UNRULY SAINT ~

 

R E A D    M E

JIM FOREST ~

J I M     F O R E S T

 

DOROTHY DAY ~

 

Dorothy Day's final arrest,

protesting with striking farm

workers in California, 1973

Photo by  Bob Fitch

R E A D     M E

DOROTHY DAY ~

Scribner 2017


No one but no one could have written this fascinating biography but a grand-daughter and a grand-daughter has. There have been many biographies and celebrations to the wonderful Dorothy Day over the years now, including by Robert Coles ( a beautiful mind barely ever mentioned any longer ) but there is something endearing and everlasting how a grand-daughter can circulate and write not only a biography from a personal perspective, but also

a universal scale, by a storyteller writing a passionate and even critical portrait of her grandmother, Dorothy Day, as well as Dorothy’s only child Tamar (the biographer’s mother) and also the author, a child then, bringing her own story

into the book. The biography becomes the story of three women’s lives, over a century long, cutting through some of the toughest ground of this country’s history: labor struggle, world wars, economic depression, civil rights, women’s rights, tattered joyous 60s, Presidential impeachment, Christian brotherhood, the Catholic Worker movement. Don’t go dummy or gummy on the word “Christian.” Here it means goodwill to all mankind. This sterling portrait will showcase how many people – often castoffs — others remarkable alongside them, and Dorothy Day, held their ground.

[ BA ]

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"Love, motherhood, religion — how many of us on finding ourselves embraced by any one of those would have stopped, rested, and remained? But this is the mystery of those forces that led her to go one step further, and another step, and another. And in one of the most grace-filled moments of a life full of grace, Dorothy finds herself praying to the Blessed Mother. Here I am — what would you have me do? Isn’t this that in-between time, that liminal space cherished by the Irish, the mysterious time of waiting and wandering? Isn’t it about hearing the call?"


~ from DOROTHY DAY
Kate Hennessey

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D O R O T H Y      D A Y

T H E      C A T H O L I C      W O R K E R

PETE SEEGER, FOREVER ~

Just to say all things must pass but some things must not be forgotten ~

here's a fine personal memoir by Bud Courtney about Pete Seeger

 I came across while reading the other night

and I thought best to share

~ carry on

LOST & FOUND ~

April 15th was a momentous day for us in the U.S. On that day two bombs exploded at the Boston marathon, killing three people. The atrocity was covered around the clock for weeks. I received e-mails from different friends in Iraq expressing their condolences and sadness. April 15th was also a momentous day in Iraq. I cannot help wondering how many people in the US heard about the eighteen bombs that went off throughout Iraq that same day. At least thirty-two people were killed. And on April random attacks left 111 Iraqis dead. On April 24th at least eighty-six were killed, and another ninety-six on April 25th. And this has been the reality in Iraq for over ten years now.

In the eight years since the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom until the end of 2011, 4, 480 US troops have died in Iraq. This is a figure commonly cited in the US media. A figure we might not have heard is the following: 4, 471 Iraqi civilians died as a result of ongoing violence in 2012 alone.

Cathy Breen, "Iraq: Hope Amidst Tragedy", The Catholic Worker August-September, 2013

young Wendell Berry

ONE RIGHT STANDARD

[The following letter was written by Wendell Berry, author, farmer
and environmentalist, to John Held, in support of the campaign against
frac sand mining - Eds. note]


Dear John,

You have offered me the privilege of joining by letter with you and your friends in Winoa, Minnesota in opposition to "frac sand mining" and I am happy to accept.

I will say, first, that there is never, for any reason, a justification for doing long-term or permanent damage to the ecosphere. We did not create the world; we do not own it, and we have no right to destroy any part of it.

Second, most of our politicians and their corporate employers are measuring their work by the standards of profitability and mechanical efficiency. Those standards are wrong. There is one standard that is right: the health of living creatures and the living earth.

Third, we must give our need to eat, drink and breathe absolute precedence over our need for mind fuels.

I wish you well.

Sincerely,
Wendell Berry

from The Catholic Worker, August-September 2013

However, other times there’d be a book I’d start reading and couldn’t put down. Here, for example, is the opening of one called Business be Damned—not a very promising title—by someone called Elijah Jordan, published in 1952 by Henry Schuman, New York, and presented at some unknown date to the library of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas by its original owner, Dr. Joe Colwell, and subsequently removed from their collection:

    "There have always been businessmen and business in the world. But never in history till today was business accepted as a morally honorable activity for men; never before was the businessman permitted to dominate the affairs of men. Today the rule of the businessman, accepted, justified and glorified, has become undisputed and absolute.

