Richard Loder, Westfield Ma.

Birth and Karma: Arrived one cold winter evening in a city along the banks of the Hudson River to second-generation Irish Catholics who married a little late for the fashion and strove for middle-class stability, until they were separated by a fatal heart attack. My mother, left with a four-year-old boy, the ten-year-old girl who was me, and no resources, recovered, found work, and sustained full-time employment all the rest of her days in public service jobs, surviving eight heart attacks, till the last one brought her down at the age of 65.

Childhood and adolescence: Kindergarten (Dick and Jane), grade school (Grimms Fairy Tales), death in the family (James Agee) two high schools (Shakespeare to Kaufman and Hart), theatre training (Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht), amateur theatre work (Hermann Hesse) summer theatre and on the road (Williams to Simon), varieties of survival jobs (Chekhov and Colette), off-off-off Broadway (Thomas Mann, Dylan Thomas), auditions and more auditions.

The Sixties: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, historic and personal upheaval, war, civil rights, assassinations, moon landings, marches, demonstrations, progressive politics, peace activism, odd jobs, feminist studies, consciousness-raising groups, tenant committee labors, tree plantings, animal rescues, important personal relationships.

The Seventies: BA in Film-Video-Photography from the School of Visual Arts, independent film and photography projects (exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York University, The Women Make Movies Collective), participant in media events for Life Magazine, Global Village Video, AIR Gallery, The June 12th Disarmament Coalition, The War Resisters League, and the New York Anthropology Center. Taught media workshops in the South Bronx. Employed for eleven years coordinating an audio/visual department for New York University, union member.

The Eighties: Downsized, post-traumatic stress (unemployment, welfare), independent studies over many healing disciplines (Homeopathic Materia Medica, Bach Flower Remedies, Herbal Therapeutics, Medicinal Plants,Yoga and Buddhist practices), painting and drawing, poetry and journals. With the help of state aid, earned a Gardening Certificate from the New York Botanical Gardens, where I also completed all the required classes for a certificate in Botanical Art and assisted at the Plant and Garden shop. Volunteer maintenance for the roof garden at GMHC, NY. A brief part-time job in commercial gardening work.

The Nineties: More yoga (Jivamukti and Dharma Mittra) and Buddhist practices, (part time resident of Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York, for several years) less gardening (private clients), more writing (journals, poetry, correspondence), artwork, exhibitions. My art and photography are in private collections nationwide.

2000 to Date: Official retirement, all of the above, plus performances on the New York poetry circuit, legal battles (landlord/tenant). The rehabilitation of my crumbling rent-controlled home of forty years, thanks to one lawyer and several generous, talented, friends from the yoga community illuminated a more relaxed state of mind, a bright sense of humor, and renewed creative vigor.

Ayat al-Gormezi, the poet jailed and tortured for reading a poem at a pro-democracy rally, has been released (though her sentence has not been revoked, which means that a threat is hanging over her.

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