Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a (mostly) weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions. (It is a 5 minute read. I hope you enjoy it.)

Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the incredible writer Hollay Ghadery.

Hollay Ghadery is a writer living in small-town Ontario, Canada. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and reviews have been published in various literary journals, including The Malahat Review, Room, Grain, CAROUSEL, and The Fiddlehead. Her personal essays have also appeared on CBC Parents and LadyLatitudes.

I am going to share our conversation with you in just a moment. First, I wanted to tell you a little bit about her debut memoir Fuse, which was published by Guernica Editions (MiroLand) in Spring 2021.

Drawing on her own experiences as a woman of Iranian and British Isle descent, writer Hollay Ghadery dives into conflicts and uncertainty surrounding the bi-racial female body and identity, especially as it butts up against the disparate expectations of each culture. Painfully and at times, reluctantly, Fuse probes and explores the documented prevalence of mental health issues in bi-racial women.

Diane Schoemperlen (Governor General Award winner and author of This is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications) praises the book’s “savage clarity, gorgeous language, and remarkable depth of insight.” And, Nila Gupta, author of The Sherpa and Other Fictions, which was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2009), calls it a “searing account of the impact of toxic masculinity on a vulnerable young girl's psyche.”

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What is engaging your head, heart, and hands? Why?

Climate change is right up there for me. It plays into my [obsessive compulsive disorder]. I have a specific form called existential OCD. Surprisingly, even though climate change is engaging my head, I am not writing much about it.

What I am writing is a collection of flash fiction, called Widow Fantasies, about the use of fantasies, sexual and otherwise, to escape the subjugation we experience, as women, in our everyday lives. [Edited March 2025: You can now buy Widow Fantasies at your favourite indie book shop.] Awhile ago, my therapist recommended an article about how it is normal for women who have been married a long time to dream that they are widows. I read it and realized there are so many women, like me, who are in perfectly good marriages but have these restless fantasies.

The stories are a lot of fun to write. I am looking at the same thing from 70 different perspectives. Every time I think I am tapped out I find another way in. I think a lot about how we are using our time here. Are we ever capable of being happy with one life? (These are the kinds of thoughts that take up time in my brain. It could be the existential OCD.)

As a lesbian in a good marriage, I think this would resonate with women who aren’t heterosexual as well.

Yes! I want the collection to be inclusive. Because I am biracial, I include a lot of biracial characters. And all the stories take place in rural settings because I live in a rural community, in an old schoolhouse.

I have a lesbian character in one of the stories. I am trying to approach it sideways. I am a firm believer in not writing from perspectives that aren’t mine. The story I’m writing isn’t going well. It is about an 80-year-old woman who watches TikTok for the first time and gets attracted to hot lesbian TikTok videos. I’ve had two octogenarians tell me to drop it.  

There is a tension between being inclusive and not appropriating others’ voices.

Yes.

What other feedback have you received from early readers?

My readers think Widow Fantasies is gothic.

This seems like a good segue into the next question.

What artists or works of art have had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

One of the most defining writers for me was Daphne Du Maurier. She wrote really dark romances. The Birds, which I’ve never read. Rebecca, which I read and loved as a teenager. I also love Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. That story never ends but feels complete. I find it reassuring that something can be complete but remain unanswered.

I remember seeing Rodin’s sculpture The Kiss. It looks like the man is in control but then you see that the man’s toes are curled under and the woman is really relaxed. The balance of power is reversed.

Oh, and there’s Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady. In the first part of the poetry collection, he writes from the perspective of the imaginary Black man created by Susan Smith as the abductor and murderer of her two young sons (when, in fact, she drowned them in a lake in 1994). It’s completely mind blowing. A gorgeous read.

I noticed the first three books are all gothic.

Ha! That’s why when someone says to me “Your writing is really gothic,”  my first thought is “Really?” Byt then, I think, “Of course.”  It all gets a little bit dark. There is always the hint of threat. I live with that threat. It is the nature of living with a mental illness.

There are so many good people working to transform themselves and our world. Who would you like to lift up?

As an Iranian woman, I want to amplify the work of Yara Leadership Society.

Yara Leadership Society* is committed to identifying Iranian-Canadian success stories and is passionate about celebrating and promoting women leaders who will serve as role models and provide inspiration and leadership guidance to the Iranian-Canadian community. By showcasing these leaders, Yara also aims to highlight the contribution of the Iranian-Canadian community nationally and globally. Yara engages both women and men in the pursuit of its vision: lead together, strong together.

Support Yara Leadership Society

Locally, I also want to lift up Ontario Shores Foundation for Mental Health Sciences, which is working to address stigma and making rehabilitation and mental health care more accessible. I was shocked recently. I was talking to someone who wanted to get a family member into rehab, and it was so difficult for them. Intervention is so critical and it should not cost $20k to get support for your family when they need it.

Founded in 2009, Ontario Shores Foundation for Mental Health was created to raise funds, and support for Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences (Ontario Shores). Our goal is to help bring awareness to, and reduce the stigma, surrounding mental illness, and to create hope, for those struggling, through the combined efforts of our team, and the generous support of our donors and community.

Donate to Ontario Shores

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Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a (mostly) weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions. (It is a 10 minute read. I hope you enjoy it.)

Today, I am featuring Joy Munt. I had the good fortune to meet Joy when we were both students at the University of Victoria in the 1990s. Over the years, I have kept track of her and her art career through social media, but nothing compares to finally sitting down and having a conversation with her.

I hadn’t seen Joy since we bumped into each other at Ikea close to 20 years ago (where she was buying props for her day job as a set decorator). It was a delight to finally catch up with her via Zoom last weekend. We talked about art and community and everything in between.

Before I share that interview with you, here’s Joy’s artist statement, which explains how she creates her incredible, multi-layered, large-scale work far better than I could.

My main brush is a power sander. It allows me to approach my landscapes in the matter in which I perceive them, which is a beautiful world of construction, stasis and deterioration and yet somehow polished and smooth.

My paintings are an expression – a distillation – of the impressions made on my psyche by the landscapes around me, whether it be the prairies in which I grew up, the west coast of my adult years or the short time I spent in a large eastern metropolis.

My process is evident in my art; it’s not something I try to hide, use and then discard, or disguise. The techniques and tools I employ – layers of pigment, sanding, scraping back, lettering – are there, exposed in the finished work. The text I use in my pieces is often found on, or inspired by, the text visible on shipping containers, grain elevators, truck, trains; sometimes I use randomly chosen numbers or letters chosen purely for what they bring to the piece graphically or compositionally.

Joy Munt is a visual artist working and living in Vancouver BC.  She attended the University of Victoria (UVic) where she received a BFA in Visual arts with a double major in Sociology and a minor in film studies.  While at UVic she did her directed studies in photography and video installation.  Fred Douglas was her main advisor and his process and way of thinking still affects her art to this day. Joy made the change in her art practice from video to painting around 2004, and over a number of years worked hard at finding her vision in this medium. 

Find Joy online at www.joymunt.com and on Instagram.

What is engaging your head, heart, and hands? Why?

Chuck Close used to say “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” I like that. If you just sit around all the time waiting for inspiration, you're never going to create anything.

During the first part of the pandemic, however, I had time, but no money. The film industry in Vancouver dried up for seven months. I had no work. No income. I wasn’t creating anything because I didn’t have supplies. And I felt guilty. I wondered, am I a real artist?

Now, I am coming out of this dark space, and I've had an epiphany. I’ve realized I have to work on a large scale. I have to work on all the paintings in a series at once. That's my process. It is how it all comes together. But it takes money.

I did a residency in March. I got ideas for six different series, but I didn’t finish anything solid. I want to do them all, but they cost money. Like, I have 10 still lives designed but they are all photo transfers. Each photo transfer costs $60.

So that's sort of where I am right now. I feel this pressure now that I've shown my work. I feel like I can't walk away or stay away too long because it doesn't look good. You know? It’s been about three years since my last solo show.

There is a tension between making money and making art. You need the money, but the job takes away from the time and energy you have to create.

I don’t mind the long hours. When I was prepping for my last show, I had four months to get ready. I worked three days a week on a film, and every single day that I wasn’t working in film I prepped for the show. I didn’t take a day off for four months, and I loved it. But it cost me $5,000 to get my paintings to Okotoks for the show. Public art galleries don’t really try to sell your work so shows like that end up costing you money. They look great on your CV, but you are out completely.

I always struggle to sell my art because I don’t paint small. And so many people are scared to buy art.

Why do you think they are afraid?

It is a big purchase in a lot of cases. I think they're scared to make a statement or to make the wrong choice (art galleries used to be so snobby).

A friend showed me the work of an artist she likes. I said, you should introduce yourself. Go to her studio. She’s like, what would I say?

You’d say hi. I like your work. Artists love to talk about their work. We know you might not be there to buy something, and that’s okay. I love doing walkthroughs. My favourite part of an art show is the art talk. I always encourage people to touch my work—it’s smooth because I power sand it so much. You usually can’t do that in a gallery so if the artist is right there saying, hey, feel free to touch this, that’s 30 layers of paint, power sanded, they get so excited. They get to be part of it.

What artists or works of art have had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

This question is kind of the easiest and the hardest for me to answer. The first influence would be my directed studies with Fred Douglas. He became my teacher and my friend.

You know, I am dyslexic, right? And I’m old. When I was in grade four, they talked about learning disabilities, but it was the 1970s. No one really did anything about it. I always managed to get by. (For me, it's just words. I don't read a lot because I'm a slow reader. I skim a lot.) When I entered the visual arts program at UVic, when I walked through the door, I thought, this is my language. Conceptual art, abstract thinking, this is my language. There was a moment of awareness like, oh, someone speaks like me. It’s like someone showed me a new alphabet.

Fred taught me not to force things together. We talked about juxtaposition a lot. I did video installation and montage with him. That experience still affects my work to this day. Rather than trying to contrive or force things together, I'm always sort of playing and that's sort of the biggest influence he had. He also taught me how to look at work and analyze it.

