I had driven down to Los Angeles anticipating glorious times among family and Southern Californian wonders, plant life included. Instead my head is filled with disbelief and grief about the atrocities unleashed upon the world.
Mourning for civilians of all ages massacred in their homes, at festivals, in the fields. In numbers that, relative to population, would amount to over 40 000 here in the US in a matter of two days. Not counting the wounded. Not counting the innumerable ones left behind, having lost children, parents, siblings, friends. Not counting the trauma that will cling to the survivors for ages. Not counting the disillusionment of the idea there would be one safe place in the world for Jews.
Mourning for civilians of all ages with almost half of them under the age of 14, exposed to white phosphorus bombs, deprived of food and water, told to leave their homes within a 24 hour window, with no place to go, all border crossings remaining closed. A population that has seen the last election in 2006, when 1 million of them were not even born, under the thumb of fanatic Islamists whose goal to destroy any Jewish state includes the knowing sacrificing of their own people. Bent on undermining rapprochement between parts of the Arab world and Israel.
Mourning for the peacemakers on all sides who have been out-gamed by religious zealots on all sides who scorned compromise or political solutions.
Mourning for the consequences of an all-out war for those who will be killed and maimed and traumatized. A war that will create displacement, re-enacting the Nakba, the catastrophe for Palestinians expelled from their lands in 1948. Consequences that will also include fuel to the fires of anti-Semitism, when the extent of suffering of a civilian population trapped in a 140 square mile strip becomes visible to the world, a world that historically preferred to ignore the plight of the Palestinians. Mourning for the Jewish civilians who will then be victimized in the next cycle of violence, in Israel and across the world. As Steven C. Beschloss wrote:
“It’s a stunning, heartbreaking moment on so many levels: The violent horror for every individual and family involved. The grim fact that this will escalate not only as a result of Israel’s retaliation and effort to recover hostages through urban warfare in a densely packed city but possibly also by increasingly triggered neighbors. The tragedy of a Mideast region in which war not peace, conflict not calm, has defined its modern and ancient history. The terrible reality for people who continue to confront a world where enmity is a central fact of life.“
Mourning. But also determined to cling to our basic humanity and acknowledge the suffering of all victims caught in this maelstrom. That does not imply justification of terrorist actions, or excusing potential military defiance of the laws of war. It does not mean political analysis – time for that comes later. It means empathy with the barrage of sorrow unleashed upon this world.
Here is a poem by German Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko who fled Nazi Germany to exile in the U.S and then Israel. It reminds us of the compounded trauma that exists and has been triggered again.
Music today provides a ray of hope, but also tears.
“…and we will remain here as long as we can see ourselves in the stars.”
– Minnesota Poet Laureate Gwen Westerman, from her poem We come from the Stars.
***
IMAGINE coming into a room filled with certain vibes: feeling peaceful, enjoying the flow, feeling grounded, dressed up to party, enjoying the rain, feeling the happiest ever, preparing for a calm rest, ready to unwind, feeling the brightness of the day, blending in, feeling proud of your people, feeling regal, filling the sky with stars. I don’t know about you, but these emotions, expressed in the titles of Lillian Pitt‘s newest exhibition, elicited a sense of joy in me, as well as a smidgen of envy, when I walked among them and the sculptures they were attached to. How can we tap the source of such serenity?
A collection of Pitt’s work is currently on display at the Bush Barn Art Center in Salem. It is an assembly of masks, carved wooden figures, ceramic and cast-glass sculptures, shimmering with color, wit and reflections echoing the positive affect of their titles. The exhibition The Art of Lillian Pitt: Past and Present is on view until the end of October, with an artist talk scheduled for Saturday, September 30, 2023. It is more than worthwhile to visit, if only for the reason that Pitt announced it to be her last public showing. I could not envision a more beautiful way to bow out.
