Questions to Consider, Violence Against Women

Once again the local headlines tell of another young woman murdered by her ex-husband.  He came for her with a 12 gauge shotgun after saying he was "going to put a hole in her" when he heard she had dated another man since their separation. He killed her while her 14 year old daughter was in the home. Her mother had tried to protect her by telling her to stay in her room when she saw him breaking into the home.

How common these tragic stories have become, women murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands and boyfriends. How little value our culture places on women. Why are we subjected to story after story of this violence against women in our entertainment: films, television, music? How many television shows present women being tortured, raped and murdered every day? Even some of the best, most applauded, shows on the networks routinely have themes of violence against women, and often it isn't just one character being killed but multiple women per show night after night. Why is this considered entertainment in this country? Why do we accept this? Then there is reality, the television news shows parading one murder case after another every night. And most often although feigning innocence, false grief and pleading for assistance to find "the REAL killer", it proves to be the one who professed to love her and vowed to protect her who decides her life should end. What will it take for this outrage to end?

Asking for Roses by Robert Frost

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'

So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.

'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'

We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

The Ponds by Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Summer's Come!

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.  ~Gertrude Jekyll

Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject of Faith by Mary Oliver

Every summer

I listen and look

under the sun's brass and even

into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --

not the pale roots digging down, nor the green

stalks muscling up,

nor the leaves

deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,

nor the shucks, nor the cobs.

And still,

every day,

the leafy fields

grow taller and thicker --

green gowns lofting up in the night,

showered with silk.

And so, every summer,

I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --

I am deaf too

to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --

all of it

happening

beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.

Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

Let the wind turn in the trees,

and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.

How could I look at anything in this world

and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?

What should I fear?

One morning

in the leafy green ocean

the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body

is sure to be there.

Claude Monet, His Water Lily Series

On arriving at Giverny in 1883, Monet saw the property as a blank canvas and quickly set about creating the garden he envisioned. He personally chose all the trees and plants himself and painstakingly

arranged them  to create a beautiful, inspirational garden full of color, symmetry and perspective - everything he did on his canvases. In 1893 he bought the adjacent bit of land because it featured a pond which would inspire him with it's reflective surface in which he could further his study of the properties of light. To perfect his landscape he included - often difficult to find - water lilies on the surface of his pond. Then in 1895 he had his Japanese footbridge constructed over the lily pond and enlarged the pond in 1901. The water lilies increasingly became central in his work. The garden was flooded in 1910 about the same time as Monet's beloved wife Alice died and he ceased painting in the garden for a period.

Earlier in his career Monet had traveled a lot for his work searching out new vistas, but after marrying Alice and starting his garden, the artist preferred to stay at Giverny most of the time. The water lily garden grew as his relationship with Alice did and came to symbolize his love for her. In the first few years after Alice's death Monet produced only a few paintings, but in time he recovered. He continued with his water lily series but without his living inspiration the paintings used less and less realism, although I believe his failing eyesight had a lot to do with that too. Monet's Water Lily Series includes approximarely 250 oil paintings over the last 30 years of his life.

Claude Monet: His Deteriorating Eyesight As Seen Through His Japanese Bridge Paintings

Because Monet always insisted he painted what he saw, it suggests his increasingly blurred effect of his brush strokes in later years was not so much that the Master's style was changing but rather that it was the result of his eyesight deteriorating. Those effects are most telling when looking at his many series paintings as they get closer to 1923 when he had his  cataract surgery. Monet was a prolific letter write and he often wrote friends complaining of his failing eyesight and his inability to no longer tell his colors apart. At first his sight was too yellow producing muddier shades of browns, reds and yellows. After surgery his sight he said was too blue. Following are a number of his Japanese bridge paintings, of which he did many, that illustrate the effect of his failing eyesight on his famous works.

Monet destroyed much of the work he created while suffering with the cataracts. The few pieces that remain from that period were rescued by family and friends. After the surgery in the last few years of his life he returned to painting and completed his water lily series.