January 9, 2024

Enjoy It While It Lasts

By DP

This week, we relay a graphic from a Guardian report that was on the front page this morning, yet not this afternoon. Apparently, the all-powerful Algorithm (nicknamed “Oz”) has decided there have not been sufficient eyeballs scanning the page to justify a front page spotlight any longer.

No surprise, given ongoing widespread lethargy and complacence in the face of a crisis that will soon be irreversible.

 

 

One person who understands the dire implications of the above: Andrew Dessler, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A & M, who provided us with our title by stating, “Every year for the rest of your life will be one of the hottest [on] record. This in turn means that 2023 will end up being one of the coldest years of this century. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

 

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January 1, 2024

A Gift From the Universe

By DP

As relayed from the Webb telescope:

 

 

Grateful for the ever-expanding circles of DP correspondence and community.

With best wishes for a creative and joyful New Year;

more soon.

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December 25, 2023

Res Miranda

By DP

ADORATION OF THE MAGI   circa1390

Above, as relayed from the Met Cloisters ; below, Philip Stopford’s glorious setting for There is No Rose of Such Virtue.

 

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December 5, 2023

Facts Matter

By DP

Against the senseless blather of COP 28, which has disintegrated into a desert rave for fossil fuel lobbyists, we offer three simple graphs that confirm we are a long way from facing the brutal truth of our deepening crisis:

 

 

 Reality is what’s still there when you stop believing in it.

(DP, with a nod to PKD)

 

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November 26, 2023

The Tyranny of Now

By DP

As the world’s hapless & increasingly irrelevant climocrats gather, in oil-stained Dubai of all places, to perform their annual COP Theatre of Blah Blah Blah, we bend an ear to the voice of philosopher and deep ecologist Roman Krznaric, via an interview earlier this year. Every word rings more loudly with each passing moon.

 

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November 9, 2023

Uplifted Into Infinite Space

By DP

Now comes the voice of novelist Lauren Groff, excerpted from an excellent recent Orion interview regarding her novel, The Vaster Wilds; immediately after reading her remarks, we placed an order for the book.

At the base of the story, even in its incredibly rudimentary earliest forms, there was always this push to slowly unveil the truth (one that we, in our hubris, tend to ignore) that humankind is a very short, bright thread in the enormous weave of the history of earthly life. It was urgent in this book to decenter human dominance and allow the rest of nature to take its proper place as equal to the human experience. As the girl in her flight goes deeper into her experience of being alone in the woods, as her body begins to suffer from the cold and exertion and hunger, the forest itself becomes a companion that allows her to see past the received ideas of civilization that had held her captive to that point, and in some ways becomes her solace.

One of the texts that I read while thinking through this book was Emerson’s essay, “Nature,” especially this part, which reverberates through my book:

“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period so ever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent Eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

To which we respond: hear! hear!

 

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October 30, 2023

Come the Early Rejecters

By DP

Here at DP, we are often accused of being Late Adopters. Not true; we are Early Rejecters!

For example, every member of the editorial staff at our vast mountainside scriptorium proudly carries an ancient flip phone and writes picture postcards to our global network of correspondents. Thus we shouted our collective affirmation upon reading a recent Earth Tongues posting by fellow Early Rejecter Eileen Crist, regarding use of AI.

The entire (concise & lucid) essay is worthy of close consideration; a brief excerpt below, with DP editorial emphasis in bold.

“The technosphere, defined as the total mass of all things manmade, now weighs more than all living things. It has taken over the face of the Earth and remains tenacious in its colonizing march. The technosphere has subjugated land, seas, and animals. It has smashed the atom, disassembled life, and projected itself into outer space. Now, the technosphere wants to take over, to replace, our thinking and our creative expressions; it so innocently offers to “assist in the content creation process.”

Methinks, NO. I do not want to know what AI “thinks.” I especially do not want AI to think or write for me. Additionally, I decide not to consider its input. This position is not motivated by prejudice against machines and by attachment to my cherished human distinction from them. Rather, in a world so slavish and reckless in every regard toward technology, with no evidenced capacity for either restraint or free choice, it behooves us to draw personal boundaries mindfully decided.”

 

 

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October 16, 2023

Monument to Freedom

By DP

Now comes the Equal Justice Initiative, announcing the creation of yet another dimension to their profoundly transformative work, bringing obscured or suppressed histories fully into the light.

Below, we relay the press release together with a video link.

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Opening early 2024, the new 17-acre Freedom Monument Sculpture Park will bring together history, narrative, large-scale sculptures, contemporary art commissions from many of the greatest living artists, a new National Monument to Freedom honoring enslaved people who were emancipated after the Civil War, and many historic artifacts that together create an immersive, multifaceted examination of America’s history with a focus on slavery and its legacy.

