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Politics

Switching Lanes

If you google Wilfrid Voynich, Wikipedia lists his professions as: Revolutionary; Antique Book Seller. How’s that for an interesting shift in live(s)?  If you read up on him, he was switching lanes many, many times in his life, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes forced, in politics, relationships, (pre)occupations and more.

Voynich, Voynich you mutter, where do I know that name from? Most likely in connection with the famous  medieval manuscript that to this day has never been deciphered – a vellum codex filled with an unknown language, drawings of scientific matters, and all kinds of other riddles now residing at Yale. The articles below provide you, in turn, with the newest insights about the manuscript and a short history of Voynich’s life.

Regarding the former, I simply adore the idea that it was after all a hoax perpetrated by some person in the 14oos (carbon dating proved that the codex was indeed generated at that time) trying to make a quick gold ducat from some gullible aristocrat. The smartest cryptographers of our century have not been able to break the code, and the drawings do not concur with any realistic botanicals of our world. It sure fooled many, seemingly continues to fool, for a long time.

Secret Knowledge—or a Hoax?

Regarding the latter, the life of this Polish Leftie, it was one hell of a ride and certainly he’d be on my list of people to take to a deserted island.  (As, for that matter, would be his wife Ethel Boole Voynich, an amazing character in her own right, allied with Karl Marx’ offspring, supporter of revolutionary causes, novelist – here is a video of her on her 95th birthday  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYoxNOJ5fwk in 1959.) Check her out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traversing the Globe….

Just think of a life like this:

http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesEurope/EasternPoland_Voynich01.htm

Short summary : Voynich was born in 1864 to a Polish family in Lithuania. While a student at the University of Moscow in 1884 graduating in chemistry, he joined the Polish nationalist movement. A year later, he was arrested and accused of engaging in revolutionary activity. He spent 18 months jailed in the Warsaw Citadel and was sentenced without trial to five years exile in Siberia. There he acquired a working knowledge of some 18 languages (!)  – and here I was proud that I have working knowledge of 4…..

He escaped into Mongolia in 1890, made his way through China and eventually reached Hamburg, Germany, boarding a ship to England.

He joined a circle of political exiles in London and worked for a period translating and publishing revolutionary propaganda for distribution in Russia; he abruptly stopped when his political mentor accidentally died; on recommendation of someone from the British museum who knew about his language skills, he opened a bookshop  in London and quickly gained a reputation as a resourceful and knowledgeable dealer. Unclear where his starting capital came from, although he has been rumored to be allied with wealthy female admirers. In any case, he discovered several astounding books, the Voynich manuscript included, and was convinced until his death that we would crack the code to figure out the black magic contained in it.

The flexibility, the stamina, the determination to survive, the smarts and the ability to adapt all truly impress me.

Please don’t touch. ART!

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Hiking

Yesterday it was all about marching. Today it’s going to be about hiking.  Alas, not the real thing, given that trails are muddy streams and/or blocked by landslides wherever you look in this extraordinarily wet state this spring.

Instead, it is about what a Black woman experienced when hiking the Appalachian Trail last year. A young friend sent me the link in response to my “profiles in courage” some weeks back.  The article is long, revealing worlds most of us simply never encounter much less understand, heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Do yourself a favor and read it through to the glorious end. I felt that if only an iota of the gleaned knowledge sticks in my memory and helps me act differently in this world, there might be progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.outsideonline.com/2170266/solo-hiking-appalachian-trail-queer-black-woman

Photographs are of young people of my acquaintance. I experience them as quite resilient right now and try to imagine that that carries over into their young adulthood – I even have the occasional fantasy that things might have improved by the time they hit their twenties. Probably groundless optimism, or wishful thinking or both. I so want them to be not harmed permanently  by racism.  It almost hurts how much I want that.

 

 

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Marching

On Saturday I took part in the March for Science here in PDX, one of 600 sister marches across the country and, for that matter, the world. Tens of thousands of people raised their voices in favor of supporting science and in protest of undermining it for nefarious goals.

The discussion about scientists becoming advocates has been around for a long time. Below is the source and an excerpt of an article that brings some of the arguments to the point: let’s not upset the applecart, so we don’t lose our already endangered funding….

