Who's Afraid...?

 

"Fear" by Jean-Baptist Greuze

Fear, says a John Cale lyric, is a man’s best friend. In certain situations it must be, or it would not have survived evolution’s editing.  Fear protects us from present danger by igniting the instantaneous flight or fight response.  When it wells up more slowly, it responds to unconscious perceptions related to hidden danger, or the near prospect of it: darkness and thrashing sounds, for example.

Fear can give us an adrenalin buzz, which seems to be why some people enjoy scary movies. But more generally, over time, fear is a distinctly unpleasant feeling.  It can be paralyzing, all-encompassing, stressful and painful.  We avoid fear whenever possible. One way of avoiding fear is by denying that there’s something to be afraid of.

 Denial in this sense, like fear, can also be a survival tool.  The most fearful thing in our lives is our death, and yet the possibility of death exists every moment we are alive.  We can most easily escape the paralysis or obsession of fear by ignoring this.  And we do, or we couldn’t function.  In this sense, it is healthy.  Carl Jung told an interviewer that among the old people who were his patients, the healthier ones simply didn’t think much about their impending deaths, and just got on with it.

 But when fear is a response to a threat distant in time and place, but still very real, it becomes more complicated and perhaps perverted.  The fear of a distant enemy can become disproportionate, and abstracted into prejudice against all outsiders, all others. 

Nagasaki 1945

 With the dropping of two atomic bombs in 1945, each which wiped out a city and left lingering effects that slowly killed many more than died from the initial blast and fire, something awful entered civilized life. World War II itself saw the final erosion of the distinction between combatants and civilians in war, and massive airpower threatened sudden death to anyone, anywhere. 

 With thousands of guided missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads by the early 1960s, the world had firmly entered an age of permanent anxiety. Most everyone in the world, and civilization itself, could be destroyed in an hour, any hour of any day.  Life could be normal, and the next second plunged into the horrors imagined as hell.

 Such is the prehistory of the politics of our moment. Though for too many the horrors of war still exist, the interplay of fear and denial in individuals and groups now goes beyond just that situation. It applies as well to other cases of huge threats, including potential threats, which people are or believe themselves to be powerless to stop or prevent.

 What are the responses to danger and the fear it evokes?  To run away from it, if that is possible.  To fight it—that is, to address its effects, learn its causes and devise ways to end or neutralize them.  Or if the threat is not immediately visible or loudly audible, simply to deny there is anything to be afraid of.

 We all feel this impulse.  But today this denial has become a bonding mechanism in our politics.  Afraid of the effects of the climate crisis?  Deny that the climate crisis exists.  Afraid of the effects of Covid-19 and epidemics in general?  Deny that they exist, or are anything to be afraid of.  Facts to the contrary are just lies.

 Deny with another product of fear: anger.  Anger is one way humans channel the adrenalin of fear.  There are arguably other sources or kinds of anger.  But most can be traced back ultimately to fear.  And in many cases, there’s little distance between fear and anger.

 Anger is energizing.  It probably evolved to quickly hype the body’s forces to fight an imminent danger. These days, anger is a major means of political bonding.  As it grows in power, anger leads to a more general and undifferentiated hostility to everyone who doesn’t share it.  It occurs on both the so-called left and right. But it is especially important to those whose binding creed includes denial of the climate crisis, and of Covid.

 We do seem to be witnessing another case of what Eric Hoffer described in his 1951 book The True Believer as a mass movement: a cult grown large. He suggests that people who are disappointed in their lives, and may have real grievances and are the victims of real and widespread injustices, deal with their perceived powerlessness by banding together behind an authoritarian leader who purports to identify their enemies and promises to smite them, and to restore the world they expect and want.  You know, make America great again.

 While radio was the technological innovation that powered authoritarian leaders of the 1930s, social media and the Internet power group bonding behind a leader or symbol.  In order to be accepted by the group and to identify with it, there are articles of faith that must be repeated and even made more extreme.  Real grievances tend to get exaggerated or even falsified. Most importantly, the group also defines itself by the people they aren't--those who are defined as outside it, as part of the group that’s the real problem.  Individuals don’t matter—only group allegiances. Other considerations don't matter--only the attitudes that bind the group. Again, much of this is not restricted to so-called right wing groups.  But it is with these groups that denial as integral is most prominent.  (Similarly, they do use fear as a binding mechanism--often projecting threatening qualities onto the groups they define as enemies. Although not all their fears are without foundation, they tend to be twisted products of their continuously nurtured and never examined collective unconscious.)

Denying the climate crisis, denying the realities of Covid, with anger and hostility, are articles of their faith.  Now there’s a comparatively new wrinkle. The effects of anxiety over nuclear Armageddon, and the unconscious effects of our general daily denial of that danger, dominated the history of post-World War II generations. Now as the culture has largely forgotten the existence of nuclear weapons at the ready, or downgraded their power, elements of the political right are busily denying that Russia constitutes any threat at all.  As if they didn’t still have enough missiles pointed at the US with nuclear and thermonuclear bombs to devastate their lives in a moment. 

 In order for the political right to deny that there’s anything to be afraid of, the authority of those who say there is must be questioned and ultimately denied.  In the case of climate and the case of Covid, the authorities are scientists, their institutions, and the political institutions that support and listen to them. These political and cultural institutions are conveniently the same ones that are seen as enemies in general, and not without reason.  America’s educated elites that benefited from today’s economy have largely ignored the devastation suffered by others as a byproduct of that economy. 

 These institutions and elites make things worse by exploiting this anger and simultaneously by giving in to it.  For a crisis that might end the future of civilization and most forms of life currently on the planet, their response to climate distortion continues to be timid and—because of the economic powers and interests involved—dishonest.  In Covid, even the CDC is now supporting the fiction that this is just another respiratory disease on a par with flu, while evidence mounts of its major effects on the heart and on the brain in a significant number of patients. Denying Covid also denies future pandemics and epidemics, and weakens the institutions that could (or could have) addressed them.  Denial can kill, now and later.