Much has been written about the artist (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs/ Wasco/ Yakama), born on the Warm Springs Reservation in 1943 and living in Portland for the last 60 years, so much that it is hard not to sound repetitive. She is the recipient of multiple arts Awards and part of many, many public and private collections nationally and in Canada. I happily refer to detailed accounts in an Artswatch interview with Dmae Lo Roberts from 2021 and a short documentary video by Jacob Pander from last year. My title lines were borrowed from something Pitt said in that video when asked about her approach to art as well as life.
What I want to focus on, rather than repeating facts about her evolution as an artist, is the double role she has powerfully used to enrich all of us: that of a member of her own Native American community who reminds the world of both the history and the contemporary presence of tribal life, art and achievements, and that of an artist who brings beauty and new knowledge to the rest of us who are exposed to her works inside or outside wherever we happen to encounter them. Works that teach and produce wonder at the same time.
Here are a few examples of public art projects that I happen to encounter on my walks, or when taking the Max train (admittedly before the pandemic.) They introduce both familiar and not so familiar imagery to us passing by, clues of a history that has not necessarily been frequently taught. At the Rosa Parks Trimet station depictions of baskets, pictographs, petroglyphs and salmon remind us of the tribal modes of existence in the Pacific Northwest.
If you live in NE Portland you have surely encountered the Mammook Tokatee Housing around Ne 42nd Ave, which offers surprises around every corner.
If you walk along the South West waterfront, the River Guardian greets you regardless of the weather – but in full brightness, when the sun hits just right during mid-morning, she sends out these luminous rays that feel like a life force.
And last but not least, at the plaza in Hillsboro there are multiple basalt boulders that reveal their secrets with differing degrees of ease – 30 petroglyphs have been carved by Pitt in an installation called Riverbed. It is a timely reminder that the city is located on Tualatin Kalapuya (Atfalati) land, in this specific case. These are just a few of the many examples that can be found. In general, her public art works weave themselves into our daily lives, making us conscious with whom we share a space and how long lasting a culture and its artifacts or religious objects teaches us about the history of the region and its inhabitants that predate us by ten thousands of years.
***
IN CONTRAST to the large configurations discoverable across the city, the current exhibition has many smaller objects, among them Pitt’s traditional Raku-fired masks,
and the familiar presence of She Who Watches.
There were also numerous wood carvings adorned with, at times, whimsical details. I must admit I was partial to these for idiosyncratic reasons. One of my childhood pleasures was to be allowed to open my grandmother’s sewing box and take out a can with buttons, often large and unusual, playing with them and arranging them to my liking. Multiple buttons can be found on Pitt’s work as well, making my fingers itch….
Left to Right: Star person enjoying the Flow, Star person feeling peaceful, Star person feeling grounded, Star person with many stars. Details below.
Details:
Last row: Star Person enjoying the copper rain.
Star persons? I learned from Pitt’s introduction that different tribes had origin stories about the Star People, who helped generate agricultural skills and introduced the most important food groups, according to the Navajo People’s legends; the Sioux used stories of the Star and Cloud people to instill hope among suffering, with animal ancestors coming down from the stars to guide the way home.
These Star People stories have now found instantiations in the star people capturing color and light: here are some of my favorite instances:
Top to bottomt: Star Person ready to unwind, Star Person feeling the brightness of the day, Star Person preparing for a calm rest, Star Person feeling the happiest ever, Star Person blending in.
I could not help but wonder if these were companions during mental preparation for retirement, an artist’s recital to herself that a life so full as her’s deserved a rest, unwinding, happiness. And that that would unfold. I cannot imagine for a second, though, that a creative mind like Pitt’s would ever slow down, much less shut down. Maybe the public exposition of her work, but not the ideas themselves. After all, she is a story teller in the grand tradition of her people, full of experience, wisdom, knowledge to be shared. And storytellers need to tell their stories.
Of course, this is the pleading voice of the audience, here, who doesn’t want to let go of opportunities to explore the legends. To hold the beauty, a beauty, in my book, most emotionally conveyed in Pitt’s ceramic work:
Starperson feeling the strength of the Snake Goddess
Star Person Blushing
Star Person filling the sky with stars.