(http://theconversation.com/should-scientists-engage-in-activism-72234)

In October, a remarkable editorial appeared in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The essay, by University of California, Berkeley engineering professor and Water Center Director David Sedlak, ES&T’s editor-in-chief, expressed concern that some of his colleagues in the field had crossed the “imaginary line” between scientist and advocate.

“Speaking out against a corrupt or incompetent system may be the product of a culture where idealism, personal responsibility, and Hollywood’s dramatic sensibilities conspire to create a narrative about the noble individual fighting injustice,” Sedlak wrote.

By becoming “allies of a particular cause, no matter how just, we jeopardize the social contract that underpins the tradition of financial support for basic research.” In other words, don’t cross Congress – which many scientists already view as hostile to their profession – and risk retaliation in the form of budget cuts. That’s no small pie, either. Through its oversight of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Energy and other agencies and programs, Congress holds the strings to a research purse worth nearly US$70 billion a year.

I am, of course, a firm believer that social contracts need to be re-negotiated if they don’t work for the social good. And it is more than short-sighted to think that budget cuts won’t happen anyhow, even if we are on our “best behavior.” Below are two more articles that provide informative summaries of the arguments used for or against our role as “neutral” bystanders. But the ultimate advice comes from someone who was smarter than the rest of us combined:

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.     -Albert Einstein

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/science-march/

https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2017/0421/March-for-Science-Can-science-and-political-activism-coexist

Photographs captured numerous signs, several of them ad hominem against Trump&Cronies, some funny, some memorable. The age of participants ranged from 3 month to 90+ years, which was encouraging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this one was carried by a 6 or so year-old who was probably told: write down what you care about….. 

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Seeking the Light

On a Friday in spring what better than branching out – we had jokes at the beginning of the week, might as well end the week with a(n imitation) Dr. Seuss tale.  Uplifting it shall be, just as the branches lift themselves into the light.  Happy spring, everyone!

 

To be read in the Dr. Seuss cadence!

 

In a land where the states are united, they claim,
In a sky-scraping tower adorned with his name,
Lived a terrible, horrible, devious chump,
The bright orange miscreant known as the Trump.

This Trump he was mean, such a mean little man,
With the tiniest heart and two tinier hands,
And a thin set of lips etched in permanent curl,
And a sneer and a scowl and contempt for the world.

He looked down from his perch, and he grinned ear to ear,
And he thought, “I could steal the election this year!
It’d be rather simple, it’s so easily won,
I’ll just make them believe that their best days are done!
Yes, I’ll make them believe that it’s all gone to Hell,
And I’ll be the Messiah, and their souls they will sell.

And I’ll use lots of words disconnected from truth,
But I’ll say them with style, so they won’t ask for proof.
I’ll toss out vague platitudes, phrases, and such.
They’re so used to fake news that it won’t matter much!
They won’t question the how, the what, why, or when,
I will make their America great once again!”

The Trump told them to fear, they should fear he would say,
“They’ve all come for your jobs, they’ll all take them away.
You should fear every Muslim and Mexican too,
Every brown, black, and tan one, everyone who votes blue.”

And he fooled all the Christians, he fooled them indeed,
He just trotted out Jesus, that’s all Jesus-folk need.
And celebrity preachers, they all crowned him as king,
Tripping over themselves just to kiss the Trump’s ring.

And he spoke only lies, just as if they were true,
Until they believed that the lies were true too.
He repeated and Tweeted, and he blustered and spit,
And he misled and fibbed—and he just made up shit.

And the media laughed, but they printed each line,
Thinking “He’ll never win, in the end we’ll be fine.”
So they chased every headline, bold-typed every claim,
‘Till the fake news and real news, they looked just the same.

And the scared folks who listened, they devoured each word,
Yes, they ate it all up, every word that they heard,
Fearing their status was under attack,
Trusting the Trump to take their America back.
From the gays and from ISIS, he’d take it all back,
Take it back from the Democrats, fat cats, and blacks.
So hook, line, and sinker they all took the bait,
All of his lies about making America great.

Now the Pant-suited One she was smart and prepared,
She was brilliant and steady, but none of them cared.
They cared not to see all the work that she’d done,
Or the fact that the Trump had not yet done Thing One.
They could only shout “Emails!”, yes “Emails!” they’d shout,
Because Fox News had told them—and Fox News had clout.
And the Pant-suited One, she was slandered no end,
And lies became truths she could never defend.
And the Trump watched it all go according to plan—
A strong woman eclipsed by an insecure man.

