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Bethlehem, THE BETHLEHEM!

12/22/2024

 
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art by Patrick Gono
I've learned one lesson in life.  Maybe I've learned a few more, but I certainly have learned that it never hurts to ask.  Frequently the questions are ignored.  All too often, the answer is no (if I get one).  But, on those wondrous, rare occasions, sometimes you get a yes!

While I was trapped in Ohio with no summer plans, I decided it was time to do some asking.  I've never painted a mural in Asia.  That's a situation that needs to be checked off of my list.  And, I have had one destination in Asia where I've wanted to paint murals for such a long time.  Israel.  Yes, I know they've had a war going on for more than a year.  I'm not worried about the "what ifs" that could happen to me if I paint there.  Hey, when it's your time to go, it's your time to go.  I want to bring some cheer to everyone who has been so very stressed living with this war.  I want to paint with Jews, Arabs, and Christians.

With no real personal connections in the area, I went to my friend Google and started searching any and all schools, hospitals, churches, colleges, NGOs, and charities that I could find.  I'm confident that I wrote to at least 30 of them.  I think it's safe to say that two-thirds of them never even bothered to reply.  Okay, I kind of understand it.  I sent a strange request.  I offered to paint a community mural for free, but there was an "if" with the request.  I'd paint if they could put me up for ten days.  This plan would give me a week to paint the mural and then three days to be a tourist.  While serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I lived in a mud block home in Africa with no electricity or running water.  I'm not picky.  They could put me up in a hotel, guesthouse, or with a family.  (I'd actually prefer the family, so I'd have a cultural exchange.)

Like I said, there were lots of no replies to my offer.

I received possibly ten answers, nine including a very polite no.  But, there was one maybe!   And, after 20 no replies and a whole bunch of rejection letters, a tentative maybe was worth dancing around my computer.  Yes, it was from Bethlehem, THE BETHLEHEM!

Bethlehem Bible College  The city where Jesus was born is in the West Bank/Palestine.  When I first visited the place, so very long ago, there was no wall around the place and Jews were permitted entry.  There is now a wall and it's my understanding that Jews can't enter the city.  But, there is a Bible College in Bethlehem, so I'm guessing there is not so much difficulty between Christians and Muslims.  

Bethlehem Bible College has a guest house.  In the summer, it was not available.  Alas, there was no room in the inn.  Not the first time to happen in Bethlehem, I hear.  Yes, sadly, there were no travel plans to Asia after receiving that bit of information.  However, a few weeks ago, I finally heard from the college once again.  The guest house was available, and they still wanted a mural.  So, very merrily, I started my plans for a trip to the Holy Land somewhere around Christmas.

El Al Airlines  The national airline for Israel is El Al.  In another situation where it doesn't hurt to ask, I contacted them.  I wanted to know if they might be interested in a mural at the airport in exchange for a free ticket.  A win-win, right? It was actually quite a series of hurdles to speak to an actual human in Tel Aviv.  Their call center is in the Philippines.  The online AI computer program would never complete the process without an error.  I had frequent text messages from El Al that informed me that my request was cancelled due to inactivity.   And, I couldn't call Israel from my telephone.  It took a week to actually find a way to connect with a human in Israel.  Of course, anyone who picks up the phones is not in the position to answer my question.   He could only pass the request further up the chain of command.  There were no promises.  There have been no email messages or phone calls from Israel. 

I'm still waiting for a Christmas miracle.

The U.S. Embassy  I have written to every United States Embassy in the world, around five times, informing them about my murals.  It hasn't generated nearly as much attention as I'd hoped.  Yes, I'm thankful for every mural I've painted with them, but I'm not sending out those requests anymore.  However, out of all the embassies, I potentially made the best new contact with someone I've never met in Israel.  No, they didn't want to bring me over for murals.  They use an organization with the State Department that relies upon young, hip artists.  I'm not young.  I'm not hip.  I have two hips, but they don't always work the way I'd like.  I am not the kind of artist that they want.  But, I still have good communication with one person at the embassy.

