From: Caroline Koebel (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jul 28 2009 - 09:57:23 PDT
Dear Frameworkers,
Chick made a great impression on Kate Haug and me when we hosted her in the
mid-90s as part of the Glare screening series at UC, San Diego. We found in
this glorious person all the ingenuity, sincerity and vitality we needed at
this tenuous point in our lives to reaffirm our own courage to do not what
we were told but rather what we willed. Kate then interviewed Chick for her
Femme Experimentale edition of Wide Angle. I was packing/weaning my
belongings a few months ago and came across the typewritten note and bio
Chick had sent me for the program over a decade ago, and yet again I
imagined the greeting I had been planning to send her for years. Whether or
not I made it clear to Chick during her lifetime, she is a person and
filmmaker who will never cease to inspire me. I've been staying with my mom
in Columbus, Ohio, and have chosen the following moment from my recent
experience to honor Chick's memory. Caroline
for Chick Strand
on bikes at the close of day
pausing midway on the bridge
over the shallows of the Olentangy River
in one direction people washing
(I had heard of the population
living on the banks)
the other a great blue heron
standing immobile against the current
indistinct in the fading light
the same creature with flashing silver
before it then lost to it
the fish taken by the bird into
its spiraling throat
near the heron men
sweeping the water with little nets
people tunneling from the
river’s edge into the woods
housing all this action on the ground
not solely the darkening sky of coming night
but also the intermingled moves
of bats and swallows
so similar in size and flight
difference is
the birds arc backward
the mammals forward
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.