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April 2026

Wasp Love

Wasp

When the honey, fruit and flowery tablecloth were whisked from the table in one sweep, it flew off with a start. Entangled in the suffocating smoke of the curtains, it buzzed for a long time. At last it reached the window. It beat its weakening body repeatedly against the cold, solid air of the pane. In the last flutter of its wings drowsed the faith that the body’s unrest can awaken a wind carrying us to longed-for worlds.

You who stood under the window of your beloved, who saw your happiness in a shop window – do you know how to take away the sting of this death?

by Zbigniew Herbert

***

Imagine entering a small garden, overgrown paths lined with lungwort. A humongous fig tree granting shade, a few vegetable beds exploding with the smell of ripe tomatoes. Sun dappled verdant corners, whimsical ceramics catching the light here or there.

Red calla lilies shining like little lamps eager for attention, chicken contentedly clucking in a coop next to the persimmons, fruit still green.

Your eye is caught by the plum trees, laden with fruit, some ripe on the ground, the purple skin of Italian prunes encasing glimpses of gold where the fruit has split open.

A feast for wasps, and wasps were what I came for.

An art book about wasps, to be precise.

Let me hazard a guess: your first reaction upon hearing the word “wasp” was not entirely positive. Pesky yellow jackets interfering with your labor day picnic, stings that not too infrequently hurt like hell or even lead to anaphylactic shock, visions of angrily buzzing swarms of insects building their dreaded nests too close to the eves of your house.

Wasp nest, displayed in the artist’s studio.

You would not be alone in this assessment, and surely not the first one. Already in 300 bc, Aristotle insisted ‘Hornets and wasps … are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.’

A recent scientific study published in the Royal Entomological Society, found that people across 46 countries really had it in for wasps. They are universally disliked much more than bees or other insects. The public associates them with negative terms like angry, painful, dangerous, scary, and those sentiments map onto relative research efforts: wasps are significantly under-studied. Across 40 plus years of thousands of papers published in entomological journals, more than 80% cover bees, and not even 20% wasps.

Paper fold drawing our attention to common reactions.

Consequently what we know is relatively little, and what little we know is not communicated sufficiently to open people’s eyes to the utility of wasps for humans as well as their general importance for ecosystems as a whole.

From the studio collections.

Just a few facts: the wasps that bug us – the yellow jackets, the hornets – represent less than 1% of the stinging wasps, the species Vespines. Wasps belong either to social or to solitary species – the latter containing many more species, in fact hundreds of thousands of them, who do not sting and live quite separate from human contact areas.

Folded paper telling a story.

Wasps have several functions. Like bees, they pollinate our crops (although to a lesser extent.) They excel, though, in helping get rid of parasites. They regulate populations of arthropod pests and vectors of disease, decompose organic matter and improve soils. Important contributors to maintaining biodiversity, then, and now severely threatened, just like bees. Agricultural practices (use of genetically modified seeds, pesticides, etc.) habitat loss due to encroaching urbanization, and climate change all contribute to endangering these guardians of our ecosystems.

Eco prints of plants frequented by wasps.

Our implicit bias against wasps can only be remedied, if we change the rhetoric of fear to a rhetoric of love. For that to happen, we need to be familiarized with what there is to love: the beauty, the amazing survival mechanisms, the intricacies of wasp life cycles, and last but not least the tremendous ecological services these insects render. Which brings me to the owner of the enchanted garden described above, artist Diane Jacobs who has just finished creating a book celebrating all things wasp, the culmination of years of study and creative exploration of the subject.

***

Jacobs received an MFA in printmaking from San Francisco State University in 1996. and was awarded multiple prizes, fellowships and residencies in the years since. Her work – prints, sculptures and folio books – can be found in museums (The Portland Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the De Young Fine Arts Museum,), and educational institutions (The New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Alberta, University of Chicago Library, University of Miami, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, Yale, and Stanford among them.)

Artist Diane Jacobs.

Her newest book intends to educate us about wasps and show the intrinsic beauty of Apocrita, those narrow waisted insects that populate pretty much our entire planet. Wasps and their environments are represented in stunning detail and through a plethora of artistic processes. The deeply serious intent to help us overcome our antipathies by getting to know the various species and their quirks, is often softened by using more whimsical means to do so.

Pop-up structures vie for attention,

Pop-ups.

paper layers inviting hands-on folding and unfolding to reveal ever more details are hidden in various pouches along the folios.

Paper folding for multi-surface info presentation.

Miniature sculptures made of natural and artificial materials expose the delicateness of wasps’ body parts, and also point to means of helping identification.

Beads and plant materials (thorns from a defunct dragon tree) sculpted into antennae.

The work evolved through Jacobs’ friendship with naturalist and photographer Kate Taormina, their shared interest and separate expertise cross-pollinating a successful collaboration. The joint project started in earnest during Jacobs’ 2024 residency at PLAYA, located in extremely remote Lake County in Oregon. The prestigious PLAYA residencies foster interaction between international artists and scientists, true to the belief of the organizers (and many of the rest of us who happen to have a foot in each of those camps!) that interdisciplinary exchange helps shape new ways of seeing the world, ultimately enhancing our approach to conservation. The concept of the book evolved over time. Now each page affords glimpses into a different universe, some pleasantly playful, others creating a sense of awe given nature’s diversity.

