Symbolic Acts of Return

The same dynamics that allow us to plunder resources and pollute the air, creating chain reactions that result in starving Polar Bears, operate at every level of our lives. If I accuse, I also take humbled responsibility.

Sometime this year, I will need to formally Give Back an important name: The Medicine Wheel.

Last weekend, on the last day of the College Art Association annual conference, I spoke with two of the Native American artists after the Saturday panel on North East Native American practice of traditional art forms, Stan Neptune and Linda Coombs. I told them that one phase of my Ghost Nets project had been the three years of designing & creating the uplands riparian zone that was part of the preparation for the eventual estuary restoration.

I called that a Medicine Wheel Garden. The work was under the guidance of, based on extensive research with Native Americans and a lot of thought about how the Medicine Wheel ideas are based in precise ecological function. And there ARE direct parallels to be studied. I always openly stated I would use the Medicine Wheel name.

That three year period of work was publically announced as creating the Medicine Wheel Garden for the ten year Ghost Nets project, which began formally in 1991. Later, with a better understanding about naming, and Natuve American issues, I felt uncomfortable with what I had done. But I was unsure what to do. I discussed this many times over the years with various Native Americans & other Indigenous Peoples as to the correct way to proceed. I felt I was on quicksand with the ideas I heard. I came to feel I needed to create a Giving Back.

Stan Neptune replied, when I brought this up again Saturday, by asking me if I had misused the knowledge in any way?

I said: no, but I had used the name inappropriately.

Stan: the philosophy needs to be used (as you have used it) but not the name.

So now I shall formally change the name. It will be one part of my on going Giving Back. Continuing to struggle to understand and apply the philosophy I learned from the Medicine Wheel is how I will sustain a Giving Back in my practice.

Asking for permission and giving full attribution to sources of inspiration must be as routine as Actions that create substantive change. Our society operates as much on the trajectories of symbols as actions. I believe these symbolic acts are as restorative as the more dramatic ones of daylighting aa estuary towards mitigating global warming.

This is post is part of a process, a heads up in my own work, moving continuously from symbols to Actions. It will not directly save a Polar Bear but it IS related.

Considering Alternatives

This past week was spent at the College Art Association conference in Boston. Every year, art practitioners gather to present panels on every topic, from gender metaphors in fourteenth century illuminations to how to teach activist art. This unfolds over the course of several days. It is a high pressure time of competition for jobs and other opportunities. It is also a wonderful chance to see and hear new ideas, new images and connect with old and new friends.

It is exhausting by the second day. By the end of the week, most of us are walking from panel to meeting to the bar with glazed eyes. Our zombie bodies are on automatic control, even as our pocketbooks shrink from hotel charges.

On the train, on the way home, the landscape was white with snow as twilight fell. I was in a trance of intellectual exhaustion. I alternated between the book I was reading, gazing out the window and dozing.

Two of the most moving panels I attended were from North Eastern Native Americans. The first was of contemporary practitioners. The second was artists continuing to work in traditional modes. In both cases, they emphasized that they are present, alive and vital. Too often, the public pigeonholes Native American artists in sentimental or outdated frames.

Whether individual artists were working in the mainstream of ideas or adapting the old to present times, the context of connection to Native American culture in our times was apparent and profoundly moving to me. Globally, Indigenous Peoples are suffering disproportionately from global warming. Indigenous Peoples are tied to particular geographical and ecological experiences spiritually and practically.

But land is being transformed and lost. Remaining Indigenous lands are used as toxic dump sites, where cancer rates are astronomical. Keystone species of animals and plants are going extinct, diseased, scarce.

A particular smoke effect essential to creating an artifact depends on the availability of herring for example. Once one could walk across the water on the backs of herring. Now, herring are bought frozen, caught by others.

As I write, NPR is interviewing an administration spokesperson. That expert tells us THEY have no understanding of how they are responsible to do anything about global warming. Who then does? At a conference for the Society for Ecological Restoration last year, speaking to scientists from several European countries, I asked them if every country in the world did all possible to cut back on emissions that cause global warming, would that offset how the USA contributes to the problem. After a very brief reflection, they said, no.

