BONES WEIGH US TO PREVENT OBESITY; NO MOON, NO LIFE ON EARTH; SWEAR WORDS PRODUCED IN A DIFFERENT PART OF THE BRAIN; WHAT NOT TO SAY TO THE TERMINALLY ILL

A mouse depicted in a Roman mosaic; photo: Anna Stępień

**

LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS

Not bird not badger not beaver not bee

Many creatures must
make, but only one must seek

within itself what to make

My father's ring was a B with a dart
through it, in diamonds against polished black stone.

I have it. What parents leave you
is their lives.

Until my mother died she struggled to make
a house that she did not loathe; paintings, poems; me.

Many creatures must

make, but only one must seek
within itself what to make

Not bird not badger not beaver not bee

*
Teach me, masters who by making were
remade, your art.

~ Frank Bidart


Oriana:

I realize that I remember certain things only because I wrote a poem about the experience. There was even a time when I felt that it was too much of a burden, remembering so much of my childhood, for instance — all because of the poems, often revised so many times I'd involuntarily memorize them. “You'd think that all I’ve done in America is miss Poland,” I lamented to friends.

As a poet I know remarked, “We don't choose what we write about.” She was very young then, and new to writing, but had already discovered this amazing fact: we don’t choose what we write about. Our best writing simply happens the way thoughts happen: words start rising from the unconscious. And yet, afterwards, reading what we've written, we can be powerfully affected by our own creation. It’s circular: we are created by what we create.

But we can also be totally surprised by an old poem that we forgot we ever wrote. If we find the poem good, we let it re-enter our psyche, where it adds to the infinite passion of life.

*

Somewhat on a tangent, but it does seem to belong: I had a whole other lifetime in Poland — and after yet another lifetime that was my first phase of living in the US, I recreated my first landscapes and experiences (I was a late bloomer as a writer). The US seemed so different, so alien, that even the moon looked different somehow in this new sky — different and WRONG. But on Christmas Eve — exactly on Christmas Eve — it started to snow (I was in Milwaukee). I was ecstatic: the snow was totally the same: the hush, the blanketing, the mysterious beauty of the world covered with snow. It was my first experience of joy in the New World.

*

In summary: We create the work, and the work creates us. And after a while, the work lives on its own — it has to, IF it lives on at all.

Mary:

This found echoes in  my own thought and experience — especially that we are makers, and in our making, re-make ourselves. This is certainly true for writers and artists of all types, the act of creation is a journey of exploration and discovery, a way not only to find out what we think and feel, but to find new ways of thinking and feeling. New truths about ourselves and the world. This is the basic human action, from cave paintings to DNA sequencing — and it is a fundamental source of joy.
 
Oriana:

I'm so glad that you mentioned DNA sequencing. After all, this re-making of ourselves is not restricted to writers and artists. Making a scientific discovery — or simply, on a much more ordinary and modest scale, having an insight about something, anything — also remakes us, gives us new eyes. Falling in love, and other life experiences also accomplish this — and I don’t think we have to deliberately strive and try to shape ourselves (think of all those self-help books with the New You in the title); the process is mysterious, unconscious, automatic.

Trusting the unconscious is one of the most important life lessons I’ve learned. Experiencing the creative process no doubt hastened the acquisition of this trust. The encounter with Taoism (“Do nothing”) was marvelous, but it was really the workings of the creative process that taught me that trust.

NO MOON, NO LIFE ON EARTH
 
~ “Without the Moon, there would be no life on Earth, French scientists claim.

The gravitational push-pull of the Moon on iron deep inside Earth keeps it hot and molten. And a liquid core is needed to generate a magnetic field, which forms a protective shield against blasts of particles from the Sun.

Denis Andrault from Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and colleagues propose the Earth's heated interior should have dropped by about 3,000 ºC over the past four billion years or so, but has instead remained almost constant — all because of the Moon.

Their story, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, begins around 4.3 billion years ago, or 60 million years after the Earth’s birth.

A massive collision turned the planet molten, with some bits flung out to clump together and become the Moon. Back then, the core of the Earth would've sat around 6,800 Kelvin, or around 6,500 ºC.

After around a million years of cooling, Earth developed a thin crust and the beginnings of a mantle — a thick layer of hot rock between crust and core. The core, at this point all liquid, started to produce a magnetic field. This, the scientists write, was a stage of "thermally driven dynamo" as heat rose from the centre of the core towards the surface of the planet, churning parallel to Earth's axis of rotation.

Following another billion years or so, the core started to solidify in its centre, while the liquid outer core kept churning and the mantle cooled. Then, by a billion years ago or so, the temperature of the core should have dropped 3,000ºC.

But it didn't, Andrault and colleagues claim – instead, it dropped only 300ºC.
In the most recent billion years, the temperature was propped up by tidal forces from the Moon squishing and stretching the mantle, along with forces from our orbit around the Sun. This "mechanical forcing", they write, "could have started to induce core motions as soon as the Moon was formed".

They created a thermal model of the deep Earth's geodynamo – an "orbitally driven dynamo" – and showed the Moon's effects made up for the heat lost into space.

And because nothing's perfect — not Earth's slightly wobbly rotation or the Moon's orbit — small irregularities can cause fluctuations in the geodynamo. Pulses of heat may have melted parts of the deep mantle which, in turn, may have led to major volcanic eruptions on the surface.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/geoscience/no-moon-no-magnetic-field-no-life-earth-study

 THE LARGEST METEORITE IN THE WORLD 

 The Hoba meteorite lies on the farm "Hoba West", not far from Grootfontein, in the Otjozondjupa Region of Namibia. It has been uncovered but, because of its large mass, has never been moved from where it fell.

The main mass is estimated at more than 60 tons, making it the largest known meteorite (as a single piece) and the most massive naturally-occurring piece of iron known on Earth's surface.


**

“The enemy of the people has never been one doctrine or another but absolutism's unchecked hypocrisy.” ~ Jeremy Sherman
 
Oriana:

Not specifically Communism or Fascism or, to go back in time, the Divine Right of Kings. Made me think of old-time totalitarian Catholicism (especially back in the heretic-burning era).

Interesting the way absolutism — absolute power without checks and balances — indeed corrupts quite quickly. Totalitarian institutions never escape corruption. I say “interesting” even though it’s predictable — interesting because whether it’s religion or a secular “ism” there is usually such a huge appeal to idealism, virtually to sainthood.

Jeremy:

I'm reading a long history of the Evangelicals. One thing that pops right out is their frequent insistence on the Bible's inerrancy, as though if even one inconsistency is found, the whole thing is called into question.

The craving for an inerrant formula runs deep. And the cosmic wedgie of the past few centuries is that we're never going to get one: In Darwin, that the formula that works today might not work tomorrow. In Godel, that there's no way to generate an airtight system of mathematics or logic that precludes all inconsistencies.

The craving shows up political and social life, in what I've called infallibility battles, people unwilling to admit to even one hypocrisy for fear that it will cast doubt on everything they do, and in religion, of course.

Oriana:

You could say that the central idea of modernity is the lack of absolutism. Most people have not been able to accept it. Hannah Arendt dared to postulate the “banality of evil” and got vilified for it. People wanted to see evil as demonic, rather than inherent in any ideology.

Jeremy:

The central disappointment of modernity is that our appetite for absolutes will go unrequited by reality.

Oriana:

As you’ve suggested many times, the remedy is to accept “fallibilism” (the opposite of absolutism) and construct a system of checks and balances that prevents the development of absolute power. Alas, what a setback we’re witnessing right now, what backlash against the recent progress in science, free trade, democracy and human rights — a right-wing (even fascist) backlash not only in the US, but pretty much globally. The yearning for absolute certainty, for unchanging answers, is an incurable disease, especially of the young and of those with low intelligence and meager education. Reality? There are always “alternative facts.” The Christian ideal of compassion? There is always “alternative Christianity” (odd how it appears to be an anti-Christianity). 

~ “SWEARWORDS AND SHOCK WORDS USED TO MOSTLY COME OUT OF RELIGION. 
 
~ “Damn, damn it, hell, God, God-damned, God damn it to hello, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ Almighty, etc, etc. A few of them appeared, rarely, in nineteenth-century novels, usually as — —- or more bravely as By G—!  or d—m! Archaic or dialectal oaths such as swounds, egad, gorblimey were printed in full.

With the twentieth century the religious-blasphemy oaths began to creep, and then swarm, into print. Censorship of words perceived as “sexually explicit” was active far longer.” ~ Ursula Le Guin, “Would You Please Fucking Stop?” from a collection of essays, No Time to Spare.