I love Robert Rauschenberg’s combines. I still can't get enough of looking at those. Or Louise Nevelson. I love her.

Honestly, I've learned more from the BBC’s art documentaries than I ever did in art school.

Except for Fred.

Except for Fred. I just loved his way of thinking. He was so funny, so scattered.

We really bonded over Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. We both connected on that concept of ‘weight.’ How you could just as easily make one decision as another. How we put weight on things. How my video installation was weighty and how it was not. How we struggle over decisions.

Edited Nov. 8, 2021 to add this video on Joy’s favourite Rauschenberg painting.

There are so many good people working to transform themselves and our world. Who would you like to lift up?

I am going to answer the question from my perspective as an artist. The past year and a half has been pretty dark. I’ve felt really isolated. Coming out of the pandemic, I really need to connect with people, to have conversations.

I have a group of people, artists, I meet with once a month. There are just four of us now. I want more people in the group. You just can’t make art in a bubble. You must get that, as a writer. You need conversations. Not just conversations at an art opening when you are sipping wine, although I do like free wine and art openings. Don’t get me wrong. But we need to ask: what inspired you today? Did you see that documentary or like that show? I feel that's what's lacking right now.

I think what you're saying is powerful. Creating and holding those spaces for conversation. That's something we can all do, and it doesn't necessarily cost anything.

We all need to find our people. People we can talk to. And, for me, it doesn't have to be another visual artist. Maybe it's a writer. I know there are people trying to create that environment, to bring artists together. I think that is brilliant. I mean, I wouldn’t have thought about Kundera today if we weren’t talking.

Can you recommend a group that is bringing people together to have these kinds of conversations?

Yes, Thrive Art Studio is creating a community for artists. I like what they are doing, although their approach isn’t right for me. It is quite structured, and I need something more informal. Like the monthly group that I am part of.

Thanks. I will check it out. I also recommend The Creative Good. I’ve benefitted so much from the community and resources founder Jill Margo has created and continues to nurture.

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Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

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Thank you my friends.

Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

Today, I am introducing you to Annabelle Chvostek, a gifted musician whose songs never fail to transport me out of the everyday into what I can only call the holy now. A place in between. A place where possibility reigns.

Check out the video for “Walls,” the first single off her sixth album, String of Pearls, which was released in 2021 in both stereo and in mono. (The latter production decision informed by the permanent hearing loss she sustained in her left ear following a feedback blast during a sound check in 2008.)

You can read about the song and the video on her website. First, read on to find out what is engaging her head, heart, and hands these days.

Annabelle Chvostek is a Toronto-based artist whose musical achievements range from folk to jazz to indie pop. She has composed music for dance and film, co-written songs with Bruce Cockburn, and was once in the band The Wailin' Jennys. Her work has been nominated for both JUNO and Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Read more about Annabelle Chvostek.

What wicked problem is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now? Why?

I am generally obsessing over some aspect of white supremacist hetero-patriachal capitalism. How is it that it got like this?  And how are we finding our way out of it? 

Two years into the pandemic there are a number of related issues that are grabbing at my heart.  On the most local level, I am living in Toronto, one of many urban centres where our parks have become temporary homes and battlegrounds as houseless people and allies negotiate violent attacks on encampments by police.

Meanwhile, the government has sat on 2.7 billion dollars that was meant for COVID relief in Ontario, and the cops enact militaristic evacuations of encampments that are costing in the millions.  As some organizers have mentioned, imagine what could have been done with that money?  With a little respect, thoughtfulness, listening to the voices of the folks affected, so much of the precarity that pushes people into such stressful conditions could be memory.  

In the wake of the floodgates of empathy that were opened by the murder of George Floyd, towards black people hurt and murdered by police, and now with the unearthed residential school system victims as well as the continuing awfulness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)—there are so many powerful critical voices emerging, and a whole new language around these issues.  

I practice some mindfulness that lets me stay open and process the pain.  Because the truths are brutal and people are needing to feel through things. I want to be a witness. As someone with white privilege I’m being asked to sit with the discomfort, so I do that a lot.  There is a massive outpouring of incredible communication and commentary happening across so many platforms. So for me it’s really a time of listening. I am very lucky to be part of a micro-world that embodies a common humanity amidst diversity. Within my chosen family I get to be grounded in a big love that proves to me every day that another world is possible. It’s incredibly life affirming and joyful. I want to do the work because it’s worth it. Everybody benefits. Together we imagine the way forward.  

What artists or works of art have had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

Right now I’m a bit obsessed with Django Reinhardt, the Sinti Romani guitar player who spawned a worldwide niche of music that started to thrive in Paris in the 1930s.

A lot of my latest album carries a clear Jazz Manouche influence. There’s a wonderful delight that I find in this music, a positivity.  And it also has a very cool cross-cultural through-line, with its close relationship to American jazz, and its connections to South America and Eastern Europe as well.  There’s depth, complexity and intensity to the music.  Plus I love having so much emphasis on the possibilities of acoustic instruments.  But the thing I’m currently digging the most is the joy.  Having that as a bass-line somehow carries all the hard stuff towards something so much more manageable.  

I listened to Django and Grappelli play “Minor Swing” a lot of times when one day it hit me on a whole new level. The exploration, the curiosity, the fun! It’s the dancing part of the revolution.

Playing with these forms has been a great way to turn lament or hardship into something softer – to stay open to the sweetness.  And it gives some bounce, some smile to the determined step.  The music of Django and his collaborators and followers has definitely lifted me these last few years.

There are so many good people working to transform themselves and our world. Who would you like to lift up?

I want to lift up the land defenders and the water protectors: Indigenous warriors who are taking a stand and facing up to the entire backwards system.  As the COP26  UN Climate Change Conference barrels forward, last chance in the minds of many, I do think supporting and following Indigenous action is a key aspect to solving planetary crisis.

One group that I’m following daily is the Tiny House Warriors who are facing off with the Trans Mountain Pipeline, building tiny houses placed strategically along the 518 km Trans Mountain route, and dealing with harassment from ‘Man Camps’ and RCMP every damn day.  On an urgent and tangible level, money can be sent to help pay for legal bills.

Tiny House warriors

Other groups to follow or support:

• Stop Line 3

• Encampment Support Network

• Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction

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Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

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Thank you my friends.

Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

Today, I am introducing you to Rachel Gallaher, who I met several years ago at Hedgebrook. (I meet a lot of good people there, including last week’s guest, Dr. Kristy Leissle.) Rachel has logged a lot of hours (and air miles) researching, writing, and editing for high-end magazines. She also is a wildly gifted creative writer and I hope to see her books gracing bookshop shelves one day soon.

Ready? Meet Rachel.

Rachel Gallaher is an arts and lifestyle writer and editor living in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in the following publications: City Arts, Seattle Bride, Seattle Homes & Lifestyles, Kinfolk, Surface, Seattle Times, Alaska Airlines' Beyond, University of Washington magazine, and the award-winning GRAY (where she is currently Deputy Editor). She is also a major theatre and dance critic in Seattle, writing hundreds of reviews of local, national, and international performing arts companies.

In 2008 Rachel won the Nature of Words Rising Star Creative Writing Competition in the ages 19-25 Fiction category for her story "The Circus." She has received scholarships to retreats through the prestigious Hedgebrook organization, and has two poems published in the 2008 and 2009 editions of the University of Washington's InterSECTIONS interdisciplinary journal. She is also a recipient of the 2015 Folio Magazine 30 Under 30 Award and received the Honorable Mention award in the Arts & Entertainment category of the Society for Features Journalism 2020 Excellence in Features awards for her 2019 cover story “A Modern Medici.”

Rachel’s story “Voice of Resistance,” won the first-place prize in the Society of Professional Journalists Region 10 Excellence in Journalism contest in the category of Magazines: Arts & Culture.

Connect with Rachel on Facebook and Instagram.

What issue engages your head, heart, and hands now?

Autumn is always an interesting, transitional time for me. It’s my favourite season, but it can also leave me feeling down and tired as the days get shorter and darkness comes earlier each week. I am turning 35 next month, and in some ways, it feels like I am ‘behind’ many of my peers who are married, own houses, and having children—all of those things that are ‘expected’ by the time you reach this age. In other ways, I know that I am achieving great things and fortunate to have a career doing what I love (writing).

I have been thinking a lot about what I call the head/heart divide: knowing something intellectually (how dangerous it is to start playing the comparison game when we’re all living in this patriarchal, success-focused societal framework that doesn’t serve a lot of people anyway) and feeling something emotionally (envy that I haven’t hit these so-called landmarks). Jealousy is something that people don’t talk about a lot—it’s framed as a shameful or childish trait. But it’s there on the gamut ofemotions that everyone feels, right next to sadness or joy—and it’s just as valid of an emotion (as long as it doesn’t lead to destructive, vindictive, or dangerous behavior). It’s okay to take time to sit with it and process it rather than just flagging it as ‘bad’ and trying to push it away. I’ve been trying to dig further into my experiences with jealousy through writing, journaling, and having conversations around it. I haven’t had any major revelations yet, but I am convinced that having discussions around things that scare us or experiences that we feel alone in is incredibly important. It can remind us that we’re part of something greater than ourselves and that even though we might feel it at times, that we are, in fact, never alone.

I know that I am right where I am supposed to be in life, but also that comparison is only human—learning to be gentle and forgiving with myself in those moments is the greatest gift I can give myself.

Friends, like Rachel, I believe it is important to talk (or write) about ‘things that scare us or experiences that we feel alone.’ I’d love to hear your thoughts. (But first, read on.)

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What artists or works of art have had a profound impact on how you see the world and your place in it?

