I am not the praying kind, but you can hear me occasionally mumbling to the universe in general, sometimes begging, sometimes announcing gratitude. Last week I could not help but whisper to the trees around me, ” I am so, so grateful.”
It was on a hike with my son in the Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, located in the Oakland Hills of the East Bay region of San Francisco. A skyline path around the rim of the volcano offers breathtaking views. A bit later you descend into a forest with ancient redwood trees, brooks meandering, occasionally forming small pools. Monarch butterflies flit around, in January! Eventually you climb back up, a steep, steep ascent through stands of eucalyptus trees, those best smelling of all invasive plants.
I could not help but think back to another time when we walked under eucalyptus trees in a park not far from the current one. Walk is a generous word – my son moved forwards on crutches with superhuman determination to get back on his feet. Finally out of a wheelchair after a catastrophic paragliding accident on the cliffs of the Pacific, multiple surgeries for broken back and other shattered bones behind him, he was set on regaining his mobility. Then, we lasted for probably 20 minutes, my silent prayer, “Let him walk pain free again.”
Now, we hiked for almost 2 hours, the only thing confining the length of the hike or slowing his step being his huffing and puffing mother.
There are temptations that parents face when confronting a suffering child: (false) promises of improvement (when you have no clue if, or when, or how complete healing might happen) and comparisons to one’s own list of life’s disaster and ways of overcoming them. Either one might make you feel better, but betray and/or burden the child. I don’t know if or how much I yielded to those temptations 6 years back. The months spent with him during recovery are a blur for the most part, hard memories tentative and quickly pushed away when reemerging. But I do know that I tried not to yield.
I was surprised when I came across the poem below, by a poet whose intellect, politics and endurance I admire. It features a mother squarely beseeching, no, scolding her son not to take the easy way out, given that she herself is persisting in her struggles. Here was a parent not shy to admonish, to lay out her exertions as a demand that they would not be in vain.
Likely these lines should not be read as announcing a debt (worst kind of parenting), but read as a model (hopeful kind of parenting.) Not as an obligation, but as a desire to convey strength.
Life will hold other challenges for our children, and maybe one day I will not bet able to shut my mouth and instead utter the last line of Hughes’ poem not exactly under my breath. “And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”
It will come from love, though, and the unending desire to protect your own from harm. However many times I have seen this young phoenix rising from the ashes, I still have written in my heart: “Don’t you fall now.”
A prayer, not a demand.
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners, And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
A friend reminded me of this poem, fit for Martin Luther King Day. Even more meaningful in this year of 2026, when powerful forces try to turn the clock back on history. There is no question in my mind that our response to the attempts to weaken or abolish the achievements of both, the Civil Rights Movement, and peace keeping organizations across the globe, are well served by Angelou’s reminders below.
We can rise, if we summon the courage.
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.
What to write for the first column of the New Year, a year that started with fresh horrors on top of the old ones? I was determined about one thing: it should be something positive, following the oft mentioned abolitionist Mariama Kaba’s instructions toward hope as a discipline, a practice. I wanted content that inspired hope, then, before landing on all the evil currently unleashed onto our world. I also wanted something close to my main interests of science, nature, art and politics. The latter two won out, with a little help from my friends.
Two of them seeded the idea: one gave me a book about artists and resistance under fascism, as a Hanukkah present. The other pointed out Mamdani’s inauguration as new Mayor of New York City. It contained a plethora of cultural references linked to artists and art that fight for a better future or strengthens the belief that all of us can be agents towards that goal.
I will focus today on the inauguration because it affects us here and now in our own cultural milieu. The general history of artists resisting fascism will take more time to learn about and digest, will return to it at some later point. Not that I understood all of the contemporary inauguration references either. I had to dig to make sense of some of them, derived from and directed at a younger generation that has been successfully awakened to participate in politics. Happy to share this new knowledge!
(Snapshots are from NYC some years back. The people make the city in all its glorious diversity.)
First, though, let’s look at some of the more familiar appearances during the inauguration. Actor and LGTBQ rights activist Javier Muñoz sang the national anthem. He is best known for starring and co-creating the role of “Alexander Hamilton” in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. That musical was, of course, about the American Revolution and Hamilton’s role in it, casting founding father roles with non-white actors. The creator and the producer of Hamilton recently canceled the show in reaction to the Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center. It was scheduled to run between March 3 and April 26, 2026, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Mandy Patinkin sang “Over the Rainbow” along with a Staten Island elementary school chorus. It is a song of wanting and longing for a better future, written by a Jewish composer and a Jewish lyricist. Composer Harold Arlen was born in Buffalo, NY in 1905, to a Jewish cantor. Lyricist Yip Harburg (Isidore Hochberg) was born in 1896 on the Lower Eastside, to Yiddish speaking Orthodox Jews who had emigrated from Russia. Harburg was a close friend of Ira Gershwin since his schooldays and, according to his son, a “democratic socialist, [and] sworn challenger of all tyranny against the people”. He championed racial, sexual and gender equality as well as union politics, and was an ardent critic of high society and religion. Harburg’s song Brother, can you spare a dime is almost as familiar as Over the Rainbow. Both artists are definitely cultural touchstones for a demand for a more just world.
