Art & Social Change—A Hypothetical Interview

© All text & photos (unless otherwise noted) copyright Skip Schiel, 2004-2010

A series from my earlier writing, not always directly about Palestine-Israel, this an attempt to understand my journey of discovery that continues to enthrall and mystify me.

Written 2003, revised 2010

With gratitude to students at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina who invited me to participate in their Art & Social Change conference, 2003—the interview no one at the College proposed.

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.

—Bertold Brecht

1. How is your art about social change?

I don’t make photos purely to produce change; indeed, I try not to think along this line, that what I make and do will change anything. I might harbor hopes, I might have dreams, but I can’t say I usually, if ever, consciously plan to stir social change thru my photos. I remain mindful of Thomas Merton’s plea that artists should not strive to be useful. Their role is elsewhere—play, experiment, delight, make something beautiful, and perhaps at times try to be a social critic.

Pettus bridge

Annual commmorative recrossing of the Bridge, Selma AL, 1999

I offer my photos to others who are the change makers. This could be the Savannah Dept of Community Services in their campaign to honor neighborhood leaders, or the Selma National Voting Rights Institute celebrating another Pettus bridge crossing, or the social service agency in the township of Evaton in South Africa succoring the elderly, or the Quaker Peace Center in Cape Town, South Africa with their multifarious programs in service and change. Or it could be the local Eviction Free Zone in their various campaigns, or Peacework, the late journal of the New England region American Friends Service Committee, and its readers who are often on the front lines of transformation.

South Africa, 1999

But equally important are the mysteries. I think of the woman gazing at my American Indian photos in the Chicago Cultural Center in 1992. Who was she, how might she have changed after viewing my photos, what was her work? Or the readers of the South African Development Fund’s annual report viewing my photos from Alexandra. Would they be moved to contribute money to the Fund which then might be funneled to social change organizations in South Africa?

Bigfoot Memorial Ride to Wounded Knee, 1990

So, in myriad ways, some of my photos might contribute to social change. I am cognizant of that. But my measure is not the change, it is the quality of the photo. Rightly or wrongly, I pursue excellence in photography—beauty and emotional content—rather than political and social effect. My lineage is photography not activism.

2. How do you support yourself in this endeavor?

Thru various funding sources—grants, fees, teaching—also subsidies for housing, food, and medical services. Plus—the community aspect. What I do is deeply embedded in Quaker practice and community. This is the real secret.

3. What difference do your political views and insights have for your work?

That is, how important is grounding myself in the issues?

Vitally important. I read, interview, meditate, muse, struggle, before, during and after any foray into a photo project. Preparing for the Auschwitz to Hiroshima pilgrimage in 1995 I read about the Balkans, Hiroshima, the death camps, Cambodia, Vietnam, and WW2 history. Some reading before, but much after. With the Middle Passage Pilgrimage, similarly, I read about slavery, the civil rights movement, key figures, the South, racism, South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and other topics germane to slavery and racism. And now, with my work in Palestine and Israel, I read A History of God by Karen Armstrong, the writings of Edward Said, various books recommended or given me by friends, the many articles sent me, while attending events about the area and issues, and meeting people who’ve been there.

Hiroshima Peace Dome, 1995

Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage

Even if the preparation doesn’t show directly in the photos, I believe it underlies the appearance and undergirds the photographer.

4. What is your center, your anchor?

A combination of American Indian practice (naming and honoring the powerful forces Wakan Tanka and Tunkashila and Creator), thanking, meditating, Buddhist practice (with its emphasis on the bodhisattva and its non-deism), Quaker practice (the silence, committee work, and clearness groups especially), and remnants of my Catholic upbringing (ceremony, endowed figures like priests, the social witness arm of Catholicism in the Catholic Worker movement, etc). Which in real life means I begin each day with yoga and meditation, walk in the spirit of the sacred, read inspirational and devotional and challenging literature, plunge deeply into my 3 core communities (Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nipponzan Myohoji, a Japanese Buddhist group that builds peace pagodas and conducts walk and pilgrimages, and Agape, a lay Catholic non violence center), and struggle constantly with the notion of god.

A Buddhist-led Pilgrimage to the School of the Americas, 2009

At the core of my center is silence, sacred silence. This is fertile ground for the inner voice to manifest, that still small voice inside that might be conscience, higher power, pulse of the universe, or god itself speaking. I go to and come from silence, building it into my day, resisting to the best of my ability the impulse given by this mad and reckless society to abandon silence and join the maddening yelling crowd, thereby swamping my center.

5. And what is your path?

Look at my photos, look at my life, and you will see it is an endless faltering attempt to walk the talk. The talk of freedom, justice, community, peace, environmental integrity, and the sacred. The walk of the walk itself—walking, pilgrimage, my photo series from various walking pilgrimages, my relations with peers and family, my teaching.

Phil Downey with Rex, Christmas, 2009

6. What would you do if you realized your photography had grown useless (in the sense of inspiring social change)?

First, how would I know this? What is the measure of utility? Aren’t we called to be faithful, beyond successful? Faithful to the call, rather than effective in implementing it.

Let’s assume I am ineffective as a photographer, measured by lack of effect on the society and lack of attention from audience, critics, and funders. What would I do?

If money dried up, I’d probably have to retool, as I did when that happened 20 years ago with my filmmaking. If the sustaining and confidence building flow of equipment, supplies, grants, gifts, and subsidies disappeared, by definition, by popular demand, I’d have to find alternatives. But if I could continue making photos, even without an audience, I do believe I would.

7. Do you regard yourself as a success?

I regard myself as a work in progress, a stumbling bumbling neophyte, persistent and not always as gifted as I’d wish.

In the words of Thurgood Marshall, “I do my best with what I have and who I am.”

Thurgood Marshall

Or as Philip Berrigan is rumored to have once requested for his tomb stone, “He tried.”

Philip Berrigan

Or the late historian and activist Howard Zinn: “It is the job of the artist…to think outside the boundaries of permissible thought and dare to say things that no one else will say.”

Howard Zinn

Or the German artist, Kathe Kollwitz: “While I drew, and wept along with the terrified children I was drawing, I really felt the burden I am bearing. I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate.”

Kathe Kollwitz, self portrait, 1923

LINKS:

Mitakuye Oyasin: All My Relations, American Indians, 1990

Auschwitz to Hiroshima: A Pilgrimage, 1995

A Spirit People, Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage, 1998-99

Visions of a New South Africa, 1999

A Buddhist-led Pilgrimage to the School of the Americas-part 1, 2009

Notes on my Quaker Connections in Palestine

© All text & photos (unless otherwise noted) copyright Skip Schiel, 2004-2010

A series from my earlier writing, not always directly about Palestine-Israel, this an attempt to understand my journey of discovery that continues to enthrall and mystify me.

PHOTOS: September – January, 2005

(Written on November 13, 2004)

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life.

—Thomas Kelly

In a nutshell, fruits borne by my Quaker connections are myriad. Without those connections my current trip [2004-05] to Palestine and Israel would be an entirely different journey.

Al-Quds University in Abu Dis with the Separation Wall impeding access of many students

Feeling a call to be in Palestine and Israel for an extended period, primarily to observe, comprehend, photograph, and portray what I experience–some would call this: witness with a camera–I wrote letters to many organizations engaged in the struggle for justice and peace in the Holy Land. One of the most promising replies came from Birzeit University near Ramallah, which was willing to engage me in a project about the right to education.

Ramallah happens to be the most active site of Quakerism in Palestine. The city is traditionally Christian; Quakers have been in Ramallah since at least the late 1800s. Motivated by the missionizing instinct, they organized a meeting for worship while establishing a school for girls.

Arriving in Ramallah in mid September 2004 to begin my work thru Birzeit (I might have landed anywhere in Israel and Palestine, depending on which organization first accepted my offer), I visited one of the two friends schools (archaically named “Girls” and “Boys” but in reality elementary and secondary, respectively). This first visit was to attend the meeting for worship on Sunday morning, since the meeting house is currently being renovated. Later that day I met the principal of the school, Diana Abdel Nour, who was in her office “catching up.” (I’d met her during the summer of 2004 at New England Yearly Meeting. The summer before at Yearly Meeting I also met the former directors of the Friends schools, Colin and Kathy South.) Diana invited me to visit the school the following Monday, coming in time for the chapel (which in reality is an assembly).

–Could I photograph?

–I don’t see why not.

Friends elementary school

Photographing I felt instantaneous resonance with the people and the place. Thus began my weekly visits to both schools and a growing series of photographs.

So connection number one with Friends in Palestine: Ramallah and Friends schools.

The Birzeit photo project ended prematurely, it did not work out. So I revived my efforts to volunteer my photography. Friends’ schools was on my list, not high, but present. I met the Friends schools head, Joyce Aljouni, at a meeting for worship. Learning of my experience teaching photography, she asked me if I’d be willing to lead an afterschool program. Initially, because of prior commitments, I said no, then, as my plans changed, I agreed to offer limited photography teaching at the secondary school.

She informed me that my offer to photograph the school was not timely–just days before my offer Joyce learned that a German photographer associated with the Barenboim-Said music project at the school was going to be photographing. The photographer, Peter Dammann, and I now work around each other.

Jean Zaru in the Ramallah meeting house

With the Birzeit project ending and the apartment they provided no longer available, I was faced with the question of where to base myself and where to live. I wrote my cyber clearness support committee (a twist on the Quaker tradition of clearness or support committee, but not in the actual presence of the members, by email instead). A friend many times to the region, Hilda Silverman, suggested I consult with Jean Zaru, clerk of the Ramallah Friends meeting. She is Palestinian, very wise, experienced in many forms of resistance to Occupation, harbors a dramatic vision of using the soon-to-be-opened Friends meeting house as an international center for the nonviolent transformation of the Palestinian and Israeli society–and might be able to help guide me on my next steps. I’d met Jean at meetings for worship in Ramallah and also in Cambridge when she spoke at our meeting. I emailed her. She suggested asking at the school whether any of the teachers or parents might have a room or apartment to rent.

Joyce replied that the school has an apartment they’d be willing to rent me at a reduced rate, the rate possibly negotiable for services to the school.

Connection number two: Jean Zaru, presiding clerk of Ramallah friends meeting.

Ramallah meeting house

I’d heard about the Ramallah meeting house, its deterioration, and one day, ambling around central Ramallah, after noticing on previous occasions a church-like structure–not quite a church, but a house of reverence perhaps–I learned this was the Friends meeting house. Later, Jean asked me to photograph its interior for the international committee which is supervising the renovation.

While searching for more organizations to photograph for, a Friend from South Africa, Jeremy Routledge, contacted me.

–Skip, I’m in Palestine, with the Ecumenical Accompaniers, let’s visit.

We had met for the first time in 1990 when a small group of us from Friends meeting at Cambridge visited South Africa to learn about the situation and express solidarity with those in the struggle against apartheid. We met again in 1999 when I photographed for the Quaker Peace Center in Cape Town that Jeremy directed at that time. And most recently we came together in Ramallah, he stayed overnight with me. He told me about the Ecumenical Accompaniers program, suggesting I might photograph for them.

One week later, I was at his team’s site in Sawahreh, a village east of Jerusalem. I photographed one of their projects observing checkpoints. Later, Jeremy invited me to join his team for a visit to another team in Bethlehem, a group of three clerics that Jeremy jokingly calls “The Three Wise Men.” With them we joined an Italian Catholic nun to pray the rosary at the new Separation Wall running thru the birth town of Jesus. I am now photographing their various other teams in Jayyous, Yanoun, Hebron, and Jerusalem.

Connection number three: Jeremy Routledge, South African Friend, and thru him the Ecumenical Accompaniers

Praying the rosary at the Separation Wall in Bethlehem

One of the Ecumenical Accompaniers teams is in Ramallah, residing at the Swift House, which is owned by the Friends School. I drop by occasionally for tea and to chat, also to photograph some of their activities, such as Emily Mnisi (also from South Africa) working in the Jalazoon refugee camp.

Emily Mnisi at Jalazoon refugee camp

And one final connection with Quakers. In 2002 a Friend, Paul Hood, videotaped at the Friends schools, and later told me stories of his experience. When that project was beginning, I felt so jealous–that could be me, I thought, maybe making a slide show for the school. His experience enlightened and propelled me to initiate my own. And here I am–not only because of my multifarious Quaker connections in the Holy Land, but because of my Beloved Quaker Community back home–living for awhile at the Friends elementary school, very happy with the sounds of children, the early and late light that streams in my apartment, the connection I have with a long tradition of Friends’ activities in some of the most difficult places on earth. Not always are Friends so placed. Thru the bases of the Ramallah meeting for worship and my refuge in the Friends school, I hope to sustain and encourage that tradition.

We will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

–Martin Luther King Jr.

Quaker connections links:

The Friends International Center in Ramallah (FICR)

Friends schools in Ramallah

Jean Zaru

“Crossing boundaries in Israel/Palestine: An interview with Jean Zaru” by Marianne Arbogast in The Witness

Ecumenical Accompaniers

Howard Zinn presente! May his life inspire us all: his writing about the uses and abuses of the Jewish Holocaust, “A larger consciousness,” ZNet Commentary, 10 October 1999

The Israel-Palestine Kaleidoscope: A memoir of my involvement with issues in the Land of Troubles—Part Two

© All text & photos (unless otherwise noted) copyright Skip Schiel, 2006-2010

A series from my earlier writing, not always directly about Palestine-Israel, this an attempt to understand my journey of discovery that continues to enthrall and mystify me.

PHOTOS from most recent trip, summer 2009

Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.

