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The Brain on Art

Confession: I “borrowed” this title from a neuroscience research study that explored the interaction between aesthetic experience and personal relevance when looking at a work of art. I liked the title more than the study, which demonstrated with brain scans what my grandmother could have told you over dinner: different people react differently to different pieces of art, and their reactions are influenced by the rest of their lives….

What, though, if the “rest of our lives” is systematically exposing us to acceptable definitions of art, contrasting it with unacceptable ones, declared degenerate, or met with any other form of denigration?

Am I thinking here of societies where “good” art is defined from above, and cultural centers are taken over to start setting certain standards? Yes.

Am I thinking of Walter Benjamin’s claim that “In fascist aesthetics, the conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.” Yes.

Did these thoughts get triggered by looking at specific art? Yes!

I was interested in the juxtaposition of work of two photographers, and my spontaneous negative and positive reactions to each series, respectively. Both artists are women, both chose to photograph in specific locations historically meaningful to them, and both stage their images. This is where the similarities end. Maria Svarbova, born in 1988, hails from Slovakia, a country that is currently seeing massive anti-government demonstrations against the authoritarian and repressive government of Prime Minister Robert Fico who has become Putin’s new best friend and is head of a populist party accused of major corruption. Nona Faustine, on the other hand, was born a Black woman in the U.S., no need to spell out who is also best friends with whom in this country, at the moment. She died last week, heartbreakingly young at the age of 48. Rest in power.

Svarbova is quite in demand on the international circuit, with commissions by large corporations, and work shown in galleries as well as relevant publications like Vogue, Harpers’ Bazaar and so on. I am focusing on her Swimming Pools series that started in 2012 and is ongoing, often labeled as Nostalgic Futurism, or Retro Futurism.

She selects old buildings in Slovakia and abroad that house swimming pools, and stages models clad in precisely chosen garb and demanding color schemes, preparing the shoots and lighting of the halls with large teams of assistants, to get everything just right. There is no doubt the artist is extremely talented, and knows how to translate visual imagination into spatial and color-bound scenes that are striking.

My reaction? At best, these staged scenes remind me of kaleidoscopes, the thrill of my childhood, with masses of brightly colored pieces of plastic holding patterns in mirrored configurations. Eye candy. Except now “plastic dolls” instead of plastic confetti.

Or maybe they evoke synchronized swimming, albeit without the strength, skill of body control, and sense of perfect timing required by this sport. More like dead fish, sardines, to be precise, crammed into rigid positions in a jar. You realize that these flawlessly arranged, perfect bodies are devoid of individuality, and any hint of emotion.

But really, and here the goosebumps start to crop up, they make me think of the choreography of fascist displays of masses moving, whether the synchronicity of goose-stepping young men, or the gymnastic displays of youth in unison configurations.

I’ll get to that in a moment. Note again, that I describe my associations elicited by the photographs, not my speculation on what the artist intended. She certainly refers to the prominent display of a No Diving Allowed sign in multiple images as a reference to the restrictions upon women who should be allowed just to have fun in the pool.

But over the years, the work has become more technically accomplished, placed in more glamorous locations that had nothing to do with communist East-European brutalist architecture or oppressive rule (never mind that no diving is a safety measure found in pools around the world), and overall slicker.

***

Here is Nona Faustine’s White Shoes series in comparison. She was interested in how the past informs the present, and in creating images that would make us ask questions about and remembering the legacy of the slave trade. Her work has been widely praised and awarded, collected and presented in a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum just last summer.

Nona Faustine “Isabelle, Lefferts House, Brooklyn (Self-Portrait)” (2016) taken outside the Lefferts Historic House museum in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

The choice of locations for the series was premeditated, just like Svarbova’s, and guides us to relevant places or areas that were constructed from chattel slavery and used significantly to perpetuate white supremacy. She would pose in various stages of undress in these public places with life going on around her, with a few props and the symbol-rich, sensible white shoes.

The representation of a voluptuous, nude, female black body, in a fat-phobic society no less, makes her self-portrait particularly vulnerable. There she stands, props in hand, on the ground that holds the bodies of her ancestors, the buildings above representing the power that put slaves into graves in the first place. Whether you experience her as a symbol for those who were made invisible, or an avenging force who demands visibility, or a woman unafraid to challenge our stereotypes of what constitutes beauty, in each interpretation you find a core of individual agency so utterly lacking in the conventional beauties aligned at the pool.

Nona Faustine “They Tagged The Land With Trophies and Institutions From Their Rapes And Conquests,” (2013) (Outside the Tweed Courthouse in downtown New York, New York, USA)

Her use of self-portraiture urges us to acknowledge the impact of the past on the lived present, to recognize the ongoing consequences of historical injustices on Black communities today. The artist reconstructs a narrative of racist oppression, making us think of the body as commodity – to deliver unpaid work and future generations of workers then, or to be traded in a world suffused by imposed unreachable body ideals, now – traumatic, both. The courage alone produced respect in me; the series as a whole was an aesthetic experience that fed my brain and made me feel sad, more than anything else, particularly now when we incredulously stare at distinct attempts of re-segregating our society. (Exaggeration? Read here and here.)

Nona Faustine  Dorothy Angola, Stay Free, In Land of the Blacks, (2021) (Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, New York, NY, USA.)

It is the juxtaposition, though, of the two series, that produces an affective aesthetic response colored by “the rest of my life,” informed by my links to German and Jewish history. I am thinking back to a book by Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics in which he talked about the role carefully choreographed spectacles and pageants played in the consolidation of his power. He suggests that Hitler’s “lack of feeling for humans… was already evident at the Nuremberg rallies and other spectacles when his ‘architecturalizing’ of the participants and his deployment of them in geometrical patterns reduced them to noctambulent creatures.” “What his monumental aesthetic would leave behind, therefore, was not the uniqueness of individual human experience or its messy heterogeneity, but monolithic forms that imposed singular meaning on disparate deeds, experiences and lives.” (Ref.)

15,000 people perform synchronized gymnastics at the Nuremberg Rally. Germany. 1938. Imagno/Getty Images

Bund Deutscher Mädchen at gymnastics exercise – 1941

A declaration of what is beautiful and which aesthetic should dominate public (or private) life did not exist in isolation, though, in fascist or other authoritarian regimes. If there is but one standard of beauty, then all that does not conform must be done away with – and here we come to the erasure of those deemed ugly. If you are fat, you need to fast. If you are wrinkly, you need cosmetic surgery.

