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Politics

Community Alliances

Large parts of the European population are trembling this week, worried about the outcome of the upcoming European elections where 350 million people across the EU are eligible to cast ballots for the 751 legislative members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

The threat of nationalists and populists winning big is real, with Euro-skepticism blossoming cross the continent, Brexit included. The predicted exponential gain of these disruptive forces, who want to make Europe great again according to Italian Deputy Prime minister Matteo Salvini, is based on an alliance of far-right parties across nation borders. Observers at the Center for European Reform hope, however, that populists, nationalist and euroskeptic parties will ultimately struggle to work together “so their influence will diminish a lot because of the lack of coordination.”

I have been thinking of alliances fron the other end of the spectrum – how a weak(ened) left or progressive movement needs to organize to develop sufficient thrust to stop the populist machine. An interesting article in the NYT from organizers in Poland provided some pointers. (Since my photographs of Poland hide somewhere in the digital universe, I am offering images of the Baltic Sea today, as close to Poland as I can get.)

In order to fight the illiberal wave crashing over Poland in the guise of the Law and Justice party, “nearly every party that opposes Law and Justice — from conservatives to Greens — united into an electoral list named the European Coalition, ahead of the elections this month. These parties have come together under the umbrella of protecting a minimum of democracy and the rule of law, as well as support for the European Union.”

The organizers stress the complications of having to compromise. Many if not all of the partners in the alliance had to give up on some of their demands. But they realize the power that comes from putting away their differences to speak in many voices expressing the same message. Something to be learned here for our own election campaigns, I suggest.

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A different alliance also caught my eye, one that stretches across an abyss deeper than anything a disunited left has ever known: the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Israeli and Palestinian members of Combatants for Peace (CFP) and the Parents Circle-Family Forum have come together to hold and alternative Memorial Day ceremony on Israel Memorial Day. “ … we stood with over 9,000 people who came to support families in mourning from (Green Line) Israel, the West Bank and—over video conference—from Gaza. Each loss is different. Some mourn IDF soldiers killed in battle; others, Palestinians who died at the hands of Israeli forces. But our message is shared: We refuse to allow our bereavement to be manipulated for nationalistic purposes and we insist that, despite all complications of asymmetry and power gaps, we have a right to recognize one another’s losses.“

It took 14 years to grow this alliance from the early 200 people to one that now numbers almost 10.000, and is vehemently, sometimes violently opposed by both the Israeli Right Wings and also by Palestinians, who accuse the CFP of normalizing relations with an oppressive government. (The article here gives details.)

But this is the message of the alliance: “Binational mourning is a sign that Palestinians and Israelis are capable of taking down the walls of fear that he works so hard to erect and maintain, and that we are able to find our own, independent moral compass, even in dark times. We know that the moral insight born of our ceremony is not enough, on its own, to change reality here; but we also know that no real change can happen without it.

As we look across the seas and watch Muslims and Jews being killed—albeit under very different circumstances—by white-supremacist terror in Christchurch, New Zealand, in Poway, California, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we invite mourners to join in our practice. It is imperative to remember the dead. It is transformative when we remember them together.”

Music ist by Swiss/Jewish composer Ernest Bloch who lived and composed in Oregon by 1916.

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Community Action

18.248 – that is the official number of refugees who during the last 5 years drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean, according to the newest report by the United Nations. The dark figure is likely much higher. Organizations like Sea Bridge have been trying to rescue as many as they could, but their work has been made increasingly difficult by the political right wing forces in Europe.

The official E.U. Marine rescue boats were already withdrawn when the new Italian government refused to allow any more refugees on land. The E.U. states could not agree on a distribution quota that would have swayed the Italians. Now private rescue operations are brought to a halt as well.

People who use their own boats to fish drowning refugees out of the water are threatened with up to 20 years in prison and insane fines for supporting “illegal immigration.” Last Tuesday the captain of the boat “lifeline” was sentenced to a 1o.ooo Euros fine in Malta for rescuing 230 migrants and bringing them on land.

