Skipped Reviews

Culture, Nature, Writing
Jun 24, 2022
1 Comments

Afternoon walk at the beginning of the week. The sun was out – finally – it started to warm up – finally! Somehow it felt as if all of nature erupted into a collective sigh of “Ahhhhh,” turning little flower faces skyward, soaking it all up.

Butterflies hung out, luxuriating in the sun.

Huge tadpoles floated in the water like being suspended from invisible threads, shifting a little with soft currents of the lake. (Hate to break it to you, they are Rana Catesbeiana, invasive bull frog babies, as my learned friend Mary told me when I showed her the pictures.)

Herons stalking in slo-mo, trying to keep a lid on the bull frog population…

Hello….

Ospreys eying the ducklings, then being chased by smaller, upset birds.

Red-winged blackbirds everywhere, as were swallows and brown-headed cowbirds.

I tried to focus on my surround and not on what to do with the barrage of emails that enter my inbox on a daily basis for unknown reasons, often prefaced by Dear Mr. Friderike Heuer…Somehow I must have gotten on a distribution list of people who think I do book reviews for a living. The wrong kind of people. Or the wrong kind of books, as the case may be. Certainly the wrong amount of time spent on reading the mails if only out of curiosity. Here is a selection for last week only, to give you a taste.

Book Review Op – Your Marriage God’s Way: A Biblical Guide to a Christ-Centered Relationship – The problems we see in marriages today have existed throughout human history, says Pastor Scott LaPierre, which is why he relies on biblical lessons when dispensing marital counseling. Scott dissects the culture of marriage intended by God in his new book, Your Marriage God’s Way, and he is available to discuss these valuable insights with your audience to help them build relationships that are strong and vibrant. Would you please read the press release below and let me know if you would like to schedule an interview with pastor and author Scott LaPierre? I would also be happy to forward a complimentary copy of his new book in consideration of a review or feature. To hear a recent interview, please visit https://anchor.fm/heidistjohn/episodes/Husbands–Love-Your-Wives-with-Scott-LaPierre-e1i3fcd.

Let’s say mine centers on a Jewish man as well…

Book Review / Interview Op – 60 Clear-Cut Ideas That Make Handling Crises and Career Setbacks Easier -in these troubling times, nothing is easy. But sought-after business coach Chris Westfall says that there is an easier way. In his new book, Easier, Chris uses a profoundly powerful approach to deliver 60 clear-cut ideas for handling crises, career setbacks, loss, grief and more — so we can heal ourselves, our companies and our culture. Please let me know if you would like to schedule an interview with Chris, who makes an extremely engaging guest. I would also be happy to forward a complimentary copy of Easier, in consideration of a review or feature. More information can be found in the press release below. To watch a recent interview, please visit….

Only 60?

I wanted to make sure you’d heard about Jerremy’s new children’s book focused on the stock market? The following is a link to the press release: https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/real-life-trading-making-investment-in-financial-literacy-for-kidsJerremy has been putting an extra focus on financial literacy for children. He was recently featured on CNBC. I’d be happy to send you a copy of his book if you’d like to review it or I can schedule an interview with him if you’d like to learn more about why he wrote it and how he’s giving back to schools and kids. He will also have a guest piece in the Tennessean soon advocating for his home state to pass a similar financial literacy bill as Florida just did.

I know I reared the kids all wrong…

Steamy Romance About Love, Sex and Chocolate – The word-of-mouth sensation, Chocolate Burnout, is now a seven-part series for Hubbard Small Press Publications with the first in the series, Chocolate Burnout: Chocolate 4 Life (June 7, 2022) launching this summer. Each novel in the series will follow a different character and address a variety of social issues including racism and interracial relationships. Chocolate 4 Life follows Chantel Reed, a successful, single African American woman who has given up on romance to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a master chocolatier. Chantel’s best friend Astrid, a prosperous, single white woman who sacrificed relationships to conquer her dream job as a certified chocolatier, is the owner of Sweet Indulgence, one of the most popular chocolate shops in downtown Seattle. The story follows Chantel as she deals with life’s challenges and bounces between an obsession with chocolate, friendships and her desire to find the perfect romance.“Throughout the seven-part series, there will be different perspectives, and the protagonists will develop and change their views as they grow older,” says La-Paz. “The main character, Chantel Reed, her eccentric group of friends and her peculiar relationships give readers something to look forward to as the series progresses.” With a romance series, a memoir, and a picture book forthcoming, Emunah La-Paz is a talented author on the rise. Please let me know if I can send you a review copy of this delicious and enticing tale.