Hell by Fra Angelico
 
Oriana:

This is an interesting observation: swearwords used to mostly come out of religion. And she doesn’t list such very common one as Gee or Geez! (both derived from Jesus), Golly or By Golly, and Holy Molly! (Holy Mary). And of course those euphemism I heard in Milwaukee all the time, but only from girls and women: Gosh! and “Gosh-darn!” and “Heck!” and “What the heck!” One source lists “Golly” as a synonym of Gosh.

Thinking of Polish, it’s much the same phenomenon: swearwords used to be related to religion, but this has changed. In my grandparents’ and still in my parents’ generation, YezusMarya! (Jesus-Mary) was perhaps the most common swearword.

So we can trace the modern death of god — and of the related concept of hell — even through the use of swearwords.

But now and then I hear a combination of religion with sex or excrement. Thus, on TV on 9/11, I heard an eye witness exclaim, “Sweet fucking Jesus!” And “Holy shit!” has of course been around for a long time.

But as I explored swearwords in more detail, something truly intriguing emerged. Swearwords are not just a subset of words in a language, generated and processed by the same language areas as the rest.

Holy Molly punches the Devil. I was surprised by the scarcity of "devil" in English swear words -- perhaps because "hell" is a more handy monosyllable.

SWEARING IS GENERATED AND PROCESSED IN A DIFFERENT PART OF THE BRAIN
 
~ “The brain treats swear words differently than other words.

Your brain has both motor and premotor areas, both of which have some control over speech and writing. A part of the brain called Wernicke's area handles the recognition of and processing of spoken words. The prefrontal cortex handles things like personality and determining what is appropriate social behavior. In most people, the left hemisphere of their brains is in charge of language, while the right hemisphere is in charge of the emotional content of language. Processing language is known as one of the "higher" brain functions, while processing emotion is considered one of the "lower" or more primal and instinctual brain functions.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the brain have revealed that swearing tends to affect the "lower" regions. Strong language gets "tagged" emotionally as we grow up, because our parents or teachers or peers react more strongly to certain words than others. If they react negatively to these words, that emotion gets stored in our brains along with any meanings of the words. So instead of processing "swear words" as a series of sounds or phonemes (as we do other words), the brain stores these "emotionally charged" words as whole units. As a result, the brain does not need the left hemisphere's help when processing them. Instead it relies on the limbic system (which controls memory, emotion, and behavior), and the basal ganglia (which controls motor functions and impulse control) to process the "swear words."

In a very real sense, therefore, swearing is a motor activity with a strong emotional content. This is one reason that most people remember swear words four times better than they do other words. fMRI studies have shown that the brain tends to "struggle" with itself when a person swears, these two areas competing for which will "win" in the moment.

Swearing is also affected by some disorders
 
One condition known as aphasia causes people to lose the ability to speak or pronounce words, as a result of disease or damage in the parts of the brain that control language. But even when aphasics have lost the ability to speak other words, they remember how to swear, and have no trouble remembering the more colorful words in their former vocabulary. Similarly, people who have undergone an accident or procedure that severs the connection with the left hemisphere of their brains tend to display a dramatic drop in their language abilities, but they still remember how to swear. There are other conditions such as Tourette's Syndrome that lead to coprolalia, an uncontrollable urge to swear. Studies of individuals afflicted with this condition have shown a strong link with the basal ganglia, and thus the more emotional components of language. 
 
As for how swearing can actually affect our perceptions of pain, one can only theorize, but there is ample scientific evidence that it happens. For example, Keele University psychologist Dr. Richard Stevens' research on the link between swearing and pain was inspired while sitting with his wife as she was giving birth to their children. When the contractions were at their worst and most painful, she often felt the need to swear, but as the contractions eased, so did the swearing. Curious, he began a series of experiments in which subjects were asked to experience mild levels of pain (holding their hands in a tub of freezing water) while repeating either neutral words, or swear words. The subjects were able to tolerate the pain significantly longer when repeating the swear words than the neutral words. His theory is that the association of emotion with these words triggers the "fight or flight" response in humans, stimulates the flow of adrenaline and endorphins, and thus can actually relieve pain.” ~

http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/16729/1/Swearing-and-the-Brain.html

from another source

~ “To understand why profanity has become a subject for serious inquiry, look no further than the title of Benjamin Bergen’s new book: What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. Studying how and why we swear has taught researchers much about where language originates in the brain, and the impact profanity has on our psyches.

It wasn’t long ago when the subject was as taboo as the words themselves. In the 1950s, academic inquiry into profanity was placed in the same category as sex research—controversial, immoral and strongly discouraged.

Yet, attitudes shifted with time, and swearing studies became less stigmatized. One of the most interesting and important findings to emerge over the years is that words come from more than one part of the brain. “We have two assembly lines that produce words,” says Bergen.

Researchers discovered that in part by observing patients with severe brain injuries and advanced neurodegenerative diseases. Often cited is a 19th century stroke case, in which a patient with brain damage lost the ability to form and understand speech, a condition known as aphasia, But he was able to swear, saying “I f*ck!” That was particularly unfortunate in his case. He was a priest.

Patients with Tourette syndrome have also provided evidence that language has multiple sources in the brain. Tourette syndrome is an inherited neurological disorder characterized by involuntary behavioral tics. For one in every 10 patients, these tics manifest as outbursts of swearing or offensive remarks such as “you’re ugly.” This phenomenon, known as coprolalia, is thought to be due to a malfunction in the basal ganglia, responsible for inhibiting unwanted or inappropriate behaviors.

Regular speech is generated in the left hemisphere, in an area of the brain close to the surface. The cerebral cortex, or “gray matter,” is often associated with higher thought processes such as thought and action. “It’s sophisticated,” says Bergen, “and comports with the idea of what it means to be human.”

Swearing, on the other hand, is generated much deeper in the brain, in regions that are older and more primitive in evolutionary terms, says Bergen. These regions are often found in the right hemisphere in the brain’s emotional center, the limbic system.

“These are words that express intense emotions—surprise, frustration, anger, happiness, fear,” says psychologist and linguist Timothy Jay, who began studying profanity more than 40 years ago.

“[Swearing] serves my need to vent, and it conveys my emotions to other people very effectively and symbolically,” he says. “Where other animals like to bite and scratch each other, I can say ‘f*ck you’ and you get my contempt—I don’t have to do it physically.” Of course there’s no protection against a primitive physical response, especially when that contempt is expressed in a bar.

Nearly every language in the world contains profanity. “There’s a point at which ordinary words don’t express our needs, but a profanity can do that,” says Michael Adams, a linguist at Indiana University and author of the new book In Praise of Profanity. Profanity makes up half a percent of the average person’s daily vocabulary, or one in every 200 words, according to Jay.

Profanity serves other purposes, too. Lovers use it as part of enticing sex talk; athletes and soldiers use it to forge camaraderie; and people in positions of power use it to reaffirm their superiority. Profanity is even used as a celebratory expression, says Adams, citing “F*ck yeah!” as an example.

The meaning of a profanity, like any other word, changes with time, culture and context. While swear words have been around since Greek and Roman times, and maybe even earlier, the types of things people consider offensive have changed. “People of the Middle Ages had no problems talking about sex or excrement, that was not their hang-up,” Adams explains. “Their hang-up was talking about God disrespectfully...so that was what a profanity was.”

Consider, also, that people today don’t recoil upon hearing “damn” as they did at the time of the movie Gone with the Wind, when Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler shocked audiences and Scarlett O’Hara with, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

We’ve since moved away from blasphemy being the most offensive and shocking type of profanity, says Bergen. “Now slurs are the worst ones.” Still, he says most swear words fall into four big categories: those relating to religion, sex, or excretion, and derogatory slurs. Most aren’t inherently disturbing except for slurs directed at people that insult their gender, ethnic or sexual identity.  And depending where you are in the word, there can be different takes on what’s considered profane. In Chile, it might be seafood: “Que te folle un pez” or “I hope you get f***ed by a fish.” In Italy, you might hear “porco miseria,” which has roughly the same meaning as “s***” or “bloody hell.” The Dutch might scorch you with “krijg de kanker,” or “get the cancer.”

While we know that swear words are produced in areas of the brain that control emotion, it seems like they might be processed in those regions when we hear them. “There is some evidence that the amygdala, the part of the brain involved in detecting threats, is activated when we hear taboo words,” says Stephen Pinker, a leading psychologist who studies language and cognition.

