During a walk at Jackson Bottom, a nature preserve in Washington County, I learned that two of the three osprey fledglings I had watched over the last months died during a a recent thunderstorm. They were pelted with hail that eventually led to hypothermia, with the parents only able to shelter one of the babies. The unusually early and intense heat led to a deluge that the birds could have weathered if it had come during the normal late summer when they’d be bigger. The change in weather patterns proves to be deadly for the vulnerable young. (Photographs today are from that walk.)
The one surviving osprey fledgling
Thoughts about climate crisis – and who will inevitably suffer from it the most – pop up everywhere I look and in unanticipated corners. In the world of art the topic has now reached music at its most exposed: the Salzburg Festival opened with Mozart’s Idomeneo, using the generational divide and power hunger at heart of the opera to deliver a lecture about the fight against climate change for a younger generation who will bear the brunt of it. Director Peter Sellars:” There is a point in time when we need new stories. It is no longer acceptable to repeat the terrible cycle of human errors.”
The reviews have been stellar or trashing, dependent on who you read. All agree that the music is phenomenal, guided by conductor Teodor Currentzis and with the young American Nicole Chevalier as superb Elettra and Ying Fang as Ilia. Opinions split when it comes to the political message and/or the way it was conveyed. Here is Sellar’s summary of what he had intended with pictures from the production.
Who owns tomorrow? is a question that is of course not just linked to climate but also to social and economic justice. One of the most insightful as well as moving analyses can be found in the article attached below. The essay looks at causes and rates of suicide in the context of the factors named above, from the perspective of someone who lost 2 members of their immediate family to suicide. Before you say to yourself “there is only so much I can handle, with my heart and head full of horror already,” give it a chance if you have time. It is worth it. If not, here is one point I’ll cite:
A feature of the rise of social inequality in America has been the evaporation of public life, the decline in social experiences not organized around pay or profit. Networks of organizations, from trade unions to church groups to volunteer organizations to parent–teacher associations, have disappeared. Without these places, we all too often retreat into our respective corners, either to make plays at getting ahead, or to nurse our wounds when such risk-taking fails to yield results. People are tired of it all but find that they have no one to turn to: they are too suspicious of each other, too cynical about the motives lurking behind every attempt at fellow feeling and human connection. To get to the future we need, we are going to have to generate new collective lives out of the wreckage of neoliberal atomization. The easy part here is knowing why we need to fight; the hard part will be figuring out a way to come together.
The essay also refers to an earlier attempt in the arts to describe the price we pay for exploitative capitalism: Berthold Brecht’s 1930s movie Kuhle Wampe – Who Owns the World. Attached below, it has English subtitles and is a masterpiece of social realism during the Weimar Republic.
A few years back I saw a remarkable documentary about a Jewish musician of Polish descent, Bronislaw Huberman, who changed cultural history by helping musicians escape Nazi-infested Europe. A child prodigy – he played Brahms’ Violin Concerto in front of the composer! – he became one of the most famos violinists in early 20th-century Europe. Sensitized to the shift in politics in the 1920s, he put his career and stardom on hold for two years to study at the Sorbonne to remedy what he perceived as lack of a general education. Politicized, inspired by the Pan-European ideas of the likes of Freud, Einstein and others, and eventually finding refuge in Palestine, he decided to spare no effort to get Jewish musicians to safety and offer them the opportunity to play in an Orchestra of Exiles which eventually became the Israeli Philharmonic. Hundreds (and their families) escaped with his help from certain death.
The documentary, attached below, is a must-see, intense, personal and informative, with comments by Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, Pinchas Zukerman, and Joshua Bell among others.
The reason it came back to my mind was a conversation on Sunday with my former professor, mentor and friend at the New School, Arien Mack. Arien has a long and exceptional career as a scholar and a researcher in experimental psychology, with a focus on issues of perception and attention. More importantly, for me, was the fact that she provided a model of intellectual curiosity and political commitment that led to important projects outside of her achievements as a psychologist. How do I love renaissance women…
Since the 1970s she has edited the Journal Social Research, an international quarterly that describes itself as “theme-driven, combining historical analysis, and theoretical exploration in engaging discussions by leading scholars and thinkers.” The Journal had been in existence since 1934 as voice for the University in Exile, namely my alma mater the New School for Social Research, founded in 1919. (Full disclosure, I have translated articles for it in the past.)
