A new link on my site today: Greater Good Magazine.

Check it out under “Com.passion”.

I feel beyond fortunate to have friends who are interesting and insightful and dear, like my friend Elaine, who introduced me to this magazine, Greater Good. It’s published by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center which (according to its own copy) “promotes the study of human happiness, compassion, and altruism”.

This 5-year-old mag, which will go online in the spring, looks at human happiness through methodological scientific inquiry. In other words, it’s where science meets positive human emotion.

This month’s issue rocks. They feature the question “Why Make Art?”, look at the human history of making art; interview a writer, a rapper (KRS-1 !) , a photographer, a choreographer, and a filmmaker — all of whom have distinctly personal answers to the question; and look at the arts in public school education and the benefits of creativity and art in hospitals.

But the topic that’s blown my mind so far in this issue is their feature “Bhutan at the Crossroads”. Mirka Knaster writes about this amazing country where happiness is a governmental policy goal.  (Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical at first and wondered if it was like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984. Someone watching you all the time, rigid codes of conduct, punishment.) But it’s really fascinating…Bhutan has a policy on GNH. What is GNH? Gross National Happiness.

That’s right, GNH. They do still have GDP, Gross Domestic Product. They’re not a super rich country. But they do rank first in Asia and eighth in the world in the University of Leicester (UK) world map of happiness from 2007. It’s amazing what’s possible in this world, what ways of thinking we can create, improve, or change.

So if the spirit moves you, check out Greater Good and “Bhutan at the Crossroads”. It’s pretty happy-making.

– MGB

For my birthday, I recently received a beautiful book I’d been longing for called THE WOMEN. It is filled with the haunting and evocative sepia photos of 19th century photographer Edward Curtis. Curtis spent 30 years of his life traveling North America photographing and recording the Native nations he met, documenting traditions, cermonies, languages, and songs. His photos of men were more famous and shaped the way Euro Americans saw the First People, particularly its warriors. But now, we can see photos of the women who — with skepticism, wariness, sometimes playfulness, and certainly a fierce strength in their eyes — allowed him to photograph them.

Here’s a quote from the book that I love:

The Great Spirit is our father, but the Earth is our mother. She nourishes us; that which we put into the ground she returns to us, and healing plants she gives us likewise. If we are wounded, we go to our mother and seek to lay the wounded part against her, to be healed. – Big Thunder (Wabanaki Algonquin), late 19th century

One of things that tickles me about this book are the multiple perspectives. To its credit, there’s a forward by Louise Erdrich and an introduction by Anne Makepeace who help us readers understand with more depth, subtlety and humor the perceptions, misperceptions, and fictions created by Curtis’ photos. They talk about how Curtis had to gain the women’s trust – at a time just before American Indian women were having their babies taken from them and sent to boarding schools. They give voice to the descendents of the women who were photographed, and allow them to laugh at the way some of the photos (beautiful though they are) are contrived. Christopher Cardozo, who culled 100 of Curtis’ photos, to create this book, writes an essay that helps us to see Curtis’ work as a photographer and his contributions as an American ethnographer.

As for me, it’s really the soul of the book that draws me to it. The woman who stands alone beside her hulking canoe, looking out across the water. The shaman women, healers among their people. The mothers and their babies in swings and hand-made carriers. The textures of the clothing. Women, their eyes shining, their faces holding something back. Anger, the ability to laugh at what’s in front of them, the mundane tasks of gathering wood and grinding flour — the everyday stuff that keeps humanity alive.

See what you think for yourselves…

– MGB

I had a great discussion with my friend Anna last weekend, one of those rambling conversations about creativity and life, cultural politics and the way we struggle to remain real and compassionate. The thing I’m realizing about creativity lately is that it requires Time. Time to slow down. Time to observe. Time to get down and dirty with the pen. Inkysludge on your fingers time.