Researchers now want to explore the impact swearing has on listeners in greater detail. In particular, they’re interested in studying how slurs and terms of abuse can affect the people they’re directed at. For example, researchers would like to know whether middle schoolers experience higher levels of social anxiety when other kids batter them with profanity.

Swearing still makes many people uncomfortable—including Bergen’s mom, who has yet to finish reading his book. But don’t expect it to go away. It’s a deeply ingrained part of our culture, and almost all of us are guilty of unleashing an expletive now and then. “It’s a rare bird,” says Bergen, “who has never let slip a profane word.” Damn right.

http://www.newsweek.com/swearing-profanity-cognitive-science-language-benjamin-bergen-518390

Oriana:

I'm particularly fascinated by this part:

~ The meaning of a profanity, like any other word, changes with time, culture and context. While swear words have been around since Greek and Roman times, and maybe even earlier, the types of things people consider offensive have changed. “People of the Middle Ages had no problems talking about sex or excrement, that was not their hang-up,” Adams explains. “Their hang-up was talking about God disrespectfully...so that was what a profanity was.” ~

And this prevalence of religious swear words continued long past the Middle Ages . . .  Then swear words related to sex and excrement started to gain dominance. The decline in religion found its parallel in the decline of religious swear words, a mirror to the death of god.

But this doesn’t apply to “hell on earth.” How far we are still from implementing the ideal in the quotation below:



And the odd thing is that we can accept this for animals (especially pets) more easily than for humans. For small children, fine: most adults would probably agree that really young children deserve to live free from fear and pain. But past a certain age, watch out! Many parents still believe in “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Life is going to be hard, so there is a need to “prepare” a child for it by dishing out abuse. I’ve certainly seen this argument on Facebook, spouted again and again — if you give your child too much love, adult life is going to be a shock and the person will be “too weak” to cope. In fact the opposite seems to be true: being loved (not just in childhood but at any time of life) makes us stronger.

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN?
 
“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” ~ Aesop (621 BC - 564 BC)

Kleptocracy. Or, as Stephen King put it, Trump and his “plunder monkeys.” 

 WHAT NOT TO SAY TO THE TERMINALLY ILL

~ “Kate Bowler's new memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason And Other Lies I've Loved, is a funny, intimate portrait of living in that nether space between life and death. In it, she shares her experiences with incurable stage 4 cancer and gives advice on what not to say to those who are terminally ill.

Bowler is also the host of Everything Happens, a new podcast.

She writes that sometimes silence is the best response: "The truth is that no one knows what to say. It's awkward. Pain is awkward. Tragedy is awkward. People's weird, suffering bodies are awkward. But take the advice of one man, who wrote to me with his policy: Show up and shut up.”

from the interview:

I wrote the book more like a theological excavation project, like I was just trying to get down to the studs of what I really expected from my life. And I think I was a lot more sure than I realized ... maybe that I was the architect of my own life, that I could overcome anything with a little pluck and determination.

I went from feeling like a normal person to all of a sudden, like this spaghetti bowl of cancer. I was trying to learn how to give up really quickly, like looking at my beautiful husband and just immediately all the stuff you're supposed to say, which is just like, "I have loved you forever," and "All I want for you is love.”

You have these impossible thoughts like, "You will live without me," and "Please take care of our kid." And like you're trying to do all that hard work and then in the same moment, they're trying to rush in and say, "We're going to fight this." There's all these plans they want to pour their certainty in, to remake the foundation. And there's this, kind of, almost terrible exchange, where you're trying to remake the world as it was. But it's all come apart.

~ On whether she has had conversations with her 4-year-old son about death

He is entirely impervious to all of this, in the best way. But I do think the thing that has radically changed is I really was, before, trying to create this little bubble around him and us, 'cause I thought, like, "It's my job to protect you," and then I realized that I would be the worst thing that happened to him if this went badly.

So then I thought like, "OK, parenting strategy change." And I thought, 'Well, if I can just teach you that there is still beauty in others in the midst of pain, then like, that's my job." So we work a lot on like, "How are you feeling?" like, "I feel frustrated." And then getting him to notice the feelings of others.

~ On how she has learned to cope with negative news about her diagnosis

Well I have rules for when things are too sad, 'cause sometimes, just the reality of things really feels like an avalanche, and it's just going to sweep everything away. So I do make rules for the day, like don't talk about sad things after 9 p.m., so I try to make my day a little gentler. I try to make other people's day a little gentler. 
 
The other thing I do is I try really stupid stuff, like I got terrible news a couple months ago, which thankfully turned out to be a medical error.

It was a scan and it looked brutal, but I spent that week thinking like, "This is my last year for sure." And it was weird because the next day, I turned to a friend and I said, "Would you like to go visit the world's largest Ukrainian sausage?" And he was like, "Oh, I'm in."

~ On her list of things not to say to someone with terminal cancer, including "How are the treatments going and how are you really?”

This is the toughest one of all. I can hear you trying to be in my world and be on my side. But picture the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Got it? Now try to put it in a sentence. Now say it aloud 50 times a day. Does your head hurt? Do you feel sad? Me too. So let's just see if I want to talk about it today, because sometimes I do and sometimes I want a hug and a recap of American Ninja Warrior.” ~

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/08/583774624/what-not-to-say-to-the-terminally-ill-everything-happens-for-a-reason
 

from Amazon:

Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

This book will not tell you "everything will be okay". Instead, it will tell you, "you know, it might NOT be okay, but we'll keep living anyway and I will stand there with you.”

Mary:

For both those facing serious illness and those terminally ill, I would  think you must be honest and kind. The worst thing I think we do is cast the terminally ill, the ones with the worst diagnoses, as “warriors” who must valiantly fight with all their might, no matter what the suffering involved — this places an intolerable burden of guilt on the person who isn’t winning, or can’t possibly win. Suffering becomes defeat, becomes failure, becomes a weakness of character, a spiritual flaw.

This is not only unjust, it is cruel, and all the cheering on, all the flag waving, and naming of “survivors” helps only those who need to distance themselves and reassure themselves that despite everything, strength of spirit and a positive attitude will prevail. This is nonsense. This is the fear of the well encountering the specter of their own potential for suffering and death. I think it is also part of our society’s fear of and denial of death — so extreme at times it is as though we somehow feel death is “optional,” and dying a bad choice, rather than the natural and inevitable consequence of life. When my mother said to me, early in the year that would be her last: “I think this is my last spring” I asked her how she felt about that — I did not “Hush” her with false reassurance, denying that she could fail so badly.. and she answered — “A little curious.”

As in our collective denial of death’s inevitability, the fundamentalist insistence on Absolutism is grounded in fear. If everything is already “written” by the One Infallible author, all uncertainty vanishes. We  are safe as children under the authority of the Father. The Righteous will be rewarded, and everyone else punished.

Fundamentalists, in any system,  cling to this with a sort of rabid hysteria — any refutation, admitting any error, threatens the whole edifice, and pushes them out into the chaos of an uncertain world that is indifferent to their existence and uninterested in their survival. I have felt the pull of this kind of belief, the temptation actually, in very hard and difficult times, to swoon backward into that mythic childhood place of feeling safe — where “Jesus loves me.” Where if I believe and follow all the rules I will be surrounded by the goodness and comfort of that love. But I simply couldn’t do it, couldn’t deliberately refuse to see the imaginary design for what it was, refuse to see my own objections to it’s inconsistencies  and elaborate nonsense. So I remain at the apostate’s table.

**

Oriana:

You put it wonderfully. Kate Bowler, the author of the book, says that she unwittingly accepted the Prosperity Gospel — everything that happens is either a reward or punishment. But you use a more precise term here: the Warrior mentality when it comes to serious illness (though the warrior mentality pervades the culture in general, an individualism pushed to the extremes: you are allegedly in complete control of your life and your body).

Yet the longer I live, the more I see how little we control when is comes to the truly important things: so much is sheer accident. Also, we often don’t know what is best, and could use more trust in the body, in life. I rebelled when a friend send me all kinds of videos with pre- and post-op meditations. “This time, I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to leave it up to my body,” I said. (At that point I’d already experienced the ravages of the highly recommended physical exercise; before then, the ravages of the so-called “healthy” diet.) 

So, I’ve come to see that while the fighting spirit may be needed in some cases, in MOST cases we do better with a relaxed, “Let go” attitude. A little gardening does my health a lot more good than any “push yourself” exercise regimen. 


