The DirtyDurty Diary

A Lesson in Love & Loss from My Mother, Teresa.

Sorrow, Mi Madre

Twenty years ago today

Never forgotten

(My mother in the mountains of New Mexico in an outfit she made)

I write about my mother, quite a bit. She passed away twenty years ago today in New Mexico. I suppose the act of writing keeps me close to her. I think about her everyday. When I have a despondent moment in New York feeling utterly alone- I imagine her arms wrapping around me, and whispering “It will be alright Maya. You have all the strength you need inside.” Once again I am fortified.

The loss is easy to remember, but it is better to focus on what she brought me in those brief years. She taught me how to sew. She use to play Tina Turner, Chaka Kahn, or Earth, Wind, and Fire records in the living room. She would make my brothers Mondrian and Matisse disco dance with her as I watched and laughed at their reluctance (they quickly came around and relished the dance moves). My mother loved to bake. I would sit in the kitchen with her and watched as she made a loaf of bread from scratch. She was a jewelry maker and a seamstress. She would sing aloud while she was creating at her work bench housed inside of our garage.  She would take my brothers and I to the mountains to visit her friends. There I discovered my love of nature, and silence. I would watch the fog settle on the mesas, drink tea, and eat her fresh baked green chili corn bread. I would pick pine nuts off the tree with her, trying to avoid another nasty spill into a pile of cactus’. She would read to my brothers and I every night at bedtime. The stories spun like tapestries in my mind before I would drift off safely to slumber.

She loved to laugh and she would most all of the time, despite being a single mother left to raise three children on her own.

She was beautiful and elegant. She took pride in her appearance. Colorful clothing (that she made) and French perfume.

She never felt sorry for herself, save those low moments in Chemotherapy. Even through her anger she would still manage to find humor in it all.

The memory of her shows me why love is so powerful. Just thinking of her at any moment of the day can move me to tears, not just because I miss her, but because my love for her is so powerful. It encompasses me. Through her, I know how to love. I know generosity, I know strength, and passion for life. I am beginning to learn patience, which I know is a lesson my mother sought to teach me.

I know my life changed forever the day she left this earth. Sometimes it brings a great deal of anger. Then I quickly put that away and remember my connection to all living beings, who suffer, and I am humbled by it all. Complaining is foolish. The gift my mother has left me is to remember that she fought for her life. She knew it was precious. So I wish for the memory of her life to be imparted to you, all my friends world wide- love your life, even the difficulties because it is apart of the experience as is joy, and I hope you all have more of that. Beso- Maya

(My mother in the jewelry and clothing she designed with my grandfather at his book release party ‘Tradition & Innovation in The New Deal’).

For All of My Women Friends, With you in Struggle- From One Maya to Another.

“Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy and even ecstasy, but still relentless, unending work. Becoming an old female may require only being born with certain genitalia, inheriting long-living genes and the fortune not to be run over by an out-of-control truck, but to become and remain a woman command the existence and employment of genius.

The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough. She must have convinced herself, or be in the unending process of convincing herself, that she, her values, and her choices are important…She will need to prize her tenderness and be able to display it at appropriate times in order to prevent toughness from gaining total authority and to avoid becoming a mirror image of those men who value power above life, and control over love.

It is imperative that a woman keep her sense of humor intact and at the ready. She must see, even if only in secret, that she is the funniest, looniest woman in her world, which she should also see as being the most absurd world of all times.” - Maya Angelo, Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now.

Six Healthy Questions for Extraordinary Nurse Holly Lautanen

There are new controversial guideline “recommendations” regarding mammogram screenings. Women have now been told that they do not need regular mammogram exams until after the age of 50, pushing back regular screenings by ten years.

I myself have been getting mammograms since I was 25 upon the recommendation of my doctors- as I have a family history of breast cancer.

My mother lost her fight with breast cancer at the young age of 40 and I have found it confusing and frustrating that women are now told to push back their exams.

I can not emphasize enough how difficult it is to surmise the courage to go to the doctors by yourself, sit in waiting room while you ponder the frightening thought of whether you will be diagnosed with cancer or not. I was worried these new guidelines would give women who already hesitant about taking care of themselves an excuse not to take charge of their health.

I wanted to get another opinion on these guidelines and so I turned to someone who is on the front lines with cancer patients everyday in Atlanta Georgia, my sister-in-law and nurse, Holly Lautanen.