So my question today is, what alternatives are available when power over a situation is held absolutely?

The Business of Saving Polar Bears

Today it's cold but the snow had already melted. As are the glaciers in Greenland. More polar bears in danger. They are about to be listed as an endangered species. Meanwhile the melting glaciers will raise sea level 232 feet.. in a short while.

I heard a provocative quote on CNN a couple days ago. A Republican, responding to recent reports about govt failures re: Katrina, commented that one reason for it was that the culture of govt. had to change- that govt. promotes safety, it doesn't promote initiative, whereas business does promote taking risks and initiative.

Then he said what struck me: "transparency does not promote initiative"- re: taking the initiative to solve problems such as Katrina ...but business WOULD.If that is the case, why are the insurance companies resisting paying their insured in New Orleans?

The implications from this pro-business politician seemed to be: business competition thrives on secrecy; transparency. Honesty, attribution all "get in the way" of taking initiative. But the evidence is that this sort of initiative has selfish results, The problemmatic translation seems to be: lie, steal & be selfish to get ahead (for yourself alone).

The art world, which I am part of, straddles academia, which values attribution. Attribution should be a form of generosity & humility. But academia is now so infiltrated by business (in the conventional sense) that the values of the conventional business world have a trickle down effect in order to get grant money. Too often, academic articles I read, seem to list sources as evidence of homework done rather than to establish clear lines of actual of ownership.

I think the conflation of govt-military-corporate interests globally exacerbates this trend. I question, as I know the most forward business thinkers also do, how ultimately efficient, pragmatic & useful these old economic models are.

For some years, I have worked with a collegial list serve group of ecological artists. Over time I have noticed that our tasks to restore ecological health have direct economic consequences.
We are deliberately trying to dismantle old models, often referencing indigenous systems. That may be a romantic construct but it does inspire us to act to give back to life rather than take away.

And I have not noticed ANY lack of initiative. Au contraire. The vitality of this group and the projects initiated, followed thru with etc are only enriched by animated transparency. Individual careers have thrived and we are gaining (albeit slowly) on getting decent fees, etc.

So if the old model is that to get ahead, careerists have to choose between stealing, lying, etc., or running for safe cover, then I think it is time to try the unfamiliar. I think there's another way to have initiative, take chances & guarantee the most safety. And say yes to life, generosity and advancement... and the polar bears.

Attributing Snow

Our lovely snow is melting in the sun today, following a trajectory of loss that began yesterday. On a collegial list serve, we are discussing how to deal with sloppy attribution in the media: it is difficult to be clear and direct about dynamics and not digress into personalities.

This is the paradox of connection. Expecting or asking for attribution, response, empathy are all desires that reflect our need to be part of a whole and include others in that whole. But to ask or point out an error is hard to do with getting defensive, someone else angry. This is as true about the dynamics of global warming as it is about personal relationships. And so we drive ourselves, eachother away from connection.

Dave Pollard's blog, How to Save the World <http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/> writes of loneliness on Valentine's Day. My Scottish friend asks me why I don't just stand at an easel and paint my beautiful view. After all, isn't that what artists do? Why am I troubled by all these political farces and tragedies?

Why can't I just stick my head in the sand? Well, perhaps that's one reason I am an ecological artist and what defines an ecological artist. My lovely view and the melting snow are small pieces of a larger whole. I am interested in the whole landscape. Just as attributions, copyrights, appreciations allow us to see the whole rich landscape of an idea, a feeling, a situation; they also protect us from the distortions that arise from significant omissions.

So what is the connection between melting snow, Cheney's secretiveness over shooting someone, professional attributions and global warming? They are all questions of transparency, trust and generosity.

What is the connection to ecological art, dying seals and melting snow? Whatever happens to the least of us happens to us all (who said that?). I think looking at these dynamics is no different than analyzing the composition of a view before I put it down on canvas on my easel.

