A beautiful tribute by Bryan Marquard this morning in the Boston Globe to Roz Zinn, who died May 14 here in Newton, where she lived with her husband, Howard. Painter (click for one of her paintings), activist, native of Brooklyn, social worker, actor, mother/wife/grandmother/sister, and first reader of her husband's books, I knew her from the grocery store. One of those unfathomable things: more often than not when I shopped, they were there too, the very tall husband and the very short wife, both darting around the store. Always made me happy to see them - and probably everyone else in the market too. Occasionally we talked, more often we smiled back-and-forth. Tiny gifts of pleasure. Heart aching for Howard, the whole family, and especially Myla and Jonny. Here are the opening paragraphs of the Globe piece:
The dunes overlooking Wellfleet's shore, a terrain Roslyn Zinn revered during summer visits, glow in one of her paintings with a singular warmth, as if she perceived the landscape more deeply than any seasonal pilgrim.
"After years as a teacher and social worker, I turned seriously to painting, which throughout my life had sparked and enlivened my spirit," Ms. Zinn wrote in a brief introduction to "Painting Life," a collection of her work that was published last year, a few months after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. "What I see in the world, so burdened and troubled, and yet beautiful in nature and in the human form, impels me to seek to create images that give the possibility of hope."
A glorious spray of tulips, the gentle curve of an unclothed hip, the deep smile lines etched around her husband's mouth - Ms. Zinn's brush found in each of her subjects a sense of serenity and promise. And those same qualities, present in her along with a radiant delight in life, impressed those she met her during her long marriage to historian Howard Zinn as they walked arm in arm in marches protesting wars from Vietnam to Iraq.
Continue reading Globe piece, "Roslyn Zinn, 85; blended social activisim with the arts."