BirchLane.org

June 

Friday 28

On Vacation. Today through Saturday, July 6. I will get around to finishing the updates for this month on vacation; Cape Hatteras, The Outer Banks, North Carolina----at least this is my plan.

Monday 24

Rose Blooms.

Sunday 23

Dante and Beatrice.

Friday 19

Yesterday.

Thursday 20

A Luster Obliterates.

It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment --but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer? ~ Lord Byron ~

Wednesday 19

Sunsets.

 

Tuesday 18

Powerbook.

Monday 17

Sunny with a Chance of Thunderstorms.

Sunday 16

Books Into Boxes.

Saturday 15

Housecleaning.

Friday 14

The Last Banquet. (story to follow)

Thursday 13

Zig When They Zag. No, I am not trying to set a new Guinness Record for jobs held in one 12 month period!. The president of the most recent company I worked for called (called) me on the phone and said "I would like you to continue to work for me, but I can't pay you a salary, I can't pay you a draw, and I can't pay any expenses." Say What! So, I called the president at a company who offered me a job last December and said to call him if anything changed. Well, it did; I zigged when they zagged. My e-mail announcement below:

Please note:

Effective today, Monday, June 10, I have joined Consolidated Graphics as an print consultant.  

Consolidated Graphics is the largest sheet-fed and half-web printer in the United States. Through its network of locally managed printing companies in 25 states, the company provides high-quality, multi-color printed materials for a broad customer base that includes many of the most recognized companies in the country. In addition, we provide full-web printing, fulfillment, direct mail and internet consulting services.

I will work out of both my home and our plant in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts—the John C. Otto Company. I will continue to service the New York/New Jersey marketplace and parts of New England.

I am excited to be joining Consolidated Graphics; a company that not only stresses service and quality but provides you with such a broad range of services----including forms presses and Docutech presses; POP displays and 300 sheet-fed presses throughout the country, including large-size format equipment. 

Bruce Barone
413-219-4916 (cell)
413-525-3687 (fax)
bdbarone@yahoo.com

Wednesday 12

The Nude. I was thinking about the nude today as painted and sculptured. Kenneth Clark in his book, "The Nude, A Study in Ideal Form," which is from the A. W. Mellon Lectures delivered at the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1953, concludes:

Thus modern art shows even more explicitly than the art of the past that the nude does not simply represent the body, but relates to it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative experience. The Greeks related it to their geometry. Twentieth-century man, with his vastly extended experience of physical life, and his more elaborate patterns of mathematical symbols, must have at the back of his mind analogies of far greater complexity. But he has not abandoned the effort to express them visibly as part of himself. The Greeks perfected the nude in order that man might feel like a god, and in a sense that is still its function, for although we no longer suppose that God is like a beautiful man, we still feel close to divinity in those flashes of self-identification when, through our own bodies, we seem to be aware of a universal order.

Tuesday 11

Graduation Night.

Monday 10

Photograph vs Photographer. Someone asked me today "What is more important? The photographer or the person/thing being photographed?"

Sunday 09

Who Knows Where The Time Goes.

Saturday 08

Five Days.

Friday 07

A Flood of Memory. There is so much I want to write but I am at such a loss for words lately (see 06/06 entry). Danielle graduates high school on Tuesday and I am consequently drowning in a flood of memory.

Woman With Earring

Thursday 06

Wondering. I have been thinking about this article from last Tuesday's New York Times science section:

veryone knows that creative geniuses are all mad. At least that is what the time-honored notion linking creativity and mental illness holds.

Recently, this was underscored by "A Beautiful Mind," the film about the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Dr. John Forbes Nash Jr., who struggled with schizophrenia. Bedeviled by hallucinations and delusions, Dr. Nash is seen scribbling mathematical formula on his Princeton dorm window and doing pioneering work on game theory in a pub. But in real life, Dr. Nash accomplished his greatest mathematics before his illness really took hold.

As a psychiatrist, I have treated several highly creative people, all relieved to be rid of the symptoms of their mental illnesses. So I was feeling confident when it came to understanding the connection between mental illness and creativity. Simply put, psychiatric illness rarely confers creativity and treatment would not impair it. At least, that was my cherished theory until I met Sheryl.