My other insight is the importance of affection. If you don’t have a loving person(s) in your life, get a dog. We must love and be loved. But in the end even love will not prevail against death. It is not a defeat. If you’ve had an interesting life, you’ve already “won” (not that there is any need for the win/lose attitude).

Thank you for sharing the wonderful detail about your mother’s last spring. Curiosity — now there is an attitude to have instead of the “I will WIN!!” warrior posturing.
 
**

“The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.” ~ A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh

It’s hair-raising in its archaic punishments. Parts of it, at least, read like an ISIS manual (Islam is mostly derived from ancient Orthodox Judaism). It’s a valuable historical document of that culture and mentality, but shows the arbitrary and culture-bound nature of Yahweh — not a lovable deity by any standard. Or, what is perhaps more relevant, not worthy of worship any more than a cruel dictator would be.

Harold Bloom says that in Christianity Yahweh becomes a very shrunken figure. That’s not the way he felt to me. On the contrary, he loomed gigantic, tyrannical, the one with the real power. Because he cast people into hell, he out-Hitlered Hitler. There was no way I could love such a god. But the commandment was to love him, so I realized I was doomed — no way for me to avoid hell. And to believe that one is doomed to hell was a sin against the Holy Ghost, the one sin that will not be forgiven. So there. A total trap. An eleven-year-old girl in despair over her upcoming eternal damnation.
 

HOW THE BONES “WEIGH US” AND HELP PREVENT OBESITY
 
~ “Scientists have found an entirely new mechanism by which our body measures and influences our weight. This "gravitostat" is thought to reside in our bones and may offer new treatment avenues for obesity.

Some studies have shown that the relationship between hours spent sitting and obesity are independent of the amount of exercise undertaken.

In other words, standing itself seems to have anti-obesity powers beyond the number of calories it burns.

As Prof. John-Olov Jansson, of the Sahlgrenska Academy [Sweden], states, "Quite simply, we have found support for the existence of internal bathroom scales. The weight of the body is registered in the lower extremities. If the body weight tends to increase, a signal is sent to the brain to decrease food intake and keep the body weight constant.”

To come to this intriguing and important conclusion, the research team ran a series of experiments on rodents (both rats and mice). The animals were implanted with weighted capsules, making them 15 percent heavier. Control animals had empty capsules implanted, increasing their body weight by just 3 percent.

Amazingly, the animals carrying the additional weight reduced their food intake to compensate. Over the course of the experiment, the animals lost roughly the same amount of weight as was added by the artificial load.
 
Body fat decreased, and blood glucose levels improved. Motor activity was unchanged, meaning that the loss of fat was solely due to dietary changes.
 
To understand whether or not leptin could be behind this fat loss mechanism, the team repeated its experiments on a strain of mouse that does not produce leptin. In these mice, the results were the same, implying that leptin is not responsible. This is an entirely new mechanism.

How can the body weigh itself?

The answer appears to be in our bones. Osteocytes, the most common cell type in bone tissue, are important for communication between cells. Osteocytes can detect whether a particular section of bone is under increased mechanical stress, signaling the need for new bone formation and remodeling.

The researchers carried out the same experiment again, but this time using mice with reduced numbers of osteocytes. They found that the animals no longer lost weight in response to the weighted implants. The mechanism appears to be osteocyte-dependent.

They conclude that “increased body weight activates a sensor dependent on osteocytes of the weight-bearing bones. This induces an afferent signal [a signal going to the central nervous system], which reduces body weight.”

Uncovering a new mechanism unearths many more questions than it answers. For example, if osteocytes are involved, how exactly do they exert their influence on feeding behavior?

To attempt to answer this question, the team looked at a range of bone-derived compounds, including sclerotin and osteocalcin, but none seemed to be involved.

They also explored the potential roles of other factors involved in fat regulation, including ghrelin (a hormone involved in hunger), MC4R (an important mediator in the effects of leptin), and estrogen receptor-alpha (involved in regulating fat and bone mass). None appeared to play a part.

Understanding how an internal weighing system might work could help to unravel the connections between sitting time and health. Ohlsson explains, "We believe that the internal body scales give an inaccurately low measure when you sit down. As a result, you eat more and gain weight.”

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320498.php
 
Oriana:

One of the most exciting medical news articles in the recent years. Hah! Sitting prevents the correct “weighing” of the body by the bone cells in the lower extremities.

Here is a quick summary from another source:

~ “By now you've probably heard the notion that "sitting is the new smoking" or put even more frankly: that "sitting is killing you." But a new study puts a positive spin on the bad news about all that time spent sedentary; the research shows that losing weight and fighting the related obesity epidemic could be as simple as literally taking a stand.

Researchers at Sweden's University of Gothenburg believe they may have discovered the body's second known system for regulating body weight.

“Quite simply, we have found support for the existence of internal bathroom scales," explains Professor John-Olov Jansson, in a statement. "The weight of the body is registered in the lower extremities. If the body weight tends to increase, a signal is sent to the brain to decrease food intake and keep the body weight constant.

“We believe that the internal body scales give an inaccurately low measure when you sit down. As a result you eat more and gain weight,” says Ohlsson.

In other words, sitting could really be killing us because it distorts the body's own picture of how much it weighs, screwing with the systems that regulate body fat.” ~

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2017/12/29/obesity-losing-weight-sitting-standing-leptin-gothenburg-pnas/#2d424a0170e2

Too simple to be true? To be sure, this is just the beginning of research into that aspect of weight control. A discovery has been made, and now it needs a lot of follow-up.

The ultimate human dream is a drug that would make it possible to eat anything we want and just prevent the conversion of excess calories into body fat. A drug that would safely block fat formation would definitely make whoever patents it extremely rich, so you can be sure that the search is on. But so far, we’ve had only unsafe stimulants that can cause a heart attack. So it’s time to simply stand up.

Stand up . . .  stretch . . . lift some weights a few times . . . or just hold those weights . . . 


**

ending on beauty:

. . . paradise was when
Dante
regathered from height and depth
came out onto the soft, green level earth
into the natural light

~ A. R. Ammons

A DOMINATRIX TEACHES HOW TO DEAL WITH A HARASSER; ARE THE MAGNETIC POLES ABOUT TO FLIP? WHAT DID THE VICTORIANS HIDE BEHIND THEIR BEARDS? HOW THE FIRST-WAVE GLOBALIZATION SURVIVED POPULISM; THE “SILENCE OF PAUL”

A fruit-bat fetus near term

*
CROSSING SAN ANDREAS
Frazier Park, California 
 
Cosmo, my neighbor, who believed
that rocks have consciousness,
they are just slow,
showed me at last where lay

the San Andreas Earthquake Fault:
“Right here. It’s the river.”
He meant the muddy trickle
meandering through sagebrush —

the bridge that spanned it
ran a quarter of a block. Each time
I crossed the bridge, I crossed
from the Pacific Plate

to the North American Plate.

I slept and worked and hiked
among the piñon pines
on the Pacific Plate; I crossed


to the North American Plate to shop.

The market was there,
the drugstore. I had to have
both tectonic plates.

Cosmo said, “When the next 

earthquake hits,
half of here will shear 
toward San Francisco;

the other half will slide
down toward Baja.”
San Francisco or Baja?
I had to have both.

Isn’t everyone always
 
crossing from world to world?

Ecstasy, or the laundry?
The soul too is a housewife

and requires both.
From parent to teacher
to artist, from I love you
to oil for the salad,

fissures, earthquake faults,
a bridge where you drop
your name like a lost coin —
knowing any instant

a shudder could start,

half of you leap north,
 
half of you slide south.
The last earthquake,

Cosmo explained,
took place two hundred
years ago. Great oaks
snapped like saplings, 


rifts opened ten feet wide. 

Cosmo wasn’t afraid:
“I built the house myself.
I put in the best


studs and bolts.”

I admired this male faith 

in studs and bolts,
though I felt shaken myself,

every day stepping across
from the Pacific Plate 

to the North American Plate.
 
The earthquake was

overdue, but rocks
have a different sense of time.
Now and then one could spot
 
a seismologist up the slope


with his long-legged
instruments, his metal
measuring rod — 


the sky flawless, lilacs

drunk with blossoms,
rocks thinking
their stone thoughts,
the pressure building up.

~ Oriana

In California we are forced to live with the awareness that The Big One — a huge, catastrophic earthquake — is inevitable, is only a matter of time (“not IF, but WHEN”), and, what is even worse, it’s “overdue” (or so we are constantly told). I’ve pondered this many times, each time resolving that living in a beautiful place and in a mild climate is worth it, even at the risk of knowing it could all be lost, reduced to rubble.