I sent a surprise email to Jerusalem informing my contact that I was coming to Israel.  Of course, more information was requested.  No promises were made, but I was told that my connection would put out feelers for any contacts who might want a mural.

Fareed  As a result of the U.S. Embassy, I was contacted by an Arab man named Fareed.  His email began, "Morning of Jasmine Scent dearest Phillip."  I knew I was going to like the message.  It continued, "Wow!  Such amazing work!!  It is not just a community mural that you are painting.  It is also the community's moral, soul, and spirit!"  Needless to say, I liked the guy immediately, and we are going to work together.  

It isn't quite determined where we will be working.  Plan A is to have me stay at a remote Bedouin village in the Negev Desert.  There are no facilities which I imagine means no running water or electricity.  It would be like my Peace Corps days, so I'd be thrilled.  However, there is a teensy-weensy problem.  In a traditional Bedouin village, you just can't have an alien American man stay at your home.  You have to be careful about the reputation of each and every female in the household.  So, if that doesn't work, Plan B is to stay in a large Arab city with Fareed's family.  It's a win-win no matter what happens.

Zipi  Another contact through the embassy is a Jewish artist in Jerusalem.  (My kind of people.)  Zipi's studio is located next to a school for at-risk youth.  It's my kind of place to bring a community together.  The principal is very interested in a mural at the school.  They are trying to figure out housing before any kind of commitment can be made.  Again, I lived in a mud block home in Africa.  A manger might be a little too small, but anything that they offer me will be just fine.  Still, the project is not a go until they say, "We have a place for you to put your head." So, I remain hopeful and wait for yet another Christmas miracle.  After all, it is the season for them.

Back to the Embassy  My contact at the embassy sent out my information to all colleagues to see if anyone else might have connections.  One more person wrote to me to gather information.  This person's contacts are with Palestinians.  So, it appears that I have good possibilities for painting with Christians, Jews, and Arabs, just as I had hoped.

When am I going exactly?  Well, that hasn't exactly been determined.  I'm hoping to go sooner rather than later.  It would be nice to know that I have three or four murals lined up in advance.  That may not happen.  I may have to just feel things out and make connections in Israel after people see my first murals.  But, I am going to try and get an open-ended ticket.  If I can get one of those, then there is no idea how many murals I might paint or how long I might be on this mission.  

Who knows what might happen on the planet in these crazy times?  All plans could be tossed aside if something terrible pops up in the headlines.  As for me, however, I'm hoping for some Peace on Earth.  After all, it really is the season for that.  Yes, Peace on Earth!  Good will to men!  And, Merry Christmas!

What do I want for Christmas?  A very positive message from El Al would fit nicely in my stocking.

Back 2 CBAN

11/15/2024

 
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I painted my mural with students at the Columbus Bilingual Academy North over the summer.  I've been waiting ever since then to come back and see the rest of the students and share how my art has taken me around the world.  I finally returned this week when I met with all of the students, from grade 3 to 8, who were taking art this quarter.  
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I've already blogged about what happens during a school visit.  I won't rehash that since you can read that here.  But, I want to share some of the highlights of my visit.    
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First off, I invited three people to see the presentation.  I brought along my neighbor who helped me finish the mural after the students had their turn.  (Hats off to Pat because she took all the photos in this blog.)  The next person to show up was the Senior Vice President, Operations, of ACCEL Schools.  (CBAN is a part of this charter school group of over 90 schools.)  And, finally, a contact from a neighboring school district attended.  It meant a lot to me that they were interested enough to come see what I can do.

