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AND BEAUTY FOR ALL:
JULY 2018 NEWSLETTER


Contents

LOSING GROUND—PARKS ENDANGERED

NEW INTERNS HELPING OUT!

HAVE A PHOTO YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE?

INVOLVE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!

CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE

YOUR IDEAS

SAVE THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND!

WRITE TO US!

 

Friends,

I hope you had a delightful July 4th, spent in a beautiful location with friends and loved ones.  Perhaps a National Park or one of your local parks.  Since Frederick Law Olmsted began work on New York’s Central Park in 1858, our cities have taken pride in their parks and understood their democratic purpose, preserving common space for all, no matter how wealthy or from what background.  Olmsted had in fact declared that the greatest benefit of his parks would be to the poor, since they were otherwise most excluded from beauty and healthy environments. He wrote of his satisfaction in having “more than once observed tears of gratitude in the eyes of poor women, as they watched their children enjoying themselves… The poor and the rich come together in Central Park in larger numbers than anywhere else and enjoy what they find in it in more complete sympathy than they enjoy anything else together.”
LOSING GROUND  

Central Park commissioner Charles Stover encouraged all groups to use the park and erected statues representing many of the immigrant groups in the city.  African-Americans, even more excluded in much of the city than the immigrants, were welcomed to the park. Authors Roy Rosenzeig and Elizabeth Blackmar describe Central Park as “the most democratic place in New York City, if not the United States.”  

For the foreign-born textile workers in New York’s teeming tenements, the park offered brief respite before and after work.  In her 1918 autobiography, One of Them, Russian immigrant and needle-worker Elizabeth Hasanovitz writes fondly of how Central Park saved her spirit, and that of her friend Fannie, in the bleakest times.

“How wonderful, how glorious nature is!” Fannie murmured wistfully.  I looked down to the reservoir. Its greenish water gleamed out from the trees. “Let ’s go to the park,” I suggested. “Yes, let ’s go down there,” she said approvingly. Quietly we walked down from the roof and off to the park. The streets were deserted, only the clattering of a passing milk-cart or bread-wagon disturbed the silence from time to time. The leaves and grass were moistened with the morning dew; the fragrance all around was deliciously sweet. The birds singing and twittering their morning songs greeted us merrily.

Central Park
 
We’d do well to understand the commitment it took in 1858 to set aside some of the country’s most expensive real estate for a 1,000-acre park.  It’s hard to imagine such a decision being made today when so much money is to be made from high-rise luxury condos and apartments.  Indeed, a shadow now threatens Central Park—a literal shadow covering the southernmost mile of the park at Winter solstice, cast by the 1,000-to-1,500-foot towers of 57th Street, now called Billionaire’s Row, offering residences at $20 million or more apiece and leaving the shadowed park too cold for children to play.

This is the antithesis of beauty for all.  But so goes NY, SF and many of our cities, according to a brilliant new essay in Harper’s magazine.

On that sad note, let’s get to the good news:  And Beauty for All is slowly growing.
NEW INTERNS

We are delighted to have new interns from the University of Washington helping out for the summer, and perhaps beyond.  Both will be seniors majoring in political science and communications.  Adele Likin is on the rowing team and currently exploring the beauty of Italy, and Kara Patajo has been writing a column about the beauty of Seattle parks, called “A Breath of Fresh Air,” for the university’s daily newspaper.  Her new blog is up on our website—check it out!  Along with another intern, Catherine Haut, a recent graduate of Maine’s Colby College, Adele and Kara will be bumping up our social media presence—on the website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I’m excited to have them all aboard!

Intern Kara Patajo and Mt. Rainier
HAVE A PHOTO YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE?

If you have photos of natural or human-designed beauty you’d like to see on our Instagram page or website, please send them to me at jodg@comcast.net.   Include a quote about beauty or a caption you’d like to see with your photo!  

You can find our website at www.andbeautyforall.org and our Instagram page at _andbeautyforall.

