The doves are back. Parading in front of my window, giving me stern looks that I have not put out any seed, puffing up when the cold breeze strikes. Next week is supposed to have 76 degrees one day, snow the other. Crazy.
The song sparrows are singing their little heart out, perched on my pear tree, about to blossom.
The wood violets are exploding.
The trillium are in full swing.
Maple and elderberries are stretching to the light.
Bluebells hiding in the shadow.
And importantly, the bleeding hearts are back. Just around the corner, clusters in the woods.
These are wild flowers, Pacific Bleeding Heart (Dicentra Formosa,) not the cultivated ones that you find in English cottage gardens (shown below).
There’s a somewhat timely story as to how the name, Bleeding Heart, got transformed into an insult along the lines of “such a bleeding heart liberal…”
As early as the 14th century, the phrase referred to a sincere emotional outpouring, found in poems by Chaucer, for example (Troylus and Chriseyde):
That nevere of hym she wolde han taken hede, For which hym thoughte he felte his herte blede.
Later, so Merriam-Webster dictionary tells me, the term was associated with religious iconography, referring to the bleeding heart of Christ. It was connected to his teachings and compassion for the poor, sick or struggling.
Leave it to a right-wing American newspaper journalist, Westbrook Pegler, a nasty Senator, Joe McCarthy, and a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, to turn a thought of brotherly love into an insult.
Pegler was a hater. The list was long: Communists, fascist, Jews, liberals. In the context of a new bill before Congress, he coined the term bleeding-heart liberal in 1938. The bill? Aimed to curb lynching.
Pegler argued that lynching was no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” (Ref.) He, by the way, became too right-wing even for the John- Birch -Society, which threw him out eventually.
The term found full attention when picked up by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.” Leave it to Ronald Reagan, then newly elected Governor of California, to make it his own in the 60s: “I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once,” he told Newsweek.
Let’s co-opt the term! I am a proudly caring, compassionate, social-justice oriented bleeding-heart progressive! There! The world needs us.
Oh, and the lynching bill? Finally, passed this March after a century or so. It failed on 200 (!) previous attempts. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which was introduced by Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) in the House and Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate, is named for the 14-year-old Black boy whose brutal torture and murder in Mississippi in 1955 sparked the civil rights movement. The three no votes: Republican Reps. Andrew S. Clyde (Ga.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Chip Roy (Tex.) Glad they were not on the jury during a contemporary lynching victim’s trial, Ahmaud Arbery.
(Sacral) Music is from 18th Century Ukraine today.
We started the week with Native American art and we will close with it too. LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in American literature at the University of Georgia, who “connects literature, Indigenous knowledge, Native histories, and expressive cultures in her work.”
You can learn more about this brilliant poet here. Photographs are of fowl in action, busy in March.
Ya kut unta pishno ma* Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
So I moved to this place, Iowa City, Ioway Where green-headed mallards walk the streets day and night, and defecate on sidewalks. Greasy meat bags in wetsuits, disguise themselves as pets and are free as birds. Maybe Indians should have thought of that?
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
Maybe you would have left us alone, if we put on rubber bills, and rubber feet, Quacked instead of complained, Swam instead of danced waddled away when you did what you did…
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
So I moved to the Place The “Jewel of the Midwest” Where ghosts of ourselves Dance the sulphur trails.
Fumes emerge continuous from the mouths of Three-faced Deities who preach, “We absolve joy through suffering.”
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
So I moved to this place where in 1992, up washed Columbus again like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals. His spin doctors rewrite his successes “After 500 years and 25 million dead, One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics 49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.”
Each minute burns the useful and useless alike Sing Hallelujah Praise the Lord
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
And when you foreigners build your off-world colonies and relocate in outer space This is what we will do We will dance, We will dance, We will dance to a duck’s tune.
Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma
We were walking along the promenade, kids visiting from L.A., a rare treat. The sky and the light changed rapidly, threatening showers, then sun emerging. Remarking on the brown, muddy water of the Willamette river, I mused about writing about the dangers of cyber war for water treatment centers. “You shouldn’t,” I was told, “it’s too depressing.” Couldn’t help but think of a snarky poem from the 1930s, by one of Germany’s most astute satirists and writers, Erich Kästner. He urged to face the truth and not insist on pretending that the world is all right. I follow, quite obviously, in his footsteps, with the same approach, though not his talent. (Below is the original for my German readers and my attempts at translation which can, of course, not capture the elegance of his rhymes, but I think I got the gist.)
“Und wo bleibt das Positive, Herr Kästner?”
Und immer wieder schickt ihr mir Briefe,
in denen ihr, dick unterstrichen, schreibt:
»Herr Kästner, wo bleibt das Positive?«
Ja, weiß der Teufel, wo das bleibt.
Noch immer räumt ihr dem Guten und Schönen
den leeren Platz überm Sofa ein.
Ihr wollt euch noch immer nicht dran gewöhnen,
gescheit und trotzdem tapfer zu sein.
Ihr braucht schon wieder mal Vaseline,
mit der ihr das trockene Brot beschmiert.
Ihr sagt schon wieder, mit gläubiger Miene:
»Der siebente Himmel wird frisch tapeziert!«
Ihr streut euch Zucker über die Schmerzen
und denkt, unter Zucker verschwänden sie.
Ihr baut schon wieder Balkons vor die Herzen
und nehmt die strampelnde Seele aufs Knie.
Die Spezies Mensch ging aus dem Leime
und mit ihr Haus und Staat und Welt.
Ihr wünscht, daß ich’s hübsch zusammenreime,
und denkt, daß es dann zusammenhält?
