Resolution #8 – Choose Understanding Over Judgement

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

Following up on my earlier post about 16 resolutions, or thoughts to live by, inspired by this article at Brainpickings.org. Here is the eighth by Ann Truitt, from her book Daybook: The Journal of an Artist.

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.

Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921–December 23, 2004) was a psychologist and also an artist.

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Anne Truitt only worked as a psychologist until the mid 1940’s. After that she concentrated on her art, and became a major figure in the development of Minimalism. Of course there is a Wikipedia article, But I think her own website HERE is even more interesting because you can see some of her work.

I find her work much more difficult to understand than her quote above. I am very curious to understand the thoughts and emotions that lead to the creation of this kind of art. I really like her quote. It is so easy to define other people and to only half listen. But, to really listen, to let them go where they want without directing and without thinking more about what you want to say next, it’s a beautiful thing but also very difficult thing.

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Happy Valentines Day

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

I hope all of you out there are having a great day with your friends, family, significant others, and everyone you love.

I haven’t posted pictures of the kids and grandchildren for a while and since it’s a day about love, I thought I’d share a few.

My California daughter has the little boy and the baby girl.

Having a baby is exhausting, so you catch some sleep when you can
the little boy also needs attention, and reading books is fun
There are a few professional photos in the mix here
Mom has just gone back to work, and dad is holding down the fort at home for a while
Fun with grandpa!
No, I do not want to take a bath!
A sweet Christmas picture
pure cuteness

My Seattle daughter also has a baby girl, born only three weeks after her California cousin.

Merry Christmas!
mom and baby (also a few professional photos in this group)
Looking cool for an outing (but I think she is sleeping behind the glasses)
daddy and daughter
The whole happy family
sweetness

It’s a good day here too. We have some cyclists staying with us at the moment and we are having a great time. What a nice way to celebrate Valentines Day, and it’s also our anniversary. 20 years? It doesn’t seem possible! We have decided that it’s working out OK so we have agreed to do another year 😀

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Resolution #7 – Master the Art of Loving

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

Following up on my earlier post about 16 resolutions, or thoughts to live by, inspired by this article at Brainpickings.org. Here is the seventh thought by Erich Fromm. from his 1956 book The Art of Loving.

Love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him… [All] attempts for love are bound to fail, unless [one] tries most actively to develop [one’s] total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; …satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement.

[…]

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.

The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.

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Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900–March 18, 1980) was a Jewish German psychologist, sociologist, and philosopher.  He left Germany when the Nazis were in power to live in the USA, and also spent some time living and working in Mexico. Check out the Wikipedia article to learn more about him.

For me, these two paragraphs from the Wikipedia article were the most interesting and informative.

Fromm considered love to be an interpersonal creative capacity rather than an emotion, and he distinguished this creative capacity from what he considered to be various forms of narcissistic neuroses and sado-masochistic tendencies that are commonly held out as proof of “true love”. Indeed, Fromm viewed the experience of “falling in love” as evidence of one’s failure to understand the true nature of love, which he believed always had the common elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Drawing from his knowledge of the Torah, Fromm pointed to the story of Jonah, who did not wish to save the residents of Nineveh from the consequences of their sin, as demonstrative of his belief that the qualities of care andresponsibility are generally absent from most human relationships. Fromm also asserted that few people in modern society had respect for the autonomy of their fellow human beings, much less the objective knowledge of what other people truly wanted and needed.

Fromm believed that freedom was an aspect of human nature that we either embrace or escape. He observed that embracing our freedom of will was healthy, whereas escaping freedom through the use of escape mechanisms was the root of psychological conflicts. Fromm outlined three of the most common escape mechanisms: automaton conformity, authoritarianism, and destructiveness. Automaton conformity is changing one’s ideal self to conform to a perception of society’s preferred type of personality, losing one’s true self in the process. Automaton conformity displaces the burden of choice from self to society. Authoritarianism is giving control of oneself to another. By submitting one’s freedom to someone else, this act removes the freedom of choice almost entirely. Lastly, destructiveness is any process which attempts to eliminate others or the world as a whole, all to escape freedom. Fromm said that “the destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it”.[3]

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This and That

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

It’s been crazy windy here lately. We expect windy days in summer as the trade winds blow through, but this seems like more than usual and it has been going on every day for well over a week. I looked at the weather report a couple days ago which said the winds were around 25 mph with gusts to almost 60 mph. It’s usually windier in the mountains so it’s really crazy up in Boquete. On top of that, it’s been wet and cold up there. Down here, it continues to be hot, dry, and rain free with frequent brush fires. Wednesday we were driven indoors because we were downwind of fires across the river that filled the air with smoke and rained ash on everything. Thankfully they burned themselves out and did not come close to our neighborhood.