During university, I was obsessed with the Russian greats (Tolstoy, Nabokov, Dostoyevsky), and I will always credit them with inspiring within me a true, deep love of literature and complicated, layered storylines. Nabokov knows how to stir up emotion in his readers—I’m a fairly stoic reader, but there is a scene in Pnin where an object that is very important to the main character is broken, and I always tear up when I read that scene. Nabokov is also the master of symbols. Once you learn more about him you realize that when squirrels or butterflies (or any number of items) appear in his work, that it means something deeper than just being a descriptive detail.

I didn’t pick up Elena Ferrante’s work until I was in my mid-30s but reading My Brilliant Friend (and the three books that follow it to make up her Neapolitan Quartet) was a revelation. Never had I come across such a rich and vivid, and most importantly, accurate, depiction of female friendship in all its ebbs and flows, the highs and lows—the competition and support. It was that feeling of, ‘here it is, this, this is what I’ve experienced, and other people are experiencing it too!’ The gorgeous poetry of her prose, the deep layers of emotion and psychological exploration—it truly is a must-read work that is relatable in so many ways.

Lastly, journalist Ariel Levy’s memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply, is a book for the precocious, motivated girls out there who have been told they are ‘too much’ or ‘too ambitious’ or ‘too threatening.’ Levy, who was working at The New Yorker by the time she was in her 30s, built an unconventional life and charged forward with her passions and convictions—and was forced to watch as it all came crumbling down around her. Her ensuing resilience is inspiring, and her deep dive into her own life to investigate the women who ‘want it all’ is as relevant today as it has always been.

Friends, have you read any of these books. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Leave a comment

There are so many good organizations working to transform our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

So many people adopted pets during the pandemic, and now as they transition back into their busy lives, return to the office, etc., quite a few animals are being ‘returned’ or given up as people realize how much work it is to add a pet to a non-quarantine lifestyle.

I would like to lift up the Washington Area Humane Society, which has a no-kill shelter, regular adoptions, a fostering program, and low-cost veterinary services including spaying and neutering. The organization takes in more than 1,000 animals (and investigates more than 300 abuse cases) each year and it is 100% funded by private contributions and donations—any little bit helps. From cats and dogs to rabbits and guinea pigs, all animals are smart, emotionally intelligent, and just want to be loved (and love you back!). It’s traumatizing and confusing for them to be shuffled around from place to place throughout their lives.

The good folks at WAHS (and other no-kill shelters in the area) do all they can to comfort, protect, and rehome these little guys. I would encourage anyone who wants a pet to first think if they can really take in a pet (do they have the time, money, energy, space, patience), and if so, to consider adoption as their first source. Fostering a dog or cat for a few weeks is also a good option and can give you an idea of what it might be like to make a permanent four-legged addition to your home.

Donate to WAHS

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Before you go

Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

Thank you my friends.

Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions. (Apologies for getting this issue out a few days late. I promise; it is worth the wait.)

Today, I am introducing you to Dr. Kristy Leissle (aka @docofchoc). I first encountered her when I attended a virtual webinar she delivered on radical listening in cross-cultural research. I took copious notes, started to look at images differently, listened a little more intently (or tried to), and almost immediately followed her on Instagram. I also reached out to ask if I could feature her here. (Readers, she said “yes.”)

Last week, I had a thoroughly engrossing chat with her care of Zoom. She was in Accra, Ghana and I was at my home in Canada’s Pacific Northwest. I am delighted to share that conversation here with you today.

Ready?

Dr. Leissle is the author of Cocoa, a volume in the Polity “Resources” series. She is creator of the series, “I am a cocoa farmer,” for ConfectioneryNews, which profiles women and men who farm cocoa for a living across sub-Saharan Africa.

She publishes regularly in academic journals, newspapers, and magazines, and contributes to Oxford Analytica Daily Briefs. She is currently researching for her next book, on Africa’s role in the global chocolate industry.

With Moutia Murheb, Dr. Leissle is Co-Founder of the Cocoapreneurship Institute of Ghana, which supports entrepreneurs working at any stage of the cocoa value chain in West Africa.

Her public scholarship has included talks and events at Oxford University, University of Ghana Legon, London School of Economics, Museum of History and Industry (Seattle), as well as major academic and chocolate conferences, festivals, museums, and libraries around the world.

Dr. Leissle holds degrees from Oxford University, University of Washington, and Boston College. She lives in Accra.

What issue engages your head, heart, and hands now?

I really love this question. And I'm so thankful to you for asking it. There are obviously a lot of issues that are always on my mind when it comes to my research. But the one that has been most persistent over the years, and especially these last four years, when I've been living full time in in Ghana, is the issue of how the people I research—cocoa farmers—are represented, and that is generally in a negative way.

Ideas about cocoa farmers in West Africa circulate, and those ideas tend to be pretty much fixated on the issue of child labor. There are two things that I will say about that. One is that there's no denying children are sometimes harmed in the process of participating in farming activities. But how extensive is that harm? How broad is it? That is a question that has not been answered. There are some estimates. But the truth is, we don't really know the extent of the problem that we're dealing with. That doesn't seem to matter. It's the only issue that anyone wants to talk about even though there's not a lot of good data.

The second issue is that we, as human beings, rely on stereotypes. We’re comfortable categorizing groups of people. I don't know why.  But I know that we, as humans, like to look at other humans and group them and say, this is the thing that defines that group, right?

Because this issue of child labor is so much discussed, it has become the thing that defines all cocoa farmers in West Africa, and even all people in West Africa. And I think we cannot separate the fact that we are talking about conversations that mostly happen within groups of people who are white, who haven't spent time in West Africa, who certainly are not from West Africa, who generally work in centres of power—in institutions or businesses or companies that are generally located in Europe or North America. And this group of people is talking about a group of people who are Black and African who participate in an agricultural lifestyle that does not look much like the office work that they do.

For me, you can't separate out these things. You have people talking about people with a very different life experience and making assumptions that there is blanket cruelty; universal immorality; and, you know, enormous neglect of children. This is what's assumed about Black West Africans if you're talking about cocoa.

It's an issue that is much on my mind, because I think representations matter. As writers, as artists, we are aware of how representations have real world impacts. And what then is the impact of this? Like, what's the material impact as far as where resources are directed? What's the psychological impact? I have a tiny bit of a window, a glimpse, because farmers tell me: “We don't like this. We don’t appreciate that people ‘outside’—as they would say here in Ghana, meaning anywhere else in the world—are going to say these things about us. It's not true. It's not how we live our lives.” They convey to me their frustration.

As Halloween approaches, we see appeals to buy chocolate that does not support child labor. What are your thoughts?

We don't have to look any further than the way that many companies and organizations decide what counts, and what doesn't count, as safe to understand that this is a race-based thing. Agriculture is agriculture. There is no agricultural society in the world that does not involve the whole family in production. To the extent that that's harmful or not, I don't feel like it's for me to say, because I am not an agriculturalist. I’d rather we ask the farmers themselves, but nobody really seems to do that.

[They say] “if you want safe chocolate, don't buy anything from West Africa.” To me, that is like saying a pretty racist thing. There are whole sections of the world that are left out or that are presumed to be safe. If you're saying it's only people in West Africa who are ‘bad’ and everybody else is ‘good’, what are you saying? There are a lot of unexamined assumptions behind that. But that, unfortunately, is the way that most institutions and even individuals approach it. “Okay, if it's not from West Africa, I'm assuming it's safe.”

I think if we make this a bottom-up approach and start talking to farmers, if we say: what are the biggest challenges in your life, what needs to be changed, what needs to be fixed? I don't think that child labour would be discussed nearly as much as it is.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

When I was thinking about that question, honestly, I was really I was surprised at what came up for me. There are two things I’d like to share.

I've been very influenced by different art forms and different artists. I'm truly not a big social media person, but I really love the Hello, Sierra Leone Instagram account because, as you can see from the pictures, it is everyday life. It is beauty. It's things that are surprising about Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone is the seventh or eighth poorest country in the world. There is no doubt that when most people think about Sierra Leone, they almost certainly will think about Ebola. They’ll think about civil conflict, which had a tremendous and devastating impact on this country.

I researched in Sierra Leone. I have heard firsthand how horrific both the civil conflict and Ebola were there. I'm not saying that those things aren't real and I'm not discounting their impact. But I am deeply grateful for another window into this country. I'm happy when I look on this Instagram account, and I see some really cool fashion. I see this staircase climbing up into a tree canopy; a child writing on what looks like a long piece of parchment paper; a woman having her hair braided exquisitely for what is maybe some ceremony.

I mean, this is also true, right? This is also true. I will never not think about the challenges there, and the devastation there. I'm grateful to see some more wholeness. If we're only focused on the most devastating parts of life, we cannot really understand any one else's existence, because our lives are not just bad or negative. I would rather understand people fully.

We're not very good at holding two seemingly contrary thoughts at the same time, right?

Yes, when I'm researching, I have to be open to contradiction. I have to be open to the fact that a farmer might say, “the price is too low for cocoa, but I make a good living from cocoa.” They could say those things and often do.  Contradiction is a part of life and contrast is a part of life and I prefer to engage in that way.

Did you say you have a second response to the question?

When I was teaching at the University of Washington for many years—I taught in African Studies—I taught a class called “Africa on film”. (I do a lot of work on visual media, and a lot of work on film.) In every class, we studied a different film about Africa or ideally produced within Africa. If I had to pick one that was most influential on me, it would be the film Amandla: a revolution in four part harmony

That film is basically the story of resistance to apartheid, over several generations, through music. The soundtrack was deeply influential on my life. The film itself was deeply influential for me. It was a profound comprehension that cultural forms are political and can be used very effectively for political ends. I encountered that film before I started my Ph. D. program, before I began analyzing culture in the way that I do now. That film showed me that something as terrible and tenacious as apartheid could be resisted through song. Many of the songs highlighted in that film were not about apartheid, but about everyday life and the way that Black South Africans lived their everyday life as fully as possible, because that itself was resistance against apartheid. People falling in love, getting married, having children, that was interpreted in song as resistance, because apartheid only ever wanted Black South Africans to be diminished. Just the fact of living was resistance.