A sea of red appeared in the gymnasium when all of the students walked into the room in their matching school sweatshirts.  And they were so welcoming and polite!  Many of them waved to me at the entered.  It was off to a good start.
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Next, as I shared about muraling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I showed them a photo of a musical instrument.  The rattle was unique; it looked like a woven basket purse.  I purchased that treasure while I was there.  Now, if you use a rattle in Africa, you don't just shake it with your right hand (which is my natural tendency).  The basket is raised over your head.  You shake it as well as everything else you can shake.  Total participation. 
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I wanted to give a couple students the chance to put that instrument to use.  One little boy volunteered.  I had him rattle as the student body sang "Happy Birthday" to him.  Since it was with a student body that also spoke Spanish, I had another student come up to give the students the opportunity to sing in Spanish.  The little girl who volunteered to help me is a treasure.  I remembered her so well from my muraling experience during summer school.  Every day that I painted, she found time to come talk to me, even if it was during recess!  No other child in the school was that brave.  She's a little trilingual miracle.  Yep, the perfect English that she spoke was her third language! 
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Finally, my favorite part of any presentation is sharing "Spider and the Honey Tree", a folk tale that I gathered while I lived in Liberia.  To do that, I need the help of a student.  I told the principal in advance that I needed someone who would not be embarrassed, was a little bit of an actor, and had a big mout.  The principal said that a lot of students fit that description.  But, he could not have picked a more perfect student!
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PictureA sea of red, dashing through the bush, and shaking what you have to shake.
I put on an African gown to dress up as the trickster Spider.  The young man also had on an African shirt.  He was to act as the sweetest, kindest, most thought child in the history of the planet.  I asked him if he was really that good or if he'd have to act.  He replied, "Maybe a little of both."  Smart chico!
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He performed so well as he described D-e-e-e-e-e-e-licious mangoes and some H-O-N-E-Y (with a very deep voice) in a hole of a tree, deep in the bush where people rarely ever go.  He also earned an unexpected reward for his services.  In my PowerPoint Presentation, I shared a few portraits of people I've met along my journey.  This young actor received a print of one of my portraits for his willingness to participate.
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Much to my surprise, if there had been enough time, a session of questions and answers would have been great.  Several of the students were prepared with questions that were written down.  About a dozen kids rushed me after the presentation to get their answers.
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"How did you get so good with your murals?" 
Just like everything else, you have to practice, practice, practice. 
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"What do you do when something goes wrong on the project?" 
I've painted so many murals that a new disaster rarely happens.  Paint always gets spilled.  I'm used to that, and I just clean it up. 
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"What is the most difficult part of the project?  Designing? Sponsorship? or Participation?"
Finding sponsors is always the most difficult part.  If I could easily locate sponsors, I would paint much more that 65 murals in 27 countries.
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There were many more questions, all good, but these are the only ones I can remember.  I very much appreciated that time was taken to think of these questions.  Yes, I was thrilled that the kids would not be denied and came up to ask them.
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Every time I get to share my story is a treat.  This time I got to toss in a little bit of my very limited Español into the mix.  So, I was very pleased that ACCEL is starting two new bilingual schools in Columbus.  I live in hope of another opportunity to speak Gringo Spanish with a muraling project and a presentation.

Saving the Best Til Last

10/14/2024

 
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This trip to Alaska was not as easy or adventurous as you might imagine.  Right after I arrived, I was sick in bed for four days.  I don’t know if I caught some bug on the airline or upon arrival in King Salmon.  I do know I was healthy in Ohio.  But, when I arrived, I soon had a cough, fever, headache, and body aches.  It was not a fun time.

When I was nearly recovered, I went to work in the kitchen at my sister's fishing lodge.  I worked every day, every meal, 60-hour weeks, for the next five or six weeks.  And, I quickly found out that I was not cut out for work in a kitchen.  In the past, dishes were scrubbed in a device with brushes on both sides.  Then, they were washed as usual in a sink.  That method has been set aside for a new, speedy, dishwasher.  However, I discovered very quickly that my back does not like lifting trays of dishes, bowls, and everything else for three meals a day.  I do not usually have back problems, but my back ached -- day and night -- the entire time I worked in Alaska.

