CSW61, the highlights (short version)

So I wrote this up for a report for some of the church groups that helped pay for the trip, but I figured I'd share it with all of you lot too. 

This was my first time going to UNCSW, and it was a truly unforgettable experience.

There were many things that happened over the course of the week that were thought provoking, or inspiring, or in some cases both at once.  I’m going to do my best to hit the highlights, but there was a lot.

The first that leaps to mind is the scale of the internationality.  There really isn’t anything quite like sitting in a worship space or conference room at the UN and realising that the sound you hear in the midst of the clapping and cheering is the sound of the women and girls from various African countries trilling, or looking around you and actually seeing the variety of clothing styles and colours, and the colours of the people you are surrounded by.

It gives what you’re there for a whole new impact and meaning, especially if you allow yourself to engage with the various realizations that hit you, one after the other, throughout the time spent there.

The panels were certainly varied and some were more engaging than others, and it became something of a learned skill to figure out which ones you were more likely to engage fully with and go to those.  All were good, but two stuck with me more than others.  

The first was in a panel dealing with the arts as activism.  One of the panelists, Noorjahan Akbar, is one of the founders of the Free Women Writers of Afghanistan.  She spoke of why she started the movement and shared two poems written by Afghan women in response to stoning.  I can’t describe how powerful they were or the impact, but the title’s spoke loudly as well.  “My Laughter is the Sound of Rebellion”.

The second one that stuck was a panel on ending violence against Indigenous women as a step towards empowerment.  The panelists were all Indigenous women who were activists in their own communities and states.  Most were from native peoples in the USA, one was Mayan.  That one hit home.  There were far too many parallels between Canadian and American movements looking for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.  The Canadian TRC came up, and it is a truly strange feeling to hear people say they are watching what happens in your country to see if there is a way forward that might work for them as well, especially when you are so aware of what still has not been done in the land you call home.  

The third thing that made a definite impact and has stuck with me very strongly was really two things, but they have to be taken together to understand them properly.  

We, the Canadian Anglican Youth delegation, and the other older Anglican delegates had a meeting scheduled with a member from Canada’s permanent mission to the UN.  There had been some discussion about what all of us had heard that we thought was important to talk about, but the Youth delegation, after some thought, decided that we wanted to make sure we were heard and that we said what we thought needed to be said in a way that was unified and well thought out.  Claiming our voices, I suppose.

We spent the night before the meeting sitting in the common area of the YMCA, talking about the subjects we’d decided to highlight and how to word it.  We ended up staying there until midnight, in large part because we cared so much about the topics we were writing about that whenever we started on the next one we ended up talking about said topic for a good hour (at least) before remembering to move on to the next one.  Some of the best conversations I’d had in a month happened that evening, and those conversations are going to stick with me for years.

The next day, we read out the document we’d prepared in the meeting.  The people who read it did a brilliant job, the response we got was very positive, and I’d say most of us left the room feeling rather elated.  It was very good experience, one I think would be hard to repeat, and well worth staying up late for.

The last thing I want to mention is perhaps the most important, and that is the other people in the delegation.  I’ve been on several group trips before and I think it’s safe to say it’s rare to end up with a group that gets along and enjoys each other’s company without any big hiccups or personality clashes for a full week, especially in close quarters.  This is the second trip I’ve been on where that was the case. (Interestingly, both were church groups)  We were all passionate about what we were there for, but we also all had something to talk about and interests in common.  Some of us went on tourist and exploratory adventures in New York with each other in our free time.  Pictures were taken, meals were eaten, and fun was had by all!  But the most powerful ones, and the ones where I was so glad I was there with that particular collection of people, were the ones about why we were there.  The different perspectives and opinion, the willingness to have a debate, the patience in the explanations.  It added up to a truly incredible, life altering experience.  

It was a privilege to be able to go to UNCSW, especially with that group of people, and I am very grateful for the opportunity.

