THREE CHRISTMAS MIRACLES

Everybody likes to hear about a Christmas miracle, especially in these not-so-merry times, so I’m going to share three that happened locally, close to our hometown of Grafton, MA.

First miracle: On the day before Christmas, a former firefighter named Lee E. Chauvette of Athol went to Town Hall to pay the food permit for his restaurant. But he discovered that he had left the check at home, so he went back to get it When he pulled into his driveway on the edge of a lake, he noticed a woman and her two young children on the ice. When he pulled out of his driveway a moment later and looked toward the lake, he saw the mother and children fall through the ice. He called the fire department and tried to get onto the ice but it was too weak, so he shouted encouragement until the firefighters and their ice rescue sled came and saved them. They were treated for exposure and released.

Mr. Chauvette told the local newspaper, the Telegram and Gazette, that it was just lucky he had to return home when he did to get the forgotten check. Luck or a Christmas miracle?

Second Miracle: Andrea Clancy of Holden was having a terrible year –her two-year-old Seamus had been constantly ill, the family lost their power in our famous Ice Storm, all their food rotted in the refrigerator, and Andrea had done no Christmas shopping by Friday Dec. 19 when her little boy got an earache and she had to take him to the hospital. She stopped at an ATM to take out $40 so that she could pay the valet at U Mass Memorial Medical Center. As she carried her crying toddler into the elevator she realized her wallet was gone with her credit cards, her gift card for toys and a memory stick with all her family photos.

Later that day the police called to say that someone had turned in her wallet. When she picked it up, everything was still in it, including the $40 plus two HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILLS.

Mrs. Clancy (as interviewed by reporter Dianne Williamson) learned from the police the name of the man who had turned in her wallet. She called him to thank him. He wished her a Merry Christmas and, when he heard about the extra $200, he insisted he didn’t put it in the wallet. He said the same thing to the reporter: “I was just trying to be nice by returning it, but I sure didn’t put any money in there.” He also asked that the paper not reveal his name. The reporter concluded it must have been Santa Claus who added the extra money.

Third miracle –Daughter Eleni, who discovered a week ago Friday that she had lost her passport with her Indian visa in it, (as reported in my last entry) has finally managed to replace the passport by going into Boston last Monday. Then on Tuesday and Weds. She visited the Indian consulate in New York and, although it looked problematical at first, she managed to get a new visa and make it home to Grafton to put the angel on the tree and go to church with us on Christmas Eve. There was joy throughout the Gage house.

Today (Dec. 27) Eleni and I are scheduled to fly from Logan to JFK and then from New York to Mumbai to begin the odyssey to India which Eleni has been preparing for so many months. Her sister Marina has already landed in Paris and will be joining us in India on New Year’s Eve as the three-day wedding festivities of Neela and Dave begin. And after today, I hope, even though I’m a novice at this blogging, to share our adventures with you via “Arollingcrone”.

Holiday greetings and here’s to the adventures (and miracles) that 2009 will bring!

GOING TO INDIA? A HOLIDAY CLIFFHANGER

It’s the day before Christmas and all through the house the bustle of wrapping gifts has been replaced by the drama of our holiday trip to India – it’s been in the planning stages for a year, but lately has suffered a series of setbacks.

First there was the terrorist attack on Mumbai which led to a State Department warning that U.S. Citizens should not travel to India right about now. (It’s in effect until Dec. 30.) Saturday, Dec. 27 is when daughter Eleni and I are supposed to fly to Mumbai and then to fly the next day to Jodhpur where Eleni’s former roommate Neela Pania, is getting married in a three-day series of parties and ceremonies beginning on New Year’s Eve. Eleni has worked hard all year to plan for us the world’s greatest trip around India, including a camel safari into the desert, visits to the Taj Mahal and a boat trip on the Ganges.

Although most everyone we knew advised us we should NOT go to India just now, we stubbornly stuck to our itinerary. Marina, Eleni’s younger sister, even expanded it into her own trip around the world -- leaving Boston the day after Christmas to stay with friends in Paris, then joining us in India for the wedding, then on to more friends in Sydney, Hawaii and back home to Los Angeles.

