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Fake it ’til you make it: Forgery for fun and profit

BY ANNE BELOV, July 12, 2013

“A Street Scene in Venice” after John Singer Sargent, oil on panel by Anne Belov. (Photos courtesy of the artists)

In just a few weeks, the third Forgeries @ Froggwell comes to Whidbey Island and you shouldn’t miss it.

But how did I, a respected art-school graduate, start copying famous paintings, and just what exactly is the point, you may well ask.

If you look back into the not so distant past of the 19th and early to mid-20th century training of young artists, you will find that much of artists’ education was copying the work of the masters. Whether it was drawing from plaster casts or setting up in the Louvre in front of the “Mona Lisa,” art students learned by copying the work of the great artists that came before them. In fact, some museums still allow students to set up in the museums and paint directly from original paintings.

There is a lot to learn from this practice. You learn about color and composition, you learn about just how a brush stroke was made, and you learn as much from doing it wrong as you do when you finally get it right. You heard that right: you learn more from failing than you do from getting it right the first time. But that’s the point of learning something new. If you could already do it easily when you started, there wouldn’t be much point in it, would there?

Belov’s “Arrangement in Black, White and Gray” oil on panel spoofs James Abbott McNeil Whistler.

I did my first master copy back in about 1999 or early 2000, after seeing the John Singer Sargent Exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum. His painting “A Street Scene in Venice” so blew me away that I said, “Damn, I wish I’d painted that!” So, my companion said, “Well, why don’t you?” So, I did.

Since that fateful day, I’ve done at least 10 copies of master works, including several more Sargents, two Vermeers, and a couple of Whistlers, most of them as close to the original as I could get, but in several of them, changing the originals in subtle or not so subtle ways.

Which brings me to this year’s Forgeries @ Froggwell show. In years past, we have done an anything-goes-copy-your-favorite-painting theme, and two years ago we celebrated the 98th anniversary of the 1913 New York Armory Show. All the paintings in that show had to have been in the original show, which turned out to be a lot more diverse than I had previously believed. (See? I learned another new thing!)

“Farm To Market Road” is an oil on panel by
Rebecca Collins, in the style of Y. A, Jackson.

This year the theme is From the School of… meaning that we are not copying actual existing paintings, but creating variations as if our target artist had maybe painted them. Rebecca Collins is painting Whidbey Island scenes as if Y. A. Jackson, one of the Group of Seven Painters, had made a trip from Canada to paint down here. Hey, it could have happened.

One of my entries, “Arrangement in Black, White, and Gray” is a spoof on Whistler’s famous portrait of his mother. I’m also doing a copy of a 16th century Raphael portrait in egg tempera, but using the face and hair of a young girl that I photographed at an event in Italy last year.

Part of the fun is for the artists to create a story and provenance for their painting, thus lending credence to the idea that just maybe, it was a real, unknown great art discovery.

Stranger things have happened.

The Third Forgeries @ Froggwell takes place on Aug. 1 to 4 at Froggwell Garden, 5508 Double Bluff Road in Freeland. Visit the Froggwell Blog here for directions, more information, or to sign up for our every once in a while newsletter, and preview images of works in the show. Hope to see you there.

Anne Belov paints, writes, makes prints, and is the founder of The Institute for Contemporary Panda Satire. You can find her paintings at the Rob Schouten Gallery, her cartoons on The Panda Chronicles, and her new book here. She also writes regularly for The Whidbey Life Magazine, a free journal of art and culture on Whidbey Island. Read her recent interview in the July Issue of The Write Life Magazine, an online publication. Her main regret in life is that there is no MacArthur Grant for Panda Satire.

July 12, 2013
Minding the Sky up on the roof

BY JUDITH WALCUTT, July 11, 2013

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time up on our roof lately to administer to the moss problem and admire the view. From up there, I have a perfectly spectacular vantage point from which to enjoy Mount Baker in the far distance and the rippling, sky-colored waves of Holmes Harbor in the middle distance. At the farthest water’s edge, there is the shore on the other side whose changes of light in the course of a day have made me want to drop everything, drive over to that white spit of land that arrives and vanishes with the changing of the tides, take a seat on a beached log, and watch it come and go until the sun sets and the stars pop.

The view from my roof in Freeland looks out over Holmes Harbor. (Photo by the author)

Instead of running away from home on these recent sunny days, though, I keep at the moss abatement project, scraping away at the greenery that has sprouted in the time we have been away. Last year alone our cumulative absence added up to about five months. On these amazing, blazing, and spectacularly blue and glittering summer days, I am happy to be home and to be up on the upper deck of my little ship, the kooky, odd-shaped house of my dreams on Honeymoon Bay.

While I’m up there, though, I’ve got a notebook in which I keep track of ideas and thoughts for things I am writing, so I don’t have to feel too guilty about being up on the roof on a beautiful day, rather than down in the basement with a screen and keyboard. Truthfully, for me, being up on the roof is a kind of spiritual practice. It is a great place from which to mind the sky and be thoughtful with each footstep; it is a good physical metaphor for practicing skillful means and joyous perseverance at the same time. You can see the big picture and your postage stamp-sized place within it, while looking out over the tree-tops and listening to the whistling of the eagle careening overhead. You can contemplate square foot by square foot, the specific nature of caring for your home.

