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Science

A Light exists in Spring.

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay –

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

by Emily Dickinson (Complete Poems)

My apple tree – lucky if we get three apples after the birds and squirrels have at it.

I figured I spare those of you not interested in politics today, by putting the poem out in front, accompanied by photographs of what is currently in bloom in my garden and the local parks, a celebration of spring. Enjoy her beautiful words that capture the essence of the season: light over darkness, rebirth, an ephemeral presence of something Holy, even if you’re not attached to Sacraments.

If you’re curious why this poem came to mind and how it is connected to thoughts about what is happening around us, on the other hand, read on. I’ll try to be concise and let the various links do the talking.

Neighborhood rhododendron

The poet warns us that there are spiritual things that science cannot “overtake” or measure, but that are rather felt by humans. I have no problem with that – I am perfectly willing to consider that not all can be explained by science. Before you allow those distrusting science in general to appropriate this poet, though, let me remind you that she also wrote in Fascicle Ten: “Faith is a fine invention / For Gentlemen who see — / But Microscopes are prudent / In an Emergency!”

Science matters. We in the scientific community, but also most everyone I talk to who is not a scientist, are horrified by the current administration’s assault on all things scientific. What affects the largest number of people, the planet, really, is, of course, anything climate related. Policies weakened, rolled back, eliminated. Data collection abandoned, particularly where they’d demonstrate negative impact of climate change or industrial pollution on vulnerable populations (air quality, lead exposure), but also weather and dangerous conditions in general. Grants for research programs canceled, thousands of scientists fired for good. Research meetings prohibited, advisory committees dissolved, scientists no longer allowed to talk to “foreigners” (e.g. the research community that collaborates or the WHO.) Fire fighting and disaster mitigation curbed or canceled. Green initiatives kneecapped. Fossil fuel extraction resumed and encouraged, even in previously protected natural areas like our National Parks, and despite their impact on increased environmental pollution. Dickinson is likely spinning in her grave.

Daisies cover our meadow

Let’s look at health next. Again, thousands of employees terminated, including high ranking scientists and advisory boards. That includes the entire Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute. Brain drain, with many of those now courted by universities abroad leaving for sure. Acts instituted by an institution headed by cabinet secretary RFK Jr., who claims that ADD, ADHD, Tourette’s, Narcolepsy and Autism was unfamiliar when he was a child. ADD/ADHD was named in 1980, Tourette’s Syndrome was named in 1885, Narcolepsy was named in 1880, Autism was named in 1912…. The same person who believes a new “origins of autism” research study can be completed by September of this year.

Earlier this month, the administration formally rescinded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientific integrity policy, which had been created to protect federal scientists from political interference and retaliation. (In a timely fashion, then, note the letter sent by he acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia this week to the editor of a scientific journal, implying that the journal was partisan and asking a series of questions about how the publication protects the public from misinformation, whether it included competing viewpoints and whether it was influenced by funders or advertisers. Suppression of scientific freedom, if you don’t like the results they publish? And do we now need to add crackpot studies that spew misinformation for “fair and balanced” reporting ?)

How many blueberries will there be – taking bets.

Grants terminated (and not just that, but completely, irretrievably deleted from data bases), all references to certain vaccines prohibited. And speaking of vaccines: not only are they no longer officially recommended (causing measles and other avoidable childhood diseases to soar), or are accused of causing autism (long disproven,) they are now actively undermined in their development. Instead of approving the tweaking of existing vaccines for new variants of Covid, for example, just like the CDC did every year for flu vaccines, the pharmacological industry is now asked to run full new trials. Not only would that cost millions of dollars but also would not be possible to do for the next season when shots are most urgently needed, in fall. So the administration can claim there is no “prohibition” of vaccination, but in reality vaccination delayed is health (survival!) denied….

If you neglect research into cancer, infectious and heart diseases, as well as Alzheimers (all of whom have been defunded) how much do you actually care about public health? If you ignore the numbers on Covid infections, maternal deaths, or sexually transmitted diseases like HIV, or prevent treatment of acute drug addiction (Narcan program is canceled), many wonder if they are interested in getting rid of disease, or rather getting rid of sick people.

The magnolia is an ancient tree and on its last leg….

I forgot: food safety inspections – gone. And following $1 billion in food aid cuts by Trump, anti-hunger programs across the U.S. are struggling to feed vulnerable communities, with charities forced to replace nutritious meals with crackers, dried cranberries, and thin soup. The cutting of vital food assistance threatens the health and dignity of millions of low-income Americans.

If you prohibit mask wearing despite the scientifically demonstrate protection they provide against infectious diseases, what is your justification, particularly for vulnerable populations like the elderly and immune-compromised? When is the line crossed to applied eugenics?

The bans limiting exposure to toxic chemicals touch most facets of daily life, prohibiting everything from bisphenol in children’s products to mercury in personal care products to PFAS in food packagingand clothing. The administration is moving to kill the bans on PFAS. The location of thousands of high-risk chemical plant now shielded from public view. Car safety rules? Loosened.

Medicaid? House Republicans are considering slashing the federal government’s 90% funding match for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act — a move that could strip millions of low-income Americans of their health insurance, shifting massive costs onto states, dismantling a pillar of Obamacare.

Frontyard lilac.

Here is a site where you can find most actions taken by the administration regarding our health, sorted by month since the inauguration.

And here is a nifty general tracker that is constantly updated, where you can look at what is changing in many aspects of our daily and legal universe for yourself. In case you aren’t depressed enough yet. Every single claim made above, by the way, can also be found in the news, newspapers, journals and radio and TV programs alike. There is nothing hidden about it. I just don’t have the patience to add all the links.

I do, however, recommend reading a longer piece that made quite a bit of sense to me in explaining where the anti-science attitude originated. Hint, the claim is that it was born from an anti-governmental ideology long anchored in conservative thinking. An interesting analysis from 3 years ago by a Harvard Historian of Science and a NASA historian at CalTech.

However, what we are seeing now is going beyond that. If you undermine public health, disaster response, and climate crisis mitigation, you harm the nation you are supposed to protect. The amassing of power when you dismantle independent agencies and academic scientific research, and surround yourself with sycophants rather than experts who know what they are doing, might be the goal, but it will not lead to an advancement of the common good, the health, safety and perhaps prosperity of all of us. The few who benefit might have the illusion that they can retreat to their private islands, their luxury bunkers or another planet – but reality will catch up even with them, if only after many of us have been harmed by the denial of science and the tools it offers for our survival.

Music today is meant to cheer us all, with one of the most incredible drummers of our time – Yussef Dayes. There is light in that greenhouse – and that music – the would be familiar to Dickinson…..

Rhodies in the park.

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Of Paroxysms and Purges.

Why despair over our descent into a failed democracy, when you can worry about the odds of being hit by an asteroid instead? The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a global collaboration started in 2013 to monitor and track space objects that could impact Earth issued its first-ever Potential Asteroid Impact Notification for the asteroid, known as 2024 YR4. The football field-sized rock is estimated to have a larger than 2% chance to hit earth in 2023. (Ref.) Give or take a few percent, predictions seem to fluctuate….

There are several reasons why I am bringing up asteroids today.

The benign reason: I recently located my long lost photographs from a trip to Mexico and am eager to share the colors, so prevalent in the entire city scape, on a grey Monday morning. We’ll take cheer where we can find it! The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and caused the extinction of approximately 75% of all species, including non-avian dinosaurs, also hit in Mexico. The Chicxulub impactor struck Earth about 66 million years ago near the Yucatán Peninsula, or so I learn from ScienceAlert.

