A Medley of Honks

I hurriedly strode down the street, clutching my sign as I rounded the corner to a cheerful medley of honks. I smiled, delighted at the enthusiastic greeting.  

Normally a honk startles me, signifying that I have been inattentive or inadvertently rude to a fellow driver. Minnesotans seldom honk, sitting far longer than others behind that inattentive driver who is studying his or her phone at a light that has turned green. After a while they might gently tap on their horn as if to whisper “Excuse me, the light is green.”

 

Honks have taken on a new meaning for me as part of my weekly vigil at a protest near our condo. Every Tuesday, people from our condo building gather with signs as we try to capture the eyes of passing cars, soliciting honks and waves from fellow citizens who share our concern about our shrinking democracy.

 

In the process I have experienced a camaraderie with my neighbors, and with the occupants of those passing cars, however fleeting. I stand there with my sign and lock eyes with a driver. 

 

“Yes, you, I’m looking at you!”

 

Then I have a silent dialogue with them as I coax a honk.

 

 “Come on, I know you want to! Come on, come on, give it a tap!”

 

 I follow their car with my eyes, moving my sign to follow their vehicle down the street. Often I’m rewarded with a belated tap as they absorb our purpose. The more timid amongst us may give a wave. I wave back with an encouraging nod. Next time perhaps they’ll honk. Then there are those that lean on the horn, honking loudly down the street or do a tap, tap, tap rhythm down the block, clearly sharing our message. Others lift their hands from the wheel in a gesture of support causing me to worry that they don’t have their vehicle under control. We’ve had cars go by with passengers hanging out the window with both thumbs up. 

 

I study the occupants of those passing cars to try to discern the patterns. Are they minorities, women, young men? Are they someone I would expect to honk based on race or gender? Sometimes I’m surprised. I examine the vehicles, assuming pick-up trucks are less likely to honk or vehicles with a business purpose where one might have more caution. I whoop with joy when a postman taps his horn.

 

I often wonder about those who don’t honk or those who speed by as if in a hurry to exit this zone. I’ve seen two cars with a thumbs down through weeks of protests and wondered who are these people? Are they rejecting the sign that says Honk for Democracy or is it the No Kings sign? Or is it just their team versus our team?

 

I often consider what this accomplishes. For me, it assures me that I am part of a larger community that shares my concern. Showing up is an action in itself, building community, yet another. Each person that honks or responds is reminded that they’re not alone. That first gesture is a step forward into the next action. And it’s easier to do that in community.

 

This week we went to our local No Kings protest. As we walked to the gathering point, we joined up with a woman walking with a sign. There was instant camaraderie, as we obviously were going to the same destination. She shared that this was her first protest, then added that she was 80 and her kids were a little worried about her. As we approached the area, we heard a cacophony of horns honking, creating shared melodies, encouraging each other to lay on their horn with joyful abandon. You would never have known it was Minnesota!

The Hidden and the In-between

I feel a bit like a negligent letter writer when I decide to write a blog post, as if I should apologize for my long absence. Ideas need downtime to percolate and as is oft the case, I have filled my life to excess with little time for contemplation.

So, what brings me back to the keyboard? It is a practical task that I soon discover has many layers. I have been trying to update my art/genealogy card, a card that has a self-portrait titled Piercing the Veil, from a series of artwork that I did on family history in 2008.  And yes, that was a few years ago and the image no longer is the me of today, although the concept of a genealogist uncovering the unknown is still quite apt.

I was surprised to discover that this seemingly simple task is a far more introspective act than I anticipated. I find myself contemplating imagery, the deeper meaning of a name, and the common threads between my artwork and genealogy.  

My artwork has changed over time. My early work was largely figurative, paintings of people dominated. I loved the process of discovering a person by painting them, studying them and finding the essence of what makes them who they are. Often just the right line would magically bring their image to life.

During the Covid years, I began walking around my neighborhood. My direct contact with people diminished and I started noticing trees, noticing them in a way I hadn’t previously. They too were figural, often with distinct personalities, and often bearing scars and injuries that drew me to them. I was in an Artists’ Lab and trees became a fluid metaphor for the wide variety of topics we explored. 

