A Change in the Wind
"Stop the EPA from hijacking the economy!" So says the US Chamber of Commerce, and claims that the Obama administration's rules on power emissions will cost $50 billion.
Jim Morin sees it differently. After all, the Sandy clean-up alone cost US taxpayers $100 billion, according to those wild-haired radicals at USA Today.
The best book review of the year, hands down, by Hannah Gold in The Baffler, begins this way:
"I have just sat down to dinner with my female friend and her two male friends she brought along, neither of whom I’ve met before. They are both programmers, and when my friend goes to the bathroom pretty much immediately upon arrival, they begin grilling me on my knowledge of scatter graphs. This is a raw deal for me. I tell them I’m “not a math person.” And so, of course, they explain.
After maybe five minutes of being told to imagine an X-axis and a Y-axis and an algorithm based on breakfast preferences, they ask me what I do. “I’m a journalist,” I say. “Oh nice,” one shoots back. “Have you written anything?”
My two simultaneous impulses are to run away and to punch “something” in the face. Then I remember that I have in my possession a secret weapon—an advertisement for myself. I reach inside my purse and, in deathly silence, remove from it a slim blue volume with the title emblazoned across the front in white: “Men Explain Things to Me.” I lay it on the table, face up, like a winning poker hand. They stare and they blink and they don’t say anything at all."
Gold goes on to admire the book of essays by the great Rebecca Solnit, a writer (I'm proud to say) I've mentioned numerous times on this site. Solnit's titular essay, for The Nation, begins this way:
I still don't know why Sallie and I bothered to go to that party in the forest slope above Aspen. The people were all older than us and dull in a distinguished way, old enough that we, at forty-ish, passed as the occasion's young ladies. The house was great — if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets — a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave, when our host said, "No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you." He was an imposing man who'd made a lot of money.
He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, "So? I hear you've written a couple of books."
I replied, "Several, actually."
He said, in the way you encourage your friend's seven-year-old to describe flute practice, "And what are they about?"
They were actually about quite a few different things, the six or seven out by then, but I began to speak only of the most recent on that summer day in 2003,River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, my book on the annihilation of time and space and the industrialization of everyday life.
He cut me off soon after I mentioned Muybridge. "And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?"
So caught up was I in my assigned role as ingénue that I was perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that another book on the same subject had come out simultaneously and I'd somehow missed it. He was already telling me about the very important book — with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority.
The resemblance is almost uncanny. The original essay went viral and generated a new word — mansplaining — that Solnit (charmingly) disavows. The review, really more of a battle cry, deserves to go to viral. Here's hoping.
Alex Ross of The New Yorker is by acclamation the most loved of classical music critics today. This spring he gently lauded a new pianist, Igor Levit, for his playing of Beethoven at his most natural.
In his words I heard an echo of an idea from Carl Jung about the connection between introspection and nature. In a previous post I quoted a passage from Jung's memoir in which he revealed how he found himself, or, to be exact, a part of himself. He found "Personality #2," a character he liked more than his social self, when alone in nature. Ross discusses a fascinatingly similar idea in the context of this pianist's performance of a solo piano sonata from Beethoven, a composer who voiced nature as much as any other.
The New Yorker site is a nightmare to work with as a blogger, for reasons I am too hick to understand, even as a registered subscriber who knows his password. Lord knows why this is necessary for a publication as rich in resources as this pre-eminent magazine, but let forge on as best we can, for those who would search to understand the experience of nature in prose:
For context, here's a portrait of Levit, a publicity still, which I will frame with Ross's eloquence.
A few months ago, the arrival of a debut recording…had me in a skeptical mood. The cover showed a well-dressed young man leaning over a piano, languidly dragging his fingers along the keys. The program contained the last five sonatas of Beethoven: two hours of sublime riddles, the realm of…erudite masters such as Maruizio Pollini and Mitsuko Uchida. What prematurely hyped whippersnapper would introduce himself in such a fashion? After a few minutes, I was transfixed. Here was playing of technical brilliance, tonal allure, intellectual drive, and an elusive quality that the Germans indicate with the word Innigheit, or inwardness.