I found the lyrics in the Jewish Women Archives, spelling out the 1911 poem by Jewish writer, editor and Jungian analyst James Oppenheim. It was based on a famous line by Rose Schneiderman, a Jewish Labor Union Leader.
Oppenheim was the founder and editor of The Seven Arts, a progressive magazine declaring “it was is not a magazine for artists, but an expression of artists for the community.” It published, among others, Theodore Dreiser, Robert Frost, Kahlil Gibran, D. H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, and Paul Rosenfeld.
For her part, Rose Schneiderman was instrumental in the fight for unions and parity for women. She worked and organized from the tender age of 13, became vice president of the New York Women’s Trade Union League and she helped organize the Uprising of the 20,000 for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1909. Her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt and their conversations on labor issues led to Franklin Delano Roosevelent appointing Schneiderman in 1933 to the National Labor Advisory Board, where she fought to include domestic workers in social security and argued for wage parity for women workers.(Ref.) The Bread and Roses reference pertains to the need for subsistence (bread), but also the need for other support (roses,) including better schools, recreational facilities, and professional networks for trade union women.
The theme of inclusivity and fighting for a better future was central to the inaugural poem Proof by Cornelius Eady, reciting his poem here. He dedicated it to all of his students currently particularly affected by the hatred and revulsion expressed by the administration for all that is deemed “DEI.” The poet ends with “proof” that our hopes can become reality if we pursue large goals unimpeded b lack of imagination.
Proof.
You have to imagine it. Who said you were too dark, too large, too queer, too loud? Who said you were too poor, too strange, too fat?
You have to imagine it. Who said you must keep quiet? Who heard your story, then rolled their eyes? Who tried to change your name to invisible?
You’ve got to imagine. Who heard your name and refused to pronounce it. Who checked their watch and said, “Not now.”
James Baldwin wrote, “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.”
New York City of invention, roiling town, refresher and renewer. New York City of the real will. The canyons whisper in a hundred tongues.
New York, where your lucky self waits for your arrival, Where there is always soil for your root.
This is our time. The taste of us, the spice of us, the colors and the rhythms and the beats of us, In the echo of our ancestors who made certain we know who we are.
City of insistence. City of resistance.
You have to imagine an army that wins without firing a bullet, A joy that wears down the rock of “no,” Up from insults, Up from blocked doors, Up from trick bags, Up from fear, Up from shame, Up from the way it was done before.
You have to imagine that space they said wasn’t yours. That time they said you’d never own. The invisible city lit on its way.
And finally, a cultural reference by the new Mayor himself. Mamdani cited the rapper Jadakiss (of the trio LOX.) “We will, in the words of Jason Terrance Phillips, better known as Jadakiss or J to the Muah, be “outside.”
What does that mean? I learned that the phrase “I’m outside,” “means having street credibility and being present in one’s community, often used to assert authenticity and connection to one’s roots. It became a cultural catchphrase representing a commitment to being engaged and visible in the real world.” (Ref.)
Being present in our community: how is that for a start to 2026, a resolution that focuses on us being in this together rather than alone. It certainly has helped a progressive candidate unafraid to confront the Goliath(s) of structural obstacles, racist individuals and institutions, malignant narcissists, billionaires guarding their turfs, and corrupt agencies he now has to run, to secure a position of power. How much he will be able to transform his proposals into reality will depend on how much support he can garner along the way. He faces formidable resistance against his plans that serve the interests of the many, rather than the profits of the few.
Here is Mamdani’s full speech after being sworn in as Mayor.
For me, the selections of these particular songs and poems signified two important points: people have lived through difficult times in this country, whether the plight of European (and other) immigrants, the starvation of farming families in the dustbowl, the workers without rights, the women as second class citizens, the non-White population exposed to Jim Crow. Hard times arch across history, not exempting the present. Importantly, though, these pieces of art speak to meaning or even victories born from activism – progress has happened, through labor and union movements, through the civil rights movement, through women liberation movements.
Yes, the powers that be ardently want to turn back the clock. But prior generations have modeled for us that we can fight for our rights and win. The vast coalition supporting the new Mayor of New York did well to remind us of that. Onwards!