The school’s first president, Alvin Johnson, with some generous support by individual philanthropists and the Rockefeller Foundation, moved heaven and earth to rescue endangered scholars from Europe, who became founding faculty at the university. Adolph Lowe and Robert Heilbroner, political scientists Arnold Brecht and Aristide Zolberg, sociologists Emil Lederer and Peter Berger, psychologists Max Wertheimer and Jerome Bruner, historian Charles Tilly, and philosophers Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Reiner Schürmann were among the faculty whose names you’ll probably recognize (not all of them refugees, obviously, but shaping the academic environment.)
Somehow teaching, research and editing were not enough work – in 1988 Arien founded the Center for Public Scholarship through which she put up the Social Research Conference Series which has across the decades given voice to an amazingly diverse set of scholars. Did I mention she also created theJournal Donation Project, which makes low-cost academic and research journals available to libraries and universities in countries where access to those publications has been difficult for political reasons? Or launched Endangered Scholars Worldwide to focus on the plight of scholars, students, and researchers around the world whose lives and livelihoods are under threat due to the nature of their work or political positions? A rich life of the mind combined with activism – footsteps of these dimensions are hard to follow for the rest of us.
Her newest venture started last September: The New University in Exile Consortium is an initiative that organizes universities and colleges to protect and assist international scholars who are endangered or persecuted. The hope is to find as many academic institutions as possible who put their money where their political mouth is to host and employ at least one scholar who would otherwise face a dire fate. If you are affiliated with a college or university, dear reader, you might bring the program to their attention.
We might be vaguely aware of what’s going on with academics in Hungary, Iran, Syria, Yemen or Turkey, but there are so many more, sometimes in unexpected corners – informative link below: http://www.endangeredscholarsworldwide.net
Here we are, practically a century since Huberman’s rescue efforts, with yet another individual with vision, intellectual power and access to funding agencies (persuaded by a stellar grant history,) who is committed and able to make a difference for persecuted human beings who are her brethren.
Almost tragic that we still have to rely on individual activists. Certainly empowering that they exist.
Music today is Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D, Op. 77 played by Huberman.
This was the upshot of yesterday’s Brexit episode in Brussels:
They don’t leave on 3/29
They potentially leave on 4/12
They potentially leave on 5/22
Perhaps they leave at some later point.
Perhaps they don’t leave at all.
Theresa May had to have dinner all by herself, being asked to give the room to the grown-ups. This was after “90 minutes of nothing” as one listener described her speech to The Guardian.
How she’ll manage to get her parliament to agree to a plan after the last two failures is a mystery.
We’ve read a lot about – and I have previously discussed here – the debilitating political and economic consequences of the Brexit deal, no matter in what form it will eventually be accepted, short of a new vote that might reverse direction.
Today I want to point to a tangential effect that affects music aficionados. (Much of it learned from an article here, alas in German:)
Britain has a burgeoning Jazz scene, recently recognized by the US and many other European countries who constantly book acts for diverse festivals. If Visas become an issue in Europe (time, effort, and particularly costs) it will be much more difficult to travel for British bands.
It is also expected that a hard Brexit will raise the cost of daily living, which will hit hard given the already precarious existence of musicians who live by their live gigs, not necessarily records sales. If these gigs disappear with Visa requirements it will have existential consequences.
The Brexit debate’s poisonous increase in xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and expressed racism is also affecting the Jazz scene which has much more racial diversity than many other musical genres in GB. Afroeuropeans, Black Brits, or musicians with Caribbean roots might have been labeled world citizens before May stereotyped them as Citizens from Nowhere as a concerted insult. Westminster is clearly hostile to immigration – just remember last year’s Windrush-scandal, where Caribbean immigrants whose families had lived and worked in GB since the 1940s were expatriated to pacify the far Right. Here was the musical response:
Your Queen is a reptile by sons of Kemet, an astounding album.