[edit]
In the ethereal theme-and-variations movement that ends Opus 109, Levit revealed a…gift for cantabile playing, for spinning out a long, lyrical line. Younger performers often have troubling falling into the kind of mood that Beethoven describes as "Songful, with innermost feeling." It is the tempo of walking in the woods, of humming to oneself, of finding the slow pulse of nature. Whether or not Levit indulges in such antiquated behavior — his tweets make no mention of it — he has an uncanny ability to let the music amble away into a summery haze.
Surely Jung would understand. And although Igor's performances of this sonata cannot be found for free on the web, justifiably, here's a very nice live playing of Beethoven's PIano Sonata #30 in E Major from Aaron Wajnberg on Soundcloud, to give you an idea of the piece. Above Ross talks of the third movement.
Related articles
The Obama administration takes a stand on carbon pollution, and calls for a 30% cut in power plant emissions by 2030. For environmentalists, this is heartening news, but what does it mean politically?
To Science, the "give states choices" method sounds a lot like Obamacare:
That more complex approach makes the new rules somewhat similar to another major Obama policy initiative—reforming health insurance—that was marked by give-and-take, [Stanford scientist Ken] Caldeira says. “If a simple price on CO2 emissions is the single-payer plan of climate policy, what we are getting is closer to Obamacare,” he says. “Better than nothing, and maybe the best we can achieve, but far less than what we need.”
To the New Republic, the plan is not at all like Obamacare — not a bit:
These proposed regulations are nothing like that. They will outrage powerful stakeholders, and thus provide Republicans a potent campaign trail talking point, particularly in coal states. But Democrats in those states will be free to oppose them, too. And crucially, though the actual rule won't be finalized for at least another year, the tussle over particulars will play out on a much smaller stage than the U.S. Congress. In that sense, it'll be more like the dread fluorescent light bulb "controversy," which drives right wingers, and only right wingers, insane, than like Obamacare, which drew widespread public dissatisfaction. As a general matter, the public supports reducing emissions.
This reporter can't help but note how muted the reaction from the GOP and conservatives has been to date. The NYTimes has an explanation for that:
In the new analysis section, The Upshot, Nate Cohn writes:
The war on coal hasn’t hurt the Democrats very much in presidential elections. Since 2000, when coal country and Appalachia helped cost Mr. Gore the presidency, Democrats have built an alternative path to victory with large margins in diverse, well-educated metropolitan areas, like Northern Virginia, Denver and Columbus, Ohio. Additional losses in coal country haven’t changed this because the areas don’t have enough voters to make a difference in battleground states.
And coal country has clear boundaries that limit harm to Democrats. In 2012, Mr. Obama suffered significant losses in the coal country of southwestern Virginia, losing as much as a net 30 points in traditionally Democratic Dickenson and Buchanan counties. Yet just a few miles to the east, in counties where there are no coal mines, Mr. Obama retained nearly all of his support. The same was true in southeastern Ohio.
At this point, Democrats don’t have much more to lose by trying to win the war.
So the country could actually act on carbon pollution? Holy cow. This is news!
In honor of the release this week of a new Neil Young record, his 60th, here's a live version of his exquisite "For the Turnstiles," performed with his late great friend and co-conspirator Ben Keith:
Visual quality just okay: sound quality excellent. How the hell does Young get so much reverb out of an acoustic banjo? Amazing.
Think it's about his doubts about being a star. One of his most haunting songs. And that's saying something.
Under the heading, To Age Well, Walk, a new study written up in the NYTimes tells us what we already knew (but sometimes choose to forget).
While everyone knows that exercise is a good idea, whatever your age, the hard, scientific evidence about its benefits in the old and infirm has been surprisingly limited.