That same approach to “deterrence” is of course also happening here in the US: the criminalization of humanitarian aid has progressed under the Trump administration to destroy potentially the lives of those trying to prevent deaths along the Southern Border. Whether you leave water for those trying to cross the desert, or pick them up in your car to bring to social services, you can be charged with federal crimes like trafficking. (This last article on the treatment of organizations that try to save lives is frightening.)

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In a statement last year the European rescuers declared: SEEBRÜCKE is an international movement, supported by several civil society alliances and people. We declare our solidarity with people who are forced to flee their homes. From German and European policy makers, we demand the establishment of safe routes for refugees, to stop the criminalisation of sea rescue and to receive them in a humane way whilst respecting their rights.

Last year, protest actions organized by Seebrücke were held in Greece and several German and Swiss cities. This week, there was a protest in Berlin.

One of the city’s landmarks, Molecule Man by Jonathan Borofsky, was clad in an orange life vest and black blindfolds by art activists. The 30 meter high sculpture was installed in 1999 and strategically placed in the river Spree where the former East and West Germany met. Refugees had sewn the huge (48 square meters) life vest by hand according to a pattern devised by a Syrian mathematician, also a refugee. Banners along the bridges proclaimed: Build Bridges not Walls!

Aktivist_innen der Seebrücke befestigen am 17.05.2019 ein riesiges Transparent in Form einer Rettungsweste am Molecule Man, einer Skulptur die sich in der Spree zwischen Elsenbrücke und Oberbaumbrücke in Berlin befindet. Foto: RubyImages/F. Boillot

Here is a fascinating, short video documenting the action.

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“Molecule Man” (1981) by Jonathan Borofsky

Here is another of Borofky’s Molecule Man, this one located in L.A. Any clever suggestions how to decorate that one to draw attention to the plight of those crossing the Sonoran Desert? And those trying to prevent them from dying of thirst? Garments of canteens, anyone?

Photographs today are of desert plants I’ve encountered in the US.

 

And here is some desert music although from a desert in a different continent.

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Louse(y) Stories

Weren’t you always dying to know about the life cycle of the salmon louse? Well, I have to disappoint you – today’s report is about the problems of aquaculture, among which the louse is one of the biggest, and it will be discussed in this context only.

Why would I even bother? Well, one of the arguments offered in yesterday’s musing on the decline of ocean health and overfishing was the possibility of farmed fish filling our protein needs no longer covered by fish in the wild. Fish farms have, of course, become a huge business. Salmon is one of the biggest products of aquaculture, generating billions of dollars of income for Norway and Chile, the top producers in the world, but also other European countries like Scotland (the US ranks only 16th in aquaculture.)

And now there is a crisis for which we all pay – and I don’t mean with increased prices only for our favorite dinner either. Salmons are farmed in net enclosures that reach up to 165 ft down into the depth of the waters and have a similar diameter. In other words, they are stuffed together for the 2 years until they are slaughtered. They used to be fed with insane amounts of antibiotics, but that was eventually reduced to acceptable levels, because they figured out a way to vaccinate the baby fish against diseases.

(More detailed information can be found here in a publication of Le Monde diplomatique (alas only in German.)

That did not solve other problems, however. Lots of fish escape these nets when they are torn during storms, and then mix with wild salmon, endangering the gene pool with their degenerated genetic make-up. During the 2007 earthquake in Chile alone, 5 million farmed salmons escaped.

In addition, carnivorous salmon require too much other fish to eat. It takes 1,7 kg of small fish made into fishmeal to generate 1 kg of salmon. Attempts to change their diet to soy beans and grains have been not very successful, they refuse to eat it and get diarrhea. More of that diet will also lessen the omega-III-fatty acids that attract us to fish in the first place.

