There is a beautiful old church down the street from where I live. It’s over 200 years old and has cracked, peeling paint, a huge steeple you can see for miles, and a side yard usually filled with giddy preschoolers from the nursery school run out of the church basement.
A few years ago, a local university purchased the church property and recently unveiled plans to, while not replace it, significantly alter it to accommodate classrooms, a library, and a gallery. While a public space to display art and house books didn’t sound so bad, I didn’t like the idea of changing such a historically relevant and architecturally lovely building to do it. So I joined the local fight to protect the church and submitted some drawings along with a written statement to the city council (council approval was needed before the university started to build).

Here are a few views of the church and its surroundings. I love how seamlessly it fits into the landscape– urban, but hugged by ancient trees and overgrown greenery…

And here are some sketches of the city council hearing, where the public could voice their opinion and the university could defend its proposal:

In the end, the city council passed the proposal despite much public opposition: by next year, the church will be stripped down, gutted, and moved several yards over to another part of the lot.

While disappointed that this historical landmark won’t last in its original form forever, I’m not surprised by the city’s decision. The forward push of time and urban development means change, large and small; I wonder if change always has to mean building up and over when it comes to the movement of city progress? How much of history can be preserved without getting in the way of the future?  Can you keep a city relevant to the present and yet preserve a sense of truly authentic, historical aesthetic and brilliance? Maybe, in this case, the university’s idea is the best approach: not completely destroying, just taking apart and architecturally recycling. The footprint of this church at least will endure. I will miss the peeling paint, stately presence, and laughing preschoolers in the overgrown yard.

The Divi Divi tree grows only in Aruba; attempts to plant it in other parts of the world have always failed. The tree’s unique leaning shape, used for centuries to show the direction of the trade winds, looks like giant hands have come along and gently pushed it, molding it like soft clay. It’s the giant hands of the trade winds, gentle but persistent, shaping the growth of the trunk every day, year after year.

For a New Englander like myself, Aruba in late winter is almost too abruptly paradise-y to handle. The day the plane took off, the streets of my neighborhood were still muffled with snow and ice:

Four hours later, I stepped into a warm tropical oasis where the average  year round temperature is 81 degrees. My skin couldn’t quite believe the sensation of warm sun and wind. I would start to reach for my down jacket and boots before I remembered the beach stretching for miles outside the hotel door. But soon those trade winds take hold of the deeply rooted winter psyche and blows it away, far out into the Caribbean sea. Like the iguanas that slink across the landscape, adapting effortlessly to the colors of the environment, it’s an easy transition to shed winter sweaters and run barefoot out into the sun. You start to blend in with the easy island way of life.

Aruba is one of the ABC islands, originally used as a fortress by the Dutch during the “Eighty Year’s War” with Spain, but is now an independent nation that relies heavily on tourism for economic survival. The tourist footprint is inescapable, especially in the cotton candy-colored Palm Beach area (a landscape of international hotel chain highrises, cars, and European sunburns). But there are pockets of original Aruban flavor tucked here and there if you’re looking.

Here’s a desert vista, drawn while hiking in the Arikok National Forest:

cave paintings by the Arawak Indians– postcards from 2500 BC:

Snorkeling along the rainbow reefs at Boca Catalina:

And of course the famous pre-Lent party, the Aruban Carnival:

I won’t lie– after a week in Aruba, it’s nearly unbearable to return to a wintry urban Northeast, even if you get to do so with a tan and a baggie of seashells.  But my sketchbook still smells like suntan lotion, so when I’m stuck inside (like during today’s cold rainstorm), I can go back to the island of the Divi Divi for a while… I think there’s a part of me that’s been shaped by those trade winds, just like the tree, a part that hears our snorkeling boat captain’s smooth voice over the PA system of my daydreams: “jus’ take it cooool… and….calm…. jus’ be happy, no?”

A trip to the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory! An unusual choice for a winter activity, and as we crossed the Vermont border and it started to rain –cold, misty rain– it felt all the more poorly timed.

