Culture Archives

Skirt Variations.

I am skirting the issue. I should be writing about the politics of war, but my head would explode. Let’s turn to the interesting people department instead. Given that it is Women’s History month, I’ll start with a 19th century poet and union leader attuned to skirts.

The Skirt Machinist

I am making great big skirts
For great big women—
Amazons who’ve fed and slept
Themselves inhuman.
Such long skirts, not less than two
And forty inches.
Thirty round the waist for fear
The webbing pinches.
There must be tremendous tucks
On those round bellies.
Underneath the limbs will shake
Like wine-soft jellies.
I am making such big skirts
And all so heavy,
I can see their wearers at
A lord-mayor’s levee.
I, who am so small and weak
I have hardly grown,
Wish the skirts I’m making less
Unlike my own.

By Lesbia Harford

StitchesbyHB7’s Paris Skirt

Lesbia Harford was an Australian poet, lawyer and labor activist. Her father abandoned the family after bankruptcy, her mother toiling to get the 4 young siblings fed and educated. Harford was one of the first women to get a law degree at Melbourne University in 1915, where she became interested in the politics of class relations as well as feminism. She decided to work in the garment factories to understand truly the conditions of working class life, particularly among women. Despite having congenitally defective heart valves which made physical labor difficult, she went on to become a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) around 1916.

She was openly bisexual, often in polyamorous relationships, and radically honest in her poetry around feminine issues that would not be discussed in public. She died from tuberculosis at age 36, her last years of life tortured by illness and dependency.

The poem struck me as both anguished and angry. Here is this small person, overwhelmed by the weight of the production task, metaphorically as well as literally. Stunted, she sews for women who are clearly of a different class, unrestrained in their consumption, free to eat and rest. Yet even these Amazon-sized women are burdened by the weight of heavy skirts, jelly-like limbs prohibiting escape.

Heaviness even when the contraptions of previous eras – the crinolines, the farthingales, the petticoats – were long abandoned. Skirt length and materials varied across time, of course, not least affected by the economics of any given era. If you look at shapes and lengths in relation to war vs. peace times, for example, you find straight correlations, with skimped materials when times are hard. Length also, eventually, became a means of protest and liberation – the mini skirts of the 1960s the most famous example.

***

Skirts were on my mind for a number of reasons. I had read about a woman who collected woolen skirts for decades from Midwestern thrift stores, up until she was 89. For the next 10 years – Audrey Huset lived until her 99th birthday – the collection of over 1000 vintage skirts was stashed in cartons in a garage. Her granddaughter, artist Mae Colburn, started to archive them in 2022, with the help of her parents, professors of costume design and photography, respectively. They sorted them according to a range of colors, plaids, and silhouettes – here is the link to the digital archive where you can be amazed at the collection.

I try to wrap my head around the motivation: how can you accumulate so much stuff, without even using the garments? Then again, I can just see the joy of the hunt, the glory of a find of an unusual specimen, the hope that these will make some warm recycled rugs in the future, the physical pleasure of touching woven wool of that period (much denser and of higher quality than what we see today.) A passion that gets you out of the house and in contact with people into your high eighties…still. Collectors are a mystery to me.

***

Then another skirt appeared on my screen. An expert knitter, designer and dancer had shared the instructions for a voluminous, long skirt she called the Paris skirt, and asked her 35.000 subscribers on Instagram (or anyone else) to knit along. There was a huge resonance, an exploding array of pictures posted of the variations generated by knitters across the globe. A new community instantly created, although I have asked myself how people who have not been knitting for ages, could afford to participate.

The pattern is not difficult. The materials required, on the other hand, are prohibitively expensive, if you do not already own a stash of remnant wool accumulated across many former projects. The mohair wool, for example, costs an average of $30 or so for 50 grams, which give you some 500 yards (the project requires over 2700 yards for larger sizes, and that does not account for knitting with double or triple strands that give the skirt some heft and bounces on the bottom.) Five different sizes of circular knitting needles required: the largest alone, US 13 mm, costs easily $27. If you had to start from scratch you could spend $300 or more, for a homemade skirt!

But again, the use of leftover materials is a sustainable practice, and the making of your own clothes a political act. Add a community that derives a sense of connectedness from the shared experience, and you have truly accomplished something. The designer herself considers knitting a form of resistance.

***

Then a book appeared in the mail, a gift from a friend who rightly anticipated my pleasure of receiving it. Loosely bound in recycled (and strangely fragrant) jeans material, it is titled Fav Pieces of, followed by some 50 names of people from across the globe. Let’s ignore the fact that the choice of font, an illegible page of contents, and an occasionally tortured introduction trying to provide intellectual heft, all scream for attention. It is, after all, published by Thaddaeus Ropac Publisher of Modern Art. (I did not yet see the book on their publications website.)

Let’s focus instead on the fabulous idea of editors Frauke von Jaruntowski and Gerhard Andraschko Sorgo, to collect essays from people with various backgrounds about their favorite piece of clothing or other adornments. And admire the range of images provided with the design, including portraits of items, owners, or both, and some contextual pictures that are meaningful, ranging from laypersons’ snapshots to serious photography.

The essays make us think about our relationship to clothes and, in turn, the ways beauty norms, body image, experienced gaze, memory, class conformity, politics, moods as well as our yearnings, influence our consumerism – or our rejection of it.

It is a fascinating read, if only for the comparison between explanatory attempts. Some people reveal intensely private information, others block with superficial description. Multiple owners describe how the item makes them feel internally for its own relevance, history or associations. Several emphasize how a given piece allows them to create a persona projected outwards. A few discuss the relevance of fashion in their lives, yet others the need for comfort, rather than public effect. Some are eloquently descriptive of beauty, others refer but to function.

Oversharing, reticence, courage to expose vulnerability, vanity, strategic self positioning, thoughtful introspection, or simple autobiographical anecdotes – all can be found between two covers.