If you are degenerate, art and human beings alike, you need to be eradicated.

The norms WERE applied not just to paintings, sculpture, music or architecture. They were used to create out-groups that would be convenient scapegoats, or could be killed to ease economic press during the years when fascists were in power. The T4 program, the very first to attack who was deemed ugly, was used to systematically euthanize the disabled. We know what followed.

During the 1930s Paul Schultze-Naumburg—an architect and scholar—traveled Germany, lecturing on mental illness and modern art, flashing slides of avant-garde paintings beside pictures of people living with disabilities.

Fascists “beautified” the world through violence and forced conformity, trying to reduce individuals to non-significance, uniting an entire people as “one,” eliminating any sense of or desire for individual agency when you felt psychologically embedded in the amorphous whole. If you remove differences from public display – all those who are Black or female, for example, you get a mass of White men who no longer draw your eye to distinct visual qualities: de-individuation achieved. Note that it is not just those who are excluded from public life who get hurt. It is also those who remain, who are forged into a whole that can be manipulated at the leaders’ whims, sleep-walking through their use as puppets or eventual cannon fodder.

We are in need of art that fights that notion, and I am wary of trends that hail imagery that homogenizes beauty, reminiscent of a past that unleashed horrors upon humanity.

Music today is about the kind of flood I wish would wash all the evil away…. Sister Rosetta Tharpe sings Didn’t it rain.(1964)

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Seeking Warmth.

“It is the fundamental task of art to fight against alienation – to go to bat for authentic hearing, seeing, feeling, thinking against the stereotypes and societal patterns that are full of hostility towards being thoughtful and perceptive.” – Erich Fried in Rudolf Wolff (Hrsg.): Erich Fried. Gespräche und Kritiken, 1986. (My translation.)

***

If you look up the meaning of the word “authentic,” the Thesaurus suggests this: genuine, honest, true, real, original, unmistakable, historical. I cannot think of a better description of the art of Ceija Stojka (1933-2013) a Roma artist, Holocaust survivor, and activist whose work is increasingly displayed by major venues, providing welcome contrast to so much of the inauthentic hokum out there.

Ceija Stojka The Mama (detail with gallery entrance reflected in the glass covering the painting.)

Across the last few years the artist’s paintings, drawings and journaling were on view at Gallery Christophe Gaillard in Brussels, the Museum of the City of Lodz in Poland, at the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture, at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo, at Kassel’s Documenta 15 in Germany, among others. Opening in April, they are at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, in a group exhibition, Apocalypse. Yesterday and Tomorrow.

Luckily, we dont have to travel that far. Some of Stojka’s work is currently shown at the Vancouver, WA gallery Art at the Cave, together with exhibits by Daniel Baker and Sam Marroquin, and short videos about the artists by Erin Aquarian, in a show titled “Seeking Warmth.”

Stojka’s father was murdered by the Nazis even before the entire family was imprisoned in concentration camps. She, her mother and all siblings but one brother survived, despite being routed through Auschwitz, Ravensbrück and ultimately Bergen-Belsen. A miracle, given that out of 12 000 Austrian Roma, between 9000 and 10 000 perished during the Holocaust. After liberation, she attended school for a few years before she had her first child at age 15. She became a successful carpet merchant, and had two more children within the decade (two of whom preceded her in death, adding more tragedy.) It was only in her mid-fifties that she started to put her traumatic experiences into diverse forms of expression, music, self-taught visual art and journaling. It is no exaggeration to say her memories poured out, with over a thousand works of art and writing composed during the decades before her death at age 79 in 2013.

Ceija Stojka Untitled (Wagon in Forest)

Before I turn to her art, a grateful acknowledgement that individual people accompanied this artist to express herself and help bring about the prominence she has achieved. One of Austria’s most distinguished documentarian film makers, Karin Berger, was the first to engage with Stojka in the late eighties. A full documentary about the artist and her trauma, Ceija Stojka: Portrait of a Roma, was published in 1999. Lorely French, who taught German language and literature, as well as film and Roma writers, retiring this May after 39 years at Pacific University, was the artist’s friend. Importantly, she translated the first English version of the memoirs of Ceija Stojka, and is a founding member and member of the board of the Ceija Stojka International Association.

The art on display in the current exhibition is a small-scale version of Stojka’s oeuvre as a whole: there are the paintings that represent a “bright cycle” – scenes referencing life as the Romani people experienced it before the descent into the hell of the Holocaust. The acrylics are expressive, colorful, reminiscent of folk-art, and often quite sophisticated in their perspective for a self-taught artist. They report what was seen, but also communicate a sense of longing for a way of life that no longer exists. Wagons, streams, summer meadows, birds and flowers everywhere, and many people forming community around chores, more often seemingly idyllic than not. Exactly a way a child would experience her childhood, without the adult knowledge of how the Roma had to fight against prejudice and persecution long before the fascists arrived on the scene. It is a remarkable feat as an artist to be able to reproduce that experience from a memory store that by all means should have been overwritten by the horrors that followed.

Ceija Stojka Untitled (Wagon with people at stream)

These very horrors are captured in Stojka’s “dark cycle,” drawings in ink and some other materials that comprise the other half of her output. These drawings are often accompanied by text. For clarity, the English translations are repeating the meaning of the words, accurately conveying what was said (a choice I would have made as well.) What gets inevitably lost – and the part that makes her texts so indelibly authentic – is the orthography of the artist. Having had but a few years of school, after liberation and before she had her first child, Stojka writes how one hears the words, phonetically, and not according to our spelling and grammar rules. It gives the texts a texture of spontaneity and intensity, of words tumbling out of a mouth rather than a pen, providing the message with an amount of urgency that can simply not be captured in translation.

Ceija Stojka Ravensbrück 1944. Liberation 15.4.1945

These two cycles, bright and dark, interact to magnify the void caused by evil, by offering us the memorial building blocs of a remembered childhood, catapulted into the abyss. The longing for the wholeness of life before is drawing us in, and then spitting us out into the agony of what came after, or the bitterness of the realization of what the artist had to endure. The yearning for the remembered ideal frames the depicted trauma caused by genocide, multiplying the horror exponentially.