Of course, I’ve always liked being on the roof. I tell that to people and they look at me funny—and suggest that I might consider the dangers of falling from heights. I explain that I’ve been running around roofs ever since I can remember and at one point in my crazy non-sequitor career, I worked for a woman-owned weatherization company in Seattle. It was actually my job to get up on tall ladders and caulk the rooflines of low-income households, to keep cold air from infiltrating and driving energy bills up.

That was one of my favorite non-writing gigs ever. Energy conservation is a great cause; they were fine people to work for; I worked outside and I learned a few practical things besides. I became, for instance, an expert window glazer in the process. I cut and replaced glass in windows that needed it and was able to cut a line of putty with the best of them. I feel confident on the roof, but not overly confidant. It’s good to refrain from over-confidence on the roof, because it is possible to fall and do serious damage to oneself and others in the process. My non-cocky confidence comes of darting about the peaks and slopes since I was a child and, like riding a bicycle, I have never forgotten how.

One of the great treats of our childhood summer was being permitted to climb the roof of the beach cottages to which we migrated directly after school got out. Our family place was located in the heart of a weathered, pine-filled woods on Fire Island, which is a slender barrier beach between Long Island and the Atlantic Ocean. When we arrived there after a very long, hot drive from my home town in New Jersey, we took a ferry boat from Sayville, Long Island across the Great South Bay, and came to a place which boasted no cars, no electricity, no phones, and in some cases, no indoor plumbing. We had both indoor and outdoor showers and while we had a flushing toilet, we also kept an outhouse for old times’ sake, since that was a remnant from the time when my parents first put stakes down on the island, right after World War Two ended.

We knew we had arrived in Paradise officially as we ran down the winding, hidden path among the Pines and bayberry that led to our house. We dropped our bags on the porch by the front door, ran around to the back of the house, and climbed up the slanted roof of the shed which was attached to the outside of the house and offered us a perfectly pitched incline to scale. Arriving on the peak of the roof, screaming our lungs out, we became the wildness all around us, announcing that summer had arrived and we with it.

I don’t know why my parents weren’t more nervous about my sister, brother, and I spending lengthy periods of time up there—having lunch in a shady corner, reading comics on a beach blanket on the gently sloping pitch, melting crayons on paper in the heat of the summer day as a form of art work, or just watching the sunset from up there, when we didn’t feel like walking down to the bay to see it. I guess they just trusted us not to do anything unthinking like jump off the roof or accidently-on-purpose push each other off, like siblings might do.

Miraculously, we did have the sense to be aware, even from a fairly young age, while still enjoying the thrill of being up high and able to see to the bay shining beyond the trees and dense brush surrounding us. We were learning something primary up there on that roof. We were learning to trust ourselves to be safe in a potentially hazardous circumstance, to watch our steps, to refrain from harmful action to ourselves and each other, to be conscious of the edge and not go over it. That seems to be a very good life lesson to get embedded at an early age and I am grateful to our parents for taking the risk with us, letting us try it out under fairly benign circumstances.

Up on the roof these days, I practice the way of careful abiding. I focus my mind and use my hands and body thoughtfully. In the process, I am clearing my head, while I consider what to write next, what to think next, what to become next–after the roof is clean and the house is clean, and the way is open for good news to arrive at the door. All the while, I watch my step and remember to cast my eyes up, grasp the beauty of it all, and mind the sky, which, like my mind, goes everywhere, even while scraping the moss.

Judith Walcutt is a Buddhist and an award-winning writer for radio, TV, and stage, alive and well on Whidbey Island for a quarter century. She is currently rewriting reams of fiction and editing a collection of poems.

Upcoming Event:

To learn more about minding your own mind, so that you too can be a good sky-minder on the roof or anyplace else, join me for Direct Mind Perception Mediation teachings given by Lama Lena Feral in “The Flight of the Garuda,” from 10 a.m. to noon and 3 to 5 p.m.on Saturday, July 13; and 10 am. to noon Sunday, July 14 at 835 6th St. in Langley.

With nearly 40 years of dharma study and practice, Lama Lena, under the tutelage of her root teacher, Venerable Wangdor Rinpoche, spent seven years in retreat in a small cave above Tso Pema – home of the Holy Caves of Guru Rinpoche. She is known to many as a teacher of Direct Mind Perception Meditation. Others may have met her during the nearly 30 years she has traveled with and translated for Wangdor Rinpoche, whose lineage in both Dzogchen and Chagchen she holds.

The teachings are open to everyone. In accordance with Tibetan custom, there is no set fee, rather dana ─ a pali word for generosity ─ is offered to the teacher. Please bring your cushion and water bottle and dress for weather. Stores and restaurants are a short walk away in Langley.

Contact Lynn Hays at 360-221-2350 or email her at tenaly@whidbey.com for more information.

July 11, 2013
Chief Milkmaid says buck the trends and eat with the seasons

BY VICKY BROWN, July 5, 2013

Long before I became a food producer I was, of course, a food consumer, as we all are. You probably have all heard the saying “You are what you eat,” which I wish was true in the literal sense. How cool would it be to see a cow, chicken or salad shake down the street with bottles of chemicals trailing behind like cans tied to a “just married” bumper?

