One hundred years ago, the month of January began with hope. Nations across the world met in Versailles for a Peace Conference, to deal with the catastrophic results of the down-fall of major empires after World War I. The reign of the Russian Tzars was finally over, as was that of the Ottomans; the German and Austrian-Hungarian Empires were done.

President Woodrow Wilson was a rising star, riding on proclamations for self-determination of nations. Non-Whites, both from the colonies exploited by Europe and in the U.S. called for emancipation in the wake of their military service contributions in the Great War.

Women, who had taken on major labor roles replacing those who had gone to fight, were unwilling to go home meekly and be but sheepish housewives again.

So much hope, all around, that the Treaty of Versailles would ring in true change. We know how that ended. The US did not ratify the treaty and abstained from joining the League of Nations. The Middle East was nilly-willy partitioned by the Brits and French, with disastrous consequences. Colonies abroad and Blacks here at home were given the middle finger. China was shorted in favor of Japan, leading to the justified assumption that the West could not be trusted. And the Germans, well, they felt betrayed and humiliated, economically with a boot on their neck, but more importantly psychologically abased, paving the way for the rise of Hitler and his minions.

Here we are, a hundred years later, wondering if democratic hope will be abandoned for good in favor of the reign of autocratic systems. For this first week of the year I will try and summarize some of the things I’ve read to see if we can learn from history. Perhaps that helps to plan action for change beyond whipping out a checkbook, or (wo)manning phone banks, although I suspect both will be needed.

Photographs today are of graffiti in Paris, as close as I got to Versailles…..

The blurb in this photograph says: Those who are born to obey will obey even when on the throne – it is a citation from Les Chants de Malador, the single book published by 19th century author Isidore Ducasse, under the alias of Comte Lautramont. It was a strange volume by a strange author on the phenomenology of evil, later taken up by the Surrealists, particularly Max Ernst who used quotes from it to explain his paintings. Let’s hope evil can be at least held in check in 2019!

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/library/2014/08/01/surrealists-inspired-by-lautreamont-2/

For music, it shall be Poulenc who fragmented his music segments and built layer upon layer, as did the surrealist painters (even though they declared music anathema…..) something I’ve never understood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKIyLlI9XFY

We all face the choice between right and wrong, responsibility and recklessness, conscience and complicity. 

This from David From in today’s Atlantic writing on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/eighty-years-after-kristallnacht/575410/

Here is another worthwhile (loooong) read about why historical evaluation of the past can be useful in our very own present.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/21/blood-and-soil?mbid=social_facebook&fbclid=IwAR1r2nYeDp0U25RdjWhacgGnVSAgzkSCd2tkMMFK4o61OiS8S6F3I00OZdc&fbclid=IwAR2ZzpjaF6I8a9sLPKRS25qryslH57Nj8Io43poaPeM3ZhnIWcuhFILugg0

And here is why it matters in our own country:

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/11/2018-midterms-voter-suppression-democrats-voting-trump

And this album says it all

Photographs are of the Neue Synagogue  in Berlin, now a memorial/museum

If you walk along Portland’s waterfront park right now the wind and rain will often make the air around you twirl with petals of cherry blossoms. The area around the Japanese American Plaza – commemorating the internment of the Japanese  during WW II – is filled with blooming cherry trees that were imported from Japan, a gift of the Japanese Grain Importers Association, planted 28 years ago.

Giving these trees as a gift is not a new tradition – after all, in 1912 Washington D.C. received 3000 of them as an expression of goodwill from Japan. 5 years ago, Takamichi Okabe, Consul-General of Japan at that time in PDX, explained: “Sakura [cherry] is one of the most beloved flowers in Japan… it is a symbol of Japanese sensitivity of natural beauty, and it is also a symbol of the friendship between the U.S. and Japan.”

Large numbers of blossoms, then, matched by an almost equally large number of photographers. This weekend you could not walk amongst the trees at the north end of the parkway without bumping into someone with iPhone or camera.

