The essay (linked below) appeared on Sunday in Oregon ArtsWatch. Longish piece, but I had to tackle one of my pet peeves:

Botanical gardens (joy) across the world are invaded by sculpture shows (irritation.)

Art among the plants: a lament

http://www.orartswatch.org/art-among-the-plants-a-lament/

Photographs today are botanical garden cacti, deliciously prickly to match the sentiment. And a shoutout to all the beloved German grandparents who raised them on their window sills….

and here is today’s poem:

This week’s blog will focus on all things German. Well, some things German. The choice was prompted by an upcoming exciting and a recent depressing event. Exciting things first: Zeitgeist Northwest is presenting its German Film Festival at Cinema 21 starting October 6th.  (Depressing news are, of course, the results of the German election, which will be discussed tomorrow.)

The Portland German Film Festival is in its 8th year, and offering once again challenging and amusing fare. Our organization is lucky to have a movie whiz, Yvonne Behrens, who has the knowledge and connections to get some cutting edge films to Portland; she also does the work of 10 people single handedly, with an energy and commitment that is mind-boggling. Films will be shown at Cinema 21 in German with English subtitles. For detailed info look here:

http://portlandgermanfilmfestival.com

The very first day, this Friday, has some ápropos selections:  During the day PPGF will show Hitler’s Hollywood – German Cinema during the age of propaganda 1933-1945 with subsequent panel discussion. Here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=mTkzrifyrFk  

“We ask what the Nazi cinema of the Third Reich reveals about its period and its people? How do these films, including their myths, their stories, their open lies and hidden truths, affect the future of the history of German cinema?
The Nazi-cinema was a state-controlled industry, subject to rigid political and cultural censorship. At the same time, it aspired to be “Great Cinema”; it viewed itself as an ideological and aesthetic alternative to Hollywood. A German dream factory. This state-funded studio-based cinema followed industrial modes of production.”  

Given the rise of right-wing, populist nationalism in Germany it seems ever more important to look back at the history of how these movements came to power, including their use of media. Certainly the current scourge of neo-nazi revival knows about that – with the help of no other than Harris Media, a Texas-based PR firm used by Trump, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and Benjamin Netanyahu. Check out this video they made about an “islamic” Germany… and of course the American Mercers, prime supporters of Steve Bannon’s movement and the Breitbart empire, have their moneygrubbing and -dispensing hands in media influence over another country’s election as well….

.http://www.dw.com/en/dwnews-afd-joins-forces-with-trumps-former-pr-team/av-40316399

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/22/german-election-afd-gatestone-institute/

Friday night you’ll be able to see a bittersweet comedy about refugee integration with a stellar cast. Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany Hans-Ulrich Südbeck will give the opening remarks before the screening of Welcome to Germany – Willkommen bei den Hartmanns. http://portlandgermanfilmfestival.com/film/welcome-to-germany-willkommen-bei-den-hartmanns/

Films will not all be political, though. For those of us interested in art I recommend a period drama about Egon Schiele. http://portlandgermanfilmfestival.com/film/egon-schiele-death-and-the-maiden-egon-schiele-tod-und-madchen/

Then there is religion: the premiere of a film about Martin Luther for the 500th anniversary of the protestant revolution. http://portlandgermanfilmfestival.com/film/reformation-himmel-und-holle-this-is-a-free-event-500th-anniversary-of-the-protestant-reformation/

Really, there is something for everything in-between – just check out the website!

Oh, and heartthrob Moritz Bleibtreu will receive the Portland German Film Festival Award 2017. Find your favorite seat and see me at the movies.

When night descended on my father’s brain in the year before his death, it was filled with vivid hallucinations. Among them were wild rides around the Brocken, the highest point of a small mountainous areas in Germany, called the Harz. The area was known for numerous myths, associated with witches, and immortalized in Goethe’s Faust, Walpurgisnacht. Goethe himself was quite interested in the occult and there is still a Goethe Weg at the Brocken, Goethe’s Path, commemorating where he walked and explored. Clearly, part of the canon of German literature, something each German child was exposed to, made such a vivid impression on my dad that it recurred, 60 years later, with the force of hellish nightmares, now indistinguishable from reality.

