Jerry Chasen's Blog

“Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the sky”—”and of course, above all to thine own self be true.”

I often felt that the commercial greetings that I bought were so much less than I wanted to say, so I resolved to create a new birthday greeting of my own each year. It helps that a good friend’s birthday is on January 6!

As it happens, the morning of the day on which the first Seder fell in 2009, was also the return to the skies at the time of creation. There’s tremendous power in “starting over”, especially when it’s conscious!

Maybe more political than a holiday would warrant, it troubled me that we were talking about religious freedom when the extremists in our country seemed to be gaining the upper hand.

This was one of the first poemographs. It’s also a return to rhyme, and a direct discussion of some larger political truths in the context of the holiday greeting. The photograph is shot into the pond in Kennedy Park in Lenox, MA. At the time, Bush was getting ready to invade Iraq, which needless to say, I didn’t think was a very good idea!