 For some, denial and our temptations to denial are handy tools to ensure profits and not rock the boat that’s working for them.  For all of us, denial is convenient.  Nobody wants to think about this stuff. Some denial may also be necessary for our mental health.  But denial also raises anxiety because we all know what happens, sooner or later, when we act as if danger isn’t out there.  The irony is that our lives would be infused with so much more meaning if we just addressed ourselves as a whole society to the dangers we are right to fear.  

This North Coast Place: It Began Here

 In the San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday, Kurtis Alexander reported on "the nation's largest dam-removal project"--the dismantling of four dams on the Klamath River in far northern California and southern Oregon.  One of the dams is gone, and the other three are due to be erased by autumn this year.  

The article also focuses on the Shasta tribe, exiled from their land along the Klamath more than 100 years ago,  when a dam and reservoir were being built.  Now the remaining members are eager to return, especially as land is reclaimed after the dam is gone.  The article mentions that some 12,000 acres in California had been returned to Native tribes by the state and conservation groups.  

It brings to mind that both of these actions--the removal of the dams, and the return of Native lands, began in some significant way on the North Coast.

The basic reason for the removal of these dams is the sharp decline in salmon in the Klamath River.  Several surviving tribes along the river have centuries' old cultures with the salmon at their center.  These tribes, including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath and Hupa, have been a driving force in this and other efforts to restore healthy conditions in the Klamath and other rivers (like the Trinity) so that the salmon can return.  

This focused activity goes back to the traumatic salmon kill in 2002, when some 34,000 salmon died before the astonished eyes of tribal members.  A few years later, Humboldt State University theatre professor Teresa May convened a group of tribal members and other interested parties to begin discussions that would eventually result in a play dramatizing the issue, entitled Salmon Is Everything.  It was first produced at HSU in 2006, and traveled to a few other venues.  A new production was mounted in Oregon in 2011.  By 2015, these productions resulted in a book on the process and the issue.  

HSU made it the university's book of the year, and a reading of the play was produced in August 2015.  Several participants in the original process spoke, and all lauded the process and the play as a milestone in defining issues, spreading awareness and gathering crucial support that ultimately led to the decision to destroy the dams and allow the Klamath to flow freely again.  Of course, years of painstaking and detailed negotiations made this accomplishment possible, which included the leadership of the tribes such as the Yurok.  But this effort played a part.  

As for the return of Native land, the precedent was set in 2004 in Eureka.  Indian Island in Humboldt Bay was the site of a notorious massacre in 1860 that nearly wiped out the Wiyot tribe.  The Wiyots and members of other local tribes were participating in their World Renewal Ceremony at the village site on the island the Wiyot called Tuluwat.  In 1992, tribal chair Cheryl Seidner, direct descendant of the only known survivor of that massacre, began the annual candlelight vigil in Eureka to commemorate the ancestors.  Two non-Natives from Eureka also cosponsored the vigil, for part of its intent from the beginning was to heal the whole community.  This was only two years after the Wiyot had finally regained federal recognition as a tribe.

In the late 1990s, Seidner began a campaign to raise money to buy back the 1.5 acres of Tuluwat, so the World Renewal Ceremony could be revived.  In 2000, she announced the sale was about to happen, though more funds would be needed for the site's restoration.  In February of 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle published my article about the 1860 massacre, the candlelight vigils (which I had been attending) and efforts to revive the Wiyot cultural identity, and the reacquiring of the Tuluwat land--something that at the time seemed without precedent.  Seidner had expressed the desire to see all of Indian Island back in Wiyot hands--while a few parcels were in private hands, most of it was owned by the city of Eureka.  

After months of negotiation, the Eureka City Council voted in May 2004 to deed all of its land on the island to the Wiyot.  The ceremony of transfer of 40 acres (with 60 acres more added later) was held in June.  No one knew of another voluntary transfer of land by a municipality back to the tribe that held it sacred.  Not in California, and probably not anywhere in North America.  After extensive cleanup of toxic industrial waste, the site was restored, and the first 10 day World Renewal Ceremony in more than a century was held in 2014. 

Another major contributor to what has become a trend of returning Native land and especially recognizing Native tribes as environmental administrators of ancestral lands, as well as fostering grassroots cultural revival, has for long been the Seventh Generation Fund, headquartered for years in Arcata and now in nearby McKinleyville.  I'm proud to have worked with this group shortly after I came to the North Coast. 

The efforts of Cheryl Seidner and others in the Wiyot vigils and subsequent activities also set a template for other efforts, in involving both tribal and non-Native communities in a common process.  The Salmon Is Everything project also included voices of concerned parties beyond the tribes, like farmers.  One possible result is that, while the dam removal project was very controversial when proposed, it seems now mostly accepted. So more and more are the partnerships with tribes.  For example, the Siskiyou County board of supervisors, who long opposed the dam removal, recently endorsed the transfer of property that will result from the dam removal to the Shasta tribe, because they would make "good neighbors."

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

by Kiowa artist Stephen Mopope 1937

 “My grandmother was a storyteller; she knew her way around words…She had learned that in words and in language, and there only, she could have whole and consummate being….You see, for her words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold….”

N. Scott Momaday (1934-2024)

 House Made of Dawn

Origins: Valentine's Day

As is often true, the ultimate origin of Valentine's Day is unknown, though there are plenty of juicy legends repeated as fact, all disputed by at least some scholars.  But the one makes the most sense to me is this: its roots are in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, held on the Ides of February (February 15.) 

 Lupercalia was an early spring fertility festival, ostensibly in honor of a god of agriculture but also of Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus.  According to that origin legend, they were twin boys abandoned in a cave and raised by a wolf (Latin and Harry Potter scholars will recognize that the"lupa" in Lupercalia means a she-wolf.)  The festival traditionally began with a rite at that legendary cave.

