Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Browsing Category

Nature

Getting off anti-depressants.

Walk with me, into a fall landscape, the air filled with the trills of migrating sandhill cranes. We won’t get to see them, but scoops of pelicans instead, circling high and eventually resting on what is left of the ponds.

There is yellow around,

and orange/red,

and brown,

and the occasional daily wildlife unexpectedly appearing deep in the woods.

The oaks are taking on a brownish hue, their leaves already falling,

the flickers flitting from one tree to the next.

Farmers are mowing the meadows, and the remaining short grass forms golden, wave-like patterns, a sea minus the threat of drowning.

Nature’s beauty swept away sadness – which brings me to today’s topic, my familiar rant against claiming scientific data when the reported pattern is ambiguous, in this case about getting off longterm anti-depressants. The issue came up during a long car ride when we listened to an NPR Shortwave podcast describing the withdrawal symptoms that some people report after years and years of taking popular antidepressants, SSRIs like Zoloft, Prozac or Lexapro. Below is a summary of our reactions, two psychologists trying to be careful.

First of all, I strongly believe anti-depressants are a valuable and often necessary tool in the fight against depression. They do have occasional side effects during use, but they are life savers, literally, for people living with clinical depression due to biological factors. They also work for people who experience overwhelming sadness due to short term events in their lives, making it possible to return to normalcy after existential threats or losses. Do we have an over-prescription problem, with 1 in 10 Americans currently on anti-depressants? I don’t know. The problem for today’s conversation is what happens when you get off of the meds.

The Shortwave podcast started with a human interest story of an investigative reporter who had been on SSRI’s for 15 years; she had gotten onto them for, as she remembers, mild problems. After all this time, she then did off-ramping with guidance from her doctor, with successively smaller doses across 1 month. (This is the way recommended by the companies who sell the drugs, stressing that the dosage and timing of this off-ramp needs to be proportional to what you took and for how long.) Despite this careful and planned exit from the drug, she was apparently thrown into both psychological and physical horror experiences. Scouring the internet she found many reports of people, now even in support groups, claiming something similar happened to them after long-term use (years, not months). She found no matching reports from people who used the meds for less than a year. Symptoms reported included existential dread, panic attacks, fatigue, dizziness, and diarrhea, among others. She found no longterm epidemiological studies to document these patterns.

So what’s going on here? Do we take these self reports at face value? Do we trust the implication that these drugs have some previously undocumented side effects with long term use, perhaps disrupting some sort of internal system?

Let’s check a bunch of possibilities first:

  • We are dealing with self report on the internet and these reports might be sustained, encouraged, and even over-stated, thanks to the patterns of internet culture. We’re also missing a crucial comparison: Are symptoms more frequent among people coming off the drug than they are for randomly selected people in the population of similar age and similar circumstances? The symptoms may be more common for people coming off of SSRI’s, but we don’t know, and this question is clouded by the reliance on self report. Maybe other people, not coming off meds, are experiencing similar problems at a similar frequency, but (with no encouragement and no support groups calling for information) have no reason to come forward and report their experience. In short: Understanding the pattern requires comparison about exactly who is going through these problems and, among other concerns, any reliance on volunteered self report raises the possibility that numbers are inflated by encouragement to report or some sort of band wagon effect.

  • Next, do we know if all those reporting followed the tapering required for off-ramping? We have no reliable information about whether some of the people – perhaps many of the people – reporting these problems just stopped abruptly taking the meds. And if it turns out that people did taper off the drug properly, are the problems reported specific to SSRIs or can similar problems be documented for other psychological meds stopped after long-term use? (If so, this is not a problem of SSRI’s, and may not even be a problem somehow linked to anti-depressants per se.)

  • Similar concerns attach to the reported difference in experience between long-term users and short-term users. The claim is that these problems are specifically associated with long-term use, and specifically with SSRI’s. We need real data on this before drawing conclusions, and the problems already described – with volunteered self-report – are also a limitation here?

  • In addition, the idea here is that people say their symptoms after leaving the drug are much worse than the problems that put them onto the drug in the first place. Can we count on this memory being accurate – especially since people are remembering their initial status years, and perhaps decades, back?

Assuming all of these questions are answered to our satisfaction, – the self reports are real, the frequencies hold, long-term vs short term differences are established, memory serves accurately – there is still a large scale question about cause and effect.

As one complication, during long-term use the person has obviously aged. We know that age changes things in the body, leaving you less resilient. More, external things can get harder with age, including a loss of economic safety, a place in the world, a shrinking of your circle of friends and family due to death. In other words, if your symptoms are worse when you leave the drug, is it possible that your life has gotten objectively worse? Or that your life problems are just as they were “pre-drug,” but your ability to cope is diminished? Add to that that many SSRI patients are female, and many go through menopause during long-term use. In these ways, if the person’s problems after leaving the meds are worse than problems before the meds, this may have nothing to do with the meds themselves!

These are all answer-able questions, and – of course – maybe the withdrawal patterns for some long term users are real, and maybe their frequency is not matched by short term users. Maybe there are good answers to the question of what causes these patterns. The key, though, is that the initial report (the sort of science reporting we all encounter in the news, on social media, leaves out information that is crucial for understanding what’s going on. Scientists generally are alert to this worry, but journalists are not, nor are most members of the public.

So far, it seems that any claims about long-term SSRI use aren’t justified – and, given recent events in the news, we need to be alert to unwarranted claims about medicine or medication.

Should researchers take steps to remove this ambiguity? Yes!