Whatever I learned about wasps, I learned even more about what can happen when an artist puts their mind to a singular pursuit of topic, but is open to embracing a huge number of different representational processes. Some of them surely needed to be acquired long after formal education had run its course.

Woodcuts in paper windows.

Just look a the list of processes and materials that the artist provided, all used to create the 16 hand-made copies of this book – one already snapped up by Yale University.

” Materials and printmaking techniques for this project include reduction woodcuts, wood engravings, mono print, lithography, photogravure etching, stitching, beading, hand painting, pressure printing, collage, polymer plates, book cloth, ceramic wasp, beech wood, unique eco print, and glass petri dish. Papers include Kitakata, handmade abaca, kozo, Gampi, mino washi, masa, Rives Lightweight, rayon, and Tyvek. All text on pages is handset and letterpress printed. Some booklets are letterpress printed from polymer plates and some are handset.”

So many artists who have had a successful 30 year career really stick to the tried and true, their developed expertise, even their general subjects. To embark on new fields of learning, as well as new processes that require tolerance of potential imperfection, takes courage. Jacobs, for example, was introduced to photogravure etching only 3 years ago, during a workshop at Mullowney Printing. Also fairly recently she learned how to do wood engraving. For Wasp Love alone the artist was going to carve 8 little wood engraving blocks. “It took me a bit to get in the groove.”

Wood engraving.

Yes, it takes courage, or at least an absence of vanity in pursuit of a greater goal. In this case helping nature to survive human indifference, or, worse, capitalism’s endless extractive exploitation, by deconstructing one stereotype after another.

Jacobs’ book Wasp Love is a marvel, not least in the way it balances education with art to be appreciated in its own right, independent of the book’s subject. Pacific NW audiences will be able to see and explore a show copy next February at The Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. It will be shown together with her wasp-related sculptural work and a series of her eco prints, as well as installations and paintings by Susan Murrell and my photomontages, in the context of Collective Effervescence. The exhibition is dedicated to our love of and fear for nature.

Pop-up folio.

***

Replacing the rhetoric of hate with the rhetoric of love – not an easy task. One of the obstacles lies in the psychological nature of hate, compared to love. For hate all you need is a simple, stereotyped target. There is “the enemy,” out to get us, in a zero-sum game of one side wins, when the other side loses. “Wasps are aggressive and hurtful.” Simplistic ideas like that are much more easily communicated and adhered to, than more complex ones.

It’s more difficult to convey the many aspects of multidimensional targets – endless species of wasps, a variety of functional advantages outweighing the occasional sting by a minority of Vespines. Complex concepts defy our desire to stereotype by means of their sheer diversity. You need to learn and integrate so many different facts. Which is made even more difficult by the reality that our old feelings were negative and now need to be recalibrated (in comparison to just sticking to your culturally transmitted biases that ruled the world across time.)

Wood engraved plates.

Art is enormously useful here. It can try and break the cycle of negative stereotyping in many different ways.

There is poetry. If we go back to the beginning of this post, you have Zbiegniew Herbert’s poem that subtly reminds us of the similarity of wasps and humans, not elevating one species over another. Rather than showering us with facts, and patronizing demands to let go of prejudice, its symbolism offers something that speaks to our emotions. Are we not all familiar with the feeling of being trapped in certain realms of our existence? Are we not all hoping against hope, to the last breath, that moving forward at all cost will bring us to a longed-for future, no matter how much we bang our heads against the wall? Because we look in the mirror, the observed death causes a premonition, a sting that cannot be resolved. Could it be that wasps are us?

Paper fold in book pocket.

Then there is literature. What comes to mind are Ursula LeGuin’s brilliant musings published some 40 years ago in The New Yorker. We are told that a woman is un-naming all members of creation, a woman who we later learn is Eve, about to leave Adam and the garden of Eden, unhappy with having been named in certain ways. The idea is that a name usually allows for categorization and/or stereotyping. Its absence will lead to equality not impeded by artificially drawn hierarchies.

“The insects parted with their names in vast clouds and swarms of ephemeral syllables buzzing and stinging and humming and flitting and crawling and tunnelling away.

…

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. “

The merging of equals, affiliating through emotion, becoming extremely close: could it be love? As always with LeGuin, of course, there’s an undercurrent of brusqueness below the witty narration, pointing to the power naming has for those on top of social or gendered hierarchies.

Trial paper folding in the studio.

And finally, there is visual art. Jacobs’ book radiates joyfulness, in its colorfulness, playfulness with hidden and revealed shapes, its use of surprise perspectives. You cannot help but find these folios emotionally rousing, no matter how concept-driven and filled with scientific facts they are. The book might not manage to induce love, admittedly. But surely it ignites strong admiration for a life form that is so much more complex than we had known. A first step away from hate or fear.

I’ll take that in a heartbeat.

Or a wingbeat, as the case may be.

Snippets in Jacobs’ studio.

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Unbidden Memories.

It’s funny how memory works. Even those of us who have studied and researched the mechanisms of remembering for decades, can be hit over the head by factors that trigger certain memories when we least expect it.

Yesterday was one such occasion. I was out on a walk through the wetlands, dried out and dusty for the most part. Noticing a lot of white.

White thistle down.

Meadows filled with white Queen Anne’s Lace, wilting with the drought.

White candle-shaped weeds, rimming the path and attracting the bees.