Next glitch – Eleni lost her passport with the Indian visa in it. She came home on Friday (during the massive snow storm) after three days spent in NYC on jury duty — days of living out of a suitcase and staying with friends because boarders had moved into her apartment for the month she'll be away. Then, when she got home to Grafton, she discovered that the passport had disappeared during her wandering about New York.

So on Monday Dec. 22 she spent all day at the emergency passport line in Boston and then Tuesday Dec. 23, she traveled with her new passport back to New York City in hopes of getting another visa from the India travel visa folks. She couldn’t get an appointment because they’re all jammed up now, but she stood in the walk-in (no appointment) line. She burst into tears when told she’d have to come back on Christmas Eve, then someone took pity on her and said that if she went to the Indian consulate around noon on Weds. Dec. 24, she could probably get her visa then, which meant, with luck, that she might get back to Grafton in time for joining the rest of the family at a Christmas Eve party followed by the traditional church service (with the children acting out the nativity scene). After church we'll put the angel on the tree and each open one gift and then it’s really Christmas. Let’s hope she makes it back from Manhattan in time.

Eleni has been to India several times with Neela and I was so amazed at the photographs she took that I’ve painted watercolors based on them. The two photos above show the same woman who sells plastic bangle bracelets in the Clock Tower market in Jodhpur (where the wedding will be held.) The first one was taken by Eleni in January 2006, when the woman had her infant son in her lap.

A year later, the little boy was a toddler when Eleni came back to the same spot and handed the woman her photograph. It caused a sensation in the marketplace. The lady had never owned a photograph of herself and was delighted. All her friends wanted their photos taken too.

I’m in such a fever of anticipation to see India that right now I’m afraid to even start packing my bags until Eleni returns with visa in hand. So Christmas Day will be a frenzy of preparation, packing saris we’ve borrowed along with western clothes. God willing we’ll all find ourselves in Jodhpur on New Year’s Eve. And I hope to photograph and write about what happens throughout our Indian adventure.... unless there’s another storm or electrical outage and we never get out of Logan airport.

CONFESSIONS OF A CHRISTMAS TREE FREAK

I’ve mentioned before that I’m hoping to write a book called “Acing the Holidays” about sneaky shortcuts and ways to cut the time and stress devoted to this season. But when it comes to decorating a Christmas tree, I become irrational and I just…can’t…stop. (If there were a Greek name for this personality disorder I realized, it would be elatophilia)

Yesterday my husband walked into the kitchen and shouted “How many trees are we going to have?” The answer is five – each one with a different theme. And this year I’m trying to keep it down because I’m leaving for India two days after Christmas.

The first and most important Christmas tree is the one in the living room that we generally buy and wrestle into the house around Dec. 6, Saint Nicholas' Day. This year the tree came with a very PC tag that said “Balsam Fir --Thank you for choosing a real tree – a natural, renewable and recyclable resource! For every tree sold, 3 seedlings are planted in its place.”

When our kids were small, we used only unbreakable ornaments, and even tied a string to a nail in the wall to keep the tree upright in case of attack. But the kids grew up and went away and I acquired a whole variety of ornaments over time, so every year I do a different color scheme. Red and gold. Or all white. Or red and white. Or pink and burgundy.

This year I noticed in stores and catalogs that the trendy color scheme is chartreuse and red, but I decided to use some mirrored (like disco balls) ornaments and reflective chains and do the tree all in silver and mirrors with maybe some red ornaments. Then I found at the dollar store some VERY cheap clear plastic ornaments that looked glass. At TJ Maxx, I also found at a discount price three dozen clip-on white butterflies with silver glitter on their wings (which are made of white feathers.)

It always takes me about two evenings to get all the clear mini lights on the tree – about a thousand lights in all. Then I started putting on chains and the butterflies and a couple of ornaments. I know I’m supposed to leave some decorating for when the kids get home right before Christmas, but I got a little carried away.

I was so happy with the monochromatic, sparkling, disco-ball tree that I decided not to put anything red on, except for a single red butterfly that I found at the dollar store. You can see the tree above. (If you click on the photo it will be larger.) It looks like the tree of the Snow Queen, I think. Or like the poor ice-encrusted trees in our yard that have been falling down or losing branches ever since the ice storm last Friday.

This tree is definitely not done – not until we have the ceremony of putting the angel on top on Christmas Eve after church (and then we each get to open one package.)

