The poem about migratory birds below was written at the end of World War II by one of the more prolific Flemish poets, Hubert van Herreweghen. Tricky translation – in the original the very last sentence really conveys that you should learn to love life or what is left of it. There was, with winter approaching, probably longing to follow the birds, away from the fields of Flanders, to a a warmer South, leaving the violence, the losses and serious hunger of those years behind.
MIGRATING BIRDS
The summer that has cheated us; the gloomy lesson autumn brings. Beneath the slow, high cumulus, I see a black bird fly across, heading south with beating wings.
The magical flight of the wild geese and cranes with their clamouring cries over the land like a golden fleece. Winter brings shadows, dark without cease, until a new journey fills up the skies.
Vulnerable heart and senses in pain, There is no home, in east or west, where, landed, you’re not restless again. You must learn to love life, that’s plain, Or, anyway, to love the rest.
By Hubert van Herreweghen, translated by Paul Vincent
I picked it as a bridge to one of my favorite clips of all time, my go-to when I need peacefulness.
I photographed the migratory swans, geese and cranes this week on their journey in the opposite direction – going North to meet longer days, more light, the delights of mating and nesting season. No longing to follow them – in love with my home, that does exist here in the West, and loving life as always, no need to learn that. Magical flights, though, indeed.
Swans
Joys to be had then, this week. Attached to change, in nature and elsewhere. Grateful for the respite.
Geese soaring
TREKVOGELS
De zomer die ons heeft bedrogen; o weemoed die de herfst ons leert. Onder de wolken, trage en hoge, een zwarte vogel voor mijn ogen die naar het zuiden keert.
Magische vlucht der wilde ganzen en kraanvogels met luid gekrijs over het land vol gouden glansen. Dan valt de schaduw die de ganse winter verduistert tot de nieuwe reis.
Ontvankelijk hart, kwetsbare zinnen, er is geen honk in oost of west of gij zijt rusteloos, er binnen. Leert toch het leven te beminnen of wat er van het leven rest.
Music today comes from a vision of migratory destinations for swans. As you can imagine the whole cycle of Cantus Arcticus is a favorite of mine.
And these are about 1000 snow geese on a stop-over, that white strip on the horizon.
Humor me. After all I spent hours in front of the TV yesterday, with goosebumps rising and tears falling. Tears of relief, as well as of exhaustion, as well as frustration because all of the optimism on deliberate display will only bring us what’s truly needed if it is followed by action.
Action that will have to be more than mild remodels of the status quo.
The luminous Amanda Gorman, aware that history has her eye on us, said it softly: There’s always light…if only we were brave enough to be it.
Back to the fun stuff: when Lady Gaga emerged to sing (exquisitely) the National Anthem, I almost spilled my coffee. Was that outfit some A+ trolling of a Babushka costume reminiscent of a Slovenian model/escort/Flotus? Did that peace dove on steroids make it safely through the metal detectors, not classified as a martial arts weapon? I learned that the outfit was Schiaparelli (elite French couture,) that it was not an attempt to cross Heidi with the Hungergames, and that she did not accidentally braid her scarf into the golden locks….
It was all so quickly made irrelevant by the tears shed in gratitude for the fire captain Andrea Hall signing and speaking simultaneously the Pledge of Allegiance.
And then there were tears of regret, for what might have been in times less polarized than ours and more willing to fight radically for distribution of justice and redistribution of wealth.
The image of Bernie Sanders sitting in his Parka and hand knitted Vermont mittens at the inauguration as if he had interrupted his run to the post office, was cherished not by me alone. A man true to himself. Honoring this icon was a river of memes that flowed throughout the day.
He was not given a cabinet position as Labor Secretary, but remains in his old job, Biden too worried we would otherwise loose the Senate. Let us celebrate courage and relentless fighting, which will happen no matter which position he holds.
Today’s music was written by Verdi in support of unification of another country: that of the Italian States, a process referred to as the Risorgimento (resurgence) which proliferated in the mid-19th century and was finalized in 1871. Masses (4500!) singing the movement.
There it was again. Bobbing for seconds above the water, then disappearing, leaving a bunch of seagulls screaming in its wake. The head, then the rump of a sea lion, about 100 miles upstream from where it was supposed to be, surfacing as little speck in front of me in the Willamette river yesterday.
Sea lions are driven upriver by hunger, and find a veritable feast in salmon that return to their spawning grounds. To protect the fish whose numbers are in dire decline due to human intervention, people now kill the sea lions, whose numbers are on the rise, due to human intervention.
“Sea-lion populations were once declining, too, but they have rebounded under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Such is the challenge for humans trying to manage vast, interconnected ecosystems. Put a thumb on one part of the scale, and something somewhere else goes out of whack. Try to correct that, and you create another problem. Eventually, you end up with a policy of fisheries managers killing sea lions.” (Ref.)
Walking downstream, my thoughts stayed on hunger. A passage from the book I am currently reading, Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann, had uncomfortably lodged in my brain. It described a man condemned to die for witchcraft having the first real meal ever – soup, meat, cake – as his last meal. He realizes then that he has been hungry all his life with no exception, an awarenesses only revealed in the hours before his church tribunal – imposed execution.