Horse chamomile,

bindweed,

dandelions.

And, just around the corner, some egrets preening, in the last pond holding some water.

A pond visited by a fleet of pelicans, glaringly white, elegant, and beautiful against the sunlit landscape.

I suddenly remembered hearing about a white dress, made of silk. When I finally arrived in Germany a few days after my mom’s sudden, unexpected death, I was told that she had bought it recently and raved about it. They found it in her closet and put it on her for the coffin. Why did my mother, then in her 50ies, buy a silk dress in November? White, no less? She was never much into clothes (in contrast to her daughters) and usually seen in utilitarian dress that could endure her gardening passion, ready to touch dirt.

Why did a friend of her’s know about purchases, although she, too, had no idea about the reason for this fancy? Why were they told what kind of funeral my mom desired, when I wasn’t? A funeral as unbefitting for a gardener as one can imagine – ashes thrown into the sea. At the time, hot dismay competed with the icy numbness of the sudden grief. The anger of a child (albeit a grown one) of realizing the independence of a mother, vast parts unknowable from now on. And that was before I found instructions in a letter addressed to me, to destroy a cache of letters and papers unread – instructions that I honored.

Seeing white on my walk triggered an emotional memory, but it was grief that led to the specific remembrance of another time of mourning. Grief for my friend who recently died, mourning for a beloved mother, missed since 1983. There were multiple sources – the color, the current feeling – spreading activation to a node that called up an associated memory.

There are a lot of people dear to me who are currently in mourning. I wish I could convey that being triggered by environmental or state-dependent cues will never stop, but the quality of the emotional reaction will. I still miss my mother, 43 years hence, but I now think about that mysterious white dress with pleasure, happy that she was willing to spend on herself, grab some beauty. I think of all the love and connectivity she left me with, rather than fuming about what I wasn’t afforded. I think about the “gift” of her early death in the sense that I learned as a young person that grief will not hurt intensely forever, and so have an easier time now, knowing current pain WILL abate.

White is the color of mourning in multiple cultures; apparently Western aristocracy, Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Victoria among them, adopted it both as mourning dress, and parts of her funeral, respectively. In Eastern religions white symbolizes hope and rebirth.

Yesterday, all I saw was brilliant white, or dainty, translucent white, or the white of strong feathers of birds at rest during migration. Nature. Impervious to feeling itself, but making me feel strongly.

Grateful for memories, but more grateful for being surrounded by brightness in the here and now, reminding me that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Music today by Ravel.

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Leaving a Mark.

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America
—Southern Pines, NC

Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only boredom. To stand
on the precipice of some wild valley,
the eagles circling, a herd of caribou
booming below, and to yawn
with indifference. To discover
something primordial and holy.
To have the smell of the earth
welcome you to everywhere.
To take it all in and then,
to reach for your knife.


by Matthew Olzmann

If your first reaction to this poem resembles mine, you’d be thinking about vandalism, or ignorance, or a vile belief system that sets man above nature. Enraged about the continued thoughtlessness and indifference of people uselessly harming trees, or anything else out there in nature.

Some second thoughts, though. What do we know about tree carvings? Turns out that there are reports of arborglyphs (or dendroglyphs or sylvaglyphs, however you want to call them) since ancient times. Both Callimachus and Virgil wrote about lovers commemorating the presumed longevity of their feelings by carving the bark of trees with their initials. Shakespeare followed centuries later.

People around the world, not just couples, have carved patterns for communication, expressions of cultural significance, scientific pointers (astronomy) or spiritual appeals into trees. Some were maps or way markers, some related to burial customs. Here in the US, the Chumash tribe used tree carving to relate astronomical movement of the planets. Shepherds in the Southwest, many of them of European origin, carved into aspen trees, including drawings and poems. We have more than 20,000 documented tree carvings across California, Nevada, and Oregon, dating from the early 1900s. Who knows, of course, how many are left after the fires.

Does carving hurt a tree? Potentially (and often) yes, if it is too deep.

Does it make sense to “engrave” important local, or scientific information into trees presumed to be around for a long time to help tribal movement and information sharing before technological means of communication? I’d say yes to that, too.

And was promptly reminded of another way of communication that conveyed not necessarily pragmatic instruction, but instead psychological resilience: the Kilroy Was Here meme found throughout the battlefields of WW II, left by the Allies to indicate presence, power, the might to invade deep behind enemy lines. It boosted morale during times fraught with killing and dying. Of course, it also used every available surface, from beach sands to fences, to bombs or lavatory walls that literally confounded the likes of humorless Hitler and Stalin, respectively. But I digress.


What is the psychological motivation, though, for individuals to leave their marks on trees, marks that have no informational value, e.g. plain initials?

For lovers, it might be a spell-like, wishful thinking that nothing will part them in the future. Alas, sealing your love that way might indeed seal the fate of that tree.

And maybe, for individuals like the poem’s villain, it has to do with our shared fear of mortality. Maybe we can ward off that sense of discontinuity, triggered by a landscape that signals eternal presence, historic continuity, a landscape in which we are but a temporary speck?

So we assert ourselves, leaving a legacy, however destructive, that will remind others and ourselves that we existed (well, someone with those initials, at least.) A cheaper, if equally perverse, version of gilded triumph arches in Washington, D.C. ….