The tree that I always put up next is the Shoe Tree in my office. It’s a table-top artificial tree and everything on it or around it is about SHOES.

This started back when the Metropolitan Museum decided to sell ornaments based on the shoes in their collections. It was a very profitable idea and soon everyone was selling shoe ornaments. And people started giving me actual shoes – I have antique high-button baby shoes and fabulous Adidas sneakers meant for a baby and some real leather and fur antique baby Indian moccasins. My favorite is a pair of Chinese baby slippers that look like cats.

Now I’ve told you about two of my five trees. Next time I’ll tell you about the wire tree with antique ornaments, the little Mexican tree with five Nativity scenes, and the Kitchen tree that is decorated mainly with edible decorations.

My name is Joan and I'm a Christmas tree addict.....

THE CHILDREN OF CHIAPAS -- A CHRISTMAS STORY

Last May, when daughter Eleni and I went on our annual culinary tour with Susana Trilling in Mexico,(she’s at seasonsofmyheart.com), Susana took us to Chiapas and Tabasco to see how chocolate is grown, processed and also celebrated (in the Fiesta of San Isidro). She asked us beforehand to bring some clothing and toys for the children of the Cacao Cooperative we would see, deep in the jungle over unpaved roads in one of the poorest areas of Mexico.

I had packed some bright inflatable beach balls that cost a dollar each, as well as some Matchbox cars, Nerf balls , baby clothes and other toys. When our van approached the village, I saw some children playing catch with an old sandal. I realized then that they really were poor, compared to even the poorest U.S. children, who could usually find a ball to play catch.

That afternoon, the Mayor of the small cacao cooperative welcomed us, the families showed us the small plots on which each grew a few cacao trees and they served us a meal in the central building. And we learned that their children were not poor in family and love. Their smiles were like sunshine, and when we started unpacking and blowing up and distributing the beach balls, they were thrilled. There seemed to be enough matchbook cars and Nerf balls and small toys to give everyone something. They waited shyly without pushing or grabbing.

I had packed one Barbie Doll, boxed in her plastic cocoon, as well as a gown for her, and I gave that to the oldest of the girls, in a black tee-shirt with a red heart. She immediately ran to show it to her mother. As the mayor made a speech, describing the little cooperative that had created solar-powered machinery to refine the cacao, the mothers sitting in the back, some of them breast-feeding babies, passed along the Barbie from one woman to another, looking at it in awe and stroking the package almost reverently.

Finally we got one of our group to explain to the girl with the heart that she should take the doll out of the package to play with it. But by the time we left, with all the children waving after our van, Barbie was still unwrapped inside her plastic bubble, an object of admiration for the whole village.

Passing out those toys last May was the high point of our culinary tour, we all agreed. As soon as I got home, I started collecting the cheapest toys I could find: boxes of crayons, Spider Man notebooks, matchbook cars, new baby clothes and dresses bought at a yard sale, counting games, plastic dinosaurs, stickers Rubic’s cubes, colorful socks. When I packed up the large cardboard box, on top I put three more Barbie dolls of various themes and skin tones..

Laura Saldivar, the lovely young woman who had served as our guide and translator at the Cacao Cooperative, agreed to distribute the toys if I would send them to her address in San Cristobal. She has e-mailed me that the box has arrived at her post office and that she’ll soon be taking it to the children of the Cacao Cooperative Voces de Jatate.

This year, as every year, I also bought, packed and delivered toys and clothing for a family in Worcester; a mother and three children who are clients of Pernet Family Services. For the Worcester children I bought much more expensive and elaborate toys and clothing, because I want their Christmas loot to compare with their friends’ gifts. Each boy, for example, is getting a large Hot Wheels fantasy set as well as extra cars and a stunt car as well as a three-piece set of pants, shirt and sweater.

But somehow, although I love shopping for the local underprivileged children — and there are far too many who will find little Christmas joy in this year of economic woes -- I’m having more fun imagining the opening of the box of dollar toys in Chiapas, and especially the reaction to the three new Barbie dolls.

WON THE BATTLE BUT NOT THE WAR

For those who have kindly asked: I did make it to 50,000 words before the end of the November Challenge of NaNoWriMore (National Novel Writing Month.)

