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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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The Berlin Requiem – Red Rosa.

· Beyond the Tree Line ·

“Die rote Rosa nun auch verschwand / Wo sie liegt, ist unbekannt / Weil sie den Armen die Wahrheit gesagt / Haben sie die Reichen aus der Welt gejagt.” – Bertolt Brecht, Epitaph to Berlin Requiem.

I think I reported on this here before, some years back, but the memory repeatedly pops up. On my 11th birthday I received a book with the title Famous Women in History, or some such. Probably meant to be inspirational, or teaching history through human interest stories – but I bet the bank my parents never read a line of it, otherwise they would have reconsidered. The heavy tome included an accumulation of bloody fates, either executed by powerful women, or experienced by powerful women, or both.

There was Judith (dead Holofernes, a head shorter), Cleopatra (dead Antony, falling on his sword, dead queen, self-poisoned), Queen Boudica (80.000 dead Roman legionaries, dead queen by suicide), Jeanne d’Arc (a lot of dead soldiers, a martyr burnt at the stake), Queen Mary I. a.k.a Bloody Mary, (beheaded competitor, Lady Jane Grey, countless executed protestants), Charlotte Corday (dead Marat in the bathtub, guillotined Charlotte), Marie Antoinette (off with her head), Catherine the Great (murdered husband, Peter III, innumerable dead after she extended and harshened serf conditions from Russia into Ukraine,) Typhoid Mary (dead everybody) and so on. One notable exception, and the only scientist mentioned: Mme Curie (dead by radiation exposure.) You would think famous women were all naturally born killers.

I have, of course, no clue how accurate and complete my memory is for a book likely written in the 1940s or early 50s, if not earlier. The book itself is long lost during my many moves in the ensuing decades. Maybe only the horror examples stuck, and I forgot the chapters about happy princesses, humanitarian nuns, or outstanding female artists. Maybe the selection of prominent bloody endings was intended to instill fear of power into impressionable little girls, keeping them in their place. Or maybe it just happens to be historically accurate that the few women who made it into the history books had, indeed, to be ruthless to join the ranks of male rulers, religious zealots, (anti)colonial fighters and tyrants.

I do know, though, who was not included, because I was introduced to the name only when my interest in politics awakened: a female intellectual and revolutionary who left a mark on her world and/or the future. She’d fit the pattern: a woman who supported an uprising, murdered in the most heinous way, her mutilated body dumped into Berlin’s Landwehr Canal: Rosa Luxemburg. (Her comrade Karl Liebknecht, who was executed the same day, was granted a funeral, because he was not Jewish. Käthe Kollwitz was asked by his family to visit the morgue and created one of her most famous memorials.)

Luxemburg, one of the first women to receive a doctorate in law and economics, a brilliant philosopher and fighter for justice, has been on my mind because we have been hearing the word Freedom brandished about in the election campaign. One of her most famous quotes (criticizing the new Russian regime, no less, in a book written in 1918 and published in 1922, The Russian Revolution,) was this:

“Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”

Also on my mind has been the fact that she and Liebknecht were killed by soldiers from the so called Freikorps, a group composed of former officers, demobilized soldiers, military adventurers, fanatical nationalists and unemployed youths hired by right-wing extremist von Schleicher, a staff member for President Paul von Hindenburg (who later appointed Hitler as chancellor.) The Freikorps was explicitly founded to fight left-wing political groups and Jews, deemed responsible for for Germany’s problems, and pursued elimination of “traitors to the Fatherland”.

“The Freikorps appealed to thousands of officers who identified with the upper class and had nothing to gain from the revolution. There were also a number of privileged and highly trained troops, known as stormtroopers, who had not suffered from the same rigours of discipline, hardship and bad food as the mass of the army: “They were bound together by an array of privileges on the one hand, and a fighting camaraderie on the other. They stood to lose all this if demobilised – and leapt at the chance to gain a living by fighting the reds.” (Ref.)

I don’t have to explain why images of violent losers and wanna-be heroes ready to incite bloodshed are on my mind. Never underestimate the danger from a militia.

The montage is trying to reflect Kurt Weill’s 1928 composition The Berlin Requiem. Weill included Bertolt Brecht’s poetic memorial Epitaph upon Luxemburg’s death: “Red Rosa now has vanished too…. / She told the poor what life is about, / And so the rich have rubbed her out. / May she rest in peace.” (The second movement.)

