Category: Blogs

Bold Ventures or Wasteful Escapades? The Controversy Surrounding Space Exploration

Private sector voyages to the edges of space have attracted lots of attention. Of course, they have. Presumably the whole point for the billionaire proprietors—Bezos, Musk, Branson—is to show they can “conquer” yet another sphere. So, are these just escapist stunts and shameful wastes of funds that could be more productively spent addressing critical problems on earth? Or are they thrilling previews of an expanding future in this time that feels so constrained, so hemmed in?

The Silly Season of the Stars: Celebrities, Romance, and the Billionaire Space Race

Maybe they’re all of the above, depending on your perspective. And I’m thinking we might be witnessing a nuanced version of what in the UK is known as the “silly season.” That usually applies to slow-news times, which clearly this is not. But with no relief in sight, folks seem increasingly drawn to big gestures and fantasy a la “lifestyles of the rich and famous.” So now, alongside news of celebrity romances and splits, we have the spectacle of rocket launches, takeoffs and returns.

Privatizing the Cosmos: From Government Territory to Billionaire Playground

Outer space, once the preserve of governments, has been privatized and colonized by super-rich entrepreneur showmen. And the enterprise turns out to be far more manageable than trying to solve stubborn, complex, earth-bound problems. In fact, space travel is an extension of the big tech businesses they’ve already grown and run. And so, Bezos, Musk, Branson, et al. add another dimension to their personas, morphing into billionaires in space, superheroes sans capes. Did they always have sci-fi dreams? Or did they recognize “the next frontier?” Branson was already famed for efforts to circumnavigate the globe in hot air balloons. Bezos is Time magazine’s current “Man of the Year.” And our heroes, who’ve made their money on tech we can no longer do without, are busy monetizing, coordinating pricey space tourism into the lower reaches for those who can afford it. William Shatner was comped a subsidized ride to live out his Star Trek role in more or less real time.

Tech Tycoons Turned Space Explorers: Morphing into Billionaires in Space

So, is this a dystopian or a utopian trend? Is it a kind of fatalism about our future that’s gotten out of hand? It’s not as if nobody saw something like this coming. Of course, there was Flash Gordon, and Stan Lee’s Marvel Universe and Star Trek and Star Wars in pop culture. Back in the 1960’s, President Kennedy called the space race with the Russians “the moral equivalent of war.” There’s also the illogical foresight of song lyrics. David Bowie’s Space Oddity of 1969, the same year as the first moon landing, with Major Tom lost in space. Elton John’s Rocket Man of 1972 was inspired by Ray Bradbury.

Dystopia or Utopia? Unraveling the Trend of Space Tourism

Hannah Arendt got there even earlier, in 1958, when she called Russia’s 1957 Sputnik launch an “event second in importance to no other not even the splitting of the atom.” And the immediate reaction was often relief over the “first step toward escape from man’s imprisonment to the earth.” Official, respectable, attention could no longer ignore what until then had “been buried in the highly non-respectable literature of science fiction (to which, unfortunately, nobody yet has paid the attention it deserves as a vehicle of mass sentiments and mass desires).” Well, that certainly seems to be changing.

Ahead of the Curve: Heroes, Marketing, and the Limits of Science

So, our self-styled heroes are likely onto something, ahead of the curve, as they’ve so spectacularly been in their previous ventures. And they’re far better at marketing than science, which as Arendt noted, can demonstrate in mathematical formulas and proofs, but becomes tongue-tied with “normal expressions in speech and thought.” We’ve seen that again in the pandemic. Elton John sang as much in fewer words. “And all this science I don’t understand. It’s just my job five days a week.”

Aspiring to the Cosmos: Balancing Dreams of Space and Earthly Realities

Arendt might have been referring to our heroes when she wrote that we, “who are earth-bound creatures have begun to act as though we were dwellers of the universe.” But of course, even with access to huge shares of the world’s wealth, there are limits. Realistically, Bezos, Musk and Branson may have made it to space, but only for short visits. And they can only haul a few people at a time and just to the edges. And even if they could go farther, there’s no place livable to go to.

So, perhaps these are stunts, but they might also be potentially aspirational. There is that human urge to go farther. Consider the Age of Exploration (read Colonization). But for now, and far into the foreseeable future, we will be here. And perhaps, not expecting any miracles or quick fixes, we could, to quote another song, “Brighten the corner where we are.” And do what we can, a bit at a time, to chip away at some of our stubborn earth-bound problems. Maybe not as exciting, but more realistic and effective for now.

Unexpected Positive Test Before Christmas

Two days before Christmas, I took a home test that confirmed I have Omicron, rather than the bad cold I thought. That cancelled plans with friends, and I was supposed to bring the main dish. Very grateful to be Moderna triple-dosed, so it was breakthrough, not too severe. But it dragged on, forcing me to give up on my traditional New Year’s corned beef and cabbage as well. Coughing and blowing my nose, I wondered where I caught it. Most likely at the gym, where almost no one wore a mask. I have complained, not that it does any good. A bright spot was losing some of the weight I’d gained during the lockdown. Frivolous and silly, I know, but vanity never takes time off. Today, I went to a public test and confirmed I am now COVID negative. Hooray!!