Ceija Stojka They devoured us.

We find both, personal grief and political anger in Stojka’s drawings and texts. What makes her so effective as a messenger is the concreteness of her reporting. She did seek warmth by resting amongst the dead (hence the title of the exhibition), shielding her from the wind. She fought off starvation by chewing and swallowing little balls of wool her mother had unraveled from the sweaters still on the corpses, or by eating grass pried from under the floorboards of the barracks, or sap clawed from trees. She banned despair by clinging to hope, perceived by her to be what gave them strength.

Ceija Stojka Hope – that was what gave us strength 1944

***

“Was wir suchen ist schwer zu finden. Die Angst, die müssen wir nicht suchen. Die ist da.” “What we are searching for is hard to find. We don’t have to search for the fear. That is there.” (Translation by Lorely French.)

***

Stojka’s relationship to fear is more complex. On the one hand, she models for all of us an incomprehensible amount of fierceness and courage in poems like this.

On the other hand, she describes, again concretely, a typical behavior that is the result of her experience: “You can’t walk along the street without looking over your shoulder.” (This sentence was juxtaposed with a quote by the poet Erich Fried, an Austrian compatriot who fled into exile after the Nazis killed his father and who survived the war in England. “For I cannot think without remembering.”)

Fear permeates the past, her book titled: Even Death is terrified of Auschwitz. It seeps into the presence – already in the year 2000, she worries about next generations forgetting history, and the fact that a far-right party joins the government coalition.

She proclaims soon after: “Ich habe Angst, dass Europa seine Vergangenheit vergisst und das Auschwitz nur am Schlafen ist. Anti-ziganistische Bedrohnungen, Vorgänge und Taten beunruhigen mich und machen mich sehr traurig.” (“I fear that Europe is forgetting its past and that Auschwitz is only asleep. Anti-Romani threats, happenings and attacks worry me and make me quite sad.”) (Ref.)

The fear, however, seems to be one of the motors for her activism to educate Austrians and the world about the history and the plight of the Romani people, activism for which she received accolades and awards. To this day, Austria has not officially recognized the Holocaust or the Samudaripen/Porajmos – in Austria referred to as the Holocaust of the Roma – through any legislative act; the Holocaust of the Roma is instead recognized as an integral part of the Holocaust as such. (Ref.)The Romani people, assumed to have originated in Asia, most likely Punjab or Kashmir, and who have never identified themselves with a homeland, have been persecuted since the middle ages within the various countries where they traveled and traded. The Porajmos saw up to half a million Roma murdered. Like Jews, they were segregated into ghettos before transport to extermination camps. After the war they were forced to settle in various locations. In post-war Czechoslovakia, where they were considered a “socially degraded stratum”, Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. As recently as the 1990s, Germany deported tens of thousands of migrants to Central and Eastern Europe, with large percentages of the Romanians among them being Roma.

Postcard work of Ceija Stojka (which I consider some of her strongest communications.)

Fast forward to our own times, where for the first time ever since 1945, Austria saw this far-right party, the FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party,) win the most seats in national elections with garnering almost 30% of the vote last September. (The centrist parties managed to form a governing coalition some many months later that excludes the extremists.) A member of the FPÖ had only a few years back distributed anti- Romani, hate-filled videos on social media, but could not be criminally indicted since he is protected by immunity as a member of congress.) Anti-Roma hate crimes are frequent occurrences across Europe, with assault and arson attacks against homes physically endangering people. Ethnic hatred and claims of “Gypsy criminality” are clearly making a comeback in tandem with rising anti-Semitic sentiments fostered by extremists movements and now parties.

Fear can be a tool. It can motivate us to (re)act and fight for justice, as the artist did. It can be both, exploited and imposed by draconian measures and persecution, as radical right ideologies have successfully discovered. Fear of others, of globalization and immigration, of status loss or “replacement,” can be turned into hatred of scapegoats, often ethnicities other than one’s own. Fear of consequences of protest or non-conformity can smooth the path of authoritarians who want to consolidate power.

Ceija Stojka knew that, expressed that, resisted that. In life and in art.

***

Daniel Baker is a Roma artist and theorist of renown who lives in the U.K. He uses metalised polyethelene rescue blankets, sometimes sculpted, sometimes crocheted, to combine conceptual issues related to survival strategies and practices with a visual aesthetic that echos Romani patterns. Part of his theoretical work concerns the (in)visibility of ethnic minorities, particularly those that are not geographically anchored. In a somewhat ironic turn, his work could have been displayed a bit more visibly in the gallery – you had to work to discover it.

Daniel Baker Emergency Artefacts.

Sam Marroquin shows her series The Madness of War in the upper parts of the gallery. An astonishingly large number of charcoal and acrylic paintings were fitted into the space without overcrowding. Kudos to whoever hung this, likely Sharon Svec, whose curation of this exhibition is splendid overall. The paintings are simplified reproductions of scenes depicted on videos and print material of first hand experiences by those living through the hell that is contemporary Gaza. Put on paper with the artist’s non-dominant hand, they appear more like the drawing of a younger person, a lack of perfection and child-like approach that parallels what we see in the paintings of Stojka. Here, too, are concrete depictions of humans in existentially threatening situations, their bodies and spirits bombed into extinction, their grief more than a single life time can hold. Block letters introduce the artist’s suggestions of the emotions and thoughts likely experienced, all universal enough that they promise verisimilitude.

Sam Marroquin Paintings along the Gallery Wall from the series The Madness of War.

The work makes several strong points. For one, any claim that we have moved beyond atrocities imposed on any one group is moot. The indiscriminate killing of men, women and children, of rescue personnel and journalists/reporters is not a thing of the past, intentional starvation included. Secondly, the suffering depicted is universal, even if it is applied in this case to the particulars of the fate of Palestinians. We could as well be looking at Syria, Ukraine, Sudan or the Republic of Congo. And, importantly, Marroquin’s drawings reveal a humanity of the victims that will elicit empathy in all but the most hardened, allowing a sense of shared humanity across borders.

