Though we weren't able to get the board members to change their minds and re-instate the show, we have found an alternative location just around the corner from MOCHA. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, we hope you will also come to see the artwork displayed at its new location. Details are on our website: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/events/oakland-ca-childs-view-gaza-exhibit
Thanks again from all of us at MECA!
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Got teared up. I don't know why. The simple grace of child beauty?
My son a very long time ago, when he was twelve, won a group award with three other kids for his UNESCO door to door fund raising. We talked about it. He saw other kids around the world through their art and poems, like his friends---that is thanks to his social studies teacher in the 7th grade who taught them about the UN and UNESCO, and other children around the world and their struggles.
This is very sentimental and probably foolish, but it melted my heart. Fuck! Boy you get it... But I said nothing.
I always had a theory, which I would have wanted to follow in anthropology. The basic premise is that childhood has a universal culture of its own which is reflected in their art, language (difficulties), and games. It's based on Mexico at nine, playing with Dolores. She taught me the hands-string finger games of lacing up complex designs. And then undoing them with a couple of strokes. She was very good at it... She was also very good at rhymes and word games.
I was reminded of that in 8 1/2 when a young girl chanted something like `anna nezzi maza'...as a magic incantation, obviously something from Fellini's childhood. It's equvalent to abracadabra. I could hear Dolores saying anna nezzi.., announcing it as the announcer on some radio show, and me, sullen wondering what the hell does she mean? She had her own little chants. They involved girl mysteries. I couldn't follow them. There are the lost jump rope chants of girls of yore... I watched in fascination of its precision. Black girls at Union were best at it.
Boys were better at collections, boxes, found things numbered and counted like state treasures... Or I was. Images of Cortez ... and others. It was a long time ago.
CG