2025: the Year of the Snake.

Culture
Jan 27, 2025
3 Comments

I went down to Lan Su Chinese Garden last week in anticipation of the Chinese New Year this coming Wednesday. The celebratory red balloons and technicolor floats on the pond were illuminated by a bright sun in a cloudless sky, strange for a late January day in the Pacific North West.

Cherries bloomed like little white stars,

moss gleamed on the tiles,

winter jasmine was fragrant,

camellias dainty,

and the white paper bush stretched into the path.

The Year of the Snake is upon us, one of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs. Each of those is paired with one of five elements – Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, and this year, for the first time since 1965, it is wood linked to the snake.

From what I could glean from various explanations, this bodes well. Wood stands for flexibility (think bamboo) and growth. Combine this with Zodiac snake characteristics of wisdom and strategic, if rigid and sometimes secretive, thinking, you can anticipate adaptability to difficult situations and reaching new heights.

The garden was filled with offerings for family feasts and remembrance. A striking absence of visual snake representations, though, apart from the gift store where rubber toys and metal pins were lying in wait. I wonder why.

Was I too early? Last year they had little dragons hanging all over. A consideration of people’s snake phobias? After all, most frequently snakes are associated with something negative, at least in Western realms, with the Staff of Aesculapius, a serpent-entwined rod held by the Greek god associated with healing and medicine one of the few exceptions I can think of.

I guess visual depictions of wisdom are harder to fashion than those envisioning seduction and cunning, violence and wrath. Searching, I found some neutral sculptures,

some signaling power of protection,

some hinting and human’s control of the beast.

But the memorable sculptures drawing and paintings were geared towards infusing us with terror.

Laocoon and his sons.

The terror contained in snake pits. Like being surrounded by colleagues and friends who have been officially instructed to be snitches. (Federal workers were told by the new administration to name colleagues who work in DEI position or face “adverse consequences.”)

Like living among bounty hunters, new legislation proposed by Mississippi district attorneys. For each successful deportation people help facilitate, they would be paid $1000, funded by the general assembly and administered by the state treasurer.

Surrounded by vigilantes who might just rough you up for the color of your skin.

Serving under those aiming at re-segregation – even without specific instructions by Trump’s DEI initiatives,

“the Air Force has removed training courses with videos of its storied Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Air Force Service Pilots, or WASPs — the female World War II pilots who were vital in ferrying warplanes for the military — to comply with the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.” (Ref.)

As it turns out that decision has been reversed as of this posting, protests howling, but the initial damage was done.

Peter Paul Rubens The Head of Medusa ( Circa 1617-1618.)

I wish I could return to the Fairy Tale world of my childhood where a snake, sacrificed no less, was the key to a hero’s survival. Remember The Brother Grimm’s The White Snake? Young peasant steals king’s privileged, secretive meal and takes a bite of a white snake. All of a sudden he can hear and understand all the animals. Goes on a journey and rescues fish, ants and crow fledglings from certain death (slaughtering his horse, no less, to feed the latter.) Then has to win three challenges to get to marry the princess (awful in her breaking her word and making more and more demands – I never understood why anyone would want to live happily ever after with an amoral person, but what did I know, naive eight year old…) and, of course, the rescued animals come to his aid and he wins the prize. The transformational power of a snake, giving him protection and prosperity, just as the Chinese New Year in 2025 implies.

I take it, from my adult perch now, that the fairy tale stresses that empathy is rewarded, and begins with understanding the other, rather than upholding our ignorance about strangers, deaf to them. Maybe we should just dole out magical white snakes to those eschewing mercy…

Why that has to be facilitated by a theft and consumption of something potentially poisonous – you tell me.

Helpful Advice.

Walk with me, but bring the gloves, on a brilliantly sunny and cold day at the wetlands. Puddles covered with ice, ponds slightly frozen, fallen leaves coated with sparkling crystals putting to shame any jewelry store – display.

My avian friends are warming up in the sun. For every heron at rest, there is an egret flying to the next perch, surveying their realm.

The sky occasionally fills with geese spooked by some raptor, and I wish I could add the sound here of them chattering and honking, a spectacular chorus. Eventually they come to rest, returning to snoozing.

I, on the other hand, have not been snoozing this week, driven by a sentiment probably shared by many of you: What can we do? I have been reading quite a bit, soaking up good advice from trusted sources, and making use of many helpful sites that display what we need to know in straightforward and legible ways.

Much of the advice overlaps: inform yourself, pace yourself, don’t give up in advance, protect the most vulnerable, engage, build and cherish community from the ground up. Two things I found particularly helpful:

Ask yourself what your strengths are: not all of us are able or willing to do public work, or join committees, or have the resources to support causes financially, or get engaged in elective office. We all have something to contribute, however. If you like baking, organize bake sales. Agreed, chocolate chip cookies are not going to defeat fascism, but a community nourished by seeing members contribute in whatever ways they can, will be more resistent and more effective in coming together and taking the necessary steps.
Focus on your interest. You cannot fight on every front. Pick the arenas where you have the most expertise or the most passion, and join efforts there.

In my case, I have a platform with this blog where I can summarize both relevant sources and write about my interpretations of them. I can do much of the reading you don’t have time for, and pick the best pieces with a critical eye on informational value, not necessarily ideology. I am also deeply interested in science and climate crisis, so that is where I will be particularly involved. Note, though, it really is up to everyone – if you are interested in protecting immigrants, DEI-or women’s rights, or fight against racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or newly established prison camps, it matters. There is no hierarchy of what needs to be protected- there is much under attack and requires advocates.

Here are Robert Reich, Dave Troy, and Timothy Snyder with pragmatic advice lists. And here is a helpful conversation between Jen Rubin and Heather Cox Richardson.

Here is a nifty google drive action tracker listing all the Executive Orders and memos proclaimed so far, grouped by targets. That allows you to inform yourself about your area of interest and what is currently affecting the status quo.

***

Given one of my interests, science, here is another bit of news (in more detail in Paul Krugman’s assessment today):

As of now there is a new communications ban from HHS. The gag order includes the publication of scientific information, including reports that are already done, prohibits emergency alerts for pandemic information, or rising health risks, including weekly data on respiratory disease developments.