Sam Marroquin Paintings from the series The Madness of War

The issue, then, is the fact that all of these images were, as “originals,” available in public sources, live-reported during this conflict. They never made their way to those fixated on selective mass media or social media sources that are ideologically inclined to show some sides of suffering but not others. The polarization experienced in a country divided about our political future, is reflected in the visual diet that we consume, basically determined by what the powers that be put into the relevant “larders.” In some way, then, art that is not explicitly associated with media that we deem trustworthy or disreputable, respectively, might inform consumers whose minds can be opened if approaching artistic depictions without easily triggered prejudice. In theory. In practice, of course, we have to mourn the fact that the likely distribution of this important body of work pales in comparison to that of even the smallest partisan social media outlet.

Sam Marroquin Paintings from the series The Madness of War

Before we despair, and in honor of the remarkable resilience of Ceija Stojka and others exposed to existential threats, let me close with a poem (Ertrag is the German title) by Erich Fried, whose words introduced this review. (And yes, I’ve been a fan since my teens, when he was first published by the German publishing house Klaus Wagenbach, before anyone else took on his poetry.)

Dividend

Gathering hope
from solvable problems
from possibilities
from all that
which holds promise

Reserving
strength
for only that
which truly
requires action

Is the way to amass
quietly
a supply of
despair
never spent.

-by Erich Fried

SEEKING WARMTH

March 2025

ART AT THE CAVE, 108 EAST EVERGREEN BOULEVARD, VANCOUVER, WA, 98660, UNITED STATES360-314-6506 GALLERY@ARTATTHECAVE.COM

HOURS: TUES-THURS 11-5PM, FRI AND SAT 11-6

For specific upcoming programs related to the exhibition, go here.

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Hope and Ashes

Would you like to walk with me, or, as the case may be, drive from Oregon’s West across the mountain passes to the High Desert? We’ll see varied beauty of landscapes moving from winter to spring, with remnants of snow offset by greening pastures and budding trees.

Once we have crossed Mt. Hood, the Sisters’ and Mt. Bachelor’s snowcapped peaks form the background for grazing horses, some looking decidedly in search for a prince. Soon you start driving along the Deschutes river, not yet raging at full strength expected after the snowmelt.

If you are curious enough for a small detour, we can visit the Pelton Dam, which impounds the waters of the Deschutes to create the deep Lake Simtustus, filling a narrow canyon about 7 miles (11 km) back to the Round Butte Dam built in 1964. The water is intensely green in parts, despite blue skies, making you wonder about algae. The surrounding rock formations are majestic. See me wince when I assume the name “Simtustus” honors a Native American, and then learn that it does indeed, but one who scouted for the U.S. Army during the 1867–68 campaign against the Paiute Indians. The Snake War, as it was known, has been ignored by historians, concentrating on the contemporaneous American Civil War and its aftermath, instead. Yet the Snake War was statistically the deadliest of the Indian Wars in the West in terms of casualties. By the end, a total of 1,762 men were known to have been killed, wounded, and captured on both sides. By comparison, the Battle of the Little Bighorn produced about 847 casualties. The Paiutes fought bitterly against the encroachment of colonial settlers onto their territory.

Driving further South, we eventually land in Sunriver, a community near Bend, and a favorite vacation spot for outdoors enthusiasts and families who love being in nature with their kids, but also enjoy the amenities of pools, nature centers, tennis and golf courts, maintained bike paths and the like.

One of the most amazing natural sights, next to deep ponderosa pine forests and the river itself,

are the lava fields produced by one of the largest High Desert volcanoes, the Newberry Volcano. Three million years old, it covers more than 2,000 square miles and sent basalt flows down the canyon of the Deschutes River as far as 65 miles from the main crater (overall it just looks like a mountain chain rather than a dome.)

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) considers it to be a very high threat volcano because of its recent volcanic activity (within the past 1,500 years) in an area where numerous people live. Up until now it has been regularly monitored to detect seismic activity, measuring swelling or deflation of the ground, and trying to detect distinctive volcanic earthquakes caused by molten rock (magma) movement beneath the volcano. Who knows if those services have fallen prey to Musk’s chainsaw as well. (I checked, the answer is YES.)

It is a strange feeling to walk on top of this sleeping giant, something I last did a decade ago, and now again, as if nothing had changed in-between, except for my (reduced) speed and level of fatigue after a ridiculously short hike. I was then and still am a speck in space and time, a particle, a glimmer, given the dimensions of this geological behemoth. And I am still in awe of the beauty around me, the sense of grandeur between the expanse of the High Desert landscape and the height of the surrounding mountains.

Yet I am also aware of human achievement, if lasting so many fewer years, reaching across millennia nonetheless. Thinking here of a poem related to volcanoes, by a smart, formerly East-german poet who weaves into his dry observations allusions to Greek mythology and writing – knowledge transmitted throughout the generations (although who knows if we will see it on U.S curricula after this administration is done, installing the Christian Bible as a textbook instead…)

Active

Then someone says crater and you’re tumbling down.
A word from ancient Greek, a fragment, it means
The pitcher, in which they mixed water and wine.
The volcanic abyss, Empedocles’s tomb.

No more than a word, a splinter, and you see the sandals
Perched on the crater’s rim. Peering down through
The hole in the skullcap at the grey matter.—These pallid
Pockmarks puncturing the map of the moon.

You just hear the word crater—there’s a crack,
And the ear conjures myths out of ceramic and molten rock.
Hephaestus, the smith, in scenes with figures of red.
Or Hades, dragging Persephone down to the dead.

BY DURS GRÜNBEIN
Translated by Karin Leeder from the German, below


“Aktiv”

Da sagt jemand Krater, und schon stürzt du hinab.
Ein Wort aus dem Griechischen, Bruchstück, es meint
Einen Krug, in dem mischten sie Wasser und Wein.
Den vulkanischen Abgrund, Empedokles’ Grab.

Ein Wort nur, ein Splitter, und du siehst die Sandalen
Am Trichterrand. Starrst durchs Loch in der Schädeldecke
Auf die graue Substanz. – Diese riesigen, fahlen,
Im Mondatlas abgebildeten, pockennarbigen Flecken.