I tend to believe that views of majestic, or even just beautiful natural landscapes often conjure thoughts of past and future, and thus instill a sense of temporality. How many millennia did it take to carve a gorge into mountains of basalt? How many centuries to grow trees of this size? Will these meadows survive the droughts ahead of them, with snowcaps no longer sufficient in providing runoffs? Will these streams run dry during our life time?

It is a short jump to mull our own life span, or the possibilities of being remembered, the next best thing if we can’t be around ourselves. Most people hope that they can influence that remembrance through their achievements, or their sharing of their story, their generosity, or through their children’s recollection.

Here is what I remember: my father showing me the tree he marked with his initials as a 10-year old in a forest that later lived through WW II, bombs and all. I was in awe when I saw it at approximately the same age. And so he lives in my memory. (As he would have without that tree-endangering carving….) Was it a villainous act?


And some people will live on in collective memory through their destructiveness, their cruelty, their indifference. Like it or not. Anything that makes them feel big, rather than enduring a sense of insignificance. Having a future beyond the grave. That includes, of course, arsonists. Those who commit arson by starting fires, and those who omit to engage in environmental protection, leaving us with ever increasing risks from climate change, burning the planet. Much more “efficient” than carving and destroying just a single tree.

Trees serve well as symbols of a future. They are strong, long-lasting, easily imagined to survive, and thus carry a message from (eventually) the past. That assumption is now, of course, likely to be burnt to crisp, alongside its subject. The ever growing fires are making sure of that.

General ideas about the future and our place in it are changing as well. Here is a gift article from the NYT that I strongly recommend for your perusal. Ivan Krastev is the chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and a Financial Times contributing editor.

“We are living in a world very different from the world of the Cold War. Probably our very idea of governance will change. Some of the changes we witness are really radical. Imagine for a moment that some of our most fundamental assumptions have been challenged. We disagree on many things, but we have tended to believe that the future will be better than today and that individuals are mortals but nations are immortals, and we continue living through our children, our sacrifices for the nation, our books.
Now some individuals — particularly in Silicon Valley, but also including people like Putin — are starting to genuinely hope that they will not die, some nations are starting to genuinely believe that they will die, and many young people for different reasons have decided not to have children. This political world cannot be understood or explained in the language of the 20th century. This is why neither awakening the utopian energies nor simply defending institutions will be enough to deal with the current crisis.

This is where this sense of vertigo comes from. In politics vertigo is when you see the abyss, but you are not sure: Is this the past or the future?”

What we see from here is, literally, smoke and ashes.

Music today is a fascinating concept album picturing Alexander von Humboldt’s trek to explore nature and cultures on a continent different from his own. Last Lost Words.



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Particulate Matter

Giuseppe Arcimboldo Fire (1566)

The allegory of Fire combines objects that are related to fire. The cheek is formed by a large firestone, the neck and chin are formed by a burning candle and an oil lamp, the nose and ear are contoured by firesteels; a blond moustache is formed by a crossed bundle of wood shavings for kindling, the eye is an extinguished candle stub, the forehead area is a wound-up fuse, the hair of the head forms a crown of blazing logs. The breast is composed of fire weapons: mortar and canon barrels together with the respective gunpowder shovel and a pistol barrel. Prominently positioned in the picture is the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, beneath which the imperial double-eagle can be seen: a clear reference to the Habsburg House and the beneficiary of the series, Emperor Maximilian II. (Wikimedia)

***

The winds shifted, and we, the lucky ones in a city not yet burning, have been exposed to smoke coming from the fires in the region. Over 50 wildfires in Oregon alone, with fire season still lasting many more months. I pretty much stay indoors all day and night, with air purifiers running 24/7 and masks handy, when the little light starts to glow red. As of this moment our AQI is 159. Red zone, unhealthy for all, not just sensitive, groups.

josepha jane battlehooke the great fire of london

Josepha Jane Battlehooke The Great Fire of London (1675)

The light is hazy orange, the sun burnt red when rising, plants and tree contours in my yard obscured by a thin layer of smoke. It brings back terrifying memories of California stays in 2020 and 2024, not to mention the familial proximity to the Eaton fire and the losses it caused last year.

Herri met de Bles – Fire of Sodom, (1545)

What are we inhaling from all this smoke?

“Wildfire smoke is a complex mixture composed of water vapor and numerous pollutants, including, gases (e.g., carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen [NOx]), organic compounds (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons [PAHs]), volatile organic compounds [VOCs]) and particulate matter (PM). Of these pollutants, PM is one of the main components found in smoke and there are decades of research documenting that exposure to PM is associated with serious health effects.” (Ref.)

And that is before even touching the issue of ozone pollution exponentially worsened by wild fires.

We are talking about exacerbation of asthma and heart failure and premature death here, potential  impact on brain function, and pulmonary inflammation and transient reductions in lung function. All this long after your intermittent raw throat and burning eyes are gone.

'The Burning of the Houses of Parliament' Joseph Mallord William Turner

J.M.W. Turner The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, (1834)

What can we do? Leaving for healthier regions is not an option for most people, be it because of local obligations or lack of economic resources. Staying inside depends on the ability to cool off spaces without having to open windows. The EPA advice page tells people to go to the mall, the library, museums, sports arenas or senior centers. Hmmmm. Ever tried that if you are houseless, or working, or have a family with small kids?

hubert robert the fire of rome

Hubert Robert The Fire of Rome, July 18, 64 CE, (1786) 

I decided to remind us that people during much of the history of the world were afflicted by fires, and somehow managed to go on. Painters clearly have been drawn to the visual drama of urban fires, and delivered eye witness accounts of sorts. Misery loves company, I guess.