The Lingering Impact: Post-Christmas Tale of Recovery

Over the past couple years, the pandemic has wrecked the whole world’s plans. It’s turned our very human need to be together against us. It’s propelled us toward a very unexpected and unclear future. No surprise then that we haven’t always made the best choices. Gaurav Suri, who studies human decision making, summarized the challenges of a world in flux. “Humans are tuned to making decisions around stability. We are not used to rapid changes in the context around us. And it takes time to adjust.” And I’m hoping part of the adjustment will be acknowledging, even if reluctantly, that we’re all in this together. The great sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, who died the day after Christmas, said empathy is our only hope. Call that enlightened self-interest. And how might it look going forward?

Pandemic’s Global Disruption: Decisions in a World of Flux

We have models for thinking about how we might change together. I start with my battered copy of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). “Paradigm Shift” has become familiar shorthand for how we reinvent ourselves and our sense of the world, when new, disruptive, and contradictory information or tech unsettle existing concepts of how the world works. The pandemic and vaccines both certainly qualify, ready or not. For me, this specific book has its own backstory around life-altering illness. The new friend who loaned it to me back in the early 1980s was soon diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. What do you do when your body starts to turn against you? I didn’t need to imagine; I’d witnessed my aunt’s decline with MS. Facing existential “Who am I now?” questions and with few treatment options back then, my friend applied for disability, and decided to move away to be nearer to her family. We lost contact in the shuffle, and I never had the chance to return the book I still consider shared property.

Models for Change: Paradigm Shifts and Existential Decisions

Thinking about existential decisions, I have no doubt my aunt and my friend would have grabbed with both hands any cure and/or any improved treatment. The virus’s contagiousness expands the scope from treating single patients to attempting to treat the community, the country, the world. Yet huge ambivalences persist around vaccines meant to protect and prevent. Are they too risky, even toxic? Are they products of unproven technology? Are they dangerous to children? Do they even work? Suspicions amplify already existing reluctance and conservatism. Everett Rogers in Diffusion of Innovation (also 1962, 2003) identified the now familiar Early Adopter, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggard spectrum of willingness and readiness to accept new tech and ideas. And, of course, in the pandemic, each decision is not just personal, because it affects all of us. And yet the rhetoric has tended to emphasize individual liberty rather than safeguarding the community. Again, there’s that missing sense that we’re all in this together that I hope we can grow up and into. At first because we have to, but increasingly, when it makes things better, because we want to.

Oddly, for me, though the virus was not at all welcome, it actually helped me feel more deeply that we truly are all in this together. That I was one among many with fellow sufferers, none of us immune, and more alike than different. No going back, we’re moving into that different, as yet largely unmapped, future. And we do better when we share. If that all sounds like something we might have learned in kindergarten, it’s probably a good place to start. Think of it as beginner’s mind.

Bracing for Impact: The Familiar Dance Before the Storm

Hurricane Ida arrived August 29, 2021. That’s sixteen years to the day after Katrina. An eerie coincidence to folks elsewhere, but I live on the Gulf Coast and trust me it’s a pattern. Katrina (2005) and Gustav (2008), plus a list of others between and after, were Labor Day storms. So, I keep the weekend circled in red on my mental/emotional calendar. And cross my fingers, at the start of each hurricane season, that we can slide by the date. If that ever works, this year it didn’t.

Hunkering Down: Riding Out Hurricane Ida’s Fury

Ida was big, topping off the Saffir-Simpson Scale at Category 4, with sustained winds at least 180 mph. Some friends who grew up here insist it was an even stronger Cat 5. While my husband lived, and for a while after, I’d go inland to my mother-in-law’s. But circumstances changed and took away that option. And I didn’t relish getting on gridlocked roads without a definite destination. So, by default I hunkered down with my two cats. Not well prepared, no way to board up windows, but with an external charger for my phone, I could watch the track and text with family and friends. Though the storm kept shifting east, it never zeroed in on my area. And I thought we’d probably be okay enough.

Surveying the Aftermath: Morning After Hurricane Ida

Hurricanes have timelines—before, during, and after. Before can turn frantic, a kaleidoscope of traffic seeming to come from every direction, with adrenaline pumping as folks rush around picking up supplies. I did top off my car’s gas tank. With long lines extending along the sides of roads, I tried a couple stations and had to pay premium price. Gouging starting already (?), but worth it if I had to make a quick exit, since pumps won’t work once the power goes. During is just sitting and waiting for the storm to pass. Electricity went out mid-afternoon, amid warnings of possible tornadoes, and that left us sweating and then near sightless in the dark, as day turned to night without streetlights. Grateful for good flashlights, I fell into a mix of sensory deprivation and a sound collage of winds swirling and whistling, interspersed with the crashing of unidentified objects blown away or knocked down. Too dark, the few times I tried to peek out, to see what was happening.