Du hörst nur Krater – es knirscht, und das Ohr,
Aus Keramik und Lavaschutt, zaubert Mythen hervor.
Rotfigurige Szenen mit Hephaistos, dem Schmied.
Oder Hades, der Persephone in sein Totenreich zieht

Newberry National Monument – Lava lands

The poem is, unfortunately, rather badly translated, which is surprising given the talent and caliber of this award-winning translator.

In my own understanding of the German, the first line describes a rather more violent, instantaneous crashing than tumbling down the slopes of a crater at the mere mention of the word. This sets the tone for the juxtaposition of “active” and “reflexive” or passive, that runs through the poem. In the second verse, the word crater is no longer a fragment but compared to a shard (not a splinter, fitting way better into the theme of the ceramic pitcher). At the end of the verse the poet refers to actually printed maps of the moon on which huge pallid flecks look like pock marks and which hung in children’s bedrooms during the poet’s youth . In the last verse, the translator uses “crack” instead of “crunch”, which is far more applicable to the crumbling lava and ceramic mix that conjures myths. But maybe I’m nit-picking. Let’s look at the references that really make this a memorable poem.

Both meanings of the word crater, volcano and ceramic pitcher, weave through the poem. Both are provided with references to Ancient Greek mythology, from writing, or found in the imagery painted onto the vessels.

The reaction to the mention of “crater” is linked to Empedocles, a philosopher who, as far as we know, was the first to offer a theory about the connection between light and vision, something picked up and developed later by Euclid. He was a strict vegetarian, had some significant ideas about human psychology and was said to have jumped into an active volcano to prove that he was immortal and live on as a God, leaving his sandals at the rim to “prove” that he had departed. There are numerous version about his demise, some claiming he faked it, others attributing it to an erupting Vesuvius which blasted his sandals up to the rim.

Empedocles’ example of a voluntary jump into the abyss provides a clear contrast to the narrator’s sense that he is inescapably falling into the depth. His imagination is active, but the experience is reflexively forced on him.

The next allusions pick up the theme of catastrophic endings by active means or passive experience. Remember who Hephaestus was, so often depicted as a red silhouette on a black vase? He was the God of fire, volcanoes, metalworking, artisans, metallurgy, carpenters, forges, sculpting, and blacksmiths, creating all the tools needed for unleashing war. And if that was not enough, he also brought a first gift to man: Pandora and her miserable box. All of it drowning the world in evil by active design. Contrast this with Persephone, who was abducted into the Underworld, tricked into eating some pomegranate seeds so that she had to stay there for most of the year, no active resistance possible.

Then again, not all is black and white, or red on black, as the case may be. Persephone still helped to bring spring and harvest about together with her mother, upon her temporary jaunts back into the world, and was Queen rather than pure victim in the underworld.

And Pandora, sent to us by a God who also provided us with habitat and tools as well as the weapons of war? She used to be a life-bringing goddess in early renderings of the Greek cosmos (in fact her name means “all-giving”), before she was eclipsed by the death-bringing human Pandora. And in contrast to the misery she unleashed, one thing stayed permanently in the box, not irretrievably dispersed across the corners of the earth: HOPE, still available.

Maybe we feel like being sucked into craters, drowned by evil that has existed amongst humans since people started to record their histories, left with a torched and jagged, infertile landscape. But we have choices: the choice to think of something as providing sustenance rather than demise (pitcher vs crater), the choice to focus on hope rather than conditioned fears that drag us down the slopes of the volcano. And we have all this because the ancients laid out the maps, and our schools taught us the history. The grey matter might be pockmarked, but it can still be put to use. Let it be active and lead to the right moves.

Chem trails in just the right position….


Music today is a life version of Genesis’ Dance on the Volcano. Here is another song from that album that remains one of my favorite of years gone by, Trick of the Tail.



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The Beauty of Ruins

Many years back I was part of a group of artists invited to spend a full day at the Blue Heron Paper Company in Oregon City, a site long shut down after bankruptcy. Like for so many photographers, decaying industrial sites held a special appeal for me, with beauty found in strange places.

In 2019, the Confederate Tribes of the Grand Ronde bought the 182 acres, and in 2021 publicized plans for the development of the river and Willamette Falls-adjacent property which holds special cultural and historical significance to the Grand Ronde. Here is the vision (captured in a short video) as expressed at the time. The plan included “mixed use for office, retail, restaurants and public spaces near the falls, as well as instructional learning spaces so visitors can learn about the history of the land. The long-discussed riverwalk would also be a part of the plans.“

Rounding up Circles

Progress has been slow, with demolition of select buildings taking a lot of time, amongst permit woes and required resources. Then, 2 weeks ago, a large fire broke out on the site, still smoldering a week later, requiring closure of major thoroughfares. The billowing smoke caught over the small town, with worries about toxic air quality lasting for more than a week. The fire fighting was hampered by the intensity of the fire, and the fact that during an earlier fire in 2020, several fire fighters faced life-threatening conditions that no-one should experience again. The cause for the fire is still under investigation, but tribal authorities are confident that their demolition plans will proceed along the original time line.

Lining up Lines

I was thinking back to my earlier explorations because of an incredibly moving and thought-provoking essay that I am linking to here. I truly recommend reading it, it is not too long and I will myself shut up momentarily, so you have time. The Miners combines current political analysis with history and an ardent love for a State, Missouri, that has seen much destruction through mining extraction. The author describes the beauty of the remaining structures of the mills and the mines, as well as the travail of the aftermath, when companies leave town, and that triggered my memory. Kendzior, by the way, has a new book coming out at the beginning of April, The Last American Road Trip, a collection of essays of her travels cross country. It can be pre-ordered here.

Pipe Dreams

And here are a couple of mining songs…. Lee Dorsey, John Prine, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Jimmie Dean.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Still so much to be thankful for. I hope the day finds you surrounded by loved ones, in good health and determined spirits to fight for what is just and ethically demanded. I am grateful for you, my critical readers and friends, a community that sustains me and each other in hard times. Grateful for nature and the arts. Grateful for younger generations undeterred in their activism for a better world.

Grateful for reminders that surrounding darkness cannot always extinguish a central light.

Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter yesterday reminded us:

“(in 1864…) Lincoln proclaimed another day of Thanksgiving, this time congratulating Americans that God had favored them not only with immigration but also with the emancipation of formerly enslaved people. “Moreover,” Lincoln wrote, “He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.”

