Love the movies? Love debating all things God? Sign up for the online class I’m teaching this summer. June 10-28. Open to all! For more info, visit SUNY Purchase.

One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,

peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces

of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth

across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.

One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story

told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,

each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:

pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,

fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows

begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—

bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,

on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—

to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did

for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,

the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:

equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,

the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,

or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain

the empty desks of twenty children marked absent

today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light

breathing color into stained glass windows,

life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth

onto the steps of our museums and park benches

as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk

of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat

and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills

in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands

digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands

as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane

so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains

mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it

through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,

buses launching down avenues, the symphony

of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,

the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,

or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open

for each other all day, saying: hello| shalom,

buon giorno |howdy |namaste |or buenos días

in the language my mother taught me—in every language

spoken into one wind carrying our lives

without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed

their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked

their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:

weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report

for the boss on time, stitching another wound

or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,

or the last floor on the Freedom Tower

jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes

tired from work: some days guessing at the weather

of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love

that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother

who knew how to give, or forgiving a father

who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight

of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,

always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon

like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop

and every window, of one country—all of us—

facing the stars

hope—a new constellation

waiting for us to map it,

waiting for us to name it—together.

Stories From My Life: An Illustrated Book Workshop culminated with author readings and a publication party on December 15^th. Everyone read beautifully and chose excerpts that reflected the essence of their stories. I felt so very proud of them and all the hard work and love they put into writing and illustrating their books.

What a joy meeting the writers’ families and friends, who previously had existed only as photographs and now stepped into their full, lovable dimensions!

The very best gift of the workshop, one that I will always treasure, was hearing many of the writers say that I helped bring a lifelong dream to life.  That made all the hard work worth it. What a love bath!  I could barely take it all in.

I want to share a note from Allison Russo, who designed Lois’s book. Other designers shared similar sentiments, but Allison’s sums up what all of us involved with the Stories workshop felt:

Would you please let Lois know that I truly enjoyed working on her book, and it inspired me to create one for my family. I spent the early part of this week with my grandmother, who is 107 years old. She has recently moved to a nursing home, and I wish that I could visit her more. Doing this book made me feel great. I feel like I helped preserve the memories of the past. They teach us so much about who we are, and who we might become.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and Hurricane Sandy was no exception.  The superstorm left me with no power and no studio access for two weeks, forcing me let go of my “little red hen” ways and lean on the generosity of my book designer and editor friends. From California to London, from Tallahassee to Kenosha, they all jumped in to help bring the Stories books to life!  We made the tight printing deadline thanks to the great net of love, talent, and generosity they spread beneath us!

Thanks to these amazing designers:

Christy Gray

Dean Motter

Lisa Rose

Allison G. Russo

Molly Shields

Simon Sullivan

And our eagle-eyed manuscript editors:

Lisa Hendey, Renee Schafer Horton, Karen Mahoney & Sue Stanton

And to Stories guest speakers Elizabeth Ehrlich and Erica Stoller, our talented and spritely intern Grace Rafferty, Lifetime Arts, and everyone at the Mamaroneck Public Library!

We love you all!

“I wasn’t going to write about Hurricane Sandy. I was going to write about the changing nature of photographs and our relationship to them in this digital age.

But as I began my research, I came across a Facebook page where lost photos from the storm were posted. Called “Union Beach — Photos and Misplaced Items,” the page shows photos of newborns and birthday parties, weddings and family gatherings.

Starting the morning after the storm devastated her community of Union Beach, N.J., Jeanette Van Houten and her niece have collected over a thousand photos and some photo albums. She is making it her mission to scan and post to Facebook as many as possible, including those turned into the fire department, police station and borough hall.

In addition, she was handed a drawerful of over a thousand family photos that must have been wrenched from a dresser.

About 60 photos have been claimed so far, and some professionals have offered to restore damaged photos free.

“These photos were passed down through families and they survived Sandy, even if the structures they were in didn’t,” Ms. Van Houten said. “They tell our story.”