But the rest of Lupercalia was dedicated to different sorts of fertility, with naked drunks running through the streets (some suggest the day also honored the god Pan), past married women who hoped they would become pregnant or have an easy delivery if they were touched by the goat's hide strips the men brandished. 

Yet another custom--more related to today's holiday-- was a lottery in which unmarried women dropped their names into an urn for unmarried men to randomly extract.  The two would become a couple, presumably including sexual favors, either for the course of the festival or (according to other sources) the entire year.  This even speedier variation on speed dating often (it is said) resulted in marriage. 

All of this went on for centuries, until the Catholic Church finally predominated.  In the fifth century, the Pope banned Lupercalia, and replaced it with St. Valentine's Day.  Some sources claim that the choice of St. Valentine was simply because he was officially martyred on that date.  Maybe.  But whenever the Church replaced a pagan feast day, or built a church over a pre-Christian sacred site, the replacement is often related to the earlier intent-- especially since Indigenous and other pre-Christian special days were related to natural cycles of the calendar, such as when birds and other animals begin mating in the early spring.

Besides, there are stories of at least three St. Valentines, all supposedly martyred, and none proven to have existed.  But by the Middle Ages the Church had a great cover story that related Valentine to the date, without saying so.  According to this legend, it all started when the third century Roman emperor Claudius II banned marriage.

Claudius had risen through the military (the first Emperor to have done so, and the first to be of "barbarian" birth) and thought marriage made soldiers weak and fretful, distracted by wives and children at home. And Claudius was often at war.

 But a Christian prelate in Rome called Valentine continued to secretly marry couples, until he came to the attention of Claudius.  During Valentine's imprisonment, he and Claudius had lively discussions, each trying to convert the other to their religion.  But only one of them was the emperor, so Valentine was executed.

Did any of this happen?  Outlawing marriage was not entirely unknown in Rome, but the encyclopedia entry that Wikipedia uses doesn't mention Claudius II (also known as Claudius Gothicus) doing so.  There is a further addition to the legend that says while he was imprisoned, Valentine had some sort of relationship--perhaps even fell in love with--his jailer's daughter.  Before his execution, he left her a note, "from your Valentine."  Right--at least a degree of cuteness too far.  

But by the Middle Ages, Valentine was a popular saint across Europe, and St. Valentine's Day became a day for celebrating early love, a sanitized--or at least euphemistic-- version of the Roman holiday.  The tradition of the card now called the valentine may have also derived from the age-old traditions of  Lupercalia.  Denied their lottery, it's said that young Roman men sent handwritten greetings to women they admired on the mid-February date.

But the first documented (and still existing) valentine card was sent by Charles, duke of Orleans in 1415.  He sent it to his wife, who happened to be a prisoner in the Tower of London at the time. 

 Handmade cards began to bear the image of Cupid (also related to Roman love customs) and to include amorous verses.  The printing press made the "mechanical valentine" a thing, and lower postal rates in 19th century England meant they didn't need to be hand-delivered, and could even be sent anonymously.  This led to more explicit imagery and racy verses, to the extent that in 19th century Chicago, some 25,000 valentines were deemed too obscene to deliver.  

Among the rude cards of the 19th and early 20th centuries were "vinegar valentines," that expressed insults--doubly so, since it often was the receiver and not the sender who had to pay the postage. Meanwhile, erotic valentines--intended as humorous or maybe not--survive into the 21st century.

The first printed valentines in America were pricey, but when greeting card companies produced less expensive versions, the practice of sending them became almost obligatory, rivaling only Christmas for predominance.  Through the 20th century at least, many faced Valentine's Day with anxiety and dread, counting the cards they got from fellow fifth graders, or mourning the first February 14 that their mailbox was bereft.  

As for the Xs denoting kisses on valentines and other written notes--which likely makes it the first emoji--they seem to be a remnant from illiterate times when many could sign their name only with an X, and sealed it with a kiss. If present trends continue, those days may not be gone forever.       

At The Same Time

While we talk

 thousands of languages are listening

 saying nothing

 while we close a door

 flocks of birds are flying through winters

 of endless light

while we sign our names

more of us

 lets go

 and will never answer

 --W.S. Merwin

Snyder For The Day #2

 

"Now [past] the end of the twentieth century, most societies are not even halfway functioning.  What does poetry do then?  For at least a century and a half, the socially engaged writers of the developed world have taken their role to be one of resistance and subversion.  Poetry can disclose the misuse of language by holders of power, it can attack dangerous archetypes employed to oppress, and it can expose the flimsiness of shabby made-up mythologies."

Gary Snyder

A Place in Space 

Happy Birthday, JJ

 

"This race and this country and this life produced me, he said.  I shall express myself as I am."

A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce.  Born February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland.

Our Foolish World

 "The iPhone 12 runs on a chip with 11.8 billion transistors etched into its silicon. Only one company in the world can make that chip. That company relies, in turn, on machines and materials that are also made only by singular firms. Those machines and materials rely on similarly complex and fragile supply chains. If any node in this supply chain breaks, so too will much of the global economy break. If a country or alliance of countries can control these advanced supply chains, locking others out, they will have a powerful advantage in both war and commerce."

Ezra Klein summarizing a point made in the book Chip Wars by Chris Miller

Snyder for the Day

 "Civilization is part of nature--our egos play in the fields of the unconscious--history takes place in the Holocene--human culture is rooted in the primitive and the paleolithic--our body is a vertebrate mammal being--and our souls are out in the wilderness."