Often in this little corner of the blogosphere, I like to post about food, including recipes. I know I’ve promised a blog about the incredible goat meat with goat yogurt roast I made the other night. I’m sorry, but for that you’ll have to wait … Next post!

It is market season and at market I’m hearing about all of the latest dietary trends. No longer Atkins and grapefruit, the new crop of trendy eating is in vogue/season. Did you know kale is out and chard is in? Ridiculous.

Market season is really the time of year when fresh goods from farmers are readily available and easy to get in a fun, social environment. It is also the four- to six-month period in which a farmer has to make her money to sustain the farm for the next 12 months, pay off any debts, and pay for any improvements or equipment she might need.

Magical market season.

Market season is the highlight of trendy foods… or food trends. It is a celebration of a style of eating that is the healthiest and most primal in all animals. The ultimate food trend: seasonal eating.

The bizarre food trends I hear about at market couldn’t have even existed 50 or 60 years ago; food was not readily available everywhere. Salmon was not being farmed and flown in from Chile. Cucumbers were either in season or pickles. Food systems like refrigeration and pasteurization were still being developed. Atomizing your food … well it wasn’t heard of and, if you had mentioned frothing your fish, you probably would have been sent to the town doc to be checked for rabies or witchcraft.

The trend then, as in the six million years prior, was seasonal eating.

As a race we have been practicing preserving seasonal foods to get us through the low times for thousands of years. Cheese was not made to be consumed with tasting notes and pairing requirements. It was made to preserve milk. Jerky was not made to be a food available at every convenience store in a bag with its own stay-fresh chem-pack. It was made because raw elk, buffalo or venison didn’t travel as well in the saddle bag.

Are you a trend follower when it comes to your meals? Have you ever cut meat, bread, dairy or potatoes out of your diet? If so, then you know about trends. Have you ever consumed a disproportionate amount of grapefruit, fats, protein or smoothies? Then you are an expert food trend follower. The challenge I offer today is to do something for your health and your community. Take a canning class, get a chest freezer, and set out to eat local and seasonally prepare your food.

If you spend like the farmers earn, 80 percent of your food budget and food work/preparation time are in the months of April through October when you grow or buy and consume or preserve those local goodies. Then from November to March, while your food budget is low, consume from your larder. Eat your canned goods, eat from your freezer… eat like royalty on the best food available, picked and saved at its best.

It isn’t crazy. I will help you. I will keep posting seasonal recipes.

To tide you over, click here for an offering from another local producer making a delicious, seasonally appropriate pizza! (Warning: this will make you REALLY hungry.)

Days are longer now, you have time to do this. I’m not asking you to go back in time and throw away your smart phone or disconnect your Pinterest account, just invest a little time in you, your family and your community.

A year from now, you will be healthier, wiser, and even more savvy as you come back to market season, renew your CSA memberships and prepare for another year of the best food trend ever: local seasonal eating.

Vicky Brown, Chief Milkmaid at the Little Brown Farm, puts her passions on the page writing about food, agriculture, and the tender web of community.

July 5, 2013
From Stage to Page: A chance to ‘get into the act’
BY ERIC MULHOLLAND, June 28, 2013

“[An arts festival] helps a city to express itself. … It lets it come into its own.” — David Binder

The quote above is attributed to Tony award winning producer, David Binder. In his recent *TED talk in Edinburgh, Scotland he shared his views on how the ‘arts festival revolution’ is transforming community art; people in communities around the world are taking art into the street. It’s changing the way we look at how art is delivered, viewed, and appreciated. It blurs the line between artist and audience and invites a kind of participation that is fresh and alive.

This got me thinking about the arts in my community, about theatre arts in particular. And since this is a blog about theatre, I felt it appropriate to wax reflective about my craft.

There seems to be an emergence of live theatre companies on Whidbey Island and most of them are housed on the same block in Langley – a sort of off, off…way off “Broadway”. But instead of bright lights and mega screens assaulting you with advertising 24 hours a day, we have a handful of escaped domestic bunny rabbits nibbling at clover and a charming collection of old buildings that greet you as you drive into town. Not to be tricked by their quaint exterior, there are some interesting things happening in those old places.

The boys of “The Full Monty” at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, April 2013. (Tyler Raymond photo.)

There are currently three theatre groups on Camano Avenue: Outcast Productions, Whidbey Island Dance Theatre and Whidbey Island Center for the Arts (WICA). And now, this summer Langley middle school will welcome two more theatre groups to its campus; Whidbey Children’s Theater (WCT) in the auditorium and Island Shakespeare Festival (ISF) in a large circus tent on the back playing field. That’s a total of five theatre groups producing shows for the community in one city block! It seems a theatre revolution might be brewing on South Whidbey.