From Darkness to Light: The Journey Back to Normalcy

After comes the following morning when we crawl out to assess damages. The high winds hit roofs and trees hard. I got lucky: a swath of shingles ripped from my roof, the backyard shed, and parts of the fence knocked down. Other folks had it much worse. No electric yet, but we’re used to going without for a while after. Then we got even worse news: the whole electric grid was wrecked and needed a complete rebuild that could take a month or longer. Thrown into primitive survival mode, we had no “modern conveniences”—lights, air conditioning, refrigerators, TV, internet. Nothing else to do and nowhere to go, folks sweated picking up debris from our yards but couldn’t wash or dry clothes. Water safety was questionable; can’t run treatment plants without electric either. I drank bottled just in case, but still assumed I could take showers to cool off some, till my upper arms turned pebbly. Good thing I put off washing my hair. The upside was the feeling of community, with folks helping each other. Restaurants and church groups offered free meals. I loved the way Ring Doorbell messages homed in on shortages of gas, ice, and food, identifying and mapping sources, then segued into tracking where power was coming back as it did. When a few stores came back, I got into the spirit and bought and gave neighbors DampRid to help combat mildew and mold.

With heavy political arm twisting and multiple crews working, restoration moved much quicker than originally projected. Even so, my neighborhood still went powerless for close to two weeks. Halfway through, a friend decided I’d had enough and made me a reservation at a pet-friendly hotel farther inland. I did still have that full tank of gas, the roads wouldn’t be as clogged and now, I had a definite destination.

The Modern Appeal: Baby Elephants in the Spotlight

The other night, I saw a TV ad appealing for donations to help save baby elephants who’ve lost their mothers to poachers in the worldwide ivory trade. Interspersed with visuals of “harvested” tusks, the little guys were extremely cute. They trotted along, big ears flopping, small trunks reaching trustingly to their very large and now presumably deceased elders.

Origin Stories: Tracing Back to “Ransoming Pagan Babies”

I recognized a trope/model, a universal staple of charities involved in retail “everyone gives a little” fundraising and marketing. Subscribe and for only $$ a day/$$$ a month/$$$$ a year, you can help save and/or rescue these irresistible creatures. Thinking about origin stories, how tropes and models emerge and become absorbed into the culture, I recall my own first encounter with an earlier, cruder, form.

 Nuns and Fundraising: A Fagan-Like Zeal

“Ransoming Pagan Babies,” that’s what they called it. Very “white man’s burden,” but it was not a self-conscious time. I was in second or third grade, seven or eight years old, in a Catholic school in the early 1950s. Our teachers were nuns. Back then, I took their hovering/looming presence for granted, but in retrospect they seem like alien creatures better kept away from little kids. Dressed in contrasting black and white, in between rote teaching, they exercised Fagan-like zeal in throwing us into fundraising schemes—selling cards at Christmas, filling mite boxes during Lent, selling Easter seals. Then they’d pressure us to bring in the proceeds asap. Did not complying somehow get tangled up with sin? We were so very young, vulnerable, malleable. I did the minimum, only moving two boxes of cards a year, one to my mother and one to the lady across the street. Paralyzingly shy, I found even the idea of going to strangers’ doors unimaginable. In contrast, one boy in my class regularly sold at least 20 boxes. To family, I assumed. Even that young, he resembled a cadaver, so I imagined, if he went to unfamiliar houses, the residents might have paid him to go away. Zombie invasion!

The Birth of “Mary Ann”: A Mysterious Mission

I recall one of those cardboard stand setups, with a slotted box for donations. There was probably a picture, but I have no memory. When did we have the chance to slip in our nickels and dimes, since we weren’t allowed out of our seats much? Yet somehow, by the end of the year, we’d reached the magic number of $5. We voted to name the baby “Mary Ann” and the nun announced the money would be sent off to the Confraternity for Christian Doctrine, which handled “the missions.” No one offered us any details. And, young as we were, we didn’t ask. But now, I wonder where our $5 actually went.

Cracks in the System: Seismic Shifts and Changing Traditions

The word “catholic” is supposed to mean universal. I therefore assumed selling and shilling was a regular part of Catholic school experience nationwide, even worldwide. But a friend who’d attended in another city said she’d never had to. And then I remembered another long-ago friend’s description of having to march out at the end of the school day to military music. So, there was room for a range of bizarre behavior and exercises of unlimited power over very small humans by women who had given up control in all other spheres of their lives. And, I later learned, were often not paid, or hardly paid, and so subsidized the Catholic school system with their free labor. That’s emblematic of the Church as it was then, authoritarian, insular, almost medieval. It seemed solid, immovable, eternal. Yet, in a few short years, the Vatican II Council would start a seismic shift, cracks began to show, and everything changed. And the nuns who’d ruled over us would come out of habit. Some would even leave the convent all together.

Modern Parallels: Fundraising Then and Now

Today’s world would be unrecognizable to my younger self. But judging by the baby elephants, fundraising techniques and methods haven’t changed much, though they’ve expanded with the media—TV, online, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Charities have also grown more adept at humanizing, using stories to build and maintain relationships rather than expecting we’ll take them on faith. Our “Mary Ann” would have had to be fabricated, something like a shared imaginary friend. But these days, actual children are identified, and letters and photos regularly dispatched to keep sponsors engaged. Though baby elephants can’t communicate directly, of course, photos specific and generic, can be provided to show happy outcomes like their being adopted back into bands of their own kind.