It was exciting to submit my manuscript to the web site’s counting robot and learn that I was a “WINNER”! and had even more words than I thought – the final count was 50,487.

That immediately qualified me for a lot of virtual gratification and even a certificate that I could print out and fill in with such fulsome praise as this:

“Through storm and sun, you traversed the noveling seas. Pitted against a merciless deadline and battling hordes of distractions, you persevered. Your dedication to the high-velocity literary arts is remarkable. Your victory shall be recorded for all time in the annals of the Office of Letters and Light, where it will serve as a beacon to writers hoping to someday follow your triumphant path. You did it, novelist. We couldn’t be prouder.”

That’s the kind of encouragement and undeserved praise that I love.

Then last night our final NaNoWriMo class gathered at the Worcester Art Museum where our teacher Laurel King, distributed champagne toasts, cookies and a button for each of us that says “Novelist”. And she gave us our inner editors back (which we had turned over to her at the beginning) so that we could start revising, which will take a year at least. And we each read a very small section of our masterpiece, to be greeted with applause from the entire class.

However, I will not be wearing my “Novelist” button any time soon, because I realize I haven’t written a novel. I haven’t even written a messy, sloppy first draft of a novel. Many of my classmates have finished their story. (In fact, of Laurel’s 23 students in two classes, 19 of them finished the 50,000 words and became “Winners”.)

But at 50,487 words, my book is nowhere near finished. In fact, I’ve just reached the climax and have to do the dénouement (as they used to say in English class) and tie up all the strings and figure out the ending. And then I’ll be able to start revising.

But I’m not going back to writing until January because there’s all that good Christmas stuff to do now, like Christmas cards and decorating the tree and making cookies….

I hope I won’t be totally out of steam when I next look at my novel draft. All in all NaNoWriMo has been a fun game and it really did teach me lots of things, including that, if you’re racing against a deadline, your characters can take over and do things that leave you amazed and surprised (at what awful dilemmas they can get themselves into.)

One more Christmas thing I’m looking forward to – on Sunday, Dec. 7,from noon to five, I’ll be at Union Station in Worcester for StART at the STATION – featuring “over 75 local artists and fine crafters, as well as food, drinks, music and good times.”

I’ll be sharing a table with friend Kim Cutler who is an amazing potter with some truly beautiful vases dishes and pots for extremely reasonable prices (I’ve already bought two for under $20 for gifts.)

I will be selling copies of my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats” for $10 and will be gift wrapping them for free in cat-themed paper and red and white gingham ribbon. Also I’ll be selling note cards and matted photographs that I’ve taken of Worcester landmarks – ready for framing in a standard- size frame for a great holiday gift for Worcesterites.

Hope to see you there!

Can I Write a Novel in a Month? NaNoWriMo

After writing professionally from the age of 21 to 60 I stopped. I was burned out. I decided to go back to my original love – painting --and started taking classes at the Worcester Art Museum. It’s worked out pretty well in the ensuing seven years. I sold some paintings and participated in several shows this year.

Recently I saw that there was a class at the Worcester Art Museum based on the now world-wide project called NaNoWriMo for “National Novel Writing Month,” started some ten years ago by Chris Baty. The point is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That averages out to 1,667 words a day. It was being taught at WAM by Laurel King.

I signed up, thinking it might get me going on writing again. We (17 students in the night class) meet every Wednesday to compare notes. Laurel brings coffee and snacks and gives us writing exercises, which are a lot of fun. One of my favorites in the first class was to draw a picture of our “inner editor” and then fold it up and put it in a jar which she keeps until the end of the month. That means that we must not edit or read what we have written or try to fix the writing – just keep spewing out words

Naturally this is difficult, or maybe I should say impossible for someone who writes professionally. I drew my inner editor as an old lady with a big nose who says things like: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” That’s what I’m doing today – typing desperately.

My idea was to write a novel that is sort of ”Chick Lit” for women over sixty. Should I call it "Crone Lit"? (By the way, the word “crone” in my blog title has raised so much controversy among friends and readers that I will have to devote at least one blog to “what is the meaning of ‘crone’?” But that will happen in a month when I’m not supposed to be writing 1,667 words a day on a novel.)