Maybe I’ll have some chocolate. Maybe I’ll pick um painting again…

Hey Friderike — below is an image of American Angie Crabtree surrounded by her hyperrealistic portraits of actual diamonds. Her art speaks for itself so I won’t bother you with fluff and BS. She has a show coming up and a great backstory. She is collected mostly by major diamond companies, celebs etc. How would you feel about a quick interview via zoom phone or email? We would be grateful! Keep sparkling, Tyler.

Or maybe I’ll escape to outer space since I can keep sparkling there as yet another star…

I am writing to you with an urgent story idea. Former Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver has a new book scheduled to be released on June 21st entitled “Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age.” It is the story of how Garver drove the commercial space program with Elon Musk against the wishes of Senators on both sides of the aisle. It is her story of how she was threatened and called the worst of names by politicians including Senators whose goal was to protect NASA programs in their districts versus Congress investing in the commercial program. The Senator from Florida who led the battle to stop the commercial program was Bill Nelson, now the NASA administrator. Garver pulls no punches on Nelson. She opens up about the excessive $20 billion-plus in cost overruns that have dogged the SLS program that Nelson drove. SLS still has not been launched after a decade of technical and financial issues. Garver writes in her book about working with Musk, Bezos, Branson, etc… and has many personal stories to share. The Former Deputy NASA Administrator passionately writes and speaks about how women have been suppressed, degraded, and objectified in the male-dominated NASA culture. In addition to the PDF, I have attached book highlights and Garver’s thoughts regarding how women have been treated at NASA.

Would you be interested in interviewing Garver for your outlet? This promises to be a dynamic interview, bestseller, and drop a number of political bombshells. I look forward to hearing from you. Please contact me at this email or xxxxxxxxxxx to schedule an interview.

Or maybe I’ll read something truly relevant to my pursuit of sharing tidbits about nature: here is the best article of last week in that regard. It will enrich your weekend!

Foxgloves

Nature, Poetry
Jun 17, 2022
1 Comments

Some things finally awaken in the garden, the columbines, some iris, a first little hedge rose, corn flowers, daisies, buttercups,

and the foxgloves.

A magnet to bees, this plant is actually highly toxic, but, used in the right amounts, can also be healing. (Don’t try at home…!) As a source of dioxin, it is used to treat cardiac arrhythmia, ever since British physician, William Withering, published his book, An Account of the Foxglove, in 1785. He and subsequent healers used it for a variety of ailments, edema, epilepsy, hydrothorax (fluid in the pleural cavities) and phthisis pulmonalis (probably tuberculosis.)(Ref.)

Some people speculate that Vincent van Gogh used digitalis (the plant’s latin name) to treat his epileptic seizures towards the end of his life. The chemicals cause haziness of vision, or a yellow tinge to everything one sees, known as xanthopsia. Occasionally, points of light may appear to have coloured halos around them. Rarer still are effects on pupil size, such as dilation, constriction or even unequal-sized pupils.

“The effects of digitalis intoxication have been suggested as the cause of Van Gogh’s “yellow period” and the spectacular sky he painted in The Starry Night. More circumstantial evidence comes from the two portraits Van Gogh produced of his doctor, Paul Gachet, showing him holding a foxglove flower. One of Van Gogh’s self portraits also shows uneven pupils.

All of this is very interesting but it is pure speculation. Van Gogh may not have taken digitalis, and perhaps simply liked the colour yellow and the effect of swirling colours around the stars he painted. Unequal pupil size in his self-portrait may have been the result of a simple slip of the paintbrush.” (Ref.)

Then again, he was known to indulge in drinking absinthe. The alkaloids in Artemisia absinthium which is used to brew the liquor cause similar visual effects.

Who knows…

Vincent van Gogh Dr. Gachet (1890)

The bees don’t care….

Today’s poem is by John Lee Clark, a DeafBlind poet, essayist, and independent scholar from Minnesota. The German name for the plant is Fingerhut, which translates as thimble.

Music is some mellow folk songs today. Titled Foxgloves, of course.

The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe.

Nature, Poetry, Politics
Jun 10, 2022
3 Comments

I take my victories where I can find them. Two days ago I won a staring contest with a coyote. The bunny, paralyzed with fear between us, lived, too. I stood still for what seemed half an eternity, he approached a step or two but then reconsidered. Time enough to take the photographs, and for a Painted Lady to land on the scat he left behind. No matter how often I feel blessed by nature, some encounters are unexpected, as if by magic, and make my heart race. With joy more than fear.

