12-03-2023

Today is the day when I am caught up with my editing of PART TWO of this diary. Meaning that, when Gwylène asked me to choose one section of it to be entered in “YOU COMIN’ TOO”, I was able to say yes.

I realize now that editing takes much longer than writing! As one or, I suspect, many writers have repeated: you are not a writer until you have edited and still edit, edit, edit! Over and over … Until you (or your editor!) decide that the work is ready. In the case of this diary, I started editing it after my operation, in June 2021. I was very quickly  discouraged by the quality of the writing. It was awful! Then, Gwylène told me that she had started to edit it as well, but in a different way. She was adding a right column to each page for remarks and corrections by myself or future readers.

She covered three hundred pages of PART ONE, she said! This shamed me ! If she had made such an effort, I had to do at least as much. So I picked up where she left off. I restarted the editing at page 300! It proved just as painful as before but I went on to page 450 ( of more than a thousand! ), if I remember. After all, I was still too tired and weak to do much studio work. But, at that point – page 450 – I was fed up with it. No more editing for the next six or eight months. Until three weeks ago or so, when I started editing again, with the first 40 pages of Part Two! And here I am! I chose to skip the five and some hundred pages of Part One! I may never get there. I may never be a writer after all!

But I am determined to see the Tale for Reparations to its end.

—–

Recommendations for choosing an artist in residence.

Victoria and Marcus are writing a how-to page about TINYisPOWERFUL the  selection of artists in residence. Marcus shows his experience in activism! He already makes a difference, with his practical sense of urgency.

I talked about it with Gwylene. She proposed some additions to his list.

Artist in residence should

– be able to talk about their work

– keep a mentor/tutor/ within  the TiP membership until they are secure

– be able to speak about collaboration – activism – art in/with community

12-04-2023

Fascinating morning!

Reading an article about Gaslighting. The author quotes Hannah Arendt, her thinking about the overwhelming presence of lies in politics and her analysis of the Watergate saga, Nixon and the Viet-Nam war. There is a book collecting her work from that time – last book before her death, I think, in 1975. One of the essays in this book was published in the New York Review of Books. I wanted to read it but they won’t let me reach it on the net without paying. So, I bought the whole book, second hand, for $5. Worth it. Isn’t it interesting though that the article in question attracted the attention of Joe Biden at the time! He wrote to Arendt to ask for a copy of it!. No joke.

Back to gaslighting, which, according to the author, Hélène Frappat was, originally, a vicious way, for a vicious husband to subjugate, belittle and otherwise deny his wife her agency, driving her crazy with lies and unfounded facts. George Cukor, an American movie maker from the 1940’s, made a movie around this  and titled it “Gaslight”.

This would be only anecdotal if the New York Times, last week, had not published an article revealing that the Israeli Government had been warned, in earnest and more than once, about an impending possible Hamas coup. The Netanyahu government denied the information. Not only was it said that intelligence gathered by lower-ranking military personnel is dismissed most of the time but, all the more in this case, the agents were women!  Does it mean that trained military women cannot be trusted as military information gatherers? I am not certain the Times really affirmed that, had the agents been men, the informations would have been taken seriously! If the Times did not, I do! And I add that dumbing down women, gaslighting them and everyone else, any other modes of manipulation of the mind do not help ‘candor’, transparency, the general level of trust needed to keep America a democracy!…  All those little slips and innuendos, ordinary lies, slowly act as the legendary ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

—–

A last quote, relating to the general topic of political corruption and what motivates  politicians (in the US) these days:

• from a lecture given by Hannah Arendt at Boston’s Faneuil Hall on 05-20-1975,
• and picked up by Joe Biden from a piece in the NYT by Tom Wicker “The lie and the image”. Biden wrote to Arendt asking for a copy of it!

” … not ideological, but obsessed with power. In other words, it is as though a bunch of con men, rather untalented mafiosi, had succeeded in appropriating to themselves the government ‘of the mightiest power on earth’.”

Clearly, Hannah Arendt is not tender at all. She even uses a vernacular, unusual for her! The article below is the one I am quoting. Its ending says that “it is not because Nixon did not succeed in his subversion that in the future, an other would-be-dictator won’t grab a power overtaken by the lies of corruption.” Yes, we may get there in November 2024.