    Until lately, however, the activity of the businessman has always been questioned as to its moral rightness. The formulation of this doubt has been the negative or critical premise upon which every developed moral system and every cultured religious system has been founded. The new fact, therefore, in what is called modern civilization, is the acceptance of business activity as morally honorable, the approval of the capacities and the characteristics of the businessman, and the assumption that these capacities are appropriate for rule and control of human affairs."

This is extraordinary, I said to myself. Jordan (1875-1953), who was a professor of philosophy at Butler University for many years, saw the writing on the wall, pointing out already back then that business had become the dominant force in our lives with all other human interests in this country subservient to it. Religion, politics, government, morality, art were all being asked to acknowledge its absolute right and absolute power to be the final arbiter.

If he came back from the dead today, Jordan would be surprised that his fellow Americans still haven’t caught on that they are being taken to the cleaners. On the contrary, many of them now believe that the solution to all our problems, be it failing schools or expensive healthcare, is to hand over every publicly run institution to profit-seeking private companies, which, thanks to their knowhow and the magic of the free market, will save tons of money for the tax payers. This is what is known as “privatization” today, the scam that makes everything from private prisons, the vast growth of our surveillance state, and our global military presence, a hugely lucrative enterprise. Voters, one can’t help but conclude, no longer seem to have any problem with fortunes acquired dishonestly and at their expense, some of them even going into huge debt to send their sons and daughters to prestigious business schools so they can go to work for these hucksters and emulate their success.

Charles Simic, "The Books We've Lost" The New York Review of Books, August 13, 2013

Isma’il Kushkush/The New York Times

KHARTOUM, Sudan — On the corner of an old colonial building in downtown Khartoum sits the city’s oldest bookstore, Sudan Bookshop. It was established in 1902, three years after Britain established control over Sudan, and for a long time it was a magnet for the city’s civil servants, politicians and intellectuals.  (read more...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/world/africa/in-a-faded-literary-capital-efforts-at-a-revival.html?pagewanted=2&hp&pagewanted=all

CATHOLIC WORKER ~

Rita Corbin

Over many decades the art work of Rita Corbin always drew my eye, whether in The Catholic Worker publications, or other venues. Her woodcuts were stunning pieces — bold and enduring impressions with elegant movement. Some years running we would order RC's holiday cards with many of the woodcuts or other designs, and always very reasonably charged and packed as if personally to us. One woodcut of a woodcutter working in snow caught my fancy and instead of calling Rita Corbin in Putney, Vermont where she was then living, Sweetheart went on a drive to meet and visit with Rita to ask permission to use her woodcut on one of my books. She took five year old Carson with her so it was some time ago. Rita was living in a trailer with cats and children and the visit all fell together nicely, Sweetheart came home with Rita's woodcut in hand. It was reproduced on the book below and published by Mad River Press. We will all miss her.

cover art by Rita Corbin



Rita Corbin, Catholic Worker artist, dies at 81

Artist Rita Corbin, whose tender line drawings graced the pages of Catholic Worker journals for decades, died Nov. 17 from injuries suffered in a car crash. She was 81.

Corbin decided early in life to become an artist, choosing to major in art while attending Cathedral High School in New York City.

"The school was keen on turning out secretaries," she said, "but I refused to learn to type. I knew I didn't want to go into business on pure instinct, I guess. I needed a major and art appealed to me the most."

For Corbin, the artistic endeavor could not be separated from one's political and religious consciousness. She considered the work of the artist to be "a real struggle to bring some kind of form and feeling out of the materials one uses and the society one lives in."

Corbin's society included the natural world as well as the poor. Both were frequent subjects of her illustrations. Her etchings and pen and ink drawings of trees, flowers and birds have been described as lyrical celebrations of nature. Her figurative work has been likened to that of German painter, printer and sculptor Kathe Kollwitz.

Unassuming in demeanor, Corbin was a prolific artist. Over the course of her life, she produced a voluminous and expansive body of work that explored a variety of styles and subject matter. Much of this art was created while Corbin was living in pacifist collectives and raising children. She donated a lot of her work and later said, "In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have given away so much to people who could pay for it. It's not fair to other artists for me to work entirely for free."

Her artwork enjoyed wide-ranging publication. Corbin's images appeared in Commonweal, Harvard Theological Review, several pacifist magazines and numerous Catholic and liturgical publications. She illustrated books, including Thomas Merton's Ishi Means Man, painted a mural in Chicago and annually produced Christmas cards and a calendar.

But Corbin is best known for her countless contributions to The Catholic Worker newspaper first published in New York in 1933. She, along with liturgical artist Ade Bethune and illustrator Fritz Eichenberg, formed what one editor of The Catholic Worker referred to as the "Holy Trinity" of artists whose work shaped the look and feel of the newspaper during its formative years.