Maturing Perspectives: Facing Realities and Funding Overhead

Charities operate based on our trust and willingness to believe they will do what they say. And it’s up to us, no longer children, to do our homework, ask bottom-line questions. Like what percent of funds goes to the direct, helping, mission and what percent goes to overhead and expenses, and research where applicable?  And, given some recent high-profile abuses, executive staff living large on their charity’s proceeds, it’s important to check out what charity watchdog organizations have to say.  (Megan Cooper. Discover What Percentage of Your Donations Go To Charity. Nov. 2, 2023).  And that way, we might realistically maximize our chances of having the positive impacts we hope.

The Shocking Vulnerability: Hurricanes, Freezes, and the Electrical Grid’s Collapse

In August 2021, Hurricane Ida completely collapsed the Louisiana electrical grid around New Orleans. Winds over 150 mph blew down trees, tossed lines and poles around, splintered poles, toppled a high-tension tower into the river. Only eight months earlier (January 2021), a deep freeze hit Texas, with temperatures so far below expected norms that they knocked out the electric grid. Talk about rolling blackouts. Many folks sat without power for weeks, in the dark and cold in Texas and in the dark and heat in Louisiana. So, what’s going on? And can we expect more of the same? Probably, if business models continue to prioritize deferring maintenance and stretching life cycles over investing in regular improvements and updates. Power pole replacement in Louisiana happens on a ten-year schedule. The fallen tower made it through previous storms but hadn’t been replaced, despite being heavily corroded.

A Déjà Vu of Failures: Climate-Induced Disasters as Warnings for the Future

Events like these remind me of the fragility of the systems we rely on but take for granted and often neglect. Back in the early 1980s, I wrote my master’s thesis on the “Infrastructure Crisis.” I’d read Pat Choate’s then recently published America in Ruins. If the country kept failing to invest in upkeep and renewal of vital systems critical to commerce and daily life—water and sewerage, electrical grids, roads, highways, bridges—we faced a rapidly diminishing future and loss of global leadership and competitiveness. Forty years later, we’ve made only spotty progress and seem to be easing closer to Choate’s dystopian forecast, further amplified by the challenges of climate change.

Echoes from the Past: The Infrastructure Crisis of the 1980s and Unfinished Business

I did my graduate work in an early environmental studies program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Recruiting a committee to oversee the work took shifting perspectives. My first invitation drew a refusal, too much urban and not enough environment. I moved on and found a political-scientist-environmentalist and an urban planner, both intrigued by the urban-environmental links, with infrastructure the buffer between. Though I didn’t realize then, I wonder now about the ways ideas start to float, long before they coalesce. It took another decade (1994) before John Elkington proposed his “Triple Bottom Line” model, reframing corporate social responsibility and sustainability to shift focus from profits to factor in planet/environment and people/equity. Progress on those fronts has been even spottier. And Elkington himself says companies have missed the point, still haven’t got the balance right.

Buffalo’s Tale: A Case Study on Fiscal Stress, Infrastructure Decay, and Public Will

My thesis featured a case study of the City of Buffalo, struggling then as now to square fiscal stress and a dwindling tax base with crumbling infrastructure. I’d worked in City Hall, so I had access. No surprise, while lining up interviews and diving into research, to discover this was as much a fiscal as a physical problem. Learning about capital budgets, general obligation and revenue bonds, state constitutional debt ceilings, I also recognized a public will problem. Choate’s recommendations came up against budgets too tight to accommodate all the urgent needs. And unless there’s a crisis, “out of sight, out of mind” infrastructure can seem like it could wait till next year or the year after.

Disaster Amnesia and the Urgency for Regular Upkeep: A Nation at the Crossroads

Stack up enough next years and there’s no affordable getting ahead of the backlog. So far, we’ve been lucky. Systems, typically built to be redundant, have proven remarkably forgiving. They’ve been patched and pushed way past their original expected lives. Still, this can’t go on indefinitely. And, as increasingly vulnerable systems intersect with more extreme weather, we can expect more failures, more public pain and outrage, more political pressure. And then the rush into incremental, more expensive, “putting out fires” emergency repairs and replacements. Call these Andy Warhol “15 minutes of fame/attention” moments. But spotlights and adrenaline soon fade and “disaster amnesia” sets in, with a return to old, seemingly comfortable, habits until the next crisis catches us off guard. And with more severe weather more often, that’s likely to happen more often too. Regularly scheduled upkeep is so much more cost effective, but there are those public will and money problems.

Choate’s book featured the ruin of a Greek temple on the cover, a not too subtle reference to the “white city” buildings of the nation’s capital. And now, the national “Build Back Better” bill has stalled and probably died in Congress. And I can’t help but notice that the country, with far greater resources, is no better prepared to take effective action than beleaguered Buffalo.

A Neighborhood Tapestry: Layers of Stories

Every neighborhood is a story, a layering of inside, outside, and shared sidewalks and streets. When I bought a small house four years ago, I chose affordable enough and safe enough (crime, flood risk). I understood folks would be more conservative. It’s David Duke territory (former KKK leader). Beyond that, I had minimal backstory, but figured I’d weave my own tale going forward, avoid talking politics and make it work. I’m an introvert, unobtrusive, a writer, an observer, not all that neighborly, spend most of my time inside, and have friends elsewhere. So, I’m unlikely to give offense, except maybe in print.

