LAURA'S RECENT RECOMMENDATIONS

Her Secret is Patience, an icon created by the American Artist Janet Echelman, suspended above the new two-city-block Phoenix Civic Space park in the middle of downtown.


ARTIST: Sculptor Janet Echelman receives calls from cities around the world asking her to make sculptures for them. She is my hero in this way and more. Her work is the most ephemeral embodiment of transformation imaginable…meaning that she weaves exquisite, monumental airborne forms that suggest space. In her TED Talk, Taking Imagination Seriously, she illustrates the evolution of her ideas beginning with the serendipitous event that changed her expressive arc from painting to sculpture and set her on her genius career. http://www.ted.com/talks/janet_echelman.html

ARTIST: Derek Jeter gave The Master of all Master’s Classes on July 9th when he hit his 3,000th home run in a game in which he also went five for five (hits for times at plate), and drove in the winning home run. The dean of baseball writers, Rogel Angell, muses that Derek “lit up the day and the record and the twenty-seven extraordinary players already within his élite new circle, and reminded the rest of us, fans everywhere, that what we come for is always the game, the game itself.” Read more @ http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/07/derek-jeter-3000-hits.html#ixzz1SPqrK3bb

BOOK: : Center of the Universe. Nancy Bachrach. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2009) Nancy Bachrach’s mother, Lola, was not only the quintessential Jewish mother (her voracious appetite for sex, notwithstanding), but the quintessential bipolar Jewish mother. Her dizzying, dazzling creativity and the inevitable, ever-growing list of flameouts make family life a tortured family circus – but a circus nonetheless. You could easily hear David Sedaris reading Bachrach’s words. As with Karen Russell in the recent Swamplandia!, Bachrach’s command of language is put to the service of a killer wit. And she never lets up. Just like her father, a hapless handyman doomed by his infernal jury-rigging. And just like her mother who refused to allow life to eliminate her universe and her place at its center.

TELEVISION: The serial drama Breaking Bad takes place in a universe “where nobody gets away with anything and karma is the great uncredited player in the cast.” It’s also, by turns, hilarious, macabre, and filled with “mordantly amusing ordeals.” The premise: After being diagnosed with lung cancer, chemistry teacher, father, husband and all-round solid Albuquerque citizen Walter White wakes from the slumber of an unfulfilling life to become a wizard at concocting the purest, most coveted crystal meth that local dealers have ever known. The fist show of the current (fourth) season on July 17 was truly grim, but trust that the cockeyed juxtapositions of previous seasons will return. If you haven’t caught it, dive in now (on AMC), but also treat yourself to a marathon of the earlier seasons.

URBAN DESIGN: “No tyrant can run a city. The city will talk back.” Three-quarters of the world’s population is expected to live in cities by 2050. This brief video collects the thoughts of several eminent urban scholars as to what they think makes a city successful, with suggestions ranging from public transportation to ethnic integration to public spaces, to states of incompleteness.
http://www.designtaxi.com/news/35050/What-Makes-a-City-Successful/

FASHION: Those feathery, flowery sculptures perched atop the heads of the royals and the friends at Ascot and the monarchal weddings are not called hats. They are referred to as fascinators. Take a look and you’ll agree the term is perfect. http://www.google.com/search?q=fascinators&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=ivns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=uykmTrLoN6rr0gGVyJzdCg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CFIQ_AUoAQ&biw=1680&bih=952


“On this Earth where you exist,
the Divine is the host,
and you are the guest.
And in this body,
you are the host,
and the Divine is the guest.”
Prem Rawat/Maharaji
http://theypi.net/latest-videos.php#1


You’ll gasp, you’ll chuckle. It’s MR. SLICK.
Your FREE e-comic book from Laura:
http://tinyurl.com/43mc4dn

THE FATE of our PLANET is in OUR HANDS

"Only the human community has the idea

that we somehow live apart from the Earth,

that the Earth does not respond to our breathing,

to our thoughts, to our actions."

Caroline Myss

photo: Laura Cerwinske

SLINKING from, SURVIVING and LEARNING TO LOVE my MOTHER

“When Mom Was My Age” is an interview series between daughters and mothers that appears in the blog of writer/editor Jane Friedman. This interview appeared on March 14th.Photos: Evie and Bob in 1985 when she was 63, Evie, today at nearly 90 years old. Unbelievable!