The Burning of the Mansion House, Queen Square, Bristol, William James Müller, 1831-2

William James Müller The Burning of the Mansion House, Queen Square, Bristol, 1831-32

Poets, on the other hand, are drawn to the psychological implications of traumatic, wide-ranging fires, and consequences that often remain obscured because they are too scary to think about. The poem below is timely, then, even if written 8 years ago, reminding us what it is that we are inhaling these days.

Francesco Guardi (Venice) Fire in the oil warehouses at San Marcuola (1789)

Particulate Matter

By Molly Fisk

“I wrote this poem after the Camp Fire was contained in Paradise, CA, where 85 lives were lost. I live 50 miles away. A friend was running the domestic animal housing operation for the survivors at a nearby county fairground so I was in close touch with stories about the devastation. We’d been wreathed in smoke for weeks and something about her stories and the smoke caused me to think more specifically about exactly what we were breathing in. I’m a literal person. Plus the linguistic link of particulate to particular struck a chord.”

L'incendie du théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique le 13 juillet 1827 - Artvee

Antoine Félix Boisselier L’incendie du théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique le 13 juillet (1827)

Why did we ever think we would be the exception to the rule? Particularly when ignoring the warning signs about climate change and building urban enclaves ever closer to nature in infinite hubris?

Those of us on the periphery of the fires should really not complain too much – my knees buckle when I think of all the evacuees and the fire fighters and personnel involved day and night in dangerous and arduous work with inevitable health consequences. So many of them prisoners who are more or less not having a choice to be exposed. My immense gratitude goes out to them, and my heart to those who are directly affected.

great fire of chicago

The Great Fire at Chicago Oct. 9th, 1871. View from the west side, Gibson & Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio), c. 1871. Source: Library of Congress, Washington DC

Music today is Debussy’s Feu D’Artifice

dresden wwii ruins

The gutted city of Dresden, the result of firebombing, photograph by Richard Peter, 1945. 

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Summer Joy.

Are the Mardi Gras Indians best defined as a community, a tradition, a brotherhood and sisterhood, or an example of living history? “All of the above!” – Big Chief Derrick Hulin, in a 2023 interview with the Smithsonian magazine.

***

“Today is a happy day!”yelled the woman in front of me last Thursday, wildly swinging her hula hoops. My sentiment, exactly.

Anne McEnerny-Ogle, the Mayor of Vancouver, WA, seemingly agreed. She joyfully greeted a large crowd settling in at the Waterfront Park last Thursday, celebrating the end of a successful free concert series offered by the city this summer.

Mayor Anne (right) Ruth J. Wikler in background.

A mild summer evening, not a cloud in the sky, people picnicking, mingling, parading interesting sartorial choices.

Not a thought about the upcoming divisive Clark Council Primary race, not a single confrontation about the rebuilding of the structurally unsound I5 bridge connecting Portland and Vancouver, with hotly debated light rail addition or refusal thereof.

A break from worrying about wildfires or how to pay for the next tank of gas. Just a Mayor, recently re-elected for yet another term by wide margins, warmly welcoming young and old to a thriving waterfront and a very special concert ahead. Friendly city staff helping out, handing out earplugs for those who needed them, answering questions. Community at its best,

That sense of inclusivity was echoed by the opening remarks of the group of people who had helped the city’s programming add a spectacular act: the two-time GRAMMY-nominated New Orleans band, Cha Wa.

The Clark College Foundation, represented by Director of Arts Programming, Partnerships, & Philanthropy, Ruth J. Wikler, provided the talent and helped bring Cha Wa to the Vancouver Waterfront – and this is just the beginning.

“This concert launched the second-ever season of the Clark College Foundation Presents performance series with what is quickly becoming a hallmark of this regionally unique program: culturally and artistically one-of-a-kind performing artists from around the country and the world bring their extraordinary expressions to Clark County audiences in special ways that uplift and spotlight both Clark College’s talented students and wide-ranging academic programs,” Wikler said.

Clark College Vice President of Instruction, William (Terry) Brown, praised the ongoing collaboration with the city.

Don Romesburg, Dean of Social Sciences and Fine Arts (right), and Doug Harris, Chair of the Music Department (left) talked about what the college has to offer, proudly presenting the opening act for the concert as well: students from the Music Department playing traditional jazz.

“They’re killing it”, someone in the crowd erupted, loud applause echoing that sentiment. Talented young men, all.

***

Cha Wa managed to rouse the crowd to its feet, once they started playing. They are part of a New Orleans tradition of Mardi Gras Indians, combining historic chants with jazz, R&B, hip-hop, rock, soul and African-inspired music.

Many of New Orleans’ Blacks have celebrated Mardi Gras for over a century, creating and wearing Native American-inspired costumes, hand-stitched and adorned with beads and feathers in the most intricate fashion, embracing extensive labor (and often cost) for these suits. The suits usually consist of a crown, a dickie (tuxedo front) and an apron, handcrafted over a period of six months to a year. They draw inspiration from both Native American and African ceremonial dress.