Kevin Le Gendre’s review: “Your Queen Is a Reptilemay reflect Hutching’s desire for political provocation, but it is first and foremost the music that inspires the imagination with its astute rewriting of key elements of jazz history and Caribbean folk. With a tuba and two drums in addition to Hutching’s tenor saxophone, the Sons of Kemet have a rough, nervous, polyrhythmically charged sound that explodes on stage. Their bass-heavy rumble hits the nerve of a younger audience that has grown up with hip-hop, dub and dance music, but also the older listener, who appreciate the abstract avant-garde character. What the 35-year-old Londoner also conveys is a full pride in his Barbadian roots – a pride he observes among many of his Afro-Caribbean colleagues. “We say: this is our vision of music.”
And still we have no clue how it all ends. Not well, I’m afraid.
The weather is echoing the mood – from spring in the air, sun galore, take- the -downjacket-off temperatures to snow on the ground with rain, sleet, and wind in-between.
Let’s focus on spring and good moods. And Kulning. What’s that, you ask? It’s what comes to my mind when I wander on Sauvie Island, happy, looking at the first signs of spring off-set by the snow covered mountains. Stare at the cows, and admire the birds.
Kulning was the traditional singing of Scandinavian women herders. “Less than a century ago, Sweden’s remote forests and mountain pastures swelled with women’s voices each summer. As dusk approached, the haunting calls of kulning echoed through the trees in short, cascading, lyricless phrases. Though often quite melodic, these weren’t simply musical expressions. They were messages intended for a responsive audience: wayfaring cattle.
Kulning was a surefire way to hurry the herds home at the end of the day.“
Susanne Rosenberg, Professor of folk singing at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (KMH), head of Department of Folk Music and member of the Academy of Music is an expert on kulning. She has been a pioneer in both rediscovering the older Swedish style of traditional singing, as well as using it in new artistic environments, involving cooperation with Sweden’s foremost contemporary composers.
Accoding to her research “the vocal technique likely dates back to at least the medieval era. In the spring, farmers sent their livestock to a small fäbod, or remote, temporary settlement in the mountains, so cows and goats could graze freely. Women, young and old, accompanied the herds, living in relative isolation from late May until early October. Far from the village, they tended to the animals, knitted, crafted whisks and brooms, milked the cows, and made cheese—often working sixteen hour days. Life on the fäbod was arduous work, but it was freeing, too.” Women alone, making a lot of noise. My good mood continues.
Not that I dare to scream out like that – the birding community on Sauvie would declare me finally mad rather than a wizard woman of the Northwest….
But even swans have been seen to respond to kulning – unless they approach you hoping for breadcrumbs.
Jonna Jinton, in the link attached above, is currently riding the wave, and making pretty you-tube videos re-introducing the ancient art.
The serious music, combining old and new, can be found below. It’ll preserve the good mood for the entire day, even if I see the first snowflakes mixed with icy rain when looking out of my window.
Yup, not playing bridge, but playing THE bridge is today’s topic. In reference to what we’ve focussed on earlier this week I thought that bridges are close relatives of borders – they can facilitate movement just as well as they can stop people from crossing over.