The Sculpture Park will join EJI’s award-winning Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice to form the Legacy Sites. The Sculpture Park fuses the power of art with history, animates the humanity and struggle of enslaved Black Americans, and sheds light on our nation’s history. Designed to be experienced as one journey, visitors are encouraged to visit all three Legacy Sites.

The Freedom Monument Sculpture park will feature newly commissioned works by artists including Alison Saar and Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, alongside major sculptures from Wangechi Mutu, Rose B. Simpson, Theaster Gates, and Kehinde Wiley.

The National Monument to Freedom will be the highlight of the experience. Standing 43 feet tall and over 150 feet long, the Monument will honor all four million enslaved Black people who were emancipated at the end of the Civil War by memorializing more than 120,000 unique surnames documented at the time. 

The Monument will celebrate the courageous survivors of this horrific era by recognizing the families they created and millions of their descendants, many of whom still carry the names chosen by their formerly enslaved foreparents. 

The plaza surrounding the National Monument will feature writings from Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and James Weldon Johnson. Visitors will be able to honor formerly enslaved people by placing flowers in a stream that flows next to the Monument. 

Space for reflection, remembrance, and contemplation will mark the conclusion of the journey through Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.

“In order to deepen our collective understanding of racial injustice and its impact on contemporary issues, our country must reckon with the painful history and legacy of slavery,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson. “Historical examination and memorialization are critical to help move us forward and build healthier communities, and we’re honored to work with some of the greatest contemporary artists to provide a cultural space for all visitors to engage with this vital part of history.”  

“Slavery touched almost every corner of the world—from the Americas to Africa and Europe—and we invite everyone to visit Freedom Monument Sculpture Park for a profound experience that will illuminate challenging aspects of our past, while inspiring a more hopeful future shaped by truth and justice.” 

Situated on the banks of the Alabama River, where tens of thousands of enslaved Black people were trafficked by boat and rail, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park creates an immersive experience in a historically significant physical space where visitors can deepen their knowledge and understanding of history, the power of art, and the importance of justice.  

More details about the opening of Freedom Monument Sculpture Park will be announced in the coming months. 

 

 

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September 29, 2023

War Against Nature

By DP

Now comes poet, rambler and philosopher of the commons, Robert Macfarlane, with a few choice remarks following the senseless felling of the iconic tree at Sycamore Gap along Hadrian’s Wall:

I just see this as part of a piece with a much broader hostile environment towards the living world in this country. Our focus really shouldn’t be on the offender here. I think it’s on the culture. Nature is under attack in these islands and has been for a long time.

There’s a line by [the poet] WH Auden written 70 years ago. He says: ‘A culture is no better than its woods.’ Well, we have not looked after our woods well. This is part of the broader war on nature.

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[That Sycamore] was a film star – it starred in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. It was a tree that ashes were scattered under, marriages were made under, and it was a shelter for tired walkers. It stood in that gap in the wall, and it survived the winds that howl through that notch. It stood in a wall that was a symbol of repression really, but it flourished there. It was a landmark in the region.

The best way to remember the loss of the tree, I would say, is with the gain of the forest. We are drastically deforested, we have the second lowest forest cover in Europe. Let us reforest the uplands. Let us see a Sycamore Gap forest rise for the loss of a tree.

 

As for the Auden poem, here is the quote in the context of the stanza:

A small grove massacred to the last ash,
An oak with heart-rot, give away the show:    
This great society is going to smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods.
A culture is no better than its woods.

 

 

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September 22, 2023

Miracles of Beauty

By DP

Now come the extraordinary Columbian dance school El Colegio del Cuerpo and the dance company Cuerpo de Indias, founded “as an act of resistance to heal  the wounds of the collective body,” under the direction of Álvaro Restrepo and Marie-France Delieuvin. In a recent profile, we were struck by one quote in particular:

This country has suffered so much violence. And all the violence that has happened to our parents, our grandparents, continues to live in them. It has not been forgotten. They’ve been burned by it, and they carry these ashes. We, their children, carry these ashes too and feel the weight of these heavy emotions all the time. For me, dance is a miracle because we can put in our anger and sorrow to make something beautiful. And beauty in any form is a miracle.

A feast for the senses, created from the ashes:

 

FROM: SPIRIT OF THE BIRD

 

PREPARATION FOR ASCENDANCE

And one more quote:

“Art opens many worlds, especially in a country like Colombia, where the body has been destroyed, massacred, during so many years of war. Dance, beginning with a body, can initiate a reconciliation – first with one’s self and then with others.”

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