In the meantime, it would be a mistake to forgo the clinical use of medications that we know have helped millions of people. I fear that podcasts like these might be detrimental to people who take the reporting at face value and make medical decisions that would be different otherwise.

Music today a favorite cello concerto. Conductor C. Eschenbach was 80 at the time of this recording.He turned 85 this February and is still actively working.

2 Comments

Il Tempo Fermo.

I have been absolutely hooked on an album by Fabrizio Cucco, called Tempo Fermo. It unfolds slowly, getting more powerful with each subsequent listening, creating and simultaneously satisfying a sense of longing. It is sung in Italian, so you might wonder why I am posting it with pictures of Portland Japanese Garden, an altogether different culture. Well, depending where you inquire, the English translation of the title says Down time, or Time Standing Still.

That is the garden for you: it forever offers down time, a shelter from thinking hard, feeling hard, worrying hard.

It provides beauty, in so many different dimensions, differences in patterns, from whole vistas to the smallest details.

Light,

and color.

It offers calm, as only nature can do, even if nature is pushed into defined configurations by mostly invisible sources (from garden designers to the knowledgable gardeners, who one encounters occasionally.)

It provides the comfort of familiarity, a place to return to that greets you with old standbys, or that you proudly assess for seasonal changes, like the familiar decorations alternating across holidays in your childhood home. Except here it is not decorations, it is nature itself that changes with the shifting amounts of daylight and temperatures. Change that is of the essence, not some imposed by-product of celebrating seasonal events.

Visiting the garden, like yesterday morning, also elicits, on occasion, my hopes for the other translation of the phrase tempo fermo: time standing still.

For a short moment I wished for time to stand still, to be preserved, just like my photographs preserve my way of seeing the world around me. I wanted not to have to leave the hazy light of the early morning, the still cool air before the heat settles in, the company of a friend who relishes quietude just as much as I do. I wanted to put that moment into a piece of amber, a moment when I could still walk and climb stairs, when pain was perfectly manageable, when news were tuned out and my brain switched away from analysis to simple, grateful awareness of nature’s beauty.

I wanted to hold on to a moment where the world can still be healed, in theory, where gardens can still defy the challenges brought on by climate change change, where frequent outings are not a luxury out of reach. Time standing still, so that no more deaths are accrued on the battlefields, the regions of genocidal starvation, the areas of natural disasters.

That wish – Time, stand still! – is of course one that has been shared by many people across the centuries. It has been experienced, most often in the context of love, longing, separation. Listen to one more piece of music that encapsulates the notion – from the 17th century by John Dowland.

Then again, here is the thing: if time stood still there would be no music. After all music is an unfolding in time – we have to switch from stand-still to procession, if we want to experience that art form. Beauty, then, offered in development rather than permanence, in “becoming” – I take that as a major consolation for futile longings of halting time!

And here is yet one more perspective on time:

On Meditating, Sort Of

 Meditation, so I’ve heard, is best accomplished
if you entertain a certain strict posture.
Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.
So why should I think I could ever be successful?
 
Some days I fall asleep, or land in that
even better place – half-asleep – where the world,
spring, summer, autumn, winter –
flies through my mind in its
hardy ascent and its uncompromising descent.
 
So I just lie like that, while distance and time
reveal their true attitudes: they never
heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.
 
Of course I wake up finally
thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,
made out of earth and water,
my own thoughts, my own fingerprints –
all that glorious, temporary stuff.

By Mary Oliver

1 Comments

Catching up.

Walk with me, before the heat sets in, very early morning. I know, it has been a long time, longer than anticipated. Had a bit of a rough stretch here, paralyzed by what is unfolding in our world, unable to face it with my usual determination. Then again, resignation is a luxury. Particularly when blessed with a position of privilege. So, shall we dive back into it, the rumination on where we are and perhaps what can be done about it? I vote yes, with hopes of not getting overwhelmed quite so soon again. Nature walks to the rescue….

Heron at his/her morning toilette

I think what got to me was the opening of more camps here and the forced abduction of humans, without legal recourse, to prisons abroad, sanctioned by a Supreme Court who knows that torture and slave labor are awaiting at those sites. What is here they call migrant tent camps or detention centers. You could also call them concentration camps for long term American residents who have not been convicted of any crime and face deportations to countries they’ve never set foot in. (A reminder: Mere unlawful presence in our country is not a crime. It is a violation of federal immigration law to remain in the country without legal authorization, but this violation is punishable by civil penalties, not criminal.)

Concentration camps hold a special place in the imagination of people like me growing up in post-war Germany. I’ll write about that history and the emergence of a secret police which paved the way, a bit later. Today, walking in this amazing landscape, I am reminded that we don’t have to look to Europe for these kinds of atrocities. Our very own history contains plenty applicable examples – all based on the Merriam-Webster definition of concentration camp:

“A concentration camp is a facility where large numbers of people, often political prisoners or members of ethnic or religious minorities, are detained in small spaces under armed guard without fair trial or legal process. These camps are typically associated with harsh conditions.”

The recent history is probably remembered by most of us: the 1942 interment of Japanese-Americans in camps, most of them US citizens, no less. But there were other, earlier examples.

Take 1927, for example, when the Mississippi river flooded, with extensive damage to Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and put in camps, segregated by race, since this was during Jim Crow. Black camps quickly turned to labor camps, run by the National Guard, forcing refugees to work on white-owned plantations or doing repairs, rebuilding the levees, unloading supplies from ships, all as unpaid labor. Black evacuees were, in contrast to Whites, not allowed to leave and go North by decree of the Governor. People trying to escape or refusing labor were beaten or killed by National Guard troops. 300 000 Black Americans, interned in 154 camps, sleeping on the wet ground, provided with scant food.

