J. Ruth Gendler's Blog

• Peace in Three Parts: Two Children's and My Peace Poems

  November 20, 2009

  • Peace in Three Parts   Part I:  A Third grader Personifies Peace Peace is a child, small, invisible, yet powerless over Anger and Ruthlessness, who seem to control war, the very enemy of Peace. But Peace would not go to war with Anger nor Ruthlessness, for she is Peace, after all. She would not go to war. Even though, of course, Peace is very busy, with lots of war going on. Alex Trux, ...
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• Favorite City, Favorite Color: Burgundy, Turquoise, Silver, Unnameable Greens

  October 23, 2009

  • Being asked to name my favorite city reminds me of trying to pick my favorite color. And it is about as impossible and subject to the answer changing according to mood. In my teenage years my favorite color was burgundy, deep rich dark red, a color of intensity and mystery. It’s not a surprise that I spent my sophomore year in a college overseas program, living on the outskirts of Florence, ...
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• Courage, Compassion, and Wisdom

  October 16, 2009

  • The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved spiritually grounded and subversive entertainments that I know, one that has delighted me forever and also given me a perspective on my own work. Many years ago, as I was adapting THE BOOK OF QUALITIES as a theater piece  and struggling to create sequences where the actors sometimes described a Quality and sometimes became the Quality, I began to ...
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• Elegy for Black Oak Books on Shattuck

  June 9, 2009

  • For almost as long as I have lived in Berkeley, Black Oak Books has been my neighborhood bookstore. I can’t even begin to put in words all that Black Oak meant and my sadness at the closing of the Shattuck store.I have great appreciation for the devotion and knowledge of the many booksellers who have worked there. If I were to look back at all the readings I attended and conversations I ...
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• Invitation to Art Exhibit: Bowl of Soul, June 2

  June 1, 2009

  • I am having an exhibit called “Bowl of Soul” of my paintings and monoprints at the Loft at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley (one of the North Bay’s hidden treasures) during the month of June. The opening is tomorrow, and I’ll be doing a talk on June 11. I want to invite any Red Room folks to stop by tomorrow or for my talk. Otherwise the gallery is open 10 – 2, Tuesday ...
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• Spring's Colors

  April 7, 2009

  •   In celebration of spring and National Poetry Month, I want to post a few of the delicious color poems that came out of a recent five week poets-in-the-schools residency with four third grade classes at Springhill School in Lafayette, California.   Doing color poems with children is a deep pleasure. I love color, the facts of color–stories of indigo dye and how our eye perceives ...
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• Qualities for Reflection and Intention: A New Approach to New Years

  January 2, 2009

  • I love all kinds of New Years and birthdays, the way that peoples around the world have begun the New Year: in the autumn at harvest time, in the darkest part of the winter, and in the brightness of early spring. I am interested in living in harmony with cycles of time, finding ways to move more skillfully between times of reflection and action. At the New Year there is a collective invitation to ...
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