Cross over is the operative term today, though – I was fascinated to read about people making an architectural object, a bridge, into a musical instrument. These folks have done some amazing work across boundaries, see for yourself: https://vimeo.com/126139725
Th Human Harp Project, founded by artist Di Mainstone, has decided to “play” huge suspension bridges, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the Bob Kerry suspension bridge in Omaha, and some others closer to their native United Kingdom like the Clifton Suspension Bridge. You can learn more in detail here: https://humanharp.org
“Mainstone’s project is ambitious. Fusing art and technology, she is currently developing modules that will be able to pick up, process and audibly project the deep tones of the vibrating cables in real time, as well as offering the “musician” a means of controlling such sounds. And it is not only the cables that could feed into the score – idle chatter and the whirr of bicycles could also be made available to the composer.” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/14/water-music-bridges-become-instruments
So you derive music from a structure. Alternatively, you could build a structure to resemble and enhance a piece of music – which is exactly what happened in the late 1950s for the World Fair in Bruxelles. Corbusier and Xenakis, a composer, built a pavilion for the electronics company Phillips. Here is the description: The reinforced concrete pavilion is a cluster of nine hyperbolic paraboloids in which music, Edgar Varèse‘s Poème électronique, was spatialized by sound projectionists using telephone dials. The speakers were set into the walls, which were coated in asbestos, creating a textured look to the walls. Varèse drew up a detailed spatialization scheme for the entire piece which made great use of the physical layout of the pavilion, especially the height of it. The asbestos hardened the walls which created a cavernous acoustic. As audiences entered and exited the building Xenakis’s musique concrètecomposition Concret PH was heard.
Have no illusions: that music is hard to comprehend….
Photographs today are of the Brooklyn Bridge, in honor of the Human Harp Project.
On the first day of 2018 I wrote here about racism, having just returned from Charleston, SC, my head filled with echoes of slavery and the Civil War. Little did I know – although I should have anticipated it – how much contemporary racism would unfold in this year. On top of misogyny, xenophobia, nationalism and a general decay of all things ethical, mind you.
As a counterbalance, on this last day of the year, I want to focus on the strength that women bring to the fight against racism (and misogyny.) I picked three examples, one from the (recent) past, one that will hopefully shine a light into the future and one that appears in today’s photographs taken at Frida Kahlo’s house in CDMX. She was another strong woman fighting for change, equality and justice, a woman who also marched to the beat of her own drummer.
Meet Hazel Scott. Born in Trinidad, she was a piano prodigy at age 3. After she moved to NYC, her talent, personality and sheer willpower opened many doors for her. Trained at Julliard starting at age 8, she eventually became a renowned jazz musician, singer and, for a short time, movie star. “Short time” because she was blacklisted after having forced the Hollywood studio to change the wardrobe of her Black female colleagues in the movies from dirty aprons to nice dresses by going on strike during filming.
She married Adam Clayton Powell, the first African-American Congressman elected in NY, had the first ever TV show of a Black woman, only to be dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the McCarthy era. It effectively killed her career, and eventually she moved to Europe, only to return after the Civil Rights Act was installed. She died in NYC of cancer at age 61.
I picked her because even though the political system was able to deliver destructive blows to her, she was a fighter who never backed down. Even as a still unknown musician she refused to appear on stage in segregated venues. She fought for civil liberties at work and at home, successfully suing restaurants that refused to serve her, for example. Her TV show focused on civil rights as well, so it’s no wonder it was rapidly canceled…She was political throughout her life, unafraid and sharing her material resources with the cause.
The link below (with cool historical footage) gives you a quick glance at her life and musical performance. Jazzing up the Classics was her trade mark.
My contemporary example is Stacey Abrams, who gave a quick TED talk shortly after she lost in the 2018 midterm elections, due in large part to lingering, at times explicit racism, as I see it. In the talk she points to three questions that guide her decision making and keep her going: What do I want? Why do I want it? And how do I get it? She answers these questions for herself, (change and justice topping her with list) and also addresses the common obstacles that tend to get in our way.
How to pursue a goal and become an agent of change seems a lesson worth learning to be prepared for 2019. Happy New Year!
I just love it when people have clever ideas that make me laugh but also speak to a deeper issues. This was certainly the case when I came across the work of Anne Percoco, who got her inspiration to create an imaginary herbarium from floral images printed on the packaging of every day items.
Percoco: “These range from abstract little leaf icons used on packaging to indicate the product is eco-friendly in some way, to leaf and tree-shaped, chemical-laden air fresheners, to fake Christmas trees, which are abundant this time of year. Once I started looking for them, I saw them everywhere.”
Why observe real nature when you can look at a fake one? Alluding to nature to sell products seems to work, never mind that it is a cleaned-up, stylized, concocted one in many cases. The art work makes us think.