Meetings and report releases for the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic Resistance are canceled. HHS is searching for DEIA programs and threatening anyone who disguises them. They are asking for people to report colleagues.

NIH study sections are canceled/postponed. These are the sections that approve grant proposals and provide funding for institutional research. This affects more than 300.000 researchers and 2500 institutions. All travel is suspended and conference publications must be approved in advance by a presidential appointee. That affects nearly $50 billion of scientific research.

Pausing public health communications and research means delays in responding to emerging threats, like H5N1. But these measures also have an economic impact. Public health protects more than health—it safeguards our economy. Disruptions in systems can ripple across industries, as we’ve already seen with avian flu and egg prices.

Note that every $1 spent by NIH generates $2.46. For example, in 2023, $47B in NIH spending generated ~$93B. Halting it all will cost us money, create worse health outcome and might motivate all the scientific talent that is now losing their grant funded jobs to go elsewhere. As of now, it is all gone, with health and education directly implicated.

If you click this link, it offers map and you can tap on your state and find out what is affected by the new administration’s directive towards the National Institute for Health (NIH). Here are the OR and CA impacts, respectively.

Before we are getting too discouraged, here is the long read for the weekend that argues the world isn’t as bad as you think. I agree with much of it, but also want to point out that it is psychologically much harder to relinquish a right or protective matter that you already held or is available to you, than experiencing improvements of a state of need. If we know we can protect our children with vaccines or health risk alerts and they are subsequently blocked by political maniacs, it is a huge blow, individually for all the little ones I love and societally for what the future will hold.

Music today dates me since I still saw it live – album by The Band. RIP Garth Hudson, who died this week.

Craving Good News.

Believe it or not, good news still exists! In fact, marvelous news concerning cravings that lead to, or are part of, addiction. I learned about new research that points to the possibility of reducing cravings for alcohol, smoking, food, stimulants and drugs all the way to gambling behavior – everything we associate with potential addiction and often catastrophic health effects, up to reduced life expectancy. Never mind societal disruption due to loss of productivity and increased crime (60% of all crimes are related to drugs or alcohol) to finance addiction.

My cravings need no further explanation….

There is this strange incongruity between the damage done to both individuals and society at large from addiction on the one side, and the lack of treatment(s) available or drug development aiming at fighting addiction, on the other side.

On the damage side of the ledger we have over 100.000 drug overdose deaths a year from addiction, and many, many more when you think about lung cancer from smoking, car accidents from drunk driving and obesity related heart and diabetes deaths that often involve cravings for too much or the wrong food. In fact the number of addiction-related deaths outweigh every other single cause of death. As a country we spend over 1.3 trillion dollars on the opioid crisis alone.

On the research side of the ledger, we have just a 0.5% investment of the pharmaceutical industry in the development of new anti-addiction drugs. Academic research into addiction is getting some support, but academia is not in the business of directly developing drugs, actual medicine that people can take. It seems odd that there is so much willingness to put money into drugs for cancer or diabetes, but not into fighting addiction, when so many more people suffer the consequences from their unquenchable cravings. Why would that be?

The answer is somewhat complicated, with many parts. For one, people all agree that many different causes can start the cravings: poverty, depression, anxiety, genetic susceptibility, traumatic life events. They can all lead to the use of cigarettes, alcohol or stronger drugs. Could there really be a happy pill that deals with all of these different root triggers? Likely not, is the popular assumption.

Secondly, there is still this somewhat puritan assumption that people lack will power and discipline. If they just put their minds to it and work hard, they could overcome the addiction. That is certainly true for some, benefitting from AA programs that foster this approach. But it is not realistic for a lot of people, particularly with synthetic drugs creating ever stronger physiological effects.

Third, don’t we have the war on drugs? Should that not be sufficient effort to curb overdoses for addicts? Well, it hasn’t worked for all of the programs’ existence and it is increasingly clear that you cannot stop drugs that are so small that they can be smuggled without detection no matter what: a single golf ball holds 8000 doses of fentanyl. You read that right. A sesame seed-sized dose of fentanyl will kill you. Also: don’t we have addiction treatments for users of hard drugs? Methadone, for example, and naloxone? The problem with methadone is the fact that it is hard to obtain and expensive, needs to be taken regularly at a particular site under observation, difficult to do if you are poor, have no transportation, can’t get off work. It also only works against the cravings while you are on it, and has terrible side effects.

Fourth, the pharma industry has been very reluctant to get engaged in addiction drug development for a number of reasons, not the least of it a worry about their reputation. Ever since it became clear that part of the industry created addiction with their pain medications, others in the industry do not want to seem like profiting off of addiction. More importantly, though, it is hard to run clinical trials with a population (of people living with addiction) that is unstable, prone to high drop-out rates and high suicide rates that could potentially (if falsely) be ascribed to the test drugs. It is also the case that the FDA has stringent criteria for green lighting new drugs which include demands for erasing a particular addiction completely (abstinence) rather than accepting modified behavior (less drinking, for example.)

All this against the backdrop of the fact that scientists have chanced on a weight loss drug’s craving-reducing effects, a drug that was developed to help with obesity and diabetes. You have by now heard of the brand Ozempic (Semiglutide) or Wegovy, which run under the tag of GLP-1 medications. People who were prescribed these drugs not only lost weight. They also experienced reduced cravings for other substances than food, and when researchers looked, for example, at a group of veterans who had been taking the drug and a comparison group that had not, the health differentials and life expectancy statistics were stunning. It reduced the rate of death by overdose by over 50% alone.

Importantly, the drug has almost no side effects, and a weekly injection works like a vaccine against cravings – of all kinds. So before you hit rock bottom or get sucked into the full cycle of addiction, this could be an intervention that would reduce your risk manifold.

By next year, it will reach generic status and can be sold internationally, helping hundreds of millions of people. People in the U.S. have become aware of the benefits of this drug to the point where they lie about their weight just to get hands on it, not for weight loss, but for curbing cravings that make their life miserable, given how much mental energy is spent (or wasted, more likely) in fighting substance abuse. Just think of all the lung cancer avoided if you quit smoking. Or the liver diseases disappearing if you can enjoy alcohol only in moderation. Or the family closeness restored when people do not turn their backs at members who are addicts, kids no longer losing their parents with alarming frequency to alcoholism or ODs.

