Astute performances from future leaders: Volume of Our Voices puts humanity in the spotlight

On the wall behind my computer hangs a bulletin board that's layered with colorful flotsam and jetsam from the past few decades, including postcards from around the globe, a Scottish pound note, my Japanese I.D. card, a Zippy gem, photos of friends and sundry ticket stubs from concerts by The Who, The Stones, the Pretenders and Nada Surf.

In amongst this visual cacophony are buttons I've collected over the years, with slogans ranging from "ERA Yes" and "Iggy Pop Fan Club" to "Question Authority" and a cow thinking "No Nukes," along with a row of badges from SF AIDS Walks.

At the center of it all is a large, faded button that reads "Feminism Is Humanism."

Of everything tacked to my vertical scrapbook, this particular specimen holds the most meaning for me, perhaps because it's the first political anything I ever acquired, launching a lifetime of buttons, bumper stickers, activism and awareness.

I got it in 1978 when my dear friend Daphne and I went to our first N.O.W. rally, held on the Stanford campus across the street from our high school. I remember the intriguing phrase — "Feminism Is Humanism" — standing out from all the other buttons, T-shirts and signs, knowing that it captured my particular philosophy more accurately than anything else.

As readers here learned last year when I wrote about the Brattleboro Women's Film Festival, I'm not your average feminist. I'm the kind who thinks our collective might becomes far more abundant, effective and lasting when attained through more inclusive means, particularly when those means fit under the aegis of art.

Though it's often felt like swimming upstream, I still believe feminism is humanism and that we serve the greater good by welcoming everyone to the discussion, with no labels, monikers or categories that might risk dissuading potential supporters from becoming involved.

During this, the final weekend of Women's History Month, a group of diverse and multitalented students and faculty members at World Learning's SIT Graduate School in Brattleboro are sharing a stage in precisely that type of event.

On Friday and Saturday night, more than two dozen performers will express their views through song, movement and spoken word, in "Volume of Our Voices," an evening of creative expression on the topics of gender, identity and sexuality, benefiting the Women's Crisis Center in Brattleboro.

Original monologues, poems, dances, music and even martial arts will illustrate stories that are personal, if not intimate, yet universal in relevance to the larger human experience and the common societal messages that can misrepresent, misinform, isolate and stereotype different factions of society.

In speaking with a few of the students participating — all of whom are working toward master's degrees in SIT's renowned international education program — I was impressed by the breadth of their experiences and the unique challenges each will voice in their respective performances.

Jon Woods, an organization management candidate, will be exploring issues of race, belonging and disenfranchisement through poetry, song and the martial art known as Capoeira, a muscular type of competitive dance that originated in Angola and found larger cultural roots in Brazil centuries ago within the slave community.

Naming his piece, "If I Had Wings I Could Fly," after a line from the song "Regulate" by rappers Warren G. and Nate Dogg, Woods takes us on his journey from anguish to understanding with remarkable perspicuity and grace.

"The poem itself goes from despair, hopelessness and rage to being lost and then trying to find guidance as a black man," he explained. "It touches on the issue that in black culture there's a disconnection between parenthood and the next generation, a prevalence of no role models existing and having to look at historical references and not necessarily in your household, whether it's a book or music that you respond to."

Though Woods' personal and intellectual path has been paved by the work of legends such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and civil rights activist and scholar, W.E.B. Du Bois, he also absorbed profound life lessons much closer to home.

"I learned a lot from my father and his struggle in the corporate world," reflected Woods. "Being a black manager he had to deal with a lot of conflict, internal mainly, and the struggle to assimilate but also be himself."

"When I wrote my poem, I was having a really bad day," he confided. "I'm the only black man at SIT and that's fine because I'm used to white schools but sometimes I just want to talk to someone I can connect with on that.

"The way that Capoeira is incorporated is a release of energy; if you're angry sometimes the tension just needs to be released. It's a martial art that's powerful but you play it against yourself."

For Cole Kovac, who is working toward a master of art in teaching, an equally formidable frustration with society emerges in his monologue titled, "Pushing Boundaries: One Man's Reality," which challenges the widely accepted pejorative term that often pigeonholes people like him as having a "gender identity disorder."

As a person born female but who identifies male, Kovac investigates his own perspective from several compelling angles.

"The first part of the monologue is about the medical world's view of transgendered people," he explains. "The second half is about my story and feelings and struggles and why I'm on stage."

When I asked him about this latter question, he replied, "At this point I'm the only transgendered person on campus and I felt like my voice needed to be heard, especially since the performance isn't geared only towards women. And SIT is a very supportive community — it's a good place to be."

Conflict transformation major Rachel Unkovic possesses a similar wealth of wisdom, particularly having learned in her studies that peace-building is more productive than conflict management or resolution.

