I have to say I cherish my meetings with Ali in our “office,” a tiny booth in the rear of Stewart’s Convenience Store in Schaghticoke, N.Y. The visits usually begin with an early morning phone call from Ali, who needs something for the soccer team, of which I am a proud sponsor. It isn’t the Olympics yet in a way, it is.
I am a very proud sponsor of this team. Ali and I, a lapsed Jew and a fervent Muslim, meet at our “office” at least once a week for coffee and talk about our work with the soccer team and the refugees and immigrants in the Albany area.
There is a strong boundary between us: it’s his team, he runs it in any way he wishes, I help him for as long as I can and in every way I can. He is doing so much for this team.
Ali’s fame is growing, some people recognize him at the office either from my blog or from the newspaper stories about him and the team. I suppose I am a shadowy figure in some ways, but after Ali left today with his pizza slice and soda, the waitress asked me if he was “available,” she said he was cute.
Ali is a charmer, for sure, I had to give her the sad news that he is engaged to a woman now living in the Sudan, they will be married next year there and will then return here. Today, Ali needed support for a Birthday celebration for one of the soccer players.
Since many of them never get birthday parties or presents – there is no money in their families – we give them a barbecue or bowling party or cookout and a present that Ali chooses – something that he knows they need.
This costs between $100 and $150, depending on where we need to go and what the present is. Without Ali, there would be no birthday celebration, and every single player gets a party. Today’s birthday party is for Es-Taw, who is 14.
Ali also needed money for socks for Sakler Moo who is now at the Albany Academy, working hard on his homework. We help the kids on the team who need new clothes for school.
They have stiff dress codes in some of these schools. In addition. I paid for the insurance for our Big Red Van, and also reimburse Ali for gas for the van, which costs $80 a fill. We did all of this today for about $450.
The van is our Independence Day. We no longer have to ask anyone for permission to do anything but treat these children well and with love, and we both know just where all the money goes – to the soccer team.
It turns out that Ali and the Albany Warriors are getting quite popular, several people and at least one organization have contacted Ali and suggested – aggressively and persistently – that they wish to take over the sponsorship of the team and offer him a steady stream of tons of money and support.
This happened after a front-page story about the team in a local newspaper.
Some of this pressure is getting intense, and I see it is bothering Ali.
Ali seems almost passionately disinterested in these offers, but I told him he should feel free to do whatever it is that he needs or wants to do. I love sponsoring this team, but we both want to do what is best for them. That is Ali’s decision, not mine. He founded the team, owns it and runs it and coaches it.
He says he is not even considering switching sponsorship. I am glad to hear it but I leave it to him, he is free to do whatever he wishes, no strings attached.
Ali says he remembers all too well the years when there was absolutely no support for the team in any form at all. I remember when the team showed up in flip-flops and had to beg and borrow soccer balls for practice.
He says they are quite happy, and their new uniforms – The Albany Warriors – are coming soon. I was touched by what he said, but I would not interfere or object if he could do something better. I trust him completely.
And we are quite a great team ourselves, it feels very solid, and it only gets better.
It’s hard for many people – even those who have worked with Ali – to understand the very personal nature of his connection with his soccer team.
He is a surrogate parent for many of them, he guides them and protects them and teaches them and supports them. He fills the holes in their difficult lives and holds their hands as the navigate a difficult new world.
As close as I am to Ali, no one is remotely as close to these young people as he is, their bond is quite profound and beautiful. He will get them across the bridge.
We also share a very powerful and distinct passion for this work, for doing good in a time of trouble. This is not something I could let go of unless that is what Ali wanted. Our connection with one another makes this work.
I am happy to be in the background, a mysterious figure who appears to help them get what they need. The soccer team is about a lot more than soccer. I could not be more comfortable or fulfilled.
So another important meeting at our office today. It always feels good.
Ali and I are plotting get -together for his mother and Maria, the two can’t speak much to one another – Ali’s mother speaks little English – but they already seem to love each other. There are lots of ways to communicate beyond language.
Ibtesam wants to teach Maria how to cook Sudanese food, and Maria wants to make some fiber art with her.
Both of them are thrilled with the idea, Ali and I are picking a date for them to get together here on the farm, and also in Albany. I know they will love being together, they already have a powerful connection and have just met once.
Ali and I often talk about the time when this very wonderful exercise will end. The team will grow up, I will grow older, Ali will inevitably move on with his own wife and family. That day must come, as all things change.
But for now, it is a beautiful experience we are sharing, for as long as it lasts, something it may be difficult for outsiders to understand, but which we both cherish very much. You all are a part of it and thanks.
Fresh from the fertile and fiercely independent mind of Maria, the new Vulva Pillow, sketched on an old hanky and hand-stitched. It is on sale now for $85 on Etsy. The Vulva series began with the Vulva potholders and is evolving into notecards and stickers.