Music is a Bread and Roses version sung by Joan Baez chosen for the video commentary on women’s existence.
Walk with me. Today the universe sent a graffiti message to find the birds, so we shall.
It will be the last stroll of 2025, a year full of challenges and sorrows, but also joy from unanticipated quarters.
Rather than listing the highs and lows of 2025 as do so many other retrospectives, I want to focus on one thing: let us continue to fight indifference in 2026. I know I have harped on this all year long, but it is important enough to reiterate in this last YDP of the year.
Wood Duck
*
There are many meanings of being indifferent. Here are some gleaned from the Thesaurus:
not mattering one way or another (what others think is altogether indifferent to them.)
of no importance or value one way or another ( they talked about indifferent things.)
being neither excessive or inadequate (hills of indifferent size.)
being neither good or bad (in the sense of mediocre work.)
marked by no special like or dislike (indifferent about the task they were given.)
marked by lack of interest or concern (indifferent to suffering or injustice.)
It is, as you likely anticipated, the last option I am after, the ongoing struggle with apathy.
Kestrel
*
I do not want to be unconcerned, incurious, aloof, detached, disinterested or all the other synonyms that come to mind (or appear on the Thesaurus page, as the case may be.)
I don’t want ANYONE to be that way, because we are in this TOGETHER, in need of the strength of collective action.
What is “This” I am referring to, you ask? I am thinking of a world that is coming apart at the seams, in need of accelerated stitching to prevent dissolution, moral as much as physical.
A world where some not only hold on to existing inequality, but think it is a G-d-given right, with a biblically defined hierarchy of White over all darker shades, male over female, rich over poor. A world that desires inequality to continue or even be expanded.
A world where climate change, spread of disease and death are hastened by anti-science policies, removal of aid, eugenics, greed and war.
A world where the tools of promoting differentiated thinking – education, a free press, mechanisms to increase differences of opinion, including free speech – are systematically removed and broken.
A world where diversity is despised instead of celebrated.
Indifference will make it possible for this world to exist, something we should oppose at all cost. It might be an uphill struggle, but, as Miles Davis reminds us in today’s music, “So What?”
Crow eating mouse….
***
Grateful that a friend sent out the poem below. As so often with Szymborska, she uses the first person singular approach to establish a direct connection to the reader. (I had posted another of her poems like that here.) SHE has all those preferences, what about yours? SHE questions established truths and mainstream narratives, what about you? SHE made choices, isn’t it your turn?
Not only does she invite us into a mindset that alternates between the small and the large, interior and exterior worlds, the philosophical and the mundane. She reminds us that we have agency – we can make up our minds about what we believe and care about, instead of being indifferent. We have options, even if the powers that be try to convince us that we have run out of them (or our state of overwhelmed fatigue insinuates the same). There are possibilities, if we only think a little harder, accept being governed by reason, avoid being stymied by borrowing trouble.
Meadow Lark. A rare find at this time of year.
What this poem provides for me is the permission to contain sometimes contradictory multitudes, as long as I care and make choices, all of which is in my power. More importantly, it makes me aware of the need for action to follow from belief, given that she lists numerous morally consequential preferences that don’t exist in a void, but require positioning.
Let us remind each other of this in 2026.
Possibilities
I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything. I prefer exceptions. I prefer to leave early. I prefer talking to doctors about something else. I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations. I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries that can be celebrated every day. I prefer moralists who promise me nothing. I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind. I prefer the earth in civvies. I prefer conquered to conquering countries. I prefer having some reservations. I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages. I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves. I prefer dogs with uncropped tails. I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark. I prefer desk drawers. I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here to many things I’ve also left unsaid. I prefer zeroes on the loose to those lined up behind a cipher. I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars. I prefer to knock on wood. I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.
“A Third Way: Between mute submission and blind hate – I choose the third way. I am ṣāmid. – Raja Shehadeh, A Journal of Life in the Westbank (1982).
I am writing this on the last day of Hanukkah, the Jewish celebration of a miracle during ancient times of war (between two Jewish factions, no less.) It is a minor holiday for us, in contrast to Christmas for others, coming up in a few days. The promise of peace through a newly born savior is central to Christianity, even though one might wonder about the seeds of conflict already inherent in the Christmas story per announcement in Luke 2:14 : “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Favoring one set of people over others is a recipe for conflict, in my opinion, and currying favor in order to be in the desirable in-group has often implied exclusion of others. But I digress.
Today’s thoughts are about peace, the absence thereof, and the steadfastness of those who try to dream about a just world amidst war and violence, including the anti-Semitic mass murder in Australia last week and the ongoing genocidal actions in Gaza for the last 2 years.