Lars Larsen and Noelle Weiner in make-up for “Oh What A Lovely War” at OutCast,June 2012. (Photo courtesy of OutCast)

Some may think this will cause a saturation of theatre in the community and therefore will diminish the efforts of individual companies. But I feel more closely aligned with Binder’s view. If arts festivals help ‘cities express themselves’ as he supposes, then I fully support the move toward more theatre. Theatre is a great tool for storytelling and self-expression. And if you think it’s only for those ‘actor types’, then you haven’t given theatre much of a chance. Many of these companies have open auditions and offer classes for actors of all levels. It’s an invitation to get into the act.

The ISF cast of “As You Like It” takes a bow at Meerkerk Gardens in Greenbank, August 2010. (Photo courtesy of ISF)

And what of this idea of the ‘new arts festival’? For many years I have been an advocate of creating a theatre festival in Langley. In fact, when I was the artistic director at WCT several years ago, I spearheaded the creation of a summer theatre festival. It was a joint collaboration with WICA’s youth program and WCT’s, and by all outward measures it was a success. After the festival closed, I moved abroad and that first foray toward creating a lasting theatre festival did not continue. (Perhaps the name “Whidbey Theatre Festival” and its acronym sealed its fate!)

Fortunately, taking up the baton is the Island Shakespeare Festival. In my view, it is the closest thing we have to a theatre festival on South Whidbey. ISF not only serves the local community, but it attracts hundreds of visitors from off-island to come and see shows and, starting this year, to participate in classic theatre training for youth and adults. It aims to act locally by building skills through education for young people and adults, inviting them into the creative process and it hopefully will attract more people from afar to enjoy, engage and get inspired.

The best part about the productions at ISF is that they are free! Theatre-in-the-park for the whole family given as a gift by a local theatre company performed in a vintage circus tent that opens up to nature on fine days and keeps people dry on wet days. Audiences are invited to immerse themselves in live story – to get inspired by art surrounded by natural beauty and its Shakespeare, making it all the more alluring and romantic.

*View David Binder’s TED talk at www.ted.com.

Eric Mulholland is an actor, teacher and writer living on Whidbey Island.

Upcoming theater events on and off the island:
- “Passengers” by Sam Bobrick – Woodinville Repertory Theatre; June 7 to 29. http://www.woodinvillerep.org/
- “The Wizard of Oz,” – Whidbey Children’s Theater; June 28 to July 14. http://www.whidbeychildrenstheater.org
- “Chicago,” Book by Fred Ebb & Bob Fosse – Village Theatre; July 5 to 28, Everett Performing Arts Center. http://www.villagetheatre.org/
- “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” by Eric Blau & Mort Shuman, based on Jacques Brel’s lyrics and commentary, Music by Jacques Brel – Outcast Productions; July 19 to Aug. 3. http://www.outcastproductions.net/
- “Much Ado About Nothing,” by William Shakespeare – Island Shakespeare Festival; Aug. 3 to Sept. 15; shows start at 5 p.m. Friday, Saturday, Sunday; Admission is free!
  Check the website for summer classes for youths. http://www.islandshakespearefest.org/
June 28, 2013
Sirithiri travels far and wide to get it local
BY SIRI BARDARSON, June 21, 2013

I remember my “first” salad. You laugh. A salad! Yes, a salad but a salad strikingly different from any that I had experienced up until then.

Don’t get me wrong, the salads of my youth weren’t bad. My mom was hip. In a nod to Cesar Chavez, there was no iceberg lettuce in the house, Viva La Raza! and Sunset magazine lay casually open on the kitchen counter. The night’s salad would be served in a teak bowl, composed of torn romaine (imperceptibly wizened in the crisper of the refrigerator) and garnished with slices of avocado and pink grapefruit. These foreign extras had traveled great distances and were unreliable and, more often than not, black or bitter and smelling like cold-storage cardboard.

I traveled far to experience my “first” salad. The setting was exotic, a rocky island off the coast of Africa. There was only the sea, the beach and a desolate inland with one rocky road that wound up and around rocky hillsides through rock-walled villages and ended, with a sharp intake of breath, at a rocky cliff and the vast, silent sea beyond.

I never saw a farm or field while we were there but each day on my way to the beach, I walked over a slim margin of dirt between the rocks and the sand. Here, there was a small house where chickens jerked across a baked-brown yard, goats bleated and a woman dressed in black tended a small garden. Perhaps the color of the sea or the closeness of the sun polarized my vision but the colors of the vegetables and this slice of local color were exaggerated and vivified.

My “first” salad was simple and I ate it in the bar of our cheap hotel. A stiff breeze cooled the evening and we sat in the half empty room filled with the smell of saffron, squid and sausage from a large open pan of paella behind the bar. I didn’t see who made my “first” salad. I imagine it was the quick work of the woman in black, her brown hands adept and strong. The lettuce was greener than green and had been rinsed but not chilled; the tomatoes, redder than red and still pulsing from the heat of the day. Each bite of color translated into a vivid flavor and texture that were bound together by a shimmer of garlicky olive oil and the sharp bite of oregano. Even the knife scratches on the tired white plate had a special patina

And so, I was changed by the local. I traveled far to experience my “first” salad from the garden of the woman in black. Like all good “firsts,” I wanted it again and I still do and I am disappointed when it isn’t there. But, I know where to find it; it’s very nearby. Ah, the remarkable in the local. It can happen. You laugh! Give it a try; there’s nothing like a “first.”

