after my first visit, nearly a year ago.  The photograph was of a middle-aged woman, standing in front of the farmacia, wearing turquoise blue tights.  I was dissuaded from printing it as several friends thought it inappropriate to show such a heavy-set woman, thinking I had chosen it for that very reason.

Well, I had, but not for the reason my critics thought.

Here was a woman, on her cell phone, comfortable in her body.

Clearly, I hadn't learned a thing. On my first morning back in Victoria, I stepped on the scale.

While my physical self-image was still difficult for me to embrace, with Willie and Rafeala, my hosts at their casa particular, I felt total acceptance of my essential being, who I am, fully.  I often said things that made us laugh. First me and Willie and then Rafaela joining in when the words were translated into Spanish. The laughter from deep inside, spilling over.

The lightness of being that we experience when there is trust and caring.

I didn't consider that I might be too talkative, too loud or too bossy; things I sometimes feel at home in Victoria. The fearful "am I good enough?" was totally absent.

In Habana, I was me, completely. I was met by my hosts, who were entirely present to themselves, and who told me that they not only accepted who I was, but that they embraced me fully.

I was family, in a culture where family is treasured above all.

This April, I was witness to another layer of Cuba. The layer lying beneath the vibrancy, humour and openness of the people.  Alongside  the music and the dancing colours, I saw a life that was difficult.

While I saw children in their school uniforms and Cubans receiving medical treatment at no cost, I also saw food shortages and government restrictions.

                         people lining up to buy chicken at a shopping centre

For me as a visitor, this tiny glimpse into daily life was only one small piece, a first sentence in a very long story.

I know that my heart is full and that I will be going back to Cuba.

                                               *************************

Signed by President Díaz-Canel in April and published in Cuba’s Official Gazette in July, Decree 349 is expected to come into force in December 2018.
Under the decree, all artists, including collectives, musicians and performers, are prohibited from operating in public or private spaces without prior approval by the Ministry of Culture. Individuals or businesses that hire artists without the authorization can be sanctioned, and artists that work without prior approval can have their materials confiscated or be substantially fined. Under the new decree, the authorities also have the power to immediately suspend a performance and to propose the cancelation of the authorization granted to carry out the artistic activity. Such decisions can only be appealed before the same Ministry of Culture (Article 10); the decree does not provide an effective remedy to appeal such a decision before an independent body, including through the courts.]

This has not come into effect at this time because of pressure from groups and artists outside Cuba.
                                  
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with every step

"If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.“
— Joseph Campbell

Having an exhibition of my artwork feels rather like pinning myself to the gallery wall, with a sign on my chest proclaiming "HERE I AM" all in caps.

I remember the joke about the Jewish mother at the dinner table when someone had refused a second helping, lamenting "You don't love my food, you don't love me!"  

In the gallery or studio it settles somewhere around "You don't love my photographs, you don't consider me an artist."  A good artist, of course. But it's even more precise: even though viewers may tell me that they really like my work, my battered ego whispers hoarsely, "then why haven't they bought anything?" 

Having been a practising artist for more than 40 years, I am well aware that artmaking is usually filled with many varieties of uncertainty.  

In their book Art & Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland explain that "The difference between acceptance and approval is subtle, but distinct.  Acceptance means having your work counted as the real thing; approval means having people like it."

They continue, noting that "It's not unusual to receive one without the other. Norman Rockwell's work was enormously well-liked during his lifetime, but received little critical respect."

That's why I treasure a comment sent to me recently by email. "I think you’re the real deal, a real artist, Jackie." To be of value to me, it had to be written by a person I respect. It was.  Tra la!

I've just had the phrase that I used earlier in this post enter more clearly into my awareness...."a practising artist."  Because really, that's what it's about. Practising. Practising. Practising. If I were to stop practising, that would mean I've quit.

It's not as if I could lay down my camera for six months and then expect wondrous photographs when again I pick it up. 

A form of practice is looking at the photographs others take- discovering what she/he  saw: how it was captured, the placement in the frame, the light. This is absolutely not about trying to copy their way of shooting or their subject matter. This is about noticing.

A few weeks ago, I sorted through photographs that I had taken 4 years ago.  I was not enamored with the work, though I was impressed that I was still working and playing at it and noticed too that I was finding my own voice. That I was taking steps on my own path.

As they explain in Art & Fear, artists did their early work on cave walls, drawing what they saw and hunted. And later, "The whole population counted as audience when artists' work encompassed everything from icons for the Church to utensils for the home." The distance between life and art was small.