The challenge is to find new molecules that target cravings specifically, and maintain the incidental benefits of the modern weight loss drugs: reducing inflammation of the brain and combating depression and anxiety. Approval policies will have to be adapted to the fact that we are talking about behavior modulation here, not a complete disappearance of consumption. People at the Center for Addiction Science, Policy, and Research (CASPR) are pursuing this project with palpable urgency. If you go to their website, you can see a cool summary of the main points promoting and challenging this project, in more detail.

There is even the suggestion that GLP-1 s can interfere with the development of Alzheimer’s Disease. Now there is good news. Says the person for whom losing her brain is one of the scariest scenarios, ever.

Music today is titled “On an overgrown Path” and “In the Mists”- two beautiful cycles of piano pieces by Leos Janáček that bring light into this week’s darkness, since there was not much good news overall with the inauguration of the coalition of creeps.

Bakery in Mexico City. Those were real cakes!

The Art of Selling Lies

Art, Politics
Jan 20, 2025
0 Comments

Someone once called propaganda the art of selling lies. It’s a catchy summary but obscures the extent to which communication can be used to influence public opinion. Sure, our beliefs can be manipulated with lies, but also with truths, half-truth, loaded language or simple omission of facts. Propaganda seeks to influence us, persuade us, and often drags us into emotional rather than rational reactions.

Now why would I want to muse about propaganda on 1/20/2025, when we should be celebrating Martin Luther King and the lives of Black Americans like Thurgood Marshall, Booker T Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Travon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Kendrick Johnson, George Floyd Emmett, Freddy Gray, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery? Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Propaganda is, at its best, indeed an art, but it uses art as well. You may remember my recent writings about propaganda art which blossomed in the beginning of the 20th century before WW I and then surged to power in Russia and Germany in the years to come. The mass production capabilities of printing posters and the technical advances in the movie industry made it possible to reach millions of people.

Art On the Road: Imagined Fronts – The Great War and Global Media at LACMA

Of course, visual propaganda had been around for centuries before that, with roughly two messages, still in action today:

“Be part of the struggle! Belong to those fighting for a better future! Join!”

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)

-or-

“Resistance is futile! Revolt and you’ll get crushed! Withdraw!”

Two Assyrian soldiers forcing Babylonian captive to grind bones of his family, 7th – 6th c. BCE. From Nineveh palace.

The topic called me again when I came across an enticing painting last week. It was posted on social media as Paul Klee’s An Allegory of Propaganda from 1939, obviously titled about propaganda, not propaganda itself. I was not familiar with it, and puzzled about the imagery in the context of the title. Ok, I thought, what can I make of it? (Screenshot of text and image below.)

Oranges and yellow dominate in a warm color scheme, a golden era upon us, preying on our need for hope? The person’s face looks rather androgynous, but is dressed and bejeweled like a woman. (“Propaganda” was actually a term for the most male of concepts: the name for a congregation of cardinals originally, established in 1622, charged with the management of missions. But in German, the word is female – perhaps because of the stereotypes of seduction and manipulative lying associated with the gender. Just speculating.) She holds a flower, often a symbol of magic (providing mystical powers in fairy tales). Or a symbol of innocence to be taken, the veritable deflowering. The woman’s dress is strangely configured. My first association was court jester costume shapes (they are hired to tell lies, amuse, distract, but ensure allegiance to the king.) Then I thought it could be a hint at rags, in German “Lumpen,” which immediately gave rise to the idea of Lumpenproletariat. The term, coined by Marx, can be roughly translated as the mob, a class of “outcast, degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers.” (Ref.) Well, mob and propaganda make a good pairing, as recipients of same, or, racketeers and propaganda, as seen in full view at the time of this writing.

OOPS.

Started to look at the date on the canvas. 1906, not 1939. Checked the title of the work on museum sites. Klee’s Allegory of Propaganda turns out to be an altogether different painting, created the year before he died, namely this:

Paul Klee An Allegory of Propaganda or Voice from the Ether, and you will eat your fill! (1939.)

(Some serious sleuthing revealed the 1906 painting as Klee’s Hesitation, which is a far better match between content and visual imagery. )

So here I was fooled into accepting false information, mentally elaborating on it in perfectly sensible ways to make it work (note, how you can make up an interpretative narrative out of thin air as guided by a presumed title…), and only rescued by an ingrained habit to look closely and to check the facts before I disseminate them to a larger circle of readers.

The true portrait’s subject is obviously salivating at the propaganda from the radio, words promising wealth and “Lebensraum,”( eat your fill!), as the Victoria and Albert Museum describes it, having purchased the painting in 1965. Alongside a matchstick that fronts fiery clouds in the back, his hair resembles barbed wire, his saliva could be mistaken for blood, his ears are open to the SS, and his cheeks flare pink in excitement of a new dawn, and a chilly palette overall, despite the prevalence of reds and browns.

***

The voice from the ether spills words, promising or threatening, dependent on the minute of the day and the target of manipulation. One of the most famous and most reproduced “art” works of the Nazi era, in itself propaganda but also about propaganda, was Hermann Otto Hoyer’s In the Beginning was the Word (1937).

Herman Otto Hoyer In the Beginning was the Word, (1937). United States Holocaust Museum, courtesy of U.S. Army Center of Military History.

The painter drew on two sources: the Gospel of John which reads: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Secondly, the word is by Hitler, found in Mein Kampf, “All great, world-shaking events have been brought about, not by written matter, but by the spoken word.”

Hitler, now as the god-like figure, uses oratorial magic that keeps the listeners enthralled. In real life as well, not just an imagined painting.

We will be flooded with words in the coming years from on high, in the form of administration pronouncements, threats, executive orders, legislative proposals, commission summaries, Supreme Court contortions, brown-shirt fashion advice and media reporting that is already bending to the will of the newly empowered (and paying into oligarchic coffers in the meantime).

Flooded with words arriving from social media that spread disinformation far faster, and in higher frequency, than any posters and art reproductions in the history of politics ever could. Words from bots that proliferate like mushrooms, for every blocked one another one popping up in the next dark, moist corner.