--Gary Snyder

The Practice of the Wild

To The Rain

 

You reach me out of the age of the air 

 clear

 falling toward me

 each one new

 if any of you has a name

 it is unknown

 but waited for you here

 that long

 for you to fall through it knowing nothing

 hem of the garment

do not wait

 until I can love all that I am to know

 for maybe that will never be

 touch me this time

 let me love what I cannot know

 as the man born blind may love color

 until all that he loves

 fills him with color

--W.S Merwin

Generally when Merwin writes a poem "to" something or someone, the "I" in the poem is talking "to" that "person."  So he is addressing the rain (and, the raindrops.)  That seems clear enough in the first stanza.  But there are some tricky tenses and referents in the second.  Perhaps what waited was the unknown name:"rain."  Something perhaps is suggested about individuality and what they are in common, as well as the difference between the physical drops and their name.  The "it" could be the rain again, but it more likely seems to be the air the rain falls through. 

  In the next stanza, "hem of the garment" is addressed, often interpreted as a Biblical reference, an instrument of revelation perhaps, but it may still be (at the same time) the rain.  The imploring "touch me this time" would still be the rain but as a kind of revelation?  In any case, the final lines are very powerful.  The repetition of word sounds in the otherwise awkward  "maybe that will never be" sets up this powerful repetition of "color," partly through the music of the lines.  Another repetition in sound and sense is the word "know" (or "knowing") that appears three times in this short poem, each time in some way incomplete.  What lies beyond it can only be expressed in the final lines and what they suggest to us.

Year of Dread?

 The most obvious cause for dread is the 2024 election campaign and the elections themselves.  As 2023 ended, the polls showed President Biden with low approval ratings, and several polls showed Trump ahead in preference for November's voting.  But politically, November is a long time in the future.  Nobody really knows what polls measure these days, except whatever it is they measure is in the present, not that future.  A lot will happen between now and then--and I suppose that's as much reason for dread as the possible outcome.

I've called him Homegrown Hitler on this blog since 2016, and so I am not surprised that Trump has become so obvious about it that even major media has noticed.  His election would be a defining tragedy for this country, as it is likely to complete the destruction of constitutional government he and his cronies and minions have begun. I don't think he will be elected, but the institutions of government and law, as well as the Constitution itself  have already been seriously weakened, perhaps fatally in the long run, with the pressure that the future is highly likely to bring.  

Regardless of the election outcome, it's all but assured that the coming year of news will relentlessly and copiously be about Trump. Even worse that last year.  The media can't shake its addiction to him (even the progressive British paper the Guardian features his photo on every online front page, sometimes several of them), since he is for many the ultimate in clickbait.  President Biden has so far signaled that he will make Trump and his threat to democracy the primary issue of his campaign, which may only be acknowledging reality. (But my few readers be forewarned: you'll need to get your Trump fix elsewhere this year.)  

There's almost inevitably going to be a lot of related drama this year: trials for 91 felonies, Supreme Court decisions, the campaign, the election, probably extending into 2025.  Just dreading the drama has to head the list.  

For me, another cause for public dread in 2024 is that, partly because Trump is likely to be the major campaign issue, once again this year we are no going to get the clear, forthright and vocal leadership on the climate crisis that we need.

If you got past the war news, the front page lifestyle features and celebrity controversies, you may have noticed that 2023 was officially the hottest year in history, and not this time by a little.  By a lot.  Human civilization is perhaps ten or twelve thousand years old, but the Earth's temperature hasn't been this high in 100,000 years, at least.  The jump far exceeded predictions and scientists' expectations.

For the past decade, the clarion cry for climate action has been fixed on keeping the world's temperature from rising 1.5 degrees Centigrade on average.  2023 hit 1.48 and some scientists believe it is likely that sometime in 2024 or shortly afterwards, it will be official that the 1.5C has been breached as the average.  This is the number that the nations of the world said in the Paris Agreement of 2015 that they wanted to avoid.  "Above that threshold," said a CNN report, "many of Earth's ecosystems will struggle to adapt and summertime heat will approach the limits of human survivability is some places."  That's the minimal impact.  If it pushes the planet past various tipping points, it will be much worse, especially in the long term.  

There was positive news during the year on addressing climate distortion, and the Guardian (the most reliable daily news source for climate issues) published dueling year-end evaluations: "World will look back at 2023 as year humanity exposed its inability to tackle climate crisis, scientist says" vs. "I thought most of us were going to die from the climate crisis.  I was wrong."

The title of that second one is disingenuous--nobody expected most "of us", i.e. people now alive to die from the climate crisis. Just when in the future that might be a real possibility depends on a lot of other things as well.  It's an annoying simplistic way to talk about the real concerns. (On the other hand, some thousands of people will likely die of effects of climate distortion effects this very year.)

 The author of this piece and the book it comes from, Hannah Ritchie, bases her optimism chiefly on statistics about the growth and prospects of renewable energy, especially as it becomes cheaper than coal and oil. She pushes these conclusions to the point where she accuses anyone with doomsday warnings as aiding climate crisis denialists.  

The title of the first one, on the other hand, fails to mention that the scientist in question is not just any scientist--it is James Hansen, formerly of NASA, the scientist who brought the news of the climate crisis to Congress and the world--in 1988.  

While I don't dispute the numbers that Ritchie and some other climate writers use and apply to temperature rises (she believes the rise could be stopped at 2C or a fraction more) due to the phenomenal growth of renewables, the climate crisis is not just about balance sheets, it doesn't just go by the numbers.

The dangers of the climate crisis to the natural world and to civilization, even in the rest of this century, are not about absolute numbers.  They are also about what the effects of climate distortion in the real world can do to push at vulnerable situations, and make already dangerous matters catastrophically worse.  That includes exacerbating threats to the natural world on which we depend, from species extinction to the now fragile life of the oceans.  But it also includes threats to vulnerable institutions and to the now fragile global civilization, and these may well become more dangerous sooner than later.

Some of the direct effects of climate distortion are evident now--we don't even have to wait for the spring and summer fires and heatwaves of 2024--we're about to see climate distortion-fed and energized storms and coldwaves in much of America, with attendant direct and indirect damage, including flooding.  We're seeing coastal flooding on the increase as well.  Meanwhile, a quarter of the world's population is living in drought, and huge parts of the world are drying up to a lethal extent.

