River Journeys Podcast

I found home. It was there all along. It wasn’t a place with an address. It was a place in my imagination. I only needed to find it. Arts and crafts gave me some of the tools to bring it to life. I understood at last what John Keats meant:

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination — what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not.

It exists. Look in the night sky when the moon isn’t full. It is there, waiting.

Earthshine.

***

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

I came to think that art is exactly not what religion is. That it’s not about absolutes and it has to do with the condition of being human, which is not ever to be able to deal with absolutes. We live in a world of doubts, a world of uncertainties, a world of ironies.

—Kirk Varnedoe (1946–2003), Professor of the History of Art at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey

The 20th century saw the birth of a quiet revolution in western thought. There are challenges to find new ways of thinking and doing in all fields. Those at the end of the Middle Ages and Renaissance didn’t know what they were in the middle of because the modern era had just begun. It is over now, but we can barely see the outlines of a new framework.

What is clear is that instead of a deterministic predict-and-control system, biology’s open systems model is here. Gone is the certainty of laws and uniform relations. Alternative patterns and multiple interpretations are the basis for constructing meaning.

John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, is a visual artist, designer, computer engineer, and former professor at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says, “We are learning to look at objects not in isolation, but within the context of everything that surrounds them — how they fit into the entire fabric of society.”

Despite the software that makes creativity seem easy, he says, “The truth is, creativity doesn’t come easy. It comes hard. It demands discipline and knowledge, and application.”

***

In this turbulent environment, it is easy for tiny temporary single-issue groups to form and re-form at high speed, looking for ways to leverage their particular issue. Consider the case of Anton Drexler, a railroad machinist in 1919. He headed a tiny fringe group in Munich. At its first public meeting 111 people attended. The 30-minute speaker: Adolf Hitler.

There are many explanations for Hitler’s rise, but thinking of the chaos of non-linear systems, two things are clear: pressure from outside carries more weight, and positive feedback creates snowball effects. People don’t think for themselves.

***

Few people suggest arts and crafts as preparation for anything relevant in dangerous times. They are. A good example is scientist, artist, and writer David Carroll. Trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at Tufts, he is best known — besides winning a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 2006 — for the five books he’s written and illustrated about turtles, natural history, and his life. “Following the Water” was a 2009 finalist for the National Book Award. The drawings are beautiful, the writing visual, the science compelling.

“What good is it to be alive on earth and never come to know at least one place?” he asks in the 2009 book. “We don’t even try to know it with our senses, much less with our minds and spirits.” Carroll was trained to see — parts and wholes. He helps others do the same.

I wasn’t thinking of profound shifts in large systems when I began my long affair with arts and crafts. My focus was narrow — home. The more I learned, the more I undertook, the more tools I used, the wider the world became. I saw how elements combine to create unity. By making things. By recognizing the whole is bigger than the parts.

William Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Arts and crafts gave me many more means to understand, interact, appreciate life. More tools.

It has been a way to gather hopes, plans, colors, shapes. To leave something for the tomorrow we cannot see. A story.

“Once upon a time, there was a home…”

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I am lost in a snowstorm. One of my companions assures me that he can see lights in the distance and that there is a village. But it is only a delusion, which we believe because we choose to do so.

—Tolstoy

There were three distinct reasons I knew I wasn’t in a San Francisco restaurant. The single question was which was most important.

The first was the wooden boxes stamped “AMMUNITION” lining the corridor to the dining room. “Dining room” didn’t quite fit, unless scarred floors, metal tables, mounted animal heads, and a makeshift corner bar count.

The second was the menu. Printed across the top it said, “We are truly in the Middle of Nowhere,” which was the name of the 800-acre “Resort for the Outdoor Enthusiast” surrounded by hundreds more acres of corn and soybeans where we were. A map on the reverse side underscored the claim. No towns in sight. No freeways. The address: Highway WW, Harris, Missouri. The telephone number: 660-794-LOST. Many San Francisco restaurants have names you can’t pronounce, much less understand. “The Middle of Nowhere” was in the middle of nowhere. They got that right.

The food choices ran to fried. Fried chicken fingers. Fried spicy pickles. Fried cauliflower. Fried gizzards. Featured specialties — all beef. Roasts. Steaks. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Ham and beans cost $4.00. Mac and cheese $1.50. Many San Francisco restaurants charge those prices for water.

