Karinaland River

  Here is a follow-up to yesterday’s historical refresher:         “ I Grew Up Celebrating New Year’s Eve Like Frederick Douglass”     By   Esau McCaulley   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/opinion/watch-night-new-years-eve.html     Excerpt:     Each New Year’s Eve reminds us that the work is never finished. Douglass knew that. He said, “The slave having ceased to be the abject slave of a single master, his enemies will endeavor to make him the slave of society at large.” Because of his prophetic imagination and the painful lessons of history, he saw that something like Jim Crow was on the horizon. He knew that law and custom would endeavor to return us again and again to servitude.     What is the solution to that ever-present threat? Douglass said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Each generation of Black folks has taken up this watch keeping, guided by a moral compass that transcends the limited imagination of the powerful. We have done so out of respect to the generat

I have always been fascinated by how people celebrate their Holy Days , their history & traditions. Sometimes there are different meanings for people in the same country, or different religions claim the same days. In America, most of the holidays have a strongly unifying commercial flavor. It is mostly the immigrants who bring their earnest approaches and traditions in order to connect with the land and culture they left behind. And regarding Black people in America, history lessons for all of us seem to be involved.   (Still by Karina)   For enslaved African Americans, the holiday season was the best time of year to escape    – it offered miracles of a practical sort.     https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/12/24/christmas-slavery-escape/   “Why Christmas was the best time of year to escape slavery ” by  Gillian Brockell     Excerpt:     On Christmas Eve 1854, Harriet Tubman, the fearless “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, rescued three of her brothers   from the pl

  Brown-skinned Angel  by my mother  Jutta Epperlein, Germany (enamel, about 2 inches high, 1975) 

I Will Not Be Sad In This World     #1    Beginning of December, a woman called Rose leaves a message on my phone about my film   I Will Not Be Sad In This World , which was released back in 2001. She saw it 20 years ago, at its unofficial world premiere in the San Francisco Public Library for the Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, and she wants a DVD of it. After so many years I have very few copies left, streaming has taken over. We talk on the phone, and I decide to let her have a DVD. When she comes by to pick it up we talk – I like her. Here she is right at my front door, holding her family stills and DVD with Zaroohe.­­­­­     Left: Mother, Hosrofui Kuiumgian born in Cesaria, Turkey in 1913; with m e: Vartuhi Kuiumgian (now Rose Magri). Right:  Grandma Nevrig     Rose tells me her ancestors’ story: how family became spread out over several countries and continents. It is the story of the Armenian Diaspora, families scattered, trying to survive & thrive in new lands, reme

  Another night walk , today in rain gear. Not yet a real test for my new rain pants :) but they enhance feeling cozily enveloped. In darkness, humid warm air, fog… in fine drizzle, silence, and rhythmic breath coursing through my body… Tidal waves of in & out, a warm bath of breath washing me gently within my skin. Cleansing my mind’s cobwebs into elemental aliveness and stillness.    In my childhood, I teach myself how to secretly slide into heightened awareness, through easing into self-invented bodily postures and movement sequences, or gazing for a long time with one eye deeply into the chalice of a flower, till I slip into a different universe, shapeshifting and “timeshifting.”    Traveling to the other regions of our being, the ones we only know from sleeping dreams… All art is for me as a child the portal to those invisible planes, music foremost. My ear is sensitive to the messages inside the sound of a singing or speaking voice. There is perhaps a hidden cry, a shy smile,

As the Winter Solstice approaches  and all things stand still the grasshoppers and cicadas in my garden put on their glitter for the Cold Full Moon dance tonight.... stills by Karina

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16 th  in 1770 – we are so lucky to know this composer’s music.   "the moral law in us, and the starry heavens above us." wrote Beethoven.... In the summer of 2019, my Austrian friend Peter, a  music teacher,  introduced me to the intimate and beautiful Beethoven Museum in Heiligenstadt, Vienna. Not a crowded tourist attraction, this small gem of a museum is intimate and beautiful. And to my surprise, while meandering through the creative exhibition of this restored residents' house,  I am flooded by memories . I am back to being 15 years old, locked in my tiny room, listening to Beethoven’ symphonies on LPs – singing, dancing, crying to the music. Over & over, I know it by heart. Just me and Beethoven. The artist knew suffering and he knew joy, he inhabited the whole range.     https://www.wienmuseum.at/en/locations/beethoven-museum  

  Have to come back to this story, and ask you:  How easy is it to see yourselves in the following predicament? Other people believe they can write your story for you, they refuse your truth and innocence, discard you, lock you up, and label you a rapist, sexual predator. You are robbed of your life – and it will be from then on extremely difficult to maintain your dignity, and even survival.     Well, Black and brown and poor people have to live this story more often than we know. Here is a case with a famous white female writer involved. The story is very old, going back to slavery, the deep-seated fear that Black men are supposedly out there to rape white women, hence many a lynching. Justice seems for Black people just not attainable for the most part.     This Story is very American, and interesting: heart wrenching, enlightening, tragic, and lastly moving and amazing.   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/nyregion/alice-sebold-anthony-broadwater.html   “Days later, Mr. Broadwater