A small but vocal number of people – women, mostly, to my surprise, were offended by Maria’s artistic representation of the vulva, which is not the same thing as the vagina. Some thought it was “repulsive”, some used the word “disgusting,” and some thought it was just plain old “offensive.”
It is true that outrage and criticism are louder than praise, and Maria found there is a large and admiring audience for her Vulva work, and also that a number of women wrote her to say they would love Vulva art but were somewhat afraid to buy some. She has sold a lot of Vulva art.
I would buy this pillow in a second for our living room, but I am banned from buying her art. She thinks it isn’t fair, that it should go out into the world.
If the Fuddy Duddies, as I call them, thought their grumbling would stop my wife, they must live in those states that sell marijuana legally.
Maria loves the idea of the vulva, and sees it – accurately, from my reading – as a powerful symbol of feminism and of the need for women to stop hating their bodies, or permit men to make them hate their bodies.
As a man, I was quite shocked by some of the vitriolic, even hateful messages I got about putting the Vulva potholders up on my blog, although many people were thoughtful and civil in their objections or discomfort, I should say in fairness.
People said it would be deeply offensive to them if Maria made Penis Potholders (sorry, she has and sold them all) or if any artist used the male penis in their art. I guess they have not ever been to Florence to see Michelangelo’s David, penis and all, or visited any great museum in the world, or the Vatican Art Collection, which has penises and vaginas galore.
I think the Fuddie-Duddies might want to check out George O’Keefe’s beloved and much praised vagina and vulva art – I’m not aware of anyone calling it disgusting or repulsive.
For thousands of years, artists have created representations of the male and female human body, it is only recently that people thought it disgusting or offensive. Personally, I find the vulva quite beautiful and powerful, and I am quite proud of my wife for seeking to capture the Vulva as a symbol of the lost but now growing power of women.
Art like this is not created to offend or titillate, there is nothing pornographic, or even specific about it. If you look at the news, it is clear that something very powerful is happening to women in our world. There is no shame in a vulva.
And there is nothing disgusting to me about this pillow. I believe the person who buys it will be fortunate to have so interesting and thoughtful and striking a piece of art. Down with Old Fartism in all of its many ingrained forms.
And down with the shaming of women and their bodies, or men either, for that matter.
The Vulva Pillow is going up on Maria’s Etsy Page even as I speak. I doubt it will stay there for long. Good work, wonderful woman, your art lives in your heart and spirit and sails out into the world like our better angels.
In our time, I think the great spiritual challenge is learning how to stay grounded and not be sucked into the whirlwind of anger, hatred and argument that has come to define our time. I deal with it by avoiding the argument and using good – small acts of great kindness – to keep me focused on what is meaningful and important in life.
My friends Shirley and Fred Foster sent me a book on one of my favorite subjects, the Kabbalah, the mystical school of writing and thought written by unknown Jewish mystics and scholars.
Nobody knows who wrote the varied texts of the Kabbalah, but I have always been drawn to its beautiful, even sexual notions of religion, feminism, the environment and a deep kind of spirituality.
There is almost no part of the Old or New Testaments that don’t bother me at times and turn me away, but there is no part of the Kabbalah that makes me uncomfortable or leaves me uninspired or enlightened.
In the Kabbalah, God is a kind of unapologetic Pope Francis, he cautions people to love Mother Earth, and Shekinah, his divine feminine colleague, streaks across the sky in her chariot, scolding God for leaving humans imperfect and unfinished, and sending her cherubs to sting the cheeks of people who fail to love and honor the earth and the environment.
In this religious text, sex is great and should be celebrated, donkeys are wise, rabbis and priests are foolish, and we all are given the creative spark, and humans are hopelessly flawed. About the only thing the God of the Kabbalah cannot forgive is the failure of people to use the spark they were given.
It is astonishing to read religious texts that are so beautiful and mystical.
Shirley and Fred recently sent me a fascinating book called The 72 Names Of God: Technology for the Soul, by Kabbalah Scholar Yehuda Berg.
Like most things related to Kabbalah, it is complex and difficult reading. Also rewarding and exciting, the people who wrote the Kabbalah were wonderful writers and creative thinkers, free of the clunky and ponderous dogma that marked so many early Jewish and Christian theology.
Our national identity is no longer focused on spirituality, but on division and conflict. It is almost impossible to escape it, our only real choice is to succumb to it or to learn how to defuse it and live in peace.
Argument accomplishes nothing in my view of the world, perhaps the right and the left will simply end up devouring one another, maybe that is God’s solution to the intractable failings of human beings.
That might be a good solution for many people, but I don’t wish to be a part of it. I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about what Donald Trump is doing, I wake up thinking about how I can contribute to life in a positive and meaningful way.
He will answer to his God, I will answer to mine.
In Technology For The Soul, Berg writes that according to Kabbalah, we all have a spiritual field of energy that extends a little more than seven feet from our bodies. Although we can’t see this field with the naked eye, it’s as real as the invisible atoms in the air, and as undeniable and influential as the unseen force of gravity.”