The re-assuring reason: that new celestial interloper is not assumed to be an extinction event, even though it could do extensive local damage if it would hit populated areas.

The enraging reason: will we have the relevant scientists engaged in monitoring and protection against natural phenomena in 8 year’s time, heck, six months from now? Will we have means of gathering information about scientific data, developments and warnings from official websites, unless we go to international sources outside of the U.S.?

Unless you live under a rock, you will have noticed that scientific websites are disappearing left and right, at the same time that scientists are fired en masse and also threatened not to communicate privately about the state of affairs or else. It might make you think of that movie “Don’t look up” that described the authoritarian mindset of a future US regime insisting that what you don’t see or count, doesn’t exist. That way you can exploit an un-aggrieved population until the last minute before the asteroid hits. We had an inkling of that with regard to the expressed desires by the 2016 iteration of this administration, to disappear Covid-19 statistics when 2020 arrived.

But now it has hit for real: entire organization websites, from weather predictors (NOAA weather and climate science websites have disappeared), to general health access, from reproductive rights information to vaccination information, all gone. As of last Friday, the CDC was ordered by HHS to take down all flu related campaign materials from its website – during the worst flu season in decades. Add to that the growing fear that mass vaccinations are going to be actively discouraged, if not entirely prohibited.

It is not just about public health information and appeals disappearing – whole data sets are purged, a kind of digital book burning. Science cannot proceed without building on established data. And medicine cannot treat without access to available diagnostic tools and treatment options – this is particularly evident in neonatal care: very occasionally newborn babies have unusual, hard to identify symptoms. Access to data bases at the Center for Disease Control or the National Institute for Health can provide quick answers what to expect and what to do. Can? Could. Data have been taken down, more than 8000 pages have been taken off-line, rare disease information included, leaving neo-natal units scrambling to come up with answers in a race against time.

Here is a table with just some of the disappeared or altered data sets. Not a complete sample, since vaccine info removal only happened last week.

Scientists, both on an individual basis and in organizational settings, are trying to rescue whatever data they can with downloading marathons. According to Wikipedia, the Internet Archive has been successful in archiving many health datasets. Internet Archive is also a contributor to the consortium effort of developing the End of Term Web Archive, which attempts to copy every government publication at the end of every presidential term.The Harvard Law School Library hosts the Data.gov Archive,  Harvard’s Chan School mirrored public health records. A coalition of data organizations launched the Data Rescue Project “as a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts”.

With regard to climate science, or astronomy, to get back to our asteroid projections, the End of Term Web Archive have captured snapshots of millions of government webpages and made them accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The group has done this after each administration since 2008. (Ref.) But archived data are harder to access, and eventually of no use, if they are not updated. Today’s (alarmed!) New Republic has a detailed overview of the Republican war on information (their phrasing.)

For me, the question I’d like to have answered is: why? Why deprive a nation of the public good of scientific data? I guess one could follow the money and claim that the absence of publicly available information means we have to pay for it from private providers. Disappearing the language around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by off-lining any scientific research around vulnerable population might feed into the attempt to eradicate those concepts (and people) from public discourse altogether.

But what use has the undermining of public health by enabling the spread of contagious diseases, or by preventing the diagnoses and potential cures for rare diseases? Is it a religious, anti-science bent that requires acceptance of deadly strikes? Is it eugenic lust for eradication of all who are weak, physically or economically? Is it prediction of future scarcity due to climate effects, scarcity which would be lessened by gradual depopulation? I am not saying it is any of these, I am seriously searching for answers, because the purges of both scientists and scientific data make no economic sense whatsoever for the country as a whole, once a true public health crisis emerges. So “follow the money” simply doesn’t work here. I welcome suggestions!

Music today has the appropriate theme: Prayer Central…. a movement from Terry Riley’s ˆSun Rings” with the Kronos Quartett.

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And Now from the Interesting Person Department…

Last week I was looking something up at the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. It is a treasure trove for scientists, artists, and really anyone interested in natural history, with hundreds of thousands of manuscripts available to peruse for free. It is a worldwide consortium, seated at the Smithsonian in D.C., with universities and national libraries collaborating to make their collections accessible to all.

What was supposed to be a relatively quick search for quasi-abstract images I wanted to learn from for a new project, turned out be a day of my life when I chanced on the biography of a most impressive naturalist that I simply HAD to read. Here is how I fell into the rabbit hole:

I had come to look at the Naturalist’s Miscellany (1789) by George Shaw, which has images of natural objects drawn from life, with Latin and English text explaining what people knew about them then. (Today’s images that are not mushrooms, are from this book.) Many of the engravings found here are spectacular. (In fact, on really bad days, going to this site and just looking at pictures instead of doomscrolling has been my rescue more than once.) After downloading what I thought were the most interesting prints, I decided to browse a bit for mushrooms, since the last blog had all these photographs I had taken of fungi. This is what popped up.

I had come upon a treatise called Brasilische Pilzblumen, (Brazilian Mushroomflowers) written in 1895 by a mycologist named Alfred Möller for a book Botanical Notes from the Tropics. He spent almost three years in Brazil, visiting his uncle who had emigrated from Germany decades earlier. Möller’s contribution to science was a detailed exploration of leaf cutter ants and their symbiotic relationship with certain fungi, which they literally farm, while living inside of them. The fungal agriculture involves planting, cultivating, and harvesting Basidiomycota for food by the ants. (Attina).

He took the photographs in 1890!

They add nutrients from fresh plant material, remove dead tissue and shelter them from predators, while consuming parts of the fungi as food, exclusively, and using fibers from the fungi to reinforce their nests. Ants contribute to protecting the plant against herbivores, fungal pathogens and competing plants. As the fungi thrive, so do the ants. Before we remain too much in awe of this mutualism, however, let’s note that the defoliating leaf cutter ants inflict widespread forest and agricultural damage in tropical regions due to their abundance. Nowadays, countries use satellite imagery and drones to detect their presence in tropical forests to fight decimated their numbers before they irreparably harm the trees.

Möller, it turns out, eventually got around to writing the biography of this uncle he visited, Fritz Müller (1822 – 1897), and this is where it gets fascinating. Well, for me, anyhow, since this was someone radically true to his beliefs no matter the cost, interested in everything under the sun, and never giving up, no matter how burdened by unimaginable losses. (The full text of the biography (1905) in German can be read here. An American retelling based on the biography is available here.)

Here is the short version. Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller is born into a rectory in Germany, one of many siblings, who develops a talent for science and mathematics and goes to university to become a pharmacist, eventually studying medicine. By the time he is done with his studies, he has joined the revolutionary youths of those years around 1848, and has become a fervent atheist, cutting him off from his religious parents and most of his siblings, as well as a woman he intended to marry. Atheism prevents him from swearing an oath to receive his university diploma, making employment difficult, so he decides to travel to Brazil where a German colony is built near Santa Catarina. He lives with the daughter of a poor farmhand and their first child dies at age three. The second child is one of two (out of 12 infants) who survive the ocean crossing to Brazil threatened by rampant malnutrition and diseases. Another thirteen children die of the measles on this trip as well.

In Brazil, the young family builds a hut in the jungle, loses almost everything to floods, to poisonous snakes, to attacks by pumas and indigenous tribes who the Germans have colonially displaced, with disease taking the lives of several of his 10 children. His most beloved daughter later commits suicide during a visit in Germany as a young adult. Müller relentlessly provides for his family with physical labor, income as a doctor with no access to necessary medicines, and eventual teaching gigs that are at the mercy of the Jesuits and the Brazilian government that is reported to have shafted him multiple times.

