The Sound of Peace

April 26, 2012 - East Hartford, CT - Amanda Hauserman meditates during a gong concert at The Conduit Center.

In an East Hartford strip mall that once housed a gunpowder mill, large metal plates are calling arms to sound. Specifically, the arms of Jeff Nickell and Owen James.

Several times a week Nickell and James are performing gong concerts in their wellness and meditation center; The Conduit Center. The gong waves coming from the center sound less like the rock-gong of Keith Moon, though, and more like the soothing improvisations of Keith Jarrett.

Surrounded by blankets and candlelight, concert-goers, some sitting in suspension chairs and some wearing Mindfold relaxation masks, say absolutely nothing while deeply resonant and living sound waves massage listeners into what Owen James calls, a “mind movie.”

April 26, 2012 - East Hartford, CT - Jeff Nickell (top).

Ancient gongs, it is reported, once heralded warnings of advancing dangers or dignitaries. Queen¹s drummer Roger Taylor, according to Wikipedia is, “known for having one of the biggest Tam-Tams in rock.” Which was probably used to end Queen’s classic song “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“When you hear the sound of a gong,” says Nickell, “It’s a call for attention but then it resonates out into peaceful silence which is the most important part of the sound meditation with gongs. When we can value those moments of quiet, to be an opportunity to become more mindful and allow more creativity, I think that’s where we can change…the world. If we can change ourselves, we can change the world.”

April 26, 2012 - East Hartford, CT, Owen James (top) plays a crystal bowl.

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The Limits of Craft

Top: 03.20.2012 Melissa Cann wipes tears while speaking of her sister Maureen Brainard-Barnes (on computer monitor). Bottom: Charla Nash in a Massachusetts rehab center.

The stories of Melissa Cann and Charla Nash may be familiar but it is difficult to imagine familiarity with the nature of their suffering.

Melissa Cann’s sister, 25-year-old Maureen Brainard-Barnes, disappeared in 2007. Her remains were found three years later on a desolate stretch of Long Island beach along with the remains of nine other people. The deaths are being attributed to a still at-large serial killer.

Charla Nash was attacked and severely disfigured in 2009 by a chimpanzee who lived at the Stamford home of Nash’s friend Sandra Herold. Nash lost her face, eyes and hands in the attack and last year underwent a full face transplant.

This week I photographed Cann and Nash on consecutive days. Cann in her Norwich home on Wednesday for a story by the Courant’s Denise Buffa. Nash, I photographed on Thursday, in a Massachusetts rehab center for a story by the Courant’s Jon Lender.

Top: 02.29.2012 - Stafford, CT - Christine Deal, Gerry LaMorte and Jim Atwood (L-R) meditate during class at Middle River Yoga in Stafford, CT. Bottom: Bigda (R), leads a class through postures and meditations "Yoga, for me" says Bigda, "is one hundred percent about peace.

On Monday, also of this week, the Courant published a story I worked on about Michele Bigda and her Stafford yoga studio; Middle River Yoga. During one of our first meetings Bigda introduced me to the following poem titled Please Call Me by My True Names, by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—

even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving

to be a bud on a Spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and

death

of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing

on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird

that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily

in the clear water of pond.

And I am also the grass-snake

that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and

bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,

refugee on a small boat.

who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,

with plenty of power in my hands,

And I am the man who has to pay

his “debt of blood” to my people

dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm

it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughs at

once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and the door of my heart

could be left open,

the door of compassion.

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The Love Bomb

02.07.2012 - Mansfield Hollow, CT - Charlie Prewitt

Charlie Prewitt’s 93 years have been a long and winding journey — from witnessing racial prejudice while growing up in southern Indiana in the 1920s, to helping build an atomic bomb during World War II, to a career promoting peace and human rights.

Through it all, the Mansfield resident credits one person with his transformation from atomic scientist to active pacifist: his wife, Virginia.

“If I had married someone who had the same attitude as me and supported me, I probably would have that same attitude today. I’d be racist and conservative. But Virginia, slowly and gently, over 65 years, changed me.”

In the summer before his senior year as a chemistry major at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., Prewitt was teaching a chemistry course, when a “vision of loveliness” — a student named Virginia Stewart — walked into his classroom.

