oh the humanity – Page 6 – The Constant Harper

Ripple in Still Water

The light in the forest casts a holy spell in George Inness Jr.'s painting. — The light in the forest casts a holy spell in George Inness Jr.’s painting.

What is it about Florida that brings out the crazy in people?

It can’t be simply the beaches and the palm trees, the warmth and the flip-flop-friendly lifestyle. All those things are abundantly present in many other places in the world where the tendency to Nutitude doesn’t seem so lushly present as it does in some parts of Florida.

I’m referring mainly to the touristy regions, of course. Never having lived in the state, I can’t testify to the mindset of the populace as a whole, but during the numerous visits I’ve made to relatives in different parts of the sunshine state, I’ve been impressed by the free-wheeling attitude that seems to thrive in the tourist zones.

Of course, since the days of the earliest explorers Florida has attracted people with an imaginative streak. Ponce de Leon and his search for the Fountain of Youth springs to mind. Get rich quick types have been trying to squeeze the sweetness out of Florida since the first orange groves were planted. And Disney demonstrated that if you build a fake castle in the middle of the sun belt, you can get people to believe their dreams will come true there.

Well, although I was raised on the Mickey Mouse Club and the world according to Walt, these days Disney doesn’t do it for me. On a recent visit to the Tampa area I had modest expectations of some quiet exploration and perhaps a discovery or two. But I never imagined I would encounter world class artwork hidden away in the tiny town of Tarpon Springs, a place best known for its once-thriving sponge business. Nowadays I’d bet the merchants along the sponge docks sell more Greek pastries than sponges. The sponge history still draws people there. Come for the sponges, stay for the galaktoboureko.

However, when we wandered off the beaten path we came upon the cozy Unitarian Universalist Church and happened onto a tour of their prize collection of “mystically tinged religious works” painted by George Inness Jr.

I had never heard of Inness Jr. before, but soon learned that he was the son of famous American landscape artist George Inness.

George Jr. also painted landscapes, but his are imbued with a spiritual subtext that sets them apart. I was mesmerized. In particular I was enthralled by the last work he painted, completed three days before he died. It depicts an endless forest bathed in glowing light. It spoke to me. That, of course, is what all art attempts to do—to communicate an idea, a feeling, a sense of place or person. The painting beckons the viewer to walk in the woods, not to get anywhere necessarily, but to enjoy the trip.

I tried to imagine what Florida must have been like in 1926 when Inness Jr. was creating these paintings. Back then there were no gleaming hotels in Miami, no plastic castles in Orlando, no captive orcas giving two shows a day. And there wouldn’t have been the miles and miles of strip malls and retirement communities. It was a quieter, wilder Florida.

That quiet wild part of Florida is still there. But it’s being pushed out, paved over and polluted by the crunch of careless development. And that’s a shame. In the peaceful pockets of old Florida you can get a sense of the wonder and mystery of the place. Along the back streets of Tarpon Springs we discovered a lovely still bayou, where the only sound was the occasional puffing of a manatee, sticking its nose above the water’s surface to grab a breath.

Down by still waters, the manatee is coy.

In recent years the gentle manatees have become poster creatures for all that is precious and endangered in the Florida wilderness. As we were waiting to catch our flight home the newspapers were leading with the story of the invasion of green anacondas into the Everglades. Previously it was thought that Burmese pythons, which have been breeding at an alarming rate and decimating the wildlife in Florida’s wilderness areas, were the problem. Now it appears that green anacondas, which get bigger and are more robust than the pythons, present a much greater threat.

So, where does this leave Florida? Hoping for a miracle? Looking for a way to cash in and turn the problem into a revenue stream?

Anything is possible. Except for the Fountain of Youth thing. That’s total hooey.

You can sip a brew at the Neptune Lounge while trying to figure out where to draw the line between old gods and new.

The Facebook of Dorian Gray

How old am I?

None of your business.

Where am I now?

Who wants to know?

What is my hometown?

Oh please. One can’t go home anymore. And, really, isn’t home just a vortex of emotional needs that one carries wherever one goes?