"It's the idea that conflict never goes away and that it can open the door to dialogue and new ideas," she asserted. "It can be changed from violence into something more productive."

In "Magic Mirror," which includes inventive vignettes such as "Sleeping Beau," Unkovic and classmates Scarlett Shaffer and Victoria Der use shadow puppets to retell classic fairy tales. "We explore old stories that we're all told growing up and the impact those messages have on kids. We're looking at the idea of gender roles and roles that you're forced to take."

That the show is a benefit for one of the region's most crucial social service organizations — providing shelter along with emotional, legal and crisis support for survivors of abuse — is all the more reason to come out and support these visionary young people who are working hard to create a future that is informed by expansive, global perspectives and a reverence for the power of the human spirit.

The Women's Crisis Center views these issues through a similarly humanistic lens, as evidenced in their thanks to SIT for donating proceeds from the show to their cause: "It takes a dynamic, unified force to address the war waged on the bodies of women and children every day in this community and all over the world. Women still live with the daily reality of physical and sexual violence, still live with the systems which protect them imperfectly, at best, and sometimes not at all. We both honor and rely on our allies in ending men's violence against women and children."

The unified force behind "Volume of Our Voices" exemplifies this inclusive approach to solving the global scourge of discrimination, disrespect and brutality. As Woods' commanding poem implores, "Let your voice be heard, preach the word, because no matter your gender or race, the struggle always continues."

Or, as Kovac puts it, with equal sagacity, "Our identities are always evolving."

Quirky collections and early eco-wisdom: Edifying exhibits are the perfect tonic

Coming back from the left coast would have been easier if another 8 feet of snow had arrived in our absence but somehow, returning to what must be about the fifth mud-season so far this year, was harder. I'm starting to think it's a meteorological fifth dimension, with a groovy theme to go with it (sing along, everyone): "When the mud, is all around the house, and furniture is lined with soil."

When mud is all around the house, the yard, the sidewalks and the state, my tendency each weekend is to find fun things to do in places that are, by definition, dirt-free, and what better destination than museums? As mentioned herein last week, Vermont is home to a constellation of intriguing creative institutions filled with far more than just fine art.

There's the American Precision Museum, the Birds of Vermont Museum, the Cornish Colony Museum, the New England Transportation Museum, the Shelburne Museum and even the American Museum of Fly Fishing. Rumor has it there even used to be a Vermont Wax Museum renowned for its revolving Elvis but, alas, he's left the turntable as the place is now closed. The mind boggles at what else might have been in there … a marble-eyed Hetty Green savoring her fortune or an ashen Ethan Allen being charged with treason?

The top of my unconventional museums list, however — the mother of all treasure troves — is the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. Vermont's much-celebrated field-trip favorite boasts more than 160,000 natural science, historical and cultural objects that 19th-century industrialist Franklin Fairbanks collected during extensive travels around the globe. Overflowing with everything from Victorian dolls, Egyptian sarcophagi and rare gemstones to paintings, textiles, farm tools and taxidermy — not to mention a planetarium and weather station — the Fairbanks is an ideal place to take friends and family for a remarkably engaging day steeped in vicarious sightseeing and international geographic illumination.

Soaking up this diverse collection is tantamount to taking a slightly surreal jaunt to other continents, distant cultures and past eras, an experience both abundant and intimate, if not occasionally daunting. During my first visit a while back with my daughter's class to what looks from the outside like a Victorian castle, I entered the massive main room, with its barrel-vaulted oak ceiling, and was instantly transfixed by a startling tableau. Just through the main doors, a towering stuffed polar bear the size of a minivan rears up on his hind legs in frozen, bared-ivories rage, dwarfing a massive grizzly and two black bears nearby.

Taxidermy isn't everyone's cup of tea but there is something profoundly stirring, albeit a tad spine-chilling, about being able to examine such gorgeous, colossal creatures up-close and personal. Watching bears on the Discovery Channel or pacing inside far-off cages surrounded by cement moats affords a modicum of enlightenment, of course, yet this was the first time I'd ever been in such close proximity to a species that's universally feared and revered, and it gave me a whole new perspective on their plight.

When I spoke to the Fairbanks Museum's Anna Rubin, she revealed that my reaction was not uncommon and also offered crucial and informative insights into the singular passion and purpose of Mr. Fairbanks who, I gathered, was something of an amateur Darwin of his milieu.

"The practice of collecting natural specimens in the late 1800s was not perceived in the same way we might look at it today," she explained. "It was really in the cause of science and wanting to preserve these animals so they could be studied and protected. All the pieces in the museum are from that era."