In itself it’s inventive, indeed, but so are the names the artist gives her specimens – that alone must have been a hoot, the latin cat and dog included (check out the silhouettes taken from pet food bags.)
For my Philly and NYC peeps: here is where you can catch the exhibit if you’re up for a trip to Jersey City…
I just despise it when people have clever ideas that make me cry but also speak to deeper issues. Tears of envy, I hasten to add – for want of traveling the world. SF based Photographer Beth Moon did so for 14 years to capture images of the oldest and rarest trees on earth. For me the work draws attention to what we are putting at risk with our absence of environmental protection – in an interview she seemed to be more keen on documenting what is before it decays, but who knows…https://mymodernmet.com/beth-moon-interview-ancient-trees/
Beth Moon
The outcome is stunning work, in b&w duotone for the trees photographed during day time and in color for the same or similar trees at night. These are analog, not digital prints, extensive work with palladium added in the darkroom, requiring real skill in addition to the eye she has.
Feux Follets are the ghostlike sparks of light you see on the ground in the moors and forests of Northern Europe. Images today are from an older series of that name, where I combined my photographs of German trees with lights of sorts.
After eating all of these, you are probably ready to sit back and listen to music.
On offer today is a song written by a Christian, composed by a Jew and and distributed by an abolitionist, just to keep us reminded that solidarity and coalitions are not always illusory. Caruso’s voice is a bonus…
The full version of the song contains this passage about slavery:
Le Rédempteur A brisé toute entrave: La terre est libre et le ciel est ouvert. Il voit un Frère où nétait quun esclave; Lamour unit ceux quenchaˆnait le fer. Qui Lui dira notre reconnaissance? Cest pour nous tous quIl naˆt, QuIl souffre et meurt. Peuple debout, Chante ta délivrance! Noël! Noël! Chantons le Rédempteur! Noël! Noël! Chantons le Rédempteur!
In 1847 a French priest asked the poet/wine merchant of his village, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure, to write something uplifting for Christmas mass. His friend Adolphe Adams wrote the music. It was adopted in churches across France, and quickly, until the Church discovered that Cappeau was part of the socialist movement and Adams was a Jew. They declared it unfit for church services, but the people continued to sing it. Abolitionist John Sullivan Dwight brought it to North America where, translated into English, it was sung all through the Civil war. Wouldn’t you know it, the stanza above is more often than not dropped these days from recordings….
And when you have had more of this (although who on earth would buy a cake for $41?)
go read about truly uplifting music from Ukraine that I heard and reviewed last weekend.
There are limits, but also advantages, to being a moderately educated music lover – like yours truly – rather than a professionally trained music critic. Good music critics bring an ear, lots of analytic skill, attention to detail, a huge memory bank and the ability to make connections to the table. Their verdicts help listeners to decide what music to listen to and what to be alert to; their feedback also helps orchestras, choirs, soloists to improve performance.
The richness of their experience is undeniable. But their experience is also focussed and informed in ways that make their experience distinct from that of the average concert goer. When professional critics attend concerts, they need to get all of the performance details right, and their task to assess the performance induces a cognitive load which can be at odds with emotional immersion. They sit at the outside looking (or listening, as the case may be) in while the rest of us has the chance to experience a whole that is comprised not just of the performance but many other interacting factors.
I was thinking about this after listening to the rousing opening “Jauchzet, Frohlocket” of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 at St. Mary’s Cathedral last Friday; under the brisk direction of Matthew Dirst, the Trinity Cathedral Choir of girls, boys and adults, the Portland Baroque Orchestra and 4 soloists performed the first 3 cantatas that night.
Composed in the Christmas season of 1734/35, the Oratorio is really a cycle of cantatas, the six parts intended to be performed on the six major feast days over the 13-day period from December 25 through January 6. To remind you where we are in the story that is told across these many days, the story of the census, Mary and Joseph’s search for housing, Christ’s birth in a stable and the adulation of the shepherds, Bach devised a clever trick: he had a narrator, the evangelist, frame the chapters in simple song, sort of like a voice-over in a documentary or the text cards in silent movies, guiding you cohesively through the story. The choir and the soloists then take on individual narratives that explore the various perspectives of the story, with the orchestra providing the emotional color of each moment.