Of course my literary hometown was London circa 1890, a time, I might point out, when intrusive so-called social mechanisms such as Facebook, Twitter and What’sNext didn’t exist. Neither did iPhones, iPods and Google.

In my day we had to construct our alternate identities the old fashioned way. We wore masks of civility in public, while in private we were—how can I explain this in millennial terms? Private. Think off the grid but with better hygiene.

And there’s the sting in the serpent’s tail. Privacy has become an endangered state. People with secrets are presumed guilty. Why else wouldn’t they publish every detail of their lives on public forums? The modern notion seems to be that only transparency can be trusted. We demand that the Emporor’s new clothes be see-through.

Naturally, being the sensitive aesthete that I am, I find all of this a bit distasteful. It’s not that I care about propriety. Heaven and hell forbid. But really, the essence of art is selectivity. There’s a reason cherubic angels are always pictured as babies. Naked babies delight the eye. Naked 60-year-olds, not so much.

Of course, there may be those who disagree. And everyone is entitled to their own tastes. But must we share every sensation, every thought, every opinion? The modern vogue for chasing the new is not new. We had the new in the 1890s. Penicillin would have been more helpful.

I suppose by criticizing the current fashion I’m showing my age. Well, I’ve got nothing to hide. You can see by my photo that I haven’t changed a bit. Still a barefoot goy with cheek of tan. Would I lie to you?

Shattered

sun-mosaic — A mosaic sun brightens the cloudiest days at the Takoma Park Community Center.

There’s a gentle mist falling outside on this cool September day. It’s not the steady rain the garden needs, barely enough to soften the air, lower the temperatures, and dampen the birdbath. But it’s a soothing kind of benediction after the bright sun and insistent breeze of the last few days. The tiny drops hardly make a sound as they fall.

It was a quiet summer here in D.C.. After last summer’s record-breaking heat and dramatic derecho it’s been kind of a surprise to have so few crashing thunderstorms. Perhaps Mother Nature felt She’d made her point last year.

The memorable moments of each season, each year, hold our attention only until the Next Thing comes along. We are creatures of limited attention spans, and easily diverted by shiny spectacle and the continuous rain of catastrophic events around the world. The work of repairing and renewing is constant. Some lament the loss of what cannot be restored. Others see new possibilities in every change.

The ability to rebound after loss or injury is one of humankind’s most encouraging qualities. I love it when people don’t fold in the face of adversity, or stop learning after they leave school, or stop caring after their hearts get broken.

Sometimes beauty is born from wreckage.

Not long after I moved to Seattle I read Stephanie Kallos’s wonderful novel “Broken For You.” The story, with its Seattle setting and compelling characters, deals with the difficulty of recovering from tragedy, a common enough theme in much literature, but the way Kallos used the medium of mosaic art as a metaphor for transformative healing really spoke to me. All my life I’ve been drawn to mosaic works, especially those which breathe life and beauty into otherwise drab surfaces.

In Philadelphia, for instance, whole blocks have been transformed by the quirky thought-provoking mosaic murals of artist Isaiah Zagar. Using broken bits of mirror, ceramic and glass to create uplifting designs in formerly neglected inner city neighborhoods, Zagar was a pioneer in the field of public art made by and for the people, unsubsidized by government or corporate sponsors.

Such gifts of beauty, produced by the patient process of putting together tiny pieces of color to make something hopeful and inspiring, help us to heal and deal with the continual barrage of violence that threatens our world. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes—the hurricanes, the floods, the crazed gunmen. The instinct to run and hide is strong, and perhaps vital to our continued existence.

But just as vital is the instinct to pick up the pieces and rebuild, to reach out to the hurt and lost and help find the way to a brighter day. Humanity is a big puzzle. Sometimes it’s hard to know where you fit in. Sometimes you have to step back to see the big picture. And other times you just have to start by picking up a little piece and doing what you can where you are.

bee-mosaic — Pull yourself together and brighten the corner you're in.

Dig In

Dew-Garden — Chris Parsons' magical art glistens in the early morning dew.

My current fave nightstand book is a small square chunk titled “The Garden Book,” which might seem unimaginative as titles go, but trust me, like the library in Terry Pratchett’s Unseen University, it’s much bigger on the inside.