Now it's wide open.

Returning to Havana in about three weeks is keeping my focus centered. It's a valuable anchor and allows me to find and explore another layer,  to travel deeper into the life and beauty I discover there.

"Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself."
    Art & Fear

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history & memory

How little I know about my deceased parents, Millie Wolkove and Louis Harry Ritchie.  How few questions I asked and how unimportant it all seemed then.



And now there is a hole in my heart and they are no longer able to help fill that emptiness.

                       My mother's parents: grandparents I never met

I knew my mother was an only child and that when she was very young her father's tailoring business allowed them a few luxuries.  I have a photograph of her mother, Esther, in a stylish-looking coat with a lush fur collar, as my mother, impeccably dressed, looked directly at the camera.

When Esther died, leaving her eighteen-year-old daughter motherless, Millie seemed to have acquired only the most basic of homemaking skills.

I know from my mother that she attended MacDonald College in Montreal and graduated a year later with a teacher's diplomas.  I have a photograph of her very large graduating class, all women and all dressed in white.

Her degree proved to be useless, however, as Jews were excluded from teaching careers.  How did "they" know she was Jewish? Did they ask her?

(Years after she told me this, I remembered again why we holidayed in Hollywood, Florida rather than the more popular Miami Beach. Many of the nicer Miami resorts restricted Jewish guests.  And I learned why a group of wealthy Jewish golfers opened Elmridge Golf Course outside of Montreal, as they had been similarly excluded from golfing at other private golf courses.)

It fascinates me that these particular stories have stayed with me, that even in my teens I balked at discrimination and exclusion.

I know almost nothing about my mum's life as a young adult.

From photographs I know she was very beautiful.  Beautiful with many boyfriends.

I know that from this group of adoring young men she chose to marry my dad.

About my dad, Lou, I know even less.  His family was very poor and I remember him telling me that he and his brothers stole apples from orchards so to lessen their hunger.
He worked at a Department store in sporting goods for a while and then as a traveling salesman.  I don't remember asking what he sold.  I do know that this work experience made him the very best packer-of-suitcases, a skill I learned from him!

When he started a rainwear business called Sports Togs Ltd., he changed his name from Richstone to Ritchie, discarding the Jewish-sounding name that his brothers still kept.

I remember him saying that he was "a card-carrying Communist" for a time in his youth and that there must have been a painful period when workers at his rainwear
factory wanted to form a union, forcing him see how his ideals were crumbling.

In conjunction with membership at the expensive golf course, my parents' friends changed from a more diverse group of people to a narrower grouping.  Looking back, I see how my mum must have missed their former friends and disliked this new milieu.

I remember lessons of the cha cha and other dances taking place at our house. The dining table was pushed aside and I peeked in to look at my parents and their friends moving to the music.  I thought they looked pretty ridiculous "at their age" (maybe in their 40s).

I remember the narrow range of my mother's experiences: even though she might have become an excellent artist had my dad not discouraged her, she stopped painting classes.  She completed the New York Times crossword puzzle every Sunday, yet she didn't have another outlet for her quick mind and intelligence.

My thoughts and words have led me far from my blog's original intent.


With this writing, a great sadness has settled on me. A sadness for not seeing my parents as people whose lives were filled with thoughts, actions, stories of joy and regret.  I went away to college at barely seventeen years old and married immediately upon graduation.  Living in Vancouver and then in Duncan kept me removed from my birth family. Phone calls never allowed for intimacy: we had learned our roles well.

And has anything changed with my grown daughters?  Do they see a more intimate  portrait of me than I did of my parents?

My fear is that this awakening to one's parents' lives is as remote as ever.

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tiny stories

This time of year, when latkes have been fried and consumed, and when Christmas lights are draped over hedges and wrapped around the trunks of trees, it can be challenging for many.

Brian and I participate only a little in holiday festivities.  A latke bash at friends' is a highlight for us, and so is lighting the Chanukah candles, which seems both solemn and joyous. 

I miss my "kids" and their families at this time and wish we could all magically assemble and share our love for one another as we sing the prayers.

At my next shift at the food bank I will bring in a huge tin of Walkers shortbread.  Because cookies are only available through donations, not purchased through the food budget, often there are no cookies at all.

The people we know probably don't consider having a cookie a luxury.  