Las Carnavales were this week so everything was pretty much on holiday for at least the weekend through Wednesday, though a few business seem to have taken off the whole week. Las Carnavales are a huge thing in Los Santos where tons of people flock for the festivities, but there were celebrations here in Dolega and also in David for the first time. Our small Parque de las Madres was fenced off and contained vendors, music and a dance area, and water tankers were around the perimeter ready for the traditional hosing down of the participants.

So, that’s the main news of the day around here. Myself, I’ve been cleaning out files and sorting through old photos, and found a few critter photos worth posting.

I put some gecko eggs in a dish, and one day I found a newly hatched baby
Me? I’m just sitting here quietly by the wall.
A baby iguana was on the terrace
It looks like this interesting bird was in one of our fruit trees
I don’t know what is up with this sitting on the stone
I found an iguana sitting on top of the fence pillar. It thought if it flattened itself down and didn’t move, maybe I wouldn’t notice it.
ah ha! So this is why my hibiscus loses every new leaf it grows. I moved it to the front yard but the iguanas discovered it there, so i have no hibiscus in my yard
A cute little hummingbird in the tree
Joel caught this little baby lizard in the yard
baby iguana on a fence post

TIP  (this is Panama) at the moment, or in a few photos from the past.

Posted in Miscellaneous, wildlife | 8 Comments

Resolution #6 – Refuse to Play the Perfection Game

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

Following up on my earlier post about 16 resolutions, or thoughts to live by, inspired by this article at Brainpickings.org, here is the sixth thought by Ursyka K Le Guin.

There are a whole lot of ways to be perfect, and not one of them is attained through punishment.   […]

I think of when I was in high school in the 1940s: the white girls got their hair crinkled up by chemicals and heat so it would curl, and the black girls got their hair mashed flat by chemicals and heat so it wouldn’t curl. Home perms hadn’t been invented yet, and a lot of kids couldn’t afford these expensive treatments, so they were wretched because they couldn’t follow the rules, the rules of beauty.

Beauty always has rules. It’s a game. I resent the beauty game when I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it and don’t care who they hurt. I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied that they starve and deform and poison themselves. Most of the time I just play the game myself in a very small way, buying a new lipstick, feeling happy about a pretty new silk shirt.   […]

There’s the ideal beauty of youth and health, which never really changes, and is always true. There’s the ideal beauty of movie stars and advertising models, the beauty-game ideal, which changes its rules all the time and from place to place, and is never entirely true. And there’s an ideal beauty that is harder to define or understand, because it occurs not just in the body but where the body and the spirit meet and define each other.

My mother died at eighty-three, of cancer, in pain, her spleen enlarged so that her body was misshapen. Is that the person I see when I think of her? Sometimes. I wish it were not. It is a true image, yet it blurs, it clouds, a truer image. It is one memory among fifty years of memories of my mother. It is the last in time. Beneath it, behind it is a deeper, complex, ever-changing image, made from imagination, hearsay, photographs, memories. I see a little red-haired child in the mountains of Colorado, a sad-faced, delicate college girl, a kind, smiling young mother, a brilliantly intellectual woman, a peerless flirt, a serious artist, a splendid cook—I see her rocking, weeding, writing, laughing — I see the turquoise bracelets on her delicate, freckled arm — I see, for a moment, all that at once, I glimpse what no mirror can reflect, the spirit flashing out across the years, beautiful.

That must be what the great artists see and paint. That must be why the tired, aged faces in Rembrandt’s portraits give us such delight: they show us beauty not skin-deep but life-deep.

I don’t think this one needs any explanation, only reading, thinking, and following.

I notice one thing about getting older. I don’t care nearly as much. Maybe I know I can’t measure up so I stop trying. Maybe there are many other things higher up on the priority list. Maybe I’m more interested in life-deep! Whatever it is, I like it a lot better.

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Ursula K. Le Guin (b. October 21, 1929)  From Wikipedia –

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (US /ˈɜːrsələ ˈkroʊbər ləˈɡwɪn/;[1] born October 21, 1929) is an American author of novels, children’s books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality andethnography.