All this on the heels of the Tulsa Massacres in 1921, where 6000 Black Americans were put into an internment camp with forced labor requirement.

Thistle, chamomile, a house finch in an elderberry bush, bindweed, mallow and mystery flower…

Further back, the bloodshed proceeded unimpeded. Andrew Jackson proposed that

 “emigration depots”were introduced as an integral part of official US Indian removal policy. Tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Ponca, Winnebago and other indigenous peoples were forced from their homes at gunpoint and marched to prison camps in Alabama and Tennessee. Overcrowding and a lack of sanitation led to outbreaks of measles, cholera, whooping cough, dysentery and typhus, while insufficient food and water, along with exposure to the elements, caused tremendous death and suffering.

Thousands of men, women and children died of cold, hunger and illness in camps and during death marches, including the infamous Trail of Tears, of hundreds and sometimes even a thousand miles (1,600 km). This genocidal relocation was pursued, Jackson explained, as the “benevolent policy” of the US government, and because Native Americans “have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits nor the desire of improvement” required to live in peace and freedom. “Established in the midst of a… superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority… they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and long disappear,” the man who Donald Trump has called his favorite president said in his 1833 State of the Union address.” (Ref.)

Red-winged blackbird, a kingfisher diving and a purple martin.

American history – soon to be deleted from a curriculum near you. One can see that as sort of a lie, a criminal lie: the erasure of what we should remember, our very own atrocities.

“The lie of active forgetting.  While humans are doomed to forget and be forgotten, that is a passive process.  Instead I am referring to active forgetting.  Erasure comes when a society takes active steps to forget the horrors it has committed.  These steps often include developing a counter mythology to help erase the truth.  Think of your typical mid-20th century American Western.  Myths about savage Indians harassing “innocent” settlers, particularly white women and children, requiring the cavalry ride to the rescue.  This is just one of many examples of how American society actively erased the truth about settler genocide of Indigenous societies.  Not savage Indians, but Indigenous civilizations whose only “crime” was thousands of years of occupation and use of American land and resources.  Scores (if not more) of ethnic cleansing and genocide campaigns repackaged as “civilization” rightfully replacing bloodthirsty, ignorant “me talk dumb ug-um Indian” savagery. And all of this in turn allows a society to actively forget, or erase, the atrocities it has committed.” (Read Akim Reinhardt’s full, thoughtful essay on suppression of historical knowledge here.)

Babies!!!

Egret and heron were spooked when I walked up.

There are obviously a number of reasons why public education is currently under relentless and brutal attack. But erasing the knowledge of painfully violent and unjust history is surely one of them.

Deer jumping across the path in front of me

We walk here on land of the Atfalati [aˈtɸalati], also known as the Tualatin or Wapato Lake Indians, a tribe of the Kalapuya Native Americans who originally inhabited villages on the Tualatin Plains in the northwest part of the U.S. state of Oregon. In 1856, the tribe was removed to Grand Ronde Reservation, some sixty miles southwest of their original homeland. Another forced relocation – a story for another day.

Bunnies at breakfast.

This turtle was on the path nowhere near water. Must have made a wrong turn. Just like this country.

Music today by Walter Zanetti. Might have poste before. Beautiful enough to repeat endlessly….

4 Comments

Two poetic reminders.

The Trees (1967)

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

By Philip Larkin

Leave it to Larkin to imbue the glory of renewal with melancholic reminders that nothing will last, not even trees, not time, least of all we, ourselves. Even greenness is a kind of grief. And yet: here is a new round, let’s start from scratch, if only for this cycle, knowing full well that all cycles eventually cease.

Afresh, afresh, afresh.

It sure felt that way when I walked my first full round of 2025 at Jackson Bottom yesterday. Trees in leaf, wildflowers covering the pathways and meadows, dog roses climbing ever higher.

There were the last of the irises, the first of the asters,

mallows and forget-me-nots – and varieties of small sunflowers.

There were clover and clumps of hemlock,

cowslip and my beloved daisies.

The darn infection of my ribs, refusing to heal completely, made it painful to lift the camera, but how could I not?

Wildlife was fully present to greet the sunny day, bunny ears lined with blood vessels,

wood ducks tending their young,

as were the swallows.

Minnows darted around,

Scrub jay brandished a nice morsel, and the little guys tried to come into their own.

Deer was shy but present until it wasn’t,

and the crowning encounter was that of a coyote hunting, giving me the eye in no uncertain terms that I was interfering with his lunch.

***

That morning a local artist who I respect a lot for who he is as much as what he creates, had posted something on IG, with multiple comments of people acknowledging that they felt the very same way.

I certainly don’t feel like a coward – that would imply that there is the possibility of effective action and I were too scared to take it. But I do feel the same helplessness in view of the tremendous suffering all around us – I simply don’t know what I could do.

Then again, witnessing is a first step, acknowledging the horrors unfolding is a commitment to truth, and focussing on the fact that throughout history things have been evolving to the cyclical nature of ALL there is, helps to not succumb to despair. It is not just the living beings – whether trees or people – that die. It is also tyrants, war mongers, colonialist or generally oppressive systems that eventually bite the dust. Rome fell, so did the Spanish Inquisition. Stalinism is gone, so is Mao; republics have supplanted kings. Yes, some ideologies have only gone underground, ready to reemerge, and yes, there are scum who would like to reintroduce segregation and continue to use indented labor in the penal system if not outright slavery. There are those who pursue ethnic cleansing and genocide for clinging to personal power. But change has happened across Millenia, and human rights have surged in places previously very dark.