Ich will nicht schwindeln. Ich werde nicht schwindeln.
Die Zeit ist schwarz, ich mach euch nichts weis.
Es gibt genug Lieferanten von Windeln.
Und manche liefern zum Selbstkostenpreis.
Habt Sonne in sämtlichen Körperteilen
und wickelt die Sorgen in Seidenpapier!
Doch tut es rasch. Ihr müßt euch beeilen.
Sonst werden die Sorgen größer als ihr.
Die Zeit liegt im Sterben. Bald wird sie begraben.
Im Osten zimmern sie schon den Sarg.
Ihr möchtet gern euren Spaß dran haben …?
Ein Friedhof ist kein Lunapark.
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“And Where’s the Positive, Herr Kästner?“
You send me letters, again and again,
with the question, thickly underlined:
"Mr. Kästner, where’s the positive?"
Well, the devil knows where it's at in these times.
You’re still reserving the empty space
above the couch for the good and the bright.
You still deny that, besides being smart,
you need to summon your courage all right.
You retreat, once again, to Vaseline
to pretend there's butter on the stale, old bread.
You insist, yet again, with a trusting mien:
"Upgrades to seventh heaven are right ahead."
You sprinkle sugar on top of your pain
and assume the sugar will make it flee.
You overstretch your wide-open heart
and rock your flailing soul on your knees.
The human species has been falling apart
and with it house and state and world.
You request that I'll fix it with a pretty rhyme
and think that that way the pieces hold?
I don't want to lie. I will not lie.
Times are black, no white-washing can be allowed.
There are others who’ll pamper you happily
and some even do it for free in this crowd.
Invite the sun to all body parts,
and wrap up your worries in tissue paper!
But do it quickly. You have to hurry,
or else the worries get greater and greater.
An era is dying. It will soon be buried.
In the East the casket is fashioned right now.
You'd still like your fun and games in a flurry?
A graveyard is no amusement show.
So what is it about water that makes me invite you to store enough to last for some days for you and your pets, independent of earthquake prep?
Cyber attacks can unfortunately do more than just interrupt water testing. They can actually manipulate things to poison the water. Why should that happen here, you ask? Well, that’s probably the same question pondered by almost any municipality in this country and the you have cases like the one in Oldsmar, Florida, last year. A hacker, using someone else’s stolen credentials, gained control of the operational panels and drove up sodium hydroxide content in the water to poisonous levels. It was caught, fortunately, swiftly enough to prevent lasting damage, but that was a question of luck. (Ref.)
The Biden administration has certainly been on alert for the threats, during normal times associated with cyber criminals or individual actors. They have an active program in the works to heighten security measures. How that plays out if we are – however indirectly – at war or in conflict with more sophisticated and powerful state actors, I have no clue. We are seeing in real time how a population can be cut off from water during a war, as reported from Ukraine.
And yet these worries are a drop in the bucket, compared to the general situation of water scarcity and quality in the world. Here is ICCP’s new report on the ravages half of the world is facing in the light of climate change. I think we can all intuit the overall picture. What I did not know is how few of the suggested adaptation strategies are actually tested for whether they work or not. These strategies are aimed at water hazards (droughts, floods, groundwater depletion, glacier depletion) or water-related direct responses (irrigation, rainwater harvesting and wetlands conservation).
There are more than 1,800 climate change adaptation strategies registered worldwide, yet only 359 had been analyzed for effectiveness. We do not know if most of these strategies actually reduce the impacts of climate change on health, safety and economy. Here is an overview of the types of adaptive measure we are talking about and what we know they might or might not accomplished. A muddy picture.
No white-washing then, even if we wanted to. But before you curse me for drowning you in miserable thoughts at the beginning of the weekend, here is an antidote. A bit of sugar to sprinkle, if you will, after all. The link describes the public hotline where you can dial in to receive a (pre-recorded) pep talk by – Kindergarteners! Call 707-998-8410. My favorite: option #4 – the laughter of 5 year-olds as a cheer-me-up.
A pod village for the houseless, next to the Hawthorne Bridge
Don the down-coat. Pack the parka. Meet the early morning mist.
If you are lucky – and I was early Monday morning – you’ll see some wispy clouds evaporate over the water, hear the different birdcalls and have the wetlands practically to yourself.
Well, the birds were naturally on location. Pretty active, too, fighting the lingering cold and scoring on breakfast. Red-tailed hawk preening…
The diffuse light blocked out the harshness of the world and gave rise to thoughts about peace against the backdrop of war.
And talking about war and peace, have you ever considered why so few birds are equipped with weapons? I mean, snakes have fangs, tigers have teeth, elephants, narwhales and walruses have tusks, deer have antlers, bees have stingers – a whole arsenal of martial gear can be found in nature. The occasional evening spent in front of PBS’s NOVA programs about animal warfare confirms this.
Scientists have devoted their lives to figuring out the evolutionary pressure behind this all, notably Douglas Emlen, who wrote one of the best overviews in the field, Animal Weapons, the Evolution of Battle. Here is a short review of the book which includes this:
“Throughout the book, Emlen’s demonstrations of the many parallels between human and animal weapons are fascinating, even when the possibilities are frightening. “I stand awed and shaken,” he writes, “thrilled by the parallels and, at the same time, terrified by the prospects.”
Back to birds, though, who have not participated in the arms race. The reason? They practically get all they want or need by flashing colors, elaborate dancing, song competition and only occasional claws, pecking or spores. (I’m summarizing what I read here.)
