Friday Homestead Dispatch

Galloping Genteelly Greensward

Oct 22

“Since the Republican Senate seats skew heavily toward rural areas, in this case, it is possible for 41 Republican senators, who represent just 21% of the population, to stop voting rights legislation backed by 70% of Americans.” Quote of the week by Heather Cox Richardson.

1.
Richard Greaves is an enigma. He bought a piece of land outside of Montreal around 1984 and started building structures out of anything and everything he could find. The wood came from disassembled ancient barns, and the rest from dumps and other scavenging. He continued for several years and then in 2009, left the land, and his worked has mostly turned back to the earth they were built on.

Difficult to approach or interview, he supposedly did say that, “My houses aren’t twisted, they are deliberately asymmetrical. They are strong because they have angles that you can’t make with nails… A nail is fixed, it stops the evolution, but a rope is patient, it can contort itself… Rope makes it possible to structure a building without hurting it, without assaulting it… With rope, it’s great because it still moves. Artworks have to continue. I hate things that are too stable.”

I will admit that some of my first building projects had a similar look…

2.
It’s about time that Kyrsten Sinema receives some blowback from her tight lips and obstructionist stances. Five veterans on an advisory council for the Senator quit this week in protest with public proclamations that she is “answering to big donors rather than your own people.” They added that “We shouldn’t have to buy representation from you, and your failure to stand by your people and see their urgent needs is alarming.”

Sinema said in a statement that she would “always remain grateful for these individuals’ service to our nation” and called the disagreement over policy issues “unfortunate.” Local buffoon/accordionist Gary Mackender was quoted as saying “In other words, she doesn’t give a rat’s ass as long as the check is in the mail.”

3.
Many of my Lawrence, Kansas friends knew the artist Julie Green. Somehow she flew under my radar during my time in LFK. She received a BFA and MFA from The University of Kansas with Roger Shimomura, a mutual friend, as a significant professor. She died Tuesday, October 12, aged 60, after a battle with ovarian cancer.

In recent years she was a professor of art at Oregon State University but she is best known for her work, The Last Supper, an ongoing series of 1000 plates to date, illustrating final meals of U.S. death row inmates. According to CNN Green ended the project in September, which spanned 21 years and 1,000 plates, to illuminate the complex emotional decisions of those facing imminent death, as well as the racial and historic implications of capital punishment in the United States. At the time of the artist's death, the first 800 plates from "The Last Supper" were on display at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington, where they will remain through January.

Julie Green with plates from "The Last Supper"

4.
Have you heard about Little Amal, the 3.5 metre-tall living artwork of a young Syrian refugee child walking across Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and the UK to focus attention on the urgent needs of young refugees? The puppet represents the millions of children forced to leave their homes in desperate situations.