Words from a state that, in the wonderfully sarcastic voice of Catherine Rampell, “now owns the memes of production.” Loathsome AI will make it (near) impossible to distinguish the false from the real, creating a sense that reality can no longer be grasped, just as Hannah Arendt predicted in the words I posted at the entry of this blog.

Yet we do not have to surrender to words.

We do not have to buy into propaganda. We do not have to believe every lie, every threat, every hint, every bribe, a tsunami of misinformation to the point where we throw up our hands, withdraw in sheer exhaustion, give up the good fight and quit, walking away fearfully into a steadily hotter sunset.

We still have the power to think and judge, (and check our sources critically, I’ll add, having myself been duped not just once.)

They might win their battle to enshrine inequality and forsake justice, but at least they will have to fight, if we don’t capitulate in advance.

Music on this Martin Luther King Day is chosen to celebrate hope. Let’s be a chorus to Sam Cooke’s “Change is gonna come.”

The Palestinian Exception

I don’t sleep very well since the L.A. fires broke out. I have this recurrent thought of “One moment you sit in the boat, the next you drown in the water,” an obviously inappropriate metaphor regarding the type of catastrophe, but a perfect one capturing the nature of the suddenness of unexpected disaster.

I try to soothe myself to sleep with thoughts like “The kids are safe, they are physically unharmed. They got out alive, they are physically unharmed.” I try to generate images of an armada of kayaks, canoes, motorboats, rafts, paddle boats circling the displaced and coming to their rescue – so, so many people have reached out, offered and provided help, throwing the metaphoric life preservers. I try to imagine forces that will eventually bring light back to the darkness, for the many thousands of people far more harmed than my own.

Still can’t sleep. I say to myself, “At least my kids aren’t facing death as soldiers or civilians in Ukraine. At least they aren’t bomb and starved in Gaza.” Somehow downward comparison does little during restless nights, when you look at your own family’s photographs of an urban landscape resembling a bombed Hiroshima.

Gaza is, of course, not only coming up in my nightly distress – the hopeful news of a cease fire came out yesterday, reminding us of what is at stake. Here is a link to a collection of experts from different backgrounds discussing the questions raised by the potential ceasefire. As of this morning, the Israeli cabinet has not even been convened to ratify the agreement, since the powers that be are backpedaling.

In this context I thought you might be interested in related issues closer to home, faced by students and academics in this country who protest Israel’s war as well as our participation in it. (If you want to read a hair-raising report on American involvement in the atrocities committed in Gaza, here is the newest in-depth assessment by Pro-Publica.) The academic situation recalls the days of McCarthyism. (Similar if not worse conditions apply to Europe, in particular Germany, I might add.)

Here is the press release of an upcoming documentary film that I very much encourage PNW folks to attend.

Portland, OR – The Palestine Exception, a Portland-based documentary film directed by Jan Haaken and Jennifer Ruth, will screen at Cinema 21 on January 26, 2025. The screening will be followed by a panel and Q and A moderated by Marlene Eid, producer and Psychology faculty member at Portland Community College, and panelists Stephanie Wahab, professor of Social Work at PSU, Hannah Alzgal, a PSU alum featured in the film, and the film directors.

Here is the l ink to a trailer, so you can judge for yourself.

The Film

After years of right-wing assaults on higher education, attacks took a new form in 2023 and 2024 that many activists describe as the new McCarthyism. As students across the country organize protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, decades-long taboos in academia around criticism of Israel—the “Palestine exception”—are shattered.

A Palestinian-American PSU student in the film recounts the deeply personal toll of administrative reactions to the protests : “I think the school didn’t ever consider the fact that there are actual people that attend [their] university that are genuinely, and I mean really being affected by what’s going on. They’ve lost land, family members… Approaching me as if I’m deserving of being collectively punished is part of this idea that [they] don’t care about Arab suffering.”

The Palestine Exception features professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies doing business with Israel and face waves of crackdowns from administrators, the media, the police and politicians. Scholars from diverse disciplines explain what is at stake in these protests and why so many young people identify with the Palestinian cause. The documentary unfolds as a story of college campuses as sites of both rebellion and repression, where personal and collective histories converge in unexpected ways.

About the Filmmakers

Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her documentary films focus on work carried out in contested social spaces and sites of political controversy. Haaken has directed nine feature films, including most recently the 2-part Necessity Series: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance and Climate Justice & the Thin Green Line and Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance. Jennifer Ruth is a professor in the School of Film and associate dean in the College of the Arts at Portland State University. She writes extensively about academic freedom and higher education. She is the co-editor, with Valerie Johnson and Ellen Schrecker, of The Right to Learn; Resisting the Right-Wing War on Academic Freedom. The producers are Jan Haaken and Marlene Eid, a faculty member at Portland Community College. Eid founded and was the first president of PCRF, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, chapter in Portland, Oregon.

Music today was played by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Ramallah many years back. The orchestra of Arab and Jewish musicians was founded by Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim 25 years ago. Here is the organization’s statement from August of last year (2024)

As we witness and mourn tens of thousands of lives destroyed and communities shattered while political courage remains absent, we, the musicians of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, are horrified and deeply saddened by the extreme escalation of violence in the Middle East, which continues to intensify daily.

The profound humanistic commitment of Maestro Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said stands at the core of our orchestra. In and through our music we seek to model a life of mutual recognition between equals.

We call on the local and the international communities and their leaders to stop procrastinating and put an end to the cycle of violence by effecting a permanent cease-fire, ensuring the safe return of all hostages and unlawfully held detainees. It is imperative to work toward a long-lasting peaceful resolution grounded in equality.

August 2024

After the Fire.

Poetry, Psychology
Jan 13, 2025
2 Comments

Here they were, salmons “singing in the street,” in Northern morning light that favored gold and blues. Right out of an Auden poem that stirred in the recesses of my brain, vaguely remembered. Had to dig it out, oddly relevant to our times when Southern light is dimmed by black smoke, or flickers as burning embers. Like all truly meaningful poetry, his poem captures universal truth, models defiance and stirs hope.

Malo Hasselblad Metal Fish Walkway at Washougal, WA waterfront Trail

***

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

by W. H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

The poem is disguised as a traditional ballad, filled with cliches which altogether take on different meanings when read in the context the poet builds around them. The message is as serious as it gets.