There are so many good organizations working to transform our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

Yes. I work closely with a cooperative in Ghana, a cocoa cooperative, called Abocfa. They have Fairtrade certification. They have organic certification. They sell cocoa to many companies that take a very explicit, no slavery stand.

I asked the managing director, what do you need? What would help you? The most recent thing he said to me was, “we need cutlasses”—a cutlass is what we would call a machete here—so I'm currently fundraising for cutlasses for farmers. They’ve given me a target of 200 cutlasses, which is about $2,000.

What I want to express about this is that the cutlass, or machete, is, in many ways, a symbol of danger or harm. It inspires fear when it is part of a visual representation of Africa. And we don't have to look any further than another film I used to teach every year, which is Hotel Rwanda, to remind ourselves that the image of an African man bearing a machete was almost iconic as a symbol of having something to fear about Africa and kind of an essentialist portrayal of Black African men as violent aggressors.

What I really appreciated very deeply about the managing director of Abocfa saying “the first thing we need is cutlasses” is it really is the God's honest truth that, for a [West African] farmer, the main tool is a cutlass. That's it.  You need it to do your work. Without one, you cannot work. I'm talking to you on my laptop. If I didn't have my laptop, I couldn't do my work. I spilled some water on my laptop a few months ago, and I was absolutely paralyzed for weeks, if not months. I couldn't do my work. It's the same for a farmer without a cutlass.

I'm glad to be doing this project, and I'm glad to be raising funds. It is very symbolic, and it's something extremely helpful that the farmers really need. If I reach my target, I plan to deliver their cutlasses to them in December. It will be considered a donation of enormous practical help. So often, that's what farmers need: practical help.

Help Abocfa give cutlasses to cocoa farmers.

To contribute to the fundraiser, please DM Dr. Kristy Leissle (@docofchoc):

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Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

Today, I am delighted to introduce you to poet Chúc Mỹ Tuệ (aka Teresa Mei Chuc). I first came across her and her deep, resonant work when she selected my poem “This Poem is Folded” for inclusion in Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in our Hands, a powerful anthology she edited for Shabda Press in 2017. I have followed her ever since.

Check out her website and the Poetry Foundation to read some of her poems and articles—but first, read what she has to say below.

Chúc Mỹ Tuệ (aka Teresa Mei Chuc) was born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam. A boat refugee at the age of two, she immigrated to the U.S. under political asylum with her mother and brother shortly after the American war in Việt Nam while her father, who had served in the Army of the Republic of Việt Nam, remained in a Vietcong "reeducation" prison camp for nine years.

Chuc’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. She is a graduate of the Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing program at Goddard College in Vermont. Her poetry collection, Red Thread, first published in 2012 has been re-released in 2021 and is available now.

What issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

There are many issues engaging my head, heart and hands right now. One of them relates to the stereotypes of Asians in the U.S.  and the categorizing of Asians into one group when we consist of many diverse people with different languages, cultures, foods, histories, struggles, etc. This issue especially affects me and my community due to the racism and violence towards Asians in the U.S. including violence against our elders as a result of scapegoating us as a cause of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Sadly, many people are not familiar with the diverse history of Asians or Asian Americans. Violence against Asians is nothing new and has been occurring as a result of imperialism and wars in our homelands for hundreds of years. My own family was impacted by the American war in Việt Nam and due to this war, we were displaced and had to flee our homelands as boat refugees. My father was a prisoner of war and spent nine years in a Vietcong “reeducation” prison camp. 

How could we create understanding and uplift the diverse voices and stories of the Asian community and diaspora to create bridges of compassion? 

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

Poetry has helped me to shift awareness and deepen understanding of the human experience. Many Vietnamese poets and writers such as Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and Ly Trần uplift the voices of the Vietnamese people. Also, reading poetry and prose by American veterans of the Việt Nam war, such as Doug Rawlings and Wayne Karlin, helps me to understand, on a deeper level, what veterans went through and how they were also victims of a vicious colonial/imperial system. 

In addition, poetry has been an empowering way for me to tell my own story as a boat refugee and the stories of my family and our experiences in the American war in Việt Nam. Poetry has been a way to counter erasure of our Vietnamese voices and stories in the narrative about the war. 

In order to break the cycle of violence, we need compassion and poetry and stories to help us to build those bridges of humanity.

There are so many good organizations working to transform our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

One organization I would like to uplift is Peace Trees Vietnam.

After the American war in Việt Nam, many unexploded landmines remain in the ground that threaten the lives of villagers. Peace Trees is an organization that removes unexploded landmines to create a safer environment for the people in the Quảng Trị Province. 

After war, we ask how we could move towards healing? The work of Peace Trees in removing unexploded UXO is one way we move towards reconciliation. 

For its 26th Anniversary Celebration [October 25th from 5:30-7pm PST] Peace Trees will be in conversation with Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, internationally award winning author of The Mountains Sing.

Peace Trees Vietnam

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Thank you my friends.

Hello friends,

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

Today, I am delighted to introduce you to poet, Heathen Derr (aka Heather Derr-Smith), who tackles the toughest subjects—dislocation, disconnection, displacement—with quiet intensity. Not only in their poems but in the wider world, where they draw our gaze, gently but persistently, to those our society too seldom acknowledges: widows, orphans, refugees, and outsiders. They immerse readers in both the sacred and profane, the extraordinary and the mundane, taking us (in the words of one of their poems):

Where every tent has a name,

And every name is the breath of you.

(Excerpt from “The girl named Tents, Tanf Refugee Camp”, The Bride Minaret, The University of Akron Press, 2008.)

Heathen (Heather Derr-Smith) is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (’97) and a poet with five books, Each End of the World (Main Street Rag Press, Editor’s Choice Award, 2005), The Bride Minaret (University of Akron Press, Editor’s Choice Award, 2008), Tongue Screw (Spark Wheel Press, 2016), Thrust (winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award, Persea Books, 2017), and Outskirts (University of Akron Press, 2022)

They are the founder of Cuvaj Se/Take Care, a nonprofit supporting writers in conflict zones and post-conflict zones and communities affected by trauma.

What issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

My heart right now is deeply committed to responding to rising nationalism in Europe and the US and the subsequent migrant crisis.

Because of the failed policies of the United States and Europe in the Middle East, there are millions of displaced people desperate for a better life who have risked everything to come to Europe. Thousands of these people are stranded in Bosnia on the border with Croatia right now.

I have a small nonprofit called Čuvaj se/Take Care based in Bihać where the crisis is acute. Our director is a young man from Bihać, a recent MA Lit grad, a writer and translator, and he also volunteers with the Red Cross in the field responding to the needs of migrants and local Bosnians. He’s doing heroic work, which is mostly unpaid, so we are supporting him financially.

I started writing poetry during the Bosnian war in the 1990’s, so the country and my work are deeply linked. When I was a college student the war in the former Yugoslavia broke out, a war that saw the worst war crimes on European soil since World War II, culminating in the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. There were concentration camps and rape camps and mass graves just a short plane ride away from Rome, Berlin, Vienna.

I was young and naïve at the time, and I could not believe that no one cared or was doing anything to help. I had also just discovered poetry and was taking workshops with Charles Wright, Greg Orr, and Rita Dove. I knew I wanted to be a poet, and I also felt like I had a responsibility to respond with my work and my whole self to what was happening in the wider world. I was engaged as an activist in Washington D.C. working with refugees and selling copies of the Sarajevo newspaper, Oslobodjenje to raise money for relief and then I decided I wanted to go to the region. So, in 1994, I went to volunteer in a refugee camp in Gašinci, Croatia and delivered humanitarian aid into Bosnia.

Now, nearly thirty years later, I watched Trump rise to power in the US using the exact same rhetoric that caused countless deaths in the century before. Thank God we are rid of Trump (for now), but we are not rid of this illiberal movement that is global in its scope. It’s still powerful here in the US and it’s rising all over Europe. Fascism continues to grow in our time.And I’m committed to fighting it as long as I live.

Now, Bosnia is on the front lines in this struggle, as migrants trying to get to the EU are stopped at the border with Croatia, beaten by police and thrown back onto the Bosnian side. Bosnia is a poor country, without enough government resources to adequately address the needs of the migrants and refugees. So, I’m doing what little I can to support our director there as he does the hard work on the ground.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

Muriel Ruykeyser has been a big influence for me. She went over during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s to fight fascism with the International Brigades but then was told she would be of more use writing poetry. Her book Life of Poetry has meant a lot to me, and I love her idealistic notion of poetry’s ability to change the world. I really do believe in the absolute necessity of poetry, as CD Wright said in her book Cooling Time, “Maybe I did not choose poetry primarily because I believed it to be a necessary good, but I have abided by it because I believe this.”

I’ve also been influenced by Albert Camus and his insistence on our own responsibility for every choice we make daily on how we will live our lives. Locating a sense of purpose in the face of uncertainty and absurdity formed my earliest drive to write.

I often say that it was the film Wings of Desire that made me want to become a poet. I wanted to do what those recording angels were doing, laying their hands on people, listening to their thoughts and observing the daily moments that make up a life, and then for one of them, ultimately, longing to become mortal and die—to be truly alive. For me this represents the process of transforming words written on a page into the communal embodiment of the poem—to bring the reader into a direct experience with the poem that bonds them to others human beings, creatures, the earth, the ineffable.

But ultimately it was the people of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. Enduring the longest siege in modern history since the siege of Leningrad, the citizens of Sarajevo were determined to keep culture alive under conditions of constant shelling, sniper fire, and starvation. They held concerts, put on plays, exhibited art, read poetry, all in resistance to fascism and nationalism.

Many artists from around the world were so inspired by this they came to Sarajevo in solidarity. Susan Sontag came in 1993, when the siege was at it absolute worst, to put on the play Waiting for Godot. Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden came to perform a concert and he later said that was the most important and most meaningful show of his life.