These begin cascades of consequences.  Even in America there are mounting costs of addressing multiple disasters, with communities slow to recover.  The danger of disease and epidemics increases.  Worldwide, we are especially seeing probably the most proximate cause of danger for the rest of this century: large scale migration; that is, large numbers of refugees.  Sometimes it is caused directly by climate effects, sometimes by warfare and political turmoil that is in part caused by climate effects.  

But we don't talk about migration that way.  We don't see it that way.  Many take no thought as to the reasons, and have no empathy for the refugees--something we haven't seen for awhile in the global north, but with dangerous potential for the stability of governments and public institutions.  This is one obvious problem related to climate that increases the dangers of violence and warfare, including the eventual use of nuclear weapons.  (Speaking of dread, I worry the dread of nuclear bombs has weakened, and their use against people is likely to happen again.)

Refugees and the reaction to them is only one issue that needs to be addressed in the context of the climate crisis.  The world dearly needs the leadership to spell it out clearly: to talk about causes and effects, and to outline action to address each.  But there is no such leader, even on the horizon.  There really isn't one I see in the US.  The only possibility I know of is Vice-President Kamala Harris, who seems to have some grasp of the problems, and who I once heard speak in terms of the causes and effects of the climate crisis--which is possibly the only terms that can organize the information in a form people at large can immediately grasp.

Here are the causes, here is what we need to do, and here is what we're doing about them.  Here are effects, here is what we need to do, and here is what are doing about them.  There is a plan, and I will keep updating you on our progress.  This is what we need, and what--in 2024--we are once again unlikely to get.

While Republicans continue their delusional and self-serving rants, Democratic politicians are afraid to name the crisis and its components.  Everything is obscured, disorganized, coded.  Electric cars alone aren't going to do it.  Saying that the climate crisis is about jobs is not enough.  It's just more hiding from really confronting the crisis and its dimensions.

The United Nations had another climate meeting in 2023, another COP.  This year's much lauded outcome was to declare that the age of fossil fuels is over, we're going to end them.  Excuse me if I see this as akin to an alcoholic declaring an end to drinking, and celebrating that with another round.  Meanwhile the US is pumping more oil than any nation in the world, and any nation in history.

Most of the COPs beginning with the Paris Agreement have been about promises.  They set goals for reducing carbon output.  They never meet them.  They set up a fund for rich nations to help the poor nations most affected, especially by rising tides.  They failed to put any money in it, and then they contributed too little.  It's been mostly about promises. Similarly, there are lots of ideas for technologies and things to do; some of the oldest have been known for years but still nothing is done. And others will require decades more of refinement, when it will likely be too late to apply them effectively.  Yes, people and nations are trying, and showing some progress.  But not enough to keep the promises from becoming lies we tell ourselves.

Until we dread the lies more than the work that needs to be done, every year will be a year of dread.  That's all I've got to say.  Captain Future, over and out.

R.I.P. 2023

 Honoring some of the prominent people who died in the past year as I usually do seems a little hollow this time, for my thoughts are heavy with people prominent in my life who passed away in 2023, even if they are not so famous.  They were all good people, and they live in my memory.  So I can't go on to more generally recognizable names without at least mentioning them. 

 I've written previously about my uncle, Carl Severini.  I've mentioned my friend since high school, Joyce Davis (my first prom date, and first teenage kiss.)  Towards the end of the year there were more: Bernadette Cheyne and Charlie Meyers, friends from Humboldt State drama department (I wrote about them here); and most recently, Janet Morrison, who I knew first at Carnegie Mellon drama and as Margaret's close friend, and who we saw a few times more recently.   The world is a lesser place without them.

But here's at least a curtain call for people who were part of many lives, some of whom will continue to live in films, books and recordings, and some of whom will remained anchored to a particular time in our memories.

So a last hurrah to Harry Belafonte, as admirable a man as he was talented.  After stardom with The Band, Robbie Robertson explored his Native roots and wrote tantalizing film scores. He must have been an interesting guy to know.  Michael Gambon was masterful in so many roles, from his early work on The Singing Detective to the great French detective Maigret in a British TV series, to international fame as the second Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, with lots of wonderful supporting roles as well (I recall expecially his role as Mr. Woodhouse in the 2009 BBC/PBS series of Jane Austen's Emma.) 

Glenda Jackson had a superb run as a movie actor, as well as a theatre actor in the UK (the only time I saw her onstage in the US was in a regrettable production of Macbeth.)  The British actor Tom Wilkinson and the American actor Alan Arkin were always worth watching in everything they did.

In an episode of NCIS, DeNozzo asks Gibbs what Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard looked like as a young man.  "Illya Kuryakin," he replied.  David McCallum of course played both, replacing the smoldering enigmatic spy with the vitality and charm of the older doctor.    

I've written at length about the timeless Tony Bennett.  I remember Jimmy Buffett and Randy Meisner (a founder of the Eagles) from the 70s, the dynamic Tina Turner from even earlier.  I met and interviewed David Crosby, not an entirely happy experience, but perhaps as much my fault as his.  I suddenly came face to face with Raquel Welch in a Manhattan bookstore--she seemed shorter than those statuesque poster poses.  

I fell absolutely in love with Melinda Dillon in Close Encounters, and though she got a bit typecast, she played her character well in Absence of  Malice. Andre Braugher and Richard Belzer I will remember from the Homicide series (though I recall Belzer even earlier as a standup comic.)  I was not a Friends fan, but admired Matthew Perry's work on The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  I encountered Barbara Bossom, a western Pennsylvania girl, at CMU with her husband Steven Bochco.  I of course had watched her on the iconic Hill Street Blues.

