Man Filmed a Tree In The Woods For a Year and Captured Things Most People Will Never See
Music - "Have You Ever," by Brandi Carlile (Cover By Angela Lupinacci)
The video comes from a new project called ‘Forestbeat’, launched by photographers Bruno D’Amicis and Umberto Esposito. After the discovery of the ancient venerable beech forest within the territory of Italy’s National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, the team have sought to spread awareness of the area to the general public.
RSA Tower, 201 Monroe St., Montgomery, AL (RSA photo)
My daughter, Elaine Farley Kinnaird is a recipient of a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. This coming Sunday, July 29, from 2:00 – 4:00 pm, she will be a part of the artists showcase exhibit. You will get to see the artists’ work and will hear each artist talk about their work. See details below.
(Photos from the art installation can be seen here.)
2018 FELLOWSHIP SHOWCASE EXHIBIT
Montgomery, ALA – The Alabama State Council on the Arts is showcasing the work of six (6) Fellowship artists at the Georgine Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery in downtown Montgomery. The gallery is located in the RSA Tower, 201 Monroe Street, first floor, suite 110. A reception is scheduled for Sunday, July 29, from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. with artist talks happening between 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. The reception is free and open to the public.
Artists featured in the exhibition:
·Scott Fisk
·Elaine Farley Kinnaird
·Miriam Norris Omura
·Charity Ponter
·Jared Ragland
·Kami Watson
Scott Fisk is a graphic designer, artist, and educator. He graduated with an M.F.A. from Memphis College of Art and received his B.F.A. in graphic design from Henderson State University. Fisk’s interests include web design, typography, photography, motion graphics and multimedia. In 1994 working as a designer with NetM Communications he created for clients in the U.S. and Britain. His motion graphic works have been featured on major television networks in the U.S., Australia and Japan. Fisk's work is part of permanent collections in numerous galleries and museums, including the U.S. National Archives. He served as an Army Reserve photojournalist in Iraq, often serving as a combat photograph with U.S. and Iraqi units during combat operations. Fisk is currently a Professor of Graphic Design at Samford University, where he also serves as chair of department of Art. http://designsetgo.com
Elaine Farley Kinnaird majored in Art History with her senior thesis on the topic of Mesoamerican sacred bundles. Her idea of the bundle as an object which elevates the mundane into something sacred has now become a central theme in her work. Her work seems to bundle space, time and memory. Her art is like jazz—a skilled improvisation, fueled by internal and external stimuli, that is created under her guiding hand. http://efkinnaird.wixsite.com/elainefarleykinnaird
Miriam N. Omura received a BFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio. After graduation, Miriam worked as Technical Assistant for the department, Artist Assistant to Cleveland-based artist, Hildur Jonsson, and in positions in area museums (The Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland Museum of Art, Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens).
Omura later earned a MA in History and Art History from Cleveland State University in Mississippi. At that time she began shifting away from studio art and towards museum collections work. Omura acquired a position at The Heritage Center in Pine Ridge, South Dakota on the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation, cataloging the historical and contemporary Native American art collection. Afterwards she moved to Alabama to be the Collections Manager of The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama. She now works full time at her studio in Birmingham, Alabama. http://miriamomura.com
Charity Ponter explores the lines between art, documentary, and portrait photography in order to reveal honest connections with her subjects. Through her work, Ponter offers a visual landscape in which people and situations can freely share realities on a deep and often spiritual level. She often seeks community collaboration with other artists supporting her view that all individuals have inherent value and a unique voice in this world. She is uninterested in visual trends that isolate, self-promote or divide. Instead she creates work that brings healing and connects diverse groups of people while invoking a communal village mentality. https://charityponterphotography.com
Jared Ragland is a fine art and documentary photographer and former White House photo editor. He recently worked on a long-term documentary on methamphetamine use in rural northeast Alabama and currently teaches and coordinates exhibitions and community programs in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Ragland is a photo editor for National Geographic Booksand has worked on assignment in the Balkans, the former Soviet Bloc, East Africa and Haiti. In 2015, Jared was named one of TIME Magazine’s “Instagram Photographers to Follow in All 50 States.” His work is exhibited internationally and is featured in numerous magazines and newspapers including Forbes, The Oxford American and The New York Times. https://jaredragland.com
Kami Watson has a nomadic past with a focus on environmental conservation and humanitarian services. Those life experiences exposed Kami to global influences in design and culture and led to a desire to create functional and visual art with an ecological sensitivity. As a second generation fiber artist, she freely explores the traditional art of wet felting, the fusing of raw fibers into a textile form with soap, water, and agitation, as well as the contemporary techniques of nuno (fabric) and laminate (multi fabric layer) felting. She combines renewable natural fiber resources, reclaimed silk sari and clothing fabrics, and her own hand dyed silk fabrics and fibers to organically create each of her works of art. She allows the materials she uses, and her past and present influences and life experiences to guide her instinctively in color and design. https://www.kamiwatsonstudio.com
"Shores of Ogygia," by Alabama's own, Bobby Horton. It was written for the PBS film series from Ken Burns, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. Bobby Horton first teamed up with Ken Burns for his groundbreaking documentary series, The Civil War. Horton was an expert on Civil War era songs and provided much of the soundtrack.