Put a thumb on one part of the scale, and something somewhere else goes out of whack. Set in early 17th century Europe, in the wake of the disastrous 30 Years’ war (1618- 1648), the novel weaves a tale with the help of its protagonist, the trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel (Till Eulenspiegel,) that draws us deeply into a world of hunger, catastrophe, superstition, religious fervor and conspiracy theories. In some ways, one might argue, not quite unlike our own.
It was Emperor Ferdinand II, a staunch Catholic, who put his thumb on the scale, trying to force his religion on the uneasy detente of Europeans states that had emerged after the upheavals of the Reformation. Hell ensued, and as with all catastrophes in human history, drove people into ever cruel and persecutory forms of thinking and behavior, seeking salvation in authority, often church-associated, and scape goats often linked to the devil and magic.
Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World, a small novel linking the 19th century explorer and mathematician Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss respectively, was a literary sensation. When it appeared in 2006, it replaced Harry Potter and Dan Brown from the charts in Germany, no small feat for a historical novel. It had to do something right, given that it elicited major praise across the literary reviews of the globe and major condemnation by the folks at the American Mathematical Society.
The book delivered easy-access, colorfully wrapped, inventively speculated bites of historical facts. You felt smarter afterwards without having to stretch your brain all too much. Tyll, I have to say, is much different. Although it echoes Kehlmann’s earlier writing with its reliance on wit and comical relief, it is much darker, much more opaque, and in some ways much smarter in its subtle ways of drawing parallels between a world from the past and our own. It makes your brain work, while your heart beats faster, more defensively.
A smart review in The New Yorker spells out the focus on magic and survival. It links to historical views of Tyll Ulenspiegel as “a dangerous vagrant, a folk hero, a journeyman magician, a bawdy circus performer, a jester and prankster who, like the Shakespearean Fool, recklessly needled those in power into looking honestly at themselves.” It also provides a perceptive enumeration of all the interesting characters populating the novel, testament to the author’s depth and breadth at this go-around, since historical sources to fall back on are much sparser.
My own reading was hooked more by the narrative line throughout the book of how unequal distribution of riches and power – from the village level to the international state players, the intra-religion conflicts to those between world religions, between emerging scientific rationality and religion-fervored superstition – affect human behavior and its psychological consequences.
Hunger creates catastrophe, a hunger driven by the inhuman conditions of a world divided into those who hold the goods and those who fight for daily survival. Without giving away too much, the small child Tyll, during a traumatic event, is driven by hunger to sacrifice the only thing he is attached to. The psychological consequences forcibly stamp out what we call conscience. Tyll, for no fault of his own, morphs into an amoral and untrustworthy hero, so vividly imagined and described that you see the world through his eyes, and blanche.
How many children are driven by hunger, by daily experience of unfairness and injustice, into life paths that end in catastrophe? Finding the escape as a jester (or a tycoon, a rap star or a sports hero) is the exception to the rule, thus making it into the canon of cautionary or triumphant tales, I gather. Well, here is one number: 13.9 million children in the US alone lived in a household characterized by child food insecurity as of late June. School lunch programs were already struggling to meet rising demand before the pandemic. With COVID-19 now keeping children out of school, many don’t have access to school lunches at all. (Ref.) And we don’t even know the dark numbers, or what it will look like when people start to be evicted from their homes by the end of the year. Nor can we wrap our minds around the likely numbers in even poorer parts of the world.
And no Willamette to fish from…..
Time to think seriously about forms of re-distribution.
As much as I want to provide some sense of relief, or encourage some optimism, I am hard pressed. I am writing this in the early hours of the morning after an election that – even if the outcome ushers in a new President, still undetermined – has shown that millions of people in this nation cling to representation that chooses white (male) supremacy over true democracy. Millions and millions who are willing to empower politicians and lawyers who embrace danger, chaos, neglect and violence in the pursuit of power and profit, the world be damned.
Yes, there are more people who did not vote for Trump, than there were who did.
But the Senate stands unpunished, with a single exception. More people voted for Trump after 4 years of his governing than did in 2016, and the court battles ahead will reveal how far we have sunk away from a nation that prided itself in the pursuit of justice, at least in name.
I am exhausted from driving home from California through apocalyptic landscapes of miles of charred forest, with climate change measures also implicitly rejected by millions on the ballot. The attached poem came to mind, which circulated after tragic losses due to domestic terrorist acts years back in this country. Written by Maggie Smith (NOT the British actress, but a name sake) it is not a particularly good poem but at the time seemed to encourage people to look underneath the rot for the good “bone structure,” the dormant true nature of this nation that could be refurbished.
Well, today I see but rotting bones, come back to life as a specter clinging to hate, to a cult-like embrace of a mad king, to the vision that they will not ever have to share what they perceive to be their birthright: the power to declare what’s theirs and what’s right against all who differ, the power of Whiteness, exclusion, of ownership, exploitation and hunger, the power over life and death for all who do not look and think like them, be it from guns, an unchecked virus or a foot on top of your neck.
