The doves are back. Parading in front of my window, giving me stern looks that I have not put out any seed, puffing up when the cold breeze strikes. Next week is supposed to have 76 degrees one day, snow the other. Crazy.
The song sparrows are singing their little heart out, perched on my pear tree, about to blossom.
The wood violets are exploding.
The trillium are in full swing.
Maple and elderberries are stretching to the light.
Bluebells hiding in the shadow.
And importantly, the bleeding hearts are back. Just around the corner, clusters in the woods.
These are wild flowers, Pacific Bleeding Heart (Dicentra Formosa,) not the cultivated ones that you find in English cottage gardens (shown below).
There’s a somewhat timely story as to how the name, Bleeding Heart, got transformed into an insult along the lines of “such a bleeding heart liberal…”
As early as the 14th century, the phrase referred to a sincere emotional outpouring, found in poems by Chaucer, for example (Troylus and Chriseyde):
That nevere of hym she wolde han taken hede, For which hym thoughte he felte his herte blede.
Later, so Merriam-Webster dictionary tells me, the term was associated with religious iconography, referring to the bleeding heart of Christ. It was connected to his teachings and compassion for the poor, sick or struggling.
Leave it to a right-wing American newspaper journalist, Westbrook Pegler, a nasty Senator, Joe McCarthy, and a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, to turn a thought of brotherly love into an insult.
Pegler was a hater. The list was long: Communists, fascist, Jews, liberals. In the context of a new bill before Congress, he coined the term bleeding-heart liberal in 1938. The bill? Aimed to curb lynching.
Pegler argued that lynching was no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” (Ref.) He, by the way, became too right-wing even for the John- Birch -Society, which threw him out eventually.
The term found full attention when picked up by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.” Leave it to Ronald Reagan, then newly elected Governor of California, to make it his own in the 60s: “I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once,” he told Newsweek.
Let’s co-opt the term! I am a proudly caring, compassionate, social-justice oriented bleeding-heart progressive! There! The world needs us.
Oh, and the lynching bill? Finally, passed this March after a century or so. It failed on 200 (!) previous attempts. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which was introduced by Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) in the House and Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate, is named for the 14-year-old Black boy whose brutal torture and murder in Mississippi in 1955 sparked the civil rights movement. The three no votes: Republican Reps. Andrew S. Clyde (Ga.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Chip Roy (Tex.) Glad they were not on the jury during a contemporary lynching victim’s trial, Ahmaud Arbery.
(Sacral) Music is from 18th Century Ukraine today.
“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it’s true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.” – James Baldwin “An interview with James Baldwin” (1961), in Conversations with James Baldwin.
It seemed counterintuitive, no, odd, really, that my first reaction to a piece of gorgeous, intense, riveting music were thoughts about visibility. After all, what we perceive is more likely associated with visual media, film in particular, and yet here I was surrounded by sound, listening to the orchestra dress rehearsal of The Central Park Five, Portland Opera‘s upcoming production.
Left to right: Donovan Singletary as Antron McCray, Bernard Holcomb as Kevin Richardson,Victor Ryan Robertson as Raymond Santana, Aubrey Allicock as Yusef Salaam, Nathan Granner as Kharey/Korey Wise.
Maybe it’s not so odd after all, when you consider that truly good art makes things visible that are otherwise hidden beneath the mere consideration of images or words. Maybe it is the emotional reaction that music in particular can stir up that connects you to what lies invisible under the surface of narratives. This might be particularly true for stories that you intellectually witnessed in your own time, and thus think you have a grasp on, until art opens up a different dimension previously foreclosed, disturbing the peace. That said, the video projections, the lighting and two opera stages on top of each other, echoing separate worlds and power hierarchies, visually helped intensify the emotions.
On top stage: Hannah Ludwig as the Assistant District Attorney, Johnathan McCullough as The Masque (he plays numerous white characters across the opera.)On Bottom stage, left to right: Aubrey Allicock as Yusef Salaam, Nathan Granner as Kharey/Korey Wise, Bernard Holcomb as Kevin Richardson, Donovan Singletary as Antron McCray.
The Pulitzer Prize winning opera composed by Anthony Davis (Libretto by Richard Wesley, conducted by Kazem Abdullah,stage directed by Nataki Garrett) recounts the horrifying 1989 tale of innocent youths (aged 14-16) accused and convicted of beating and raping a woman in New York’s Central Park, after they falsely confessed but then recanted, with no physical evidence connecting them to the crime. The story focusses on the many aspects that led to this outcome, with lasting damage done to the defendants despite the eventual vacating of the verdict, when DNA evidence and the confession by the true perpetrator exonerated them. The case made salient the racial inequities in our criminal justice system. The $40 million settlement with the state of New York did not buy back the time lost and sorrow inflicted on kids (and their families and communities) as young as 14 years of age, spending years incarcerated (the one 16 year-old 13 years in adult prison!) for a crime they did not commit.
For me, the music captured the tension inherent in an adversarial system built into the criminal courts, the racism both structural and individually applied that so often erupts in cases of violence against white women. It also echoed the preconceived assumptions about crime-prone black youth, and the career ramifications for police and DAs as well as aspiring politicians like a former president who involved himself in fashioning public opinion in what turned out to be a stepping stone to an election campaign.
Christian Sanders as Donald Trump
The music conveyed the fear, the paralysis, the disbelief of the victims of procedural malfeasance. For me, it made the legal and social injustice of this case visible at a gut level, allowing us for a short while to walk in the defendants’ shoes.
Others at OregonArtsWatch, who know much more about music than I do, will write about the Portland Opera production in coming weeks. What I want to do today instead, is to make visible, from my perspective as a former lawyer and psychologist, how this is not an isolated case, however brilliantly captured by Davis and the musicians who moved me so. Let’s look at both the myths surrounding false confessions and the general processes that can create them in ways they affect criminal trials every single day.
***
I believe that many of us share deep concerns about our legal system. The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but 20% of the world’s prisoners, a huge number especially when we consider the horrific circumstances that define incarceration (Ref.). In addition, black Americans are incarcerated 5 times the rate of white Americans (Ref.). Blacks constitute roughly 14% of the U.S. population, while in some states they constitute over half of the prison populations. You have to worry about what these numbers mean.
