Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Monthly Archives

July 2024

Late June (Dis)Pleasures.

Walk with me. A sedate stroll on Sauvie Island, easing us into a week where I will be working on a longer writing project and thus not posting across the 4th of July holiday.

Nature put on a show. Then again, when does it not?

Bloom and setting of fruit happening simultaneously for the black berries.

Oregon grapes already basically ripe,

while Hawthorne berries showed only a hint of the red that will later attract birds and squirrels alike when reaching full saturation.

Oak galls galore, a consequence of chemical injections by wasps who benefit from these growths.

Flowers in the meadows competing for my breathless mutterings – Oh, beauty!

Rufus Towhee hopping around, distracting me away from their nest, while ground squirrels watched with amusement.

Water levels high at the lake, serene at the canals, and small clouds lightening the grey skies.

The ospreys reliably resettled their nest that I visit every year.

If you stand close by, quietly, long enough, there will be coming and going, with lunch provided for those who wait long enough and screech loud enough.

Nature, relying on us to preserve it, since we have stressed it already so close to the limits. Preservation that will be made infinitely harder with the abominal Supreme Court Chevron decision last week which, as Zoe Schlanger at The Atlantic put it, shoved American environmentalism into legal purgatory. Read it and weep. The kneecapping of federal regulators will, of course, not just harm the environment, but also have huge implications for consumer protection.

This implies not just safety for what you eat and drink, or cars and planes, or warnings about chemical agents that might be harmful. It fully embraces the issue of pharmacological treatments, their safety and access granted to them, including the long sought prohibition of oral abortifacients. It also implies that a judge or a panel of judges can make decisions on the availability or necessity of vaccines. Think of another pandemic rolling around, and the judiciary, filled with anti-vaxxers, decides that vaccination is illegal. It will affect labor regulations, from workplace safety to pay requirements to the sales of goods no longer considered fairly made.

We cannot even conceive of the extent of the consequences this decision will have for the American people. Protection blown to the winds like grass seeds.

Justice Kagan’s dissent in Loper Bright Enterprises vs Raimondo is worth contemplating.

“A rule of judicial humility, gives way to a rule of judicial hubris. In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”

Regarding stare decisis, the respect for previously made decisions:

“It barely tries to advance the usual factors this Court invokes for overruling precedent. Its justification comes down, in the end, to this: courts must have more say over regulation—over the provision of health care, the protection of the environment, the safety of consumer products, the efficacy of transportation systems, and so on. A longstanding precedent at the crux of administrative governance thus falls victim to a bald assertion of judicial authority. The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.“

Mullein has the symbolism attached that it opens channels of communication with a higher power. Man, do we need that…..anybody out there????

Well, so much for sending you off to a holiday week. Enjoy your fireworks while they are still safely regulated in defiance of profiteering at all cost.

Music today is the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite # 2 in D-Minor. You can read darkness into it, or, as I do, a moment of hope. Preludes are beginnings – and we can always begin anew, putting things right. Eventually. Hopefully.

0 Comments

Arcing, Stilling, Bending, Gathering.

Rather than spend time reading today, I encourage you to listen. Classical composer Lisa Illean creates music that is often serene, able to soften the knots in your stomach, head, back, or soul – wherever the pain currently resides.

If you want to read nonetheless and need to know a little bit more about the focus of her work, here are the composer’s words describing it.

Although most of the movements are inspired by oceans and waves, I picked the album for today’s photographs of caterpillars on common ragwort, who, too, are arcing, stilling, bending and gathering. They are cinnabar caterpillars who will molt into cinnabar moths, which play a key role in successfully controlling ragwort, a toxic weed poisonous to livestock.

They use nature’s tricks well. Newly hatched larvae feed from the underneath of ragwort leaves and absorb toxic and bitter tasting alkaloid substances from the food plants, becoming unpalatable themselves. The bright colors of both the larvae and the moths act as warning signs, so they are seldom eaten by predators, other than cuckoos! Not too many of those around here.

