In These Days ...

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves

Erica Jong, extract from Women Enough.

I've been busy ... a project, of course.  A new website specifically for the project, and all kinds of other things too.

At night, I shift my aching body from my ergonomically-disasterous desk and creak to my bed ... tired from sitting rather than anything deliciously active.

But the website is almost done.  I'll launch soon, via a newsletter that shall become regular.  I'm eyeing Instagram too ... I'm in Genova next week, it seems like a good time to work out all this social media stuff that I've mostly ignored, as the new project is all about Genova.

I've been cooking and cleaning, imagining myself quite marvelously productive there too, although wanting more applause than I get for fitting everything into my day.  I've always been dubious about this housewife stuff.  It seems to run along the lines of 'if a tree falls in a forest and noone is there to see it ...'  Same with housework.  A clean house is the result of many lost minutes and hours.  Many.

Erica Jong wrote the perfect poem when she wrote Women Enough. 

So precisely, yes.

But I must work.  I have one more in the elderberry series to post.  It's been up to 28 celsius, thunderstormy, calm and cool too.  It's Spring.  I'm loving it.

Jared Moossy, Photographer

Jared Moossy is an American photographer who filmed all four episodes of the documentary series Witness. He specializes in conflict photography and is a founding member of the photo-collective Razon. For the Witness series, he travelled to Juarez, Libya, Sudan, and Brazil. Witness shows what life is like for photojournalists working in conflict zones; how they utilize fixers and contacts, search out a story, and make their photographs. The series also touches on the dangers that the photographers, their colleagues, and subjects face, while pursing this work.

An Interview with Jared Moossy, in Nowhere Magazine.

Anyone who knows me knows that war photographers and journalists fascinate me.  I read a lot of their literature simply because I have this idea that they take the reader beyond the gloss and spin that is everyday news, beyond everyday life, to a place where agendas don't really play out in reporting the news and the truth can't be bought and repackaged. 

They go out into the world and attempt to tell the story ... a story with words and/or photographs.  Camille Lepage was one of those people.  She was a 26-year-old French photojournalist who died on Tuesday May 14th, 2014 in Central African Republic.

She said, “You, as a photojournalist, are the messenger, you’re not the one who will implement new laws on Human Rights in Russia or Chechen, you’re not the one who will put rapists in jail, you will not cure Aids and won’t give food to all of those who are malnourished, but you’re the one, and that’s essential, who is going to denounce those things. Your job, or at least that’s how I see my role, is to make it as appealing as possible so people can relate to it and ideally put pressure on those in charge and whose role is to make things change!” 

Camille Lepage, December 1, 2011, via the blog of Christine Dowsett.

Jared Moossy for Nowhere Magazine: Syria from Nowhere Magazine on Vimeo.

Nina Coolsaet, Wine-maker

I have a new interview up in my Interviews section.

Nina Coolsaet is the loveliest Spanish-based Belgian who, together with her Spanish husband, Alfredo, is breathing new life into the old family bodega and creating some head-turning wines.

I had the pleasure of interviewing her a while ago.  I was curious to know more about this couple who were all about creating wine with their family in mind.  I imagined how that might affect the way you would produce a wine. 

And so we chatted awhile ...

The photographs were provided by Rafael Bellver and I have created a slideshow of his images over here.

 

 

Out in the Garden ...

This morning my camera and I wandered out to the garden but it's not really my garden at all.  The Jasmine ... okay, I carried that home from the Amsterdam Flower Market one year, on the train, traveling with my favourite Australian, Clare.

And I pushed for the lavender plants and the honeysuckle too, bought one of the raspberry canes, and asked if we might have a fern.  I was rapt when Gert's parents gave him a part of their rhubarb plant ... while wishing I could have had a slice from the root of the mythical rhubarb plant back home in New Zealand.

Nana and Grandad grew the best rhubarb in the world, or that's how we told it.  Mum and Dad were given a section with roots and voila, we had some of that Invercargill perfection growing out back in our Mosgiel garden.

But I'm more of an admirer of gardens ... as opposed to being an actual gardener.  My mother would have told you that I was a bit of a lazy wench when it came to gardening.  I preferred reading or walking my dog, or just simply watching.  I should have been ashamed, as I come from a long line of hardworking, dedicated gardeners but I wasn't.

Then  I met Gert, who didn't garden but does now ... just like the New Zealanders I grew up around and so our garden is all thanks to him.  The big fat toads living out there simply amuse him.  He brushes off spiders, and goes into battle with the Ivy when it threatens to overwhelm all.

He BBQ's too, and this time I don't have a dog to get rid of the evidence about totally not being a Kiwi when it comes to BBQ food.

So these photographs taken by me mostly capture the result of his hard work and dedication ...

It was a Sunday morning impulse to attempt to capture a sense of how this beautiful day is playing out in our tiny pocket-sized Belgian garden.