—Elie Wiesel, Acceptance speech, Nobel Peace Prize,  December 10, 1986

LEBANON

I was aware of Lebanon in 1982. I saw photos and TV images of the destruction of Beirut. Osama Bin Laden, the alleged architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, apparently claimed that watching Israel destroy the downtown towers of Beirut planted the idea of attacking tall buildings in the US. I heard about the Israeli-sanctioned massacre of Palestinians in refugee camps, Shatila and Sabra. I observed from afar the flight of the Palestinian liberation organization into exile in Tunisia, and with it the rise of Yasser Arafat.

Sabra refugee camp, Lebanon, 1982, photo courtesy of the Internet

Closer to home, an Armenian family from Lebanon owned a Middle Eastern produce store in Watertown Massachusetts where I lived at the time. Altho I never spoke with them about Lebanon, I imagined the suffering of their relatives trapped in that besieged nation. Thru my imagination the family focused my attention on the unfolding catastrophe. I learned later that I was not alone in coming to the issue of the Middle East thru Lebanon. Leap forward 24 years to 2006: the second invasion of Lebanon. By then, with my 3 years of direct experience in Israel and the Occupied Territories, the renewed suffering traumatized me, as I expect happened in much of the world. During the summer of the 2006 Israeli-Israeli war, Hezbollah missiles landing on civilians in northern Israel, cluster bombs and white phosphorus killing over 1000 Lebanon’s civilians, I wept and bashed my fists into the table, angry and hurt that the massive killing continued.

APARTHEID

Some observers of the conflict in the Middle East compare separation between Israelis and Palestinians to South African apartheid. In the mid 1980s I became intensely aware of apartheid in South Africa. This was a period of the worst of the worst, the most repressive period of apartheid. New and highly restrictive laws, censorship, house arrests, banning orders, detentions, torture, states of emergency, along with a growing international resistance movement thru educational campaigns, boycotts, divestment, and sanctions brought the issues to my attention. My first trip to South Africa was in 1990, during the demise of apartheid, a few weeks before the government released Nelson Mandela who would later be elected the first president of a free South Africa.

Photo courtesy of the Internet

I was part of a Quaker delegation. To visit Quakers in Soweto, the notorious township, we had to circumvent a restriction denying entrance to whites. I learned later while in the Occupied Territories of Palestine that Israel forbade its citzens from entering these regions, except for Israeli settlers. Similarly, South African Blacks could not enter white South Africa unless they had passes—leading to the famous anti-pass campaigns of the 1950s. Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza can enter Israel only with permits, very hard to obtain.

Dying in a township, 1999

Robben Island, Nelson Mandela’s home for most of his 27 years in captivity, “The University of Resistance,” 1999

AUSCHWITZ

At the gates of Auschwitz, the first night of Hannakah, December 4, 1994

Jews suffered the Holocaust, and before that, 2000 years of persecution. What might Auschwitz evoke if I were to visit? With my Germanic background, how would I respond to a killing field designed and implemented by some of my ancestors? In 1995 a Japanese Buddhist order I’m affiliated with, Nipponzan Myohoji, organized a pilgrimage commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War 2. As much as possible we would walk from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, praying, observing, hearing stories and bringing them to others in World War 2 zones of suffering, such as the death camps, bombed cities, and occupied regions–Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, and Palestine and Israel. I’d yearned to visit Auschwitz and Hiroshima, but when I learned we’d go thru large parts of Israel & Palestine–my desire long smothered–I was delighted and understood that this was an opportunity I could not pass up.

At Auschwitz standing before the ovens I realized that had I been raised in Germany or Austria at that time, as had many of my ancestors, I could have gassed and burned the Jews. I might have been a willing executioner, intoxicated with Nazism.

Drawn by Emilia Cassela, courtesy of Gemini News Service

After 4 months of travel, I ran out of money and returned home to find a way to rejoin the pilgrimage. I would miss Israel or Palestine–I was devastated. The seed planted when I first discovered the pilgrimage’s plan went dormant, but did not die. After the pilgrimage ended I helped edit a book about our journey, Ashes and Light. The chapter about Palestine-Israel explored the theme of the Abrahamic tradition, Jews, Muslims, Christians all descended from the forefather Abraham and the two mothers, Hagar and Sarah. This common root was a new discovery for me, one I work with to this day in an attempt to comprehend the paradox of a family conflict–both the Abrahamic family and the wider family of all creation–that flames nearly out of control in Palestine and Israel. I gazed longingly at the photos made by my colleagues showing the pilgrims passing thru a Gaza checkpoint. I vowed to somehow find a way to make photos like this myself. If not with a pilgrimage, maybe a delegation, maybe eventually as a solo agent in a broader context. I was disappointed, unsure, confused, yearning: the seed in me slowly grew.

Crossing the Gaza checkpoint, 1995, photo by Bill Ledger

“WHAT IS YOUR NEXT PHOTO PROJECT?”

The 1995 pilgrimage began to concentrate my attention more directly on Palestine-Israel. I learned about the first Intifada, shaking off or rebelling in Arabic, that began in 1987 in Gaza, and with others I was hopeful that this largely nonviolent resistance might resolve the conflict. Then the Oslo years, surprise after surprise, again building hope. But I was only marginally knowledgeable about these events, spottily read and fuzzily focused. In 2000 I had a conversation with my elder daughter, Joey, who like me was growing more upset at events in Palestine-Israel after the obvious failures of Oslo and subsequent peace initiatives. She told me about Edward Said’s book, The Question of Palestine. Reading its graceful phrasing and passionate articulation began to ground me in the tortured and many faceted perspectives about the region. Later I was to read Israeli Jewish authors like David Goodman, Benny Morris, and Nurit Peled Elhanan to widen my perspective.

I met a Palestinian activist in Boston, Amer, outspoken about the injustice in his homeland. While driving home one evening, he was stopped by police who discovered in his car political posters about an event supporting Palestinians. He was arrested on a traffic charge and eventually deported to Jordan for an alleged visa infraction. In my mind, not only was he a human being from a Middle East rapidly growing in my consciousness but also a person badly treated by US authorities.

I attended a report meeting about a delegation from my city Cambridge that had recently returned from Israel and Palestine. One of the participants, a portly genial fellow, Marty Federman, wearing a kippah (skull cap), began his message with words to the point that some in the audience will probably object to what he’s saying. Indeed, after a few more sentences someone yelled out at him, liar, self-hating Jew, you should be ashamed! This was Hillel Stavis, legendary local arch supporter of Israel. This interchange–Marty remained calm–alerted me to the volatility of the issue and the imperative to engage with it. Rather than turn back, this evening affirmed my growing direction.

Drawn to deeper awareness of the region, the issues freightened me and caused severe pain. Simultaneously I was attracted and repelled. One outcome may have been to numb myself, to silence my heart, walk away and plunge into some other issue. How could I be useful, learn with an open heart, and bypass narrow thinking and all the preconceptions that had adhered to me over my 63 years? Wasn’t I a little old to begin this new adventure? I longed to be able to wipe my internal hard drive clean, except for my operating system, and reinstall needed software, begin again with absolutely zero assumptions, preconceptions, world views, supposed facts, and see with clear vision. Know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Deer Island prison, Boston, 1988

Often people asked me what my next photo project would be. I’d completed a series about water, Bread and Puppet Theater, poverty, African Americans, and American Indians. I was musing about what next. I’d photographed in the old Deer Island prison and for three years visited a young Black man in Walpole, a maximum-security prison. I’d delved mildly into the Middle East topic. There were only two possibilities: prisons and Israel-Palestine.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was writing in my journal about this dilemma–which project to pursue?–when my younger daughter Katy and my sister Elaine visiting us from Alaska rushed into the house. They shouted, You won’t believe this, an airplane has just crashed into the World Trade Center. And they’ve closed Logan airport, all planes in the country are now grounded.

The explosions in the Towers and the Pentagon coincided with potential explosions in myself. I was very angry about the violence and intractability exhibited by all parties of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. So explosive that I felt myself becoming a bomb. This led to the realization that unless I found a way to work with my anger, to transform it into fuel for a long struggle, anger to outrage, a passion that would benefit rather than destroy, I would become self-destructive. I would not be a useful player. But what to do, how to activate, be responsible, use my craft?

URGENCY–TIME TO ACTIVATE

If verification of my urgency was needed, reflecting on Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli invasion and reoccupation of most Palestinian cities in 2002 as a response to increased suicide attacks on Israel, sealed my direction. I recall awakening during that period with gratitude on my lips that I was alive, my home was intact, my family had survived. Yet, had I been living in Ramallah, for instance, I might awaken abruptly in the rubble of my home–if awakening at all, lucky to be alive.

Israeli soldiers during Operation Defensive Shield, photo courtesy the Israeli Security Agency

Presidential compound (muqata), Ramallah, Occupied Palestine, 2002, photo by Ronald de Hommel

Drawing on my experience with South Africa when I experienced the horror of apartheid and the valiant struggles against it, and Wounded Knee when I first learned compassion for others outside my sphere, I decided to engage thru photography, but this would require travel to the region, see with my own eyes and sense with my own heart the various realities people are forced to endure. In my imagination I could become a Jewish high school student on a bus blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber. I might assume the role of the bomber. I might be an Israeli Knesset (legislative body) member who calls for the forced removal of all Arabs. I might be in the Palestinian Authority, seeking weapons from Arab countries. I could play many roles–in my imagination. I could meet real people, hear their stories, make photographs of them. But only if I were present in the region. And this would require undergoing some danger. I asked myself, am I willing to pay the ultimate price? And are my skills and personality suitable for the challenge?

I knew I could not continue relying solely on books, videos, speeches, slide shows, print exhibits, websites, or first hand accounts by recent travelers. Nothing so second hand. My path had to be on the ground–be there soon. Overcome my analysis paralysis.

What might be the most suitable method? Not solo. Definitely not a tour organized by a Jewish or Israeli group. Ah, a reality tour or alternative tour like those offered by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Global Exchange, and Boston to Palestine. Maybe join with the olive harvest as some friends have done.

During the summer of 2003, I attended a talk by an Israeli Jew who was initiating a housing project called Mosaic that would serve both Jews and Palestinians. He was the first Israeli Jew I’d met. I also met someone in the audience, the only dark skinned man present, Tarek, originally from Egypt, a handsome, deep voiced, impressive fellow who I learned later was part of the Muslim Peace Fellowship of Fellowship of Reconciliation. He was to co-lead a Fellowship of Reconciliation delegation in the fall. After much hesitation and confusion, I’d stumbled into a decision: travel with the delegation for two weeks thru Israel and Palestine, learn what I could, listen and look with an open heart, try out my photographic skills, and decide my next steps.

QUAKERS

So I finally began, supported and opposed by one of my primary communities, the Religious Society of Friends. In my Quaker circle, other Friends, both Jews and strong supporters of Israel, are sorely tested by my views, as I usually am by theirs. Some think the photos I show from my experiences take sides, demonize Israel and Jews, demonstrate my anger and hatred, do not align with the traditional Quaker peacemaking mode, and harm rather than aid the cause of peace, freedom, and justice. They’ve walked out of my slide shows, questioned a major grant my community gave me for my work, twice rejected workshop proposals about Palestine and Israel at national gatherings, and might be now blocking my participation in the local meeting’s forum series. My perspectives, some feel, border on or reveal anti-Semitism, that dreaded accusation that can lead to self-silencing. One Friend worries that I may slip from critic of Israel to advocate for its destruction.

Friends Meeting House, Cambridge Massachusetts

I feel my Quaker community is my family, I cannot avoid them, so we must resolve this conflict. Happily in the context of the Compassionate Listening Project, some of my primary adversaries and I have reached reproachment. Additionally for about 3 years a small group of us have been meeting monthly, the Israel Palestine Working Group, and we’ve offered 2 public programs, while visiting key aides to our national legislators. This group acts as a vital support group for me.

For years, in our small group’s ignorance of a larger world, we assumed we were among the few Quakers active on this issue. Then 2 years ago we discovered Friend comrades who publishes maps showing the shrinkage of Palestinian lands and erected a website that links Friends nationally and eventually internationally wrestling with the question of Israel and Palestine.

Friends Meeting House, Cambridge Massachusetts

CURRENTLY

I’ve been 5 times to the region, nearly 15 months during the past 6 years, with an additional 6 months or so of travel in the southern and western regions of the United States giving slide shows and putting up exhibits. In the fall of 2007, enrolled in a writing workshop at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education where I teach photography, I soon realized I was the only male among 15 students. I tried reading one of my stories from a recent visit to the Middle East, about roadblocks and threats from Israeli soldiers. Some of my fellow students seemed to wince. Maybe I’d made the wrong choice of story to read. During the next few weeks, hearing names of people and listening to their writing, I soon guessed that more than half of my colleagues were Jewish. Perhaps I should choose different materials to work on and read. Discussing this with my good friend Y, herself a writer and writing teacher and knowing my photographic work in Israel-Palestine, I decided to try to tell the story of how I arrived at the issue that now absorbs me.

There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone
And I won’t know the right from the wrong when I’m gone
And you won’t find me singin’ on this song when I’m gone
So I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m here

—Phil Ochs, “When I’m Gone”

Skip Schiel in Dheshei refugee camp, Bethlehem, 2003, photo by Mark Daoud

LINKS:

Quakers With a Concern for Palestine-Israel: Working for a Just and Lasting Peace

Rich Siegel, singing “In Palestine”

A Witness in Palestine, the work of Anna Baltzer

Ashes & Light (a book about the 1995 pilgrimage from Auschwitz to Hiroshima)

Auschwitz to Hiroshima: A Pilgrimage, 1995

Visions of a New South Africa, 1999, photos by Skip Schiel

“And you will be carried where you do not wish to go,” a fuller account of my photographic journey, presented as the keynote at the New England Yearly Meeting sessions on August 6, 2005, (revised January 5, 2007)

Upcoming New England tour with recent photos from Palestine & Israel—seeking venues

The Israel-Palestine Kaleidoscope: A memoir of my involvement with issues in the Land of Troubles—Part One

The road between Jerusalem and Jericho in the mid 1800’s

Israeli-only road thru the West Bank of Occupied Palestine, 2009,
photo by Kathy Felgran

© All text & visuals copyright Skip Schiel, 2006-2010 (except for two photos by Kathy Felgran)

The first in a series of my earlier writing, not always directly about Palestine-Israel, an attempt to understand my journey of discovery that continues to enthrall and mystify me.

