Ice Follies

I used to want two winters a year, but now that winter is so fickle, I am losing my trust in it. I am willing to trade in the two for just one good winter. I love the brilliant white when it snows; watching ice form and create mysterious humps and shapes, or crystalline patterns; and the glint of setting sun on the phenomenal transformation of liquid to solid.

But how are we going to cut ice blocks to store for summer in the icehouse? Or kill off the ticks, the emerald ash borer, and other non-native bugs without long deep months of cold? And even worse, I am afraid that this current blanketing of snow with no deep freeze into the ground below is already pushing up our seasonal plumbing into a network of broken pipes!

Snowflakes take a kernel of sand or dust to form around. This microscopic bit becomes the catalyst, the creative stimulus that generates the creative force of becoming. Listening to Shankar Vedantam on Hidden Brain I am intrigued by the discussion of how “creative force” comes into being. Whether artist or not, my fundamental question has to do with the moment of “whoosh” when something seemingly comes out of nothing into something!

So back to Ice Follies, to the Great Ice 2023 Festival, in North Hero! - ice or not, winter or not…. We need to get out and gather, to laugh and play, at home or with others, stomping the ground in celebration of winter. Things to do: walk to your favorite ponds and look for beaver activity… Check out what’s happening below the slush in the water, look for all those little animal tracks in and out of your foundation wall, and listen to wild creative music!

Migrations and songs: Cristina Pato at TEDxMadr www.youtube.com/watch?v=37e2EiGhcQE

Enjoy the time we have! See you on Feb 18th at 4pm for Hannah Dennison’s The Quarry Project - Film.

Where is our ice today?

I love reading Lake Look by The Lake Champlain Committee and its current issue with the reference to Caperton Tissot’s book Adirondack Ice:  A Cultural and Natural History in Burlington’s Community Newspaper.  I always learn more about the lake and in this case about ice.

Notes from Lake Look:

        When record keeping on Lake Champlain freezing began in the 19th century, it was rare for a winter to go by without a complete freeze-over from shore to shore of the lake.  This regular freezing created the basis for a seasonal culture of ice-dependent activities.

        Ice fishing, spanning back millennia, was practiced by indigenous people of different tribes throughout the basin.  They, like many today, used windbreaks when fishing on the ice, in their case from evergreen branches.  Ice fishing is still an important activity for many of us.  Historically, people of the Champlain Basin extracted not only fish from under the ice, but ice itself. 

        Ice was wild harvested and boomed in the 19th century.  Block and pulleys would bring ice ashore and then were sent down country protected in sawdust.  We also inherited stories of the frozen lake as a highway access to visit friends and family, build cabins in inaccessible places, ship food and supplies, etc.

In the case of GreenTARA, the former St Benedict’s Church that was moved from City Bay to where it sits today, the story goes that a small group of local Catholics petitioned the bishop in approximately 1883 to buy the 1823 general store on the waterfront and known as the “Wadsworth Store” (or in some deeds the “Keeler Store” - Keeler was father-in-law to Wadsworth).  So by 1887 Bishop DeGoesbriand is brought to across the ice to North Hero from Burlington to inspect the property; he approves the purchase, loans the money, and the general store converts to a Catholic church for the next 120 years… 

And where is our ice today? 

        For the past decade, Lake Champlain has frozen over completely just three times – in 2014, 2015, and 2019.  Full closure of the ice on the lake was once the norm, but due to higher winter temperatures from climate change, a trend in less and less ice is apparent.

Based on historic and current trends Dr. Vaughan of the Lake Champlain Basin Program predicts that the lake will “close” about once every four years for the next few years.… This warmer winter trend also poses a problem for cold-water species like lake trout and appears to have a role in the cyanobacteria blooms we are experiencing.

But maybe not all is lost - we do have a few ice and snow goddesses we could solicit for our Great Ice 2023 winter planning:

Skaði, from Norse Mythology, who is a jötunn (a supernatural being) and goddess associated with bowhunting, skiing, winter, and mountains and linked to skiing and snowshoeing,

Or if you like Greek mythology better, we have:

Khione (chiōn – means snow in Greek) who is a minor goddess or snow nymph and daughter of Boreas, god of the North Wind and Winter.  She has divine authority over ice, and snow, and can freeze mortals and demigods into ice sculptures!  (re. Wikipedia).

Look for specific postings and updates on Great Ice 2023.  Events are planned for Feb 17, 18, 19, 2023, including at the Gallery:  a showing of The Quarry Project film of Hannah Dennison and Company’s gorgeous dance project from last summer. Sat Feb 18, at 4pm. 

