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What better way to follow up yesterday's poem that included roses and bees than with a video about pollination? First shown at a TED conference in 2011, this video depicts how "the seductive love dance between flowers and pollinators sustains the fabric of life and is the mystical keystone event where the animal and plant worlds intersect that make the world go round."
The Sassistas! think that watching it will help your world go round. Enjoy!
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One day in summer
when everything
has already been more than enough
the wild beds start
exploding open along the berm
of the sea; day after day
you sit near them; day after day
the honey keeps on coming
in the red cups and the bees
like amber drops roll
in the petals: there is no end,
believe me! to the inventions of summer,
to the happiness your body
is willing to bear.
-- "The Roses" by Mary Oliver from American Primitive
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The sassosphere microphone is open, sistas and mistas.
Please step up and dish whatever you like.
The Sassistas! sponsor Open Mic the last Friday of every month.
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On Sunday, the Sassistas! saw "Gidion's Knot", one of five new plays featured at this year's, Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. At the beginning of June, the Sassistas! had met the playwright, Johnna Adams (very lovely and unassuming), at Bnbsista's, and found her description of the play so interesting, we wanted to see it. Here is the description of "Gidion's Knot" from the CATF website:
Over the course of an unexpected parent/teacher conference in a 5th grade classroom, a mother and her son’s teacher have a volatile conversation about Gidion. Was he a bully? A victim? A protector? Or, was his imagination too powerful a tool for the adults around him? As his story is uncovered, the women try to construct an explanation for his behavior and come to terms with who, or what, is at fault. Gidion’s Knot is a heart-wrenching, devastatingly beautiful work about the power of words and freedom of expression. It explores the dangerous, emotional, and often painful world of elementary school.
The Sassistas! realize that you have to see the play to experience its power, nevertheless, it does raise some very provocative questions. Gidion, a very sensitive fifth grader, has committed suicide two days earlier after being suspended from school for writing a viscerally violent and vivid story in which "The Poets and Weavers" capture, rape and kill several of the students and teachers at the school. In his story, Gidion uses the actual names of the students and teachers, i.e., "Jake" and "Miss Clark" (the teacher in this play), and explicitly details raping the teachers and pulling out their "entrails" and wrapping them around poles, etc. For all of its shocking and graphic violence, the story is beautifully written and his mother -- a professor of medieval poetry at a local university -- instantly recognizes that the writing is "magnificent". (Trust the Sassistas!, it is magnificent and reads like a battle scene from The Iliad or The Odyssey.)
Did Miss Clark do the right thing by sharing the story with the principal and suspending Gidion because of the story's potent (yet poetic) violence? Is she responsible for Gidion's suicide because she suspended him? Is Gidion's mother responsible for Gidion's suicide because she did not pay more attention to her son's vivid imagination?
It's the classic clash between art and responsibility. Poetry and propriety. Creativity and conformity.
Put yourself in the shoes of Miss Clark. Or the mother. Or Gidion. Where do you stand?
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Is ghostwriting a book ethical?
Two weeks ago, a former client gave Flannista's name to the executive director (ED) of a large evangelical business leadership organization who needed a ghostwriter for a book he wanted to write on how Christian leadership ethics can transform communities. I sent him an email telling him that I was not a ghostwriter but a "writing coach". He said he was still interested in talking to me and sent me a working outline for the book based on a template he had found on the internet. After we exchanged phone introductions and pleasantries, I asked him how I could help him:
ED: I talked out my perspectives about how different Christian leaders "lead" into a tape recorder and you would transcribe those recordings and turn them into chapters of the book.
FLANN: But I'm not a transcriber. I am a writer.
ED: Oh, so I would have to get a transcriber and then you would take the transcriptions and form them into chapters.
FLANN: It would be a better book if you took the transcriptions and then did a rough draft of the chapters that I would then edit.
ED: But I don't like to write. It's too hard.
FLANN: I don't like to write either, but I love having written.
ED: I don't love anything about it. It's too tedious, but God has called me to write this book.
FLANN: Well, if God wants you to write a book, don't you think you ought to actually write it?
ED: But I don't want to write it. It's too time-consuming. I need someone else to write it.
FLANN: So to be more accurate, God has called you to have an idea for a book, but not to write a book.
ED: Yes, precisely.
FLANN: Isn't that a little like Michelangelo coming up with the idea for the statue of David and then someone else actually sculpting it?
ED: But this isn't art. This is a book.
FLANN: You'll have to forgive me, but I have too much respect for the writer's unique voice not to believe that ghostwriting is unethical. Have you ever written anything before?
ED: Yes, I did a workbook on how businesspeople can become better leaders, but I hated writing it. I was only able to write a page a day.
FLANN: Wow. I'm so jealous. That's better than me and for that matter, writers like Eudora Welty and Ernest Hemingway. A page a day is great.
ED: Really? But it takes everything out of me. I just don't have the time or patience.
FLANN: But you do have a unique voice and perspective. I believe in that voice and perspective. I am an advocate for that voice and perspective. I am your advocate.
ED: But I don't want an advocate for my voice. I want a ghostwriter.
FLANN: Okay. I am not a ghostwriter. Let me email you the names of a couple of colleagues who may be interested in ghostwriting your book.
Was I too hard on ED? I've been thinking about this conversation a lot and would love your perspective.
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The Sassistas! have been thinking and talking a lot about
adventure lately. This image captures something that wildly appeals to us.
So our topic is ADVENTURE.
Share one. Dream one.
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The parking lot outside the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, CO
July 20, 2012
"And so once again, with the squeeze of a trigger, just 20 miles from Columbine
High School, scene of the 1999 student massacre, the nation was plunged
into another debate about guns and violence." -- New York Times
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TODAY IS MATISSTA'S BIRTHDAY!
TIME TO CELEBRATE WHAT SHE BRINGS TO THE WORLD . . .
. . . BEAUTY AND LAUGHTER!
I am in LOUVRE!
What can Flann say? When I think about Matissta, I think about beauty and laughter. I think about gorgeous paper cut-outs by Matisse, and I think about what that artist said when he went to the dentist: "Matisse hurt." No one calls me on my b.s. or makes me laugh better than Matissta. She's had a challenging year professionally. PLUS she's attending school. So let's send her our louvre and best birthday wishes today.
And Matiss -- if you are worried at all about the future, just remember: Que Seurat Seurat! (I'm certain you get my point.)
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