Two weeks later he asked her out on a date. Two weeks after that, they were engaged. And in the summer of 1941 they were married in Lexington.

In the fall of 1941, Charlie was recruited for the U.S. government’s secret Manhattan Project, whose work led to the development of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 to end World War II. The project initially sent him to work as a chemist at an Army facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where Virginia would also be employed. Later on, they were transferred to Hanford, Wash.

Prewitt says that from the beginning of the project he had reservations about building “a bomb that could blow up a whole city.” He and some other chemists wanted to stop their work, but were told by their superiors that if they quit, they “would be drafted and sent right back to their same desks. We had families, so we stayed,” Prewitt said. The day after the war ended, “I quit.”

The natural sciences, Prewitt said, “discovered how to destroy all life on Earth.” So after the war, Charlie and Virginia decided to teach social sciences. “If there was any contribution we could make, it would be as educators.”

In 1952 Prewitt began teaching at Eastern Connecticut State University. He retired in 1979 but continues to teach peace and human rights part time, as well as attending weekly peace vigils.

Last September, ECSU dedicated the Virginia and Charles Prewitt Office of Peace and Human Rights and a foundation has been created in Charlie’s and Virginia’s names to provide scholarships for students demonstrating an interest in peace and human rights.

Virginia died in 2007.

“The greatest gain in my life was marrying her,” says Prewitt. “The greatest loss of my life was losing her.”

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2012.02.20

Millions Of Stinging Bees

01.12.2012 - Rais Bhuyian (L) at Glastonbury High School (credit: Mark Mirko) and Bhuyian (right) in 2001 after he was shot by Mark Stroman (credit: worldwithouthate.org)

Rais Bhuyian has lived through some big dreams. When he was young man in Bangalore, Bangladesh, he dreamed of being a pilot. That dream came true during his service in the Bangladesh Air Force. Rais also dreamt of seeing the world and obtaining a higher education. That dream came true in 1999 after he obtained a student visa to study in New York City.

Rais was in Texas during the attacks of September 11, 2001, and he remembers watching television crying and wondering “Who are these kind of people that can do this kind of harm?”

Four days after those murderous attacks, Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant living in Texas, was shot and killed by a white supremacist named Mark Stroman. Rais’ dreams changed after Mr. Hasan’s death and for three nights in a row he dreamt of being robbed and shot while working at his friend’s gas station.

On a rainy Texas September 21, 2001, Rais Bhuyian’s nightmarish dream came true.

Mark Stroman walked into the gas station where Rais was working. He pointed a shotgun at his face and asked, “Where are you from?” Rais, who thought he was being robbed, had already placed the cash register’s money on the counter. Before he could answer Stroman’s question, Rais says he felt his face explode with the sensation of “millions of stinging bees.” Stroman’s gun ripped through the right side of Rais’ head. Rais fell to the floor screaming “mom.” Stroman left the store with Rais thinking, “I’m dying today.”

The paramedics who arrived on the scene, understanding that a man had been shot in the head with a shotgun, told Rais later they expected to see, “a body on the floor.” Instead, they said they saw something that “looked like a slaughtered chicken running toward the ambulance.”

Rais survived the attack and still lives in Dallas but this year, in January, he was visiting Glastonbury High School at the invitation of English and drama teacher Linda Napoletano. She connected with Rais through Facebook and has been working with him to write a play about his life. The play is called Blind and Toothless, in reference to the idea of exchanging an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

About three weeks after Rais was shot, Mark Stroman walked into the store where Vasudev Patel, from India, worked and shot him dead with a .44 caliber pistol. In 2002 Stroman said while being tried for his crimes and sentenced to death “that he had performed a patriotic duty.”

The fact that Rais Bhuyian survived being shot at such close range is remarkable. What Rais sought for his attacker, however, is the message Rais wants people to hear. Bhuyian, with the support of the families of Mark Stroman’s other victim’s, fought to stop his execution. Rais spoke on Stroman’s behalf at universities as well as the German and European Parliaments. He formed a website, worldwithouthate.org, and collected 12,000 virtual signatures from around the world, asking Texas to commute Stroman’s sentence to life in prison without parole.