Resilient, flexible, forgiving: attributes of the clay that she shapes into testimonials to Native American history. Attributes that shaped her into one of our most important sources of artistic expression inseparable of that history.
Dear Lillian Pitt, could we respectfully ask you to please postpone retirement a little longer?
***
Here is the full poem about what the Star People brought.
Wicaŋhpi Heciya Taŋhaŋ Uŋhipi
(We Come from the Stars)
Stellar nucleosynthesis. That explains where everything
in our universe
came from according to astrophysicists who only recently discovered the cosmological constant causing the expansion
of our universe.
Our creation story tells us we came from the stars to this place Bdote where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers converge, our journey along the Wanaġi Caŋku,
in our universe,
that stargazers later called the Milky Way now disappearing in the excessive glow of a million million urban uplights. The original inhabitants of this place,
of our universe,
we are Wicaŋhpi Oyate, People and will remain here as long as we can see ourselves
Yes, this time of year again. A few years ago I paired the real flowers with the painted ones (see below). I figured this year we just look at the real thing, the surround where they grow and the words they bring to mind.
So walk with me, and bring a bucket, since the farm where I went near Hillsboro allows you to pick all things ripe. Grapes were beckoning – the vines laden – or is it loaded? Whatever, lots of grapes. Still dry on Wednesday, the day before the rain came.
But I had come for the sunflowers – equally attracted by the buds,
the blossoms,
This one had a drop of water in the center like a jewel
the stems and the leaves. Intent to paint with the camera:
Emil Nolde would have been proud of me – except I am not proud of him…
Daily wildlife made an unanticipated appearance. It pays, if you are old and walking slowly, so that critters like these are more curious than frightened. S/he put on quite the show.
The makeshift tents to protect against the sun had their own structural beauty, folded and unfolded, plastic, metal rods, netting all claiming attention.
I can never decide if the poem below is full of wisdom or soppy (or both.) But in August, with the annual radiance of sunflowers, it speaks to me. (Although I’d prefer to embrace the present rather than reveling in memory. Move forwards. not backwards.)
You Can’t Have It All
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back. You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August, you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love, though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys until you realize foam’s twin is blood. You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs, so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind, glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness, never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you all roads narrow at the border. You can speak a foreign language, sometimes, and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead, but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts, for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream, the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand. You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed, at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise. You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump, how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards, until you learn about love, about sweet surrender, and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you, you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept. There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s, it will always whisper, you can’t have it all, but there is this.
The sky filled with clouds, the rain would appear in force the next day.
Music today played by the talented Sol Gabetta, who was seemingly dressed in a cloud, but her cello sounded more like thunder, appropriately Shostakovian. If that’s a word. They seem to be reticent today!
“I HAVE to do this: believe that there is the possibility of reconstitution. I have to be sure of the fact that there will always be those who are already engaged and can be joined, so no one has to go it alone.” Such were the thoughts on my hike last week, when assaulted by the heat and the views of so many oak trees either diseased, or dying, or dead.
The grasses will recover.
So will the wild blackberries, although the fruit dried on the wine, hard little balls of no use to perusing wildlife.
The trees, though, are suffering.
Eventually I made it to sturgeon lake, now just a puddle. Small California sunflowers lined the shores where there is usually water, a golden band screaming: beauty!
The herons and egrets joined the pelicans, some of them roosting in the trees behind the water.
A flock of Western sandpipers, really a murmuration, undulated as a cloud in the air, and looked like blossoms on a tree, in a particular spot. They were miraculous, shimmering, moving hard in the hot air. They are difficult to photograph and to detect, just look closely.
I had to sit down in a shady spot twice during a hike that I used to do briskly, without any sense of fatigue then. Yet, I am still hiking. I am still casting my lot with those who love nature and try to raise consciousness about the climate crisis. I still believe change is possible. And the birds still signal wonder.
Music today is the same mix of sadness and resilience that colored this week – from Poland with decidedly Jewish melodies perfect for the upcoming High Holidays, I’ve been listening intently.