Only two skirts made the list. One is from an exchange between designers, a hand-stitched, non-traditional patchwork quilt in return for hand painted plates. The essay informs about the history of Scottish tartans, symbol for traditional Clans. It then turns to lovely interpretation of the possible meaning of patch-worked remnants, creating a style that belongs to all. A Mix-and-Match Clan for a rootless citizenry, a remix overcoming divisions, and an important reminder that we can create something new from old. The reader truly understands why that is a favorite piece in this context.

The other skirt appears to have been protectively underused, in contrast to its oft worn twin in more muted colors, both purchased at KENZO in 1980’s London, simultaneously. The beloved bright one was a match for the buyer’s brilliant mood at the time, the darker one more likely acceptable in the owner’s day-to-day existence. A short comment on personal history that brought the good mood in the 80s in stark relief, and a cryptic snippet on how she regrets not having worn the favored piece enough, are the parentheses for the half-page long musings.

***

I used to wear skirts all the time. These days, not so much. I live in the functional, no need to think, can get dirty, ready to hike, comfortable uniform of pants and sweaters. But my favorite item in my closet is indeed a skirt, and it has accompanied me through good times and bad ones, for probably 20 years or longer. It replaced an old, red, star-sprinkled favorite that somehow got lost during emigration. I wear it when I travel, when I give lectures, or when I need a boost to my sense of who I am, during tricky encounters.

I picked it for my double portrait sessions with Henk Pander when he was still alive, a project, Eye to Eye, where he painted the photographer, I photographed the artist, across weeks of sittings. The skirt felt like the appropriate feminine counterweight to the absence of feminine symbols, eradicated by mastectomies for cancer. It’s most important attribute, other than a cheerful patchwork of patterns, is that it is light and wide enough to run in. No heavy skirts, no constricting pencil shapes ever again!

Henk Pander in his studio.

The skirt is also associated with something I am occasionally proud of: resisting overconsumption, for the most part, sticking to the tried and true. (I previously reviewed fiber artists, Ophir El-Boher, who embodies that concept in her art.) Of course that, too, comes from privilege. When you have permanent space to store things forever, when you have enough clothing that any one item is not worn to threads, when you have the funds to buy good quality that lasts, it is easy to do the right thing and not yield to compulsive purchases. In that way, then, the skirt reminds me to be grateful for all the choices I have.

Music today leads us back to the top – the fate of seamstresses in an exploitative economy. A Yiddish Ballad about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

The Year of the Fire Horse

Culture, History
Feb 19, 2026
5 Comments

On Tuesday I stood in line early to watch the celebration of the Lunar New Year at Lan Su Chinese Garden. The long wait was worth it, despite cold feet and a mounting worry that my parking might expire before I got to visit the garden in full.

A kindly gentleman with a nifty beard contraption kept us in good spirits – he distributed red envelopes with lucky coins in them – Hongbao – to children and adults alike. This is a traditional custom ensuring that generosity is remembered and rewarded.

Then the lion dancers arrived at the plaza in front of the garden. Quick change in attire – it does get hot in those costumes.

Plenty of opportunity for the press to take pictures, and then the dance began.

Each lion had two hidden actors, some quite young, all very athletic as well as expressive. They happily “ate” the dollar bills offered to them by an enthusiastic crowd, kids transfixed.

The musicians were impressive as well, even though I feared I would go deaf standing right next to them, camera in hand and thus unable to plug my ears…..

Finally the gates to the garden opened. Dancers, musicians and public rushed in, making the rounds through the various pathways, performing some more on the terrace.

The garden was beautifully decorated with small, tasteful ornaments on some of the trees, horse graphics in the windows, and colorful sculptures in the ponds.

The combination of Horse (the 7th of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs) and Fire (one of the 5 rotating elements) reoccurs only every 60 years and is believed to be particularly powerful. The sign is associated with energetic, determined, resilient personalities with an entrepreneurial drive. It is also burdened with superstition: in some Asian cultures it was believed that women born under this sign were likely to overpower potential husbands and thus not a good match. Consequently, birth rates declined in those years to avoid exposing daughters to an uncertain fate.

It never ceases to amaze me how cultural mythology actually shapes our behavior.

Astrologers also claim that years of the Fire Horse are associated with important political and social events. Can we find that to be true of 1966, the last time the Fire Horse appeared?

Spoiler Alert: yes we can; and no, I did not check 1965 or 1967 just to confirm my hunch that important things happened then as well, as they do every year….

I will, however, remark on where we are 60 years later.

1966 saw the start of the Cultural Revolution in China on May 14, initiated by Mao Zedong. This socio-political movement aimed to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. Bloodbath, but also initially making huge inroads to combat inequality, both in land holdings and educational access.

Where are we in 2026? China’s Xi Jing Ping is certainly not as despotic as Mao, but also not as open to relative freedoms as his own father was, choosing a middle path. One can look at repression under his leadership and the fraught issue of Taiwan, but also at long-term planning that takes into account scientific knowledge, climate change and so on, securing economic stability for billions of people.

Other major shifts in governments abroad: Indira Ghandi was elected as Prime Minister in 1966. Tough maneuvers to get into and then stay in power, with a focus on nationalism as well as leftist politics of redistribution of wealth. In 2026 we have Narendra Modi whose right-wing leadership has led to a resurgence in Hindu nationalism, taking away the autonomy of Kashmir in 2019, and relentless democratic backsliding in the following years.

Closer to home: 1966 saw an increased engagement in the Vietnam war and concomitant protests. It also saw a variety of legislative actions benefiting Americans: Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency created significant domestic policies, including the Great Society programs aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ was published. It became a seminal text in the American civil rights movement.

Medicare was officially implemented. The Freedom of Information Act was signed into law, promoting transparency in government.

We joined the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These covenants are key international treaties that outline fundamental human rights and freedoms, establishing standards for all nations.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded on June 30, 1966, and aimed to advocate for women’s rights and equality, addressing issues such as workplace discrimination and reproductive rights.

The Endangered Species Act was signed into law on December 28, 1966, marking a significant step in wildlife conservation efforts in the United States. This legislation aimed to protect species at risk of extinction.

And last, but not least, the Cuban Adjustment Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. This legislation aimed to provide a pathway for Cuban refugees to adjust their status.