With the Facebook page, Ms. Van Houten uses newer technology to help people reconnect with their old-fashioned snapshots. And seeing the photographs of mundane scenes and milestones on Facebook, along with the grateful comments from people who got back a bit of their lives, reminded me of both the fragility and strength of photos and their continuing importance in our lives. Judith Dupré, author of “Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory” (Random House, 2007), and other books, teaches a class at her local library in Mamaroneck, N.Y., called “Stories from My Life,” for older residents. They use photos and stories to write about their lives.

“They bring in a basketful of photos,” Ms. Dupré said. “Each one of these photos contains a story — they’re like a key that opens the door to a life.”

And a printed photo “is a different species than a digital photo,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s figured out the place of digital photos in terms of memory keeping.”

When an elderly aunt of hers died and left behind lots of photographs, Ms. Dupré said the family took them to the memorial service.

“We had a table and people could select and take what they wanted,” she said. “It was a very moving part of the memorial.”

Of course, even prints can lose their meaning and poignancy through the generations.

And in some cases, as with Hurricane Sandy, photos may be safer in cyberspace than in an album on a bookshelf — as long as you remember to upload them to a site like Flickr, Shutterfly, Snapfish or countless other photo sites available. (And make sure you know how long a site will keep your photos. Some, for example, require you to show some activity at least once a year.) That way, if you lose your hard drive, you don’t lose your photos.

But Ms. Dupré said she worried that photos that existed only online somewhere might die with the photographer.

“I don’t even know what my parents have in terms of digital photography,” she said. She said she put the password to her photos safely away with her will and other documents, so her children can access them.

Now I’m not trying to say that the old-fashioned way is the only way. Photography has constantly evolved. The Brownie camera, first sold by Kodak for $1 in 1900, radicalized photography by making it available to just about everyone.

But, and I know this largely a generational thing, I can’t help but wonder about the ubiquity of the cellphone photo. As Ms. Dupré said, “The infinite number of digital photos that can be taken has devalued the single image and made one-of-a-kind prints that much more precious.”

I talked about this with my 14-year-old son, who has no real interest, at least right now, in printing out photos. To him, the act of taking the picture is, in some ways, more important than the product.

People “don’t see a photo as much as a keepsake, or as marking a moment,” said A. Joan Saab, an associate professor of art history and visual and cultural studies at the University of Rochester — the city where Eastman Kodak once thrived.

Professor Saab said she ordered photo books from Shutterfly, a Web site where you can upload photos and create printed albums and other photographic mementos, for her parents and in-laws, and occasionally orders prints herself.

“Now, I have photos stuck in Shutterfly envelopes all over the house,” she said.

Like Professor Saab, I enjoy the convenience of digital photography. But I agree with her that photographs used to be more special. Waiting for the photos to be developed and then reliving the trip or party where I collected them was part of the excitement.

But I don’t even know what I don’t know when it comes to the intricacies of cellphone photography. Dan Burkholder, a photographer and author, most recently of “iPhone Artistry” (Pixiq Press, 2011), said taking the photograph with a phone was just the beginning.

“The thrill is editing and stylizing the image,” he said. “You used to have to be in a darkroom or go to your computer to use Photoshop. Now you can do it in the field.”

Mr. Burkholder, who also teaches at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan, said the challenge was finding the right combination of apps that offered the best textural effects, color control, contrast and even composition and layering.

“Every week apps are popping out,” he said, adding that the democratic nature of photography by phone is “to be admired, not to be feared. If you don’t like change, you shouldn’t be in photography. You should be in pottery.”

But, he said, that doesn’t mean the printed photograph will — or should — disappear. It just means that the way a photo can be seen is different. Light reflects off a print, he said, while a computer emits light.

George Miles, curator of the Western Americana collection at Yale University, has been interested in collecting old photographic albums from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some include peoples’ names, while others are anonymous with titles like, “My Trip to Yellowstone.”

They are “fascinating for providing a window of what the American West, postfrontier, looked like,” he said, not only as photos themselves, but as a chronology.