Moreover, there is no question that the legal system routinely makes horrible mistakes, including getting the basic facts wrong, as the Innocence Project has proven with the high numbers of DNA exonerations they have brought about. Specifically, scholars talk about myths, that pervade and erode the legal system. One example includes the so-called sexual assault myth – the idea that the prevalent form of sexual assault involves a stranger leaping out of the darkness. The reality is instead that sexual assaults are vastly more likely from someone you know. Given that the American legal system counts on the common sense of jury members to reach a sensible verdict, we have a problem if some common sense beliefs are mistaken and rely on myths: it can have tragic consequences in the legal system and elsewhere.
Left to right:Elliott Paige as Antron’s Father, Babatunde Akinboboye as Raymond’s Father, Ibidunni Ojikutuas Antron’s Mother, Jazmine Olwalia as Sharonne Salaam.
A different set of myths concerns confession evidence, starting with the widely held belief that false confessions are quite rare. And here the common sense appeal is powerful. After all, why would someone confess to a crime, and invite punishment, for something they didn’t do? As a related myth people assume a false confession would only be produced by someone who is mentally ill or attention-seeking, or someone who has been physically coerced (yelled at, threatened, beaten) by the police. (Ref.)
All texts are photographs of the supertext panels that displayed the words that were sung. Surtitles were written and produced by Ethan Cope Richter.
There is no doubt though that these myths are myths. For example a national database of exoneration cases shows us that 13% of the cases involve confessions we now know to be false (another take by the Innocence Project that relies on DNA evidence only, claims the rate may be as high as 1 in 4.) The numbers get worse, much worse, if we zoom in for a closer look. In the same database, among exonerated juveniles, 36% involved confessions we now know were false, and if you look at the youngest juveniles in this data set (12-15 years old) 57% confessed to a crime they did not commit. These were, of course, the ages of 4 of the Central Park Five. Kids this age are less mature, more impulsive than older ones, they are more gullible, and they don’t always think about long-term consequences.
***
How is it possible that there are so many false confessions? Let’s look at the interrogation process. Police have become remarkably skilled in what scientists call “psychological coercion” (note not physical coercion). This process involves many specific levers, often used in a back and forth combination, but there are three overarching themes. First, no matter how many times the suspect denies the crime, these denials are refused, ignored, or rejected, or even sneered at. The message to the suspect therefore is that not confessing is not an option. To drive this point home, this process can stretch out over two or four or ten hours, leaving the exhausted suspect too tired to resist, and eager to do anything to escape the interrogation room. To up the pressure, police do most of the talking, set the agenda for topics of conversation, decide when breaks are happening and in classic settings – small room, no windows, no clock, no distractions, uncomfortable chair – they keep at it to maximize confrontation.
The second broad theme involves multiple efforts toward minimizing the cost of confessing in the eyes of the suspect. This includes offering the suspect a variety of excuses, “You were drunk, you were under stress, you just ran with the crowd, they asked for it!” and with these excuses the suspect might think s/he is confessing to something that is understandable and not so blameworthy. Often this minimizing is established via presenting a contrast: “We know you are not a terrible person; you’re just a guy who made a mistake.” The police also puff up whatever evidence they have (including utterly false claim about the evidence which they are allowed to make since they are legally allowed to lie in interrogations). The message to the suspect here is that they are likely to be convicted with or without a confession, so that confession costs them nothing.
The third major goal involves a package of strategies that suggest benefits from confessing. Police are not allowed to promise leniency, but they are wonderfully skillful at hinting at leniency along the lines of “How do you think the prosecutor is going to react when she sees that you stonewalled us? And how do you think she would react if you were open and took ownership of what you had done?” Interrogators also suggest psychological benefit from a confession once they have determined the defendant’s allegiances: they lean on religion, if they think you’re religious. They stress the aspects of healing of closure for the assault victim if they think you have some loyalty to the victim. They point at the responsibility towards the community if they believe you have strong links there.
Do these levers work every time? Surely not, but they work often enough that false confessions do happen and that is profoundly troubling because a confession of almost any sort virtually guarantees a conviction.
Johnathan McCullough as The Masque, Hannah Ludwig as the Assistant District Attorney
***
Why do police engage in these tactics? For one, and the data are clear on that, because they do result in factually true confessions a large percentage of the time. But many interrogators also deny the possibility that false ones are happening at all or are happening with regularity, or they are willing to tolerate this error. Secondly, police are explicitly trained to do interrogations in this way with many training programs across the country based on what is called the Reid Technique which instructs in the above-listed application of tools: coercion, situational control, minimizing the cost and maximizing the potential benefits of confessions in their communications to suspects. Even if officers have not had formal training, they learn about these tools from colleagues who had and so continue in this vein.
Police understand that their interrogation techniques are confrontational, often a determined push to confirm their suspicions by alternating carrots and sticks, and even coercive. Police believe, though, that we are all protected by two safeguards. As it turns out, both of the safeguards turn out to be hollow. One safeguard relies on the idea that police can figure out before the interrogation who is guilty and who is not, and therefore they aggressively push for confessions only with presumed guilty suspects. There is, unfortunately, overwhelming evidence, that most police officers when trying to decide who is lying to them and who is not, perform at a level only marginally better than a coin toss. This guarantees that they will use coercive techniques with people that they have wrongly decided are liars.
The other supposed safeguard comes after the interrogation, when police seek further evidence that will corroborate, or perhaps undermine, the confession. Here we run into a problem called confirmation bias, with the essential notion being that, once you have a confession, it biases what other evidence you look for and how you interpret what you encounter. The result? A false confession can invite the collection of further evidence that seems to support it, so that bad evidence leads to more bad evidence.
Babatunde Akinboboye as Matias Reyes, left, Nathan Granner as Kharey/Korey Wise, right.
What can be done about this, especially given how these issues interweave with strong patterns of racial bias? That bias manifests itself in some officers’ willingness to assume a black suspect is likely guilty and proceed accordingly in the interrogation. That bias is also evident in the power dynamic of an interrogation, with a police officer relying on social distribution of power to bully a black youth. There is also a tendency for interrogators (as well as teachers and school administrators) to bear in mind that a white kid is a kid, while failing to make the same crucial adjustments when interacting with a young person of color. Black girls are seen as more adult than white girls at almost all stages of development. Black boys are constantly judged to be older than they are (adultification) and, importantly, the older they seem, the more we consider them culpable. (Ref.) Finally, given the economic inequities in our country, a white suspect is far more likely to have decently paid legal representation compared to the resources available to POC.