Dozens of “tribes” parade during Mardi Gras, chanting and singing  call-and-response songs, playing tambourines, cowbells, drums and other percussion instruments. Sometimes they are staging friendly competitions with rival “tribes,” alerted to them by a traditional “spy boy,” who walks in advance of each social group. “Cha Wa,” they call, ” We’re coming for you!”

A distinctly African-American tradition, it is believed to have originated in the 19th century to pay homage to the Indigenous people who helped slaves to escape and survive in the wild, on land once belonging to the Chitimacha Tribe. Some escaped slaves tried to make it in maroon camps (makeshift settlements in Louisiana’s swamps and bayous), while others sought shelter with Native communities, which then assimilated the Africans into their tribes. Choctaw, Seminole and Chickasaw and mixed-race people of Black and Indian heritage knew the fate of the enslaved. They constituted some 20 percent of the state’s enslaved population during the antebellum period, when New Orleans was a hub for the colonial slave trade.

There have been some discussions around the issue of cultural appropriation by one social group using the adornment of another. The 2021 documentary Big Chief, Black Hawk addressed the issue, generally approving of a hybrid of Native and West African Cultures. If two marginalized group are willing to support each other, can that be called cultural appropriation?

***

The band Cha Wa was founded by musical director and drummer Joe Gelini a bit over a decade ago. They have amassed awards for their vital and musically integrative albums, a music simultaneously true to its roots and yet inventing its own idiosyncratic style.

My absolute favorite part of their Vancouver performance, other than the wildly talented saxophone playing of front singer Tajh Derosier, was the way the story was told.

Historic facts about the fate of those enslaved in Louisiana, those who tormented them and those who came to help them, were contained in a narrative seamlessly blending with the music. For a representative cross section of their music, I recommend listening to “Spyboy,” one of Cha Wa’s celebrated early albums.

***

Lots going on in Vancouver, WA. Growing collaborations between city and college. Grants gifted by generous individuals and organizations to the Clark College Foundation, supporting the educational value of art in all of its forms. And plenty more enticing events in the offing, next weekend’s Vancouver Arts and Music Festival among them. (Program information found in the link.)

You can find me at Esther Short Park then for sure – betting on another happy day!

Bringing my own chair this time.

Here are the Clark College and Clark College Foundation contributions to the upcoming festival:

(Can’t miss the clowns…!)

FRIDAY August 7th: Performing Arts: Clown Garage/The Waddle Ensemble: 4pm & 6pm (20 minute appearances; 4pm features Clark College Baking & Acting Students)

Visual Art: Exhibit dedicated to Clark College Visual Art student work: 10am-6pm, Esther Short Building.

SATURDAY August 8th: Literary Arts: Clark College Creative Writers read from 11am-12n at Acoustic Stage

Performing Arts: Clown Garage/The Waddle Ensemble: 1pm, 3:30pm, & 5pm (20 minute appearances; 1pm and 3:30pm feature Clark College Baking & Acting Students)

Visual Art: Exhibit dedicated to Clark College Visual Art student work: 10am-6pm, Esther Short Building.

SUNDAY August 9th: Performing Arts: Clown Garage/The Waddle Ensemble: 11am, 3:30pm, & 5pm (20 minute appearances; only 11am and 3:30pm feature Clark College Baking & Acting Students)

Visual Arts: Exhibit dedicated to Clark College Visual Art student work: 10am-2pm, Esther Short Building.

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Mermaids, anyone?

Still on vacation. Just popping my head up for five minutes to bring you some cheer amidst all the frightening news flooding the zone. Just feels like cheer is desperately needed, even if a bit trivial.

I have been watching a new-to-me site out of Lithuania on the net. The Ancient Dog triggers equal amounts of amusement, consternation, wondering and being creeped out. Someone has taken AI to provide lectures by (most often dead, and some fictional to begin with) people, summarizing their philosophy, teachings or world views.

Poet’s Beach in Portland, Oregon on Mermaid Parade Day.

It is weird to see the likes of Hannah Arendt, Lacan, or Camus speaking to an (imaginary) audience about the central tenets of their philosophies as if they were alive. It is even weirder to see generated representations of van Gogh or Jesus do the same. Knowing that the videos do not contain real people, why should we trust that what they are telling us is real, or more precisely true to what their work actually was about?

I have read many of these classics 100 years ago, but I certainly cannot count on my memory to declare what is correctly communicated, or what is manipulated by sleight-of-hand. Are the lectures riddled with errors when artificial intelligence extracts original passages and merges them all together in convenient lecture format digestible to a 10th grader?

Then there is the series’ Professor Bruno Vero, an entirely imaginary prof who teaches us about more philosophers or artists, suspicious if only for his stereotypical outfit of tweed jacket and wool vest, gray beard and unruly curls giving off liberal college vibes. All that’s missing is the leather elbow patches.

Long story short, there is a through-line to many of these 3 minute or so lectures that has to do with how we should approach a life lived right, beyond asking about life’s meaning, or erecting whole philosophical constructs or religions to distract us from the fear that there might be no real meaning to our existence after all. And that is generally a welcome reminder.

It also brings us, finally, to mermaids. I had a chance to see them partying at a small beach along the river yesterday, after they marched in a big parade through town that I skipped. The creativity in costuming and make-up, for mythological figures and marine wildlife alike, made my heart soar.