PHOTOS from most recent trip, summer 2009

VIDEO:  Starting Point: An exhibition of photographs from Gaza

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive…

…Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, from “Please Call Me By My True Names”

MAIMONIDES SCHOOL

September 1966, 25 years old, a four-month-old daughter, Vietnam raging, quit graduate school, unemployed with skills in mathematics. And so I found a job teaching math and science at an Orthodox Jewish school in Brookline, Maimonides. Rabbi Cohen, jolly and willing to risk hiring someone with virtually no teaching experience, welcomed me to the school. He gave me free range in what I taught and how. The students, tho at times rambunctious, were mostly attentive and dedicated. I taught a calculus class to 12th graders. During the year, the school held programs educating students about Israel and encouraging support of the state. More than 50 percent of the school’s graduating seniors defer their college matriculation so they can spend at least one year studying in Israeli institutions. To date more than 150 graduates have become Israeli residents. Near the end of the academic year, June 1967, a major war erupted in Israel, ending in 6 days with the total defeat of the combined armies of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria. My students and fellow staff were elated–I shared that feeling, buoyed by the prospect of a safe and secure Israel. Later my views were to change. How could I have foreseen then that 36 years later I—in essence a type of Zionist, believing that Jews worldwide had a right to a homeland and nation, even if this required the removal of indigenous people—would undertake a photojournalism project about Israel and Palestine, living there for extended periods of time to make photographs elucidating aspects of the troubles?

WORLD WAR 2

I was born one year and a few days before the United States entered the war after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor–1940, as President Roosevelt declared A Day of Infamy. World War 2 effectively ended the Great Depression, brought Blacks and women into the work force, fostered a short lived spirit of sacrifice (Victory Gardens inspired me later to become a vegetable gardener), created unusual alliances such as the US and Soviet Union, and simultaneously initiated the Cold War. The War set the stage for the emergence of the US as the sole superpower.

On the day of my birth, December 4, Jews were being rounded up throughout the regions controlled by Germany. The Nazis were concocting and soon implementing The Final Solution, the extermination of all Jews in all the regions they controlled, potentially the entire world. Not only was I, as might be expected at my age, oblivious to events across the Atlantic, my parents, neighbors, and much of the country were also. As stories slowly leaked out about the Shoah or Holocaust, most people in the US and much of the world chose not to pay attention.

This is especially surprising since my sister and I have long wondered if my mother with her features, mannerism, close Jewish friends and her maiden name, Sage, changed from Zage when her family immigrated to the US, was Jewish. Asking her about this always elicited a strong denial, as if she were embarrassed even to be asked. I felt simply curious about this possibility, neither proud nor ashamed, neither desirous of being Jewish or embarrassed by the prospect.

My mother, Pearl (Sage) Schiel

When WW2 ended with the defeat of the Nazis and the full revelation of the horrors Jews and others like the Roma and Soviet prisoners of war experienced, I was fearful. My heritage is German and Austrian. I tried to conceal my background, feeling that if discovered, I could be ostracized or banished by even my closest friends. For a short period, I lived in terror, the only time in my life I’ve felt threatened because of elements of my personal history beyond my control. Germans had been the enemy, Germans were now vanquished, the “Mad Man”, Hitler, was Austrian. The 1940s were a volatile time–the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, the anxiety about Communism, and the aftermath of profiling Japanese people, Asians generally, during the War.

Auschwitz, 1994

ISRAELI PIONEERS

I grew up with images of young Jewish pioneers settling the newly founded state of Israel. I was 7 years old when Israel became a state, I was entering my own pioneer period. I visualized young tanned bodies, male and female sharing equally in cultivating the land and building communities. They wore shorts and short-sleeved shirts that revealed muscled limbs. Narrow brimmed caps blocked out the intense sun. They all smiled, a few carried rifles, they seemed inordinately happy. I was attracted.

1938

Joining the Cub Scouts, later very active in Boy Scouting, I fantasized that my life as a Scout might transform into a possible life as a kibbutznik . The world was beginning to learn about the communal spirit of the Israeli founders. I was excited by the word kibbutz, striking me as some sort of idealized home shared by many families. With my rebellious spirit I thought if I lived on a kibbutz, I’d have multiple parents and many more friends to play with. Later in college, meeting Bruno Bettleheim, the renowned Austrian psychologist who’d studied children on kibbutzim, I gained a more mature view of benefits and pitfalls of life on the kibbutz. Indeed, the kibbutz inculcated strong moral values, but over time experienced a gradual erosion of communal spirit.

CATHOLICS & PALESTINIANS

I knew nothing about Palestinians: they were invisible, absent, ciphers. I reflected the ignorance of most of my peers, I had some confused notion of everyone in the region once being Palestinian, but now no one was. Where did they all go? They had mysteriously vanished, like American Indians. I knew nothing of the consequences they’d experienced as a result of the founding of Israel. There was no Palestine, except in biblical picture books that depicted the ancient and supposed life of Jesus.

Skip Schiel dressed for his First Communion

My parents were Catholic. They dragged me to church on most Sundays. I viewed pictures, either photos or drawings and paintings, depicting a hot dry dusty Palestine. Our church sent delegations of church members–pilgrims–to what we called the Holy Land. During this period a desire to journey to special places–pilgrimage–grew in me. For years, whenever the prospect arose of actually visiting Israel (never Palestine as we were taught not to call it) I felt a major blockage, a huge stop sign–a barrier, ditch, checkpoint–in the middle of my path. In my mind, the place was as unreachable as the middle of the earth or the rim of the Milky Way. How would I ever manage to make such a long arduous trip? Yet inwardly a yearning grew.

Sermon on the Mount

Christ on the cross, the suffering Christ, the eternally suffering Christ, is emblazoned on my internal screen. I imagined Jesus as a young boy questioning the priests in the temple. I visualized him later during his last days of teaching sweeping his arms across the moneylenders’ tables in the temple, metal shekel pieces thudding on the smooth white limestone floor. I envisaged Christ entering Jerusalem on a donkey, his followers strewing palm fronds on his path. He was heading heroically to the Last Supper and his final agony. With my Catholic peers, I learned to make the Stations of the Cross, that symbolic pilgrimage with Christ along the Via Dolorosa, The Way of Sorrows. His feet were indelibly imprinted in the limestone–contrary to reality, but foot prints that I would later seek on my various journeys to the region. I learned to honor the man’s teachings–to the point of considering myself one of his acolytes–and even as a youth doubted the more mystical and probably fictitious elements of his story. Not until I was much older would I begin to question the teaching about Jews that emanated from my Catholic background, some subtle like sculpting and painting a non Jewish-looking Jesus and disciples, and some blatant like the passages that ascribe his murder solely to the Jewish priests and mob. And only later would I more fully explore the Hebrew Testament, slowly gaining insights into the archetypal story of the Abrahamic tradition. As I learned some of the stories of the family of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, of Ishmael and Isaac, of Joseph, I also slowly shifted perspectives about the Israeli state and the Palestinian struggles.

JEWS AND ME

Who was Jewish in my childhood and what relations did I have with them? Of course no one was Palestinian, no one was even Muslim or Arabic on the Southside of Chicago in the 1940 and 50s. I remember two Jewish boys in my school class, Chuck Bernstein, living about 5 houses down the street from me, a short kid, but agile and eager to play sandlot football and baseball with our informal neighborhood teams. We weren’t close, but we were often teammates. I knew he was Jewish but I don’t recall it making a difference about friendship. Howie Hoffman, with buckteeth, a remote, mysterious character, was another Jewish classmate, never a friend, never an enemy. My sister, Elaine, however, had many Jewish friends, as did my parents. Occasionally she attended Jewish events such as bar mitzvahs. But never a religious service. Our church prohibited all participation in other religions’ services. For me Jewishness was a mark ranging in importance between hair color and sports ability. It might be an insignificant attribute, or it might persuade me to wish to be teammate.

1952 c.

Later in high school and university, Jewishness submerged–it disappeared as a distinctive mark. I did not notice whether someone was Jewish except when the context disclosed people’s cultural or religious orientation. However, in later life, my current life, I am very aware when someone seems Jewish. One of my best friends, Stan, is Jewish, tho not practicing his religion. With his daughters, he often celebrates some of the holidays. One daughter told me after she’d traveled to Israel, this is the first time I’ve felt safe.

Stan is an artist and feels deeply, he is quick to express his emotions. He is short, walks with a severe limp from a car accident, and works as a tearcher, theater director, and visual artist. He and I endlessly discuss Jews, Israel, and Palestine. He has strong opinions and is trying to formulate a way to peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. In 2003 we traveled together on a delegation to Israel and Palestine, my first of 5 journeys. He was terrified that he’d be identified as a Jew when visiting a Palestinian village. He thought he might be stoned. On the long plane ride home, during a quiet moment when most of us were sleeping, Stan noticed an empty seat next to Scott, one of the co-leaders of our delegation. Scott had asked for reflections about our experiences; he preferred them in writing. Stan took that empty seat, said he wanted to express his feelings from the trip. I am so ashamed, he said as he openly wept, of the suffering Jews are  causing to Palestinians.

Some of my Jewish former friends, like Linda, have abandoned me because of my attitudes about the conflicts in Palestine and Israel. One of my primary adversaries is another Stan, Jewish, with family connections to Israel. He is short, sturdy, ebullient, vociferous, and like me, a photographer and teacher of photography. But this Stan is a strong supporter of Israel. He once brought a tape recorder to one of my presentations, taping without permission Jeff Halper, an Israeli Jew, a fierce critic of Israel. Jeff was testifying in favor of my project at one of my fundraisers. Stan and I had coffee one evening to talk over our differences. He sternly admonished me for what he felt was my partisan approach, claiming I knew nothing of Israeli and Jewish suffering, was merely spouting ignorant propaganda, and would do a greater service if I abandoned my project. I’m on his email list, which I consider a great gift, because he frequently sends me materials from the most conservative Jewish groups. In this manner, I learned better the arguments and evidence of some of my opponents.

Partially as a survival mechanism I now rigorously tune to who is Jewish because this will effect how and what I express concerning the Middle East, the Israeli lobby, Zionism, and related topics. Rightly or wrongly, it also allows me to anticipate some of their perspectives. But most importantly, it reminds me that this human being that I’m now engaged with might feel wounded by history, the stark fact of the holocaust, the millennia of suffering that led to that diabolical act, and feels no one would protect Jews if again threatened with annihilation. I am struggling to comprehend that this is an enduring wound coloring present experience.

MUNICH, 1972

1967, the elation at victory of the Israeli army and then five years later, Munich, the Olympic Games, 1972. The abduction of Israeli athletes added to an unfolding picture of horror, complicating my picture. Who is the victim, who the aggressor? As might have been true for others, I was horrified when all eleven athletes died before and during a failed rescue attempt. The context for this act of aggression on civilians was a wave of airplane hijackings beginning in the 1960s. Palestinian militants–often young men masked and carrying rifles and grenades, an enduring image leading to a dangerous stereotype–committed many of these attacks, with Israelis or the Israeli national airline, El Al, the primary target. These attacks might have heightened sympathy for Israel–it did in my case.

I didn’t follow closely the various attempts at bringing peace, justice, and security to the region. Only recently, with my passion for the region and its troubles, have I explored the details of these flawed attempts. I was only dimly aware of President Carter’s Camp David initiatives and signing the peace treat between Israel and Egypt in 1978. I had no idea then that Carter would go on to continue his deep involvement with the issues, try to broker agreements, monitor elections in Palestine, and finally in 2006 publish a seminal book, Palestine–Peace or Apartheid? This book would help open the debate in the US about next steps to resolve the conflict.

TO BE CONTINUED

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

—Goethe

Palestinian, 2009, photo by Kathy Felgran

LINKS:

Maimonides School

Pioneer Israel:

Then

Now

Kibbutz

On the road: a photo tour in the USA south about Palestine/Israel, fall 2009—part 12 (Cambridge Massachusetts)—the last post in the southern tour series

Excerpts from my journal while touring the southern United States with new photographs and stories. The main shows are Gaza Steadfast, Bethlehem the Holy, The Hydropolitics of Palestine/Israel, and Quakers in Palestine/Israel. (I’ve completed the tour and I’m now happily at home in Cambridge Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.)

PHOTOS

VIDEO: Feet, Shoes & Boots, Winter Holiday Vacation, 2009

November 24, 2009, Tuesday, Cambridge:

Home at last, god almighty, I’m home at last. The day after. Feeling good.

These dreams to celebrate: watching Y—very clearly Y for a change, not some stand in—walking thru a park, maybe Dana, on her regular morning solo walk. Tempted to join her since we’d not seen each other for some long time, I resisted, knowing she’d rather be alone. I’ll greet her later.

And a 2nd dream, about my home, one room in a 2-room home. A new couple was moving in, I met them, along with the couple moving out. I did not relish the thought of sharing a home—would I have privacy? I noticed the man moving in was in a wheel chair and considered his difficulty getting to his portion of the house. Up a landing and thru my room.

My home is familiar to me, for a short while pleasingly familiar: the paths I use to reach different parts of my small home (700 sq ft), where I store things, my various routines such as the one I used this morning to make an omelet, how the bed feels, where I meditate, when and how I exchange clothes between hot and cold seasons, where I bathe, and endless other paths and routines I use to exist day to day. All familiar to me. Whereas I’ve just returned from daily encounters with novelty.