Our narrator is out on an evening stroll amongst the sea of humanity, fields of harvest “wheat,” that might soon meet their reaper. He overhears a lover singing, near a brimming river and the train tracks that could quickly carry one away, looming disaster and flight metaphors in one simple verse.

The lover borrows every available absurdity to express the strength and longevity of his sentiments, with love lasting until the impossible happens, physically, geographically, biologically, metaphorically – in other words, lasting forever. The depth of love is expressed in fertility symbols (said singing salmons and the rabbits.) The allusion to disaster and flight is repeated in the image of the seven stars, squawking like geese. It refers to the Pleiades, a star cluster that played a major role in Greek mythology. Like migrating geese, the seven daughters of Atlas fled from place to place for many years pursued by Orion, until Zeus turned them into a constellation as he did with Orion, who still hunts them across the sky.

The lover’s song expresses the belief of singularity: the first love of the world, flower of the ages. But, more importantly, an unshakable faith in continuity, or even permanence. This is of course, a core belief that keeps us all going. Not just for love, but for life plans, for the existence of what and who we know and hold dear.

An unshakable faith, until it is shaken, or burnt to ashes, as the current case may be.

Such relentless optimism awakens the malevolent clocks: Time will have none of it, our lovers soon be disabused of their notion of eternity. Physical decline, material worries and economic stress (icebergs in the cupboard,) the eventual abating of sexual desire (desert in the bed) all putting cracks in the vessel once thought to last forever. Time manages to put the very notion of fairy tales onto its head: the presumed innocents prove to be lascivious, and relationships revert in unexpected ways. Why should “happily ever after” be the one to survive?

Looks like an inevitable ride downhill towards impermanence or even death. But now Auden rescues us with some strangely placed exhortations that are subtly encouraging.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

Could be washing your hands free from guilt of having been so naive, mistaken about continuity, or unable to live up to the promise of eternal love. But could also be a suggestion that you interrupt the narcissistic admiration of your Self in the basin, by making waves that destroy the image, pushing the focus on something else. That would make sense given how much Auden had embraced Freudian theories. It would also very much explain the next command:

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

YOU might have failed in your naive or misdirected optimism, but LIFE remains a blessing. I read this as such an important reminder to be grateful. There is stuff out there, even if not what you hoped for, even if you lack agency, even if you dropped, or were dropped by a lover (a repeated theme in Auden’s personal life, made more complicated by being gay in times where it was illegal.) Even if you incurred unimaginable losses, there is a world out there. (One, I might add, shouting for us to find ways to protect it.)

And significantly:

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’

Look out towards the world, no matter how rotten you feel, and remember the commandment to love your neighbor like yourself. They might be crooked, so are you. The whole idea is about goodwill/love towards others, a form that is not necessarily the sexual rush of the lovers we encountered in the first part of the poem, but the notion of Agape, the “unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another, “as the dictionary defines it. Reaching out towards humanity as a whole, engaging in brotherly love, might protect from time’s relentless drag.

***

We are experiencing Agape at this very moment. The love and support extended towards the displaced by the Eaton Fire is beyond description. I cannot thank everyone personally, but am deeply grateful for the outpour regarding my kids. From what I hear, mutual aid is generally flourishing in Altadena, trying to soften the blows while everyone is still in a state of shock, where even finding a meal or a change of clothes can become an overwhelming task. The fire is forging an already tight community into a whole, held by concern for each other.

In our personal case, it feels like a small child is at the protected core of concentric rings, reaching ever further outward. Fiercely shielded by parents, who are supported by grandparents, aunts and uncles, then friends, then acquaintances, then friends of the older generations – a whole network of emotional sustenance, physical comfort, shared expertise and financial generosity.

The Greek word apocalypsis actually means not so much doomsday, but revelation or unveiling. The fires reveal humanity’s fragility and the consequences of ecological overshoot – using more than the planet can sustain. But they also reveal something essential: We cannot count on permanence, but we are here and now surrounded by love.

You don’t know how much of a difference that makes at this very moment.

Auden wrote this in 1937, unsettling times in Europe with rising fascism, not unlike our own – he soon after emigrated to the U.S., having had a harrowing time when traveling to Spain to report on the Civil war. I think it is a poem to be bookmarked for the year(s) to come.

Here is Auden reading his poem.

And here is a song cycle by Benjamin Britten. “Our Hunting Fathers, Op. 8, was first performed in 1936. Its text, assembled and partly written by W. H. Auden, with a pacifist slant, puzzled audiences at the premiere.”

Eaton Wildfire: Facing Insurance.

Many people who have lost their homes and all belongings to the LA wildfires are likely overwhelmed by the multitude of tasks demanded of them at a point in time when all they want to do is crawl under a borrowed blanket and cry. I would be. Heck, I am, if under a blanket I own, given that I sit safely at home in PDX while my kids try to navigate the unknown after the Eaton inferno.

How do you find accommodations? Where do you buy a change of clothes, diapers, food? With what do you pay? How do you deal with your employers, how are you even able to work if sitting in cramped quarters or emergency shelters or can’t breathe for the smog? What do you tell your children why they can’t go home, or to school, or see their friends? How do you make it clear to the many well meaning people who inquire, that you have no clue what the immediate, much less far, future will bring?

And, importantly, who do you contact for insurance questions? Do you have even the names and numbers you need?

Here are a few pieces of information that were either handed down to me by people in the know or found on official websites, just my summary from what I gleaned that would be helpful.

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE

For lots of information about getting help after the Eaton (or any) wildfire go here: the non-profit United Policyholders website guides you through various steps towards recovery and also FEMA applications if you are not insured. They have step by step practical and legal information that is extremely helpful.

The California Department of Insurance (DOI) has a website as well. It gives you instructions on how to approach and deal with your insurer.

Their top ten tips include advice how to obtain a copy of your full policy in the first month (they HAVE to give that to you) and answers to your general questions about rebuilding, loss of personal items, and current living expenses (for which they have to give you an advance.)