Afresh, afresh, afresh. Nature (and poetry) as a reminder that cycles will unfold, no matter how inevitable everything looks like now with power in evil hands. It will not bring back to life those who were brutally killed, it will not change our helpless mourning that currently colors every aspect of our lives, but a more just world can evolve along this historical spiral.

Maybe the artist’s simple uttering of those words allowed some other people not to feel alone, hearing sentiments that matched their own. That is the first step to build community that shares an assessment of facts, making us less vulnerable to manipulation of how we experience reality. There is nothing cowardly about the paralysis so many of us experience, but we have the choice to put our energy into hope, instead, and into local action. Do something for someone – here I cling to the words of Emily Dickinson:

If I can stop one heart from breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

by Emily Dickinson

Jasmine sweetness was suffusing the air.

Music for walking through this world….

1 Comments

Memorial Day 2025.

During law school I worked tons of different jobs to save money for my travels. Some of the jobs were advertised, others came through word of mouth. To this day I cannot decide which was the hardest one: sitting at a production line – stools carefully assigned to alternate German and non-German factory workers (the so-called Turkish “guest workers” at the time) so conversation was unlikely – filling 20 pound bags with birdseeds, and lifting them off, all the while inhaling the dust of that stuff permeating the air of the huge hall. Or standing all day behind the counter of a fried chicken fast-food joint in the caves of a subway station, selling food. I don’t think I lasted more than a few weeks in either.

Then there were jobs I regularly returned to, filing bills and receipts for a renowned bookstore specializing in textbooks, typing in the office for a huge pickle company, and helping with book keeping at a construction firm. The variety in itself was an education – being in environments and with people I would usually not encounter, learning real life skills outside of the privileges of the ivory tower.

One of the more creative, if dangerous, jobs was candle making in the shop of a hippie out in the boonies, who spent most of his time in an Ashram in India, well supported by the candle business it seems, which paid pennies for the student workers. It was fun, but I also have the scars to show for it, hundreds of tiny spots on my arms where hot wax landed.

All this came back to mind while photographing the bees and bumblebees on my salvia plants, which are currently in bloom. Where do they bring the pollen, how much wax is produced for their hives? How are our ever scarcer bee populations affected by the decisions of a conspiracy theorist, who is rolling back 100+ EPA rules, slashing toxic cleanup funds, weakening pollution limits and blocking previous pesticide bans, none of it based on science?

Stopped myself right there, and tried to distract my thoughts away from the horrors, back to beauty instead, deserving of the bees. Focus on art!

Maybe you share my appreciation for the truly astounding installations made from wax by the French artist Juliette Minchin. Likely not bees’ wax, of course, but wax nonetheless.

Here are some pieces from the most recent Art Basel (2024),

Juliette Minchin Hydromancie 33 & 35 (2022)

and those shown in Munich, below; the latter was part of a group exhibition in the newly constructed Bergson Kunstkraftwerk building by Gallery König, METAPHOR TO METAMORPHOSIS, riffing on Franz Kafka.

(Allow me a side comment: Here is the exhibition announcement – when I hear the words “drawing from the aura of his works,” all I can do is try to stop my eyes from rolling at warp speed in my head….

“The exhibition draws inspiration from Franz Kafka, reflecting his exploration of identity and transformation in an ever-changing and threatening world. Central to the show are themes of personal, national, sexual, and other forms of identity, examined as unstable constructs that are constantly in flux and transformation, and often questioned by the artists. Kafka resists categorization, and perhaps it is this elusiveness and indescribability that makes his work so captivating even 100 years after his death. The exhibition does not seek direct references or interpretations of Kafka, nor does it offer an art historical analysis. Instead, it draws from the aura of his work, the sense of relentless search, an attempt to understand the world, and often alienation.”

Elusiveness and indescribability are perhaps apt terms for whatever this signage exhibits: name dropping and fashionable terms that serve as a rubber band heading for diverse approaches to art.

Juliette Minchin Lit 17 (2024)

Here, however, is Minchin’s site-specific installation that took my breath away, even when seeing it only in photographs, with no hope of experiencing it in person. The work was shown last year at the Museo Sant’Orsola in Florence, in a part of the former convent of the same name that is currently being redeveloped, with an anticipated official opening scheduled for 2026. (All images below from Juliette Minchin, Rivelazioni.) Everything you see here within the architectural frame is made from wax.

The specifics below from her website:

“For the space in the convent’s first church, Juliette Minchin has designed an installation that unfolds around the remains uncovered during the latest archaeological dig (2014). Her drapes and veils of wax envelop the architecture: the back of the room and the windows come to life, as if breathed through by a new breath of life. In her own way, the artist seems to be resuscitating the convent’s theatrical and fleeting Baroque past, of which there has been no trace since the 19th century. In the convent’s former pharmacy (spezieria), on the other hand, the artist is staging a vigil. Around the room’s imposing pillars, Juliette Minchin has hung panels covered in wax and wicks that will be lit and melted each day, offering visitors the spectacle of silent, ever-changing creativity. The shapes, light and scent of burning wax offer visitors a spellbinding sensory experience, a reference to the liturgical and healing rituals once practised in these places.​”

The combination of impermanence (the wax melting, the convent in ruins) and resurrection (the art reinstating and emphasizing the architectural beauty, the permanence of symbols of faith or attempts at healing) I find it all glorious. and I thought the idea of staging a vigil is an apt invitation for Memorial Day, today, honoring those who died for the rest of us, many in order to prevent fascism’s rise. May their sacrifice not have been in vain.

