My memories of that day in 2001 now have a counterweight to the more recent events of 2020.
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The South Whispers Warnings
Originally posted on Barbara Ganias Comstock:
The deep South has as much historical significance as does Boston or DC, but its whispered warnings can often be ignored. The lessons the South has to offer seem particularly poignant today and so this is where I’ve spent the last week on vacation. It’s not been like other…
Death at a Distance
All my life, people have passed away either way too young or just old enough to have “had a good life.” But like the miracle of birth, the mystery of death always happens in its own time. It cares nothing about convenience or preparedness. No one ever asks me if I’m ready. I was 13…
Do elephants bring good luck?
I mentioned last week that I just started drawing, kind of out of the blue, almost two weeks ago. Many times, it seems, I work hard to fail. And then sometimes, a piece looks really terrible for a while until something kind of miraculous happens and it begins to look like the thing I’m actually…
Hope in the Time of Sheltering-in-Place
As spring hangs on the tips of every branch, verdant green stalks shooting through mud, tight buds on the brink of bursting open, And the skies aswirl with storms of a passing season, There is a dense and unrelenting darkness Like the deep sleep of winter — Crowding, pressing, pushing Us to stillness,…
A Meditation for Sheltering-in-Place
COVID-19 has swept into our lives in devastating ways. Across the country, it single-handedly has brought so much of life as we know it to a stand-still. If you live in the SF Bay Area, you’re now under a “shelter-in-place” directive. Everything closed. Everyone home. We’re all washing our hands and hording toilet paper. Stress…
Warren’s Woman Problem and the Conversation That’s Been Hiding in the Closet
*I saved the image of Warren from Twitter and wish I knew who the artist was. If you know, please advise, because I think that artists need to be given proper credit. I love this image as it hearkens back to the three gorgeous images of women right before the first Women’s March in 2017….
When death comes at Christmas
I have a friend who is dying. It always seems to be at the holidays when life — both the birth and the dying — hangs in the balance. It might be also in those precious, slow-motion moments, when time almost stands still, that we feel a little closer to God. Maybe it’s just at…
Rosies were everywhere! A tribute to the women of WWII at the Richmond Shipyards
What to do on a beautiful Bay Area summer day? Discover a quiet gem of a park! Yesterday was the Rosie Rally Homefront Festival at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Park — and there were Rosies EVERYWHERE! The Richmond, CA shipyards provided thousands of jobs throughout the war and was the home…
White Man Yelling in a Crowded Hall: How do we react?
Last night, it became crystal clear that my daughter is the generation raised with gun violence as an everyday aspect of their lives. I knew that, of course. I’ve been a teacher for over 20 years and we’ve been doing lockdown drills for what seems like forever. But this . . . We were at…
Butterflies, Guns, and Freedom: Why I’m So Done with the 2nd Amendment
Originally posted on Barbara Ganias Comstock:
There is a reason the young Pavel Friedman wrote from Terezin in 1942 that he “Never Saw Another Butterfly.” In the Nazi-made ghetto, where freedom was squashed and guards paraded around with guns slung over their shoulders, how could something as free as a butterfly exist? I’ve been thinking…
From fire and breath, beauty: Discovering the Blown Glass of Dale Chihuly
Always a fan of the earthiness of pottery, I wasn’t prepared to be blown away by glass. To whatever deep, soulful spaces pottery invites me, I found that blown glass invites me into the celestial. I was in Tacoma when I discovered the work of Dale Chihuly. Very quickly, I realized I must have been…
Barbara Ganias Comstock 