Redtree Times

I am the bond I weave with others.

— Albert Jacquard (1925-2013)

I received a small package yesterday postmarked from Italy. Castel Gandolfo, specifically which is, according to Wikipedia, a scenic town and municipality in Italy’s Alban Hills, located about 25 km southeast of Rome, best known as the historic summer residence of the Pope. Situated overlooking Lake Albano, the town features the 17th-century Apostolic Palace, the Barberini Gardens, and the Vatican Observatory.

It is also home to the Apostoline Sisters, an order of nuns whose specific mission is in helping young people find a path in this world through spiritual and vocational training, with the idea that every life is unique and every vocation important because, according to their website, Every vocation is never for oneself, it is always a task, a mission for the good of all.

That’s a thought I have always held in my mind, that there is dignity and purpose to be found in everyone and every job. So, when the Sisters reached out to me this past year to ask for permission to use two of my paintings for their annual desk calendar that they sell, along with other items, in order to raise funds for their mission which includes a vocational school there in Castel Gandolfo, I was honored and pleased to give my permission.

It’s a great little desk calendar whose overall theme is asked in a question gracing its cover: Under these skies, where are you? Each month’s image accompanied by an appropriate quote and a list of the feast days for that month. The first of my paintings chosen is for this month, February, and carries the title Creo Legami which translates to I create connections.

I like that.

It also includes the quote above that supplied the calendar page’s title from the late French geneticist/essayist Albert Jacquard. I love the quote they chose not only because it refers to the Baucis & Philemon painting accompanying it but because it also beautifully sums up how I viewed much of my work from the past year, especially those with the tangles that formed their skies.

I wasn’t aware of Jacquard but I can see why his words were chosen. He was a leader in genetic research which sounds ominous in itself. However, he devoted himself as a humanist to the betterment of the human condition through his advocacy for the homeless and illegal immigrants of France. He had an interesting quote about his research which resonated with me as someone who asks a lot of questions but offers few, if any, answers:

I have no solution: I don’t intend to build the society of tomorrow. I just want to show that it must not resemble the society of today.

I can certainly relate to that. I can’t say what our future holds or even what it should be. That is well beyond my limited abilities and understanding. But I do know what it should not and cannot be.

Here’s an absolute favorite song that I haven’t shared here in a while that echoes in these last few paragraphs. This is A Change is Gonna Come from the immortal Sam Cooke, a song that was written by Cooke at the height of the civil rights struggle in response to his arrest in Louisiana after protesting a Holiday Inn refusing to honor his reservations at that hotel.

And to think that there are some who would have us return to that time. That is a future we cannot accept.

Io sono legami che intreccio con gli altri…

PS: I also have another painting in this calendar for the month of October. I will share it at that time.