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Photo courtesy of David de Graaf
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AND BEAUTY FOR ALL:
JANUARY 2019 NEWSLETTER
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Contents
INTRODUCTION
A LETTER FROM OUR NEW EDITOR
NEW BLOG POST BY TIM PALMER
KARA'S CORNER
BOOK REVIEWS
REACHING OUT
JOHN'S APOLOGY
WINTER WISHES
Friends,
Happy New Year, friends and supporters! With the holiday season, it’s been a bit quiet since the last newsletter, but we’ve got some big plans underway. I continue to hear from more folks interested in this campaign, including some from other countries. My hope is to launch an International Day of Beauty through the United Nations to call attention to beauty’s capacity to increase concern for the earth and for each other—to heal the wounds of mindless industrialism and consumerism and the wounds of hate and violence. Let me know if you’d like to help develop that idea.
Our biggest (and best!) news is that this is the last newsletter I will edit. My duties, except for writing a monthly letter as part of the newsletter, are being taken over by University of Minnesota—Morris professor emeritus Vicki Graham, who has some great ideas about jump-starting the newsletter and our movement. I’ll keep my comments short so can read her excellent letter of introduction below. Welcome, Vicki!!! I know you are about to take us to the next level!
I’m headed to California next week to participate in Nevada City’s wonderful Wild and Scenic Film Festival, where I’m sure to see beauty expressed in film. After that, I’ll visit the small town of Colusa, California, where the director of the Colusa County Resource Conservation District will show me around and introduce to others who may be interested in a beauty initiative there. Then it’s off to Vallejo to start a new film project about the wonderful way that city is using beauty and nature to build community and develop a thriving, sustainable economy. If you haven’t already read about what Vallejo is doing, here’s a closer look.
In February, I’ll be meeting with a group of recreation and leisure faculty members (from all around the country) in Greenville, South Carolina, with hopes that they will begin AND BEAUTY FOR ALL initiatives with some of their students.
A final note, I just read a wonderful book, BEAUTY AND THE SOUL by Italian psychologist Piero Ferrucci, who lives in the beautiful city of Florence. It’s a deep look at how much beauty matters for both our physical and psychological health, filled with wonderful stories from Dr. Ferrucci’s patients. It’s a gem. If you’re looking for a pick me up in the gray of winter, this is one not to miss.
I’m honored to have this new piece about BEAUTY AND HAPPINESS published by both PR for People and Common Dreams.
To a beautiful 2019!
John de Graaf, national coordinator
Photo courtesy of Banna Bazzarie
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A LETTER FROM OUR NEW EDITOR
New Year’s Greetings!
from Vicki Graham, your new newsletter editor
“And Beauty for All”: two months ago, these words shimmered on my computer screen as I read the October newsletter, forwarded to me by a good friend. The newsletter led me to the “And Beauty for All” website, and I was hooked, delighted by the photos, the blogs, and the sensitive and joyful philosophical explanations of the power and necessity of beauty in our lives. I had found a place where beauty is revered not just for itself, but for its life affirming gifts.
Inspired by the “And Beauty for All” project, I sent John a collection of my own beauty poems which he shared on the website in November. A few weeks later I queried John about his search for a volunteer editor. After a delightful telephone conversation with him, I took on this job, grateful to be able to contribute to a project I know is essential to the health and wellbeing of all life on earth.
For as long as I can remember, I have had a reverence for beauty—not just in nature and in art, but in random day to day moments. When I first moved to West Central Minnesota from Berkeley, California to take a job as assistant professor of English at the University of Minnesota, Morris, I was plunged into an alien landscape. Not wild prairie as I had imagined, but miles and miles of flat fields of soy beans and feed corn. It took time for me to learn to find beauty in a place where the only wild seemed to be the weather.
Now, many years later, a line from a poem by Marianne Moore sums up for me the wind-chiseled expanses of snow and the pale gold, crooked, elbowing stalks of cattails I see at the edge of this prairie town where I still live half the year: “This porcupine-quilled, complicated starkness--this is beauty.”
This prairie, this complicated starkness, is the beauty I have been given, and on this cold January day, as I watch the snow fall, as the world around me turns white and black and grey with a few flecks of sepia in the trees and dry grasses, I am reminded again of Rachel Carson and her infinite reverence for the beauties of the natural world. At the end of The Sense of Wonder, she writes, “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.”
Yes, there is assurance and beauty in the cycles of nature. Yes, spring will come. But first, there is winter. And so, my New Year’s wish for myself, and for all of us, is that wherever we are, and however harsh the landscape or the season, we dwell fully in the place we have been given, recognize its beauty, and promise ourselves to protect that beauty for all the people of the world, for all time.
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NEW BLOG POST BY TIM PALMER
John’s note: I’ve been blown away time and again by Tim Palmer’s books with their environmental message, lyrical writing and stunning photographs. Tim is one of our advisors and his entire life has been committed to protecting and honoring America’s beauty. He also introduced me to our new editor, Vicki Graham. We were honored to receive this new blog post for our website from Tim. Check it out!
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KARA'S CORNER
Besides our posts shared on the And Beauty for All Instagram page, we would love to see YOUR photos of beauty. We are a community organization and, as such, really strive to build a community around beauty. Simply include the hashtag #andbeautyforall in the captions of your Instagram posts so that other beauty lovers can find your photos and to see your posts shared onto our website on the Take Action section. Or, if you would like to see your photos shared on our Instagram page please do not hesitate to reach out via email or send us a DM on Instagram.
All photos we share are sent to us by volunteers, so we cannot share images of beauty without YOUR contributions. Thank you to Banna Bazzarie for regularly sending us breathtaking photos and helping us spread the word about beauty!
Photo courtesy of Banna Bazzarie
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BOOK REVIEWS
We’re looking for book reviews as a section of the newsletter and website. Kara will be writing one soon about the book THE NATURE FIX by Florence Williams. Let us know if you’d like to write one for us.
REACHING OUT
Vicki will be reaching out to some of you personally and directly in the next few months. We really do want your ideas and contributions and we are forming an executive committee for monthly conference calls. Let us know if you’d like to be part of that. So far, about six people are on board.
JOHN'S APOLOGY
I had really hoped to get a survey out to you this month but it was not to be. Look for it in the February newsletter.
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WINTER WISHES
And last, but not least, thank you for reading our newsletter and for sharing in our vision of beauty for all.
We hope you have a wonderful winter season enjoying the beauty brought by Mother Nature this time of the year.
For the Beauty of the Earth!
John de Graaf
jodg@comcast.net
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