In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.

And in 1865, at least, they won.”

And always grateful for music!

Regular YDPs will resume when I am back home by the end of next week.

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A Strong Beginning

“We do not know what will happen. But we can know who we can commit to be in the face of what happens. That is a strong beginning.” – Rebecca Solnit

So who do we want to commit to be in view of being surrounded by voters willing to tolerate or invite fascism, voters manipulated into ignorance about the consequences of their actions, or non-voters indifferent enough to fail to prevent it? (I think it is important to remember how many people did not vote at all.) Who do we want to commit to be in anticipation of the catastrophes brought to our neighborhoods (and the world) by agents of hate, retribution and lust for power?

In my own case, I want to commit to nourish community, in my real as well as my digital life, as expressed here on the blog. I will stand on principle and not make compromises halfway between the truth and lies, as appeasers in the media would like to have us. I will continue to use the tools I have, to stimulate thinking about politics and history, to use my background as a scientist to educate about the domains of psychology, health and climate change. I will also add a new feature once a week, Does this makes sense?, linking to one or two long-form pieces of writing that were particularly thought-provoking in my perusal of the week’s publications (and not necessarily something I agree with), perhaps prompting a community discussion in the comments. I will post reading recommendations from people who are smarter and more organized than I am, geared towards the issues at hand. You’ll find some at the end of today’s blog. Solnit’s encouragements are a good way to start. Mind you, I completely understand if reading is too much now, or ever; it’s just my frantic default option….

I will commit to balancing the reports on the frightening with all that we can still be grateful for, the beauty around us, nature that models resiliency, indigenous wisdom that guides us, art that encourages resistance, poetry that fortifies us. Today’s choice, written during the horrors of the Civil War, describes adaptation as a form of resilience, not defeatism. Let that be the manner in which we tackle our current universe!

We grow accustomed to the Dark-

We grow accustomed to the Dark –
When light is put away –
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye –

A Moment – We uncertain step
For newness of the night –
Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –
And meet the Road – erect –

And so of larger – Darknesses –
Those Evenings of the Brain –
When not a Moon disclose a sign –
Or Star – come out – within –

The Bravest – grope a little –
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead –
But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.

by Emily Dickinson

I am currently in Southern California, surrounded by nature in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The noisiest birds that visit me are the California acorn woodpeckers. I wrote at length about this fascinating species here two years ago. They are perfect models for what we have to learn: to live in “bushels” of community, tending to our broods and granaries as a cohesive group, rather than fixating on individual success. They are a prime example of the evolutionary benefits of cooperation, across many generations, both with regard to breeding patterns, raising the young and creating, using and restoring granaries for acorns, riddling oak trees with custom-sized holes which provide storage for food during winter. Cannot think of a better symbol for the road ahead.



Music today is Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. Feel it.

Reading Recommendations (some might be of interests to book groups that don’t shy away from difficult conversations):

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum

Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen

Let This Radicalize You. by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba

Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

How to be an AntiRacist by Ibram X. Kendi

Several of these come with work books helpful to guide group discussion or offering further action proposals.

Here is a compilation of analyses of how we got here:

https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/ten-articles-explaining-the-2024?ref=organizingmythoughts.org

Here is a road map from Choose Democracy founder Daniel Hunter:

https://therealnews.com/10-ways-to-be-prepared-and-grounded-now-that-trump-has-won

Here are ten currently free e-books around dealing with times of crises.

Yesterday’s sunrise:

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It can happen here. And it Has.

Trump’s victory is a grim day for the United States and for democracies around the world. You have every right to be appalled, saddened, shocked, and frightened. Soon, however, you should dust yourself off, square your shoulders, and take a deep breath. Americans who care about democracy have work to do. ” Tom Nichols in Nov 6, 2024 The Atlantic

My night was disrupted by constant despondent messages from my European friends and readers – not that I could sleep anyhow. I found myself embracing conspiracy theories rather than acknowledging the real horror of this election outcome: the majority of American voters are happy to act on racist, misogynistic, patriarchal and christian nationalistic impulses. The spectacle of cruelty and power, of ignorant belief in empty promises and a desire for traditional hierarchies restored, attracted millions of voters, White women and men predominantly among them. Embracing the fact that they are empowering a convicted felon and his coterie of oligarchs and supplicants. Equality, as enshrined in the Constitution, but an empty term.

Who would not rather believe that voting machines were manipulated, by oligarchic shenanigans or foreign powers, that bomb threats and voter suppression disrupted the process, that votes were systematically not counted, than to admit in what company of landsmen we exist?

The grief I feel today is compounded by the fact that German history is so closely associated with my life as German-born, as a Jew, as a scientist, who sees the writing on the wall, whether it will be show trials for opponents of a malignant narcissist, withholding of disaster aid to blue states, willful ignorance of scientific data ranging from vaccination denial health care decisions (welcome back, polio and diphtheria, measles and pandemics,) to climate change in what short window of time we still have. The damage will be irrevocable.

Millions around the world will pay the price for this nation’s election, starting with the Palestinian and Ukrainian peoples who will have fought in vain against genocidal aggression. The grief is compounded by knowing that so many of my younger friends or children’s generation worked so hard for a better future, throwing themselves into canvassing and other organizing work, because they realized that their own future is so much more endangered than that of my generation that soon will be gone.

I know that autocrats’ goals are to instill fear in us, and exhaustion, isolation, disorientation. George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian before the election:

Never underestimate the vengeful nihilism at the heart of this movement. The glitter-eyed fanatics behind Project 2025 and other such programmes will smash whatever is most precious to you, partly at the behest of commercial interests – but also to enjoy watching the pain it inflicts. They will crush beauty, joy, community and hope precisely because other people value them.

Well, they will try. There will be a time to resist that, to move and organize and understand that those of us who are privileged as white middle class people are called on supporting the multitudes of more vulnerable fellows. But today I grieve. I withdraw. I have nothing else in me. I had gotten my hopes up, unable to fathom the depth of racism that drives this country and the lust for hate, and fell all the more. Allow yourself to grieve, too, if you share these fears. Then we’ll figure out what comes next. Together.