Here is the music.

Ragwort patch

2 Comments

Self-Deception and Denial (2)

Today’s images were made by a young photographer from New York City. Ben Zank was on a meteoric rise as an artist until the beginning of the pandemic. After a stretch of five years without exhibitions, as far as I know, he is now reentering the world of photography with a book of his photographs of staged compositions, performances that are enigmatic and technically exquisite. I thought the string of self-portraits in Nothing to See Here would be the perfect complement for the topic before us: an essay on self-deception by philosopher Amélie Oksenberg Rorty.

We can probably all list numerous self-deceptions that we detect in ourselves or others. They can be as trivial as thinking that the expenditure of frequent visits to a hair dresser is worth it because we now look more desirable (hah!) or as consequential as turning our eyes away from behavior that signals abuse by someone we love. They can be harmless, when we tell ourselves we are really interested in some boring activity, in order to keep someone’s affections, or they can be deadly, if we wishfully look away from physical signs that would require prompt medical attention before becoming lethal. Given that self-deceptions are not just quirks, I wanted to learn more about them.

User-friendly Self Deception, published in 1994 is a fascinating foray into a corner of moral philosophy about questions that heavily overlap with cognitive psychology, my own neck of the woods, and of course older varieties of psychoanalytic thought. I found Rorty’s essay wonderfully informative about what we need to think through when concerning ourselves with the issue of self-deception. And her writing is delicious – just look at sentences like these:

“We draw the lines between self-deception and its cousins and clones—compartmentalization, adaptive denials, repressed conflicts and submerged aggressions, false conscious- ness, sublimation, wishful thinking, suspiciously systematic errors in self-reflection….The question is: how can we sustain the illusions essential to ordinary life, without becoming self-damaging idiots? Are there forms of user-friendly self-deception that do not run the dangers that falsity, irrationality and manipulation are usually presumed to bring?”

One of Rorty’s fundamental claim is the fact that we cannot avoid self-deceptions and that they can have positive results, until a certain line is crossed. Rather than condemning them – something that I habitually do, thinking that any kind of lying, even lying to oneself, is morally objectionable and functionally disabling in the long run – she urges us to be ambivalent. We should acknowledge the value self-deception can bring to both self and communal life, but also know where to draw the life when it becomes self-harming.

The essay is structured around a discussion what self-deception is and what it is not, and what strategies we use to perfect it – a helpful tool when we try to understand how the process of deceiving ourselves unfolds. She then turns to the benefits of this psychological manipulation, both globally and locally, and eventually wonders how we can prevent self-serving strategies to become a folly with serious consequences. I will report on the key points, and leave out the philosophical frameworks which I would surely screw up, given my layperson’s extent of knowledge. Or lack thereof. You might have better luck reading the essay yourself.

Rorty defines self-deception as a species of rhetorical persuasion driving us away from rationality and transparency. Like for all forms of persuasion, the processes involved are complex, dynamic and necessitate co-operation – among the different parts of our own selves, as well as between us and our social surround. They imply various mechanisms, including perceptual, cognitive, affective and behavioral dispositions. Concretely, what we (don’t)see, where we (don’t) direct out attention, what feelings we decide (not)to allow and which actions we (don’t) take all interact to sustain the desired state of belief.

I’lI try to translate this into an example of parenting – assume you suspect your teenager to have turned to shoplifting designer clothes (or taking drugs, or stealing cars – you name it.) You don’t want to face the reality. In order to maintain your self-deception of “my daughter would never do this,” you can ignore that the kid sneaks stuff into the house, believe her lies that items are borrowed from friends, avoid inspecting the closet for new merchandise, tell yourself she has gotten a lot of tips at her summer waitressing job, and never ever join her at trips to the mall, or open her mail from the court system. Note that self-deception is not necessarily about yourself, then. It can be about the honesty of other people or some such, as well.