At the south end of the parkway it was a completely different scene. Potluck in the Park set up their free Sunday meal under the ramp of the Hawthorne Bridge, with endless lines of the homeless waiting to get something to eat. The Non-Profit has been fighting hunger even before those cherry trees were planted – since 1991 nobody in Portland needs to go without a warm meal on Sundays – the numbers of people fed on that day range between 400 and 600, all based on donations and volunteers who provide the food and serve. They lost their original space at O’Bryant Square and so the off ramp of a bridge has to do.

Get to know all about how we are feeding Portland homeless

I got to talk to a relatively young woman who had decorated her place setting on a fence post above the river with flowers. She had her walking (and defense) stick adorned with found objects to make it beautiful. A poignant expression of creativity thriving amidst all the adversity.

Large numbers of tears suppressed, when I walked away, feeling privileged as hell. This really was the weekend for crying – during the marches, when hearing the speeches, when seeing the homeless scurry, regardless of what they left behind, to quell their hunger.

The skies agreed, ready to let the drops fall. In large numbers.

The rest of the week should provide something less political, more uplifting, wouldn’t you agree? What caught my eye, then, was a history of our relationship to horses. How could you not be cheered by a book that “is not the Pony Club Manual or a trot through the more familiar sights of equestrian art history; it’s Kafka, Aby Warburg, Tolstoy, psychoanalytic theory, Nietzsche and bleak monochrome photos in the style of Sebald. This epic enterprise is relieved by Raulff’s spare, vivid style and deep learning. He is as comfortable analysing the etymology of Pferd and Ross as he is discussing the Chicago School, Clint Eastwood and the Amazons, and he rarely loses his audience.”

I remember my disdain for all the horse posters on the wall of my girls-only boarding school. (Then again my disdain extended to almost anything and anyone there in that miserable, elitist place, and thus my loathing parkour was just par for the course. Hm, had to think about that one.)

It did not help that my father, in some of our rare outings, took me to the CHIO equestrian competitions in Aachen, something they call the Wimbledon of the horse sporting world. It meant hours of fearing he would keel over with a heart attack so tense would he get with all the jumping horses barely missing the beams. We do come from very excitable stock….

https://www.chioaachen.de/de/programm/

Some years later during months of backpacking through South America, I had multiple occasions to actually sit on a horse; your couldn’t call it riding exactly, but it was certainly thrilling since it got you to places that would otherwise not have been reached.

Here is a review of the book that replaces my strange memories with interesting facts.

Hanging Up Our Spurs

You’ll understand, though, that I prefer to stick to photography of urban horse chimeras while listening to this…..

Last weekend a young friend introduced me to the term natural living skills. They are taught in communities around the country who share the desire to be friendlier to the earth, get away from the consumer-oriented world and reconnect with nature. Some of them remind me (longingly) of the old hippies of yore, some are rather professional as I detected when scouring the web to find out more about them. All of them might have an advantage should war or climate destroy the world as we know it.

If you look at the list of skills that are re-discovered there are the ones familiar by name: blacksmithing, bee keeping, basket weaving, canning, gardening, mushrooming, herbalism etc. Sort of what the pioneers did, with subsequent generations welcoming any and all invention that made life easier, mind you.

Then there are the skills that seem important during disasters as well, namely how to survive in the woods, find food through hunting, fishing and foraging, tanning, cord making etc. Here is a typical list offered in one of the many workshops offered:

http://www.whippoorwillfest.com/workshops.html

I found it particularly interesting, that the courses (see list above) that taught practical skills were intermixed with sessions of a more political nature, for example:

I hate people, the proper use of Razor wire and welcome to Cumberland Falls
This is a lesson in protectionism, an open discussion of use of trails to limited access. Social medias role in the destruction of valued areas in every state. Just who is responsible and how everyone can make a difference with the very first step.