I chose a wide path bordered by crooked trees to celebrate a woman’s courage to leave the straight and narrow one proscribed, pursuing an ideal of radical democracy instead, her thinking opening windows into a brighter world. She reached high in her pursuit of social justice and freedom for all, just like these trees are reaching for the light, defying the storms that bend them. They were photographed in Holland at the North Sea, but same can be found in coastal Poland, the country where she was born.

Here is the Requiem.

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Tree People

· Photographers Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo at the World Forestry Center. ·

I have to admit, it’s been ages since I visited the World Forestry Center. No more explaining to my (now grown) kids that the fake logger climbing a fake tree with a fake goose and owl calmly sitting on branches below him, are there for educational purposes, and maybe, just maybe, meant as a joke. Or to stimulate discussions how museum exhibits not necessarily reflect the real world. Don’t get me wrong, they and I loved the place during too many rainy days in Portland, Oregon, and some of the educational displays did promote meaningful conversations.

As it turns out, there are now more and better reasons to visit, than simply looking for bad weather diversions. The place is changing at a fast clip, with an ambitious plan to update and modernize this Portland treasure. Among the important improvements are a program of new art exhibitions that should attract a wide swath of visitors who are interested in both, information about the environmental conditions of our state as well as of international forests and how contemporary issues of changing nature is represented by serious artists.

Let’s face it: today’s cultural institutions have a near impossible burden to carry. Besides the particular content they are supposed to display in aesthetically appealing ways – here forestry in all its permutation and history – they have to engage in educational missions, social outreach, community involvement, and simultaneous financial juggling between higher cost and decreased funding. To fulfill all these imperatives you need innovative thinking, creative solutions, and a vision that extends beyond the safe, habitual offerings we’ve come to expect from specialty museums. Judging by the current exhibition, the Discovery Museum at the Center has found someone who fits the bill. Stephanie Stewart Bailey, the new experience developer (unfamiliar title to me, but makes sense when you look at the intersection of art, science and nature) has managed to mount a show that combines stellar international photography with an educational mission to help us understand better the central role and function of trees in numerous civilizations.

Tree People by Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo was the first installment of a three part artistic collaboration between these two prize-winning Finnish photographers interested in the interrelationship between nature and those that populate it. For over three decades the duo have explored the mythology associated with trees and forests, (Tree People, 1997) the way forest management and silviculture affect both land and people, (Silvicultural Operations, 2009) and now how primeval forest look (and act) differently from those that have been exposed to centuries of human commercialization (Forests of the North Wind , 2024).

The visual work is compelling (as is their environmental activism), but the deeper attraction to me lies in the artists’ rigorous research, amounting to an anthropological tour de force across these 30 years, including field interviews and archival exploration. Each of the three installments stands on their own. I found the choice of Tree People for the Discovery Museum timely because they speak to some issues that are currently of great cultural interest in the Pacific Northwest as well.

The exhibition is divided into topics, photography always accompanied and enhanced by written explanations of the historical context. One section explores the destruction of sacred spaces, groves believed to be hallowed, once Christian proselytizing started in earnest, cutting down worshipped trees and replacing them with churches. One of the most appealing aspects of the curation was a circle of fabric panels, printed with trees, that you could enter as if it was a grove. It was mounted by Stewart Bailey in a clever way, hanging from a braided wreath of twigs and branches, which stayed with the topic of trees, and were visually harmonious. More interestingly, they projected shadows onto the semi-permeable canvas, doubling the sense of being close to trees.

There is a part on forest spirits, and traditional fare around how to combat them and keep a boundary between human civilization and the forest.

There is an introduction to good luck/sacred trees that are associated with a particular homestead. One of the photographs depicts a houseless person who had made his home under a tree in a Finnish park. It was a comforting thought to one of the younger visitors feeling they would never be able to afford a piece of property where a legacy tree could serve multiple generations. Stewart Bailey told me, that the idea to choose a tree in one’s general environment was visibly uplifting. Must be the Zeitgeist (or more likely the housing market…): the Washington Post just last week had an article strongly encouraging us to select a favorite public tree and tie our own life events to frequent visitations.

Last but not least, there are two sections devoted to memorializing the departed, humans and animals alike. These provide a direct link to a big question raised in the contemporary Pacific Northwest where competing interests fight over the preservation of certain trees that were culturally modified.