Mostly, of course, you simply don’t think about it. But a small earthquake, and there are plenty of those, is a reminder.

The earth has plenty of potential ways of erasing us. 

Mary:

I wouldn't worry about those tectonic plates and the overdue earthquake. Once you start there are so many potential catastrophes you could worry about, it could take up all your time and energy. Eventually we all will be gone, eventually, in deep time, nothing of who we were or what we did will remain, and we each know one thing for certain — each one of us will die, one way or another, and how won't make a difference.
Oriana:

And we don’t worry about it all that much — except that little earthquakes are a reminder. Woody memorably said, “It’s not that I'm afraid of death — it’s just that I don’t want to be there when it happens.” And in a sense, we won’t be there — we’ll be unconscious, or in a very confused state.

I have a very sturdy-looking dining table under which to dive in case there is an earthquake, and I happen to be near that table. But I could be anywhere, so there is no way to really feel safe. So much depends on sheer luck. It makes our efforts to lose ten pounds look pretty ridiculous — in the end we’ll lose ALL our weight.

But before then — “lilacs drunk with blossoms.”



ARE THE EARTH’S MAGNETIC POLES ABOUT TO FLIP?

~ “One day in 1905, the French geophysicist Bernard Brunhes brought back to his lab some rocks he’d unearthed from a freshly cut road near the village of Pont Farin. When he analyzed their magnetic properties, he was astonished at what they showed: Millions of years ago, the Earth’s magnetic poles had been on the opposite sides of the planet. North was south and south was north. The discovery spoke of planetary anarchy. Scientists had no way to explain it.

Today we know that the poles have changed places hundreds of times, most recently 780,000 years ago. (Sometimes, the poles try to reverse positions but then snap back into place, in what is called an excursion. The last time was about 40,000 years ago.) We also know that when they flip next time, the consequences for the electrical and electronic infrastructure that runs modern civilization will be dire. The question is when that will happen.

In the past few decades, geophysicists have tried to answer that question through satellite imagery and math. They have figured out how to peer deep inside the Earth, to the edge of the molten, metallic core where the magnetic field is continually being generated. It turns out that the dipole — the orderly two-pole magnetic field our compasses respond to — is under attack from within.

The latest satellite data, from the European Space Agency’s Swarm trio, which began reporting in 2014, show that a battle is raging at the edge of the core. Like factions planning a coup, swirling clusters of molten iron and nickel are gathering strength and draining energy from the dipole. The north magnetic pole is on the run, a sign of enhanced turbulence and unpredictability. A cabal in the Southern Hemisphere has already gained the upper hand over about a fifth of the Earth’s surface. A revolution is shaping up.

If these magnetic blocs gain enough strength and weaken the dipole even more, they will force the north and south poles to switch places as they strive to regain supremacy. Scientists can’t say for sure that is happening now — the dipole could beat back the interlopers. But they can say that the phenomenon is intensifying and that they can’t rule out the possibility that a reversal is beginning.

The Earth’s magnetic field protects our planet from dangerous solar and cosmic rays, like a giant shield. As the poles switch places (or try to), that shield is weakened; scientists estimate that it could waste away to as little as a tenth of its usual force. The shield could be compromised for centuries while the poles move, allowing malevolent radiation closer to the surface of the planet for that whole time. Already, changes within the Earth have weakened the field over the South Atlantic so much that satellites exposed to the resulting radiation have experienced memory failure.

That radiation isn’t hitting the surface yet. But at some point, when the magnetic field has dwindled enough, it could be a different story. Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, one of the world’s experts on how cosmic radiation affects the Earth, fears that parts of the planet will become uninhabitable during a reversal. The dangers: devastating streams of particles from the sun, galactic cosmic rays, and enhanced ultraviolet B rays from a radiation-damaged ozone layer, to name just a few of the invisible forces that could harm or kill living creatures.

How bad could it be? Scientists have never established a link between previous pole reversals and catastrophes like mass extinctions. But the world of today is not the world of 780,000 years ago, when the poles last reversed, or even 40,000 years ago, when they tried to. Today, there are nearly 7.6 billion people on Earth, twice as many as in 1970. We have drastically changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean with our activities, impairing the life support system of the planet. Humans have built huge cities, industries and networks of roads, slicing up access to safer living spaces for many other creatures. We have pushed perhaps a third of all known species toward extinction and have imperiled the habitats of many more. Add cosmic and ultraviolet radiation to this mix, and the consequences for life on Earth could be ruinous.

And the perils are not just biological. The vast cyber-electric cocoon that has become the central processing system of modern civilization is in grave danger. Solar energetic particles can rip through the sensitive miniature electronics of the growing number of satellites circling the Earth, badly damaging them. The satellite timing systems that govern electric grids would be likely to fail. The grid’s transformers could be torched en masse. Because grids are so tightly coupled with each other, failure would race across the globe, causing a domino run of blackouts that could last for decades.

No lights. No computers. No cellphones. Even flushing a toilet or filling a car’s gas tank would be impossible. And that’s just for starters.

But these dangers are rarely considered by those whose job it is to protect the electronic pulse of civilization. More satellites are being put into orbit with more highly miniaturized (and therefore more vulnerable) electronics. The electrical grid becomes more interconnected every day, despite the greater risks from solar storms.

One of the best ways of protecting satellites and grids from space weather is to predict precisely where the most damaging force will hit. Operators could temporarily shut down a satellite or disconnect part of the grid. But progress on learning how to track damaging space weather has not kept pace with the exponential increase in technologies that could be damaged by it. And private satellite operators aren’t collating and sharing information about how their electronics are withstanding space radiation, a practice that could help everyone protect their gear.

We have blithely built our civilization’s critical infrastructure during a time when the planet’s magnetic field was relatively strong, not accounting for the field’s bent for anarchy. Not only is the field turbulent and ungovernable, but, at this point, it is unpredictable. It will have its way with us, no matter what we do. Our task is to figure out how to make it hurt as little as possible.

https://undark.org/article/books-alanna-mitchell-spinning-magnet/

Oriana:

Should we start preparing? Build some underground cities, for one thing? 

Mary: NO MORE PROTECTED FROM EXTINCTION THAN THE DINOSAURS

I have been worried lately by hearing one of my very best friends was in a house fire — she wasn't burned badly, but suffered smoke inhalation and was in the hospital. Whether her home can be made livable, and if so, when, is still a big question. This is the home she grew up in, and has lived in her entire life — something pretty unique these days, and I don't know how she would do living somewhere else. When something like this happens it reminds you how very fragile all things are, and how suddenly great losses can come . . . with that same kind of utter indifference as earthquakes . . . or the planet's magnetic poles changing places. We have changed this world drastically in many ways — and yet remain, in the larger scheme of things, incidental, ephemeral, no more protected from extinction than the dinosaurs.
Oriana:

Exactly. Even though you and I grew up with the photos of nuclear explosions, somehow, like the Second Coming, it wasn’t happening, and in a while we ceased to worry. Then we realized the crisis was the environment — that we couldn’t just multiply and pollute and plunder, and not suffer consequences. And now there is the growing awareness that nature could wipe out us regardless . . . So much for the hubris of seeing ourselves as the “Masters of the Universe.” Of course that was a joke from the start, but I'm afraid some couldn’t see the irony.
 

*

But here is something more reassuring:

SWITCHING MAGNETIC POLES — NOT EXACTLY AN APOCALYPSE?
 
~ “Scientists estimate that past polar flips have been rather sluggish, with north and south migrating to opposite positions over thousands of years. This is both good and bad if you’re concerned about how a geomagnetic reversal will affect life on Earth.

The sluggish polar meander is good, because it means we have time to prepare and can do our best to ameliorate any unpleasant effects before they get really unpleasant. But it’s bad, because our planet’s magnetic field helps shield us from damaging solar and cosmic radiation, and a protracted flip means Earth might be slightly less protected from harmful space rays for longer than we would like.

The only major, noticeable effect that’s guaranteed to occur when the polar flop is finished is that your compass needle will tell you that North is in Antarctica and South is somewhere near Canada. This will make the names of the American continents temporarily confusing (at least, on a geologic time scale) but it’ll make for a good story in classrooms.

