Day 4438: Global Wind Phone, Can't Sleep.

        

"Restrictions": junk collage.

  

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            Click:  James Brown, I Feel Good.

  

 

 

2GN2S

For the Grieving, Global ‘Wind Phone’ Is a Lifeline

Evanston, Illinois.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sendai, Japan, sent a catastrophic tsunami crashing into the island. Waves towering 40 meters high ripped across the region, killing 15,500 people and destroying the homes of more than 450,000. When the tsunami reached the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, it caused three nuclear reactors to melt down and spewed radioactive materials into the environment, layering disaster atop of disaster. 

Sasaki’s “Phone of the Wind” in Otsuchi, Japan

Garden designer Itaru Sasaki lost his cousin to cancer just months before the tragedy devastated his town, the small fishing village of Otsuchi. In an attempt to wrangle his grief, he decided to create a space for mourning in his backyard, one that would offer quiet and a symbolic connection to his loved one.

Set in a lush garden is a small, glass-paned booth with a seat and built-in desk holding a notebook, pen, and black rotary phone. The vintage device isn’t tethered to any service line, a severing that provides the space its name: Kaze no denwa, or the “Phone of the Wind,” a nod to the idea that whatever is spoken into the receivers will be carried only through the air.

Palm Harbor, Florida

  In early 2020, Amy Dawson’s daughter Emily died following a long illness. As she dealt with her own loss and studied to become a grief coach, Dawson discovered Sasaki’s “Phone of the Wind.” She felt an affinity with the idea and through additional research, quickly found similar projects in the U.S. 

“I believe very much that the people that go ahead of us are still around us, and their energy doesn’t disappear,” Dawson tells us one morning over Zoom, echoing Sasaki. This sentiment, atypical for U.S. and other Western audiences, is common in many cultures. Think of Mexico’s Día de Muertos, an autumn holiday described as a family reunion between the living and the dead. The Buddhist Obon festival in Japan is similar and summons visits from ancestors.

Mayfield Green, Kansas

Silverton, Colorado

Ellensburg, Washington

Several—from one in Evanston, Illinois, to another in Langley, British Columbia, and another in Amsterdam—utilize the iconic British booth painted in bright red. Others are humble wooden boxes affixed to trees and benches, or a single phone nested into a rock as in the island village of Rhoscolyn, Wales. “Wind Phones” take different shapes and forms for different people, similar to the grief they help soothe.

As the project grows and we collectively destigmatize loss, Dawson hopes people remember that loss is broad, and death isn’t the only reason someone might be experiencing sorrow. “You lose a job, a relationship, your house gets foreclosed on, whatever you can think of, all the millions of ways that people grieve,” she adds. “People are going to ‘Wind Phones’ for more than just death, and that’s really important.”

Alberta, Canada

Capponilli, Italy

Legacy, Ontario

To read the entire article, here.

It's 4:44 am and I have been awake for a while now. I had a text as I was trying to get to sleep, and then I was all the way awake. I hadn't finished today's Update, so I am in the studio trying to use this time productively?

Oyasumi nasai

 

  

 

A 3+ minute video, Bat Time,  here

 

 

 

  

 

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Magpie-Lark

  

 

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