And November the 8th arrived, finally it came,
Like a slow-moving storm, but it came just the same.
And Tuesday became Wednesday, as those days will do,
And the night turned to morning, and the nightmare came true,
With millions of non-voters still in their beds,
Yes, the Trump, he had done it, just like he had said.

And the Trumpers they trumped, how they trumped when he won,
All the racists and bigots, deplorable ones,
They crawled out from the woodwork, came out to raise Hell,
They came out to be hateful and hurtful as well.
With slurs and with road signs, with spray paint and Tweets,
With death threats to neighbors and taunts on the street.
And the grossest of grossness they hurled on their peers,
While the Trump, he said zilch—for the first time in years.

But he Tweeted at Hamilton, he Tweeted the Times,
And he trolled Alec Baldwin a few hundred times,
And he pouted a pout like a petulant kid,
Thinking this is what Presidents actually did,
Thinking he could still be a perpetual jerk,
Terrified to learn he had to actually work,
Work for every American, not just for a few,
Not just for the white ones—there was much more to do.
He now worked for the Muslims and Mexicans too,
For the brown, black, and tan ones, and the ones who vote blue.
They were all now his bosses, now they all had a say,
And those nasty pant-suited ones were still here to stay.

And the Trump, he soon realized that he didn’t win,

He had gotten the prize—and the prize now had him.

And it turned out the Trump was a little too late,
For America was already more than quite great,
Not because of the sameness, the opposite’s true,
It’s greatness far more than just red, white, and blue,
It’s straight, gay, and female—it’s Gentile and Jew,
It’s Transgender and Christian and Atheist too.
It’s Asians, Caucasians of all different kinds,
The disabled and abled, the deaf and the blind,
It’s immigrants, Muslims, and brave refugees,
It’s Liberals with bleeding hearts fixed to their sleeves.
And we are all staying, we’re staying right here,
And we’ll be the great bane of the Trump for four years.
And we’ll be twice as loud as the loudness of hate,
Be the greatness that makes our America great.
And the Trump’s loudest boasts, they won’t ever obscure:

Nearly three million more of us—voted for her.

Written by H. Blair, a teacher in Bellevue, WA; edited by R. Green and A.Vizinho

Make America Sane Again.

And here is the last of the Fruehlingslieder…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHmzzu4FAnM

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Lying Trees?

On a spring Wednesday I revel in blossoming trees.

And no, Adorno can’t take the pleasure away from me, hard as he may try.

The excerpt below is from his Minima Moralia (Reflections from the Damaged Life, 1944) written during the horrors of the war. He argues in #5  that it is unacceptable to rejoice or take pleasure in anything lest one forgets the horror around us. A conscious gaze has to be directed at the horror at all times.

Doctor, that is kind of you. – Nothing is harmless anymore. The small joys, the expressions of life, which seemed to be exempt from the responsibility of thought, not only have a moment of defiant silliness, of the cold-hearted turning of a blind eye, but immediately enter the service of their most extreme opposite. Even the tree which blooms, lies, the moment that one perceives its bloom without the shadow of horror; even the innocent “How beautiful” becomes an excuse for the ignominy of existence, which is otherwise, and there is no longer any beauty or any consolation, except in the gaze which goes straight to the horror, withstands it, and in the undiminished consciousness of negativity, holds fast to the possibility of that which is better. Mistrust is advisable towards everything which is unselfconscious, casual, towards everything which involves letting go, implying indulgence towards the supremacy of the existent [Existierende]. (The doctor, by the way, refers to a line in Goethe’s Dr. Faust, joining the peasants for Easter celebration.)

 

Well, I am staring often enough at the damages done to the world here and elsewhere, as so many of us do. Let there be moments of unmitigated joy in nature, if only to re-fuel one’s energy and will to fight for that which should be protected! Otherwise we might eventually get so overburdened that we shut down and become full-time privatiers, or we end up so obsessed that there is no longer room for rationality or critical analysis. Neither one a desirable outcome (and speaking of outcome: the Georgia run-off slate for June MUST be supported for Ossof! Man, was he close. Close, but no cigar.)