Of course, the beauty of the salvia blossoms is impermanent as well, while hopefully the collected pollen will be transformed into something a bit more stable and lasting: wax for the hives. Waxing and waning, thoughts coming and going. And the privilege to observe it all, matched by the obligation to remember.

Music today is by an Italian musician, recorded in a 14th century benedictine monastery in Varese, but reimagining sacred afro-cuban music. My current favorite, so beautiful and soothing.

1 Comments

Light at the end of the tunnel.

By all reports, it used to be a happy place. A house right next to a “Tunnel of Many Vistas”, an engineering marvel from 1915 on the original 73-mile route of the Columbia River Highway, the first major paved highway in the Pacific Northwest and the first scenic highway constructed in the United States. By the 1930s, that building became a roadhouse, a service station, a restaurant and a bunch of rental cabins for overnighters who drove their cars out to Hood River, admiring the tunnel along the way. Much dancing, fueled by moonshine, gregarious company and fun throughout the Prohibition.

The original Mitchell Point Tunnel was closed in 1953, no longer safe, and no longer able to accommodate increased numbers of ever larger cars. It was ultimately destroyed and filled with rocks in 1966 to widen I-84. (The basalt that constitutes the surrounding mountain and delivered those rocks, is in itself a thing of beauty – just look at the coloration!)

Want to join me for a short walk? The tunnel is now rebuilt and connected to the Historic Highway State Trail through a steep mountain at Mitchell Point, open for hikers (and eventual bikers) only. (You can reach it by car, but parking is extremely limited (fewer than 20 spaces with no off-rad alternative available. So choose timing wisely.) The State Trail hopes to connect The Dalles with Troutdale once again, a stretch of 68 miles or so.

The choice to visit this place, opened to the public less than two months ago, was the perfect antidote to the feelings incited by this week’s news. For me it was the mix of assaults against individual people or groups combined with attacks on ideas and values, never mind the law, that registered as such heavy burden. To name just a few: a brain-dead Georgia woman kept alive on tubes to serve as an incubator to her unborn baby due to new restrictive abortion laws, with her family having to foot the bill for the next many months, never mind not facing a form of closure. Birthing machines, even in death.

The passage of the “big beautiful bill,” that will deprive millions of kids and people living with disability of food, and kick over 13 million people off health insurance.

  • A bill that will lead to the closure of over 150 rural hospitals, not only making timely health care accessibility close to impossible in those areas, but also kicking 1000s of people off impossible to replace – jobs.
  • A bill that deprives young and adult trans people alike of HRT or surgical treatment compensation.
  • A bill that has hidden clauses like: “no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
  • And, in one of its most authoritarian passages, a bill that order judicial silencing in Sec. 80121(h): “No court shall have jurisdiction to review any action taken by the Secretary, the EPA Administrator, a State or municipal agency, or any other Federal agency […] to issue a lease, permit, biological opinion, or other approval.” In other words, if the government approves drilling, mining, or development, even illegally, you can’t sue. – It applies retroactively, killing lawsuits already in progress. – Tribes, environmental groups, citizens, even states, lose the right to challenge these approvals in court.
  • A bill that contains provisions (sec. 70302) that would block federal courts from enforcing contempt charges against government officials who violate court orders, unless a judge required a monetary bond when issuing the original injunction (which is rarely done.) This would clearly undermine the already tenuous balance of power between our branches of government.

On the disaster preparedness front, the news was equally worrying. The Trump administration canceled 33 million in funding to help prepare and protect Californians from earthquake damage. And FEMA announced that it canceled its Four-Year strategic Plan ahead of Hurricane season, with no replacement given. This came a week after the announcement that FEMA is ending Door-to-Door canvassing in disaster areas to provide aid.

Tunnel as antidote to all this? Yes! Not only is there light at the end of the tunnel. The new tunnel mirrors the historic tunnel with re-constructed arched windows with views of the Columbia River, letting light in continuously along the way. Such a prominent reminder that not all is dark – there are islands of hope, of openness, of change and restoration (like this very tunnel), as well as resilience.

And speaking of which, the wildflowers clinging to the steep cliffs surrounding this site, were in bloom or in brightest green of emergent leaves, on the scarcest of soil. The delicate poppies swayed with the sharp wind, not defeated. Nature’s will and strength to survive on full view. Turned out to be a happy place, indeed.

Anthem of the day: had to be this, right?

3 Comments

Your very own Town Crier.

Walk with me. That way we can talk and I don’t have to yell “Oyez, oyez, oyez!” like the town criers of yore, to get your attention for today’s public announcements. Oyez means “hear me,” (still used in French, originally Anglo-Norman.) I have always wondered if the German expression Oh Je – oh no! – is a derivative, since the news were mostly bad and the expression is one of concern, regret, or surprise….but I digress.

Let’s walk the just re-opened Oak Island Loop, at its most glorious colors this time of year, on a sunny and warm day, too warm for April, really. Trudge across the large meadows and turn a corner into the oak woods – unclear who was more startled, the calves hanging out in the shade or this hiker. But guess who ran!

Vultures hovering close, ever hopeful. Not this day, my friends, not yet!

Golden sheen wherever you look. The unfurling oak leaves green-gold, the poplar leaves not yet covered with dust reflecting sunlight like golden dots, the buttercups not far behind.

Colors in general more on the pastel side, soft pink hawthorne, nettles, the blues of the camassia everywhere, and white, tinged occasionally with pink in the fruit blossoms and emerging white hawthorne.