Where does this leave us? Here, the importance of art. Narratives and documentaries can inform. Art can move, often in a lasting way. Will it move police officers to change their practices? Perhaps not. Will it shift legislatives votes? Likely not. But we’re at a place in which ordinary citizens can have extraordinary power. In a criminal trial, jury verdicts must be unanimous. (Ironically, this has been true in 48 states for years; it is only recently true in Oregon and Louisiana). On a jury, a single citizen empowered by this production, remembering his or her reaction to the music and the story it conveyed, introduced to reality rather than clinging to myth, can hold firm and may be the stalwart obstacle to decisions resting on false beliefs and leading to catastrophically wrong verdicts. Portland Opera’s choice of a timely and important piece of contemporary music, beautifully staged and performed, might have long lasting consequences and not just providing us with a riveting night at the opera. Art empowering justice
I started with a James Baldwin quote, so let me also end with one:
“Well, if one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goesto the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person—ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” – James Baldwin – No Name in the Street.
————————————————————————–
Portland Opera presents:
The Central Park Five
Composed by Anthony Davis Libretto by Richard Wesley
We were walking along the promenade, kids visiting from L.A., a rare treat. The sky and the light changed rapidly, threatening showers, then sun emerging. Remarking on the brown, muddy water of the Willamette river, I mused about writing about the dangers of cyber war for water treatment centers. “You shouldn’t,” I was told, “it’s too depressing.” Couldn’t help but think of a snarky poem from the 1930s, by one of Germany’s most astute satirists and writers, Erich Kästner. He urged to face the truth and not insist on pretending that the world is all right. I follow, quite obviously, in his footsteps, with the same approach, though not his talent. (Below is the original for my German readers and my attempts at translation which can, of course, not capture the elegance of his rhymes, but I think I got the gist.)
“Und wo bleibt das Positive, Herr Kästner?”
Und immer wieder schickt ihr mir Briefe,
in denen ihr, dick unterstrichen, schreibt:
»Herr Kästner, wo bleibt das Positive?«
Ja, weiß der Teufel, wo das bleibt.
Noch immer räumt ihr dem Guten und Schönen
den leeren Platz überm Sofa ein.
Ihr wollt euch noch immer nicht dran gewöhnen,
gescheit und trotzdem tapfer zu sein.
Ihr braucht schon wieder mal Vaseline,
mit der ihr das trockene Brot beschmiert.
Ihr sagt schon wieder, mit gläubiger Miene:
»Der siebente Himmel wird frisch tapeziert!«
Ihr streut euch Zucker über die Schmerzen
und denkt, unter Zucker verschwänden sie.
Ihr baut schon wieder Balkons vor die Herzen
und nehmt die strampelnde Seele aufs Knie.
Die Spezies Mensch ging aus dem Leime
und mit ihr Haus und Staat und Welt.
Ihr wünscht, daß ich’s hübsch zusammenreime,
und denkt, daß es dann zusammenhält?
Ich will nicht schwindeln. Ich werde nicht schwindeln.
Die Zeit ist schwarz, ich mach euch nichts weis.
Es gibt genug Lieferanten von Windeln.
Und manche liefern zum Selbstkostenpreis.
Habt Sonne in sämtlichen Körperteilen
und wickelt die Sorgen in Seidenpapier!
Doch tut es rasch. Ihr müßt euch beeilen.
Sonst werden die Sorgen größer als ihr.
Die Zeit liegt im Sterben. Bald wird sie begraben.
Im Osten zimmern sie schon den Sarg.
Ihr möchtet gern euren Spaß dran haben …?
Ein Friedhof ist kein Lunapark.
*************************************************
“And Where’s the Positive, Herr Kästner?“
You send me letters, again and again,
with the question, thickly underlined:
"Mr. Kästner, where’s the positive?"
Well, the devil knows where it's at in these times.
You’re still reserving the empty space
above the couch for the good and the bright.
You still deny that, besides being smart,
you need to summon your courage all right.
You retreat, once again, to Vaseline
to pretend there's butter on the stale, old bread.
You insist, yet again, with a trusting mien:
"Upgrades to seventh heaven are right ahead."
You sprinkle sugar on top of your pain
and assume the sugar will make it flee.
You overstretch your wide-open heart
and rock your flailing soul on your knees.
The human species has been falling apart
and with it house and state and world.
You request that I'll fix it with a pretty rhyme
and think that that way the pieces hold?
I don't want to lie. I will not lie.
Times are black, no white-washing can be allowed.
There are others who’ll pamper you happily
and some even do it for free in this crowd.
Invite the sun to all body parts,
and wrap up your worries in tissue paper!
But do it quickly. You have to hurry,
or else the worries get greater and greater.
An era is dying. It will soon be buried.
In the East the casket is fashioned right now.
You'd still like your fun and games in a flurry?
A graveyard is no amusement show.
So what is it about water that makes me invite you to store enough to last for some days for you and your pets, independent of earthquake prep?
Cyber attacks can unfortunately do more than just interrupt water testing. They can actually manipulate things to poison the water. Why should that happen here, you ask? Well, that’s probably the same question pondered by almost any municipality in this country and the you have cases like the one in Oldsmar, Florida, last year. A hacker, using someone else’s stolen credentials, gained control of the operational panels and drove up sodium hydroxide content in the water to poisonous levels. It was caught, fortunately, swiftly enough to prevent lasting damage, but that was a question of luck. (Ref.)
The Biden administration has certainly been on alert for the threats, during normal times associated with cyber criminals or individual actors. They have an active program in the works to heighten security measures. How that plays out if we are – however indirectly – at war or in conflict with more sophisticated and powerful state actors, I have no clue. We are seeing in real time how a population can be cut off from water during a war, as reported from Ukraine.
And yet these worries are a drop in the bucket, compared to the general situation of water scarcity and quality in the world. Here is ICCP’s new report on the ravages half of the world is facing in the light of climate change. I think we can all intuit the overall picture. What I did not know is how few of the suggested adaptation strategies are actually tested for whether they work or not. These strategies are aimed at water hazards (droughts, floods, groundwater depletion, glacier depletion) or water-related direct responses (irrigation, rainwater harvesting and wetlands conservation).
There are more than 1,800 climate change adaptation strategies registered worldwide, yet only 359 had been analyzed for effectiveness. We do not know if most of these strategies actually reduce the impacts of climate change on health, safety and economy. Here is an overview of the types of adaptive measure we are talking about and what we know they might or might not accomplished. A muddy picture.