My favorite scene from the 1998 Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman written movie “Shakespeare in Love” is when Will’s at his desk, absorbed in the creative moment, fingers smudged with ink (the quill he stores in a tomato). It’s messy. Manuscripts are full of cross-outs and arrows and the signs that a human intelligence, a human heart is at work. Beautiful. Also, smudges on fingers are sexy.

Mabuhay.

It’s been a long, good week, very productive — and I’m here again parked in the rain at a bend in the Des Plaines River. The ice on the riverbend is a soft, translucent white. The thawed parts of the riverbend are a flat brown tinged with green, gray on the surface. The bare-limbed trees are reflected in the sheen at the river’s edge and the rain is plopping, like water fountains sounding beneath a rumble of thunder. The roots of the old oaks along the north bank are submerged. Two mallards and a stray goose glide smoothly among the trunks, unperturbed by the showers. I am here again, in the pelting rain, in the drumming, thrumming rain, in the winter-turning-to-spring, in this hidden pocket of Chicago. I am here, again, because where else can I go (so co close to home), away from the productive bustle and noise of the week? Where else can I turn but to the riverbend, in the rain, to catch my breath and slow the racing of my pulse and the pace of my hours? Where else can I simply be?

It’s storming full-force now. And so many fat raindrops hit the river, between the tree trunks that the river is splashed white. Puddles and rivulets deepen on the softening banks, returning rainwater to the bend.

It smells like old road salt and boots and winter’s last cough in my van. But I don’t care because when I roll down my window, I smell the natural richness of the bank, the fresh rain, and the wet bark while the storm drums on my windshield.

– MGB

I just found a new mag online, “Hyphen Magazine” — paging through it, I was caught by the high quality of art, sweeping brushstrokes, and bold photos. Article titles, hed & dek, even the subscriptions categories had me rollin’. It’s a magazine devoted to taking a fresh look at Asian America (yes, including the Midwest). As to race? They seem to take things tongue-in-cheek. A little irreverent. Lots of sense of humor. Getting into what is overlooked by more mainstream press. What else could I do? I subscribed.

I’ve got it linked under “Bayanihan Spirit”. Hyphen is a non-profit mag. The staff works for FREE. “We do it as a labor of love,” they say. I lift a glass of Dom to you — that’s bayanihan spirit. Mabuhay to Hyphen.

Check-it and subscribe if the spirit moves you. Let’s get that staff of artists, writers, and editors paid.

~ MGB

New to check out:

A new category of links, “Bayanhihan Spirit, Cooperative Spirit”. These are links devoted to people and orgs engaged in collaborative work and community-building.

• Anti-Gravity Surprise – collaborative arts for social change.
• Pinoy+Proud – celebrates Filipino heritage, history, and arts; helps cultural centers; all welcome. (Yes, my cousins and I run this site.)
• Tanikgalang Ginto – Ken Ilio’s pinoneering site that serves as one of the largest Filipino culture directories online.

Under “Natural Heritage” category:

• Ansel Adams – awesome nature photography, environmentalism, and majestic images of Yosemite.

Enjoy!

Just out a page of poetry on my site for kids –

“Advice for Visiting Relatives” is my in-progress poetry collection for children based on my first trip to Manila when I was thirteen. Enjoy!

MGB

Lovers of history and art, a couple of new links on my site:

• In “Joy of Artistry” –> Kim Taylor Reece and his gorgeous, sensual, and well-researched sepia photos of kahiko hula, ancient hula. Beyond mainland novelty plastic skirts, 1950’s kitsch posters, and hula girl bobbles, Reece’s photos capture the power, spirituality, and sensuality of the dance. Breathtaking.
• In “Globe-trotting and Time-travel” –> The Wampanoag Homesite, part of the Plimoth Plantation site. Learn about Thanksgiving from the perspective and experiences of the Wampanoag community. (National Geographic has a children’s book, 1621, A NEW LOOK AT THANKSGIVING, which shows historical re-enactments of the multi-day feast. A real eye-opener. What is factual? What is national mythology? Great for kids.)

Enjoy!

MGB