Decoding Civic Virtue: Flags, Signs, and Neighborhood Dynamics

This tactic served me well enough until after the 2020 election, when Trump signs and American flags multiplied. I read them as code, like a secret handshake. Evolutionary anthropologist David Solan Wilson calls the ways we signal connection and mutual recognition “civic virtue.” Think Halloween decorations and how kids sense which neighborhoods are best for trick or treating, or Christmas and, around here, Mardi Gras decorations. I wouldn’t call election signs and flags virtuous, but they do either connect or divide, depending on surrounding opinions. So, I was unsurprised, a little bothered, but still kind of detached so long as they stayed outside my immediate vicinity. But then a Trump flag appeared right across the street. A day or so later, the house next to the first raised a Biden-Harris flag, below the American flag they’ve flown since before I moved here.

Navigating Ideological Currents: A Delicate Dance

So, opinions were not as solid as I had assumed. Might we hope to achieve some kind of balance, even tolerance? But not so fast. The first house switched to a Confederate flag. Whoo! I assume that was a reaction to the Biden-Harris flag. But I wouldn’t/couldn’t ask. I’m invested and need to live here, so didn’t want to confront neighbors who were hardly even acquaintances. We’d chosen our houses, not each other, after all. This happened post-election, so I tried to imagine inside conversations over the urge to send a message, to “take a stand.” And now, having committed, would taking the flag down feel like losing face, giving in?

Winds of Change: Mother Nature’s Intervention

I worried the situation might escalate, that my safe neighborhood could implode. Would we see a rainbow flag next? But then, in an inspired and graceful maneuver, the folks in the Biden house defused the situation, switching to a state flag and an “All Lives Matter” yard sign. And I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Next time I saw the man from that house outside, I crossed the street to say thank you. He appreciated that someone else in the neighborhood had similar, “let’s just get along,” feelings. I clued him in that the young couple next to me also felt the same. So, for now, I assumed the Confederate flag will stay. Over time, it might tatter and fray as, I hope, will the urges behind it. And then perhaps we might inch closer to the balance and tolerance I keep hoping to see.

Follow up: no matter what political affiliation, folks in my neighborhood were very kind and helpful after Hurricane Ida. The storm blew away the Confederate flag and staff and neither has been replaced. So, we could say Mother Nature intervened. Perhaps that came as a welcome relief to the owners, who did not have to decide. It certainly came as a relief to me.

Navigating the Bureaucratic Labyrinth

A couple weeks back, I signed closing papers for a small SBA loan to finish post-Hurricane Ida (August 2021) repairs on my property. The man I met with said he averaged a dozen closings a day. That volume of activity has me thinking about the many thousands of us inching along the same path. Bureaucracy is a great leveler, designed to fit us into standard categories. On the downside, we each become numbers. Hard to feel special at such scale, just when we could use a little customized TLC after being hit literally where we live.

Fluidity in Identity: The Dichotomy of Official and Personal

It’s said that our society lacks rites of passage to mark the transition between stages of life. Perhaps that’s why, in adulthood, we tend to view identity as fairly constant. But it is in fact quite plastic and elastic, especially as we age and even more when we face major, unpredictable and disruptive events that tear us away from regular life. Yet we go along, still affixing the same signatures to documents like the loan papers. Well, maybe not exactly the same, as described below. So there’s a split between official identity and far more nuanced personal experience. And who are we now, when we’re at home in those houses still in need of repair?

The Evolution of Names: A Symphony of Signatures

The ancient philosopher Heraclitus said we can’t step into the same river twice. We change and so does the river. Social customs and expectations shift as well. Women’s identities have been especially fluid; until very recently it was taken for granted that we’d give up our own names and assume our husbands’. Mine left it up to me. I kept my birth last name as middle, but without a hyphen. Still a large part of my sense of myself and it connected with my professional identity too. And that’s the signature I use on documents like the loan papers. With the shorter version, just my first and his last, I also liked the alliteration of the two “j’s.”

Rites of Passage and the Ever-Changing River

Our biggest transition, adolescent to young adult, is a time of reinvention and rebellion, stepping out of parental visions of who we are and into self-discovery. Native Americans often had robust rites of passage and did much better with transitions. Vision quests opened space for individual transformation, from provisional birth names to discovery of the real and true in young adulthood. I imagine gender-crossing processes, done with sufficient support, allow for similar personal discovery. And I wonder how it might work if we were a little more flexible, didn’t cling so tightly to official identity and allowed for periodic shifts. But that would probably require a hard to achieve level of trust in our mobile society. I have my own experience with legal name change, which I think of more as reclaiming. According to the family story, my mother anticipated having another boy, so when I arrived instead, she didn’t have a girl’s name ready. But then the priest wouldn’t baptize me with the one she chose, and I ended up by default with my grandmother’s name, which I hated. Not that I hated my grandmother, whom I never knew. Though I might work up a little resentment against the priest, if what mother said was accurate. Who made him the arbiter? At home, I was called by a nickname of what would have been my name. All sounds like a fairytale, doesn’t it? One of those where the hero/heroine is rediscovered, revealed, named. Perhaps that’s where my interest in stories began. Oh, and this time, as you’ll notice, I did insert a hyphen.