The biggest problem for aqua farming is the salmon or sea louse, however. It has killed 50 million salmon in Norway in 2016 alone. The 8-12 mm parasites glum onto the salmon and eat holes into their skin. They flourish in the conditions of these tight nets and the warming of the waters due to climate change, and now also spread to wild salmon when these migrate close by.

The lice are resistant to many insecticides; what is still in use is Emamectinbenzoat and Diflubenzoron (yes, they are as toxic as they are hard to spell), as well as Hydrogenperoxide (they now use 42 liters of that for every ton of aqua farmed fish….) Traces of these chemicals remain in the fish that land on our plates. And if one country prohibits use of certain chemicals, why, globalization allows the industry to spread to other parts of the globe.

The Norwegian salmon farming giant Cermaq has a sea lice emergency on their Clayoquot Sound salmon farms right now. Documents released through Access to Information indicate Cermaq obtained an Emergency Drug Release to use the insecticide Lufeneron to control sea lice in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region (British Columbia). That chemical was not approved by the Norwegian Government (and the application withdrawn with much secrecy.) This very month, it is used over here. And I quote:

“There are human health concerns with use of the drug, which resides in the fat of treated animals. The flesh of treated fish cannot be consumed by humans for 350 days after treatment. This raises questions around how Lufeneron-treated fish will be disposed of in the event of a mass die-off, and in the event of an escape, whether Lufeneron-treated fish might be eaten by a predator which could later be caught for human consumption.

“Lufeneron acts as a chitin synthesis inhibitor; it kills crustaceans like fleas and lice by preventing them from growing a new exoskeleton after moulting. This raises questions about its impact on aquatic organisms in the marine environment—particularly crustaceans like crab, shrimp and prawns”, said Glambeck. “Although the drug will be administered in freshwater hatcheries, it stays in the fish for a very long time. How much will be excreted by fish into the ocean? How long will Lufeneron persist once it settles beneath the fish farm? And how readily will it be accessible to sea creatures?”

The details of all this will be forgotten by me by tomorrow, but the principle will linger: there are no easy solutions to problems that were created by our interference with nature. The idea that depletion of wild fish can be compensated by harvesting farmed fish is only theoretically sound. In praxis the diseases nurtured by close-quarter farming and then the chemical treatment of those diseases generate health scares in their own right and potential longitudinal effects that we have not even begun to understand.

Lousy, indeed.

Photographs taken yesterday of wild carp thrashing in a lake nearby.

Music is self explanatory.

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Fashion Statements

I was barely 13 years old when I was shipped off to boarding school in Heidelberg, a small but sophisticated university town known to Americans more for its castle ruins and romantic ambience than anything else, I believe. Among other attractions, it sports the longest car-free shopping street in Europe, where consumerism runs unchecked.

Coming from a rural village I was singularly unprepared for what awaited me at the all-(rich)-girls school: a beehive of communication via fashion items, be they certain clothes brands, certain kinds of shoes, (preferably horse bit loafers,) headscarves (the kind of silk squares worn by the Queen of England were all the rage in 1965,) hand bags and watches (the latter having a whole language of status levels of its own.)

It took a crash course to understand the code – and a code it was, opaque to anything but insiders and for them a language expressed with precision. Items signaled (economic or social) class hierarchy, family background (think signet rings) or even geography (certain things were worn by northern aristocracy, others by southern multimillionaires.) People like me could learn that language by being thrown into that environment, but might as well have embroidered outsider on every piece of my clothing for lack of the relevant outfits.

It brings a blush of shame to my cheeks even now to think how I longed to have some of these things, begging my mum for those shoes and saving up to get the imitation version, which made me an object of ridicule by the in-crowd before I could even wear them in. Longing to own equaled longing to belong. To my eternal relief that belonging never happened – I am shuddering to think what it would have meant to be a classist, or part of an exploitative class, or a potential supporter of right wing policies.

What remains is a desire to dress in ways that are all but associated with the uniform of an elite, instead expressing my individual taste, one which isn’t tied to any other “class” either.