When my mother, Evelyn Schwartz, was my age, in 1985, she was still working as a public elementary school reading teacher.

What was your typical day like?

I awoke at six-o-clock, went for swim, took a shower, dressed for the day, prepared Bob (my husband’s) breakfast and my lunch (a sandwich, tomato, and apple), carried my books, papers, and folders to the car, and drove to school.

I made sure to get there extra early so I could write the lessons on the blackboard before the kids arrived. (My students were difficult kids, the discipline problems and the underachievers. I couldn’t afford to turn my back on them when they came to school.)

After several hours of teaching, I had lunch in the teachers’ lounge, and when I returned to class, I would read or tell a story, complete the school day’s lessons, then stay after school to grade papers or go to faculty meetings.

I was always proud of my bulletin boards, and often stayed on to create the month’s newest theme. One of the nicest compliments I ever had was from the music teacher: he told me my classroom was the most creative of all he’d been in.

I usually brought home a lot of work because I couldn’t get much done in class. After preparing and serving dinner, I graded papers or contacted parents or whatever the school day required. I know I brought home more work than the other teachers.

If I had the energy, I’d watch TV with Bob before going to bed.

Laura: Evie is nearly 90 years old now. She still lives in the house that our family moved into in 1961 from our original house, where Rick and I were born and raised. The “new” house was/is her lifelong dream-come-true—open, sunny, custom built in a new suburb, with a pool overlooking a waterway and big rooms with sliding doors that open onto views of the waterway. Evie has lived here on her own since my father, Bob, died eight years ago, but she remains almost as busy she ever has been, teaching reading skills in her home office, attending her many literacy and Jewish organization meetings, and entertaining her beloved girlfriends and relatives. As a child, I found Evie’s list of professional activities and social obligations not simply daunting, but formidable—how was an introverted child with unconventional passions and a vast plague of insecurities supposed to find a place on it?

What did you worry about most?
My biggest anxiety in those days was what to make for dinner before I went grocery shopping on Friday. After growing up with the privations of the Depression, I learned to live life day by day, to say my prayers at night and hope things would work out well. Bob and I felt that everyone in the family was coping in their own way, handling their own problems, and seeming pretty independent. No one came crying on our shoulder.

What did you think the future held for you?
Who had time to think about it! I was always optimistic. Life takes you on its course: You finish one phase and move on to the next.

How do you look back on that age now?
I look back on all of it with satisfaction. We did the best we could do. Compared to the Depression years, the later years were not filled with anxiety because we had a steady income.”

From Laura
During this era, when Evie was 63, I was 37 and had recently (finally!) moved into a nearby house with my six-year-old son after our living with Bob and Evie for several years following my divorce.

This house (near enough that my son and my father could still see each other daily) was my dream house—dim and cozy, on an acre of pines, with a fireplace and cedar-lined closets. I’d always been a little house-mouse, reluctant to leave home or go out and socialize, and moving into this wooded nest was the perfect balm to my shredding confidence.

I was supporting my son and myself (insufficiently) as a freelance writer while struggling with clinical depression, anorexia, extreme PMS, and migraines—the typical distress list of overwhelmed single mothers. In addition, my son’s attention span was as depleted as my income, and the school reports on his conduct and performance were mortifying. I could sense that his aggressive behavioral momentum was unstoppable, but I kept delving, seeking, applying whatever knowledge and strength I could garner to learn and simply cope. More than anything in world, I wanted to sleep.

As a kid, I truly hated school—the hours, the routine, the incomprehensible social structure, the fears of getting roughed up, the unbending authority, the monotonous texts, the patriotic pabulum, the unopenable windows. Being an honor student made no difference.

Each morning, Evie, the robust, unstoppable, perpetual motion machine, would wake me with a cheerful bedside recitation of: “Here is now dawning another new day. Think, woulds’t thou let it slip useless away!” Even then, the only place I wanted to slip was deeper under the covers.

I still sleep a lot. Evie still swims every morning. I survived public school, single motherhood, a parade of predatory men, and the vicissitudes of a writer’s career.

Evie flourished and continues to flourish among her books, students, Jewish philanthropies, literacy efforts, lifelong friends, and relatives. She loves the life she created for herself, and I have grown to love it for her. I praise her lists of plans and teaching activities as well as her extraordinary good health. What had been a cursed agenda for this daughter in youth is a blessing for that same daughter in late middle age.