The task has to be to look at the many more people who desperately tried to make this place beautiful, even if the chance should be snatched away from them through antiquated electoral college rules that serve to preserve established power, or through courts that have been strategically seated with partisan judges. The task has to be to question democratic party strategies that believed in wooing centrist “Biden republicans,” a non-existing slice of the electorate. The task has to be to see progress as a marathon, our efforts needed across the decades, not the years. The task has to be to model for the generations after us that you don’t tire when evil escalates and withdraw into resigned or willfully blind domesticity, no lessons learned from the 1930s.
Our task is not to surrender to hopelessness, disgust, fear or fatigue.
Our task is not to give up.
Here is music that will help us with this pursuit.
Three days before his accident my son moved into his new digs on the Bay side of San Francisco. The neighborhood is a vibrant mix of old, moneyed houses up and down Protero hill, industrial buildings now converted into lofts, about a million car mechanic and auto body shops, the medical school and its adjacent hospitals, a Louis Vitton meets McNuggets mix of sorts.
And then there are whole street sides covered with tents of the unhoused who find protection in group settings. With one of them, Chavalle, who stays across the front door of the building, I am on a daily greeting basis.
When my son was still mostly confined to a wheelchair and the air was not too unhealthy, we would push it the 4 blocks down to the bay and sit and watch the action – ships coming in and out, cranes moving loads, backhoes digging sand from the channel, fishermen trying their luck in the grossly polluted waters.
One day a guy came with a big carton filled with crabs. One by one he released them into the water, taking note of it by filming his proceedings. I chatted him up and he said that he had bought the whole lot for a bunch of money intent on setting them free and not having them boiled to death for someone’s dinner.
Good intentions. Alas, the crabs were someone’s dinner after all. Maybe not all of them, perhaps some escaped. Let’s work on that glass half full perspective….
Below is one of the best descriptions of eating these critters I have ever read, with added food for thought when it comes to hunger. The poet, Kay Ulanday Barrett, identifies as mixed Filipinx and White American heritage and has recently published a book on their experience as a disabled transgender queer. Here is their website.
Aunties love it when seafood is on sale.
By Kay Ulanday Barrett
In summertime, the women in my family spin sagoo like planets, make even saturn blush. They split the leaves of kang kong with riverbed softness.
They are precise; measure rice by palm lines with laughter and season broth made of creature’s last gasps. You’d swear they were teenagers again, talking gossip stretching limbs elastic, durable, like seaweed.
Come dinner time, skilled mouths slurp through the domes of shrimp and crab.
They prize the fat, the angles of their teeth splinter claw, snap sinew, dip tart into sweet then back again; bitterness balanced, succulence on succulence, is to find flesh from even the smallest of spaces.
Women who swallow whole, who make a pile of bones, who suck teeth, taste every morsel, so that all that is left is a quiet room and shells of what once was.
To the daughters of dried fish nets whose dreams dragged on sand, dragged to this country, they bring home recipe years later, flick joints to garlic, salabat to the sick, culinary remix, teach cousins, this is how we stay alive, mourning in the Midwest by taste bud.
Afterwards, they keep the ocean husks for another meal because to get a good deal is to double. And anybody from the island will tell you, that is where true flavor is
and what is hunger anyway, but the carving out of emptiness, the learning you gotta always always save something for later?
And here is, how can I not, a crab canon. A crab canon is an arrangement of two musical lines that are complementary and backward, similar to a palindrome. It originally referred to a kind of canon in which one line is played backward. J.S Bach’s Musical Offerings has the perfect one.
Forgive me if my mind wanders even more than usual these days. I used to think of my habit of forming strange and far-reaching connections as an asset; these days associations come unbidden, feeling more intrusive than clever or surprising. Be that as it may, here is the most recent chain of thought, originally triggered by a day of darkness.
Literal darkness, that is, as you can discern yourself when realizing today’s photographs were taken at noon, overlooking San Francisco Bay, some days ago. A darkness likely to have enshrouded the Oregon landscape as well, a consequence of the devastating fires.
It brought to mind Lord Byron’s poem, Darkness, attached below. It was written in the summer of 1816 after the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora in 1815. The eruption killed more than 10,000 people, while an additional 30,000 across the world perished from the crop failures, famine, and disease that resulted from extreme weather triggered by the explosion. Volcanic ash blotted out much of the sun for more than a year, having people believe that the sun was dying. The average global temperature dropped by a whole degree. The poem reads like a prescient description of both climate change and/or the more figurative darkness that surrounds us in these days of the demise of our democracy.