All this came to mind when I came across the riveting essay attached below. Coded fashion statements are back – although they probably have never disappeared, I’ve just grown oblivious. I strongly recommend reading the piece, because it reveals how much the lack of historical knowledge about the language of fascism prohibits us from understanding the full force that is unleashed.

Call me a fascist: from Melania Trump to Ayelet Shaked

Clothes items can tell the world about your beliefs, as we know from MAGA hats and, as we saw during Trump’s speech at the Republican Jewish coalition last weekend, certain kippot.

Coded fashion items signal not just membership in a class, a group, or an organization, but they can serve as dog whistles.

For the far right industry in Europe sales of coded items, many of which valorize violence, also provide the funds fueling their political activism. https://newrepublic.com/article/153161/far-rights-secret-weapon-fascist-fashion.

Some of them are forbidden to wear in Germany in certain public places because they use Nazi symbols – which makes them all the more desirable to certain populations. “Using style to express and conspicuously display group identity and to make a political statement is integral to subcultures,” says Molnar, a sociologist at the New School. What’s more, she adds, because members of far-right groups are often only infrequently connected face-to-face, with much of their interaction online, “their like-mindedness and shared values can be (visibly) expressed and experienced through consumption.”

There might be no direct link between the message on someone’s T-shirt and actual extremist violence. But as a gateway to enter a supremacist universe these fashion statements should be taken seriously. (Photo below was taken day before yesterday in NYC, posted on Twitter.)

https://www.salon.com/2018/04/21/the-rise-of-fascist-fashion-clothing-helps-the-far-right-sell-their-violent-message/

And, equally importantly, we should familiarize ourselves with what the more nuanced codes mean: Mealnia Trump’s I really don’t care logo on a coat worn during a visit of incarcerated children at the US border was, after all, a fascist motto.  

It is an English version of the Italian me ne frego (tonally closer to “I don’t give a damn”)  which became a fascist call for arms since the end of WW1. Italian writer and translator Giovanni Tiso describes the history of the use of the phrase, from the time it was chanted by Italian special forces to signify that they didn’t care if they should lose their lives in battle, through Mussolini’s elevation of the slogan to “the philosophy of his regime”, signifying an acceptance of violence and, later, a detached moral autocracy. The phrase has survived as a marker of ideological nostalgia, and can be found nowadays on t-shirts and other neofascist merchandise. (Cited from the article at the top of the blog.)

There are even guides now to the different dress codes for different right wing organizations …https://www.topic.com/decoding-the-language-of-extremist-clothing

Here’s an example…..

Let’s hope Woody’s prediction bears out.

And here’s more resistance music from the world capital of fashion, France. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2WdCgAEXDA

Images today are gathered from the web.


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Housecleaning?

Today is the day of the Knesset election. From everything I’ve read, Netanyahu will likely win with the help of right-wing, orthodox splinter parties. Benny Gantz, his opponent, a general who was once appointed by Netanyahu as military chief of staff, does not have that kind of support.

Nor does he and his Blue & White Party have the machinery of the American president at his disposal, who did everything he could to give his buddy Netanyahu a leg up in the election campaign. In fact, Gantz has been subject to character assassination and leaked claims that his phone was hacked by Iran. “How can he protect the country when he can’t protect his own phone?”

Gantz is not a progressive, and has shown no opposition to Netanyahu’s threats to annex the West bank, international law be damned. He knows full well that more than 40% of Israelis favor some form of annexation. He has also failed to provide any suggestions as to how he would approach solving the Palestinian question. In other words, since there are no left-leaning parties in the running, the choice is between right wing (G) and far right wing (N), with the latter being favored by potential coalitions.

5 million Palestinians, to be ruled by the new government, are denied the vote. In the West Bank, they will face a military closure. In Gaza, where 2 million are already segregated, crossings will shut. Jewish settlers in the West Bank will vote today while their Palestinian neighbors — whose land they are living on — can’t.