There is a term in Arabic, Sumud, which means “steadfastness” or “steadfast perseverance”. In one interpretation, it encompasses everyday nonviolent resistance against injustice imposed on you. Sumud is an alternative to and rejection of passive submission to oppression and dispossession. It became an important aspect of Palestinian existence under Israeli occupation, summarized early by Edward Said as work which “becomes a form of elementary resistance, a way of turning presence into small-scale obduracy.” (Ref.)
Folks at the Arab Educational Institute in Bethlehem defined the sumud concept as, “on the one hand, [relating] to a vertical dimension, ‘standing strong’ on the land, having deep roots. On the other hand”, sumud indicates “a horizontal time dimension – an attitude of patience and persistence, of not giving up”, despite the odds. (Ref.) I chose photographs of roots and trees for this reason today.
A person who practices sumud is called ṣāmid, and I can think of no better example right now than Ahmed “Muin” Abu Amsha, a musician, sound engineer, composer, and music educator from Gaza. He has steadily worked with children under the onslaught of bombs and drones, teaching them music that incorporated the sounds of the drones, making something terrifying into something beautiful. He insists that music is just as important as finding shelter and food, a steadfast focus on something more than war. His choir, Gaza Birds Singing, has provided meaning for so many youths living under excruciating existential threat. Watch for yourself.
Sumud is also the title of a new, short film by documentary film maker Jan Haaken, featuring a Portland anesthesiologist who regularly travels to Gaza to provide assistance to a medical system under systematic attack, and Omar El Akkad, a now Portland-based author whose most recent book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, won the 2025 National Book Award for non-fiction.
Truth be told, I had to force myself to watch these 27 minutes, given how overwhelmed I feel by my mix of emotions every time I think of Gaza. The sorrow over the Israeli victims of the Hamas attacks; the subsequent killing, maiming and psychological torture of Palestinian men, women and children for two full years. The horrid and completely counterproductive Israeli response, with our tax dollars supporting an indiscriminate war against civilians. The lack of will of the political establishment around the world to put an end to the slaughter. The undeniable fact that the current “cease fire” is a sham, with more than 360 Palestinians, mostly kids and the elderly, killed since it was announced 10 weeks ago. I just want to hide my head in the sand.
I did watch, though, and learned a lot, much of it new to me, including the report of the anesthesiologist on the systematic nature of the injuries they encountered with victims all waiting in lines at food distribution centers. But much of the film also gave me renewed hope that there are people out there who can and will help, with their courage, their wisdom, their insights and longing for justice, to move ahead. These are, of course, people who need us, in return, to join for collective actions that might have an impact on ending the war. In an earlier print interview, author Omar El Akkad outlined his observations and recommended action, asking: “How does one finish the sentence: ‘It is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead, but …’”
Pondering this sentence might be a first step towards overcoming the tendency to avoid facing what is going on in the Middle East, a tendency otherwise fueled by the need to keep one’s peace of mind somewhat intact in the face of the onslaught of bad news in our world. If we want to be agents of peace, we likely need to leave our clinging to peace of mind behind. Period. It’s our turn to embrace the concept of steadfastness, not as cultural appropriation but as an expression of solidarity with victims everywhere.
If you are interested in screening this documentary with a group of friends or colleagues for free, you can go to the website. In the lower left corner is a red square where you can apply for a free link to see the film.
***
People who decry the extent of Palestinian suffering are constantly challenged to justify themselves, particularly so if they are Jewish. Anyone standing in solidarity with Palestinians is tagged as suspicious, as if support for this devastated population necessarily involves anti-Semitism. This challenge, though, is incoherent, and there should be no obstacle to asserting two simple concepts at once: a respect for Jewish lives and a respect for Palestinian lives; a rejection of anti-Semitism, and an abhorrence of the indiscriminate killings of Gazan civilians. Why do I have to defend myself for these simple, humanistic statements? Why do I have to justify them and defend myself against the bizarre notion that these views are anti-Semitic?
Just look at the table of contents of the current issue of Jewish Currents, the award-winning quarterly of politics, culture, and ideas. There you will find a plethora of reports and analyses authored by people raising their voices against those who have distorted all discussions of the war in Gaza and the future for a Palestinian homeland, deliberately (and falsely) equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and falsely condemning calls for Palestinians statehood as anti-Semitic. Amid the horrors of the reality in Gaza, it is dismaying that so much time and energy are now spent defending against how the notion of anti-Semitism is instrumentalized to push through political projects that are rooted in very different considerations.
A poignant summary comes from Will Saletan at The Bulwark, noting how supporters of contemporary Zionism, ever more exclusionary and territorially expansive, play into the hands of anti-Semitic terrorists like the Bondi Beach murderers.