It had already been a morning filled with sweet encounters. The hungry scrub jay fledglings waiting for their mother,

other mothers readjusting worms in beaks.

Egrets hanging out, with a cacophony of their screaming offspring in nests in the woods behind them.

Glimpses of snowcapped Mt. St. Helens in the distance.

I had come to photograph something altogether different, though. I wanted to capture the star-like flowers of hemlock or cow parsley, you choose. (I have written about the distinction between these two, the former highly toxic, the latter good for making soup, previously here.) I needed a stand-in for stars, since they play such an important role in the poem attached below, not having images for the real thing since I rarely see them these days. Either it is too cloudy, or I am in bed already.

I don’t know why I had not come across this poem earlier – it has been around for a long time. Since 1977, to be precise, in a volume called The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe. The author, Laura Gilpin, had received the Walt Whitman Poetry award the previous year. She died, not yet age 56, barely 6 months after a diagnosis of cancer, in 2007.

The Two-Headed Calf

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

by Laura Gilpin (1950- 2007)

The poem hit me at gut level, about the precariousness of life, about “othering,” and the hope one can find when staying in the moment, if only for a moment. It also fascinated me with a level of writing skill that manages to suggest so many different scenarios in so few lines.

What do we have here? Immediately we get introduced to the derogatory term freak. Wrapped in newspaper (a calf with two heads? Large newspaper…) reminiscent of ways to discard refuse like stinking fish. It will be displayed, gawked at, the museum replacing freak shows of yore on the circus circuit.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, freak show is

“...a term used to describe the exhibition of exotic or deformed animals as well as humans considered to be in some way abnormal or outside broadly accepted norms. Although the collection and display of such so-called freaks have a long history, the term freak show refers to an arguably distinct American phenomenon that can be dated to the 19th century.”

Promoted by P.T.Barnum, people raved about the entertainment delivered by watching disfigured animals or humans with disabilities, weight and height differences, dwarfism included, absence or increased presence of limbs, vitiligo, and persons with ambiguous sexual characteristics including hermaphroditism. Given how indefensible and indecent amusement at the sight of human abnormalities is, it is no surprise that the world saw a “Revolt of the Freaks” in 1898, when a collection of the 40 or so most-famous performers in the world staged a labour strike while on tour in London, demanding that the management of the Barnum and Bailey circus remove the term freak from promotional materials for their shows. To no avail. It took until the middle of the 20th century for these shows to be abandoned.

What is unfortunately alive and well, though, is a (religious and ideological) movement that defines “non-normative” people as freaks, abnormalities to be eradicated from a healthy societal body, and threatens to, at best, exclude them and force them into hiding, or punish them and those who support them, or, at worst call for their extermination. From a church pulpit, no less.

In this year alone, more than 240 bills have been introduced directed against LGTBQ people, most of them trans, and the year isn’t half over. The Human Rights Campaign reports that last year, 50 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed in the U.S., 14 so far this year. That is not counting the suicides of mobbed or despairing trans teenagers. According to NPR, a third of the known trans-youth, 58.000 people, are in danger of losing gender affirming health care. Actually, newest statistics show that the U.S. has about 1.6 million people who are transgender, 43% young adults or teenagers.

Gilpin draws a scenario in the second stanza that shows the domesticated framework of a summer evening at the farm. North field, like a neighbor’s address, with mother, a loving family then, mellow conditions lit by the moon, soothing noises by soft wind, the mention of an orchard promising the sweetness of fruit. All is right here, as long as the cruel world can be kept at bay, and the fate of non-conforming to norms, or of disability, postponed for just a few hours longer. It is inevitable, but in the meantime there is beauty to behold. And here is a glint of magic: four eyes in two heads see double the beauty, a privilege not granted to the rest of us.

Yet the added shimmer is no compensation, in my mind, for the lack of a glimmer of hope that people will attempt to integrate physical or mental disability without prejudice, or accept gender non-conformity (not a disability!) as a human right. Or stop using it as a wedge issue in a war between polarized ideological factions.

Gilpin worked for decades on a second volume of poetry, finished shortly before her death and published posthumously, The Weight of a Soul. Mine was left less heavy by the thought that poetry can still help us think things through, sort out who is discriminating and who needs protection. My soul was also made lighter by the hocus-pocus of nature, creating every variability imaginable, shimmering in the light.

