Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Browsing Category

Culture

Hereness.

There is a woman in my neighborhood who spreads beauty. She lays out blossoms and greenery into flower mandalas at a local park, refreshing or changing them ever so often, usually early in the morning, before anybody sees her. I don’t know who she is, or her motivations, but I know this: the joy of walking by these little works of art and discovering new patterns and/or colors (never mind learning about what is currently in bloom) is immense. It feels like we have our very own local flower fairy. Or, for differently inclined people, a hint at the powers of Gaia, the earth Goddess, who appreciates, by all reports, these kinds of offerings…

What I appreciate is living HERE, amongst people who are kind and offer gestures of comfort or encouragement. Or remind us of beauty. People who give to 2-can Tuesdays, leaving food items for the local hungry, dependent on Neighborhood House food pantries, under their mailbox every Tuesday, to be picked up by volunteers. People who will soon start to exchange the overflow produce of their gardens, people who don’t know your name but that of your dog, from friendly chit-chat on the daily dog rounds. Or people who are handing out ACLU cards with printed instructions in different languages about what to do when stopped by police, ICE or the FBI. People who offer rides to the doctor, or free translation services.

There is a term in Yiddish, doikayt or doikejt (in english-speaking or german-speaking countries respectively) that refers to Hereness – the idea that you should live and fight for what is right, what you believe in, right where you live and not in some distant place or in nationally defined borders. It was a guiding concept to the Eastern-European Jewish Labor Bund, a secular, socialist, Jewish party dedicated to fighting for a better world and against anti-Semitism, founded in Vilna in 1897. Rather than following Zionist ideas (officially founded in the very same year) or emigrating to the U.S., they favored integration at the local level. The Bund believed that culture, not a place or state, would be the glue that held our people together, within the context of a world of multicultural and multi-ethnic countries. Here is an interview about the history with artist and writer Molly Crabapple, who is working on a book about Doikayt. It gives some background and is generally wonderfully snarky and informative.

I think the concept, hereness, should really be held in a more universal way, constructively appropriated from the original ideas of the Bund, then relevant to the Jewish Diaspora. We all should focus on the “here” in making our communities places where we can live in dignity, provide mutual support, protect the planet, and take that ideology with us whenever and wherever we are forced to move, by circumstance outside of our control. Moves that these days might very well be forced on many of us, by geographic, economic, catastrophic or political circumstances, integrating into ever new communities.

Returning to the flower lady, local support can be as simple as small gestures of spreading joy in times when it is increasingly more difficult to come by that commodity… joy reinvigorates, strengthens. But small gestures that you yourself are capable of, can also add up to inoculating you against larger dangers, making it less likely to sink into indifference because so much is overwhelming. Psychologist Robert Cialdini‘s principles of commitment and consistency apply here (even though developed for marketing strategies.) Once you have committed with a small step, you are likely to engage in larger ones later, feeling bound to the principle of consistency.

Why would this matter? I am reminded here of a quote by Gordon Hirabayshi, a Seattle-born Japanese American who fought legally against the internment policies of the government in 1942.

“We had the Constitution behind us in 1942. It didn’t because the will of the people (wasn’t) behind it.”

(We might take note, given current events, of the legal issues surrounding internment of American citizens.

“Hirabayshi’s case before the Supreme Court, Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), was the first challenge to the government’s wartime curfew and expulsion of Japanese Americans. The Court ruled against him 9-0. In the 1980s, 40 years after his wartime convictions, Hirabayashi challenged the decisions with a little used legal recourse called coram nobis, which allowed for judicial review of a judgment based on factual error not known to the court at the time the judgment was delivered. Researchers and legal scholars Peter Irons and Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga had uncovered irrefutable evidence that the government had withheld information from the Office of Naval Intelligence, contradicting the United States Army’s claim of widespread disloyalty among Japanese Americans. This was the so-called “military necessity” rationale for the evacuation. In fact, not one Japanese American was ever convicted of sabotage or espionage during the entire war. Hirabayashi’s exclusion and curfew convictions were overturned in 1986 and 1987 respectively.” 

***

The will of the people – it will be influenced by our perceptions of ourselves guided by moral principles, rather than governed by fear. No one is asking you (yet) of hiding someone in the attic. But, of course, there are other ways of strengthening the struggle for justice and equality at the local level, and sometimes the means are provided from farther away. I am thinking here of two national data bases that affect the local level.

One is this one. There are over 700 Oregon businesses that have chosen to be listed as PRO-MAGA businesses. You can check them out and then decide what to do with that information…..