Mark Stroman was executed by lethal injection on July 20, 2011. In September of 2011, Rais filed suit against the State of Texas and governor Rick Perry for being denied his right to meet Stroman, a right afforded under the state’s Victim’s Bill of Rights.

During his talks with the Glastonbury High School students, Rais said that for most of the ten years Mark Stroman was on death row, he continued to espouse his ideas of white supremacy. In a Huffington Post story dated July 18, 2011, however, it was reported that:

According to those close to Stroman, the efforts by Bhuiyan on his behalf have contributed to a change of heart in a man who called his crimes “patriotic” before his trial and who prosecutors once described as a cold-blooded killer.

In an interview last week, Stroman told Ilan Ziv, a documentary filmmaker, that he was remorseful for the crimes and was deeply moved by Bhuiyan’s attempts to save his life.

When asked at Glastonbury High School why he wanted to meet Mark Stroman, Rais said, “I wanted to connect with him in a human way. Not as a murderer. I wanted to learn from him, to understand him. What went wrong, and how did he change once I started my campaign? He was talking about peace and human rights and love because he found this from his survivor. What really went on in his mind that made him change? That is powerful and I could relay that message to other people.”

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Stars And Wars

Stars

West Hartford, CT    |    07.03.2011    |    General Colin Powell (above).

West Hartford, CT    |    07.03.2011    |    (Top: from left to right) Jerry Hilgert, 17, of Luxembourg, Michaela Gross, 16, of Newton, Massachusetts, and Spencer Couch of Falmouth, Maine, practice reciting their peace project proposals before sharing them with General Colin Powell. Thirteen young people — some from China, Bangladesh, Iraq, Europe and Russia  – were invited to meet with Powell and discuss their ideas for peace before the former Secretary of State and retired four-star general addressed the World Youth Peace Conference.

 

Jacinta Lomba (above, center), 15, of South Windsor, CT, inspired by her parents from Cape Verde, Africa, spoke of her plan to build libraries in Cape Verde. “Growing up,” Lomba told Powell, “My parents shared stories with me about how they never had the opportunity to read books for fun. And I think that is something that we take for granted here in America. We can go to the library, check out books and let our imaginations run wild. So my pathways to peace project will require me to travel to my home country and install libraries for the children there. And the libraries will be filled with books, fictional novels and children’s stories, printed in Portuguese.”

“Fictional stories,” she continued, “shape our imagination and our beliefs for the future. This is a great way for me to promote peace amongst my own people and perhaps to change the world someday.

To Lomba’s surprise, Powell said he had been to Cape Verde. He further noted that earlier in the day he had been speaking in northwestern Connecticut with a group supporting the Kent Memorial Library. “It was built about 80-years ago,” Powell said about the library, “to honor veterans of the first world war. The point I made to them is that I was raised in a poor neighborhood in the South Bronx. And I had a library in my community called the Hunt’s Point Library. My parents were immigrants and you didn’t spend money on books, you had a library. The Hunt’s Point Library introduced me to the books of James Michener and these wonderful books about the South Pacific. Willa Cather and her wonderful My Antonia took me from the South Bronx to the plains of Nebraska. And so libraries open a new world for people who are shielded from the real world because they don’t have the opportunity to read.”

Three television lights kept the small room warm as more ideas were presented by young people from Russia, China, Iraq, Luxembourg, Maine, Florida, and Massachusetts.

Powell left the meeting and, after stopping in the cramped hallway outside the media room to pose for photographs with the participants, went out to speak with the crowd. He spoke of his combat service in Vietnam and not seeing his son until he was 8-months old because, as he put it, “I was in the jungle.” The 74-year-old former Secretary of State also spoke of working with Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, the Military-Industrial complex, leadership, success and driving his Corvette.

At the close of his talk General Powell said,

“As long as my country, and every country represented here in this room this evening, understands that

–We are all of a creator.

–We all have inalienable rights.

–We all have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.

–We are all joined in this together and increasingly so because of the power of the information revolution.

–We are all each other’s brothers and sisters no matter what country we are from, what religion we profess, what ethnicity we have.

–We are all in it together in this great world of ours. A great world that I am so very proud to have lived in during my 70-odd years.