I found the story in Amor Mundi, the Arendt-dedicated site from Bard College and related by Roger Berkowitz. Here is the site:

https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/when-joe-biden-wrote-hannah-arendt-2020-08-06

—–

I also want to go back to the paper ‘It Takes Two to Hope’. When I ask myself whether it is possible to have a symmetrical judgement on the warring parties of an outrageously a-symmetrical conflict, I offer that in such a situation it is necessary to establish, beforehand, a set of ethical and unbendable principles, to be on an irrefutably clear and principled foundation. Can I venture to write: on a ‘moral’ basis. Although this paper will appear in the TINYisPOWERFUL WebApp, I feel free to use the ‘moral’ word because, at TINYisPOWERFUL, the principles of autonomy and reciprocity strip ‘moral’ of its excluding, judgmental content. Here, ‘moral’ means human. It refers to universal decency.

—–

And getting ready for the Podcast, Thursday. Will cover:

– talk about the TALE OF CHARLESTON

    TALE FOR REPARATIONS

    SPACE FOR REPARATIONS

– do they know Setha Low? And her book PUBLIC SPACES MATTER

– COMMONS

12-10-2023

The podcast came and went but it was between Victoria and me in person, with Rayn as our virtual partner. I was going to write: our more and more virtual partner! But how to characterize them when we know that they are not with us because they are preparing for an exam in … accounting. Yes, Rayn is going to be an accountant. Is it like Claudel was a diplomat, Bernanos an insurance salesman … All exceptional minds, they seem to choose parallel careers to make sure they keep one foot on the ground and solvency! Victoria was, again, so easy-going in her control of the dialogue. She let me have just enough loose to give a piece of my mind here and there:

. About ‘Art’ not being ‘atmospheric’, in Charleston or elsewhere, as Thetyka claimed.

. About the Tale of Charleston, of Reparations and a Space for Reparations.

. About today being the beginning of Hanukkah.

. About why, in god’s name, Charleston voted for a Mayor-Developer …

I ended my participation suggesting that folks read Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish.

—–

On NPR, the New Yorker Radio Hour interviewed Liz Cheney. As determined as ever to see Trump condemned and jailed if it comes to that. She talked about the creation of a new party; her deep worry for the American democracy; Democrats becoming more and more anti-semitic.  That I did not know! It told me right away that, if this was the greatest divide between democrats and republicans, Liz Cheney was not the smartest analyst! She too is a victim of the dreadful destructiveness of binarity. How will she reconcile the new party idea with her very binary analysis of American politics? If she can resolve this contradiction, then she may well become a major political force.

—–

Other dimension of the American quandary: How some universities are under the gun for not being pro-Israel enough, meaning for showing even the slightest support for Palestine, as it is being steamrolled out of existence, its people hunted, gunned down systematically, its very land pulverized.

This illustrates an other side of the (official) American binary : if you are not with us, you are against us! This reminds me of the games we, kids 10 or so, were playing in the school yard when, for the first time, we were discovering that there had been such things as wars of religions in 16th century France. Riding brooms and brandishing sticks the big game was to hurl menacing questions: le Roi ou la Ligue? Catholique ou Protestant, Cathare ou Albigeois? If you were on the wrong side, you were struck dead immediately! I have tried very hard to forget these terms of polarizing antagonisms. Sadly, today, that is where we are in the Middle-East and on our campuses. Religious, cultural, racial wars are, of all conflicts, the most recessive, the most indefensible, the bloodiest also.

***

That is why I was so determined to communicate with Randy Koonce, who, I think, is Jewish. The last thing I want is for him to believe that I crossed the street to avoid him. All these occurrences, in the early hours of this 10th day of December 2023, make this day potentially pivotal. It is clear that the fight we have to fight is one against  blinding ignorance. We are deliberately being dumbed down by the political and business establishment to make us all gullible dupes.

We better think up or we-the-people will become irrelevant, therefore unnecessary.

—–

Letter to Randy Koonce

Not sure how to apologize about the incident which took place this morning. As I was walking back to Devereaux, I saw someone going down Alberta. I did not recognize it was you coming and I crossed the street to turn on Devereaux. Looking back at one point, I realized it was you. It was too late to catch up and I went straight home. There I jumped on my phone and sent you the following I Phone message:

Mr. Koonce,

On my walk this morning, it was too late when I realized it was you going the other way.

Please, don’t think that I was trying to avoid you. Mostly in these times of confusion and dehumanization.

It has been so long our paths have not met! My marches are much reduced these days!

Sorry again for this incident.

Be well and  … we will meet again!

This message may not have reached you. My phone seems to be confused about your number. I tried to send it at least twice! Never sure you would get it.

So sorry again about this imbroglio. I am just totally concerned.

Yours,

12-11-2023

This morning, Mr. Koonce came by the house and handed me an invitation to a Christmas party the 22nd, 4 to 7 pm. No unnecessary words, confusion or excuses. We were confident that there was no misunderstanding. Randy Koonce is a gentleman.