All this despite the fact that Netanyahu faces charges for bribery, fraud and more. Since I am no expert on Israeli politics and/or the implication of this election, for American Jews as well, I thought I’d compile a reading list of articles that caught my attention as pertaining to the topic. Given that we have to ration the daily amount of bad news, you might prefer to skip any one of them. No offense taken if you do.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/israeli-election-netanyahu-gantz-west-bank-palestinian-peace.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/israel-votes-as-american-jews-and-netanyahu-grow-apart/586705/

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/07/donald-trump-jewish-vote-2020-1260172

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-how-netanyahu-defanged-social-media-regulation-ahead-of-election-1.7105621

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/08/netanyahu-thanks-trump-sanctioning-iran-request-eve-israeli-election/

For my German readers: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/israel-knappes-rennen-zwischen-benjamin-netanyahu-und-benny-gantz-bei-der-wahl-a-1261760.html

For music I chose the Israeli Youth Philharmonic playing Schubert’s unfinished symphony. Lots of unfinished business ahead of them, regardless of the outcome of the election.

Photographs are self explanatory…

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Campaign Memorabilia

This weekend we were invited to dinner at a friend’s house. Still dreaming of the pasta carbonara…. the second attraction was a guided tour to the host’s collection of buttons given out by political campaigns.

It never ceases to amaze me what people collect. Can’t help but roll my eyes at many collections given my hesitancy to amass objects, but not this one – this one scored. I think it has to do with the continuity between what these buttons represent and the rest of the owner’s life, a life in large parts devoted to political activism.

It also links to lived history – my Beloved got unusually animated when discovering buttons that were part of his own youth, worn during presidential campaigns, and largely forgotten for decades.

It is educational – your’s truly got a lecture in two voices about her ignorance of the difference between Eugene McCarthy and McCarthyism… and certainly a crash course in Presidential campaigns before my arrival on US shores.



And last but not least the collection was displayed in ways that were artistically designed and often gripping.

Collector Carl Wolfson was the host of “Carl in the Morning” on AM 620 KPOJ and FM 107.1 KXRY, Portland, Oregon’s progressive talk stations, for almost a decade until 2016. The show and his many other radio appearances were devoted to the issues he cared about: healthcare, social and economic justice, foreign policy. These topics were also a large part of his routines as a comedian, a fixture on national television, appearing on Showtime’s Comedy Club Network, VH-1 Stand-Up Spotlight, An Evening at the Improv, and The Joan Rivers Show.

He is certainly a funny man, something we cherish. Passion takes over, however, when the subject comes to American Political Items, the category these button belong to. The study of campaign memorabilia is serious business as any historian can tell you. The collection by now contains some 20.000 buttons, displayed on over 200 canvas boards, put together in pop-art-like grids. Most of them, alas, in storage, since there is not enough space to hang them all. The prognosis calls for about 600 boards when all is pinned and done – time to explore public venues!

https://carlwolfson.com/collector

The progression through time of these buttons is in itself fascinating – what began as a simple identifier soon morphed to slogans, was elaborated, became strategic tool and followed the roots of all other persuasive mechanisms, advertisement included. Some of it barbed, but none of it in the slime pits of contemporary discourse of the Trumpian universe. They also provide glimpses in the kinds of civic organizations actively involved in the political process, and windows into the role of women as flattering by-products of electoral choices (or not….)

A museum is called for, if there was only a funding angel to be found…. in the meantime I wonder what large space in our area would be feasible for hosting a temporary exhibition. It would be a blockbuster, I am sure. Hive mind, get to work!

Music today can be chosen by yourself from this play list: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/playlist-election-day

My pick was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSwzjD0L4co

(The album it comes from, “My Name is Buddy,” recounts the early-twentieth-century history of big labor and leftist politics using a cat, Buddy, as a protagonist.)


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Until the Flood

This is one of the rare mornings where I write directly before I post. I had to give yesterday’s experience, today’s topic, some time to sink in. Some 12 hours later I am still reverberating.