One of my best friends was a soldier on the front lines defending his city from annihilation and after his shift of fighting was done, he would walk an hour and a half under threat of shelling and snipers in absolute pitch darkness to get into the city center to go to a concert or performance. It’s what kept him alive and what kept so many Sarajevans alive, but more than just alive—kept them human.

Seeing how important art was in sustaining people against the forces of genocide had the most profound effect on me in my development as a poet.

There are so many good organizations working to transform our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

I would love a specific call to action to donate right now to my nonprofit, Cuvaj se/Take Care. We are supporting Adnan Kurtagic, a young Bosnian writer from Bihac who is working day and night with migrants trapped on the border between Bosnia and Croatia. Many of these are refugees from Afghanistan.

Adnan triages the injured and sick, organizes blood drives, collects donations of shoes and clothing, and right now has a project building a washing facility for migrants to be able to wash clothing. He has a team of dozens of volunteers under him and together they are able to implement so much good.

Every single penny goes directly to Adnan, to pay him a living wage and to help him in buying supplies so that he can continue to do this work. In supporting him, you are really making a huge difference, affecting exponential change in the community.

Readers can make a donation here:

Donate to Čuvaj se

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Thank you my friends.

Hello friends,

Today, I am delighted to introduce you to musician David Vest, one of the finest boogie woogie piano players and blues shouters around. The son of an Alabama sharecropper who makes his home on Canada’s west coast, David’s been writing and performing songs for more than 60 years. I am grateful to know him and honoured he agreed to be featured in this issue of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

David Vest is a blues artist originally from Alabama. His career dates back to 1957. Since relocating to Canada, he has won the Maple Blues Award for piano player of the year five times. He lives in Victoria, BC, where he plays monthly shows at Hermann's Jazz Club.

Did you know?

On October 1, 2021, Cordova Bay Records is releasing two new live albums by David Vest.

What issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

I play blues, and I believe John Lee Hooker when he says that blues is the Healer. Nothing about it is supposed to bring you down. It’s purpose is to lift you up. To lift up our common humanity, to reconnect us to ourselves and to each other. So for me, the wicked problem is disconnection. 

There are so many incentives to disconnect. Life is full of danger right now, and everybody wants to be safe. The streets are full of angry people who have been disconnected from rationality, and so is the internet; why wouldn’t anybody want to disconnect from that? But when I disconnect from others, whatever the reason, I risk being disconnected from myself. And if there’s nobody home, I’m neither here nor there.

The way most music is made today is a perfect metaphor for what is happening everywhere. These days, most music you hear on the radio or anywhere else is recorded by people who are completely disconnected from each other. Often they never even meet, much less play music together. It’s truly insane. The drummer and the bass player come to the studio on different days. The singer sings to a pre-recorded track, most of it made by synthesizers and drum machines. So the big hit song starts and ends as a karaoke record, with some vocalist “emoting” in an isolation booth. And all the imperfections that make music (and people) charming are eliminated in the process, thanks to auto-tuning and other “corrective” technologies.

Nowadays, with the pandemic, even blues artists are being encouraged to make music this way. I’m supposed to play some piano, then record a vocal part later before I send it off to Dropbox where the guitar player, the cellist, the sax player or whoever can all download it and add their bit. Or I guess I could play all the parts myself and pretend I’m a band or something.

What it all lacks is the sound of people listening to each other, responding to one another, being influenced and changed in the moment. For me, that’s the real test of any recorded music: can I hear them all listening to each other?

It's the same in "real life." I don't hear us listening to each other.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

From music, I'll pick Memphis Slim and his masterpiece, "Mother Earth.”

I don't care how great you are,

And I don't care what you're worth.

When it all ends up, you got to go

Back to Mother Earth.

I could just as easily have picked John Lee Hooker again:

Ain't no heaven.

Ain't no burnin' hell.

When I die,

Where I go,

Don't nobody know,

Can't nobody tell.

Can you imagine touring the segregated Bible Belt in the 1950s, singing that song?

Then there's Alabama's Willie King, who wrote a song called "Terrorized." You can find it online.

From literature, I'd say Marguerite Yourcenar, whose Memoirs of Hadrian is the most astonishing book I've ever come across. She demonstrates that it really is possible to get outside ourselves and to see the world convincingly through the eyes of another. It requires the complete disappearance of the artist into the work. Among artists and creators, the willingness to vanish is rare indeed. 

I also admire a writer like Patricia Highsmith, who reveals what it's like when the smartest person in the room "doesn't get it." The brighter we are, the greater our capacity to delude ourselves.

There are so many good organizations working to transform our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

The closer to home, the better.

Bridges for Women

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Thank you my friends.

Leave a comment

Hello friends,

Today, I am delighted to introduce you to B.A. Lampman. I have had the great pleasure to get to know her, her work, and her process a little in recent months. (Thanks to the auspices of The Creative Good.) I am so grateful she agreed to be featured in this issue of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

B.A. Lampman is an artist and writer who paints in ink, collages, and writes an art journal/ newsletter called Feed the Monster from her backyard studio in Victoria, BC. She has a degree in Fine Art, with Distinction, from Concordia University in Montréal (1989). 

• Follow B.A. Lampman on Instagram.

• Visit her website.

• Take her collage class.

What issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

I’m not sure I’d call it an issue, but what’s engaging my heart, head and hands at the moment is a graphic memoir I’ve been working on about my late mother’s Lewy Body dementia called Life’s Work.

It started out as something I was moved to make as a response to the 5 years of dealing with her disease, and my difficult relationship with her that informed my caretaking. In posting my work on social media however it quickly became apparent that there was another element to it, which is that a growing number of people have parents or loved ones dealing with dementia. And like me, most have no idea what they’re getting into. So there’s a component of building awareness of the disease, and providing commiseration for those dealing with it.

Lewy Body dementia is on the Parkinson’s spectrum and differs from Alzheimer’s disease mainly in its pronounced and lurid hallucinations, which certainly present as a shock for those first encountering them. Lewy Body is also the second-most prevalent form of dementia, yet most people have never heard of it. It’s a particularly cruel form of the disease.

I’ve been engaged with this for about a year and a half now, and as a friend noted the other night, I could easily be doing this for the rest of my life! I do hope to wrap it up in a more timely fashion than that though.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

I would have to say Marina Abramovic’s performance piece The Artist is Present, though I don’t think I was aware of it while it was happening at MoMA in NY in 2010.

Abramovic sat in a chair six days a week for three months, and people lined up around the block—sometimes overnight—for the chance to sit across from her and look into her eyes for the duration of their choice.

For me it all began several years later, when a co-worker showed me a book of photo portraits of the thousands of participants, taken by Marco Anelli: Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramovic. I was struck dumb by this book, though I couldn’t have said why at the time, and ran out to buy it for myself. 

In 2015 I decided to participate in The 100 Days Project—where participants make or do something each day for 3 months and post it to social media—by painting faces from Anelli’s book. I had recently left my day job, and with my daughter grown and no longer at home, I now had the opportunity to devote myself to artwork for the first time since leaving art school thirty years earlier.

I thought participating in the 100 Day Project might help catapult me past my fears and hesitations about returning to painting, and I wasn’t wrong. I learned that I loved ink, which I had just recently started experimenting with. I learned that I had a facility for painting portraits, and found myself painting in a style completely new to me. I learned that I could maintain a sustained practice (if only by force), and that consistent practice most certainly results in improvement of skills.

I had good days and bad days of course, but had to post what I’d done to social media regardless. I was surprised to discover that friends and strangers alike were following along and said they looked forward to each post. All in all it was a life-changing experience, and one that finally cemented for me that I’m an artist, goddammit.

There are so many good organizations working to transform our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

My first thought was The Indian Residential School Survivors’ Society, and I am sure I don’t need to explain why. I don’t feel properly equipped to hold forth on how or why human beings are capable of committing atrocities . . . I just know it’s very painful to me that they do, and that this fact never seems to change. Please give generously.

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Thank you my friends.

Leave a comment

I am delighted to introduce you—or, perhaps, re-introduce you—to artist Courtney Blazon today in Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . If you’ve read other issues, you’ll notice that this one is a little different. I’ve pulled it out of the archives.

In 2016, Blazon’s solo show, The Year Without a Summer, premiered at the Missoula Art Museum. This week, it will be launched once more at the Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture Jessie Wilber Gallery. It only makes sense then to re-publish our discussion about the year without a summer—the year that followed a catastrophic volcanic eruption that had far-reaching effects, from deadly famines and outbreaks of cholera to the invention of Frankenstein. (You can read all about the year without a summer in the May 2021 issue of Sift. Shift. Lift.)

Courtney Blazon is an artist and illustrator living and working in Missoula, Montana. She is a graduate from Parsons School of Design, where she received her BFA in Illustration. She's shown in Montana at the Missoula Art Museum, Holter Museum of Art and Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, and outside of Montana, she has shown in Seattle, Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Baton Rouge, San Francisco, Jackson, Wyoming, and most recently, in Billings, MT at Northcutt Steele Gallery. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings (Western Edition), Studio Visit Magazine, and juxtapoz.com.  She is the co-organizer of the popular Montana MADE Fairs (under the umbrella of Handmade Montana), a series of art and craft fairs started in 2007. She is a past recipient of a Montana Arts Council Artists Innovation Award. She is represented by Radius Gallery in Missoula, MT.

Courtney, tell us about the Year Without a Summer.

In April of 1815, the volcano Tambora erupted on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. It is considered the third largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Aside from causing total devastation to the surrounding area, this eruption had global repercussions as volcanic gasses caused a worldwide aerosol cloud that clogged up the sky—in the year that followed, climate anomalies were recorded around the world. The volcanic winter and subsequent effects on European and North American crops caused 1816 to be known as the year without a summer.

How did you become interested in the Year Without a Summer, and what inspired your solo show?