2026: Measures to improve or protect the rights of women and racial minorities are actively rescinded, under the guise of DEI hostility. Reproductive rights and voting rights are under particularly vicious attacks. I had written about the SAVE act earlier, but remember, if ratified it will make it harder for married women, poor people, students and native Americans to vote. Millions of them.

We have numerous instances where healthcare is endangered through the new bills that Congress and the President established, with Medicare a likely target for further restrictions.

We have withdrawn from the UN covenants.

We have limited or eviscerate the Endangered Species act.

We are blockading Cuba (while ICE is rounding up Cubans in Florida) to the point where we are accused of human rights violations by the international community.

Can some Fire Horse please gallop in to promote significant directional change for the rest of 2026????

In the meantime there is always the natural beauty of the garden, camellias, plum blossoms and paper bush in bloom. There are also many events scheduled (see the garden’s website) including light shows and miniature horses on site to be admired by the kiddos.

Music today: Dmitri Shostakovich completed his Cello Concerto No. 2 in 1966, matching the mood of our times.

Happy New Year of the Fire Horse!

Go on, sing!

Culture, Music, Poetry
Dec 15, 2025
1 Comments

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.

by Valencia Robin.

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!

“Did Women Ruin Men Blaming Women For Ruining Things?”

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.

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.

by Wislawa Szymborska translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

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?”

Or music. Or anything…..

The Unreal and the Real.

· Oregon Contemporary presents: A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin ·

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.

Ursula K. Le Guin, second stanza in A Hymn to Time (From Late in the Day Poems 2010 – 2014)

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don’t understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they’re there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it’s the other side that matters…

by José Saramago The Cave (p.60), (2003)

—

A few years ago I visited the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna’s Berg Gasse. Driven by a somewhat morbid curiosity, I guess, given that I ain’t buying what the man was selling. His claims of offering “science” out of step with how science proceeds, his concepts of memory often completely inaccurate, his assertions about children and child development flatly wrong, his analytic method for the therapeutic process, involving class and traditional gender stereotypes, having done more harm than good. I do concede, however, that the he was a literary giant, converting his extensive humanistic education into far-reaching and complex contemplations that challenge readers to think hard about his suggestions.

What can an exhibition about a literary figure, (or for those so inclined, the father of Psychoanalysis,) convey? A recreation of his environments, the typewriter here, the ashtrays there, the proverbial couch long moved to England, various photographs of different life stages, copies of manuscripts or even original pages, earned awards, and everywhere the collection of knick-knacks, or artifacts from ancient cultures: it all struck me as detritus of a life forced to abandon, or a shed carapace with the substance – his towering intellect – missing in the room.

Then again, the exhibition certainly fed our eternal craving for human interest stories, opening a window into the life of an (in)famous man, if not his mind (or even at the expense thereof.) And having opened this window into the personal details of an existence might, in turn, lure you to open the door into the more interesting part of the house: actually engaging with his writings.

All this came back to me, with trepidation, when I planned to visit a recently opened exhibition at Portland’s Oregon Contemporary. Another literary great on view, and one, in contrast, who I greatly admire: the author, poet, blogger and all around renaissance woman regarding creative modalities: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 – 2018).

To come straight to the point: this exhibition is much more successful on many levels, although, it, too, suffers from the structural constraints around conveying at least some of the heft and style of the intellectual output of its literary protagonist. There were many things I delighted in, and there were some I sorely missed, that might or might not have been possible to introduce.

(I will skip biographic details that can be easily learned from her website. A compact overview was also recently offered by one of the talented StreetRoots writers – shout out to our local street newspaper! By her counting, it is pretty amazing to look at the volume of Le Guin’s output: 21 novels, 11 volumes of short stories, 12 children’s books (please see the popular picture book “Catwings”), four collections of essays, multiple volumes of poetry, and four of translation, including the Chinese classic text Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching and the poems of Gabriela Mistral.)

The exhibition title A Larger Reality is ambiguously open to multiple interpretations, but LARGE unambiguously ruled sensory perceptions. The visitor enters a cavernous space, greeted by a larger than life portrait of the author. A brilliant choice among the many photographs available of a strikingly photogenic woman across her life-span, depicting Le Guin as we knew her during the last years of her life, no shying away from old age skin and sagging features. No pretense here, no softening of reality. I cannot think of a better promise that this will be no hagiographic show, but an uncompromising honoring of the truth embodied by this face, a face exuding wisdom and zest in equal measure.

An enormous dragon stretching across almost an entire wall, grabs your attention next – a fanciful mural that embodies the playfulness so prominent in the written work. The scales are dotted with photographs of the author across a lifetime, many including her family. The dragon spikes on top, or whatever they are called, contain the titles of her most successful output.

Small display cases accompany the mural, offering personal benchmarks, and glimpses of activities that cannot be separated from her life as a writer, or that mattered in addition to her professional career. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Next we encounter a large accumulation of drawings of maps, all preceding the various worlds Le Guin created in her novels and stories. The facility with drawing, and as shown in subsequent display cases, water colors and sketches is enviable – but not as enviable as the fact that the quality of prose is absolutely matched by the quality of her poetry (something you would not learn from this show.) It was a smart curatorial choice not to dilute the impact of the geographic inventions and depictions by other illustrative output. The stunning variability of the maps themselves can be better appreciated this way. (Readers in GB: You can see some of this work as well. Open through December 6: The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin at the Architectural Association Gallery, London, UK.)

Not done with large yet. There is Mother Oak, a humongous tree where you can sit and read her stories or listen to her voice (what a gift to have those recordings. I so miss the voice of my parents, unable to recreate them accurately in my mind, much more so than visual memories.) In contrast to the oak tree in her book Direction on the Road, this one does not expand and shrink depending on the approach or departure of people interested in its stories. It is just a – large – reality.

Multiple interactive stations invite the visitor to engage with some of the science fiction and fantasy ideas. A recreation of the author’s workspace, including the view out of her window, familiarizes us with her environment. Videos add more introductions to visual creativity.