Upcoming local musical events:
- Don’t miss the fourth annual South Whidbey Acoustic Music Festival (SWAM). This year’s festival begins at 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 30 at South Whidbey Tilth (Thompson Road and Highway 525 in Bayview) and will continue until at least 6 p.m.
Siri Bardarson is a musician devoting this year to creative projects that synthesize her classical and popular music backgrounds via her new electric cello. She is ecstatically happy!
June 21, 2013
‘Creating in Chaos’ at the Creativity Café

BY DEB LUND, June 21, 2013

It’s the end of the school year. Concerts, final tests, soccer tournaments, district track meets, miles, miles, miles. Novels call, songs wait to be written, lines beg to be learned, dance steps practiced.

Henri Matisse’s oil on canvas,” La Musique” from 1910, reveals an artist with creativity to spare. The painting is now part of the collection of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

We’re splitting up the family for a big chunk of the summer. Some here, some of us to Minnesota. Pack, pack, referee kids, pack, feed them, argue about which vehicle to take, and then, and then, and then…

A bigger issue arises. It doesn’t matter what it is. You know how it goes. It could be that the dog dies, the spouse confesses, a kid starts a forest fire, or you’re quarantined for a rare disease. What happens then? Do we stop? No! Well, except for this … We put off creating. And this is the time we need to create.

We need to stop obsessing, stop making ourselves grind away our souls little by little, but we don’t. We check off the lists; tell ourselves these are the important things; these are the things my community wants of me. Our creative work isn’t even on the list! This fact should horrify us.

What if we dropped the “shoulds” and wrote a blog post we’ve been wanting to write (um… this one); sing the song that’s been wanting to come out; rehearse that scene for the play?

And those things that serve creativity that didn’t even make the list after whatever was thrown at the fan — let’s put those back in, too.

Sleep. Eat well. Go for a walk — even if it’s just to the mailbox. Okay, you’re allowed one trip to the Payless bakery for that gooey chocolate torte you deserve and later stuff in your face while sitting at the television. But, before you make the trip, what if you tried sketching? Or pulling out your old saxophone? Have those paints totally dried up yet? Got a few jazz steps still in you?

My family’s in Minnesota. There will be washers and dryers there. I can borrow anything I forget. If my friends and community can’t support me when I need to say NO, then what’s there for me anyway? What do I need right now? What do you need?

I’m going to go cross off items I haven’t done on my list. And replace a few of them.

Have a good, healthy, creative summer. See you later.

Deb Lund is a creativity coach, children’s author, and popular presenter at conferences, schools, and libraries. Deb is a pro at creating in chaos, and she would like to thank her wonderful family, Karl, Kaj, Sandra, and Jean, for helping her develop that skill. You can hear more from The Creativity Café here.

June 21, 2013
In Search of Truth and Beauty from the Costa Rican jungle

BY JONI TAKANIKOS, June 14, 2013

In Search of Truth and Beauty or … the double cliché’ of leading a charmed life, while flying by the seat of my pants.

I have been a practicing yogi since the age of 14, and I do mean practicing. Sometimes more and sometimes less, and as my years add up, the flexibility of this yogi requires steady practice. I have given up those really cool poses of my 20s and 30s.

But for the last several years, I have dreamed of someday doing a yoga teacher training in order to deepen my personal practice. Two years ago I decided that I was not only interested in deepening my own yoga practice, but I really wanted to teach yoga and its philosophy, which has kept me sane and fit all these many years. The Internet was my research ally, and after narrowing the myriad field of options, I had found a month-long training with a great teacher, but the location of the training was on an island in Greece.

It was beyond my budget, but I felt it was the best way for me to become a teacher. I needed the immersion and the warmth, which equal Truth and Beauty in my field. So I kept the vision in my heart and my mind, and knew that somehow I would find a way to make the dream a reality.

On my birthday in December, my mother handed me a check for the amount of my training, which was an enormous and unexpected surprise. She had this money because my grandmother had passed away in the spring and they sold her farmhouse. My mother told me that while she knew my dream was to do this training, she also wanted me to know that I could use the money for whatever I wanted. I came home that evening with the check in hand and realized that I could buy myself a car and other more practical things. But after five minutes, I jumped on the Web and began searching for trainings. The one in Greece was no longer available, but I found a wonderful retreat and teacher in Costa Rica. Before the end of the year, I had booked the training and purchased my tickets to the jungle.

An iguana keeps vigil over my teacher training sessions in the Costa Rican jungle. (Photos by Joni Takanikos)

So that is how I found myself on a beautiful platform in the Costa Rican jungle from the end of April through the end of May. This area of Costa Rica, the northern Nicoya coast, is known for its great surfing waves, as well as for its wild and wondrous creatures, its flora and fauna.

Everyday there were birds flying at eye level and, situated on an old stump just inches from the platform, sat a still and wise yogi in the form of an iguana. His lovely interns ─ butterflies, hummingbirds, and dragonflies ─ fluttered around him. There also was the ocean backdrop with its wild and beautiful surf, and all of it reminding me to take note that life is indeed a beautiful dream inside certain moments.