“For the first time, we have directly shown that exercise can effectively lessen or prevent the development of physical disability in a population of extremely vulnerable elderly people,” said Dr. Marco Pahor, the director of the Institute on Aging at the University of Florida in Gainesville and the lead author of the study.
Countless epidemiological studies have found a strong correlation between physical activity in advanced age and a longer, healthier life. But such studies can’t prove that exercise improves older people’s health, only that healthy older people exercise.
Okay, but looking past Captain Obvious, how much can we expect walking to help? And what does that kind of aging look like? How do we not just exercise in a general way, but walk in the mountains as we age? How hard do we push ourselves?
So happens that Backpacker magazine has a superb story on exactly that topic, although — to my bewilderment — I cannot find it in the Backpacker webite, even though the featured "senior hiker," Joe Kelsey, a climber still at 75, a former guide and writer, has been written up in past issues, and the writer of this piece — Hike Forever — Matt Jenkins, has a long association with the magazine.
And believe me, I looked through their site. But no matter — if and when it's posted, I'll link to it. For now let me link to a past mention of Kelsey's favorite trips in his beloved Wind River range in Wyoming and manually quote the rhetorical heart of Hike Forever, from adventurer/writer Matt Jenkins, which has some of the best such writing on the physical mysticism of hiking in the moutains I've seen in some time:
Now you might think a man in his 70's might be a little creaky for hard climbing, but not Joe Kelsey. He moves upward like a dancer. Of course, he's not the only senior hiker to remain physically fit at an age when most people are looking at photo albums, not making them. Heck, Earl Shaffer, the Appalachian Trail's first thru-hiker, hiked it for the third time at age 79. But unlike record-setters, whose feats can appear unattainable for us mortals, Kelsey's path seems like one I can follow. Keeping doing what you love. Go for a short hike if you can't go for a long one. Use packhorses if you'd rather spend your energy climbing backcountry rocks than carrying a heavy load.
At lunch we lie in the meadow, close our eyes, and swap stories. This is the finest gift of the mountains: to be utterly unattached to the outside world. We are in an alpine meadow so close to the sky we need only reach out our arms to touch it — while the rest of humanity is far down below, entangled in a morass of emails and tweets and text messages. the spiritual freedom of this recognition gradually fills us like a snowfield fills a tarn. for a while we simply listen to the exquisiteness of nothingness, allowing ourselves to be absorbed into the landscape, to become part of the mountain like the purple fleabane and the flecks of feldspur.
I am dozing, in a dream-like state but still conscious of the warm rock under me and the sun upon my skin, when I once again fast forward to inhabit the body and mind of my older self. I can see that I will enjoy what I presently resist: taking my time, observing more than doing, accepting limitations. I can imagine no longer constantly pushing, but rather accepting the world for what it is rather than what it should bve, and myuself, not for what I weill become, but for what I already am.
That's why I keep going back to the mountains I guess. Haven't found a pic able to express what Jenkins puts so well, but this one — of a pinyon pine in the Mojave — gives some sense of that warmth and that timelessness on the trail. From one of the best campsites I have found on the PCT — entirely by chance.
[at about mile 637 in Section F atop a hill beyond a water cache]
One of the most heartening of Google's doodles ever (for me at least) comes today, in honor of Rachel Carson's 107th birthday. The inspiration she drew from nature — and the questions nature pushed her to ask of us — are with as today as much or more than ever.
We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a very tiny part of a vast and incredible universe. Now I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves.
[quote comes from an interview with Carson conducted by "60 Minutes," for what turned out to be a huge story on "Silent Spring," aired on 4/3/1963. ]
On a recent book tour, promoting his delightful new memoir Little Failure, the mordantly funny essayist/novelist Gary Schteyngart — who in his last book predicted an economic crash, urban chaos, and the rise of a movement that sounded very much like Occupy — joked that he was "the Nostradamus of two weeks from now."
The joke brings to mind the remarkable achievement of an Ohio State glaciologist named John Mercer, who back in l978 precisely foresaw the break-up of the West Antartic ice sheet, which two studies published two weeks ago revealed has already begun.