More often than not, this self-deception is sustained by social support. Your friends tell you, should you dare to mention your suspicion, that it can’t be, your daughter is such a good kid, or that it was a momentary lapse on her part, or a quick phase that teenagers go through, not evidence of a larger underlying problem.

Many kinds of self-deception occur within social interactions, and Rorty argues that without them “our dedications, our friendships, our work, our causes would collapse.”

“It is virtually impossible to imagine any society that does not systematically and actively promote the self-deception of its members, particularly when the requirements of social continuity and cohesion are subtly at odds with one another and with the standard issue psychology of their members. Socially induced self-deception is an instrument in the preservation of social co-operation and cohesion.“

Self-deceptions can protect us from an overload of despair, or the burden of constant skepticism, or the stress that comes with acknowledging a true rupture in personal relations, or having to give up self-harming behavior that we are addicted to.

A further benefit from deceiving ourselves can come when we pretend to have confidence or skills in order to acquire them. When the world reacts positively to our mimicry, we might find ourselves very well in position where it becomes reality. On the other hand, deceiving ourselves about the value of our roles in society, or the amount of respect we deserve, or that hierarchical systems are justified, are, of course, contributing to societal peace as well. One might ask who is paying the price, though…. (I am thinking here of the resurgence of the tradwife (traditional wife) movement and its horrifying consequences of women insisting that (economic) dependency on their partner is the best choice in life, smartly explained here.)

Rorty ends her considerations by noting that “Self-deception does not monitor its own use: it doesn’t know when or where to stop. It is specifically constructed to ignore and resist correction. The danger of self-deception lies not so much in the irrationality of the occasion, but in the ramified consequences of the habits it develops, its obduracy and its tendency to generalize.”

For each instance we have to ask the question of who eventually benefits from the manipulation and when will it be self-defeating. We have to inspect the details of our psychological contortions and be willing to ask within every context and occasion who is trying to persuade whom to what benefit within the circle of our various parts of self.

Honestly, I find that a bit unsatisfying, just as her suggestion to be mindful of the company we keep, company that might collude with and incite self-deception. For one, it seems an elitist approach – how many people have the analytic wherewithal required by such introspection? And when does a commitment to constant analyzing one’s states and motives switch over to a kind of hyper vigilance that detects fault everywhere? Feeds into narcissistic tendencies towards continual preoccupation with self? And, most importantly, If it were as easy as asking ourselves questions and following a moral and pragmatic compass, why are the habits so damn entrenched? Any suggestions?

Music today is about the self-deceptions around departed loved ones….

1 Comments

Self Deception and Denial (1)

When I talk with my friends we often circle back to the question of finding the right balance: When is it ok to stick our head in the sand against world news in order to cope, and when does that reaction become self defeating in the long run? We are obviously not alone with that worry: just last week two eminent researchers, a sociologist and a psychologist, raised a warning flag in the Scientific American about “peak denial,” and the ways it manipulates our take on reality. Newspapers of record also start voicing concerns about the consequences of societal denial.

Independently, dictionary in hand, I stumbled my way through a brilliant essay on self-deception by a philosopher. I thought maybe you might be interested in a condensed version of these assessments of public and personal approaches to psychological (self)control. I hope that I caught some, if not all, of the complexities. We start with public denial. The next blog will focus on self-deception. And for balancing out the heavy topics, today’s photographs will tackle Big Foot denial, since I can provide proof of existence from my hikes in the Cascades….

Marianne Cooper, a senior research scholar at Stanford University and Maxim Voronof, a professor of sustainability and organization at the Schulich School of Business at York University, are interested in what happens when overlooking and tolerating greater levels of harm becomes a shared cultural habit.

“Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, we acclimate to ignoring more and caring less at our own peril. In the short term, living in a state of peak denial helps us cope. In the long run, it will be our undoing. Because the danger here is desensitization: that we meet this unprecedented litany of “wicked problems,” from climate change to the rise of fascism, with passive acceptance rather than urgent collective action.”