In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.
On Auden’s grave marker, in Kirchstetten, Austria.
***
Their Lonely Betters
As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade To all the noises that my garden made, It seemed to me only proper that words Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.
A robin with no Christian name ran through The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew, And rustling flowers for some third party waited To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.
Not one of them was capable of lying, There was not one which knew that it was dying Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme Assumed responsibility for time.
Let them leave language to their lonely betters Who count some days and long for certain letters; We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep: Words are for those with promises to keep.
W.H. Auden’s 1951 poem depicts him thinking out loud in the garden shade, less praise and more lament, in my opinion. At first sight, the poem is presumably about language, which makes us “betters” as a sign of evolutionary development, but also introduces lying and consciousness about how much our days are numbered. Is language something that improves our existence or is it a curse, and we would be better off to be like plants and critters, who thrive in the absence of language?
Our tomatoes
Underneath it is, as so much of Auden’s poetry, about love. The one we wait for, the one which is withheld, the absence of which is felt as loneliness. Words manifesting in broken promises. Auden was known to connect over and over again to Freud’s writings in ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’, which posits a negative relationship between how civilized we are and how happy we might be. The rule, Freud claims, is that humanity will show increasing unhappiness the more civilized we become. Human progress, and note I am oversimplifying his claims here, is closely linked to increases in loneliness and depression. So, there is this whiff of sadness lingering around Auden’s words.
I, on the other hand, was sitting in my garden chair in the shade, too hot to venture anywhere else, eternally grateful for words. They made it possible to read Auden and noticing the link to words written in the 17th century by another poet, Andrew Marvell, in his renowned poem, The Garden. Here is my favorite line:
“(To) a green thought in a green shade.“
Salvia on its way out
The next stanza after this line describes a paradisal state (and he refers indeed to the biblical paradise) until it becomes clear in the stanza after that that a solitary existence won’t do – and things go downhill from there, with Eve’s appearance. But let that wait for another day, for now let the soul glide into the boughs.
Zillions of zinnias
Pictures today obviously from my garden, with eternal gratitude to our friend M. who donated all the tomato starts. We now have regular salad nights with homegrown lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, unless the deer got to the beds first. Speaking of which – one of them, plunked under my plum tree, surely had green thoughts in a green shade, of green plums shifting to a sweeter blue, most likely.
And given that we prefaced this today with an exhortation to praise: I am so eternally grateful for a tree- lined place in the heat, and my heart goes out to the houseless who fight this on asphalted streets and dusty roads. We are so privileged.
Too hot to write. So I borrow words and burrow in the archives to find the matching images. Have not yet made it to the beach so far, a deep regret. And now it’s August, crowded, hot. But looking at these creatures so amenable to metaphors is at least cooling….
Difference
The jellyfish float in the bay shallows like schools of clouds,
a dozen identical — is it right to call them creatures, these elaborate sacks
of nothing? All they seem is shape, and shifting, and though a whole troop
of undulant cousins go about their business within a single wave’s span,
every one does something unlike: this one a balloon open on both ends
but swollen to its full expanse, this one a breathing heart, this a pulsing flower.
This one a rolled condom, or a plastic purse swallowing itself, that one a Tiffany shade,
this a troubled parasol. This submarine opera’s all subterfuge and disguise,
its plot a fabulous tangle of hiding and recognition: nothing but trope,
nothing but something forming itself into figures then refiguring,
sheer ectoplasm recognizable only as the stuff of metaphor. What can words do
but link what we know to what we don’t, and so form a shape?
Which shrinks or swells, configures or collapses, blooms even as it is described
into some unlikely marine chiffon: a gown for Isadora?
Nothing but style. What binds one shape to another
also sets them apart — but what’s lovelier than the shapeshifting
transparence of like and as: clear, undulant words? We look at alien grace,
unfettered by any determined form, and we say: balloon, flower,
heart, condom, opera, lampshade, parasol, ballet. Hear how the mouth,
so full of longing for the world, changes its shape?