Naturally I fell behind on my word quota because November is a month of things like Thanksgiving. Yesterday I didn’t write a word on the computer but had great fun shopping with daughters Eleni and Marina on Black Friday and also trying to sell copies of my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats” at a local Borders.

I woke up this morning and realized that my word count so far (you post it every day on the site at NaNowriMo.org) is only 45,268 and that I have to write nearly 5,000 words by TOMORROW.

Our class will meet for the last time on Dec. 3 to celebrate the winners with food and revelry. Never mind what they wrote, if they wrote 50,000 words of anything they are WINNERS.

It’s not looking so good for me. And to make things worse, most of my classmates have already finished. Laurel said that of the international NaNoWriMo participants last year (there were more than 100,000 would-be novelists!) only 17 per cent finished but that 88 per cent of the students in her classes did finish.

To make matters worse, if you wait till the last day to try to submit your manuscript for counting and validating (a computer program does it) then you may find the site too choked up to count you. I just looked and it’s already barely working.

Will I be a winner or a loser by tomorrow (Sunday) midnight? Tune in tomorrow.

Why I Love Thanksgiving (and Shortcuts)

I love Thanksgiving because you don’t have to buy and wrap gifts and it’s non-denominational – any religion can play. Even vegetarians like our son can find plenty to eat at Thanksgiving.

I used to make vegetarian gravy to go with our traditional stuffing – just take Pepperidge Farms Cornbread stuffing , and prepare as directed with water and butter but first throw in sautéed mushrooms, a little sautéed celery – you get the idea. (Trader Joe’s even sells a Tofurky roast made from tofu with gravy , although we go the free-range fresh turkey route.) Put a cut-up orange and/or onion inside the turkey’s cavity. If you put the stuffing inside, the turkey takes forever to cook and the stuffing comes out soggy.

My doctored-up corn bread stuffing always wows the Greek relatives who have spent days making stuffing involving sausage, pine nuts, chestnuts, etc. My stuffing takes five minutes. Theirs takes three days and must have a thousand calories per spoonful. Don’t tell them that, and also don’t tell them that, after years of failing at gravy-making I just jazz up canned turkey gravy with some chopped cooked gizzards and a little of the maple/bourbon glaze that I brush on the turkey near the end of the cooking time to keep it moist and a nice color

When I was a newlywed in 1970 I made Duck a l’Orange for our first Thanksgiving. The next year there was a baby at the table – smaller than the turkey -- and then two and three, and for 38 years we’ve celebrated the full catastrophe, often inviting foreign college students who have no place to go.

We still do it the traditional way, from cranberry/orange relish and wild rice (which comes from my native state of Minnesota) to apple and pumpkin pie (which is wicked easy to make, but now I make a pumpkin roll — like a jelly roll with cream cheese in the middle. You can freeze it and serve it centuries later, just defrost and slice and sprinkle with powdered sugar.) Somehow Chocolate Kahlua Pie has also become a family “tradition.”

I used to keep the kids busy making place cards for the table… for instance turkeys out of popcorn balls wrapped in red cellophane with heads made of lady fingers or Greek kourlourakia. The turkeys stand on three toothpick legs stuck into some large flat cookie with a person’s name on it.

Over the years I developed more and more shortcuts because cooking is just not my thing. Decorating is. By now I’ve now got it so streamlined that I’m going to write a book next year about "Holiday Shortcuts". Trust me, you can do a Thanksgiving and Christmas worthy of Martha Stewart and be cheating every step of the way. That’s the thesis of my upcoming book, which has the working title "Acing the Holidays". Stay tuned.

This year I’m plugging my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats”

which costs only $10 and is perfect for the cat people or going-to-Greece people on your list. I’ll sign it and wrap it in cat-themed paper for free if you order it off my web site: www.GreekCats.com .

I’m also going to be selling it at Border’s, 476 Boston Turnpike, Shrewsbury on the day after Thanksgiving and on Sunday, December 7 at “Start at the Station” – Worcester’s Union Station — from noon to five p.m. along with 80 other artists and craftspeople.

Last night, youngest child Marina came back home from LA. On Wednesday night Eleni’s coming home from New York. As soon as Marina got here, her cousin Efro came over and the two girls sat at the kitchen table looking at photos on Marina’s computer of her new life full of beaches and sunsets and new housemates. The girls were laughing so loud you could hardly hear the phone ringing. “You see,” said the Big Eleni, who is Efro’s mother, “The minute children come home, the house is filled with joy.”