No white-washing then, even if we wanted to. But before you curse me for drowning you in miserable thoughts at the beginning of the weekend, here is an antidote. A bit of sugar to sprinkle, if you will, after all. The link describes the public hotline where you can dial in to receive a (pre-recorded) pep talk by – Kindergarteners! Call 707-998-8410. My favorite: option #4 – the laughter of 5 year-olds as a cheer-me-up.
A pod village for the houseless, next to the Hawthorne Bridge
Join me on a walk? Take your rubber boots – the Pineapple Express has arrived, an atmospheric river that transports moisture from the tropics to the northern areas of the planet in great masses. In simpler words: it has been pouring.
And this is the foot path …..
I needed to get out yesterday to get away from the news, so many horrors all at once. Nobody able to predict what will happen next, how to approach a situation where the unchecked power over weapons destroys lives, a people, potentially the world as we know it. The reactions in favor of greater militarization in Europe are understandable but go so against the grain of what a nation – Germany – has tried to do for decades in acknowledgement of its history. All of a sudden there are billions available to fill the coffers of the weapons industry, when poverty and houselessness and lack of social services are unabated. Let me hasten to add, I do not have a clue what the right thing is to do, with the stakes so insane. And I do understand that you cannot defend yourself against unlawful, imperialistic military invasion with bare hands.
Much mud carried by the fast stream
The refugee situation is raising ambiguous feelings as well. It is great how hundreds of thousands of fleeing Ukrainians are welcomed in neighboring nations. It is horrifying that people of color have been treated very differently, not just in general (think Polish treatment of Syrian refugees) but in this particular instance – Black and Brown students studying in Ukraine not allowed across the borders, pushed out of trains and busses, humans of a second order. The internet is full of suggestions that Africans make it immediately to Romania which is set for flights to Ghana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
And then there is the situation of the Jews whose fate is so tied to the history of Ukraine, the unspeakable terror against them during WW II, whose Holocaust memorial at Babyn Yar has been bombed by Putin yesterday. Their status as refugees, outside of Israel, has been a double edged sword. Or even within Israel – it is the occupied West Bank that will house the influx of Jewish Ukrainians, complicating things for the Palestinians.
I was thinking back to an essay describing the experiences and difficulties of Eastern European Jews emigrating to Germany in the 1990s when Germany accepted a contingent of Jewish refugees to polish its own image, to signal repentance of past deeds.
I also remembered Hannah Arendt’s words, so applicable to the moment. In the link, her short essay We Refugeesis printed in full after her portrait.
Windfall
But lest we forget, there are also people in Russia whose life will take a devastating turn as we speak, who have few choices for protest or action to change what is decreed from above. Here is a short essay from 2 days ago by a young Russian Jew who is grieving.
And then there is a novel about a survivor of another war in Ukraine, that comforts us with a tale of resilience. Here is an excerpt of Kurkov’s Grey Bees.
Nature on my walk pretended that nothing had happened. Ignored the fact that it was so warm that everything seemed to explode in growth spurts several weeks early. An unstoppable push towards renewal.
A few of the small birds were happily chirping along, including a female ruby crowned kinglet, a miracle to catch with the camera since they move at lightning speed. (Below are Towhee, song sparrows, a female junko, killdeer and the kinglet.)
The geese did their thing, coming and going.
The wild currants joined the chorus of plants in a landscape that defiantly put up some color against the grey sky.
As did the rest of the flowering beauty:
The pussy willows, in different stages of growth, seemed to suggest that tears can be beautiful adornment, and that they will roll off by themselves – well, my mind prone to anthropomorphising suggested that, but I did not complain….
Spring is all about renewal. Renewal is also humanity’s highest good, enshrined in democracies who are willing to take risks, accept the unpredictable, renounce the statism that aristocracies or authoritarian regimes want to enshrine. Renewal is about a livable future, not an oppressive past. It is upon everyone of us to support that project of renewal, within and beyond our borders.
When the rain got too hard I found a shelter, and some earlier visitor had left something behind. At least the kids here can still assume that nothing has happened and engage their fairy worlds. Wish it was true for every child in the world.
In view of the current violence unleashed unto the world, whether here or in Eastern Europe, I want to dedicate today’s poem, A Brief History of Hostility, to the victims: in Portland, and likely soon in Ukraine, in Russia. So many families losing loved ones, so many friends losing their allies, so many communities destroyed by wrath, greed and ambition.
Jamaal May’s poem appeared in “The Big Book of Exit Strategies,” published in 2016. Given its purview of themes of war and slavery, it seems a good choice for Black History month, but also relevant during a week where Europe is on the brink of war.
On Saturday here in Portland marchers had planned a protest to remember Amir Locke and Patrick Kimmons, Black men killed by police. Multiple women, directing traffic in preparation of the peaceful demonstration, were gunned down by a man living nearby, who approached them on the street and called them terrorists, killing June Knightly, a 60-year old woman walking with a cane, having just overcome cancer, and severely wounding the others. In the words of one of the victims:
“We were unarmed traffic safety volunteers who weren’t with any protestors. Four women trying to de-escalate & he unloaded a 45 into us because he didn’t like being asked to leave and stop calling us terrorist c*nts. We were in high vis and dresses. He murdered a disabled woman.”
The shooter was then shot by someone in the crowd, trying to come to the rescue of the victims. The aggressor’s name has not been released by the police while I write this, 48 hours after the event, and the Portland Police has erected a wall of silence other than calling him a home owner (code for White, or linked to castle doctrine) involved in a confrontation with armed protesters, unaffiliated with any political background. All counterfactual, as it turns out. There was no notification if he was arrested while in hospital, and his apartment was searched only after the FBI stepped in, suspecting a hate crime. Roommates, colleagues and family had testified to his links to the Proud Boys and other alt right forces, his frequent threats to shoot up Black Lives Matter folks, and the possibility that he was running unregistered guns. According to the media, virulent anti-semitic and islamophobic threats had been conveyed earlier to police, with no reaction.
(Update: he is now charged with multiple crimes. A GoPro video of the massacre, viewed by the DA, confirmed that he was the attacker. One of his victims is paralyzed from the neck down and in critical condition at OHSU.)
Meanwhile, on February 21, Russian President Putin basically said Ukraine shouldn’t exist. “A steady statehood didn’t occur.” Almost the same words that Stalin said about Poland in 1939.
