Wednesday Walk: Maples, Milk, and Sunflowers
Welcome to the Quarantine Creatives newsletter, a companion to my podcast of the same name, which explores creativity, art, and big ideas as we continue to live through this pandemic.
Every Wednesday, I share random thoughts and tidbits with links to let you do some exploring. I call these Wednesday Walks, as it’s the type of conversation we might have walking down a path in the woods- the topics are free flowing, sometimes related, sometimes not.
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Fall in New England
We are at peak fall here in Massachusetts. My parents visited us last week and also did some sightseeing in other parts of New England. After their visit, my wife and I were talking about how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place that we often forget is so special until people visit from elsewhere. It is really incredible at this time of year.
The sugar maple outside of my home office window is ablaze in color at the moment. Here’s how it looked yesterday:
If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, you may know that this is one of the sugar maples that I tap in the late winter for sap, which I then boil down to make maple syrup.
Maple trees in particular always fascinate me because they are so useful for so many things. I appreciate that I can make my own maple syrup by simply driving a small tap through the bark and collecting the sap. Maple wood can also be used to smoke barbecue, and it pairs nicely with pork.
For a woodworker, maple is a very stable hardwood that is often used for furniture and cabinetry. The wood also burns very well, so it can be a good firewood.
I love that we can all get something from a tree, even if those uses are all very different. At the moment, my maples are providing nothing more than beauty, and I’m appreciating their show while it’s happening. It won’t be long before the trees will be bare and the winds will get colder.
Artful Protest
In case you missed it, there have been a number of strange protests happening across Britain lately. One that’s perhaps received the most attention was when activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland with the group Just Stop Oil threw cans of soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting, then glued themselves to the wall of the National Gallery.
The museum has said that the painting was stored behind glass and there was only minor damage to the frame. Still, watching the video provokes a visceral reaction in me. This particular painting was made in 1888 and is an important part of our world culture. Imagining it destroyed in an instant is shocking, perhaps because vandalism in this way feels violent and violating. It’s quick, deliberate, obvious.
By contrast, we allow the destruction of our planet every day from pollution and emissions, but that destruction is happening at a much slower pace. Instead of watching a can of soup hurled at a priceless artifact, we are witnessing average global temperatures slowly climb over 150 years. It becomes harder to shock on that timeline.
This type of protest has the possibility of garnering headlines and attention, but I wonder how many people will take the time to consider the message. My interpretation is that they are trying to say that we should feel the same shock and disappointment with what’s happening to actual sunflowers in nature (and the rest of the natural world) that we do to seeing a painting of them possibly destroyed. Does that message penetrate?
There was another protest I saw circulating soon after the soup incident that may be in a similar vein but missed the mark for me.
While the soup protest had the shock value of taking place in front of a world renowned painting, this one was in the pedestrian setting of a supermarket. Instead of potentially destroying a Van Gogh, these protestors are dumping milk on a vinyl floor. There’s far less immediacy to this one.
It’s interesting how the cell phone video elevates the importance of both activities though. We have a front row seat to the action, and we assume there is an audience looking on to the live proceedings. In the case of the museum, that may be true. People can be heard shrieking and calling for security when the soup is hurled. In the supermarket, the camera gives a sense of an audience, but it doesn’t seem like there were many onlookers actually on the scene. The importance comes in viewing it on social media after the fact. Very few minds will be changed in person.
I don’t follow movements like this closely (although I have interviewed folks who do), and I view them more as a curiosity. I’m interested in what motivates people to protest and I wonder if there are better ways to channel that energy to motivate real change.
I am interested to hear your reactions to either or both protests. Is one more impactful than the other? Are they both wrong because they involve the destruction of property? Or is that destruction permissible if a larger message is broadcast or folks are moved to action?
More Fotomat Reading
In last week’s Wednesday Walk, I brought you some snippets about drive through photo processor Fotomat. If you’re interested in going even deeper on Fotomat’s history and seeing more photos of kiosks that have been repurposed, I’d encourage you to check out Rolando Pujol’s most recent issue of The Retrologist.
If you’re interested in roadside Americana and midcentury kitsch, there’s nobody who chronicles this beat quite like Rolando. His Instagram feed is always a delight and his recently launched newsletter has covered interesting topics like Pizza Hut Classics (which I’ve also written about) and Lucille Ball’s hometown, which is full of Lucy murals, statues, and museums.
Give The Retrologist a read and as subscribe if these topics are up your alley.
Other Wednesday Walks
If you’d like to catch up on past episodes of the Quarantine Creatives podcast, they can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
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If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
Stay Safe!
Heath
That looks a lot like our sugar maples here! We don't tap our trees, since we have locally sourced maple syrup right down the street at a local dairy farm, but it's always neat when you can produce some of your own right on site. My wife and I are actually considering starting a little indoor garden to grow certain things like lettuce and spices really just for the fun of it, but also to save a little money :)
I'm not going to touch the protests. I could write an entire book-length dissertation on what I think of those...
As for the Fotomats, ever since I read your first post on the subject, I have begun to see refitted Fotomat booths everywhere. There are a ton of them in my hometown in Massachusetts and quite a few here in Vermont and upstate New York, too.
Hope you're having a great week... I'm not so much, but it's always a pleasure to get your letters in my inbox :)