Guest Post Tonight

• Location: The Stranger newspaper box, Georgetown Truck Stop, Washington State
• Date: May 8, 2008
• Description: white crane with hand-drawn 3-D pie chart sliced up, with the word “piece” pointing to a slice of the pie

My friend Liz, who I like to call “the poetry doctor,” was on sabbatical this past spring and spent her time traversing the country. You may remember her from this post. Liz is a crane-folder who, out of the blue, sent me an email with today’s post. Thank goodness, or else you would’ve had to see pictures of my most recent artwork (this could’ve gotten ugly). Her whole email is peace-like, right down to the quote at the end. Here’s what she wrote:

This craning episode comes from Washington State, where I visited the family earlier this month. One day I hung out with my brother in Seattle and we had breakfast at a great spot — The Georgetown Truck Stop. My brother is the one who first taught me how to fold cranes, and who folded me a thousand cranes when I was finishing up my Ph.D. He has a mess of tiny paper cranes in his car because he folds them habitually from ferry receipts. He says receipt paper is excellent crane folding paper, by the way. Anyhow, his car cranes made me think of the Crane project and how I should have my brother fold a peace crane (or, as it happens, a ‘piece’ crane) while we were in Seattle. So, after our fabulous breakfast, I commissioned him to fold one. From a receipt. We left it in a newspaper box on top of the May 8 issue of The Stranger, right next to the Georgetown Truck Stop. I’ll also paste in a poem I wrote years ago (published in Prairie Schooner at some point) about folding cranes (and my brother, and other stuff):

The Thousand

In memory, cranes have wings –
but in the now, this one’s flightless,
its wings somehow folded safe
inside the wrinkled body.

Some folds seem familiar
like streets I’ve driven twice,
but with the inevitable wrong
turn, the incorrect fold.

He taught me to fold them
with a trained patience,
talked me through and showed
my fingers what his already knew.

I thought I’d fold a crane a day
until I hit the thousand –
transcendance, wishes granted,
the number of will and desire.

Like other plans, this one
never took shape, never fleshed
out past the mere bones
of an idea. Today, though,

I’m suddenly needy for it,
wanting to do it, or just
to know I know how to do it –
but I can’t call it back.

I remember so much: the wristed
trick of cat’s cradle, the folds
for hats, boats, and the squared-off
finger fortune tellers from school.

But not this simple skill, a gift
of one winter afternoon
when I asked and he agreed
and he was my teacher.

The thousand cranes I never
folded? The wish never asked for
or even imagined? Maybe today
they call to me, try to remind me

how to gather and fold –
this crease a beak, that fold
a wing — an envelope
that’s closed and open, containing

and becoming the wonderful news
of itself. The paper-thin whispers
of the not-yet-cranes, and the fingers
of my brother, folding.

Happy craning!

Liz

‘War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.’ — Ambrose Bierce

Here are some more of their photos. Good stuff, Liz!

If you’ve made it this far, don’t forget to check out my picture from yesterday, which I haven’t uploaded yet, but I have faith in WordPress, so I’ll tell you to go check it now now and then go try to upload.

Peace is my Business

• Location: near You’re Fired, Salem, NH
• Date: April 13, 2008
• Description: blue crane with big black peace symbol

I decided to draw a really great peace symbol on this crane.  It turned out nice and big, and the folded design looks geometric and kind of reminds me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work.  I left this crane in a commercial plaza in Salem, New Hampshire near the paint-your-own pottery place called You’re Fired.

I also spent some time today redoing all the categories on my posts to assist in navigating around the site.  I’m trying to branch out a little and make the website more about peace than my life, so I’ve joined the flickr group called “One Million Peace Signs.”  You can see their website here.  They have a blog too.  Stay tuned for more updates on other pages.

If Storks Bring Babies, What do Cranes Bring?

• Location: The mail
• Date: Hopefully tomorrow, May 7, 2008, but definitely by the end of the week
• Description: small pink crane with blue peace signs all over

That, my friends, is a mail crane. I’m going to write a very nice note to one of my representatives, enclose a crane, put it in the mail, and send it on its way. Do you like the stationary? I made it to send a crane in, but then no one I didn’t know asked for one, so I never got the chance to send it out.

If I already had a letter written to one of my people, here’s what it might say:

Dear Senator __________,

I am writing to ask you to encourage peace whenever possible. Let’s define “peace” as the dictionary does: “the normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world” and “a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, esp. in personal relations” (www.dictionary.com). If we take this at face value, we can talk about peace in terms of a global perspective as well as a personal perspective.

There are certain ways that you can inject a little more peace into your life. Try to be accepting of those who annoy you, and let it go when it happens. For example, please consider a more bi-partisan relationship with Republican senators. It’s easier to think peace when you’re not caught up in your anger at someone.

Although I advocate for peace, I’m not anti-military; on the contrary, a military is useful in certain situations. I would like to remind you, however, that having a military does not mean we should use it to respond to every threat or action we perceive is against us. At the moment, there is a bill going through the House of Representatives that would establish a Department of Peace, whose main goal would be to “work to… divert from armed conflict” (HR 808). I urge you to read the bill and learn about it so that if and when it does come through the Senate, you’ll be ready.

In addition to the skills necessary for war, we need to have the skills required by peace: namely the ability to defuse and resolve conflicts before they escalate to violence, as well as knowing how to maintain peace through reason and compromise. We can use these skills on a personal as well as a political level, and I am asking you to support both.

Respectfully yours,

Q Finder

Not bad for a first draft, eh? If I have time, I can go over it tomorrow and send it out. But since I worked 11.5 hours today, I think for now I’ll just go to bed. You’re welcome to take my text and use it for yourself to ask your representatives to think peace. And if you have constructive comments, I’m all for them.

P.S. The plan worked today: I went to the gym and I feel much more inclined to be at ease with myself and the world. Excellent.

Whole Foods is Expensive

• Location: Whole Foods
• Date: April 20, 2008
• Description: Purple crane with the definition of peace written on one half, and a peace sign written on the other

Some cranes just turn out better than others. I really like the dark purple cranes, but the only thing that shows up on them is a yellow gel pen that takes forever (think 24 hours) to dry and smudges easily.

I spent the day in Connecticut today. There’s not much to report, except that my family is awesome.

You can Call me Tree Hugger

• Location: Weir Hill
• Date: April 13, 2008
• Description: large orange crane with peace symbol on one wing, and the word “peace” on the other

Seth and I spent a good part of the afternoon yesterday hiking around Weir Hill. We have this book that gives very good descriptions of and very bad directions to hiking locations around Boston; consequently, we spent a good part of the early afternoon yesterday trying to find Weir Hill. But once we found it, we hiked it. I don’t think my body particularly likes exercising twice in one day.

It was nice to see mountains and green things again. Skunk cabbages were poking up in the numerous streams we crossed birds were chirping — it makes a nice change from the sound of traffic that we get most of the time.

Recently, I’ve been cleaning out my stock of cranes by taking ones I’ve already folded and writing things on the wings. While this decluttering process is great for my desk, it’s not so great for my mind as I haven’t been folding cranes for a week or so. Last night I had the worst migraine in months. I ended up staying awake into the wee hours wishing half my face would just fall off and get it over with (no such luck with that, by the way). I’m not saying the lack of crane-folding directly caused a bad migraine; however, it does correlate. Of course, the decrease in the number of pirates directly correlates to an increase in global warming. That kind of proof is hard to refute.