After six weeks, all of the guests finally left and there was a week to pack up the camp for the long winter that is just unimaginable this far north.  But, on one of those days, I was asked if I wanted to go to Katmai National Park for the day.  If you’ve ever seen photos of bears in Alaska fishing for salmon in a shallow waterfall, that is Brooks Falls at KNP.  Of course, I wanted to go!
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PictureKatmai National Park is beautiful with Autumn colors.
You will see bears at the park.  It is their natural environment.  If you visit the park, you are invading their space.  So, I was a space invader in bear territory.  All bears within 70 miles of the coast are brown bears.  However, if they are any farther away, they are grizzly bears.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s just word games.  I was in the neighborhood of 2,200 grizzly bears!

In bear class, visitors are taught what to do if a bear is seen on the path.  Walk off of the trail and keep a 50-yard distance until the bear passes on by.  The bears are interested in Alaskan Salmon and not Ohio Buckeyes.  On the walk to the falls, there was a curve in the path.  I walked along the curve.  When I was in the middle of the curve, I saw a bear about 50 FEET away from me in the brush along the path.  What to do?  About the same time that I saw the bear, I spied two park guides enter the other side of the curve.  I thought safety in numbers sounded good to me.  Besides, most likely the guides would have bear spray or a gun.  I had nothing like that.

As it turned out, the guides didn’t agree with my thoughts.  I was instructed that I should have gotten off the path, on the other side of the trail, and explored 50 yards of Alaskan tundra.  I didn’t see the bear until it was really too late to do that.  However, I don’t think the guides thought that was a sound excuse.
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PictureA zoom lens gets me close enough to bears in the wild.
Anyway, I made it to the falls without being slashed to death by bear claws or jaws.  The last time I was there, the railing of the terrace by the falls was lined with photographers with huge camera lenses.  None of them moved away after a reasonable time.  Everyone wanted their perfect bear photo.  If you weren’t one of the few in that front row, you were not going to get that picture.

On this occasion, I spent an hour by myself on the terrace overlooking the falls.  It was peaceful and so very beautiful.  Some days, the falls are packed with bears.  On this day, there was only one.  But, he cooperated with this photographer.  It was a good trip to Katmai National Park.

Of course, everyone comes to this part of Alaska to see bears.  Anything else is just a bonus.  On this trip, in the final week, I saw several foxes.  Two of them wandered near two different lodges that I visited.  They weren’t as terrified of humans as you might expect.  In fact, in both locations, the foxes came up to the front doors and peered through the windows.  Adorable!

In recent months, solar flares have created Northern Lights as far south as Michigan and northern Ohio.  I don’t live that far north and have missed the lights this season.  I seriously hoped that I’d see them much farther north in Alaska.  However, King Salmon is not so far from the coast and has lots of cloudy weather.  Even when this part of Alaska was supposed to see the Northern Lights, they weren’t visible around King Salmon.

Until they were!

When I got up to work at 5:15 AM each morning, I tied to go to bed around 9:30 each evening.  But, on my last week in Alaska, the clouds cleared away – after bedtime.  Some of the camp guides called around 9:45 PM to announce they had seen the lights.  When I first saw the Northern Lights in Iceland, they were bold white lines in the sky.  I was extremely disappointed because I expected pink, blue, and green in the sky.  I learned that 90% of the lights in Iceland were white.  Bummer.

When I rushed to the terrace – the very freezing terrace at this time of year in Alaska – there were white streaks of light across the sky going up and down.  There were also hints of green and a bit of pink.  It was wonderful.  I would have been devastated to miss them in Alaska while it was possible to see them.

I learned an unusual thing about technology as well with this spectacle.  When I took photos of the lights with my phone, I saw colors that were not visible to the human eye.  It looked much more spectacular on my phone.  I don’t care.  I saw the Northern Lights.  And then, I was certainly ready to go home.