And then I whistle to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7p0nU0xQsY

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Spring

What do we do during spring here in Oregon?

 

On Monday we tiptoe through the tulips, and ponder which of the below is the best curse to memorize…. courtesy of Aaron Spiegel …

Yiddish Curses for Republican Jews


  • May you sell everything and retire to Florida just as global warming makes it uninhabitable.
  • May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare.
  • May you make a fortune, and lose it all in one of Sheldon Adelson’s casinos.
  • May you live to a ripe old age, and may the only people who come visit you be Mormon missionaries.
  • May your son be elected President, and may you have no idea what you did with his goddamn birth certificate.
  • May your grandchildren baptize you after you’re dead.
  • May your insurance company decide constipation is a pre-existing condition.
  • May you find yourself insisting to a roomful of skeptics that your great-grandmother was “legitimately” raped by Cossacks.
  • May you feast every day on chopped liver with onions, chicken soup with dumplings, baked
  • carp with horseradish, braised meat with vegetable stew, latkes, and may every bite of it be contaminated with E. Coli, because the government gutted the E.P.A.
  • May you have a rare disease and need an operation that only one surgeon in the world, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, is able to perform. And may he be unable to perform it because he doesn’t take your insurance. And may that Nobel Laureate be your son.
  • May the state of Arizona expand their definition of “suspected illegal immigrants” to “anyone who doesn’t hunt.”
  • May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers.
  • And when we are done muttering under our breath we just hum this:
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umw-8J-O14o
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Resilience

Today’s profile in this week on courage is about a man who lost his face. It was literally eaten up by a bacterial infection the day after birth. Worse than the physical assault and the endless reconstructive surgeries it necessitated throughout his life, was the fact that his parents abandoned him on the spot.

He lived to write a book about surviving in the absence of love, a void confirmed by a harrowing meeting with his mother when he seeks her out as an adult. 38 years of the most painful life culminate in encountering a shallow, narcissistic, defensive human (?) being who accuses him of making her feel bad. Howard Shulman, then, is testimony to resilience, a capacity to persist in the face of, in his case, unimaginable difficulties.

http://narrative.ly/as-my-face-disappeared-so-did-my-mother-and-father/?utm_source=Narratively+email+list&utm_campaign=89cbd9ffd2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f944cd8d3b-89cbd9ffd2-66322689

Passover inspired my associations with courage this week; it was a week that saw official US governmental reflections on the holocaust describe it as a something where chemical weapons were not used on “one’s own people,” who had been sent to holocaust centers (known to the rest of us as concentration camps). The decision who is one’s own, and who is not, based on race, orientation, religion and in Shulman’s case mere looks, who deserves abandonment or even death is not something only from the history books. Imagine my joy, then, when a message of inclusivity reached me from North Dakota, headlined: the most radical seder in the history of North Dakota: progeny had created a special seder plate.

“Last night our seder plate included the normal stuff (bitter herbs, boiled egg, lambshank-beet, matzoh) and then:
an orange symbolizing gender equality;
a brick symbolizing stonewall + trans liberation;
a key symbolizing an end to mass incarceration;
olives symbolizing Palestinian liberation;
coffee beans symbolizing modern slavery;
a tomato symbolizing undocumented liberation;
a burning cop car symbolizing burning cop cars;
a packet of yeast symbolizing RISING UP;
and a shell with burned sage acknowledging our host, and acknowledging that this is all stolen land. “
There is hope!

 

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The Fight against Racism

Today I want to celebrate the courage of a woman known to all of us and the determination and ingenuity of a man known to – I daresay – none of us. I am talking about Rosa Parks, whose courage to insist on her bus seat when challenged by a white man gave rise to the civil rights movement. (Coincidentally, another person not giving up his seat made the news yesterday – a doctor was forcibly and violently dragged from his United Airline seat, paid for and entered legally, after United failed to find volunteers to accommodate their own employees’ needs, and did not offer the amount of money needed to persuade fliers to volunteer their seats.  Flying while Chinese has become another source of danger, apparently. But I digress.)

