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Nature

Magicicada Mysteries

If creepy-crawlies give you the creeps you might consider skipping today’s blog. Not for the faint of heart. But, oh, so fascinating in terms of what nature has, once again, to offer, and in terms of the utter cluelessness of science in answering some very big questions. Skip right to the end to listen to Bartok’s piano piece which will enrich your day.

2021 is the year where the central and eastern U.S. is expecting a mass emergence of cicadas, millions and millions of them who leave their burrows underground and climb the trees in synchronized fashion, for a 6 week-short life- span of reproduction after having been underground for 17 years.

They are known as periodical cicadas. Only 7 of the 300 species of cicadas worldwide have this strange life rhythm, waiting for 17 or 13 years, respectively, to then come up all at once. While developing underground they suck the liquid of plant roots, apparently counting the seasonal pulsed of fluid flowing from those roots – when the plants have completed 13 or 17 cycles and the temperature has gotten warm enough (65º/18º) they know to emerge. During the long time underground they molt their shells 5 times – and not all at the same speed. But somehow towards the end of that interval the more developed nymphs wait and the lagging ones catch up, so the they are all ready for time x, ready to fly and populate the trees where they mate and lay eggs. No one knows how they pull that off.

Unlike locusts that devour crops, cicadas are good for our ecosystem. Their weight en masse in the trees helps to prune weak branches, they release tons of nutrients into the soil after death and they serve as an abundant food source for all kinds of predators, four-legged and winged varieties included. This despite the fact that the sheer number of bugs (as many as 1.5 million may crowd a single acre) has anyone of them at practically zero risk for being breakfast, lunch or dinner. Although interestingly – and here is one of the unanswered questions – bird populations that are normally predators of annual cicadas decline just at the point where the periodical cicadas emerge. In the years before and after these birds a back to their normal population density.

So why these prime numbers – 13, 17, – for the emergence? We do not know for sure. Some mathematicians have offered the following hypothesis:

Both 13 and 17 are prime numbers, meaning they’re divisible only by 1 and themselves. This means that emergences rarely overlap with predator population cycles that occur in shorter intervals. For example, if cicadas emerged every 10 years, they’d be susceptible to predators whose population boomed on a cycle of one, two, five or 10 years. If they came out every 12 years, they’d be a tasty snack for any predator on a cycle of one, two, three, four, six or 12 years. Thirteen years, though? Only one and 13. The same goes for a 17-year cycle.

Climate change might put and end to that, too. Scientist are seeing shorter emergence cycles on the horizon for cicadas, prompted by ever warmer temperature and speculated to come down to something like 9 years in the future – no longer a prime number. This implies far more exposure to predators, obviously.

Cicadas have one natural enemy that is not affected by time spans at all: a fungus named Massaspora which does an ugly job on them. Its spores colonize the backend of the bugs, disintegrating it while the cicadas are alive, while injecting the them with a compound similar to amphetamine that keeps them moving while dying. Thus they disseminate the spores across a larger area. For male cicadas it also has the weird effect that they start flicking their wings like females, attracting other males who then try to mate, getting immediately infected. Told you it would get creepy.

The short clip below is a marvel of time-lapse photography showing the life cycle of cicadas.

Photographs are of Maryland and Massachusetts birds, cardinals in particular, that will be in shorter supply this year.

And maybe not the best way to play: saxophone amidst the cicadas.

Here is a different musical take: “The most obsessive admirer of bugs was Bela Bartók. The Hungarian composer evoked the cicada in his 1926 piano suite Out of Doors, the fourth movement of which is called “The Night’s Music.” Here Bartók piles up tone clusters to create an eerie evocation of frogs, birds and cicadas that are audible right from the very beginning.”

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Cherry Blossom Contemplations

I should have gone there earlier. When I meandered along the Esplanade last week the peak of the cherry blossoms was clearly a thing of the past. But there were still enough pretty ones left to be fodder for the camera.

There were also many other stimulating sights that reassured me that I was still living in a world populated by other human beings. It was my first outing into the city proper since the beginning of January. Clad in jeans and down coat I was clearly not appraised of the appropriate dress code.