As the those crazy radicals at the Toledo Blade revealed today, Mercer wrote:
“I contend that a major disaster — a rapid 5-meter rise in sea level, caused by deglaciation of West Antarctica — may be imminent or in progress after atmospheric CO2 [carbon dioxide] content has only doubled. This concentration of CO2 will be reached within about 50 years if fossil fuel continues to be consumed at its recent accelerating rate, or within about 200 years if consumption is held constant at today’s level,” Mr. Mercer wrote in his paper.
The newspaper goes on to point out:
Mr. Mercer’s forecast was largely validated recently by evidence presented in two major scientific papers published in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters.
Those papers show the breakup of West Antarctica has already begun, and that the pending disaster Mr. Mercer warned about in 1978 is now virtually unstoppable.
About the only thing mankind can do is slow down the rate of melting through greenhouse gas reductions, according to the latest research.
Mr. Mercer alluded to that in his 1978 paper too, when he said the industrialized world needs “to make the changeover from fossil fuels to other sources of energy.”
Or as Wikipedia put it:
Following John T. Hollin's work (1962) suggesting that climatic warming and rising sea-level cause Antarctic ice shelves to retreat , Mercer postulated that the West Antarctic ice sheet, being grounded well below sea-level and terminating in floating ice shelves, was vulnerable to these changes and may have collapsed altogether during the last interglacial when Antarctica may have been warmer and sea-level may have been higher. In 1978, in the science magazine Nature , Mercer pointed out that "green-house" warming from burning fossil fuel could have the same effect during the present interglacial. Two studies published 12 May 2014 may appear to confirm Mercer's assumption.[1][2]
But the newspaper also took the time to give us some of the marvelous character (not to deny eccentricities) of the far-sighted Mercer, an explorer of Antarctica as well as a scientist, who perhaps not coincidentally came from England.
"Mr. Mercer was so focused on his research that he was less concerned about material things in life, such as his attire, almost to a comical degree.
His favorite shirt, according to Mr. Denton, was a Mickey Mouse shirt.
One of his best friends, Keith Mountain, associate professor and chairman of the University of Louisville’s geography and geosciences department, recalled one particular gaudy pair of red-and-white canvas tennis shoes that were obviously too large for him.
Mr. Mercer told people he liked them because he caught a deal on them “and the price was right,” Mr. Mountain said.
Mr. Mercer had a large office at OSU, but it was notoriously full of clutter. Piles of papers were stacked everywhere.
“John discarded nothing,” Mr. Mountain said. “But he seemed to know where everything was. It was impressive.'”
Related articles
We should be properly skeptical of any image I suppose, especially in these days of Photoshop, and when an image purports to describe a before and after in colors demand to know even how the the satellite data was visualized, the colors chosen…but wow, this image knocks me off my feet, and at a gut level I believe in and believe it harbingers a shift in the Pacific.
[From the enthralling earth/nullschool site and app.]
Holy holy, as Allan Ginsberg used to say…
Visualization of the Pacific showing how far sea surface temps are from the 30-year average. http://t.co/K0CawmVcOW pic.twitter.com/9Aj9Z7iXyQ
— Cameron Beccario (@cambecc) May 3, 2014
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Related articles
Great minds think alike, the nine zillionth example:
Virginia Woolf, from To the Lighthouse:
"She felt…how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."
[painting of Woolf by her sister, Vanessa Bell]
Carl Jung, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Chapter IV, Psychiatric Activies:
In many cases in psychiatry, the patient who comes to us has a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. It is the patient's secret, the rock against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story, I have a key to the treatment. The doctor's task is to find out how to gain that knowledge. In most cases exploration of the consicous material is insufficient. Sometimes an association test can open the way; so can the interpretation of dreams, or long and patient human contact with the individual. In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.
As must the dramatist, surely — I wonder if this is the half-secret connection between drama and therapy, the challenging of character.
Kit Stolz