He also confirmed he will recognise two breakaway Ukrainian regions as independent, a move that Ukrainian politicians see as “dangerous and a declaration of war.” It is certainly a violation of international law, the Minsk agreement. We will know, when you read this, if an invasion of (all of) Ukraine has begun in earnest. As I write this, military columns are entering Donbass.
I am linking back to an older blog here, that described the ebullient musical comedy of the Ukrainian Teatro Pralnia, a group of young musicians who are on my mind today, wondering what their future holds. You can see their 2018 full show at the Kennedy Center here.
The war said let there be peace and there was war.
The people said music and rain evaporating against fire in the brush was a kind of music and so was the beast.
The beast that roared or bleated when brought down was silent when skinned but loud after the skin was pulled taut over wood and the people said music and the thump thump thump said drum. Someone said war drum. The drum said war is coming to meet you in the field. The field said war tastes like copper, said give us some more, said look at the wild flowers our war plants in a grove and grows just for us.
Outside sheets are pulling this way and that.
Fields are smoke, smoke is air.
We wait for fingers to be bent knuckle to knuckle,
the porch overrun with rope and shotgun
but the hounds don’t show. We beat the drum and sing
like there’s nothing outside but rust-colored clay and fields
of wild flowers growing farther than we can walk.
Torches may come like fox paws to steal away what we plant,
but with our bodies bound by the skin, my arc to his curve,
we are stalks that will bend and bend and bend…
fire for heat fire for light fire for casting figures on a dungeon wall
fire for teaching shadows to writhe fire for keeping beasts at bay fire to give them back to the earth
fire for the siege fire to singe fire to roast fire to fuse rubber soles to collapsed crossbeams fire for Gehenna
fire for Dante fire for Fallujah fire for readied aim
fire in the forge that folds steel like a flag fire to curl worms like cigarette ash fire to give them back to the earth
fire for ancient reasons: to call down rain fire to catch it and turn it into steam fire for churches fire for a stockpile of books fire for a bible-black cloak tied to a stake
fire for smoke signals fire to shape gun muzzle and magazine fire to leap from the gut of a furnace fire for Hephaestus fire for pyres’ sake fire licking the toes of a quiet brown man fire for his home fire for her flag fire for this sand, to coax it into glass
fire to cure mirrors fire to cure leeches Fire to compose a nocturne of cinders
fire for the trash cans illuminating streets fire for fuel fire for fields fire for the field hand’s fourth death
fire to make a cross visible for several yards fire from the dragon’s mouth fire for smoking out tangos fire to stoke like rage and fill the sky with human remains fire to give them back to the earth fire to make twine fall from bound wrists fire to mark them all and bubble black any flesh it touches as it frees
They took the light from our eyes. Possessive. Took the moisture from our throats. My arms, my lips, my sternum, sucked dry, and lovers of autumn say, Look, here is beauty. Tallness only made me an obvious target made of off-kilter limbs. I’d fall either way. I should get a to-the-death tattoo or metal ribbon of some sort. War took our prayers like nothing else can, left us dumber than remote drones. Make me a loyal soldier and I’ll make you a lamenting so thick, metallic, so tank-tread-hard.
Now make tomorrow a gate shaped like a man. I can’t promise, when it’s time, I won’t hesitate, cannot say I won’t forget to return in fall and guess the names of the leaves before they change.
The war said bring us your dead and we died. The people said music and bending flower, so we sang ballads
in the aisles of churches and fruit markets. The requiem was everywhere: a comet’s tail disappearing into the atmosphere,
the wide mouths of the bereft men that have sung… On currents of air, seeds were carried as the processional carried us
through the streets of a forgetting city, between the cold iron of gates. The field said soil is rich wherever we fall.
Aren’t graveyards and battlefields our most efficient gardens? Journeys begin there too if the flowers are taken
into account, and shouldn’t we always take the flowers into account? Bring them to us. We’ll come back to you. Peace will come to you
as a rosewood-colored road paver in your grandmother’s town, as a trench scraped into canvas, as a violin bow, a shovel,
an easel, a brushstroke that covers burial mounds in grass. And love, you say, is a constant blade, a trowel that plants
and uproots, and tomorrow will be a tornado, you say. Then war, a sick wind, will come to part the air,
straighten your suit, and place fresh flowers on all our muddy graves.
(Welcome to the new subscribers – come for the nature, stay for the rest!)
Want to come on a hike with me? Follow along, explore the beauty of the Lacamas Heritage Trail!
At least that’s what I thought two weeks ago when we still had night frosts and the mornings were cold, with brilliant light. All long shades, blues and golds, a balm for the eyes.
Some source – PDX Monthly or The Mercury or some such – had recommended the hike as an easy start to hiking season. Located in WA, some 40 minutes north by car, it’s not exactly around the corner but I thought, give it a try!
As the photographs will show you, looking on one side of the trail, there’s plenty of beauty to see. The path winds along a small lake through some old growth forest, including Madrona trees, and occasional glimpses of Mt. Hood on a cloud-free day.
What they don’t tell you: on the other side of the trail, you pass right by a golf course, plenty of condos and then McMansion after McMansion overlooking the water, with fences and signs for private property, both sheltering the property owners and their access to private docks for water sports. I don’t call that a hike. The seven miles (it’s a there and back) really are a stroll through suburbia on steroids, although a nice one if you live close by and want your daily exercise. Which countless people did, so that it was more like a group walking event. Not my idea of a day in nature. (Note, though, the path was so groomed that it is really wheelchair accessible and easy for people with limitations on walking, a big plus.)
The whole concept of what we see and what we don’t, or what we don’t know if the telling is in the fine print or there’s no telling at all, was on my mind this week for a number of reasons.
Take data protection, for example.
In general, we have little protection against the abuse of private data. Just last months, three state A.G.s brought a lawsuit against Google that claims the company deceived customers into giving up sensitive data. While customers were told they could avoid location trackers by choosing the right account setting, their data were nonetheless syphoned through a backdoor. In addition, rules favoring the company are often hidden in legalistic language that no-one bothers to read, or provided with opt-out options for notice and consent that are often obscured enough that the average consumer doesn’t have a clue.
I don’t know if you use a health app, for instance, one of those things that track fitness, nutrition, sleep and other health-related metrics. According to a Gallup poll conducted 2 years ago, in the United States about one in five women between the ages of 18 and 49 currently use them. At this point the numbers might even be higher. Some of the most widely used tools are apps that track your menstrual cycle – period trackers like Flo or Clue, which have 50 million and 10 million downloads respectively. Apple has its own cycle tracking for the iPhone and the Apple Watch.