Now home for only a couple of weeks, I am still translating this beautiful foreign dream with gratitude for the leaps we take that are enabled by others; in this case my mother and my grandmother, and all of my friends who support the impracticalities of my present life. One of my dearest friends recently intoned, “Joni, your life is like a foreign film.” My preference leans toward an eclectic French or Italian comedy, you know, the ones that show those scenes with lots of good food, music and friends situated around an old wooden table in the summer countryside.

My next adventure is already near, and I am off at the end of this month to do some singing in the Netherlands and France. I hope to teach some yoga, too. I am internationally certified now to teach yoga, but also carry with me the special knowledge of the Costa Rican jungle that comes from awakening at dawn to the sounds of the Howler monkeys; to breathe in the stillness of the iguana. That is surely yoga of the highest order. Smile and take a deep breath.

Howler monkeys awakened me each day at dawn in the jungle.

Here’s a short poem fragment that I wrote on the small plane from San Jose to Tambor:

Cloud Shadows

shapes made of air
water seas rise
turbulence as breath
life casting
its shadow.

Joni Takanikos is a poet, wandering minstrel and yoga teacher. Look for her yoga class coming to a Whidbey Island venue near you.

June 14, 2013
The Free Range Reader travels with fiction

BY ZIA GIPSON, June 7, 2013

When I think, “curl up with a good book,” it’s a book of fiction I have in mind. I love a good story and deeply etched characters. I appreciate a well-made plot and social commentary. A good book of fiction should offer all of the above and more.

When I travel I do a great deal of reading. Besides the hours involved in coming and going, there are the long nights in the hotel bathroom with the flash light reading and wondering, “Will my body ever get on this time zone?” On the road, books keep me company and help me while away afternoon hours, when shops are closed or my feet have given out.

I love the sensation of being deeply engaged in a book that is set in say, India, only to step outside and find oneself in Italy. This frisson of time and place happens to me at the movies, too. I like the pleasant jolt of dislocation from the usual reality, as I quickly readjust to figuring out where I’ve left the car, or if I still have my umbrella.

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling I have “grown up” with set of characters who’ve appeared in books I have read over a decade or longer. Do I sound misogynistic if I say some of my favorite people live in the novels of Donna Leon and Elizabeth George to name two? Leon’s Brunetti family is born and bred Venetian. They have deep roots in this watery, tourist-swamped Italian city. In the course of Leon’s novels, I’ve learned about Italian politics, pollution, industrial meat production, and opera, just to name a few subjects.

Thanks to Whidbey’s own Elizabeth George, I’ve become fond of London-based detectives Thomas Lynley and Barbara Havers, both of whom make bad choices and therefore good reading. I find myself nonplussed when a book is set for a movie or TV and the actor playing a lead character doesn’t correspond to the characters as one first encountered them. Some characters are so familiar I’ve developed an attachment to them and look forward to seeing them in the next novel.

Also in the suspense and mystery novel category, I’ve recently read more of British author Robert Wilson’s novels. One of his series’ detectives is Javier Falcon. Falcon is more than the usual brooding, crime-solving policeman. He’s approaches his cases with intense physical and emotional fervor. The novels take on personal, social, national and international issues and the writing can be beautifully poetic.

Recently I picked up Charles Cumming’s “A Foreign Country.” It has less texture and psychological depth, but is still a pleasurable read with just enough of a plot twist to keep me engaged.

Isn’t it wonderful that in books, as in life, we can greet old friends and make new ones?

My “Catch of the Day” is “The Accidental Masterpiece, On the Art of Life and Vice Versa” by Michael Kimmelman.

Next time, I’ll cover books of fiction and the Whidbey Reads program.

Look for weekend island book sales at your local Sno-Isle Library. In the meantime, don’t forget to put libraries and librarians in your bedtime prayers. I love my library!

Zia Gipson is a mixed-media artist who is working on a series of collages that incorporate printmaking, stamping, drawing, painting, and other forms of mark-making. She’s active in the artists’ groups, Whidbey Island Surface Design and Northwest Designer Craftsmen.

June 7, 2013
‘Musical Moments’ – Christensen remembers his important ones

ERIK CHRISTENSEN, May 31, 2013

Erik Christensen gets funky in 1968. (Photo courtesy of the author)

Art is so much more powerful when it’s elusive—and hard to come by. There are fleeting moments—seconds, really—that seem so resonant and powerful. I remember reading an interview with Elvis Costello where he told the story of growing up in the 50’s and there was one hour of pop music on the radio per week. One hour! He recalled sitting around anxious for Sunday night at 8 p.m., waiting breathlessly to hear Fats Domino or Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry. Then, nothing until next Sunday. He said kids in those days would spend all week talking about the new music they had heard, argue about it with like-minded friends, and by the next weekend, they would be just shaking in anticipation by the time 8 o’clock rolled around. The magic was elusive.

Nowadays, music is everywhere. And free. And perhaps not as interesting. The fact that pop music is so pervasive, and any punk kid with a smart-phone has access to all the music ever recorded, ever, nonstop, somehow cheapens it, makes it less fulfilling.

I grew up between the wartime scarcity of Elvis Costello and the split-second download era of today. I am always moved by the fleeting moment passing in time—something you can’t quite reach out and touch.