The train ride yesterday [November 23, 2009] felt long, 24 hours roughly, Atlanta to Boston. The train on time, a private seat so I could spread out during the day, as opposed to the night when I shared my seat with a woman I learned later came from Liberia. She and I were instantly friendly, especially when I announced yesterday morning early as she was stretching awake, you can have both seats now. And there in the café car I sat for most of the morning, until noon and DC. She brought me my reading glasses which I’d left at the seat.

I found an Internet connection at the Corner Café in the DC Amtrak station as I awaited my train to Boston, ate a muffin (banana and not my favored chocolate), sipped strong coffee (my 2nd or 3rd cup), and did some email. I avoided going outside, not wishing to carry my heavy black equipment bag. And the weather was cold and wet, as it was all the way between Atlanta and Boston. E wrote asking when I was returning, which led to a fantasy about her then writing to ask if I needed a ride from the train station, to which I’d reply, sure, and that would eventually and ineluctably lead to an intimate experience.

I made my way home from South Station alone, lugging all my gear thru the wet drizzle, and eventually mounting the stairs, shedding my clothing, firing up my erotic imagination, and settling in.

How would I assess the tour overall? Splendid, a qualified success. Decent shows, reasonably large audiences, warm response, equipment held up, Dave did a passable job, and the tour ended brilliantly at SOA Watch, with the Gaza Steadfast show to a large enthusiastic group. This bodes well not only for my photo work but for the topics I try to illuminate—for this trip, mainly Gaza. I should report this to my friends back home in Gaza. The main problem was finding venues in Louisiana and Mississippi, many open dates. We’ll try again next year, do better.

Tuned to Y: thru our mutual South African friend, SF, who wrote me recently; thru the SOA Watch which she in turn tuned to; thru the Nipponzan Myohoji theology and practice and people we share; thru activism (she wrote recently about joining a demo at University of California Berkeley over tuition increases and brutal treatment by the administration); thru Ella and family generally; on and on. One wonders, aren’t we meant to be couple? Answer: guess not.

Today: slowly unpack, relishing every second of it, slowly check off the various duties I now have ranging from replacing my Boston public transport (T) elder pass (which I lost) to editing more slide shows from last summer’s photos. I might call Katy to see about meeting her and Ella at school today, assuming school is in session (it’s Thanksgiving week).

November 26, 2009, Thursday, Cambridge:

One major dream to start us off: after some event requiring lots of folding chairs, I offered to help fold and store them. This required acrobatics—we had to fling ourselves out into space, grabbing the hand of a new partner, holding on for life itself; crawl thru constricted spaces; climb up and down narrow stairs; while a couple sitting to one side, not participating, asked us inanely, how are you?

I was impressed with my abilities, my agility, strength, perseverance. The older me strode gaily with the youngest and strongest.

Which is what happened on the pilgrimage I attended capping my southern tour, and how I felt in comparison with the young ones who tended to unexpectedly fail from various physical problems. I’d worried about my legs, that they might ache, be weak, not carry me long walking distances. They not only succeeded but seemed to heal. After walking, resting, sitting, sleeping, they felt back to normal—I can live up to my earlier moniker, earned walking the Auschwitz to Hiroshima pilgrimage in 1995, Iron Man.

The weather has been dark, cool, misty. Neither winter nor autumn, an in-between time. And today is Thanksgiving, snow not anticipated, far from it. The leaves have mostly fallen, revealing new patterns of vegetation (the weed growing amidst my rose bush for instance). Garden hoses in the community garden are stashed, which probably also means the city turned off the water. I missed gardening this summer because of my Israel-Palestine journey. And I look forward to the garden for next season, realizing that I might be able to persuade grandkids to help with it and learn.

Next summer I will be 69 yrs old, 4 years my own father’s senior when he died, 6 years my mother’s, assuming I survive past my birthday which is coming in about one week.

Being home and beginning again has been unadulterated joy: no deadline, virtually no schedule, fit in the tasks I love doing, one at a time, like opening mail, while making way for more onerous tasks like cleaning the house that demand doing, all the while relishing truly precious tasks like shifting my computer setup and beginning editing slide shows. This is sheer spontaneity, when the muses are at their best. They have free rein. They are happy.

I’ve begun a report of the tour, sketching out ideas first, and these I based on yesterday’s lunch conversation with Ken when he seemed genuinely interested in hearing from me. Main points, such as audience response, venues, etc (unlike many who say, oh Skip, you’re home, I can’t wait to hear all about your trip, and then either try to listen but slip away to other topics, or never find the time even to try.). As usual, asking him about himself, his response was, oh, about the same, nothing new, same old stuff. Which means lots of reading about the holocaust, plus attending some Israel-Palestine events.

I also updated my itinerary to more accurately reflect what happened. This will be a good public record of my tour, the details.

I nearly didn’t arrive home by train when I’d hoped. In New Haven CT I made the serious mistake of misinterpreting the train-boarding announcement. I was standing on the platform, enjoying the air and the space, when a woman’s voice called, all aboard, last call. I assumed this was meant for folks in the waiting room, not on the platform. A conductor walked by and I asked him a question I’ve now forgotten, when I noticed the train doors closing and the train moving. Holy shit, I yelled, it’s leaving without me! Can you stop the train? He called on his radio, the train slowed, I ran after it, it stopped. The door didn’t open, I pounded on the door, and then I saw a conductor about 4 cars ahead waiting for me. I ran, apologized, found my car, my seat, all my gear. What a disaster that would have been. What if the conductor had not happened by when he did? I’d be stuck in New Haven, most of my luggage on the train—all by itself.

All because I’d misheard—again—and wrongly assumed—again. These 2 factors seem present in most mistakes I make. I concluded that my mischievous tricksters were at it again, playing with me. They are probably my muses with a playful nature. They know how easily misled I am. They play games with me. I never seem to learn.

End with a perplexing thought about love: suppose B and I were to become a couple, suppose she wished to live and work somewhere else, Germany, Oregon, Gaza. What would I decide? Would I be willing to leave my entire life in Cambridge and New England to be with the one I loved?

Or suppose I insisted on staying here while she wished to move elsewhere? What might she decide?

Is this sort of thinking useful, does it accomplish anything? Two answers: it is pure fantasy, compulsion, sickness of the heart, longing, yearning, disgusting, a waste of time. Or it is productive, a thought experiment, useful for engaging the imagination and supposing what if, stretching the mind, preparing for a possibility.

As I imagine another in bed with me, cuddling, or with my family, eating turkey with dressing, or on tour with me in the south or with me in Israel-Palestine, or me with her in let us imagine Bosnia, photographing together. Why not? Such imagination is free and fun. Or even in a photographic workshop I teach, maybe Winter Light to the far reaches of the Blue Hills in the cold and snow, stranded. Why not imagine it?

Free and fun.

LINKS:

Video: Viva Palestina Convoy Arrives in Gaza

On the Road: a report of the southern photographic tour, October 17 – November 23, 2009

Detailed itinerary of southern tour

Seeking venues: Upcoming New England tour with recent photos from Palestine & Israel

Slide show Gaza Steadfast screens February 7, 2010 in Cambridge MA

On the road: a photo tour in the USA south about Palestine/Israel, fall 2009—part 11 (School of the Americas Watch, Columbus Georgia, and on the train home to Cambridge Massachusetts)

Excerpts from my journal while touring the southern United States with new photographs and stories. The main shows are Gaza Steadfast, Bethlehem the Holy, The Hydropolitics of Palestine/Israel, and Quakers in Palestine/Israel. (I’ve completed the tour and I’m now happily at home in Cambridge Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.)

PHOTOS

VIDEO: Free Gaza: First Night Parade in Boston, 2009

(Please see links at the end of this post for more information about the Gaza Freedom March and Viva Palestina)

November 22, 2009, Sunday, Columbus Georgia, home of N and J, bed of my bedroom:

A grand finale to my southern tour yesterday: march to the gates of Fort Benning with Nipponzan Myohoji [the Japanese Buddhist order building peace pagodas and conducting pilgrimages, socially engaged Buddhism] drumming, along a big highway, many honks in support; a rally at the gates, enclosed by multiple fences, some with razor wire, numerous security personnel (what does all this cost the various governments? How useful or useless is it?); the rally attended by 1000s, many of them very young, nearly all white, same as and different from the US Social Forum in 2007 when I first met my tour coordinator Dave; literature, clothing, crafts, books, videos, and people from a wide variety of organizations, many of them for indigenous rights (including Guatemalans), many of them with religious bases (saw nothing Quaker); loud music (Charlie King, Emma’s Revolution, etc) and frenetic speakers blasting from many loudspeakers to the point of me wearing my ear plugs; a brief meeting with Kathy Kelly who told me some group in upper New York state has been following my work; tabling with Dave, trying to sell my photos (1, of Bethlehem, for $5, not exactly a killing); wandering around trying to photograph some of this activity; and suffering a minor migraine that twice had me dizzy and experiencing partial loss of vision. All in a day’s work.

Then my Gaza Steadfast show to a packed room of about 80 people. I’d wondered how many would show up since the regional focus of SOA Watch is on Latin America. One of the best shows I’ve given—most stayed for a rich discussion, entered in at the last minute (coming late) by Medea Benjamin and (former colonel) Ann Wright (friend of my family in Juneau Alaska when she stayed with them). Several people offered venues, Dave had magically appeared and seemed enthused (important to keep him happy), and I felt gratified.

Housing on these last 2 days has been more than expected. N and J hosted “the boys,” Jim, Jules, John, (the 3 J’s), Dave, Bob, Skip. In my own room, a comfortable bed, some privacy, near the toilet, with fast Internet, I could not be much happier—unless in my own home.

Y wrote and I phoned back while walking to the rally, giving the phone to Jim so they could say hi. She was rushing out for a meeting. She writes that her housing quest is going well.

November 23, 2009, Monday, nearing DC, on the train, in the café car:

Yes, on the train, the long awaited train ride home after 5 weeks on the road with my photos from Palestine/Israel. Not the most restful night on a train but good enough. These dreams then:

The first, now disappeared into oblivion, at least proved to me that I was sleeping. And then one in which I was playing catch with a man by throwing tomatoes back and forth. When he tried to catch mine, they splattered, shattered. A large bird, perhaps a duck, either flew between us or one of us caught it and threw it to the other. It hit a tree, seemed dead. When a child attempted to touch it, it opened its eyes.

Now my purported reality: on the train I slept beside a middle aged Black woman, in a car full of mostly Black people, the larger share of them overweight and old, some feeble. My companion spoke what sounded like an African language on the phone, plus fluent English. She seemed worried about her belongings and kept her 3 large bags under her seat, squishing her in. She slept under a blanket, a very clever way to produce privacy. I coughed repeatedly, maybe an allergy, maybe my postnasal drip exacerbated by my upright position. I told her as I left the seat this morning, I’m going to the café car, you can spread out.

The car attendant assigned seats, she wanted a window, and altho I usually prefer windows, for this night, thinking I might have to pee many times, I offered her my seat. Later during the night (on my only pee break, unusual), in an exploratory mood, I went into the next car and found it empty. Why not, thought I, bed down here? Within minutes an attendant asked me to leave—Why? Car out of service. Doesn’t make much sense to have an empty car when most of us are squeezed together.

I sit now in the chilly café car, a stream of hungry morning risers buying food. It is raining outside, cloudy, foggy, typical late November weather, early winter, even here, south of DC. And from the water in the car linkages, I assume rain has been falling on this entire trip. It rained at the School of the Americas event, it rained driving to Atlanta. And it was cold, sometimes windy.

I am inordinately happy—mubsut!—about completing this journey. On a very personal level, it ended well, the finale at SOA Watch with my Gaza Steadfast show, and then yesterday, the funeral procession with the puppetistas, placing the crosses at the gate (which I missed, as I did placing the Palestinian flags at the gate, an initiative by Dave, missing this because I’d forgotten about it and was cold, tired and hungry—therefore distracted, I forgot the lesson from Dorothea Lange that I often convey to my students: never assume you’re too fatigued to do more; diligence pays off.)

However I did photograph the procession, the lifting of crosses at each name and presente, the puppets, some speeches (especially by Kathy Kelly framed against a huge image of a fallen Central American woman), many individuals, and assorted other images. I continue to find myself oscillating between still and motion, wondering if this is a leading in the bud: do I return to video-film making?

And do I kick myself for missing the gate scenes? Or think, others were there (a multitude of media, mostly not the commercial media, as far as I could determine), they’ll show it, and I’ll borrow if needed. Plus my aim was not complete coverage, but seat of the pants spontaneous photography, as spirit leads. Spirit did not lead me to the gate. On this particular day—it had the day before.

2 processions on the train that leap out, if I could video them: in the middle of the night, me walking by the sleepers in their various postures, some of them with heads hanging into the aisle, others—the lucky ones with no seat partners—splayed across 2 seats, one elderly obese woman with her cane jutting half way into the aisle, and some sitting upright as if corpses. Perhaps one or 2 open their eyes and notice an apparition of the night passing them.

The 2nd procession is occurring now, on the way into the café car: lining up for food. Most look dazed, sad, depressed, some sick. Often with blank expressions. In sharp contrast with our pilgrimage group processional to the food table: smiling, happy, greeting all.

~~The train races north. Just now thru Orange Virginia. Two hours to DC~~

Some catch-up items:

There were 3 newly formed couples on the pilgrimage, all devoting one year to the service program run by Anton in LaGrange. Zack and Margarita, always holding hands, she relatively quiet, both loving; Ben and Monica, both with foot problems; and another whose names I don’t remember. How sweet, thought I, how will they be 3 decades down the road?

Years ago Y and I might once have resembled them, an older version, especially on the first walk we made together, the 1992 Columbian Quincentennary, or before that, the Bigfoot Ride to Wounded Knee. How did we appear to others?

Or P and me, when we met in 1960 during a YMCA-YWCA conference in Cedar Rapids Iowa, holding hands while strolling thru the night.

