“It’s all art. The way you laugh.
Your smile. Your wardrobe. & the
way you decorate your home.
The way you dance. Your energy.
Your collection of books. & the
way you write. Your playlists.
Your grocery lists.
Your friendships. It’s all art.
Your whole life is art.”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve posted about my day trip to Salem. Strolling around the city during the holiday season and enjoying a local cafe.
The reason for the trip was to see the photography exhibit, As We Rise, before it left the Peabody Essex Museum. It was wonderful and I’m so glad that I got to see it before it ended on December 31st. The description of the exhibit on the website truly intrigued me.
“Explore Black identity through a compelling compilation of photographs from African diasporic culture. Drawn from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge Collection in Toronto, a Black-owned collection dedicated to artists of African descent, As We Rise looks at the myriad experiences of Black life through the lenses of community, identity and power.
Organized by Aperture, New York, the exhibition features more than 100 works by Black artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States and South America, as well as throughout the African continent. Black subjects depicted by Black photographers are presented as they wish to be seen , recognizing the complex strength, beauty and vulnerability of Black life.”
The exhibit shows ordinary Black people living their lives and reminded me of my own family photos. The exhibit acknowledges the importance of these pictures. Yes, we as a people have been through a lot. There has been struggle. And the struggle continues.
But we are just like any other people. We live our daily lives and have families and friends. We take pride in our work.
We enjoy the simple things and glamour. We are bold and beautiful.
It feels wonderful to see these people just being themselves and living their lives, just like me. It means something to see oneself, depicted in this way. It means something to see oneself portrayed at all. To show that we existed and continue to exist. And that we will exist.
I remember as a kid watching TV shows like Star Trek and being happy that there were Black people in the future. To a certain extent, it’s silly. It wasn’t real. Even so, it mattered.
The text in the picture above, “Identity as Seeing Ourselves” resonates with me in a similar way.
“These photographs are not only about seeing ourselves and our place in the world, but also picturing where we are going.”
This picture above, which represents refusal, is quite interesting. Not something I would display at home. But I like the idea of us as a people being able to have control over whether we are seen or not and how we choose to be seen.
And last, but not least, As We Rise shows Black people at rest and leisure. I loved this portion so much! What’s the point of life if not to enjoy ourselves and relax at least some of the time? Have we not toiled enough?!
An Instagram post by The Nap Ministry for the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. says it best.
“The teachings of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have been a North Star in my life since I was in elementary school and obsessively wrote every paper for any class on him until college. I’ve read everything he has written and his work grounds my ethos as a Black Liberation Theologian. As the country honors his legacy and celebrates his birthday, I am deep in meditation about leisure for Black People.
Leisure and the right to simply exist without the constant weight of having to be a tool for production is something Black people have been denied for centuries. It is our divine right to simply be and embody leisure as a human right. These photos of MLK, Jr. on vacation in Jamaica in 1965 are a balm and deep breathing. Radical inspiration for our rest practices. We Will Rest!!”
“It’s not what you look at that matters,
it’s what you see.”
                                                                                                                        ~ Henry David Thoreau
Maybe it’s because I live in Quincy. The one in Massachusetts, that is. Or because I feel a strong sense of history. Possibly both.
Whatever the reason, whenever there is an election where democracy hangs in the balance, which seems to be every election now; I find myself making a pilgrimage of sorts to places dedicated to the Adams family. One “d” not two! The presidential family, not the fictional funny/creepy one.
Anyway, soon after the 2020 election, we Americans, and probably most of the world, wondered if there would be be a peaceful transfer of power. To calm my nerves, I wandered around the garden at Peacefield. I sat and looked at the most magnificent tree. I thought about the depth of the tree’s roots and the depth of our democracy. Immersed myself into the feel of that place and called on the spirits of this old Quincy family to help democracy hold. Because if anything was important to former presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, it was democracy and this lovely place where they lived.
Because of January 6th, there was not a peaceful transfer of power. However, there was a transfer of power. And thankfully we were spared from another term of the one whose name I don’t want to write.
And here we are again. It’s Saturday, November 12th. The midterm election was only this past Tuesday, but it feels like it was weeks or months ago. Partly because Twitter’s new owner is causing complete chaos. Vote counts continue, so we still don’t know who will control the House or Senate.
Last Saturday, the city of Quincy recognized another member of the Adams family with a new statue. This time it was finally for a woman! The magnificent Abigail Adams! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the ceremony that day. According to an article in The Patriot Ledger, the sculptor, Sergey Eylanbekov, also created the nearby John Adams and John Hancock statutes. His work is beautiful.
To vote for this election, I had my ballot mailed to me and on Monday, I dropped it off at Quincy City Hall. The new memorial is right across the street, so I walked by it. While I was there, several other people stopped to look and take pictures. Again, I called on Abigail’s spirit (and the rest of her family!) to help democracy hold, because it’s still faltering.
A couple of years ago, here in the United States, society was toppling, tearing down, removing, renaming and sometimes defacing statues. Most with good reason in my opinion. It’s nice to see someone remembered who was by most, if not all, accounts a kind person, intelligent and forward looking.
Some quick research shows that there may be some disagreement on the day she was born. Most places, including the National Park Service, give the date of November 11, 1744. However other places, including part of the memorial pictured below, give the date of November 22, 1744. The White House just gives the year. Either way, it’s around that time now, so either early or belated 278th birthday Abigail Adams!
She was our nation’s second first lady, the mother of the sixth president, against slavery and wanted better treatment for women.
One of her most famous quotes, from a letter dated March 31, 1776, to her husband, was memorialized in the picture above. But it’s not the original spelling or the full text as written by Abigail. The Massachusetts Historical Society has archives of her letters and they are available on the website. Below is more from the letter with the original spelling.
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency — and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”
Abigail Adams was right. We women did have to rebel and did not hold ourselves bound by laws not giving us a voice or representation. Otherwise we would never have gotten the right to vote or the right to own property.
Credit cards were created in 1958, but only for men. Women couldn’t open a credit card in their own names until 1974! We would have never had reproductive choice without rebellion. And we are still fighting. Sometimes the same fight over and over again.
The constitutional right to an abortion was only decided in 1973 and we lost that right just this year. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But just like Abigail, we women have to adjust to our current circumstances so we can survive. Then fight and keep looking to the future.
Spring forward! We have more daylight today as Daylight Savings Time begins!
Although spring isn’t officially here until the 20th, I really start to feel it when it’s light at night. Tonight it will be light until 7pm!
It also makes me start to think about things that I’d like to do this summer. I’ve been to Florida and California more recently than New York, which is so much closer! I just learned about an interesting art exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that I would love to see.
Right here in Boston, I’m interested in getting over to the Institute of Contemporary Art far more often. There are several exhibits I’m interested in seeing. As I write this, I’m sensing a theme. I guess I want to go to museums more often! Years ago, I would go on a regular basis and I really miss it.
But I don’t have to wait until summer to visit more museums. Let me focus on the present and what I can do now. Get myself to some museums! I work just a couple of T stops from the MFA, so I could even go for a lunch break.
Thinking about spring flowers and the end of winter, a passage that I recently read in a poem by Rumi, comes to mind.
That light reveals
flowers growing in this place.
I am so amazed:
where death is,
there flowers also grow.