Another one is a data based established by Georgetown Law students (2Ls no less) recording law firms’ responses to the EO singling out law firms for political retribution. They titled document “Legal Industry Responses to Fascist Attacks Tracker” and included by now more than 800 firms, assigning them to one of five stark categories: “Caved to Administration,” “Complying in Advance,” “Other Negative Action,” “Stood Up Against Administration’s Attacks,” or “No Response.”

This will help people looking for internships, or future employers, or hiring a lawyer, to make informed decisions; wherever you are locally, you can check the data base about the status of that particular firm. (It works so well that apparently some firms are now asking to have changes or updates to assignment.)

As today’s reestablished Bund demands: “We must strengthen our communities, workplaces, and economies by making them more democratic, exemplary, moral, and marked by respect for all, striving for both justice and peace.” On any given day, I might just include creating beauty.

We just need enough people. As Thomas Paine wrote in 1776 : “When a people agree to form themselves into a republic … it is understood that they mutually resolve and pledge themselves to each other, rich and poor alike, to support this rule of equal justice among them … (and) they renounce as detestable, the power of exercising, at any future time any species of despotism over each other, or of doing a thing not right in itself, because a majority of them may have the strength of numbers sufficient to accomplish it.” (Ref.)

Music today by a Viennese musician who has pursued the concept of doikayt. This album contains old Yiddish songs from the Bund and also compositions integrating the works of Yiddish poets.

2 Comments

The Repair of a Torn Civic Fabric.

Today I want us to think through the connection between hobbies and Pope Francis. “What on earth,” you mutter, wondering if I have lost my marbles, or at least the relevant respect for the recently deceased. Neither, I assure you, just give me a minute.

The number of obituaries for the Pope matched those of articles contemplating what will come next, just as the differing political leanings were obvious in both kinds of publications: reverence for what he represented and had accomplished, or hopes for a return to less progressive eras.

“Some popes perfectly complement the age in which they live. A few were reformers—agents of positive change. Others railed against modernity and the diminishing power of the Roman Catholic Church. Some accomplished great things, some horrific.”

“It was a pope who, parleying with Attila the Hun, persuaded the great conqueror not to invade Italy; a pope who, in what remains the greatest psy-op of all time, riled up disgruntled Normans and sent them to Jerusalem to repulse the Seljuk Turks; a pope whose legate, after indiscriminately slaughtering the entire population of Béziers because a gnostic sect was based there, replied, when asked how to tell the heretics from the faithful, “Kill them all and let God sort them out”; a pope who divvied up lands in the New World between Portugal and Spain; a pope whose Papal Bull was used to justify slavery in the Americas; a pope who excommunicated Henry VIII, indirectly establishing the Church of England; a pope whose corrupt and venal policies prompted Martin Luther to nail his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, jumpstarting the Reformation; and so on.”

This from the most insightful – and funny – essay on the power of the papacy in general that I read yesterday.

What stuck we me, however, regarding Pope Francis, was a paragraph in the NYT obituary about his personal focus:

“Francis …called for “Synodality”, the word given to the ancient church habit of assembling, discussing, discerning and deciding. Francis adapted the ancient practice of synods and councils in a radically inclusive way that invites all the faithful to be involved. The cardinals may conclude that right now, this is the greatest sign of hope the church can offer the world.

This “culture of encounter,” as Francis called it, may seem a puny thing to the powers that be. But it starts from the idea that those in thrall to the will to power cannot understand: the innate dignity of all, the need to listen to everyone, including those on the margins, and the importance of patiently waiting for consensus. These things are all crucial to the repair of a torn civic fabric.“

And here, of course, we have our bridge to hobbies: the culture of encounter.

New reports on the effects of the devastating consequences of this administration’s economic kamikaze include the fact that many people are priced out of their hobbies, with cost increases put on consumers’ backs. Now, for usually more solitary passions like mine, knitting, the horrendous prices for wool might register in decreased sanity – after all, it is my form of therapy, and absent those hours spent with my needles, neuroticism might visibly increase – beware, dear reader. Might lose my marbles after all.

Can you guys what my current project is?

But many hobbies are activities where you meet other people, or engage with them, often providing exposure to very different types from different walks of life, who would usually not be encountered. You meet people fishing, bowling, hunting, or in bike clubs – you get the idea. Usually, the Meso-world, as sociologists call it, the tiny publics you find in groups that come together to act on the local level, consist of people who already have much in common. Your unions, your prayer circle, your book club or who you go to demonstrations with are all comprised of somewhat like-minded compatriots.

Hobbies, on the other hand, really draw participants from different worlds. And if they now exclude the segments that simply can no longer afford them, you have lost an opportunity for civic encounter in small collectives. That means losing the dialogues that can lead to cooperation, or to conflict – both drive civic commitment that can provide a metaphorical hinge between individuals and societies. (Informative reading here: Gary Alan Fine The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments.)