In the next room we encounter numerous display cases offering ephemera of her various interests. The walls are exhibiting pieces by very different artists done in response to Le Guin’s work, and yet another large mural depicts a variety of people and anthropomorphic creatures offering books that had some impact on the author. Framed in pink, no less. It did not work for me, too contrived, and lacking the intellectual elegance that I so associate with the writer and that was captured in the mural by the entrance.

A wizard’s cape, created by one of Le Guin’s daughters, reminds us of the abolition of genders in Earthsea, times for great celebration marked by such a robe. She fashioned it from various hoods of doctoral gowns worn by the writer who received no fewer than 8 honorary doctorates. Smartly conceived and beautiful in one fell swoop!

***

Political writing of the highest order is rare. Moments at which a particular language is opened to a further range of possibilities – a new tone, a new conception of human purposes, a sharper or wilder rhetorical ascent – in any case happen very infrequently.

– T.J. Clark Those Passions: On Art and Politics, p.327

—

The gallery website introduces the exhibition as such: “A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin offers a biographical and poetical portrait of one of Oregon’s best known artists. Examining important moments and themes in Le Guin’s life and oeuvre, the exhibition encompasses a rich variety of media, immersing guests in the ideas, playfulness and hope that course through Ursula K. Le Guin’s art.“

The exhibition scores on most of those points. Yet, the important themes in her oeuvre just weren’t exposed enough (and, mind you, I am always willing to admit maybe I missed the relevant info. I will happily stand corrected.) For example, Le Guin’s political advocacy is represented with a variety of buttons on a bag with a tongue in cheek printing of “I have abandoned truth and am now looking for a good fantasy.” The signage there reads that she was advocating for a variety of causes in her life, from anti-war movements to tree preservation. The description of her as an anti-capitalist is softened with the humorous referral to her love of shopping, particularly shoes. These attenuations might bring her closer to the rest of us mortals, but they really underplay the intensity or progressiveness of her positions as they appear in her writings. Cloaked in science fiction, her writing was political of the highest order.

It would have been great to introduce, particularly to those new to her, the variety of political topics that forever reappeared, and associate them with particular books, to catch new readers’ interest. Curious about feminism or gender identity? Read Lavinia, or The Left Hand of Darkness, or The Wizard of Earthsea. Thinking about the evil of colonialism? Read The Word for World is Forest or Always coming Home. Can anarchism work as a form of political entity? Find out in The Dispossessed. I could go on about issues of power, our relations to the natural, world, you name it. But here is one I care about most: Want to know why the writer is considered by so many as the queen of moral dilemmas? Go straight to The Ones who walked away from Omelas, a short story that won the 1974 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, given annually for a science fiction or fantasy story, and appeared a year later in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters.

A city full of joy, prosperity, security relies on its citizens’ complicit acceptance that it is all maintained by a single child being tortured and kept in permanent isolation in a fetid hole. Only a select few walk away from the city and its immoral bargain after viewing the child, towards an unknown fate beyond the perimeters of “paradise.” We have obviously graduated from one child to several million who we currently willingly starve in our own country, or kill by omission around the world with the abandonment of USAID, or murder by commission of weapons sales for the Gazan genocide, which brings the issue of complicity in ever sharper focus.

Pat Barker, another inimitable writer, voiced in an interview with the Guardian’s Susanna Rustin almost 20 years ago: “Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn’t know the answer. What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do.”

I can’t think of a single novel that I’ve read of Le Guin’s that does not directly or indirectly force us to face a moral or ethical quandary and think through the consequences of free will, or the constraints on destinies imposed by oppressive powers.

The real is imported into the unreal, and vice versa.

What makes her so impressively different is the fact that none of this involves didactic scolding, or condescension, but always, always offers glimpses of hope, the possibility of change if courageously – and collectively – pursued. No defined solutions, but no Antigones for Le Guin either!

At the same time, she could be quite cutting in her answers to those of us (yes, myself included) who asked apparently stupid questions during readings and lectures. She did not suffer fools.

The refusal to accept black & white answers or cling rigidly to positions, made up for that. I remember vividly my college students’ reactions year after year, when we discussed a video of her talking about gender issues in my Social Psychology or Psychology of Women classes. The expected outline of the difficult position of women in societies organized around patriarchal principles was always counterbalanced by Le Guin holding forth on the fate of young men in those very same societies – they are expendable, good for canon fodder. Male and female students alike felt seen and were able to engage in much less defensive discussions.

And speaking of young people, it would have been great to have some knowledgeable sources provide an overview of how much of an influence this author has had on younger, aspiring writers across the years, including the awards given to them, like the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which you can see for yourself here. Her breadth of interests is certainly reflected in the composition of nominees.

***

Theo Downes Le Guin introduces the prize ceremony in the video link above. He is also the main curator for the exhibition portraying his mother, with his sisters offering major contributions as well. I cannot help but wonder how you find a balance between (on one side) the desire for proud public display of your mother and all she achieved, and (on the other side) the need for privacy not just regarding the subject of the show, but your own relationship to a parent who, by public decree, was a Living Legend.

Portland was hometown of all the Le Guin’s, with near cult status afforded to the elder sitting alongside of the fact that the younger ones have considerable standing in their own right. If curatorial interests clash between what is opportune for public display and what is important both for privacy and for keeping the spotlight on the mother, how do you solve the dilemma?

I have earlier described in Oregon ArtsWatch Theo’s curatorial prowess, but the current situation is unique, with a number of potential vulnerabilities. What does it imply psychologically when you set your task to be one of describing comprehensively the importance of your mother, while also mourning the absence of a beloved person, gone for good? Digging through life-long archives inevitably entails reminders of a childhood shared with her profession, no matter how often (and in this exhibition repeatedly stressed) she voiced her conviction that parenting and authoring were perfectly compatible, even complementary. What does it mean to be in the wake of your mother’s departing ship, likely happily engaged as her literary executor, building the Foundation, arranging traveling exhibitions (at least I hope, for this one should find a broader audience) but – as a result of all of this — no longer able to devote full energy to pursuing what you used to do?

These are all questions brought to mind in a year that has seen its share of biographies about larger-than-life mothers and the complexities of filial love – the off-putting How To Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast and the fascinating Mother Mary Comes to Me by the brilliant Arundhati Roy the most prominent ones.

