Our amazing Webs

Funnel Weavers are spiders from the genus Agelenidae who build funnels in which they can hide out and wait for prey. To do this they construct a horizontal web that leads back to a funnel or hole, often in rockery as did this one in Monhegan Island, Maine.

In general, spiders are often more friendly than fearsome. When it comes to house spiders, they eat common pests, such as flies and mosquitoes. In the wild, they help control insect populations, as well as other spider populations. And they are an essential food source for predators like birds, lizards, and small mammals. Details thanks to: www.magazine.scienceconnected.org.

Spiders also remind us of our own intricate webs of connection. We build links across our physical boundaries and span long distances for community, for safety and security, as well as for attacking others,… even as our worldly webs dance across beauty.

To the moment at hand - we are celebrating three years of Kraemer & Kin at GreenTARA this weekend - Oct 15 & 16, noon - 6pm. K & K move out before the end of October in order to have Halloween festivities at “the (Alburgh Golf) Links.” Look for plenty of fun, apples, pumpkins, and spider webs there!

Boogie Woogie Transitions

A hand-painted copy of Boogie Woogie Broadway by Piet Mondrian now hangs in the Gallery. The painting was done as a gift of love between two people. But now we live between dancing storms and boogie woogie transitions of human endeavors.

GreenTARA will continue but Kraemer & Kin are moving full-time to the Alburgh Golf Links at the end of October. Final community celebration and party days at GreenTARA are Oct 15 and 16, 2022. Please join us in this.

But also!!! Week-end in the Islands (WITI) is Oct 8 & 9, 2022. GreenTARA is open and hosting Life in the Islands story-telling and recordings for the OurStoryBridge North Hero Library project www.northherolibrary.org/life-in-the-islands. If you are interested in sharing your story, please contact Diane Bahrenburg at dibahrenburg@gmail.com or 802-777-7402.

There is only Oneness

The Selkies - last Sunday! What a lovely day of art, music, and light flowing. While you may have missed the music, you can still catch the last weeks of “We the People” and “Do Trees have Standing?” Below is a copy of Susan Barba’s powerful poem “River”… This is about the Colorado River and what it means to give it standing.

Gratitude for Rain

Rainstorms inspire beauty, changing light, oxygenated freshness, and a change in temperature. Inspiration from Lake Champlain is ever present, but last winter’s woodblock exhibition of Hiroshige’s prints at the Southern Vermont Arts Center inspired this white on white weaving - called Gratitude for Rain. While I normally knot the ends of a rug, this one allows the warp to continue unbound as if the flow was still there.

And, in reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KImmerer, I am inspired to include part of the Thanksgiving Address. This section offers gratitude to the Waters. From https://danceforallpeople.com/haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address/haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address-3/ : It is offered as a daily sunrise prayer, and is an ancient message of peace and appreciation of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. The Thanksgiving Address teaches mutual respect, conservation, love, generosity, and the responsibility to understand that what is done to one part of the Web of Life, we do to ourselves.

We give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms — waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send our greetings and our thanks to the spirit of Water.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE

We the People / Do Trees have Standing?

An essay on the current exhibition of art and photography at GreenTARA Space, by Diane Elliott Gayer, August 2022.

“WE THE PEOPLE of the United States”, the opening line of the US Constitution reminds us that we, as separate individuals, are the people, and as such, we are united in a belief that a more perfect union is possible.  This notion is a prayer and a faith for a collective future and a responsibility to recognize freedom in ourselves and for others.

Janet’s Van Fleet’s People remind us that we are – even when we are different – still a coherent part of the whole.  Her People talk to us:

They are looking at you, and you are looking at them. I like to think that they may be saying something to you, and you might be replying, or making a statement of your own. This is a bit like our mixing it up with the other people around us, our co-citizens. Often it seems impossible to understand where they’re coming from, and they sometimes have no clue what we think and why we think it. Connecting with art often requires a similar effort to open ourselves and relate. I wish you a good conversation!

The Constitution, the legal document that identifies and attaches our unalienable rights, is not fixed in time.  It has gone from its narrow beginnings of rights only for white land-owning men to today’s assignation of personhood to corporations, which allots the same rights to them as to natural persons. 

This acceptance of corporate personhood raises the question about rights for other entities we co-exist with. We have many practices and ordinances that protect our natural systems, but the systems themselves (forests, air, water, earth, wetlands, etc.) do not have intrinsic rights within the legal system. While they might have specific economic value – such as how much a tree is worth if your neighbor happens to cut it down and you sue them for it, or, a means by which I can sell and transfer my air rights to you so that you can build a higher high-rise – they do not have Rights and are victims to our modern econo-politico structure.  And, regardless of the type of government (democratic or authoritarian), the natural systems that animate our world fall prey to human greed and desire.