The Brocken was also site of an experiment between science and the occult, around the time my father was 10 years old, in 1932. In honor of  the centennial of Goethe’s death a skeptic was invited to try his hand at magic: turning a goat into a little boy. As the linked article aptly states: “Spoiler alert – science won.” The fascinating – and ludicrous –  details can be read below.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-brocken-experiment-failed-to-change-a-goat-into-a-boy?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=eae8ac97a1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-eae8ac97a1-66214597&ct=t(Newsletter_5_11_2017)&mc_cid=eae8ac97a1&mc_eid=1765533648

How weird ist that? We are talking the year when Heisenberg receives the Nobel prize in Physics, Neumann establishes the foundation for quantum mechanics, Thorndike finds experimental evidence for the theory of special relativity, Anderson observes a positron, ascorbic acid is discovered to fight scorbutic disease, the first sulfonamide drug is patented, shall I go on? And the population, including attending press, believes magic done right can create a boy from a goat?

The world is a strange place; alas, not much has changed. Except it seems like the magical thinkers are winning in a republican-shaped world.

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/20/7_things_americans_think_are_more_plausible_than_global_warming_partner/

With that said – a happy mother’s day to those who are and a happy day to those who aren’t  – with hopes for  a shared sentiment:

Yesterday afternoon the entire cityscape of Seattle seemed to be taking on a greenish hue in anticipation of St. Patrick’s Day.

I decided to pick up green as a theme of my afternoon walk, which brought me along the waterfront, the ferry terminals and to the shipyards where they repair boats.

Along the way there were glimpse of green everywhere.

The Guardian helped with a musical selection –http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-to-listen-to/st-patricks-day-12-best-irish-songs-time/

I chose this one, had a hard time choosing, though……

Alfie? Why is everyone talking about Alfie, I wondered. It turns out I misheard. The topic of the day is Elphi, short for Elbphilharmonie, the concert house overlooking Hamburg Harbour. The building has been everything from hyped architectural marvel to fiscal bone of contention for the last 15 years. Planning started in 2001, construction in 2007, legal wrangling over cost and timing begins in 2010, in 2013 we learn that the ultimate cost will be 866 million Euros (that includes donations) – 1o times as much as originally budgeted. Late 2016 the first rehearsals in the cutting edge concert hall lead to applause for the director of acoustics – he’s been a magician.

It will be opened TOMORROW! With a mega light show, real-time TV transmissions and much fanfare when the Haute Volée appears on the carpets.  Concerts are booked out for the year(s) to come, as is the hotel located on one of the upper floors. A Westin that provides you for the pocket change of $3.500 per night with the best of the best, including harbor view. (Truth be told the range is more from the 300 to three thousand, and yes, you read that number right the first time.)

We mere mortals, however, can take the curved escalator to various levels where you can walk around the building, see Hamburg from 4 sides, and enjoy the reflections in the various surface structures that give the building some fluidity.  That is if you don’t fall over people restlessly emptying cartons of tchotchkes that are sold in the tourist trap store,

or the cables that are haphazardly strewn about for the millions of halogen lamps for the opening light show.

Lightshow equipment surrounds it

NOT recommended for people with fear of heights…..

much recommended for people interested in architectural gimmicks.

Escalator is curved; internal walls covered with a white plastic foil 

Actually, this quote from the Financial Times sums it up in a more generous fashion: Sophisticated and ugly, striking yet appropriate, brutal but open, it is a generous gesture and a magnificent paradox.

https://www.ft.com/content/9e14e66c-b313-11e6-9c37-5787335499a0

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was a woman who defied expectation. Founder of the Whitney Museum she was a progressive and unflappable patron of the modern arts. Her husband, on the other hand, did not permit her portrait (painted by Robert Henri) to be hung in their house; he probably couldn’t stand all that assertiveness. Or a woman wearing the pants….

The new building of the Whitney is functional and delightfully unpretentious. Which can not necessarily be said for the museum visitors who seem to be inclined towards color coordination with the exhibits.