Here is some beautiful music from Australia Superclusters. More stars, for your ears this time.

Hemlock towering over me by a foot at least…

Drying Out

The sun was out. The sky was blue. Puffy white clouds. Miracle of miracles, after these endless rains, the cold, a May more like February. Yesterday was a promise of better times.

And everyone, I mean everyone, was out drying their plumage, preening, soaking up some warmth.

The herons opened their wings to the sun rays, or flying low in a bit of a breeze.

The Bullock’s Oriole (says my bird book) competed with the golden light around it, more interested in getting the gnats out of its feathers than watching the busy swallows right above it.

And the turtles?

Lined up in a row, late comers trying to score a place as well, not too successfully.

Mothers and offspring sharing a log.

Heads stretched up high, opening wet folds, drying out.

Before we get too excited with all those harbingers of better times ahead, let’s be pragmatic. The rains will reappear in the not too distant future, says the weatherman. Good for our parched state, bad for our mood. Lets not be like the theoretic turtle – let’s follow canine advice: work around it and all other nuisances…

The Theoretic Turtle

The theoretic turtle started out to see the toad;
He came to a stop at a liberty-pole in the middle of the road.
“Now how, in the name of the spouting whale,” the indignant turtle cried,
“Can I climb this perpendicular cliff and get on the other side?
If I only could make a big balloon I’d lightly over it fly;
Or a very long ladder might reach the top though it does look fearfully high.
If a beaver were in my place, he’d gnaw a passage through with his teeth;
I can’t do that but I can dig a tunnel and pass beneath.”
He was digging his tunnel with might and main, when a dog looked down at the hole.
“The easiest way, my friend,” said he, “is to walk around the pole.”

by Amos Russel Wells (1862 – 1933)

A sense of place

My twitter feed regularly sends me images of three artists, without me ever having followed those sources. Riddle me that! I like two of them very much (Max Ernst and Varo Remedios,) but had never heard of the third one, Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898). He was a Russian Realist (in contrast to the other two surrealists,) and I now recall I included one of his paintings in a recent blog about people wandering through landscapes. But that’s it.

Pine on sand # Heuer #photography

In any case, looking at Shishkin’s landscapes, painted around the area of St. Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia, I was struck how many of them resided in variations in my photographic archives, without ever having set foot into Russia. The scenes were photographed in Europe and North America. The fact that similarities can be salient, just as dissimilarities can, seemed noteworthy in light of the fact that I know so many people who are currently moving away or have moved away from places they have called home for years. Not everything will be unfamiliar!

Stone in the forest # Heuer #photography

For the younger ones, the reasons for moving have to do with increased flexibility of the workplace, allowing to do your job long distance. For those I am most familiar with, a continual change of location implies mostly excitement, and has also been the norm between college, grad school, post docs and so on. Relocation of us older folks is a different thing – often done to be closer to family, to be of mutual support, sometimes done to find environments easier on an aging body or to escape into (visions of) tranquility. Not an entirely new phenomenon, if you think of the many East Coast “snowbirds” who annually tracked to Florida in the winter from the Northern states (again, I am aware it is the privilege of a certain class.)

Oaks # Heuer #photography

You give up a few things when you move. Your familiarity with the lay-out of your city and environs, your ease of finding your way, your knowledge of where to find things (in shops or nature,) not to mention your doctors, dentists, and last but not least the friends who remained (this latter one is for older people often a reason to move rather than to stay – people around you are no longer.) And your sense of place, your attachment to and pride in the place you call home, will be disturbed, although, as we will see, it can be reestablished on the other end with remarkable fluency.

Mounds # Heuer #photography

There is a whole research enterprise in various scientific disciplines that explores the (dis)advantages of a sense of place that comes mostly from having lived somewhere for a long time, if not all of your life. (I got my information here and here.) Definitions vary as do approaches, it can be confounding to try and get a grasp of it.

For psychologists, it is the experience of a person in a particular setting, feelings and thoughts included. In geography, it’s called topophilia, the affective bond between people and place or setting. For historians it is a sense of place that we ourselves create in the course of time. It is the result of habit or custom, reinforced by what might be called a sense of recurring events. For anthropologists, place attachment is more than an emotional and cognitive experience, it includes cultural beliefs and practices that link people to place, a symbolic element tying us to shared history.