The REAL reason? Flight. Anything that flies has to worry about weight. Flying consumes much more energy than movement on the ground or in water, and energy need increases with added weight, even tiny bits. We have indeed mathematical models of flight that spell out in detail how leg or wing spurs, no matter how small, increase fuel cost in untenable ways (given that fuel acquisition itself – searching for food – costs energy as well,) particularly for smaller birds.
(A funky comparison from the article: United Airlines started printing its inflight magazine on lighter paper to reduce the weight of a typical flight by about 11 pounds, or 0.01% of an airplane’s empty weight. Through this tiny decrease, the company cut its annual fuel use by 170,000 gallons, saving US$290,000 yearly. Think through this with today’s news about gas prices….)
Spurs, then, are primarily found on land fowl and in fewer than 2% of all avian species. And beaks used for fighting are rare as well, given that any injury to them might compromise the ability to feed – a direct threat to survival. Yes, some raptors fight with their talons, but overall, we are seeing a peaceable kingdom, if interrupted by screaming matches over territorial rights..
Evolution, you botched this. Should have provided mankind with wings!!
Swallows already returned, harbingers of renewal.
Killdeer twittered.
Hummingbird glowed.
The morning softness continued, sun broke through clouds.
Later the rain set in. What better reminder of “teaching our troubled souls… to heal.”
Mother rain, manifold, measureless, falling on fallow, on field and forest, on house-roof, low hovel, high tower, downwelling waters all-washing, wider than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster than countrysides, calming, recalling: return to us, teaching our troubled souls in your ceaseless descent to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root, to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.
Today I am posting someone else’s photography for obvious reasons. Ukrainian photographer Yevgeniy Kotenko has captured quotidian life in a beautiful series called On the Benchsince 2007.
He photographed the view from his parents’ kitchen window in Kiev throughout the seasons.
At this very moment the images strike me as tragically poignant, wondering what all these individual people are going through, likely for years to come, if they survive.
And survival is doubly imperiled for people with life-threatening illnesses, in hospitals that are either not functioning due to dire lack of medication and supplies or being attacked themselves. The World Health Organization reports that shortages of cancer medications, insulin and oxygen supplies are reaching hazardous levels. Hospitals have been hit with cluster munition, according to the Human Rights Watch, and sick children are moved to make-shift bomb shelters in hospital basements.
Ukraine had put particular efforts into the care of sick children, beyond medical treatments. Here is a link to a project that provides children’s wards in hospital with constructed environments that support healing through play and discovery.
“The design studio Decor Kuznetsov and the Vlada Brusilovskaya Foundation have teamed up for CUBA BUBA, a project that transforms hospital rooms throughout Ukraine into sensory wonderlands for young patients. Complete with comfy seating, reading nooks, and even open-air chimes, each module is compact and intended for children to rest and relax as they undergo various treatments.The group recently installed its sixth iteration, “CUBA BUBA SUNNY,” which features a shelved room full of greenery and sculptures. Suspended below the light is an ornately carved ceiling that shines a unique pattern onto the eclectic collection. To inspire play, an earlier design’s facade is comprised entirely of holes, allowing kids to wind rope throughout the structure into a vibrant web.” (Ref.)
I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane, The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories, The news would pour out of various devices Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen. I would call my friends on other devices; They would be more or less mad for similar reasons. Slowly I would get to pen and paper, Make my poems for others unseen and unborn. In the day I would be reminded of those men and women, Brave, setting up signals across vast distances, Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values. As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened, We would try to imagine them, try to find each other, To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other, Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, To let go the means, to wake.
“A labyrinth is a symbolic journey . . . but it is a map we can really walk on, blurring the difference between map and world.” – Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Remember Ariadne? The labyrinth? The Minotaur, half man, half bull? Vague memories of vengeful Cretan king, Athenian hero, lovestruck princess and a ball of yarn? I could not help but thinking of the myth during my first artist visit for this year’s Exquisite Gorge II project, offered by Maryhill Museum of Art. Thirteen fabric artists, in collaboration with community partners, will portray an assigned section of the Columbia river in three dimensional form on frames. The sections will be linked in the end, forming an “Exquisite Corpse” during a public outdoor celebration at the museum in August. I hope to introduce all of them and their work with individual portraits during the next few months.
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THE EXQUISITE GORGE PROJECTII
“…a collaborative fiber arts project featuring 13 artists working with communities along a 220-mile stretch of the Columbia River from the Willamette River confluence to the Snake River confluence. The project, again initiated by Maryhill Museum of Art and following the original one by printmakers in 2019, takes inspiration from the Surrealist art practice known as exquisite corpse. In the most well-known exquisite corpse drawing game, participants took turns creating sections of a body on a piece of paper folded to hide each successive contribution. When unfolded, the whole body is revealed. In the case of The Exquisite Gorge Project II, the Columbia River will become the ‘body’ that unifies the collaboration between artists and communities, revealing a flowing 66-foot work that tells 10 conceptual stories of the Columbia River and its people.”
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So much to take in at Kristy Kún‘s studio in Ashland, OR. So many associations to the Ariadne myth.
A short refresher: Vengeful Cretan king subdues Athenians in war, extracts human sacrifice ever so often, feeding the youth to his hungry Minotaur, a monster conceived by the queen and an angry God because the king betrayed him with a cheap sacrifice. Half bull, half man, the creature is conveniently stashed out of sight in a labyrinth built by clever engineer Daedalus. Athenian hero Theseus vows to slay the beast. Clever daughter of the king, Ariadne, helps Theseus by providing a spun, woolen thread that allows him to navigate the steps through the maze for his return after the bloody deed is done. He takes her, as promised, away on his ship as his bride, but then dumps her on the Island of Naxos, as instructed by Goddess Athena in a dream. Marries Ariadne’s sister, no less. Depending on who you read (or listen to, lots of opera material!) and in which century, Ariadne either hangs herself out of despondence, or marries a God, Dionysus. Oh, no one lives happily after. Just saying.