“Someone made a story — this image goes before that one and after this one,” he said. ““I think photography is an interesting mix of moments in time and yet, very often we use photography to tell a story that implies movement and sequencing and narrative.”

And the desire to do that seems just as strong online as offline, as shown by Facebook’s introduction of Timeline last year, which allows users to easily scroll back to earlier years.

Karen Walrond, author of “The Beauty of Different” (Bright Sky Press, 2010) and a photo blogger, remembers going back to visit her grandmother in the Caribbean, looking through a family album and seeing photographs of her 70-year-old father as a child.

She would love the idea of her grandchildren stumbling across photos she took, but admitted that many of the photos of her family were on hard drives somewhere.

“I have no idea where all the photos are,” she said.

She does write in a journal every day, and every now and then will print out a photo and stick it in the journal.

“I think it’s different if you actually have a print,” she said. “I sometimes print out and send a photo to a friend saying, ‘thinking of you.’ You can tuck it into a mirror or on a fridge. It brings a moment of joy.”

This article first appeared in the New York Times on November 16, 2012.

Addressing the trepidation of some writers at the thought of narrowing down their photo choices, workshop leader Judith Dupré recounted Anne Lamott’s story of her ten-year-old brother’s struggle to finish a report on birds he’d been agonizing over for months. Her father calmed him with this advice: “Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

Not everyone, however, was casting around for a photographic “on-ramp.” One woman told us she hadn’t had a problem because one photo “chose her.” She let her writing flow uncensored, knowing there would time to revise later on. We talked about how a story might need images to support it.  Or, conversely, how a powerful image could inspire the writing. There is no right or wrong way; the job is simply to begin.

We looked briefly at the nuts & bolts of making an online book: from cover and dust-jacket design to text and image layout options. While participants have yet to download the Booksmart application to their own computers, I encouraged everyone to register at Blurb.com and explore the site.

Next week we return with written descriptions of our books, revised bios, and second drafts of the stories we began in class. Grace, our intern and photographer, will continue to take dust-jacket headshots and scan photos.

Stay with us as we continue to gather our stories  “bird by bird.”

—Holly Posner, guest blogger

Photo: Judith Dupré 

Last Tuesday, under roiling skies and the threat of a tornado, we made our way to the relative calm of the newly expanded Mamaroneck Library for Stories From My Life, a workshop taught by Judith Dupré. Judith, a best-selling author and teacher, introduced me (your faithful scribe) and Mamaroneck High School intern and photographer Grace Rafferty, who will help with scanning and take in-class photos. I will act as blogger, assistant and point person for the books’ layout and production.

Sixteen of us, 55 to 87 years young, gathered around a big table to write and, eventually, publish illustrated books. We are parents, grandparents, authors, teachers, arts lovers, a former Mamaroneck Village trustee and even a local poet laureate—each of us united by our desire for a written legacy.

We read aloud from David Grossman’s marvelous essay, “Writing in the Dark.” Judith gave us writing prompts designed to diminish our writerly fears. (Yes, even veteran writers understand the terror of a blank page!) I spoke briefly about BookSmart, the bookmaking application by Blurb, that we will use to design and publish our books.  The program has been funded by a Creative Aging grant from Lifetime Arts.

For homework, we’ll develop our “gratitude lists” and “personal timelines,” and select 3-5 photographs that “speak to us.”  How will we choose these photos? How will our stories unfold?  To find out, come back soon and follow our literary adventures.

Much like the weather—writing can be messy, unpredictable, and even frightening—but it is always, as Grossman so eloquently put it, “crammed with possibilities.”

—Holly Posner, guest blogger

Photo: © 2011 Judith Dupré

The architect Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, a firm known for large commercial structures, intended to design an inspiring space made from light and humble materials. In all important ways, he has succeeded.

This cathedral is “not meant to impress through its consumption of resources and display of spectacle, but to achieve a generosity of spirit with modest means,” Hartman said. He emphasized wood, concrete and glass, three materials used since antiquity. Rendered to reveal their essence and intrinsic beauty, they cause us to reconsider in the face of stressed natural resources what is truly precious and rare. If church builders once expressed reverence by using the costliest materials, then Oakland’s cathedral offers prescient commentary on how luxury will soon be defined.

