REFRESH

One Saturday in January, members of the Friends of Calligraphy gather for Trivial Pursuits, a day-long workshop that gives us a chance to catch up with friends, meet new ones, and try our hands at art projects. The day is like a game day for calligraphers, unlike the rigorous routine of regular calligraphy classes.

I arrived at the church hall near Japantown where the event is held each year. I looked around the room to see familiar faces and some new ones. Six members of the group volunteered to lead classes that allowed us to experiment with paper sculpting, stamping, eco-card making, and practicing meditation by drawing circles with a Chinese brush.

My results from Trivial Pursuits
 a bookmark, two letter stamps,
an eco-card with envelope, Enso circles, and Celtic knots.

As I looked at each table, I could see the packets each instructor had meticulously prepared for us. The packets held the supplies needed for the project they presented to the group. I grabbed a cup of coffee before I sat down to construct an ornament of paper circles from paper that had calligraphic writing on it already. 

After the first class finished, I moved with a different group of members to a table where we wrote a quote in a circle on a piece of eco-printed paper. Once finished, we fit the paper inside a black frame and addressed the envelope provided. 

At the next table, I found a completely different experience. Holding a Chinese brush at the top of the brush instead of near the brush end, I made circles following the practice known as Enso, a form of meditation. The circles are drawn slowly and helped to quiet my own rapid mind.

After lunch, we gathered for our fourth lesson. I opened a folder to find instructions to make Celtic knots, the complex pattern often appearing in Medieval manuscripts. Making the pattern reminded me of setting type for a letterpress. I needed to concentrate on the pattern and the world around me disappeared.

Celtic Knots

In the next class, we created letters cut from sticky-backed foam which we inked and stamped onto a piece of paper. The stamps could be a good way to mark authorship of a project.

In the next class, we made bookmarks using acrylic paint. I randomly placed removable Scotch tape onto a piece of watercolor paper and then brushed various colors of acrylic paint over the entire surface. Once the paint was dry, I removed the tape, which left the white paper showing. I cut the watercolor paper into strips of different lengths and widths and adhered some to the bookmark provided. Along one edge I wrote a quote by Fran Leibowitz about reading.

My bookmark with an error in the quote.
It should say, "Think before you speak. Read before you think."

All day the room was buzzing with laughter and questions, with people showing each other completed projects and learning about new tools. At the end of the day, tired from all that creativity, we all cleaned tables, folded chairs, rolled the tables into storage, bundled up our projects, hugged friends, and walked out feeling refreshed and motivated to continue to explore the techniques learned at Trivial Pursuits.

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Jim Costa:  Don’t give into the lies. Don’t give into the fear. Hold onto the truth and to hope.

GREAT FRIENDS

How would you like to be remembered by those who knew you? I asked myself that question with the news that a special friend passed away this week. She was part of a long-time threesome. We visited museums, went to plays, wrote memoirs, and played the game Quirkle on the picnic table in her backyard. We ate lunch together at local restaurants sometimes accompanied by other writer friends, spent time in each other's gardens, and painted and played with art materials. We laughed a lot and shared stories of our families. She was always game for an adventure even when her world had been reduced by physical limitations. The reaction from other people to the news of her passing showed that her kind outreach to others affected everyone she knew. She will be one of those who will be sorely missed, unlike others who leave a messy stamp on the lives of those who knew them.

I've read of the idea that we die twice. Once when our bodies let go, and the second time when no one keeps us in their memories. I think back on my parents, grandparents other relatives, and friends who died too early. I still hold their memories, most of the time with affection, sometimes with regret for not being a bigger part of their lives. Joan lived a long life filled with family and with strong connections to people in her community. She was part of a church group that made quilts every year to give to people in need. As a writer, she told stories about everyday incidents that had universal meanings. Joan was a mentor to me and showed me often how to be a better friend through her kindness, her attention to other people's needs, her sense of adventure, and her willingness to share life lessons. She is well-loved and will be remembered for a long time. 