I experienced the Le Guins’ curation as an act of generosity as well as a public service, keeping an important voice alive for all of us. Cannot imagine that it hasn’t been hard, though.

One last shout-out: Oregon Contemporary’s Executive Director Blake Shell not only checked people personally into the exhibition, but approached with serious interest at the end of my round, offering to engage in conversation. I was pressed for time and so had to leave promptly, but would have enjoyed that interaction with someone so intimately involved in the whole enterprise. The gallery is facing hard times, like so many of our cultural institutions. The National Endowment for the Arts revoked its federal funding for the 2026 Artists’ Biennial that was intent to showcase a diverse group of Oregon artists, many expected to defy the administration’s imperative to deprive us of “DEI” associated art. You can learn more and help here.

Oregon Contemporary
8371 N. Interstate Ave
Portland, OR 97217

Hours
Fri / Sat / Sun, Noon–5pm
Free and open to the public / ADA accessible

Suggested Donation $14.90 for those who can.

Additional events:

Saturday, December 6th
Event: First Saturday, Talk with Michelle Ruiz Keil & Ashley Stull Meyers and Screening of CROSSLUCID’s Vaster than Empires
Time: 5:00-8:00pm, 6:00pm start of event

Saturday, February 7th
Event: Todd Barton performance of Music and Poetry of the Kesh by Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton with a screening of Kesh, a short film by Rankin Renwick
Time: 5:00-8:00pm, 6:00pm start of event

Lazy Monday.

· Silly Pictures - Few Words. ·

Art, Culture, Music
Oct 27, 2025
2 Comments

I started to look at memes which are sprouting after the Louvre heist, but then thought they are probably all in your view already, related by everyone from OPB to Town and Country Magazine….

I also found myself thoroughly out of touch with the dominant meme references to a Bollywood movie called Dhoom 2, featuring similarly daring jewel robberies and managing to make more money than any previous action caper at the time. I’m getting old or out of mainstream – probably both. Apparently the cinematic thieves were given another chance at (a reformed) life. We wait to see what happens to the real life suspects apprehended yesterday.

The heist had come up in the context of thinking about museum staff or leadership who are currently sacked or deciding to resign for far more worrisome reasons – refused censorship among them – than lack of museum security. But then I was simply too lazy to dredge up all the examples that had accumulated in my inbox across the last months.

So I turned to a more familiar and easier knowledge base instead: memes about classical works of art. For your amusement, then, some images dedicated to several friends of mine (you know who you are!) and one of self portraiture – you may guess.

Given the medley of memes, starting with the Louvre heist, music today is a medley of French composers, some famous opera music included, mostly warhorses. Which brings me to the educational part of Monday:

Here is a hilarious introduction to all that’s wrong with contemporary opera…..

Thank you, L., for sending this. Made me snap out of it.

Painting Pumpkins.

Culture, Poetry, War
Oct 13, 2025
0 Comments

A two-and-a-half year-old of my acquaintance is by all reports besotted with pumpkins and other Halloween decorations. I have been sending her photographs of pumpkins and some considerations for how to explore different colors, since painting is another current cherished activity.

Today’s images, then, are the results of my trying to keep up with the creativity of my favorite toddler. They are also related to the poetry of Richard Brautigan, the master of observing everyday occurrences and putting them into innocent, childlike, anti-poetic words that can be grasped by everyone, exert an incredibly strong visual pull, and are deceptive in their simplicity.

—

The Pumpkin Tide

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

BY RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

***

It is the time of year, where walks around the neighborhood are dominated by Halloween decorations. Plain, messy old pumpkins have been replaced by plastic ones, inflatable figures waste electricity, and attempts at humor compete with gruesome skeletons and jumping monster spiders.

How do you explain to a child what this is all about? Do you explain the pagan origins of Halloween, coming from the Celtic world of ancient Britain and Ireland? A celebration of the beginning winter period, a day where the souls of those who had died were believed to return, and those who had died in the preceding year were on their journey to the afterworld? With bonfires lit to frighten away evil spirits, and disguises and masks worn to not be recognized by the ghosts among us?

Or do you center the 7th century Christian attempts to supplant pagan rites with the introduction of Allhallotide, a three-day Christian triduum dedicated to remembering the dead that begins with Halloween (October 31- the evening before All Saints’ Day became a holy, or hallowed, eve, from which the word “Halloween” evolved,) and is followed by All Saints’ Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2)? (Ref.)

Protestant Reformation, by the way, put an end to this for non-Catholics. Majority Catholic countries, like most of Mexico and South America, still celebrate, often happily and vividly, the Day of the Dead.

Or do you stress the notion of a now secular holiday, devoted to fun costumes and endless candy, if your parents let you….? So how to explain the ubiquitous skeletons?

***

These are the same questions I ask myself when thinking about fairy tales, or kids exposed to adults teaching them to take the bible as a literal document to be believed. Does it make a difference in how children learn about these things if and when the adults themselves believe in the tales they tell or not?

I suppose the function of fairy tales (or biblical lore) as instructions for how to understand the world, behave in the world and perhaps change a world that is unjust and menacing, is enhanced by a belief that the threats are for real. If you trust that you’ll end up eaten by the witch if you abscond to the woods, or fry in hell if you covet your neighbor’s possessions, you might be indeed more inclined to follow the rules.

Note, though, that it is not always about punitive actions. Fairy tales in particular often stress the positive outcomes of courage and risk taking, the questioning of hierarchical oppression, the power of empathy and reciprocal aid. And in modern versions, the Disneyfication of the old stories, if you will, evil powers and their reach have certainly been tamped down, compared to what the originals contained, stressing agency instead of assured victimhood.

The German fairy tales I heard as a child were assuredly different than the ones I read to my American children, more brutal and more inclined to stress the consequences of misbehavior. And fear was a palpable experience, in the absence of Halloween decorations, for a non-Catholic child in my catholic village during All Souls’ Day in the beginning of November. I have written about it before, but the flickering of remembrance candle lights on the graves of the local cemetery, breaking through the darkness of the flat, misty landscape of beet fields and meadows, gave me bone-deep shivers as a child. It was not about ghosts. It was about death. Death in the context of a too recent war, with evil at its roots.