Darkness
BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)
I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d, And men were gather’d round their blazing homes To look once more into each other’s face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain’d; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil’d; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d: the wild birds shriek’d And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl’d And twin’d themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour’d, Even dogs assail’d their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish’d men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur’d their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer’d not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish’d by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap’d a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak’d up, And shivering scrap’d with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other’s aspects—saw, and shriek’d, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr’d within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp’d They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir’d before; The winds were wither’d in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
The poem’s apocalyptic tone was not just caused by the strange, dark weather. Byron himself was at one of the lowest points in his life, his reputation shattered by revelations of his incestuous relationship with a half-sister, and public disclosure of his marital cruelty (he was sexually and emotionally abusive to his partners, men and women alike, throughout his life time.) He left England in disgrace at age 28, never to return again, wracked by debt and alcoholism. He died in exile from illness contracted through exposure to the elements. Notorious to the last, and yet he was a shining star in romantic poetry’s firmament, of bright intensity or intense brightness, your pick.
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Notorious is also a term for me, for many of us, prominently associated with RBG. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, may her memory be a blessing, died last week on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, a bright sun extinguish’d. For all she fought for, trailblazed, conquered, for a life lived with integrity at the opposite end of the spectrum from Byron, she, too was not granted a peaceful death. The very knowledge that her passing would be exploited for yet another power grab by those who care for nothing but, must have weighed heavily for someone ready to be freed from the ravages of cancer and yet clinging to life in hopes of gaining time towards the election. It was not to be.
We must mourn her, and then tend to her legacy by whatever means we have. I find it heartening to be reminded that this is not on individuals alone. If you reread the poem above, look at the lines that signal connectedness – “And men were gather’d round their blazing homes To look once more into each other’s face” – we are in this together. Or the lines that point to a future, even if shrouded by fear – “A fearful hope was all the world contain’d.” And then various descriptions of how people, other than those giving up, acted on that hope.
The poem does not end happily, but rather in desolation. That is a choice, but one the poet himself did ultimately not give into. Byron dreamt of revolutionary changes for the world and actually fought for social justice in his few years in government service. So did Bader Ginsburg in her reckonings with the powers that be. Here are Byron’s words from Canto IV of Childe Harold:
But I have lived, and have not lived in vain: My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, And my frame perish even in conquering pain, But there is that within me which shall tire Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire [.]
For the rest of us: let’s tire, if not torture or time, then at least the current President and Senate hellbent on filling a Supreme Court Seat that does not belong to them. Make them weary with an onslaught of action. Exhaust them, weaken them by all means in our repertory. Unless darkness becomes the universe.
Music today uses the words from another Byron poem, She walks in Beauty. Rest in power, RBG. You have not lived in vain.
As with so many things in life, where poison or rot is only revealed by a closer look beneath the beautiful surface, so it was when I hiked among this fairy-tale landscape of a sea of white blossoms last Friday, an incandescent lace pattern against the fresh spring greenery.
What you expect to see in meadows or at the edges of woodlands is cow parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris. What I found was its rather more famous cousin hemlock (both are in the families of carrots,) Conium maculatum, which looks almost identical, but is highly toxic, even deadly. It grows tall, sometimes over 5 feet, with leaves that are triangular and lacy, and little flowers clustered im umbels – just like cow parsley. The only way to figure out which is which for the lay botanist not schooled in subtle variations, is to look closely at the stem: if it has blotches of purple or dark red color, it is hemlock.
Medieval lore insisted that hemlock grew on the hills of Golgatha and Christ’s blood touching it upon crucification – the purplish spots – made it forever toxic.
Those crucified die by asphyxiation – they cannot breathe.
Death by hemlock comes through lack of air as well. Hemlock contains a poisonous alkaloid named coniine, which has a chemical structure similar to nicotine. This poison disrupts the central nervous system—a small dose can cause respiratory collapse. Death can result from blockage of the neuromuscular junction caused by coniine. In practice, it eventually stops your ability to breathe, causing you to suffocate.
We all know why I am thinking of this right now: the killing by police of George Floyd, another suffocation of an unarmed Black man, and poisonous state violence, from up on high through the ranks of the police who wield teargas, nightsticks, rubber and pepper projectiles with abandon, having people gasp for air. Or the smoke from the fires that are erupting in the course of the protests, set by those enraged, or those intent to provoke and instigate blame, manipulating the racial divide. Or breathless, distracting focus on property destruction, so we can maintain a state of denial about police violence against human bodies. Or Covid-19 which makes it impossible for drowning lungs to provide you with oxygen, or hard to breathe through masks that are a necessity to prevent the spread of the disease.
Bushtit parent with chicks lined up above the hemlock
It is more than that, though: as Dahlia Lithwick points out in one of the most thoughtful short pieces I’ve seen in recent journalism, you can’t breathe when you are unable to stop screaming in anger or frustration or plain fear. You can’t breathe when you are sobbing or terrified. You can’t breathe, or breathe with shallow intakes, when you are forced to be in public or work in places where you are not protected and surrounded by potential spreaders of a lethal virus. We will also not be able to breathe if clean and cool enough air is no longer available due to the climate catastrophe, at least for most of humanity stuck in the places where it will unfold in first extremes.
“To be dying of a lack of air is a powerful symbol; it’s a metaphor for scarcity, for insufficiency. It’s a marker for ways in which the “richest country in the world,” the “most powerful nation in the world,” and the “leader of the western world” somehow finds itself gasping. Fighting for what should be plentiful….. We can’t breathe, and the words “last gasps” seem to have taken on a new force as we contemplate the stunning fact that we all breathe the same air, whether we like it or not, and that a nation in which only some people can draw breath safely is not a nation, but rather a tenuous hostage situation.”