In the past few months, I've taken a couple of Zoom calligraphy classes through Friends of Calligraphy, one of the Bay Area guilds. Risa Gettler taught a class in Visigothic Versals based on an alphabet used in Spain during the Middle Ages. Because of our move, I was only able to participate for a couple of sessions but came away with the technique of placing a large, decorated letter at the beginning of a paragraph. I'm now taking a class with Jurgen Vercaemst (based in Belgium) which he calls Colorful Lettering Compositions, using a casual version of the Roman alphabet. Though I haven't had the time to thoroughly engage in either class as much as I would like to, I have come away with some new ideas. I've used those to design a piece that is still in the draft stage to honor my friend.

A lament on the loss of letter-writing  
First draft for Spanish Visigothic Versals

First Rough Draft
capital too far away from other letters

Which capital letter to use?

Second Rough Draft
Ready to be inked and colored?

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"The time is always right to do what is right."  Martin Luther King, Jr.

EXPERIMENTS

Winter. We notice winter in California because of the darkness in the morning, the rainstorms we hope for, and temperatures hovering between 30 and 50. Not the tough weather that happens in other parts of the country. We still feel the sense of winter, wanting to curl up by a fire with a good book, and having hearty meals to warm our bodies. I'm reading The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate right now. Her writing is powerful and lyrical. The first sentence of the novel drew me in.

Besides reading, I'm back to my watercolor class. I immediately noticed that my lack of daily practice over the holidays showed up on the page. I tried painting a scene of the north side of Mt. Diablo, a mountain peak in the East Bay. I almost put the painting in my cut-up and repurpose file, but I persevered to see if I could improve it. I find that art and cooking have similar trial-and-error episodes.

A couple of days ago, I tried a new recipe, a pasta dish without meat, but with caramelized onions and mushrooms as its base added to broth and penne pasta. It sounded good. When I put in the ingredients in the amount specified by the recipe, my mind nudged me that there was too much broth. Those little nudges I get occasionally that tell me "watch out, stop, go back, think again" are important to me, but something I ignore too often. That nudge was right. Too much broth left the meal pretty bland.

I didn't want to waste all the food I had prepared so I thought of ways to change the recipe. I remembered a Mostaccioli recipe, another pasta dish similar to lasagna. I poured off most of the broth and stirred in sauteed crumbled hamburger and my homemade tomato sauce into the mushroom and onions. In another bowl, I combined ricotta with an egg, parmesan cheese, oregano, salt and pepper. I placed half of the pasta and meat sauce in a greased pan and topped the mixture with the ricotta cheese, to which I added another layer of pasta, meat sauce, and ricotta. I topped it all with mozzarella, covered the dish with foil, and baked it for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees. I removed the foil and baked it for another 5 to 10 minutes until the sauce bubbled on the edges. I ran it under the broiler to brown the top a little.

When I served this refreshed dish, Bill and I took our first bites and smiled at each other. All those flavors added up to a hearty winter meal. This pasta dish will help us get through a chilly winter. Now, if I can do the same with my recent watercolor painting by adding a variety of values and shapes, I might end up with a painting I'm pleased with.

Unfinished watercolor with possibilities for improvement

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Ann B. Miller, a San Francisco artist, teacher, and calligrapher, wrote a recent post about mistakes titled The Order of the Black Chrysanthemum. Good read!

Ann B. Miller and Getting Inky post:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-154404892 

FULL OF WORDS

 Do you make resolutions in January, pick a word of the year, or list aspirations? I've noticed that writers of blogs and personal essays find a word that resonates with them to use as a theme throughout the year. Like resolutions, these ideas often fade away as life presents other interesting ideas. I don't usually make resolutions or pick a theme word, but this year the word, time, keeps cropping up for me. This past year has been one of recognizing how short time can be. Our moves around the Bay Area have heightened the number of projects we have to do. We think, "It was just the first of January and suddenly it's a week later or a month later or...." We look around at what we have to do and remind ourselves one thing at a time.