***

Oregon, like Finland, has an important history linked to the ways we have handled forestry, claiming ourselves to be the state that timber built. The natural riches of fir trees, cedars and Ponderosa pines were there for the taking, and taken they were, generating winners and losers along the way. Depending on one’s perspective you could think of pioneers conquering the wilderness, or robber barons using illegal timber sales through the rail road contracts to make a fortune. Here, as well as in Europe, opposing interests fought over legislation that promoted their often contradictory goals.

Logging throughout the first half of the last century provided great pay, secure employment and boons to the infrastructure of many growing timber communities. When private timber reserves dwindled in the late 1950s, the Forest Service and Bureau of Federal Land Management were pushed to permit increased harvesting on public lands and allow clear cutting and use of chemical herbicides. Eventually environmentalists started to fight back, and during the 1990s the “timber wars” ensued – protection of endangered species like the spotted owl was weighed against the fate of the many communities that lost their livelihoods with stricter federal regulations on logging, or the earnings of the lumber industry, respectively. (The link brings you to a fabulous OPB series on the history of the law suits.) An early verdict prohibiting national forest timber sales in potential spotted owl habitat in May 1991, set off years of litigation over animals and plants that had been listed as endangered and severely curbed logging.

The attempt to change the rules and regulations governing timber harvest and protection of old growth forests is ongoing. The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan is in the process of being amended, partially due to fast changing environmental conditions. Catastrophic wildfires and tree-killing pests have done intense damage to all habitats. Barred owls are conquering spotted owls’ habitat, ever diminishing their numbers. A committee working under immense time pressure has made numerous recommendations, several of which were slashed by the Forest Service, deemed irrelevant to the amendment. There is also a planned amendment for all national 128 forest plans, a draft of which was release in June. In theory the public has 90 days to comment, and the timeline declares hopes for a decision and implementation by January 2025. Many of the parties involved in this joint effort to find compromises for forestry management have expressed worries that different national election outcomes would affect the planned amendments in various ways. (Ref.)

Most of us have probably an inkling of this history, although the extent to which it is related to violations of treaties with tribal groups who had to cede old growth forest in land swaps or were simply dispossessed, has rarely been stressed. New to me, and bringing us back to the context of the exhibition and its focus on the function of trees as keepers of memory, archivists of entire civilizations, is the call for protection of individual trees in the fight over the right to harvest large swaths of timber by the industry. What is at stake here is the fate of culturally modified trees (CMTs), living trees that have been visibly altered by indigenous cultural practices. They were related to food production (peeling the bark), cultural traditions (weaving, producing ceremonial regalia, building shelter or carving of paddles and canoes.) Trees were selected for memorial or mortuary poles as well, and many exhibit drill holes that tested the strength of the tree so that sustainable harvesting could be completed, not hurting future growth.

These trees are of cultural and spiritual significance, sacred memorials to tribal ancestors and living archeological sites that allow insight into historical practices. Equally important, they are of legal significance. When indigenous rights are challenged, carbon dated trees with indigenous modification can be testament to the occupancy and forest stewardship of tribes at a given point in time. For cultures that existed without much written record, whether the indigenous Samis for Finland, or the first nations, tribes and bands in the North American sphere, these trees are archives that can be precisely dated and are a rare historical source for archeologists, anthropologist and historians alike. The question is how they can be legally protected from clear cutting, before they die a natural death given their age in old growth forests. (Here is a great book for further information about the research and the political debate around CMTs.)

It would have been fascinating to link the photographs of the Finnish memorial trees with their arboglyphs, those carvings of dates and numbers, to the contemporaneous questions raised by the protection of modified trees in our own backyard. But I am sure those connections to place and universal issues will be made once the museum has found its stride with traveling as well as independently curated exhibitions.

As is, I cannot recommend a visit to see this work strongly enough. It is like falling into another time and place, yet eerily familiar. Then go home and (re)read Richard Power’s The Overstory. The winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction is a paean to trees, nature and environmental activism, one of my favorite novels of all time. Or, alternatively, just hang out under a conifer it Forest Park. The trees will speak to you.

World Forestry Center Discovery Museum

4033 SW Canyon Rd, Portland, OR 97221-2760

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Juneteenth 2024

Today is Juneteenth. We mark the day in 1865 when the last of enslaved Black Americans in Texas first learned of the Emancipation Proclamation – more than two years after it was issued. It is a day that reminds us that change is not just desirable, but possible. That liberation is to be celebrated as a shift from a status quo – slavery – to a goal, however compromised in its evolution: freedom and equality for all.

Photographs today were taken 10 years ago when I still worked as a volunteer photographer with dance groups for teaching kids African dance, drumming and customs.