The Art of Reinvention: Signatures, Nicknames, and Legal Shifts

Back when I made my decision, I assumed I was unusual, rare. But not so, the lawyer I consulted said. I had to attest I was not changing to duck out of debts or other obligations. There’s that level of trust thing. Since then, I keep discovering both men and women who’ve recalibrated or even discarded birth names. Mostly, they’ve acted for professional reasons and around professional names. Easy, no paperwork involved, the face shown to the world, while the legal name can keep ticking along in the background and trotted out as needed. Like for signing loan documents. Marilyn Monroe was Norma Jean DiMaggio when married to the famous slugger. Andy Warhol, famous of his “15 minutes of fame” comment, shortened his last name. Ralph Lauren shifted from his original. A preppy name made it much easier to sell preppy clothes.

And so, I understand the impulse to reinvent. For me, carrying through cost a little time and money. And it felt right from the very beginning, that I’d come home to myself.

The Absence in Art History: A Glaring Gap

A while back, I watched Robert Hughes’ 1980s The Shock of the New on YouTube. I didn’t have a TV when it first came out and it had been on my list for 40 years. I was struck by the dearth of women artists. I counted only four or five through the whole eight episodes, plus the 25-years later follow up. And one of these, Sonia Delaunay, though a noted artist and designer, was mentioned only regarding a piece her artist husband made for her.

Checking contemporary criticism, I found questions over which (male) artists and their movements Hughes chose to highlight. But apparently the omission of women failed to register, was taken for granted. This reflected the assumption that there were not and could not be any important (read powerful, groundbreaking) women artists. That women simply couldn’t make the cut, meet the “rigorous” standard.

Breaking Down Biases: Linda Nochlin’s Questioning

In 1971, Linda Nochlin wrote her article Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Ten years before Hughes, she used the same criteria and pointed out that making art could not be viewed as a political act in feminist terms. But then she questioned the criteria themselves, most notably in an ironic retelling of the story of the artist Giotto, discovered as a young shepherd boy drawing on rocks and immediately recognized as innately gifted with divinely, blessed-by-God, talent. It’s a classic hero tale, with demi-god overtones. Think Jesus, Achilles, King Arthur, Superman, Marvel Comics heroes. And, of course, no women need apply, because women can’t be heroes or demigods.

Anonymous Was a Woman: Trivialization of Female Work

When I shared with a friend, she described a course she took in the 1980s called Anonymous Was a Woman on how female work has been trivialized, cast as merely decorative, and often appropriated and coopted. Around the same time, I was taking a history of modern architecture course with the great Reyner Banham. His sense of how influence moves has continued to shape my view of the world. Who studied with whom, who worked for whom, who borrowed/stole from whom? Now, I apply this to women artists, though all examples at that time were men. Not because women couldn’t, but because until recently, many were not even allowed to try or leave home on their own, let alone enter schools and professions.

The Bauhaus Dilemma: Co-Ed Aspects and Gender Biases

Now, I wonder how much has changed and if bias has only become more subtle. I offer quotes from opposite ends of the socio-political spectrum. Mao said, “Women hold up half the sky.” The Dalai Lama said, “The world will be saved by the western women.” And getting there will take continuing to throw off millennia of conditioning inculcated in both women and men. And there’s a double bind: noticing and bringing this stuff up can be seen as shrill and unreasonable and lead to pushback. However, saying nothing allows damaging patterns to continue unchallenged. The actress Geena Davis noticed and spoke up and started her Institute on Gender in Media, which tracks, documents and works to reduce unconscious and insidious bias in films and TV that impact opinions and actions.

Double Bind: The Struggle to Be Heard

Both Hughes and Banham devoted considerable time to the Bauhaus, that iconic font of early 20th century architecture and industrial design. But neither touched on the co-ed aspects, still unusual at the time. Walter Gropius, the director, claimed, “No difference between the beautiful and the strong sex.” But his choice of words clearly says otherwise and that was carried out in practice. I believe only one woman ever became a master teacher. Women could enroll, and they did, outnumbering men in the first class. But early on they had to pay higher tuition and could only take “feminine subjects,” like weaving and textiles. Nevertheless, Anni Albers (textile artist, print maker) and the multi-talented Sophie Tauber-Arp (artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, and dancer) managed to stand out. This despite often being hampered by the common pattern of having their work being subsumed into their husbands’, with themselves treated as “assistants,” though in fact they were co-creators and often independent creators. And all the while, they juggled maintaining households. A la Ginger Rogers dancing backward and in heels.

The Geena Davis Institute: Challenging Media Bias

Davis said she started her institute to help open more space for her daughter and other young girls. I recall my mother’s participation in a study on women’s roles conducted by nearby Cornell University. The data apparently went unused at the time. Was that due to lack of interest? Though it was the 1950s, a few years before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, when many “housewives” were going quietly and sometimes not so quietly mad in their constricted lives. This was before they were called “stay at home moms.” As with women artists, definitions and shifts of emphasis are often applied from outside, rather than discovered from inside. My mother herself took a refresher course in bookkeeping and found a job as soon as my younger sister started school. Years later, when a researcher wanted to follow up with daughters, my mother sent her my way. Things had changed—more divorces, some traces of domestic violence, hints of self-discovery as gay. I myself married relatively late but was then early in relationship with the man who would become my husband.