Rising Sand 2018 46″ x 26” x 4″ Details below
There were labyrinthine works hanging on Kún’s studio walls or spread on surfaces, pathways ebbing and flowing with no discernible entry or exit.
There were threads pulled from materials, threads criss-crossing layers to be felted, threads waiting in skeins of wool to be pummeled.
There was instance after instance of the application of Ariadne’s thread, a problem solving method – by definition, a logical method that traces steps or takes point by point a series of found truths in a contingent, ordered search that reaches an end position. You solve a problem by multiple means, keeping a record so you can see where you dead-ended or progressed.
It might sound strange to introduce artistic work with a focus on problem solving, but the work at hand requires so many steps, so many intricate levels of processing, so much, indeed, engineering, that a logical, even mathematical mind is required.
The result, flowing, extravagant, holistic beauty belies the tight construction that goes into the creations.
Kún works with felt. Makes felt. Shapes felt. Compiles and arranges felt, with a brain trained as an engineer and the eye of a visual artist.
The matted fabric we call felt is created by binding protein fibers (wool from animals like sheep, goat, yak or alpaca) to each other in a process that involves the physical tangling of the fibers by means of special needles, or by using water and agitation that pummels the raw materials. Ever accidentally shrunk your favorite sweater by 2 sizes in the washer/dryer? That is wet felting…. the hair in the wool consists of shafts that are covered by protein scales. The water and detergents open up the scales and the agitation in the rotating drum, or rolling and rubbing and tossing, binds them together, shrinking them up to 40%.
Dry felting involves barbed needles that you stick into the raw material over and over, weaving the fiber strands together. It can be done by hand or by machine, when large projects are involved.
Felting has been around since at least the 6th century B.C., predating spinning and weaving. It likely originated with nomadic peoples in Asia, and remnants were discovered in burial places all across Siberia and Northern Europe. It was essential for shelter (think Mongolian yurts!) warmth and durability in clothing and boots, and protection from saddle burn for animals carrying loads. Ornamental uses have found their way into beautiful blankets and carpets, now extending to 2-D or 3-D sculpture.
The fabrication of today’s materials has come a long way from being coarse, wet wool stomped by camels, or pummeled by the hoofs of horses. Kún, for example, varies the kinds of fibers going into the felt. The selection involves the density of wool – wool is measured in microns, which describe the diameter of a wool fiber, the smaller the micron the finer the wool.
Micron 23
The artist also uses materials like silk that get entangled into the pressed fibers, dying the silks herself to achieve desired color gradations.
Layered wool and silk get run through the needling machine up to 6 times, then cut into strips, or fins, by a power cutter, wet felt aligned with cheese cloth, worked on surfaces that allow to pool the water.
Eventually the materials get shaped. That includes insane detail work of pulling threads out of the sides by hand to achieve a chenille-like effect that adds to the beauty.
Individual elements are stitched on, wet felt fibers shaved or torched to achieve the desired smoothness.
And then it’s time to finish the design, long planned and recorded to the tiniest detail. Some of the pieces are huge.
Photograph by Kristy Kún.
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The artist with the clear face, beautiful eyes half hidden behind her glasses, is the descendent of Hungarian immigrants who settled in the Mid-West, establishing Presbyterian churches in and around Ely, Iowa, working hard to feed large families. She certainly has inherited that incessant, laser-focussed work ethic, a red thread like Ariadne’s throughout the many changes along her professional path. Trained as a construction engineer at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, she found her first real calling in wood working and furniture making. She settled in Northern California, interned and worked and learned the craft. A marriage to a fellow craftsman dissolved swiftly, leaving her as a single mother to a young daughter, trying to eke out a living in a male-dominated domain.
A side line of supplying crafts materials to her daughter’s Waldorf School led to an import business of Italian wool, selling it to spinners and felters. She got increasingly drawn into the fiber arts world, attending bi-annual workshops and camps for craft artists, the Frogwood Collective among them. Inspired by artists like Janice Arnold and Jenne Giles, Kún turned to felting in a serious way in the last decade, shifting from roles as supplier to that of artist.
It did not make her economic existence less precarious. Now located in Portland, OR, she was trying to support her family, while struggling with the illness of her new partner, who she lost to cancer in a painful battle to the end. Two years ago she moved to Ashland, leaving the familiarity and friendship network of PDX behind, to start a new life with a new love and a new studio, all during pandemic woes.
Life has felted Kristy Kún – my take, expressed with admiration. The various analogues of pummeling and stabbing, prodding and stomping have produced a tough, resistant core combined with (intellectual and emotional) flexibility like the fabric counterpart. Loose threads of flickering temper and intense empathy stick out here and there. Like the matted material absorbs water, she absorbs ideas and visions, turning amorphous input into shaped Gestalt. In addition to her raw talent, her persistence and technical skill have registered with the art world. Her work will be shown at this year’s Smithsonian Craft Show, Future Focus, and large commissions from collectors and designers across the world are regularly received.
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While Kún and Lou Palermo, Maryhill Museum’s Director of Education, brainstormed over technical details of construction and placement of the frames – now stashed in her show room – within the Exquisite Corpse design, my thoughts wandered back to the tale of Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur. The myth has inspired countless works of art, from tellings by Catullus 64 and Ovid’s Heroides 10 in the first century B.C., to paintings spanning over 1000 years (here is a link that provides 73 of them!), to musical compositions, Monteverdi in the Baroque period, and Richard Strauss in 1916. And let’s not forget the modern version of myth telling – most recently seen in Dark, the German sci-fi thriller available on Netflix, that makes heavy use of Ariadne’s story and symbolism. A smart review of Dark in the NYT pointed out the particular theme’s relevance to contemporary history.