To be confronted with or dying of a lack of air is a traumatizing experience. I was 13 years-old when first put on a post-operative ventilator, after 9 hours of lung surgery, and then again at age 16. It is drowning with full consciousness, the very essence of life, of living somehow clogging your throat, unable to get in or out, accompanied by ever rising panic. I do not wish that on my worst enemy. Much less on all those who are exposed to variations of that experience now, due to no fault of their own other than having been born into a certain race or class or circumstances beyond their control.
And yet here we live in a country and a time where it is inescapable. Imagine to be a person of color, or their parent, the horror of slavery encased in your DNA, venturing out daily into a world that disrespects you, denigrates you, debases you, discriminates against you. A world where you are deprived of opportunities or dispossessed if you grabbed them. A world where physical harm awaits you to the point of being killed when you encounter those who, stoked by group mentality in their like minded corps, empowered by weapons, sheltered by partial immunity, and fortified with the knowledge that historically they never ever had to bear the consequences for unlawful, excessive violence, can decide to make you gasp for your last breath. It is a life of trauma.
How can you breathe?
*
You might vaguely remember that Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, chose a cup of hemlock as his execution method when sentenced to die for religious disobedience and corrupting the young. Officially he was condemned for his teachings, but political motivations were behind it, since he quite literally engaged in civil disobedience (Martin Luther King, Jr. would cite it in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”)
Through the reports of his students (he never wrote anything himself) we know that one of the questions that concerned him was personal ethics. Why do we do wrong when we genuinely know what is right? He believed that we go wrong when the perceived benefits seem to outweigh the cost. We have not developed the right “art of measurement,” correcting the distortions that skew our analyses of benefit and cost.
In line with Socratic method – instilling knowledge through a questioning dialogue, rather than provide answers directly – I ask those of us who are White, privileged, living in relative security from state violence or racist encounters in public for our own measurement:
What kind of civil disobedience is appropriate when all other peaceful methods have failed to right a wrong?
What kind of actions are needed to stop racially motivated killings?
What means do we have to shift the value attached to preserving property compared to the value of preserving human health and life (on all fronts, not just the direct killing through police, but the endangerment through exposure to to lethal diseases or hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, lack of education, science phobia etc etc.)
How do we become conscious of language that uses a passive mode for protestors gettin hurt (the journalist lost her eye when struck by a projectile,) versus an active mode when protesters act (they laid a dumpster fire)?
How do we change the fact that we judge the protestors by the most violent elements among them (those rioting looters), versus allowing the “a few bad apples” schema application for structural police violence?
What price are we willing to pay for changing a system that is inherently unjust? What are our personal ethics when it comes to giving up privilege?
Some of the answers can be found here: I have recommended Kendi’s book before. (#HowToBeAnAntiracist by @DrIbram is sold out on Amazon and third party sellers on that site are engaging in major price gouging. Please order on @Bookshop_Org or from any indie such @PoliticsProse or @Shakespeare_Co.)
Some of the answers can be found by honestly looking into the mirror; a closer look might reveal a paper-thin membrane between the truth and denial, one that could easily be ripped off to allow living up to our purported ethics.
Here is Lianne La Havas singing Paperthin. I chose this music because it is about human connectedness, not afraid of strong emotions, and as immediate, un-artifical a musical experience s we can have right now.
And here is evidence of a red thread through history, particularly for minority groups who always suffered from state-sanctioned prosecution.
In 1917 a ‘Lupin’ banquet was given in Hamburg at a botanical gathering, at which a German Professor, Dr. Thoms, described the multifarious uses to which the Lupin might be put. At a table covered with a tablecloth of Lupin fibre, Lupin soup was served; after the soup came Lupin beefsteak, roasted in Lupin oil and seasoned with Lupin extract, then bread containing 20 per cent of Lupin, Lupin margarine and cheese of Lupin albumen, and finally Lupin liqueur and Lupin coffee. Lupin soap served for washing the hands, while Lupin-fibre paper and envelopes with Lupin adhesive were available for writing. (Ref.)
I guess, the guy liked lupins. Turns out, he was not the only one. In 1949, Connie Scott (later know as the Lupin Lady), of Godley Peaks Station in New Zealnd, “scattered lupin seeds along the roadside. She bought about £100 worth from the local stock and station agent, hiding the bill from her husband for many months, hoping simply to make the world more beautiful.” It started an ecological disaster, as well as becoming a source for economic gain both from tourist trade – travelers arrive in flocks to marvel at the beauty – and sheep farming in otherwise barren regions.
What is it with lupins? On the one hand, they (particularly the white and yellow varieties) are a high-protein plant source, a real alternative to soy beans. Given that the global demand for meat, dairy and fish products for human consumption is recognized as unsustainable due the high environmental impact of animal production and given our knowledge about the rise in diseases associated with excessive consumption of animal products, plant-based protein really looks promising. Lupin use as a protein crop is widely spread in Australia and now recommended for European farmers, once some advanced breeding techniques are developed to provide new lupin varieties for socio-economically and environmentally sustainable cultivation.