All the while he observes, records, analyzes and describes everything under the sun – mollusks and seashells, orchids, butterflies, you name it. He publishes, he corresponds, he reads the scientific literature when his means allow him to order the journals, and he draws exquisite images of what he finds in nature. Soon he gets a reputation in Europe, receives honorary doctorates, and begins a life long correspondence with Darwin, who calls him the “prince of observers” using many of Müller’s suggestions and reports to bolster his arguments about evolutionary processes. In fact, Darwin feels so indebted to him that he offers a substantial sum of money when once again natural disaster has destroyed much of Müller’s household and small library, which the latter politely refuses. He does accept, however, the scientific community’s gift of sending journal and literature for free after the disastrous flood.

In 1878 he publishes his observations on the evolutionary advantage of certain colorations in butterflies: mimicry as a defense mechanism against predators. “Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and sharing common predators, have come to mimic each other’s honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit.” Not only did he observe the functional advantages of coloration, but he developed one of the first ever mathematical models of frequency-dependent selection in biology. (Ref.) Darwinists ran with it.

So why do I go on about this, other than being happy to share something fascinating? I think it is a good reminder that openness to new ideas can produce amazing results. Ok, we probably all agree on that. But Müller also modeled resistance: his passion for something, the natural world in his case, and his engaging with the puzzle of evolution, enabled him to survive the worst hardships and personal losses someone can face. His correspondence reveals over and over again how the drive to understand the world we live in superseded the grief over what this world had in store for him.

It helps me to get a grip on those bad days where I feel overwhelmed. Pick and engage the things that interest you most, and for a while there will be no room for worry. Or rage. Or fear. Even if it is just a temporary relief, it might produce something that goes beyond just the personal realm, even for the many of us who are not the kind of genius he clearly was. Read an obscure biography! Feel better in no time.

***

After writing this yesterday, this morning I received an essay by Brian Klaas from my subscription list. It picks up on the topic of resilience, resonating with one’s environment (and even ant colonies,) late in the piece, which is generally about the dangers of optimization in contemporary cultures. The perfect long read , spelling out the dynamics of adaptation and the inherent risks. I would have liked though, if the author had discussed how it cannot be the duty of individuals caught in organizations that profit off optimization, to change from the bottom up – it would harm their livelihoods and functioning within the work place. It has to come from the top down, or as a synchronized movement by many like-minded people. But the essay provides a LOT of food for thought for young people trying to balance life and careers.

Music from Brazil. If you want a full album by Pauletti, I recommend (on Spotify) Ritual das Cordas.

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Game On.

Walk with me in this first week of the New Year. Grab your boots, though. My neighborhood park is rain-drenched and muddy – good for sliding, good for fungi, some of which shine with the wetness in reflective beauty, good for the drought-stressed environment.

I had a fun experience this morning even before I entered the woods. During my routine perusal of the news, I got hooked by a Merriam-Webster game asking people to look at a GIF – one of those gimmicks that show things in motion – that displayed words in fast succession. The idea was to take a random screenshot and whatever word you captured would be the lead for the year. Well, folks, I got UPLIFTING.

Screenshot

And just to show how my brain works, I thought “maybe that is the word they trickily provide for everyone to help us enter 2025 a bit more hopefully.” So I played the game again to test my hypothesis, and got – TOXIC.

There you have it – I will report on toxic events this year, but I will do it with the goal to uplift us all by utilizing our grief to be a catalyst for change. Game on.

Of course I’ll report on inherently uplifting things as well, often connected to science and the way activism has managed to protect us and/or our environment. Here are a few highlights from 2024:

Conservation Wins:

Close to home, salmon returned to Klamath river, after dams came down. Gray whale populations rebounded, as evidenced by a 33% increase in migration counts. In Everett, Washington, voters approved a ballot initiative that grants the Snohomish River watershed the rights to exist, regenerate and flourish. City residents, agencies and organizations can now sue on behalf of the watershed, and any recovered damages will be used to restore the ecosystem. Also in Washington, voters upheld the 2021 Climate Commitment Act by voting no on Initiative 2117.

Further East and South: Barbed-wire fences, maiming and killing wildlife, are removed or replaced with friendlier barries for hundred of miles in Wyoming and at the Montana/Idaho border. Wolf populations boom in California, and the first pack has been introduced to Colorado. California has introduced “pop-up” wetlands for migrating birds, by paying central valley rice farmers to flood their fields earlier in the fall and let them stay flooded longer in the spring.

Health Breakthroughs:

Looks like scientists found the next best thing to an HIV vaccine: the new drug Lenacapavir can prevent infection for up to 6 months after receiving the shot. 630.000 people still die of AIDS-related illness every single year. There are also ever more efficient vaccines against malaria and cervical cancer on the market – a child dies every minute of the former and 350.000 women globally every year of the latter. (It remains to be seen how the vaccine battle will unfold under the new administration in the U.S., of course. Anti-vaxxer sentiment is growing.)

Climate Change Modifications:

Solar power is advancing at a brisk clip, across the world. Washers, dryers, furnaces, water heaters, and stoves are becoming more energy efficient and also getting cheaper. Diesel-fuel powered school busses are starting to be dropped for EV busses across the country (there are half a million school busses on the road in this country…) It will not only be better for the environment but also save costs. People are realizing that small personal steps – eating 10% less meat, re-wilding your garden as just 2 examples – can have a cumulative impact.

(Long read for this week about personal contributions: What If We Get it Right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. ((Here is an 8 minute listen of an Ari Shapiro interview with the author, that provides the gist.)) Great mix of essays and poetry.)

And then there is “Chonkus.” Researchers isolated a new microorganism, cyanobacterium UTEX 3222, nicknamed “Chonkus,” for its ability to consume carbon dioxide. If it could be genetically engineered, “this single-celled organism’s natural quirks could become supercharged into a low-waste carbon capture system” to fight climate change. More about Chonkus here. A possibility, not yet a reality, but hope for a future.

***

Any toxic part, after these uplifting news?

Unfortunately, yes. Repression of climate and environmental protest is intensifying across the globe. (Climate protests refer to general demands about environmental protection, environmental protest is often the local resistance towards damaging projects.) The details can be read here. But the upshot of research looking at the reaction to global protest movements that have surged over the last years, given the proximal climate catastrophes experienced by so many, is this:

  • A large number of anti-protests laws have been introduced since 2019. “Anti-protest laws may give the police more powers to stop protest, introduce new criminal offences, increase sentence lengths for existing offences, or give policy impunity when harming protesters.”
  • Protest is criminalized and brought to the courts. This includes applying terrorism charges to non-violent, direct action groups. Criminalization also implies that corporations can take out injunctions against protesters.
  • Harsher Policing. “This stretches from stopping and searching to surveillance, arrests, violence, infiltration and threatening activists. The policing of activists is carried out not just by state actors like police and armed forces, but also private actors including private security, organised crime and corporations.”
  • In some countries environmental activists are killed, countries that include Brazil, the Philippines, Peru and India. In Brazil, most murders are carried out by organised crime groups while in Peru, it is the police force.

Seen in the middle of the park. secured in case someone wants to carry a tool heavy box over a mile to the next road?

The clock is ticking, and we are reaching or already have reached tipping points with regard to how our planet and all those living on it can be saved. Change requires political action, which so far, with few exceptions, has been lacking on a grand scale. By criminalizing protesters, you shift the focus from politics to “crime,” allowing you to continue with the old ways, committing irreparable harm.