One of the reasons for its ongoing popularity, I believe, is that one can apply so many different perspectives to any one of the characters or actions involved. Across time you can see how interpretations of Ariadne focussed first on her passivity, her abandonment by yet another fickle male, then on her possible emancipation, her cunning in helping her lover, her ruthlessness in sacrificing a half-brother to a hero she saw as her ticket off the island – you name it. All links to shifting perceptions of gender roles.
Theseus has had his share of fans and critics too, understood as a self-sacrificing hero, or simply power-hungry. His wandering in the labyrinth has been appropriated by psychodynamic approaches in psychology, an archetypal representation of the psyche and a path to individuation, the authenticity you reach when you’ve made your way through the convoluted maze of feelings.
Comparisons to creativity have been offered as well. Serpentine windings to a goal without knowing the way, many a dead end, unclear what fates await – you get the idea. It looks to me that Kún’s creativity has not at all been impeded by labyrinthine obstacles. If anything, her work has blossomed from tightly constructed, somewhat rigid, representational beginnings to more freely flowing abstractions of natural forms that are willing to stand on their own. To link back to Rebecca Solnit’s quote at the beginning: Kún has created a bridge between map and world, walking along in its folds.
This leaves us with one final contemplation, how shifts in perspective define the Minotaur. The creature could either be seen as a bloodthirsty monster, depraved and deserving of slaughter, or as someone who in his deformity had to be hidden away as to not offend the sensibilities of the viewer(s.) Is he an enemy to the outside world? Or is his confinement an act of brutality against him? Do we project our fears of power, aggression, rage, disability and death onto this misshapen creature? Avoid the Other? Classic takes rejoiced forever in his slaying.
There were a few compassionate voices, Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert’s among them, expressed in a post-humosly published volume of essays, Labyrinth on the Sea, which described his visit to Crete in 1964. Elaborated in a later prose poem, The history of the Minotaur (1974), he sees the misshapen prince as a victim of those who insist on political, social and religious norms as defining who does and does not belong. Which – and yes, we were getting there eventually! – also applies to women and textile art.
I will talk about the history and politics of textile arts in depth at a later point in this series of essays. Let me just say here the very basics: not only were the arts and crafts divided into domains, with gender roles assigned, for centuries. Different arts were also linked to different values – male painters and sculptors scored higher than their female counterparts, the latter for the most part chained to their textile universe behind the embroidery frame. Hidden away in a maze, for all intents and purposes, forever invisible and unnamed even if they created stunning woks of art – just think Bayeux tapestries. Only in the last 40 years has textile art been given a platform, previously reserved for the male dominated, traditional fine arts field. With the help of some pioneers in the early 1920s who opened the flood gates, women have emerged to show the world how true art is independent of medium and how neglected media add novelty to the traditional canon in ways that are intensely beautiful.
Kristy Kún has to be counted among them.
It was a cold night in Ashland, sky shimmering with stars. I would not have found the Corona Borealis even if it had been present (I looked it up, it appears in July) – I barely can locate the Big Dipper. The small constellation of stars is said to represent the crown (corona) that Dionysos gave to Ariadne after she had been abandoned. It comforted me to think that, even if connected to a consolation prize, a woman with a thread is visibly remembered.
In view of the current violence unleashed unto the world, whether here or in Eastern Europe, I want to dedicate today’s poem, A Brief History of Hostility, to the victims: in Portland, and likely soon in Ukraine, in Russia. So many families losing loved ones, so many friends losing their allies, so many communities destroyed by wrath, greed and ambition.
Jamaal May’s poem appeared in “The Big Book of Exit Strategies,” published in 2016. Given its purview of themes of war and slavery, it seems a good choice for Black History month, but also relevant during a week where Europe is on the brink of war.
On Saturday here in Portland marchers had planned a protest to remember Amir Locke and Patrick Kimmons, Black men killed by police. Multiple women, directing traffic in preparation of the peaceful demonstration, were gunned down by a man living nearby, who approached them on the street and called them terrorists, killing June Knightly, a 60-year old woman walking with a cane, having just overcome cancer, and severely wounding the others. In the words of one of the victims:
“We were unarmed traffic safety volunteers who weren’t with any protestors. Four women trying to de-escalate & he unloaded a 45 into us because he didn’t like being asked to leave and stop calling us terrorist c*nts. We were in high vis and dresses. He murdered a disabled woman.”
The shooter was then shot by someone in the crowd, trying to come to the rescue of the victims. The aggressor’s name has not been released by the police while I write this, 48 hours after the event, and the Portland Police has erected a wall of silence other than calling him a home owner (code for White, or linked to castle doctrine) involved in a confrontation with armed protesters, unaffiliated with any political background. All counterfactual, as it turns out. There was no notification if he was arrested while in hospital, and his apartment was searched only after the FBI stepped in, suspecting a hate crime. Roommates, colleagues and family had testified to his links to the Proud Boys and other alt right forces, his frequent threats to shoot up Black Lives Matter folks, and the possibility that he was running unregistered guns. According to the media, virulent anti-semitic and islamophobic threats had been conveyed earlier to police, with no reaction.
(Update: he is now charged with multiple crimes. A GoPro video of the massacre, viewed by the DA, confirmed that he was the attacker. One of his victims is paralyzed from the neck down and in critical condition at OHSU.)