***

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

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The clinching reason was a practical one. The waiter was wearing a loaded gun. Since we were sitting and he was standing, I was eye to eye with his holster. I’d seen a lot in my life. The move into our current California house was my 26th relocation. Then there were all the business and holiday travel excursions. This was a new experience. Forget the food. Every negative stereotype about guns popped into my head. Ideas are hard to change. My trips to rural Missouri became a high point once I stopped peering through preconceived, rusty biases.

And yet relation appears, / A small relation expanding like the shade / Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill.

—Wallace Stevens, “Connoisseur of Chaos”

Jill Kinmont Boothe was a U.S. champion skier when she graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1955. The issue was still on the newsstands when she crashed during a race. A broken neck paralyzed her. She died February 9, 2012, at 75. Her life became a role model for the tenacious pursuit of altered dreams.

She learned to use her neck and shoulder muscles to write and paint, studied German and English at UCLA, and was a teacher for three decades. In 1975 she was the subject of a film, “The Other Side of the Mountain.” Everyone confronts obstacles, though most not as daunting as Boothe’s. Some, like her, overcome them. Many more do not. Those that do are a privilege to know. A crew of painters — house painters — showed me.

Courage. Not on the ski slopes. At home.

***

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

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Home ownership is trench warfare against decay. The house always wins. After 16 years of benign neglect, ours was looking shabby. The to-do list grew longer — torn screens, cracked cement, broken appliances. Peeling gutters were the last straw. It was time to paint, patch, punch up the place.

Our experience with contractors ran the gamut from talented to terrifying. On one end were the unemployed history graduates who parlayed building skills learned from their fathers into an unexpected career. At the other end was the seemingly friendly giant who tore up our yard in a landscaping project and then disappeared. The place looked like an enormous burial ground for voracious mutant rodents for months. We figured our batting average was a little under 50 percent for good work, on time, and within budget.

The peeling gutters evolved into an expansive project — outside, inside, doors, trim — everything nailed down got painted. A rotating three-man, sometimes four-man crew was on site for a month. Their English language skills ranged from little to none. The company, Final Coat Painting, advertised “professional application and finishes.” The owner spent several hours studying the house. “We’ll spend the first week getting ready,” he said. “Washing, sanding, filling cracks, masking.” I interviewed four companies. He was the only one who talked as much about preparation as painting. I had learned through many failed projects and mediocre school lessons preparation makes the difference — in art, in teaching, in everything. They got the job.

Dressed in white, the men arrived on time, worked hard, treated their tools with respect, tidied up every night. They cleaned their brushes as carefully as I cleaned mine. Rooms were dismantled. Reassembled. Plastic covered everything. The place looked like a rock concert aftermath. Light fixtures drooped, furniture huddled together, windows disguised. I was fascinated.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained NOT when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

No silence is as uncomfortable for a teacher as the space between question and answer. We imagine our discussion starters will lead to waving hands as students jump in, eager and prepared. When that doesn’t happen, most of us answer our own questions. Research says we wait less than a second when we’d get better answers if we waited between three and seven. Seven seconds? I wasn’t willing to risk it. Seven seconds in a high school classroom is an invitation to chaos. I asked and answered so many of my own questions I felt like an actor playing twins — first one personality, then another. Lindsey Lohan reprising the Hayley Mills role in “The Parent Trap” had nothing on me. The routine left me exhausted, students bored observers.

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

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I had two problems. First was the idea that an easy question with quick answers was learning. It’s not. It’s recall — something useful but different. The second was my aversion to empty space. After too many years of lessons that looked like game show preparation, through trial and error my questions improved. I stopped asking for short, recall responses in favor of those that required actual thinking.

A math teacher helped me with the space problem.

Part Five***EARTHSHINE

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always the something you were after.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

—Horace Mann, 1796–1859

The door to the cramped office was locked. The appointment card read 3 p.m. The wall clock in the waiting area said 3:10. We knocked. With a jerk, it flew open. A man stepped out. Dressed in a black suit, white shirt, pale tie, he looked out of place amid the careless exuberance of a college campus.

“Come in,” he said with a reassuring, jovial smile. “Sorry about the locked door. Human resources rules, you know. Let’s start. You have an hour. Don’t want time to get away.”

He slid his business card across the table: “Retirement Planning.”

The computer behind him ticked off the minutes like a basketball scoreboard clock. He had questions. “What do you need?” “What is essential?” “How much time remains?” The first two were easy. The last unanswerable.