I had been thinking about colors, having wasted 90 minutes of my precious life time on an inane movie with nothing to show for but admiration for the colorist who designed costumes and backgrounds to sheer perfection. The Room Next Door was on my list for the mere fact that I am a sucker for Tilda Swinton and director Pedro Almodóvar‘s work. I don’t know what they were thinking here. Stilted dialogue, a plot too hard to believe, a display of photogenic suicide with nary a bit of pain in sight.

Narcissistic woman who has managed to drive everyone from her life, is now facing cancer death in loneliness. Neither estranged daughter nor distant friends answer her request not to die alone when taking her own life. Forgotten friend from long ago, who makes a living writing about her fear of death, inexplicably yields to the request for companionship even though both know it endangers her for criminal aiding and abetting. Rent a mansion in upstate NY (costing enough to cover the price of a first class flight to Switzerland, where assisted suicide for any reason is legal, is my bet.) Patient takes her own life, friend barely escapes legal trouble, daughter (also played by Swinton in a ridiculous wig) reappears to find no real answers.

In any case, the ethics of suicide are never discussed, the pragmatics not based in reality, and the question of succumbing to requests that are entirely selfish, not once tackled. Political questions are reduced to the plight of personal trainers not allowed to touch clients any longer, or whiney ex-lovers hinting at their disgust for climate change. Almodóvar, what has got into you? In any case, not recommended, but for the colors which rule in setting up space and personalities.

***

Back to the public proclamations of your personal town crier. On Wednesday, the members of Portland City Council Community and Public Safety committees voted on passing a resolution about the fate of Portland Street Response‘s future to the full City Council. Part of Portland’s Public Safety area, the program is a successful tool in assisting people experiencing mental health and behavioral health crises, rather than calling the police on the frequently unhoused people in distress. The new resolution seeks to strengthen this program, among other things, by fully realizing Portland Street Response as a 24-7 co-equal branch of the first responder system. Here is the resolution in full.

Water is ominously low already. St. Helens in the background.

Two of the committee’s members, Loretta Smith (District 1) and Eric Zimmerman (my istrict 4) voted against bringing the resolution to the full council – really trying to throw a wrench into the gears of progress in dealing with our homelessness crisis. They ignore the positive example of many other cities (Seattle, Albuquerque, and Durham, NC, among them) that have shown that independence – not reporting to either police or fire department, in other words being co-equal – has improved service capabilities. Luckily, Steve Novick cast the decisive vote to bring the resolution forwards.

Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood in full view.

The meeting for the full council is in early May. If you cannot attend – a lot of presence always helps – I encourage everyone here in Portland to consider writing to their respective council members what you think should be voted for (or against.) Seven ayes will be needed to pass the resolution. (I have already written to Mitch Green, who is the District 4 member to vote next. And to Zimmerman to protest.) Here is the link where you can choose to write to your counselor. There is a spot where you can pick the name of your representative to be alerted.

Back to private proclamations: the woods were full of birdsong, the warblers picking up the golden dot theme,

For obvious reasons called butter butt…

the mourning doves, the red-winged blackbirds, the robins, song sparrows and swallows joining the chorus. Baldies shrieking, Heuer happy.

Instead of music today we’ll have the splendid sound scape of a day’s recording – dawn to dusk – of nature sounds on the Knepp Estates, one of Englands pioneers in rewilding. The album was released 4 days ago and is revelatory. From the producers:

The recordings were made by Alice Eldridge of the University of Sussex, who explained the idea behind the wilding.radio project that inspired this release:
“I have come to believe that nature sounds are not only ‘calming’, but offer a powerful, visceral means to remind us that we are a part of the wider tapestry of life. This simple listening experience has been received with extraordinary enthusiasm and gratitude. Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. This reduction in biodiversity has serious consequences for the future of life on this planet. It also radically depletes our sensory connection to wider nature. And if we don’t feel our connection to the rest of life on this planet, we are less likely to care for and take positive environmental action in the future.”

2 Comments

On this Passover.

Yesterday, Robert Reich’s Sunday Thoughts landed in my inbox. He describes the most recent evidence of the “Trump regime’s abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality,” and asks, “How does a moral person live with this? How do we not become complicit?”

We have been asking ourselves these very questions during this year’s Passover, a Jewish holiday focussed on the experience of abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality, (against ALL, by the way) and on teaching our children and grandchildren how you should forestall a repetition of oppression or how you can overcome it. Except that in this very year 2025 the “Never again!” rings hollow.

I had absconded to the Northern California Redwoods to get away from the news, and get together with family. The beauty of those woods is unique, but even there you are reminded of human interference for profit, the harvesting and subsequent charring of century old trees. (The big stumps are the ones logged about 100 years ago, the surrounding forest is secondary growth.)

The secondary growth is still awe inspiring, as is the light that pushes its way through the dense tree crowns, forming intensely contrasting scenery.

The meadows adjacent to the forests are filled with wildflowers at this time of year, and the emerging elk look as if a fairy tale world existed that they freely move in and out of, safe from predators.

Safe from predators: no longer a given in a nation that decides it can disappear people without due process, with no redress once removed from American soil, and put into gulags extracting slave labor until the day you die. It can happen to anyone, Jews no exception, particularly with this administration’s anti-Semitism in plain sight. “What?” you ask? Are they not devoted to fight anti-Semitism?