I am reassured and glad. Actually emotional about the topic of antisemitism which is creating so much tension and generating distrust across the country.

Concerning the call for resignation of some select University presidents over antisemitism again, I believe the Guardian is right to say that they were trapped when asked to condemn ‘the genocide’. In fact, this is just an other maneuver by the far right to call ‘antisemitic’ the least show of humanity for the Palestinian people. This deliberate way to confuse issues, to gaslight in the name of the First Amendment is vicious, extremely troubling/confusing and a path to open violence.

—–

Now, I am going to meet with a contractor who will possibly install the kitchen I am designing and will build for Bill Carson, a local artist remarkable for his community work in music. He has definitely contributed to the appreciation of contemporary music in Charleston, with the Charleston New Music Collective, now defunct I believe, but which organized many excellent concerts in the 2000/2010 period.

12-13-2023

The last two days have been spent at ‘Ripple’, an open workspace at the Cigar Factory. It is user free and very user friendly. Today, it even offered lunch to the few people present. TINYisPOWERFUL had reserved the Yoga room for two 10:00 to 3:00 work sessions. Not extremely comfortable but, check out the ‘smart boards’! Huge flat screens on which you can share screen(s), handwrite, erase, Zoom and whatever else is necessary for workgroups to accommodate all their HighTech needs! Dizzying for me to the point of distraction. But seemingly very familiar to the young members of the collective.

I think we did a good job at projecting what TINYisPOWERFUL should look forward to in the next few years, as long as it finds ways to be financially sustainable. This obvious condition for survival, whose specter is ever present, brings me back to the time when GG and I decided to start a business instead of having to make art-for-money. It was, altogether a very good solution. It may have required around 4 or 5 artless years, but as soon as we could pay folks to cover for us at the café we spent more and more time in the studio. The effects on income proved acceptable and well worth it. Of course, it is easier for me to say than for Gwylène who worked more café hours. But, let me say, I also made money building on-order furniture. I did that for a long time. Until now actually, since I have taken on the making of a full kitchen for Bill!

Anyhow, to dream of being a serious in/with community artist without supplemental income from grants or furniture making, is folly to me. Yet, I still believe that our group is diverse enough in talents and skills that we could make good money as artist-facilitators, artist-brain stormers, artist-dialogists, in/with community artists that is. I think, with the addition of Marcus to the team, we can add activists, organizers to our list of abilities.

This two-day ‘Ripple’ session will hopefully have sharpened our image as in/with community artists in our own eyes and beyond. We also envision working with hired artists as well, for particular projects, to complement our skill set. I believe that if we propose services, unique and of quality, there is a market for our product! But, unlike what Victoria suggested when I tried to outline this whole scheme yesterday afternoon, we will have to do more than one or two sessions per week. And we may have to travel out of town.

Yesterday also, I expressed that the systematic use of our TINYisPOWERFUL art tools  would guarantee that they become part of art in/with community practices in more and more places.  This would mean that, besides the good memories and goodwill our workshops leave behind, the collective would have successfully convoked, affirmed and spread the spirit of the arts …

But, of course, this also is work …

Who said that the goal of working hard is to fall in love with the work so it doesn’t feel like work any more?

12-16-2023

Hier, je me suis payé une bonne gamelle!

Yesterday I treated myself with a great fall! During my walk, I got my feet entangled in a plastic strap which was left in the street. I tripped and fell flat on my face. Today, I am resurrecting as a raccoon! Beautiful black and white markings, with some interstitial purple shades. The symmetry is most amazing. Under the eyes, the circles end with heavy black pockets, so full they may fall off the cheeks!

—–

It is not any easier to take a fall than this simple E message from Rayn who writes that due to an overload of commitments she will not participate in next week’s Tiny Investigation or Creative Sync. Thus leaving Victoria hanging high and dry … Gwylène believes that Rayn’s commitment to family comes before everything else. Her GrandMa may be demanding a little more house work at Christmas time!

—–

In the studio with Gwylène.

She helped me to NOT embark in a huge piece representing the ‘Public Theater’ part of the Tale, one of the 5 parts left to do. I had hesitated some. Afraid that the size and scope of this element would be a break from the scale and spirit of the installation. We reduced it to a much more acceptable proportion. I am very much thankful to her. And inspired.

12-19-2023

Recovering slowly from the fall. My raccoon face is fading off. I observe very carefully whether headaches develop. Danger of brain trauma. So far so good.