They remind you to track all your expenses after the fire ( keep receipts!), and to document all the interactions you have: “Record conversations with your insurer/adjuster about your claim and policy limitations in a dedicated claim diary. If your adjuster says something is excluded, limited, or subject to certain conditions, ask the adjuster to point out the specific provision in your policy being cited.”

And this: Get at least one licensed contractor’s estimate or bid on the cost to rebuild your home just to get a reasonable sense of the actual cost as compared to your coverage limits (for more considerations on contractors, view the CDI’s electronic brochure Don’t Get Scammed After a Disaster and check the California’s Contractors State License Board website.) While your insurance company may provide its own estimate, it may contain errors or fail to reflect local conditions or demand surge. Demand surge reflects price increases following a major disaster when contractors and materials are in short supply. (Will be a huge issue in Altadena, no doubt.)

Many more suggestions can be found on their page, including the possibility that you might want to have a public adjuster assess the damage and help you deal with the insurer, rather than the insurers’ own adjuster who knows who they work for. This is a bit of a dilemma – if you hire your own, you have to pay, often a hefty percentage of the reimbursements you eventually receive. Also you need to find one who you can trust, which can be problematic because there are unfortunately scammers out there, lurking at the borders of disaster.

You can, however, look at your insurer’s conduct record to see if they are pretty reliable or if you should have outside help. Here is a website that lists the 50 most frequent insurance companies and their complaint history (the list is conveniently graded from top (best and most reliable) to bottom (worst) by looking a the ratios of justified complaints to number of complaints, as of 2023.

Here is something else to be aware of: The insurer is required to give you their most recent breakdown of their cost estimate for rebuilding your house. Ask for it! You then have to make sure that the info about your house is actually correct.

“Did they ever check with you? Did they ever give you that breakdown to review before now? The breakdown will have a “quality grade”- usually standard, above average, or custom. Above average is supposed to be for tract housing communities. Any house that was built individually and designed by an architect is supposed to be at least “custom.” This one piece of data alone affects your insurance coverage by at least 30%. If they got it wrong, start digging into it NOW. Was your house built on a slope? Increases the cost about 15%. On a long and remote road? Another 15%.”

So what to expect – and bring to – the first interaction with the adjuster?

Contact info and description of current stay (friends, airbnb, shelter etc)
Basics of the lost property: estimated square footage, type of construction.
Try and have a list of all the property you remember in each room ( Oregon folks, for earthquake or fire PREP, it helps to video tape each room slowly with a description of furniture, instruments, artwork, jewelry, library, good china, household appliances, electronics, garage contents, sports equipment like skis or kayaks, clothes etc. Don’t forget ,comforters and linen cost money; so does rain gear and winter boots.) Writing up a list after the fact will be psychologically hard since it makes you remember all that you lost, but it will help to get funds for replacement.
Find out which fire department district protected your home
Info about additional insurance
Bank account number for transfer of funds
Info about your mortgage company

In turn, ask them, again, to give you the full policy details and also an advance for the immediate necessities, rent, clothing, food. They might have recommendations about provisional housing and will need to tell you how much your policy allots. Here the demand surge is likely a problem – it will not increase your stipend for expenses. Housing issues, already such a huge problem, will right now explode exponentially. As did the fires. As did the silence, in much of the mass media coverage of the catastrophe, about the role of climate change in generating ever more frequent and more destructive environmental disasters. Zip. Nada. But that we will discuss in another blog.

For now, tackle the loathsome business of dealing with the administrative burden of insurance. Then take your time in making a decision, DO NOT RUSH INTO ANYTHING.

Rebuild? Relocate? So many factors need to be evaluated. The longing for familiarity, the place once home, for the community you cherish and want to recreate, is strong. That is why people return to floodplains and fire-prone areas in the first place. But you also have to consider, if the community can be reestablished given the rebuilding obstacles for many who were underinsured or not at all. This is particularly relevant for Altadena that was an unusually diverse and low-income town. (Historically it attracted Blacks because wealthier White folks avoided the local bad air quality due to the geographical trap for smog that the San Gabriels backdrop provided, catching the north- and westward drift.)

Fear of the unknown and inertia when you are trauma stricken are heavy burdens. But there is also the question of toxicity of the environment, for kids in particular, and the issue how schools and childcare availability will be impacted.

Importantly, there is also the looming threat that further insurance will be unavailable in fire zones exposed to future more frequent and intensifying catastrophes, so close to the canyons.

Insurers are leaving disaster-adjacent states like FL and CA in droves, or hiking rates up so they become unaffordable. Being a climate refugee is unimaginably hard, but being among the first still provides you with affordable options. A decade from now that picture will have changed.

I hope some of this will be of help. I’m crawling back under my blanket.

Bluebird photographs from November at Altadena’s Mountain View Cemetery where Octavia E. Butler is buried. She was an astute observer of our society and a brilliant analyst of our history, all of which allowed her to write the Parable of the Sower, not mystically prescient, but thinking things logically through to a likely end, deadly fires and fascistic rule, set by her in 2025.

Music: Here is Pärt’s De Profundis.

Eaton Fire

Nature
Jan 8, 2025
9 Comments

Since so many of you have inquired, for which I am truly grateful, I want to just answer a few questions.

My son and family in Altadena escaped the fire unharmed, but lost their house and all of their belongings. They are currently staying with a family friend some 20 miles away from the active fires and, importantly, the smog. We have no clue what will come next, and are taking it a day at a time, just mindful of the privilege to remain physically intact and surrounded by a strongly supportive network.

When this is all over and the kids are settled – wherever remains to be seen, I would love to rebuild the little one’s library that was turned to ashes. If any of you want to have an eye on Thriftstore treasures of children’s books, please keep us in mind. I am happy to pick up and/or reimburse and store at our house here in Portland. Age range 3 – 8, she devours everything, particularly nature oriented themes.

I will go silent until l have processed all this a bit more, but hopefully will be back on track next week.

These are apocalyptic times.

And Now from the Interesting Person Department…

Biology, Science
Jan 6, 2025
0 Comments

Last week I was looking something up at the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. It is a treasure trove for scientists, artists, and really anyone interested in natural history, with hundreds of thousands of manuscripts available to peruse for free. It is a worldwide consortium, seated at the Smithsonian in D.C., with universities and national libraries collaborating to make their collections accessible to all.

