Opportunity censored by hatred, fear

By Christine Anne Piesyk | November 10, 2007 |

Some times we are simply compelled to speak out. To stand up for an idea or principle.

When I received a letter from friends and fellow alumna at Goddard College in Vermont about an incident of art censorship in that state (a fairly rare occurrence in that Green Mountain setting), my ‘compulsion’ turned to action from a distance. I wrote a letter.

Much to my surprise, since I attend Goddard as a low-residency student but live 1400 miles south/southwest in Clarksville, I received a call from the editor of Seven Days, Vermont’s alternative print newspaper in much the same way that Clarksville Online is this region’s online alternative to corporately moderated media.

To begin with, the issue I responded to was a story titled A Wall Has Two Sides by Ken Picard, a Seven Days writer covering a controversial art exhibit by Peter Schumann: Independence Paintings. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Issues, Opinion | 2 Comments

Holiday cards and the lost art of letters

By Christine Anne Piesyk | November 10, 2007 |

I’ve always been a writer. Not just out here in public, where everyone and anyone can read me, but privately, in the comfort of my home, at my desk, or curled up on my my sofa, lap tray, pens, paper and postage stamps in place. I am a letter writer. A compulsive letter writer.

It’s a compulsion that manifests itself in the months leading up to Christmas, months when I haul out my once finely honed Palmer penmanship - once done with Parker fountain pen, inkwell and blotters - taught in grueling detail by the nuns at the French Catholic school of my childhood. Honed further still by my mother, whose penchant for cards, notes, letters and postcards were unrivaled in our neighborhood. I get it from her. And her mother and father before her.

Not only did I master true penmanship with old-style instruments, I did half of it in French, a great source of pleasure to my Canadian grandmother, who rarely spoke a word in English to any of us out of sheer stubbornness. At one point in time, I wrote her letters for her: she, seated in her rocker at the double wide kitchen window looking out on a froth of maple trees in fall mantle, me at her feet, paper on a cutting board, writing her messages to cousins, aunts and uncles, all in rural Quebec, when her own hands became too frail, too gnarled with arthritis to hold a pen. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | 1 Comment »