Just pose the question to yourself, whether or not there's an impending weather event. What happens? Have you got excellent flashlights, fondue pots, Viewmaster sets and drawers full of good candles? Gallons of clean water, Sterno, batteries? It’s a comforting thing to have provisions. But still more comforting to know ...

What if no job or house or car or ideal weight or ideal husband is what is going to make you shine? What if there’s a bucket of magic in your secret heart and everything you witness stands transfixed, watching you, awaiting that moment when you smile and start flinging that sparkle everywhere. What if everything simply ...

Everyday Adventures in Beingness: Some Ideas

Here are some things that might be fun. Or might not. You decide. Research memory. Or Joseph Campbell. Or the workings of the brain. Or the Shakers, or Diane Arbus, or Walker Evans. Wallpaper the bathroom with Bazooka bubblegum comics. Plan a weird ass party. Make yourself some paper mache birds and let them ...

Oxygen

"Breathe," someone said to me yesterday. Good idea. #survivaltactic. How is it I had forgotten about breathing? Taking in oxygen. Even when I have worked fourteen straight days and am doing little beyond working very hard, eating and sleeping. Or especially then. I can still breathe in and out. I can still ...

Tap here

Tap here to begin writing, someone whispered, and she realized it had already begun. It had started somewhere after her telephone call with a friend from her early life, from when she was some inconsequential, flimsy thing unrecognizable to her now and it had fluttered, birdlike, when she began her ...

Choices

I am at Silver Diner for the first time, having a delightful Saturday morning. I've helped my Dad shovel two truckloads of mulch and, after my Belgian waffles, Amish eggs and nitrate-free bacon, I am going over to lounge around with my beautiful sister and talk of anything/everything. A lovely young ...

Letting Art Be

My dear friend and amazing human being Liz Sheehan is the director of Partners in the Arts, a program that supports arts integration at local schools here in RVA. We know, of course, that art feeds our soul. Our spirits. And kids know this already and way better than we do, but sometimes we just math them and english them to distraction so the part that they know at a deep level — the language and the dance of their very spirit — gets forgotten.

Enter Liz Sheehan. Now here is a woman with an enormous heart and a brain that can think circles around mere mortals and in that way, Liz often reminds me of Katherine Hepburn’s character in Desk Set who “associates many things with many things.” Beyond that, she has an intriguing history of having grown up in Manhattan, working as a graphic designer there, acquiring a PhD in cultural anthropology and consequently working at the Smithsonian Institute in D.C. where she could wander the catacombs of the place, examining the ephemera and iconic memorabilia of our culture to her heart’s content. When you talk to Liz, there is a profound listening going on that is practically seismic. As you can imagine, all of these qualities and experiences make Liz an extraordinary writer — indeed, one of my favorites. I am going to keep all the rest of the treasures I know about Liz to myself because by now she will be blushing and wanting me to keep the focus on the kids who need the arts integration for God’s sake. I just want you to understand about this quiet wonder who is here in Richmond, Virginia, working quiet wonders under the guise of Partners in the Arts, this quite unique program that actually uses art to teach other subjects. Speaking to the children in language they inherently understand, it would seem.

So now, here’s one of the projects of Partners in the Arts, involving Chris Milk Hulbert, one of Richmond’s beloved painters, and Sarah Fought, art teacher at Linwood Holton Elementary School and her students. How lucky are these kids to have teachers and people like Liz and Sarah and Chris who honor them and that part in them that is sacred and constant and mustn’t be papered over for the sake of busyness or culture or other foolishness. “Being happy and inspired while making art makes happy, inspired art,” says Chris to the children. Yes, yes, yes.

I’ve been watching too much television news lately, i.e., more than 5 seconds on any given day, and it had started to wear at my gleaming worldview just a little. For this little segment where I get to listen to Chris’ responses, I will make an exception to my new no-television-news-whatsoever rule:

Virginia This Morning Interviews Chris Milk