Thursday, January 7, 2010

ART AS ESCAPISM

Last night we enjoyed a traditional Rosca which is a part of the Christmas celebration. A circle of friends gathered to share sweetbread and hot chocolate. The bread came in a beautiful box and if you write to me by snail-mail you will receive a small portion of the box. Since it is Verna's birthday today, I gave her a card and two bags of Campion tea last night.
Aina called this morning to tell me that one of the rabbits seems to have disappeared and she saw a white squirrel in the lilac bushes. The surviving rabbit is Perky. Well, Gurki was a bit slow and perhaps was overtaken by a coyote or a fox.
The recession hit Broadway in 1982 and Mae Sarton was sympathetic toward all those who worked so hard to stage good plays. "I see Broadway as a dragon that devours the innocent and the truly sophisticated, devours the pure in heart, and no knight to ride up at the eleventh hour to make a rescue!"
But today the Yoga said, "I am awake in joy."
When Willa Cather was asked about 'art as escapism' she replied, "...the world has a habit of being in a bad way from time to time, and art has never contributed anything to help matters - except escape." When I was a child living with my grandparents on e Franklin Ave, Mpls, I often accompanied my Grandmother Vanoss to the movie hall. There were at least three within walking distance. I didn't know it then but we were escaping from the simple scripts and familiar drama of our own lives to see how other lives were lived.
Today I have begun to read "Education for Extinction" by David Wallace Adams, American Indians and the boarding school experience (1875-1928). According to the preface these schools were "established for the sole purpose of severing the child's cultural and psychological connection to his native heritage, this unique institution figured prominently in the federal government's desire to find a solution to the 'Indian problem,' a method of saving Indians by destroying them."

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