Dress-up and masking was exquisite, and the joy that people exhibited when showing off the costume details to me, or standing proudly for a portrait, was infectious. Celebrating a kind of mysterious beauty, reveling in the childhood remnants of fascination with fairy tales, extending love to the many endangered species in our oceans by fancy representation – humanity at its creative best. Humans living the right life by acknowledging that beauty, whimsey, creativity are all necessary to counterbalance the horrors happening in our world right now, and to keep us sane. Certainly made me happy for a full Saturday afternoon, before more news of the fires across the globe landed.

___

Not that I forget that we have choices, but also obligations. A gentle reminder that the SAVE Act is now incomprehensibly before our Senate. Senator should be told in no uncertain terms that it CANNOT pass. Here are the facts:

Note the very last clause that will come as a surprise to many voters…. when it is too late to jump through the administrative hoops. Best to call or email your senators.

Back to my lawn chair in the garden. Enjoy your week and this lyrical symphonic Mermaid music.

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The otherworldliness of dragonflies.

My break is not quite over, but I wanted to share a few thoughts and images, before I hibernate again.

I have been driving South to spend time with family, taking occasional photographs when nature allowed – between the heat and hazardous smoke everywhere, it was not easy to find solace in nature.

I have been mourning the rather sudden death of a close friend, and I have been pouring energy into creating and editing new montage work that is (re)imagining our world past, present and future.

As chance would have it, I came across a poem that embraces a similar approach, down to the details of using a bit of fantasy or surrealism to get across some of the points.

The poet had dragonfly choppers hovering above Walden Pond. The ones I saw were unusually static, likely as fatigued as I was, with temperatures in the 100s, in dried-out, dusty Sacramento wetlands. Their images will end up in future landscapes envisioned while thinking about what the hell we are doing to our country, our planet, most likely.

If just one of the montages approaches the brilliance of this poem, I will be content.

Why Is We Americans


We is gator teeth hanging from the rear-
view mirror as sickle cells suckle at Big
Momma’s teats. We is dragonfly
choppers hovering above Walden Pond.
We is spinal cords shedding like the skin
of a cottonmouth. We is Psalm 23 and
the Pastor’s chattering chicklets. We is
a good problem to have. We is throats
constricting and the grape juice
of Jesus. We is Roach and Mingus in
Birdland. We is body electric, eyes
watering with moonshine, glossy lips
sticky with lard. We is half brothers in
headlock, arm-wrestling in the dirt.
We is Vaseline rubbed into knocked
knees and cracked elbows. We is ham
hocks making love to kidney beans. We
is Orpheus, lute in hand, asking do we
have a problem? We is the backstory
of myth. We is sitting horse and crazy
bull. We is brown paper bags and
gurgled belches. We is hooded ghosts
and holy shadows roaming Mississippi
goddamned. We is downbeats and
syncopation’s cousin. We is mouths
washed out with the blood of the lamb.
We is witch-hazel-coated backs sucking
on peppermint wrappers. We is the
spiked antennas of a triangle face
praying mantis. We is barefoot
tongue-tied hogs with slit throats and
twitching bellies. We is sun tea and
brewed bitches. We is the crying
pussies that stand down when told to
man up. We is Radio Raheem and Zoot
Suit Malcolm. We is spit-slick low cuts
and fades. We is scrappy black-masked
coons and turkey-necked bullfrogs. We
is the pits of arms at stake, the clouds
frothing at the mouth. We is swimmers
naked, private parts allegedly fondled
by Whitman beneath the water. We is
late lurkers and castrated tree limbs
on the Sunday before last. We is red-
veined pupils and piss-stained knickers,
slack-jawed and slumped in the
bathroom doorway. We is whiplash
and backhanded ways of settling grief.
We is clubbin’ woolly mammoths
upside the head, jammin’ fingers in
Darwin’s white beard. We is comin’
round yonder, pigeon-toed and
bowlegged, laughin’ our heads off.
We is lassoed cowboys swingin’ in
the sweet summer breeze.

BY ALISON C. ROLLINS

Music appropriate for dragon flies and otherworldly scenery in general can be found today here.

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Before the Fourth of July.

Last Sunday I visited an annual event that has been a Portland tradition since the mid 1960s. The Milk Carton Boat Races at Westmoreland Park display engineering ingenuity, civic commitment by organizers and sponsors, and above all family togetherness that lasts through many months of learning about watercraft construction, preparation of costumes and paddling practice before the culminating races. In that regard they are a microcosm of what can be good about our nation, a common good, no less, since the events are inclusive, free to visit, and making use of city parks dedicated to the community.

A short history of West Moreland Park and its usage, written by Dana Beck 4 years ago, can be found here. It explains the role of the Royal Rosarians (for non-Portlanders: these are “ambassadors of Goodwill”, a 114-year-old civic organization associated with our famous rose festival) as current sponsors of the races. They know how to put on a party, but more importantly work hard to maintain civic cohesion and draw youths into engagement with our civic institutions. Including instructions to how to build a boat from dairy cartons….

I will let the photographs speak for themselves. They captured some of the joy and excitement, parent-child bonds,

friendship groups,

the fashion quirks as well as smart costumes designed at home,

the ambassadors who organized the event and greeted everyone with warmth and poise,

and some of the volunteers from multiple organizations and businesses who helped make things run smoothly.