The advantages of these tracking systems are obvious. You can track fertility if you want to get pregnant, you are warned about missed periods, you might discover patterns to be discussed with your doctor, and so on.
What they don’t tell you, though, is that there are huge red flags regarding your privacy. Generally, and this might surprise you, consumer health apps do NOT have to comply with a federal privacy law called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, which specifically covers patient data collected by and shared among doctors, hospitals, labs and health insurers in the U.S. Europe, by the way, is way ahead of the game, they have stricter controls. (Ref.)
Many of these apps tell you, indeed, promise you, that your personal data will be protected. Yet the Federal Trade Commission has revealed how many of the data collected by these firms are nonetheless illegally shared with third parties. Once received by Facebook or Google, these data are used to send specifically targeted ads to you. Pregnant? Buy maternity clothes! Oily skin around your period? Buy this pimple cream!
Ok, maybe being showered with cringe-inducing ads is the price you’re willing to pay for having the practical advantages of health apps. What about this, though? In 2019 the state of Missouri monitored the Planned Parenthood health apps, looking at women’s menstrual cycle to identify those who had (failed) abortions. In a world of changing laws, data might very well be used for surveillance of criminalized behavior. Reproductive surveillance is theoretically and practically as possible as contact tracing or any other set of data used by agencies that you never dreamt would get their hands on your information.
And just yesterday we learned, that women’s most personal data, their DNA, collected to help solve a case when they were the victim of a rape crime, has been used, without any information or permission, to identify them if there is suspicion that they themselves were involved in a crime at some point.
San Francisco’s DA Chesa Boudin made it clear that if DNA from a rape kit was used without consent for purposes other than investigating the underlying rape case, it may be a violation of constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as well as California’s Victims’ Bill of Rights. As of now, nobody has a clue how often and how long this has been going on.
Rape is one of the most underreported crimes of all. Women are hesitant to come forward for numerous, justified reasons, shame, vile treatment in trials, dreaded accusations of being a liar if the defendant is not convicted, among them. If you add to that the possibility that the preservation of your DNA opens you to arrest in an unrelated situation, it functions as a huge deterrent to reporting and cooperating with law enforcement.
It really is no longer just about what they don’t tell you, or in such small print that it is easily overlooked. We have to decide, fully aware that data might be illegally distributed or analyzed, if we really want to share them at all. Reverse from a what they don’t tell you to a determined: What I won’t tell you!
Music today are the energizing four seasons by Piazzolla – getting ready for spring hikes on this end!
Now even the snow has grown sad – Let overwhelmed reason go, And let’s smoke our cigarettes through the air-vent, Let’s at least set the smoke free. A sparrow flies up – And looks at us with a searching eye: ‘Share your crust with me!’ And in honourable fashion you share it with him. The sparrows – they know Who to ask for bread. Even though there’s a double grille on the windows – And only a crumb can get through. What do they care Whether you were on trial or not? If you’ve fed them, you’re OK. The real trial lies ahead. You can’t entice a sparrow – Kindness and talents are no use. He won’t knock At the urban double-glazing. To understand birds You have to be a convict. And if you share your bread, It means your time is done.
Translated by David McDuff
It was one of those weeks where I seriously wondered if I should throw some crockery through a window or not leave bed ever again. Didn’t know whether to scream or to cry. I can only acknowledge helplessness in this never ending cycle of bad news or anxiety-inducing ventures into a seriously restricted world. The way we process death from Covid – or refuse to – by thinking of the thousands of daily victims as poor or POC (if you are a Trumpist) and thus not counting, or unvaccinated (if you are not a Trumpist) and thus somehow deserving, was just one of the things that had me upset.
My usual distraction, filling my eyes and brain with images of nature, did not exactly work out either. Having driven for over 40 minutes to the spot where birds of all kinds are usually guaranteed, I found none, well, just a few ducks and geese. It was as if all, in view of the ominous skies, had decided to leave or hide, exactly the hint I did NOT need. No hawks, no herons, no raptors of any kind, no shorebirds, zip.
Except a few sparrows, immature gold-crowned ones, I believe, but what do I know. Which led to locating the poem by Russian dissident Irina Ratushinskaya, imprisoned for years in a hard labor camp South East of Moscow, until she was released early for strategic reasons to affect the Reykjavik summit between then US president Ronald Reagan and then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Ratushinskaya, trained in physics and mathematics, had signed appeals and demonstrated for the exiled Sakharov in 1981, and was again arrested in 1982, tried in 1983 and punished with a severe seven-year labor camp and subsequent five-year internal displacement sentence. It was assumed that the persistent Christian voice in her ever more prominent poetry led to the harshness of the sanctions. After her release she joined her husband in exile in England, and later spent two yeas as poet in residence at NorthWestern University. Eventually, with Russia now led by Yeltsin, they returned to Moscow to raise their sons there. She died of cancer in her early 60s in 2017.
The poet came to mind not just because of her sparrow poem; she wrote a goose-bump-producing book on prison conditions and interactions with other political dissidents and comrades, Grey Is the Colour of Hope (1988.) That was in the 1980s. Now we have again a situation where famous people like opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny are imprisoned (and as of Monday put on the terrorist list,) but also where an increasing number of opposition allies, rights activists and independent journalist have to choose between potential prison and exile (if they are still lucky enough to choose at all.)
And if you are still rolling your eyes over the likes of Newt Gingrich in this country threatening the members of the January 6th commission with jail time if – or when – the GOP wins the midterms, I’d advise to look at what is happening in plain sight. Independently of what the committee has – or has NOT – accomplished so far (overview here) there are real-time attacks on its members or people who favored an investigation. The Virgina attorney general, for example, just fired Tim Heaphy, University of Virginia’s counsel and member of the committee, from his post. In Texas, U.S. Rep. Van Taylor, R-Plano, is facing an unexpected number of powerful primary challenger angry over his simple vote to investigate the insurrection. I could go on.
I would not dismiss the idea of jailing opponents as a, if not plausible, at least possible fact of life under new management in 2024. After all, we have history as a guide. Which brings me back to throwing things or crawling under the covers for good. Or maybe I, too, should jump into a puddle. Which shall it be?
Alternatively, I might just run to the hills. Here are Scottish composer Sally Beamish’ Hill Stanzas. She has also set some of Ratushinkaya’s words to music, but I could not find those pieces.