You, although you are not my children, tonight you are my children, and I want to make sure I am giving this message to you: Go forth and save this world of ours.”

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Silence And Thunder

Storrs, CT    |    06.17.2011    |    (l – r)  Nicholaes Roosevelt, Judy Hyde and Norman Janes in silent worship. 

 

During the past three months there have been three Quaker Quest meetings held at the Quaker Meetinghouse in Storrs. The first was about peace, then worship, and Friday night’s meeting was about simplicity. It was a three hour meeting that started at 6:30 p.m.

In the beginning, strawberry shortcake was served.

At 7 o’clock, handheld chimes were sounded and the assembled moved from a dining area to a room with about 50 chairs arranged in a circle. Five to ten minutes of silence started the meeting.

Silent consideration was used by the group throughout. The silence didn’t feel implemented as much as it felt…organic, despite the thunder rumbling outside.

My camera never sounded so loud as when its shutter was released while surrounded by this silent circle of worship.  I made two photographs from inside this circle.

Before last night I was not familiar with Quaker theology beyond a vague awareness that peace was a tenet. Silence, I learned, is a primary Quaker method of worship. Queries, I also learned, are a primary tool for considering ideas; asking questions when searching for answers.

Gerald Sazama, a meeting participant, provided me with a 20-page excerpt from “A Testament of Devotion,” by Thomas R. Kelly, a Quaker educator. The excerpt included these thoughts on peace:

“For the experience of Presence is the experience of peace, and the experience of peace is the experience not of inaction but of power, and the experience of power is the experience of a pursuing Love that loves its way untiringly to victory.

He who knows the Presence knows peace, and he who knows peace knows power and walks in complete faith that that objective Power and Love which has overtaken him will overcome the world.”

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June 19, 2011

The Fog of Peace

Nobel-ity

(From the top)  Wednesday, May 19, South Windsor  |  Thursday, May 20, Hartford

It was not a typical week.

Wednesday I photographed President Barack Obama boarding Air Force One out of Connecticut.

Thursday, a press conference with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Given that both men have been awarded the Nobel peace prize, and given that I have been exploring the idea of peace and photojournalism ( #1-peace, #2-gratitude), I wanted to make this post matter.

That was a lot of pressure also given that the world was predicted to end Saturday.

It is now Sunday night, here is what Tutu said about the media during his press conference:

“I have a great deal of time for young people. I have often been upset with the media who have tended to take the case of a young person who goes astray. And they splash it as if it was representative of all young people.

I have been to a number of poor countries and it has been heart-warming to see, what in your case is say, members of the Peace Corps. Young Americans working in remote isolated villages helping to build classrooms, helping to build clinics. And I say to the media why don’t you tell us a little more about these incredible young people?

When I was growing up the only drug you had was marijuana. Today you have a whole range of really hard drugs with unscrupulous drug pushers.

What should surprise us is not that some young people go astray, when you think of the high pressure advertising to which they are exposed.

We didn’t have television. We didn’t have internet and all of that stuff. I gather, I don’t know, but I gather there are some quite extraordinary things you can access there.

Isn’t it amazing, that given all of these pleasures, not more young people, in fact, succumb. We should be saying, “Isn’t it fantastic that only a few?”

Young people are incredible. They are amazingly idealistic. They really do dream that this world is capable of being a better world.

And for us oldies: The thing that I usually say to young people is for goodness sake don’t allow yourself to be infected by the cynicism of oldies. Dream. Dream that this world can become better.”

Thank you for reading, have a good week.

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Gratitude

Peace

2011.04.22 – Hartford – Good Friday

We are familiar with images of war.

But what do photographs of peace look like?

War photographer James Nachtwey wrote in 1985: “In a way, if an individual assumes the risk of placing himself in the middle of a war in order to communicate to the rest of the world what is happening, he is trying to negotiate for peace.”

For those of us with cameras who do not work in conflict zones, but believe in the imperative of peace, what do we photograph?

Is it possible to negotiate for peace without violent imagery?

Words, in some cases the identical words, can stir people toward peace or hostility.

I believe photographs have a similar power.

So what does a peace photographer report?

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April 23, 2011