Morning in late fall – view of Mount Tamalpais  through the oak's window Living in Berkeley is a huge privilege. Every morning I am grateful to have been bound to the San Francisco Bay Area now for four decades. It was a December night exactly 40 years ago. With my one-way ticket on a Pan Am flight and one small suitcase, I arrive from Munich at the Oakland airport, which is tiny back then, and deserted. Nancy and Tony, members of the theatre company SOON 3, pick me up around midnight. The car ride to San Francisco over the old Bay Bridge. It all seems non spectacular to my exhausted and disoriented young self. In a few days I will turn 28 years old. December 14, 1981.  For the first three months, I am going to be living at the directors' home called Dreamland Ballroom. Performing at the famous Magic Theatre. My English is very bad, my ear is not used to the American tongue. I barely understand conversations, unless people speak slowly. And I get basically nothing of what is ra

International Human Right’s Day –  s ince December 10 th , 1948 Justice – or the lack thereof – has interested me all my   life: in many settings, historical or contemporary. And maybe all of December should be about the basic NEED for Justice, because without justice, there cannot be Peace, or Freedom, or Equality. Justice is the basis for true brotherhood, the place where we meet as equals, are treated equally, given equal opportunities & rights.      In America, most people who end up in the Criminal Justice System have not been treated equally, they are either poor and/or people of color. Those of us who belong to the privileged will be protected from injustice and therefore not even notice. For me, it has been encouraging to hear more voices talk finally about this “monstrous” problem in American society.     The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration.   https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/ One in every 5 people in the US has been in touch wi

  When a famous person is involved, we might pay attention:   Anthony Broadwater and Alice Sebald Washington Post – Anthony Broadwater exonerated – December 2, 2021 “Justice arrived like a meteor, originating from an unlikely source: Timothy Mucciante, who nursed grave doubts about the veracity of Sebold’s story when he was the executive producer of the film version of “Lucky.” He suspected that the man called “Gregory Madison” in the book might not be the actual perpetrator, and in late June hired private investigator Dan Myers to look into the matter. “After a conversation of over an hour with Anthony Broadwater, I knew this guy was innocent,” says Myers, a 20-year police veteran.   Five months later, on Nov. 22, four decades after Broadwater’s misfortune began, the conviction was vacated in a courtroom where the judge and prosecutor agreed that the case was profoundly flawed.    “It was professionally sickening,” Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick says days later

Sunset  still empty panels on this living memorial

Wrongfully convicted in 1979. One of several recent exonerations  in the news. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/23/kevin-strickland-murder-exoneration/     “Kevin Strickland, 62, managed a smile while talking to the media after his release from prison on Nov. 23 in Cameron, Mo. Strickland, who was jailed for more than 40 years for three murders, was released from prison after a judge ruled that he was wrongfully convicted in 1979."     “The state of Missouri is not going to pay Mr. Strickland a dime for the 43 years they stole from him, but the whole world is going to make sure he’s compensated,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Strickland’s attorney and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said in a phone interview Friday with The Washington Post.”     https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/26/kevin-strickland-gofundme-donations/   https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-kevin-strickland-after-wrongful-conviction

  The other day, I spot a young woman in jogging attire across the street , intently looking at the mural. Then she comes over and looks more carefully, reading. She does not see me watching. Her mouth slightly ajar, she is completely absorbed, with a stunned and painful look on her face. She takes her time; these are private moments for her. Besides the old-timers who talk to me about the mural and other things, most people walk briskly by these days. But there are also newcomers, or those who dare to take it all in. And then I am reminded that the mural has impact on the viewer. Like most art, which invites people to engage, resist, ignore, or be inspired. And even in the act of refusal is always the seed of having been touched…   This little episode got me to ponder some more where to take this memorial mural project.  The idea for it started to pour through me 18 months ago.  Honoring, remembering. And I am still listening, not done – a Justice Wall, giving dignity and context, per

My feet move in steady rhythm, legs swing loosely from the hips , knees soft, soles are rolling into the springy compacted sand. Each step’s impact ripples up my spine to the head top. Step after step, after step. Uninterrupted. Listening to the continuous currents inside my body, I realize Sand is talking to me, louder and clearer than ever. Gravity falling through me, Sand below, forward motion. Rhythm of my feet harmonizing with murmuring gentle waves rolling in… what strangely balmy beach weather on this first day of December.   The tide is very low. The soles of my feet eagerly deciphering the rising messages. Sand is talking. To my heart. Sand revealing itself as my ancestor. Teaching me about ever shifting patterns and change. The art of being changed, sculpted, shaped and reshaped… over and over again… I keep walking, same rhythm, hundreds of delicious steps, two hours have gone by.   Sand keeps telling stories. How wonderful to be sculpted into endlessly morphing