Q: Can you tell me a little a bit about your work environment and what you do day to day?  

A: I work at the largest private hematology and oncology practice in the state of Georgia. We have a team of doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and wellness staff to provide the most comprehensive care possible. We have a “treatment” room where we administer chemotherapy, biotherapy, including but not limited to monoclonal antibodies. We have a surgical suite where we can perform biopsies, port placements, and CT scanning. We have 14 female physicians (practice wide) specializing in breast cancer treatment and prevention. Life day to day depends on where I am scheduled to be that day. My day can consist of anything from administering chemotherapy, triaging sick patients, working with one of the physicians, sitting on the phone fighting with insurance companies to having a discussion with a patient about hospice. One thing for sure is that we are a great team, we gel so well and that is evident by the quality of care that our patients receive. 

Q: What was your reaction to the new guideline “recommendations” for mammograms? 

A: In terms of the recent guidelines set forth by the Preventive Services Task Force in regards to mammograms I to am frustrated and really just disgusted. This Task Force did not contain one Oncologist. Breast Cancer is the second leading killer in US women and the seventh leading cause of death for women overall. So, yes it’s disheartening to put it mildly. Everyday I can look at at least one women under the age of Forty that is fighting for her life. Some of the most aggressive forms of cancer are found in younger patients. Most of the women with whom I have spoke in the position of having being diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age first felt a lump which lead to a mammogram and ultimately a biopsy. It’s worth finding that one cancer at a early stage as opposed to a late stage because those women have to go through far more aggressive treatment and the odds of their survival are severely decreased. The American Cancer Society has recommended annual mammograms at the age of forty and they stand by their position. In terms of women who have a strong family history of breast cancer they should start ten years younger than when that person was diagnosed i.e.: your mother. Young women do have denser breast tissue than let’s say a women who 40 years of age and a discussion should take place between them and their physician on the best approach to take in regards to mammograms VS MRI’s or Ultrasounds or even all of the above. Really, one can not and should not put a price on human life. Women who have a increased risk for breast cancer and/ or ovarian cancer because of their family history should consider genetic counseling to learn more about their potential risks and about BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic tests according to the NCI. Lastly, I want women to remain informed, ultimately to be their own advocate, know your body, do your monthly BSE’s (Breast Self Exam), if you have a concern contact your physician. If you don’t like or just have a gut instinct that something may be wrong and you feel your not being heard go to someone else. People don’t realize that we hire our physicians and if we don’t feel they are meeting our needs they can fired just like anyone else. Knowledge is power and Fear is paralyzing. It’ my hope that patients will take charge more than ever and really be a “self advocate”.

Q: Is this the beginning of rationing health care? 

A: Is the beginning of rationing health care? Well I think the obvious answer is yes. In fact I fear it is just the beginning of one of many ploys to start cutting costs for government run health care. Unfortunately this is at the expense of lives and the people that depend and love these lives.

Q: As a mother of two, what would you like to see happen with health insurance in this county? 

A: I am definitely uneasy with the thought of what lies ahead for my two children. Unfortunately that uneasiness doesn’t do any good, it won’t help them. We need to scream at the top of our lungs and oppose government run health care that I know for sure. Do I know what the answer is? No, there isn’t just one answer. I can’t make the person who runs around in the latest and greatest clothing, prioritize what is important. If one wants to choose material possessions at the expensive of their health then so be it. I know that is not everyone, I know there are hard working citizens that fall between the cracks and just make enough to feed their family but yet make too much to pay for health insurance and that saddens me. That is real and what’s wrong with our society. If anything I would like to see health insurance companies sell health insurance across state lines to hopefully increase competition and lower premium costs

Q: What are your main frustrations with being a nurse?  

A: I am never frustrated with being a nurse, I am honored. I am frustrated with the system. I can confidently say across the board that no matter what your specialty is, no matter what your situation the biggest issue is feeling like there is never enough time in the day where you can walk away from someone and say to yourself “I gave that person my all”. I will never understand why someone who has never walked my walk can make decisions on how many patients I am capable of caring for. These are generally the overly paid exec’s that crunch numbers and don’t really have a clue as to what’s “really going on”.

Q: What are the most fulfilling aspect of it? 