You might have heard that some of the Japanese cities famous for their cherry blossom festivals experienced the earliest peak ever since measurements began 1200 years ago. Scientists blame the warming spring temperatures due to climate change. What is worse, though, and less reported, are the delayed blooms in some areas of the country. These happen when winter, not spring, temperatures are too warm. The average cherry tree variety needs a full month of cold weather (below 41º F/5º C) in order to bloom properly.

There are about 600 or so variety of cherry trees. These days 70% of all Japanese cherry trees are of the Yoshino variety, which blooms profusely and not too long after it has been planted. These are also the trees you see in Washington, DC and in Portland, gifts given by Japan. Unfortunately they are quite susceptible to climate issues and disease. It is quite important to start to diversify varieties or we run out of cherry blossoms altogether in no time. Think of what that would do to tourism in Japan, or cities like Macon, GA which attract thousands for their annual celebration – they have more than 300.000 Yoshino trees, far more than the number in Washington, DC. Never mind the issue of pollinators being deprived of an important food source, endangering the food chain for all of us….

Then again, you would never have to stand again in a line like this.

Source

That’s what it looked like pre-Covid times in the Amsterdam Bos, which is one of Holland’s most famous cherry tree arbors in the middle of a forest. 400 trees were donated by Japan in the year 2000, and each one of them was named, half Dutch and half Japanese female names. Alas, I could not find a single source to identify those names…. The municipality of Amstelveen, home to about 1700 Japanese ex-pats, organizes the festival.

And if you miss out on the real thing, this or any year where things change out of the blue, you can always create your very own blossoming cherry tree. Just requires a crane and a lot of blocks….881,470 to be precise. You can see this and numerous festivals if you travel to Japan in 2022 – here is you handy travel guide should the borders be reopened by then.

Or you can just walk down the Esplanade and enjoy what’s left of the bounty, strewn into nooks and crannies, hidden beauty wherever you look.

Here is the traditional Japanese version of Sakura, Sakura the cherry blossom song.

Here is a sweet variation with guitar.

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First Signs of Spring

Spring is officially on the calendar and sure enough, the first messengers, trilliums, are popping up left and right in the woods. These wondrous little sentinels from the Lily family grow from rhysomes, have three furled leaves, a short stalk and, in these parts, mostly white flowers.

Before the flowers unfold, the shoots are easily overlooked, and I worry when Hundchen does his exuberant run in the woods that things get trampled – just like the damage done to the wildflowers by the tree cutter in Frost’s poem below.

Frost’s protagonist goes to the woods to collect birch boughs for a trellis for his peas.

As much as he is in favor of utilizing what nature has to offer, he also cares about the damage done – the axed stumps are bleeding and the wildflowers might be crushed by all the debris on top of them – go, clean up the mess! In fact, it might be too late for the trilliums, having been “crooked” by man’s arboreal harvest. I assume that means sort of crushed.

Somehow, though, nature seems to prevail. That last line reminds of the inevitability of growth, even if damage awaits. They just push through, next after next.

That certainly seems to be the case in the woods here, still bruised from the recent storms, windfall wherever you look. The little stars dot the landscape – affirmation of resilience, or nature doing its thing, unperturbed, you choose.

Pea Brush 

Robert Frost – 1874-1963

I walked down alone Sunday after church
   To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
   He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
   Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
   From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
   Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
   To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!—
   All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
   And got them off the wild flower’s backs.

They might be good for garden things
   To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,
   And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
   They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
   And since it was coming up had to come.
 

Here is some music that captures the sparseness of the woods and the still cool light in March, reflected off the white petals of the Trillium.

Photographs mostly from archives, a few from this week, 4 legged creature included.

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Mix and Match

Let’s do some experimentation to bridge these weeks where I am not at full strength – brain and body alike – with something focussed on a single photograph.

My choice of image was based on how well the picture captures what’s going on in my current state. Here is today’s visual representation of the status quo.

The central characters are stuck at a cliff edge. Looking ahead, fog envelopes the landscape, with no clear view of what the future holds. The blossoms are curled into themselves, with tear-like rain or dew drops attached. The path towards the edge is filled with broken pieces of granite, pebbles, sticks and stones that make for precarious footing.

I’m stuck as well. Not necessarily at the cliff edge, but with little predictive power as to how the future unfolds, with the fate of lung capacity uncertain. I have so little stamina after two consecutive surgeries, and so little breath available that I can slowly walk for only 30 minutes. Forget hiking. Water drops cling to me as well, be they tears or be they frequent night sweats that try to push all the medication out of my body. The path has been anything but smooth, and now we have to wait until early April to determine if I need yet more surgical repairs.