Ironically, the protein these plants provide is also widely used in sheep farming, so we all can enjoy one more rack of lamb….
This is where the conflict between conservationists and farmers arises, at least in New Zealand. Lupins clog braided river beds, providing shade for many invasive species of weeds to move in and they are disturbing nesting sites for endangered birds – Black stilts and certain terns need to nest on gravel beds in these rivers, which are now grown over. The environmental agencies are bowing to the sheep farmers’ needs, with scant efforts to control the spread of the plant that gets carried far in the sheep’s fleeces, with landowners not taking any responsibility. Ecologists see them as uncontrollable weeds like scotch broom, their spreading soon to be unstoppable across the entire land
In Oregon we have, strangely, the opposite problem. Kincaid’s lupine or Oregon lupine is regionally endemic from Douglas County, Oregon north to Lewis County, Washington. They are now threatened due to the loss of prairie lands where they once flourished. The smaller the prairies – a result of urbanization and use for agriculture – the larger the distance between them, which means seeds have a harder time being spread into suitable environments to grow. We finally got a critical habitat designation in 2006, after the plant had been declared threatened in 2000. The was essential because they are the primary larvae food plant for the endangered Fender blue butterfly (Icaricia icarioides fenderi), which is found only in Oregon. The plant is also used by the Puget blue butterfly ((Icaricia icarioides blackmorei) in Washington State.
It’s never simple, is it? What’s good for ecology in our region might be bad in other countries. What’s good for economic development, including alternate protein sources for poor, developing-world nations whose populations face hunger and malnourishment, might mean the end of certain species whose habitats get destroyed by the plant. Even within industrialized economies there might be conflict. What serves the sheep farmers well for their livestock might undermine the success of brands like Icebreaker who buy up all the wool but run under a certified sustainable flag, now debatable – surely brought to consumers’ attention by ecologist who try to save habitats.
What is simple is to enjoy the beauty of the plants, once you manage to stop thinking: so it was on my Saturday walk up at the protected area on Powell Butte, on an unseasonably hot, windy day with the waves of grass rolling, the lupines shining in blue, the daisies pointing their faces to the sun and the mountains glowing in the distance. My heart sang.
And here is a piece inspired by endless prairies, from 1948, with the composer Lukas Foss playing the piano.
Here is a short piece about the composer and here is an excerpt from The Prairie a composition that is probably more fun to sing than to listen to.
By all reports, people are emptying nursery shelves of edible plants and seed catalogues are running out of products to ship because we are back in Victory Garden mode. With all that war-related terminology – fighting the invisible enemy – it’s no wonder that old war concepts are making a come-back.
Planting additional gardens to provide food was originally started in WW I, ironically to save our European allies from starvation- their farms had become battlefields and their farm workers soldiers. US citizens were asked to grow their own food so that we could send more industrially produced foods to Europe. During WW II 20 million additional gardens produced 40% of the nation’s food; the process included administrative manuals to help citizens with planting and pest control, and instructions for canning and preserving to help with excess crops. Here is an interesting re-counting of the history. And here is an incredible historical propaganda video sporting a patriotic family doing their share towards the war effort in a HUGE (quarter acre) victory garden, mostly dug by a horse and tended by a 14-year old who inhales enough pesticides to be guaranteed lung cancer – (as a side commentary, every one in the film has a name, Dad and Grandpa Holder, Dick and Jane, and then there is…. mother! Also, Jane likes to garden in penny loafers. Just saying.)
Food insecurity is indeed a monster raising its ugly head even higher in times of mass unemployment and disrupted supply chains. Yes, I’m speaking of today, not 1944. The statistics from just 2 years ago are staggering – over 37 million Americans, including 1 million children, lacked consistent access to enough food for an active healthy life. African-Americans are hit twice as hard compared to Whites when it comes to hunger. (Which reminds me: if you read one single thing today that I link to, read this: Kendi on the causes for disproportionate suffering experienced by minority populations facing Covid-19.)
Extra vegetable gardens, with now so much more need for food arising, are indeed a good idea. That is if you have a plot, as small as 2 by 6 feet, that gets 6-8 hours of sun a day, an inclination to get your hands dirty and a nursery that can still provides some seedlings and bags of soil or other stuff to plant in. Never gardened before? Luckily you don’t have to rely on James Burdett’s 1943 book, The Victory Garden Manual. He was the founder of the National Garden Bureau, a non-profit organization “that exists to educate, inspire, and motivate people to increase the use of plants in homes, gardens, and workplaces by being the marketing arm of the gardening industry.”
Yes, they market, oh do they market, but they do so cleverly to help the un-initiated find the joy of gardening. Their latest effort, Victory Garden 2.0, is a step by step internet tool that I can actually see being successful in adding food to the food banks. They offer instructions for raised-bed or container gardens of various types, a salad garden, a kitchen garden, a high yield garden and a giving garden – for the hungry. Everything is spelled out – from soil preparation to pest control to what kinds of seed you need, how to plant, space, water, pollinate – you name it. Example below. The link goes into way more detail.