That’s what I love about Thanksgiving. Hope you have a great Turkey Day! The photo above is last year’s feast with Nick about to carve the turkey.

Which Portrait Do You Like Best?

This semester I’ve been taking a class at the Worcester Art Museum called “Portrait I & II” which is taught by Ella Delyanis. (She does wonderful pastels – see her work at www.artanagallery.com)

She suggested that each student choose a piece to frame and submit to the Adult Student Exhibition which will hang in the Education Wing of the Museum from Dec. 9, 2008 to January 23, 2009..

I can’t decide between two portraits I’ve done in the class – one of a model named Brenda and one of a model named Paul. The one of Brenda was a longer pose – about an hour – and the one of Paul was much shorter, but I kind of like the fact that it’s looser and more unfinished.

I’d love your input on which of these two portraits to submit.

I’m also posting a photo of Brenda posing with an earlier portrait of her that I did in the class.. When the class was over she took out her own camera and snapped a photo of the drawing, which made me happy because it meant she liked the portrait. So I asked her to pose with the drawing for my camera.

It’s not easy posing – the models have to hold the pose and stay very still for so long and it takes good muscle control, especially in contorted poses for figure drawing. The Worcester Art Museum has some very professional models.

"HOLY DEATH', THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA AND MY PAINTING

My friend, photographer and teacher Mari Seder, first introduced me to Mexico, its incredible colors and fascinating folk and religious art when I visited her in Oaxaca many years ago.

Several years ago I traveled with her to the isolated Church of the Virgin of Juquila on the mountainous road from Oaxaca to Puerto Escandido. Pilgrims come here by foot from all over Mexico to ask for a miracle from this tiny, dark-skinned figure of the Virgin who is housed in a massive church.

The pilgrims walk for days, sleeping in village squares, fed by pious Mexicans, until they reach Juquila. They often approach the saint on their knees. The tiny figure (who is considered Indian because of her dark skin) has a white train which stretches out of the church and far into the distance. Pilgrims leave on the train gifts and hand-made wooden crosses either specifying the favor they need or thanking her for favors received. My photo above shows two Indian women on their knees approaching the Virgin , one with a blond baby on her back.

Three years ago on March 21 my daughter and I were on a tour led by cooking guru Susanna Trilling (www.seasonsofmyheart.com). We were at El Tajin – a pre-Columbian archeological site in Veracruz, composed of multiple pyramids. It was the Spring Equinox and hundreds of Mexicans, all dressed in white, came there to be cleansed by the Sun God with the aid of cueranderos (healers).

On the way into the pyramids, among the many objects on display on the road outside, I noticed the skeletal lady dressed as a Spanish Senorita. I had never seen anything like her … she was like the many Guadalupe virgins seen everywhere, but she was Death So I took her photo, but no one could tell me exactly what she was for. They told me she was Santa Meurte and I could see she was available for some kind of religious ceremony (for a price) but I couldn’t get any other kind of information. Everyone seemed reluctant to talk about her.

Last year in February in Oaxaca I attended a class sponsored by the Worcester Art Museum called “Expanding Your Vision -- Painting and Photography in the Magical World of Oaxaca, Mexico”. It was taught by my friend Mari Seder and Oaxacan artist Humberto Batista. (They’re doing it again in Feb. 2009 --- www.worcesterart.org) Humberto strongly encouraged the students to think outside the box and to paint something unlike their usual style.

At his urging (although I am VERY literal – usually painting just what I see) I incorporated the figure of Santa Meurte from El Tajin into my painting of the interior of the Church of Juquila. The result is the painting above which is now on display at the Worcester Art Museum in a show of art done by students during their off-site classes.

I was surprised and excited when I recently picked up the New Yorker dated Nov. 10 and found an article by Alma Guillermoprieto called “Days of the Dead, The new narcocultura.” She wrote about the narcotics trafficking that is causing such bloodshed in Mexico and she investigated the role of “The Holy Death” – especially as she is celebrated in a mass every day in a troubled neighborhood of Mexico City called Tepito where the drug dealers and addicts collect.