One way to counteract the price surges and foster local engagement at the same time, are lending libraries – not for books, but for tools or other items needed for activities once easily shared. These are, of course, not new inventions. I remember driving my teenager, who had a new expensive hobby every 5 minutes, to a tool shop where you could rent space and time with existing wood working tools that would have cost a fortune, even then, to acquire. He met quite a few people who would mentor or share his interests. These days, these shops take on a different kind of urgency.

These non-profits have, of course, their challenges. Who does the tool maintenance? How do you recoup the tools that wander off… who pays for liability insurance and how do you raise funds, if you don’t charge membership dues or other fees? But on net, they are a marvelous way to create community, connecting people around them and supporting other communal efforts of small collectives. After all, community-based volunteer programs around the country, from tree plantings to building renovations, from picking up trash to community garden projects, all depend on borrowing massive numbers of tools when they call for action.

Here is a way to find your local tool lending library or other ways to share tools.

As for crafts? There are certainly ways to find or found local craft groups, or, if your health or transportation issues preclude in-person meetings, there are zoom encounters with like-minded knitters. For folks in Portland, there is a wonderful offer by the Multnomah Library system, to be taught and to meet with others in their A good yarn project for knitting and crocheting, all levels of experience welcome. And of course there is always the BUY NOTHING possibility for scoring some tools and wool that generous people donate.

The civic fabric might be torn, but we still have ways to mend it. Don’t let inertia be the enemy.

And since we are talking politics and craft/ tools, it has to be Hans Sachs today, singing about the madness of the world… Wagner’s Meistersänger is endless (4:29 hours, although in Herman Prey’s company it might fly by…), but I figured we could stomach this short aria.





4 Comments

2025: the Year of the Snake.

I went down to Lan Su Chinese Garden last week in anticipation of the Chinese New Year this coming Wednesday. The celebratory red balloons and technicolor floats on the pond were illuminated by a bright sun in a cloudless sky, strange for a late January day in the Pacific North West.

Cherries bloomed like little white stars,

moss gleamed on the tiles,

winter jasmine was fragrant,

camellias dainty,

and the white paper bush stretched into the path.

The Year of the Snake is upon us, one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs. Each of those is paired with one of five elements – Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, and this year, for the first time since 1965, it is wood linked to the snake.

From what I could glean from various explanations, this bodes well. Wood stands for flexibility (think bamboo) and growth. Combine this with Zodiac snake characteristics of wisdom and strategic, if rigid and sometimes secretive, thinking, you can anticipate adaptability to difficult situations and reaching new heights.

The garden was filled with offerings for family feasts and remembrance. A striking absence of visual snake representations, though, apart from the gift store where rubber toys and metal pins were lying in wait. I wonder why.

Was I too early? Last year they had little dragons hanging all over. A consideration of people’s snake phobias? After all, most frequently snakes are associated with something negative, at least in Western realms, with the Staff of Aesculapius, a serpent-entwined rod held by the Greek god associated with healing and medicine one of the few exceptions I can think of.

I guess visual depictions of wisdom are harder to fashion than those envisioning seduction and cunning, violence and wrath. Searching, I found some neutral sculptures,

some signaling power of protection,

some hinting and human’s control of the beast.

But the memorable sculptures drawing and paintings were geared towards infusing us with terror.

Laocoon and his sons.

The terror contained in snake pits. Like being surrounded by colleagues and friends who have been officially instructed to be snitches. (Federal workers were told by the new administration to name colleagues who work in DEI position or face “adverse consequences.”)

Like living among bounty hunters, new legislation proposed by Mississippi district attorneys. For each successful deportation people help facilitate, they would be paid $1000, funded by the general assembly and administered by the state treasurer.

Surrounded by vigilantes who might just rough you up for the color of your skin.

Serving under those aiming at re-segregation – even without specific instructions by Trump’s DEI initiatives,

“the Air Force has removed training courses with videos of its storied Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Air Force Service Pilots, or WASPs — the female World War II pilots who were vital in ferrying warplanes for the military — to comply with the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.” (Ref.)

As it turns out that decision has been reversed as of this posting, protests howling, but the initial damage was done.

Peter Paul Rubens The Head of Medusa ( Circa 1617-1618.)