M wrote, with another of her cryptic but attentive messages, some concerning the Namu Myoho Renge Kyo chant:

A poignant video (yours). [referring to the Miami settlement video] The only thing I could hear, above the breeze (or was it the sound of the ocean) was your question, Who are the workers? Great video!

Love,

And:

Whether one says na’mu myoho renge kyo or the informal “nam…” the benefits are the same. I’m delighted and over joyed that you spend “hours” chanting the wonderful sound!

XXOO

M.

IAF, the Black Muslim from Birmingham also wrote, to me directly and on his blog about me. A new friend, thanks to the Birmingham Alabama mosque appearance and the blog:

I spoke to you briefly in Birmingham Alabama a couple of nights ago. I was the tall black guy (crude description I know, but how else am I going make sure you remember me?)

I wrote up a little post on my blog about your visit.

You gave a very good presentation the other day. You’ve taught me a lot, and that’s good ’cause I usually think I know it all.

Please keep up the good work. You are doing something very important that not many people have the opportunity to do.

Peace (and I mean that in every sense of the word),

I

And from his blog:

Gaza Photos

I had the chance to see something not too many people see: astonishing Gaza photos of the destruction caused by the Israeli siege earlier this year.

At the Birmingham Islamic Center in Hoover, Alabama, photographer Skip Schiel showcased his photos of the aftermath of Israel’s war against Hamas. He gave a pretty balanced presentation as he also displayed photos of the damage caused by Hamas rockets into Israel.

But there was no comparison. The damage caused by Israel’s barrage made the difficult situation in Gaza even worse. I can’t even begin to explain or describe everything he talked about. All I can say is, whatever I thought I knew about the situation was only just a glimmer of how life really is.

I’ve heard people call Gaza the world’s largest refugee camp. Gaza is roughly the size of Manhattan, and has roughly the same population (about 1 million). But Gaza doesn’t have high rises, skyscrapers, Central Park, Madison Square Garden, or a subway system.

Actually, Gaza has little of anything. An economic blockade prevents medicine and construction materials (but not guns). The infrastructure has been destroyed so the modern necessity of electricity is rare. And Israel destroyed many hospitals and schools in Gaza during the war.

There is a little hope. Skip’s photos showed Gazan (is that a real word) residents engaging in learning activities, leadership classes, and he himself gave them a photography class.

But as optimistic as I am (I’m a Mets and Knicks fan. Now that’s optimism) even I must admit that hope seems to be diminishing for the Gaza as well.

Please visit Skip’s blog, and like I  had to do…deepen your understanding.

Also visit Skip’s photojournal for more pictures of Gaza.

One regret: no contact with J and S of Birmingham. I realize they are busy, her with her illness and her mother, him with his radio interviews and Dallas speaking engagement, but the end result disturbs me: didn’t attend my show, didn’t meet, and didn’t follow up with a phone call or email. How would I have responded if he or she came to town for a performance? Do I now cross them off my list of friends? Or am I being precipitous, as is my pattern?

LINKS:

Gaza Freedom March

Gaza Freedom March Demonstration at French Embassy in Cairo

French woman dead in Cairo part of Gaza Freedom March (Marie-Renée Le Grand)

Marie-Renée Le Grand, a French woman associated with the March died on Wednesday of a heart attack. She was not present at any of the demonstrations, according to an organizer of the French delegation, Yasser Hassan.

Décès de Marie Renée Le Grand
publié le jeudi 31 décembre 2009

Gaza Freedom Marchers issue ‘Cairo Declaration’: End Israeli Apartheid

Viva Palestina: Gaza aid convoy leaves Syria

In Memory of Marie Renee, by Alice Kast (posted on gazafreedommarch-boston and used with permission)

Marie visited me this morning.  She didn’t tell me her own story of why she had come all the way to Gaza.  I don’t know her statistics–how old, what city, whether she had a family, or if she came alone.  In fact, she did not speak at all.  She was a presence.  It was obvious to me that her heart was breaking.

The whole city of Cairo was a prison but she came anyway.  A woman willing to witness to love and solidarity.  They  were not allowed on busses or in taxis to get to the border where they wanted to let the people of Gaza know that they were not alone. Their representatives at the Embassy would not speak with them.   Some were barricaded in their hotels.  Some were followed around the city and made unwelcome even in stores.  It made no difference to Marie that she wasn’t literally enclosed in the pen with the other French witnesses when she died.  The whole city was throbbing with the tension which could explode at any minute.  The riot police, the red water cannons were all reminders to her of what could happen at any moment.

She died because she knew that to bring into being a world where everyone has a place to live, she would have to place herself in danger.  Thank you, Marie.  You knew there was the possibility of beatings or arrest and you were willing to pay the ultimate price for the children and families living in the concentration camp that is Gaza.  And thank you for visiting me this morning.  I will never forget you and welcome your presence in my life.

It was a mixed blessing for anyone to be there in Gaza at all and those who had come from all over the world received mixed greetings.  People witnessing to the inhumanity of what is being done in our name are not always welcomed.  I just say thank you that  there are still some in the world whose sense of humanity includes all people.  Genocide is not something “good” people should do.

Thank you to all of you who went because it was the right thing to do.  Can’t wait to have you back.

Love in solidarity with the one family of humankind.

On the road: a photo tour in the USA south about Palestine/Israel, fall 2009—part 10 (near Columbus Georgia on a pilgrimage)

Excerpts from my journal while touring the southern United States with new photographs and stories. The main shows are Gaza Steadfast, Bethlehem the Holy, The Hydropolitics of Palestine/Israel, and Quakers in Palestine/Israel. (I’ve completed the tour and I’m now happily at home in Cambridge Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.)

On the first anniversary of the Massacre of Gaza

PHOTOS

VIDEO: a buddhist led pilgrimage: justice for immigrants

November 15, 2009, Sunday, Atlanta, Nipponzan dojo/Buddhist temple:

The train delivered me on time to Atlanta, and thanks to a kindly Denise and generous and patient Jean C, I made it to the dojo, dinner, a bed, sleep, and now this morning we drive some 3.5 miles to meet the walkers. The theme is immigrant rights, along with close the School of the Americas, SOA.

This is my final week of the 5-week tour, with only 2 gigs remaining, one in Birmingham Alabama, one in Columbus. The train stopped in Birmingham for about 15 minutes. I reached Jim Douglas who reported sales of his book, JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He died and Why It Matters, thanks in part to a recommendation by Oliver Stone the filmmaker, have topped 20,000. He has 15 radio interviews pending in one week, and will soon leave for Dallas for a talk. I joked with him, Jim, my friend, you have become a marked man. He replied, isn’t that the point, getting in the way?

On the train, as usual one of my favorite work sites, I completed the Miami settlement video, another installment of my blog, a new subsite, along with finishing my journal entry of yesterday. The train ran ahead of schedule, was about 1/2 full, a large percentage black (and fat), service was excellent, my power went out for awhile, then reappeared, and I worked mostly at my seat.

Passing thru the flat lands of Mississippi and Alabama, then Georgia, I noticed much water on the ground, learned later from Jean that tropical storm Ida had rained heavily further north, maybe here as well. What may have been cotton fields were now uncultivated. Mostly forests, with some timbering evident. Very few people in the fields. Of course this is early winter.

I missed sunset, emerging from my nap of more than one hour (unusual for me), and so I made only one sunset photo—a grain elevator brilliant in the slanting sun rays. I also tried making a video as we crossed the gaping Lake Pontchartrain. Weather has been cool.

Jean is a lively soul. About my age, with connections to the Atlanta dojo, she seems jolly, unflappable, patient, and loving. Waiting for me at the train station she had to circle in traffic for nearly one hour. She seems without a strong mission, other than to struggle for peace and justice.

November 16, 2009, Monday, Americus Georgia, on the SOA/immigrant rights walk:

Another unusual dream (2 mornings in a row): I noticed the light on a friend’s face that lit him so his eye sockets and mouth were totally in the dark. This was thru a window in the early morning. I knocked on the door, showed him my camera to ask his permission to photograph, he let me in but was busy with something like a mobile phone call. I made one photo and thought this might be the one.

This may be the first long walk (relatively long walk) I’ve made since the Middle Passage Pilgrimage in 1998-99. Very relaxed and well led, the group yesterday on the first full day of walking traveled some 15 miles, me joining at lunch riding with Jean, about 8 or 9 miles. We are residing at the Koinonia Community in Americus Georgia, a mythical site because of its history during the civil rights movement when it pushed for integration by integrating itself, black and whites living together. I learned that it is also the seedbed of Habitat for Humanity, organized by one of the early partners. If time allows I hope to scout the area, it seems extensive.

Last night at the potluck about 40 people showed up, from inside and outside the Koinonia Farm. It felt decidedly Christian, with a song about Jesus, some prayers, and an interdenominational Eucharist. Not exactly my path. So I ducked out of the after meal program, partly to dodge it but mainly to try to exploit my new found slow sketchy Internet connection.

I’d left a phone message for Y during the walking, recording the drumming sound for her before announcing where I was. Later I found an email from her asking me to phone that night, and informing me that she’d reached Napa after being frightened by a storm alert. She drove non-stop from the east side of the Sierra Mountains to Napa. Talking with her later she asked about my hips during sleeping—the only person on the planet that would be concerned about this—and about Sister Denise and Brother Utsumi—one of the few people sharing this interest with me. So the walk brings us close together.

Jim Harney is also much in my heart since one theme of the walk is immigrant rights. Y also told me that Nancy S had sent an email which included some of Jim’s last journal entries, and that she might continue doing this. A true gift. I intend to add Jim to the morning prayers—Jim Harney presente!

X wrote with

hello Skip, from Guatemala!

i loved your film through the golf course in florida – made me laugh out loud

i am not sure why but it made me think of this small video of Leonard Cohen’s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFOjTVCPBjY

i hope you enjoy it

happy travels down south

Well, at least one person seems to have appreciated that video. The Cohen video did not strike me deeply, on first viewing. I’ll try again.

November 18, 2009, Wednesday, Birmingham Alabama, in the Days’ Inn motel, sitting on my bed:

Dreamt about saying goodbye to a sweet heart, forever, but she was not one of my actual friends. I was extremely sad, expecting never to see her again, or even remain in touch. Dreamt also about a very young grandson who walked perilously close to a precipice, almost fell over, caught himself at the last minute.

November 19, 2009, Thursday, Buena Vista Georgia, St Mary Magdalene church, in the back pew:

About the most torturous sleeping conditions of this journey—on the floor, on a thin pad, narrow space between pews, cold, no sleeping bag or blanket, rising a few times to pee (partly because of the cold, me not sleeping well), stepping over bodies, some slight snoring (mostly Sister Ichikawa). But hey, adapting what they might say in Gaza, that’s life on a pilgrimage.

So what? It’s fun. Talking with M after a delicious dinner of spicy potatoes and black beans cooked by our local host, the voluble Patrick, we agreed, this life is fun (for awhile). A slumber party.

~~Morning prayer begins, I take a break from journaling.~~

Once again I seem to be in the mentor role. M, young, blond, shapely, beautiful, in her early 20s, wishes to write, to perform in plays, to photograph, all about her dying and dead father, about the funeral. What to do in my life? The big question of those in their 20s. Why do some seem to find me useful?

What do you suggest, she asked, for becoming a good writer (or photographer)?

Write, desire to be a writer, join a writing group, circulate your writings, read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, read good writers (she’d not heard of Proust or Gertrude Stein).

An easy day walking since Dave and I, driving 4 hours from Birmingham, joined at lunch, and walked for the afternoon about 7 miles into Buena Vista. For the first time on this trip that I’ve experienced, people came out of their homes to greet us, ask us where we were from (all over the country), where we were going (to Fort Benning to close the School of the Americas), what we were walking for (peace). Lots of good will, especially among black people who were the preponderance of greeters. Occasionally we passed men who looked Latino. They seemed dazed by us, not fully registering that one of our 2 themes was immigrant rights. An older woman greeted us as we entered downtown Buena Vista with the words, welcome to Buena Vista even if you’re coming for the wrong reasons. She gave us an article about the value of the military, why they should be honored rather than opposed.

I’m making more videos on this trip than usual. Yesterday feet and shadows, plus lunchtime snoozing. Then this morning at prayer. I feel I’m understanding better the differences between motion and still, sound and silent. I play with the differences, oscillating between video and still. My Canon camera encourages this since it has both functions and can switch readily between the 2.

D is like a wandering ghost, rarely fully present, eternally hovering. He stands to one side, gazes, rarely interacting with others. A blank personality. For his intended occupation this is a handicap. As R wisely surmised after sharing a room with him, D has a self-esteem problem.

Last evening was free. I’d accidentally chosen an ideal spot for my home, the backbench, the last pew, relatively private, adjacent to a power outlet. So after the delectable dinner and the equally delectable conversation with B, I retired to my home away from home and finished sketching another blog, No. 5. Also a new subsite, mostly Baton Rouge. Looking at what I’d photographed, with the crucial assistance of my host there, M who graciously drove me around on tour, I realize how dependent on others I am for my photos. Without him I’d have been severely limited.

November 20, 2009, Friday, Buena Vista Georgia, st Mary Magdalene church, in the back pew:

A long day walking, some 17 miles, thru heavily forested and harvested rolling hills with a fair among of truck traffic. All this made the walking boring, dangerous, arduous, having to dart off the road to dodge traffic. Yet I am so pleased I can walk. Earlier, anticipating problems from my arthritic hips and sore legs, I said to Brother Utsumi when we met, I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk much. In fact, the walking seems to heal me. I feel as strong as ever.

Our destination yesterday was Culetta which we learned from a plaque outside the municipal building had been a major Creek Indian site. Some migrations, and then a disappearance, presumably but not noted—the infamous Trail of Tears. Another plaque admitted that an early courthouse had been built with slave labor.