Before establishing the museum in 1891, he regularly invited the public into his home to see his "cabinet of curiosity" in which he displayed his eclectic collection, which contains items of international, national and regional interest. One of my favorite displays was on the second-floor balcony, which is brimming with shelves, cabinets and cases of antique dolls, vintage toys and various household and historical artifacts.

Inside a low vitrine is a group of personal possessions dating from the Civil War. I was particularly moved by a small, lovingly handmade sewing kit, given by a local 15-year-old girl to her sweetheart before he left to fight. One can only assume it was found out on a battleground, and the inclusion of that kind of human iconography in the context of a museum containing more than 3,000 natural specimens reflects Fairbanks' holistic view of the world and its inhabitants.

Fairbanks would come back from his trips with assorted pelts, weapons, insects, photographs, costumes, shells and other discoveries that could help to edify his friends and colleagues back in Vermont. Having inherited great wealth from his uncle, who invented the platform scale and founded the Fairbanks Scale Co., Franklin Fairbanks was committed to giving back to his hometown and integrated his own zeal for travel into this impulse.

"He was like many Victorian civic-minded family members who felt a real love for the community," said Rubin. "He wasn't a scientist or scholar but out of a deep appreciation for nature, he brought to this isolated part of New England these views of animals and visions of other parts of the world."

Working with local, self-taught taxidermist William Balch, Fairbanks eventually built a museum to house his finds, an eccentric landscape unto itself, filled with recreations of the flora and fauna that he'd come to cherish in places he knew most of his friends, family and neighbors would never see.

Balch proved to be an innovator in exhibit design as well, crafting lush, convincing dioramas in which he placed the exotic creatures he'd carefully preserved, deftly utilizing materials of the day, such as linen (this was long before plastic's time) to create the illusion of natural habitats. With the same scientific authenticity and remarkable eye for detail that was being employed in New York City's Natural History Museum right around the same time, Balch was, as Rubin reverently put it, "at the cutting edge of interpreting the natural world."

Together, the two men filled custom-made wood-and-glass cases with meticulously arranged environments, including a truly exquisite display of what is thought to be the world's largest collection of hummingbirds. With 131 shimmering specimens presented on realistic-looking trees, replete with nests, under glass at eye-level, it is yet another of the museum's many breathtaking exhibits.

Everyone at the museum clearly venerates Mr. Fairbanks' pioneering sensibilities and generosity of spirit, and with good reason. Though through our 21st-century lens we might consider a room full of posed animals in ersatz environs to be tacitly un-P.C., everything Rubin taught me about Fairbanks' motivations and expansive thinking as a true animal lover convinced me that, were he alive today, he'd probably be out there picketing for PETA and holding fund-raisers for Greenpeace.

The entire collection of the Fairbanks Museum is a manifestation of its founder's global sensibilities, which were evident in his respect for cultural diversity, an abiding love of nature and a staunch devotion to the stewardship of all the world's creatures. It is sobering and inspiring to realize that his visionary achievements pre-saged the very issues with which the human race now struggles, on so many fronts.

Eloquently summing up the magnitude of Fairbanks' accomplishments, Rubin said it best: "The museum is a timepiece, about the Victorian understanding of the natural world and the awesome beauty of these creatures."

Online: www.fairbanksmuseum.org

Postcard from California: Absence makes the art more cherished

As I write, I'm sitting in the café of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art amid a sea of mod wood tables surrounded by a bold exhibit of large-format, close-up photos depicting brightly colored plates of plastic bits and pieces, monochromatic meals comprised of saturated, bright blue, orange or green combs, curlers, gears, spoons and other small objects. When I brought my kids here a few days ago, my daughter said it was "weird art" and that she liked it.

I remember her saying the exact same thing while gazing up at Andy Warhol's huge, high-contrast, vividly hued portraits at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center's exhibit four years ago. Likewise, her brother thought Spheris Gallery's show of Donald Saaf and Julia Zanes' fanciful paintings in Bellows Falls a while back was "totally cool" and he's made the same assessment in front of a few über-hip west coast walls throughout this vacation.

This morning, when we stopped in at a high-end gallery up the street — one of San Francisco's top purveyors of contemporary art where years ago I was co-director — they said the paintings, which were all minimalist squares of glossy enamel, were boring and that they liked Vermont art more. I have to admit, I agree, though I'm surprised by my somewhat blasé reaction to the breadth of wild art here because usually when I come out I'm a hopeless culture vulture.

Here in this crowded, costly cultural oasis, where we've seen a number of off-the-grid exhibits during a fun and fulfilling visit to the Bay Area from where we moved to Vermont seven years ago, I've actually found the art scene more irksome than iconic. I thought I'd be a veritable sponge, soaking up every ounce of S.F.'s world-class art exhibits, illustrious literary heritage and renowned music scene but in the three years since our last visit, something in me has changed. To put it simply, it's because of this column.