Sixty minutes later we made our way across campus in the gathering gloom to the car. Where had the time gone? Not the hour, the decades. I found myself thinking about Mrs. Merrifield’s lamp.

***

I was 22 years old. It was our first apartment. The previous tenant, a gentle white-haired woman, was moving to a retirement home. She left behind one table lamp in the center of the living room floor. Attached was a note in a spidery hand. “Consider this a gift.”

The lamp was like Mrs. Merrifield herself — the green and gold base worn and faded, the shade not quite level. But it worked. It was the first household item we owned. Years passed. More lamps appeared. Mrs. Merrifield’s gift, outclassed and obsolete, ended up in the trash.

According to the black suit, the things we accumulated might be difficult. A minefield to manage. To maintain. I didn’t think so. Material things aren’t the problem. Knowing when to let go is the problem. I learned that from painting. Time was another story.

***

I acquired a large collection of books and magazines on arts and crafts over the years. The china ones often begin with lists — “Materials Used for Painting on Porcelain.” What follows are 40 or so items before they get to kiln requirements. Catalogues offer as many as 60 different brushes. Hundreds of colors. Thousands of blank objects to paint.

China shows and exhibitions feature earnest sellers offering a dizzy array of items “painters can’t do without.” I ended up with potions, bottles, boxes, tools I couldn’t identify, much less use. Vendors extolled the virtues of one color “house” over another.

I bought vials from many. Soon I had 14 rose shades, 20 reds, 19 browns, even six grays. I couldn’t keep track. Lugging my supplies to class took several trips.

***

After painting for some years I stumbled on an instructional video on the internet by Barbara Duncan. Duncan, a world-famous oil as well as china painter, was demonstrating “peace roses.” What surprised me was her palette. Nine colors. She mixed everything from them. She used three brushes — a squirrel shader with a flat square top, a long thin scroller, and a small berry brush. “Of course, these take practice,” she said. “Don’t be discouraged. Keep on.” She was talking about roses. I was thinking about tools.

I reduced my painting supplies by half. It was easier to carry, to choose, to create, to clean up. I experimented. I improvised. I deviated from suggested design palettes.

***

Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, wrote his famous “The Cat in the Hat” with 236 words after reading a 1954 article in Life Magazine asking why children’s stories were so complicated. Afterwards, his publisher, Bennett Cerf, bet him $50 he couldn’t write a story with 50 words. Cerf lost. Geisel wrote “Green Eggs and Ham.” It remains one of the four best-selling children’s books in the world. Less became more.

Michael Masterson and Malcolm Gladwell are contemporary writers about achievement. Masterson says it takes at least 1,000 hours of practice to get past incompetence in anything. At 5,000 hours one becomes competent. He agrees with Gladwell’s assertion in “The Outliers” — mastery comes after 10,000 hours.

2010 marked 10 years of china painting. Ten years: to borrow from Pascal, nearly nothing in relation to infinity, nearly everything in relation to nothing. By Masterson and Gladwell’s reckoning I am a little more than halfway to competence as a china painter.

How much time do we have left? The man in the black suit, surrounded by actuarial tables and charts, couldn’t be sure. Nor could his locked door keep time from slipping away like pale winter sun on a cloudy afternoon.

Sort. Simplify. Substitute. Good advice for painting. For writing. For the material world. Time is different. There will never be enough.

Artists and writers don’t stop time. They do make it easier to see it. With fewer tools I concentrate on what I am painting, not what I am painting with. I waste less time rummaging for lost items. I’ve gained more — time to revisit favorite subjects. Reread favorite books. My paint box is lighter. My house is cleaner.

A man in black asked questions. A painter had some answers.

Reduce. Restrict. Refine.

A poet had the rest:

The painter Harlan Hubbard said / That he was painting Heaven when / The places he painted merely were / The Campbell or the Trimble County / Banks of the Ohio, or farms / And hills where he had worked or roamed: / A house’s gable or roofline / Rising from a fold in the hills / Trees bearing snow, two shanty boats / At dawn, immortal light upon / The flowing river in its bends.

And these were Heavenly because / He never saw them clear enough / To satisfy his love, his need / To see them all again, again.

—Wendell Berry, “Sabbath XV, 2005”

River Journeys is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The damp snapping wind ices the bones / through to marrow.