—–

Yesterday there was a TINY INVESTIGATION. Again, no exterior participation of significance. Marcus was presenting and facilitating. Obviously he has never been through a Question/Relay session. Otherwise, he may have hesitated to speak in front of the audience ( us + 2) for 20 minutes! But it was interesting to hear some of his life experiences in activism. Afterwards, we shared a well prepped lunch. Pam brought a batch of her legendary brownies … and a set of Christmas decorations and toy soldiers the like(s) of which this house had never seen!

Something else: this morning, for the first time, I have admitted overtly that if – at the occasion of a public meeting like this Tiny Investigation – there is a much lower attendance than I hoped, I freeze! All my mental fluff and bravado deflates and I keep very quiet. But I am not necessarily  discouraged. Otherwise, would I keep working in the field!? As soon as I think about it harder, the edifice of resistance recomposes itself and … I am back! We cannot be defeated.

—–

At the Creative Sync, this AM, Pam took one of my objections badly enough that she left the meeting, I thought! In fact, she had already done this before. Gwylène and Victoria told me that she cannot take pressure. I asked Victoria to present her my apologies but added that they were not really apologies. Just an expression of my surprise to realize how sensitive she is. I have a history of shocking people! Sorry.

This Pam episode took place in the middle of a conversation about the Artist Residency we want to launch in January. My suggestion was that we ask Marcus to be our inaugural artist. He would be testing various models of residency. Victoria’s proposal was for an open call for artist. Marcus thought he could be the resident artist but, he would want to pair with an other person. This was a very good suggestion. I went along – It is during this exchange that Pam made a remark and objected to my saying that it was not to the point. No, she replied, it was to HER point … and Zoomed out!

I think I am going to eat one of her brownies over this one! It is freezing in here today. And I need it.

12-24-2023

The Union Pier Community Advisory Council has accepted my application to participate. It is a signal that I am coming out of solitary confinement, as far as the Tale for Reparations is concerned. It is now identified as  A SPACE FOR REPARATIONS. Already last week, I had a conversation with Gwylène about opening the studio to Victoria and showing her the ‘cornucopia’ of fishes and vegetables. An other signal that a somber period of the Tale ended. It was so hard to carry on with the work by myself, ever since the original collaboration with Arianne and Morgan failed.

—–

Is it really when the lowest point has been reached that renewed possibilities appear? I sure hope this proves true in the case of Palestine as well.

—–

Are we, peaceniks for Palestine, so deeply engaged in the slow moving tragedy of our collective future that we will choose to join the inexorable column of martyrs who march to their death with the ecstatic trepidation of a Poulenc Carmelite?

Have stupidity, blinding ignorance and wholesale selfishness transformed masses into molasses?

Today is my 81st birthday.

I may finally be liberated enough to feel free!

It is 2:30 pm. Celeste is coming for a very early Christmas eve dinner and I must put the leg of lamb in the oven … At least, we won’t starve for a while!

12-25-2023

The day after! Christmas day.

Cheers!

Gwylène has been on the phone with Pam for at least an hour and I am struggling with the printer to copy an article from the New Yorker. Quite a piece by Masha Gessen about her being almost denied the 2023 Hannah Arendt Prize for comparing the destruction of Palestine with that of the Warsaw ghetto. Gessen is a character I place at the same level of expressive enthusiasm as Noam Chomsky! Cheers! But what a mind they both have! They are more like impressive and scary! Intimidating that is. Both have been guests at Amy Goodman’s ‘Democracy Now’ many, many times.

The fact that the four persons I just referred to are likely Jewish-American is enough of a proof that supporting and deploring the plight of Palestine is NOT an anti-semitic stance. Gessen, Arendt, Chomsky and Goodman are irreplaceable in the American intellectual and journalistic landscape. Besides, to be an American and not to realize that the United States would not be what they are without the Jewish culture, is a guarantied sign of deep ignorance or of deliberate dishonesty. In both cases, it is an open door to racism!

Below the link to Gessen’s article.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust

12-28-2023

It is getting worse. Unbearable to observe how I could get used to the daily deluge of horrors Netanyahu and Putin pour over the world. Overkill. Overdose. Good thing I am still emotional, my eyes fill up with tears, but I bear it. When the October 7 massacre and the Israeli response hit the news, I remember getting into a rage and hurling a fork or something on the kitchen floor. I don’t hurl things lately. Have I gotten used to abuse? Have I cut my losses and compromised? Have I chosen disillusionment  over discontent and anger?

The least I (can) do is cry.