Way to go.
While waiting for vegetables to grow, I’m getting anticipatory pleasure from fruit-tree blossoms – not my own, since my garden is too shady, although I have one ancient pear tree that yields about 4 exemplars per year, worm-eaten in my pesticide-free zone, but pears none-the-less….
Music today by Béla Bartók who seemed to appreciate certain kinds of vegetables:
“And then, after moving to America in 1940, he and his wife visited Los Angeles where he first encountered the avocado pear while eating a version of Waldorf salad. ‘This is a fruit somewhat like a cucumber in size and colour,’ he carefully recorded. ‘But it is quite buttery in texture, so it can be spread on bread. Its flavour is something like an almond but not so sweet. It has a place in this celebrated fruit salad which consists of green salad, apple, celery, pineapple, raw tomato and mayonnaise.”
Schiff’s playing is tight, and the second movement of the 3rd piano concerto sounds at times as if the ducks have gotten lose in the garden…
There is an Outside spread Without & an outside spread Within Beyond the Outline of Identity both ways, which meet in One: An orbed Void of doubt, despair, hunger & thirst & sorrow.
– William Blake, Jerusalem (1818).
Let me not mince words: I despise the term outsider art. Yes, I know the definition is loose – it can refer to anything, from art by those not trained as artists, or not affected by a particular culture, or living on the margins of society, or living with a disability or mental illness – often in any possible combination of all of these. And yes, I know we are stuck with the term, since it has taken on a life of its own ever since people started collecting this art. It is part of a commodity market always on the look-out for something new, something striking, something that money can be invested in.
Marker work by Lindsay Scheu
Lindsay Scheu
The very fact that you call some artists “outsiders,” (including those living with disabilities, who are our family, our neighbors, our clients and, yes, our friends,) perpetuates a tendency toward segregation rather than integration, to the loss of all involved. All, that is, but cutting edge curators and collectors who boost their bottom line, staging art fairs and exhibitions of the few among the legions of creative “outsiders” who somehow make it to the top of the art market.
Shannon Anderson
One might argue – and people do – that the invitation to show and sell outsider art removes some of the stigma that is associated with being different from societal norms, and alleviates the poverty that is often correlated with the struggle to make it as a person living with disability. Well, if the art is good enough to break through, why add to it a diagnostic label, triggering stereotypes of illness which we know to be still so pervasive? A bit of frisson? A bit of a kick that you are now leaving the comfort zone? Why invite the demarcation painfully experienced in real life at the boundaries between norm and not-norm into the language, perpetuating it?
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In the 19th century they called people like William Blake, one of the first and finest protagonists of this art genre, “madmen,” or eccentrics, not outsiders. They still used those words in the 20th century when psychiatrists started to write about the art produced by their patients in asylums. Walter Morgenthaler’s A Mental Patient as Artist (1921) and Hans Prinzhorn’s Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie und Psychopatologie der Gestaltung (Artistry of the mentally ill: a contribution to the psychology and psychopathology of configuration) (1922) made a splash in their time, leading to some cross fertilization with the emerging art movement of Surrealism.
Ceramic Studio – Mask by Mathew Spencer
Painters Jean Dubuffet and André Breton coined the term Art Brut, Raw Art, collecting innovative and sui generis works of art of those outside the mainstream. (A more detailed definition and a treasure-trove of art can be found at the Collection de l’Art Brut at Lausanne, CH.) It was not until the 1970s that the term Outsider Art was introduced, in a pathbreaking book with same title by Roger Cardinal. These days, variations abound. Marginal Art, or Art Singulier, are terms applied to anyone who is not fully included and shows novelty of expression or culture-independent vision. Closer to home we often find self-taught as a term being used to describe art produced by the above populations. In a society that values educational achievement as much as our’s, this seems to replace one stigma with another, but perhaps weaker one.
Caitlin Pruett
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Luckily, there are places of art being made and displayed, where terminology is of no interest, and where the creative experience of singular human beings rules the day. It was one of the most pleasurable moments in recent weeks when I discovered just one such place close by: The Portland Art and Learning Studio (PALS) in NE Portland. PALS is a program of Albertina Kerr—a local nonprofit that empowers people experiencing intellectual or developmental disabilities, mental health challenges, and other social barriers to lead self-determined lives and reach their full potential. The program is made possible by gifts and grants of the community. Check it out here: PortlandArtAndLearningStudio.com.
PALS Building on MLK
The building alone is inviting, and the staff, from a genuinely friendly receptionist, multiple instructors and interns, to the intensely engaged and perceptive Ass. Director Chandra Glaeseman, serves some 90 clients with visible dedication. Both Chandra and instructor Malcolm Hecht took time out to introduce me to the program and the participants and show me around the space.