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San Ramon Valley

Eugene O’Neill looked for and found a seemingly peaceful enclave for writing his all but peaceful plays in the San Ramon Valley. For 6 years he and his wife lived in a gated house built with the money from his NobelPrize for literature, overlooking Mt. Diablo, grateful for the seclusion in the valley, the writer struggling with progressive tremors from Parkinson disease.

He felt he could only create with pen put to paper, an increasing hardship. His oldest son’s suicide, the estrangement from with his other 2 children, actively pursued by him after his daughter Oona married Charlie Chaplin, threw long shadows over a landscape filled with light. Eventually the couple moved back to the East coast.

“Peaceful” was in the eye of the beholder, anyhow. The original peoples of the region were violently uprooted by the 1772 arrival of the Spanish who established missions, killed those who objected in direct warfare and spread diseases that decimated the Tatcan, Seunen and Saclan tribes in horrifying numbers. When the missions were closed in 1863, fewer than a score of Indian descendants in the region were alive.

Of course, it didn’t end there. The Mexican government granted two Ranchos in the valley. The grazing cattle and sheep destroyed the herb and bulb meadows carefully nurtured by the tribes to provide traditional foods when hunting or fishing was precarious.

Then came the miners. The Gold Rush invaded more Indian lands and when California joined the Union in 1850 they immediately passed a law that allowed Indians to be enslaved by any White man, cynically called the “Act for the Protection of the Indians” (repealed in 1863, well into the Civil War period.)

I learned all this from a visit to a tiny history museum located in an old train station in Danville, attendant struggling to figure out that admission was $3, since they usually deal with school classes. A single room filled to the brim with dusty exhibits, lovingly collected across decades.

Displays ranged from stuffed animals to tribal artifacts, to walls of photographs celebrating noted personalities of Indian descent. Prints of works by famous photographer Edward S. Curtis and drawings by Michael Harney were isolated highlights among a lot of idiosyncratic exhibits.

Walking in the valley early in the morning provided welcome access to species alive rather than embalmed by eager taxidermists.

It is beautiful out here, even after the hottest, driest summer on record. The rains are supposed to return today.

Dried out creek.

Instead of music here are links to “Beyond the horizon,” a play filmed on the grounds of the O’Neill Tao House and in the landscape I currently walk in.
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How We Remember.

“But I have found that where there is a spiritual union with other people, the love one feels for them keeps the circle unbroken and the bonds between us and them strong, whether they are dead or alive. Perhaps that is one of the manifestations of heaven on earth.” – Alice Walker, Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973- 1987 as cited by Intisar Abioto.

Want to walk with me? I invite you to a place where we have been before, and then some steps beyond it. You will be taken in by the beauty of the landscape, and perhaps taken aback by what I encourage you to read, admittedly difficult, but important fare on the issue of memory politics.

Imagine a strong sun, still air as clear as can be, a deep blue river reflecting a cloudless sky, except for some contrails.

An ochre landscape, summer drought visible, resilient flora still hanging by a thread.

Hexagonal columns of Wanapum basalt flows that were scoured by the Ice Age floods some 10,000 years ago surround the lake, their darkness dissolving into myriads of colors from different species of lichen when you take a closer look.

We are on the Washington side of the Columbia river, a bit east of The Dalles bridge, at Columbia Hills Historical State Park, specifically Horsethief Lake. There is a public trail there, close by the railway, which offers a selection of petroglyphs moved from various places that were destroyed when damming the river began in earnest.

I have written about the history previously here.

Honor the Past, Respect the Present.

This time around I was invited to a private visit of petroglyphs that are only accessible in the company of a tribal guide. The trail winds through shrub-steppe and in parallel to the river’s shoreline, and brings you to petroglyphs that are still located on their original surfaces of basalt rock. The most famous among them is Tsagaglalal (“She Who Watches”.)

It is said that the trickster-hero Coyote put her there with luminous eyes and a broad face, when she, a chief of the Chinook tribe, worried what would happen to her people when she could no longer look out for them. Before he tricked her, he insisted there would be no longer female chiefs in the future, and then, having put her into rock, he said “…now you shall stay here forever to watch over your people and the river…” According to some sources,  “She Who Watches” they called her. She became a symbol of conscience and of death. “She sees you when you come,” they said, “she sees you when you go.” 

I was thinking of what I had learned earlier about petroglyphs from Lillian Pitt:

“Petroglyphs/pictographs are not art. They are sacred images that represent significant cultural themes, messages, beliefs to a Tribe.  They were not created for aesthetic purposes.  They were created to teach, warn, or record those not yet born.  Even though we may think that they are pretty, beautiful, pleasant to look at, those are not the values inherent in the images you see.  those are the values that you as the viewer are placing on the image. Please stop calling them rock art. “

I was also painfully aware how little historical knowledge we have in general – when my Native American friend and guide did a land acknowledgement by means of unfolding a rope where every millimeter stood for a year of historical Native American existence in these parts, I could only marvel at the numbers expressed in unending length.

We know, of course, only what we are taught, and teaching about Native American History has been overall a sad affair, when you look at general public education. Here is a comprehensive article on the need for reform. Things are changing, slowly, with curricula developed and available from private and public sources, like the Native Knowledge 360º Project initiated by the National Museum of the American Indian. Tribal members themselves have always kept the memory alive and transmitted to next generations. It is no coincidence, that a recent Tsagaglalal (She Who Watches) Scholarship was established in 2022 in honor of Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama), who was instrumental in teaching tribal history as an artist, mentor and advocate.

Looking at the landscape, at these sacred images that convey a message, at the spottiness of my understanding of American history, I could not help but think of memory culture from my own, very different background. The immediate source for these thoughts circled around the October 7th anniversary of the Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli war actions. Two very different essays I read around the politics of memory related to the fate of the Jewish and the Palestinian/Arab/Lebanese/Syrian people have me still think long and hard. Written by an anti-Zionist Jewish intellectual and activist, Naomi Klein, and a Zionist Jewish novelist, Dara Horn, respectively, they outline assumptions about appropriation of Holocaust narratives and memory culture that can harm rather than elucidate the complexities of history (links to the essays under the authors’ names). Long and complicated, but truly important work that will open perspectives you might not otherwise come across.

