Basket for Web

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here.

In the Cherokee tale of the first fire, which my sixth-graders read as part of a unit on creation narratives from different faith traditions, a river divided the freezing animals from the burning sycamore tree. How to fetch fire back? The big and strong raven couldn't do it, and he was burned black when he tried. None of the owls could do it, earning red eyes and white eye rings in their attempts. The snakes tried, but the fire sent them swimming home. It was up to the unlikellest heroine, the water spider. Not only did she skip across the water, but she also spun her threads into a basket, into which she deposited a burning coal. 

At Singapore Unbound, we wish to imitate the little water spider. Internal discussions on labor equity are landing on the need to pay all team members, including interns, a monthly volunteer's stipend, not just after a year of service, but from the start. The reasons are compelling: (1) we want to recognize the immense value of volunteerism. No one is receiving a salary, but everyone should receive a small stipend so that their talent, time, and work are not taken for granted; (2) we want to lower the financial barrier to joining the team in any way we can; and (3) our supporters believe, as we do, that honest work should be paid and would love to learn more about the creative effort needed to bring all our programs and publications to you.

However, we are wary of falling into the web of perpetual fundraising. To avoid doing so, we must turn the web into the spider's trusty tusti bowl, which she carries on her back everywhere she goes. You may have noticed the new donation link at the top of our website. Now every article on SP Blog ends with the donation link too, in the event that you feel moved to make a generous donation after reading a beautiful poem, original story, insightful essay, informative review, or inspiring interview. In fact, we have big plans for SP Blog, and we can't wait to tell you all about them.

A trap may be turned into an elegant and useful receptacle. A web into a basket. Invention is the daughter of necessity, they say. Well, so is adaptation.

Jee Leong Koh
October 28, 2021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Examples from ar
Read more

Wallace Stevens' "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words"

Just read three essays from the "Poetics" section at the back of Volume One of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry : "The Poetry and the Present" by D.H. Lawrence (1919); "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" by Langston Hughes (1926); and "The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words" by Wallace Stevens (1942). The first is an artful polemic for free verse in contact with the "insurgent naked throb of the instant moment." The second is a spirited rejoinder to a young Negro poet who wanted to "write like a poet--not a Negro poet." The third, my favorite, is a wide-ranging meditation on the nature of poetry and the role of the poet. So many grand things said but I will only quote a few passages: I am interested in the nature of poetry and I have stated its nature, from one of many points of view from which it is possible to state it. It is an interdependence of the imagination and reality as equals. This is
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic
Read more