EASTER CONVERSATION

watercolor by Kyle Mort "Low Battery" (will work for food?)

Yesterday, sitting around an Easter dinner feast with friends, conversation steered to one of the all-time philosophical questions: You come into a pot of gold (millions of dollars? billions?). What will you do?

Sure, you go to your attorney, financial advisor, and spiritual leader for advice. Of course, you pay all your debts and set up safety nets for family members. And then?

What’s stopping you from doing all those things now…even if on a limited scale? Start again.

Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York, is an exquisite little architectural gem sitting nearly in the shadow of infamous Auburn State Prison. It’s named for a young (rich) man who died in 1931 leaving a bequest to build an art museum in his home town. The Art Center opened in 1981.

Schweinfurth is unpretentious. It doesn’t own a thing except the space where it sits. A small staff of fewer than half dozen women run the place. Nearly all their exhibitions feature New York artists except the annual prestigious national quilt exhibit. I haven’t seen a financial report. My guess is that the place “makes do” with a combination of funds: memberships, donations, a few grants, a modest endowment. 

Its existence is a gift, a “feel good” escape for stressed visitors. In my fantasy, this could be my “what next.”

"Continuum" by Russell Serrianne (very Victorian!), wild vine tendrils with clear shellac surface

Last week, the horror of watching Notre Dame burn, one of the world’s architectural treasures, unified France and the world in grief. Few events are big enough to achieve that these days. The last time? 9/11…and the U.S. was forever changed in ways that would astound former generations.

Immediately, pledges of millions of dollars began pouring into France to restore the 600 year old spire of Notre Dame and for an entire 24 hours, we thought “there is good will across the world after all.”

In a blink, protestors in Paris took up the cry “Wait! Money for a building but not for people? We are the working poor and we deserve attention.”  

There you have the age-old conundrum: Feed the physical or feed the spirit? 

Why must this be a choice? Isn’t it possible to take care of the physical needs of the world’s population with enough left over to enrich the spirit? The most insane thing I read last week was our President actually saying that our country “is full — no more room for immigrants.” That follows another official’s view that “solar energy will use up the sun” and “wind turbines cause cancer.” 

It’s the division that’s the problem — not the supply.

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The Svalbard Globle Seed Vault in Norway

Speaking of supply, there are 1700 seed banks in the world. These are repositories to insure against strains of plants becoming erased.  In past years, crops have died out due to blight, insect infestation, and climate change. Now, new crop diseases are increasing faster than world scientists can diagnose and stop infestations. Seed banks are life insurance policies meant to keep the human race from starving.

But seed banks themselves are always under threat. Several were looted for their plastic containers in Afghanistan. Others in Syria were destroyed by war and the typhoon that hit the Philippines destroyed another. Others have failed through lack of government funding.

(HUNGER, a novel by Elise Blackwell, describes a group of scientists who work in a seed bank in Leningrad during World War II. In 1941, Germany completely isolated Leningrad. People were without supplies for 900 days and resorted to eating bark stripped from trees, animals in the zoo and moss growing on rocks. Sex was traded for teaspoons of sugar and invaluable art treasures traded for cups of flour. The novel follows scientists faced with starvation or defending the seed bank there.)

In 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was officially opened in Norway. Cold and dryness are the required preservatives for seeds  and the Norwegian seed vault is located a mere stone’s throw from the northern most populated outpost on earth. It is deep within mountains surrounded by permafrost where the average temperature is -18%C.

But sometimes insurance policies fail. The earth is warming faster than anyone predicted and faster especially at the upper northern hemisphere. The permafrost is melting and water from melted ice has already entered the outer entrance to this fortress. Scientists are scrambling to shore up the entrance but how long can they bail? 

Nothing is a “sure bet.”