The tree in the field # Heuer #photography

Let’s stick with the psychology: the feelings and thoughts about where you live. They can be influenced by numerous bonds. There is the biographical tie, you were born here or lived here for a long time. The bond can be based on spiritual relationships, you feel a sense of belonging within your people’s history, for example. You can be tied to a place for ideological reasons (let’s skip that…) or due to an accepted narrative (creation myths, stories of origin.) And, importantly, the relationship can be a commodity: you choose a place based on desirable attributes, grand children high on the list (!), life style preferences, health advantages and so on. Last but not least the tie to a place can be involuntary, a bond by material pressures, constrained by economic dependency or lack of choice (and I am not going into the legislative proposals floating around that in the future women will only be allowed to leave a state if they prove they are not pregnant.)

Sandy Coastline #ivanshishkin # Realism

Sandy Coastline # Heuer #photography

Note, for all of you who move(d) with mixed feeling: the element of choice is one that can (re)establish a sense of place, a positive attachment. Given that our notions of a somewhat ideal community change across the life span, it follows that we would want to relocate towards something closer to our ideals. It might not be easy, but then being stuck in an increasingly lonely place isn’t either. It might not be your first choice, but at least you have a choice, in contrast to people displaced by involuntary reasons.

Mirror Lake shrouded in mist # Heuer #photography

The research bears out that you increase the likelihood of positive attachment to a place with increased participation in a community, with benefits for the environment in return (the more attached people are to a place, the more they invest to protect that place, urban or rural). I think community participation is particularly difficult if you are older, and now constrained by the pandemic dangers for many of us. Nonetheless, focussing on ways to integrate with people who share interests or political goals might be the way to go. Joining walking tours to explore the architecture or history of a place might help. Even if you loathe group activities or don’t feel up to take history courses, there are ways to familiarize yourself with the place on one’s own. Worthwhile exploring!

(And on a totally selfish note: I miss every single one of you who is moving/has moved…. you are putting a dent in my sense of place! And welcome to the ones moving in!)

Grass # Heuer #photography

Music by a quintessential Russian composer. (And YES I do not cancel Russian artists if they have no affinity to current events.) “The 14th symphony is scored for soprano, bass, and orchestra and dedicated to English composer Benjamin Britten. Comprised of 11 texts by Federico Garcia Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rainer Maria Rilke, the theme of mortality unites these varied texts. The result is a highly unorthodox, engrossing reminder that death is always waiting.”

So we might as well make the best of our remaining time, moving and all!)

Forest Landscape # Heuer #photography

Get a Grip, Heuer!

Originally, I meant to write about my Trouble with Change. I decided to get a grip instead – let me explain.

Columbia River, looking East

Two of my regular haunts, the Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Preserve in WA, and parts of the Tualatin River National Wildlife Preserve south of Portland closed a while ago for considerable amounts of time, 3 and 1.5 years respectively, to restructure the landscape, reconnecting the rivers with floodplains. Altogether important environmental improvements, with me (and others) moping about years of lost access even while acknowledging the need, and now celebrating the re-opening.

Restored flood plain and lake, respectively

When I first learned about the closures in 2019, I was upset that everything changes, even landscapes, usually reliable points of constancy. In fact, hiking through both preserves this week, I was again sad about some paths no longer accessible, while others were rerouted and still bore signs of human construction and interference, which will soon disappear, I guess.

Harrier Hawk

I consider myself a person pretty open to change, even if it is not always chosen by myself. I have lived through and adapted to major changes, the types of environments I lived in, from small rural German village-life to years in metropoles like New York City, the languages I have spoken, careers that came and went, constellations within my household, rise and decline of friendships and last, but not least, changing capacities of an ailing body. All taken, with the exception of short interims of sadness or agitation, in stride. So why is the change in the faces of familiar landscapes such an issue? You tell me.

Herded goslings and flock of lesser yellowlegs, I think

Plain old ducks

It makes me embarrassed. Almost ashamed, given the intense demands for adaptation to change required by the many refugees in this war- and misery-torn world of 2022. Think about the psychological burdens for any given refugee, with Ukraine of course holding a special place in my consciousness right now. The trauma load often consists of the pre-flight part, where violent events, threat to life or loss of loved ones and destruction of home are experienced. Then the flight itself whether under a carpet of bombing, or across ocean with unstable boats, drowning in the Mediterranean, burning to death in dry Greek island camps or freezing to death at closed Polish borders, you name it. Then the arrival in the host country, which reacts to despondency with varying degrees of helpfulness, often dependent on the color of your skin, the (dis)similarity of religious and cultural practices, your ability to speak or learn the language and degree of prior education.