How did we get here? What do we know about denial and the processes that lead to our “reality-adjacent” lives where serious problems are made to seem normal? The researchers focus on how threatening information is neutralized or evaded (Bonus: they link to two accessible books that look at these techniques in detail: Living in Denial – Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life by Kari Marie Norgaard, and Never Saw It Coming – Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst by Karen A. Cerulo.)

Using COVID as an example, the authors explain how these strategies work. (Given that I am convinced that we will be thrown into another pandemic, variants of the even more deadly avian flu, sooner rather than later, I find this case study particularly worthwhile to think about. But we could also look at climate change, nuclear warfare, or the rise of authoritarian regimes across the world.)

One way of neutralizing a problem is by making it hard to hear or learn about it. You can restrict efforts to look into it, keeping information inaccessible or not collecting it in the first place. The CDC scaled back Covid tracking for example, requiring increasingly less reporting from hospitals or other institution, until they stopped all together. The government also refuses to alert the public about danger levels (the second highest surge happened only 6 months ago, last winter, knowledge not distributed by the White House.) Tracking and warning are replaced by no monitoring or mentioning – allowing things to seem back to normal.

Minimizing the problem is a successful strategy as well, when you want a public ensconced in denial. This can be done by neutralizing language: “endemic,” or “during COVID,” “lower hospitalization rates than last year,” all suggest the main danger is behind us. Establishing laws that prohibit mask wearing make it seem like the danger of getting infected is tiny compared to the cost of having purported criminals be unidentifiable. I wrote about my disgust with the North Carolina bill to ban masks, now adding my disbelief that New York’s Governor Hochul wants to ban masks in the Subway.

One particular consequence of COVID infections was met with early institutional silence: long Covid. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine announced the definition for long COVID only now June 11,2024. Early on, sufferers of this disabling condition were accused to be hysteric or generally anxiety-driven, making it hard for them to access care. Never mind that long Covid can be acquired by even the mildest Covid infection, is associated with autoimmune diseases, triggering Type 1 diabetes, cardiovascular risk as well as cognitive dysfunction for the individuals, and a societal economic cost that rivals the Great Recession, and has no easy treatment options. People’s behavior would surely be affected if they knew about this threat in all of its complexity. Both neutralization and minimizing are obviously at work here.

Cooper and Voronof point out that in addition to revising the present, we also tend to rewrite the past when that helps with public denial of a problem. The cultural amnesia about the extent of the pandemic is striking. “In burying the past, we sidestep accountability for what went wrong and preserve the status quo by failing to implement lessons learned from our own history.“

And woe to the voice that pipes up, calling us to acknowledge or remember the actual facts. Threats against truth tellers loom large, as do actual retaliations against whistleblowers. We are so used to conspiracies of silence, and so in need of positive illusions, that we don’t want to break the patterns that sustain them on all levels of society, ranging from small groups to large corporations, from personal friendships to politics.

How do we escape this cycle? How do we prepare ourselves for what’s on the horizon by breaking through our patterns of denial? The authors summarize:

“We need to stop enabling it. This starts by being more attuned to our “everyday ignoring” and “everyday bystanding”—like that pinch we feel when we know we should click through a concerning headline, but instead scroll past it.

We need to work harder to catch ourselves in the act of staying silent or avoiding uncomfortable information and do more real-time course correcting.

We need to guard against lowering our standards for normalcy. When we mentally and emotionally recalibrate to the new normal, we also disassociate from our own humanity.

We need to demand that our leaders give the full truth and hold them to account. We must stand up for the silenced and stand with the silence-breakers.”

This seems easier said than done, but Stanley Cohen’s 2001 seminal book, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, delivers the goods. Cohen was a sociologist and criminologist, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. His research focussed on “emotional management”, including the mismanagement of emotions in the form of sentimentality, overreaction, and emotional denial, spelling out in great detail what we have to do to be effective witnesses. Strongly recommended.