“Supporters of Israel have shifted their position again. Any endorsement of Palestinian statehood, they contend, is an invitation to antisemitic violence.
This is a false and dangerous argument. If you tell people that accepting Palestinian statehood is tantamount to promoting or provoking the murder of Jews, you’re erasing the nuances that make coexistence possible. You’re conflating Palestinian autonomy with opposition to Israel. You’re conflating opposition to Israel with hostility to Jews. And you’re conflating hostility to Jews with murder.
All of these conflations serve the interests of antisemitic terrorists. Their goal is to polarize the issue. They want to equate supporting Palestine with killing Jews. Prominent supporters of Israel are now, in effect, endorsing that equation.“
***
I started with references to the sound of drones, and I will end with another one.
Let me close with a poem by Mosab Abu Toha, who received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary with essays published in the New Yorker this year (2025). His first volume of poems won the American Book Award, the Palestine Book Award and Arrowsmith Press’s 2023 Derek Walcott Poetry Prize.
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear
For Alicia M. Quesnel, MD
I When you open my ear, touch it gently. My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside. Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.
You may encounter songs in Arabic, poems in English I recite to myself, or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.
When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear. Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.
II The drone’s buzzing sound, the roar of an F-16, the screams of bombs falling on houses, on fields, and on bodies, of rockets flying away— rid my small ear canal of them all.
Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision. Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up. Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours, my doctor, day and night.
BY MOSAB ABU TOHA
Music today is more by the Gaza Birds Singing – here, here and here.
The entire album, Wings over Wire, can be found on Bandcamp for a pittance. All proceeds for purchase go to the Gaza Bird project.
The essay below was written before the horrific events of the last days, the mass shootings at Brown University and Bondi Beach, the stabbing of a righteous couple. I wondered this morning, if it would be frivolous to post it. But it ends with thoughts of having to create light when there is none, reminders of making a world shine during difficult circumstances. I think that core message is what we need. So here goes….
_____________________________
Hah! The universe tells me to think, not mope.
I had barely started to whine about the fact that I miss live singing, both as a participant and a listener, when, within 24 hours, interesting pieces about singing popped up in my news feed, in publications as diverse as The Guardian, Nature and High Country News.
It began with listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, familiar from childhood. In retrospect, it seems as if we sang not just in this season but all the time in the 50s and 60s – in class rooms, at services, at demonstrations, at parties, on school field trips in the busses, and eventually at live performances. Belting out the newest hits from the Beatles or the Kinks, Procul Harum, the Stones, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Traffic, Jonny Halliday and Gilbert Bécaud, you name it. Informed by listening to Radio Caroline or Radio Luxembourg under the covers on contraband tiny transistor radios, strictly prohibited in my boarding school. No matter how much I loathed being stashed there, when we sang, a sense of community took over.
(Portraits today of people of that – my – generation. I always wonder what someone’s musical taste might be, why I stereotype many of them as (Grateful)Deadheads, and if I’ll ever find a match to my idiosyncratic musical preferences.)
Later I joined choirs, until chemo wrecked my voice; then regularly attended choral concerts, until the Covid pandemic shut down my ability to be in close proximity to large crowds. These days what goes for singing is croaking along to my Bandcamp collection in the privacy of my car on solo rides to my nature outings. Oh well. Could be worse.
I was squarely reminded of that, when I read about people who have made it their business to sing to people on their deathbeds. The assumption is that it calms the dying, and allows them to cross the threshold, accompanied by soft, slow melodies and harmonies sung by up to 4 practiced people who travel to homes and hospices. Importantly, they only sing their own compositions, assuming that more familiar tunes would “keep” you from letting go, clinging to or (re)living the past. Hmmm.
I am firmly convinced that we have no agency in the choice of timing our exit, as I have discussed previously, and so nothing we do or don’t do, will have any influence. But would a music lover feel more comfortable with simplistic, if sweet tunes by these threshold choirs, than the familiar sounds of, say, a Mahler or Schubert song cycle? For that matter, would one feel comfortable with strangers in the room (though still better than the traveling harpists so prevalent in local hospitals…)? You can read all about the choirs here.
***
As it turns out, not surprisingly, hard times, punctuated by traumatic events like 9/11 or the pandemic, have an impact on songs. Interesting research, recently published in Nature, analyzed 50 years of song development (1973 – 2023) for the lyrics of songs on the US Hot 100 Billboards. (Heads up for sampling bias: certain genres are not reflected in these charts, from rap to early punk, which was censured, just think Ramones or Sex Pistols. Reggae and Latin music was extremely popular but did not make it into these charts since at the time based in club culture.)