 Like a year about ten years ago, several people I knew passed away. They had been people from my childhood or early adulthood but we hadn't stayed connected throughout our lives. Their deaths surprised me and left me with a sorrowful feeling. Though we knew each other briefly early in our lives, their passing means I have no way now to learn from them or to say goodbye.

Other words have popped up this year. I am curious about the difference between hope and optimism. Several writers offered essays favoring one over the other. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hope as "to cherish a desire with the expectation of fulfillment; to want something to happen or be true." Optimism is defined as "an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome." A slight, but important, difference between the two.

Of the two words, I favor optimism because to me it implies an understanding of past events and with the knowledge gained, to look to the future with a willingness to weather challenges that will always come our way. I look back to fictional characters who I admired: Jane Eyre, Mary Poppins, Anne of Green Gables, and others who exhibited the traits that I value and hope I have acquired. The last couple of weeks I've often thought of former President Jimmy Carter, who showed us that optimism and hope go hand in hand. His work to build better lives for people, to end diseases that threaten us, and his work for peace reminds us that with his positive attitude and self-confidence, he could accomplish much in the time he had.

ALIVE AND HEALTHY

One page from a daily sketchbook

One year I wrote one sentence in a gratitude journal each day. At first, the ideas came easily. I tried to concentrate on small things: a cup of coffee handed to me by my husband Bill, the cat poking my face to wake me up, the joy of meeting a friend for a walk. After a while, I had to dig deeper to find something different that impacted my day. At the end of the year, I read through my statements and surprised myself by feeling better about the world I lived in.

Gratitude, sometimes an overworked word at this time of year, came slowly during that year. Writing down my thoughts helped me realize what mattered. This year, I didn't find the time to write in a gratitude book, but one human endeavor kept popping into my head. I turned to gratitude and found science. Two discoveries made a difference in my lifetime: antibiotics against infections and the development of vaccines. 

I was told that as a toddler, I had mumps. If you've ever held a baby with an earache, you must wonder how awful mumps, which can last for days, would be at that age. Luckily, I don't remember being sick except that I continued to have painful earaches throughout my childhood. The triple vaccine for whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus was already available and with the herd immunity essential for vaccines, I was never exposed to any of these. During my childhood, I had chicken pox and suffered through high fever and painfully itchy skin. I contracted rubella and measles from a friend as a teenager. With measles, I spent two weeks in bed with red rashes all over my body including down my throat. I had a hard time swallowing any food, but I was lucky not to develop deafness nor blindness nor some of the worst secondary conditions that can result from a case of measles. It wasn't until a few years later that vaccines were introduced to prevent those childhood diseases.

In the first year of elementary school, we all lined up to receive the new polio vaccines. We were well aware of the consequences of that disease. We had all seen photos of the rows of iron lungs, breathing for the people inside them, but we also had a personal experience. A friend contracted polio before the vaccines were available. She continued to walk with the assistance of crutches and braces on her legs. Her life was changed forever by polio. 

My dad was the only person I knew who didn't have the round scar on his arm from the smallpox vaccine. I was told that he had had smallpox and survived. Because of the smallpox vaccine, smallpox has been eradicated around the world.

In our turbulent world, there is much pain, suffering, joy, and pleasure. We now have vaccines for flu, pneumonia, RSV, and COVID. We can be a healthier world because of the work of scientists. Today, I want to thank scientists for developing these life-saving preventions that continue to significantly improve our lives. What a difference they have made. 

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Check out this article in VOX about the importance of herd immunity:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/386215/trump-rfk-jr-vaccines-health-measles-chart

If you are a nurse and agree about the importance of vaccines, you can support the Nurses for America petition here:

https://nursesforamerica.net 

View from my window December 2024