Long chat with Z, again about favorite books, sharing lists, with him also, like M, comparing me favorably to one of their art profs. He asked, are you Dutch? The resemblance. Their prof is senile, however, and Z believes I’m not. He nurses a sore knee, perhaps from so much early sports playing.

No photos to speak of, a dry day photographically. I find I wish not to repeat myself, feel I’ve sufficiently shown key aspects of pilgrimage, either on this trip or on others—the long line, individual walkers, the circle, prayer, etc. Only if I can find some distinctive way to show the event and people do I even try. Is this laziness or conciseness?

Talking with Laura, swapping stories of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who disclosed that Israel had nuclear weapons.

Hard to write this with so many distractions, upcoming events, uncertainties.

Winding down, winding down from this tour. Thinking of home, privacy, predictability, boredom. Love, love, love.

November 21, 2009, Saturday, Columbus Georgia, home of N and J, bed of my bedroom:

An ideal housing arrangement, producing dreams, and a few extra minutes for my morning routine, including journaling. My own room, soft bed, up early enough to write, quiet. In 2 groups, me and 4 other men separate from the monk and nuns. No prayer. Fast Internet connection. And so these 3 dreams, amazingly vivid:

Observing and analyzing a photo of Jimmy Carter taken thru a keyhole. He’d almost been assassinated, shot. The photo showed him smiling, and I noted to others that had something been slightly different (angle, light, I’ve forgotten the detail), he’d be dead.

Watching a parade in which I’d have my last chance for marriage. If the last puppet figure was somehow not my wife to be I’d not have much chance of ever marrying. The last figure was not even a puppet—but a dog.

Teaching a painting workshop to about 4 adults. We each were to choose something in a small room or hallway to paint, and then my plan was to look at all the paintings and comment. I chose an inch-long section of chipped wood, labored over it, fairly proud of what I’d achieved, even tho in the dream I was not an accomplished painter. Then—we might have been on a walk—it was time to begin walking and we never were able to analyze the paintings. Upon awakening I thought, however, this might be a good way to teach photography—by having my students actually paint small sections of a surface.

Altho I thought yesterday was to be a short walking day in Lumpkin, the site of the Steward Detention Center run by the private security company, Corrections Corporation America— the nation’s industry leader of privately-managed corrections solutions for federal, state and local government, quoting their website—I was mistaken. We walked (my face sunburned, forgetting to carry my sunscreen) for about 6 miles, 3miles a sort of warm up on a highway coming into Lumpkin and then another 1.7 to and from Lumpkin center and the detention center. We were told that some 1000 men were held there, most of them non-criminal immigrants, most about to be deported. We carried the photo of a young man who’d died from a heart condition complication, Mr. Roberto Medina, in his early 30s.

We were a funeral procession, marching slowly, with the Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji prayer drums serving as the signalers of grief. About 100 participants, all ages, after a rally at the old courthouse and another at the gates of Stewart. I photographed extensively, especially at the gates, trying to show the stern scowling officials holding the gates, one with a brush cut (a style I’d not seen in ages), nor responding in any way to the procession, even tho invited to sing Amazing Grace with us.

Anton did a fine job leading this event, and I assume designing it. It is the 2nd or 3rd year. He also gave a rousing speech to conclude the various remarks delivered by others, all brief, including a young woman whose father had been deported, breaking up the family. Apparently, despite promises from Immigration and Customs  Enforcement, ICE, not much has changed under the new administration, a pattern and not a surprise.

We could ask, who profits from the system? Why does it continue? Greed is a key answer, the privatized “security” industry, plus fear. Greed motivates the leaders of the companies and the municipal officials, and fear allows the populace to accept this dirty rotten system. And this is probably a pattern for understanding societal injustice generally.

I found myself switching back and forth between still and video, thinking, what can I show here, and how can I best show it? For instance, approaching the gates. Show the gates and the personnel and then in one take swing the camera along the road to show the approaching procession. To portray the juxtaposition of sign announcing Stewart and the procession, use a still from behind the sign and include the back of the line stretching out.

Having both functions in one instrument helps. I observed a media man with 2 still cameras, one long lens, 1 video camera, and a notebook and tripod trying to manage all the gear, running from spot to spot, and trying to keep up with the slow moving march. To his credit, he came fairly early and stayed to the end.

A few days earlier we’d noticed another photographer on the road, stopping to photograph us, a short man with a beard, not smiling, with a Fort Benning parking permit and a license plate that said media. He showed up behind the detention center gates, and we suspected that he is employed by Stewart. He had privilege, for sure.

D noticed—at times he may be a klutzy organizer and poorly organized himself, but he can be astute—that buses may have been rented in case of a mass arrest, and they were parked to block the view of the prison. I tried to show what I could thru the openings between buses.

Some of the events forming the School of the Americas Watch itself are housed in several places in Columbus Georgia, including a converted industrial building that now serves as a convention center. Huge, wooden in parts, large beams exposed, much space, gorgeous. Nearby is the Howard Johnson’s Inn where I attended a program about Guatemala. I did this in solidarity with my new friend who has focused recently on Guatemala, is there currently, and might find her path more and more entwined with that region. Odd that I’d come to a possible emerging involvement in Central and South Americans affairs thru a new friend. I’m so pleased I attended, not only for the information and stimulation provided by 3 speakers about the region, including a torture survivor, American widow of someone disappeared there (Jennifer Harbury), and another woman, plus a very well made video, Do Not Forget, but to build a friendship.

I noticed some parallels with Gaza: a peace accord in 1993 (same year as the Oslo Accords), the use of a fact-finding commission, ignoring or neglecting the results, a call for bringing the case to the International Criminal Court, the continuing presence of criminals in government, etc. I also realized I could end my new slide show Gaza Steadfast better by concluding with a plea for justice, as Do Not Forget does. So I might revise my show.

In a nutshell the situation in Guatemala: in 1954 a democratically elected regime fairly responsive to the needs of Guatemalans. Then overthrow from corporate-driven interests, like United Fruit, supported by the United States. Responding to egregious oppression, the formation of an armed resistance group. Brutal retaliation by the government and militias in the 1980s—more than 300 massacres, many disappeared, a wave of emigration. Both sides committing atrocities, but something like 90% of them from the government and terror groups. In 1993 a peace accord but little change, the oppression continues.

So not only do I possibly connect more directly with X but I learn about a parallel case. And I can be more in solidarity with my colleagues at Cambridge Center for Adult Education from Guatemala.

LINKS:

Noam Chomsky: “Gaza: One Year Later”

Koinonia Farm

Corrections Corporation of America

School of the Americas

School of the Americas Watch

History of Guatemala

On the road: a photo tour in the USA south about Palestine/Israel, fall 2009—part 9 (New Orleans & on board the Crescent train to Atlanta)

Excerpts from my journal while touring the southern United States with new photographs and stories. The main shows are Gaza Steadfast, Bethlehem the Holy, The Hydropolitics of Palestine/Israel, and Quakers in Palestine/Israel. (I’ve completed the tour and I’m now happily at home in Cambridge Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.)

PHOTOS

VIDEO: Crossing Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans North

November 14, 2009, Saturday, New Orleans, University of New Orleans, Training, Rehabilitation, and Assistance Center, guest room (where I began this entry), and the train bound for Atlanta (where I completed the entry)

Many dreams last night, recallable, probably because I needed to arise early this morning to meet the taxi, to meet the Amtrak station, to meet the train to Atlanta, to meet Jean Chapman who will meet me at the Atlanta station, to meet the Buddhist dojo, to meet my bed for tonight, to meet the pilgrims tomorrow, eventually to meet the School of the Americas and close it, then to meet my train home. And to meet my home and all will be bliss.

All that might be considered a dream.

I’m writing now since the night is fresh, but I won’t have time to finish—in a few moments I’ll have to walk across campus to meet my taxi.

To the dreams: sharing a home with Fran, my dad, him wanting to have all of us prepare lunch together, me resisting, raiding the fridge to make something for myself, trying to clean it, complaining about how messy the fridge and kitchen were, partly because of a very young Katy [my daughter] who’d made herself toast with butter sprinkled with brown sugar.

Preparing to make a huge print, talking with someone, a Japanese man, about how to prepare the printer, clean it of dust, run a test print which will require much ink.

While talking with someone about selling his bike—a slim yellow cone with tiny wheels and foldable pedals—I suggested the Bike Workshop in Cambridge. Then I was there, a sort of worker, but not getting my hands greasy. In walked a large delegation from Friends Meeting at Cambridge on some sort of procession; they were all dressed up, men in suits, women in dresses. Would they recognize me? A few did, far fewer than I’d hoped. I’d learned earlier by stumbling into the meetinghouse early that this was a special day for men, honoring men. Andy told me that. I’d have to miss it.

During family camping, I was counting quarters donated to my wife and me, separately. I was confused, partly because the counting platform was wet and dirty, and some boxes supposedly of money had other materials not money. Fireworks were part of the dream.

I note that one theme of these dreams was family: my father and Katy, my wife and our kids, Quaker family. Absent from my recurrent themes: women (except for P), sex, and love.

I devoted yesterday to exploring New Orleans, post Katrina, and with memories of my 2-week visit here in 1998 fairly fresh. I’d ended my romp with the Middle Passage Pilgrimage, I’d formulated my plan to return to the south for 4 months to volunteer my photography, I’d arranged with Sister Clare and Brother Kato to drive the dojo car back to Leverett, and with Y to reside with her for one month to get ready for the next leg (as a couple our worst month ever). I was free to stay at the church the pilgrims had used. I believe they had left for the Caribbean so the church was relatively empty.

(This all reminds me of Kato’s devotion to Clare. He’d planned on leaving the pilgrimage to return to temple building. He understood she needed his support so he decided to go the entire way. What a difference between Y and me, my devotion to her so embarrassingly slim.)

Yesterday, under conditions different from the pilgrimage, I bussed in to the center of the city. The route took me thru the St Bernard area. Only African Americans rode the bus, many of them looking destitute, and the neighborhoods were a mix of new construction, boarded up homes, and vacant lots. This was the No. 52 bus; I could later check its route.

Part of my mission was reconnoitering the route from my room on campus to the train station, planning to catch the Atlanta train at 7 am while the first bus ran at 6. A chore. Doing this, realizing how long it was and how difficult with my luggage, how much I’d worry, and that if I missed the train I might miss the pilgrimage to close the School of the Americas, I decided to book a cab for about $20 and ease my anxiety, assure my timely passage.

First stop: library and Internet. This is the same facility I used 10 years ago, upgraded. Didn’t learn much thru my email.

I rode the St Charles street trolley thru the Garden District, as I’d done 10 years earlier, this time finally—but too late—remembering I could video from the trolley. So I tried, with mixed results. As memory infests much of what I do and who I am, New Orleans notably from my one and only visit here in 1998, the trolley brought back many childhood experiences riding a trolley much like this one, similar vintage, along Stony Island Avenue on Chicago’s South Side. Same grinding sound as the motors increased their rotational speed, a sound I could simulate by turning my dad’s grinding wheel faster and faster. Same squealing brakes like pigs being slaughtered. Same thundering sound of metal wheel against metal rail. And same bobbing motion—a land voyage on a tour boat.

In the French Quarter, wandering like a lost ghost alone and eager for excitement, to return to life—resurrection thru sex—two black prostitutes welcomed me. Ah, thought I, had I only the guts and the gonads and the bucks I might try this. Yet, for one fleeting effervescent moment of pleasure I might be saddled with deadly poisons. So: ladies, no thanks. From other buildings frenetic music roared. I ducked into one of these places to pee and felt repelled by the singing of what looked like a mad man, belting out fuck you’s and shit’s.

On the street people sipped from brightly colored tubes that turned out to be grenade drinks, rumored to be powerful, each Grenade and its sipper a walking testimonial to the buzz of the drink and the buzz of the marketing campaign.

Jazz from 2 outdoor bands contrasted with the boisterousness of this first bar music. One of them all black except for the tuba player, the other all white and this band included dancers, one couple reminding me of M and her man friend, how they might dance together. Standing by a railing in Jackson Park behind the first band, which was playing outside the park, I tried for an unusual vantage point, showing their backs and the listeners. Moving to be in front of them, I concentrated on the trombone player, his one puffed cheek, and the washboard player, his silvery washboard gleaming in the sun, his face equally gleaming. I also thought of a Robert Frank photo—I think it was his—showing a man hidden behind his tuba. Tried the same arrangement of player and instrument.

Photographing the other band, all young, vibrant—why haven’t I fallen in love with a musician, maybe the blond clarinetist in the band? Is this the next episode in my love life?—the dancers appealed, how they darted about in perfect synchrony (do they have sex together, is it good, as the sex between M and her friend, she says, is good?). The sunlight glanced off them, adding to their appeal.

The casino was a hit. Slot machines that emit an otherworldly hum (music of the gambling spheres?), electronic versions of all games, like poker, blackjack, craps (I assume) and roulette, “gaming” tables filled with not so jolly “gamers,” each table serviced by a bored looking “player,” windows where patrons can order more money, various food lines depending on one’s membership type, all in a darkened womb-like huge room or series of rooms, the outside world effectively blotted out now for the fantasy of hitting the big time. Few do. Posted around the casino: if you’re having a gambling problem, call…

I gambled on making photos, surreptitiously pushing my shutter button while the camera was draped casually over my shoulder. I’d preset it in the bathroom to not be noticed. I’m sure plain clothes security prowled the joint, some may have noticed me gliding back and forth looking very suspicious, but no one interfered. I assumed the worst that could happen was ejection, and I’m used to rejection, my close cousin.

A few photos might later be useable, most I soon jettisoned because of blur.

Incidentally, reading the October 2009 issue of the Sun Magazine, an essay by Jim Ralston called “Confessions from a Conversion Van,” he says while encouraging a young student he’s about to fail to write one essay in his own language: and include one detail about your girlfriend dumping you. How’s that supposed to fit in?, says the student. That will be the part that makes the piece worth reading.