A young German historian, Annika Brockschmidt, recently published a book about America’sHoly Warriors(so far available in German only as Amerikas Gotteskrieger,) detailing the evolution of Trumpism, the general turn to an authoritarian, evangelical, cult-like movement within the GOP and the resulting danger to democracy. It met with acclaim, moved up the ranks in bestseller lists, until last week a sudden shitstorm unfolded, led by Politico’s chief Europe correspondent and echoed by representatives from the right-wing German press. She had not visited America! She had not interviewed Republicans in person! She was just echoing propaganda from leftwing US sources! Independent of the fact that the pandemic made travel impossible, the criticism conveniently overlooked that the contents were not claims by an investigative journalist (although she sure has an incredible breadth of source information as well as journalistic experience) but source analyses by a trained historian. The book, by the way, is smart, concise and perfectly reflective of what we here in the U.S. are experiencing.
I am bringing this up partly because I have been wrestling with the fact that my current reviews of visual artists are confined to a virtual experience of their art, or reading about their art. I am forced to look at their work on-line, if that is even possible. I can describe none of the emotional reactions that come with a real-life encounter, in situ, or thoughts that are spontaneously elicited when you meet face to face with something extraordinary. Maybe that is why universally available poetry has taken over so much of the recent musings. Does that mean I cannot, for now, review visual art? No. Just like it was for Brockschmidt, I still have access to the ideas, the concepts and insights that drive visual artists to their creations and can describe how those affect me or what they imply for the likely standing of the work.
Today, then, I want to introduce the ideas of a gifted young Palestinian artist, Jumana Manna, a film maker and sculptor, who was born in the U.S., grew up in Israel, and now spends her time between Berlin and Jerusalem. She recently received one of Germany’s more coveted awards for up and coming young artists, the bi-annual Max Pechstein Prize. It is the latest in a string of accomplishments that include stints at the 2017 Venice Biennale, and solo shows in major European and American institutions.
Let me trace the evolution of Manna’s ideas that have clearly marked her thinking for much of her career. As always, I am impressed when someone is able to have a continuous body of work that pursues different aspects of a general question.
Or questions. Who gets to decide what gets preserved when power hierarchies determine access and interpretation in situations defined by conflict? Who gets to determine how memories are shaped and transmitted? Who gets to choose what artifacts or living organisms get preserved or extinguished? Who gets to fix a value hierarchy that often serves indirectly political purposes? Manna looks at these question in the domains of botanical and agricultural preservation and opens the door to new ways of thinking about everything from the way religious botanists shaped the description and preservation of a region’s flora, to the insidious side effects of the Green Revolution in Middle Eastern countries torn by war, to Israeli laws and punishments imposed on foragers for traditional Palestinian foods.
An early body of work, Post Herbarium, looked at the American missionary, botanist and surgeon George E. Post (1838–1909) who in the late 19th century traveled to the Levant to collect botanical specimens. He believed they would be a key to understanding Christian theology. A depiction of the inherent tension between biblical beliefs and assumed scientific rationality was focal to Manna’s installations that used information gathered at the Post Herbarium at the American University of Beirut, where the specimens collected in Syria, Palestine and Sinai are archived.
Next came the film Wild Relatives (2017). (The link to Manna’s website includes a short trailer. The whole thing can be watched on True Story, but needs subscription.) The film is a marvel. It follows the journey of seeds between Syria, Lebanon and Norway, seeds collected and crossbred by scientists at local seed banks, then lost due to war, recouped from the Global Seed Deposit in Svalbarg and eventually sent back there again. (I had introduced that Seed Bank in the blog in 2017, when melting permafrost frost threatened it with flooding. Here is a more recent description of their work. )
I cannot begin to describe how the dry and often horrifying facts are told in lyrical fashion and with a sensitivity to human suffering that makes you cling to the story while absorbing scientific detail. I can, however, describe what we learn from the film. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, known as ICARDA, a center that focuses on seed collection, cultivation and research, was moved from Lebanon (during that war) to Syria, back to Lebanon (during this war.) Scientists were lucky to escape Aleppo and much of their stock was lost. They requested their original seeds back from the Svalbard Seed Bank which had housed earlier deposits. Refugees from Syria are now working the fields in Lebanon to continue the local seed collection, cultivation and cross breeding with wild relatives of the species, and, once established, packages of these seeds are returned to Svalbard for further safe keeping. The film follows the journey and the humans involved in both Lebanon and Norway, their dreams and their nightmares shaped by both science and religion.
A detailed description of ICARDA’s work and struggle can be found here. What the film offers, though, is a question of the impact of Western agricultural practices and developments on the lives of small holding farmers in poor countries. What we know about the Green Revolution, the production of more food due to genetic manipulations that increased yields, is that it was a double edged sword. With increased food security (good), you also had increased use of pesticides, increased agricultural water consumption, increased areas of land needed for efficient farming, driving small holders out of the business (all bad.) Monocultures depleted the soil, and indigenous varieties of crops got extinct (really bad.)
The loss in biodiversity is real – and a problem. In the U.S. alone, 95 percent of cabbage, 91 percent of corn, 94 percent of pea, and 81 percent of tomato varieties were lost between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More importantly, in countries that are more exposed to current assault from climate change, like Middle Eastern countries are regarding droughts, the industry-produced seeds have not adapted to the shift and thus deplete water resources ever more. Seed preservation in vaults, theoretically a good thing, stores genetic material from times past, just like you keep animals in a zoo. The genes, however, do not adapt if they are not exposed to changing environmental conditions, yet it is exactly those adaptations that are needed to feed a world that grows drier and hotter. And hungrier.
The film makes clear that on the one hand questions of scale – who has the means, economically and scientifically, to run preservation projects for humanity’s safe keeping – favor organized institutions. But those who have the means also make the choices about genetic varieties in breeding and are able to monopolize world markets. Small breeders and preservationists who have still access to wild varieties of plant species contribute an enormously valuable part in fighting declining agrobiodiveristy, but they are an endangered species themselves. What will be preserved, what will be developed all rests on who is in power to make decisions that affect much of the world.
Here are some additional considerations how the interaction of climate crisis, monopolized agricultural decision making and urbanization contributed to the revolution turned war in Syria.