I know I am coming back to that term, over and over. It probably allows me to combat the general feeling of helplessness in the face of world affairs, as if witnessing is a significant contribution. But I think if there are enough of us who continue to look rather than look away, perhaps it will make a difference.

Denial, however, does provide some serious succor, when it comes to politics and economics – science denial is for many an expression of identity, used to shore up polarization within the electorate. And a humming economy needs workers as well as consumers. If either stay home for fear of infection, the system will crash. Self-deception provides similarly important protections for individuals. More on that next time.

Music today echoes foreboding and rebirth, both possibilities when thinking about denial, which can, after all, be abandoned. Beautifully captured by Shostakovich after verses by Pushkin.

1 Comments

Salvia and Szymborska to the Rescue.

One of those weeks. Between the heat and a body with its own intentions I had to cancel all planned outings, miffed and distraught. As luck would have it, a friend sent out a poem that shut me up and set me right. It converts disappointment into the insight that all moments matter. They all contain their very own history, asking us to value what is, not what has been or might come along. We are embedded in a timeline, each moment of its own importance.

“So it happens that I am and look.” Which is what I did. At a single plant on my balcony, a blue salvia visited by the occasional humming bird, the bees preferring its neighboring lavender and the yellow zinnias (this year’s color scheme in solidarity with Ukraine. Much good it will do, other than reminding me to be a witness. But I digress.)

No Title Required

 It has come to this: I’m sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It’s an insignificant event
and won’t go down in history.
It’s not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrannicides.
 
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact.
And since I’m here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.


Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal’s field glasses might scan.
 
This tree is a poplar that’s been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn’t spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn’t beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.
 
And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It’s just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.



Conspiracies aren’t the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don’t trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
 
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
 
So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else’s but its own.
 
When I see such things, I’m no longer sure
that what’s important
is more important than what’s not.

By Wislawa Szymborska
 
From Poems New and Collected 1957-1997

Here is music about a summer garden.

3 Comments

Juneteenth 2024

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the bullet points as expressed by her:

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

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

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

In the scholar’s words:

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

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

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

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

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

2 Comments

Walking Among the Beasts.

Phew. Don’t have to start with my innervated spiel about art and botanical gardens, sounding like a broken record. As it turns out, the universe of plastic animalia that we walked into by chance, looking for a break during the long drive to Southern California last month, was located in what they call an “Exploration Park.” Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding, CA, to be precise. It contains a botanical garden and arboretum, but also features museums, forest camps, a sundial bridge and much more. Amusement, then.

The critters were larger than life, intensely colorful under the bright California sun, but apparently unfolded their real magic a night, when they all lit up for a technicolor spectacle. (You can see a video of it in the link.)

I must admit I had fun walking down the dusty pathways, watching little kids in awe of the oversized fauna. Did they learn anything? Who knows. Must we always learn something? Not really. Sometimes I need to remind myself that there is nothing wrong with simply wallowing in pleasure, on a bright day, surrounded by whimsical assemblies of plastic wildlife.

I did think, though, about oversized animals that do come with a message. Partly because I deeply agree with the message, and partly because I admire the artistic process that underlies the final sculptures. Here are some samples of real art, by sculptor Quentin Garel.

The French artist, who was educated at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, has it in with hunting for trophies, denouncing “a proud practice of man, a domination over the animal seen only as an object of consumption,” or as an means of inciting status envy and signaling the belonging to the exclusive club of wealthy trophy hunters I might add.

He began working with landscapers and architects for public spaces: sculpting work that is figurative but also anamorphic, playing with size and excerpts. According to his gallery, “Garel claims to be a sculptor of form rather than concept, between art and science, wood and metal, dental surgery and the unrestrained chainsaw.”

Gallery LJ in Paris will open his newest solo show in October 2024 in Paris. Catch it, if you’ll have the chance! With a 15 minutes walk through the Marais you can reward yourself later with the best kosher pastries in Paris, at Boulangerie Murciano, with a divine Apfelstrudel. At least that was possible when I last visited, now too many years ago. But I digress. In between the two locations you can visit Musée Carnavalet that presents the history of Paris.