Where were you on
July 20, 1969? That was the day when we realized the goal set forth by
President John F. Kennedy “to put a man on the moon in this decade.” I know, some of you had not even been imagined yet, but if you're a boomer, you probably know where you were that night.
It was on a Sunday,
and in my hometown at the First Baptist of Dadeville, Alabama, some petitioned the preacher, Rev. Murray
Seay, to cancel the Sunday night service so we could all watch. He came to our
Training Union class to announce that the first step on the moon had been
delayed and we would have time for worship and the moon walk.
Our family gathered around the black and white TV. The moment came at 9:56 p.m.
Central Daylight Time. We heard Neil Armstrong declare, “That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” We were all amazed that two guys were actually up there walking
around on the moon. We watched along with Walter Cronkite, of course, as he
anchored the CBS News desk.
The first Apollo mission had ended in tragedy when a flash fire engulfed the capsule during a test run the day before the scheduled launch. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were
killed that day. Then later, there was the dramatic mishap on Apollo 13 in which the crew were fortunately brought back safely after a rupture disabled the service module of the Apollo spacecraft on the far side of the moon.
In the years that followed, I was dismayed that the Apollo missions became
so routine that there were no network interruptions to carry sustained
coverage. It was treated as old hat, when I wanted to follow each mission as it unfolded.
Later we would see the Space Shuttle program, the deployment of the Hubble
telescope, the building of an international space station, and missions to Mars
with robot explorers like the Curiosity Rover. You can see it all at NASA’s
website, https//www.nasa.gov.
I first saw this edition of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke over at Dave Robison's blog, On the Road with Dave. He calls it "the happiest 20 minutes on the internet."
This is a time for all good men and women to open
their eyes and ears. It is time to awake from our slumber. We will find our
nation’s hope where we have found it in the past, by looking to the values that
we hold dear. We have often failed to live up to those values, or perhaps we
have moved toward them haltingly, but we dare not abandon them.
On Inauguration Day,
2017, I began a series of journalistic poetry that I called, “Bearing Witness to the Times.” With that first poem, I spoke of how we can find hope. Today I
still think that this is how we find our way back home.
When Hope Is Set in Stone
(Thoughts on inauguration day)
Photo by Martin Child / Robert Harding
(Getty Images)
We put our heroes in marble
Thinking we give them honor
When in fact
We do it for ourselves.
Having learned that we can so quickly
Misplace our values
Or set aside our highest ideals,
We chisel from the stone –
Or cast in bronze –
Those images we admire.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial (Wikipedia photo)
Justice and wisdom Come through those marble faces,
I have a couple of new posts over at The Music of the Spheres. This is one I went searching for. I heard this magnificent hymn sung in church recently and it stayed with me throughout the days ahead. "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation," translated by John Mason Neale and set to the tune WESTMINSTER ABBEY by composer Henry Purcell.
I found this rendition on YouTube where it was sung at the Ecumenical Celebration at Westminster Abbey, September 17, 2010.
Listen to Fred Rogers' inspiring commencement address from 2002
"Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. May we never even pretend that we are not."
[The following essay was first posted on July 4, 2017]
Photo from Max Pixel
Today on our nation’s birthday, I will spend some time in gratitude for the wonderful country that is the United States. I will not, however, spend any time conflating God and country. The one is a natural human response that anyone might have for his or her homeland while the other is a dangerous move toward the idolatry of nationalism. That danger of conflating faith and patriotism came home to me last Sunday when we sang the soul-stirring "America the Beautiful" in church.
Brian McLaren had a brief discussionon his blog regarding the difference between nationalism and patriotism. He also shared some thoughts with Patheos publishers on the meaning of Christian identity as it related to patriotism in a YouTube video.
God and Country?