To my surprise, I also noticed themes in my work beyond that arboreal content. I found that many of my paintings dealt with liminal space, that space in between as we go through change. Liminal space is often a place of transformation. This theme is perhaps best illustrated by my painting Stepping Into the Chrysalis.I  recently wrote of the liminal space between sleeping and waking, life and death in my blog post I Thought I Dreamt You. It is often a scary place because we don’t know yet what awaits us or how we will navigate it. 

In addition to liminal space, I also seem to often take what is hidden and make it visible. In the case of trees, you can see that in Tree Time, a painting of a 4,700-year-old tree where I brought the tree rings into visibility. I did a similar thing with the Burly Tree as I reflected on burls as a metaphor for brokenness and wholeness.

I suppose I should not be surprised that the theme of liminality is also reflected in my genealogy work. Many of my genealogy talks relate to topics of names and immigration. An immigrant is the ultimate liminal being, occupying that space between old country and new, old names and new, as they try on new identities. And what is genealogy but taking the hidden and making it visible. That early self-portrait clearly illustrated that as it spoke to the unveiling of family names arrayed behind me.

I didn’t consciously realize how much of my interest focused on the hidden and the in-between until I studied the patterns in the paintings arrayed on my studio walls. Perhaps we all have themes that we explore in the course of our life. It is only when the patterns shout out to us that they move into our awareness.

In deciding what to change on my card, I realized that I needed to include a new email as my old email address had stopped forwarding correctly. I needed a new email name, and I knew that “liminal” would be part of it. I soon discovered that others had that same inspiration. After trying several versions of the word, only to find someone had beat me to it, I decided to combine two words, liminal and ruach, creating a new word “Liminachal.” I’ve had a couple people ask me about the origin. I don’t have an elevator speech on what it means so I usually stammer something about it relating to my approach to artwork and genealogy. So let me practice on you with a little more cogent definition.        

Ruach, the word that I partnered with Liminal, is first introduced in Genesis in the creation story. Its meaning is God’s breath. In fact, the line that follows it is “Let there be light.” It is the act of breathing life into something, an act of creation. Creating artwork, when it works, takes me to a liminal space, a transformational one. It requires me to learn to live with not knowing exactly where I am going, but to trust the process.  Hence the uncertainty that accompanies it. Surprisingly, when I enter a genealogy search, I have much the same experience. Amidst that uncertainty, I am hoping for that spark that breathes life into my exploration. I have had to learn in both spheres in my life to not force a conclusion, but rather to let things unfold. To go bravely into those liminal spaces with curiosity and openness to the surprises that await.So what did I arrive at for my card? I decided to keep an excerpt of my early self-portrait on one side, but introduce my painting of Tree Time on the other side. Since my two passions of art and genealogy are joined in this card, a tree felt appropriate, especially a tree that is 4700 years old and goes by the name of Methuselah.

I Thought I Dreamt You

For ten years I was part of the Jewish Artists’ Lab, using Jewish and secular text to explore themes through artwork. After a lapse, it has resumed in a slightly different form through the Jewish Artists’ Collective (JAC), a collaborative project sponsored by a number of Jewish organizations in the Twin Cities. We begin the year with a topic that we explore in discussion which becomes the creative engine for artwork in a group show. The theme this year is Dreams, a theme that I struggled with for I seldom remember my dreams anymore. In sorting through old files, I ran across dreams I had documented from the 1980s that were incredibly vivid. Now a dream is a rarity, save for an occasional vague image or feeling that remains. As I have a limited portfolio from which to choose, I began to consider powerful dreams of the past that stayed with me and arrived at one which I’ve begun to work with. Of course, it has a backstory that is important in understanding what I am trying to capture.

In my mother’s final years, I began to drive down to see her for a week at a time, tag teaming with my sister who lived an hour away and came in each week. For me it was 500 miles away, an eight-hour drive that I had begun to get accustomed to, even finding the solitude satisfying.