Image from Mary H. Foster’s Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology, 1901

Hannah Dennison - The Quarry Project - Film

The Quarry Project, conceived and directed by Hannah Dennison, was a site-specific dance/theatre piece created for the Wells Lamson, one of the oldest, deepest granite quarries in our country, situated in the small village of Websterville, VT. Seven years in the making, the sold-out performances happened over 14 days in August 2022.

The film made from these performances will be shown at twelve locations during December, January, and the last showing in February is during our Great Ice festival. Feb 18, 4pm at GreenTARA - downstairs in the Video Temple space. Come warm up with a cup of cocoa and a beautiful film.

Women Builders and Earthen Architecture - film link

https://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/african-women%E2%80%99s-traditional-building-practices-today

This is a link to the CCTV - VICII Program with Sandy Baird, Eric Agnero, guest architect Amelie Essesse, and Diane Gayer of GreenTARA Space.

Teaming up with VICII

GreenTARA Space has teamed up with Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement for a couple long-term projects. Bringing Amelie Essesse (and her film on Earthen Architecture and Women Builders here) was Part One of a longer opportunity and the CAFÉ Program with photographers from Cuba for June 2023 is the other art / architecture exchange project we are currently working.

So if you don’t see signs of activities at the Gallery it is simply that we are quietly working on the next steps. If you have interest in either of these two projects, please contact me. I will also be posting updates along the way….

Photos of us at CCTV and at UVM. Best to you all, enjoy this twinkly season!

Women builders and earthen architecture!

Here we are weathering both hurricane and election season... They do tend to overlap and look like they are getting worse, more dramatic with more casualties, but even so, we seem to make it thru with resilience and faith. Do I say this because I feel safe and sound, maybe, but still I recognize that in both situations it takes a belief in democracy, a reliance on communal energy, and an effort to build sustainability to get thru the trials and tribulation of the work at hand.

We cannot innocently sit by. We never could. To imagine beauty takes us all. Beauty is our interpretation of the eternal, our internalization of the immortal. We see it in Bierstadt's painting of Yosemite at The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and we see it in our human connection with each other. We can eat a Gianduja chocolate in Italy or we can clean the muck out of the basement after a storm, it's all the same, we must bring heart to it. "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

But back to GreenTARA : Kreamer & Kin Microbrewery is now at the Alburgh Golf Links, the Gallery hosted an Afghani Wedding Engagement Party for 50 people this past week, and GreenTARA has a visiting French architect from the Cameroon, Amélie Esséssé as guest this coming week. A segment of her film on WOMEN BUILDERS AND EARTHEN ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE IN AFRICA will be aired on Thursday November 17, 2022, on CCTV, at 6pm, a VICII program.
The Program Title is : African Women’s Traditional Building Practices - Today . This is a VICII Program thanks to CCTV and Sandy Baird, VICII. Co-hosted by Eric Agnero, citizen journalist / co-producer of VICII and Diane Gayer, architect / ecological planner. We will host a discussion with guest Amélie Esséssé about her film as a means of addressing the re-claiming of cultural identity, global architectural expectations, and climate change.

Please join us!

Fall into the Light

How do we manage to let the reflective light flow thru us when the push-pull of daily activities fills our mind, when the torture and pain of so many people surrounds us, and when the maelstrom of politically voices fill the airwaves… to focus beyond these forms and words is not easy. The hunter’s blind for shooting ducks and geese in Carry Bay shows us how close we are to both beauty and death. They both surround us…. and startle us awake.

Our amazing Webs

Funnel Weavers are spiders from the genus Agelenidae who build funnels in which they can hide out and wait for prey. To do this they construct a horizontal web that leads back to a funnel or hole, often in rockery as did this one in Monhegan Island, Maine.

In general, spiders are often more friendly than fearsome. When it comes to house spiders, they eat common pests, such as flies and mosquitoes. In the wild, they help control insect populations, as well as other spider populations. And they are an essential food source for predators like birds, lizards, and small mammals. Details thanks to: www.magazine.scienceconnected.org.

Spiders also remind us of our own intricate webs of connection. We build links across our physical boundaries and span long distances for community, for safety and security, as well as for attacking others,… even as our worldly webs dance across beauty.

To the moment at hand - we are celebrating three years of Kraemer & Kin at GreenTARA this weekend - Oct 15 & 16, noon - 6pm. K & K move out before the end of October in order to have Halloween festivities at “the (Alburgh Golf) Links.” Look for plenty of fun, apples, pumpkins, and spider webs there!