I wish I could return to the Fairy Tale world of my childhood where a snake, sacrificed no less, was the key to a hero’s survival. Remember The Brother Grimm’s The White Snake? Young peasant steals king’s privileged, secretive meal and takes a bite of a white snake. All of a sudden he can hear and understand all the animals. Goes on a journey and rescues fish, ants and crow fledglings from certain death (slaughtering his horse, no less, to feed the latter.) Then has to win three challenges to get to marry the princess (awful in her breaking her word and making more and more demands – I never understood why anyone would want to live happily ever after with an amoral person, but what did I know, naive eight year old…) and, of course, the rescued animals come to his aid and he wins the prize. The transformational power of a snake, giving him protection and prosperity, just as the Chinese New Year in 2025 implies.

I take it, from my adult perch now, that the fairy tale stresses that empathy is rewarded, and begins with understanding the other, rather than upholding our ignorance about strangers, deaf to them. Maybe we should just dole out magical white snakes to those eschewing mercy…

Why that has to be facilitated by a theft and consumption of something potentially poisonous – you tell me.

3 Comments

Spread Peace: Yoko Ono’s installation at Portland Japanese Garden.

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” -Yoko Ono

The next few days (6/7 – 6/10/2024) offer all of us the opportunity to raise our voices in support of a better world, one without violence or suffering. We are invited to interact with SPREAD PEACE: Wish Tree, an art installation by Yoko Ono, manifesting our hopes for peace by writing them on slips of paper and hanging them on 5 Japanese Maple trees specifically provided for the occasion.

5 Japanese Maples at the Plaza of the Cultural Village

It could not have arrived at a more poignant time or a more appropriate place: a time when wars have raised their ugly heads across the world again, a place – Portland Japanese Garden – that was founded to help heal the ruptures and wounds carved by an earlier war.

In addition, we are afforded this interaction in the company of other important public gardens across the globe – Keihanna Commemorative Garden in Japan, Kokoro no Niwa in Chile, and Johannesburg Botanical Gardens in South Africa will all be exhibiting Wish Trees during these four days as well.

The international collaboration with multiple organizations, including the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway which houses the Yoko Ono: Peace is Power exhibition, is led by Japan Institute of Portland Japanese Garden, our own cultural institution that, in its own words, is focussed on fostering dialogue and bridging divides. (I had written a more detailed history here.)

The Japanese garden is the perfect setting for the installation, and not just due to its historic focus on issues of reconciliation and peace. It currently provides a particularly peaceful atmosphere: rather than the fiery colors of autumn, spring produces softness and calm in most of the garden’s appearance, the muted purples and whites of the last rhododendrons,

the pink and whites of the mountain laurels,

the pink and white of the azaleas,

and the ever graceful dogwoods.

The garden joins the ranks of many other important places chosen across the life-time of the Wish Tree project, started in 1996, now almost 30 years in the making. Some of the previous trees were placed temporarily for exhibition purposes, in museums or cultural institutions, others have found a permanent home in public gardens, still in use, or just beautifying their respective location. I have seen them in New York City, the Arlington Gardens in Pasadena, CA, and at a gallery in Venice,Italy, but they really spread across the entire world, to Europe, South America and Asia.

The instructions are simple:

“Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree. Ask your friends to do the same. Keep wishing. Until the branches are covered with wishes.“

The power of wishes has been a theme throughout mythology and literature, just think of the Greek or Norse Pantheon, the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales or 1001 Arabian Nights, the drama of Dr. Faustus. Whether Gods, fairy godmothers, genies or the devil granted the wishes (often three of them) the warning was about the content of the wishes – driven by greed, longing or lust – and the distinction between cleverness and foolishness, with individuals believing they possessed the former but exhibiting the latter. Be careful what you wish for is often the moral of those tales.

Detail views of the trees that will host the wishes.

The power of Ono’s work lies in the leap from individual desire to collectively expressed hope around a shared dream. Looking at a tree covered with hundreds of pieces of paper provides a sense of collective voice, a gratitude for being joined by many in our very own aspirations. That feeling is multiplied by millions, the number of wishes collected so far, all of whom get deposited in one final resting place: Imagine Peace Tower on Viðey Island in Kollafjörður Bay in Iceland. There is something about shared action that adds value to an experience, whether singing in a group or choir, praying in unison with a congregation, or a shared exposure to cultural events – it provides a qualitative, not just quantitative shift in the way we feel, given that we are a social species.

Group actions, whether through economic alliances or political coalitions, or the structure of societies geared around families or clans, have, of course, shaped cultures in other ways as well. We are all aware that partisanship exists, and that the struggle for power, limited resources, land or revenge for historical slights, can lead to horrid consequences, including war. It is all the more important then to have projects like Ono’s that demonstrate a desire for peace likely crossing the boundaries of partisanship. The majority of people, no matter who we vote for, or where we live, do not want to be exposed to violent harm or inflict it upon others. We will hang our wishes on the tree joined by others who in that moment become simply allies.

