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All things must pass ~ George Harrison

March is known as a transitional month - it starts in one season and ends in another, perhaps the working definition of the in-between, liminal space that facilitates transformation. We're looking forward to longer days and enjoying the light while we have it.

With absolute horror, state senator Richard Stuart discovered that a 2-mile stretch of his recently purchased riverfront property in Virginia was full of grave markers used to shore up erosion along the banks of the Potomac.

The trail led upriver to the nation’s capital, and illuminated a dark truth: The headstones were from a historic African American burial ground that was dug up and moved in 1960. Part-time historian Lex Musta is attempting to relocate the gravestones and contact the families of those who had been displaced. We’re trying to fix these broken parts of our past.

You can read the full Washington Post article here.

Divya Mehra's inflatable sculptures literalize the expression and experience of the tsunami of grief that can accompany loss. We are all dealing with death at a huge scale right now - and also often on the most intimate scale simultaneously.

Mehra lost her father in 2015 so she is familiar with the power of waves and is able to extrapolate that with an exuberance that reflects a global death toll approaching 2.5 million. Her work is complex and does not shy away from the anger that can be the underside of grief.

You can read the full NY Times article here. See her installation The funny things You do here.

Erica Buist's father-in-law was already dead for a week before found in his bed with a book resting on his chest. Erica was thrown into agoraphobia by the experience and eventually got curious about how other cultures dealt with mortal terror.

This led her to a trip around the world investigating the celebration of death in multiple cultures - the festivals of mortality.

You can find the book here.

Pulitzer prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw’s latest album, Narrow Sea, channels water as a spiritual vehicle between here and the hereafter, and conjures the euphoria of transitioning; crossing over and leaving the world behind. Shaw’s music grows ever more mystic.

You can listen to the album here and read more about her and the composition here.

The Dig - a movie set in pre-war Britain about the discovery of the immensely valuable Sutton Hoo treasure (dated from the Anglo-Saxon era) is also about mortality and the timeless challenges of meeting it.

Archaeologists discover what remains of us, all of our things and nothing of our physical selves except the memories those things represent. This is a beautiful movie that will also leave its mark.

You can find the trailer here and the movie itself here.

Before I Die, a memento mori project for the modern age, is a global art project that invites people to contemplate death and reflect upon their lives. Originally created by Candy Chang on an abandoned house in New Orleans after the death of a loved one, there are now over 5000 walls all around the world.

You can see them and read more about the project here.

This 12 minute animated film is presently shortlisted for consideration at the 2021 Oscars. Its subject is the heartbreak of a child lost to gun violence while attending school - a uniquely American story. Animation is known for its ability to conjure universes with a few lines and this short more than meets the challenge.

You can find an article about the genesis of the film here.

And you can find the short itself here.

Biodiversity is the lifeblood of the planet, we ignore it at our risk. Species extinction is accelerating at alarming rates. Partha Dasgupta, a Cambridge University economist frames nature as an asset in this New York Times article. That means literally assigning value to what the natural world provides - that this simultaneously seems both obvious and a new idea encapsulates our current dilemma.

You can find out more about biodiversity here and here.

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