Another interesting consequence will be that animals that use Earth’s magnetic field for navigation—including birds, salmon, and sea turtles—could get lost during their routine journeys. Eventually they will sort this out, and all other things being equal, life will go on. Lots of doomsday prophets have tried to equate geomagnetic flips with mass extinctions, but the data just aren’t there.

It’s true that when the poles do reverse, Earth’s magnetic field could get weaker—but its strength is already quite variable, so that’s not necessarily unusual, and there’s no indication it will vanish entirely, according to NASA. Why? Because it never has.

However, if the magnetic field gets substantially weaker and stays that way for an appreciable amount of time Earth will be less protected from the oodles of high-energy particles that are constantly flying around in space. This means that everything on the planet will be exposed to higher levels of radiation, which over time could produce an increase in diseases like cancer, as well as harm delicate spacecraft and power grids on Earth.

These are consequences we can prepare for, and as far as everything below the stratosphere goes, we’ll have a nice, thick atmosphere that can also help act as a shield.

For now, we’re doing a decent job of introducing carcinogenic toxins to the environment and otherwise altering the ways in which ecosystems normally function, so there are bigger things to worry about in the short term.

That being said, one total bonus of having a weaker magnetic field is that auroras will be visible from much lower latitudes, so the nighttime skies will be even more epic.” ~

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/earth-magnetic-field-flip-north-south-poles-science/

Oriana:

Again, it seems that most people believe “something else will get us first.”


A DOMINATRIX REVEALS THE SECRET OF DEALING WITH HARASSERS 
 
~ “A recent New York Times article featured Kasia Urbaniak, a former dominatrix who teaches a sold-out course in New York called “Cornering Harvey: Verbal Self-Defense Training Camp for Women.”

A word “dominatrix” often evokes images of whips and chains. Kasia apparently does teach with a riding crop but the crux of her teachings comes down to a simple element of power dynamics that psychologists have studied for years. And, this secret element can be used in dealing with people in a wide array of situations beyond the bedroom.

The key to taking your power or giving it away comes down to a simple question: Where does your attention go?

When women are made self-conscious (through catcalls and questioning), they become less agentic and less able to act for themselves; instead, they react and are reactive to the other. In other words, they take the submissive role — and are diminished to only responding and reacting to the dominant questioner.

In dominant-submissive relationships, the dominant person puts attention on the submissive person—and keeps their attention on the submissive person, keeping them feeling slightly off-kilter, so they stay on their toes and completely focused on their own internal experience. This makes it very difficult for the submissive person to take independent action because they are literally being held under the thumb of dominant person’s attention.

If you’re in a situation in which you’re made to feel uncomfortably self-conscious, try shifting your attention on to the person who’s making you feel self-conscious.  For example, if someone says, “You look so pretty today—oh now you seem kinda nervous.” Don’t say: “Why do you think so?” or “Screw you!” Instead put the attention back on them by saying, “Where did you get that shirt?” “Why are you standing there looking at me?” Anything to put the attention back on them and leave them feeling off-kilter instead of you!

In my research using mirrors to track attention, we’re studying the effects of inward and outward attention. We find that both perspectives can be effective (or ineffective) depending on the situation.

Focusing inward is great when you want to tap into your feelings and intuitive knowing, and when you want to reveal yourself and build trust in relationships. But as Kasia points out, inward focus when being put on the spot creates a sense of submissiveness, reactivity, and unwanted vulnerability. Also, focusing on yourself when you are speaking or performing in public can lead to disaster. It’s much better to focus outward when leading groups because outward attention is necessary to “read the room.” Yet, if our attention is focused outward too much of the time, we can lose touch with how we’re feeling and project what’s going on inside of us onto others, which can lead to a wide array of misunderstandings. We may shift our attention outward by becoming engrossed in social media for example, which can lead us to forget ourselves for extended periods of time and serve as a way to avoid uncomfortable feelings inside.

It’s important to know how to shift your attention to match the situation. But in relationships taking the middle road of having your attention half in and half out might be not effective. If you want to stay in control, you have to put your attention on the other and keep it there. For instance, if you put your attention on someone to make a request, you need to keep your attention them. Don’t keep explaining why you want the thing or waver in your request if they don’t say yes immediately—because that puts the attention back on you.

Knowing where your attention is, and where it’s going, is an important element to feeling in control and at ease in any social situation. If you find yourself feeling confused or off-kilter in a conversation—check in and ask “Where’s my attention?” ~

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-clarity/201801/dominatrix-reveals-the-secret-power-dynamics?collection=1111135

Oriana:

I love this article. Instead of becoming confused and reactive, try to switch the focus of attention to the harasser: “Where did you get this shirt?” Now it’s his turn to be uncomfortable.

So it’s about directing attention. And note that the situation need not be sexual. Master manipulators have used this technique whenever made uncomfortable by an inquiry. Instead of replying to a “difficult” question, they ignore it, and reply with a question or a remark that puts the questioner on the spot. Ever watched a politician do that?

Speaking of politics, I am reminded of the notorious Soviet propaganda technique that got named “What-about-it-ism.” Thus, asked about the Gulags, Soviet spokesmen might reply, “But what about your treatment of the American Indians?” or, “And what about racism in the South of the United States?” More recently, Putin was asked about a political opponent found dead in his prison cells, apparently beaten to death. Asked about it by an American interviewer, Putin replied, “You of course have no deaths in American prisons?”

So, the technique is simplicity itself — instead of addressing the person’s query, you shift the attention to them in an uncomfortable way, putting them on the defensive. As practiced in politics, this is one of the main “dirty tricks.” Used by a potential victim of harassment, however, this becomes a useful technique of verbal self-defense.

Altogether this is a fabulous article. “Where did you get that shirt?” ~ what a startling response to a harasser — what a shift of attention! “A mental disorder means paying attention to the wrong thing” was for me the first “lightning strike” along those lines. This is the second one. Love it.

(Shameless digression:  : This reminds me of learning about the distress caused by choice and too much information.)

Where did you get that throne?

HIDING BEHIND THEIR BEARDS: VICTORIANS AND THE BODY
 
~ “It turns out that the story about Victorians wrapping little trousers around their indecent piano legs is apocryphal or, at the very least, a weak joke. Yet the idea endures that our great-grandparents muffled their bodies in heavy fabric and silence. It’s an idea we picked up from the early 20th century and then, because it was flattering to imagine ourselves as so different from our poor buttoned-up, self-loathing ancestors, we refused to let it go.

Yet you only have to take a quick imaginative tour of the physical conditions in which the Victorians lived to realise that a state of chilly physical self-sufficiency would have been beyond them. From the end of the 18th century, British citizens piled into the expanding cities from the countryside. Strangers who had never previously set eyes on one another found themselves in an involuntary embrace at the factory bench, the railway station, the lodging house, the park or on the top deck of an omnibus. Other people’s sneezes, bums, elbows, smells, snores, farts and breathy whistles were, quite literally, in your face. Privacy, in the form of screens, locks, water closets, first-class carriages and single beds, was available only to a privileged few. For everyone else it was a question of raising thresholds of embarrassment and shame to protect against sensory overload.

To the brute proximity of other people’s bodies you would have to add the tyranny of living in your own. In an age without antibiotics or much effective doctoring, discomforts that we moderns can magic away in less than a week – constipation, an aching tooth or swollen toe – became chronic conditions to be endured over decades. In the process a body might become permanently marked with the tokens of its earthly passage — an osteoporotic hump, a dense splatter of smallpox scars, a missing finger — that it carried with it to the grave.

DARWIN’S BEARD

It had been Emma who first suggested Charles grow a beard, as a way of dealing with his severe eczema. Since adolescence he had been subject to breakouts of a skin complaint that swelled his lips and turned his pleasantly pudgy features red, so that he periodically appeared like an angry cherub. Ceasing to shave would eliminate the irritation that came with the daily scraping of skin with steel, and allow Darwin to conceal the scaly redness that had been the source of much embarrassment since his teens. Indeed, disappearing behind a thick curtain of facial hair was a relief for a man who had long been convinced that he was, to use his own sad self-accusation, “hideous”.

Darwin was not alone in using the new fashion for facial hair to bind up private psychic wounds. For the past 15 years, men of every class had been growing out their early-Victorian mutton chops and “piccadilly weepers” into spectacularly bushy beards. Alfred Tennyson had started his poetic career as a clean-shaven young man with a jaw that could only be described as “lantern”. But by the age of 45 his facial architecture had begun to collapse, thanks to a “queer” set of false teeth. Growing an extravagant moustache and beard not only allowed the poet laureate to hide his caved-in mouth, but also enabled him to fashion himself as a timeless sage, one who channelled the wisdom of the ages.