And this may be one of the main reasons I include similar material in my blogs, and why I find writing about failed and successful loves so appealing in my journal.

This also from Jim Ralston: I’m not ready yet to look at the smiling pictures of us [Jim and his former girl friend, Raven] vacationing in Guanajuanto. Her letter is emotionally detached compared to the way we talked to each other fairly recently. She says she never meant to hurt me, that she’s learned so much from our time together. (The ultimate kiss off: “I have learned so much from you.”) Fuck you, Raven…

Sounds familiar.

As I was about to enter the river front area I reached for my sunglasses—gone. Where’d I leave them? The retired surfers restaurant where I’d eaten the delicious fish tacos? Fallen off my head when I placed them there and forgot about them. Somewhere else? Should I return to the restaurant? Ditch that idea and simply assume I’d not find them and would soon replace them. After all, didn’t they need replacement anyway, scratched and perhaps not filtering out UV?

So I squinted my way along the waterfront, noticing for the first time how many did and didn’t wear sunglasses. I’d say the ratio of did to didn’t is about 4 out of 5.

Another discovery and new since I’d last visited the river was the holocaust memorial. I tried to figure it out. It consisted of a series of tall colorful panels, vertically oriented, that seemed to compose new figures depending on one’s vantage point. Exactly what these futures were partially cleared up when I found the obligatory artist’s explanation. Essentially a Star of David symbolizing the Jews massacred during the holocaust turned into 2 radiating spheres, symbolizing humanity recovering. Or some such. Thanks to god for the explanation; otherwise this would remain in mystery.

~~On the train we are now zipping past what looks like a suburb; a housing development, flat fields, low sun illuminating all. We’ve just passed a graveyard, all graves hovering over the wet earth.~~

On my 1998 visit I’d noticed for the first time living statues, people earning money by pretending to be frozen. Very clever and perhaps hard to do. This time I only noticed 2: a perfectly still black man caught in mid movement, and later, at a trolley stop, a woman in silver—silver makeup and a silver costume sliding from her body. She sat on the tub she used to collect money. She appeared dazed as she inhaled her cigarette. She looked drunk. She looked sorrowful, like I feel sometimes when considering my misguided love life. So, to show myself, I show her. I snuck the photos by holding the camera low, viewing the scene on my flip out screen, and snapping without anyone noticing.

~~On the train we are now racing along a huge water body, one of the lakes near New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain, between the water and a levee, homes and fields on the other side. The levee has thickened from about one meter to about 3 meters, reminding me of the separation barrier in the West Bank. What happens to the tracks when the water rises?~~

Finally, finding my way back to the campus in the early evening (dark descends here at about 5:30 this time of year), thanks to friendly Black men who knew where the No. 52 bus would stop, proud of myself, I discovered the campus student center was not only open (Friday evening early) but its dining hall features all you could eat take out for a mere $7. Can’t pass this up. I’ll eat in my room, reading mail and news on the computer. And go to bed early to rise early, 4:15 am, to meet the cab, to meet the station, to meet the train, etc.

But first, tomorrow: who’d meet me at the Atlanta station and when would I join the pilgrimage? I checked the pilgrimage schedule, discovered to my horror that tomorrow evening the walkers would have driven to Koinonia after walking to the Martin Luther King Center in the morning. There might be no one home? Now what?

Call Dave. He’s not coming until Monday.

Call Denise, and hope she’s not grouchy as she can be. Reach Denise who turns out to be sweet and loving and patient. You’re lucky, she chimed, we had a slight change in plans, someone sick whose partner is driving down to retrieve her. So someone will be here on Saturday evening and can pick you up. You’ll drive on Sunday morning to meet us.

Oh, thank god for that, but not for the illness. I hope she does not have the H1N1 flu. I read that it is striking the world hard, in the US some 500 children already dead (is this accurate?), with something like 3,000 adults dead. God in heaven if this is so, and when will it end? Should I be more careful with hygiene? I’ve had shots, I carry flu remedy.

So far, the only illness I’ve suffered on this tour is a slight flu-like symptom already reported here. It passed. I feel good, currently.

~~We are now perilously streaming past two large water bodies, Pontchartrain on the left, another lake on the right, with numerous bridges spanning the water. What happens to the tracks if the water rises? What happened during Katrina? Isn’t this precarious?

I’m about finished with this writing for now, might break for coffee and food from my larder, a breakfast while gliding over treacherous waters. Later to spell and grammar check.~~

On the road: a photo tour in the USA south about Palestine/Israel, fall 2009—part 8 (Baton Rouge & New Orleans)

Excerpts from my journal while touring the southern United States with new photographs and stories. The main shows are Gaza Steadfast, Bethlehem the Holy, The Hydropolitics of Palestine/Israel, and Quakers in Palestine/Israel. (I’ve completed the tour and I’m now happily at home in Cambridge Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.)

PHOTOS

November 12, 2009, Thursday, Baton Rouge LA, home of J & M, in their living room:

Several breakthrough dreams last night, in the sense of being vivid, memorable, and possibly important. In the least dramatic but most intriguing—and hard to recall, describe and interpret—either I or someone else was explaining that we’d recently discovered or uncovered a remnant of an earlier people, foot prints encased in resin. These footprints were somehow connected with our early loves.  If only we could detect presence in the footprints we’d have access to these earlier loves. Vague, I know, but when dreaming it I felt deeply moved.

The second was an intense sexual encounter with someone I didn’t know. Then the scene suddenly shifted to outside, a group of people lining a walkway saying, give them room, let them breathe.

So much for my dream life, what about my real life?

Well, photographically speaking much is happening. Last night, showing Gaza at the local Islamic center to about 20 tired-looking folks after evening prayer, one man from Gaza came to me later to complain about me showing Sderot [the small Israeli town 1 mile from Gaza that has suffered many of the rocket attacks] as if the suffering was equivalent, Sderot and Gaza. This felt to me like the same argument some Jews might use when someone places an experience of deep suffering beside the Nazi holocaust of the Jews: can’t compare them, the Jew might say, completely different. Has the Gaza massacre, for Palestinians, become the New Holocaust, Palestinian style? Sacred, inviolable, incomparable? And eventually used to justify subsequent acts of injustice and brutality?

The man was angry, tho polite, thanking me for my efforts, but clearly feeling wronged, slighted, misunderstood. What could I answer? I offered at least 2 reasons for including Sderot, maybe 3: it’s a strategic method to build an audience; I’m curious about life there, especially trauma; and to show the boomeranging effects of the rockets, how they’ve increased the oppression rather than decreased it. To do this I should be clearer that many in Sderot have become radicalized, more extreme against the Gazan. And world attention suddenly focused on the plight of Sderot, deflecting attention from what happened to the Gazan. His remarks confirm to me the correctness of my choice—ending the slide show with Sderot. Or so I pray.

Otherwise the show and audience seemed lacking something, not with my usual energy. Partly reacting to the poor turnout and my host, M’s, disappointment. Many more were at prayer, choosing not to remain. M takes this seriously, this lack of awareness and action among his fellow Muslims. His wife, J, also seemed to feel it. Compared with the only other mosque appearance I’ve made, this one clearly failed. But the photos looked good, the audio sounded good, and I didn’t miss many of my lines.

Other than the evening show, followed by dinner at their favorite Mid East restaurant, Almazar (the diamond), not much to narrate. I accompanied M as he did some chores. We discussed prostate problems and remedies. He suggested Flomax and Finasteride, both prescription drugs, and J added saw palmetto. I believe it’s time for me to do something about my noxious little problem.

I worked at home—this was Vet’s Day—to finish the next entry for my blog, about M and S, S especially because of the day. This entry has been one of the trickiest to edit: how much to disclose about both, especially him? I removed major portions of my story about him and his wife, trying hard to conceal their identity, protecting them: fewer weapons, virtually nothing about their free-flowing love lives. I chose not to send the initial blog version to him for checking, mainly because of the deadline, also the supposition that he’ll never see it and that I’ve done a sufficient job concealing him.

M was easier, not too much to hide. And since I do not link the photos directly with the writing, tracing who’s who will be harder. I linked to the latest photo set, and the video about McDonalds, hoping they both show something vital about my experiences in Florida.

Calling Dave yesterday to sort out the remaining schedule was helpful. Our plan now is for me to train from New Orleans to Atlanta in the next few days, depending on how much hospitalility I can find in New Orleans. Then join the School of the Americas Watch pilgrimage organized by Sister Denise and Brother Utsumi, drive with Dave back to Birmingham for that gig, and end at the SOA. The last weeks are coming together, slowly, but unless magic happens with New Orleans housing—an ironic twist on the Katrina story: Skip without housing in the Crescent City—I’ll not have much free time to explore.

My walk this morning was glorious—sunny and cool, clear sky, flat terrain, much to watch, especially the live oaks, many paths to take, no rush, and inspiring my hosts to begin a walking regimen. I miss such walking.

November 13, 2009, Friday, New Orleans, University of New Orleans, Training, Rehabilitation, and Assistance Center, guest room:

On a sunny cool morning, living alone for a change, with an open day for New Orleans exploration. The Gaza show last night, sponsored by a newly formed chapter of Amnesty International and the General Union of Palestinian Students, to about 20 students and one off campus man, Joe.

M graciously drove me all the way into New Orleans, with our usual animated conversation about political events, plus news about his precarious economic position requiring him to continue working in his civil engineering business. I experienced a big loss recently, he said, not giving details, which keeps me working. Altho he is generous and compassionate, I detect a note of deep suffering, frustration, impatience. He is often highly critical of others, using the word disaster frequently. Yet he and his wife are exemplary hosts, inviting me back for further shows. I wonder if he’d prefer being in S’s position, free from the need for paying work, able to devote full time to organizing.

On long bridges we soared over swamps,. This is a water rich area, one that if I ever finish my Palestine/Israel project I might concentrate on for its water theme. The title might be, Water in New Orleans.

The group heartened me last night, many of them young activists, attentive to my show, with many questions later. I found myself disclosing personal information to an extent unusual even for me, in particular about consequences of my secondary trauma—weeping, love, love, love, and sex. I told the story of photographing the burning mother in Nepal, occasionally glancing at Jason who is Nepali, how I noticed cattle fucking near the cremation ghats. I regarded this as a sign of the intimate connection between death and sex, or between suffering and love. That was in response to a question about how I dealt with witnessing suffering.

A related question—and I worry at times that I’m too much about me, not about others—was about how children respond to suffering: attending programs like Popular Achievement in Gaza, university enrollment, graduate education, sports, religion, sometimes extreme forms of religion as with Hamas and even more radical Islamic groups, and of course despair, caving. Which may be more prevalent than I observed because I was with a select group of Gazans.

At the show at Louisiana State University I’d seen a display about hidden people and decided to use this theme in my intro. Forgot. Forgot also at the mosque show but last night I remembered and opened with that. I asked, after explaining how I came to this idea, what are some hidden populations of humans that you know about? Only a few responses. (Of course, being hidden they might not be apparent.) I listed the Katrina population, especially people of color. Paradoxically there was great attention to Katrina itself, as a catastrophe, and some attention to the victims, of all types. But because of how blacks living in poverty were portrayed—criminals, rioters, killers, monsters in short—they were rendered invisible: their true selves were hidden. They were not rendered as human beings. Ditto for American Indians. And for the Vietnamese during the war, the gooks, and the Iraqis, and the same for the Gazans—who we are taught are all terrorists. This proved a useful frame for the show.

Also I now use the 2 images from Newsweek, Vice President Joe Biden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, contrasting them: man in suit with American flag lapel pin, smiling vs. a scowling bearded Arab. This to the point of why I do my work: to balance the big picture by portraying Palestinians as human beings.

I encouraged questions about photography, so from what equipment do you use to how are you regarded when photographing in Gaza were tossed at me. I’d said earlier to a young man who had professed interest in photography, please don’t hesitate to ask me about photography, few do, and I love those questions.

In the few hours I had between drop off and show time, I searched for internet access, found none, concluding this is one of the tightest campuses yet for internet security; walked to Lake Pontchartrain and made a panoramic photograph from a levee; bought and snagged food for later consumption (some of it I’m afraid is from the stash of the resident assistants); and pondered what to do about New Orleans, how long and where stay?

I feel cut off  without Internet access. I’ve had it fairly reliably on this trip, especially during the last days in Baton Rouge, and at home since I signed up for Verizon. Without internet I am blind to new developments about trip planning, can’t get local info, can’t book my Amtrak ride (I could over the phone), won’t know if any personal messages arrived, and can’t add web material to the slide shows. Perhaps I’ll find temporary access today in my travels. A library perhaps.

Jason, my host, is from Nepal. He informed me that the campus suffered greatly during Katrina, under 18 feet, yes FEET, of water, but suffered more from the vandalism and looting inflicted by evacuees who’d been temporarily housed here. I’m not sure how true this is, perhaps a projection upon others?

He also cleared up for me the use and meaning of the term teeksa. Not pronounced teek-sa, but thik cha, 2 syllables, the Nepali pronounciation of th not available in English. And Nepali has a word for thank you, contradicting what I’d learned when in Napal in 1979, but at least I was correct in guessing that thik cha means ok, fine, why not, etc. So I’ve mauled the word, yet correctly interpreted it. End result: I’ll make no change. I’ll continue to use it for my photography passion, but not explain it as the Nepali equivalent of thanks because the language lacks that word.

LINKS:

Gaza Freedom March

US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

Stolen Beauty, a selective boycott campaign against an Israeli product, Ahava, promising “Beauty Secrets from the Dead Sea”

Israeli Apartheid Video Contest

On the road: a photo tour in the USA south about Palestine/Israel, fall 2009—part 7 (Slidell & Baton Rouge LA)

Excerpts from my journal while touring the southern United States with new photographs and stories. The main shows are Gaza Steadfast, Bethlehem the Holy, The Hydropolitics of Palestine/Israel, and Quakers in Palestine/Israel. (I’ve completed the tour and I’m now happily at home in Cambridge Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.)

