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.
After the deluge
Hurricane Helene stormed through the mountains of North Carolina in late September while my husband and I were visiting my son and his family in Melbourne, Australia. We watched the events unfold an ocean and a continent away.
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.
Four small images of beauty
Four small images from my Four Seasons of Beauty—The Farm at Penny Lane series are currently on the wall FRANK Gallery. The series Four Seasons of Beauty is a love letter to The Farm at Penny Lane, a place of refuge, human connection with the natural world, and beauty. This farm in Chatham County, North Carolina serves individuals with severe and persistent mental illness through volunteer opportunities, wellness workshops, and boxes of fresh, healthy vegetables.
Pick your poison
It’s probably a little late in the summer for this, but I need to make a public service announcement about poison ivy.
Illumination
The ground over which I now was watching these tiny sparks of light from my front porch was a place I had known the joy of kinship…
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.
Painted ponies go up and down
Please come visit Peel Gallery’s carnival-themed “Carousel” slideshow and exhibit at The Northside District Restaurant. An opening reception will be held Thursday, October 26 from 6-9pm and the art will stay in that space through the end of November.
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).
Paris. Photo.
What was Paris Photo to me besides an excellent reason to visit my good friend Sarah and my favorite city of Paris? Besides an overwhelming kaleidoscope of human interaction around the material and conceptual stuff of photographic art?
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.