But for the general popular music we see clear trends: across time, themes of stress and negativity increased, while simultaneously the lyrics got less and less complex. Across the same 50 years, rates of depression and anxiety increased, as did the negative tone in the media and fiction books, amidst recent drops in IQ and PISA test scores.
Preferences in music consumption could mirror what is going on in the surrounding culture and one can speculate about what emotional regulation we choose in response to what is happening around us. We can select music that aligns with our current affective state (stressed), or we can listen to music that brings us closer to a goal state (happy) – in short, we can regulate our moods by choosing particular musical coping mechanisms. The research here was interested if that happens in ways we can predict for society as a whole, particularly during periods of traumatic events.
As it turns out the prevalent mood congruent trends were NOT amplified during 9/11 or Covid; in other words, people did not listen more to upsetting music when they felt particularly frightened. If anything, people chose to listen to more positive music instead, modulating their mood perhaps in ways that allowed them to make it through these hard times.
The complexity of lyrics – or absence thereof – is currently affected by yet another variable: the arrival of AI on the scene. Here is Timothy Snyder’s description of the AI renditions of classic Christmas songs, musical score intact, lyrics changed, as experienced in a coffee shop just a few days ago. In his inimitable prose:
My guess would be that someone, somewhere, entered an instruction to generate winter and Christmas songs that avoided “controversial” subjects such as divine and human love. And so we get mush. In a reverse sublimation, the sacred becomes slop. …
The carols bear a message about love, one that that no machine will understand, and that those who profit from the machine perhaps do not want us to understand. Love begins humbly, takes risks, recognizes the other, ends in pain, returns as song. And begins humbly again.
As always, his essay is worth a quick read.
***
Let’s end on a more positive note, though, keying in on A or C major (preferred keys by Earth, Wind and Fire, one of my favorites, as it turns out.)
I found the poem below about singing songs that are also centered on love, incredibly perceptive as well as motivating. The poet Valencia Robin was a recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, her poems have appeared in a wide-range of journals, anthologies and podcasts including The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Poetry Daily. Here she cites a quite familiar line from The Essential Earth Wind and Fire, album 2002, track 9 All About Love, a song that inspired the poem:
“And if there ain’t no beauty, you gotta make some beauty,”
Have Mercy,
Listen to me Y’all……
Ars Poetica
I woke up singing my favorite song as a kid and I mean, really singing, catching myself all morning, asking myself what it means, a reminder perhaps that we can be strange — we wake, we sing, we wonder why we’re singing, we realize how seldom we have a song in us anymore, remember how we used to play/be Aretha and Anita or Earth, Wind and Fire — Maurice bringing it, sending us on one of the few oldies where the words ‘right on’ don’t sound silly, standing in the middle of the room giving our all to the olive-green sofa and wood paneling, mama at work — we even had his little laugh down and when’s the last time we believed what we were saying so completely, all that 70’s positivity, all that gospel pretending to be the devil’s music — and is that what ruined us, why we’re so bad at real life — practically screaming the last line, And if there ain’t no beauty, you gotta make some beauty, deciding without even knowing we’d decided that that — Lord help us — was the dream.
It’s still the dream. And about time, that poems titled Ars Poetica don’t just give a nod to Horace (he wrote the very first poem with that title about the craft of writing poetry), but acknowledge the likes of Maurice White whose poetic lyrics motivated and uplifted generations.
And now excuse me while I slink off to hum this and grab the camera to make some beauty out of a dreary winter landscape. You can come along, if you sing!
Looking at the wondrous waterfalls and an old, abandoned house at the White River in WA earlier this fall, I was reminded of Bishop’s poem Song for the Rainy Season. The poem’s short lines and enjambment establish a kind of breathless rhythm, matching my breathless climb back up from the river, once I had explored the ruins. The poet describes the beauty of a wet landscape with a home embedded within, in the tropical forests of Brazil where she lived for some 15 years. The rainy season has arrived here in the Pacific Northwest and adjacent High Desert regions as well, and before you rush to wish for a return of the dry, read the 6th stanza. Some of the magic and coloring will all dry up….
Song for the Rainy Season.
Hidden, oh hidden in the high fog the house we live in, beneath the magnetic rock, rain-, rainbow-ridden, where blood-black bromelias, lichens, owls, and the lint of the waterfalls cling, familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age of water the brook sings loud from a rib cage of giant fern; vapor climbs up the thick growth effortlessly, turns back, holding them both, house and rock, in a private cloud.
At night, on the roof, blind drops crawl and the ordinary brown owl gives us proof he can count: five times–always five– he stamps and takes off after the fat frogs that, shrilling for love, clamber and mount.