Is leaving copies of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in the military libraries the Naval Academy, while removing books teaching the history of the Holocaust, fighting anti-Semitism? When the superintendent of a school district in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas agrees within minutes to a conservative group’s demands to remove seminal texts about the Holocaust and antisemitism, including Maus and Anne Frank’s Diary? Florida’s state Education Department rejected two new Holocaust-focused textbooks for high school classroom use. “Modern Genocides,” and a course titled “History of the Holocaust.” Is that fighting anti-Semitism? Is using the Hitler salute by an administration “advisor” fighting anti-Semitism?

Is Trump’s election campaign use of featuring ads of Hillary Clinton against a background of hundred-dollar bills and a Star of David, and another promising protection against global special interests and featuring the portraits of three Jewish financiers, Janet Yellen, George Soros, and Lloyd Blankfein fighting anti-Semitism? Both ads are typical renditions of the classic antisemitic smear of Jewish money and Jewish financiers as the sources of power behind an opponent.

Is calling demonstrators marching with swastika and Confederate flags in a Nazi-style torchlit parade, chanting the Nazi slogans “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us” at a rally in 2017, ““fine people” on “both sides” fighting anti-Semitism?

Trump declared the protesters wearing sweatshirts that said “CAMP AUSCHWITZ,” or those seen elsewhere wearing what seems to be the Proud Boy version, “6MWE” (6 Million Weren’t Enough) during the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, “political hostages” and “patriots.” He regularly dines with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers like Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. And in the run-up to the 2024 election, he proclaimed that if he lost, it would be because too many American Jews had failed to vote for him—once again a classic antisemitic tactic: if things go wrong, blame the Jews. Is this fighting anti-Semitism?

Is not calling out the arson of a Jewish governor’s home with his family sleeping inside on the first night of Passover fighting anti-Semitism? There was, of course, no official response whatsoever from our President.

In the spirit of Passover, let me recite what I see in the context of our history. So far, the concept of anti-Semitism has been used to stifle dissent, targeting pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel sentiments. It has been abused to stifle freedom of expression at our Institutions of Higher Learning in general. (For detailed and smart discussions of this listen to Timothy Snyder here, or read Elad Nehorai here.)

Polls already taken in 2021 reported that more than a quarter of all American Jews believe that Israel is an apartheid state, while 45% assert the Palestinians suffer from systematic racisms. These numbers are likely to be much higher now. Definitionally, according to the Antidefamation League, these American Jews are anti-Semitic. If the current administration would deport them for their beliefs, and Israel ensures not to allow them to live there (see the new conditions touted by BEHAR), the two countries will render fellow Jews stateless. Again.

Can’t be deported for your beliefs? May I introduce you to Mahmoud Khalil. Can’t be deported (and tortured or left to rot) as a U.S citizen? May I encourage you to listen to your President’s suggestion that he can and will do so? Here is the game plan. Can’t be deported as a declared enemy of the state for criticism of the President? Here is a legal analysis that suggests former Trump cyber security officer, Christopher Krebs, now investigated for treason for asserting that Trump lost the 2020 election, might get ready to leave the country before he ends up unretrievable in El Salvador.

Can’t be retrieved, after admittedly erroneous deportation, even if the Supreme Court demands it (or pretends to do so…)? Indeed, says the administration, oops. When the single proposed safety mechanism against wrongful deportation, Habeas Corpus, is made moot by trickery and lawlessness, we are all endangered. From purported criminals they HAVE rights to due process) to dissidents to personal retribution targets to religious classes – none will be spared.

As we recount the history around the seder table – all of this is not new. But apparently more than 60 million voters in this country were willing to install exactly that kind of ideology. It was not hidden. 6 million dead Jews made no difference. Nor does the attempted erasure of an entire other people, the Palestinians, apparently.

How do we not become complicit? Educate yourself on the issues and speak out! Understand that the core freedoms of our constitution are under attack, regardless of who you are or what you believe. Protect those who are less privileged than we still are. Defy apathy or wishful thinking that it will all work out. This is not just chaos, or economic turmoil, or a multi-pronged attack against science and humanities. This is about sending people to their death in prison camps, ordered by those with immoral inclinations and through lawless means.

To brighten the day after some dark musings (Yes, I’m back, true to form… ) here is a remarkable collaboration between a French and a British musician.

and this from my inbox: Reversible Barnes & Noble display in Georgetown this weekend. (Courtesy of Chris Geidner.)

4 Comments

The Sultan’s Turban.

– In memory of my friend, Dutch-American painter Henk Pander. You are missed. –

Henk Pander Remembering Haarlem (1922) Painted a year before his death on April 7, 2023.

***

Walk with me, and you’ll get rewarded with a fun fair ride, or a gigantic ice cream cone or a wine tasting at 11:15 in the morning on a Monday – up to you. I, of course, had come to photograph the tulips and the never disappointing sartorial choices that people make when they visit the fields.

On my way to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm, I drove by one of those traffic control machines that flash speed numbers at impatient drivers. Mine said instead: Great Job! I must have been, for once, under the speed limit, but could not help be irritated by patronizing traffic machines that are now talking to me. But I digress. Let us leave quibbles behind and indulge in beauty.

Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm South of Portland, in March 2025.

Claude Monet Tulip Fields at Sassenheim (1886)

Vincent van Gogh  Fields of Tulips (1883)

What used to be a farm with a small store where you could get cut flowers and order bulbs for next year’s planting, is now a consumer’s paradise, with a fun fair, hot air balloon rides, endless booths for food and trinkets.

You have to book tickets on line and decide on a fixed time slot for arrival, so that the acres of parking lots can be managed by the staff. But you know what: it’s fine! Let people have fun in a world that offers little of that, let the kids squeal and the adults delight in a whiff of spring and distraction from daily worries. I certainly had a blast and was grateful to hear so much laughter.

