A Hero
Our heros reveal something about us. They can reveal our interest, and our priorities. We shape ourselves by those we admire and emulate.
Today, September 7th, is the birthday of one of my heros: Grandma Moses. Anna Mary Robertson Moses was born in 1860 and died in 1961. She began painting at 78 and ceased painting just before her death.
Can We Create an Earthquake?
Last week I enjoyed a telephone conversation so much I felt I gained a phone friend. And it’s with the very special Lauren Volkmer of ARTZ (Artists for Alzheimer’s). In this rambling introduction to ourselves we used and then repeated various images to agree that there is something very special happening around creativity and aging and creativity and dementia; it has to be a phenomenom of earthshaking proportions. So many wonderful people are working in so many wonderful ways that have deep connections – and Lauren and I agreed we were part of this. But is it a tidal wave or an earthquake? But does it matter as long as it keeps happening?
But the tidal wave seemed to flow through this week’s newspapers here in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first was Monday in that voicebox of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal. There was an article on pyscho-oncology which piqued my interest: “A New View, After Diagnosis“. It is about making life meaningful in the face of fear, in the face of mortality. And from what I read, being creative is, for many people, part of what helps. In my book, creative living in the face of cancer is creative aging at its best.
Another whisper of making meaning is the ad for a set of lectures by James Hollis, Jungian Analyst and Author. He’ll be here at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant Friday July 17th and Saturday July 18th for Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and What Matters Most. I haven’t found a description of these programs but I’ve already fallen in love with their titles.
The next piece that reverberates for me is in Meet the Artist in GoTriad section of The News & Record. It’s on Robert ‘Bob’ Postma and he is a living and breathing tidal wave of…creativity, creative aging, community creation, and everything of great meaning. I’ve got to meet this man!
The important question
The neatly dressed woman stood quietly, waiting patiently, until almost all the other glad-handers had gone. I’d just finished a breezily-entertaining (and I hope enlightening) presentation on brain fitness and we all had enjoyed ourselves. She approached and I turned. She asked the important question: “How do we get people to try?” Try painting, she said, because painting was the greatest mental challenge she’d ever had and ever enjoyed. But if we can’t get people to try then they’ll never be able to succeed.
Great question. And I have valid fragments of an answer but no truth. How do we get people to try? Try something new. Try something challenging. Try something hard. How?
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