I became interested in the year without a summer after reading the book Tambora by Gillen D'Arcy Wood. It really served to show me the amazingly far-reaching effects the events of the eruption of Tambora in 1815 had on the entire world. I’d been searching for a subject I could dive into to create a large body of narrative drawings for my first museum show, and once I entered the world of Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, J.M.W. Turner and more, I knew I’d found something I could really sink my teeth into!

What themes do you explore in the series? Did these themes emerge or evolve as you worked through the series or were they set before you began to create?

One of the very important themes I explore is connection/interconnectedness. A natural disaster that happened in Indonesia in 1815 can be traced to the birth of modern climate science, the birth of modern meteorology, the opening of the Northwest Passage, the advent of the Chinese opium trade, the birth of gothic horror and American westward expansion. This theme emerged and evolved in the initial research/development stage of my process. The more I read and absorbed, the more I could see that this period of time was one of the most dramatic, exciting, and complex periods in our collective history. Because of the size and complexity of the drawings I was creating, two of which were 8 feet long, I had to craft very tight and focused sketches, so the evolution and discovery phase of my process really happened in the R&D phase, and once I got to the final drawings, it was purely about execution.

Did creating this series shift your world view?

This series completely shifted my world view. There are so many connections between the climate crisis that occurred because of the eruption of Mount Tambora and the man-made climate crisis we are experiencing now. I began to see things as more of a continuum, if that makes sense. We are a society of people who have “been there before.” The struggles we once had are the struggles we still have, though modernity has shifted what that looks like. I even made a piece about our current climate crisis, using the device of the seven deadly sins. Now, if I’d been making this body of work closer to our current COVID-19 crisis, the connections would have been obviously surrounding pandemics, as the eruption of Tambora led to two cholera outbreaks, most severely in India and Europe.

How would you like viewers to respond to the art in this series? Do you think art can transform the viewer or artist?

I am happy to allow the viewer to respond any way they feel compelled to respond to this series, as I know art is consumed on multiple levels. In an ideal world, I would like my art to be seen in its purest context; as a body of historical drawings that show a narrative of an important and topical event. I would like the viewer to come away with some knowledge of Tambora and its effects, and to see a connection to our current state of affairs. But if the viewer chooses to only look at the images and draw their own internal conclusions, I hope that my work conveys some of the ideas I have strived to portray. 

I know I have been transformed by art, both as a viewer and as an artist. I believe that anyone can, if they open themselves up to the possibility. This can be emotionally, intellectually and even physically.

Is there a piece that best represents the far-reaching impacts of the fallout from the eruption of Tambora?

There are really two pieces that represent the far-reaching impacts of Tambora’s eruption. They are the two eight-foot drawings I created: “Détails sur La Fin du Monde” and “The Poetry of the Seven Sorrows.” They are both geographical portraits of the world in the months following the eruption.

“Détails” narrates the early months following the eruption and the subsequent year without a summer of 1816, starting in Indonesia as the Raja of Sumbawa loses his daughter to disease from poisoned water; to China where crop failure was forcing farmers to turn to opium production; to India, where cholera was beginning its brutal spread; to Switzerland, where Mary Shelley and Byron were ushering in the advent of gothic horror; all the way to America, where Thomas Jefferson’s meticulous daily weather record keeping gave insight into the drastic changes the world’s weather was experiencing.

In “Poetry,” which starts in America and ends back in Indonesia, at the scene of the eruption, the narration centers on the events that stretched into the subsequent decades past 1815-16, but trace their origin from that period.  This includes westward expansion; the birth of climate science; the eruption of cholera in Europe in the 1830s; the food crises raging in Switzerland and Italy; the invention of the first bicycle in Germany, the start of the opium wars, and the opening of the Northwest Passage. 

There are several portraits in the series. How did you decide who to illustrate?

I ultimately went with the people who were most interesting to me as characters, or who were linchpins in my narrative. For instance, I focused a lot of my energies on Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and their cohorts, so it was natural for me to create narrative drawings plus portraits about their lives. I also created a large portrait of Benjamin Franklin because he accurately understood the impact volcanic activity had on climate way back in the late 1700s, in a paper he submitted that was completely dismissed.

The smaller portraits I did were meant to portray the poets, the painters, the scientists, the military, and the journalists who were an inextricable part of the fabric of the Year without a summer. Li Yuyang is one of my favorites. His poetry is really one of the only ways we have any idea of what life was truly like for the rural people of China’s Yunnan Province. Further evidence of the importance of the arts on history.

The Year Without a Summer had a significant impact painting, especially landscape paintings by artists like Constable and J. M. W. Turner. Can you tell us a bit about the influence the Year Without a summer had on art?

The landscape paintings from this period have the highest concentration of red paint in them of any period in history, for the simple reason that the skies throughout the world were red, a chemical response of the volcanic gasses which were blanketing the sky. Turner, the ‘painter of light’, could not have been creating paintings at a more fortuitous time. The skies were phenomenally strange and unpredictable. Weather records throughout the globe suggest it was not unusual to experience a 85 degree Celsius day that ended in a 20 degree Celsius blizzard. In this period, Britain experienced fewer than a handful of days in which the sun was even hazily spotted, and this is the reality of what Turner was recording. The most important thing about the art being created at the time is that it isn’t wild fantasy or imagination. It was a record of the world Turner was witness to, and we are lucky to be able to get a glimpse of the ways the Tambora eruption had turned the world on its head.

Has this series, and the research you did, influenced your approach to art?

This series, and the immense amount of research I did for it, have forever changed my approach to art. I think it’s expanded my ability to seek out the beautiful connections and links that tie the world together and to make work that is full of the past, present, and future. In a more practical way, it’s given me the confidence to know I can tackle a subject matter that is incredibly complex, and allowed me to hone my methods for organization and creation.

What are you working on now? And, where can readers learn more about your art?

Currently, I am working on three different projects, in addition to my paid work as an illustrator and commercial artist. I have been working on a series of drawings based on the area of Missoula, Montana (where I reside) that attempt to recreate the area of the town in the late 1800s called the Badlands, which were ruled by a Madam named Mary Gleim. This is following a residency I had last summer at the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. I am also slowly working my way through a large series of drawings based on the life and works of poet Sylvia Plath. Lastly, I am in the development stages of a body of work that is about the mundanity of personal memory and the role our senses play in cementing these memories in our minds.

You can find out more about Courtney Blazon and her work at www.courtneyblazon.com, or on Instagram at @courtneyblazon.

Did you miss an issue?

Here are the links to the last two issues of Sift. Shift. Lift. (just in case):

• Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . artist and illustrator Scott Aasman (August 29, 2021)

• The Weekly on hurricanes, climate change, and mental health (September 1, 2021)

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Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

Thank you my friends.

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Hello friends,

I first came across Scott Aasman’s illustrations through the Makers and Mystics Collective. I was instantly drawn in by his intricate, richly detailed illustrations, which depict historical, mythological and contemporary narratives, religious and secular themes, in surprising and thoughtful ways.

Today, I am delighted to introduce you to Scott (assuming you are not already familiar with him or his work), and I am so grateful he agreed to be featured in this issue of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions. (I am thrilled to share a few of his illustrations with you as well.)

Scott Aasman is an artist, illustrator and carpenter working out of Hamilton, Ontario where he lives with his wife Michelle and their two children. Scott’s work attempts to intertwine biblical, cultural, and personal narratives, allowing viewers to re-engage with these familiar and “over-seen” stories and find a new sense of wonder and awe.

You can find him on Instagram @sanillustration

Scott, what issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

Lately I’ve been immersed in the idea of story, from science fiction to fairy stories, to cultural and religious myths and legends to personal narratives, I’m realizing more and more how these shape the individual and the art of telling them (and telling them well!) have a profound impact on both the teller and the listener.

Stories open up time and space and create a tie between the teller and the listener. It's a vulnerable space, and the ability to listen well requires an opening up and humbling of oneself just like the telling. I’ve read somewhere that “good books read us” and I think it is the same with good stories—the questions I’m wrestling with are am I willing to sit and listen and what truth do the stories have to tell, and sometimes more uncomfortably, what truth do they have to tell about me, and how do I respond? 

For me it's been an important time to listen to the stories of those who don’t get the same platform as I do, to learn from their experience but also see that at the core their similarities and desires are very similar to mine. Where so much causes fractions in our culture, storytelling and “storylistening” are a way in which we can be united.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

A number of years ago I first read my favourite book—Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin. I’ve returned to it a couple times since but this year I dived into it deeply again. I could say a lot about the writing style, the elements of the miraculous woven in throughout the everyday, and its concept of time, but the reason this book about a 15th century holy man took such a hold of me again is, in part, because it tells a story set in the midst of pandemic and plague, but it also takes place in a world divided by religion, groups of people, and politics.

The main character (who goes by several different identities throughout the novel), moves through these different groups winning them over not by might or power, but by grace in often surprising, and sometimes, unpleasant ways. At the core, it is a book about repentance and takes off the saccharine sentimentality of giving one's life in service of the divine, and shows what it actually looks like when we ask to be humbled by God. In doing so it displays a new heroic ideal—not a conquering knight, or superhero or super soldier, but one who shuns power, who disowns himself and opens himself up to others in doing so. Through its unique characters, the intrinsic quirkiness to Vodolazkin’s writing, and the strangely relevant medieval mindset, I can’t stop thinking about this work of art. 

There are so many good people and organizations working to transform themselves and our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

I would lift up one of the best places to eat in my hometown, 541 Eatery & Exchange, which is set up in a volatile neighbourhood in Hamilton, Ontario.  They believe “there is dignity in choice, and that eating together fosters a diverse community of belonging around the table.” They demonstrate this belief wonderfully through the space they have made, where people can gather and good, healthy food at affordable prices is available to all. Whenever I visit I am amazed at the wonderful blending of beauty and justice in action.

541 believes that everyone should have access to good food, so they offer the opportunity to help others pay for their food through purchasing buttons, which others can use to redeem whatever they like from the menu.