The fields were a bit behind, given the strange weather patterns of this winter, with field color concentrated only in one corner, but found in planters generously spread throughout. What was in bloom showed most frequently shapes that no longer resemble much the sultans’ turbans, etymologically the root of the word tulip, from the Turkish language.

Jacob Marrle Four Tulips: Butter Man, Nobleman, The Great Plumed One, and With the Wind. (1635)

Erkin Tulpen in blauwe Kom (2018) He is a contemporary Dutch realist painter who goes only by one name.

Yellow was definitely coming up, opening wide to a surprisingly warm morning.

Gerhard Richter Tulpen (1995)

Picked this painting despite the ongoing “let’s make them guess” style of this artist (I’m not a fan, as you know), with multiple options including a view from a moving train, fading of memories, or vision problems – which was what I thought about during my stroll. The farm had a sign out that suggested you could borrow glasses that would help overcome color blindness and help enjoy the full glory. I had to look it up, once back home, if these glasses really are able to keep what they promise – and wouldn’t you know it, only IF you have a mild version of the common red-green colorblindness (and not an absence of color receptors,) do they have an effect, enhancing contrast vision more so than color vision per se. (Ref.)

Lots of workers in the fields, picking flowers for sale, transporting goods, weeding, guarding against visitors flaunting the rules. Hard work on a still cold and damp ground.

Lots of appropriately themed garb.

But nothing beats the beauty of the blossoms – or, as a matter of fact, the breeding of new stem colors.

Max Beckmann Stillleben mit Ausblick aufs Meer  (1938)

Paula Becker Modersohn Stillleben mit Tulpen in blauem Topf. 

One tent housed a wood worker who made traditional Dutch Klompen out of poplar wood.

It made me think of the long history of Dutch colonialism, agricultural brilliance, and the 17th century tulip mania that ended in an economic crash. One thought about speculative bubbles led to another, and here I was wondering why so many young men are so attracted by crypto currency speculation, meme coins, and, for that matter, sports betting.

Anonymous The sale of tulip bulbs (17th Century)

For one, it is interesting to see that there are endless postings on the web where tulip mania and crypto speculation are compared and scathingly disentangled – the former bad, the latter good, in very LOUD voices… Of course, if you dig, you find opposing views and people quite worried about another bubble, eventually bursting and dragging the investments of young men down with them. The numbers are staggering – both in terms of how many young men are drawn to day trading, crypto and betting (relative to women and older populations,) how many of them consider themselves addicted in one form or another, and how much money they gain or loose in short amounts of time.

Roughly one in three young people has traded in or used crypto (when I can barely define what that actually is.) The new administration is helping, in terms of loosening banking restrictions, or active encouragement in investing in these kinds of currencies (Trump just yesterday introduced a new cryptocurrency, the Stablecoin.)

Listen to the expert (and this link leads to a smart, short piece on the psychology of crypto attraction):

Still, the bro-economy exploits its users’ penchant for risk. Crypto companies and betting sites do not generate value; they take cash from their users, reshuffle it, and redistribute it, while keeping a cut for themselves. Postmodern trading platforms encourage excess, making their margins on esoteric trades and superfluous volume. The casino lacks guardrails, not to benefit the bettors, but to benefit the house.

Musk and Trump have given young men something to aspire to. But their ascendance makes the stricter regulation of the bro-economy unlikely—and, in the case of crypto, makes deregulation a sure thing. Guys are about to lose billions and billions of dollars a year on apps designed to obscure risk and keep them coming back for a dopamine hit. Trump and Musk can afford to lose huge sums. Most young American men cannot.

 Jan Brueghel the Younger Allégorie de la Tulipomanie (1640)

Oh, let’s just return to the beauty out there, and not fret, for five minutes.

Claude Monet Vase of Tulips (1850)

Emil Nolde Tulpen, (ca. 1940)

And one of my favorites:

François-Emile Barraud Parrot Tulips (1931)

***

I was not the only one who found joy.

And Easter around the corner.

The pug, on the other hand, was sort of done with it…

As was he.

Careful, Bigfoot, even the curbs have tulips…

Music today are variations on a famous composition by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt who died in 2012. The piece is called Canto Ostinato (1979). Here is a version for four pianos, recorded live in 1984 and here is one I really like from 2017 at a world music festival, with incredible singing.

1 Comments

Finding Gifts.

Yesterday was a good, a surprisingly good day. I had gone to Sauvies Island, rather than giving in to fatigue, and found myself with an embarrassment of riches. It was as if all of nature conspired to wait for me and shower me with extraordinary beauty, wherever I turned. The wetlands looked like a Dutch landscape painting from the Golden Age.

The willows glowed like little lanterns against soft air.

32 egrets (I counted!) grazed in a field, occasionally flying off to a better spot for hunting.

Sandhill cranes overhead and hopping around in their elegant, if short-lived, staccato dances tugged on my heart strings – I so love these birds.

Ducks joined them.

Swans moved northwards, will I ever see the tundra again? No. That’s ok. Can’t be greedy.

Snow geese rose with a cacophony of noise when spooked by a raptor. When they eventually settled it looked like huge white blossoms tumbling down onto the ground.

And then a pair of eagles decided to show off, noisily announcing their arrival, or yelling at each other, what do I know, maybe they’re courting. Not mutually exclusive, I hear.

So, just for today, I’ll revel in nature’s gifts, leaving politics aside. In that spirit, music will also be enchanting, a new find of an L.A.- based Jazz trio. Little guy below hops in rhythm….

8 Comments
© 2026