OUR WORLD’S AN OPEN BOOK
Benji of deli fame, two students in China, New Berlin cows, a woman in her rainbow-colored pantsuit, a knitter, Jack Waldheim relaxing, Bill Nichols’ head, all sit on tables while our son Joshua plays chess day and night on the floor. They’re part of Adolph Rosenblatt’s sculptural world on display this month at Open Book Co-op, 4093 N Oakland Ave in Shorewood.
And my world’s there, too, in ink and acrylics. My dancers leap, gull shadows threaten my pizza, other gulls observe me, one eye at a time, lovers embrace, and the sun rises on both the east and west end of the wall.
If you feel like saying hello to us in our visual milieu, please come to our meet-the-artists reception on Thursday, April 8, between 6 and 8 PM.
We are at work, shaping, and at "becoming a humanity."
A poem:
It is the human brain reaching out beyond what makes mere existence,
DOES GRAY MATTER?
"I'm not getting older, I'm getting busier." That should be the twenty-first century mantra.
Does busier make us age faster?
Maybe that's why so many people dye their hair;
they want to hide the gray, as if gray matters.
It's gray matter that matters, the substance of our overworked brains.
The more matter the better, as the gray blur of whirring remains.
Does busyness kill us or help us survive? make us dumber or smarter?
And where do we place the blame For all this Busyness?
Frankly, I want to go read a book and worry about it later. Anyway, if I'm still around in a couple of years, I'll figure that being busy helps me to survive.
So here's my busyness for the next few days:
Friday, APRIL 16 is Gallery Night: Eli has an opening at Soups On Gallery, 221 N. Water St, 6-10 PM. He's been painting a blue streak (not literally), and has a lot of his recent work posted on his home page.
Friday, APRIL 16: Adolph and I will be at Rosenblatt Gallery, 181 N Broadway, and the Guest Artist is TINGHONGINNIE LEE, reception 7-11 PM.
Thursday, APRIL 22: I'm performing my Water poem next to Lake Michigan's waters for the Sierra Club's Earth Day Celebration at the Coast Guard Pavillion, 5-7 PM.
Friday, APRIL 23, 7 PM, at the Urban Ecology Center, and Saturday, APRIL 24, 8 PM, at the Coffee House, it's the 23rd Annual Earth Poets & Musician Performances.
FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010
7 PM Interactive Poetry and Music for the Whole Family
8 PM Earth Poets and Musicians with SPECIAL GUEST: SUSAN FIRER, Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2008–2010 Featured Performers: Jahmes Finlayson, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Holly Haebig, Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, and Harvey Taylor
URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER, 1500 E. Park Place
$5.00 Per Person, $10.00 Per Family, UEC Members Free
LITTLE STEPS ON A LONG BRIDGE
One June night in 1977 I awakened in the middle of an intense dream and wrote it down. That's how I started writing short stories, a sudden, unexpected step into my future. My short stories became longer ones, then I began to write travel journals after trips, then memoirs in the third person and personal journals in the first person.
Poet Christina Zawadiwsky invited me to read my stories with her at Woodland Pattern, and that's how I started performing, one more step on my bridge to nowhere in particular, which is where I like to go.
Shorewood High School Alumni Association Update!
As a blogger who also happens to be the President of the Shorewood High School Alumni Association, sometimes things cross over into all aspects of being a Shorewood resident and parent as well. Everyone knows pending budget cuts from the state are going to affect all schools in a big way. Shorewood as a District stands to have to cover an $800,000 shortfall just for next year, with another whopper following that.
What can we do? Get informed, and Get involved!
Open Book: Can it be saved?
The Milwaukee Professionals Association will host a meeting at Shorewood's Open Book store Saturday to talk about ways to save the store.
Open Book operates as a co-op after a rocky start as an LLC. The store is slated to close April 30, after less than a year in operation. Organizers said they couldn't make it financially and wanted to cut their losses. Here's a link to the story I wrote when the closing was announced.