 Also, check (and LIKE) our Facebook page!

Professional photographer Jennifer Derrick Adams will also be helping us out.  She is currently promoting a powerful film about the destruction of beautiful birds.  Albatross was directed by acclaimed visual artist Chris Jordan, and shows us the horrible impact of plastic pollution, which is as deadly as it is ugly.  You can watch it here.



 
INVOLVE YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!

And in Golden, Colorado, Teen Services Librarian Brittany Dolezal is helping us develop a template program for libraries all over the country to promote a focus on community partnerships for beauty.  We see libraries as a perfect venue to engage communities in And Beauty for All day and the campaign, which is a non-partisan effort to make America more beautiful and to understand the value of beauty in promoting fairness, generosity, tolerance, health, social connection and sustainable environmental behaviors.

Libraries are increasingly focused not solely on being a source for lending books, but a center for community outreach and engagement.  Libraries can partner with many other community institutions—schools, businesses, environmental organizations, urban planners, garden clubs, city and county government, Scouting organizations, parks and recreation departments and others to promote community connection and engagement through attention to beauty.

•    If planning time permits, your library could celebrate a week or more of Beauty around the time of And Beauty for All Day (October 2nd).  Those efforts might include:
•    An adult books exhibit featuring books about beauty found in the library, with a focus on where to find local beauty.
•    A similar exhibit for Young Adults and Teens.
•    Evening presentations about Scenic Trails and Rivers to honor the 50th anniversary of the National Scenic Trails and Wild and Scenic Rivers Acts.  There are 208 Wild and Scenic Rivers in the US and 60,000 miles of national trails.  Do you have any near you?  Are there more candidates where you live?
•    A high school essay contest on a subject such as “How can we make America more beautiful?” sponsored by a local business.
•    A juried photography exhibit—display beautiful photographs of your town or nearby wonders!
•    A concert featuring songs about beauty, including singalongs of America the Beautiful and This Land is Your Land.
•    A survey to determine how your local residents view beauty and what they think can be done to make their community more beautiful.
•    Partnerships with local media to do stories about local beautification efforts. 
•    A city proclamation endorsing And Beauty for All Day and committing your community to greater beautification efforts.  See https://www.andbeautyforall.org/new-page-3/ 
•    The number of ideas are limited only by planning time and resources.  None should be expensive, and the activity is likely to lead to wider citizen appreciation of the library.   See https://www.andbeautyforall.org/simple-things-you-can-do/ 
•    It may be possible to find business or foundation grants to carry out this project.



 
Please consider doing something to celebrate AND BEAUTY FOR ALL DAY in your community and try to involve your library—and community schools too, if you can!
CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE AND HAVE FRIENDS SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!

Please encourage friends to sign up for our newsletter on our web page www.andbeautyforall.org 

I’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR IDEAS

As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, And Beauty for All isn’t growing as quickly as we’d hoped.  We need financial support and more members. But step by step it IS growing, and more people are finding out about us.  For now, we hope to create some community models that others can emulate, and we need your help—and your ideas.  Please send those to me and we’ll include them on FB and our website.   Beauty won’t be won overnight, but I believe we are headed in the right direction.  Thanks for all that you do.

SAVE THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND!

And finally, write to your members of Congress and urge them to reauthorize and appropriately fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, by far the best method that communities have had to fund parks development, open space protection and beautification projects across the US since it was originally passed in 1965.  The Act must be reauthorized by September 30th or it will disappear and so will an important source of beautification support.  The Act has strong bi-partisan support and the reauthorization bill is co-sponsored Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Richard Burr (R-NC).  It is being held up in the House by Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah.  Please encourage immediate reauthorization.  

WRITE TO US

We’d like to include letters from readers in the newsletter. Email yours to me at jodg@comcast.net. 

For the Beauty of the Earth!
John de Graaf
jodg@comcast.net




Copyright © 2018 AND BEAUTY FOR ALL, All rights reserved.


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