Anam Ćara: Soul Friends Photography Exhibit at Regis Center for Art, University of Minnesota

I've made sacred, intimate friendships my entire life, finding affinity with creative people. The Celtic understanding of friendship maintains that such bonds allow the hidden spirit of your anam ćara to be revealed. These portraits of my soul friends, taken in locations that reflect their most creative essence, attempt to coax the invisible to become visible. (From Anam Ćara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, by John O’Donohue.)

Local artist Heinz Brummel

Local artist Craig Harris

Local artist Carmen Gutierrez-Bolger

Local artist Candy Kuehn

 Local artist Brant Kingman

Dutch condutor Jaques Ogg

Glass Angel: An elegy for my friend Nancy R (Alessandroni) Carolan

Glass Angel

An elegy for my friend Nancy Alessandroni Carolan

I gave away the last of my glass angels

thinking there would always be time

to gather another from your trove

made for each soul shattered

when monsters menaced the 911 sky

battling your own monsters

you bathed in

sand, sea… and fantasy

opening for love

light and art

cutting a CD,

collecting sea glass and shells

crafting light catching fish and angels

never tethered by reality -

soaring beyond mundane

making magic in ovens and gardens

that most ferocious fiend, cancer,

couldn’t easily snatch you -

besting that devil

you got to see all your

sons wed, grandchildren born

knowing your legacy lives on

I kept the glass fish, Nan,

it swims in the clouds

with you, my glass angel

©2014 Susan Schaefer

Nancy Carolan (nee Alessandroni) Tries on Her Wings

Nancy R Carolan (nee Alessandroni)

10/7/50 - 9/10/14

Mother to Sean, Seumas, Brendan and Eamonn Carolan, sister to Sally Downey, Marian Parrott, Elaine Diamond, Joseph, Luke and John Alessandroni, grandmother, aunt, and beloved friend. Nancy was a rare beauty who took life by the horns and rode it her own way. She was a trendsetter, opening Philadelphia’s premiere health food counter at the famous Reading Terminal Market well before its current chic status, with outstanding cooking credentials, and a recent stint as the demo chef at the Center City Trader Joe’s. Her voice could open the heavens and she used it to record a cd, sing in clubs, and in theatrical performances from Hawaii to Philadelphia. Fitness was second nature, and surely her weekly swims kept her fit for that wretched foe, Leukemia, which she battled indefatigably for four years, putting up the proverbial good fight, surprising her medical team at every turn. After 9-11 Nancy began a glass angel project, striving to make angels from beach glass for each soul who perished in that tragedy. And her garden! I think after her sons and their families, she was most proud of her stalked and seeded children, which grew in abundance under her conductorship. Nancy and I have walked many paths together. Fortunately for me we got to spend much time in each other’s company over the past dozen years. I will have to stop myself from picking up the phone to hear of her escapades and adventures. Now she’s going on the greatest adventure of all and she leaves many wailing and wondering why so left us so early. Nano, you made so many pair of wings, now fly brightly with your own. You’ve earned them, old friend.

Memorialize What We Fight For: the Peace Benefit

On this day that honors those who sacrifice to fight, die and be maimed forever in war, on this day after yet another massacre of innocent youth in California, I am searching to connect the dots that lull our society in glorifying violence.

The indoctrination of the the modern individual has been shaped by a publicized history steeped in violence and warfare, the latter (war) being the institutionalized form of the glory and justification. Plainly put: history has been written in a male dominated society that reflects the OBVIOUS. So, too, however, just as we are innately violent, so too are we innately kind and generous.

Evolution has multiplied the potential for both. We have choices. The use of violence to protect us from harm has more morphed into aggression to assert power and domination. Through technology we have weapons of MASS destruction that did not exist before the Atomic Age. Automatic weapons, guns, wipe out scores of lives in seconds. We possess the means for annihilation that did not exist until about 60 years ago. Think about this.

Yet, our innate sense of reasoning has also evolved, though seemingly not in step with technological advances. Sociological governance allows us to live in (relative) peace daily without the NEED to slaughter one another.

Peace and collaboration seem so vulnerable in the face of anger and aggression. Yet, most rational humans want peace and a calm, comfortable life.

What if we spent more time evolving peaceful solutions, even among those we feel are out "to get us?"

To achieve this those of sound minds and hearts must give up a small dose of complacency. We need, like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, to unite around a platform that relegates the military industrial complex and it's legion artifacts of guns, might and aggression to the corner where we've relegated caveman behavior.

Our current political party system in its calcified partisanship. We must elevate the role of education for all. There are ample resources on this earth to develop and share.

II don't have the answers. But I am raising worthwhile questions. How many of you want more legions of the walking wounded among us? Soldiers returned whose MINDS and bodies are so scarred they cannot function in peaceful society.

Aggression breeds more aggression, I want for all children a world where they do not march off to war, nor live in fear of going into a convenience store on a Friday night and being gunned down. Is that an irrational wish? I know it's not.

http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/what-is-the-military-industrial-complex.asp

What do we fight for? Peace. Can we switch the focus of our education, our socialization, our science, our technology from industrial military economy to peaceful economic benefit? A journalist far smarter than I thinks so, and a while back has written a compelling book explaining how: “...capitalism seems increasingly dysfunctional and alienating, and fundamentally conflicts with humanity's noneconomic values. Greider says we have the luxury and responsibility now to repair this, to transform the essential purpose of our economic system from the relentless pursuit of ‘more' to the fulfillment of 'human needs.' Greider (Secrets of the Temple) breaks from the standard left-wing critique in one critical respect: he believes the system will be changed not by activist government but by a variety of small-scale reformers working to transform the economic system from within.”

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-86219-4

Poetry Month Event

Poets' Line Up: Matt Rasmussen, Rebecca Ramsden, Bruce Peck, Satish Jayaraj, Anne Sawyer-Aitch, Ted Hovey, 

Susan Hermse Schaefer, Roslye Ultan

Thrilled to participate in this morning’s poetry reading at Amplatz Children Hospital, sponsored by Cracked Walnut Literary Festival to celebrate National Poetry Month. 

Full house including kids at back

The lobby at Amplatz filled to capacity early on, and the appreciative audience listened as Anne Sawyer-Aitch kicked off the morning with a dramatic rendition of her children’s book, Nalah and the Pink Tiger, wowing the crowd. 

Bruce Peck

Next in line, Bruce Peck kept spirits high with his style and humor. 

The Adventures of Yin & Yang: Snoepje and the Pizza Box

I followed with a selection of seven poems, including the crowd pleaser, "The Purr of a Cat", from my book, The Adventures of Yin & Yang: Snoepje and the Pizza Box.  

"The purr of cat is stronger than potions, older than history, deeper than oceans; it lowers blood pressure and makes your heart sing, the purr of a cat is a mystical thing. It cures and it calms, it heals like a balm, and all that’s required ‘tis a stroke of your palm. 

A cat on your lap is equal to heaven, imagine then having three… six… or seven!

The purr of a cat, is really an Om, the purr of cat makes each house a home."

Satish Jayaraj, who organized the event, told a wonderful tale of dragons and tears, one of his original stories. Ted Hovey, Rebecca Ramsden and Roslye Ultan presented an engaging mix of prose and poetry from the heart.

Matt Rasmussen, with daughter, and organizers, Rebecca Ramsden and Satish Jayaraj

MN Book Award for Poetry Winner, Matt Rasmussen

My Loft Literary Center poetry teacher, Matt Rasmussen, winner of this year’s Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, closed the reading with a few selections from his award-winning book, Black Aperture, and a newer selection. 

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets throughout the United States band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.