art
The Red Box
Forest
Observations
Fodienda
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”11″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]Viewable as a pdf here: bit.ly/Fodienda
A Little Girl Tugs on a Tablecloth
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”9″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]Illustrations for a poem by the wonderful Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, dedicated to my baby niece.
Do Betta
Bettas deserve better.
First the Dog
Speaking of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, Robert Hass said that Herbert wrote “as if it were the task of the poet, in a world full of loud lies, to say what is irreducibly true in a level voice.”
Zbigniew Herbert (yes, that’s how it’s spelled, yes the names go in that order) came of age during the Nazi occupation of Poland, writing his first poems while a member of the Polish resistance. The introduction in my volume of his poems describes his work as “quarrying for himself a little area of light and sense in the engulfing darkness of total war and repression.” Even while ruminating on the fate of Laika, the Moscow stray sent to space in Sputnik 2, Herbert’s meticulous lines cast out a light into the unknown, into the blind darkness of space, tracing a path forward towards the future of space exploration.
From “Selected Poems,” translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, 1968.
Noli Me Tangere
Sagittarius serpentarius – it’s got style, glamour, and a kick with a strike force 5 times its own body weight. The etymology of its common name, the secretary bird, is fuzzy; some sources say it refers to the long, quill-like plumes on the bird’s head, others that it stems from the Arabic saqr-et-tair, for hunter. With the longest legs of any bird of prey, these birds hunt terrestrially and are known for stomping their prey to death before eating it whole. It’s an admirably efficient process. They are particularly famed for killing snakes this way, referenced in the scientific name Sagittarius serpentarius, which means “archer of snakes.” I saw secretary birds throughout my trips to Tanzania, their stork-like height coupled with the heavy body of a raptor making them stand out on the savanna. Any large bird carries a gleam in their eye that says “We haven’t forgotten being dinosaurs,” but I think that, next to ostriches and emus, secretary birds may remember it the best.
The phrase “noli me tangere” is Latin, loosely translated as “don’t touch me” or “stop touching me/cease clinging to me.” It was a popular trope in medieval Christian art, depicting a scene in the Bible after the resurrection when Jesus said the phrase to Mary Magdalene. Derivations through the years include the Gadsden flag’s “Don’t tread on me,” with its aggrieved Revolutionary rattlesnake that has been appropriated in the modern era by the Tea Party and others who think that lifting a boot from someone else’s neck is the equivalent of having their own toes stepped on. While I do think that snakes – rattlesnakes in particular in the U.S. – get a bad rap, I wanted to flip the script from the static “don’t tread on me” – a fear of uncertain future attacks – to the older translation: stop touching me. The snake in the grass is doing me harm, here and now, and it’s going to stop. Time’s up.
Some sources:
http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/secretary-bird
http://library.sandiegozoo.org/factsheets/secretary_bird/secretarybird.htm
Unnatural
“It is generally accepted among environmental geographers that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. In every phase and aspect of a disaster – causes, vulnerability, preparedness, results and response, and reconstruction – the contours of disaster and the difference between who lives and who dies is to a greater or lesser extent a social calculus.”
This essay and others at Understanding Katrina were written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, addressing the political and social issues laid bare by the devastation. They call the supposed “naturalness” of disasters a form of ideological camouflage for the fact that many dimensions of a disaster are preventable.
Even when the hazard itself is natural, like the earthquakes devastating Mexico, the effects are socially determined. Meanwhile, the battering ram of hurricanes in the last month was doubly so, exacerbated by the unnatural role of climate change that the government and special interests continue to let go unchecked. It’s easier – and more convenient – to dismiss disasters as an Act of God than to address them as failures of government, infrastructure, and preparedness.
quakeandquiver.com 