Two things caught my eye in particular. I had mentioned this piece before, turned upside down per request of the artist the day after Trump was elected. Not a peep about that in any vicinity of the artwork. People are left in the dark, probably to dark-adapt for the upcoming years…..

And then there is this wax sculpture of Julian Schnabel created by Swiss artist Urs Fischer. It has been burning as a candle since April, having been an intact image of the man at the beginning. I guess heads roll first – that, too, an ominous prep for our future. The poor guard’s job is to light the candle in the morning, extinguish in the evening at stand near a portable fire extinguisher for the rest of the day. Now do you feel better about what’s in store for you today?

Like mother like son, we documented our favorite sights, as well as the unconscionable tasteless ones.

The museum store offered the upscale advice of what I had found on the street earlier.

Not exactly the advice that hungry waifs or sumo babies could use – but one taken seriously by yours truly.

“Just see your servant’s suffering and misery. Just see his soul, a vulture in a trap.”

This self- description by Ibn Gabriel, one of the ancestors of Hebrew poetry, fits not just himself but really all the disenfranchised people I can think of. Just see your neighbor’s suffering and misery, your refugee’s, your homeless person’s. They might not appeal to a higher power, as Ibn Gabriel did, for enlightenment. They might just long for safety, a place to be, a meal to share to escape their cage. The Jewish poet, by the way, living a short and arduous life, with anger issues and a love for the grotesque, derived his quest for knowledge and philosophy from the Arab world that he lived in.

 “The large-scale absorption of cosmopolitan ideas and intellectual pursuits by Jewish intellectuals and religious leaders was one of the developments in Jewish culture that was made possible by the spread of Islam throughout the Mediterranean world. By the mid-tenth century, most of world Jewry lived in Islamic domains and spoke Arabic as their native language. Through Arabic, Jews had access to the high culture of the age, including, on the one hand, the metaphysics, medicine, astronomy, logic, and mathematics inherited from the Greeks.”

Or so I learn from an introduction to his works here: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/219518/vulture-in-a-cage?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=db7edbd121-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-db7edbd121-207667521

Vulture in a Cage

I strongly believe that art sets that vulture free from his cage, and never more so when done in solidarity and with a shared mission. Below is the perfect example. Why the title talks about vulnerability is a mystery to me. All I learned from that short clip was about the strength of a community whose soul did soar.

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/511085/when-art-becomes-an-exercise-in-vulnerability/

(Photographs from the Austin Tx Kite Festival)

Read it and laugh – or weep, as you please. The collection of quotes in the link below is priceless.

Weekend Words: Gift

Priceless like the best gifts, which depend on truly knowing each other.

My beloved sister sends me a calendar each year that celebrates the spirit of the season. It is published by a progressive group of German Christians and includes art, poetry, and teachings from a variety of religions. Mostly it is really about how to be a decent, thoughtful, committed and just person – all the things we try to be.

This week it taught me about something in this country, namely in Pittsburgh PA. For years now a restaurant named Conflict Kitchen has served food that is entirely devoted to nations with whom we are at conflict. So for several months each you get to eat food from Afghanistan, or Iran, or Cuba, or Venezuela, or North Korea, etc. Tied to the choice of national food are events that teach about the country, cooking courses for school children, and community outreach.

I think this is such a clever idea, using the psychological insight that we need to get to know each other to feel able to connect.  It is also a good sign that people who work for this kitchen get to attend free courses at Carnegie Mellon!  The kitchen’s website is a fount of information.

http://conflictkitchen.org

So this week I’ll delve into cultural differences, or the meeting of cultures, or culture as a tool of teaching and learning. At least that is the plan. We’ll see what I can find…..

Below are some perfect examples of Baumkuchen a German specialty that has been baked for special occasions for over 500 years now. Royalty around Europe orders from this shop in Salzwedel, a town in Eastern Germany.

http://www.baumkuchen-salzwedel.de/Ueber_uns.html

And for local fare from lands we are at peace with: https://www.pdxmonthly.com/features/2015/11/20/a-picture-perfect-meal-from-the-land-of-ice-and-snow    Try Broder Söder on Olsen Rd!