But, oh, look at the defiance of these Penstemons!!! They make due in the harshest of conditions, are luminous in their rebellious purple, smartly planting themselves in the vicinity of a natural wall that protects against the harsh mountain winds. They don’t have to go anywhere, the world comes to them, pollinators grateful for a destination, hikers silent in appreciation of the unexpected beauty.

Count me their cousin. I might be purple in the face from huffing and puffing, but it is a purple of determination to get this body back to working. Conditions are somewhat harsh, the Covid isolation making everything more complicated, the pain requiring a delicate balance between weaning off the meds while not have pain interfere with healing. I, too, however, am graced with the shelter of my surround, practical and emotional support arriving from all directions, some intermezzos of calm before the winds arise again. Things could be worse!

Mahler’s 3rd captures the mood to perfection.

How is that for a mix and match?

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Squirrels on Ice

Kissed by privilege. Not only do I live in a place surrounded by old-growth trees, but from my bed I look directly onto a balcony that has become a cafeteria for all kinds of creatures during the cold months. The crows visit, as do the thrush and the nuthatches, the juncos and the towhees, some sparrows and the occasional shy chickadee. And then there are the squirrels, scrambling up the side of the house.

We had put seeds and nuts out onto the railing before the snow hit. The squirrels lost no time to dig them all up and either eat them right there or abscond with them to refill empty caches. It brought nature as close to me as possible, a source of considerable joy and distraction. Photographing with my small digital camera – I am not allowed to lift or hold the large one until the incisions are healed – through the window yielded some fun images.

It also made me think about the double-edged sword of the fragmentation of boundaries between human and animal territory with our human incursions into nature’s spaces. On the one hand, you gain so much knowledge if you can observe and research animal behavior of populations close to you. On the other hand, we all know how pandemics are generated if territorial lines are crossed. I feel like Cassandra just mentioning the fact that 7 Russians were the first humans found to be infected with the H5N8 bird flu last week.

Let’s start the week on a more optimistic footing, though. Here are two amazing things about squirrels.

They have not only the capability to listen for and identify predators’ calls, like owls and hawks, predators that could become dangerous to them. They also eavesdrop on the general bird population around them. If other birds continue to chatter unperturbed, the squirrels relax.

“Eavesdropping on alarm calls or eavesdropping on chatter is a cheap and easy way to supplement the information they have access to. Because it’s free. It’s produced by other individuals in the environment. It’s publicly available to any organism that has the cognitive ability to recognize and interpret that information.”

Nifty, but nothing in comparison to what other squirrels’ brains have to offer in the fight against human disease, Alzheimers in particular. Recent research of the brain of arctic ground squirrels revealed some facts that no one ever anticipated.

These critters, at home in Siberia, Alaska and Canada, burrow about a meter under the tundra surface to hibernate for 7 months. During that process, their body temperature plummets, below the freezing point of water!, and their brains stop producing a lot of neural activity. Structurally their neurons shrink and the connections between neurons shrivel away. Think of it as if a tree crown sheds all of its twigs and branches, just leaving a few big limbs intact.

But here comes the amazing part.  When the squirrels wake up, they grow back, within only two hours, not just all the synapses lost during hibernation— their brain cells now boast many more links than those of an active squirrel in the spring or summertime. A day later, their brains prune many of these ties, probably recognizing them as superfluous, and so end up in exactly the state before they started hibernation. The details of this process can be found here. The implications for brain plasticity and potential application to brains that have lost a lot of their dendritic connections (dementias) are now explored by scientists around the world.

Maybe my own synapses start firing again, one of these days, emerging from this semi-hibernating interlude. And I will walk in nature again. Which reminds me of one of my favorite poems about walking while stewarding nature’s cycles or mythology, your pick. It was written by former Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen. The story of Demeter and Persephone really focusses on the eternal cycle of sowing, growth, harvest, withering and dying back, questions as to the nature of human life and death, including the possibility of resurrection from Hades. A mother, Goddess of the harvest, Demeter, carries her tears with her grains, missing her abducted daughter. The pomegranate seeds, mentioned late in the poem, hold life but also the banishment to the underworld, if you remember Persephone’s fate. A temporary excursion into the realm of the dead, just like squirrels in hibernation….

