February's Theme is Monumental
When we call something monumental, we mean it as a matter of scale. Societies erect statues and build squares and dedicate memorials to prevent the past from being buried. These structures loom large and cast long shadows. They are meant to endure, to keep our ancestors alive in our memories, but sometimes they dwarf the living and engulf life itself.
What does it mean to think on a monumental timescale? To honor the past in such a way that it paves a path for the unfolding of the present? We have no way of knowing if our memories will outlive us, if they will manage to travel the vastness of space and time. But there are people in the future who will need our stories, stories capacious enough to hold all of our humanity. So what will you bear witness to? What will you leave behind when you’re gone?
Our Richmond chapter chose this month’s exploration of Monumental and Mending Walls to illustrate the theme.
📚 A Monumental Syllabus
This month we turned it over to you to crowdsource a “monumental” syllabus. When asked what came to mind when you hear the word “monumental,” you shared the following artifacts:
If Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart is a monumental endeavour of understanding emotion as a universal mechanism, this honest talk with Brown’s sisters is a monumental journey in itself: with love, compassion, and a lot of healing pain. - Alice Teodorescu
The Unity Food Garden is a non-profit project dedicated to uniting people from all walks of life for people living in the Swellendam/Railton area to grow food in a healthy, sustainable way, encouraging a self-sufficient lifestyle whilst caring for the earth. - Kveta Probst
A monument implies grandeur, but a monument is also simply a statue meant to remember the dead. Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, one of his last plays, doesn’t tower over the English language like his others, but it shows us—literally, through a monument of a dead woman that comes to life at the end of the play—how art can preserve the memories of those we love, and, in our experience of art, resuscitate them, return them to us, make them feel real and alive. - Marek Makowski
I’m sharing this photo of the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond transformed by Black Lives Matter protests. I can’t think of a more powerful expression than reclaiming a Confederate monument to honor George Floyd and all victims of racial violence in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. - Rachel Scott Everett
“Dil Se Re” by A.R. Rahman is a song in Indian film music that represents a milestone in both music composition & lyrics writing - simply beautiful. - Abhishek Joshi
The online course Learning How to Think Clearly is monumental for a creative at pivotal stages of a project or personal life. - Keva Epale
The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant is a staggering work of nonfiction, combining botany, ecology, ethnography, and a riveting whodunnit at its center. It’s a tribute to the living monuments that are North America’s vanishing old growth forests. It’s one of my very favorite books (and it’s so good that everyone who borrows it does not return my copy, ahem). - Annie Yi
I’m sharing my song “In This Moment” to remind people that no matter how much chaos is going on in their mind, that you need to remember to stay In This Moment! - Isidro Diaz-Rosales
Joy Harjo’s poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” brings us to kitchen tables… ordinary, yet foundational; mundane, yet monumental. - Dustin Renwick
In the current global context, death has been in the news (and on our minds) more than ever. The funeral industry is costly and very harmful to the environment. But what if we could leave the earth a better place (quite literally) as our final exit act? Biotechnology researchers in Delft (the Netherlands) are working on a 100 percent biodegradable mycelium-based coffin called the Loop Living Coccoon. - Mickey Gast