 

I had driven down the day before and now slept soundly in my childhood bed, a twin bed in a room that I had shared with my sister growing up. Above me was a picture of myself as a somber toddler, wearing a dress that my grandfather had made. Behind me was a headboard, white spattered with gold specks. 

 

My parents had lived in that house for sixty years, deeply rooted to their home and community. Now my mother lived alone. She was losing memory, no longer able to continue her voracious reading as she lost the thread of a story. I had taken her to Israel the year prior, something she had always wanted to do. I’m not sure that she remembered much, but in the moment she did. We lived in the moment now. She was someone who I admired, even in this more difficult state. Each morning, she created collages because it gave her life purpose. “Everyone does something,” she once told me, “This is what I do.”

 

I was still slumbering but gradually awakening when the bedroom door opened a crack. My mother peeked in, and her face filled with delight as she exclaimed. “You’re here! I thought I had dreamt you.” 

 

I think now of her as existing in that time within the liminal space between our world and whatever comes next. I am often drawn to liminal imagery, the space between, which is in fact very much what a dream is. I also believe there are times when we are especially sensitive to being in an in-between state as I believe my mother was for those months prior.

 

I called her each morning and on one call she had told me that she had fallen asleep in her chair and woken to a place she didn’t recognize. It was her home, but it wasn’t her home. It had distressed her, and I wasn’t sure what I could offer her. “Life is getting harder for you,” I said, acknowledging this reality.

 

“Yes, it is,” she replied. Then she added a plea, “Hold me.”

“I’ll always hold you close,” I said, tearing up as I reached across 500 miles, practice for the lengthier distance that loomed. 

 

My mother died two months later. After her death, I wondered if she would come to me in a dream. Months went by and nothing happened. Then one night I dreamt I was sleeping in my childhood bed. I could hear my mother’s flip flops as she walked down the hall. A sense of peace filled me. There was nothing more comforting than knowing that my mother was nearby. I awoke in my own bed in Minnesota, my mother clearly not present. I had in fact dreamt her.

 

In JAC we were told to analyze the components of our dreams. I dust off this treasured memory and think of our discussion on making a dream manifest, bringing it to life. I didn’t see her in this dream, I heard her, a familiar noise that instantly translated into a sense of peace. Sound and feeling, but no interaction or communication. It was a sparse dream, but a rich one all the same.

I Thought I Dreamt You

What I love about this story is the juxtaposition of the two stories. What she thought was a dream turned out to be reality, my seeming reality turned out to be a dream. Mirror images, a play on liminal space. But how to paint it? I’ve been doing more abstract or nature-based imagery, but I couldn’t figure out how to tell this story without figural drawings. So, I started with a painting of my mother looking into a room in which I slept. How do I paint the sound of footsteps? I set that aside and remembered the headboard of my childhood bed with its specks of gold. I decided to create a suggestion of that and began tearing small pieces of gold from a foil wrapper. I stuck each one into medium where the headboard would have stood. They reminded me of music, dancing overhead. It dawned on me that they could connect me to the sound of her steps. I painted footsteps and then placed specks of gold between those footsteps leading to my ear. I collaged papers into the bedsheets that wrapped around me, forming roots below in the home in which my roots grew. Veils obscure parts of the footsteps, creating that liminal space that separated us. A painting evolves in an iterative way. What I don’t know is if this is the beginning or an end. I am considering if I could take some of the imagery which emerged and work with it in a more abstract way, perhaps playing with mirrored images, the suggestion of sound and footsteps.

If there was a resolution or meaning from this dream, looking back ten years later, I feel my mother’s presence and continue to hold her close. Perhaps she does the same with me.

Favorite Books: History and Human Experience

This blog post has become a bit of a tradition for me. This is the fifteenth year that I have written about the books that I especially enjoyed in the prior year of reading. I frequently go back to fondly remember the details of a particular book or when I read it. When I describe my reading, I usually look for the common themes and often they are quite clear. I am drawn to historical themes and several of these fall within that category, but perhaps the overriding theme is that of the human experience.  How do individuals respond to the challenges that life presents? What actions do they take, both in outward action, but also on an emotional level? Here are some of my favorites from the past year.