The canaries in the coal mine? Why, insurance corporations, who are refusing to insure against fires, floods and other climate-related damages in ever larger numbers. They know the danger is real, as is the unwillingness of corporations and governments alike to do the necessary things about it.

“A conservative estimate of the homeowner insurance gap is $1.6 trillion in uncovered risks. That’s mostly being borne by people who are relatively poor or live in acknowledged flood and fire zones. Everyone in the insurance industry expects that gap to grow, as risks metastasize and are priced into policies. Insurance eventually becomes too expensive for many to afford, if it’s even still available. For homeowners, skyrocketing premiums are too high. But insurers worry they can’t charge enough to keep up with increasing risk. The climate crisis is already rendering entire communities and even regions uninsurable.

Uninsurable properties are also often unlendable. A 2023 study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the overvaluation of homes measured only by their exposure to floods alone was as high as $237 billion.” And people forcibly or voluntarily moving to safer regions are driving up home prices, driving out those without means to stay in relatively climate stable places. (Ref. This link is actually to one of the most dispiriting essays on climate change I’ve come across recently, discussing the price of potential political (in)action. Be warned.)

Let’s end with something uplifting: the creeks are filling, the common hazel is blossoming and the sparrows are looking for love! And we can still detoxify with music: today Barber’s Adagio for Strings Op.11.

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Random Thoughts while standing on a Land Spit.

I had never been to Point Reyes before. Driving back home from L.A., it seemed a worthwhile destination. The road up to the landmark lighthouse winds through endless, bare headlands occasionally interrupted by dairy farms. Cows dot the windy landscape, as do black-tailed deer. The peninsula, part of the Salinian Block transported north by the Andreas Fault, was once part of the Tehachapi Mountains, located 350 miles to the south. Since 1962, the region is a National Seashore Park, with some of the land leased back to ranching operations that coexist with tourists flocking to the landmarks and beaches.

I was there on a clear day, able to photograph the light house without having to climb down and then up again the 300 or so steps – during the usual dense fog, you are apparently unable to see it from the top of the stairs. According to a sign at the small visitor center, it is celebrating its 125th birthday. Its construction must have been a mind-boggling task.

Point Reyes juts out about ten miles (16 km) into the ocean, and the views of the Pacific and the long-stretched beaches are awe-inspiring. I did not see elephant seals, known to appear on those shores, but plenty of cormorants huddling on little rock islands, and ravens finding shelter against the wind.

A few cypress trees on the way up to the top are testimony to the force of the wind and nature’s resilience – look at the angle at which they continue to survive.

Resilience was also on my mind when looking at the concrete dome built into the granite rocks adjacent to the foot path. It is part of an elaborate water collection system, since there are no natural springs on the Point. The dome covers a cylindrical, concrete cistern that catches rain water run-off from the hillsides and natural rock formations. By true coincidence, I had just read a fascinating science report on how the Pantheon in Rome was built, the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. It has been indestructible since 126 AD, while more modern concrete structures crumble all around us. MIT researchers recently solved the mystery of little white aggregates suffusing the cement, long believed to be impurities sustained during the cement mixing process: they are a form of quicklime that ancient engineers intentionally added to the cement mix, enabling it to heal itself, blocking tiny cracks that could develop into large fissures, which would eventually burst the structure.

“As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread.”

Adopting ancient technological knowledge would not only provide for more durable structures. As it turns out, their way of mixing the ingredients required half of the temperatures currently used to produce ordinary cement. IF we could apply this approach commercially, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions of this process by about 70 % – a huge number, if you consider that cement is one of the most used substances in the world and responsible for 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Dome over the Point Reyes cistern.

Resilience: Maybe we could all be tiny white lime casts in the fraying societal fabric around us, healing small cracks before they become agents of complete destruction. Individual acts of resilience or resistance to malign forces accumulating to stabilization of the whole. Believing in the wisdom of ancient creators rather than chasing the modern technology at all cost, as a start.

A woman can dream.

Point Reyes, as it turns out, is also an intermittent rescue location for lost birds. As I learned here, some birds, know as vagrants, get deviated during migration and seek shelter on land far from their usual routes. Scientists have revised their early assumptions that these birds are disoriented, flying into random directions. Instead, they seem to be misoriented, consistently oriented, but in the wrong (mirror image) orientation.

“The result of mirror-image misorientation is that, if a species’ normal route is, say, 40 degrees east of due south, the misoriented individuals orient 40 degrees west of due south and keep going, eventually reaching the coast of California.

But mirror-image misorientation does not affect birds in a uniform manner; otherwise, the tendency would have been eliminated by natural selection. Rather, experts have concluded, it works in tandem with wind drift, a second critical influence on vagrancy in California. If northeasterly winds occur just when a misoriented bird sets off, this individual will be blown in a southwesterly direction and, rather than making a course correction, the bird simply continues. “

Some of these birds will continue South and never make it to their location, eventually becoming exhausted, drowning in the ocean. But some species, palm warblers, white-throated sparrows, and swamp sparrows, have established wintering populations in Northern California. So there is testimony to resilience as well – given a bit of luck with external circumstances, you might survive being different from the norm required by migration coordinates, eventually flourishing in newly established patterns. Another lesson to take to heart, I suppose, in the coming storms pushing us adrift. Just stay out of the way of the hawks on high.

Mozart to the rescue…. here is his Requiem in D-Minor.

And speaking of catastrophic storms: As I had promised, here is my first link to an occasional long read, an essay by Yale historian Timothy Snyder that pulls no punches about a twice impeached, adjudicated rapist, business fraud and felon, who is above the law in this country.

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Bear Divide

A friend sent a poem this week that had me thinking ever since. I was riveted by the way it palpably conveys loss, the way it captures how pain can suddenly emerge in the most mundane situations, and the way it contains phrases that are incredibly well forged, “a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature sound.”

There Are Plenty of Angels,
She Said in the LADIES

in the rest area LADIES on the road to 
Terre Haute. Plenty of angels, she said again.
But not one, I’ve heard, not a single one
will mission to the fade as it does to the darkness.
A stall door latched. Her bag got hung.
Seen that sign, back west a ways?
The one on the warehouse, in a movie marquee?
Blessed Hope, it says. Blessed Hope, she said.
It’s meant to be a sign from heaven,
but hope’s, I’d say, more a human invention,
like freeways, she said. Funny word, she said.
They call ’em highways when you pay to ride ’em.
Mama’s buried off one in Missouri. Had her
forty years and forty days on earth.
And the day we did it was a noisy day,
all out-o’-doors like a day at the beach:
the tearin’ down sounds of the sun and the wind,
clouds and trees, grass and stones,
a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature
nature sound. Mother never did care much
for nature. Enjoyed a sunset well enough
Those shameless ones like colored candy,
those ones can look like wall-to-wall
in a Cineplex foyer: pinks and purples, reds, she said.
It was so noisy, anyway, that day
even the birds shut up for once.
Or got their singin’ drownded out.
But I could hear when the box hit bottom:
Get on with it, is what it sounded like to me—
She had dried her hands on a paper towel—
I’m done here.

by Kathy Fagan
 
From The Paris Review, Issue no. 129 (Winter 1993)

I experienced a noticeably notice-me-I’m-nature nature view a few weeks ago, and was thinking that my own mother and paternal grandfather loved nature, as do my children and now the next generation who partook in the views of that day. Somehow that shared affinity softens loss, since you can always recall the joyful moments when you were inseparably linked in awe.