I had felt this years ago in another show concerned with interaction around wishes, although not defined solely by a single theme. The New Museum in NYC exhibited work by Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander in 2010. In A Day Like Any Other you entered a room with white walls covered with colorful ribbons on which wishes, previously written by visitors and deposited in small holes in the walls, were printed. You were encouraged to add your own, and permitted to take a ribbon and bind it across your wrist, with three knots, if you shared the particular wish written on it. Lore had it that the wish would come true once the knots dissolved and fell off. (Note: I can confirm that that happened, against my better rational judgement, and yes, you may roll your eyes now.) The main emotion was contained in a sense of shared longing, bound to an unknown companion in a particular hopefulness.

Rivane Neuenschwander A Day Like Any Other (2010)

***

The Tate Modern in London is currently exhibiting a retrospective of Yoko Ono’s work, open until September 1, 2024. Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind received rave reviews both for its content and curation of seven decades of work by this iconoclastic artist. Much of the work expresses a leap of faith around the dichotomy of war and peace, the core focus of her creative imagination. The artist, who grew up In Japan during World War II, a deadly conflict that ended with nuclear bombs destroying Hiroshima, is convinced that WE, the interactive participants in so many of her installations, will, in the end, provide individual contributions to make our world less belligerent.

In April, the nonagenarian has also been awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal, an honor previously given to Stephen Sondheim and Toni Morrison among others. The lifetime achievement prize honored her continuous engagement with her Leitmotiv: Peace. Projects like the one we’re about to experience at Portland Japanese Garden will be a reminder that we all, indeed, can, no, should contribute to this singular goal.

***

Wishing Trees (or for that matter wells) have been around for a long time, across diverse cultures. Many speak to existential issues of love, fertility, poverty, and, of course, war. The wishes can be expressed via words, or pieces of cloth or the donation of coins, depending on custom. Why trees? They might be particularly visible and relatively stable. In many mythologies they are linked to forces of nature or habitats of benevolent grantors, the spirit world.

Clockwise from upper left: Tanabata Festival wishing tree in Japan; Wishing tree from Alaçati, Turkey;Wishing tree hung with Nazar in Anatolia; Wishing tree spiked with coins in Scotland. (Photographs all web sourced.)

Portland has had its very own wishing tree for over a decade now, an ancient chestnut tree at the corner of 7th and NE Morris St. I wrote about it some years ago, puzzling over the diverse sentiments found at the location.

“For me psychologically more interesting is the fact that people like to externalize what could be a private prayer or wish – the very act of making it public, saying it out loud, seems to have some meaning. Maybe the act of sharing makes you feel less alone, or heard, even if the next reader is not the powerful entity that could fulfill your wish. Maybe the act of voicing it defines a problem that you want to be collectively remembered and then collectively tackled (certainly for the wishes for peace or end of poverty.) Maybe putting it in words clarifies, through the very act of verbalizing, the hierarchy of your own needs and provides access to thoughts about action.”

Whatever motivates us, it is Ono’s creative insight that mobilizes a communal agreement about a worthy goal, reminding all of us about the fact that there are some things that are truly at the core of our existence and that they are forever endangered by war. If you have a chance to visit Portland Japanese Garden this weekend, add your voice to the chorus. If you can’t, you can still make yourself heard: here is a link to the Imagine Peace Tower site, where you can send your wishes electronically or with old fashioned postcards.

Then go and take in the peacefulness of Portland Japanese Garden and its current bloom at a more convenient time. It nourishes hope for a better world.

1 Comments

Modes of Philanthropy

Does this happen to you as well? A particular topic enters your thoughts and then you see it everywhere you turn?

Philanthropy came to my mind when I stopped at a small history museum in Southern Oregon that was established in the late 50s by an Oregon politician who wanted to help Oregonians remember their history. More on Pottsville in a moment – photographs today are from that site.

I was also wondering about the mechanisms of philanthropy last week when reading about Melinda Gates’ decision to pull out of the Gates Foundation and start moving her philanthropic investment in a different direction.

I was thinking about philanthropy when I heard that multiple Jewish organizations in Oregon cut off their charitable donations to the Oregon Food Bank when the latter called for cease fire in Gaza in a statement critical of Israeli military actions. Never mind that Hamas’ atrocities were condemned as well, and the statement had been discussed with Jewish allies prior to publication. It seems particularly poignant to think of locally increased hunger being the outcome of ideologically motivated decisions when forced starvation of a locked -in region at war has been criticized by many entities across the world.