Now, ignoring ghosts, specters, witches and all the other symbolic stand-ins, we are focused on the existence of evil again, in the context of war and in the vicinity of cease-fire agreements, in unadulterated crimes against humanity, as just one example picked for its sadistic timing. Could come up with uncountable more, all over the world, all sides.

How do you preserve the innocence of a young child, model courage and foster their fearlessness, provide them with a moral compass with a true north of all humanity in our current world? How do you celebrate the memory of the dead when we are all implicated in bringing about their demise, be it by action, indirect financing, or simple silence and averting our eyes?

Any answers out there?

I was thinking hard about what music to include today. There is the heavy, if beautiful piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Dona Nobis Pacem, Give us Peace. It is a war protest, and includes the Catholic Agnus Dei, three poems by Walt Whitman, a speech by Quaker politician John Bright, and excerpts from the Biblical book of Jeremiah.

But in the interest of lifting us all (and preserving a young child’s chance to listen to some really cool music!) I think I’ll recommend this. Maurice Ravel wrote this to commemorate friends and acquaintances who died in WW I, and was accused of doing it too light-hearted. His response: “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.”

It is us, the living, who need this musical consolation. Music, painting pumpkins, watching kids blossom – creativity and connectedness help us to get through hard times in one piece. They are the tools to guard ourselves against the pain, the hopelessness, the fear at our doorsteps – feelings that surface way too often these days, at least for me.

Reshuffling the Natural World.

· Vögel, höret die Signale! ·

Art, Culture, Environmental Protection, photography
Aug 28, 2025
3 Comments

I don’t know about you, but when I go to aquariums or zoos there are a lot of conflicted feelings – from what it means to deprive animals of their freedom and often put them in torturously narrow cages deprived of stimulation, to what it means to have this way of keeping species alive when they are no longer safe in their natural environments. I sometimes wonder if the decorations we find in various tanks and cages are an expression of humor to distract from the zoo keepers’ own conflicted feelings, or if there are yet another sign that we have to put our “civilization” stamp on everything…..

Cue Zed Nelson’s new photo book “The Anthropocene Illusion.” I read a captivating review of it in the New Yorker, a magazine that I avoided to subscribe to for 44 years, long story. Clearly my loss, now that I discover the power of Elizabeth Kolbert’s writing – but I digress. Again.

(Link here to Nelson’s spectacular photography – all the captions below the photographs are provided in his book.)

Polar bear. Dalian Forest Zoo. China.
Polar bears are the largest land carnivore in the world, weighing up to 800kg and growing up to 3 metres in length.
The typical zoo enclosure for a polar bear is one-millionth the size of its range in the wild, which can reach 31,000 square miles (80,290 km²).
Polar bears live in Arctic regions in Canada, Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Norway, in temperatures as low as -46°C (-50.8°F)

–

The book displays photographs taken across the world of settings containing or pointing to animals, settings that try to reproduce the natural world they would inhabit if free. The attempts at providing verisimilitude are, of course, futile, and the photographer very much hones in on the artificiality of the backdrops. In addition, there is magnificent photography capturing civilization encroaching on habitat, or humans making encounters with nature into a distraction, at best.

Railway bridge. Nairobi National Park.Kenya Nairobi National Park, established in 1946, is the only national park in the world bordering a major capital city. Home to lions, rhinos, giraffe and the remnants of a once-thriving wildebeest migration, the park has faced increasing pressure from urban expansion and infrastructure projects. The Chinese-built Nairobi-Mombasa railway now cuts through the park on an elevated bridge, prioritising cost-saving over conservation. Further developments, including proposed hotels and fencing plans, threaten to sever the park from critical wildlife corridors, turning a once-open ecosystem into an enclosed and managed space.

–

Kolbert summarizes Nelson’s main message:

“But Nelson’s point seems to be that all efforts to reproduce the natural world, whether motivated by crassly commercial interests or ones that are, ostensibly, more edifying, are much alike in the end. The Anthropocene illusion is that we can somehow connect with the natural world at the same time that we have, as Nelson puts it, “turned our back” on it.”

Niagara Falls. Ontario, Canada.

Established in 1885, Niagara Falls is the oldest state park in America. Over 8 million visitors visit annually. More than 5,000 bodies, mostly suicides, have been found at the foot of Niagara Falls.

–

Or as Nelson himself phrases it:

“While we destroy the natural world around us, we have become masters of a stage-managed, artificial ‘experience’ of nature – a reassuring spectacle, an illusion.”

Kolbert again:

“From the mountains to the savanna, it’s alienation all the way down. The volume’s power lies in its relentless impulse toward disenchantment. Wonder isn’t really an option.“

Polar bear tours. Hudson Bay, Canada.

On the southern edge of the Arctic, Hudson Bay is known as the ‘polar bear capital of the world’. Bears come ashore here in the summer when the sea ice melts, to wait for the ice to return in November.
Tour companies cater to an annual influx of tourists eager to see polar bears during the six-week ‘bear season’, when the bears roam the shoreline, waiting for the sea ice freeze over.

–

I see that somewhat differently, having just taken a beloved 2.5 year-old to the zoo, including their fish tank. There is still wonder galore, even if it is somewhat restricted to the short set. And there is something unsettlingly privileged about the claim that connection to nature is lost if it is presented in artificial environments. For inner city kids and poor families in general, the only access to seeing a live animal and not just something on a screen, might very well be the zoo or a cage in a city park. That experience, in turn, might make them more interested and engaged in thinking about habitats or what we do to species other than our own.

Restaurant with live penguin display. Penguin Hotel. Guangdong, China.

At the Chimelong Penguin Hotel in China, visitors can dine alongside captive penguins in a 1,600-seat, glacier-themed restaurant. While guests enjoy a curated spectacle of nature, wild emperor penguins face an uncertain future. The slow-evolving birds have survived for millions of years, yet nearly 70% of their colonies could vanish by 2050 as a result of climate change.
The hotel also offers close-up penguin encounters at the Penguin Pavilion and a Penguins on Parade show at the Penguin Ice Palace Theatre.

