Happy Summer Solstice
With the help of a small, hard-working crew the overgrown butterfly garden was dug up, except for the crown flowers and tropical milkweed, and replanted with dwarf marigolds, and spider flowers. The butterflies are happy…
Custodian to Yellow
I will start by being
custodian to yellow.
Whole fields and gardens swathed in yellow
bits of orange and purple for spice
with underlying green encompassing the weave.
And beautiful dusty dirt
coming home under my fingernails
My friend Deb found this handmade, blank book in a thrift shop and knowing I love bright-shiny things, got it for me to fill. Here are a few pages of my illustrations from it, as well as the cover. With forty pages, it was a challenge. My goal was graceful absurdity - thinking of Charlie Chaplin picking up 12 chairs (individually!) and dancing around.
Life Time artist book - Ruth Ann Howden
5.5" x 4.25" (closed)
Mixed Media painting
collage, metallic ink, pencil & walnut ink
40 pages in found handmade journal
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Rick-o-shaying 'round
stuck in a nut, maybe knot
transformative times
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Former President Dwight Eisenhower was a most credible whistleblower and yet here we are 60 years later caught in the chaos of the military-industrial complex that he warned against.
The US Military is single largest consumer of fossil fuels and has about 1000 bases around the world.
Weapons manufacturing in the US is a trillion dollar industry - Wikipedia reports US accounts for over half of weapon sales and rising every year, supplying not just the military, but police, individuals and paramilitary organizations.
In James McBride's new novel, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store he calls out the industry: "men creating great companies that made weapons of great power in factories that employed the poor, weapons that were sold cheaply enough so the poor could purchase them and kill one another. Any man could buy one and walk into schools and bring death to dozens of children and teachers and anyone else stupid enough to believe in all the American mythology - hope, freedom, equality, and justice."
Did we really choose this or were we too busy struggling to get by to pay attention? Too busy being consumers? Too busy watching tv, getting hooked on computers and now social media?
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And on the ecological front – this June 24th Our Children's Trust trial begins in Honolulu vs Hawaii Department of Transportation
I now give my attention to the rare gift of another day.