The book (published by Phaidon) offers an illustrated survey of 500 of the world’s most influential gardeners. There are 500 photos, each accompanied by a tantalizingly brief paragraph about the designer or the garden.

Those who have never attempted to make a garden from scratch might be bored already, but for those of us with calloused hands and dirt under our fingernails, this book offers a stunning, inspiring, and humbling glimpse at the breathtaking scope of gardening ambitions.

Some of the gardens included are famous, others not so much. Some are modern, severe and tightly controlled. Some are wildly romantic, lush and drunk with blooms. There are examples of amazing artistry, such as Chris Parsons’ dew garden, a work of ephemeral beauty created by brushing a design on a dew-soaked lawn. Other effects take years to achieve, such as the cloud hedge at Schoten Garden in Belgium.

cloud-hedge — The cloud hedge in Schoten Garden, Belgium.

Anyone who has waited years to see a particular plant reach its peak will marvel at the patience and vision of some of these gardens. Of course, not all of us have the resources to produce anything on the spectacular scale of La Reggia di Caserta, with its nearly two-mile-long canal and water-staircases in Naples. But then, that garden was built to impress kings. We who simply aspire to produce a pleasant spot for an al fresco lunch may be content with more modest achievements.

I’ve been gardening so long, I sometimes wonder why I can’t seem to do a better job of it. Yet no matter how boldly I start out in January, planning and plotting, by September the decline is unmistakable. Some years it’s drought. Other years bugs, or blights, or heat, or cold, or fill in the blank with the personal melt-down of your choice. And, of course, the clock is ticking the whole time. You can tell yourself there will be another spring, another summer, but, you know, immortality isn’t as easy as it looks on the big screen.

Yet, in this respect, my little garden book offers a kind of sustaining perspective. Among the many gardens depicted are some whose best days were many centuries ago. Not much is left of Apadanus Palace, the once-magnificent garden showcase of Darius the Great in Persepolis. Around about 1450 B.C. Darius’s terraces and reflecting pools were the talk of Persia, yet now only the stone stairs and a few pillars remain as evidence of his personal paradise.

The fleeting nature of, well, Nature, is both its charm and its ineffable mystery. And now it’s September. The days grow shorter. The angle of the sun casts long shadows across the garden, gilding the bright leaves, the russet grasses. There’s a different kind of energy in the air as autumn begins its mellow drawing in. Somehow, even though the garden is winding down, I feel excited already about the next season.

It’s like baseball, only better. In gardening, everyone wins.

Ripeness is All

Okay, it’s mid-August. If you haven’t got any ripe tomatoes by now either you’re not trying or you live in Seattle.

I used to dream of ripe tomatoes when I lived there. Yet it was nigh on to impossible to coax the plants to fruition, not for lack of sunshine, which is abundant to the point of ridiculous in August. But the night temperatures drop so low that tomatoes sulk and seldom achieve the sort of shiny overflowing pulchritude that comes so easily in the Mid-Atlantic region.

This summer marks the first time in seven years that I’ve not only grown my own, but had enough to give away. However, I’ll say this for Seattle: they know how to make the most of the tomatoes they get.

In the past decade of so, with the spread of social networks and the ubiquity of the devices in which they fester, there’s been a rapid proliferation of events engineered to bring together carefree young people, and those grown-ups who refuse to abandon all silliness even after they land a real job. Flash mobs were one of the first successful examples of this sort of phenomenon. Large groups of people would gather, as if spontaneously, to sing and dance, “Glee”-style, in public places. As the popularity of this sort of thing grew, it was perhaps inevitable that professional organizers would come up with a profit angle.

But what does this have to do with tomatoes, you ask? Put on your goggles and swimsuit and I’ll tell you.

It appears that we live in the golden age of the Tomato Battle. Young folks these days, not content to make lemonade out of the lemons which life hands them, have found a way to make merry with leftover tomatoes. In cities all across America and abroad, savvy marketers have put together those two staples of outdoor summer fun, the beer garden and the tomato garden, to make an unholy mess. Coming soon to a city near you.