–

I am the first to mourn our devastation of nature, as my blog’s writing over and over demonstrates.

Here, for example, is the latest compilation of all the assaults on the environment committed by the current administration. Read it and weep.

But experience with something alive, even if corseted in artificial settings, might teach future generations that there is something worth rescuing.

***

The relationship between nature and human interference has been one of the main topics of art, through the ages, but is particularly prominent in contemporary art informed by climate action. Regular readers might remember that I offered a somewhat whimsical series some years back, focussed on the way habitat is encroached by cities, and animals, in turn, intruding closer into our spaces, a destructive development in both direction, but heavily weighted against them. For Guardians of the Towers (Turmwächter) my photographs of cityscapes were combined with the wild life I captured elsewhere.

There are many more serious approaches, with strong work presented in Germany by, among others, Dennis Siering. His 2022 exhibition Unnatural territories, speculative landscapes was enthusiastically reviewed at the time.

He has turned to a different version of reshuffling nature this year. Together with experts in ornithology, bioacoustics (Andre Siering), audio design (Aleksei Maier), and artificial intelligence (Bastian Kämmer), he has developed sound installations – Radical Climate Action Birds – that translate melodies composed by humans into artificial bird calls.

The synthetic bird songs are broadcasted with solar power for about three hours a day in a public park in Karlsruhe (Supported by the UNESCO City of Media Arts Karlsruhe Project Funding Program for Media Arts), potentially leading to uptake by the birds: mimicking the melodies and gradually importing them into their repertoire. I have no clue if this is actually happening, or if the claims that black bird were the fastest learners, is verified as more than wishful thinking.

Here is the fun part of this installation, though: the melodies are all from anti-fascist protest songs. Bella Ciao, whistled by a black bird, might be quite the wake up call! The idea is, of course, that the resurgence of nationalist and neo-fascist ideas, generally inclined to extract rather than protect natural resources, should be of concern to all of us, with direct reminders from nature itself as brilliant a messenger medium as is conceivable. Instead of illusions of nature transplanted into human environments, it is illusions of culture transplanted into nature itself then, in theory. Would be a riot if it worked….

(For non-German readers: my subtitle “Vögel, höret die Signale! plays on a line in the German version of the International, which says Völker, höret die Signale! Birds (people) listen to the call!

Völker, hört die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkämpft das Menschenrecht!

In the English text, the refrain begins with:

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

The original French refrain: (the anthem was written by Eugène Pottier, in Paris, June 1871; he was a refugee from the Paris Commune, who wrote the poem while in hiding in the aftermath of the massacre of the Communards. It was set to music 2 years after his death by Pierre Degeyter in 1889.)

C’est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale
Sera le genre humain.

Here is the anthem sung in German for today’s music. And here is Bella Ciao.

Let’s hope the birds are fast learners!

History Lesson, anyone?

Art, Culture, History
Aug 18, 2025
3 Comments

It could not have been more perfect. The light was right, the temperature warm, but not hot, there was a feeling of adventure in the air. After way too many days listlessly stuck at home with the oppressive heat, I was exploring the sandstone cliffs of Cape Kiwanda, located some 2 hours southwest of Portland at the shores of the Pacific.

The colors and configurations were breathtaking, I could have photographed all day long. Much of it reminded me of Paul Klee (and so some of today’s images are overlays of his art and nature, just to give you the idea.)

The association had probably been triggered by the fact that I had yearned to visit an exhibition that recently closed in Berlin, and was stuck with thinking around the issues it raised, without being able to travel to see it.

This photograph of a sandstone angel overlooking the bombed-out city of Dresden in 1945 was part of the show at the Bode Museum, which brought together images of angels from the Berlin museums that were damaged or burned during the Second World War.

The Angel of History: Walter Benjamin, Paul Klee and the Berlin Angels 80 Years after World War II centered around Paul Klee’s most famous artwork Angelus Novus and Benjamin’s texts laying out his thoughts on the “angel of history,” as he called him. The exhibition also showed excerpts of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire(1987), a film in which two angels stand watch over a divided Berlin and in which explicit reference is made to Klee’s 1920 watercolor and Benjamin’s interpretation of the artwork.

Here is what Benjamin wrote in the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “Theses on the Philosophy of History”:

A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.^[3]

The piles of debris are, of course, not restricted to the past – we see them growing skyward all around us, in the present, if we don’t close our eyes in desperation.

***

The look backwards towards the past, however, is under (re)construction – what we are allowed to see now depends on the whims of those who think they own the interpretation of the past.

President Trump’s executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” aims to review and align the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibitions and materials with his interpretation of American history, focusing on removing what he calls “improper ideology.” This initiative is part of a broader effort to ensure that national museums reflect a narrative of American exceptionalism and unity ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States. The White House

Whether it is controlling the Smithsonian, other museums or our universities, the National Park Service or the National Endowments for the Arts, Public Broadcasting or the Voice of America or shifting public to private education – it boils down to preventing people to gain knowledge and engage in independent thought – both reviled by authoritarians. (I had previously written about fascism and education in more detail here.)

While we still can, let’s look back at history not so long ago.

(My sources for today are the general education you get when visiting the site of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Michael Burleigh’s The Third Reich: A New History, a moral history reasserting the existence of a totalitarian dictatorship in Germany, Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir, and, most importantly, Richard. J. Evans’ T he Coming of the Third Reich. It is an intellectually rich guide, written in totally accessible language and structured in ways that really cover all aspects of the German people falling for the lure of Nazism.)

From its very beginnings, the National Socialist regime of Germany tried to shape cultural displays and production, trying to force German culture into the frame of the preferred ideology. Art that did not conform to the Nazi norms was declared degenerate, confiscated and/or destroyed, Paul Klee’s works among them (and he was fired from his position as a professor at a prestigious art school). Work was sold on the international market to enrich the regime and pay for war preparations. This was, of course, just one facet of societal control.

If we look at the larger picture, the goal was to amass absolute power right off the bat – handily provided by the Enabling Act which got passed in 1933. It allowed Hitler to pass laws without the consent of the Reichstag, basically eliminating all power for our parliament. If you look at power consolidation here, now, you will not have to venture far from the text of Project 2025, or, for that matter, the Supreme Court decisions of late.

