Abby Shahn's Blog

The dangers of single issue politics

All of the recent chatter about contraception prompts me to ask this question. We keep hearing about the fact that Obama’s attempt to have access to birth control included in women’s health care coverage somehow indicates a government interference with freedom of religion and with the right of people to follow their own consciences. My question is this. Does it follow then that religious organizations ought to control women’s decisions? Are people saying that church should have the right make those decisions for women? Are we more concerned about the freedom of these men to make decisions for women than for a woman’s right to decide for herself. Is that somehow better than having the government limit the churches power on this issue?

I heard Rick Santorum this morning on the news trying to dodge owning up to his former statement that birth control was morally wrong. Then he went on to boast that he was the guy who didn’t believe in man made global warming. After our eighty-degree temperatures yesterday I was surprised that he didn’t try to dodge that issue too. But no one asked him if the odd weather gave him pause. I guess he knew that he could count on the talking heads on the TV not to ask any of those questions.

I always loved lightning bugs. How did they do it? I remember that my friend and I filled a whole jar with them and then held the jar over a book. We would read whichever word got lighted up. Or a friend’s kid who set them in clear cups on a table where they became an instrument panel on a space ship. I guess I’m still playing.

Once someone gave me a clump of daylily roots and bulbs. I never got around to planting it, so it sat in a bucket all winter. The next spring it sprouted. I was amazed about that. It had frozen hard as a rock, but stayed alive still.
Then I began to notice that there were more and more daylilies along all the roads around here. Here’s what I figure is happening. The snowplows come through in the winter and pick up little clumps of lilies and carry them down the road and drop them off. They grow there and then the plow takes a clump of that patch and moves it on down further. and so on…
What a wonderful powerful plant! The young shoots are delicious. So are the buds of the flowers.

It’s been so long since I added anything here…or anywhere. I’ve been busy getting the garden in, hanging art and art shows. I was in a nice drawing show at the Harlow gallery in Hallowell organized by Amy Ray, whom I’ve come to admire.
I also organized, put some pieces in and helped to install a show in the empty windows of Skowhegan….and some full ones. It is a show of globes and riffs about globes and about the world. “Worlds Seen and Foreseen”. A lot of people went all out and produced some really wonderful works. We have installed lighting, so the show can be seen at night. It looks really wonderful. It will be up through August 6th.
There will be an artist reception on August 5th. More info will follow and I’ll take some pictures too.

I used to have a little saying that “despair is a luxury”. What I meant was that people who were scrambling for the next meal, had to hope that they would find something to eat. I meant that they couldn’t waste time with despair. I meant that it was better to hope for a better world, and especially to work for it, than to sit home and wallow in despair.

But this morning, watching Amy Goodman marking the one year anniversary of the BP disaster; realizing that the oil had settled in and gone nowhere; that the claims for compensation were being denied; that dolphins, turtles, fish and bird were still washing ashore….realizing all of that I got a little overwhelmed. Despite the fact that we know that fossil fuels are ruining the environment, we just keep pumping them out.

Meanwhile, just as we watched the oil spill endlessly into the Gulf last year, this year the Fukushima nucleat plant endlessly spills it’s radioactivity. I love eating fish. I think it’s important for our health, but which fish should we eat? Despite the fact that nuclear disasters are so devastating, despite the fact that scientists have found no safe way to deal with nuclear waste, we keep commissioning new nuclear power plants. What’s going on?

I wonder what kind of world my grandchildren will inherit. Our civilization seems to be on a collision course with it’s own annihilation. Spring is finally coming. Things are starting to sprout and grow. There’s no need for this madness.

The TV is full of faces. Think about it. You never see talking heads at the movies….sometimes kissing heads….well, sometimes talking heads too. But the movie screen is bigger, and it has more room for whole landscapes. There is room there for landscapes with multiple incidents within them. The TV, on the other hand, is really good at faces.
Sometimes the TV faces are pointless, like the faces of the pundits, like the faces of the sports announcers. Then there are events like the recent uprising in Tahrir Square. When stuff like that happens, TV is in it’s glory. At those times the TV news can be a powerful art form. So it just was, as those events unfolded. It seems to me that the whole world was captivated by the events there. We saw an incredible array of faces…..beautiful faces…lit up with hope. …..crumbling in despair. It was very moving. There was so much real bravery. The whole world was moved.
Those events made me realize what was the greatest betrayal of Obama. It wasn’t caving on health care or the budget. It was even the escalation of the wars. Worst of all, was the betrayal of hope. Obama spoke of hope, of the “the audacity of hope” and millions of people who were in despair, dared to feel hope. As I watched and listened to those events, I saw how hungry we all were for hope. I realized how deep will be our despair as our hopes are crushed.
Two people killed in Tahrir Square this morning.

How brave the people of cairo are!
I’m so moved by their resolve and courage.
I want to apply those qualities to my own life.
I want to convince my country to stop supporting tyrants.

When she sleeps it seems like the deepest sleep imaginable.
No sudden sounds disturb her, since she is deaf. It seems at those moments as if she is hovering on the border line between life and death. it seems as if one day, she will sleep her way into death. That would be the right way for her to go.

Our cat is twenty years old. She is stone cold deaf. She
was a great hunter when she was younger. Now she meows all the time. They say that that’s because she can’t hear herself.
Now she has become an ancient….more and more precious to me.
I feel as if I should pamper her in every way, just as i would pamper and ancient wise woman who was only partly conscious any more.