Housekeeping first: I am taking part of next week off from the blog, need to spend some time photographing, something that has gotten short shrift over all the writing.
***
I had to laugh at this headline found yesterday in an article in VOX:
“Especially the “if true” part” – UFOs, dead alien pilots, reverse engineering, secret government programs… the rumor mill is at it again, this time through a whistle blower, a former government official named David Grusch, who has worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, who gave public testimony before a House of Representatives committee Wednesday.
No evidence provided, just more talk of hear-say. But what I find interesting is this eternal preoccupation with a world “out there,” instead of saving the one we’re currently wrecking, or at least loving it for what it is. I have written about the psychological function of alien narratives previously. Today I will just turn to the tried and true, a poet with whose views I agree more often than not, and whose remarkable ways of getting a point across with seeming ease belying masterful construction always puts me in awe.
She is content enough with our sleepy backwater…
The Ball
As long as nothing can be known for sure (no signals have been picked up yet), as long as Earth is still unlike the nearer and more distant planets,
as long as there’s neither hide nor hair of other grasses graced by other winds, of other treetops bearing other crowns, other animals as well-grounded as our own,
as long as only the local echo has been known to speak in syllables,
as long as we still haven’t heard word of better or worse mozarts, platos, edisons somewhere,
as long as our inhuman crimes are still committed only between humans,
as long as our kindness is still incomparable, peerless even in its imperfection,
as long as our heads packed with illusions still pass for the only heads so packed,
as long as the roofs of our mouths alone still raise voices to high heavens —
let’s act like very special guests of honor at the district-firemen’s ball dance to the beat of the local oompah band, and pretend that it’s the ball to end all balls.
I can’t speak for others — for me this is misery and happiness enough:
just this sleepy backwater where even the stars have time to burn while winking at us unintentionally.
Photographs today are of some of the more alien looking flora I’ve come across this year in this sleepy backwater. Wish it would stay sleepy and not burn up….
Here is a track – Of Beauty – from Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (THE SONG OF THE EARTH). Beautiful music about a beautiful world.
A Bird, came down the Walk – He did not know I saw – He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw,
And then, he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass – And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass –
He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad – They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. –
Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer Home –
Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.
***
I’ve been hanging out in the garden far too much, not able to brave the heat for more adventurous excursions. But I shouldn’t complain, given the number of visitors happily parading in front of the camera, as long as the plants provide sustenance or I bring out the bird seeds….
Quite a few youngsters,
and one of the butterflies makes my heart beat faster, since he comes every day, a relentless survivor given that someone ate half of his wings.
Squirrels now letting me come so close I could practically give them a manicure, or is that a pedicure?
Bees, in contrast to last year, are leaving me alone, too busy in the lavender.
An occasional newt
Summer. An oasis. Not even a slug to fight with. I feel blessed.
Then again there is always a mouse that needs transport far away from my basement….lest it comes back the next day.
Music matches the mood – maybe Mother Goose comes down the walk next. In the meantime, the chickadees get fed.
Layli Long Soldier’s (Oglala Lakota) first full-length collection Whereas (2017) won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her poem above was published in 2018, in one of the most interesting anthologies around: The New Poets of Native Nations.21 authors write about their thoughts and experiences of being indigenous people in America, with work published after the year 2000, the heirs to Joy Harjo and Sherman Alexie.
“New Poets of Native Nations gathers poets of diverse ages, styles, languages, and tribal affiliations to present the extraordinary range and power of new Native poetry. … Collected here are poems of great breadth — long narratives, political outcries, experimental works, and traditional lyrics — and the result is an essential anthology of some of the best poets writing now.”
The diamond structure of the poem allows the reader to find their own path – combinations of diverse actions taken or ignored, for past, present or future. At the core, inevitably presented and crossed, is grief. But at the beginning and the end is an “us,” the reason why this poem stirs me. The words “as we” and “our faces” acknowledge, in my mind, that grief is shared, and action as well as consequences can be communal. The harmful ones, but the empowering ones as well.