My own conflict came to light for me many years ago when I was a Baptist seminary student. I was in school in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge – a beautiful environment for learning. While in school, I was involved in youth ministry in a nice suburban church in Novato, California, which is further up U.S. Highway 101 in northern Marin County. One Sunday, right before the choral anthem, the pastor (a fine man who had given me some excellent guidance and advice) called for us all to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (it was on the Sunday that fell just before Independence Day). One of my best friends even went up to hold the U.S. flag. In all fairness, my friend was in the military reserves and several in the congregation were military as well. I am sure that they, like many other of my Baptist colleagues, saw no conflict. I, on the other hand, felt like I had been delivered an unexpected side-blow.
During that time of worship which I saw as a time for contemplation and the turning of one’s attention toward God, I was suddenly called upon to stand in allegiance to my country. Of course, I was proud of my country – and patriotic – but to me, in that setting, in that sacred space, the worship of God took precedence above all else. I had first begun to parse out the difference between love of God and love of country when I was a freshman in college. I learned in my Western Civilization class about how St. Augustine saw the necessity of reassuring the faithful that their faith need not be devastated by the fact that the Roman Empire was falling apart. He set it all out in his written work, The City of God. It occurred to me that just like those earlier times when Rome and the Church were seen as inseparable, we American Christians too often were conflating God and country. The way I framed it for myself then, trying to follow Augustine’s lead, was that if I did not fully separate my faith in God from my love of country, then my faith might not hold up if my country were to fail. More important, I might not properly distinguish the demands of faith vs. the demands of citizenship.
Taking it to the Classroom
It just so happened that in seminary that semester I was taking a field supervision class which met every week to examine issues we were experiencing in church ministry. I brought my dilemma to the group – of having faced the inner conflict of having to say the Pledge of Allegiance in the context of Christian worship. In the discussion that ensued, some were surprised that I would have such a conflict. One person said that he saw patriotism as a Christian duty. "What about Vacation Bible School?" someone else countered, "we always lead the children in the Pledge of Allegiance there, in church, while teaching kids the Bible." Another said that I was sounding more like a Jehovah’s Witness than a Baptist (Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in saluting the flag or pledging allegiance to the United States since their duty and allegiance should be to the Kingdom of God). Later in the week, one of my classmates stopped me to offer a word of encouragement and expressing admiration that I “put myself out there on the line” in the group discussion. I had not seen anything “heroic” in my questions, I was simply bringing forth my own honest discomfort and conflict that had occurred during a time of worship.
A Young Country and an Old Faith
Since those days, I have parted from my Southern Baptist heritage for many reasons. Nevertheless, it remains ironic to me that a group that has made the separation of church and state one of its hallmarks should have conflated God and Country so that the line between patriotism and faith is practically indistinguishable. Our great country is, after all, not even 250 years old while the Christian faith is over 2,000 years old.
Though I have not been in a position of having to say the Pledge of Allegiance during worship in the intervening years, I still witness the unexamined conflation of God and country, as in the case I mentioned earlier with using "America the Beautiful" as a closing hymn in church. During that service last Sunday, I closed my hymnal and remained silent throughout the hymn. I listened, wondering if perhaps I could make that a prayer for country rather than an exaltation of nationalism in the context of worship. I decided, no, that would be a stretch. It is a beautiful song that I prefer even over the National Anthem, but for me it does not belong in church. Love for Country and Peace among Nations
The tune "Finlandia" was composed by Jean Sebelius and has been used for other hymns ("Be Still My Soul" is one example). "This Is My Song," by Lloyd Stone, was written when the poet was 22 years old. It was after WWI and the song is a beautiful example of having love for one's country while recognizing the need for peace among the nations. The song is performed here by Indigo Girls.
This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine;
this is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.
"Sparrow," by Paul Simon, from Simon & Garfunkel's first album, WEDNESDAY MORNING, 3 AM. Art Garfunkel mentioned in his memoir, What is it all but luminos, "We knew how to do Sparrow from the summer of working English folk clubs."
According to the Gospel of Matthew, soon after the visit from the Magi, Joseph was warned that he and his family should flee their homeland and go to Egypt to seek refuge from King Herod's attempt to kill their infant son.
As we remember the refugee, and those immigrants who have much to contribute, I am re-posting a poem inspired by the French artist Luc Olivier Merson. Egypt knew not whom she held, yet she kept the family intact.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
How still the air must be this night –
A wisp of smoke
Moves straight to the sky
As the fugitive fire
Slowly dies.
How still the night
As the light of heaven
Rests in Egypt’s ancient arms.
How still the night
As donkey grazes and
Joseph sleeps While beyond the distant river Some petty tyrant Fashions weapons of war.