She influenced such Booker Prize winners and other writers as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell – and notable science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks.[2] She has won theHugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once.[2][3] In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.[4] Le Guin has resided in Portland, Oregon since 1959.[5]

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Mi Jardin es Tu Jardin in Boquete

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

I was in Boquete last week and my friend suggested we have lunch at Mi Jardin es Tu Jardin (My Garden is Your Garden) in Boquete. This place has been known for some time for its beautiful gardens. Unfortunately the couple times I went to visit I missed connections and they weren’t open. Word is, there was a death in the family, and now under new management not only are the gardens being revitalized, but there is also a charming restaurant on the property.

The pretty restaurant has seating above and also below on garden level
This is the view from the restaurant
Just below the restaurant you find yourself entering the beautiful garden area
a pretty pond
Spanish moss is not a common sight in Panama but this pine tree was full of it
A red poinsettia was in bloom
pretty waterfalls
I don’t know what the orange trees are in the background but they are sure pretty
Bougainvillea in full bloom
The open spaces have nice views of the mountains
There was a swimming pool under the building full of koi!
The lookout platform was closed, but word is the views from up there are really nice
I like the painted statues that are found in various places in the gardens
I didn’t realize these plants made such nice flowers
A little girl runs to the painted cow so her family can take her picture
We enjoy one last view of the mountains as we return to the parking lot

This place has been enjoyed by tourists, expats, and Panamanians alike for a long time. It’s a nice place to relax, enjoy the natural beauty, and spend time with friends and family. Now there is also a restaurant with attentive and English speaking staff, so it’s a good option for a nice lunch or dinner.

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Resolution #5 – Make Room for “Fruitful Monotony”

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

Following up on my earlier post about 16 resolutions, or thoughts to live by, inspired by this article at Brainpickings.org, here is the fifth thought by Bertrand Russel.

We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement.     […]

As we rise in the social scale the pursuit of excitement becomes more and more intense.

The pleasures of childhood should in the main be such as the child extracts from his environment by means of some effort and inventiveness… A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young, and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony.

I do not mean that monotony has any merits of its own; I mean only that certain good things are not possible except where there is a certain degree of monotony… A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase.

To me, this sounds like the flip side of Resolution #2, Resist Absentminded Business and the idea of always looking for happiness out there, of always wanting to be entertained, of always wanting to be distracted from ourselves. It also makes me think of some kids who are so heavily scheduled with activities that they don’t have any time to themselves. I think like all things, a balance is best, a combination of activities and time on your own.

bertrandrussell

Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970). According to this Wikipedia article, he was born to a prominent aristocratic family in Britain. He was a philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, and political activist. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy. Of course Google will lead you to more information if you are interested.

It makes you wonder how someone so brilliant and accomplished in a wide variety of areas had any time to enjoy “fruitful monotony”. Or, maybe he wished he had. He talked about the problems of rising in social scale, and how a young person should be left like a plant to grow in the same place. But he was born to a family of high social scale and probably had the opportunity to travel and do a lot of things.

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Exhibition at the Art School

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

It has been summer vacation here, and the art school (Centro de Arte José Cáceres O.) where I have been taking painting lessons had summer workshops for the kids with all sorts of various activities like painting, music, dance, exercise, etc.

When I went to painting class on Thursday morning, lots of preparations were in progress for the exhibition.

Paintings were stacked everywhere
Stacks of easels were waiting in the back yard
The student assistants were labeling and hanging paintings
they were also framing and mounting paintings

Friday was the last day of the summer session so that was exhibition day. I thought I would just pop in for a moment, but we had such a good time that we stayed for a while. There was a lot of student work on display, as well as snacks, drinks, playtime, and a piñata for the kids.

The event was very well attended
The school’s owner poses with one of the students
The artist and professor poses with a couple parents and a student
The piñata is prepared
A little girl takes a swing at the piñata
This little boy tackled it with much enthusiam
The kids took turns, first a boy, then a girl, starting with the smaller ones and working up to the bigger ones
It wasn’t long before candy starting falling out of the piñata

Before you look at the work below, keep in mind that these are young kids. I know some are as young as four, and I think there are very few older than eight or ten.

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Here are some of the students, and I think most of the youngest of them aren’t even in this photo.

I have seen the kids at class. I have seen them working, sometimes with as much paint on themselves as on the painting. I have seen the work in progress, and the gentle guidance and instructions of the professor, and encouragement to come back from the playground when they have burned off some excess energy. But, to see the final results beautifully displayed, even I was very impressed! I was happy to also get a couple photos of the artists posing with their work.

Thank you Maestro Víctor Aguirre Chirú for all the good work you have done with all your students.

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People who don’t know much about Panama may be surprised to find out how much good stuff there is going on here!