Police Militarization and its Relevance to Appalachia
The militarization of police in the U.S. has gained real recognition as a consequential trend in the last few years. This workshop would review the issues and evidence surrounding this trend, and examine specifically its relevance to the Appalachian region and community.

Designing Urban Ecosystems: Social and Environmental Permaculture for Community Resiliency
Cities are ecosystems! Learn how to make them healthier through landscape design, culture design, community building, and future building. Some topics covered will include the creativity involved in edible landscape design, an overview of permaculture design and principles, varieties of edible and medicinal perennial plants that will grow well in the Whippoorwill climate, some lessons in land use policy and community organizing that should be applicable in various municipalities, and ways you can get involved in your community, your home, and in your own self-care to leave this world a greener, healthier place than you found it. 

Maybe that is why I found myself reacting very differently than when thinking about the far-right survivalists who are really preparing themselves for doomsday scenarios, cached weapons in hand.

Some of the offerings in the natural living skill world are trendier, though, slickly packaged, and clearly not averse to making a buck. Some are turning their skills into resources for reality TV shows and the like.

http://www.truenature.org/earth-living-skills-course2.html

Some are offering 4 year courses to certify you as organic builders, advertising with at least a mention on “how to get rich”, albeit with frugal methods. https://naturallivingschool.com

The majority, though, are clearly drawn to a hands-on, close-to-nature life, in itself a somewhat privileged way of being, given that the majority of people in this country could simply not survive that way or aren’t healthy enough to try.  Which doesn’t mean that people should not try to leave the grid – more power to them!

I am reminded by all this of a novel I read in the early 1990s. A Gift upon the Shore by M.K.Wren is a dystopian tale set on the Oregon coast after some disaster(s) – well, a pandemic, nuclear winter, collapse of civilization, to name a few. The good gals are two women named Hope and Morrow, a poet and a painter – subtlety is not the first thing that comes to mind in this otherwise spellbinding yarn – fighting the bad guys in a fundamentalist Christian group called the Arkites. They threaten our heroines’ golden project: to preserve all important books as a gift to posterity. For the fundamentalists, only one book, the Bible, is allowed. And of course all the while all of them are all barely able to make it on the land. Wren had a point here: sheer survival will not suffice. The accumulated knowledge about art, history, philosophy, handed down to us in written form, should not be wasted.

Photographs are from pioneer museums in Texas and Oregon – worthwhile trip for Portland readers would be Aurora – they have a sweet little museum there.

Perhaps this week we should turn to history – or at least some interesting tidbits that are loosely related to the past.

Luckily, there are always those who fight for the right ways for the past to be remembered. I read with admiration about the Portland woman who insists that the stories of the Oregon Trail are not whitewashed, in the truest sense of the word….

The Long Journey to Reveal the Oregon Trail’s Racist History

The photographs most closely related to the pioneers were taken at the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery in Portland. Established in 1855, it is a beautiful spot in the SE quadrant of the city, with some magnificent trees, lovingly maintained, a peaceful oasis.

Which does not exclude some typical PDX quirkiness, as witnessed this Saturday afternoon. Some folks were doing a dress rehearsal for historical ghost tours to be given at Halloween and were kind enough to pose for a spontaneous group shot when I asked.

Others just practiced their acrobatics, hopefully amusing the dead as much as the living.

The cemetery has old graves scattered throughout, some mausoleums for the well-to-do,

and a section for the Russians who arrived in the last 50 years and who have a very different approach to honoring their departed.

There is a section devoted to firefighters who gave their lives on duty – made me shiver thinking about California, where 1000s of inmate are now fighting the fire, for $1 per hour, many of them female. I have written about them before. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-inmates-fighting-californias-deadly-fires

But back to history: I am still moved by the markers that acknowledge role, not name, in a devoted fashion.

(Your guess is at good as mine)

And here are the details, including the names of the couple who donated the land: the Stephens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Fir_Cemetery

May they all rest in peace, ignoring a world which seems to have abandoned the concept.