By the way, all the words in this poem also appear in a Native American Apology Resolution, signed by then President Obama. Never heard of it? I hadn’t either – it wasn’t a direct apology from the government, but rather apologizing “on behalf of the people of the United States to all Native peoples for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted on Native peoples by citizens of the United States.” The resolution included an important disclaimer as well: Nothing in it authorizes or supports any legal claims against the United States, and the resolution does not settle any claims. Robert T. Coulter, executive director of the Indian Law Resource Center, pointed to the “overwhelming silence” regarding the resolution. “There were no public announcements, there were no press conferences, there was no national attention, much less international.” No wonder we didn’t know.
***
In a month that has seen the highest Court in the land generally rescind rights that were granted to the vulnerable or those with less power in our social, historical and political landscape, it is important to remember that we can and must build coalitions.
In another ruling, 303 LLC Creative vs Elenis, discriminatory behavior was given the green light for a business offering customized expressive services, allowing it to violate state laws prohibiting such businesses from discrimination in sales (as it turns out, the facts presented for this case were based on lies, but the Court seemed to be not caring or oblivious.) The revival of the ugly spirit of Plessy vs Ferguson is going full speed ahead.
And a 6-3 majority on the Court dismantled affirmative action in college admission policies, a process originally granted due to an acknowledgment of structural racism. Note, it did so for elite educational institutions (and likely to extend to businesses and institutions of all kinds focused on diversity, equity and inclusion), but leaving the practice standing for military academies. I am paraphrasing someone who said this first: minorities can die in the bunker, but not share the boardrooms…) which struck me as particularly apt.
Here is a summary by lawyer and court observer Dahlia Lithwick on the outcome of this term – I am quoting her verbatim because she is succinct and hits the nail on the head.
To see why this term was not some kind of triumph for moderation, consider the decisions that commentators have deemed huge victories for the left. Moore v. Harper simply rejected the independent-state-legislature doctrine, a fringe theory that was rendered toxic by its central role in Donald Trump’s failed coup; at the same time, the court awarded itself ongoing authorityto rein in any state courts that it deems to have gone “too far” in protecting democracy, codifying a minority viewpoint into law. United States v. Texas merely put a new limit on the outrageous collusion between red states and a clutch of rogue Trump judges eager to seize control over immigration enforcement. Haaland v. Brackeen followed precedents reaching back two centuries in upholding Congress’ power to protect Native people; even then, it left the door open to future legal attacks on Indigenous rights. Allen v. Milligan affirmed an interpretation of the Voting Rights Act that has stood for nearly four decades and imposes moderate limits on racial gerrymanders. It was arguably the one clear-cut “liberal” victory of the term, and that’s only because the protection of voting rights has now become coded as an exclusively liberal concern. Even that “win” came only after the court left an illegal gerrymander in place for the 2022 midterms, and after years of attacks on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that left it much weaker than it used to be.
Now consider this term’s victories for the right. Biden v. Nebraska abolished a program that would’ve forgiven $430 billion in student debt for 43 million borrowers by concocting a self-contradictory theory of standing then relying on a “major questions doctrine” that isn’t a real doctrine. 303 Creative v. Elenis gave for-profit companies a First Amendment right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people for the first time ever. Students for Fair Admissions put an end to race-based affirmative action in higher education as we know it. Jones v. Hendrix condemned innocent people to languish in prison under illegal sentences through no fault of their own. Sackett v. EPA revoked federal protection over millions of acres of wetlands in a grievous blow to the Clean Water Act that will devastate sensitive ecosystems, endangered species, flood control, and drinking water. These decisions were interspersed with smaller conservative rulings that promoted key tenets of the conservative legal project, including one that offered an existential threat to unions’ right to strike and yet another favor to corporations that seek to dodge lawsuits.
The grief – The grief – The grief – The grief.