Her now-famous etching contrasting the Works of War with the Works of Mercy was emblematic of the Catholic Worker movement's commitment to Christian pacifism and solidarity with the poor. It has been reproduced in Catholic Worker journals all over the country.

Editors described her as a most agreeable and responsive artist, able to produce images in a timely manner.

"If we said we needed something for the newspaper, Rita would do it. She understood the importance of the work," said Patrick Jordan, a former editor of The Catholic Worker and now managing editor of Commonweal.

Rita Corbin's famous depiction of the works of mercy, seen in Catholic Worker communities across the country.Jordan said Corbin "had a way of picturing the poor that was obvious it wasn't from afar. ... There was one picture she drew of a woman at the [Catholic Worker] soup kitchen standing beside a dining room table where someone had scrawled, 'Joy, Joy, Joy.' Rita caught that detail. For a journal that didn't use photographs, she conveyed a great deal with a certain clarity that worked very well for a newspaper."

Writer and publisher Robert Ellsberg, who edited The Catholic Worker in the late 1970s, praised Corbin's regard for the natural world.

"A lot of the famous Catholic Worker artists like Bethune and Eichenberg brought a heavy, narrative approach to the paper," he said. "Rita always brought a more celebratory and decorative approach that came out of the [Catholic Worker] farming communities. Her images from nature reflected as much of a concrete dimension of the Catholic Worker movement as those depicting the Houses of Hospitality."

Indeed, Corbin said she considered some of her best art to be her drawings of nature and the poor, "those on the fringes of society, the same kinds of people Christ came to heal and teach."

Born May 21, 1930, in Indianapolis, Corbin was the youngest daughter of Carmen and Hubert Ham. The family was very poor and traveled throughout the country while Hubert Ham, an organist, played for magic shows.

After graduating from Cathedral High School, Corbin remained in New York to pursue training in art. She was awarded a scholarship to Franklin School of Professional Art, a three-year advertising school, then later studied with Hans Hoffman, a master of abstract expressionism. She also took classes at the Arts Student League of New York City.

But Corbin said much of her artistic education came from wandering through New York's galleries and parks, simply observing.

Upon graduating from advertising school, Corbin was offered a job at an agency, which she declined. When later asked if she regretted refusing a potentially lucrative career, Corbin said, "What I do is kind of commercial, but I have control. I consider myself an artist illustrator, not a fine artist, not a commercial artist."

Corbin first visited the New York Catholic Worker on New Year's Day in 1950. Like many before her, she was immediately recruited to help in the kitchen. She made friends with the Catholic Workers and kept coming back to their home on the Lower East Side to attend Friday night meetings, bake bread, serve soup, support a strike or demonstrate against the city's civil defense drills.

"The Catholic Worker was my school, my education," she once said.

The Catholic Worker first published Corbin's art in 1954. Two years later she married Marty Corbin, a Catholic intellectual. For 10 years, the couple lived in Glen Gardner, N.J., in an intentional community founded by pacifist Dave Dellinger.

As artist and writer, the Corbins contributed to Liberation, a radical, pacifist monthly. Conditions in Glen Gardner were very tough. The Corbins lived in an un-insulated chicken coop. Their firstborn, a son, died in infancy, the first of many losses in Corbin's life. Three daughters were also born in Glen Gardner.

In the mid-'60s, the family moved to the Catholic Worker farm at Tivoli, N.Y. Marty Corbin edited The Catholic Worker. A son and another daughter were born.

After spending 10 years at Tivoli, the Corbins relocated to Montreal, where Marty taught English at a local college. Rita separated from her husband four years later, and with her children, moved back to the United States. She lived in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., then Weston, Vt., where she became art director of Growth Associates publishers, then Worcester, Mass., where she studied printmaking with artist activist Tom Lewis.

At the time of her death, Corbin was living in Brattleboro, Vt., near her five children and grandchildren.

Once asked what advice she would give to young artists, Corbin said, "Keep working at it. It doesn't come easy. It's very fulfilling. A lot of young people think in terms of jobs and not vocations. It's very schizophrenic."

~ Claire Schaeffer-Duffy

for National Catholic Reporter

Rita Corbin poses for a photo in 2008 at the 75th anniversary celebration of the Catholic Worker movement in Worcester, Mass. (Photo courtesy of Bob Fitch)

Claire Schaeffer-Duffy is a longtime NCR contributor. She writes from Worcester, Mass., where she lives and works at the Ss. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker.

http://ncronline.org/news/people/rita-corbin-catholic-worker-artist-dies-81