Jane Birkin

Mary Quant and Jane Birkin are linked forever to the England Swings 1960s (as is the lesser known actor Shirley Ann Field in several British films of their golden era in the early 60s.)  Daniel Ellsberg represented a different 60s and 70s, as did Tom Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, and Vietnam era pacifist David Harris, while Newton Minnow will forever be associated with "the vast wasteland" of TV he described as FCC commissioner in the 60s.  Astrud Gilberto had a hit with "The Girl From Ipanema" in 1964, influencing a generation of musical talents.  I recall the bold installations of Robert Irwin as part of the liberation of the 60s.

I remember Dick Groat as the shortstop on my beloved 1960s Pittsburgh Pirates world champs (He hit .325 that year and won the batting title and was the co-MVP, and I don't even have to look those up.)  Johnny Lujack was the fabled record-setting quarterback for Notre Dame and the Chicago Bears who had a long career as a sports announcer.  My father told me he was a second cousin, probably through my paternal grandmother's family, but I never met him. 

Even further back, Phyllis Coates was the first Lois Lane in the 1950s Adventures of Superman TV series, and Franco Misliacci was the lyricist of "nel blu, di pinto de blu," one of a few Italian language hit records of the 50s, which later was a hit again for Robert Ridirelli (Bobby Rydell) and others by the title of its most recognizable word, "Volare."  

I've written about writers who passed away in 2023 here. Many of these strangers were part of the texture of my life, so in partial and mysterious ways, you could say I knew them.  May they rest in peace and in our memories.

New Year's Resolution?

 "Are you going to try to improve yourself, or are you going to let the universe improve you?"

Dogen

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"One of the first things I noticed when I came back was that everybody talked a little too fast, and they took too much for granted."

Gary Snyder, recalling his return to the US in the 1960s from living in a Buddhist monastery in Japan. 

The Morning

Would I love it this way if it could last

 would I love it this way if it

 were the whole sky the one heaven

 or if I could believe it belonged to me

 a possession that was mine alone

 or if I imagined that it noticed me

 recognized me and may have come to see me

 out of all the mornings that I never knew

 and all those that I have forgotten

 would I love it this way if I were somewhere else

 or if I were younger for the first time

or if these very birds were not singing

 or I could not hear them or see their trees

 would I love it this way if I were in pain

 red torment of body or gray void of grief

 would I love it this way if I knew

 that I would remember anything that is

 here now anything anything

 --W.S. Merwin

Three Guides

 Among the concepts I regard as guides are three with non-English names, from three different cultures.

 Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word which literally means non-harming, the most basic Buddhist precept.  Poet Gary Snyder, who studied Buddhism for many years, defines the concept as “do the least possible harm.”  So it is less restrictive than total non-violence, but it is broader in application.  It means do the least possible harm to everything—not just humans but animals, plants and even rocks.  It turns out to be an ecological as well as a moral principle. In life it means a change in assumptions—that is, think first before making a harmful change, not exactly second nature to western civilization.  Personally it means being mindful, respecting the other, and sincerely evaluating whether causing harm is necessary.  This is a key to the sacred attitude towards eating and other aspects of ordinary life that nevertheless have profound meaning.

 Hozho is a concept from Navajo culture, part of the Beauty Way.  A Navajo character in a Tony Hillerman novel explains it with an example: In times of drought the Hopi and some other cultures will pray for rain.   “The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought…. The system is designed to recognize what’s beyond human power to change, then to change the human’s attitude to be content with the inevitable.” This does not eliminate trying to right wrongs, address problems, or change what needs to be changed.  But where it applies, this concept is not only a profound act of humility, but a necessary human response of adjustment to reality.  It’s something that other animals do instinctively—they find ways to cope with drought, for example. They adapt to the environment.  Instead of being angry or frightened, or obsessing on things as unjust and taking them personally, people accept the conditions and work within them to make life better—by conserving water, for instance.  Being in harmony is not easy.  The Navajo ceremonies take days.  But as a general principle, it only makes sense.

The third concept is Italian, and so part of my own Italian American culture.  Sprezzatura can be defined in various ways, but it can come down to making a personal style part of life, an elegance that is natural and appears effortless.  Tony Bennett applied it to music, but outwardly it can most often be seen in modes of dress.  There are places where such expression is noticed and valued, but more places where it isn’t.  But that doesn’t matter so much, because sprezzatura is an attitude, and expression (playfulness, authenticity) for its own sake.  Or to quote another Italian saying: Niente senza gioia.  Nothing without joy. 

Readings: Its Own Reward

 “As the Lord Krishna on the battlefield said to the warrior prince Arjuna, ‘ To the work alone you are entitled, never to its fruits…He who knows that the way of renunciation and the way of action are one, he verily knows.’

 Life as an art and art as a game—as action for its own sake, without thought of gain or loss, praise or blame—is a key, then, to the turning of living itself into a yoga, and art into a means to such a life.”

Joseph Campbell  Myths to Live By  

But this is not necessarily an either/or--just that this point of view is ultimately the one.  It connects to a couple of other quotes posted here (or there) in the past:

   "Writing becomes its own reward.  What do you need from others--except a little money--if you have satisfied the stern critic of yourself?"

Malcolm Cowley 

"You don't have to sell a hundred million records, you don't need thousands of platinum disks, you don't need to sing to millions and millions of people for music to nourish your soul.  You can sing and play to the cat, it will still mend your life.  My mantra is five simple words: Music is its own reward."

Sting

Ignoble Nobel? Is That Why They Ignore Margaret Atwood?

 It's been over for awhile but it still bothers me.  2023 was the latest year in which Margaret Atwood did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

At least the Pulitzer Prize committee finally recognized Barbara Kingsolver.  There's been no better US novelist, none more consistent and capacious in the breadth, depth and style of her work.  But also this year the Nobel committee has once again ignored not only my now-perennial favorite--and  the world's-- in yet again passing over Margaret Atwood.

Atwood was widely believed to be the favorite back in 2017--so much so that the actual winner, Kazuo Ishiguro, publicly apologized for winning it instead of her.  But there was always next year.  And next year. And next year... And now Margaret Atwood is 84.