Sheryl, a photographer, had been depressed for nearly all her 36 years. Always gloomy and pessimistic, she accepted that she was hard-wired for unhappiness and that this was just her unlucky personality. So it never occurred to her that she might have a treatable illness. It was her boyfriend, singing the praises of his own treatment for depression, who sent her my way.

Though she had witnessed her boyfriend's transformation on medication, she was skeptical that it would work for her, since she had no concept of what it would be like to feel well. It turned out that there was a deeper reason. She was afraid the treatment might dry up the wellspring of her creativity. To Sheryl, her depression and her art were inextricably linked, even though she knew that she had been artistically paralyzed in periods of severe depression.

I told her that she had been suffering from a lifelong mild form of chronic depression called dysthymia, which she had mistaken for her personality, and that it was just as treatable as the severe episodes of acute depression that she periodically had.

In one session, we discussed the topic of mood disorders and creativity. She knew of creative geniuses like Robert Schumann and John Keats, each manic depressive, and was sure that suffering was a prerequisite of great art. I countered that their creative output actually dropped during flare-ups. While there was evidence of a strong connection between bipolar disorder and creativity, the data for a link between pure depression — like Sheryl's — and creativity was much weaker.

I reassured her that the antidepressant would not diminish her as an artist. The depression had hobbled her, and treatment, if anything, ought to free her to greater heights of expression.

Sheryl came to the next session carrying a large portfolio of her photography. She wanted me to see her art before treatment started so I could witness its effect on her work. In stark black and white photos, she had captured the homeless and poor. Her kinship with the dispossessed was obvious, and the images were sad and moving.

Despite her skepticism, Sheryl began treatment with an antidepressant that same day. In two months, Sheryl noticed that her lifelong pessimism, insomnia and fatigue had lifted. The depression melted away, and she felt happy without any other change in her life save the antidepressant.

There was only one problem. The antidepressant had not just improved her mood, but had also transformed the content of her art. While Sheryl was now making and selling more photographs, she judged the quality to be inferior to her depressed art. I was flustered and asked to see her recent work.

To my amazement, the photography had undergone a change as pronounced as her mood. Many shots were now in color, but the greatest effect was a change in subject: abject images had given way to street scenes of raucous boys and amorous couples. Sheryl dismissed the work as commercially successful but artistically mediocre. Who was I to judge?

Now she faced a difficult choice: happiness in life or excellence in art. She chose to stop the antidepressant but remain in therapy. Within three months she had fully relapsed into depression, but preferred the art now to her "happy pictures."

After several months of feeling depressed, she changed her mind and restarted the antidepressant. It sounds heretical coming from a psychiatrist, but a little depression probably was good for her art, even if the personal cost was too high. In the end, she opted for happiness.  

Wednesday 05

Stellar Daughter.

from today's newspaper:

"The Northampton Blue Devils charged into the championship game of the Western Massachusetts Division I Girls Lacrosse Tournament with a 13-7 thumping of No.3 East Longmeadow on Tuesday.

Senior Danielle Barone delivered a stellar first-half performance to help the Blue Devils (16-2-1) build a lead against the Spartans......scoring five goals in the first 24 minutes of the game."

woohoo

Tuesday 04

Remembrances of Things Past. From Mitsu excerpts from T.S. Elliot:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

and

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

If you look hard and long the Twin Towers are still there.

Monday 03

Birth of a Nightmare.

Sunday 02

Where Went The Wonder Years? 

"1968, I was twelve years old. A lot happened that year. Dennis McLain won 31 games, The Mod Squad hit the air, and I graduated from Hillcrest Elementary and entered junior high school...but we'll get to that. There's no pretty way to put this: I grew up in the suburbs. I guess most people think of the suburb as a place with all the disadvantages of the city, and none of the advantages of the country, and vice versa. But, in a way, those really were the wonder years for us there in the suburbs. It was kind of a golden age for kids."

Saturday 01

Before. During. After.

Almost two years after a tornado wreaked havoc in sections of Northampton, nature put on a near-repeat performance Friday afternoon when the winds and lightning of a line of thunderstorms damaged homes, downed trees and electric lines, and knocked out power to thousands across the region. Northampton appeared to bear the brunt of the fast-moving storm, which generated multiple lightning strikes that split trees and hit numerous homes, igniting a fire in the attic of one city home and destroying a barn in Hatfield. Despite widespread damage, no injuries were reported, emergency officials said.

"Bruce," Betsy screamed. "Hurry, Help me. The rain is coming in the house."