When Time Stopped by Ariana Neuman

Have you ever been to the Pinkas synagogue in Prague? There you will find the names of Holocaust victims written on the walls. When the author of this book first visited the synagogue, she was shocked to discover her father’s name. Where normally there would have been a death date, she saw only a question mark. This sets the stage for what is a book of discovery of what exactly that question mark embodied. Raised in a privileged family as a child in Venezuela, Ariana was the daughter of a man who had become a wealthy industrialist. And yet he harbored secrets. As a child, Ariana formed a detective club and was drawn to secrets, stumbling across clues about her father that everything was not as it appeared.  

 

It was only upon her father’s death that she was gifted a pile of clues from him from which she reconstructs the amazing story of his life during the Holocaust, living in the heart of Berlin under a forged identity. She learns of the Jewish grandparents she never knew and conjures them to life through her discoveries of their life in Prague and later in their letters exchanged with family while they were held in Terezin. A talented author and a dogged researcher, she has created a rich memoir and brings us along on the journey of her search. 

 

 

James by Percival Everett 

James is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway slave Jim, referred to as James in this telling, who is often a father figure to Huck.  Together, they travel down the Mississippi in flight. James because he learned he was to be sold away from his wife and child, while Huck is fleeing his drunk and abusive father. If there is a theme to this book, it is that things are not what they appear to be. Our first hint of the differences arises with an example of code switching that James teaches the children, or what he refers to as “correct, incorrect grammar.” It is the vernacular of “black-speak” designed to play to stereotypes, to hide in plain sight and preserve one’s safety.  He switches into perfect English when among other slaves. The few times he lets a white hear him speak in that manner, it strikes fear in the listener, shattering the world as they knew it. Appearance too does not always reveal race, a black man appears white and in one story James joins a band of white musicians and performs in a minstrel show in black face, made up to appear as if he is white. A thought-provoking book with an unusual framing.

 

 

Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo

This is a story of both slavery and escape, a true story based on the lives of Ellen and William Craft. Each experienced separation from loved family members as the cruelty of slavery divided families with no consideration of family ties. It was from this experience that they resolved to escape, to remain together and create a family that could not be sundered. Ellen, the daughter of her mother’s master, appeared to be white and they cleverly played upon this by assigning her the role of a young master suffering from illness while her husband assumed the role of her personal slave and attendant. They had some unique obstacles. Ellen had never learned how to write her name, so they bandaged her hand to avoid situations where she would need to sign travel documents. As Ellen had served as a slave to her half-sister, she had opportunity to observe how young men of wealth carried themselves, useful information as she crossed both racial and gender lines. Upon their successful arrival in the North, they joined the antislavery lecture circuit. They soon had to contend with the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 which could have resulted in them being sent back but evaded it and ultimately moved to Great Britain where William continued with the lecture circuit, and they raised a family. This is a dramatic story of escape and the people who became an important part of the anti-slavery efforts.

 

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

This book brings together many of the characters from Strout’s earlier books, Olive Kitteridge, the Burgess Boys and Lucy Barton. Bob Burgess is falling in love with Lucy, drawn in by the intimacy of being truly known on their regular walks. Meanwhile he navigates his marriage to Margaret where he often feels unknown. Olive and Lucy share small stories of people they encounter, those with unrecorded lives as they reflect on the meaning of the story or if there is any meaning at all. A murder mystery introduces some new characters and builds bonds between Bob and the young man who he defends, offering a fatherly presence to someone deeply in need of it. The book is a character study filled with well-developed characters living out life’s conundrums with each other, often bringing to them a level of unexpected kindness and insight.