I don't claim to have read all the fine writers of the world, and I must defer judgment on a lot of prizes, like the Booker.  But the Nobel has a specific, specified mission.  In the words of founder Alfred Nobel, it is for the writer "who, in the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."

That person, year after year for the past decade (I've been touting her since at least 2011), has been Margaret Atwood.  She is unique in the world for sustaining quality literary work over many years, while her work consistently engages the contemporary world.  She is now a global presence, for the shared present and future dilemmas she writes about (and the increasingly relevance of The Handmaid's Tale), but also as a literary figure and an active voice.  Her contributions are immeasurable. 

Of course the Nobel committee in Sweden has ignored their founder's goals for years.  They tend to award for a body of work rather than something from the previous year, which is defensible.  But they also tend to choose writers who are perhaps known mostly within a single nation (usually a small one), if, frankly, at all.  Their influence on the world is minimal, at least until they win and their work gets new editions.  At least, that's what they usually do, when they're not awarding it to a legendary popular music lyricist who is either a skillful selector in the folk music tradition, or a serial plagiarist, including portions of his Nobel Prize acceptance address. 

If the body of work is a major consideration, consider this:  Margaret Atwood has published 18 novels, nine story collections, 18 volumes of poetry,  11 books of nonfiction, eight children's books and two graphic novels--and these are only works brought out by major publishers and presumably translated widely.  She writes and speaks on ecology and economics as well as literature.  And the world reads and listens.

But there's no point in making the case.  Everyone knows it.  Everyone knows she is the perfect Nobel Laureate, and has been for years.  

So why hasn't she been one?  It can't be only because she sometimes writes speculative or science fiction--they gave the award to Doris Lessing many years ago.  Atwood herself hasn't commented on it in interviews I've read or watched on Youtube, usually praising whoever just won.  But I got the feeling that she doesn't expect to ever win it, because of some problem with the Nobel committee regarding her.  Maybe there's animosity, personal or otherwise, from a member or members of the committee.  Maybe they feel she's gotten too many other awards.  Who knows? (Actually, I think she does.)

The Nobel committee in any case has a well known track record of not getting around to honoring major literary figures in their lifetimes, and therefore never honoring them at all.  So why should I care?  I probably shouldn't.  But to me it calls into question not only the Nobel committee's judgment but their integrity.  I know all these prizes are political to some extent, and this is not the worst injustice in the world.  But seeing some justice done is a rare but good feeling.  She deserves this.

So I don't care who wins the Nobel anymore.  Not until the name that's announced is Margaret Atwood.  

P.S. Margaret Atwood's latest fiction is a story collection, Old Babes in the Woods.  Barbara Kingsolver's Pulitzer-winning novel is Demon Copperhead.  Both are fine gifts for discerning and appreciative readers.

Then and Now: Mourning in America

 In a 1964 essay Joseph Campbell chose as his example of  "the high service of ritual to a society" the funeral of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963:  "For here was an enormous nation; yet during those four days it was made a unanimous community, all of us participating in the same way, simultaneously, in a single symbolic event.  To my knowledge, this was the first and only thing of its kind in peacetime that has ever given me the sense of being a member of this whole national community, engaged as a unit in the observance of a deeply significant rite."

It's not hyperbole (if a bit exaggerated in detail): that's how it was.  And as it has never been again--which probably makes it inconceivable to the majority of Americans today, who were not old enough or even alive then, sixty years ago this month. 

Among the contributing factors to the national response was the status of the presidency, and of the President as a kind of personification of the nation, that's largely gone now.  There was the shock: it broke the continuity of time.  Few if any then alive could remember McKinley's assassination in 1901.  There was also the new intimacy which the Kennedys brought, largely through the relatively new national medium of television.  People had never been as familiar with a President and his family.  

John F. Kennedy became a national figure at the 1956 Democratic convention, one of the first covered by television, when the presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson left the choice of the vice-presidential candidate to the convention.  So there were nominating speeches and a tense vote.  Kennedy came up short by about 20 votes, and took the platform to move that the nomination of his rival Estes Kefauver be made unanimous. 

 Early in 1960, Kennedy was frequently seen on the evening news as he took the new route to the presidential nomination of competing in primary elections.  The campaigns in Wisconsin and West Virginia were particularly dramatic and heavily covered.  The Democratic National Convention was in media-saturated Los Angeles and dominated the networks all that August week, as they played up the drama, though eventually Kennedy secured the nomination on the first ballot.

The 1960 campaign featured the first four televised debates.  The election was close and so demanded a lot of media attention.  Once Kennedy became President, he and his administration and especially his family were everywhere in the broadcast and print media, which included not only newspapers but magazines from newsmagazines to glossy photo-rich weekly magazines like Life and Look, plus glossy women's magazines like Good Housekeeping that featured Jacqueline Kennedy and daughter Caroline. Jacqueline Kennedy refurbished the White House public rooms to reflect their historic character, and the networks all carried her one-hour tour of the result. 

The nation watched not only as JFK confronted crises in Berlin, Cuba and elsewhere internationally, and domestic crises like his confrontation with Big Steel, but as he and his wife brought a baby boy into the White House, and also lost a son at birth.  Kennedy was the first to hold live televised press conferences, which displayed his charm and wit as well as command of the issues.  He entered the White House at age 43, as the youngest man to be elected President in American history.  

In other words, the American public had the opportunity to become more intimate with JFK than any President before him. 

In both senses of the word, Kennedy appealed to a wide variety of Americans.  The industrial and working middle class was strong and unionized, and he was supported by the unions.  His first big legislative goal was to increase the minimum wage (to $1.25 an hour.  Opponents warned it would tank the economy.)  The young flocked to join the Peace Corps that he began.  He proposed and fought for "medical care for the aged," that became Medicare, finally passed in 1965.  He spoke often about education, and about the arts.  He brought artists and entertainers to the White House.  He supported the sciences, committed the US to landing an American on the moon, which at first resulted in probably the global event that came closest to presaging the attention to his funeral rites, which was the fully televised launching of John Glenn as the first American to orbit the Earth, as well as those three orbits and his splashdown. 