Music by Stravinsky, I’m indulging in the incomparable German version with Fritz Wunderlich.

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I dwell in possibility

Nothing you haven’t seen before, if you have followed this blog for a while. The same vistas, the same trees, the same kind of birds. A recurrent destination for my walks, Sauvies Island. And yet….

Yesterday, the light was moody. It felt like dawn had lingered into mid-morning, reluctant to leave to wherever dawn goes, a darker place perhaps.

The birds were moody. Resting one minute, then driven into the air by the hunters’ shots or a hungry raptor chasing their weakest links, no safety here.

Canada Geese, now staying year-round

Snow geese, on their migratory routes, in dire need of refueling and rest, where constantly erupting into their airy circling, feeling threatened.

The ducks were just trying to hide, making themselves small in the water.

The clouds were moody as well. Forming bulwark banks in some places, wispy sheets in others, breaking on occasion to remind us the sun still exists. Flecked and blue skies in alternation, until the rain came and washed the light into uniform grey.

The corn was moody. Late, dry stalks whispering when not drowned out by the cries of a thousand geese. Bordering on water that came too late in the year to be of use. Or maybe it was the hunters whispering in their corn-clad hide-outs.

I was moody. But as always, nature soothed with magic. The sandhill cranes danced.

Each return to this ever changing place reminds me of possibility. I might not gather paradise, but at minimum a distraction. If lucky, a kind of peace that descends temporarily from that everlasting roof of a sky.

I dwell in Possibility

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise –

Might even spot some flying swans, reminding us of nature’s gift of transition.

Music today is Debussy‘s perfect capture of moody possibility.

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Thoughts on Experience

The Wild Swans at Coole

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Don’t sweat the details. Trees displayed late, not early autumn beauty. The paths were muddy, not dry. It was December daylight, not October twilight, and there were surely fewer than 59 swans. A number, I am told that signified something other than reality in any case in the poem, since swans do not congregate in such large flocks and if they did you couldn’t count them…

Other than that, I thought Yeats perfectly captured the experience during my current jaunts. There is the splendor of late autumn, caught in all the rusts and russets, garnet, oranges and gingers I’ve been walking amongst.✅  There is that sense that the lighter steps are a thing of the past, and treading is a bit harder with approaching age.✅  The heart sore? ✅  Nature’s beauty immutable? Ok, Yeats could not have possibly heard about the climate crisis, so we give him a pass on that. Future can only be guessed at? ✅, again.

I know I sound like a broken record, but for me something that transcends the particulars of a given time and/or historical setting, is necessary if not sufficient to make it art. I don’t know the particulars of the Irish turmoil and rebellion in 1916 that literary critics link to the poem, as they do to Yeat’s personal misery as a refused lover, who feared to be cut off from happiness in his approaching twilight years. And I don’t need to know them.

The description of someone seeing time pass by and fearing changes that are not kind, stand on their own, an experience known to all of humanity. The fact of nature’s beauty existing independently from us is timeless – and could be read as a reminder not to take ourselves too serious after all, but be grateful for the lovely cyclic permanence around us. Then again, the juxtaposition of nature, beautiful in each of its stages, but also guaranteed a renewal after each season, and our own linear progression towards a winter without spring, is rather depressing, don’t you think? The words resonate.

Quick, the reliable sharpness of Margaret Atwood to the rescue:

Hm, pull back a bit from exhortation and despair, and come to your own conclusions about a poem written over a century ago, which provided an experiential understanding if not of human impact, then of human frailty.

Not a great help, either….. but maybe I am indeed coming to the wrong conclusions.

(Poem from Atwood’s new collection: Dearly.)

Here are two different versions of the poem set to music.

Photographs were taken in the last 5 days, at Oaks Bottom, 1000 Acres and at the Ankeny Wildlife Blind.

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Dreaming, while snared, of murmurations.

I have been working on a project that, once again, tries to express the feelings associated with our current predicament: longing for freedom of movement and togetherness with others while being forced into spatial isolation. (I wrote about my last one along those lines here.)

The most recent exploration was initiated by watching a clip about those eerie kinetic artists, starlings, swooping through air in energetic and coordinated murmurations. The freedom of movement combined with a sense of communal action seemed like the perfect symbol for all that we deprived of right now during (in)voluntary quarantine due to Covid-19.