Whenever this field is charged with negative or stressful energy, we find ourselves in a lower state of being, often suffering from sadness, stress, depression, hostility, fear and uncertainty. Or we are just plain unhappy.
“Unpleasant places and gloomy people influence our lives when we come into close contact with them, Berg writes.”
This culture of argument and hatred is a violation of our personal space, suggests the Kabbalah, it disturbs energy in a way that is harmful and unhealthy to us and our well-being.
The Kabbalah, I should say, was written before smartphones and CNN and Fox News and social media, it was easier for them to withdrawn into their field of positive energy than it is for me or you. Our spiritual challenges are so much greater.
But they do have so much wisdom to offer us, and we don’t get much from the seers and pundits who get to go on television and scream at one another.
For me, this is remarkable thing about the Kabbalah, every time I read it I say yes, yes, this was written for me, this is what I feel and believe, this is a faith I can enthusiastically embrace.
Berg suggests a meditation to counter this negative energy and stress, and I will write it here and also record in audio below.
“Purifying light banishes unseen ominous forces and deactivates harmful influences lurking nearby, including those that dwell inside of you. Stress dissolves, pressure is released. Balance and positive energy permeate your environment.”
Audio: I like this meditation, and read it below on the audio app.
Of all the forms of photography I try to practice, I think portraiture is my favorite. There is a powerful challenge to the idea of trying to capture someone’s soul in a photograph. I know some people whose portrait I am just on fire to take – Kelly, Ed and Carol Gulley, and now, our friend Susan Popper, a new resident of our special little town.
And then, I know many people I would not dream of doing a portrait of. I often wonder what the quality is that draws me to a portrait.
What goes into a portrait? A portrait lens helps, my favorite is the Canon 85 mm, it has a special quality of light and detail and warmth to it. It is big heavy lens and it rarely fails me.
I have known Susan for awhile and I wonder why I am drawn to taking her portrait. As I learn to know and understand Susan, I am beginning to understand what makes a good portrait.
First, I have to like the subject. I can’t really take decent portraits of people I don’t know or care about. There is an intimacy between the portrait taker and the subject, each reacts to the other, and I like Susan, and she likes and trusts me, or at least is beginning to.
That really matters. If I like the subject, the subject likes and trusts me, I usually get a portrait that works for me.
Susan is happy right now, she is coming out of an awful period, and I wanted to catch her happiness. But how do you do that? People are so stiff when a camera is pointed at them. She has a radiant spirit, and any portrait that doesn’t capture that is a failure.
There are other issues. Susan has written about obesity and struggled with it for much of her life, and I worried that she would be sensitive to the way I took her portrait. But Susan has a quality that often makes for a good portrait – she is a strong woman, she is proud of her self and basically says to the photographer, “go head, do your thing.”
Susan
She does not much care how she looks or how her body is presented, it is her body and her life, and there it is. That is unusual, something the photographer picks right up on. With Susan, I am free to take the photo I want.
I learned a lot about strong woman when I started taking photos of Kelly Nolan at the Bog, she had that same way of looking into the camera without a need for prepping or primping. She liked herself just the way she was. I like to take pictures of strong women.
Maria is a strong woman, every portrait of hers is a study in character and vulnerability. She never really likes to be photographed, but she doesn’t mind being photographed well.
Susan sometimes projects a grumpy and aloof demeanor, it was how she protected herself from abuse and cruelty for many years. But the truth is, she is loving and sweet and inherently social. The mask was just that, a veneer.
How to show this. It’s very easy to get Susan to smile, she has a quick and ready sense of humor. So I told an off color joke or two, or said something mildly surprising and off color. I knew that would get a laugh out of her, and it did.
Then, there was her strange little dog Sally, a tiny, shy and odd dog she loves dearly, Sally was her companion while Susan hid from the world, they are quite attached to one another. I’ve never seen Susan hold Sally, and I suggested she pick her up, I knew it would bring out the loving soul close to the surface.
She lit up just holding Sally.
And then I asked her to stand beneath one of her photographs, she is a creative, emerging as a very gifted photographer, she just opened an Etsy shop for her photography, she calls it Susan Unframed (I would have called it Susan Resurrected).
So I added three elements to the portrait taking, none of them evident to anyone in the room but me, and perhaps, Susan. One, the joke, two the dog, three the photo above her head. In a way she was standing up for herself, her photographer, her creativity. And then I had the right lens, it helped me in a dark room.
And in a sense, what makes a good portrait is the same thing that makes a good friend – time, love and trust.
I also put her by the staircase, which added lines and dimension to the picture. You do have to think about portraits, they give back just what they are given.
I think Susan will be a regular subject for me in the new life she is building. I like strong women, she has a great back story, it is exciting to see her true self emerge.
This is why I love portraits I think, you have to think about them, and like what you are seeing through the viewfinder.