Think again.
                                                                             

Our book club members are a generous group of women. To our December meeting we bring in socks to donate to Our Place and in January, the bookies give me items for the food bank at St John the Divine. This year I've suggested special items like honey and jam, chocolate and olives. Tinned salmon and salsa. There are enough months when tinned vegetables and beans and pasta are the regular fare.

At the food bank, shampoo is poured into little plastic film canisters. Once a month, when a client gets to select 15 items from a printed shopping list, choosing shampoo means getting two of these containers. Last week, we emptied the last from the larger shampoo bottles into these wee containers.

 I imagine it's on next month's list of items to purchase.

The next day when I was at my hairdresser's, I talked about my experiences at St John's and asked if she might purchase a gallon container of shampoo and sell it to me at her cost. "Yes, absolutely," Moira said.  And today she phoned from Salon Modello to say she had the shampoo, and that she was donating it to the food bank!

Another angel.

On the darker side of gifting, I am horrified by its excesses.I subscribe to Ruth Reichl's newsletters in large part because of my fascination with how a select group of people eat, drink and otherwise indulge themselves. At this time of year she posts "A Gift Guide"  featuring one item a day for about two weeks. 

Noir Chef's Knife



$450.00



Even today when she recommended the reasonably priced collapsible coffee press, she suggested to wrap up a few great bags of coffee to go with it.  A few. 

I've just reread what I've written so far and, with a slight blush, notice how self-righteous all of this sounds. 

But, when David Hockney's "Pool with Two Figures" was recently purchased for $90.3 million after nine minutes of heated bidding at Christie's in New York, all I could think of was "No painting is worth that much", followed by, "Just think of the good those millions could have done."

What I see as supreme selfishness is that this painting will likely be hung in a locked room with specially controlled temperature and humidity. Or perhaps it will be stored in a vault.  The iconic painting, simply an acquisition. No longer art.

I wonder how I would feel if I found out that this private purchaser had also spent $90 million on famine relief in Yemen. Would that be justification for this personal indulgence?

 No, it wouldn't.

Opportunities for kindness and generosity surround us. 
                                                               $Millions not required.

When I pass someone sitting on the pavement, asking for money, I try not to look away. That doesn't mean I need to give money to everyone. Sometimes I have a pair of socks in my bag to offer, sometimes a Tim Hortons Gift Card, sometimes I offer acknowledgment with a nod.

And sometimes I do look away.

I had a powerful experience a few months ago. I was on Fort Street and a middle-aged man walked quickly by someone sitting against a storefront, berating him in a very loud voice. "Go get some work! Get off your ass!!" was the gist of it. I ran after Mr. Sanctimonious to say that his remarks were both hurtful and totally unnecessary. 

When I returned to the man who was the object of this toxic display, he quietly thanked me. Our pain was visceral.

For that moment I WAS the man on the street. 

For generosity is much more than about giving away things or money. Assisting people with kindness and giving people recognition for who they are, embracing differences with acceptance, is truly what generosity is about.

I believe that we can be most generous to others when we are both giving and forgiving towards ourselves.

This is something for me to remember as we move ever closer to 2019.

The photographs were taken in Pasadena when we visited my niece, Andrea



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toxicity

These last many months I have thought a great deal about our responsibility for the things we read and for those words that we choose to pass on from our gathering of information. 

This introspection, a reflective looking inward, is being forced upon me primarily because of Donald Trump and his toxic comments on Twitter.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY "Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell." PRESIDENT TRUMP, on his current and former secretaries of state.

This quote was included, in the large print you see above, in a New York Times newsletter I received this morning.

The internet, as well as reaching and connecting many millions of people and dispensing valuable information, has opened a huge chasm of differing viewpoints and comments from the ethereal to the divisive and toxic. The word, chasm, from the  Latin, chasma, and from the Greek, khasma ‘gaping hollow,’ evokes in me the frightening image of being in a deep hole or pit and trying to crawl up from its depth.

Why this dark image when I have seen and read glorious and positive stories on-line?  Stories of kindness and discovery; introduction to poets and artists; fact-finding and wisdom. And cartoons that make me laugh. On-line I find help towards understanding my camera and Google translations from Spanish into humorous English so I can read emails from my friends in Cuba.

For sensitive people in particular, the burr of negativity sticks, just as the burdock plant's prickly seeds stick to our clothing.

I know how the people we choose to be around is important to our well-being.  How the negativity of a person in our midst can pull us all down. And how, likewise, a  person's joy and consideration have a positive effect.  I am conscious of my effort to cultivate the friendships of those who elevate, and to move away from those who do not.