The core that spoke to me was Klein’s analysis of the politics of mourning (and is easily transferable to historical conflicts of all kinds of cultures, our own destruction of Native American tribes included):

“When experts in mass atrocities speak of the importance of “bearing witness”, they are referring to a specific way of seeing. This kind of witnessing, often of crimes that have been long denied or suppressed by powerful states, is an act of refusal – a refusal of that denial. It is also a way to honour the dead, both by keeping their stories alive, and by enlisting their spirits in a project of justice-seeking to prevent a repeat of similar atrocities in the future.

But not all witnessing is done in this spirit. Sometimes witnessing is itself a form of denial, marshalled by savvy states to form the justification for other, far greater atrocities. Narrow and hyper-directed at one’s own in-group, it becomes a way to avoid looking at the harsh realities of those atrocities, or of actively justifying them. This witnessing is more like hiding, and at its most extreme, it can provide rationalizations for genocide.” (Ref.)

Much to contemplate during these days of Teshuvah, the days of repentance leading up to Yom Kippur, our holiest day. A time to contemplate ways of ethical being. Maybe the love one feels for others keeps the circle unbroken, as Alice Walker stated above, but so does true, non-performative mourning – whether they are dead or alive, those victims of hatred and genocidal fury.

Here is Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre. (Unfortunately there is an interruption by advertising at some point, but it can be prompts skipped. I just favor this performance by Argerich enough that I was willing to tolerate it.)

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Cat Propaganda.

Two days ago I mentioned that I would write about the spread of falsehoods regarding the consumption of stolen pets by Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Little did I know that everybody and their uncle would jump onto the lie after it was uttered by a former President during the Trump/Harris debate (and is now repeated during campaign rallies as we speak.) Whether you read the NYT, The Washington Post, the Atlantic, Vox, Politico, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, or countless essays on Substack, people express horror, disgust and step deep into analysis, why this kind of lie is spread, believed, and exceedingly dangerous.

What can I possibly add? Maybe a basic primer on the function and use of memes? A check on historical sources that understood the value of propaganda? Lucky for me, all of that is spelled out in detail in the teaching materials of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, which I will summarize, applied to the case in point.

Here is where we stand right now: the rumor started in late August during a march staged by the nearby neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe and a diatribe in front of the Springfield city commission about the savagery of the Haitian immigrants. It was posted on Facebook.

A flood of memes followed (created by Republicans and their wing men), many indirectly alerting to the issue by making Trump the heroic rescuer of barnyard menagerie. J.D. Vance then spread the lie via tweets, careful to insert an “if rumors are true” in the margins, not so the House Judiciary GOP, and Elon Musk tweeting to his million of followers. Trump locked onto it, publicly disseminating it during the debate. He was fact checked, at the debate, (and again during the last two days when he continued to utter the claim during rallies), by multiple official sources from Springfield, including city hall and the police, that the rumors are not true.

(I have consciously left out the memes that depict Blacks in the background in more savage fashion than the one above. They are horrifying in their attempt to ride on stereotypes of black violence.)

Meanwhile, Vance insists on keeping the memes coming.

And wouldn’t you know it, threats of violence against multiple actors in Springfield have multiplied as of today. Bomb threats against administrative offices (the one who denied the veracity of the claims), the media, threats against schools, now sending kids home early. Fear is spreading among the Haitian population, called on keeping their kids inside and not expose themselves to potential harm at night.

Rightwing extremists are stoking the potential for violence by announcing bounties.

NONE OF THIS IS NEW.

“Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert.—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1924).

And the more cruel and politically expedient, the more it is employed. By definition, it is biased or untrue information intended to shape people’s beliefs and behavior. In racist societies propaganda plays a major role in establishing who is included and who either belongs to the margin, or should be irrevocably excluded. The means by which propaganda is applied, and the receptivity of the audience are both factors that shape how successfully the manipulation proceeds. For the Nazis, rallies, print material, the radio and film were all used to spread the message.

These days, we also have so-called memes that are disseminated across the internet. Like all propaganda, memes simplify complex issues, and speak to emotions. Moreover, they help to construct collective identity, give us a feeling we belong because we “get the joke.” They grab attention, they establish or prolong a cultural discourse. (In fact, the term was coined by Richard Dawkins some 50 years ago; he believed that cultural ideas, like genes, can spread and mutate, fostered by a surge of dopamine when we recognize what is expressed and emotionally react to it.)

In societies as divided as our’s, these seemingly humorous images act both as a formation for in-group belonging (remember the meme of Bernie sitting with his hand in mittens, transported into all sorts of weird situation, and we smiled every time?) and as a jab at the other side, which is ridiculed for its ignorance or negative reaction.

Memes are not inherently bad, depending on content. But memes breed partisanship, and when they gleefully ignore the absence or distortion of facts, in fact are passionately indifferent to truth, and open the gate wide to racism, they do harm. Trump himself posted this today.

They fall on fertile ground, since the slander that immigrants have unacceptable dietary habits is as old as this country. Across the ages, Asian immigrants have been accused of eating dogs. Jews, of course, have been accused of eating something altogether different and more heinous.

Haitian immigrants are particularly vulnerable, however. They immigrated en masse in the 1980s, and were treated as economic migrants despite fleeing the repressive rule of the Duvaliers. In the 90s they were stashed in a camp at Guantanamo to process asylum claims. David Duke and Pat Buchanan railed against the immigration of non-Whites, and reports on high numbers of HIV infections among the Haitian refugees elicited panic in the American public. Extremists had picked a definable out-group and today’s heirs to this thinking pursue it without remorse.

Legal immigrants have massively contributed to the American economy ever since. Temporary Protected Status Holders from Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador contribute a combined $4.5 billion annually to our GDP. Some 15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield, helping revitalize the local economy and filling the pews of local churches.  They came legally and are doing all the right things, but are the perfect target for dishonorable smears, however far fetched.

It is hard to deny that once again things boil down to the color of skin, and gleeful racism amuses those who found what looks like an easy target. As Ken White, a first amendment litigator and criminal attorney points out:

Engaging on the same level cannot be the answer. How can you reach across the divide, though, when it all boils down to beliefs and emotions, rather than on a willingness to establish facts?

What should the answer be? You tell me.

Music today from Haiti.

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