Last but not least, a chance conversation with a woman a bit younger than myself, elegance personified and a legend in her professional field, raised a different notion of philanthropic involvement: rather than (or in addition to) writing the big checks, with or without strings attached, you quietly contribute by adding your insights and knowledge to help steer non-profits that you are passionate about in a direction that allows them to maximize their impact and develop their full potential. A true form of more or less anonymous giving back.

I had simplistic notions of charitable giving. It can be either ethically or religiously driven, in fact for us in the Jewish realm it is a mitzvah, a commandment, not a choice. (If you are interested in the religious roots of charity, here is a neat summary out of Harvard.)

Giving can be used to promote or preserve a name – think buildings across American or European campuses, sports arenas, concert halls.

It can be a means to erase shame – think of the many donors and board members who make astronomical contributions to cultural institutions like museums, who are eventually called out for where their money came from. I had written about a specific case not so long ago at the Whitney. Recently, the V&A Dundee, the National Gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris severed connections to the Sacklers, a dynasty indelibly linked to the global opioid epidemic, from which some members of the family profited via their company Purdue Pharma. The British National Portrait Gallery severed ties with BP in 2022, the end of a relationship that had lasted more than 30 years.

Consider the Tears

Reading up on the idea of philanthropy, I now learn that people categorize charity in more complex ways as well. (I’m summarizing, among others, from a source here.)

There is Philanthropic Investment  which aims to invest resources into nonprofit enterprises in order to increase their ability to deliver programmatic execution. The Philanthropic Investor, like a for-profit investor, is primarily focused on the longer term increase and improvement in programmatic execution relative to grant size. Basically, they are building the organization, rather than engaging in spontaneous charitable giving for whatever need arises in the moment.

Then there are two types of philanthropy that try to affect change systematically. One is Strategic Philanthropy  which buys up nonprofit goods and services in a way that aligns with a theory of change defined by the strategic philanthropist. This approach hopes to advance the solution that they believe is most likely to solve the problem they seek to address. The other is Social Entrepreneurism  which seeks to directly execute programs that align with a theory of change, defined by themselves. I had previously written about philanthropy that hopes to be a direct agent of change here.

Present or future need – which should be served?

Politics enter the arena of charitable giving of course not only from the side of individual donors with specific goals or groups of protesters who try to influence the flow and acceptance of charitable funds. There exist direct attempts to oversee what can be given to whom, assessing the legality of the donations. Case in point is ‘Not On Our Dime’, a recently (re)introduced bill by New York Assembly member Zohran Mamdani and endorsed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The bill aims to sanction New York charities who send more than $ 60.000.000 a year towards Israeli settlement expansion, that the bill’s sponsors consider to occur in violation of international law.

Much to think about. Far easier to wander around a photographer’s candy store of agricultural machinery gently rusting itself into oblivion, among small buildings recreating villages of yore. The museum itself is only open by appointment, and the fairgrounds serve mostly locals for motorcycle swap meets, parades, fairs and the likes. We were the only living souls in the vicinity, mid-afternoon on a weekday, acres and acres to ourselves.

Pottsville’s founder, Eugene “Debbs” Potts (1909 – 2003) was by all reports quite a character, serving multiple roles, including decades as a state senator. Although named for the famous socialist Eugene W. Debs, his leanings were more centric, voting as a Democrat quite frequently with his Republican colleagues. He donated the land, gave seed money to the non-profit, and eventually contributed his gigantic collection of tools and machinery.

The highlight of my visit came when I saw a few murals by one Mark M. Jones on the sides of the buildings. Landscape scenery was lovingly depicting the wonders of our state,

a rodeo snippet was attributed to Olaf Wieghorst, a Danish-American painter who specialized in depictions of the American frontier in the vein of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.

Then this.

My first thought was, “Is he familiar with Oskar Schlemmer?”

Then I read the signage and the referent painting was Farmers Planting Potatoes by van Gogh.

Oh, the surprises of Pottsville. Oh, the generous sharing of one’s means and/or skills for all of us to enjoy.

Long live giving.

Music today was written in 1915 to support charity for refugees. Polonia was first performed at London’s Queen’s Hall at a Polish Victims’ Relief Fund Concert in July 1915, with Elgar conducting. He dedicated the work to his friend Paderewski, a great pianist and later Prime Minister of Poland.

0 Comments

Bosch, Revisited

“Poor is the mind that always uses the inventions of others and invents nothing itself. -Hieronymus Bosch, one of the most idiosyncratic painters in all of art history….