 

The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar

This book is historical fiction, but also based on history. Told as many such novels, it alternates between two braided stories, one modern day fictional story, the other based on history.  What is unusual about this is its subject and her role in art history, the sister-in-law of Vincent Van Gogh, credited with introducing him to the world after his death and that of his brother.  Upon the death of her husband, Theo Van Gogh, Johanna Bonger was left with a young son and hundreds of Vincent's paintings. Her deep commitment to her late husband and her growing appreciation of Vincent's work, led her to move into a role that was quite unusual for a woman of that day as she gradually introduced the world to Van Gogh's work. The modern day story revolves around a young woman whose grandmother has just died and left her with a mystery and a diary. She too is finding her way as a young woman asserting herself in the world. She learns that the diary she received was written by Johanna Bonger. In crafting her story the author drew on the contents of the actual diary, that exists at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and in digital form as well, having first been released in 2020. While I enjoyed the present day story, I found myself intrigued by this woman who had the drive to carve out such an unexpected life and life's work. 

Doorman Wanted by Glen Miller 

On a lighter note, this book tells the story of the son of a wealthy man who suddenly inherits a fortune upon his father’s death.  Wealth is a world that he has long rejected and as he struggles with this new position in the world, he is sent to a building owned by his late father to sign some documents. Arriving at the building he notes a sign seeking to hire a doorman and in a brief moment of mistaken identity coupled with his hesitance to assume the mantle of wealth, he accepts a job as that doorman. The story develops around his role and relationships as the doorman, a role in which he thrives. His struggle is with how he will be perceived as a wealthy man and treated in a manner that prevents true relationships. This is a first book debut by Glen Miller who crafts a story with wit and heart.

Are We There Yet?

We put our old home on the market in November and closed on its sale by year-end. It was amazingly empty at the end, a state I could never have conceived of earlier. This blog was written when it still felt like a process that would never end. Much thanks to my husband without whom this would have felt impossible. Glad we did it now!

Are we there yet? We had moved into our new home. On sunny days it was flooded with light that filled me with unexpected pleasure. There were concerts in the park across from our condo. We had begun to get to know people in our building often with truly serendipitous connections to other friends of ours. We were both pleased with our new home. But we weren't done yet! We still had an old house to empty and sell. So how do you get rid of things? I had taken clothes to Goodwill and periodically thinned out papers, but I realized that I was skimming the surface in my elimination of things. Now we had to get serious.

I began with the seemingly easier things, sending 100 novels off to a senior living facility. But my books were my history, my first glimmer of that obstacle in discarding. I found I could more easily emotionally part with books if I listed them out first. That system quickly broke down as the numbers overwhelmed me. I discovered boxes of books from my parents' home that I wanted to keep and had already culled from their collection almost ten years earlier. As I’ve read electronically for years, I prioritized what I would keep in physical form, giving priority to art, history and reference books along with the few novels that felt especially important to me. And of course two shelves of cookbooks. 

We both faced dilemmas with things from our parents that we had forgotten about. My father had a large stamp collection that I had sold upon his death, but several boxes surfaced after my mother passed away and landed in our home. Fortunately, they were easily disposed of at a stamp and coin dealer. Unbeknownst to me, my husband had stored fifteen boxes from his late mother's home for the past twenty years. From old china to family history documents, he now had to sort between what to dispose of and what to keep.

You know those bags you get at conferences? We had a ridiculous number of them and were delighted to learn that we could dispose of them at an office supply store as well as old electronics. A scrap metal dealer took anything that was primarily metal allowing us to eliminate those items that had languished in our garage. I reached out to consignment shops and to antique dealers while my husband mastered Facebook Marketplace. Gradually the piles lessened with odds and ends remaining. We then painted and re-carpeted, preparing the home for its future owners. 

Despite our best efforts to eliminate belongings, there were items that followed us to our new home.The part that I struggled with was what to do with my own personal history, the pivotal points in my life documented in journals and letters. There was correspondence from old friends and roommates as we shared the travails of our twenties and beyond.  I also had rough drafts that I’d kept of my end of the correspondence, documenting my life in real time. I had forgotten how much we communicated in letters prior to email. 

And what does one do with old love letters that represent periods of my life frozen in amber? As a test, I actually shredded letters from one early beau whose letters did not inspire retention. The shredder died. I wondered if the universe was sending me a message and if so, what exactly was it trying to tell me. 