Actually, the most recent Tomato Battle in D.C. took place indoors, and, judging by the photos, was a kind of sedate affair compared to a full-fledged tomato battle royal. The Tomato Battle organizers understand that you can’t run a good battle without ammo. They anticipate going through 100,000 pounds of tomatoes in the upcoming Seattle Tomato Battle, scheduled for this coming Saturday, August 17th, at the Pyramid Alehouse. They also understand that the key to success in any tomato fight is timing. Thus the beer garden opens three hours before the first tomato flies.

The organizers have thought of everything. They assure participants, and all those who object on principle to the idea of playing with food, that all the tomatoes used in the battle were already damaged (aka “rotten”) and thus could not have been used to feed the hungry. This disclaimer fits with Seattle’s firmly held convictions about keeping priorities straight: save the environment, help the helpless, then party like there’s no tomorrow.

And, since Seattle is not known as a tomato town, there’s also a note in the fine print to acknowledge the contingency: “In the event of a tomato shortage we will hold a giant mud battle. The event will go on as planned but with mud instead of tomatoes.” Good to know.

Don’t Bug Me

mosquito-sunrise — Imagine the onshore breeze, the quiet whoosh of waves.

So after a week at the beach during which we set aside our usual trunk load of complaints, anxieties and issues, and concentrated on putting on enough sunscreen and minding our manners, I found myself applying a different definition to daily challenges: First World problem.

I don’t recall the first time I heard it, but I know that even in that first hearing no one had to explain the concept. When confronted by the inevitable minor vexations of ordinary life, more and more the phrase “First World problem” seems a just and clear-eyed assessment. If you run out of mayo for your tuna sandwich, that’s a First World problem. If you have no safe drinking water, that’s a Third World problem. If you have no toilet paper, that’s a First World problem. If you have no toilet…

This led me to wondering about the situation in the Second World, wherever that is. So I searched for it on the internet and found more than one “answer.” However, among the rants and raves I came across the One World Nations Online site, which seems to offer a fairly reasonable breakdown of the terminology. According to the site, the Second World was originally defined as all the countries inside the Soviet Bloc, or controlled by it. Obviously a lot has happened since the 1940s. Times change. Definitions shift with the tide of fortune.

On a beach vacation the problems of the Third World rarely intrude, unless it’s hurricane season. But here in D.C. one particular Third World menace has been gaining ground. When I was a kid in the region in the 50s and 60s, there were some mosquitoes. They mostly came out at night. You might get a bite or two if you lingered outside on a warm summer evening. But during the daytime the mosquitoes weren’t much in evidence. Now there’s a new mosquito in town.

Asian Tiger mosquitoes arrived in this country in the mid-80s in a load of tires. They are tiny but relentless. They bite in the daytime, and, to make matters much worse, they carry a whole bevy of diseases that the old garden variety biters didn’t. If you get bitten by an Asian Tiger mosquito, along with the painful, itching welt comes the threat of West Nile fever, dengue fever, yellow fever, two types of encephalitis, and something called chikungunya virus—it doesn’t kill you but makes you feel dead anyway, according to this article on Live Science .

As global trade and travel accelerates, we must be prepared to share the problems as well as the bounty of all the worlds within our shared world. Since these Asian tiger mosquitoes don’t like to fly at night, bats can’t help us on this one. Unless we can figure out a way to breed sun-loving bats. I’m betting that even now, in a garage laboratory in the hills of North Carolina some enterprising genius is working on it. I’d gladly contribute to his Kickstarter fund.

Escape Route

art-escape — You can escape into art, even if it's not.

It’s always good to have a way out. Even if you are lucky enough not to live in a war zone or a country where paranoid folks can walk the streets carrying concealed weapons, there comes a time for most of us when we wish we could just get out of Dodge.

For me, that time is now. It’s not just the headlines. There’s really no getting away from those anymore. It’s not even the weather. There’s no place without it.

I yearn for a vacation from the internal critic that mutters constantly inside me, noting with disdain how I could have done better, should have done more, and definitely should have known better.

Be that as it may, I need to recharge my aged batteries if I hope to finish strong in this human race. And while a trip to Paris or Tahiti is out of the question, a dive into my favorite authors’ works is nearly as refreshing, and certainly less expensive and exhausting.