Puddles from silver rain earlier in the week / create a chain of lakes / along the moss-edged cement sidewalk — / a mottled white ribbon / stained with silhouettes of / dying leaves like dusty chalk outlines / at a murder scene.

Soon their shadows disappear as more / and more descend, burying the decayed / charcoal shapes beneath soggy piles, / as though remembering summer’s splendid / verdant canopy is too painful to recall.

The stern old trees rise from the / blotchy grass, shaking their black / limbs like fists against the cold / bitter blue sky.

Canadian geese peck at fallen brown / apples near the sleek granite building. / Winter is stalking the campus.

Autumn begins with the same three / colors: green landscape, yellow / leaves falling through a / gray afternoon.

—Notes from Ann Arbor, 2009

River Journeys is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The sky was as Prussian blue as Potsdam could require, but it was yet more like that lavish and glowing use of the color which a child extracts from a shilling paint box.

—G.K. Chesterton

It was a destination birthday party — an important birthday — a 50th birthday. Winding along the rural roads of Sonoma County on a sunny afternoon, we saw countryside dotted with shabby cottages, mom and pop businesses, roadside vegetable stands. Wide swaths of vineyards crisscrossed the landscape like giant checkerboard lines.

Down a bumpy dusty narrow lane a house emerged out of the hillside. A beautiful, elegant Craftsman, it should have been out of place amid its more modest neighbors, but it wasn’t. The wraparound deck, filled with revelers, looked across the valley to distant hills wearing rows of grape vines like exotic jewelry. Other guests wandered the grounds. This must be how Gatsby felt when he looked across the water, I thought. Fitzgerald’s world had its own surprises — so did the house before me.

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

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The host, the husband of the man whose birthday we were celebrating, took us on a tour. The colors were warm, subtle, muted. Both men had demanding jobs. I knew enough about color to know these had been chosen to create the restful, quieting influence browns and greens elicit. The sightlines and room dimensions were precise. Turning a corner, I found a spectacular large, exuberant many-colored canvas. Against the measured subdued backdrop it was even more captivating. An attractive woman, wearing the turban that said she was fighting cancer, stood nearby. “Do you like it?” she asked.

“It’s staggering. It looks alive.” I said.

“It is alive,” she smiled. “I should know. I painted it.”

Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and color, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end of the day.

— Winston Churchill

Between the end of my discouraging high school principalship and before the Chapman University appointment the following spring, I decided I needed one thing — anonymity. Something meaningful I could do alone. Alone was key. No groups, no committees, no project teams, no political wrangling. An art class might be the answer. I was wrong. Not wrong about the class. Wrong about what I needed.

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

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The china painting session began in January. Pulling into the crowded Community Center parking lot, I snagged the last slot, farthest from the building. The rain and angry gray slashing clouds turned noon into night. Soaking wet and grumpy, I ducked into the lobby. Opposite the glass entry doors, the Center’s fluorescent lights crisscrossed the art room ceiling like a giant tic-tac-toe game, piercing the gloom. Dripping my way across the floor, I hesitated in the doorway. The smell of paints, alcohol, oils, and turpentine swirled out, taunting. Should I go in? Go home?

A break in the clouds sent shafts of light streaming through the skylight above onto tables below stacked with brushes, rags, design books, and blank china plates. A tiny Chinese lady looked up from her seat. “Come in,” she said. “There’s a place right here.” Seven words. Simple. Short. Sincere. Stepping inside, I thought to myself, “If this doesn’t work out, it’s only eight weeks.”

“I’m new. I’m not sure what to do.”

“I’ll help you,” she said. “And the teacher will too. You’ll see.”

***

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When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

Sometimes we don’t realize what we’ve learned until we’ve already known it for a very long time. Writer Ann Patchett says:

Coming back to something can help you see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you to another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which, aided by several detours—long hallways and unforeseen stairwells—eventually puts you in the place you are now.

For me, one of those “somethings” was a tole project.

***

The most exhausting part of motherhood is the fact that for 99.9 percent of the various needs, you can’t simply decide to “opt out,” or even put them off until later; a child preparing to run into traffic takes precedence over anything else. It is the loss of the smallest measures of mental freedom and self-containment, the ability to pay attention to oneself when needed at that moment(!), that carries the most impact on our lives, energy, and sense of self.