That morning we drove from Altadena, CA north into the San Gabriel mountains. Clouds of lifting mist weaved in and out of the valleys, giving the scenery a mysterious, fairy-tale look.

Ceanothus covered the hills in differing shades of blue, occasionally punctuated by yellow tree poppies that looked like sun confetti.

Our goal was the Bear Divide, a location on the Pacific Flyway, the north-south migratory route that connects Alaska to Patagonia for innumerable migratory birds. The San Gabriels provide both rest and food for the flocks, who tend to seek the specific passage way at the location that we drove to.

The corridor which allows passage at relatively high altitudes, was discovered by chance in the spring of 2016. Brought to the attention of the folks at the Moore Lab at Occidental College, a systematic monitoring of the migratory flocks started soon after. (Everything I learned, including the statistics, I found here.) In 2023 they counted 53,511 birds of 140 species from February to May, (the return trip for the birds seems to happen somewhere else) with some mornings as many as 20.000 birds recorded. The sheer variety is stunning.

The lab uses the help of citizen scientists, local birdwatchers and volunteers, to help with the observations. As it turned out, we chanced on a group of volunteers with the USFS who were netting and banding birds the very morning we arrived.

The nets are erected in the mornings and inspected every thirty minutes. They catch birds without harming them, who are then banded with a very light metal ring around a leg that provides numbers for scientists all over the world to report on flight routes, durations, survival.

The data reveal helpful information about birds’ responses to changes in environmental conditions and ecological shifts across the world. If that made me feel good, something else lifted my soul even more: seeing son and toddler rejoice beyond the sheer fascination with the procedures, sensing their appreciation of the world around us (if only lifting every single pebble or bug on the path as behooves a 14 month-old) reminded me of my own happiness during nature walks with my mother or my Opa. Little is lost. Much lives on.

Orange crowned warbler

Highway restrooms: I no longer fear you! When hope is met, who cares if it’s a human invention!

Music today from the Bowerbird Collective. The video alone is worth it.

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Pulling Strings.

What would you say are the most important tools harnessed by early mankind? Fire? The Wheel? Agriculture? Does string even come to mind?

It did not, for me, until I embarked on a bit of reading about the history of string after I was stupefied by an archeological find that dates some 35.000 years back, a tool that allowed a small group of people working together to produce meters and meters of strong rope in about 10 minutes.

Single threads are not particularly useful. Twist them into yarn, though, or make yarn into strands, or strands into string and then ropes, and you have something that powerfully affects your interactions with the world. Our idioms tell the tale: learn the ropes, spin a yarn, hang by a thread, tie the knot, thread the needle, string along, cut the cord, moral fibre, loose the thread – where was I?

“A string can cut, choke, and trip; it can also link, bandage, and reel. String makes it possible to sew, to shoot an arrow, to strum a chord. It’s difficult to think of an aspect of human culture that is not laced through with some form of string or rope; it has helped us develop shelter, clothing, agriculture, weaponry, art, mathematics, and oral hygiene. Without string, our ancestors could not have domesticated horses and cattle or efficiently plowed the earth to grow crops. If not for rope, the great stone monuments of the world—Stonehenge, the Pyramids at Giza, the moai of Easter Island—would still be recumbent. In a fiberless world, the age of naval exploration would never have happened; early light bulbs would have lacked suitable filaments; the pendulum would never have inspired advances in physics and timekeeping.” (Ref.)

We lace our shoes with string, we get sewn up on the operating table with string, our clothes are woven from twisted fibers, and much of what is tied in knots depends on cordage. Hunting or camping involves plenty of ropes. String has been used as a form of mathematical expression by indigenous people in South America thousands of years ago. A system of knots and tassels hanging from a central strand would record census data and tax information. The language of modern technology refers to strings and threads as well – string theory, web-sites, links, Threads (e.g. the replacement site harboring all of us fleeing from formerly known as Twitter.)

One of the biggest and most consequential uses of string were, of course, the ropes and woven sails that enabled naval exploration: centuries of warfare, colonialism, but also economic trade and scientific exploration depended on cordage that made those boats functional. It was not just the rigging of sails. You also need rope to tow ships, and, to this day, tie even modern ships in harbor. You need hoist cables for cranes, winches, and dumbwaiters as well as woven fenders.

The history books tied rope making to early inventions and practices in Egypt, between 2000 and 1750 BCE. But archeologists knew of much earlier use by indigenous people of ready-made threads, like grasses, vines and pliable roots. Eventually people discovered that you can twist the fibers extracted from plants and animals into ropes, with pliable plants like agave, coconut, cotton, willow, and pond reeds producing strong fibers.

Here is the finding that blew my mind: archeologists unearthed tools made in the Paleolithic, some 35.000 – 40.000 years ago, that were used to manufacture rope. Excavated from a cave in southwest Germany, these are ivory batons, about 8 inches long, that have four holes containing 6 precisely carved, sharp spiral grooves.

The scientists experimented with replicas of the tools (called a Lochstab in German) to see what could possibly be processed with them.

“Individual holes of the Lochstab did not prove effective for pretreating sinew, flax, nettles, and hemp, but we achieved positive results for cattail, linden, and willow. Cattail was particularly applicable because the Lochstab could help to remove the starch for consumption by crushing the outer harder surface of the stems while separating the fibers for cordage. The use of cattail for making rope is well documented ethnographically, and archaeological accounts exist, in particular for later periods. Cattail is highly useful for food, cordage, and basketry.

The tool’s relevance lies in making thicker, stronger rope consisting of two to four strands. We twisted and fed bundles of cattail leaves through the holes. The holes help to maintain a regular thickness of the strands and facilitate the addition of new material necessary for making long stretches of rope. The grooves help to break down the leaves and orient the fibers while maintaining the torsion needed for rope making. The four-holed tool is then pulled with regular speed over the strands . Behind the tool, the strands combine automatically into a rope as a result of their twisting tension. The number of holes used determines the thickness of the rope. Because one person is needed to twist and maintain tension on each of the strands and one to operate the Lochstab, three to five people would be needed to use a four-holed Lochstab for rope making. Our experiments using cattail and four or five participants typically produced 5 m of strong and supple rope in 10 min.”

What fascinates me is not just that they figured out this tool per se. Using it also required social cooperation, communication and shared goals, bonding the people to each other and thus gaining an advantage over groups that had less developed technology and reciprocal labor. Shared labor led to in-group cohesion, augmenting survival. 35.000 years ago!

Here are some musical references to skipping rope – a childhood activity I preferred much over tug-of-war, wouldn’t you know it. There is Ukrainian composer Viktor Kosenko‘s 24 Children pieces that include jumping rope, Khatchaturian‘s Skipping rope, there is the Children’s Suite Op. 9 by Ding-Shande, really a sweet piece also referring to jumprope, and a piece for harp by Carlos Salzedo that includes Skipping Rope.

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Trauma handed down through Generations

We will never know the exact number of children traumatized in today’s world, with its wars, environmental catastrophes caused by climate change, hunger, disease, and violence empowered by entrenched racist and caste systems.

Artists have taken on the task of drawing our attention to the plight of these children in ways that make it possible to confront the horrors without being fatigued by pure statistic or scared by sensation-seeking news reports. One of the artists I most admire in this regard is JR (yes, he goes by initials only) who has created work that registers emotionally, makes us think about facts, and also generates income that he is donating to funds helping children afflicted by war.