I went to see Until the Flood at the Armory last night, a play written and performed by Dael Olandersmith, directed by Neel Keller, with sets by Takeshi Kata (see today’s photographs.) The play immerses you into the minds of the people of Ferguson, Missouri after the Michael Brown shooting. It opens with the audiotapes of the dispatcher calling police patrol on an apparent theft of cigars from a convenient store and you eventually hear the shots from the gun of police officer Darren Wilson – too many for me to count, six of which hit Michael Brown fatally.

Olandersmith morphs across the 70 minute, uninterrupted, brilliant performance into 8 or 9 different personae, telling their story about the interaction of past and present in a place deeply affected by racism, poverty and race relations. Place plays a dominant role, many of the characters repeatedly name locations, both those to which they are chained and those to which they dream to escape. It made the characters more real but it also was a useful tool to make the audience feel how distant we are from all this, not just geographically, but separated from the, in this case, Southern experience in our safe, little White cocoon.

That experience itself, of course, varies, as Olandersmith brings intensely across. Being White or Black, old or young, educated or not, shifts your perspective. Shifts your judgement. Shifts your feelings. In ways I still try to wrap my mind around, the playwright and actress manages to infuse each and every character with humanity, or glimpses thereof, even when the most abhorrent White nationalist, supremacist or gun loving characters are portrayed. Without patronizing she is able to show how the White sickness affects Whites themselves, although the focus is of course on the devastation it reeks on the lives of the Black community – a devastation that goes beyond the immediate danger of being killed, faced by young Black males, extending into the internalization of stereotypes of inferiority and lives lived within boundaries set by the power of others.

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The characters, a retired Black school teacher, a White retired cop, a young enraged Black male, a young “good liberal” White schoolteacher, an older Black barber, a White supremacist fantasizing about lining Blacks up and shooting them to make Ferguson white again, a frightened Black high schooler, and a Black bi-sexual minister are composites that the playwright created after interviewing many people in Ferguson. How she was able to face some of those used as models for her monologue, spewing hatred or justification for state-sanctioned violence is beyond me.

It has been 5 years this August since Brown was killed. It has been 2 years since documentaries came out questioning how the events were described in the official reckoning. Wilson was never indicted, although he had been previously accused of racial discrimination and use of excessive force. The link below is to a 2017 documentary Stranger Fruits discussing the issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbdW2H0caMs

The recent deaths of 6 men tied to the Ferguson protests gives rise to more speculation.

Deaths Of Six Men Tied To Ferguson Protests Prompt Fear Of Sinister Connection


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Last night’s play pivoted on flow. The flow experienced in people’s lives, cultivated in their language. Flow oscillating between anger, resignation, and questioning one’s faith for the Black teacher; flow of tears of frustration for the White one who simply didn’t get it – why did race relations destroy her friendships? Gushing accolades towards the right of “self-defense” with guns. Small streams of humor and pride in one’s existence. Flowing sexual identities, flowing hand movements, cleansing prayer. Hatred, condescension, homophobic streams of associations. A deluge of supremacist rantings. Waves of fright, down to trembling physical movements for some, trickles of anger merging into suicidal, flowing rage for others. Until the flood.

Attached below a terrific professional review: /https://www.orartswatch.org/two-tales-in-black-white/

Music today tied to the Black Lives Matter movement:

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In so many words

This was the upshot of yesterday’s Brexit episode in Brussels:

They don’t leave on 3/29

They potentially leave on 4/12

They potentially leave on 5/22

Perhaps they leave at some later point.

Perhaps they don’t leave at all.

Theresa May had to have dinner all by herself, being asked to give the room to the grown-ups. This was after “90 minutes of nothing” as one listener described her speech to The Guardian.

How she’ll manage to get her parliament to agree to a plan after the last two failures is a mystery.

We’ve read a lot about – and I have previously discussed here – the debilitating political and economic consequences of the Brexit deal, no matter in what form it will eventually be accepted, short of a new vote that might reverse direction.