Artists have, of course, taken an interest in starlings for centuries. A contemporary one is photographer Søren Solkær who has observed the flights for many years now and published the images in a series called Black Sun. It’s worth clicking on the link below (Colossal) to see a spread of what he captured, some etherial beauty of stark landscapes in addition to the murmurations.

This project has taken me back to the landscape of my childhood and youth in the marshlands of Southern Denmark. A place where as many as one million starlings gather in the spring and fall, prior to onwards migration, and set the stage for one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena. As the countless birds congregate in large murmurations before collectively settling in the reeds at dusk they put on an incredible show of collaboration and performance skills. And now and then, by the added drama of attacking birds of prey, the flock will unfold a breathtaking and veritable ballet of life or death. The starlings move as one unified organism that vigorously opposes any outside threat. A strong visual expression is created – like that of an ink drawing or a calligraphic brush stroke – asserting itself against the sky. Shapes and black lines of condensation form within the swarm, resembling waves of interference or mathematical abstractions written across the horizon. At times the flock seems to possess the cohesive power of super fluids, changing shape in an endless flux: From geometric to organic, from solid to fluid, from matter to ethereal, from reality to dream – an exchange in which real time ceases to exist and mythical time pervades. This is the moment I have attempted to capture – a fragment of eternity.

BLACK SUN: Amorphous Flocks of Starlings Swell Above the Danish Marshlands

One of my favorite paintings of a young starling is by Dutch painter Jan Mankes (1889 – 1920) who, come to think of it, deserves his own YDP one of these days.

Starlings are often snared – they are perceived as a nuisance when they descend in great numbers onto cities, Rome being a case in point, where 5 million of them spend the entire winter before flying to Scandinavia to nest in spring. The city, no longer allowing nets, now has taken to releasing falcons to hunt them and places loudspeaker with starling distress calls and calls by other predatory birds near their roosting sites. Why such efforts, you wonder? In one word: Poopocalypse….. More than a nuisance are starlings at airports, endangering safety when they get caught in the jets of planes – Seattle’s airport SEA TAC catches over a thousand each year.

In any case, I had to combine, for my own Covid response purposes in my montages, a sense of being snared with a sense of symbolic murmuration. You tell me if the sentiment is adequately captured.

Music today is in honor of Mozart’s starling – a bird he held as a pet. Details on that in an interesting interview here. Apparently Mozart’s piece Musical Joke was part of their collaboration….

“Mozart’s Musical Joke was completed very shortly after his starling died in 1787. And I’m not the first to make the connection between this starling and this piece of music. That was Meredith West in a 1990 piece for American Scientist magazine [co-written with Andrew King]. She noticed that musicians hated this piece because it made them sound really bad — a lot of disharmony, fractured phrases, very odd key changes. Finally, she noticed that if you overlaid some of the most disconcerting parts over the song of a starling, there are a lot of similarities. You find the same kind of fractured phrases and general playfulness.”

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The Dream World and the Real World are the same.

There I was mid- afternoon, back to my old haunts, this time Oaks Bottom. Looking one way, a fall landscape of etherial beauty, separated by a mirror-like body of water, still as can be. Looking the other way, I was surrounded by throngs of people trying to catch the last sun rays before the upcoming storm, getting their runs in, having outdoor school, setting camp for the night, ever deeper in the woods that shelter the unhoused. Busy, noisy, alive, but not exactly a retreat into undisturbed nature.

Made me think of something Spanish-born artist Remedios Varo once said: “The dream world and the real world are the same,” although she, of course referred to the content of her paintings, her art in general, that “alchemically combined traditional techniques, Surrealist methods, and mystical philosophic inquiry into visionary dreamscapes.” (Ref.) It was also the mantra of the surrealist movement – André Breton declared in his essay The Manifesto of Surrealism,”surrealism is a movement that seeks to display the thoughts of the unconscious mind in a conscious manner, linking the dream-world and reality.”

My dream world and my real word yesterday depended on where I pointed my gaze, while hers’ originated with her inner eye. Varo had joined the surrealists when moving from Spain to France in the late 1930s before she fled fascism and emigrated to Mexico in 1941. Her art was a reaction to both the misogyny she experienced in Paris among her fellow painters and the political repression, also squarely directed at women, that made her stay in Mexico during Franco’s rule of Spain after the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939.