The last week had work for me to do, but a whole lot less lifting trays of dishes.  As I headed back to Ohio, my back no longer ached as much as it did.  Can’t say that I will volunteer for this duty next year or ever again.  But, I had an amazing final week in Alaska.

Picture
The Northern Lights as seen from my sister's balcony at Lake House.

747

10/3/2024

 
Picture
Who knew that there were celebrities living in the vicinity of King Salmon, Alaska?  I certainly had no idea.  Have you ever heard of 32 Chunk, 128 Grazer, 151 Walker, 164, 435 Holly, 480 Otis, or 747?  If you haven’t, like me, you don’t know about Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park.  It’s a celebration of the strength, success, resilience, adaptability, and survival of the bears that live around the park.  With live-feed camera monitors, visitors to the park as well as an online audience vote on which bear is the biggest and best of them all.  747, a twenty-year-old critter not quite as big as a jetliner, won the competition in 2020 and 2022.  Not to be outdone by that, Otis won in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2021.

Like any good beauty contest, Fat Bear Week has requirements.  The bears must be seen in both Summer and Fall fishing for sockeye salmon at Brooks Falls at Katmai National Park.  This park in southwest Alaska is huge, 6,391 square miles, and is home to approximately 2,200 bears.  These brown bears eat as many 30 fish a day, which can be as much as 120 pounds.  And, with that diet, they may gain up to four pounds a day as they prepare for hibernation beginning in October or November.  By the time Spring rolls around, the bears will lose about one third of their body fat. 
​

If the contest really interests you, you can get the full scoop online and watch live bear cams as well.  The way it works is each day two bears are pitted against each other in a daily vote.  Voters may choose any criteria they want to cast their ballots.  It’s a single elimination event.  Lose once and you’re out until the following year when you can feast on salmon all over again.  At the end of all voting, on Fat Bear Tuesday, the final winner is announced.
PictureThe Real 747 too close to home. (Photo: Naknek River Camp staff)
747 will not win Fat Bear Week this year. 

I don’t know who will win, but I can tell you why 747 does not have a chance. He’s still a giant among the bears, estimated to weigh in at a sizable 1,400 pounds.  Perhaps two victories are enough for him?   Maybe 747 doesn’t want all the attention and fame?  For whatever reason, when the live-cameras were rolling and voters were casting their ballots, 747 was nowhere to be seen around Brooks River and the waterfall.  No, the champion decided that he wanted to fish for his salmon on the other side of Lake Naknek.

The other side of Lake Naknek is where my sister and her husband run Naknek River Camp.  Yep, that’s right, 1,400 pounds of bear spent the week wandering around and through the camp both day and night.  I actually only saw him once.  He was right outside the dining hall, less than thirty feet away!  Fortunately, I was safe inside the building as he ambled by.

Sometimes, problem bears are shot, if you have a permit.  But, nobody would dare harm a celebrity bear.  747 wandered wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted.  I saw bear prints in the mud just outside the dining hall.  On the path from the dining hall to the guest cabins, it was important to watch your step because bears frequently leave souvenirs that nobody wants to step in.  Additionally, it was easy to see where they left the path and cleared a way through the tundra.  Camp guides often leave cases of beer outside of their cabins to keep them cool.  Surprisingly, it appears that bears like to slash open the cans for a late-night nightcap.  Who knew?
​

So, it may not surprise you that I do not wander the camp at night.  If I need to go anywhere, even in the daylight, eyes gaze the path around me.  747 is not a celebrity I want to meet up close and personally.  I have no desire for his autograph or to get my throat slashed.
_____
Author's Note:  When I wrote this, I thought that last week was Fat Bear Week.  As it turns out, it is currently taking place.  And, very fortunately for 747 and us, this mammoth creature returned to Katmai National Park.  We are safe from being clawed to death and 747 is back in the running to be a champion once again.

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