Meanwhile, on February 21, Russian President Putin basically said Ukraine shouldn’t exist. “A steady statehood didn’t occur.” Almost the same words that Stalin said about Poland in 1939.
He also confirmed he will recognise two breakaway Ukrainian regions as independent, a move that Ukrainian politicians see as “dangerous and a declaration of war.” It is certainly a violation of international law, the Minsk agreement. We will know, when you read this, if an invasion of (all of) Ukraine has begun in earnest. As I write this, military columns are entering Donbass.
I am linking back to an older blog here, that described the ebullient musical comedy of the Ukrainian Teatro Pralnia, a group of young musicians who are on my mind today, wondering what their future holds. You can see their 2018 full show at the Kennedy Center here.
The war said let there be peace and there was war.
The people said music and rain evaporating against fire in the brush was a kind of music and so was the beast.
The beast that roared or bleated when brought down was silent when skinned but loud after the skin was pulled taut over wood and the people said music and the thump thump thump said drum. Someone said war drum. The drum said war is coming to meet you in the field. The field said war tastes like copper, said give us some more, said look at the wild flowers our war plants in a grove and grows just for us.
Outside sheets are pulling this way and that.
Fields are smoke, smoke is air.
We wait for fingers to be bent knuckle to knuckle,
the porch overrun with rope and shotgun
but the hounds don’t show. We beat the drum and sing
like there’s nothing outside but rust-colored clay and fields
of wild flowers growing farther than we can walk.
Torches may come like fox paws to steal away what we plant,
but with our bodies bound by the skin, my arc to his curve,
we are stalks that will bend and bend and bend…
fire for heat fire for light fire for casting figures on a dungeon wall
fire for teaching shadows to writhe fire for keeping beasts at bay fire to give them back to the earth
fire for the siege fire to singe fire to roast fire to fuse rubber soles to collapsed crossbeams fire for Gehenna
fire for Dante fire for Fallujah fire for readied aim
fire in the forge that folds steel like a flag fire to curl worms like cigarette ash fire to give them back to the earth
fire for ancient reasons: to call down rain fire to catch it and turn it into steam fire for churches fire for a stockpile of books fire for a bible-black cloak tied to a stake
fire for smoke signals fire to shape gun muzzle and magazine fire to leap from the gut of a furnace fire for Hephaestus fire for pyres’ sake fire licking the toes of a quiet brown man fire for his home fire for her flag fire for this sand, to coax it into glass
fire to cure mirrors fire to cure leeches Fire to compose a nocturne of cinders
fire for the trash cans illuminating streets fire for fuel fire for fields fire for the field hand’s fourth death
fire to make a cross visible for several yards fire from the dragon’s mouth fire for smoking out tangos fire to stoke like rage and fill the sky with human remains fire to give them back to the earth fire to make twine fall from bound wrists fire to mark them all and bubble black any flesh it touches as it frees
They took the light from our eyes. Possessive. Took the moisture from our throats. My arms, my lips, my sternum, sucked dry, and lovers of autumn say, Look, here is beauty. Tallness only made me an obvious target made of off-kilter limbs. I’d fall either way. I should get a to-the-death tattoo or metal ribbon of some sort. War took our prayers like nothing else can, left us dumber than remote drones. Make me a loyal soldier and I’ll make you a lamenting so thick, metallic, so tank-tread-hard.
Now make tomorrow a gate shaped like a man. I can’t promise, when it’s time, I won’t hesitate, cannot say I won’t forget to return in fall and guess the names of the leaves before they change.
The war said bring us your dead and we died. The people said music and bending flower, so we sang ballads
in the aisles of churches and fruit markets. The requiem was everywhere: a comet’s tail disappearing into the atmosphere,
the wide mouths of the bereft men that have sung… On currents of air, seeds were carried as the processional carried us
through the streets of a forgetting city, between the cold iron of gates. The field said soil is rich wherever we fall.
Aren’t graveyards and battlefields our most efficient gardens? Journeys begin there too if the flowers are taken
into account, and shouldn’t we always take the flowers into account? Bring them to us. We’ll come back to you. Peace will come to you
as a rosewood-colored road paver in your grandmother’s town, as a trench scraped into canvas, as a violin bow, a shovel,
an easel, a brushstroke that covers burial mounds in grass. And love, you say, is a constant blade, a trowel that plants
and uproots, and tomorrow will be a tornado, you say. Then war, a sick wind, will come to part the air,
straighten your suit, and place fresh flowers on all our muddy graves.
It will come as no surprise to you that I am hooked on word games like the NYT’s Spelling Bee and Wordle. The newest one that I can highly recommend – an exercise in finding synonyms – is called Wordy Bird. Try it and rip your hair out.
Today is all about words, then. Words (and phrases) photographed across years, usable as guides to deal with stressors of the moment. For balanced reporting, however, today is also about numbers. Go figure.
Words by clever wordsmiths can be found beyond shop boards….
Take these, for example, attributed to Lewis Carroll.
A Square Poem.
I often wondered when I cursed, Often feared where I would be— Wondered where she’d yield her love, When I yield, so will she. I would her will be pitied! Cursed be love! She pitied me …
Read the lines in the normal way, then read it in columns – either way, it reads the same! words, with some quick math thrown in!
A dozen, a gross, and a score, Plus 3 times the square root of 4, Divided by 7, Plus 5 times 11, Is 9 squared, and not a bit more.
This Limerick is believed to have been written by British mathematician Leigh Mercer, known for inventing the famous palindrome “a man, a plan, a canal—Panama!” in 1948.