*     *     *     *

Twenty-four years old, home for Thanksgiving to visit my parents from my first or second year working on Whidbey Island. I was falling asleep, sitting on the downstairs couch at my parent’s house. MTV still played music videos at the time, and it was a common practice for me to have it on like a radio in the background. So, book open in my lap, I was enjoying one of those lazy, grey winter afternoon naps on the couch, with the TV softly playing, dozing in and out of consciousness. I was half awake as a grainy, dark video with a repetitive guitar riff came on: “You’ve got a fast car/I want a ticket to anywhere….”

“Fast Car” is on the 1988 album titled”Tracy Chapman.”

Hmm, kind of interesting, I sleepily thought. The music continued—an open narrative, flirting around using the second person. As I was coming more awake, the hammer dropped:

See, my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle, that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
But his body’s too young to look like his

My mama went off and left him
Wanted more from life than he could give
I said someone’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did….

What? What? Holy cow, WIDE awake now and off the couch. “Who is this? This is the best song I’ve heard in years!” In those dark pre-internet days of the late 80’s, no such thing as a Google search. I was left to only stare at the TV screen and stutter. “Wait! Who was that? What song was that?” The (still unknown to me) profile of Tracy Chapman faded out, and I stumbled out to my car, sweatpants, T-shirt, on a mission to the record store in the Alderwood Mall.

I stumbled to the counter: “OK, it was a light-skinned African American girl, spiky hair, acoustic guitar, singing the saddest, most emotional song EVER.”

Awkward silence from the young, tattooed kid behind the desk.

“Was it this?” he said, holding up a Paula Abdul cassette from the “New Music This Week” display.

“Huh?! No … like, it was folk music, sorta … but way cooler.” I began to realize how bizarre I must have looked; wild-eyed and insistent with my attempt to explain what I had just heard.

*     *     *     *

I remember sitting in the passenger seat of my older brother’s car as we pulled into the driveway. We had been to the gym and running errands. The plastic Delco FM radio was playing the last verse of “Alison” by that very same Elvis Costello. I was vaguely familiar with the song, but as my brother came to a stop, slid the gear lever to “park,” and reached for the keys to shut it off, I heard the fade-out ending of the song, which I had never paid attention to before:

Elvis Costello released “My Aim is True” in 1977.

Alison, I know this world is killing you
Oh, Alison, my aim is true
My aim is true
My aim is…true.

I pushed my brother’s hand away as he went for the ignition switch. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? The longing and sorrow—the perfect encapsulation of a young kid like me who spent entirely too much time inside his own head, but really wanted to connect with others and prove he could be somebody. My aim is true. Damn right.

And just like that, song over. Radio goes to a station break, my brother shuts the car off, and we go inside. I can still hear “my aim is true” fading away in the dashboard light of that old Chevy Cavalier. Truer words were never spoken.

*     *     *     *

Walking in Bellingham, State Street, just south of the WWU campus, one of my all-time places to walk. Out of nowhere on this sunny afternoon, I hear the end of Jackson Browne’s “The Load Out” from the “Running on Empty” album. It was playing loud from somebody’s backyard, and I could barely make it out:

Oh, won’t you stay
Just a little bit longer
Please, please, please, say you will.

1977 also saw the release of Jackson Browne’s album “Running on Empty,” which stayed at the top of the charts for 65 weeks.

Then comes the slide guitar and keyboard interplay, and the “thank you all again” exclamation as the band is winding down and the applause from the live audience comes up. “Thank you all again,” I repeat, as I resume walking, grateful for those few seconds of music, floating through the Victorian houses and trees of the neighborhood like a gift.

*     *     *     *

Any new musical moments like these? They seem harder to come by as I got into my 40s—and, recently, my 50s—hard to be that affected, that bowled over by a fleeting moment of music. It still happens, though: the first time I heard Susan Tedeschi belting out “It Hurt So Bad” like Janis Joplin on steroids, the power of the E Street Band as Bruce sang “Meet me in the land of hope and dreams” in the early 2000s, and even Bruno Mars absolutely crushing the “Saturday Night Live” stage last year singing “Locked Out of Heaven.”

*     *     *     *

They’re here and gone in an instant, but that’s the beauty; the elusive thing that makes them so special. Those moments are still available.

I’m waiting for the next one.

Upcoming music gigs:

Erik Christensen Band plays at the Front Street Grill in Coupeville from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 12 and Jacobs Road plays oldies classic rock at the Ebey Bowl from 8 to 11 p.m. Saturday, June 22.

Erik Christensen teaches English at Oak Harbor High School, writes songs and poetry, and still thinks the designated hitter rule is a bad idea.

May 31, 2013
Minding the Sky while cleaning the closets

JUDITH WALCUTT
May 24, 2013

I am cleaning my house. Everything must go. Or almost everything. As I have explained to anyone who’s asked about those tall stacks of banker’s boxes dominating our front hall, kitchen, and living rooms, I think that it’s crucial to clean out every corner of the house every 25 years, whether needed or not! The accumulated detritus of life must be examined and discharged — if not to the “permanent” collection of life artifacts to be left to one’s heirs to sort through (good luck with that, kids!), or else to the recycle bin, the donation center at Good Cheer, or the plain and simple fact of the garbage can.