What was supposed to be a relatively quick search for quasi-abstract images I wanted to learn from for a new project, turned out be a day of my life when I chanced on the biography of a most impressive naturalist that I simply HAD to read. Here is how I fell into the rabbit hole:

I had come to look at the Naturalist’s Miscellany (1789) by George Shaw, which has images of natural objects drawn from life, with Latin and English text explaining what people knew about them then. (Today’s images that are not mushrooms, are from this book.) Many of the engravings found here are spectacular. (In fact, on really bad days, going to this site and just looking at pictures instead of doomscrolling has been my rescue more than once.) After downloading what I thought were the most interesting prints, I decided to browse a bit for mushrooms, since the last blog had all these photographs I had taken of fungi. This is what popped up.

I had come upon a treatise called Brasilische Pilzblumen, (Brazilian Mushroomflowers) written in 1895 by a mycologist named Alfred Möller for a book Botanical Notes from the Tropics. He spent almost three years in Brazil, visiting his uncle who had emigrated from Germany decades earlier. Möller’s contribution to science was a detailed exploration of leaf cutter ants and their symbiotic relationship with certain fungi, which they literally farm, while living inside of them. The fungal agriculture involves planting, cultivating, and harvesting Basidiomycota for food by the ants. (Attina).

He took the photographs in 1890!

They add nutrients from fresh plant material, remove dead tissue and shelter them from predators, while consuming parts of the fungi as food, exclusively, and using fibers from the fungi to reinforce their nests. Ants contribute to protecting the plant against herbivores, fungal pathogens and competing plants. As the fungi thrive, so do the ants. Before we remain too much in awe of this mutualism, however, let’s note that the defoliating leaf cutter ants inflict widespread forest and agricultural damage in tropical regions due to their abundance. Nowadays, countries use satellite imagery and drones to detect their presence in tropical forests to fight decimated their numbers before they irreparably harm the trees.

Möller, it turns out, eventually got around to writing the biography of this uncle he visited, Fritz Müller (1822 – 1897), and this is where it gets fascinating. Well, for me, anyhow, since this was someone radically true to his beliefs no matter the cost, interested in everything under the sun, and never giving up, no matter how burdened by unimaginable losses. (The full text of the biography (1905) in German can be read here. An American retelling based on the biography is available here.)

Here is the short version. Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller is born into a rectory in Germany, one of many siblings, who develops a talent for science and mathematics and goes to university to become a pharmacist, eventually studying medicine. By the time he is done with his studies, he has joined the revolutionary youths of those years around 1848, and has become a fervent atheist, cutting him off from his religious parents and most of his siblings, as well as a woman he intended to marry. Atheism prevents him from swearing an oath to receive his university diploma, making employment difficult, so he decides to travel to Brazil where a German colony is built near Santa Catarina. He lives with the daughter of a poor farmhand and their first child dies at age three. The second child is one of two (out of 12 infants) who survive the ocean crossing to Brazil threatened by rampant malnutrition and diseases. Another thirteen children die of the measles on this trip as well.

In Brazil, the young family builds a hut in the jungle, loses almost everything to floods, to poisonous snakes, to attacks by pumas and indigenous tribes who the Germans have colonially displaced, with disease taking the lives of several of his 10 children. His most beloved daughter later commits suicide during a visit in Germany as a young adult. Müller relentlessly provides for his family with physical labor, income as a doctor with no access to necessary medicines, and eventual teaching gigs that are at the mercy of the Jesuits and the Brazilian government that is reported to have shafted him multiple times.

All the while he observes, records, analyzes and describes everything under the sun – mollusks and seashells, orchids, butterflies, you name it. He publishes, he corresponds, he reads the scientific literature when his means allow him to order the journals, and he draws exquisite images of what he finds in nature. Soon he gets a reputation in Europe, receives honorary doctorates, and begins a life long correspondence with Darwin, who calls him the “prince of observers” using many of Müller’s suggestions and reports to bolster his arguments about evolutionary processes. In fact, Darwin feels so indebted to him that he offers a substantial sum of money when once again natural disaster has destroyed much of Müller’s household and small library, which the latter politely refuses. He does accept, however, the scientific community’s gift of sending journal and literature for free after the disastrous flood.

In 1878 he publishes his observations on the evolutionary advantage of certain colorations in butterflies: mimicry as a defense mechanism against predators. “Müllerian mimicry is a natural phenomenon in which two or more well-defended species, often foul-tasting and sharing common predators, have come to mimic each other’s honest warning signals, to their mutual benefit.” Not only did he observe the functional advantages of coloration, but he developed one of the first ever mathematical models of frequency-dependent selection in biology. (Ref.) Darwinists ran with it.

So why do I go on about this, other than being happy to share something fascinating? I think it is a good reminder that openness to new ideas can produce amazing results. Ok, we probably all agree on that. But Müller also modeled resistance: his passion for something, the natural world in his case, and his engaging with the puzzle of evolution, enabled him to survive the worst hardships and personal losses someone can face. His correspondence reveals over and over again how the drive to understand the world we live in superseded the grief over what this world had in store for him.

It helps me to get a grip on those bad days where I feel overwhelmed. Pick and engage the things that interest you most, and for a while there will be no room for worry. Or rage. Or fear. Even if it is just a temporary relief, it might produce something that goes beyond just the personal realm, even for the many of us who are not the kind of genius he clearly was. Read an obscure biography! Feel better in no time.

***

After writing this yesterday, this morning I received an essay by Brian Klaas from my subscription list. It picks up on the topic of resilience, resonating with one’s environment (and even ant colonies,) late in the piece, which is generally about the dangers of optimization in contemporary cultures. The perfect long read , spelling out the dynamics of adaptation and the inherent risks. I would have liked though, if the author had discussed how it cannot be the duty of individuals caught in organizations that profit off optimization, to change from the bottom up – it would harm their livelihoods and functioning within the work place. It has to come from the top down, or as a synchronized movement by many like-minded people. But the essay provides a LOT of food for thought for young people trying to balance life and careers.

Music from Brazil. If you want a full album by Pauletti, I recommend (on Spotify) Ritual das Cordas.

Game On.