Tired?Stand here and activate your super powers
And then there is Miles Kington, who got away with two lines, making my morning:
A Scottish Lowlands Holiday
In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise, eh, lass? Inertia, hilarious, accrues, helas!
This is a holorime, where both the last syllable of a pair of lines of verse rhyme with one another, as do the entire lines themselves. Best read out loud.
Finally we get to this: for some unrelated reason I slogged through a scientific article on word prevalence norms – i.e. how many people know the meaning of a given word. 5 million pages and a headache later I learned that more men know the words on the left hand of the table, more women the ones on the right. Surprise!
Ofcourse, you could have asked your grandma. She would have been perfectly able to predict and verify the statistical pattern… Do we really need the scientific seal on this kind of common cultural knowledge? Of course we weren’t taught words that did not pertain to our spheres, still rigidly divided by gender in so many areas.
One of my favorite neighborhood signs of all times in Hamburg a decade ago: Nothing works here (In German that has more than practical implications)
Hope the music delivers free happy for the weekend with every word and/or number.
When I came across Isobelle Ouzman’s project of cutting and drawing in old books my immediate association was one of contraband. Prison administrations have always claimed that drugs, cell phones, cigarettes and the like were smuggled into prison by friends and relatives, some via books, even though the evidence suggests that it is mainly prison staff who brings these things in and sells for a mighty profit (Here are the newest data.) So let’s look at prisons and books.
In case you missed it: Reading and other educational opportunities in prison reduce the likelihood of recidivism and increase the likelihood of gainful employment once you’re no longer incarcerated. Good news.
Likely you missed it: Not just prisoners, literature is locked up as well. There is an increasing trend across states to ban books in prison, often on arbitrary grounds, or make them available only at considerable cost. I am summarizing today what I learned from a PEN America report and an overview article about the state of censorship in U.S. state and federal prison. Another good source is the Marshall Project‘s collection of links to topics around book banning. Bad news.
Here is the long and the short of it. Prisons claim security concerns as the reason to ban books, and not just those with explicit sexual or violent content. Evidence that books are used to smuggle contraband is, as I said, sketchy at best. Nonetheless, over the last 5 years, many state and federal prison administrations have banned family members, charities and other outside parties from donating books, any books at all. Used books are completely prohibited. Only approved vendors can sell, and their offerings are arbitrarily restricted by decree from administrators.
“With free books banned, prisoners are forced to rely on the small list of “approved vendors” chosen for them by the prison administration. These retailers directly benefit when states introduce restrictions. In Iowa, the approved sources include Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, some of America’s largest retail chains—and, notably, ones which charge the full MSRP value for each book, quickly draining prisoners’ accounts. An incarcerated person with, say, $20 to spend can now only get one book, as opposed to three or four used ones; in states where prisoners make as little as 25 cents an hour for their labor, many can’t afford even that.
With e-books, the situation is even worse, as companies like Global Tel Link supply supposedly “free” tablets which actually charge their users by the minute to read. Even public-domain classics, available on Project Gutenberg, are only available at a price under these systems—and prisons, in turn, receive a 5% commission on every charge. All of this amounts to rampant price-gouging and profiteering on an industrial scale.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, prison library budgets have also been cut increasingly, making it ever more difficult for prisoners to access literature.
In states where there are no general, content-neutral bans on book donations there are still arbitrary restrictions of what type of materials are allowed in. Or perhaps not so arbitrary after all. There are blanket restrictions on books that concern Black culture, urban novels that concern African-American crime and intrigue, comics and cartoons like MANGA, and literature on the Civil Rights movement. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which won a Pulitzer Prize are banned in several states, Hitler’s Mein Kampf is not. Censored also are multiple books about learning Arabic, Japanese and American Sign Language, instruction manuals about learning to be an electrician or computer programmer. (Here is a typical list of all the technical materials Oregon prisons prohibit, Windows 10 for Dummies included.)
Many states do not give access to their ban lists, unless you fight for them under the Freedom of Information Act. But we do know that Texas, for example, has a list of 15.000 titles by now, Florida banned over 20.000 books, a stunning number. Racially motivated restrictions are widespread. The New Jim Crow by civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander, for example, examines the phenomenon of mass incarceration and argues that our incarceration practices represent a continuation of our country’s racist policies of the past. After its release, the book was banned in prisons in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey. Two years ago, Arizona banned Chokehold: Policing Black Men, a book on racial injustice in the criminal justice system, written by Georgetown Law School professor Paul Butler. Prison Nation, a book examining the prison-industrial complex, was banned for “security threat group/white supremacy.” The Factory: A Journey Through the Prison Industrial Complex, about a formerly incarcerated person’s time behind bars and the school-to-prison pipeline, was banned for “encouraging activities that may lead to group disruption.” Blood in the Water, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Attica uprising, was banned for “security concerns-encouraging group disruption. I’m certain, the 1619 project will be next on the list.
Here is something we can do: the American Library Association keeps a list of donation programs that send books into prison libraries where still allowed.
Contributing to one, any one, is a form of mutual aid and solidarity we can all practice.
Unless we agree with ever curmudgeon-y Philip Larkin, who had nothing better to do with his Oxford degree in English Language and Literature than to write this…
A Study Of Reading Habits
When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size.
Later, with inch-thick specs, Evil was just my lark: Me and my cloak and fangs Had ripping times in the dark. The women I clubbed with sex! I broke them up like meringues.
Don’t read much now: the dude Who lets the girl down before The hero arrives, the chap Who’s yellow and keeps the store Seem far too familiar. Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.