A: The most fulfilling aspect of being a nurse in my specialty would hands down be the ongoing relationships that I develop with my patients and their families. I am honored to be with them at one of, if not the most, scariest time of their life. The trust they give me, the secrets they share, our ups and downs, our celebrations and even our tears. I think I look at life a little bit differently because of them and that is a gift. Every now and then when the thought crosses my mind that I want to leave, it is inevitable that one of my patients be it someone I haven’t seen in a year or someone I just saw yesterday will come to me and express how grateful they are for the role I played in there life during the most difficult time ever. I take this as “whispers from god” saying “you’re where you need to be”.

I Hold You in High Esteem

When Will Ferrell and his comedy partner and friend Adam McKay made the internet sensation “The Landlord” with Adam’s two year old daughter Pearl cursing up a storm they received loads of criticism. “How could you teach a child to swear like that?” One concerned parent said on the comment section of the website. Adam McKay shot back, “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She doesn’t even know who she is yet.”

I have often found that just as it takes time for a child to distinguish the words they are speaking, so too does it take time for an adult to comprehend the weight of their words, and a sense of their self-worth.

Living in New York, I sometimes feel like I inhabit the Land of the Lost where escapism is paramount, talk is cheap, and if gratification isn’t instant it isn’t worth the investment. Words are more often used to manipulate and woe, then to uplift and sooth.

A city where cockiness is often mistaken for confidence and where being a brat is mistaken for being bold. There are many that think they ‘deserve’ success or a good relationship, yet, they don’t want to do the work that goes into either one of those objectives, or they reprimand the past and its former pain for their current lot in life. I know it’s difficult to move past the things in our life that hold us back. For years I blamed the loss of my mother for why I had a bad attitude or why it was difficult for me to maintain a healthy relationship. Somewhere along the way I realized that I had to stop looking for excuses for why things weren’t working out. When I opened my closed eyes I saw before me that I was surrounded by the most generous loving friends in the world who had not abandon me even with my terrible attitude. I hoped in some way they were reflections of the potential in me.

Even now, on those occasional low moments I use perspective. I love the word perspective. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in our little lives that we forget about others. Their suffering, their frustration, and what they need. We forgot that much of us share the same fears, moments of joy, cowardice, jealousy, envy, appreciation, and bravery.   If we all really understood this we would stop feeling that we lack something, and realize we all share a point of connection. It’s an opportunity to level the playing field and to be the best version of ourselves.

With open eyes I now see many of those that are lost wish to be found. Soul searching takes place in crowded subways, fast moving sidewalks accented by blaring ambulances and police sirens, or those rare quiet moments at 5:00am when the city is silent for just for a moment.

Possessing a healthy sense of self has been a long and sometimes difficult road for me to traverse. But I now see its importance. It has taken time to understand the words: patience, love, compassion, friendship, and generosity. But I feel the weight of those words and I hope they will mean something to you and that they will illuminate your life as they have mine. Beso- Maya Contreras

Eight Weeks of Bruce & The Him Book Avail as eBook here now. Paperback Nov. 30.

Prolific Artist Nancy Spero (1926-2009)

Nancy Spero, an artist my mother revered past away this Sunday, October 18, 2009. She was a brilliant artist and if you hadn’t heard of her, now is the time to discover her luminous body of work.

Here is a statement from GALERIE LELONG:

Nancy Spero, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, died Sunday, October 18, 2009, in New York City.  For over fifty years, Spero made the female experience central to her art’s formal and thematic development.  Her radical career encompassed many significant visual and cultural movements from Conceptual Art to Post-Modernism to Feminism.

After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and l’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Spero lived in Italy briefly and then in Paris, where she remained until moving to New York in 1964.  In Europe, Spero produced her first significant works, the Black Paintings-somber, figurative works allusive of existential oppositions and emotional turmoil.  These works were made at a time when Pop Art and Minimalism were the focuses in the art world, marking Spero’s first consistent oppositions to the prevailing conventions in art making. 

Nancy Spero’s return to the U.S. in 1966 coincided with the height of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.  In this charged political climate, her passionate engagement with these issues engendered the groundbreaking aesthetic style and the political and feminist themes for which she is now known.   The War Series was Spero’s first significant body of work on paper, a support she would favor for the majority of her working career.  Described by Spero as “broadsides,” The War Series depicted women and children as victims of war and suffering, a theme that would occupy Spero for the next forty years.  Though exhibited rarely in their time, The War Series works were more recently exhibited to great acclaim, including in Documenta X in 1997 and in Nancy Spero: The War Series at Galerie Lelong in 2003.