One of the Nazi regime’s early undertakings was to identify minorities who could be dehumanized, labeled as them to create an us, both through rhetoric and through punitive actions of cleaning the streets of subhumans (Untermenschen) and later people with disabilities – we know what ultimately followed. (Rounding up the homeless in Washington, D.C. anyone? Putting immigrants or political opponents on trial or in deportation camps?)

Parallel to that, there were purges of the civil service, firing all who were deemed illegal or simply disloyal from professional institutions. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service from 1933 allowed the immediate removal of Jews and political opponents. (Just peruse the jobless numbers in Washington D.C. right now. Or look at the state of the Veterans’ Administration.)

At the same time, Hitler confronted military leaders and started to shape the military as his own power tool. Here is a link to the historical time line of submission of the military, documented in the encyclopedia of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. (As of this writing, military personnel from numerous states have been deployed in Washington, D.C. Armed, no less.)

In addition to the military, the Nazi regime established the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo. They wanted a centralized political police force that would be directly reporting to Nazi leadership, undermining state and local police. It took but three years, to 1936, to form such a force; that summer it was combined with the criminal police (what would here be the feds) under SS leader Himmler and his deputy Heydrich. The Gestapo’s mission was to “investigate and combat all attempts to threaten the state.” It could arrest, try and send those who criticized the regime to camps, under the 1934 law that made it illegal to criticize the Nazi Party. It could monitor individual behavior, and even send people directly to camps, under a mechanism called protective custody. They were allowed arbitrary warrantless searches and surveillance on mail and telephone calls. (Here is a smart piece on why it is risky to form analogies between ICE and the Gestapo, yet commonly seen these days.)

Note that the vast majority of Aryan Germans did not encounter or even expect to encounter the Gestapo during the 1930s. But the Gestapo was a constant threat for political opponents, religious dissenters, homosexuals, people of color and Jews. In fact, both Klee and Benjamin had to flee their country. Paul Klee left for Switzerland in 1935 and got very ill very fast. He died in June 1940, after 5 painful and increasingly debilitating years, from an autoimmune disorder triggered by stress as one factor, a disease that destroyed his body; his friend, admirer and collector Walter Benjamin took his own life but three months later, stranded in Spain while trying to escape the Nazis.

***

Exhibitions like the one in Berlin allow us to look back at the horrors brought upon human kind and the environment by a fascistic regime. They bear witness to the death, the loss, the damage wrought by war, and make us think about the reach this suffering had for subsequent generations. It is this kind of honest assessment about the ravages of historical events that many fear will be suppressed by the administration’s executive orders and institutions bending the knees.

What I don’t understand, though, is that we seem to be oblivious to this history even while we are still able to look at it, read about it, being taught about it. How can we so blindly follow the play book that brought us darkness once and is likely to bring it again in one form or another? A play book, step by step mirrored by the one now catapulted into use under the guidance of the Federalist society? Amassing absolute power, destroying democratic norms, ignoring the rule of law, marginalizing and demonizing scape goats to speak to the baser instincts of people who feel powerless, has plunged the world into catastrophe. What prevents us from learning from this? Honest question, not a rhetorical one.

Richard J. Evans, citing journalist Sebastian Haffner who interviewed contemporary witnesses, provides some hint at how the process of voluntary subjugation psychologically unfolds:

“Lawyer Raimund Pretzel asked himself what had happened to the 56 per cent of Germans who had voted against the Nazis in the elections of 5 March 1933. How was it, he wondered, that this majority had caved in so rapidly? Why had virtually every social, political and economic institution in Germany fallen into the hands of the Nazis with such apparent ease? ‘The simplest, and, if you looked deeper, nearly always the most basic reason’, he concluded, ‘was fear. Join the thugs to avoid being beaten up. Less clear was a kind of exhilaration, the intoxication of unity, the magnetism of the masses.’ Many, he also thought, had felt betrayed by the weakness of their political leaders, from Braun and Severing to Hugenberg and Hindenburg, and they joined the Nazis in a perverse act of revenge. Some were impressed by the fact that everything the Nazis had predicted seemed to be coming true. ‘There was also (particularly among intellectuals) the belief that they could change the face of the Nazi Party by becoming a member, even now shift its direction. Then of course many jumped on the bandwagon, wanted to be part of a perceived success.’ In the circumstances of the Depression, when times were hard and jobs were scarce, people clung to the mechanical routine ofdaily life as the only form of security: not to have gone along with the Nazis would have meant risking one’s livelihood and prospects, to have resisted could mean risking one’s life. “( Haffner, S. Defying Hitler pg. 111-114.)

***

So the angel of history looks at piles of debris. Sandstone is also a pile of debris, generally speaking. It is made out of fragments of other minerals or rocks, grains from quartz and feldspar flying through the air and accumulation for eons, then cemented by silica, calcite, and iron oxide, which contribute to the color the we see. Silica and calcite are general very light in color or even colorless, iron oxide, however, is rust-red and often stains the sandstone that way.

The cliffs at Cape Kiwanda are made of some 18-million-year-old particles, and the fact that these formations still stand has to do with their position relative to a haystack rock in front of them – it breaks up the wave action, sheltering the walls from the ever eroding surf, although erosion is not stopped completely.

Bits and pieces are constantly worn away, and sometimes massive sections drop off into the ocean. Two years ago, two large sinkhole appeared with months of each other on top of the cliffs, forcing a costly re-fencing to protect the public wandering around there.

Climate change makes it all worse. More frequent storms whipping the waves, longer periods of rain, heavier rainfall in general during climate patterns like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) which is brought about by rising temperatures, create more and more damage. Of course, whether we will learn about climate change or support science to combat it, is another question that warrants looking at historical precedents. Doesn’t look too good. The Angel of History is at this point probably better off flying around with the pelicans to distract him/herself rather than be glued in horror to the views of wreckage accumulating around them…..

Then again, Robert Reich reminds us: “Remember: If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game. The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can be changed.”

What he says.