Memory is too much a burden: poem and painting

My poem, "Memory is too much a burden," and my painting below, "Marin Headlands Study 1," were published in The Montague Reporter's poetry page on April 30, 2020, with poems and art by Trish Crapo and Nina Rossi. Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno is the poetry editor at The Montague Reporter. 

Marin Headlands Study 1

 

Memory is too much a burden

 

Memory is too much a burden.

With this acceleration, 

the requisite catalog 

too much to keep.

 

Forgetting is a luxury. On Thursday the president proposed 

we inject disinfectant. How do you write a love poem? 

The birds have returned to look at us.

A robin, perched on the fence, 

watches me drag a chair across the yard

to sit and read a book.

 

A friend’s bicycle helmet    hangs on a wooden beam

now a nest for finches. I cannot 

remember the sweet tobacco of my mother’s hair. I cannot 

remember the tilt of your mother’s head 

as she worked a hook in yarn. I cannot 

remember how sunlight beams in through the tall windows, 

stretches the length of the wooden floor 

as we work together. I cannot remember sitting, 

our elbows on the table, as we argue the succulent oranges 

from their pungent, elastic skin.

-Samantha Wood

#RiverWitness: The knife

 This knife.

My mother’s extended family, Russian Jewish refugees, settled in the Connecticut River Valley, in Connecticut, in the early part of the 20th century.
They came to this region to farm because of the excellent soil turned up by the river itself.

My mother referred to this knife as the “bread knife” and it had belonged to one of her grandmothers, D’vorah, one of my great-grandmothers for whom I am named. Before my mother died, she gave me the knife.

And so, I found myself, years after coming to live in Greenfield, Mass., while working at a newspaper here – and in so doing, learning much about the history of this place – standing in my apartment holding this knife in my hand and pausing to read the stamp on the blade.

Russell. Green River Works.

A couple blocks away from where I was standing in my kitchen in an apartment in a building built around 1850 to house railroad workers, was the first site of this company – a factory powered by the Green River.

A couple of decades later, around 1870, the company moved over the low ridge to Turners Falls and expanded in a facility powered by the Connecticut River.

Standing there in the kitchen with this knife in my hand, I understood that much in my life has been shaped by these rivers. The knife had come home. #RiverWitness.

****

The #RiverWitness campaign, a create community response and social media tool to connect the communities in the Connecticut River watershed in service to the advocacy work of The Connecticut River Conservancy, has been developed in partnership with the Collaborative Community Art Response Team (CCART) and The Art Garden, and is supported by a grant awarded by The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts with funding from The Barr Foundation.

COVID-19: Greenfield masks

Greenfield Mayor Sticking by Mask Advisory

Says Mandate Would be Too Great a Burden on City

GREENFIELD – Amidst growing calls that the city mandate the wearing of face coverings in public, Mayor Roxann Wedegartner has explained her reasoning for holding to the advisory the city issued last week.

 The wearing of face masks and their efficacy in stemming the transmission of the novel coronavirus has become a topic of much discussion, with some countries calling for the wearing of masks in public. The Centers for Disease Control first advised the American public earlier this year that masks weren’t necessary, and even that masks should be avoided due to a shortage of professional protective gear for medical professionals. Then, on April 3, the CDC reversed its position, advising the public to wear a mask when going out, and provided instructions on how to make a simple one.

 During a Thursday afternoon press conference outside the emergency operations center (EOC) at the John Zon Community Center on Pleasant Street, Wedegartner explained her reasons for maintaining this city’s advisory position: the burden of enforcing such a mandate, and the inability of the city government to provide a mask for every resident.  

“Our police department and our health department employees are working hard to address daily calls and issues around social distancing, and believe me, there have been many, many calls,” Wedegartner explained. “They did not need this added enforcement action in their day-to-day work.

“In regard to access [to masks], the EOC, with its on-going supply issues, was unclear if they would have the capacity to both meet their mission and meet the demand for distribution of PPE to all city residents – which I feel like we would have to do if it were mandatory,” the mayor said, adding “we strongly encourage everyone to wear face coverings when out in public as an additional layer of protection for yourself and your community.”

On Sunday, former city council president Karen “Rudy” Renaud posted on Facebook that she intended to ask the current council leadership to schedule an emergency meeting “to discuss face coverings in public.” A day later, she submitted a draft ordinance to the council that would mandate their use.

On Wednesday, city council president Ashli Stempel-Rae and council vice president Otis Wheeler issued a statement in reply, saying they had discussed the matter with local leadership, and they had decided not to take action toward mandating masks.

“There have been requests for City officials to order that face masks be worn in public, and for City Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss. We appreciate and understand the spirit of the request; health and safety is our greatest concern, and in a state of emergency, an abundance of caution is warranted. However, after conferring with Mayor Wedegartner, and inquiring with Command Staff,” the press release reads “we feel that such an action is not justified at this time.”

“It remains as it was outlined in our release, a strong advisory,” the mayor said Thursday. “The city is not mandating the wearing of face coverings in public and there will be no fines issued or negative consequences for members of the community who do not have a mask to wear in public.” 

However, the mayor had stern words for local businesses. 

“I especially want to remind all of our retail businesses that have been designated as essential and able to stay open, to have their employees wear masks as well as make every effort to encourage customers to be doing the same thing.