An hour later, a free mint-chocolate-chunk sample in my hand (cheerfully offered at the end of the factory tour), and I had completely forgotten about weather-induced whining. Besides the sugar, there’s something addictive about the Ben and Jerry’s atmosphere and unconventional, fun-loving philosophy. It’s optimism exemplified, the spunky story of two unlikely heroes and their realization of the American Dream via specialty sweet treat: success through good old-fashioned hard work, gumption, and following one’s vision with gusto. It wasn’t the literal ice-cream-making process, described in detail on the tour, that particularly interested me (although the giant, shiny stainless steel mixing bowls and mouth-watering ingredients were pretty mesmerizing).  It was the attitude behind all those ice cream beaters and chocolate chips, that go-get-it spirit of artistry … two college hippies, a mail order course on ice cream making, and a dream is realized!

For a multi-billion dollar company (the two college drop-outs sold their expanding company to Unilever in 2000), Ben and Jerry’s has maintained a relatively impressive social and environmental responsibility record, everything from using exclusively fair trade cocoa to reducing their overall carbon footprint. This people-green-friendly image was augmented by the surrounding environment: the beautiful Vermont scenery, with its rolling farm hills and quaint New England towns, was beautiful even in the wintry rain. We walked the grounds (not without first grabbing a pint of Chubby Hubby for the road) and then visited the nearby town of Stowe. Here are a few snapshots of the scenery.

In just a few hours, the office of the President of the United States will change hands. One man will step down and another will lift his right hand and utter just a few phrases– and with these few, simple and quiet actions, the world will change.

Scenes from the Inauguration Celebration on Sunday, Washington D.C.

I started 2009 with a trip to Mystic Seaport, CT., to reportage the park with the Dalvero Acadamy (including fellow 1104 studio members, Danielle McManus and Rosa Lee). Visting this historical place, including a preservation shipyard and 19th Century seaside village, in the winter was quietly magical. Not a popular wintertime tourist destination, we had the park mostly to ourselves to explore, talk to knowledgeable staff, draw and photograph. As the Saturday afternoon sun soon gave way soft, blue-grey snow, the landscape became even more alive as if the old ships were whispering their long held secrets.

I’ve read about the Amistad, the slave trade, the back-breaking yet lucrative whaling industry. I’ve heard lectures on the way America was built brick by brick in the cities and towns across the United States, the strands of cultural and historical events that run through our society and extend into the present.  But to see, hear, touch and feel it in person hits an emotional chord you can’t experience any other way.  Standing with your feet planted on the Amistad or running your hands over the barnacle-stained side of the Morgan, the oldest wooden whaling ship in the country, you can’t help but add a new dimension to your understanding of history– and how you can and will fit into that story.

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing!
To drive the dark away…
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us- listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.
-Susan Cooper

“For that is the true genius of America – that America can change.

Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

President-Elect Barack Obama

Grant Park, Chicaco

Election night

A secret garden: just the place to draw, to read, to think, take your problems. Pull some weeds, watch some bumblebees, plant some zinneas or cherry tomatos. A little vitamin D, a little dirt and messiness, a little (or lot of) perspective. It’s to my secret garden, tucked behind the creaky Victorians and bumpy brick sidewalks of my Cambridge neighborhood, that I bring all my problems.

When I first thought about starting this blog, I had absolutely no idea of how to start. What to say and how to say it? Lois Lowry, a favorite author from my childhood, once wrote, “stories don’t just appear out of nowhere. They need a ball that starts to roll…”

An embarrassing amount of time and failed attempts later, and my ball was definitely not rolling. I threw up my hands and retreated to the garden. I thought I was getting away from my blogging block, but in truth, its solution was staring me in the face. Like digging in the dirt, blogs are the opportunity for raw spontaneity and a little messiness. Blogs give you permission to be imperfect for the sake of what’s created by pure instinct, observation, and just plain having fun. It requires the ability to take a leap of faith, plant the little spout of an idea, and see what happens.

So, what will the future of this little sprout hold? I have no idea. But I begin my blog, my metaphorical garden, with a sketch of its inspiration. There is a good chance much of what you’ll read here grew out of a sunny afternoon planting a tomato plant just like this one.