For those who have lived under a rock in our century and never heard a recording or a concert of the piece: it is jubilant. It is celebratory. It is contemplative. It is tender. It is exulting. It gives hints of what’s to come in the future of this innocent child swaddled in the manger. Above all it is an expression of devout faith.
Which brings me back to the pleasure of the amateur music lover compared to the burden of the music critic. The former can easily imagine sitting in the pews of the church in Leipzig two centuries back and listen to the church choir belting it out, joined in shared devotion, joy and gladness, unawares and certainly not caring if there is brilliant rigor, or the right balance of voices, or a precise shift in tempi. It simply doesn’t matter how they sing; you get swept up in the glow of their expression, there is a shared experience of praise (regardless of your own religious inclinations or the absence thereof.)
There is also the shared experience of a communal reaction in live concerts, if you don’t have to keep your brain in gear to focus on the performance details. It is one of the factors why almost any live performance beats a recorded one, in my book, no matter what the quality of the musicians, and certainly that of Friday’s musicians was up to standards and in some cases, as we’ll see, far exceed them.
Think of how rarely these days you experience yourself in a group, jointly reacting to a shared input. Unless you regularly attend services, or frequently visit live theatre or join weekly demonstrations, our lives are pretty much lived as individuals and not as part of a feeling whole, in contrast to most of our history as a species. On Friday night there was such an experience when the young countertenor, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, stepped up for his first recitative (3. Nun wird mein liebster Bräutigam) and a disbelieving hush descended on the still restless hall, stunned by a voice that was crystalline without being harsh on the edges, melodious perfection for the tender words he had to utter.
The combination of musical accomplishment with his empathy for the role and his ability to communicate with the audience was astonishing in one so young. It didn’t hurt to see his etherial presence in the 31. Aria Schließe mein Herz dies selige Wunder be balanced by boyish charme during the soloists’ entrance to the stage; I swear he winked at someone in the front rows. I wish I could have heard him with the Leipziger Barockorchester singing Bach’s Magnifikat in the Thomaskirche. My overactive imagination would’ve had me sit next to Bach’s approving presence right then and there….
He might have been the rising star at hand on Friday, but one placed within a brightly shining firmament of our very own PBO. I grew up in Germany with the Oratorium recording of Karl Richter, with the Münchner Bach Orchester and soloists Gundula Janowitz, Fritz Wunderlich, Christa Ludwig and Franz Grass. The trumpet player was the extraordinary Maurice Andre, idolized by many. PBO’s Kris Kwapis struck me a force of nature as well, and clearly had a fan club in the audience.
Then there was the flute playing of Janet See, which was a wonder. There are lines in the oratorio where the flute plays the same extended phrases as the soloist; her’s were magnetically attached to the voice, in on-set, termination, tempo and phrasing, without loosing any fluidity. All this while she wasn’t able to see more than the back of the performer who was turned to the audience.
The woodwind section was strongly expressive and the cello held its own against all the rambunctious sounds around it, not an easy feat.
It is the orchestra as a whole, though, that I will likely remember, because they have a liveliness and melded tone, a visibly engaged and friendly interaction, a joy at playing that brings home the point of all music: creating community of sorts. I take that over Karl Richter recordings, or any other ones for that matter, any time. We are so lucky to have them and their select visiting musicians for concerts in Portland.
Which brings me back to the poor music critic: he has to listen to all of these performances and intelligently compare them. 65 years’ worth as it turns out – https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/bachs-christmas-oratorio-–-which-recording-is-best Then again, it gives him the opportunity to come up with sentences like this: “The Dresden Kammerchor and vocal soloists fulfill Chailly’s ambition for unremitting leanness and breathtaking mobility, and yet my heart tends to sink under gymnastic survey and über-elegance.” Will I ever have the chutzpa to write like that?