About an hour’s drive north of the village where I grew up lies s’Hertogenbosch, the capital of the Dutch province North Brabant. Its most famous son was probably Hieronymus Bosch (born Jheronimus van Aken, ca. 1450 – 1516 – he renamed himself after the town – the Duke’s Forest.) A permanent Jheronymus Bosch Art Center with reproductions of all his works was opened in a local church in 2002; for the last many years the town has also been hosting an extremely popular festival, the Bosch Parade. (Images are from their website and a Dirkjm Photography from the 2022 festival.)

Floats fashioned by individuals sail for a number of days down the river Dommel, its banks and the medieval city walls lined with spectators. All of the floats re-envision snippets of some of Bosch’s art, dependent on the theme chosen for the bi-annual festivity – this year it is Contemporary Demons. A Garden of Delight serves drinks and foods, there is music, and costumed individuals parade around before climbing into their respective floats that reproduce the fantastical and mysterious creatures from Bosch’s paintings.

Locals’ enthusiasm for 15th century art of one of their own is understandable, but it is widely shared internationally. It’s not just the museums (most of his known 25 paintings and a few drawings are housed in Madrid’s Prado), or books and poster industry. From bags, Doc Martin boots, t-shirts, mouse pads to phone cases, there is a whole range of consumer products with printed excerpts from mostly The Garden of Earthly Delights, his late masterpiece. The only other artists I can think of matching this range is Frida Kahlo. Riddle me that.

Quite a number of surrealist painters cited Bosch’s influence over their own creations. His work has made its way into other visual media as well, dance and circus performances among them. (Photographs below are from my last pre-Covid shoot in Montréal for the circus performance Scenes from Bosch Dreams, a production by Les 7 Doigts, a 500th anniversary commission by the Hieronymus Bosch Society, all of it mounted by TOHU. My write-up can be found here. Video snippets here.)

Ballets capture the ominous quality of the paintings, like Compagnie Marie Chouinard‘s Le Jardin de Délices and digital animations (this one commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum for the 500 year Bosch celebration) translate the ideas into modern movement.

So what is behind the contemporary interest and preoccupation? Spectacle and sex come to mind. The inventiveness of his couplings, bestiary and architectural structures are truly spectacular, and easily divided into self-contained narrative scenes, fit for printing or reconstruction into costumed staging. A boon for commercial exploitation.

The weirdness of it all, coupled with sexually explicit imagery, lent itself to certain conspiracy theories, like the proposal banded about in the 1940s that he was a member of the Adamites, a heretical sex cult, or that he was high on ergotic wheat – eating too much moldy bread, in other words.

Serious art historians place his work into a very different context, that of a committed, faithful catholic who was intent to warn of the wages of sin, using every biblical parable under the sun to make his point. The visual referents, in turn, are mirroring imagery found in the churches and cloisters of his hometown (95 gargoyles, for example, in just the main cathedral.) Drolleries in the side margins of theological books and devotionals, put in by sex obsessed monks in abandon, and pictures of foreign animals found in bestiaries of his time and accessible to him are used as templates to create the scenarios that will lead to hell. If you have time, watch this lecture by a British curator on Bosch’s religious conservatism, I found it truly educational.)

But I believe there is something else at work here. The 16th century saw seismic changes in politics and social structuring of societies, not unlike our own. There was a worry (for some, hope for others) of end times, after a famous astrologer predicted the end of the world in early 1524, to be preceded by catastrophic flooding. Bosch, Albrecht Dürer and many other artists picked up on it, pointing to the Last Judgment. The apocalyptic tone of the work might very well resonate with us, not for its religious implications, but due to recognition that our sense of impending catastrophe is best ignored by engaging in all kinds of distracting activities, however frivolous or lustful they might be. The more, the better in fact, to drone out the sense of helplessness.

It is not poor minds who are too lazy to invent their own ideas, but agile ones that sense the relevance of existing, if 500 years old, imagery for its predictive power of a world gone mad. He should be proud of his art’s longevity and prescience. Then again, pride is a cardinal sin….

Music today directly from the painting…

3 Comments

The Chinese Zodiac: 2024 – Year of the Dragon.

You learn something new every day. For example, your fortunes can be told not only by the zodiac sign associated with the year of your birth (I am a water dragon) but your personality can be predicted by the sign in combination with your blood type! Apparently AB positive dragons are “the most independent ones among all the Dragons. They love nature and travel far to enjoy various landscapes. The born sensitivity to art and beauty make them outstanding romantics.” Hmmmm.

Nature ✅ Travel ✅ Born sensitivity, eh? Dedicated to art and beauty, ✅ (if acquired rather than innate), but surely I cannot be counted as a romantic. Never have been, never will be.

I also learned that “Dragon women are typical feminists. They think women can perform as well as men, and even do better. Besides. They have a clear plan about their future and will be determined to fight for it. In life, women with Chinese zodiac Dragon sign prefer simple and comfortable clothing to fashionable styles. At work, they tend to be career-oriented and creative.”