Garel’s sculptures evolve through initial charcoal drawings, which he then converts into wooden sculptures. From there moulds are taken and cast in bronze. Many of them are now situated in public gardens across France. More information can be found here.

I find the drawings as attractive if not, in some instances, even more so than the sculptures.

It is wonderful work and the artist seems to have a sense of humor that certainly appears in the sculpture as much as in his own demeanor…

Can’t help it, music has to be about the hunt – mainly because there are so many beautiful pieces out there celebrating something that in earlier times was part of stocking the larders, rather than simply catching trophies. Although that was probably always the case as well. Joseph Haydn it shall be, Symphony No. 73 in D major “La chasse”.

Oversized Animal Sculptures by Quentin Garel Weigh the Prideful Pursuit of Hunting for Sport
1 Comments

June Excursion.

If you like vistas, wildflowers and wondrous limestone ponds, come walk with me around a lake or two at the southern side of Mt. Hood.

If, on the other hand, you prefer your landscapes more accessibly packaged into paintings, go see the current show at Maryhill Museum on the northern side of the Columbia river. One of the artists, Erik Sandgren, is giving a talk about The Columbia River: Wallula to the Sea featuring works by Thomas Jefferson Kitts and Erik Sandgren this Saturday, June 15, 2024 from 2 – 4 pm. I will report on the work likely next week.

I had the fortune to explore Trillium Lake on a day with perfect weather, wispy clouds in a blue sky, snow-capped mountain brilliantly lit, green exploding all around me. Created in 1960 by the US Department of Fish and Wildlife by damming Mud Creek, a tributary to the Salmon River, the lake has become a favorite of day visitors, engaged in canoeing, kayaking, paddle boarding and angling. There is also a campground for longer stays.

The place is jumping, conveniently located less than a 2 hour drive from Portland, offering an easy, flat trail around its circumference with recently repaired boardwalk and bridges, and plenty of trout. The views were pretty, if crowded.

The wildflowers were abundant, many only now coming into bud.

Knotflower

Salmonberry, false Solomon seal, wind anemone, horn violets, monkey flower, skunk cabbage, shooting star primula, bear grass about to bloom and same for rhododendron.

Trillium on their last leg, wild strawberries and elderberry in full swing.

Bald eagles and other raptors circled overhead, dragon flies and butterflies rested here and there.

Marshes rimmed the lake and old growth forest contained quite a few campsites.

It was uplifting, but paled in comparison to the second stop of our June excursion, Little Crater Lake. It is a 45′ ft deep pond formed by dissolving limestone, fed by spring at the bottom and Little Crater Creek.

The water is crystal clear, with colors changing depending on where you look – overall it has a turquoise appearance where it is deep, at the rims there are orange shades where the water is less deep, covering the stone. Due to the properties of the aquifers it is 34 degrees cold year round (swimming – wisely – prohibited.)

You reach the lake by wandering through a pristine, mysterious meadow, clouds of yellow pine tree pollen wafting through the air. The path goes around the tiny lake – more of a pond – and eventually connects with the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.

I did not make it that far – too busy photographing the wondrous jewel from all angles, with light tinging both marsh, water edges and water with flecks of gold, setting off the bluish green with contrast. Submerged logs seemed in a state of suspension, the only movement coming from small ripples set in motion by the wind.

A silent spot, you could hear the pines, cedars and hemlocks sighing in the breeze, if you listened closely, occasionally interrupted by a screeching jay.

The meadows were damp, closer to marshes, rimmed with lupines in full bloom, stippled with camas and the occasional mountain bluebell, all softly merging with the greenest of green of fresh cordgrass.

It is late spring at the foot of the mountain. I hope for many returns during the months leading in and out of summer. These outings restore the soul. They also restore the body, if you don’t overdo it, because of the kind of stress relief that they provide: activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the one that handles physiological processes like digestion and breathing.