Linked above is that terrific review. The choice for overall best recording was Hanacourt’s 2006 version of the Christmas Oratorio.
Linked below is my choice, Hanacourt’s concert from 1982 for the simple reason that it let’s you see the boys of the Tölzer Knabenchor. (Bonus: Hanacourt looks like a character out of a Dicken’s novel.) Bach originally wrote this cycle for boy’s voices. The larynx of a boy is about 1/3 larger than that of a grown woman, able to produce a sound up to a maximum 5000 Hertz, more powerful and much richer in the higher registers. The Oratorio texts also implied an innocence much easier captured by a young singer (as for example in the 29. duet Herr, Dein Mitleid, Dein Erbarmen.) In Bach’s Leipzig times a male alto was used but once. If nowadays sopranos or countertenors replace the boys’ voice it has to do more with the scarcity of eligible young singers than anything else.
And now I’ll have to turn to the dishes in my kitchen sink while croaking a joyful “Jauchzet, Frohlocket” at the top of my lungs….. it will be therapeutic during the darkness of these days.
An astonishing piece of writing appeared some 5 years ago in the New Yorker. Ariel Levy’s autobiographical essay on having a miscarriage during a trip to Mongolia when she was 5 moths pregnant, combined the most ruthlessly honest introspection with the clarity and sensibility of a war reporter. Read it and weep.
The author, still a staff writer for the New Yorker, will appear for a discussion of her new book here in PDX , having a conversation with Cheryl Strayed and Danzy Senna on March 29, 2019, at the Portland Ballroom.
I had thought I might riff off her title, Thanksgiving in Mongolia, with a Hanukkah in Mongolia, but alas it turns out there are no Jews there. Well, fewer than 100; those 600 or so who had fled from Russia in the 1920s were purged and killed by White Russians in 1921. A few families still lived outside of the capital, but most left after the breakup of the Soviet Union and emigrated to Israel. Mongolia had known shamanism and freedom of worship, then Buddhism throughout the centuries; once it became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, all religion was forbidden, some 30.000 Buddhist monks shot and most temples destroyed. Since the 1990s a number of Christian sects are arriving to proselytize the country which has experienced a mining boom, inviting expert personell and workers.
Mongolia has the lowest population density in the world, its capital Ulaan Baatar, the coldest capital on earth, sporting half of the entire population with 1.5 million inhabitants, all breathing in the most polluted air imaginable. The country is huge, stretching from, for sake of comparison, the latitudes of Berlin in Northern Europe to Rome in Southern Europe. Endless steppes are bounded by high mountains on one end and the Gobi desert on the other. It is hot in summer and extremely cold and windy in winter. It is also subject to occasional harsh climatic conditions known as Zud, which is a natural disaster unique to Mongolia, resulting in large proportions of the country’s livestock dying from starvation or freezing temperatures or both, producing economic upheaval for the largely pastoral, nomadic population. They rely to large parts on the export of their cashmere wool, sold to exorbitant prices here as luxury goods, paying them pennies to the dollar.
I would give a lot to be able to travel across Mongolia and photograph the landscape in all its variations. The pictures I have seen capture a raw natural beauty of vast spaces, high skies, colors suffused with light. I do not have the stamina, though, for the conditions of travel, even with some pricey National Geographic tour offerings, that provide the guides, the rides, the yurts. You are responsible for your own flight to Beijing and then Ulaan Baatar on top of it. For large parts there would be no electricity to charge the camera batteries and I could not possibly scrounge up or justify $10.000 for a 2 week trip.
Just as well, I sit in the comfort of my room, listening to what the world out there holds, from traditional throat singing music
to the newest band combining traditional instruments with modern rock, eating fritos instead of mutton stew (I can’t stand sheepy, lamby meat) and sifting through my snowflake photos in honor of the Mongolian climate in December.
These snowflakes, by the way, stitched with a sowing machine, were found in a Montavilla Sewing store run by a lovely Ukrainian woman in Lake Oswego who invited me in to photograph when she saw me peering through the window.