An early series of his was Déplacé·e·s, a collection of super large images of refugee children that were shown in places that housed refuges who had fled from war, famine or social instability. Aerial photographs of 170-foot-long banners—carried by groups of people around the camp or a city—depicted the full image of a child. The project generated a lot of awareness about how many millions of refugees are currently on the move or settled under horrifying circumstances, in many cases.

Currently, the artist is exhibiting a different way of displaying photographs of kids in refugee camps across Rwanda, Ukraine, Greece, Mauritania and Columbia, among others.  Les Enfants d’Ouranos shows images that are photographic negatives transferred directly on wood, producing ghostly figures in a reversal of light and dark. The children, now anonymous silhouettes standing in for all of the displaced rather than an individual child, are bright, luminous, carriers of hope. Ouranos was the Greek God of the sky, creator of the Titans, and I wonder if his fatherly role, alluded to in the exhibition title, is that of punisher or protector. These kids are seen primarily running – away from something or towards something? Did this primordial God unleash the disasters, or is he in charge of shelter? Some of the work can be seen at the facade of the Parrish Art Museum in Waterville, NY, until the end of May. (All images are work of the artist.)

I want to talk today a little bit about what we know of what might happen when these children who lived through traumatic events have children of their own. My field of psychology and also the area of psychiatry has seen an increasing research focus over the last 40 years on how trauma is handed down through the generations. I will relate the story at the most basic level, leaving out most of the specific scientific details, because it matters to me just to get the idea across. For an in-depth overview, go here. That article will also refer you to many other sources, for investigations of specific traumas or ways of transmission.)

What we know: children of survivors of traumatic experiences are more likely to have behavioral or mental and physical health problems than children of parents, otherwise matched for age, education, financial status etc., who were spared tragedy in their lives. These can be externalizing problems such as hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, and rule violation, or internalizing problems that are characterized by worry, anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal. They can be bodily ailments like immune system deficiencies, asthma, autism-spectrum diseases, obesity or the propensity towards diabetes and heart disease, presumed to be modulated by the way stress affects the second and third generation.

The original traumatic experiences that were studied in humans range from the Holocaust, the Japanese Internment experience, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian and Armenian genocide, European and African hunger epidemics, slavery, the participation in Israel’s war in 1973, Palestinian displacement, to the exposure of an individual to repeated, serious childhood abuse or being victim to a sexual crime. Animal models have also been used to push our scientific knowledge further. Many researchers agreed that some of the effects of trauma on the next generation (intergenerational trauma) or even subsequent generations (transgenerational trauma) could be related to how generation 1’s experiences affected their own behavior, subsequent adjustment problems, including addiction, violence or suicidal ideation, as well as their parenting styles, aloof or overprotective, leading to problems with attachment for generation 2.

Yet scientists were curious if something else was going on in addition to what happened in the direct, day-by-day interactions between survivors and their children, interactions that of course shaped the lived experience of the children. This triggered a flurry of research into epigenetics, the study of how external factors can change or affect the ways our genes work.

Remember that we inherit our parents’ genes, with the DNA from the male carried in the sperm, and the DNA from the female carried in the egg. When sperm and egg merge they form a single cell, which then multiplies to supply us with all the different cells required to live. Throughout this process, every single cell in your body has the same genes, the same DNA. However, in each cell, some of the genes are activated and some are not; that’s how a single configuration of genes, shared by every one of your cells, can function differently in different locations and at different times. What’s at stake here is called “gene expression” – with the pattern of gene expression in your liver cells making sure those cells function as liver cells should, with the pattern of expression in your nerve cells making sure neurons do neuron things, and so on. One catalogue of genes (i.e., one “genome”) throughout, but different expressions of that genome governing the function of the DNA in each individual cell.

What governs gene expression? Basically, it’s the immediate chemical environment of that specific cell, which in turn is governed by a variety of other factors, including factors in your environment. In other words, your environment has a powerful influence on gene expression, and so your environment has a powerful influence on how your genetic material operates.

But now we add two further steps: First, it’s crucial that, when the DNA is passed to the next generation (through sperm and egg), the DNA molecules that are passed onward are (like any DNA molecules) molecules with a particular pattern of gene expression. In other words, in the DNA that’s passed to your offspring, some of the genes are currently “switched on,” and some of the genes currently “switched off.” In this way, the pattern of your experiences (which – again –  influences gene expression) can literally alter the specifics of the genetic pattern you pass on to your offspring. 

Second, trauma turns out to be one of the experiences that matters for gene expression, basically changing how someone’s DNA functions. In particular, trauma changes the expression of genes important for glucocorticoid function – a body chemical that’s crucial for how someone responds to stress. The result? The person (because of this change in glucocorticoids) may be overreactive to stress, and may have unhealthy cortisol levels.

Putting these pieces together: Trauma influences gene expression, and (part of) the pattern of gene expression is transmitted to your children, through your DNA. As a result, parents who have expressed trauma literally change the biology of their children. And, again, this is a purely biological, genetic transmission, in addition to whatever ways the behavior of (previously traumatized?) parents can alter the lived experience of the children raised by those parents.

I am not a biologist, so a lot of the details go beyond my comprehension. But I did learn that multiple variables correlate with different outcomes. So, for example, both maternal and paternal trauma can affect gene expression that then gets inherited by the next generation. It matters how old survivors were at the time of trauma, it matters what gestational phase the fetus is in, if the trauma occurs during the pregnancy and not before. Boys and girls are differently affected. Some studies (with very small sample sizes, so caution) say that the effects of gene expression are even more detrimental in the 3rd compared to the 2nd generation.

What conclusions are drawn? “At the present time, the field has not sufficiently grappled with the meaning of the intergenerational transmission of trauma effects for the offspring. It could be argued that this transmission is indicative of increased vulnerability. On the other hand, this transmission may extend the adaptive capacities of offspring through a biological preparation for adverse circumstances similar to those encountered by the parent. Ultimately, the potential utility, and possible stability, of an environmentally induced trait transmitted to an offspring will depend on the offspring’s environmental context.”(Ref.)

Honestly, that seems a bit bland and falsely comforting by not confronting the fact that so many trauma survivors are part of a multi-generational system. When you think about the historical backdrop of Jews’ experiences across time in this world, or that of Blacks, or the inhabitants of the Republic of Congo, or large numbers of Ukrainians, or Palestinians who have been displaced, killed and oppressed for many, many generations, increased vulnerability through a lineage of multiple survivors is likely to trump adaptive capacity.

We know how war and famine have immediate horrifying effects for those experiencing them. Captivity, whether as a hostage, a prisoner of war, or a human being fenced in a concentration camp or a strip of land with closed borders, with death looming above you or raining down, will do irrevocable, life-long damage to those who survive. Starvation, whether through natural famines, or the intentional withholding of food, during Stalin’s purges of Ukraine or the Israeli war cabinet’s decision to cut off food to the Gazan population, will change the health status of several generations down the line.

Terror and war are, as we now know, generating wounds for those in the future, generations of children who will be affected by the suffering of their parents and grandparents and great grandparents, with gene expression turned on or off in ways detrimental to their health. It will potentially feed into new cycles of violence, perpetuating trauma.

Music today is a contemporary song about refugee children.

Also a modernist’s reaction to war: Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen.

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The full story

Today I am offering a selection of favorite photographs from New Mexico. Reading a few things related to the new film that was hyped this weekend, Oppenheimer, led me to peruse the archives.. (I did not go to Los Alamos, so no footage from there.)