 

Then there was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962--which definitely had the nation's attention.  On its 40th anniversary, when several of the principals involved were still alive, his Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara and White House aide Theodore Sorensen agreed, that if anyone else then on the scene--Democrat or Republican-- had been President (with the exception of his brother Robert) and faced the same circumstances, thermonuclear war would most likely have resulted.

Kennedy called for and negotiated a nuclear test ban treaty with the USSR, crucially important as the first reversal in Cold War hostilities and the arms race.  He gave his signature speeches on the test ban and on civil rights one after the other in two days, and it was his words--the eloquence and directness of his argument-- even more than the acts themselves that set the stage for at least the near future, and that continue to echo through history. Most historians and political observers now agree that he was about to end direct American involvement in Vietnam.  As 1963 was coming to a close, he told political advisors his 1964 campaign issues would be pursuing peace and addressing poverty in America.    

 He was up and down politically, and he was hated by some. There were cynics, as there are many more now.  But Americans felt a connection, and he inspired widespread affection and admiration, confidence in his ability as President, and an optimism for the future.  His assassination was a shock on so many levels--of vulnerability, of an unimagined violence, of reality cut loose, then of grief for a young family we'd come to know. Part of it for many was the feeling that it was a turning point in history--a turning back, a turning away.  It turns out sadly that we were right.  

It is true that most of us experienced those four days through television.  Although I don't recall watching all that much on Friday, the day of the assassination itself.  I was in an afternoon class in high school when the principal, Father Sheridan, came on the p.a. (as he often did), but this time announced that TV was reporting that President Kennedy had been shot in a Dallas motorcade.  My next class was gym, which we held outside, engaged in some sports activity that allowed me to almost forget what I'd heard, as if it hadn't happened.  Then we showered and dressed, and as I walked up the narrow stairs to the gym itself, a boy coming down for his own gym class answered my inquiry with a fatal nod--President Kennedy was dead. 

I remember wandering the dark silent halls, then walking home with my two best friends, including my debate partner, Mike.  We were scheduled to work on our debate case at my house.  Instead we spent the evening talking about what had happened and what might happen next.  

But by the next day I was watching almost all the time.  The entire broadcast day was devoted to this news coverage, and would be through Monday.  There were no commercials whatsoever.  Much of the time on Saturday especially, the TV coverage highlighted events in Kennedy's campaign and presidency--at least for another day, he was more alive than dead on the TV screen.

  On Sunday I didn't go to Mass with my family so I could watch the procession to the Capitol, and thereby happened to witness Oswald being shot on live TV.  A moment before I'd been startled by what I thought was a gun, but it turned out to be a microphone. Then the real shot, and the chaos.  Like most people, I watched the funeral Mass (in the same church where, two days after his Inauguration, Kennedy reached back to shake my 14 year old hand), then the procession to Arlington National Cemetery on TV (although Margaret, having grown up in Arlington, was there.)  We saw the caisson drawn by six horses--one of many deliberate echoes of Lincoln's funeral--and the riderless black horse, rearing and bucking.  We saw Kennedy's three year old son John and his salute, and all the closeups of Mrs. Kennedy, a contemporary portrait of Our Lady of Sorrows.

But though we were bound together through television, it wasn't the total measure of our participation or expression.  I remember going with my father to Main Street in Greensburg, probably late Friday or early Saturday, to the Singer Sewing Machine store he managed, where we placed one of my Kennedy photos in the storefront window, surrounded by black bunting.  Every store on the street had a similar display.  None of them would be open for business until Tuesday.  Main Street was in mourning--here and everywhere.

When Kennedy's coffin was displayed in the Capitol rotunda, nearly half a million ordinary Americans filed by to pay their respects, all day and night and into the next day.  On Monday, the coffin entered St. Mathew Cathedral at 12:14 pm.  Historian William Manchester wrote in his book The Death of a President, that "millions of individuals, reading the funeral timetable in the morning papers, had spontaneously chosen that moment to express their own bereavement."  

"For the next five minutes, the continental United States was virtually isolated: telephone and cable communication with the outside world was suspended until 12:19."  Traffic in cities stopped. The New Jersey Turnpike was deserted.  Trains across America stopped. Subway trains under cities stopped in their stations.  Buses pulled off the highways and stopped.  Planes scheduled for takeoff remained on the runways. Even elevators stopped.

There were official memorials: sailors on US ships at sea cast wreaths into the waters.  Thousands of artillery pieces at 7,000 US military posts fired salutes.  But citizens invented their own tributes.  Two Eagle scouts played taps to a totally silent Times Square, where taxi drivers stood by their cabs with bowed heads.  A railroad conductor got down from his stopped train in rural Pennsylvania and blew taps on his own trumpet.  And it wasn't just Americans.  It was rush hour in Athens but Greek police still stopped traffic for a period of silence.  A tribal ceremony of mourning was held in Nairobi.

Manchester reports that television viewing dipped to its lowest during the funeral Mass, as people attended memorial services in their own churches, synagogues and mosques, and in San Francisco, at Buddhist temples. There were memorial programs at all fifty state capitals.  These rituals kept the country from going crazy, but they did not heal the nation completely, nor the lives of many of us. 

The mourning, and certainly the effects, did not stop at the end of those four days.  But those days remain a moment in America without precedent and without repetition (though the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968 prompted extensive response.)  For most Americans now I'd guess, it is only the faded black and white television images sampled briefly now and then that prevent it from sliding completely into the historical obscurity of the response to FDR's death, or Lincoln's assassination.  Those of us still around who lived through it consciously will remember a different America, and especially the different America that could have been.