Available Light
Harrow(ing)
During our early March visit to the woods*creek*meadow, I was able to partially solve the mystery of the large object buried on the woods-side of our creek, thanks to our builder, Tony. He offered the use of his small Bobcat excavator, already on our premises for some driveway work, after I told him about noticing something spiked and metal sticking out of the ground more than a year ago as I was cleaning up trash in the woods.
Book Review: “Red Earth Nation,” by Eric Zimmerman
Zimmer makes the case that though the Meskwaki people continued to face hardships because of America’s racist policies, the land they were able to hold onto provided more leverage to maintain their sovereignty than they would have had otherwise.
Book Review: “Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair,” by Hilary Giovale
Hilary Giovale’s book, Becoming a Good Relative, is a gift and an invitation.
Who are the savages? Parallel histories of Indigenous genocide
So clear to me is the historical parallel between Israeli settler colonization of Palestinian land and European and then American settler colonization of the Americas, known as Turtle Island to its Indigenous peoples—that I do not understand how anyone can see it otherwise.
Family Stories—Inherited Silence and The Cost of Free Land
Two recently published books describe the authors’ surprising revelations about their ancestors’ settler colonial pasts.
A letter to my Congressional representatives
…I said I would post the letter I wrote to my Congressional representatives. I imagined writing the most beautifully persuasive letter…
Land Justice and the 2023 Farm Bill
Access to farmland is challenging for young farmers, and particularly so for those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
New exhibit: Landscapes of ancestral migration
My ancestors drew me to landscapes they inhabited before and after over a hundred of them emigrated from Europe to this continent during the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I traveled to and photographed these landscapes in the Netherlands, Germany, and England, on one side of the Atlantic, and on the other, to Virginia, Iowa, New York, and North Carolina. In those places I often felt a quiet knowing inside myself that specific ancestors had been where I was standing, sensing their presence in the present as I felt the hard edges of my linear sense of time dissolve.
More than we can see—Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’
Learning more in Linda Gordon’s biography of Dorothea Lange, A Life Beyond Limits (NY: WW Norton, 2009) about the history this photograph—Migrant Mother—made me consider my own photography practice in light of hers.
Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine—A review
Claudia Rankine searches for conversations about white people’s complicated understanding of white privilege in Just Us, a beautiful book of poetry and essays accompanied by curated imagery.
Book review: Clint Smith’s How the word is passed
How the Word Is Passed is a first-person account of Clint Smith’s travels to places in this continent and Africa to uncover stories that have been lost or hidden about the tragic legacy of slavery in this country.
Being here
…travel is central to my investigation of my ancestors' lives, particularly those who left Europe to settle this continent.