So for example when it comes to adopting climate action plans:

Trees have historically not been included in local Greenhouse Gases (GHG) inventories and climate action plans due to lack of guidance about how to quantify their carbon impacts, as well as the perception that their emissions are small compared to other sectors. But as trees both emit carbon when cleared and remove carbon from the atmosphere as they grow, including these emissions and removals (sequestration) makes inventories more complete. And with urban trees in decline across the planet, quantifying this value of forests and trees can give communities yet another reason to protect them and even expand their cover.  [https://thecityfix.com/blog/cities-should-account-for-trees-in-their-greenhouse-gas-inventories-nw-guidance-shows-how/]  

While this paragraph does not argue for the personhood of trees it does begin to identify the roles trees play in our society.  And closer to home, reading from Burlington’s Climate Action Plan we learn that:

Research indicates that carbon sequestration — or the process by which carbon is captured and stored to avoid release into the atmosphere — is a sound and viable way to reduced greenhouse gasses. Because trees sequester carbon, Burlington is fortunate to have an extensive tree canopy, approximately 40% of Burlington’s land cover mass. Not only do trees sequester carbon, Burlington’s urban forest, a mosaic of planted landscapes and what remains of the native forest, is a reflection of the city’s health, wellbeing, and livability. It is an important part of Burlington’s character, giving the City a special sense of place.

This leads me to the questions: Why are we cutting down six acres of trees to make way for a highway project that is obsolete by 50-years?  And: Why do trees not have legal standing when it comes to climate action decisions?  Considering all of Burlington’s Climate Change policies: Why was a GHG (Greenhouse Gases) study not done prior to destroying acres of trees in a critical habitat and riverine zone?

To pursue the question further, I refer to the Burlington Climate Action Plan which holds the to increase the Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) by 588 trees per year and to maintain the existing urban tree canopy on both public and private property. So again: How are we reckoning our policies with actions?

There are municipal and regional plans and studies that underlie transportation projects, but they are not addressing the cost-benefit analyses of tree removal, especially given their role in mitigating climate impacts.  In the case of the Champlain Parkway no one asked these critical questions, updated the Environmental Impact Study (EIS), nor looked at Burlington’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) for guidance. Designed decades ago, the Parkway has many design flaws and missed opportunities.

The project no longer meets any of the City of Burlington Transportation goals (CAP strategies in detail, page 21) from the goal of improving bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to the long sought after integrated transportation hub. This should have been the core of this multi-million dollar project, but it is not even a faint whisper.  The highway design and what is now being built is truly circa 1965 in engineering thinking and city planning.

Finally returning to the question of Rights: Why haven’t we assigned trees the Rights of Livelihood common to the rest of us?  We do, after all, all depend on the same things – healthy air, water, and spirit.  The Rights of Trees encapsulates the Rights of All for if they are healthy and safe, so are we.

We the People

We the People

Janet Van Fleet’s large figures hanging on the wall are half- to three-quarter human scale. They are made with found and re-purposed materials, including wood, metal, wire, rubber, buttons, and glass. Their presence as People remind us that we are made of many things and ideas, yet united in our collective future and desire for freedom.

Janet Van Fleet:

They are looking at you, and you are looking at them. I like to think that they may be saying something to you, and you might be replying, or making a statement of your own. This is a bit like our mixing it up with the other people around us, our co-citizens. Often it seems impossible to understand where they’re coming from, and they sometimes have no clue what we think and why we think it. Connecting with art often requires a similar effort to open ourselves and relate. I wish you a good conversation!

Elusive beauty

Elusive beauty shines even when we aren’t aware of it. Beauty, like a wave in the lake, is hard to hold, to grasp, and yet like the wave is no more than the water itself. We are held in tension by the dualities of existence, yet they too dissipate like water in our hands. As with Beauty, so too with Love — a wave of being that flows across boundaries and through our actions.

Join us Saturday, July 16th 4:30 - 5:30 for a panel discussion with artist Sally Linder, minister/poet Chico Martin, and redeveloper Melinda Moulton.

Love Is - a panel discussion

Join us at GreenTARA Gallery in North Hero for an artist talk /panel discussion with Sally Linder, Chico Martin, and Melinda Moulton. We are extraordinarily blessed to have such talented and inspired members in our Vermont communities. They will be talking from their perspectives as visual artist; local minister & musician/poet; and environmental/socially conscious redeveloper. Linder's exhibition "LOVE IS" will be background to the discussion - please join us in thinking deeper about our actions in this world. Talk to be in Main Gallery, please wear a mask if you need to. Kraemer & Kin microbrewery will be open.

GreenTARA Space

Sat., July 16, 4:30-5:30 p.m. 3275 US Route 2, North Hero

Sisterhood