Seems like the perfect day to ask the question why so many powerful forces in this country, most densely represented in the current Supreme Court constellation of judges, want to revert from the change that we celebrate to a situation that enshrines the status quo at the very time when slavery was alive and well.

I am, of course, talking about the embrace of Originalism, the legal theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exclusively in ways the Founders meant it.

Let me count the ways in which this approach, heavily promoted by right wing forces across the judiciary, is problematic. For a more in depth discussion of the issues I strongly recommend a new book by Madiba K. Dennie, The Originalism Trap. The legal commentator, previously a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and professor at New York University School of Law, is now a deputy editor and senior contributor at the critical legal commentary outlet Balls and Strikes, which I follow closely. Her new book reveals the many inherent faults of this supposed intellectual theory that treats civil rights gains as categorically suspect, eager to roll them back, reverting the country to the inequitable version of the past.

Here are the bullet points as expressed by her:

  • Originalism is the idea that the meaning of the Constitution is fixed in time, locked in when the Constitution’s provisions were ratified. If you asked an originalist how you should interpret the Constitution today, they would tell you there’s only one way you can legitimately interpret it: the way it was interpreted 200 years ago. Originalism is ostensibly tied to a single point in time, and as a result, it bakes the biases and bigotries of that time into constitutional interpretation. 

  • Even if there was a single objective historical meaning of the Constitution (and there isn’t), and even if the Court relied on the finest historians to unearth that meaning (and it doesn’t), it would still be irresponsible to cast aside all the ways democracy has evolved in the intervening centuries and relinquish our right to self-governance. A well-intentioned liberal originalist would still be outsourcing constitutional interpretation to 18th century men who couldn’t possibly imagine a modern pluralistic society. That does a disservice to the whole nation, and poses an unique threat to historically marginalized people.

Dennie favors an alternative approach dubbed inclusive constitutionalism. It focusses on the fact that our nation adopted the Reconstruction Amendments in the wake of the Civil War. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were added to the Constitution and abolished slavery, granted equal rights to formerly enslaved people, and enshrined the right to vote for people of all races.

In the scholar’s words:

“They instruct us to create an equitable multiracial democracy in which everyone can live freely, equally, and with dignity. Inclusive constitutionalism argues that the whole Constitution must be interpreted through that lens. Legal interpretation should be guided by the Reconstruction Amendments’ expansive principles and their unfinished mission to foster a democratic society with equal membership for all.

Inclusive constitutionalist courts would protect people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies and to live with dignity. They would protect people’s right to make decisions about their communities and participate in the political process. And they would recognize all people as legitimate members of their communities.”

Of course all 300 million of us are currently ruled by nine unaccountable people, the majority of whom want to turn back the clock and have the power to do so for the rest of their lives. There will have to be structural reforms like court expansion and term limits as some limitations on the court’s authority in addition to demanding a retreat from originalism as selectively applied as it is right now. It would truly be in the spirit of Juneteenth, or the promises of democracy, providing equal rights to all marginalized or hierarchically locked in place groups.

Happy Juneteenth! A federal holiday. Never mind that in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, Republicans have passed laws to prevent teachers from teaching kids why. It’s not just the Judiciary …..

Ok, time to turn away from doom and gloom to celebrate the spirit of Juneteenth: here is Jean Baptiste to the rescue, with music to dance to!

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Art as Witness.

These are the woes of slaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

“We are the witnesses!”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Witnesses

Just a 50 minute drive from Portland, OR, you enter an entirely different world – old growth forest covering the mountains, steep cliffs, the majestic Columbia slowly making its way through a gorge that was carved millennia ago into the landscape. If you happen to visit the Gorge Museum in Stevenson, WA on your way East, you can currently immerse yourself in yet a different world still – a collection of quilts that witness the life, skills and wisdom of a 19th century slave, handed down to next generations. Named the Hartsfield Collection after the family who preserved the legacy of one of their ancestors, a former slave, it serves as an entry into the patterns of both slave life and quilting.

Crossroads Quilt, Late 19th Century

The accumulated heirlooms are part of a collection created and persevered by a family dedicated to witnessing history, including that of their very own ancestor(s.) The current generation is represented by Jim Tharpe, who realized that the quilts, made by five different seamstresses across four generation from 1850 – 1960, were of enormous significance and able to tell a story that resonated beyond what we know theoretically about quilting during slavery. His insights and persistence to bring something of significant historical value to our eyes made it possible that these quilts are now making their rounds in museums keen, among others, on teaching history.

