PASSOVER FOR ALL OF US

Part the sea
and lead us to freedom.
We find our way through pain
and turbulence.
Always we remember
salty tears
and above all
hope.



© Helen Webber, Passover,
fabric collage tapestry 4’x5’
also available as a fine art print,16”x18”

Lower Ninth Rhythm

© Nina Ryser. "Lower Ninth Rhythm", awarded Scholastic's NYC regional Silver Key Award for art

Nina Ryser, my grand daughter, i6 years old when she took this prize winning photo, last summer, went to New Orleans with a group of teen age volunteers to help clean up the mess in the famous lower ninth ward.

Playing The Dream

He’s playing that drum again.
This kid from the lower ninth,
his legs just about long enough to straddle
that big white drum.

He’s doing his beat
with his bright white sneakers.

Leaning against the plywood slats
slapped up in syncopated blues;
There’s the blue chewing gum
peeking out of his mouth
to pierce the sky.

He’s playing his dreams.
Will he play in a soft whisper
or in a roar like the winds of Katrina?

Behind his closed eyes
does he see the
shadows of possibility?

© Helen Webber




The photo is a dramatic reminder of one of the ten Rights of The Child: the right of a child to develop his talents and special abilities, described in art and poetry in the book CATCH A DREAMER. www.dovetailpublications.org

PASSOVER, The festival of Freedom

why you don’t have to be Jewish to celebrate Passover


Gathered together,
many of us and them,
old and young
people of all persuasions
celebrating our human kinship
and becoming us
together

learning the story
from a book read backwards,
the Hagaddah
ancient tales of
slavery and suffering
and plagues sent down to
vanquish the oppressors,

and discovering the world of slavery today

Moses pleading with Pharoah to
let my people go

And the miraculous escape from
slavery through the
parted Red Sea,
a pathway to a new life in a new
desert land, to freedom at last.

Free at last!

The dream of Martin Luther King
The jubilant proclamation of Nelson Mandela

The table with eggs dipped in the salty tears of the oppressed
bitter herbs, and unleavened bread
baked in the desert,
apples chopped with honey,
the cement of bricks that Jewish slaves
lifted for an eternity of suffering.

And now in 2010,
we together,
of many beliefs
and many ways of praying
and many ways of wishing and hoping
lament the slaves of now,
of 2010,
27 million throughout the world
more than any time in history
half of whom are children
children dragged from their childhood
into prisons of pain and horror
in fields and factories,
and brothels…

We raise our glasses
to toast those who fearlessly
work together to create
paths to freedom,
for all.
Everywhere.
We break unleavened bread
together
for renewed strength
and hope…

Our Passover, together.

Children's right to play

A child’s right to Play

My book CATCH A DREAMER, began when I created ten tapestries celebrating the ten rights of the child. The very first tapestry I created in this series related to a child’s right to play, the essence of childhood.

Maybe it was the child within me, (possibly an overused phrase, but still valid nevertheless), that drew me first to that particular right.

Childhood is play. That some kids don’t have a chance
to play is beyond belief. Play is so much part of being
a child it seems that denying the experience of play
to a child is close to denying a child her life. That children
find a way to play when they have almost nothing, gives
testimony to the miracle of a child’s spirit.


Play is the soul of childhood.
It is magic and imagination
mixed together in a fairy tale brew.

It is chalking lines on a sidewalk
and hopping between them.
It is running in a field or a park
and thinking you are a super being
who can fly,and swim in a cloud.
even if you’re running in a field of garbage.

Play is when you are the queen of the whole wide world
and the world is wider than the street, the house
the back yard, wider than the sky, bigger than all the school rooms all put together..
even if you haven’t ever been in a schoolroom because you have to work in a field or a factory



Play is when you are the magician, you are the doctor,
you are the teacher. Play is when you swish your wand and all bad things disappear.
even if your mother is so sick she can’t take care of you and you are afraid she will die and leave you.

Play is tumbling and wrestling,
and skipping and throwing a ball higher than the highest mountain
and battling the monster with your
silver sword which is a stick you found
in the street,
even if there are soldiers with real guns all around you, and you are afraid of them.

Play makes dreams become real.
Play is the game of I win, I am strong
I am brave, I can ride an elephant
Play is the game of who can giggle
the most,
and who can laugh the loudest.
even if I am homeless.

Play is jumping rope with a rainbow.
Play is the jump rope game of life.


click here for information about an organization
that takes play seriously:

http://www.ipausa.org/index.html