Today’s post is dedicated to my grandfather Eduard (1894 – 1977) a musician, bird lover and gentle soul. His birthday was yesterday.
Canada Geese
Buckle up folks, it’s going to be all over the map today.
It all started with a reminder notice that one of the strangest pieces of music, John Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP –As SLow aSPossible – was about to change to a different tone on February 5, 2022. The longest composition ever – duration 639 years, you read that right – started in 2001, with a seventeen month-long pause before the first tone of the organ, especially built for the performance of this piece, was to be heard. Here is a video clip that shows the special organ in a small church in Halberstadt, Germany.
One particular tone emanates continually, and is changed at irregular time intervals according to the composer’s instructions. (Here is a calendar that shows the me changes and tone variations.) The current sound will last 2 years. This announcement had me wonder:
While we had to wait for more than 6 long years for the 14. sound change in 2020 , the next one is occurring only a few months hence, on February 5th. Quite a challenge for a subjective sense of time to get the hang of this. For those clinging to their subjective sense of time we might mention that the new sound will last exactly 24 months. Could very well be that those months will pass in a flash.
Honestly, I could not tell if this was meant seriously or ironically – probably a combination of my addled brain and being German. But be that as it may, it reminded me of a dominant topic in my current conversations. How is our sense of time shaped by the pandemic, the isolation, the sameness of the days and, admittedly, by aging?
Snowgeese yesterday
Snowgeese from other years
Cage’s composition was not the only reminder of the languid, unending spread of hours and days that I – many of us – feel, like time stalling. (This stands, of course, in extreme contrast to young families for whom the double burden of professional work and unrelieved childcare at home leads to a sense of having not enough time ever, time on 3x speed fast forward.)
One of the best cinematic experiences I’ve had in these last months also managed to capture a sense of time that is altered, aided by the elongated storytelling formats of TV series—those time-indulgent, episodic ways to weave a tale, unhurried by a two-hour time limit of movies. And no one knows how to unfold a plot in slow-mo better than the modern Korean film makers.
Steller’s Jay yesterday – Grey herons from other years
In Beyond Evil (directed by Shim Na-yeon, available on Netflix) it’s not just about the tempo of the narrative, though. Time itself seems to stand still in a small town haunted by age-old murders and secrets, with an unlikely coupling of 2 unmatched policemen churning the dregs and bringing new sorrow. It is not a serial murder case in the traditional sense, but rather a psychological study of a variety of characters stuck in time as flies are on those strips hanging in country kitchens. The protagonists are honing their compulsions, tending to their losses, and deciding what to sacrifice to remain on the ethical side of things. I know, does not sound enticing, but honestly, it was brilliant.
Sandhill Cranes yesterday
Sandhill cranes from other years
So, I thought, perhaps we should delve into the scientific psychology of time perception, since a lot of research has happened in the field lately. Nah, you can read up on it here. I much rather learn from poets than deal with my own field today.
Hawk from yesterdayHarrier HawkRedtail Hawks from other years
Both of the poems below managed to drag me away from moping about the altered sense of time’s passing, the feeling of being hermetically closed off from a perception of forward movement. They helped me, pushed me towards remembering what I sort of know but always forget: what matters is attention to the moment, the noticing and processing of what is afforded to you by grace of nature or the kindness of others or the tasks that give you pleasure or a sense of having something gotten done or the simple acknowledgment you’re still functioning reasonably.
Bald Eagle from yesterday
Baldies from other years
With Forever- is composed of Nows – Emily Dickinson celebrates recurrence, sameness, un-differentiation, all the while she spent her life in something akin to self-imposed lockdown.
Hummingbird (in February!) from yesterdayKingfisher from other years
Seems like good advice. I figured I’d drag a series of “nows” out of the archives, selecting samples of the last 5 years of early February photographs all taken without travel, in my immediate vicinity (2021 excluded since it was spent in hospital…) The same ducks and geese, sandhill cranes and variety of raptors, the same small folk and an occasional outlier (elk!) thrown in – a forever of joy from repeat excursions, the last one just yesterday afternoon. It helps to live in Oregon, one of the most beautiful places imaginable.
Elk from other years
You can slow down time as much as you want, if you ask me, if it still contains the possibility of momentary encounters, anchoring us in the NOW. Even robins, bushtits, woodpeckers and sparrows in the yard suffice.
Forever – is composed of Nows – ‘Tis not a different time – Except for Infiniteness – And Latitude of Home –
From this – experienced Here – Remove the Dates – to These – Let Months dissolve in further Months – And Years – exhale in Years –
Without Debate – or Pause – Or Celebrated Days – No different Our Years would be From Anno Dominies –
Rufus Towhee from yesterdayDowny woodpecker from other years
With Clocks, Carl Sandburg extends a warning that a focus on the measurement of time can distract us from using or enjoying the one we still have, since we don’t know when time will be cut short for good. Don’t focus on the perception of passage then, but what you can do to fill time with. (Never mind that that opens another problem set during a pandemic…)
HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes. A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams. A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands. One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail. And of course … there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France…
White throated sparrow from yesterday
Sparrows from other years
And for good measure, let’s throw in the advice of Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh who died last month:
“While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.” Why? If we are thinking about the past or future, “we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.” (from The Miracle of Mindfulness.)
Told you, it would be all over the map. Off to wash the dishes now.
Sandhill from yesterday. Music today in honor of my Opa who played the stand-up bass in a small-town orchestra named Fidelio. Here is a creative – and timely – version by the Washington National Opera of Beethoven’s Fidelio, with an explanation of how the new version came to be. Fidelio is a story of hope and resilience, a more desirable focus than speed of time…..