The exhibition is expertly guided by signage that tells you about the provenance and meaning of each quilt (as displayed in my photographs.) You can learn even more detail in a book written by Tharpe and available at the museum, that explains the family history, the creation of the collection and his purpose in investing his passion, time and energy into the preservation of the collection.

The earliest quilt, the Slave Quilt (1850), was made as personal bedding by a thirteen-year old slave, Ms. Molly, who was sold away from her family to a plantation in Whitlock, Tennessee. Close inspection reveals not just use and tear, but also bloodstains. We will never know if from the whip, rape or childbirth – she bore two sons to her Master, who were fortunately not sold away from the household. Faded, easily overlooked, they nonetheless instill a sense of the horrors of the life that then-child must have experienced.

She taught her skills to her own children and in-laws after the Civil War was won. Eventually the family relocated North, but still trecked to Tennessee many years later to visit relatives that remained there, often under the shadow of racism that put travelers in danger.

Danger while traveling was, of course, one of the hallmarks of the Underground Railroad movement, helping slaves to escape their masters and start a new life somewhere supposedly more safe, if not free. One of the ways to prepare, or to warn, or to help people finding their ways and supportive allies, was a language of communication contained in quilts. Specific patterns indicated specific requirements or signals to those on the move.

Expert quilters might be well aware of this history, lots written about it. For the rest of us, even though we are aware of forms of communication not contained in written words – just think of the knotted messages of the Incas, Semaphore or Braille, sign-language or Morse code – we might not know about the meaning of patterns around in quilts. I certainly had no clue, even though I count two expert quilters among my friends.

The exhibition then, really opened my eyes not just to the creativity of individual seamstresses and the beauty of their resulting work, but the meaning behind much of what was in front of me, guiding me into a world that lacked all the privilege of my own and that holds historical lessons we should well heed.

In general, there were ten quilt codes to be used for the journey, with just one displayed at the time. A sampler with all the codes in small form, secretly passed around, served as a teaching device for memorization of the patterns. The quilts were displayed in windows or hung out with the washing to inform the travelers. The backs and fronts were joined by twine tied two inches apart, with patterns of knots mapping the existence and distance of safe houses along the route. (Ref.)

Here are some of the patterns used in the quilts on exhibit (note, there are variations in names across states, not captured here):

The variety of the artistry shown is helpful for us to understand how form, function and aesthetics go hand in hand. The dedication of this family to relating the skills to subsequent generations and preserving, despite many moves across the U.S. what is a treasure, makes it very clear that they know about the importance of history, and the ways its official telling needs to be supplemented by people who’ve actually experienced it from diverse perspectives.

I was particularly moved to see the oldest and most recent of the quilts exhibited in juxtaposition. The latter was a graduation present to Jim Tharpe, with an inconspicuous love letter stitched into the sidebars, just as the blood stains were inconspicuous on the former. It brought home to me that it is not enough to be exposed to something in order to witness. You have to look. Look carefully. Not leave it to those lying at the bottom of the ocean.

The effort to bury parts of our history, efforts yet again sweeping our country in the form of curriculum changes, prohibition of certain books, elimination of programs dedicated to Black History studies and the like, is hopefully counter-acted by exhibitions like the current one. It brings history alive in front of your very eyes and encourages conversations with those you bring to this show, children included, about what is contained in these beautiful quilts and why it had to be kept secret.

Columbia Gorge Museum

Ms Molly’s Voice: Freedom and Family Spoken In Fabric

June 1 – July 31st, 2024

Open Everyday: 10:00am – 5:00pm

990 SW Rock Creek Dr, Stevenson, WA 98648

Special Event:

“In celebration of Juneteenth, the Columbia Gorge Museum will be hosting an open event where attendants will focus on creating quilt patterns in a dialogue with the patterns and skill of Ms. Molly. Take a guided experience through the quilt exhibition and thanks to some amazing Columbia Gorge quilters, create your own family document in a quilt square. 

This event takes place June19th between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. All are welcome!

If you would like to attend this event, simply RSVP here!“

Here is the full poem from which I took the quotation at the beginning of the review.

The Witnesses

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In Ocean’s wide domains, 

   Half buried in the sands, 

Lie skeletons in chains, 

   With shackled feet and hands. 

Beyond the fall of dews, 

   Deeper than plummet lies, 

Float ships, with all their crews, 

   No more to sink nor rise. 