Warm temperatures are predicted and rain. More snow will melt here this weekend. My tulips may try again even tho they aren't scheduled till late May. I can't help them. I hear it is snowing in Israel. In Idaho there is not enuf snow cover to protect over-wintering crops. The polar bears are still starving. My elderly dying dog is still dying but has rallied and wags her tail often.

She is lying in the sun on my globallyw armed porch. With a change in diet her coat is glossier. Witha change in routine she seems more alert. She is resting now from playing ball a bit.

We all do the best we can. I am connecting some dots to make a picture here. The view I see is of change and alarm and the hope of life that persists despite loss.

Snow Redemption

We got eight inches of snow yesterday. It was glorious, a proper blizzard. My global warming skeptical friends sent me messages along the lines of hahahaha. I am thrilled to hear we may get another storm next weekend to build on this progress.

There are two schools of thought here, one feels snow is why we live in Maine year round. The other is, how soon will global warming be coming? As for myself, the world is a beautiful blue and white and today I am happy with no complaints at all.

The Answer is Blowing in the WInd

This Noreaster is starting slow as most good blizzards do. About an hour ago, flakes so tiny they could barely be seen began to blow. In my seventeen years up here, I have become pretty adept at gauging the future by the size of the present. Tiny flakes mean a big blizzard. But I am not always right. The weather people sure seem to anticipate a real cover and a good storm and my friend here predicted, one hell of a storm, it a few days ago. I am hoping this is it.

Already we have about half an inch and it was all I could do to coax my elderly lab out the door, down the steps a bit down the driveway to pee in the winter grasses. A friend in Scotland, a physicist, poo poos all this global warming. After, what can I know, being an artist?

Well, in the Feb. 4, Science News, James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York was quoted saying on Jan 24 that the global average temperature rise of .06C in the past 30 years, .08C in the past century, does correlate with the rapid growth of emission concentrations and is consistent with climate modelling. In the same issue, the Jan. 28, Geophysical Research Letters, explained how warming global waters had been slowed in their effects by polluting aerosol concentrations but as aerosol use has declined, the pace of ocean currents driven by warm surface water and salinity will slow and models predict, on the basis of data going back to 1860, this will all slow the global circulation patterns that determine weather. By 2040, thermaline curculation will reduce warm water in the Northern Atlantic by 20%. But hey, that is just models & American scientists and by 2040 my Scottish friend & I will both be dead so why worry?

Meanwhile, the air out my office window is a gratifying white, the wind is telling me something I am straining to hear, I can no longer see the shoreline and on Face the Nation, Condaleeza Rice was speaking very reasonably about how the United States will deal with insanity loose in the world before Howard Dean came on to be told that any other agenda besides that of the Republicans may be trivial. His old-fashioned premise is that it’s against the law to lie and commit treason, both of which this administration has apparently done. The reporters seem to be implying that it is bad to be angry about such matters. People do not like anger. That is true. They do not. But I also do not like seeing the book, 1984, written in 1948, become reality; not only ho hum normal but insufficient in that vision to how quickly all restraints on greed and hubris can overwhelm civilization, let alone the global environment.

http://www.wonkette.com/> links us to <http://iraqyouknow.cf.huffingtonpost.com/>, where we can all watch an entertaining musical of life in Iraq. What neither does mention is how that relates to dying seals and lobsters. What I never understood was why Kerry didn’t carry the ball on the relationship between economic prosperity and environmental restoration? Altho the truth may set us all free, we DO need a road map out of this cesspool of blood, oil and fear besides telling people what most of us already know, that control of this world is now in the hands of madmen with unprecedented opportunity to spoil all our days, let alone polar bear health. But hey, I am just an artist. And maybe not enuf people have noticed yet that there are a few disconnects here.

There is the beginning of a road map. I thought Kerry had one part. It might have helped New Orleans. Why did he throw it away? Is fear sexier? Probably.

We have quite a few hours to go on this weather advisory and now the Danish Prime Minister is reporting on CNN, that the offending cartoonist, whose exploding turban has ignited global rage and a gleeful contest to parody the Holocaust, courtesy of Iran, is on indefinite leave of absence. Furthermore, he opines that freedom of speech is sacred. Is there not some connection between that and truth? Does this not have something to do with facts and do not facts have something to do with transparency, observation, thought, analysis, education?

