Summer Light—Cranes Beach & Cox Reservation

Cox Reservation, Essex Massachusetts
From my journal of July 20, 2008, Sunday, Cambridge
Photos
On a warm, muggy, still morning, full moon set, no birds singing, eerie: storm coming?
Dreaming but barely: I was preparing for a long trip, to fly over one of the stans, like Uzbekistan, but not able to land for some reason; JVB had agreed [...]

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A test of vision

With the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert

With the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas

With the foreign minister of Israel, Tzipi Livni

In Sderot, examining the remains of a rocket fired from Gaza
Let’s take a close look at the following set.
Barak Obama in Israel and Palestine, the photos in Ha’aretz
How many photos show [...]

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Summer Light—Wingaersheek Beach & Conomo Point

Photos
Summer Light (at Wingaersheek Beach, Gloucester Massachusetts)
For the Summer Light workshop, 7.18.08
Harsh bright heated light
bearing down on us with thin skins
superheating exhausting sweaty bodies
Until
We duck out of the light
into the shade, and,
since we are at the beach with
thousands of others (Wingaersheek), and
the huge gobbling greenhead flies
are coating our bodies (some of us),
We can run, into [...]

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Yusef from Gaza, Skip from the United States

On Mar 2, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Yusef wrote:
Subject: The children still playing..
Dearest Skip
The sun is going to sink in a short time. The sounds of a hidden helicopter still heard from time to another but the children still playing and shouting outside without giving any attention to these terrifying sounds, Strange isn’t !!!
The [...]

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Queries and my responses about Palestine/Israel

For the workshop, “The Question of Palestine & Israel,” at the Friends General Conference Gathering, June-July 2008 (revised July 17, 2008)
What are my questions concerning this topic?
Can I concoct a schematic view of the situation that omits names of peoples? A and B rather than Israel and Palestine. And what difference would this make?
Will I [...]

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Summer Light—Rockport & Halibut Point

Photos
Three weeks later,
can I recall the sky?
On that longest day of the year, summer solstice, 2008?
First, clear, cumulous forming slowly on the horizon,
and then the sky was overcast, or nearly so,
with sharp definition.
For the photographer, a challenge: rapidly changing light, color
temperature climbing from 5,000 degrees Kelvin
to over 7,000. Blue ascending.
Day fading,
into the diminishment of light, [...]

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Just passing through: courageously faithful (part 2)

Niyonu Spann, Tribe 1

Part 2 (of 2)
Photos

One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one’s manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions — sorrow and anger — adequately.

—Anita Brookner
July [...]

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Just passing through: courageously faithful (part 1)

Painting while praying
Photos
Movie: Quakers eat
Part 1 (of 2)

They [photographs] are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you.
—Diane Arbus

June 27, 2008 Friday, south of Trenton NJ, riding [...]

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