The author suggested that there are two thousand shrines in Mexico to Santa Meurte and that she is the saint of drug traffickers (although the woman who established the large shrine in Tepito denies that it is only for drug traffickers.)

When I painted the watercolor above, showing a woman crawling toward the Virgin of Juquila , I imagined that she was going to ask the Virgin to heal her baby and was encountering Santa Muerte blocking her way to salvation. If it’s true that Holy Death is the saint of narcotics dealers, that adds another dimension to the painting. Perhaps the baby’s health and safety are threatened by some version of the narcocultura (maybe not now but when he grows up.)

The thought gave me a shudder, appropriately enough at this season which celebrates the Days of the Dead. And it adds a layer of unexpected meaning to the painting

Tell me what you think.

Street Artist Banksy and his Peculiar Pet Shop

On the same weekend in October that I visited the CFA – IAMs Cat Championship in Madison Square Garden and the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, I also went with two fellow crones down to Greenwich Village to view an exhibit by anonymous British street artist Banksy.

No one knows who Banksy really is, including the young men and women who were keeping watch over his Greenwich Village exhibit. (I asked them. They said they’ve never met him) According to Wikipedia Banksy is "a well-known pseudo-anonymous British artist believed to have been born in 1974."

His street art usually combines graffiti and a stenciling technique — leaving political statements on walls -- but in New York he opened a realistic-looking "Pet Store and Charcoal Grill" at 89 Seventh Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street. (Love the irony in that title…It was only there from October 9 to Halloween and we crones felt privileged to see this street art in action before Banksy folded it up and took it away. It was the first time Banksy has used animation to create exhibits that moved.)

From the outside, the Pet Store featured what appeared to be a large leopard sitting in the window with a twitching tail. (“Do not tap on the glass", said a sign.) But when you went inside, the "leopard" turned out to be a strategically folded leopard coat. With a moving tail.

In another window was a white rabbit applying lipstick while looking in a mirror. There was also a hen with several "chicks" --- really animated large chicken nuggets -- drinking out of a dish of barbecue sauce. Inside the store were fish sticks swimming in an aquarium, sliced sausages and hot dogs eating out of dishes and a chimpanzee watching a TV video of chimpanzees having sex.

As you've probably figured out by now, Banksy is making an ironic comment about how we turn animals into processed food and torture rabbits, for instance, to test cosmetics. What I liked about the exhibit (which some bewildered folk mistook for an actual pet store) is that it's good-natured and humorous piece of art that gets the artist's point across more effectively than a diatribe, or throwing flour at Lindsey Lohan or paint at Sarah Jessica Parker when they wear furs.

There was a book inside the “Pet Store” where people were encouraged to write their reactions to the art. Someone who was there before me had written: "Banksy totally gets it! This is why I don't eat meat." But the children passing by outside with their parents were delighted with the moving exhibits in the "Pet Store and Charcoal Grill." Perhaps it would start them thinking, the next time they saw a chicken nugget or a sausage, perhaps not, but it was more engaging that an exhibit of calves being tortured in cages, and so was probably more effective in making people think about where their food comes from.

Another artist who is referred to as a “guerrilla artist” or street artist (because he paints his political statements on walls and then runs away before he can be arrested) is Sheperd Fairey, who is the hot young artist of the day ever since he designed the terrific red, white and blue poster of Obama for his campaign. Sheperd Fairey, Banksy and their ilk have had a huge influence on young artists.

It was fun to watch passers-by the Pet Store do a double take and then come up and study the exhibits. This is the best kind of interactive art. It reminded me of walking through a snowy Central Park on the last day of Christo's "Gates” in February 2005 and watching hundreds, maybe thousands of people--some who had flown in from Europe --touching, discussing and interacting with the 7,500 saffron-colored fabric panels which transformed Central Park on a cold winter day into an open air museum where everyone had something to say about the art.

(If you want to see more photos and a discussion of Banksy’s pet store and grill, follow this link:)

www.woostercollective.com/2008/10/the_village_pet_store_and_charchoal_gril.html

And if you want a copy of The Secret life of Greek Cats” for an animal lover on your holiday list:

www.GreekCats.com

Madison Square Garden Cat Show

“It was like herding cats” is an expression for something that’s extremely difficult (because, as everyone knows, cats don’t take kindly to being told what to do, especially in groups.)