Today I want to point to a tangential effect that affects music aficionados. (Much of it learned from an article here, alas in German:)

https://www.zeit.de/2019/12/jazz-szene-grossbritannien-brexit-folgen

Britain has a burgeoning Jazz scene, recently recognized by the US and many other European countries who constantly book acts for diverse festivals. If Visas become an issue in Europe (time, effort, and particularly costs) it will be much more difficult to travel for British bands.

It is also expected that a hard Brexit will raise the cost of daily living, which will hit hard given the already precarious existence of musicians who live by their live gigs, not necessarily records sales. If these gigs disappear with Visa requirements it will have existential consequences.

The Brexit debate’s poisonous increase in xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and expressed racism is also affecting the Jazz scene which has much more racial diversity than many other musical genres in GB. Afroeuropeans, Black Brits, or musicians with Caribbean roots might have been labeled world citizens before May stereotyped them as Citizens from Nowhere as a concerted insult. Westminster is clearly hostile to immigration – just remember last year’s Windrush-scandal, where Caribbean immigrants whose families had lived and worked in GB since the 1940s were expatriated to pacify the far Right. Here was the musical response:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/18/windrush-a-celebration-review-barbican-anthony-joseph

And here is the current pick of the scene:

Your Queen is a reptile by sons of Kemet, an astounding album.

Kevin Le Gendre’s review: “Your Queen Is a Reptilemay reflect Hutching’s desire for political provocation, but it is first and foremost the music that inspires the imagination with its astute rewriting of key elements of jazz history and Caribbean folk. With a tuba and two drums in addition to Hutching’s tenor saxophone, the Sons of Kemet have a rough, nervous, polyrhythmically charged sound that explodes on stage. Their bass-heavy rumble hits the nerve of a younger audience that has grown up with hip-hop, dub and dance music, but also the older listener, who appreciate the abstract avant-garde character. What the 35-year-old Londoner also conveys is a full pride in his Barbadian roots – a pride he observes among many of his Afro-Caribbean colleagues. “We say: this is our vision of music.”

And still we have no clue how it all ends. Not well, I’m afraid.

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Good Writing

I might be a year older, but I haven’t gone soft quite yet. Proof positive are the odd results of yesterday’s photo excursion at the Oregon Zoo for lack of a real safari. Not soft (hopefully) puts me in the company of two women whose writing I greatly admire. You know the stories floating around about people on their deathbed not willing to let go until they see the Mueller Report? I feel like I want to hang on for many more years to see these young women in their full power.

The first is Jia Tolentina whose articles I have introduced here before. Her wit has the precision of a sharpshooter, frequently with similarly devastating results. Her essays are often deeply personal, or at least suffused with personal bits and pieces which allows the reader to relate on more than an intellectual level. Associations to her Peace Corps service in Kyrgyzstan resurface regularly, making me think that it was either a formative or a memorable time, probably both.

Snack Time

Not surprisingly, given my own predilections, I find her eclecticism in choice of topics particularly attractive. Although the bulk of her work is focussed on, loosely speaking, issues of gender, she does introduce a remarkable range of themes. The latest example can be found in the New Yorker, where she is staff writer.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun

It is a piece about Shen Yun, the traveling dance troupe(s) of Falun Dafa (aka Falun Gong) a Chinese organization deemed a cult by the Chinese government and not clearly definable by the rest of us. The essay excels in description, vividly capturing the experience of being at one of the performances and laying out what knowledge could be gained about the formation and ideology of Falun Data. Their claim to fame in public consciousness has been the accusation of organ harvesting of its imprisoned members by the Chinese authorities – a claim that remains largely unproven.

Semi-headless giraffe
Who peed for an inordinately long time. Running commentary by the gaggle of fourth graders surrounding me eventually morphed into awed silence.

