posso dire che quasi quasi mi commossi? geniale questo sito, proprio
dentro le nostre poetiche storie frammentate di lucido ciclismo
urbano. e stasera non posso neanche farmi consolare dalla massa che
festeggia il bel tempo. disastro :-))
http://post-gazette.com/pg/07344/840487-152.stm
Of wayward gloves and lost souls
Monday, December 10, 2007
By Ruth Ann Dailey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two Saturdays ago, this newspaper's front page carried an article on a
local art student's bittersweet effort to return lost gloves to their
less-than-fully-dressed owners. A critical reader ribbed me: "This is
your paper's top story today?"
But the story, whimsical at first glance, struck a deep emotional
note. Accounts of Jennifer Gooch's Web site, onecoldhand.com, and her
quixotic mission -- to retrieve misplaced gloves from Pittsburgh
streets and sidewalks and reunite them with their lonely mates via the
Internet -- soon appeared everywhere from Seattle to San Jose to USA
Today to the BBC.
These far-flung news outlets didn't carry the story because their
readers and viewers might be hoarding Pittsburghers' missing gloves.
They used it because Ms. Gooch's project captures the pang that
accompanies what she calls "a small moment of loss." Sometimes a glove
is just a glove; sometimes it's more. Sometimes it might be an
invitation to consider, at a safe distance, the deeper pain that
accompanies great moments of loss.
The gloves collected by the Carnegie Mellon University student sprang
to my mind just a few days later when a teenage gunman killed eight
strangers and himself in a mall in Omaha, Neb.
In the tragedy's aftermath, we learned how hard Robert Hawkins'
father, foster parents, family therapists, psychotherapists, social
workers, drug counselors and public defenders had worked to try to
help him find his way. The state estimates it spent more than $265,000
on his care, and officials felt they had done everything they could
do.
Unlike an inanimate glove, the young man had a will and mind of his
own, and he refused to undergo any more drug treatment. The state
could have kept him as a ward till he was 19 but had terminated its
custody of the then-18-year-old, deeming him "non-amenable to further
services."
Anguished authorities and caregivers are now asking themselves whether
there was anything else they could have done. But who will ever know
whether one more effort, one new, unimagined approach, could have
recaptured a lost soul? Maybe some lost things cannot be restored.
As the television news anchors introduced the unfolding story of the
Omaha shooting last week, many mentioned the tragic holiday timing.
Several victims had been clustered at the department store gift-wrap
counter when terror and violence shattered the season's happy warmth.
This is the time of year when we give gifts to show others their value
to us. We give to our loved ones, of course, but also make special
donations to charities that minister to the homeless, the hurting, the
lost.
We stuff money into red kettles and mail checks to those who live as
catchers in the rye, trying to rescue the lost or the unaware before
they plunge over a precipice.
It's simply coincidence that Christmas in the northern hemisphere
falls during winter, the season of lost gloves. And you could think of
Jennifer Gooch, the artist rescuing those lost gloves, as just a
catcher in the wry.
But there's power in her wall and Web site full of forlorn gloves. She
tags them with exact notes on where and when they were found, hoping
to reunite them with their partners and their purpose. Come spring,
the project will become an art installation, its mundane medium
speaking to life's daily pattern of loss and gain.
But the "gain" is really only a partial restoration. A graduate
student working toward a master's of fine arts degree, Ms. Gooch spent
several hundred dollars setting up the project's online component.
"The site is bittersweet to me," she said in initial news coverage.
"It's set up for this benevolent aim that might not really be
realized. ... If I have one person find their glove, then the entire
thing is totally worth it."
Then Ms. Gooch has succeeded. In the subsequent 10 days, she has
reunited two pairs of gloves with their grateful owners. More than a
dozen local businesses -- mostly coffeehouses -- have accepted
drop-boxes for found gloves, other cities are picking up the idea, and
an unknown number of helpers are joining the campaign.
It's living art.
Some gloves will go unclaimed. Some of the missing will not be found.
Some loss is permanent and some tragic.
Even as "One Cold Hand" lightly captures the pang of loss, it
encourages us to keep trying, to rescue and restore whatever we can.
Ruth Ann Dailey can be reached at rdailey@??? or 412-263-1733.
First published on December 10, 2007 at 12:00 am
2008/1/16, Q ^_^ <quantika@???>:
> Piovono genialità! Meraviglia?!
>
> Un simpatico luogo per tristi guanti smarriti... ho sempre pensato che
> qualcuno dovesse pensare a loro. In fondo, sono storie dimenticate
> che avrebbero tanto da raccontare...
>
> chissà che accadrà... ^____^
>
>
> Il 16/01/08, icx@??? <icx@??? > ha scritto:
> >
> > > A me fanno incazzare quelli che perdono un guanto alla volta, tutti
> > > 'sti guanti single mollicci sul porfido lucido di lacrime. Che
> > > desolazione! Voglio I guanti a coppia!
> >
> > http://www.onecoldhand.com/
> >
> >
> ________________________________________________________________________
> > SERVIZIO VOICE: TELEFONA e INVIA SMS dal tuo computer a tariffe
> vantaggiose!
> > Scopri come telefonare e videochiamare gratis da pc a pc.
> > http://voice.repubblica.it
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cm-milano mailing list
> > Cm-milano@???
> > https://www.autistici.org/mailman/listinfo/cm-milano
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ---------------------------------
> E' difficile acchiappare un gatto nero in una stanza buia soprattutto quando
> non c'è.
> (CN)
> _______________________________________________
> Cm-milano mailing list
> Cm-milano@???
> https://www.autistici.org/mailman/listinfo/cm-milano
>
>
--
invel