“Our board of health is monitoring our essential retail businesses, at my direction.”

The city is working with local crafters who have been making masks for use by the general public. “This week we’ve launched a donation and distribution drive for homemade cloth masks,” the mayor said, adding that hundreds of masks have been pledged by an anonymous donor and are expected soon at the EOC.  

If any Greenfield resident needs a mask, the mayor encouraged them to contact the city’s COVID-19 resource and information line at 413-775-6411.

“It is a type of honor system,” the mayor said.

A number of Massachusetts cities have recently mandated the use of face coverings in public, including Northampton, Holyoke, Salem and Brookline.

Abstract art in a time of increasing surveillance

Map by Nelena Soro

One of the pleasures of curating You Are Here and Exploded View's residency at The Great Falls Discovery Center is getting to spend time with the art, pausing, returning, focusing and pursuing the unfocused gaze. 

Abstract art, both visual and musical (and here I am thinking about improvisational music and jazz, especially), is sometimes difficult or frustrating, sometimes it is considered foolish, a mess or a waste of time. 

American culture makes almost no room for it. I suspect this is because so much of our communication and working life is representational, or literal, and we are often punished or considered suspect for associative thinking or creative pursuit. Time is money, they say, are you wasting time?

With increasing saturation of surveillance technology, people may pay more attention, whether overtly or subconsciously, to what is expected of them.

And people may, increasingly, do only what is expected of them.

Can we even grasp the loss implied in this?

This is the subtext I hear when people say that surveillance technology provides a convenience and it is only a problem when people have something to hide.

Because it refuses to tell us immediately what it is, abstract art confronts people with the act of feeling and creating meaning on the spot. This is, perhaps, unsettling. It immediately violates the rules of a culture that wants you to do only what is expected of you, because no one can know what you will see or hear in such art. It requires you to respond.

For me, this unknown ability, this invisible organ – sensory nerves fueling muscles of the imagination – is the best thing about being alive. It is at the core of our ability to think, to solve problems, to make something new. 

And as we move toward an increasingly surveilled state of being, in a culture that has always been suspicious of art, I think it is even more precious and worth making. 

*
To learn more about the artists in You Are Here, go to:
https://explodedviewma.blogspot.com/2020/01/you-are-here-in-personal-cartography.html

Antenna 1

An audio collage

https://soundcloud.com/user-345402517/antenna-1

This work is part of a larger project examining the mechanism and meaning of antennas.

It was prompted by the event: 413 says #CloseTheCamps, which was organized by Theatre Truck. This piece was first played in public at midnight on July 27, 2019 during that 24 hours of performance at The Shea Theater in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.

Run time is 27 minutes and 53 seconds.

A letter to the editor sent to The Recorder in Greenfield, Mass., on January 23, 2019 on the topic of the proposed library project.

Renters and the library

It is a myth often repeated that renters do not pay property taxes. 

In most cases, renters, through their monthly payments, cover taxes and the mortgage on the dwellings they rent. Renters also increase wealth for landowners. I would challenge anyone to look at the rents in Greenfield and consider what all that money could be paying for, if it isn’t also covering property taxes. It is difficult to find an apartment with one or two bedrooms in Greenfield for less than $1,000 per month. A house will be more.

Other strange myths about renters include that they aren’t committed to their communities, they won’t stay here for long, they don’t care about the local landscape, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with them for not getting the money together to buy a home. I have heard all of these opinions expressed in conversation. Take a look at average local wages and calculate how difficult it would be to save enough money for a down payment on a home while paying that rent and maintaining a vehicle. Now add student loans, a child, saving for retirement. 

Surely, some homeowners will be having trouble making ends meet, as will many renters.

And through all this, there is tremendous public support for the library project in Greenfield, across these sectors. 

A new and adequate library is an essential service. It is the starting point of continuing education for the entire population. The library is the community’s center, where members of the public exercise the First Amendment every day with access to news, information, arts and culture, and meeting spaces. We pay for this collectively through our taxes, local property and state income taxes. It’s a great idea. Let’s build a good library.

Samantha Wood

Greenfield

Light gets in

It is time to return to the laws of thermodynamics.

1- energy cannot be created or destroyed 

2- entropy always increases – something will be left behind

3-The entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero. 

What is light?

Merriam-Webster says:

“ electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength that travels in a vacuum with a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, specifically  : such radiation that is visible to the human eye”

Whose eye?

Light is measured in candelas and lumens.

A candela is a measure of intensity equal to the light of one candle.

The lumen is a measure of luminous flux.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but where does it go when it gets in your eye? 

What is light in the body and mind?

Does entropy pool in the feet, the knees?

Light gets in but where does it go? 

Energy always moves, unless we register a temperature of absolute zero-

We are faced with a question at this time of year: 

Can we live without light?

Can you even see down the road to get home?

The Doppler of inspiration coming at you and leaving,

are we meant to freeze in a perfect stillness?

Energy cannot be created 

or destroyed.

It gets in your eye.

For we are an imperfect instrument,

and light cannot stop.

Even the light of one dead star on the darkest night is moving at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second.

You can feel it when it hits you. 

I performed this poem at The Holiday Spectacular at The Shea Theatre in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, December 14 & 15, 2018.