Lupines and Buttercups

I believe this is what many people overlook – we are so geared towards thinking that only meditation or some other mindfulness practice can relax us to the point where it restores balance to our overly busy systems, that it doesn’t dawn on us there are other ways to disconnect – doing something while doing not much of anything required.

Veratrum

In fact there are many, many people for whom a total disconnect as achieved in meditation, or sitting still and doing absolutely nothing, produces an enormous amount of anxiety or guilt: we are so trained to be productive or responsible for being on all the time to care for others’ needs, that disengagement has the paradoxical effect of making us panic. And then we feel the added shame that we are not accomplishing our meditation goals!

Engaging in focused activity that you enjoy, like cooking, gardening, reading to your kids, or ambling along a nature path, is indeed more healing for some people, particularly those with generalized anxiety, than completely disconnecting. (Ref.)

Walking in the woods around a lake, starting to listen to the wind or the waves instead of the inner voices of “you should!” or “have you?” is an acceptable alternative to meditation, partly because we consider connection to nature a positive, justifiable endeavor. Listening to the former sounds makes it easy not to listen to the latter inner voices, with no guilt attached.

Mountain Bluebell

Mindfulness, in other words, does not need to be disconnected from any old activity. You just need to find one that allows you to focus and that is sufficiently attention holding, that the old worries can be kept at bay. I recommend sitting under a tree at Little Carter Lake with a journal or a camera….

Music today honors the trouts – again….with a particularly poignant farewell recording.

1 Comments

Art as Witness.

These are the woes of slaves;

They glare from the abyss;

They cry, from unknown graves,

“We are the witnesses!”

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Witnesses

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

Crossroads Quilt, Late 19th Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Columbia Gorge Museum

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

June 1 – July 31st, 2024

Open Everyday: 10:00am – 5:00pm

990 SW Rock Creek Dr, Stevenson, WA 98648

Special Event:

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

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

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

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

The Witnesses

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In Ocean’s wide domains, 

   Half buried in the sands, 

Lie skeletons in chains, 

   With shackled feet and hands. 

Beyond the fall of dews, 

   Deeper than plummet lies, 

Float ships, with all their crews, 

   No more to sink nor rise. 

There the black Slave-ship swims, 

   Freighted with human forms, 

Whose fettered, fleshless limbs 

   Are not the sport of storms. 

These are the bones of Slaves; 

   They gleam from the abyss; 

They cry, from yawning waves, 

   “We are the Witnesses!” 

Within Earth’s wide domains 

   Are markets for men’s lives; 

Their necks are galled with chains, 

   Their wrists are cramped with gyves. 

Dead bodies, that the kite 

   In deserts makes its prey; 

Murders, that with affright 

   Scare school-boys from their play! 

All evil thoughts and deeds; 

   Anger, and lust, and pride; 

The foulest, rankest weeds, 

   That choke Life’s groaning tide! 

These are the woes of Slaves; 

   They glare from the abyss; 

They cry, from unknown graves, 

   “We are the Witnesses!” 

7 Comments

Monsters among us.

The election results for the European Parliament are in. While not surprising, they are horrifying regarding the advancing power of the extremist right, with France’s Macron, facing terrific losses, even calling for new elections in the middle of preparation for the Olympics.

How shall we escape a monstrous present? If you are like me, by watching monster movies, of course, where all the horror is safely contained in a make-believe world. All the better if they amuse you – and today, for all the reviews I’ve read with people claiming they shed tears over the moving melodrama in question, I have to admit, mine were tears of laughter.

I am talking about the newest Netflix addition, fresh from a short, extremely successful run in real cinemas, praised to the heavens by most who know their cinematic stuff and adorned with an academy award for special effects: Godzilla Minus One.

The public loves it. The critics loved it. (Reviews from the US and abroad here, here and here.) It was shot on a minuscule budget as these kaiju – strange creatures – movies go, and it has two parallel storylines allowing you to focus either on a human interest drama, or the frisson of seeing a mega-monster trample Japanese cities, throw large ships and train cars miles through the air, and dooming all the extras.