Instructor Malcom Hecht
A large, industrial hall is divided into multiple work stations that offer about any creative activity you can think of. Ceramics, painting, fabric arts, digital art, music, writing, beading, you name it. Tables provide spaces to interact, have lunch or snacks, and be creative. Some corners allow for more uninterrupted time to make books, or paint. A 1:4 or 5 ratio of staff to clients allows for individualized attention. A loudspeaker system helps to remind people that their transportation has arrived and they independently move about.
Brian Moran in conversation with Quinn Gansedo Ed Case, Terrie Bush and Ed Papst enjoying lunch
The place is open to the public who can come and visit a brightly lit gallery that displays art both of local participants and traveling exhibits from allied organizations, like the Land Gallery in New York City, Creative Growth in Oakland, CA and Creativity Explored in Richmond, CA. Visitors can also peruse the works at the different artists stations and purchase them directly from the artist or craftsperson.
Gallery Space in the Building
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PALS was opened some 19 months ago and still has capacity to accept more clients. Glaeseman is an engaged, hands-on leader of the program. Educated at the Maine College of Arts, she went on to receive her MFA from the Rhodes Island School of Design in 2008, including a Sculpture Magazine Outstanding Student award and RISDY’s Award of Excellence, juried by Ian Berry of the Tang Museum. During stints as adjunct faculty at PNCA, Lewis&Clark College and Willamette University she added teaching experience to her artistic practice. I am glad she did not waste resources to pursue additional achievements in social work or clinical psych, since from everything I observed, interacting with people in a genuinely caring and simultaneously pragmatic eye-to-eye fashion comes natural to her.
Director Chandra Glaeseman
Chandra (a truly apt name, I thought, when I learned it means bright star in the sky) has multiple goals for the growth of the organization, goals that are actively supported by management, in particular CEO Jeff Carr at Albertina Kerr. Her vision, for one, is to help clients increase their autonomy, and to provide tools via any kind of creative practice, not just visual art, to achieve more independence. In her experience making art provides a skill set that is transferable to everyday problem solving, however non-lineal the process might be.
Jeanette Mill, concentratingJames Enos
Secondly, she also promotes an attitude towards risk taking which signals that failure is acceptable, even welcome. Providing a safe space to fail, a space free from judgmental criticism, secures learning. Best case scenario, it also increases self confidence and the tools to take on real jobs in the community that recognizes the ability levels achieved at PALS.
Ginger Matthews
Last but not least, the hope is to connect PALS’ artists to the outside world, participating, for example, at the Outsider Artfair in NYC, where progressive studios have national representation and organizations can network to support each others’ work in the field.
“Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.” – NYC-based German artist Hans Haacke, (2019)
Who needs NYC when we have Gallery 114 in Portland, OR, not a museum but an artist collective that was founded in 1990. Haacke’s views of the role of art institutions, and his artistic focus on the social, political, and economic structures in which art is produced, exhibited and purchased, seem to be a good reminder what progressive galleries can and should do: educate.
Ebullience – Getting ready for opening night at Gallery 114Gallery member and curator Diane KendallGallery members and curators Joanie Krug and David Slader in back
Gallery 114’s dedication to inclusion of less-represented populations is remarkable – whether they open their space to poetry readings by Street Roots vendors, or hang exhibitions like the one this month on display. The current show, Ebullience, presents the diverse creative outpouring from PALS’ artists. The title couldn’t be more fitting – the work on display lights up the gallery’s rooms that are tucked in the Souterrain.
Judy Nuding, Brian Beckham, Alister Bond, Jamond Williams, Steven Jean-Marie. Acrylic, Oil-pastel, and Paper Collage on Canvas. Detail below.
Sculpture, weaving, drawing and painting all hold their own, thoughtfully curated in cooperation with PALS staff, by artists Diane Kendall, David Slader and Joanie Krug (who as a volunteer at PALS saw the potential and made the connection.)
Endale Abraham, A Palacefit for a King, Acrylic and Graphite on CanvasLindsay Scheu Untitled Marker on Matte BoardRicky Bearghost, Untitled, woven Plastic, Wooden and hand-made Ceramic Beads, Leaves, AcrylicPaint. and Pom-Poms. Detail below,
The work might open new perspectives on how to view the world, a world not necessarily familiar. Viewing this world might shift the rigid boundaries between “us” and “them,” locating all of us on a continuum, rather than in disparate regions, inside for some, outside for others.
David Hunt Untitled (Waterfalls) Watercolor and Markers on PaperPALS Collaboration with EATCHO, Acrylic on CanvasJamond Williams Untitled, Watercolor, Graphite and Markers on Paper
Make time for a visit, in the gallery or at PALS’ studio space, it will brighten your day. There is an effervescent mood at both places right now that gives rise to hope: hope for more empathy, more understanding, for unbridled joy in making art and, importantly, for inclusion.
Gallery 114 – Ebullience
1100 NW Glisan Street Portland, OR. 97209 503-243-3356
Thu, Feb 6, 2020 to Sat, Feb 28, 2020
Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 12pm – 6pm
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Portland Art and Learning Studios Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-2 p.m. 4852 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. Portland, OR 97211 503-528-0744