At home, I painted in the hours before dawn, before daytime demands. As I worked, the room changed from black to gray as Oregon’s oft-hidden sun announced a new day beginning. On Thursdays, a widow neighbor watched the children. I took a paint-filled tackle box to the University library. Using Jim’s faculty status to reserve a small study room the size of a closet, I would set up my paints and lose myself in a landscape or still life. It was a routine very similar to my Whittier study carrel days. The difference was at Whittier I looked at the paintings tucked around me; in Oregon I painted them myself.

***

The National Society of Tole and Decorative Painters held an optional certification examination once a year. Submitted projects were evaluated on a long list of criteria, from brush control, to composition, to color choices, to wood preparation and finishing. I decided to apply. I spent months on my submission. The subject, chosen by the association, was a formal still life. A copper cylindrical vase with daffodils, daisies, and poppies cascading out stands on a shadowy table. To the left grapes, strawberries, and a ripe peach surround a small oval-decorated box. Muted yellows and reds filter through the background. I imagined it sat in a prosperous colonial dining room. It came to life in the bowels of the university library.

I wrapped the 11-by-17” piece as though it were glass instead of wood and sent it off to New York. Two hundred points was the qualifying score. I had been painting for some years and knew it was the best piece I had done. I was sure I would qualify. If there was anything I was good at, it was taking tests. When the critique arrived some weeks later, I tore the envelope open. “We regret to inform you…,” it began. As I scanned the evaluation grid, phrases floated by, “needs more contrast... deepen shadows...doesn’t shimmer.” My score: 188. Close. Not close enough.

***

I jammed the project in the back of the winter coat closet—too discouraged to look at it for weeks. Never mind all I had learned in the process—the happy hours I spent in classes and in the library carrel, the people I met. It is disappointing even now to remember how disappointed I was then. I wasn’t as resilient as life requires. Time taught other lessons that made this failure seem insignificant. But not then.

Dave Henderson was a Boston Red Sox backup player in 1986. He hit a home run that defeated the Angels in the seventh game and got the Sox to the World Series, where they lost to the New York Mets. Later Henderson said, “I actually won a World Series in 1989, but the one I think about most is ‘86. It hurts more to lose than it feels good to win.” Yes, it does.

***

I continued painting and began teaching a beginning evening class at a large local craft supply store. Joyce Steece, the wife of another professor, was my first student. An English teacher, she was like me, not teaching in Oregon, looking for ways to keep learning. We talked about breaking painting into manageable parts and how similar that was to teaching someone to compose an essay. Before I completed a second submission, we left the Northwest. The Steeces returned to USC and Joyce to a long career, as did I. I often began my lessons on expository writing by painting a simple apple for class. It helped my students. I wonder if she did the same.

Today the colonial still life hangs on the wall. It looks the same as it did three decades ago—but the young woman who painted it is gone. I occasionally study it through the lens of the present. Three things stand out:

* Although I met the technical requirements, the painting looks stiff. Still lifes aren’t still. My porcelain teacher says, “Make your work sing!” Though my project wasn’t porcelain, it wasn’t singing either. It was humming.

* The time I spent with other amateur painters was as important as the painting. After all, amateur descends from “amator,” which is Latin for lover. Throughout much of its history it has also been used to refer to people who engage in an activity for love rather than money. Having enjoyed community concert bands and local theaters that dot the landscape, I know how useful a role the serious amateur of all kinds plays in community life.

* Most important, just because things hadn’t gone the way I planned didn’t mean they had gone all wrong. I became a better teacher and a better painter than I would have otherwise been. And because I was so unaccustomed to failure in competitive settings, it was a step toward becoming a better human being… or at least a more compassionate one.

***

Living has taught me, since those days, that there is a balance between getting what you want and being open to the things that actually come your way. There are many more important challenges than painting certifications—but in its time and place it was important to me. Today I think certification would have been terrible. Life is not about getting certified. It is about remaining curious, staying open, trying not just one day…but every day. The real trick is to let life, with all its missteps and regrets, be always more alluring and mysterious than its end.

“It hurts more to lose than it feels good to win.” Yes, it does.

The 12 points I didn’t earn gave me a chance to rethink something I thought I knew. The quiet cylindrical vase became a touchstone. When family issues loomed large, or teaching became overwhelming, I would sometimes stand in front of the wooden picture and think.

From a painting perspective, my still life is quiet… barely “humming,” in fact. From a life perspective, I hear it singing. It’s a melody I recognize.

I wrote it myself.

River Journeys is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.