Dickens, meanwhile, was so self-conscious about his weak chin, especially now that he was besieged by requests to sit for photographic portraits, that he grew his trademark door knocker as a kind of prosthesis (a full beard was beyond him). The American poet Longfellow wanted to disguise the terrible scars he had acquired while trying to rescue his wife from a house fire. The nonsense writer Edward Lear was, like Darwin, convinced he was ugly and simply wanted to hide, declaring: “There was an Old Man with a beard, / Who said, ‘It is just as I feared! / Two Owls and a Hen, /Four Larks and a Wren, / Have all built their nests in my beard!’ ”

Despite being surrounded by this extravagant facial topiary, Darwin knew that a man’s capacity to grow facial hair must be about more than vanity, neurosis or fashion. In his Descent of Man, he wrestles with the problem of what the beard is for. Is it there to attract a female mate, much like the peacock’s bright tail feathers or a lion’s handsome mane? Or is it something to do with male competition – the man with the hairiest jaw gets to dominate his smoother friends? But, in that case, why was it that in Tierra del Fuego, which Darwin had visited as a young naturalist aboard the Beagle, indigenous men, who might be assumed to be “closer to Nature”, had such light beard growth? And why did the Fuegians appear to regard the bristly chins of the Beagle crew with all the horror of home counties aunts? Did the answer lie in the realms of culture, biology or both?

Darwin never came to a clear conclusion, and it’s a puzzlement that modern scientists share to this day. What is apparent, though, is that Victorian women tended not to share their men’s enthusiasm for a bristly chin. Emily Tennyson longed for her “Ally” to shave off his malodorous attachment (personal hygiene was never the poet laureate’s strong point) while Mary Butler, with whom Darwin struck up a friendship, declared “I don’t like the idea of your long beard” and never wrote to him again. But the most emphatic shudder came from Lady Morley, who said of the very hairy Duke of Newcastle that she could always tell how many courses he’d had for dinner by looking at his beard. It comes as no surprise to learn that Lady Morley’s husband remained eccentrically clean-shaven.

GEORGE ELIOT’S HAND

One day in the 1840s a young woman in her mid-20s was talking to her neighbor in a genteel villa on the outskirts of Coventry. At some point in the conversation Mary Ann Evans stretched out her right hand “with some pride” to demonstrate how much bigger it was than her left. It was the legacy, she explained, of having spent her teenage years making butter and cheese on her family’s farm, eight miles outside the city. All that vigorous turning of the churn at 40 repetitions a minute, not to mention the squeezing of the curds to expel the watery whey, had built up the muscles in her right hand. Even now, several years on, her right hand was broader than her left, making her permanently lop-sided.

When Eliot died unexpectedly in 1880 you might have expected the guardians of her posthumous reputation – widower, brother, nephew – to be delighted for the public to hear this charming story about how the great novelist’s body carried a permanent memento of her early years in rural Warwickshire. Not a bit of it. When the first, unauthorized, biography came out just 28 months after Eliot’s death, these professional men – a banker, a clergyman and a gentleman farmer – were appalled to discover the Coventry neighbor had passed on the anecdote about Mary Ann Evans’ broad right hand. Now it was out there, in print, for anyone to read.

FANNY CORNFORD’S MOUTH

In the early days of 1860, Dante Gabriel Rossetti unveiled his latest painting to a select group of friends and supporters. It depicts the head and torso of a luscious young woman in a brocade costume that falls open to reveal her thick pillar of a neck and deep, creamy chest. A tumble of red-gold hair adds to the pervasive sense of undoneness. And then there is her mouth. “Mulatto mouths”, carped the critics, would become a signature of Rossetti’s work over the decades to come. This, though, is the first one that really matters: thick, quilted, and so ripe that on this occasion it is unable to hold itself decently shut. As if to underscore the point that it is the woman’s lips that are the real subject of his painting, Rossetti titled it Bocca Baciata, which translates as “The Kissed Mouth”.

While Rossetti’s friends registered Cornforth’s “sumptuous” beauty, that didn’t mean they were willing to acknowledge this vulgar woman with her unruly mouth as a significant part of the artist’s life. The moment he died in 1882, at the age of 53, Cornforth was cast out of what remained of the pre-Raphaelite circle and all but excised from its biographical records. She ended her days in the county asylum in her native Sussex, where the medical casebook records that, now an old lady, she is “incoherent & talks incessantly”, but also loves her food. And as for the mouth that was once described as “so awfully lovely” yet perversely indecent too, the asylum authorities say that it is now devoid of teeth apart from a few decaying stumps over which upper and lower dentures are insecurely hooked. What’s more, the authorities note in a final terse observation before rearing back in disgust, Cornforth’s tongue is furred and her breath foul. Sad perhaps, but irrelevant surely not. For it is here, in the smells, blots and gurgles of the body’s physical life that some of the most revealing biographical stories about the Victorians turn out to reside.” ~

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/28/embarassing-bodies-what-did-the-victorians-have-to-hide?CMP=fb_gu

Rossetti: “Bocca Bacciata” (portrait of Fanny Cornford)
Bocca baciata non perde ventura, anzi rinnova come fa la luna.
‘The mouth that has been kissed does not lose its savor, indeed it renews itself just as the moon does.’

Oriana:  

When I think of fiction, I still tend to think mainly of Victorian novels, extending somewhat into the twentieth century (esp The Magic Mountain). But the world was so very different then, including even people's bodies. Look at the portraits and early photographs: even men from rich families tended to have narrow shoulders, reflecting less than optimal childhood nutrition and amount of exercise.

And indeed the beards, the layers of clothes — it wasn't perhaps the notion that the body was obscene as much as the desire to hide various physical conditions. Again, the past was largely a nightmare.

By the way, George Eliot’s wider, more muscular right hand reminds me of the “thick” hand Penelope in the Odyssey. It’s rarely (if ever) translated in this literal fashion — the translators want to see Penelope as an elegant, leisurely queen. But in fact she did a lot of weaving, which develops hand muscles. 

Mary:

I agree it is so important not to simply chalk up their ideas and behaviors to prudery, but to consider the world they lived in and how different it was from our own. Not only were they without antibiotics, they were without so much else that is basic — clean water, clean air, adequate plumbing. Adulterated food was a problem. Infectious disease, including widespread tuberculosis, syphilis,  and even the childhood diseases, could kill quickly, or become a lingering and chronic illness, that killed slowly but surely. Dental problems, like those that plagued Charlotte Bronte, could be the source of endless suffering. Infant and child mortality was high. So was death as a result of complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Thinking of these conditions can help (at least a little) one understand the practice of post mortem photographs, especially of children. And these conditions were worse of course for the poor and working class.

I think both the embarrassment about Evans large right hand, and the expulsion of Fanny Crawford from the pre Raphaelite group after Rossetti's death, were due to issues of class, not esthetics. You must never seem “common” or “vulgar” if you want to keep your place in “society.” Think of how this is explored by Dickens in Great Expectations. I am thinking of his description of the hands of Estella's criminal mother, and how that echoes in the story about Evans’s unacceptably large and muscular right hand.

Oriana: ESTELLA'S MOTHER'S CRIMINALLY STRONG HANDS

Let’s look at the passage about those “criminal” hands:

[Mr. Jaggers suddenly seizes her hand as she reaches across him to clear the table]:

~ Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other hand behind her waist. “Master," she said, in a low voice, with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. “Don't."

"I'll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable determination to show it. “Molly, let them see your wrist."

"Master," she again murmured. “Please!"

"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking at the opposite side of the room, “let them see both your wrists. Show them. Come!"

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured, — deeply scarred and scarred across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us in succession.

"There's power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has.” ~ 

**

~ “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” ~ Hannah Arendt


GLOBALIZATION SURVIVED POPULISM ONCE BEFORE 
 
~ “We have been here before. While the word “globalization” did not come into use until the mid-twentieth century, the facts and pressures of global market integration were omnipresent in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Flows of capital, people, and trade across the borders of major industrial countries in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were as great or greater than they are today. The first globalization, as it is now known, began in 1870 and lasted until war broke out in 1914. Historians and economists who have compared globalization today with that of the forty years before World War I invariably point out big differences between the global economy then and now. But that period also aroused major political threats from groups demanding protection, and important points stand out from that earlier period about the politics of defending open borders.

The threats to the first globalization were severe. As in our own times, the challenges clustered around trade, immigration, and the movement of capital across borders.