Having grown up in the 1920s to the achievements of a women’s movement that was espoused in the liberal Second Republic, she saw those rights trampled, including the right to divorce, use contraception, have an abortion or simply have a passport or a job (your husband had to sign.)

In 1934, a very conservative fascist group founded a new branch of government named the Sección Femenina. Franco later redesigned the mission of the Sección Femenina to encourage women and teach them how to be the ideal woman, as described by Franco and the Catholic Church. Women had to take classes at a young age to be “cheerful, supportive, self-sacrificing wives, waiting for the return of their husbands to a spotless home and happy family.” Maybe Lindsey Graham read the instructions. This is what he said at a campaign event beginning of November almost 100 years later: “I want every young woman to know there’s a place for you in America if you are pro-life, if you embrace your religion, and you follow a traditional family structure — that you can go anywhere, young lady.”

Varo became a highly successful painter in Mexico before her death of a heart attack in her mid 50s, although much less known than her male surrealist counterparts. Just think Salvador Dali, her contemporary, attending the same art schools in Spain as she did, and part of the movement that she joined in Paris during late 1930s.

Art critics have often described the two as surrealism’s extremes, representing shock and wonder, respectively.

And yes, there is much wonder to be found in her work, much admiration for nature (birds are ubiquitous, reason alone for me to be enchanted,) and mysticism and magic, but there is much more to it than that. There are clear feminist expressions found in the way women are depicted, strong, self-determined, explorative and intelligent. Equally important, she understands the Orwellian implications of mass movements centered around a snake oil salesman, having sacrificed their personal identity for being members of a cult, yearning for mystical fusion with the conjurer.

Here is The Juggler. (The Magician) (1956)

I think this painting could not be more apt for our times. (A lager version can be seen in the MOMA link attached at the bottom.)

The juggler, on the one hand, seems to represent enlightenment, his face painted on mother-of-pearl, in nature a protective layer, here a mask protecting who from whom? He is painted in the style of Hironymous Bosch (one of Varo’s role models) with red, shimmering robe, and metaphysical objects rather than rings thrown in the air, a light show to distract and/or blind the acolytes in front of him, although sold as enlightenment.

His cart, like a little ship that could sail away any moment when his manipulative task is done (or he lost the election,) contains a woman with closed eyes (no enlightenment here!) and all matter of domesticated critters, tame lion included. That’s what autocratic figures pull off.

The most interesting part is of course, as Varo herself declared, the uniformed mass of beings. “… a kind of unenlightened individuals who were awaiting a transference of enlightenment from the magician so that they can wake up…”

If you look closely, they seem to be wrapped all in the same cloth, a cape that reminded me of those fairy tale invisibility cloaks, about to be triggered. The people are rather androgynous, although upon close inspection you can see still hints of individual expression, some hope or differentiation. Not all is lost. The dystopian future of psychic fusion with the magician might just be averted.

Let them wake up to the real world, not the dream world, and tackle its healing without the help of witch-hat spouting quacks. And have eagle eyes to be on the look-out for the next one….

(Note that the MOMA interpretation of the painting is rather different.)

And here are jugglers at the opera.

Here is the full opera, a master piece.

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Thoughts in Yellow

I figured we’d celebrate the wave of relief felt by more than half of this country with a color that stands for enthusiasm, positivity and enlightenment. Or so the color gurus tell me…. conveniently ignoring that yellow has often had different connotations.

Just think of its association with sickness – yellow-fever, hepatitis, yellow-jack (a flag on a ship that is under quarantine) – or associations with excess – yellow journalism. Then there are yellow-dog contracts which deny workers the right to join unions. And my own yellow-bellied (cowardly) manner towards a personal nemesis: yellow jackets.

Oops, I announced a celebration, so let’s look at the positive side: yellow daffodils are one of the few bulbs that are absolutely resistant to being devoured by critters, and who bring brightness to spring. And yellow is certainly the color in late fall, early winter, that captures, mirrors and reflects the last of the light, reminding us of escape from the darkness.

Yellow mums bring cheer, modeling patience for long winter days given the eternity they last even in a vase or through first frost. The vivid contrast between yellow and the dark surroundings in the fall woods feels energizing, no hiding here, no shyness, a sturdy presence, at least when it comes to mushrooms.