There the black Slave-ship swims, 

   Freighted with human forms, 

Whose fettered, fleshless limbs 

   Are not the sport of storms. 

These are the bones of Slaves; 

   They gleam from the abyss; 

They cry, from yawning waves, 

   “We are the Witnesses!” 

Within Earth’s wide domains 

   Are markets for men’s lives; 

Their necks are galled with chains, 

   Their wrists are cramped with gyves. 

Dead bodies, that the kite 

   In deserts makes its prey; 

Murders, that with affright 

   Scare school-boys from their play! 

All evil thoughts and deeds; 

   Anger, and lust, and pride; 

The foulest, rankest weeds, 

   That choke Life’s groaning tide! 

These are the woes of Slaves; 

   They glare from the abyss; 

They cry, from unknown graves, 

   “We are the Witnesses!” 

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Kairos

Kairos: a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action : the opportune and decisive moment. – Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A video has been making the rounds in Germany for the last few days, depicting a group of wealthy young people at one of the country’s most exclusive bars engaged in laughing, singing and shouting racist, nationalistic and even fascist paroles, one of the revelers seemingly giving the Nazi Salute, filming themselves with glee and later posting the recordings. (I refuse to share, giving them more exposure…)

Most commentators remark on this as something that is not novel for the sentiment depicted. What is new is the pride accompanying a brazen openness about one’s ideology that was previously subterraneous in a country blanketed with shame over past sins. There is also a shift regarding who comes forward with explicit racism – once a province of beerhalls and most often associated with lower-education populations mainly in the East, it now seems to be fashionable among the elite. Think a five star drinking hole in the Hamptons, visited by Nepo-babies and their entourage. For Germans who were happy to assign Nazism to poor yokels, this is an unwelcome occasion to have to admit extremist sentiments in all sectors of society across the nation.

Of course, we see an inclination towards unapologetic flaunting of ideologies previously kept close to the chest and only revealed in like-minded company here in the U.S. as well. Just think of Justice Alito’s various flag demonstrations. Or that of evangelical House Speaker Johnson, who displays the Christian nationalist flag in front of his office, signaling his theocratic agenda. The Appeal to Heaven flag is part of the symbolism of the far-right New Apostolic Reformation, a movement fighting for a hegemonically Christian America.

Apparently it is a crucial moment in time, propitious for the public flaunting of racist and nationalistic agendas we thought banned for good. Or at least hoped. It signals a qualitative shift, in my opinion, fostered by increasing desire for and acceptance of authoritarianism colored by religious fervor, whether Christianity or Hinduism as just two example, internationally.

Crucial moment in time is also the title – Kairos – of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel, translated by Michael Hofmann, that won this year’s international Booker Prize. You can read ubiquitous reviews here, here and here. Be warned, though. It is an incredibly sad, cruel, and bitter tale that is unfolding, both in descriptions of a May/December love affair, and a reckoning with German history set at the time of approaching reunification of East and West in the 1980s.

I was grateful to read the original language, having always thought the author has an incredible skill with words to both lure you and distance you at the same time to and from her preoccupation with time. Much of her work is concerned with how time takes things -as well as bodies – apart. Now she shifts to the concept of time as that moment that changes everything, and it dawns on you, slowly, eventually, that we willingly overlook the signs that point to that moment of change, until, basically, it will be too late. True for relationships as much as politics of nations.

By all reports, the English translation is formidable. I, on the other hand, have been struggling to find the right word for an adjective I associate with the author, who was by the way, trained as a director of opera: unerbittlich. In English it is translated as unrelenting, but the German word has more of sense of “without mercy” attached. Not just not giving in to pleas, but exhibiting a punitive streak. She mercilessly holds the mirror to German society preoccupied with “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” a reckoning with the past, showing how often we still look away, or keep things at a surface, too fearful to look deeper. Exactly the situation that the reactions to the video alluded to above seem to reflect. The same pattern emerges for acknowledging signs of domestic violence and abuse. We ignore the creeping signals around us as long as we can, since it can’t be true what we don’t want to be true.

This might not be the moment in time to focus on entropy, Erpenbeck’s continual concern. Do we really want to burden ourselves with yet another downer, a hair-raising, deeply sad tale, when we are so emotionally vulnerable from all the trauma around us?

But if not now, when? Disentangling the lessons of history from wishful thinking will always be hard. Her writing is as brilliant a guide as any. Maybe this novel rises to prominence with the Booker Prize at exactly a propitious moment, before it is too late.

Kairos.

Music by John Dowland today.

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