Renewed Interest: Reclaiming Women’s Artistic Energy

By the time Hughes recapped his series around 2005, he walked with a cane. Though he devoted significant time to a single woman artist Paula Rego, he bemoaned modernism’s loss of energy. Was this a stunning feat of illogic and/or blindness? Was it a reaction to his own loss of physical power? Whatever, one of his talking-head commentators read from the same page, saying we’d only need one or two key male artists to get things going again. Nonetheless, almost another 20 years on, we’ve seen renewed interest and major exhibits of artists like Albers and Tauber-Arp. Women of Bauhaus is a prominent Instagram channel, rubbing virtual shoulders with the iconic Patty Smith, who presents herself in still active old woman mode, as well as equally iconic throwback images of Debbie Harry from her hottest period. And reconditioning continues to be a hit-and-miss, stop-and-start slog, with perhaps an inkling that at least some movers might just be women? And that opening the door just a tad might help restore some of the lost energy?

The Puzzling Landscape

Day 20 of Putin’s war, headlines mix attacks on Ukrainian civilians with sanctions on Russia, and we can watch it unfold almost real-time on smartphone videos shot by civilians and journalists. Peace and cease-fire talks drag along, but so far get nowhere. Putin claims this isn’t a war and Ukraine isn’t a country. He calls the world uniting to pull the economic plug on Russia an act of war. Whatever possessed this man, previously viewed as a crafty strategist, accommodated by Western political classes and media, even admired as a strong leader in some quarters?

Lessons from History

As citizens who have to share this world, we just want to live our lives and ease out of the pandemic toward something resembling normal. But how can we, when an oppressive dictator imposes his self-aggrandizing agendas? No qualms about dragging in his own people and the rest of the world, without forethought about what might happen if he doesn’t succeed. Hitler, at the end, blamed not himself, but the German people for failing in the world-domination task he’d set them and thought they deserved to self-destruct in a Wagnerian Gotterdammerung.

White and Eurocentric Privilege in Conflict

George Santayana famously said those who fail to learn from the past will be condemned to repeat it. And so much of this seems to be like a trope/cliché quoting past bloody, catastrophic, haunted history and very déjà vu all over again, a’ la Yogi Berra. Combat’s happening on the same ground fought over in WWII. That includes Babi Yar near Kyiv, where thousands of Jews were murdered. And now, Russian troops are reportedly looting and shooting civilians. Putin threatens to deploy nuclear weapons while Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, lies a little north of the city and its safeguard system is at risk. Bombing of cities, with civilians sheltering in subway tunnels dug extra deep during the Cold War, resonates with the London blitz and retaliatory bombing of German cities during WWII. Nuclear saber-rattling reverberates with the Cuban missile crisis (1962), an earlier time we almost went over that unthinkable edge. And, though I’ve seen no other mentions, and with no disrespect to the Ukrainians, but do I detect a certain white and Eurocentric privilege a la the Bosnia ethnic conflicts of the 1990s? That has been this country’s preferred, though not all that accurate origin story. Would we see such a groundswell of global support if the conflict was happening in Africa and targeting non-white populations, like say the Rwandan genocide? Kenya’s ambassador to the UN gave a speech comparing Russia’s actions to past colonial aggression on his continent. All justified by “the white man’s burden.”

Putin’s Calculations and Unintended Consequences

Putin’s scenario anticipated a quick walkover to jumpstart restoring the “Russian Imperium” and himself, of course, as a major player on the world stage. But the Ukrainians and now the world haven’t cooperated. Even so, he has kind of gotten his wish. We are paying attention, if not in the way he wanted. And he is right about economic warfare. Dry up all his sources of cash, the reasoning goes, and he’ll run out of funds to keep financing this war he doesn’t want anybody calling one. An NPR commentator described him as using 19th century land-grab tactics in a 21st century world where everyone’s connected. But a friend suggests he’s probably 21st century enough to resort of crypto currencies and he has armies of internet trolls no longer busy messing with our elections to facilitate. And he probably provided for such eventualities by dispatching oligarch cronies to set up super-secret piggy banks hidden too deep in the dark web for sanctions to reach.

Truth as the First Casualty

It’s said that truth is war’s first casualty. And that’s especially applicable on the home front, where what Putin and his minions probably fear most is a popular uprising. So, their fake news blames the Ukrainians and they cut off social media outlets that might offer contradictory platforms. “Bye, Bye, Instagram!” one Russian user posted in a final message. But it’s reported western friends and colleagues are finding ways to text more accurate information. Tech flows like water, not that easy to control; cell phone texts, photos, videos fueled Arab Spring demonstrations. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers at the front are prohibited from having smart phones, lest they call or text home to let their mothers know they’re ok an escribe what’s happening. Many weren’t even told they were invading. And anxious, desperate, mothers wait, fear, hope, in a repeat from Chechen conflicts and the Afghanistan invasion that contributed to toppling the USSR. Mothers in Argentina walked, silently, carrying photos of sons and daughters “disappeared” by the repressive regime, and eventually catalyzed a national reckoning. But anything like that seems highly unlikely, especially with laws threatening any Russian who even dares use the word “war” with a 15-year prison term.

