FROM KATE

Hi to all of you,

I had a real flashback yesterday evening after a beautiful weekend with my three grandsons in Franklin Massachusetts (home of the first American free Library)  They have created a very suburban village in an old Italian Village full of old Roman Catholic Iconic sculpture. They have created a new sculpture park and the young families have a place to walk in nature and see public sculpture.  

I turned on the IPAD to check my email and there was a beautiful shot of Havana with a skycape against the Sea Wall on a day of blue sky with billowing clouds.  It brought a flood of images to mind that really delighted me.  One of standing in a beautiful tropical breeze on the top of the hotel near ours where Cuban music played each night. I am standing by Kent Twitchell looking over the edge at the beautiful detail in the architecture of the building next door.  The gorgeous European detail, gargoyles and long carved West Indies French doors flung open to reveal a small glimpse of the interior.  It was breathtaking and it made me for a short moment aware of the incredible work of so many people to create these buildings. It was a moment of remembering how incredible each human life is, invested in enormous intelligence and spirit and creativity.  Seems to me our egos rob us of awareness of the miracles all around us in the world.

As I drove toward home--a 90 mile trip we make quite often to return to our post and beam cedar cottage--a beautiful tropical storm was brewing out near Nantucket.   Steve and I had taken different cars in order to get all our errands done while up in the more modern shopping of off Cape communities.  The sky was so spectacular and it lit the whole horizon creating  such a show you couldn't imagine what you were seeing. 

It made me remember our day at the beautiful Fine Arts Museum in Havana, the way the thunder and lightening had echoed through out the amazing open stairway of the museum.   It was as though nature was creating a symphony to match the works collected in the museum. 

I wanted to write to myself in my journal that night , to never forget the powerful moments that can't be really described even in images.  The feel of the oppressive humidity on our skin, the heat and the build up to the first lightening strike.   I notice in myself and so many artists around me the striving and the burning creativity that sometimes keep me from being present for the real miracles around me. 

I will remember this weekend, such a great time with my friends and family just enjoying each other and being aware that it is always a miracle, each day, each friend, each child running in the grass.  

Art gives us a second look at those moments when we take the time to really look.   I am sure the wonderful people of Cuba (that we met and experienced_ often see a show of fantastic lightening and thunder out beyond that sea wall.  Perhaps those gifts of nature in someway make the other suffering tolerable at times?