Less strong here is an underlying analysis of this strange phenomenon Falun Dafa – they attract millions of adherents despite disclaiming evolution, disavowing homosexuality and promiscuity and predicting a strict separation of races in the there-after; and they are a real target of state persecution. Acknowledging the limits of fact-based interpretation is a welcome honesty, though.

“The fact that both Falun Gong and the Communist Party communicate via propaganda makes it almost impossible to understand what’s really happening; a decade ago, the journalist Joseph Kahn, in the Times, described the rise of Falun Gong as “probably the most mysterious chapter in the history of China over the last 30 years.” Falun Gong members are genuinely persecuted in China, but stories about this have petered out in the press. And, in China, state censorship of dissent is growing. Under these circumstances, Shen Yun can be seen as a baroque and surreal last-resort call for help and attention.”

Flamingo ridiculing my recent attempts at Pilates


and getting into a fight with the wrong opponent.

Analysis, on the other hand, is a particularly strong suit in the article of Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor who teaches African-American studies at Princeton.

http://bostonreview.net/race/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor-succeeding-while-black

If looks could kill

Her piece in the Boston Review takes apart Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming with laser-sharp observations. Willing to give praise where deserved, her criticism nonetheless forces the reader to stop avoiding important implications. Here are key passages that encapsulate what’s written across the essay:

Becoming, after all, is an exquisite lesson in creating ideology. As a political insider with broad pop culture appeal, Obama wields enormous influence in shaping discourse and opinion on critical issues concerning race, gender, public policy, and how we define progress in general………Obama, then, is not just telling stories; she is shaping our understanding of the world we live in, which is why it is so critical that we, as a public, interrogate her ideology. When we do, we might see that her story is not in search of the collective experience but is a celebration of personal fulfillment—the kind of self-involved, “live your truth”-inspired homilies that middle-class and rich women tell each other. Becoming normalizes power and the status quo while sending the message that the rest of us only need to find our place in the existing social hierarchy to be happy. This is unfortunate because personal narratives—including Obama’s—do have power. When stitched together and told honestly, they can create a map of shared experience that raises the possibility of collective action as a way to transform the individual circumstance. This is certainly true of poor and working-class black women whose personal stories expose the racism, sexism, and general inequality of U.S. society. These stories relentlessly pierce the treacherous idea that the United States is free, democratic, and just, and they prove the axiom of black feminism that the personal is political.

Let that sink in!

Music today is an homage to strong girls:

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There’s Hope

Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake. Walter Benjamin

I want to think nothing but optimistic thoughts today, so the pride of place goes to the kids who organized #FridaysforFuture, #climatestrike.

These Photos of Kids Protesting Climate Change All Over the World Will Give You Hope for the Future


I skipped “school” last Friday as well and went for an extended walk through bird territory, grateful for nature as we can still experience it.

Kestrel
Jay

Another reason for hope: The government of New Zealand is contemplating further and forceful restrictions in their gun laws after the Christchurch mosque massacre last Friday. https://www.vox.com/2019/3/15/18267093/new-zealand-gun-control-laws-christchurch-mosque-shooting

And finally: time travel exists, after all!!!

Well, sort of. In music. Or our understanding of music across time….. listen to Jeremy Denk’s newest album that covers 7 centuries of classical music, from c.1300-c.2000…….

The interview linked to below gives a glimpse into fascinating insights of how music evolved.

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2019/03/16/703799425/jeremy-denks-musical-odyssey-through-7-centuries-of-music

Harrier Hawk

Red Tail

Here you can listen to one of my favorite Brahms’s intermezzos:

https://www.nonesuch.com/journal/listen-jeremy-denk-brahms-piece-forthcoming-album-c-1300-c-2000-2018-01-08

and a wonderfully annotated rendition of 2 Goldberg variations:

I know, today’s offerings are all over the map, but they all made me feel better. As did that walk on Friday at the Steigerwald Nature Preserve, with photographs to show for….

And birds who tried not to show at all..

Brown Creeper
Hairy Woodpecker
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