Wolf Blitzer is segueing to Katrina and New Orleans. Ah, I grow hysterical and self-righteous with fear and frustration and will quit here as the wind picks up volume out my window.

Zen activism

I have read four articles on global warming today. They all conclude that the problems are accelerating faster and with more complexity than we ever imagined. For example, as sea water warms, cold water in the North Atlantic is rendered colder. Fishermen here are already noticing that the lobsters are coming later each year and caught later as well. I don't understand the thermodynamics but I know when you have to fish in cold weather it's a hard job out here. I also heard someone speak on NPR today on global warming. He pointed out that the effect of actions take several decades. That means everything we do to reduce the impact of global warming is a zen exercize because we are unlikely to see the consequences in our lifetime. It is like creating a bank account for grandchildren. It was Robert Watson speaking for the Cambridge Forum. The New York Times reports that 86 evangelicals are joining against global warming, despite cautions for the Bush administration: "Evangelical Climate Initiative". Today I am heartened because the rocks in the lee of cove shelters are iced with glossy white and I see some frozen waves.

Analogs

Some of my purposes in this blog include, first, to escape the trap of the familiar- as fear about our collective ecological future right now. Second, and related, find new sources of and possibilities for ecological hope- looking at what others are doing.

The third goal is to create a virtual analog to a physical place. This blog is a daily exercize in considering the physical site of Ghost Nets as one level of a series of analogs. The physical site of Ghost Nets was once a dump site. Now it is a wetlands system integrated into a larger series of constallations. Every time I consider another site around the world, it is layered onto my consciousness and becomes another analog. This blog may be the most important analog to that integration.

The first consideration is, what is changing on the ground? Talking to the old timers around here. No one can recall a Winter like this one. Though one friend predicted that it was all going to be offset by one h— of a blizzard. We’ll see. Today is colder.

Considering global warming and rioting, a perpetual war machine from Washington, an economy still vested in fossil fuels and other practices that guarantee accelerating global devastation I am looking for the right circumstances, hope in the periphery of my vision.

Sunny Maine in February

Today is sunny and calm after a brutal rain storm yesterday. The grasses at the shore are golden in the light and at low tide, the rocky sea bottom and shore of the far island is a full panorama of browns and olives from the algaes and mosses. If global warming weren’t a nagging issue, I would just glory in this Spring-like weather in February here in Maine.

My spiritual antidote to despair over environmental problems these days are all the little stories I’ve heard from Indigenous Peoples around the world. I repeat Wengari Maathi’s story of the hummingbird who tried to put out a forest fire, carrying one drop of water at a time in her beak, like a mantra. In her story, all the large animals are fleeing and laughing at her but she replies, "it is all I can do".

Having a blog is like looking into a mirror in public. In my first two day of posts, I see how much fear, anger, confusion & grief I have about the environment. I do. As an ecological artist, my task is to create art out of that. What is the purpose of art? To share feelings, passions, insight, communicate, entertain inspire awe, courage, serenity. I don’t resonate to any of those things when I see a dead harbor seal alongside the Winter garden near my Summer studio. But it’s likely the seal died of starvation. One in four pups die even without global warming, no matter what happens in Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the carcass has been whisked away to be reduced to an educational skeleton which will no doubt be very beautiful and useful. I have taken some polaroids and done some drawings that may or may not result in something more of whatever degree of beauty & pertinence may come.

Death is a frustrating part of life we must all live with. I don’t suppose my difficulties with this basic fact of life are any different than any other creatures and I shouldn’t elevate it beyond that, pointing fingers and venting my feelings over dead seals and dying dogs. It does no good to conflate general angst over life with the real issues we need to dissect and examine with calm dispassion, as the dead seal must be studied.

When I read grist <grist@grist.org>, as I do daily or listen to the news and see all the depredations of the corporate kingdom, it is hard not to connect the dots and harder to contain my frustration. But it has been said that courage is something we do in spite of fear. So perhaps one function of this blog is going to be to elevate my own courage every day, as spiritual exercize, come what may.