Posted in culture, Miscellaneous, Panama | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Resolution #4 – Pay Attention to the World

Posted on February 6, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

Following up on my earlier post about 16 resolutions, or thoughts to live by, inspired by this article at Brainpickings.org, here is the fourth thought. It is by Susan Sontag when she was asked to give advice on writing, and it says: “I’m often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: “Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”

Needless to say, no sooner had these perky phrases fallen out of my mouth than I thought of some more recipes for writer’s virtue.

For instance: “Be serious.” By which I meant: Never be cynical. And which doesn’t preclude being funny.

To tell a story is to say: this is the important story. It is to reduce the spread and simultaneity of everything to something linear, a path.

To be a moral human being is to pay, be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attention.

When we make moral judgments, we are not just saying that this is better than that. Even more fundamentally, we are saying that this is more important than that. It is to order the overwhelming spread and simultaneity of everything, at the price of ignoring or turning our backs on most of what is happening in the world.

The nature of moral judgments depends on our capacity for paying attention — a capacity that, inevitably, has its limits but whose limits can be stretched.

But perhaps the beginning of wisdom, and humility, is to acknowledge, and bow one’s head, before the thought, the devastating thought, of the simultaneity of everything, and the incapacity of our moral understanding — which is also the understanding of the novelist — to take this in.”

Whew! That’s a lot to chew on. What does this mean?

I think the clue is in the last paragraph. The world is full of so many things going on all at once, so what do we pay attention to? The more we increase our ability to pay attention the more of it we can take in. And, everything we take in can be put in order of importance, and how this is done is a moral judgement.

To be a writer and a moral human being, we must pay attention to the world and take in as much as we can. We can then do the best job possible of deciding what is most important, and deciding what we will pay attention to as writers and as people.

I can see this as a writer. There is a whole world out there. What do I choose to pay attention to today? What do I choose to share with my readers? But, even if you don’t write it makes a difference what you concentrate on, what you talk about with your friends and family, what you raise to higher levels of importance. The more we can broaden our awareness and sort through our worlds, the more we increase our ability to be moral human beings.

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Susan Sontag  (January 16, 1933–December 28, 2004) was a writer, teacher, filmmaker, and political activist. If you want to read more about this very interesting woman there is a Wikipedia article here, and of course Google.

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Summer Flowers

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Kris Cunningham

There are two seasons in Panama, summer (dry and windy, Dec – April), and rainy (May – Nov). Right now we are in summer. It almost never rains, some days are very windy, a lot of the grass and plants are turning brown, and brush fires are common. But it is also a time when many plants burst out in flowers and fruit. I thought I’d share some of the treats we are enjoying now.

Bougainvillea are popular here, and they are covered with flowers all over town. They seem to love the sunny, dry days of summer and you can see them in a multitude of colors.

Some bushes are totally covered in spectacular flowers
I really like this color.
The side entrance to this house is really pretty
This is one of those interesting plants that has two colors on the same plant.

There are some fruit trees showing promise of yummy things to come.

These beautiful flowers are on a tree called mariñon corizon here, or perra in Nicaragua. The fruit is somewhat bland but when cooked, it tastes a lot like apples and can be used in the same ways.
The petals fall and make gorgeous colored carpets under the trees.
Some of the early fruiting mangoes have fruit that is getting quite large

A few other random photos of various things

This is one of many beautiful heliconias that thrive in this area
I put out some papaya peels for the birds, and this beautiful blue crowned mot mot visited. This is a visitor who can be seen throughout the year though, not just in summer.
Yes, it is windy. The banana leaves shred a lot in the wind but still seem to function for the plant.

Funny, as soon as I started to put a caption on the photo of the mot mot, one landed in the tree beside the terrace. They are so pretty and fairly quiet, just making a low key “mot mot” sound now and then.

The best, which I saved for last, are the trees that flower in the summer.

I think I prefer the rainy season when everything is lush and green. But, there are good things about summer too. Unfortunately in this El Niño year Panama is drier than normal and summer is expected to last especially long. You would think in this land of epic downpours there wouldn’t be water problems, but much of the country is having a severe drought this summer. They are especially worried about enough water for livestock, hydroelectric power, and the canal. As this country grows rapidly they are searching for ways to conserve and find alternatives. They have installed a lot of windmills in central Panama, and the new locks for the canal will reuse and conserve water. Carnavales, a huge, country wide party starting tomorrow, has water tankers that spray the crowds with water all day. Word is that this year, there will be a lot less spraying and it will only be for three hours, not all day to conserve water.

So, summer has its problems, especially this year, but we will also try to enjoy the good things that come with it. It’s also great for exercise. Biking home against this 25 mph wind today is a heck of a workout 😀

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