Northern flicker, joined by swallows

Add to this forms of survivor guilt, that you escape a dreaded fate that others didn’t (think of the large number of Afghans who were left behind by those who were allowed to flee,) the separation of family units (men not allowed to leave their country of origin, for example, to be recruited) and the complete loss of trust when your very own friends and neighbors became the enemy who killed you and yours (think Bosnia, for example,) or refused to believe the reality of your plight (your Russian family not accepting that war occurs in Ukraine.) It is no surprise, then, that studies indicate that depression and anxiety are at least as common as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)and suggest that one or a combination of these conditions affects at least one in three refugees. (Ref.) One in three…

Turtles

Of course there are exceptions – here is a well-told story of a Syrian refugee in Germany whose intelligence, achievement orientation and a good portion of luck enabled successful adaption despite cultural and bureaucratic obstacles. Here is a thoughtful document for professionals how to help children through the acculturation process that speaks to a larger, more general need and seems to have been successful. (Source is Canadian, the only thing I could find in English.)

Blue herons roosting

In any case: the burden of required change while under psychological duress, or even traumatized, is immense.

My own reaction to changes in nature should be nothing but endless gratitude for what I have and what I’m spared. Duly noted. Grip gotten.

Common yellow throat

Yellow-rumped warbler (Butter butt!)

Music today is a favorite cello concerto. War horse, I know, doesn’t make it less beautiful.

And here is someone waiting for the mosquitoes to enter his beak:

Red-winged blackbird

Hatched and Hatching

Nature
Apr 29, 2022
3 Comments

I spent more time than anticipated in the wetlands yesterday, coming home so tired that I had it not in me to write. Napped instead. So today it’s going to be a lot of pictures. Nothing I could say would beat the sweetness of those images in any case.

It was a day with intermittent strong showers, the world was wet.

Lots of songbirds, ospreys flying, red-winged blackbird singing their hearts out. Deer unperturbed.

Since it was an unplanned hike, I had only the small camera that is always in my pocket. What serendipity, then, that the freshly hatched goslings and their retinue crossed the path and into the water right next to the bird blind. I could photograph them from as close as one can possibly get to the edge of the water.

Some grazing on the shore

Mama watching, and off they went again.

While the geese were out already, the swallows were tending to their nests, busily populating the bird houses, bringing what’s needed for their upcoming broods.

In between they were just hanging out and grooming.

One still solitary;

Probably not for long.

I left when finally drenched. He didn’t care.

And these dancers would have fit into the landscape perfectly.

Plant Blindness

Nature, Poetry, Science
Apr 27, 2022
3 Comments

Maybe it was the cold. Maybe the decline in pollinators. The number of wildflowers were sparse. It made finding every single one a particular joy, of course, hah, another iris! Maybe this 231 acres Cooper Mountain park, new to me, never had that many to begin with, or it was still too early in the season. When trails announce Larkspur Meadow, and all you find are a few puny specimens of the plant, it does make you wonder, though.

Made me think about a recent book. If you have time, read the The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. It is a fascinating anthology of conversations between and presentations by some twenty scientists and humanists (artists and poets included), presented during a conference at UCSC Santa Cruz a few years go. As conferences go, this was surely an imaginative one: the topics of how we can live and progress on a damaged planet were divided under two headings concerning he Anthropocene: Ghosts and Monsters.

Here is a link to Native Irises

Ghosts referred to issues around landscapes altered by the violent extraction and modification during human expansion. Monsters concerned interspecies and intraspecies social interactions. The goal for all theses scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics was to suggest critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. A planet we share with other species, in other words, while making it inhabitable.

Dandelion and Wild Geranium

It is a book that has a wide range of topics, not to be read as a whole, but digested bit by bit, at least that worked for me with my aging brain. It will familiarize you with ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste, to name a few. We learn what has been harmed, what can be rescued, what needs adapting, and, importantly, how art can be of help in the process.

Lupine

It came to my mind on a walk on Sunday, a warm, sunny day so atypical for this dreadful April, where I found myself ambling through various biotopes: paths through old growth forests, along sunlit prairie, and in groves sheltering what remains of the oaks and freshly budding maple trees, both hung with veils of Spanish moss. Me and the rest of town – this is an easy 3.4 mile hike on Cooper Mountain near Beaverton and e v e r y o n e was out. Good for all of us – being in nature remains restorative, even when the damage is visible and seen, perhaps, by multitudes. Engaging with nature helps with (re)learning how to be in the world.

