When I was ten years old my grandmother’s friend “Uncle Charley” told me about my ancestor Charles Pickering who in the 1600s had a secret silver mine. I always wanted to find it but never had the time, always wondered if the stories were true. Now I think I have found it and next week I will get to the bottom of the mystery….after all it is just what a part time pirate should do look for hidden treasure!
NEST of IDEAS is a temporary public art installation to be built with the students of the Cambridge Montessori School at Danehy Park July 5&6. It will be up till August 1.
NEST of IDEAS is a symbol of security the nest sustains us as we grow. The earth is the nest of the humans it has sustained us as we grew but now how do we sustain it? Join us in weaving register tape with ideas poems and drawings about a sustainable future.
I arrived at the Cotton Tree Lodge to the sound of chainsaws and the sickening crack, whoosh and crash as an ancient tree falls. The Howler Monkeys were screaming in protest as our neighbor Juan Cho cleared more Milpa to grow rice. He will burn these trees adding carbon to the air. Sadly if his crop is successful, it will only last a few seasons and he will have to cut and burn more.
I had met my friend Santiago Chubb, and as we talked he told me about the “progress,” the forest and local struggles. I tried to save this forest four years ago and make it a sanctuary, but the people in the end voted it down. For them, the preserved land had no value, no income. Hope springs from the new generation. Santiago has also told me about a group of teenage kids who are gathering seedlings to replant the rainforest. Nobody has told them to do this. They are doing it on their own for their future and without outside resources. Can we help?
Salem, MA: On January 26th at the New England Foundation of the Arts Terry Bastian will present “The Blue Wave Project,” a lecture on his public participatory art installation. Aimed to build climate change awareness, the project was sponsored by Peabody Essex Museum, New Bedford Whaling Museum and the Army Corps of Engineers, with funding from the cultural councils of Salem, Sandwich, New Bedford and Vineyard Haven.
The Blue Wave Project renders global climate change concrete. Starting in 2008 at the South Snake Caye, a vanishing island in Belize, Bastian and his volunteer collaborators installed a blue line of cloth to mark where the sea level may be within 100 years. Bastian’s art installations range from urban sites, like Harvard University and Lawrence, MA., to jungle installations at the Cotton Tree Lodge. His work in ecological and environmental art explores the relationship between culture and nature. He has studios in both Salem and Belize.