Structurally too the cathedral touches the earth lightly. Its concrete base floats on a series of isolators to protect the building from seismic damage. A louvered wooden structure rises above the base, cupping the sanctuary and revealing snippet views of the sky. Its unusual elliptical plan was inspired by a variety of influences, from the ancient Christian symbol of the fish to the torqued sculptures of Richard Serra. The open-weave structure reflects the diocese’s desire to create a “kinetic worship” experience that draws people into the vibrant space to receive Christ’s light and sends them into the world to share that light. Yet for all its porosity, the building has been constructed to last 300 years or more.

Much like a basket, the cathedral’s structure and many of its furnishings are woven, evoking scriptural imagery, from Moses’ infant journey to the miraculous leftovers collected after Jesus fed the multitudes. Its form also recalls the exemplary baskets made by the Pomo and other Californian tribes and those carried by agricultural workers who have powered the state’s economy. The reredos and confessionals, made of latticed wood, encourage openness between clergy and laity and underscore the cooperative nature of worship. The exterior glass panels that protect the internal wooden structure are patterned with vertical lines that visually intermingle with the horizontal mullions. Along the top of the cathedral, aluminum extensions reach upward, looking much like the warp ends of a basket before the weaver’s work is finished, reminding us that our lives are not completed here on earth.

The weaving motif continues in an outdoor memorial garden, which consists of a circular boulder that has been broken into pieces and placed, almost, back together. A plaque states that the memorial is “dedicated to those innocents sexually abused by members of the clergy. We remember, and we affirm: never again.” Oakland is the first cathedral in the nation to acknowledge these victims with a permanent memorial.

The sanctuary centers on a massive image of Christ. The designer Lonny Israel ingeniously recreated the 12th-century carving of Christ in Majesty on Chartres Cathedral’s western facade by pixelating a photograph of the sculpture. The image was laser-cut into aluminum panels using 94,000 variously sized perforations, calibrated to recreate the Christ figure when light passes through them. In contrast, the Stations of the Cross were made to human scale and placed at chest height to encourage people to touch them.

In order to welcome all, including those unfamiliar with traditional Catholic iconography, the sanctuary forgoes much of what we have come to expect in cathedrals: statuary, paintings, stained glass and rich fabrics. Instead, the eye delights in abstract, touchable surfaces subtly animated. “We absorb things from our world that may not be evident to us,” Hartman said, “but there is a cumulative effect that influences the way we think about the world, about life.”

A Gothic cathedral’s darkness was cut by light emanating from stained-glass windows, an allusion to humanity’s stumbling toward salvation amid ever-present temptation and grace. We, who can instantly access as much human misery as we can bear, know darkness well. Perhaps it is light we need most now.

This cathedral invites light in—dappled, raking, translucent, reflected, soft, sharp and changing. Even the Christ in Majesty is made of light, formed of thousands of voids through which light streams in. Those same holes, molecular wounds, suggest that we stand on Calvary too, spears in hand, just as the soldiers who pierced Christ’s physical body once did. Yet in the face of these daily choices, there is grace, conceived in Oakland’s cathedral as light that pours in, surrounding us.

—Judith Dupré is the author of Churches and other books on architecture.

View a slideshow of photographs from the Cathedral of Christ the Light.

Photo: © Skidmore, Owings & Merrill | © Timothy Hursley

This article was published in America on September 10, 2012.

During the course, participants will gather meaningful photos from their lives and write about them. Photos and stories will be compiled and published as individual illustrated books. We expect lots of reminiscing, laughter and beautiful legacy books.  And all this wonderfulness is free, courtesy of a Creative Aging grant!

You can read more about it in the Larchmont Patch.

Please forward this to your favorite seniors!  Class enrollment is limited.

Happy summer to all,

Judith

Photo courtesy Flickr/Bohemian