House, open house to the white dew and the milk-white sunrise kind to the eyes, to membership of silver fish, mouse, bookworms, big moths; with a wall for the mildew’s ignorant map;
darkened and tarnished by the warm touch of the warm breath, maculate, cherished; rejoice! For a later era will differ. (O difference that kills or intimidates, much of all our small shadowy life!) Without water
the great rock will stare unmagnetized, bare, no longer wearing rainbows or rain, the forgiving air and the high fog gone; the owls will move on and the several waterfalls shrivel in the steady sun.
Walk with me, before I take off for Thanksgiving, driving South to see the kiddos.
The trees were in full glory, emanating golden light, or sometimes green-tinged yellow brilliance.
A few reds thrown in, here or there, claiming attention.
I had no clue that there is a huge difference between the yellowing of fall leaves, and those turning red. Scientists apparently understand the biological process of the former, and have only speculations about the latter, (or so I learned here.)
When trees start to retrieve nitrogen they need for photosynthesis in fall, they break down the green chlorophyll in their leaves. This exposes the yellow pigments that were there all along. Case solved.
For red (or orange) looking leaves, trees have to produce a brand-new chemical, just before the leaves fall from the tree. Why take on that energy cost?
Scientists are divided about the likely options. Many of them believe that it has to do with protection against the sun, a kind of sunscreen that helps shelter the trees against surplus light when chlorophyll activity is declining.
Susanne Renner at Washington University in St. Louis explains: “There are a lot of high-tech, biochemical, physiological experimental papers showing that one function [of red pigment] is photoprotection.” Arguments in favor come also from correlational observations: Northern Europe, with much less solar irradiation in fall, has fewer trees turning red than we have in the States.
Alternatively, red pigments might be protecting the tree’s ability to recover nitrogen from the leaves. Tree species that co-exist with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which give them abundant nitrogen, generally do not turn red.
Other scientists are not convinced and suggest a very different cause: insects. It turns out that aphids can tell the difference between red and yellow, and much prefer to lay eggs on the latter. Trees, then, could protect themselves against these pests if they evolved to turn red. As a bonus, there is the chance that the red-color pigments have anti-fungal properties that would serve trees well.
Not knowing the right answer, or the list of them, doesn’t faze me one bit. I am just so incredibly happy to look at the beauty, to understand that it has a purpose in addition to making my heart sing – once again grateful for fall.
Soon there will be no leaves left.
In Blackwater woods
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is
nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side
is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
I borrowed that title from writer Celeste Ng who posted it in response to the inane opinion piece by Ross Douthat in the NYT, wondering if women ruined the work place (I will not even link to it – they later shifted the titled to liberal feminism instead of “women.”)
Low energy on my end this week, so you get to look at some portraits I took of strong women, and a collection of publications (I found ready-made) that blamed women for ruining – well, everything.
It would all be laughable, if the bigotry wasn’t so scary.
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Portrait of a Woman
She must be a variety. Change so that nothing will change. It’s easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot. Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray, dark merry, full of pointless tears. She sleeps with him as if she’s first in line or the only one on earth. She’ll bear him four children, no children, one. Naive, but gives the best advice. Weak, but takes on anything. A screw loose and tough as nails. Curls up with Jasper or Ladies’Home Journal. Can’t figure out this bolt and builds a bridge. Young, young as ever, still looking young. Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing, her own money for some trip far away, a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka. Where’s she running, isn’t she exhausted. Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn’t matter. She must love him, or she’s just plain stubborn. For better, for worse, for heaven’s sake.
A short piece for music today, introduced as: “Being a woman writing music in the early 20th century was an act of feminism in itself. In the 1920s, a critic at one performances remarked with surprise that Ruth Crawford Seeger could “sling dissonances like a man”—because, you know, what could a woman possibly know about discord?”
Green King tides on the Pacific coast this weekend. Blue waves in other parts of the country a few days later.
(Photographs from the outing – note how the light shifts in the span of just 48 hours and how the trees are shaped by their environment.)
Got me thinking about William Makepeace Thackeray’s insights about the power (or lack thereof) of men to stop the tides and his savage novel, Vanity Fair, converted into a brilliant movie (2004) by the mother of New York City’s newly elected mayor. Convergence!
Thackeray was an interesting character – born in India, sent to England at age 5 after being orphaned, educated in brutal school settings, gambling away much of his inheritance. A smart, extremely perceptive satirist, allergic to hypocrisy and liberal to the core – he fought for suffrage, legislature term restrictions and an end to classism. Some of his social critique of Victorian society is almost too on the nose for our own times.
