LOCAL HEROES

IN PRAISE OF THE DEDICATION OF ADULTS & THE COURAGE OF CHILDREN

GRAND PRIZE AWARD TO SCHOHARIE RECOVERY

Big Mind Learning is thrilled to announce our list of 2012 Local Heroes for the Environment. This week we will salute those activists, legislators, businesses, and schools working to make altruistic contributions to our local scene. We thank them heartily and encourage their commitment and spirit of solidarity. We also know that a dedication to environmental values makes good business sense.

Before we name our recipients, we want to honor all of the individuals associated with Schoharie Recovery, www.schoharierecovery.org. In light of the crisis precipitated by Hurricane Irene, residents of Schoharie, NY rose to the enormous challenge of rebuilding their community. We name Schoharie Recovery as the number one recipient of our Local Heroes Award. Since the flooding occurred, this organization has valiantly worked to rebuild, to recover, and to support those in crisis.

                                                          Photo courtesy of Seth Sholtes


    Photo courtesy of Seth Sholtes

Katie Farineau, Lily Caza, Allen Rossetti, and Seth Sholtes from Schoharie Central School participated in a reading devoted to Schoharie Recovery at The Carrot Barn on June 14, 2012. The dream of this event started from my own desire to spread the word about Katie Farineau's moving essay about Schoharie which won first prize in the Big Mind Learning Scholarship Contest. 

We reprint Seth Sholtes's poem here.

The Field of Dust

                            

by Seth Sholtes, 8^th grade, Schoharie Central School                                

I walk across a field of dust,

that once was lush and green,

with oiled ground as red as rust,

I wish it was a dream.

The crops are sculptures made of sand,

curved downward like a bow.

Their leaves crumble in my hand,

their coating falls like snow.

The field of dust holds empty shells

of memories now long gone,

replaced with that of screams and yells,

that lasted until dawn.

Debris is the new crop of the field,

piled high in large mounds.

The trees are dead, their bark is peeled,

toys buried in the ground.

As I walk across this field of dust,

I wake up from my dream.

I look outside and see only just

The field I had just seen.

Artist and Writer Anthony Thompson and the Martinez Gallery

In our appreciation of artists interpreting the natural world, we now focus on Anthony Thompson, a painter, teacher of studio art, and a student of psychology and neuroscience. He is involved in understanding the way in which artists make “non-conscious perceptions concrete” in their art and, in his words, “seem to be agents or mediums through which someone or something else is creating.” In both his writing and teaching, this artist compellingly explores the roots of creation and perception.

Living in the Hudson Valley, Thompson has been influenced by the American Hudson River School of landscape painters such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church (of Olana). This movement incorporated pastoral settings and showed harmony between human beings and nature. In addition to his traditional landscapes, he also produces contemporary landscapes and drawings combined with abstraction, showing his intense investigation into cognitive psychology and the creative process.  

Thompson has had numerous solo shows in Boston and New York, and his work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. Locally he shows his work at the Martinez Gallery in Troy, NY, www.martinezgallery.net, located in Monument Square at 3 Broadway, in the district for arts and antiques. This gallery features contemporary art focusing, but not exclusively, on Latino and Latin American art.

Samples of Thompson's work:

"Olana" (2004)

“Cohoes Falls” (2002)

“Wiltsie Bridge” (2005)

“Pond” (2007)

Check out Tony’s website at http://www.tonythompsonpainter.com.

Big Mind Learning 2012 Scholarship Essay Contest Winners Announced

Big Mind Learning is delighted to announce the winners and finalists of our 2012 second annual Scholarship Essay Contest. The judges were very impressed by the quality of the entries, and we are always happy to celebrate personal essays that express directness, maturity, and style while discussing compelling subjects. We honor all the students who submitted their work and hope they will continue to write with candor and expressiveness.

To the schools and students who submitted, thank you very much for your participation. We look forward to your continued interest next year.

In 2013 we will expand the scope of our contests to include a competitive fellowship for teachers concerning a project related to the STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and math. Please look for the announcement of both contests in August.

Congratulations to our winners and finalists!

Read the winning essays at www.bigmindlearning.com.

Jojo Ans, Photographer

Jojo was raised in New York’s Hudson River Valley, and remembers having a Kodak Instamatic X-35F camera as a girl. The best part was after sending the film off in the mail, she would get the package back, addressed to her, with her prints from the weeks before. It seemed like magic.


She went on to study photography before its digital age, and continues to shoot with film. She processes the black and white photographs herself now, and still has a moment of heart skipping excitement when she sees what has been revealed.


After her formal education, she traveled across the U.S., then Europe, and had extended stays in France, New Mexico and New Hampshire as an artist in residence. She also worked in the fashion photo world of New York City for many years.

Half House, Hudson Valley

Canoe, Hudson Valley

In Jeanne Finley’s Garden

Jeanne Finley is a freelance writer, poet, fiction writer, and editor. She was employed for many years by the New York State Writers’ Institute. To many people in the Capital District, she is also known as a tireless activist for human rights and environmental issues. Besides writing, Jeanne finds artistic expression in her inspirational garden and her photography. Her photographs are available for purchase.

To contact Jeanne, you can reach her at: finlandia [at] nycap.rr.com.

Enjoy these two photos!

Morning Glories

Praying Mantis in the Spirea

"Bell" by Cecily Parks

Writers, artists and photographers help us appreciate the natural world through the lens of their sensitivity and unique vision. Our selection of responses from the arts begins with a poet who transforms snow through her associative genius.


Cecily Parks is the author of the poetry collection Field Folly Snow. She recently earned a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. A resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, she teaches poetry writing at Columbia University.

This poem first appeared in the January/February 2012 issue of Orion magazine, located in Great Barrington, MA. Their website is www.orionmagazine.org.

Bell

This newness of snow. This boot-ringing 

as the snow warms in the sun to crush. These holes 

we wind around the witnessing pines. This

violation of white. This slowness of moose. 

This counting of steps. This counting of scars 

in the bark: the warty burl bulging low 

on the trunk, the black-scratchings left

by a bear learning to climb. This counting

of sleeps between this country & the next country 

we call home. These branches shucking off 

the statuesque in avalanches of needles & ice. 

This progress, as in the wind-scalloped snowmeadow 

pretending to be moon. This love that sets us scrambling 

over the map’s last ridge, our red hoods bright

in shrunken sky. This metallic weather in which we 

are the ore. This alder. These crimson-tipped willows 

reverberating next to a river of turquoise ice. This 

following the deep tracks of one coyote stepping 

where another has stepped. This wilderness 

that we trespass, burning like berries in the juniper 

& becoming the air in the belfry.

     

                           By Cecily Parks

Organic dairy farmer Sam Hendren of Clover Mead Farm in Chesterfield, NY tells about his journey to making award-winning artisan cheese

Sam Hendren grew up on a dairy farm in central Ohio and has been farming in the Champlain Valley of New York for over a decade. Clover Mead Farm depends on certified organic Jerseys and a functional farmstead. Wanting a flexible operation that invigorated the local economy but didn’t demand the doubling of his herd, Sam started making cheese twelve years ago. Since then, Clover Mead Farm has offered a variety of organic cheeses including Couronne, for which Sam won a bronze medal competing against 14 countries and 120 entrants in the International Cheese Competition in Trinity, England.

Using a tradition dating back to the French settlements in his area, Sam has been garnering accolades for his cheese. He and his wife Denise have been featured in Gourmet magazine and Three Farms, a film showcasing innovative farms in the Adirondacks.