A brief update

Hey all

I'm terribly sorry about the radio silence.  I came to the conclusion (fairly quickly) that it was basically impossible to experience the UNCSW, New York, write a blog, and stay reasonably sane all at once.  

So I took notes.  Lots of notes.  I'm going to sort through them all, and decide whether I'm going to try and write posts chronologically, topics that leap out at me, or some combination.  We'll see what happens!

I'm currently relaxing and re-calibrating with family in Ontario, so I'm hoping I can get some posts started and the already started ones finished sometime in the next week.  I will definitely get the whole trip written out over the next month! (I think :P)

Talk to y'all later

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the Frick is so delightful!

I have a bit of backlog when it comes to "things I want to babble about" but we'll start with this and I'll see about filling in blanks.

So.  To start, an observation about weather and city humans behaviour in it.

I'm from Vancouver Canada, and this Winter has dumped far more snow on the city than Winter usually does.  This, of course, has lead to a whole bunch of memes along the lines of "welcome to the rest of the country" which is fine and dandy (except for the fact that weather is one reason in particular that I don't live elsewhere in Canada, thank you very much).  The other thing that it lead to was a series of short articles about how silly Vancouverites were for using umbrellas in the snow.

That I had issues with.  As far as I'm concerned, if it's water falling out of clouds then umbrellas are perfectly fine.  I like having something to keep snow or rain from scouring my eyeballs out of their sockets and keep my glasses from getting too hard to see through (yes, that happens), so as long as it's not too windy to do so I shall keep using umbrellas in snow and rain thanks all the same.

This is quite a long way around to come to this particular observation, but I've arrived.  The other day in New York it decided to have a good dump of snow, complete with strong wind and all the other things that go with weather.  

And I noticed something.  There were a couple of different types of clothing I saw.  There were a lot who were simply bundled up in cold weather appropriate coats with gloves and hoods (myself included.  I was more than half blind with all the water on my glasses by the time I got where I was going), and the other?  

People bundled up, but also carrying an umbrella.

My first thought was "HA!  Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it, umbrella haters!"  Followed by, "well, they might not be local, I suppose."  But I saw a few too many for them all to have been out of towners.  So I have decided that the only people who are allowed to make cracks about umbrellas and snow are people who don't use them when it's raining, either.  Those who go through life in (hopefully) weather appropriate coats and shoes over their clothes (like my brother) and regularly look down on the rest of us mere mortals, and that's it.  The rest of you can stuff it.

So that's the weather.  On to the second half.

My destination on this particular snow skip was the Frick collection.  And hooooly Mary was it worth it!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Frick collection, (I was until about two months ago) it was the private art, furniture, and curio collection of Henry Clay Frick, an American industrialist and avid art collector who died in 1919.  The house the collection is housed in is the Frick house that he had built when the family moved to New York from Pittsburgh, and it's quite interesting all on it's own.  When his wife, Adelaide, died in 1931 the house was turned into a museum in order to showcase the extensive, and beautiful, collection he'd acquired over his life (one thing I find particularly cool about that is I'm pretty sure he planned it that way).

The collection, oh, the collection!  

To start off, I'm a history nut.  I love finding out what happened centuries ago and trying to piece out why.  I like going to ruins, or preserved buildings and poking about imagining what it would have looked like when it was still in use.  I like living history museums, where they've either restored or rebuilt and people dress up.  And god, do I love old art and artifacts!

I've also found, through trips to several different museums and galleries, that I'm particularly enamoured of oil paintings.  The Frick has them in abundance.  There were medieval icons, (tempera on wood panels) portraits, (most all oil on canvas or wood) Chinese porcelain, (always impressive) old clocks, (gilt, metal, gorgeous things) and quite a lot more.  