—–

There is a French sociologist who has made an effort to flesh out the concept of ‘Attachement social’. I believe BELONGING would be a good translation. Serge Paugam is his name. He identifies four factors which strengthen the sense of belonging. As usual, I cannot adhere to his analysis, from what I have read about it. But, from his construct, I build my own. I pick and choose, l revise, I elaborate. I interpret, I project. I believe this is a way to cover a diversity of thoughts and multiply sources! It does not make me a scholar! Or a good disciple, a follower. At least I keep some autonomy!

Here are the four factors:

. filiation, family – not by individual choice

. participation – individual choice to serve in NGOs, charities, volunteering …

. work structure – workplace, function, labor, job

. identity – citizenship, place, race, religion, gender …

Serge Paugam has created a chart from which one can articulate one’s own thinking.

One thing this chart does not account for is the social body temperature of a given moment, its geography, its politics and/or political situation or structure, its culture and history … And the infinite number of uncontrollable variables which make up any social ecology. Mostly, it diligently ignores the aspirational factors at work always, their poetics, their Irrational, the presence and vigor of the spirit of the Spirit of the art.

So I am tempted to add one factor to Paugam’s list:

. qualitative factors – empathy, love, amity … all the uncontrollables.

Of course, it is me adding this category, not Paugam. Had he added it, there could not be any categories at all! Why even be tempted to categorize porous, living characteristics? Education and training, I guess, are just as inadequate for sociologists as it is for economists, when they altogether consider homo economicus to be the norm.

Of course, it is impossible to create a special category for the uncontrollables without risking irrelevance, since they ‘belong’ in the makeup of every factor identified above.

I am just making a central point here: no categorizing, in the human sciences, can NOT be regressive, normative, therefore authoritarian. Which is precisely contrary to belonging, which,  in spirit, carries openness, liberation and, of course, transformation. The day sociologists and those who use and abuse their work, particularly politicians, will understand this, they will have brought about a revolution powerful enough to save the entire world from itself!

12-30-2023

It has come to this: today is the one-before-last day in the life of year 2023, with its very own October 7th and the ensuing trails of endless violence. Israel is on the hot seat.  But, because of the asymmetry of the Palestinian conflict, I refuse to call it a war. From what the press tells us, it consists in the heavy killing of civilians and the occasional mention of low tech Hamas rockets. Can there be a war between a clone of the US military in the Middle East and what … a people of refugees? I know this simplification cannot be true. The more glaring the asymmetry, the bigger the lie,  the clearer the inhumanity of it all. This will ultimately demonize some and demoralize most! Israelis included. Their reflected image disfigures yet an other people: the Jewish people.

—–

Gwylène is right, I should not intake so much news. I should diversify. This is exactly  what I just did: explore the blog of Médiapart, the readership side of this online journal. And sure enough: I fall upon an entry by Agathe Pin-Chomette, whose entry celebrates the launch of a movie, “SHTTL” – the intentional misspelling of SHTETL. Shtetls were rural communities of Jews in Eastern Poland, with deeply authentic and traditional modes of living and socializing. The invasion of German armies during WW2 marked the eradication of the shtetl culture. All Jews were sent to their death. For her movie title, Pin-Chomette removed the E of stetl and  made it the E of eradication.

Besides a movie, she asks us to remember and read “the Return Home of Jossel Wassermann”, a 1993 book by Edgar Hilsenrath … the idealistic love story, in a resurrected shtetl, of an urbanized youngster with a local girl … What else is there left to do but dream, when violence has erased history?

Pin-Chomette asks herself whether Hilsenrath has written a tale, because “Maybe the tale prevents us from giving up?”. Well, here is a beautiful and profound justification for continuing the work on  ‘a Tale of Charleston’ AKA ‘a Tale for Reparations’, and for keeping the word Tale in the title, for its imaginary content.

This is the link for Agathe Pin-Chaumette’s article:

https://blogs.mediapart.fr/agathepinchomette/blog/281223/si-le-shtetl-m-etait-conte

The original quote for the above question, in French, reads: Le conte permet peut-être de ne pas renoncer. Literally: The tale permits us, maybe, not to renounce. Or Maybe the tale permits us not to give up, or … This tale gives me hope.

Whatever the translation, I will use this quote to legitimate my presence in the advisory committee for Union Pier! I am gearing up to being there and representing what the arts can bring to a process of urban development.

12-31-2023

A message from Victoria tells the reaction of a listener, to one of the latest podcasts of TINYisPOWERFUL, on Ohm Radio. Very encouraging for sure. In return, to give her more heart, I send the quote “le conte permet peut-être de ne pas renoncer”. With still more precisions: the tale format of storytelling keeps us from renouncing. It feeds our imaginaries. It strengthens our Irrational muscle.