PHOTOS

November 8, 2009, Sunday, Slidell LA, home of L, in the dining room:

Some confusion about the remaining big plan: which of the few remaining gigs are confirmed, where will I stay at night, what will be the transport? Last night’s show scheduled for a church in Biloxi MS had to be shifted to the home of one of the organizers, G, because someone had slipped and not actually booked the church—so we couldn’t get in. The afternoon Hydropolitics show was in a classroom on a nearly empty campus—so few attended. In short: dismal times.

Partly this seems to reflect the political climate here, sodden, conservative, quiet, at least in the region of the Gulf Coast other than New Orleans itself (which is said to be highly politically active). As one man said, the Egyptian at my Gaza Satori coffee house show (which was well attended), there is no one to argue with here, dead.

I respond: so what? One of the main reasons Dave and I chose to move into this zone was exactly its relative backwardness compared with other parts of the country. Backward only in the sense of awareness and involvement in progressive politics.

Surprisingly I’m not worried. I trust that good things will eventually happen. Church locked? Use someone’s home. Few upcoming gigs? Use the time to explore New Orleans and Birmingham. No housing around the time of Birmingham? Use Couch Surfers and Hospitality Club [2on line systems for finding hospitality worldwide, I used it in Israel] to find alternative housing in that area. Worst case is perhaps shift to Atlanta and reside in the Japanese Buddhist dojo and join the immigrants’ rights march, or ship myself home early. I have choices.

At the end of this road is the prospect of a full month of relaxation and concentrated photo work. December: enjoy the onset of winter, plunge into processing the photos from the summer, maintain blog and website, visit family, perhaps establish a deeper friendship with a few good souls, put together a New England tour, and photograph in New England.

About hurricane damage, the aftermath of Katrina, I’ve noticed open land where buildings once stood, foundations, building relics, and other markers of habitation. The Long Beach Mississippi University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Campus for instance. Driving in past boarded up buildings my impression was of dereliction. Abandonment. Loss and no recovery. Driving further, following signs for “Event parking,” we entered the renovated part of the campus. I learned from an English prof there that the university is slowly rebuilding, from the back of the campus to the front, in part using insurance money.

Casinos seem to have been rapidly rebuilt, altho some construction was frozen because of the economic crunch. Workers have removed the tons of sand blown in by the storm. In places they were distributing new sand to reconstitute the beaches. Oddly, in most parts of the beach we drove along between Ocean Springs and Gulfport few people were on the beach, only one or 2 in the water.

Our Middle Passage Pilgrimage in November 1998, about this time of year, had walked along this stretch. I believe I spotted the Lutheran church were we resided, and I noticed the beach area where we’d stopped for prayer in a circle, which I’d photographed. Later I’d like to check my records to determine the exact route, and to read what I may have written about my experience on the way to New Orleans and eventual departure from the pilgrimage to construct my own.

My Slidell Louisiana host, L, is the only person that I’ve queried about knowing about the Middle Passage Pilgrimage that actually remembers it. She attended a church event on the topic, but did not herself participate. She thinks we headquartered in the Unitarian Universalist church in New Orleans. I might check that when I’m there.

To meet the threats posed by violent storms, buildings now must be built on stilts, at least the residential buildings. I’m not sure what changes in building codes have been instituted for large buildings. Sitting square and huge along the water I muse about their vulnerability.

Slidell Louisiana

Unfortunately photographing this is tough. In a car, whisked from spot to post, by friendly hosts, I’m not able to walk, find vantage points, consider the light, and make decent photos. And since so much seems viewable from ground level, I float the thought that to photograph this topic well—aftermath of Katrina—a helicopter might be a useful tool.

About the folks hosting me: D and D, exceptionally kind and thoughtful, my every need considered, jewels of humanity. Initially meeting in high school, they now seem utterly compatible. They’ve strewn their tables with unfinished projects. D showed me his garage with wood tools he’s not used in 3 years. His computer books are all out of date. Before retirement he worked as a chemist, she a secretary. I love them and hope to know them better on my next trip. They appreciated my work, invited me back.

My main host, G, aging, falling asleep at odd moments (said to fall asleep while on the internet), hunched over because of back problems, lost his wife recently, her 4th marriage (widowed twice). Dave thinks he’s a good organizer but judging from the turnout maybe not.

Another host, L, about my age, speaking very slowly with a southern accent, lives alone with her cat in a house that resembles that of someone living inches above the poverty line in the early 20th century—lace, old fashioned furniture, thin rugs, spare kitchen. But she rallied, met me in Gulfport, drove me to her home, is hosting me for 2 nights. Her part time job is shelving books and she complained about once being married to the “world’s worst husband.’

No wireless Internet where I’m staying in Slidell with L, but I can use her computer. Once again I’m handicapped—but not for long

November 9, 2009, Monday, Slidell LA, home of L, in the dining room:

I found this powerful poem that I’m now using as my footer.

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

—Yuelin Shiguan

Being close to the traditional Veterans’ day, which I thought was either the first or second Tues in November (the first was election day, does this replace Vets’ day?) yesterday, a Sunday, I happened upon a parade thru the center of Slidell which included lots of vets, lots of Junior ROTC marchers, and one armored personnel carrier manufactured locally at Textron. I’d been out walking, surveying this somewhat dismal town—observing the Amtrak station (which if I’m lucky I might pass while on an Amtrak bound for Birmingham), noticing a small internet café at the station that I might have used had I known about it, the town’s center and in it a church with a huge attendance, L’s neighborhood consisting mostly of one story, flat housing, much of it looking ramshackle, hardly able to stand up against floods and winds, a park along a bayou, missing trees in its midsection (L explained that Katrina had destroyed many trees and most would probably not be replaced), another park with a name like Hound or Pig Hollow, many small closed antique and boutique shops, a few other people out walking, plenty of cars, and a few other points of interest.

I photographed houses set about 8 ft up on stilts, learned from L that many of them have been raised to offer some protection from flooding. A few abandoned houses. Not much to photograph. Until finding the parade. Then, how to show it compassionately? The announcer repeatedly called for the crowd to “put your hands together and honor…,” a Korean war vet, a major who’d made some contribution, performing cheer leaders, a marching band, etc. All American, and I’m on the outside. I don’t hate this exhibition of militaristic fervor but I find it repellant. To the point of imagining a conversation between me and someone who’d noticed I wasn’t “putting my hands together.”

I might respond: I’m with you on honoring courage and dedication, trying to act effectively for what one believes. I have to question the belief, the objective of the action. Is using violence to resolve conflict smart? How many innocents are injured and killed when military action is taken, what is the long-term achievement of using the military, and what are the hidden costs such as post traumatic stress disorder?

The person might pop me one as a weakling or supporter of terrorism, or might say, well, I’ve never thought about that. Let’s go somewhere after the parade for coffee and conversation.

I discovered the Ali Baba café, serving Mideast food. Tasty but slow, a gracious overworked owner, very dark skinned with a wide smile. The shelves were spotted with a few Mideast foods but empty space predominated over filled space, lending the appearance of either a start up business or one that is not exactly thriving.

Sunday was an off day, I hope not one in a growing string of off days—no gigs. I had time to edit and post on YouTube my first video of the tour, made while cruising thru a hilly golf course on my comfort bike in Miami while talking to myself, barely hearable over the wind noise. I’m curious about responses to this video, whether some might find it stupid and pointless, others innovative and courageous. Is it deep or is it a trifle? It surely was fun to make and about as fun to post.

Looking at my YouTube viewing numbers I discovered that a Walk Around Ramallah was most viewed, with over 1500 or so viewings, while some others like the workout in Portland gathered only about 60 or so views. The ratings, when people stopped to rate, were generally good.

A few more observations about my host, L. She seems to live alone, not only in her house, but in her community, rarely referring to anyone or any community. She has habits like every morning eating instant oatmeal, eating while sitting on a beach chair at the dining room table with her legs up reading the morning paper and cuddling her cat. She is very helpful and thoughtful, which I appreciate, and she likes my photos, to the extent that she volunteered to put some on her Facebook page. This may be her true community, Facebook.

I gave her a 5 by 7 of her choice, she had sharply observed remarks to make about some that almost made the cut (I’d offered one free), asked me to photograph her for Facebook, asked if I’d be her friend on Facebook, and is now trying to find me housing in New Orleans thru a friend.

Anne R is circulating a doc entitled GLOBAL ACTIONS TO END ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION, which has her mark on it. It lists various organizations and other initiatives that suggest the efficacy of Boycott-Divest-Sanction, BDS High on the list is Veolia Transportation, the company that presumably pulled out from its contract proving light rail service to Israeli settlements, running thru Palestinian territory. I’ll have to thank her for this and I’ll consider sending it to my list.

Hurricane Ida is approaching, how will this effect my plans, and what will it do to the land and people?

November 11, 2009, Wednesday, Baton Rouge LA, home of Joey and M, in their living room:

Mississippi River, Baton Rouge Louisiana

A tour of Baton Rouge with the ever hospitable M, dinner with him and his wife at home, a minor revision of Gaza, and finally contacting my New Orleans host—that about makes up my day yesterday. Not the most exciting day of the trip, but adequate.

The Mississippi river runs thru Baton Rouge (red stick, supposedly from a red stick that native people placed along the river to designate the spot), and because of the levee the river is hard to see unless one is on the levee or a bridge. A railroad line runs along the levee, past a station converted to a museum. The city built a walkway, much used at sunset yesterday when m and I promenaded along the levee and tracks. Here I made a panoramic of setting sun, opposite shore, bridge, and perhaps a few walkers. We tried gaining perspective for photos by driving as slowly as possible across the new and the old bridges, without much luck. I believe I was able to show some of the numerous refineries along the river. I believe this stretch of the river is called Chemical Alley because of all refineries.

On the Baton Rouge levee (click for an enlargement)

We also visited the government complex along the lake, centered on a tall building of about 30 stories built in the 1930s by Huey Long. He was assassinated in the main hall. The lake was gorgeous, and the grounds included an Indian mound thought to be a sacred or leadership site, a rose garden with odorless depleted roses, egrets, and the old powder magazine left over from a fort. Inside the magazine a museum explaining the history of Baton Rouge and exactly what a powder magazine is.

We cruised thru various sorts of neighborhoods, including ones inhabited by black Americans. These are spotted throughout the city and are remnants of pockets of Blacks who lived near plantations, if I understand M correctly. There is also a larger concentration of Black people elsewhere. Unlike Slidell, there has not been a permanent immigration of Katrina survivors. Some moved here temporarily and then returned to New Orleans or moved elsewhere.

M treated me to a catfish lunch at a well-known restaurant opened by a former football player, now a sort of chain in Louisiana. Good food but obsequious service. The aging “server,” Desiree, used most of the endearment terms in the book: dear, hon, honey, sweetie, love, baby… and we’d just met! M quipped that such terms in English often relate to sweet food, whereas in Arabic, the multipurpose word habibi, the terms are more focused on relationship. Habibi can range from dearest one to friend, and might even be a sort of imperative, as in HABIBI, come here!

The downtown, altho initially appearing decayed to me, is in fact, M explained, being rejuvenated. This is due to a governmental initiative to relocate government offices to the central city. as Chicago reawaked its downtown by siting colleges there, thus drawing ancillary service organizations and people, Baton Rouge appears to have done this thru legislation—a mark of good government?

Weather was warm and moist, with manifold sky creatures zooming about, mostly cumulous. M complained about the year-round heat and mosquitoes, using this to explain his lack of exercise.

The remark about Sderot from someone in the audience at the Baton Rouge show prompted a slight revision of Gaza. Indeed, I learned that Sderot is built on Palestinian land, the cleansed village of Nadj in 1951, and might have been founded to define Israel territory—another fact on the ground. It also housed refugees from North Africa, Kurdistan, Persian and other regions, so it is a town of immigrants. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any visuals to illustrate the idea of worldwide Jewish and Christian attention to the town when attacked by Gazan rockets, contrasting with the minimal attention to Gaza itself and the suffering Israel caused.

J and M have lived in this house more than 30 years, raising all their children here for at least part of the children’s lives. M and J speak of moving to Damascus, his original home, claiming that at least one child wishes to move with them. But as J, from the US, added, he’s been talking about this for 40 years. I note that I am one of the few people I know not beset by bi-regionalism. With no desire to return to the Chicago area, my original home. Perfectly content to live out my remaining hours, days, weeks, months, years in New England, if not the Boston area, if not Cambridge, if not 9 Sacramento St.

Refinery, Baton Rouge

And my New Orleans host, JS, finally emailed me, claiming he’d had the flu and was busy. He assures me of hospitality for one night, I remain presently an artist without a home for the remaining few days in New Orleans. Ditto for Birmingham. Slouching toward Atlanta where in about 12 days I board the train home. Can’t wait, not so much for this journey to finish but to be home and in my expanded December zone of work work work, with family, friends, Quakers, land all mixed in.

H wrote in response to my first video, about bicycling around a fancy South Miami golf course:

The subject says it all… this is surreal… a contrast to Gaza perhaps?… maybe an ‘opposite sketch’?… maybe you are……… ???

And from me:

all [of what you wrote] seems correct: surreal, Gaza, “opposite sketch,” and … mainly just having fun, playing, momentarily in the land of the rich. you are very perceptive.

LINKS:

Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage: “The Modern Dance of Imperialism,” by Teresa Williams

A Spirit People: One View of the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage, photos of the pilgrimage by Skip Schiel

Global Actions to End Israeli’s Occupation (mostly using Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions, BDS—thanks to Anne Remley and QuakerPI.org)