So, Jane Austen it is. Also P.G. Wodehouse, Tom Holt, Terry Pratchett and Christopher Moore. Such a list will not impress the heavy heads in the audience. But escape reading isn’t an ego contest. It’s a prescription to remove gloom, to reduce leaden anxiety.

Millions of people enjoy reading murder mysteries, and who am I to blame them? The accepted fantasy of the murder mystery genre is that murders get solved, that murderers get what’s coming to them. In reality, I suspect this is less often the case. To me here’s nothing “cozy” about murder.

However, that’s why we love fiction, right? Only in fiction can you be relatively certain that the good guys will triumph, even in the most noir pulp fiction. And if, for some annoying post-modern reason, they don’t, you can always throw the book across the room, or out the window “Silver Linings Playbook” style, and go do the crossword puzzle.

My advice is: take your time, enjoy a break when you can. Because reality will still be there, snarling and scratching, whenever you’re ready to return to the fray.

Happy holiday!

New Wave

Happy Birthday U.S.A.!

Seems like only yesterday you were a rambunctious toddler, smashing into things and throwing tantrums if you didn’t get your way. But now, look at you! Reasoning calmly, debating respectfully, open-minded and bighearted, a nation any citizen would be proud to call her own.

Most of the time.

It’s true we’ve had our share of rough patches. Our comeuppances and cringe-inducing awkward moments. But here we are on the brink of another Independence Day, and, so far, we haven’t completely trashed the place. Yay us.

I could go on about how much work there is still to do, but nobody wants to hear a lecture at a party, so we’ll table that for now and concentrate on what is great about our scrappy happy country.

For starters, it’s still breathtakingly beautiful. I’ve sampled it from coast-to-coast, and there’s a lot of great scenery to be seen. Also great food to try, music to hear, events to take in, and plenty of folks willing to give you the benefit of the doubt before judging you solely on the basis of your hairstyle, apparel or accent.

I like that about Americans. At our best, we are a nation of independent-minded folks who live and let live. Up to a point.

Where we drop the ball, sometimes, is when we expect people of other nations to follow our lead, as if we and we alone know the right way to travel to wherever it is the good ship Earth is headed.

I’m not convinced this is always the case. I believe wise and caring people can be found in every part of the planet, but they may not care to swallow the don’t-worry-be-happy pills that appear to be all the rage in this country at the moment. There’s stuff to worry about, people. And it’s a small planet. Problems way over there will inevitably cast a pall on the backyard picnic—it’s only a matter of time.

Back when the world seemed more united about the fractured border between right and wrong, George M. Cohan wrote his rousing ditty “Over There,” a patriotic tune that cast Americans as the natural heroes of the war of that time. It captured one of the ways we like to see ourselves—as righters of wrong, champions of the oppressed, liberators.

Lately that image has been smudged a bit by the complexities of the modern world. No one’s writing popular songs about Guantanamo.

But we’re trying to do better. And that, I feel, is worth celebrating. We’re still trying to live up to our own heroic myths.

This week we’ll gather in parks and backyards across the nation to enjoy burnt offerings, intoxicants, brass bands and fireworks. We’ll set aside our petty squabbles and take a moment to be thankful for all the things that bind us together under one flag. We’ll even try to sing our unsingable anthem, even if we have no ramparts o’er which to watch.

Yes, our United States will be blowing out the candles this week, but don’t get any ideas that we’re done growing. We’re still a rock ‘n’ roll nation, and we’re just getting the hang of this harmony thing.

The Earth Remembers

NMAI-sinuous-curved — Landscaping at the National Museum of the American Indian reflects harmony with nature.

On the razor-thin borderline between the new and the old, we the people balance on this elusive current moment.

It changes constantly, as do we. Our efforts to hold onto the moment, to capture the past, or predict the future, generally fall short. Yet we keep trying. I like that about us.

Here in D.C. there’s a lot of emphasis on the present, in the form of news. Yet the rush of time is such that nothing has a shorter shelf life than news. Today becomes yesterday, and the ravenous public looks for what’s next.