Rosa Park’s house was about to be razed rather than made into a museum – this country has apparently no interest in a memorial to the successful fight of racism, however unfinished. Ryan Mendoza, an artist living in Germany, managed to dismantle it and reconstruct it bit by bit in his Berlin garden, covering the cost of the transatlantic transport himself.  Details of this amazing feat below.

http://www.dw.com/en/why-rosa-parks-house-now-stands-in-berlin/a-38343924

And while we’re at it, here is another example of private initiative and determination to fight racism. Leaves me in a good mood this morning (as long as I don’t read the rest of the news.)

http://www.dw.com/en/children-are-our-future-german-footballer-gerald-asamoah-tackles-racism-at-school/a-37826264

Featured image says: Mobile Tolerance Zone

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Words

Occasionally you read something in public places that gives you pause. That is, if you scan your environment, rather than burying your nose in a book or rushing along…. if you are of the former kind you might have caught the subtle messages displayed in subway trains in NYC and who knows where else….

http://hyperallergic.com/364131/artist-remixes-if-you-see-something-say-something-posters-in-nyc-subway/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=When%20Experimental%20Music%20Resonated%20with%20Abstract%20Art&utm_content=When%20Experimental%20Music%20Resonated%20with%20Abstract%20Art+CID_aa18ac7eba309946f4fd5a724e4566cd&utm_source=HyperallergicNewsletter

Once you exited the trains and walked through the stations you might have encountered this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-poster-halt-action-group-art_us_58c2fcd4e4b054a0ea6a8d94?fd1fcngkj8dcuwhfr&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

You have to be the change you want to see in the world

Clearly people are trying to get a message across to populations they might otherwise not reach. I commend them, given the amount of work that goes in such a project, the risk of legal prosecution and the likelihood of “low return.” If you are glued to the one or two sources of news that match your politics you will not hear what the other side has to say. If you are too exhausted from work and poverty, you might not notice.

Real life is always uncomfortable. It is never easy or thought-free and that’s how it has to be.

And speaking of messaging – here is an interesting bit on how you can try to manipulate language to pursue your goals:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-political-lexicon-of-a-billionaire-populist/2017/03/09/4d4c2686-ff86-11e6-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumplanguage740p%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560a13cc993f

Photographs are of words that caught my roving eye in January. The featured shot says War starts here, as does the resistance.

Will happiness find me?

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2nd Act

 

One of my favorite voices these days is British: George Monbiot writes for the Guardian, when he doesn’t write books. (Regarding the latter I recommend his thrilling read for anyone who loves nature: Feral. 

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/24/feral-searching-for-enchantment-on-the-frontiers-of-rewilding/

For today’s topic, though, I’ll attach 2 of his columns. One is a scathing take-down of neoliberalism, providing an analysis that helped me understand more about where we are now and why. Here is an excerpt:

“It was inevitable that the blazing, insurrectionary confidence of neoliberalism would exert a stronger gravitational pull than the dying star of social democracy……. the result is first disempowerment then disenfranchisement. If the dominant ideology stops governments from changing social outcomes, they can no longer respond to the needs of the electorate. Politics becomes irrelevant to people’s lives; debate is reduced to the jabber of a remote elite. The disenfranchised turn instead to a virulent anti-politics in which facts and arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation. The man who sank Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency was not Donald Trump. It was her husband.”

Here is the whole essay: http://evonomics.com/ruthless-network-super-rich-ideologues-killed-choice-destroyed-peoples-faith-politics/

The other is one of his occasional musings on how effective resistance can happen, a helpful guide for the passive perplexed. http://www.monbiot.com/2017/02/09/all-together-now/

An opera that fits with the theme of money in politics is, of course, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Weill, who wrote the music, and Brecht, who wrote the libretto, parted ways after this collaboration. As someone once said, Weill wanted success while Brecht wanted revolution. Brecht urgently called for resistance to a social order that descended from some kind of feudal capitalism that rots the soul into Nazism. Weill, a plain liberal, wanted to reach a broader spectrum of people with his music; after Mahagonny he never wrote opera again, but rather succumbed to showbiz music. Second act is fun, but the best known song from this opera, which Hitler hated and regularly had interrupted by the brown shirt youth, is Alabama.

Here are some versions:

Lotte Lenya, Weill’s wife, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orDcL0zt34  1930

David Bowie, in his Peter Pan outfit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz1ypTjChcA, 1978

Marianne Faithful, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T59ej_TlXE

And yes, I did not care for the Doors version…..

 

 

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