Making news...PBS NewsHour and the effects of stories and images

See NewsHour coverage about an initiative
called Peaceworks and OneVoice

Male Peacock, Pavo cristatus, displaying

Images matter

If I cannot picture it I cannot create it

In the tangled story of something like the Middle-East
the PBS NewsHour tells me story

about how peace is kindled and possibly made

about how journalism chooses the stories we tell,

the pictures we see

These images re-form in our minds

reform our minds

they become our stories

they are possibilities

a story about

how reality starts

As the young business visionary who started the projects says "We're moving from theory into action. And the first part of the action is actually visualizing what is it that the people are going to do and then helping empower the people to actually start..."

See the clip "Hostile Neighbors Come Together as Trade Partners"

Courage applied to peace in practical measures is something I need to see more often. I want to tell the NewsHour that this journalism helps-- this type of story is important. It is news.
If you do too, you can click on their feedback page and tell them so.

Sharon

This post is dedicated to Bruce Dan MD who makes fun of me for watching PBS because, as he says, I am the only one.

Alarming Cost cutting measures-- UGH-- make a fuss

UGH!  Now what will they feed us?

Linda Hanson (Photographer San Francisco) who shared a link to a NYT article ( "Governments go to extremes as downturns wears on") and a follow up editorial in Calitics by Robert Cruickshank that
describe bone-chilling measures to cut costs in various states -- reducing school days, turning off street lights, cutting community policing-- just to name a few. After I shout at the computer and stomp around the house I wear a look on my face much like the turtle above. UGH....

The buildings, institutions, and infrastructure that we inherited from our grandparents and their grandparents rose from the urge to create the future and demonstrated their belief in a national society.  But, we have re-framed their investments and  accomplishments -- making them admirable and relevant for those days but not these.  The view of joint action and shared costs as efficient, as a sign of wealth and civilization, as a gift to our children, the same force that created firehouses, libraries, and laboratories, is now spoken of with distrust and cast as oppression -- Big Government, socialism and taxation as over-burdensome.

The long run of good fortune and global economic dominance that was the the hope then the reality for the US during most of the 20th century was a byproduct not a birthright.  The optimism that characterized Americans, and for which we were belittled and beloved, has been replaced by magical thinking and denial. I am puzzled and alarmed by our willingness to abdicate the strategies and products of our national optimism and power.  Have we really decided that well proven solutions and critical investments are not important anymore or will not benefit us or those we care about? 

It seems we no longer consider our society or community as a valuable commodity that can be created and inherited.  I want to be proud of what we have contributed.  We cannot afford to do less or to back away.  Our national security is tightly bound to much much more than military spending and selling arms.  We must not be fooled, by these "cost cutting" steps and the situation that made it necessary was constructed, partly designed, and it is not simply to be accepted.  Make a fuss.
Or, at least make a face.
Sharon

Perfect Meadows

Picturing Peace

Often I find that art comes to me as I pass it, or seek it out in various collections and shows. The emotional response is one then that I have not sought out, but rather one that is impressed upon me. Not that this is a negative way to experience art, but it is a usual one. Recently I found myself looking for an emotional response, a state of being; I was looking for peace. Not peace in the world peace sense, but images that evoked a sense of peacefulness. Searching through Gay's images I chose several that evoked that response, and over the next several weeks I sat with them, returned to them, and found they continually brought on a sigh, relief and release. Peace.

I then thought about what it was that evoked that response and that, along with some of those images, is what I share here.

In the image above--taken on the Olympic Peninsula--I like the sense of the near, far and middle distance. It speaks of potential and possibility as much as it speaks of a contentment with what lies behind, and of the present. The interplay of purples and greens, the snow on the far mountains, these speak of change, promise and contentment.

Three birds sitting on the barbed wire in the last not-quite-warm sun of a late summer afternoon, two looking forward, one looking back. They appear so content; accepting of  the imminent change of seasons, the combination of warm sun and slight chill on the breeze, being where they are, looking both forward and back without judgment. Just being.

And finally, here is this little fellow, coming out of the grass, stopping to look into his future, enjoying the warm sun on his back, warm mud and gentle eddies of the water around his legs and feet. Like the birds he is so present, going from one place to another, yet so content with what is and what was.

So, I realized that when I picture peace I look for a sense of possibility without the anxiety of contemplating change that we so often instill in our path through life. So often we mull over our options, try to figure out what will be, try to look behind and change what we can't. That is a state I find anxiety producing and not particularly constructive. It was interesting to me to look for peace in images, find it, and consider what evoked that feeling: possibility, change and contentment with what is and was. These images (and others I chose) serve as reminders of, and vehicles to that place, that state of being.

I am going to try this with other states of being in future posts, but perhaps you would like to see what says peace to you, or what says... something else you seek.

Look through Gay's images and see what speaks to you. Make a lightbox so you can return to those images (if you need to know how to do this please e-mail), and consider...what says "peace" to you? What says.....?

Please comment below or e-mail to respond to this post, share and let us know what you find.

Gay's Gallery previews, look at images: http://archive.gaybumgarner.net/c/gbi/gallery-list

My peace lightbox, with additional peace images: http://www.photoshelter.com/c/gbi/lbx/lightbox?L_ID=L00000OUBPrC2Xbk