When Brian and I were in Cuba we were distant from all world news. No television, no internet, no communication at all outside of the personal day to day ones.

No tales of sorrow and bigotry. Of pain and unleashed anger. Of better than and less worthy.

In Havana I witnessed the kindness of people we met.  Not an easy life, to be sure, but as an outsider I appreciated how often people helped us figure out directions from our small map, often walking along with us. How we laughed together, unable to say in words what we meant, but noticing that it didn't really matter.

                         a tee shirt I brought to Havana....a perfect fit!

No "outside noise", as in negative news cycles, made it so much easier to access kind expressions from inside, from close to my heart. To notice parents' love for their children, older men and women sitting near a window observing life in the streets and to be able to smile and say"no thank you" to the multitude of bike taxis.

Yes, I did see the poverty in Cuba partly as a result of the American embargo. I saw too the young adults sitting on door steps, who seemed not to have work. I realize that I was a tourist/visitor who didn't know the stories behind the nearly 2,000 photographs I took.

But, in retrospect, I was healing from the American and Canadian news outlets.

I can escape again by returning to Cuba in the spring, but, as an ongoing filter, this isn't practical!

Just as responsible parents restrict their kids' screen time, so too do I need to limit mine.

I feel somewhat virtuous as I don't follow the news on television, but visiting on-line is no longer much different.  A half hour or more scrolling weighs me down. Where has the time gone and why am I not reading the books from the library and the three new ones from the Beacon Thrift store that sounded so fascinating just yesterday?

I've just scrolled through this month on my Facebook page.  I am trying to determine what grade to give myself.

When is sharing a truth okay and when is it best to be silent.















The entry (Dec 4) from Doctors Without Borders telling about being forced to stop their rescue boat from saving migrants in peril in the sea seems important to share. And, another post, saying that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) announced that it had located a terror tunnel, constructed by Hezbollah, that extended 40 meters (131 feet) into Israel, also seems important for others to read.

I think that sharing information, whether on-line or in person, needs to be considered as carefully as measuring drops of a chemical into a test tube.

For me, Trump's tweet translates to acute toxicity.

Definition of Toxicity - MedicineNet

https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=34093

Toxicity: The degree to which a substance (a toxin or poison) can harm humans or animals. Acute toxicity involves harmful effects in an organism through a single or short-term exposure.

The effects of Trump's produce absolutely nothing of positive value.  His hateful rhetoric benefits no one: not even the one who spews the dirt.

How can we ask our children to understand the pain of bullying and the harm hatefulness lays upon all of us, when the President of the United States belches forth these toxins.

Yet we must try. We must discipline ourselves, as well.

zeal

“I will give proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! It ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one."

From Darwin's autobiography.

How I love this quote, copied and saved on my computer for quite some time.

I wonder if it is the obsession part that holds me, or simply the unbridled fascination with a new discovery.

This morning I went to London Drugs to buy a second 64 GB camera card. While I won't be shooting raw this trip, I believe my camera can never have too much space for photos! 

Habana Vieja was truly a dream come true for me. Before Rafaela served us breakfast at 8 a.m., I had been outside with my camera for an hour, and after eight full days in Cuba, I returned home with 2,500 images, more than could be downloaded onto my computer.

Speaking with the woman who heads the photography department at London Drugs, I told her that I was returning to Havana in two weeks. 

"How wonderful!" was her response. We chatted for about 10 minutes, recalling moments of joy from our trips and also particular events that have remained with us. 

I talked about an hour-long downpour and the ride back to our casa in a bike taxi, covered only somewhat with bright yellow tarps. 

A few of my friends have thought it odd that I am returning to Cuba so soon.
"Isn't there somewhere else you'd like to explore?", they wonder.

"No, not really," I reply.

About 20 years ago I saw a short film in an art class I was taking at Malaspina College. The artist featured had two huge studios. One studio held a great many cabinets with about 100 shallow drawers.  Each drawer held a particular type of paper, sorted by colour and design. These were for the collages and mixed media art pieces he created. 

Besides the envy I felt, I was awakened to his passion and to his manner of collecting.  

The single line that has stayed with me was his mantra: "Follow your obsession!"

I reminded myself often of this advice over a twenty-year period, as I created more and more images of chairs using acrylic and occasionally a combination of paper and paint.

And, over the last few years I have collected about a dozen children's chairs, which reside in my studio-gallery.

And, as I look through my collected photographs from Cuba, well over 100 of these  are portraits of chairs!

                                        And in two weeks I will be back.