Nostalgia, Assassination Calls, and Cold War Fantasies

Senator Lindsey Graham’s call for Putin’s assassination is not just imprudent. It also reflects counter nostalgia for seemingly simpler Cold War days and covert CIA actions. And it perpetuates Putin’s strong man myth, that removing him could make all this disappear. Another version of the “great man” theory of history, that leaves out regular citizens of the country and world who have to live with the consequences and can take action, as so many Ukrainians have.

In fact, this all reflects nostalgia for the supposed tense certainties of the Cold War, as well as serious uncoupling from reality. Peter Pomerantsev of the London School of Economics, studies “21st century information manipulation and how to fix it.” In This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (c2019), he quoted the late Russian-American scholar Svetlana Boym. “The 20th century began with Utopia and ended with nostalgia. The 21st century is not characterized by the search for new-ness, but by the proliferation of nostalgia.” And now, Pomerantsev himself noted, “…both the old Cold War superpowers [take] a sort of adolescent joy in throwing off the weight of grim reality, with facts viewed as increasingly irrelevant.” Yet now, now the very real, grim, ugly, deadly, war keeps grinding on. Will it provide a cold-water bath of to wake the world up, as we confront an even more uncertain future? Pomerantsev again: “…though facts can be unpleasant, they are useful. You need them, especially if you are constructing something in the real world. There are no post-truth moments if you are building a bridge, for example.” Ukrainians have shown the way, putting their bodies, lives, stories on the line and online. Ukraine’s President Zelensky will give a virtual address to the US Congress.

Lost Years and Unbearable Anxieties

Most of 2020 and all of 2021 were, of course, almost unbearable lost years, full of weird anxiety, lethargy, isolation, claustrophobia, ennui, nervous overeating, weight gain, and mental health challenges. Even as the pandemic washed over us, pandemic denial, mask and vaccine resistance joined climate-change refusal/denial. Then “Stop the Steal” election narratives ramped up to the shocking Capitol riot.

Dueling Narratives: The Clash of Election Stories

Sad, but not surprising that we found ourselves snagged on opposing election stories. On one side, the popular vote created dancing-in-the-street elation over “taking the country back.” But the other side insisted the very same popular vote had been manipulated by the corrupt, invisible, hidden, “deep state” that really runs the country for its own purposes. And that story never wavered, though legal challenges and ballot recounts failed to find significant election fraud. And that brought us the Capitol riot, with more than 800 breaking into the building. Who were they? Some fit the stereotype, young, unemployed, into extremist groups and anonymous online channels known for conspiracy, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, denigration of women, pornography. But others were older, employed, without known extremist ties, but equally distrusting of “the system.” Mark Fenster, in Conspiracy Theories (1999, second edition c2008), described parallel worlds, with conspiracies hiding and then being unmasked by those who recognize the “truth.” And so, while some rioters took selfies and some tore things up, others rifled through lawmakers’ desks and papers, searching for “evidence.” A cop tried to reason, suggesting that the rioters were treading on sacred ground. But could they see the Capitol as both sacred ground and the seat of corrupt power at the same time?

Capitol Riot: Breaking Windows and Shattering Confidence

Trying to understand whys and wherefores does not excuse. These folks broke things—windows, doors, cops’ heads and bones, potentially our fragile confidence in the rule of law, and in the implied social contract that holds us gingerly together. For me, a video captured the spirit of the day, showing a single Capitol police officer, Eugene Goodman, who stands alone, facing the advancing mob. He is Black and the image of a man of color menaced, followed, chased by a white mob in the halls of the national Capitol is a graphic and chilling reminder of our darker history. Yet I also detect a more positive storyline. Goodman turned the tale around, smartly using his Black/cop body to distract and lure the mob away from the door to the Senate chamber. By delaying the mob till lawmakers could be led to safety, he saved the country from a far worse outcome. Like Goodman, we may not change minds and hearts, since conspiracy theories seem to be self-feeding and cannot be disproved for those who believe. And yet I hope, if some of us are willing to keep our minds open even a little, we may discover opportunities to turn the national story a little and keep exploring and moving toward whatever light we can make out.

A Chilling Reminder and a Glimmer of Hope

Update: I wrote this piece in the months following the riot. Since then, we’ve seen reframing of the story to recast the rioters as “tourists,” non-violent visitors, not a threat at all. We’ve also seen hundreds of rioters identified, with indictments handed down. Many identifications have been made by regular citizens tracking videos and images online. Rioters made this easy, exerting little or no effort to disguise themselves, being anti-mask after all. They apparently expected to suffer no consequences and, when called to court, have often claimed they didn’t mean it, were caught up in the moment. This is in sharp contrast to triumphant messages they sent on the day itself. Sentences and fines have generally been fairly light. Perhaps that reflects limitations of existing law or it may indicate desire and hope to move toward healing wounds and in the general direction of the light.