The 21st Century Matriarch

This week the two books-of-the-week are about decorative art published in the early 1900s about native cultures on opposites sides of the world: The Huichol in Mexico and the Amur tribes in Russia/China (along the Amur River). Both have a relationship to clothing ornamentation.

The sample image from Decorative art of the Huichol Indians by Carl Lumholtz (1904) has a pattern called ‘double water-gourd’ in a ribbon and girdle.

The Decorative Art of the Amur Tribes by Berthold Laufer(1902) also included designs in metal and ceramics. The designs are common in the broader Chinese decorative arts showing the long-term exchange and cultural linkage with these tribes to the rest of China…at least in the early 1900s. The sample image I chose includes a boot – showing how clothing items incorporated decoration.

I like browsing the books and letting the designs prompt Zentangle tiles. I am reminded that art is not static. It is a representation of the moment it was created – a communication through material culture into the future – different but as potent as the written word.

The Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference (MACCEC) was a conference that went virtual because of the pandemic. I anticipated that it would be an intense 4 hours in from of my computer. I set up to use both of my screens – one for the WebEx and one for note taking/agenda/etc. Initially, I thought I might use a headset for the audio but quickly decided that 4 hours was too long for that. I also thought that I might get up and move around more during the sessions, but I was too busy interacting with polls and chat…and taking notes. I only got up and moved during the breaks!

Now that it is the ‘morning after,” I’ve had some hours to digest what happened on the first day. It was overwhelming at times while it was happening – and in a different way than an in-person conference is overwhelming. The flow of chat during the presentation is often invigorating but also distracting. It requires multi-tasking. Sometimes I tuned it out to focus on the presenter entirely.

Like most conferences, the speakers were often rushed so that we could stay in the time windows on the agenda. The charts were posted which made up for the rush somewhat…but not completely.

There were breakout sessions that ended up having some similarities with in-person conferences since one time I got lost for about a minute…couldn’t find my session!

The big take aways from the first day were:

information is out there for climate change educators…choosing what works best for their situation
education on climate change is interlinked with JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion)
always get to solutions…don’t stop with defining the problems

The ice-breaker activity was to determine the native inhabitant of land where participants were located using the https://native-land.ca/ website. I learned that where I live is Piscataway land. Where my daughter lives in Springfield MO is Kickapoo, Osage, and Sioux land. The land where my parents and sisters live in Texas (Carrollton, Flower Mound, and Sherman) was Kickapoo and Wichita land. Got us all thinking about how the land, water and air have changed since then…what we can and should restore.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Deer found the day lilies. The deer ate many of the day lily buds in the past few days. I am cutting a few every day as they manage to mature enough to bloom indoors.