So what’s wrong with me that I felt it provided a huge amount of comic relief? Particularly since the underlying message is really an anti-war stance and a reminder of what hell nuclear bombs created (viz. monsters) and what trauma a government forced upon a population asked to sacrifice for war without sufficient militaristic, technological or other support?

The movie’s title already introduces the idea of devastation. Set in 1946, the war has brought Japan to ground zero. A potentially successful attack by Godzilla, a sea creature that grew, radioactive flame throwers included, from the exposure to nuclear bombs and later nuclear testing at surrounding atolls, would move the needle even further into the dark ages – from zero to minus one. Would I have known that if I hadn’t scoured the internet for explanations? Of course not. Maybe not the best start.

Here’s the (abbreviated) plot line (spoiler alert!): Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima chickens out during the war and lands his plane with a pretext on a small island outpost with Japanese mechanics. Godzilla appears and our “hero” freezes again, not shooting the monster who then kills the crew but one. Returning to Tokyo after the war, Koichi as well as everyone else counts their losses, but with a large heart takes in a plucky young woman, Noriko, and an orphaned baby, Akiko, supporting them with dangerous work as a mine sweeper. On the job, he bonds with a band of diverse characters, the typical roster for action movies (think Ocean 11) with geeks and planners and musclemen well represented.

His shame and guilt prevents him from reentering life, attaching to the love interest, or becoming passionate about just about anything. When Godzilla reappears, now even more humongous than before, and destroys a city where love interest works, seemingly killing her in his spree as well, our hero decides to join the desperate attempts of civilians – with the government once again leaving them to their own – to tame and maim the monster, back to his old tricks as a kamikaze pilot. Except this time a mate provides his plane with an ejection seat, something the Japanese government had not afforded to war pilots before.

Curiously many ships get destroyed in the battle with Godzilla except for the ones manned by our merry band of misfits. After much fiddling and nail biting, the monster is slain, although some of the last underwater shots show parts of him regenerating already. Hero and love interest are re-united and he feels he has done sufficient restitution to his honor that he can “live” again.

The core story is indeed: war is bad, human bonds are good, trauma can last forever unless there is an occasion to redeem yourself. Survivor guilt dominates the post-traumatic stress experience. But it also hints at taking honor seriously, and being a bad person if you don’t sacrifice everything for the nation, or your fellow countrymen.

My problem? The acting is so cheesy, and the hero having not even a smidgen of charisma, that you feel you are in a method acting exercise with superlative special effects thrown in. Add to that the complicated approach to honor in imperialistic systems, with revisionism just about kept at bay, and a lack of familiarity with the details of these monster film scenarios on my part, and there you have it: I just felt amused, not riveted.

The special effects, though, and the visuals in general, were truly impressive. Shot in real water, the ocean-faring scenes are striking, the creature itself half terrifying, half exhilarating. I’d recommend watching it on a large screen rather than a small laptop, as I did.

Here is the trailer.

Funny thing is, I remembered having seen another monster story that struck me for its wooden acting and sappy melodrama many years ago, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall which one it was. A dear old friend came to the rescue, pointing to the 1954 movie Creature of the Blue Lagoon that we watched in the early seventies, feeling extremely confident that our scorn was justified.

I just rewatched it and must admit that the entire narrative about evolution, ecology, the value of science and the rotten nature of economic extraction was lost on this then 20 year old. At least I didn’t remember the white bathing suit of the heroine either, which apparently was a main attractant for scores of male movie watchers at the time….

And since things like to come in threes – here is another horror movie – and, yes, not a spoof. Apparently this 2 minute music video depicts what lots of Americans genuinely believe and why DJT’s scandals don’t impact his Christian support. Fanatics having found the CHOSEN one.

And with this, it’s back to the real world.

Photographs today from war ships and other fleet items echoing the movie’s maritime scenery.

2 Comments
© 2024