Yet, there are also words full of fire, thoughtfulness and resistance. Do read the dissent in the Affirmative Action case penned by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (starting on page 72 of this link) – I’d give my right arm to write with such clarity, persuasiveness and power. Converting grief to light across our faces, summoning communal resolve to serve justice. Let’s choose the right action – and the right team.
Here are the words of a man who knew:
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”
Photographs from New Mexico, where the poet Long Soldier resides.
Music was written and performed during a time of hope and glimpses of change. Why should we not also hope that we can win back what is so systematically destroyed right now? There must be a path.
this website had crashed and it took more than a week to get it fixed. Sorry for the unannounced interruption.
Save the date: for those readers living in the PNW, I would love to see you at our photographic art exhibition, opening Saturday, September 16th, 2023. Details about The Gorge Beckons: Change and Continuity will come closer to the actual date.
Today I want to introduce poems by two women who experienced war, prompted by yet another unsettling death. One, Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska, 1909 – 1984) survived WW II as a member of the Resistance in Warsaw during the German occupation. During that time she escaped execution by the skin of her teeth, and saw death and destruction on a daily basis as a war nurse. She wrote about her experiences in a poetry volume first published in Poland in 1974, Building the Barricades. I picked the poem below because it honors those risking death to serve a just mission, defending their country against imperial aggression. But I am also linking here to one of her longer poems that I cherish for its emphasis on the possibility of survival and resurrection, even during the darkest times. It appeared in the collection Talking to my Body, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. Milosz tried hard to introduce Swir’s work to folks beyond Europe, not entirely successfully.
Air-raid sirens across the country It feels like everyone is brought out For execution But only one person gets targeted Usually the one at the edge
This time not you; all clear
by Victoria Amelina
Translated from the Ukrainian by Anatoly Kudryavitsky
First published in the anthology entitled “Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War”, SurVision Books, Dublin, Ireland, 2022
Last week, she was the one. Amelina (1986-2023) was killed in Ukraine by a Russian missile while meeting with writers and political activist at a restaurant in Kramatorsk (together with many others, it turns out, children included. Despite being rushed to a hospital, her injuries were too traumatic for survival). The 37-year old mother of a young son had left her flourishing career as a novelist behind (her work has been translated into Polish, Czech, German, Dutch, English and Spanish and won multiple literary prizes) to join the Human Rights organization Truth Hounds when the Russians invaded Ukraine. She relentlessly traveled to discover and document war crimes, working on her first non-fiction book, War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, which was due to be published. Now posthumously. Here she is on June 6th, less than a month ago.
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Several poems appeared during this last year of her life, engaging with other victims of the war, interviewing women who lived through Russian occupation. Here is one that emphasizes the importance of remembering. I must say the official rallying cry of “We must never forget” has taken on a sour taste for me, given that the implication – if we remember we won’t repeat – is currently severely challenged. But Amelina wants us to remember the name of the victims, disallowing a complete victory of wiping out a culture and its representatives, human beings who could have contributed so much across a life time, herself included. May her memory be a blessing.
Poem about a Crow
In a barren springtime field
Stands a woman dressed in black
Crying her sisters’ names
Like a bird in the empty sky
She’ll cry them all out of herself
The one that flew away too soon
The one that had begged to die
The one that couldn’t stop death
The one that has not stopped waiting
The one that has not stopped believing
The one that still grieves in silence
She’ll cry them all into the ground
As though sowing the field with pain
And from pain and the names of women
Her new sisters will grow from the earth
And again will sing joyfully of life
But what about her, the crow?
She will stay in this field forever
Because only this cry of hers
Holds all those swallows in the air
Do you hear how she calls
Each one by her name?
by Victoria Amelina
Translated by Uilleam Blacker.
Music today is about the town of Lviv, Amelina’s birthplace. The town is a gateway for over 3 million Ukrainian refugees who have left eastern and northern parts of their country to flee Russian bombs and seek refuge in Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. They all transit via Lviv, by train, cars, buses. From the late 18th to the early 20th century, Lviv was also part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today symbolizes for many the prevailing Ukrainian hopes to once again be part of Europe.