Note that the claim is “we think” we can perform as well as men”, not that we do…. Hmmmmmm.

Not believing at all in horoscopes from any cultural background, I was nonetheless relieved that these instances of contradiction provide enough evidence of the futility of soothsaying. Thus I will not take the prediction that this is a year that will be hard for water dragons seriously… Hmmmmmm.

As the photographs show, I had occasion to check out Portland’s Lan – Su Chinese Garden, a few days after the Chinese New Year started. As beautiful a visit as ever, starting with the friendly smile of the young cashier who sported an extravagant tie brooch.

Lots of decorations for the occasion, including new (to me) lanterns that seemed disproportionately large for their surroundings, and some inexplicable plastic pandas climbing across the roofs near the tea house.

Signs of spring everywhere, in single blossoms, and budding magnolia capsules.

Hummingbirds came and went, resting near the dragon figures on the roofs.

If the dragons displayed across the garden did not suffice,

there were plenty more in the gift shop. Take your pick!

Not suitable, though, to represent the dragon of the poem below, who, in the end, decides to continue being a terror.

A Dragon’s Lament

I’m tired of being a dragon,
Ferocious and brimming with flame,
The cause of unspeakable terror
When anyone mentions my name.
I’m bored with my bad reputation
For being a miserable brute,
And being routinely expected.
To brazenly pillage and loot.

I wish that I weren’t repulsive,
Despicable, ruthless and fierce,
With talons designed to dismember
And fangs finely fashioned to pierce.
I’ve lost my desire for doing
The deeds any dragon should do,
But since I can’t alter my nature,
I guess I’ll just terrify you.

~ Jack Prelutsky

The boys loved that one when they were little. I wonder where the book is. Oh no, the predictions come true: a hard year it will be, if chaos rules the bookshelves and memory fails me…. Hmmmmm.

Of course the joke freezes on my tongue, when I see people dumpster diving right under a mural of the local PDX food distribution center for the houseless, Blanchet House, across from the garden. Talk about a hard year.

Here is Wu Man playing the pipa, a traditional Chinese instrument. Her fingers fly, just like a dragon.

2 Comments

Pulling Strings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 Comments

Not all is doom and gloom.

As an antidote to my habitually bleak news these days, I thought I’d collect and present what brought me fun, knowledge and/or encouragement across the last week.

HOPE:

In Germany literally millions of people marched against the far right now for two consecutive weeks, with demonstrations particularly strong on Holocaust remembrance day. “Germany’s constitutional court stripped a neo-Nazi party of the right to public financing and the tax advantages normally extended to political organizations, a decision that could have implications for countering the Alternative for Germany, a far-right party whose growing popularity has caused concerns among parts of the population.”

Below is what demonstrators got to see on a high-rise in Düsseldorf.

“The difference between 1933 and 2024? You!”

EDUCATION:

And also this…..

I did not know that.

RELIEF:

The International Court of Justice in The Hague walked a fine line in their ruling on the genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa; here is a compilation of short, informative expert opinions on the implications, offered by the Atlantic Council (not exactly a hotbed of progressivism). Here are the take-aways from The Guardian, slightly more to the left. And here the ruling is declared a historic victory for the Palestinians by The Intercept. Then again, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir declares it: Hague Shmague. Fact is, the case is taken up, will stretch out for years, but importantly for now, the court ordered Israel to “take all measures” to avoid acts of genocide in Gaza, a ruling that is, however, unenforceable.

FUN:

I discovered a site, Artbutmakeitsports, that manages to combine knowledge of art and sports in ways that had even me, the least sportive person in the world, laugh with delight.

Autumn, by Mikhail Larionov, 1912

The Harvesters, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565.

Last, but not least,

CONTENTMENT:

I finally managed to bring some of my affairs in order, figuring out what to do in the case of eventual demise. Unlike those whose adherence to religion faiths proscribes what to do, I had to make difficult decisions myself. I’ve never wanted to imagine myself cooped up in a coffin. I did not like the idea of cremation due to its horrid environmental impact. They now offer an alternative, where your remains get literally composted and then, except what urns relatives might claim, gets used to fertilize reforesting projects in the PNW forests. “Mami Mulch!” as my beloved declared. And now I don’t have to think about it ever again…

When I am Among the Trees

 
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
 
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
 
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
 
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

By Mary Oliver

I might not shine in this world, but I can sure make it grow!

And here is sunlight and a breeze flittering through the tree canopy – Liszt‘s music at its best.


 

2 Comments
© 2026