There were several pieces that particularly caught my eye.  
One was by Thomas Gainsbrough of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, a well known courtesan, and I loved it.  It caught and encapsulated one face of the courtesan and displayed it beautifully, and I'm not actually explaining this as well as I'd like.  It's a gorgeous piece and it shows a side of the society at the time that we don't get to see in beautifully done portraits very often.
Two other incredible portraits of truly remarkable women that the Frick has are the portrait of Mary Edwards by Hogarth and the portrait of the Comtesse d'Haussonville by Ingres.  If you don't know who these ladies are go look them up.

Then there were the portraits of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell by Holbein set on either side of a fireplace, facing each other, a large portrait of the seventh Earl of Derby and his wife and daughter by Van Dyck where the impish mischief that the little girl seem to radiate captures your attention, Arrangement in Black and Gold by Whistler which is such a study in dark and light it was hard to look away, and so much more.

And the special exhibit?  Turner's ports.  With some pieces on loan from the Tate.

It was such an awesome day

New York; The Beginning (sort of).

Hello again.

Over the last eight years or so I've found myself on several different world travelling adventures.  More than one of them rather spur of the moment.  And given the fact that I'm more than a little opinionated and frequently find myself composing comparisons, food critiques, and wistful reminiscences in my head, I figured I may as well write it down properly somewhere.

The plan I'm working from right now is to do this trip (oh yes, I'm on one of the little adventures right now) to start with, as it's fresh, and then as I constantly go over the above mentioned critiques and reminiscences when I'm bored, I'll do those as they come up at later dates.

This particular trip came to about because of church.  Not the first time that's happened, and probably won't be the last.  Anywho.  

At the end of November 2016 a friend got in touch and asked if I'd be interested in joining a group of women in our Diocese (Anglican in this case) going to the UN Commission on the status of Women in New York.  My response, obviously, was "Hell yes!"  Or something to that effect.  

So It all got sorted and I flew South and East at what I consider an unholy hour of the morning, and here I am.

Now, normally I get quite excited about leaving when I'm going somewhere new, especially if I've wanted to go there for a while anyway.  This particular travelling period what was going through my head most of the time was "I suppose I'll get excited when I'm less exhausted?"  The answer as far as I can tell is "Yes, I think."  I'm certainly enjoying myself, at any rate.

The first thing I did, really, was appreciate the traffic.

I'm no stranger to crazy traffic.  Anyone who's had to navigate a major European city in rush hour, or, God forbid, had a go at the M25 in August (all of which I've done) has been through their share of hell.  And I'm no stranger to American traffic either (a side effect of frequent trips to Seattle and a road trip down to San Diego).  One thing I've had the chance to notice is each country has it's own "traffic flavour pattern", if you will, and each city has its own particular version within that flavour.  New York's is certainly interesting.

I got a shuttle from La Guardia, and within the first five minutes, I'd counted about eight horn honks and we hadn't even left the airport yet.  I was grinning fit to split my face.  I'm not totally sure why.  It might have been New York living up to at least part of the mythos surrounding it (it has got quite a lot built up, you have to admit), it might have been sheer amusement at the drivers, and it might have been the fact that the traffic was making it very obvious that I was, in fact, in New York and not asleep (I have never seen so many yellow taxis in one spot in my life).  Whichever it was, I was already enjoying the drive in when I saw the lights.  

Now, lights in any large city are special.  They highlight things that you miss in the daylight hours, and they create a unique cityscape for each metropolis that explores light as a form of distinction for its buildings.  It is, in a lot of ways, an art form.  Some are fairly obvious, and some are subtle.  Taipei's is fairly obvious.  
So is New York's.  Both involve bright, coloured lights, sometimes blinking in patterns, but they are very different.  New York's older skyscrapers have them set up so they highlight some of the architectural designs.  Climbing up the sides, fanning out to the edges of an artful top spire, and of course, lighting up some of the favourite photo op buildings for tourists.  It creates an impact, and I was in the perfect head space to appreciate it, and my introduction to New York in general.  The whole place was loud, bright, and moving.  

Absolutely awesome as a pick me up for a tired extrovert.