His poem below is often misinterpreted to claim the King thought he was almighty and tried to stope the waves, when it really says the opposite. His immoral life full of raids, killing and looting, he gets cold feet towards the end of it. Caught with remorse and fear of consequences (thoughts of will I get into heaven, one might wonder,) he, I speculate, tries to appease the judging power with submission. The sycophantic parasites surrounding him being too dense to even catch his drift. Plus ça change….
King Canute
KING CANUTE was weary hearted; he had reigned for years a score, Battling, struggling, pushing, fighting, killing much and robbing more; And he thought upon his actions, walking by the wild sea-shore.
‘Twixt the Chancellor and Bishop walked the King with steps sedate, Chamberlains and grooms came after, silversticks and goldsticks great, Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages,—all the officers of state.
Sliding after like his shadow, pausing when he chose to pause, If a frown his face contracted, straight the courtiers dropped their jaws; If to laugh the king was minded, out they burst in loud hee-haws.
But that day a something vexed him, that was clear to old and young: Thrice his Grace had yawned at table, when his favorite gleemen sung, Once the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her tongue.
“Something ails my gracious master,” cried the Keeper of the Seal. “Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served to dinner, or the veal?” “Psha!” exclaimed the angry monarch, “Keeper, ’tis not that I feel.
“‘Tis the HEART, and not the dinner, fool, that doth my rest impair: Can a king be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care? Oh, I’m sick, and tired, and weary.”—Some one cried, “The King’s arm- chair!”
Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my Lord the Keeper nodded, Straight the King’s great chair was brought him, by two footmen able- bodied; Languidly he sank into it: it was comfortably wadded.
“Leading on my fierce companions,” cried he, “over storm and brine, I have fought and I have conquered! Where was glory like to mine?” Loudly all the courtiers echoed: “Where is glory like to thine?”
“What avail me all my kingdoms? Weary am I now and old; Those fair sons I have begotten, long to see me dead and cold; Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould!
“Oh, remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites; Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights; Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about my bed at nights.
“Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires; Mothers weeping, virgins screaming vainly for their slaughtered sires.—” “Such a tender conscience,” cries the Bishop, “every one admires.”
“But for such unpleasant bygones, cease, my gracious lord, to search, They’re forgotten and forgiven by our Holy Mother Church; Never, never does she leave her benefactors in the lurch.
“Look! the land is crowned with minsters, which your Grace’s bounty raised; Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and Heaven are daily praised: YOU, my lord, to think of dying? on my conscience I’m amazed!”
“Nay, I feel,” replied King Canute, “that my end is drawing near.” “Don’t say so,” exclaimed the courtiers (striving each to squeeze a tear). “Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fifty year.”
“Live these fifty years!” the Bishop roared, with actions made to suit. “Are you mad, my good Lord Keeper, thus to speak of King Canute! Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty will do’t.
“Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Cainan, Mahaleel, Methusela, Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn’t the King as well as they?” “Fervently,” exclaimed the Keeper, “fervently I trust he may.”
“HE to die?” resumed the Bishop. He a mortal like to US? Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus: Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus.
“With his wondrous skill in healing ne’er a doctor can compete, Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet; Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet.
“Did not once the Jewish captain stay the sun upon the hill, And, the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon stand still? So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will.”
“Might I stay the sun above us, good sir Bishop?” Canute cried; “Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride? If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide.
“Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?” Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, “Land and sea, my lord, are thine.” Canute turned towards the ocean—”Back!” he said, “thou foaming brine.
“From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat; Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master’s seat: Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!”
But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar, And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore; Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the king and courtiers bore.
And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay, But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey: And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day. King Canute is dead and gone: Parasites exist alway.
Before we expect miracles to follow Tuesday’s election outcomes, here are some reflections on what is ahead of us – not meant as downers, but as a reminder that work lies before us.
Election lawyer Marc Elias predicts Republicans’ reactions and further assault on voting rights.
Hadas Thier at Hammer & Hope writes thoughtfully about the challenges to Mamdani’s delivery of much that he promised voters.
Both reads highly recommended.
He will have help, though, from a lot of accomplished women on his transition team:
Former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, nonprofit president Grace Bonilla and city budget expert Melanie Hartzog will be his transition co-chairs. Progressive political strategist Elana Leopold, a de Blasio alum and senior Mamdani campaign adviser, will serve as the transition’s executive director.
Together, they have backgrounds in social services, finance, city budgeting and housing development. Their roles on the transition team — meant to smooth the mayor-elect’s path from election in early November to inauguration in January — often serve as a de facto audition for appointments to City Hall. (Ref.)
Music today promises unity in diversity, jazz from Sweden, not too far from King Canute’s home in Denmark, to celebrate what the electorate managed to pull off.