I am sure there are some perfect people somewhere who have already done this on weekends or summer vacations, while also mastering the mad dance of balancing mother- and/or father-hood, work-life, artistic life, spiritual life and community life, WHILE maintaining gorgeous photo albums with the grace of spinning so many plates on sticks, but I am not one of them. The 25 years of raising two boys on Whidbey Island went by in a blur of bright colors; we were busy doing all of it, all at once, all of the time, and much too busy to sort papers; but I have large tubs of Legos and closets stuffed full of used Halloween costumes to evoke the amazing times we had in place of living by House Beautiful standards.

The boys are now two years semi-permanently out of the nest, and while I have had the recent excuse for my messiness of working very hard away from home for months at a time in places like Kentucky and Florida, the nest finally became over-saturated to the point of bursting like a fat piñata. Though the image is a colorful one, suggesting something creatively constructed of crepe paper breaking open with a confetti of treasures and treats raining down, the reality is more like a murky flood of old, moldy phone bills and credit card receipts from 1988. I kid you not.

My desk before my “spring” cleaning interlude.

There was literally and figuratively nothing else to do but take it on as I have been doing for the last several weeks — or is it months — as I have lost track of the present while meandering in the stacks of memorabilia. These excavated artifacts include a collection of stories I wrote as a fourth grader, which my mother saved and then sent to me when the boys were themselves in grade school. I have folders for each one of them as well, which contain similar irreplaceable items — Orson’s epic third grade novel, entitled “Travels of an Elf” and Preston’s series of mysteries, which he wrote using his fourth-grade spelling words as a prompt entitled “The Casebook of Tony Mounds — Private Eye.” Who could toss such valuable accretions as this?

Me with my sons Preston, riding piggyback, and Orson at Double Bluff Beach.

In any case, the long and the short of this giant sorting out of the evidence of my life has culminated with the achievement of a glistening clean office, including two completely clear desks, denuded window sills, a new found emptiness of file cabinets, and a central, easily accessible location for paper clips, pens and pencils. From the rubble of the past has arisen a revived writer’s paradise.

This new spaciousness in my workroom is a sight I have not glimpsed since the Great Flood of 1999, when an exploded washing machine hose caused a remodel of our downstairs. For a brief period of time, the place was as empty as a blank piece of paper. Since then, of course, the layers of love, life and sloppy work habits have had ample opportunity to build up again, to the point where I began to feel I should call on one of those reality TV shows to come and force my hand at cleaning up or else be humiliated in front of untold numbers of viewers nationwide for hoarding stacks of unanswered Christmas cards — still hoping to make a master list of addresses, which some day will lead to holiday greetings sent out by Thanksgiving rather than Chinese New Year’s or not at all.

Fortunately, it did not have to come to that. I got a grip on myself and set a deadline which, not so serendipitously, coincided with my oldest son’s 25^th birthday, on the 25^th of May. I suppose there was something about the majesty of a quarter century marking the start of that crazy, chaotic, beautiful, love-filled time of our lives, which made me wake up, smell the coffee, and clean up the mess. Our family’s form has transitioned into something else now — a time to love each other from afar, cheer each other from the stands, and carry on with each of our separate life’s work. For me, that consists of making peace with the words that went underground, like buried treasure, in the time between my first son’s birth cry and my second son’s departure for college. So many unwritten words are packed into the walls of the house, that when I pull back even one layer of papers in a box, hosts of syllables crowd out like ants from a disturbed hill.

I had occasion to put my hands on what remains of my boys’ baby clothes not long ago, as I disgorged the goods accumulated in not one but TWO storage units at Waterman’s. As I touched them — little hats, a funny coat, a favorite pair of overalls, and an assortment of colorful socks barely worn — I remember their tiny feet inside me, kicking to get out, followed by bigger feet in red, salt-water sandals, splashing in the low tides of Double Bluff, which soon enough became even bigger feet in tall socks, shin-guards and cleats, running up and down the soccer fields. I am fortunate; they had good feet and strong legs, and now as young men they are using these assets to wade their way out into the world away from here, away from drowsy island time and the shimmering pools of childhood summer.

In wishing my son Orson the happiest of birthdays, I offer him this new and shining empty place I’ve made in his and his brother’s absence, with the hope and prayer that it gives us all a fresh start, a new blank page on which to write the next perfect word we can collectively share, which, grammatically speaking, is a verb in the imperative mood. Simply put: “Begin!”

My writing desk after the cleaning frenzy.

Upcoming beach-cleaning events on the island:

For those who have already done their closets, sorted their drawers, and dispensed with excess rubbish, but nonetheless are looking for a productive way to act on the urge to Spring clean, I suggest joining the W.S.U. Beach Litter Clean-up Program. It starts May 24 at Fort Casey State Park and continues at various beach sites on the island until the end of June.

To learn more about the clean-ups, contact Stinger Anderson at the WSU Island County Extension at (360) 240-5558. Here’s the full schedule.

If you’ve still got kids in salt-water sandals at home, this is a great way to spend time with them before they run off into the future without you!

May 24, 2013