I assembled a box of documents of the important turning points in my life, choices that played a role in my personal journey, a roadmap of sorts. I am at this odd place in time where I can see the patterns in my life and what led to the me of today. When we are simply living our life, we don’t always recognize the full significance of those choices until hindsight deepens understanding, allowing us to find our path through our history, connecting the dots. When I do genealogy presentations, I often retrace my steps through a case to understand my intuitive process. I then use that material as a teaching tool. Similarly, my artwork emerges out of an intuitive process, but I then go back and make sense of where it took me to find the story within it. In many ways, my interest in my own personal history is a similar exploration. 

Why does this documentation of a life matter? Perhaps I would revisit it to write some essays. Would I be wishing I had that original source material? But if not for me, would anyone else care?  I was already imagining my nieces or step-daughters going through it someday. Would they simply pitch it, understandably overwhelmed with the disposal process. Or perhaps they would do as I did with my father’s correspondence, pause to read it and arrive at a deeper understanding of the person they thought they knew. Would they be at all surprised? 

I recall an old friend who in his 40s never kept anything personal in writing, no journals, no correspondence, and certainly no love letters. I was quite incredulous when he told me of this practice, knowing I could never implement such a rule in my own life. Now, I understand the wisdom in his approach, but for me history matters –– family history, cultural history and my history. This is where I am stuck as the boxes accumulate in my office. Of all of the stages of moving, this is what stumps me. I want to keep it all. 

Often things I’ve held on to for years can be repurposed in artwork. Of all the seemingly odd things I have held onto is a box of leaves, waxed leaves, leaves from 1975 with the newspaper article on how to preserve them. It was a project I had undertaken with my former-husband. I spread them out on a piece of paper and noted the interesting patterns they formed. I often paint about memory and what better material than 50-year-old leaves. A seemingly ephemeral thing which should have turned to mulch years ago. 

We are nearing the end of the parts of this process that require our active engagement. It has been a multi-step process from considering what we wanted, to finding what was there, to making a decision, to making it our own, to letting go of belongings. I liked the making it our own stage the best. And the least –– letting things go. The process of emptying out a house of almost thirty years and unearthing my history was daunting, even more so deciding what to do with it. 

Look how empty!

There is a learning curve to moving and we don't do it often enough to master it. And there are a multitude of decisions to make along the way. It is a stressful project, more so later in life when belongings have meaning within them, laden with the loss of loved ones and the story of one's own life. I am glad we made the jump now. If we waited ten years, it would not have happened. 

And I am grateful to have taken it on with my husband who has a variety of skills that made it more manageable. And now, I look forward to resuming the activities that I enjoy, so much of which has been on hold. Writing about the experience has reminded me of how much I enjoy and have missed writing. I hope to be doing it more in the future.

And a little extra . . .

As we went through this process, many friends confessed that they were thinking of a move too, but hadn't progressed much further than beginning to thin out belongings. We discovered  businesses that support those efforts and tapped a number of them. So we thought we'd provide some of the places we discovered to recycle as we went through that process for those of you who are contemplating the same. Some are local for the Minnesota crowd, but check the nationwide stores in your area to see if they provide the same there.

Home Depot Garden Department recycles Plastic pots (they don’t have to be clean), but not during the winter.

H&M (Ridgedale) recycles worn out clothing and textiles including bed linens and they give you a coupon for 15% off. For more information

Levis Store (Mall of America) Has a trade in program for old Levis jeans. They’ll  pay for some that are salvageable and recycle those that aren’t. There’s a limit of 5 items per month. For more information

Express Metals in Hopkins pays for scrape metal including things with motors, wires, screws and nails pretty much anything with a metal component. https://www.expressmetals.net/

Turnstyle is a good option for consignment. Stop by to check out one of their shops to get a feel for what they might carry. It took awhile to get the hang of it, but it did turn things we forgot we had into cash.

Staples takes those old conference bags along with electronics and gives you a 10% gift certificate for the store. 

If you have something that might fall into the antique category check out local antique dealers. 

And of course all the usual places, Goodwill, Facebook Marketplace, and putting things at the end of the driveway with a free sign.