I have not seen Oppenheimer despite being quite interested – I have to be patient until it streams. So, my own review has to wait, but I do suggest you check out an author who I usually completely agree with, Greg Olear from Prevail (one of my all time favorite writers.) Here is the link to his assessment of the film.

And here are some choice words by another author about the depiction of nuclear testing in NM, with a side of the story apparently not fully, if at all, covered in the movie. Here is Alisa Lynn Valdes, a journalist and film producer from Albuquerque, NM:

“This quote, from the @nytimes review of the OPPENHEIMER film: “He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near- desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico” It was inhabited by Hispanos. They were given less than 24 hr to leave. Their farms bulldozed.

Many of those families had been on the same land for centuries. The Oppenheimer’s crew literally shot all their livestock through the head and bulldozed them. People fled on foot with nowhere to go. Land rich, money poor. Their land seized by the government.

All of the Hispano NM men who were displaced by the labs later were hired to work with beryllium by Oppenheimer. The white men got protective gear. The Hispano men did not. The Hispano men all died of berylliosis. These were US citizens, folks. Their land taken, animals killed, farms bulldozed, forced to work for the people who took everything from them, and killed by those
people.

For 20 years I have been trying to sell a film based on the story of Loyda Martinez, a remarkable whistleblower whose family’s land was seized for the labs. Her dad was one of the men who died from beryllium exposure at the labs. She later went to work there too.
She is a computer whiz who rose to the top of her department at Los Alamos. Then she started digging for info on the Hispano men the labs killed, like her father. She filed a class action lawsuit, and won. The first Hispano governor of NM, Bill Richardson, appointed Loyda to run the state’s human rights commission. She then filed a second class-action against Los Alamos, on behalf of women scientists not paid fairly.

But, no. We want more films about the “complex and troubled” “heroic” white men, who conducted their GENIUS in a “virtually unpopulated” place. These are ALL lies. This is mythology in service to white supremacy and the military industrial complex, masquerading as “nuanced.” Because of what the labs did to the local Hispano people in northern NM, our communities now have the highest rates of heroin overdose deaths in the nation. The generational trauma and forced poverty is outrageous. We need the real stories of
Oppenheimer to be told.”

We are talking tens of thousands of people who lived within a 50 mile radius of the test site. These downwinders are still seeking justice after the federal government’s exposure of citizens to nuclear fallout 78 years ago. The Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, founded in 2005 by a victim descendant Tina Cordova and others, is trying to expand a government program, RECA, to compensate for the damage done. (The link above brings you to an informative website).

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), passed in 1990, came after decades of above-ground testing in the American West and Pacific Islands, but did not acknowledge the victims from the NM site. It is also about to expire. A planned amendment that includes new populations and longer pay-out schedules is currently on shaky feet, being deemed ” too expensive.” In three decades, RECA has paid out $2.6 billion dollars to more than 40,000 people. That’s a fraction of a percent of the $634 billion the federal government plans to spend on nuclear weapons and development in the next decade, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. (Ref.)

Cordova about the Oppenheimer film: “When they came here to develop the Manhattan Project, they invaded our lands and our lives, and they treated us like collateral damage. When they came here to make the movie, they took advantage of our tax incentives. They invaded our lands and our lives, and they walked away.”

In the meantime, there is always the book on which the movie was based, which has its own fascinating story. American Prometheus was co-authored by two men, Sherwin and Bird, after the former had a serious case of writer’s block or inability to stop extensive research into the topic, the other in dire need of a job and happy to push the project to completion. It took about 25 years. Martin Sherwin died a couple of years ago. Kai Bird was interviewed at length last week here. The tome will tie me over until the movie becomes available on streaming sites!

Music had to be John Adam’s Dr. Atomic even though I don’t like it.

Alternatively let’s listen to Master’s of War by Dylan. Building shelters won’t help….


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Breasts and Beyond.

“When you find out that you are ill, your priorities are shattered. One moment you are in a boat, and the next moment you are in the water…. Once you’ve experienced being mortally ill and you’ve come back, you have learned something that’s worth knowing.” – Susan Sontag

***

THESE DAYS I seem to meet survivors wherever I turn. I can’t decide whether that’s a good or a bad thing, good for the outcome, bad for the frequency of affliction. Yet every cancer survivor who I’ve encountered, or for that matter anyone diagnosed with any life-threatening illness, can relate to Sontag’s words. They were uttered in an interview in 1988 when she had successfully navigated a return to the living from metastatic breast cancer, and before she was diagnosed a decade later with an unrelated uterine cancer. Ultimately, the treatment required to fight these cancers led to yet another one, t-MDS or therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome, a then untreatable variant of leukemia. She died in 2004.

You are in the boat one moment, and the next you are in the water. The possibility of drowning looms large, but there is still a chance to swim, if you are lucky, strong, determined – and were taught to swim in the first place.

I was thinking of that during my visit with Laura Ross-Paul at her studio last week, meeting the artist for the first time to talk about her upcoming exhibition, The BrEaST Show, at The Nine Gallery (inside Blue Sky Center for Photographic Arts.) Ross-Paul found herself in the water in 2003, diagnosed with breast cancer, and after intense research opted for what was then experimental cancer treatment, being the very first breast cancer patient in the U.S. to undergo a procedure called cryo-ablation. She has shared what she learned ever since she’s come back on land, as an activist as well as an artist. It’s worthwhile knowledge for the rest of us as well, and the exhibition will provide the perfect forum to get informed in addition to see a painter yield color with admirable abandon.

Depending on the type of breast cancer, a person’s surgical options are mastectomy (a full removal of the breast,) lumpectomy (removal of a small part that contains the tumor,) and and now cryo-ablation, a surgical procedure that involves inserting a stainless steel probe directly into the tumor. The thin probe carries cold argon gas down an outer tube to the sealed tip of the probe, then the gas expands as it returns through an inner return tube to the gas delivery system. This makes the probe tip extremely cold, which freezes the surrounding tissue into a controlled, spherical shape with safe margins around the tumor to insure that the entire tumor is killed. (You might have encountered a version of this procedure during a visit to the dermatologist, where they use cryo-ablation to freeze off some of the undesirable growth on your skin.)

There are clear advantages to cryosurgery, breast preservation looming large for many women and/or their partners (which turns out to be something of a conundrum: how to proceed if the husband wants breast preservation at all cost, and the wife would like to avoid experimental procedures in the interest of the tried and true, the knife?) Other benefits come in multiple forms: you avoid major surgery with all the potential problems associated with it. Damage to surrounding tissues is limited. It can be used in conjunction with other cancer therapies, including hormone therapies and targeted immunotherapy which activates our body’s own defenses against the cancer. It is much cheaper (although not all insurance policies cover it) and can be done in a relatively quick in and out procedure, often with local anesthesia only, not requiring a hospital stay. And there is some evidence to suggest that the dead cancer cells, absorbed into the body, stimulate the immune system to recognize cancer on further occasions.

The big question, like for any new procedure, is, of course, does it work?

The answer is as you’d expect: it depends. The great news first (great, because it applies to all cancer types, not just a subset, thus helping the largest number of people): it is an extremely effective palliative approach for patients who cannot be cured of the diseases, but who can receive pain relief by destroying large tumors through freezing, or any tumors in locations that cannot be reached by any other surgical means, when the cancer has spread to the bones or the liver. It can buy time for patients who are too old or otherwise not able to survive conventional surgery.