Imagine 212 nervous cats representing 43 breeds and an equal number of nervous cat breeders herded into Madison Square Garden last Oct. 18 and 19 for the very elite CFA- IAMs Cat Championship, which included two days of judging cats in five different rings at the same time. It culminated in the choice of the best of the Best of the Best at 5:00 on Sunday.

I was there – partly to promote my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats” (check it out at www.GreekCats.com) but mostly to see and photograph all those exotic breeds I’d read about but never seen in the flesh, er, fur, including the popular Sphynx Cat, hairless except for the fine down on its body.

Near the door where you come in there was even a Republi-cat and a Demo-cat named Barack Obama, in patriotically decorated cages.

Everyone was admiring the Ocicats—a breed which has markings like a leopard and would make a very chic (and expensive) accessory for ladies who like to wear animal prints (not me.) Cats and kittens were being bought and sold and $600 was the lowest price I heard mentioned.

I love the exotic long-hairs with their squashed-in grouchy faces although many people don’t. The Greek cats who tell their stories in my book are certainly not pure-breds. They’re, as the real Obama would put it, “Mutts like me”, but just as attractive as the cats who walked off with the ribbons at Madison Square Garden.

Everyone there was, of course, a cat lover, including the judges who held up each furry contestant and raved about the good points of the breed. The judges held wands with tassels on the end to get the cats interested and involved. Some, but not all, of the breeders looked like their cats. If you want to see photos of the judging, let me know.

The ultimate winner on Sunday was a Blue Russian, but I didn’t make it back in time to see it. I was down in Greenwich Village looking at a crazy art show created by the guerrilla artist Banksy which was a witty but effective statement about turning animals into food, but I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

A Rolling Crone Gets Rolling

Here is my very first post -- I've spent far too much time getting ready to do it or, as my mother Martha would put it, spitting on my hands.

It's time to put up or shut up and so I'm trying to launch this ship TODAY despite the fact that I foolishly signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo is their web site) -- for which more than 100,000 would-be novelists have promised to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. (You will hear more from me about that as the pressure mounts.)

That's 1,667 words a day every day, and since I have a slight cushion, as I'm at 21,343 today, Nov.13th, I'm taking off time to start the blog A Rolling Crone. (The name was daughter Eleni Gage's inspiration.) You can get to it on www.arollingcrone.blogspot.com. Soon I’ll also have it linked to my website: www.joanpgage.com.

“Why a blog? you ask? “There are too many already! And let’s face it—you’re not a pundit, you’re just a crone.”

Well, a year or so ago I took a course at the Worcester Art Museum called “Marketing your art on the internet”, taught by a computer expert, artist and genius named Andy Fish. He told us we all must have a website and a blog which we update daily. So I’m finally doing it. I promise not to write anything about the following: Obama. McCain, Palin, the bailout and Joe the Plumber. (Unless it’s about hairless Aztec dogs suitable for Obama's allergic daughter, which I plan to write about soon.)

What I will write about, as the spirit moves me, is art (I just got back from Manhattan where I visited exhibits by Banksy and Van Gogh—a study in contrasts); cats (in NYC I visited to Madison Square Garden cat show—what a trip!); my travels (next up three weeks in India), along with photos illustrating same.

I will try to address issues and events that are of interest to crones over sixty, who are definitely under-served in the media. Yet we are, as a friend remarked, the pig in the python—the huge population of women who are still tuned in and creating despite (or because of) our age.

The blog is also meant to be (as explained by Andy) a sneaky way to call attention to my paintings and my newly published photo book “The Secret of Greek Cats, Feline Photos and Cats’ Tales of Greek Life and Lore” (now only $10 on my web site: www.joanpgage.com or www.GreekCats.com ).

About the photo: It's me and some of my watercolors at last June's Grecian Festival at Saint Spyridon Cathedral in Worcester, MA where I was privileged to show some of my paintings (and even sold some!) I also was lucky enough this year to have my first solo show of my watercolors at The First Show Gallery at C. C. Lowell in Worcester.

I hope you’ll tune in to this crone’s journey!

Joan Paulson Gage

Questions, remarks, slander? Write me at JoanPGage@yahoo.com