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Yellow was van Gogh’s favorite color. Speculations abounded what could account for his “yellow vision.”

It was his abuse of absinthe, the alcoholic drink he favored! No, he suffered from xanthopsia, a state where everything in your sight looks yellowish, the result from exposure to toxins, including poisonous foxglove tinctures prescribed by his doctor in the asylum at St. Remis! It was subacute angle closure glaucoma that accounted for the yellow ‘halos’  in his paintings!

Basically all of these arguments are put to rest here. The use of digitalis from the foxglove plant was well understood in the 19th century, and by the time van Gogh would have reached sufficiently toxic levels (from absinthe as well) to exhibit xanthopsia he would have been unable to paint. Furthermore, he did not display any of the other symptoms associated with the kind of assumed glaucoma (brow ache, blurred vision,) never once mentioned in his otherwise detailed thousands of letters home.

His vision was also tested by his Doctor in 1889, using the kinds of color vision tests available for railroad personnel in safety tests, and found to be normal, as was his short- and long-distance vision. The guy was in his early 30s at the time, remember?

In contrast, we have his own thoughts in letters about his use of color, of his experimentation with color (yellows were almost always off-set with blue and white, a white he could not have distinguished from yellow with xanthopsia) and the fact that the use of yellow was already dominant in his very young years in Holland, before any of the potentially poisonous agents appeared on the scene. (Here is an invaluable source for his letters, searchable by key concepts.)

Last but not least we also have the assessment of his colleague Paul Gaugain:

‘Oh yes, he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland — those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.’

Now why do I bring up so much of this debate, in my view solved by looking at scientific facts with an eye on the whole package of historical data?

I have been thinking of how arguments are flying around in the Democratic party post-mortem of the election, claiming this or that or those being at fault for losses, for gains, on all sides. Often the loudest arguments win, or the ones that jive most with our own closely held beliefs (confirmation bias,) or the ones that are repeated most often. Now more than ever it seems paramount to wade through them all and really test the veracity of claims, not just their plausibility.

This is important because we will not prevail if we do not learn from mistakes. I am all in favor of celebrating today – but the work of tomorrow has to begin with honest assessments of future moves. And a good start is to look at the differing voices. We can contemplate what AOC had to say in an interview with the NYT yesterday, pointing to the fact that we urgently need and utilize the help of marginalized communities, but then tend to drop them and their demands once we’ve won, giving plum political jobs to anyone but progressives. Or we can turn to a thoughtful, intelligent essay in the Atlantic about what it would mean for democracy to simply go back to the status quo ante 2016. (Highly recommended reading.)

We can look at the argument of many that a centrist Biden, or down-stream candidates like him, overall outperformed the more progressives, even if those won in their own districts. We need to ask, if those claimed differences (we don’t even have yet all the numbers!) are based on message content differences (Medicare for All/Defund the Police) or were inherently driven by misogyny or racism (the more progressive candidates also tended to be POC, many of them women.)

There has to be an assessment of the way messages were conveyed – did we match the skillful bite-size narratives of the republicans with our more complicated stories, did we match their community engagement (democrats did not do door to door canvassing because of Covid)? Did top-down regulations and media approaches hamper individual democratic candidates because they were not appropriate for their communities?

Was there a failure to nationalize attacks on Trump for fear of scaring potential republican voters ready to jump ship – a population that did NOT materialize? After all, campaigns that accepted top-down funding were obliged to run under basic strategic maps brought to them by the DCCC/DSCCC/DLCC and this was their strategy.

Was lack of skill or funding or awareness for the need for social media dispersion a factor? There are so many variable to be taken into account beyond the core issues of progressive demands versus centrist calls for reconciliation and moderateness, that it will take time to isolate them and analyze them all. Most of all it will take the will to do that, otherwise we will not stand in 2022.

Reward yourself for due diligence in exploring these issues with a walk in the woods showering you with exuberant yellow. It will lift your soul.

Music today is by Michael Torke who has composed a lot around colors, including bright blue and its opposing color on the wheel: YELLOW. (Yellow Pages are not the only industry to flag that color. Think Nikon, National Geographic, McDonalds, and CAT and Caterpillar…..) Someone knows what they are doing.

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