Walk with me in this first week of the New Year. Grab your boots, though. My neighborhood park is rain-drenched and muddy – good for sliding, good for fungi, some of which shine with the wetness in reflective beauty, good for the drought-stressed environment.

I had a fun experience this morning even before I entered the woods. During my routine perusal of the news, I got hooked by a Merriam-Webster game asking people to look at a GIF – one of those gimmicks that show things in motion – that displayed words in fast succession. The idea was to take a random screenshot and whatever word you captured would be the lead for the year. Well, folks, I got UPLIFTING.

And just to show how my brain works, I thought “maybe that is the word they trickily provide for everyone to help us enter 2025 a bit more hopefully.” So I played the game again to test my hypothesis, and got – TOXIC.

There you have it – I will report on toxic events this year, but I will do it with the goal to uplift us all by utilizing our grief to be a catalyst for change. Game on.

Of course I’ll report on inherently uplifting things as well, often connected to science and the way activism has managed to protect us and/or our environment. Here are a few highlights from 2024:

Conservation Wins:

Close to home, salmon returned to Klamath river, after dams came down. Gray whale populations rebounded, as evidenced by a 33% increase in migration counts. In Everett, Washington, voters approved a ballot initiative that grants the Snohomish River watershed the rights to exist, regenerate and flourish. City residents, agencies and organizations can now sue on behalf of the watershed, and any recovered damages will be used to restore the ecosystem. Also in Washington, voters upheld the 2021 Climate Commitment Act by voting no on Initiative 2117.

Further East and South: Barbed-wire fences, maiming and killing wildlife, are removed or replaced with friendlier barries for hundred of miles in Wyoming and at the Montana/Idaho border. Wolf populations boom in California, and the first pack has been introduced to Colorado. California has introduced “pop-up” wetlands for migrating birds, by paying central valley rice farmers to flood their fields earlier in the fall and let them stay flooded longer in the spring.

Health Breakthroughs:

Looks like scientists found the next best thing to an HIV vaccine: the new drug Lenacapavir can prevent infection for up to 6 months after receiving the shot. 630.000 people still die of AIDS-related illness every single year. There are also ever more efficient vaccines against malaria and cervical cancer on the market – a child dies every minute of the former and 350.000 women globally every year of the latter. (It remains to be seen how the vaccine battle will unfold under the new administration in the U.S., of course. Anti-vaxxer sentiment is growing.)

Climate Change Modifications:

Solar power is advancing at a brisk clip, across the world. Washers, dryers, furnaces, water heaters, and stoves are becoming more energy efficient and also getting cheaper. Diesel-fuel powered school busses are starting to be dropped for EV busses across the country (there are half a million school busses on the road in this country…) It will not only be better for the environment but also save costs. People are realizing that small personal steps – eating 10% less meat, re-wilding your garden as just 2 examples – can have a cumulative impact.

(Long read for this week about personal contributions: What If We Get it Right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. ((Here is an 8 minute listen of an Ari Shapiro interview with the author, that provides the gist.)) Great mix of essays and poetry.)

And then there is “Chonkus.” Researchers isolated a new microorganism, cyanobacterium UTEX 3222, nicknamed “Chonkus,” for its ability to consume carbon dioxide. If it could be genetically engineered, “this single-celled organism’s natural quirks could become supercharged into a low-waste carbon capture system” to fight climate change. More about Chonkus here. A possibility, not yet a reality, but hope for a future.

***

Any toxic part, after these uplifting news?

Unfortunately, yes. Repression of climate and environmental protest is intensifying across the globe. (Climate protests refer to general demands about environmental protection, environmental protest is often the local resistance towards damaging projects.) The details can be read here. But the upshot of research looking at the reaction to global protest movements that have surged over the last years, given the proximal climate catastrophes experienced by so many, is this:

A large number of anti-protests laws have been introduced since 2019. “Anti-protest laws may give the police more powers to stop protest, introduce new criminal offences, increase sentence lengths for existing offences, or give policy impunity when harming protesters.”
Protest is criminalized and brought to the courts. This includes applying terrorism charges to non-violent, direct action groups. Criminalization also implies that corporations can take out injunctions against protesters.
Harsher Policing. “This stretches from stopping and searching to surveillance, arrests, violence, infiltration and threatening activists. The policing of activists is carried out not just by state actors like police and armed forces, but also private actors including private security, organised crime and corporations.”
In some countries environmental activists are killed, countries that include Brazil, the Philippines, Peru and India. In Brazil, most murders are carried out by organised crime groups while in Peru, it is the police force.

Seen in the middle of the park. secured in case someone wants to carry a tool heavy box over a mile to the next road?

The clock is ticking, and we are reaching or already have reached tipping points with regard to how our planet and all those living on it can be saved. Change requires political action, which so far, with few exceptions, has been lacking on a grand scale. By criminalizing protesters, you shift the focus from politics to “crime,” allowing you to continue with the old ways, committing irreparable harm.

The canaries in the coal mine? Why, insurance corporations, who are refusing to insure against fires, floods and other climate-related damages in ever larger numbers. They know the danger is real, as is the unwillingness of corporations and governments alike to do the necessary things about it.

“A conservative estimate of the homeowner insurance gap is $1.6 trillion in uncovered risks. That’s mostly being borne by people who are relatively poor or live in acknowledged flood and fire zones. Everyone in the insurance industry expects that gap to grow, as risks metastasize and are priced into policies. Insurance eventually becomes too expensive for many to afford, if it’s even still available. For homeowners, skyrocketing premiums are too high. But insurers worry they can’t charge enough to keep up with increasing risk. The climate crisis is already rendering entire communities and even regions uninsurable.

Uninsurable properties are also often unlendable. A 2023 study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the overvaluation of homes measured only by their exposure to floods alone was as high as $237 billion.” And people forcibly or voluntarily moving to safer regions are driving up home prices, driving out those without means to stay in relatively climate stable places. (Ref. This link is actually to one of the most dispiriting essays on climate change I’ve come across recently, discussing the price of potential political (in)action. Be warned.)

Let’s end with something uplifting: the creeks are filling, the common hazel is blossoming and the sparrows are looking for love! And we can still detoxify with music: today Barber’s Adagio for Strings Op.11.