Following The War Series, Spero produced two bodies of work: the Artaud Paintings and the Codex Artaud series, based on the French poet Antonin Artaud, whom Spero described as the “most extreme writer of the 20th Century.”   In reading Artaud, Spero coined the term “victimage,” making a parallel between Artaud’s language and her feeling of the “loss of tongue” as a female artist in a male-dominated art world.  One of Spero’s great inventions was the fracturing of text and image in the Codex Artaud works, which some critics have described as the first works of Post-Modernism.  Following the Artaud series, Spero began work on her pioneering and critically lauded scroll series: Hours of the Night, 1974 (collection Whitney Museum of American Art), Notes in Time on Women, 1979 (collection Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Torture of Women, 1976 (collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).
Earlier this year, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria awarded Spero the Herbert Boeckl Prize and presented her exhibition Nancy Spero: Woman as Protagonist.  In 2008, the Museu d’art Contemporani Barcelona organized a full-scale retrospective, Nancy Spero: Dissidances, which traveled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville.  The Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris will present a retrospective exhibition of her work in 2010.  During her long career, monographic museum exhibitions of Spero’s work have been held at de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; Frac Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England; Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Germany; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; The Power Plant, Toronto; and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, among many others.
Nancy Spero was married to the artist Leon Golub (1922-2004) for over fifty years.  In 1996, together they received the Hiroshima Art Prize—awarded to contemporary artists for their achievements in promoting world peace—and exhibited at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art.  A joint retrospective of their works, War and Memory: Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, was presented by the American Center, Paris in 1994 and traveled to the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia.  Spero is survived by her three sons—Stephen Golub of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; Philip Golub of Paris; and Paul Golub of Paris—five grandchildren; and sister, Carol Newman of Portland, Oregon

GALERIE LELONG Located at 528 WEST 26TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10001         ph 212.315.0470

Adventures of Power is pure Ari Gold (part 1 of 3)

I had the privilege to meet and interview the brilliantly talent (yet utterly humble) writer, director, actor, musician Ari Gold.  His Film Adventures of Power is about to be in theatres nationwide this coming week. The movie is heartwarming, comic gold, and the cast is sure fire: ADRIAN GRENIER, JANE LYNCH,  MICHAEL MCKEAN (just to name a few). My interview with him will be up Monday, Oct. 5 on this website. But for now, here are a few reviews of the movie, and links to Ari Gold’s websites to give you more information about the film.

SITE: http://www.AdventuresOfPower.com

BLOG: http://www.powerthepower.com

“ADVENTURES OF POWER is a crazy, hilarious, bizarre, insane movie. And in all the best ways possible.” —Ain’t It Cool News

“Rowdy response to “Power’s” midnight unspooling at Sundance establishes the pic’s cult-movie cred… Gold’s a gifted comedian.”—Variety

“Optimism is making a comeback… Perhaps the most hilarious opening to an indie comedy ever.  Without apologies or irony, this is the kind of earnest go-for-your-dream movie that might have been made in the 1980s like Flashdance or Karate Kid.  And that’s what works so well about Adventures of Power, it is simultaneously hilarious and heartfelt and better yet, it all feels real.  This film will single-handedly bring newfound respect for the art of air-drumming and dreamers everywhere.”

—Chris Gore, China Shop 

 “A movie that brings together unions, air drumming, country music, golden footballs, forbidden love… This movie is rock and roll. In a complicated world, isn’t that the simplest thing we can ask for–hope?” —Velvetron

 “As this year’s Audience Award winning film, “Adventures of Power,” took the Vail Film Festival by storm. Suddenly air drummers were everywhere throughout town, banging away on dinner tables and bar stools in the hope that one day, they too, could save their town and family with air drumming.  This low-budg film has the potential to earn big bucks at the box office.” —Real Vail Magazine

 ”The most unique comedy I have seen in a great many years… getting to witness a character with a genuinely fascinating world view and a wonderfully understated wit is a really refreshing treat. I’m pleasantly shocked with the aftereffect of this movie; because of it, I actually learned something about soul.” —ElitesTV

 “Throughout the film, the audience erupted in laughter. The rock’n’roll soundtrack fits the movie like a glove.” —Slug.com