Fast forward to 2022 for Manna’s most recent video installation. Here at the West Coast we can currently see her newest work,Foragers, at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA.) The video installation was co-commissioned by BAMPFA, BAK Utrecht, and the Toronto Biennial of Art and filmed primarily in occupied Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem. (Full disclosure: I have not seen Foragers yet, but have been deeply moved by Manna’s essay on the issues exposed by the film – highly recommended reading, an insightful contemplation of many interrelated historical and political topics as well as an autobiographical testament: Where nature ends and settlements begin, translated into German by Fabian Wolff.) The text about the genesis of this work and her own personal experiences is a powerful reminder of what it means to live in occupied territories. Culture and tradition can be drawn into the struggle between opposing forces, and that extends even to what is allowed to be picked and eaten as per centuries-old customs.
In this specific case wild thyme and wild thistle, central to the Palestinian cuisine, known respectively as za’atar and ‘akkoub, were put on a protected species list by the Israelis, even though harvesting actually encourages the growth of these plants year after year. Individuals caught by the Nature Authority are put on trial with significant punishments, all the while many more of these plants are destroyed when the ground is prepared for the construction of new Israeli settlements. Here is a detailed description of the video installation.
If you remember, I have recently written about foraging here in the U.S. and its relationship to slavery and the impact of historical change on the African-American traditions. Traditions and knowledge were cut off with the hardships and legal (or customary) exclusion from nature following emancipation. Proprietary rights of White landowners were harshly enforced, once they had no gain from people’s survival through foraging, a survival that depended on supplementing the meager scraps of food they received on plantations. I have also discussed the effects of the Bonneville Power Act on the destruction of traditional food sources for Pacific Northwest tribes, by destroying fishing sites and generally endangering the salmon runs in order to regulate and increase water needed for aluminum production.
The interplay between nature, its products, competition for resources and power hierarchies are not an isolated phenomenon, but something found throughout history. An artist’s rendering of these complex and often rather dry topics (Seed propagation? Genetic engineering?) can open a space for us to think through the issues. Work done that reflects not just some distant past but the actual situation of growing food, lacking food, monopolizing food seems incredibly timely, given that we can expect food production to suffer in a world hit by pandemics, changing weather patterns and armed conflict. To do all this without wagging fingers, but with grace and inclusivity as Manna’s work does, is quite an achievement.
And I haven’t even talked about her work as a sculptor yet which happened in parallel to her video explorations.
Looking into the endless gray this week, all I wanted was color. The rain hammered on my roof during the nights, with leaf-stuffed gutters overflowing, water gushing by my window. Of course! Drainpipes! The solution to filling my eyes with color and pattern and my brain with delightful memories of prior travels. Thus today’s barrage of photographs, since pipes held my interest for years on end, always with faint plans to use them eventually for abstract montages.
Of course you don’t get away today with just admiring rusting pipes. Too pressing the problem – in Portland and elsewhere – of health issues associated with lead in the water.
The nation, for the most part, knows about Flint, MI and the water troubles they experienced. The crisis there has become synonymous with environmental disaster. Turns out, Portland is worse.
Since the late 1990s, samples have shown Portland exceeding the federal safety threshold for lead 11 times. In 2017, after Portland had once again surpassed that threshold, OHA required the water bureau to build a corrosion control treatment facility, according to Salis’ letter. Water from the Bull Run watershed is naturally corrosive, which can cause lead from copper plumbing and fixtures to leech into people’s homes. By building a facility to make Portland’s water less corrosive, the bureau expects to reduce the amount of lead dissolving from old plumbing into stagnant water. The facility is slated to be completed by April. (Ref.)
Here is the water bureau’s January 2022 response after decades of complaints:
Some of the actions the Water Bureau is taking include:
Treating the drinking water to reduce lead and copper;
Offering free lead-in-water testing to all residential customers and childcare providers;
Increased education and outreach to customers through mailings to multifamily residences and all homes built between 1970 – 1985;
Actively managing drinking water in the distribution system to maintain the effectiveness of corrosion control treatment; And
Proactively partnering with the Oregon Health Authority and Multnomah County Health Department.
I leave it to you to assess the quality of government/management in this city when you consider this problem was known for 30 years now.
In case you’re worried: The water bureau offers free lead-in-water testing to all residential customers and childcare providers. People can contact the LeadLine at leadline.org or 503-988-4000 to receive a free lead-in-water test.
And since we are in a practical mood today, here are 9 gutter fails that are slowly killing your house….only half joking, a beloved neighbor of ours had utterly expensive damage from rain water making its way into the walls and house foundation.
Children are, of course, the ones most at risk. They are often exposed to multiple sources of lead contamination: the water they drink, the dust they inhale from the paint used in older houses or contaminated soil in poorer neighborhoods often build adjacent to industrial sites. Parents who work in certain industries – automotive repair shops for example – can inadvertently bring lead particles home on their clothing. Kids are also surrounded by toys that expose them to lead:
“Lead softens the plastic and makes it more flexible so that it can go back to its original shape. It may also be used in plastic toys to stabilize molecules from heat. Lead dust can be formed when plastic is exposed to sunlight, air, and detergents that break down the chemical bond between the lead and plastics.” The CDC recommends to keep plastic toys away from young children who put their hands in their mouths after or during play.
Lead poisoning has serious consequences, developmental delay and learning difficulties included. Here is a link to the Mayo Clinic site that describes what to be on the look-out for symptoms.
And if all this is not enough justification to dig into my drainpipe archives, then maybe this is: Drainpipes are having a moment after homophobic Politician arrested at Gay Sex Party. (A right-wing Hungarian politician tried to avoid being arrested at a party in Belgium during lockdown by climbing out of the windows and down a drain pipe.) Everything that puts shade on the ruling Fidesz party is welcome….. (a rival lawmaker in Hungarian parliament, Zoltán Varga, reportedly brought a drainpipe to the floor of the legislature to use as a prop in a recent speech railing against the ruling Fidesz party’s hypocrisy.)
And here is a piece of music that captures sounds of rain and multiple rhythms when it runs, or dips or plops or gushes down the pipes…beautiful composition by John Luther Adams (2009.)
Let’s end with Ford Maddox Ford. (The entire wonderfully snarky poem can be read here.)
In the Little Old Market-Place
(To the memory of A. V.)
It rains, it rains, From gutters and drains And gargoyles and gables: It drips from the tables That tell us the tolls upon grains, Oxen, asses, sheep, turkeys and fowls Set into the rain-soaked wall Of the old Town Hall.
Here’s to the next 8 days that are supposed to be entirely dry!