The Seal, Day 2

Yesterday, I drove to my wharf to see the dead seal that had beached there before it died. At first, I was disappointed.

My neighbor said it had been sighted alongside the dinghy to tend the sheep on the island across the way but I saw nothing. I thought the science teacher from our sister island, who had expressed interest in dissecting it, had taken it away.

But then, as I got closer, the patches of snow, edged by darker shadows where it lay on the light brown winter grasses resolved into a smallish shape: the dead seal. It's gray mottled coat blending perfectly with the ground, the outlines of it's body, echoing the snow patches that surround it so that I had to be quite close to make it out. The patterns of it's coat are shockingly beautiful. I understand why people trapped these creatures to adorn themselves. In the car, it looked so perfect, I thought surely it can't be dead. Surely it will be still breathing and the people who have been here before me are wrong. When I got out of the car and walked around to it's face, I saw eyes just like my elderly lab's eyes when she was a year old and a face whose shape was almost the same as a dalmatian I once had, when I was married, with similar markings and then when I bent closer to shoot pictures, I saw the flatness of the eyes that proved it's death without any need to check for a pulse.

The crows are coming now. I have to call the science teacher.

Fear, Politics, New Orleans, Global Warming and Seals

On this first day of this blog, it is gray in Maine and another storm has hit New Orleans. As I type, an administration spokesperson on CNN is telling the world that we are conquering terror by acting on fear, which I imagine means little to New Orleans, where conquering the wetlands has insured that the fear of global warming has become a fact of life.

If that’s not clear, I mean that Manifest Destiny set this nation forth to conquer all wildness, including coastal wetlands, in the pursuit of progress. Along the way, we generated massive energy from massive resources (long husbanded by Native Americans, whom we also conquered). That “productivity” resulted in what we now call global warming, which has raised sea level temperatures and along with coastal development/environmental fragmentation, created the welcome mat for Katrina in New Orleans. There.

Well, others who live with the consequences of remote decisions are the seals. Including the two who beached on my wharf Tuesday. I was busy taking care of my two elderly dogs, whom are both dying and didn’t know they were beached till this morning, when I spoke to my neighbor.

I haven’t yet gone down to see them but I already know, after staying two days, one left, the other is dead, according to my neighbors. Almost twenty years ago, when I first came, I never saw seal beachings. Then I saw the first one, a gray, about ten years ago. Another last year and now two more.

Speaking to scientists, including at the Marine Rescue Lifeline, I learned that they are seeing more viral mutations that may account for the poor health of these animals and account for the beachings. Probably the result of global wamring & sea temps. Perhaps the same effect as the fungal mutations that are rendering hundreds of frog species extinct world wide. All caused by climactic disruptions.

Meanwhile, on CNN, in security hearings, Democrats are complaining that they have not been informed of critical decisions from this administration. The dead seal, of course, doesn’t care. It didn’t read any reports on climate change, as the Pocantic Report published by the Pew Center, Nov. 2005, which concludes that openness and broad engagement must be tied together by political will, which other nations can effect.

What other nations exactly? Seal nation? Native American Nations? Iraq? Me? I imagine the living targets in Iraq might still care about whom knows what when and why. That connection between fear, war, global emissions, climate change, information and death is one to consider.

“Ghost Nets” was spiritually, about “escaping the trap of the familiar”. Fear is so familiar. It is warm and comforting in the surge of adrenalin, the drive towards others of our kind for comfort and protection. Now we have cities and oceans of FEAR. When the seal that is still alive left, did it feel fear? What was it’s relationship to the dead one? Mother? Friend? Child? Did it stay out of attachment tot he familiar? A science teacher will come get the dead one and dissect it and perhaps learn something about the cause of death. But in arguably my own human hubris, I think I already know. The seals of the Celtic islands were regarded as spiritual beings, "silkies". When the Gray beached and it was rescued, I sang to it to calm it while they loaded it for rehabilitation. It recovered but not enuf to release and eventually died that Spring, apparently too damaged by infections.

8:35 AM