At least this was part of what Ursula Le Guin, a participant in the conference that led to the book, suggested: “To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it.” She defined two possible approaches in ways I have cited before: “Science describes accurately from outside; poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates; poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe.” She explained: Skill in living, awareness of belonging to the world, delight in being part of the world, always tends to involve knowing our kinship as animals with animals.”

And here she put it in her inimitable poetic way:

THE STORY
It’s just part of a story, actually quite a lot of stories,
the part where the third son or the stepdaughter
sent on the impossible mission through the uncanny forest
comes across a fox with its paw caught in a trap
or little sparrows fallen from the nest
or some ants in trouble in a puddle of water.
He frees the fox, she puts the fledglings in the nest,
they get the ants safe to their ant-hill.
The little fox will come back later
and lead him to the castle where the princess is imprisoned,
the sparrow will fly before her to where the golden egg is hidden,
the ants will sort out every poppyseed for them
from the heap of sand before the fatal morning,
and I don’t think I can add much to this story.
All my life it’s been telling me
if I’ll only listen who the hero is
and how to live happily ever after.

–Ursula Le Guin

I’d like to add to the focus on animals an acknowledgement of plants. People nowadays, kids in particular, know fewer plants than ever before. It is a phenomenon called Plant Blindness, the inability to notice or recognize plants in our own environment. The term was coined by two botanists, James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler, who originally proposed that we are blind to plants because they lack visual attention cues. They don’t have a face; they don’t move in the way that animals do; and they aren’t threatening. They look more like each other than animals do – and the human brain is geared to detect differences over similarities. We also favor things more familiar, and animal behavior is closer to humans in that regard, establishing some bio behavioral kinship. Add to that our general separation from nature, and you end up with people unable to identify more than a few plants.

Larkspur

This ignorance, echoed and anchored in the demise of academic instruction in plant biology, is all the more worrying given the role plants play in societal developments: global warming, food security and the need for new pharmaceuticals that might help in the fight against diseases. Without young people being drawn into plant sciences we might not be able to fight new plant diseases or develop plant strains adapted to changing climate conditions or discover new medications, and so on. In Great Britain you can no longer enroll for a botany degree, for example. Across the US, university Herbaria are closing. Funding is affected: 10 years ago plants made up 57% of the federal endangered species list – they received less than 4% of the endangered species funding! (Here is a good overview article on the consequences.)

Wild Strawberries

If schools fail at instruction, take the kids to the park. An emotional connection outweighs dry instruction in any case. Teach them how plants can be – are – heroes when it comes to their healing properties or their role in environmental protection – there are plenty of guides and apps for the phone available in case you’re not so sure yourself about names and species. Snap a picture and have an identification within a minute.

Prairie Meadow. I believe the yellow flower is Monkey flower, but am not sure.

Turn it into a treasure hunt to spur the kids’ interest. Who can find more larkspur than irises? Who spots the first saxifrage? Who can tell a strawberry by their blossom?

Saxifrage

Tell fairy tales where plants play a significant role (Hans Christian Andersen scored here, as do many Native American tales), seek out botanical gardens that help with education.

Lilies

I have my doubts about living happily ever after at which LeGuin’s poem hinted – but I believe walks are the moments when we can live happily, encountering spring’s renewal, however sparse, in all its beauty, and learn in the process.

Wood Hyazinth

Oh, and the Camassia are about to be in bloom!

Music by Aaron Copland today.

Earth Day Ruminations

Nature, Poetry
Apr 25, 2022
1 Comments

Last Friday was Earth Day. The Oak Island nature trail on Sauvies Island had just opened after its annual 6 months-closure to protect migratory birds. I can think of no better place to celebrate nature – off I went, except it felt more like an attempt to escape than to celebrate.

Escape from thinking about the ever expanding, ever faster cycle of crises, ever larger looming dangers, ever more consequential action (or inaction) threatening this planet and its inhabitants. A carnival of negativity, as someone put it in The Atlantic while describing what is happening to our young people. There comes a point where you either shut off in depression or get enraged to the point of non-functioning.

One of the opinion writers at one of Germany’s most influential weekly, Der Spiegel, advised us this week to go milk cows, or commune with nature in any which way, or hang out at a spa, in all seriousness grappling with these options to fend off paralyzing doom, sounding simultaneously ridiculous and echoing my own sentiments (I guess ridiculous ones as well.)