The good news next: it is an option to cure you from cancer, rid you of the scourge, IF certain conditions apply. On averaged, the best candidates for this method are patients whose tumors are smaller than 15 mm, hormone receptor–positive, and HER2-negative, and have NOT metastasized into the lymph system. In other words, if you have a low-risk, non-aggressive cancer that is detected early in its first stages, cryo-ablation is ensuring survival as well as preserving your breast in full. Many clinics and cancer centers in the U.S. are offering the procedure these days, with China having embraced it full scale and developed specific immunotherapies in conjunction with the surgery, as Ross-Paul told me.

There seem to be few side effects, if any; according to the artist who also received the immunotherapy, she was advised to forgo inoculations for other diseases, which might be a problem in the age of pandemics, or age-related vulnerability to other scourges like shingles and pneumonia. There are certainly research data that show a problem for patients with active cancers undergoing immunotherapy who also received the Covid-shots: it can lead to averse reactions, including a flare of tumor growth.

***

ON MY WAY HOME I was searching for a term that best encapsulated my first impressions of the artist. Spirited, curious, plucky, driven – none seemed to fit the bill, until it dawned on me: undaunted.

As a patient, undaunted. As a pioneer subject for medical research, undaunted. As a pedagogue employing art as social practice, undaunted. And last but not least, as a painter, undaunted. Patient, pioneer, pedagogue, painter: colloquially expressed, the woman has balls.

The pun, of course, applies to a recurring motif in the work to be exhibited as well. Balls, spheres, round configurations appear in the paintings as symbols linking to breasts but also the spheres of frozen tissues that saved her life as well as her physical integrity. Pearls of wisdom rain down from various sages emblematic of her learning curve during an extensive period of research to find a way to retain unblemished breasts while staying alive, her husband, award-winning author Alex Paul, and her children foremost on her mind, since she herself was orphaned at a young age.

Balls are on a dress, when exploring the possibilities of many treatment options, trying the freezing bubbles on for size. Balls are stacking up during treatment, patient now enveloped by the argon bubbles of the dress, and balls can be freely juggled, shedding the illness, leaving an impression of joyous return to a more playful life.

Spheres also appear on the cervid companion, for Ross-Paul a symbol of the innocence that is lost when you encounter existential dread. For me it evoked more of a “deer in headlight” reaction, the fear that paralyzes you at times if living with cancer. Wouldn’t want to embrace that. But then again, I’m also on the war path with these creatures who devour my beloved garden in their nightly visits, so not a neutral observer. Real-life Bambis be gone!

The accumulated work gently guides you through the stages of treatment selection and process, with a focus on the importance of collecting data, having a radar for possibilities, making decisions based on scientific information (for me an example of being “taught how to swim” that I mentioned earlier – it takes an educated person aware of resources and able to discern the quality of information.) This is really the part where Ross-Paul’s educational activism comes to the fore – visual pointers so often more effective than a complex written literature on an unfamiliar topic. She communicates ideas that, in turn, allow you to ask questions of your doctor. This is in parallel to a book she co-authored with her husband and her Doctor, Peter Littrup, M.D., which explains the journey in all of its details.

The painterly work extends to “art as social practice,” a domaine that involves participatory engagement between community and artist, when we look at the many portraits she painted in collaboration with sitters who had opted for the experimental treatment, connecting from across the world. In some ways I am reminded of earlier projects that crossed lines between art and education, if on a different scale. Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago’s Womanhouse in Los Angeles—which was part art installation, part educational facility, part performance space in the 1970s, comes to mind, given its focus on women’s concerns. Portland State University, by the way, has an increasingly recognized Art and Social Practice MFA program, with an archive established in 2018, well worth exploring.

***

“There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every colour holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a person who has no art in him, colours are colours, tones tones…and that is all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to hell, just go unnoticed.” – Emil Nolde, from Emil Nolde: Die Farben sind meine Noten.

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WHATEVER YOU THINK of Emil Nolde, one of the pioneers of German Expressionism, his work with color reigns supreme. (I have written about his anti-Semitism, his Nazi-affin politics and the incredible research by art historians that went into unraveling the clash between political identity and art of the painter here.) At times his colors do not only sing, they scream. No wonder, that one of the largest retrospectives of his work in 2018 at the National Galleries of Scotland was titled Colour is Life, while a 2019 one at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin, Germany was called Emil Nolde. A German Legend. The Artist during the Nazi Regime.

The vibrancy and levels of saturation of many of Ross-Paul’s paintings remind me of his work, using electrifying color as a means of communication rather than a tool for verisimilitude. Her exhibits, if you peruse the show in order, will transition from more muted colors to a riotous slate that is the perfect carrier for the emotional palette the artist intends to invoke. When I said earlier that she is an an undaunted painter, I was motivated by the artist’s generous use of pink. Pink on the surface of the paintings, but also on the sides of the canvasses which are embedded in some sort of reflective frames that emanate a kind of rosy halo.

Pink is a curious choice for a breast cancer survivor who is also a progressive activist. Before I explain, let me say that I ended up liking the pink more so than I had anticipated, or maybe I adored the attitude of an artist who ignores symbolism when it interferes with her sheer love of color and her desire to convey some hope on the horizon. Pink, after all, reflects dawn, the beginning of a new day, not a gentle color slide into the night.

Pink is a color associated with breast cancer since the early 1990s, when Evelyn Lauder (of Estée Lauder) established the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, with pink ribbons becoming a universal symbol for the disease. Of course, the disease had been branded before – the American Cancer Society and Imperial Chemical Industries (now part of AstraZeneca, which makes several breast cancer drugs), launched Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1985, originally intended to encourage women to get regular mammograms.

What was meant to help address the rising number of cancer diagnoses and deaths (over 4 million people have a history of breast cancer in the U.S. alone, with 43.700 expected to die from breast cancer in 2023 in this country,) has, alas, become an exercise in pinkwashing. One of the definitions goes along these lines:

Pinkwasher: (pink’-wah-sher) noun. A company or organization that claims to care about breast cancer by promoting a pink ribbon product, but at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products containing chemicals that are linked to the disease. (Ref.)

It is desire for profit, not compassion or education that drives the association between products with pink ribbons and inspirational quotes, particularly during October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. Some companies donate a portion of the income to the cause. Others disappear with the proceeds. We are asked to donate with total uncertainty if the funds arrive at their destination: the patients.

Some of the inspirational words, however, ring true enough that they deserve to be put up on the fridge, where my assorted collection of wisdom resides these days, for the most part.

Breast cancer is a word, not a sentence.

Actually it’s 2 words. As is undaunted painter, who already in 2003 upon diagnosis decided to take her fate into her own hands and acknowledged that her breast mattered and a mutilation of her body was unacceptable, ceteris paribus where survival was concerned. That goes beyond breasts and balls, into the realm of knowing yourself and being willing to fight for something truly existential. It was certainly the message I took home from her work that reinforced my own beliefs about living with cancer. There is no one way, no right way, no indisputable way of dealing with what ails you. Just like grief (and plenty of that to go around with the loss of body parts, or decimation of life expectancy, or simply energy levels that will never resume the status quo), you have to find an approach that honors who you are and how your values manage to survive. Otherwise you might as well jump off a cliff, instead into a life net, provided by whatever therapeutic approach you choose.

“It’s unclear where she’ll land, but she shows trust that she’ll land alright.” – Laura Ross-Paul, July 17, 2003

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The BrEaST Show
Laura Ross-Paul

JULY 6-29, 2023
Opening: Thursday, July 6
5:00-7:30pm

NINE Gallery (inside Blue Sky Gallery)
122 NW 8th Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97209
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