Among the more inspiring aspects of life in the nation’s capitol is the reverence given to our shared history—the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good is easier to take, of course. The glories of the art museums, the beauty of the landscape, the pride in our heroes—these things are evident in the war memorials, the grand presidential monuments, and such.

But those parts of our history which are more painful and shameful to recall are also on display, lest we forget the cost paid by some, and the debts we can never repay.

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), one of the relatively newer structures on the National Mall, stands out from its mostly marble neighbors. Its striking golden stone facade and sweeping curvilinear architecture instantly bring to mind the grandeur of the American Southwest. But inside, the scope of the museum extends even farther, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, representing the collected histories of all the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.

It’s an overwhelming subject, and for someone like me, of Scotch-Irish heritage, something of a guilt trip. The native people who lived on and cared for this land we all love were systematically forced off it by the pioneers, most of whom came from Europe.

We who have overrun this land in the past four hundred years haven’t done such a swell job of preserving it. The Dust Bowl springs to mind.

But for this very reason the NMAI is an invaluable resource to educate and preserve the history and the spiritual heritage of the remarkable country in which we all live.

Monuments to heroes are all well and good. But even more important are the memories and history of our shared past. Where we will end up remains a mystery. But if we can at least remember where we came from, and how we paid for the trip, perhaps we can be mindful not to waste what we have left.

NMAI-totems — The newest totem poles in D.C.

Wanna Bet?

Global-lawning — The calm before the protest.

It’s hard to sell the concept of global warming to folks digging out from a couple feet of snow.

However, the winter storm which silenced much of the Northeast barely frosted the windows here in D.C., where we’ve been enjoying a snow-globe kind of winter. Every couple of days a few flakes shake down from the clouds, but it never amounts to much. Kind of like our national approach to dealing with global warming.

This coming Sunday, February 17th, thousands of people concerned about global warming are expected to mass on the National Mall to bring attention to the rapidly changing weather patterns on planet Earth.

Naturally, in a country such as ours, where dissent is considered a birthright, there will likely be a contingent of outspoken global warming deniers, who insist that a couple of degrees here or there aren’t worth getting all worked up about, and certainly not reason to trade in our SUV’s for more modest vehicles.

Not being an expert myself, I can’t claim to understand the Big Picture. But I do think the key word here is “global.”

While it’s easy enough to read the mercury rising in a thermometer in your own backyard, it’s far more difficult to appreciate how the rise of one degree at the North Pole can lead to oceans swallowing coastal towns and island nations.

Yet this is what the data tells us. This is what all the computer simulations predict. This isn’t just one or two crackpot doom scenarios, or some completely random Mayan prediction of world-ending chaos. This is quiet, steady science—the same kind that brought you laser surgery, high definition television and the Internet. You believe in those, right? At least the first two anyway.

The problem is that for most humans that global perspective is tough to maintain. One minute you can see it—how we are all just tiny specks in a vast soup of cosmic possibilities; the next minute you’re hungry and the only bowl of soup you’re interested in is minestrone.

So, much as I’d like to think that Sunday’s demonstration will have lasting impact on policy makers, I’m doubtful of our nation’s ability to make the hard big decisions, and less than optimistic about the will of people like me when it comes to making those hundreds of small decisions every day that add up to climate change: whether to drive or walk, to recycle or throw in the garbage, to turn up the heat or put on another sweater, etc.

In the long run it may already be too late for us to reverse the course of the planet’s mood swing. The fact that most of us won’t live to see the way this all turns out makes it all too easy to ignore.

This past Sunday I went down to the National Mall, where the mild weather had brought out the kickball teams, the Frisbee tossers, and a smattering of happy tourists enjoying the sunshine and the wide open spaces. On such a day it’s easy to forget about polar bears running out of ice, and the tiny atolls in the Pacific which will completely disappear in a matter of decades at the rate things are going.

Maybe the complacent deniers will win out, and we’ll continue to burn through this planet’s resources as if there were no tomorrow. But even if we won’t take responsibility for the planet for ourselves, shouldn’t we at least do it for our children?

It’s their world we’re gambling with.