Donate to 541 Eatery

Did you miss an issue?

Here are the links to the last two issues (just in case):

• The Weekly call to action on wildfires (August 25, 2021)

• Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . animal chaplain and author Sarah Bowen (August 22, 2021)

Not yet a subscriber? Pull up a chair. There is always room for one more. 

Subscribe now

Before you go

Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

Thank you my friends.

Leave a comment

Hello friends,

I “discovered” Sarah Bowen (aka @modernreverend) on Instagram, where I had the good fortune to win a copy of her first book Spiritual Rebel (Monkfish Publishing, 2019) in a draw last year. That book, “inspired by her childhood fascination with Star Wars” drew me in and kept me engaged with its wit and wisdom. It also set me back into the wider world armed with some simple but profound spiritual practices based on philosophical, scientific, religious, and (pop) cultural traditions she’d explored.

I am so grateful to Sarah for sharing more of her musings with me so I can share them with you in today’s issue of Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . a weekly column in which I ask clever, curious, compassionate people my three favourite questions.

If you aren’t yet familiar with the Rev. Sarah Bowen, it is my honour and delight to introduce you now.

Especially interested in the intersection of spiritual values with animal and planetary welfare, (Rev) Sarah Bowen is an animal chaplain, award-winning author, and academic dean at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City. Sarah teaches interspecies mindfulness practices, supports humans experiencing animal loss and grief, and advocates fiercely for the more-than-human world. You can often find her huddled over wildlife struck by cars, giving them a sacred sendoff, or leading a Sunday Service at the world’s first interfaith, interspiritual, and interspecies community Compassion Consortium.

Sarah is a columnist for Spirituality & Health Magazine and the co-host of Unity Online Radio’s Big Universe show. Her book, Spiritual Rebel: A Positively Addictive Guide to Finding Deeper Perspective and Higher Purpose, won a Nautilus Book Award. Her newest book is Sacred Sendoffs: An Animal Chaplain’s Advice For Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, & Healing The Planet (forthcoming from Monkfish Publishing).

Sarah, what issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

I’m heartbroken by human exceptionalism and its cousins speciesism and environmental racism. Anthrozoologists, social justice advocates, and everyday animal lovers have long pointed to the entangled issues that cause humans to ransack the planet and hurt the other creatures we share it with—human and other-than-human alike. Relegating marginalized peoples to an invisible “workforce” and other sentient beings to so-called “resources,” we have somehow become a species that fuels poverty, pollutes oceans, clear-cuts rainforests, and imprisons other animals through factory farming.

Humans make up just 0.01% of life on this planet. Things exist in this world that aren’t solely for us: stuff we can’t see, hear, smell, or experience. If we now know that other-than-human-animals can think, feel, and act autonomously, why do we stop our compassion and concern at human animals? Shifting our awareness to include all species—not just ours—can help us better balance the needs of all life.

Accordingly, I spend a lot of time talking to people about animals: their ability to have strong bonds, spiritual experiences, and grieve their own losses. And about how our daily choices affect others we share the planet with. In Spiritual Rebel, I provide people with exercises for coming into balance with the natural world and our supernatural connections. And in my newest book Sacred Sendoffs, I explore how learning more about the deaths of our beloved pets, farmed animals, wild creatures, and animal astronauts can help us improve life for all beings on Earth.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

Some of my best shifts have happened in art museums! By moving from a thinking environment to a sensing environment, I can disconnect my analytical brain and ponder on an extraverbal level. I rarely read museum catalogs or do advance research, preferring to be surprised at what I find.

The Chalkroom, a virtual reality installation by Laurie Andersen and Hsin-Chien Huang, changed my life in a mere ten minutes. Within this exhibit, you sit in a dark black-lit room covered in glowing graffiti—words and squiggles on every surface. Donning a VR headset and holding two controllers in your hands, you can fly through a dark purple city maze, all covered in words. As you pass scrawled phrases, you hear them read to you, snippets of thoughts combining randomly based on where you choose to travel. Off in the distance is a hazy sun peering through the dimness. The environment itself is magnificent. But that’s not all.

Using the controllers I held in each hand, I could fly in and through the buildings at breakneck speed. It was exhilarating. My brain was processing virtual reality as reality. And then I saw a bright white glowing cube in the distance. I flew towards it, stopping abruptly right at its base. Then I walked right smack into it. My field of vision glowed full white-hot light. I sat there in the whiteness. It hummed and resonated a tone. Then, disappointingly, the museum attendant came to tell me my time was over. She inquired, “How was it?” I replied, “I don’t want to ever leave.” And for a moment, I meant it. It was a truly spiritual experience. I had touched a dark mysterious bliss. My consciousness had expanded again. This was no mere art exhibit. Not entertainment. No game for tweens. I was forever changed.

As I wandered through the rest of the museum, everything else paled in comparison. I felt as if I was now in the un-reality, in a dream state. It took a while for me to sync back up to this reality. But when I did, I found, intriguingly, that I felt intensely connected to birds and flying insects, both of which I had never had much interest in, preferring furry creatures—my own speciesist preferences! Somehow, the act of flying helped me shift awareness to what life might be like for creatures who travel the world through flight. This awareness has stayed and expanded my work into concern for the perils facing bees and birds. About 187 species of birds have gone exinct and 14% of the 37,400 species threatened with extinction are birds. And we all know the sad crisis facing bees.

There are so many good people and organizations working to transform themselves and our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

One need not be a full-time animal activist to help open people’s eyes to the problems of human exceptionalism, speciesism, and environmental racism. Learn how to make compassionate purchasing choices with LiveKindly. Spend just a few minutes signing a life-saving petition from In Defense of Animals or Mercy for Animals. Get involved in food justice by eating local, sustainable, plant-based foods raised by people making a living wage. And if you find an injured animal, stop to alert a local wildlife rehabilitator. Get a list of people near you ready to help through Animal Help Now.

Finally, if you’d like to learn more about the intersection of the natural world and our supernatural connections, please join me on the fourth Sunday of any month at the Compassion Consortium.

Follow Sarah on Instagram at modernreverend and learn more about her work at http://www.thisissarahbowen.com/

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Before you go

Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

Thank you my friends.

Leave a comment

Not yet a subscriber? Pull up a chair. There is always room for one more. 

Subscribe now

Coming up next:

• The Weekly (August 25, 2021)

• Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . Scott Aasman (August 29, 2021)

Did you miss an issue?

Here are the links to the last two issues (just in case):

• The August issue of Sift. Shift. Lift. on the Oka Crisis (August, 20, 2021)

• The Weekly on the fall of Saigon and Taliban victory in Kabul (August 18, 2021)

Hello friends,

I had the good fortune to meet Fran Westwood at a virtual writing retreat last year (where she gave me some truly insightful feedback on the first chapter of the novel I am writing).

Since then, I have sought out her finely wrought poetry, which I love for its keen observations about people and relationships, deep respect and love for the natural world, and abiding sense of wonder.

She is thoughtful and eloquent, and I am delighted to introduce her to you today in Sifting, shifting, and lifting . . . where each week I ask one of the most clever, curious, compassionate people I know (or want to know) three questions.

Ready? Read on.

Fran Westwood is a poet, psychotherapist and urban gardener of settler background living in Toronto, Ontario, traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples (Treaty 13 land). 

With a persistently lyrical voice, Fran writes poems that help her pay attention, find belonging and recover wonder about the natural world, while also challenging capitalist and colonial narratives that disconnect, individualize, and shrink what it means to be alive and human. Fran’s work was shortlisted for Room Magazine’s 2020 Poetry Contest and has been published by or is forthcoming in various national and international journals.

When not writing, figuring out companion planting or applying permaculture principles to her perennial garden, Fran spends her time working as an addictions counsellor and therapist offering support to individuals experiencing addiction and mental health challenges. 

Find Fran Online

You can find out more about Fran Westwood and read some of her poems online at @fran.westwood (instagram).

Fran, what issue is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

The intersection of ecological issues and Indigenous sovereignty and rights is something I have been engaged in as a learner for some time.

As someone from a settler background, I'm deeply grateful for the opportunities and relationships which have helped me begin to deconstruct settler-colonial ways of understanding identity, worldview and relationship with land (characterized by individualism, dualism, dominance and extraction) and to sit under the leadership of Indigenous elders, teachers, farmers and writers who have demonstrated a way of life with the land based on relationality, reciprocity and justice for all.

I've become convinced that the colonial, material way of life that Western nations are built on, and have perpetuated, is ultimately making humans, and the rest of creation, deeply unwell. This is evidenced in many places including the epidemic of loneliness among many people, the prevalence of trauma and mental health issues, increasing divides between rich and poor, the loss of biodiversity, increasing extreme weather events and ecological refugees - just to name a few!

I'm convinced though, of the power of story, art and relationship to change and restore people and communities. I think hope is so important at a time like this, just as lament and right seeing are important, too.

What artist or work of art has had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

I have been influenced by many voices, but want to highlight some of the Indigenous writers and activists that have shaped me.

Professor, botanist and writer Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer's work continues to profoundly move me and help me see and relate to creation in new ways; in particular her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013) has stayed with me.

The poetry of writer and scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (This Accident of Being Lost, House of Anansi Press, 2017), and poet Joy Harjo (Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, WW Norton, 2015) have been very formative for me as a poet.

I have also been deeply impacted by the hospitality and teaching (through both writing and hands-in-the-dirt experiences) of Randy and Edith Woodley.

There are so many good people and organizations working to transform themselves and our world through compassionate action. Who would you like to lift up? 

I would like to draw attention to Eloheh: Indigenous Centre for Earth Justice, founded by Randy and Edith Woodley, which focuses on education and restoration of Indigenous land based values and practice - the Woodleys are providing such vital leadership as we face the effects of climate crisis more and more acutely.

Indigenous led conservation efforts such as Conservation Through Reconciliation (their Virtual Campfire series is a great place to start learning) and Nature United's Indigenous Led Conservation in Canada are also really great places to learn and get involved.