Poets have gone a step further, exploring the desire to go back to a state of non-sentient existence, compared to one of calmed thought after a bovine encounter (the latter state, by the way, does not result from milking cows. As one who has engaged in that activity regularly, it is somewhat nerve-racking, just saying.)

The poem below speaks to the issue, the desire to be a speck that seeded the universe, un-thinking, un-feeling, un-remembering. It will be followed by another poem written in response, that I found somehow more encouraging (and encountered here). Written by Marissa Davis, illustrated by Lottie Kingslake and sort of sung by Toshi Reagon, it celebrates more than just “being.”

Ospreys

I was thinking of these kinds of poems while walking the loop. It used to be knee deep under water in April, now dry underfoot even though this has been one of the wettest Aprils in a long while. Trees had crashed down during the winter in unprecedented numbers.

Song birds flourished. Junkos and white crowned sparrows galore.

Those old fruit trees who remained standing were pushing out enormous amounts of blossoms – I hear that is a reaction to last year’s drought, cannot confirm.

Busy birds, herons up very high flying to and fro from their nests hidden in the woods across the slough.

I even saw a humongous swan flying west from the Columbia river (not captured on camera.) Ospreys nesting, hawks hanging, buzzards circling.

Jays everywhere,

and a few glimpses of yellow-rumped warblers and wrens.

The sky changed constantly, from grey to blue and back. The land and water was shimmering green, a color associated with the word hope in German. If we have to feel at all, unable to escape into the singularity, let that be the emotion associated with Earth Day! (Fed by the election results in France and Slovenia this Sunday, as well. Although I do believe, as you know, that a continuation of unconstrained neoliberal policies is but creating the substrate on which those barely defeated extremist political movements grow.)

Singularity

Marie Howe

(After Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?
There was no   Nature.    No
them.   No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up to what we were
—when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all—nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All everything home

And here is the response poem, also called Singularity, by Marissa Davis.

April Shivers

Nature, Poetry
Apr 13, 2022
0 Comments

I have been cold in April before. Seriously cold. Shipped off to England from Germany during Easter break to learn English as a 10-year-old, the host family’s daughter dragged me to old churches and had me do some brass rubbing while she absconded with a secret boyfriend. On my knees on someone’s commemorative brass plaques on the floor, large swaths of butcher paper rolled over it and rubbing oil crayon on it, like you would do with a pencil over a coin. Hours on end in unheated Cambridge cathedrals. Miserable, as well as cold.

A decade later the state was self-inflicted. I had agreed to “meet” my boyfriend who was traveling in North Africa at the Spanish port of Algeciras to drive back home together. I had taken a ferry, crowded with drunk tourists, from the island of Ibiza where my mother spent Easter with me, to Barcelona. From there a long train trip to the Southern tip of Spain. All this in the age before cell phones and credit cards, the early 70s, mind you. Found the cheapest hostel possible in Algeciras with no heat, a threadbare blanket matched by a threadbare towel for the sink with cold water in the room, WC down the hall, no showers. And then the wait began. Each day a walk to the post office to see if there was a letter kept at “poste restante.” Each day a walk to the harbor where the ferry from Africa (Ceuta, really a Spanish enclave) arrived. Standing in harsh winds from the Strait of Gibraltar waiting for the cars to unload in long lines. No message, no boyfriend. Plenty of catcalling. Cold nights with only one incomprehensible book to distract me, Leon Trotsky’s letters – don’t ask – until funds ran out, must have been a week or so. I hitchhiked home, having not enough money left over for a train ticket, with some friendly Brits. Happy ending delayed by about 2 weeks, when the parts for the broken-down land rover finally arrived in some atlas mountain hamlet and the return trip resumed. I think I was still freezing when we reunited in Germany all those weeks later…

And now snow. Mid-April. In Portland, Oregon. Obscuring the plum- and pear-tree blossoms, eliciting shivers and uncanny thoughts about another harvest damaged by extreme weather. Dickinson came to mind and her ways to observe the landscape, distilling views, providing new associations. Never mentioning the word snow once while writing an entire poem about it….

Photographs today from my garden within a 5 day span, from warmth in the 70s to today’s snowfall of 2.5 inches. I first thought I might add the newest political news on the climate denial/regulation/Supreme Court decisions front. Then I decided against it. Why mix the brightness of the snow with the underlying dark issues. Let these beautiful words ring in our ears, and the images speak for themselves.