Not to mention the canine presence….

It was the perfect on-ramp for thoughts about the 4th of July, and the special birthday this nation is celebrating, seeing the diversity among participants all happily cooperating to provide a joyous moment for Portland’s citizenship. A melting pot of people, paddling on rickety structures, lovingly maintained, cheered on by a large crowd of (mostly) strangers. Groups from all walks of life (and likely political backgrounds) joining in a shared task. No commercial exploitation, or lure to buy stuff to consume – simply the excitement of the competition and the creativity exhibited in the designs and sportsmanship in a civic space. A commonwealth.

There are others who have meaningfully written about the problems and uncertainties we are currently experiencing as a nation, Rebecca Solnit and Jennifer Rubin among them with insightful analysis. I, however, just want to cling to the glimpses of happiness from last Sunday, a reminder what is possible in this country, what we can make possible if we embrace the ideas about equality on which this nation was founded.

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Beach Combing

The Hope I Know

doesn’t come with feathers.
It lives in flip-flops and, in cold weather,
a hooded sweatshirt, like a heavyweight
in training, or a monk who has taken
a half-hearted vow of perseverance.
It only has half a heart, the hope I know.
The other half it flings to every stalking hurt.
It wears a poker face, quietly reciting
the laws of probability, and gladly
takes a back seat to faith and love,
it’s that many times removed
from when it had youth on its side
and beauty. Half the world wishes
to stay as it is, half to become
whatever it can dream,
while the hope I know struggles
to keep its eyes open and its mind
from combing an unpeopled beach.
Congregations sway and croon,
constituents vote across their party line,
rescue parties wait for a break
in the weather. And who goes to sleep
with a prayer on the lips or half a smile
knows some kind of hope.
Though not the hope I know,
which slinks from dream to dream
without ID or ally, traveling best at night,
keeping to the back roads and the shadows,
approaching the radiant city
without ever quite arriving.

BY THOMAS CENTOLELLA

Last week, I set my mind to beach combing, rather than keeping it from the idea. Hope needs sustenance, and it can be found on beaches, unpeopled or otherwise. Although the one I went to seemed to be a world in its own, not a soul in sight. Only traces left via drift wood edifices. Intriguing, but not as beautiful as the drift wood itself.

It was cool, bordering on cold, with intermittent squalls. Not flip-flop weather, a rain coat over the sweatshirt. A welcome break from the heat, though, that had taken a bite out of me.

After so many decades after my arrival in the United States I am still amazed at the frequent experience of being alone in vast spaces, nature easily reached near population centers, all yours, and yours alone, for the taking.

No witnesses to loud singing with a voice cracked by chemo so many years ago, or angry screaming, or crying your eyes out – all the things I phantasize about as possible private acts during solitude. Except, once I’m in nature, those urges completely vanish, my mind and soul entirely focused on the treasures around me, the intricacies of evolutionary design.

A focused mind, until it drifts to things I’ve read about the beach and ocean when I was young and completely impressionable. Now old, and intermittently impressionable, I shudder to think about how I was moved by Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s meditations on grief adjacent to emerging environmental concerns, A Gift from the Sea.

Little did I know, beyond her tragic loss of a child to kidnapping and murder, that she was a not-so-closeted admirer of fascism and Hitler in particular, arguing that totalitarian regimes were “manifestations of an inevitable historical wave of the future.” (Will she have the last laugh, after all?) Being married to a serial cheater, sympathizer and fascist-adjacent Charles Lindbergh, and bearing him 6 children, was nowhere on my teenage horizon. I was simply eager to embrace female role models that excelled in flying air planes and being a successful writer simultaneously.

Role models that embraced science and poetry in one fell swoop, like – the political impeccable – Rachel Carson, who wrote about the oceans with a conservationist’s mind even before I was born. I devoured The Sea around Us.

Hope, at the time, was not about approaching a radiant city, like Thomas Centolella describes in his poem above, but about finding an independent place in the world to explore who I was. Self-centered, in other words, but aware of threats to nature even then.

Carson had it right:


“I wonder if we have not too long been looking through the wrong end of the telescope. We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.”

Like the poet, I know many types of hope. Mine, as well, struggles to keep its eyes open. And it occasionally centers on the young being able to find all kinds of books and be educated, not censored; to read and comprehend early, with patience and the ability to analyze; to tolerate the hard parts of learning, because the acquired knowledge will sustain you through many decades of your life. In other words, not let their minds rot through the use of AI.

If we’re lucky, they will be able to fight the planned destruction, enabled by knowledge and critical thinking! The destruction of the radiant city, the shining symbol on the hill, for one. Before Reagan used this biblical phrase to celebrate American exceptionalism, it was meant to remind us that morality was the cornerstone of this symbol of hope.

Speaking of which (a moral approach to bolstering democracy, that is): if you are in favor of vote by mail, now is the time window to send your comments to the Postmaster regarding the plan to refuse vote mail delivery/absentee ballots in States that will not hand over their voter rolls to the Trump Administration. Here is the link for easy commenting, offered by the League of Women’s Voters. It takes two minute, max.

Music is happy today. In celebration of the (unexpected) majority decision of the Supreme Court to allow counting of mailed ballots that arrive after election day, but were post marked in time. A win for democracy and voters.

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