The Land Back movement, more than any one organization, is something I have found it important to lean in and learn about.

I am also really grateful for local stewardship organizations (such as LEAF - Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests) or the Nature Stewards program here in Toronto which focus on nature education, promoting biodiversity and removing invasive species from local ravines and parks.

I encourage readers to look into what communities and organizations are active in their area, and to get involved, whether through learning or action, or both!

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Before you go

Would you do me a small favour? If you enjoy reading Sift. Shift. Lift. please take a moment to like, share, or comment below. It is a simple gesture, but it gives new-ish publications like  Sift. Shift. Lift.—and creators like me—a much-appreciated boost.

Thank you my friends.

Leave a comment

Not yet a subscriber? Pull up a chair. There is always room for one more. 

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Coming up next:

• The Weekly (August 18, 2021)

• The Monthly Sift. Shift. Lift. (August 20, 2021)

• Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . Sarah Bowen (August 22, 2021)

Hello friends,

Welcome to the second issue of Sifting, shifting & lifting, where I sit down with some of the most interesting people I know (or want to know) and ask them my three favourite questions.

Today’s guest, Natalia Zukerman, continuously delights and inspires me with her music, her art, and her way of walking in this world.

It was her music that first drew me in.

“Natalia’s voice could send an orchid into bloom while her guitar playing can open a beer bottle with its teeth.” –New Yorker

“a strutting brass band one minute, a sighing lover the next.” –The Boston Globe

“a wise mix of rootsy styles from torch blues to country swing. If you’re a fan of Madeleine Peyroux, Bonnie Raitt or even Amy Winehouse, you’ll find stuff to connect with here.” –Philadelphia Daily News

As incredible as her music is, I soon realized that she is a gentle, creative powerhouse in more ways than one. Want to know more? Read on for her bio, our conversation, and an invitation to practice yoga with Natalia on Sunday mornings. (Yes, really!)

Musician, painter, muralist, and educator Natalia Zukerman resides, writes, plays, teaches, and paints in the Hudson Valley in the state of New York. Having released eight independent albums on Weasel Records and her own label Talisman Records, Natalia has toured internationally as a performer since 2005. Alongside her touring career, she continues to teach songwriting and guitar, paint private and public murals and portraits as well as illustrating books.

In 2017, Natalia became a Cultural Diplomat through the U.S. Department of State, touring throughout Africa with her trio, The Northern Lights. This 2021-2022 season, Natalia will once again serve as a Cultural Diplomat (this time virtually) with the band Raining Jane, teaching, performing and exchanging ideas around the world.

Natalia, thanks so much for chatting with me. What wicked problem, or social justice issue, is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

I like to think of problems as opportunities—when I have enough sleep and serotonin, that is!)—chances to learn and grow. That being said, there has been no shortage of growth opportunities lately. There is a lot about this time that is fomenting. Things feel fragile and on the precipice of collapse on the one hand and simultaneously like we are about to push evolution thousands of years forward on the other. I have hope that the awakening to injustice and inequality that has happened over the last year and a half will continue to turn the lights on and we will collectively and individually refuse to go back to sleep or return to "what never was normal."

For me, personally, I've had a real brush with the realities of climate change on a very personal level. My little area of the Hudson Valley recently got 14 inches of rain over a very short period of time. Long story short, we had a flood in our basement and spent several days sweeping, pumping, drying, crying and doing our best to stave off another flood as the rains refused to let up. What we discovered quickly is that the way we navigated the crisis was the most important thing. We found ways to comfort one another and work together as a team. We also took stock of how lucky we are and how much worse it could have been. We were able to save almost all of our belongings . . . and are saving up for a generator and maybe another sump pump.

Knowing that home is not a person, place or thing has never been more profoundly clear and with that came the overwhelming feeling that even though that's true, everyone deserves to feel safe. Knowing how many people don't is devastating and makes me want to work tirelessly to give that feeling to as many people I can.

Climate change is changing the way we live. This wicked problem is engaging my head, heart and hands pretty much every moment of every day.

What artists or works of art have had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

There are so many artists and works of art that have laid the foundation for the ways I view the world. The list of women, BIPOC and queer/trans artists that have given me permission to even BE let alone create is too long for these pages, but the first person who jumped into my brain hole with this awesome question is Judy Baca. Muralist, community organizer and activist, I read about Baca’s work in college as I was insatiably inhaling any and all information about murals (and the Chicano/a mural movement in particular) that I could.

I remember reading something she wrote at one point and a lightbulb went off like a torch that has really lead the way for me ever since. She was talking about graduating from college. If I remember correctly, she may have been the first woman in her family to do so. In any case, I do remember that she was writing about showing her grandmother her art work and explaining to her some ideas and concepts about her process. An incredible painter, she was able to capture lifelike semblances of people, still lives, landscapes. She was talented, that was clear, but her grandmother looked at her work, slowly taking it all in. She finally looked up at Judy and simply said, "But what is it for?"

That simple question rocked Judy's world and changed the trajectory of her work for the rest of her life. Just because she could imitate and recreate reality on paper and canvas wasn't enough. Judy realized that her life's work was going to be to tell people's stories in order to bring about real change in people's lives. I think of this question as I make music and art and it often drives my process—even stops me in my tracks at times. I can't say that everything I've made always has transformative meaning. Not even close. But that's an ideal that I strive toward and feel driven by.

Who would you like to lift up?

Thank you for this question! There are so many amazing people and organizations doing THE WORK. One that I've been following and supporting through their Patreon is The Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. They're creating land based wealth redistribution and reparations for BIPOC farmers.

I live in a gorgeous, agricultural part of the United States and have been educating myself on not only food inequality and the effects of global climate change on BIPOC communities but also land ownership as it pertains to BIPOC in this country. As this organization says, to be truly regenerative we must be reparative.

Check out their work and support BIPOC farmers when, where and however you can.

Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust

Want to do yoga with Natalia?

The artistic director at SoulCall Global, a global conscious community, Natalia is also a certified yoga teacher and life coach. She is starting a free (donations gratefully accepted) online Sunday morning yoga class through SoulCall beginning August 15, 2021. Interested? Register now.

Yoga with Natalia

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Coming up next:

• The Weekly (August 11, 2021)

• Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . Fran Westwood (August 15, 2021)
  

Hello friends,

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Sifting, shifting & lifting, where I sit down with some of the most interesting people I know and ask them the same three questions.

When I dreamed up this series I knew immediately that I wanted to feature today’s guest. Clever, curious, compassionate and deeply committed to amplifying the voices of others: Kelly McCartney doesn’t shy away from difficult, transformative social justice work (and she has fantastic taste in music).

If you know anything about Kelly, you know what I am talking about. If you don’t, well, let me introduce you.

With a style that is equal parts personal, political, and philosophical, Kelly McCartney inhabits a purposely intersectional corner of the roots music space, making her one of the format’s favourite commentators and curators.

As a journalist, Kelly has contributed to No Depression, NPR Music, Folk Alley, Stereogum, and other outlets. She also spent over four years hosting/producing the Hangin' & Sangin' podcast/radio show and now hosts Apple Music's Record Bin Radio. Her passion for music and its makers is palpable, making her the perfect tour guide for listeners looking to explore and expand their musical horizons.

When not promoting artists in a public-facing way, Kelly continues that work as executive director of the Rainey Day Fund, a grant fund which supports marginalized artists in the roots music space. She also regularly organizes benefit projects to support the social justice causes she believes deeply in, including voting rights.

Kelly, what wicked problem, or social justice issue, is engaging your head, heart, and hands right now?

Supporting and uplifting marginalized voices in roots music is a huge part of my work right now, and has been for the past six or so years because, in order to achieve actual equality, we must first build equity for many populations, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled folx. I figured I might as well start in my own backyard, which is the Americana/roots music community. I initially began that work through the artists I covered as a music journalist and radio host, then expanded it with the Rainey Day Fund which offers micro-grants and support services to marginalized artists, some of whom have gone on to nab record deals, Grammy nominations, and other accolades. It's enormously rewarding work that also allows me to say "I told you so" a lot. And doing that is one of my favorite things in life. 

What artists or works of art have had a profound impact on the way you see the world and your place in it?

I wouldn't be who I am, in any way, without the Indigo Girls. Their inseparable art and activism forged my convictions and identity starting when I was 19 and continues to this day. They taught me (and so many others) how to move through the world in an authentic, empathetic, community-minded way, always reaching back to pull others along as any step forward was made. More recently, Brandi Carlile has also been a huge inspiration to me with her incredibly generous spirit, both in how she offers financial support whenever possible and how she shares her spotlight and uses her platform to uplift others. 

Who would you like to lift up?

I would be remiss to not lift up the Rainey Day Fund and its new Rosetta Fund offshoot which supports marginalized identity writers and other media makers in the roots music space. We get money directly into the hands of artists and creators so that they can do what they know how to do. The grants are small in amount, but huge in impact because they say, "We see you. We support you." And that means everything to someone who feels invisible. It's the simplest way I know to support BIPOC, queer, and disabled voices in this arena.

Rainey Day Fund

Friends, I am so grateful to Kelly for taking the time to answer my questions, and I have so much respect for the way she uses her privilege and her platform to address inequities in the Americana/roots music community. If you do, too, share this post or leave a comment below. Let’s show Kelly some love.

Until next time,

Shelley

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Join me

Every Sunday, in Sifting, shifting & lifting, I will introduce you to someone clever, curious, & compassionate. Someone who is digging deep, changing hearts and minds, and lifting others up in the process. Someone you want in your (intersectional) corner.

I also explore horrible histories and wicked problems through the work of academics, artists, and activists in the comprehensive monthly newsletter Sift. Shift. Lift. and in The Weekly, a bite-sized bulletin.

Coming up next:

• The Weekly (August 4, 2021)

• Sifting, shifting, and lifting with . . . Natalia Zukerman (August 8, 2021)

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