When I first approached Randal Smathers, the Rutland Herald's fearless editor, with the idea of writing a regular spotlight on Southern Vermont arts and culture, part of me was unsure as to whether there really was enough going on to merit a weekly column. Oh, me of little faith, my worries couldn't have been more unfounded, for there is so very much happening in the lower Green Mountains that I quickly learned it was far more a question of what not to write about than finding something good to cover.

In the nearly two years since the Sover Scene was born, I've become well-versed in the oodles of galleries, museums, literary centers, music venues, playhouses, move theaters, dance events, book stores, CD shops and sundry cultural festivals, forums, summits and sanctuaries that thrive in the region.

I remember that, prior to our big move out east, some of my friends and associates here were worried that I'd be culturally isolated with not enough intellectual stimulation to feed my thirsty, artsy soul. Heck, I wondered too, fretting that perhaps all the fascinating online arts organizations that had inspired me to explore Vermont as a potential home would prove to be little more than empty ethereal promises of a culturally rich existence.

Yet within, oh, all of 20 hours after rolling into Vermont, those fears were duly allayed, for on our first drive around Bellows Falls we ended up in a gallery on Canal Street watching a Nigerian dancer perform to live traditional drumming. I recall looking down at my kids' upturned faces, their mouths and eyes open wide at the beautiful, bead-festooned man shaping the air with elegant arms and pounding the floor with strong, sinewy legs to a pulsing djembe accompaniment. I remember thinking, "They aren't going to miss out on anything."

That was just the beginning of my edification on the diverse creative happenings that take place in Vermont on a regular basis, from international film festivals and pivotal fine art retrospectives to premier performances starring eminent actors and informative lectures by distinguished political experts.

During this trip out west, I've not only been reminded that Vermonters are in no way deprived of top-notch creative and intellectual resources, but have also come to appreciate one crucial element of the cultural experience that makes every exhibit and performance far more powerful and pleasant: access.

Take my trip here, to one of the most popular destinations for Bay Area art lovers, for example. Though I drove only a few miles from where I'm staying at a friend's house near Golden Gate Park, it took me 40 minutes to get here and 20 minutes to find parking, which, like the museum entrance fee itself, cost $12. So with an hour of gasoline and another 20 minutes looking for parking at the other end, just getting to the museum door and back is a two-hour, $30-plus venture. Then there's the $2.50 cups of coffee here in the café, but don't get me started.

Though the exhibits themselves are exquisitely curated and displayed, the epic black marble lobby seems more like a cavernous corporate atrium than a museum and I was not surprised when, upon entering, my son asked, "Where's the art?" Good question. After scaling three flights of a dramatic central staircase that's floodlit by a massive round skylight, we finally found the art, but, having been spoiled by the less ostentatious yet equally high-caliber venues back home, such as the Southern Vermont Arts Center, the Bennington Museum and BMAC, the trek seemed absurd.

The show we finally found was interesting, however, and the kids liked it. "America By Car," an expansive series of Lee Friedlander's black-and-white photographs, documents a trip throughout the United States with multi-faceted images that use car mirrors and windows to reframe various corners of the country in inventive, thought-provoking ways.

Afterward, we headed over to the Exploratorium, a hands-on science and discovery museum replete with inventors' lab and "Tactile Dome," but, again, the congested streets, parking hassle and steep entrance fee sure took the sheen off the experience for me and, once inside, I noticed that the kids seemed far less engaged than when we go Norwich's Montshire Museum. With its enlightening, interactive exhibits on nature, astronomy, science and the environment and a great educational program, not to mention the outdoor water sculpture garden, hiking trails and groovy fog machine (which, admittedly, would be redundant in S.F.), the Montshire is everything a parent could want for their kids and easy access to boot.

We're headed back to Vermont tomorrow and — though it's been a great trip with lots of family visits, fun with old friends, running on beaches and panning for gold in the foothills, not to mention a terrific jaunt southward to Disneyland — we're all looking forward to coming home.

Thanks to their culture-vulture mom, the kids have seen some great art and have been wonderful gallery-goers throughout, but their quota is definitely full. Yesterday, I wanted to show them around the Stanford campus and after parking the car near a grove of trees, I mentioned the wonderful nearby museum. Almost simultaneously, they both wailed, "No more museums, Mom!" before bolting from the car to run, climb and swing from the trees.

They're homesick for Vermont and, as of a few minutes ago, after discovering two photos I'd initially overlooked up in the Friedlander exhibit, I am too. One depicts a corner in Bellows Falls, the other a porch in Putney and the sigh I let out upon seeing both confirms what I've suspected through this entire trip. I left my heart in Southern Vermont.