The big waves of immigration into the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century also gave rise to another powerful surge of anti-globalization politics. Hostility to differences of race and religion and the politics that are built on those cleavages are as old as the republic itself, but mobilizing nativist resentment of European immigrants developed only from the 1880s. The manifestations ranged from lynchings in the workplace, to union demands for restricting immigration, to public hysteria about foreign anarchists and terrorists that peaked around the Haymarket Affair (May 4, 1886).

In Europe, too, the impact of global markets provoked deeply hostile political reactions and demands for closing the borders to immigrants, to trade, and to capital flows. Particularly in times of economic stress, such as the great depression of the 1870s or in the wake of the 1907 banking crisis, globalization’s enemies threatened to close borders. The fall in agricultural prices with the arrival of wheat from the United States and Russia led to a wave of demands for tariff protection culminating in the “Iron-Rye” tariffs in Germany in 1879 and in the Méline tariff in France in 1892. In Britain at the turn of the century, Joseph Chamberlain forced a major split in the Liberal Party over free trade and campaigned for tariffs in the hotly fought election of 1906. And the immigration of workers from southern and eastern Europe into the fields and mines of Germany and France met resistance that was often violent.

Some of the politically most sensitive concessions involved immigration. Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the United States had had a virtually open borders policy with little federal involvement. (The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was a flagrant exception.) The massive entry of southern and eastern Europeans at the turn of the century put the wages of unskilled and low-skilled U.S. workers under pressure. Unions were divided in their reaction. Unions with large numbers of members who themselves had emigrated from those parts of the world were reluctant to block the flows, while other unions wanted controls. The compromise was a law in 1885 that blocked contract labor—workers who were recruited abroad by companies who then paid their passage and employed them on arrival. These immigrants were especially resented because they were paid less than going wages and often used as strike breakers. When English gardeners, for instance, were found on the Rhinebeck estate of the Republican vice presidential candidate Levi Morton in 1888, a scandalized New York Times article asked, “Mr. Morton’s Gardeners. Were They Brought Here under Contract?” Concerns about terrorists among immigrants also surfaced. At a congressional hearing on contract labor, a witness from a mainly Jewish union was questioned about how many of the “Russian Hebrews” entering the country were anarchists. (Response: only a handful.)

While concessions on tariffs and immigration were critical, the most important lessons from defending the first globalization involve building political coalitions between “natural” supporters of an open international order and other groups with more mixed and conflicted interests. What remains relevant to our own times is that coalitions in the first globalization that supported free trade, immigration, and cross-border capital flows joined an open borders agenda with programs of political, fiscal, and social reform. Liberal free-traders worked with socialist party leaders to build programs that accommodated and reshaped the interests of both partners in the coalition.

Economic historian Michael Huberman has closely tracked this coalition building in Belgium. There, he documents, “labor had successfully transformed debate on free trade into a project on social policy.” In exchange for support for globalization, unions and parties of the left demanded social reforms. Belgium had been far behind Germany, France, and Britain in instituting welfare policies, but at the turn of the century the Belgian coalition of free-traders and socialists accelerated the passage of laws on old age pensions, accident compensation, and unemployment insurance legislation. The same coalition of free-trade liberals and labor pushed through legislation reducing tariffs and shifting the fiscal base of government revenues to a redistributive income tax.

In Britain there was passionate support for free trade across social classes, and this was based not only on working-class interest in cheap food, but on the belief that freedom in trade was an integral part of basic civil rights. Even in Britain, however, free-traders felt the need to buttress support for open borders with advocacy for welfare reforms. The 1906 elections were a landslide for the free trader Liberals who decisively beat back Liberal unionist imperial protectionist challenges. The Liberals then promptly introduced the first elements of a welfare state: old age pensions, free school meals, and a proposal for national insurance. David Lloyd George then fought the 1910 election on fiscal reforms and a “People’s Budget” that linked redistributive taxes to free trade.

Nowhere did globalization policies advance alone on their own economic merits, but always as linked to larger visions in which internationalism was defended as the outward face of a nation whose domestic order was on the move toward greater well-being and social justice.

The international economy of open borders thus survived protectionist politics, resentment and hatred of immigrants, and severe financial crises. But it all crashed to a close when war broke out in August 1914. Globalization turned out to be reversible. Stock exchanges around the world closed; borders hardened up. At the end of the war, the new technologies of transportation and communication that had enabled global economic integration were all still operating, but the political coalitions that had built and protected globalization had been destroyed. Not until the early 1980s did levels of cross-border economic flows return to what they had been on the eve of World War I.

In globalization this time around, there have been relatively few concessions to opponents. Advances on the globalization trajectory have been so rapid since 2000 that they have left little time for adjustment. And so globalization has moved ahead alone, shorn of the reform agenda that had previously been its domestic legitimation.
The anger of voters who turned out to elect Trump, the discouragement and depression in rural areas and old manufacturing centers of the country, and the wave of proposals from Washington to renounce old trade agreements, refuse new ones, and close the borders to immigrants all suggest that globalization can no longer afford to go it alone. Indeed, globalization is facing challenges today that are more menacing that any it has had to overcome in recent years.

Most importantly, to rebuild a coalition in support of globalization, support for open borders must once again be linked to a broad program of social and fiscal reforms. There are many obvious candidates: raising minimum wages, consolidating national health insurance, lowering financial barriers to post-secondary education for working- and middle-class children, tax reforms, and tackling the sources of inequality. Constructing such coalitions in a period of slow productivity growth and after years of stagnation of middle-class incomes will be difficult. But all the alternatives look even worse, both for an open economy and for liberal democracies.” ~

http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/suzanne-berger-globalization-survived-populism

Oriana:

A very important article, I think, showing that globalization need not — and should not — be implemented ruthlessly, but rather at a slower pace and with concern for general welfare (health care, education, higher minimum wage etc).

Loaves and Fishes Church in Tabgha

“WHEN YOU’RE OLD, YOU HAVE TO MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY. OTHERWISE YOU GET OLDER.”

~ “The elders I spent time with, like the vast majority of older people, lived with loss and disability but did not define themselves by it, and got up each morning with wants and needs, no less so because their knees hurt or they couldn’t do the crossword puzzle like they used to. Old age wasn’t something that hit them one day when they weren’t careful. It also wasn’t a problem to be fixed. It was a stage of life like any other, one in which they were still making decisions about how they wanted to live, still learning about themselves and the world.

In movies, beauty is always young, and amorous elders are dirty old men. We like people to ride into the sunset when their mission is complete. How much more exciting if Thelma and Louise, instead of driving off a cliff, got old and started a mentoring program in downtown Denver, sometimes taking male companions, raising heck along with their home attendants? But old people don’t get to tell these stories. As May Sarton wrote, in her novel As We Are Now, published when she was 61, “The trouble is, old age is not interesting until one gets there. It’s a foreign country with an unknown language to the young and even to the middle-aged.” Pretty smart for someone only 61.

Pillemer said his life was changed when he stopped thinking about old people as a problem and started to think of them as an asset, a repository of wisdom and experience. The title of my book—Happiness is a Choice You Make—comes from one of the first lessons the elders taught me: that even as our various faculties decline, we still wield extraordinary influence over the quality of our lives. As Ping put it, “When you’re old, you have to make yourself happy. Otherwise you get older.”

You can go to a museum and think, I’m confined to a wheelchair in a group of half-deaf old people. Or you can think, Matisse!” ~

http://lithub.com/how-the-oldest-of-the-old-taught-me-to-choose-happiness/

Samson the cat at Knightshayes, Devon
 
THE SILENCE OF PAUL

~ “Paul seems unaware of any virgin birth, for example. No wise men, no star in the east, no miracles. Historians have long puzzled over the “Silence of Paul” on the most basic biographical facts and teachings of Jesus. Paul fails to cite Jesus’ authority precisely when it would make his case. What’s more, he never calls the twelve apostles Jesus’ disciples; in fact, he never says Jesus HAD disciples –or a ministry, or did miracles, or gave teachings. He virtually refuses to disclose any other biographical detail, and the few cryptic hints he offers aren’t just vague, but contradict the gospels. The leaders of the early Christian movement in Jerusalem like Peter and James are supposedly Jesus’ own followers and family; but Paul dismisses them as nobodies and repeatedly opposes them for not being true Christians!

Liberal theologian Marcus Borg suggests that people read the books of the New Testament in chronological order to see how early Christianity unfolded.

Placing the Gospels after Paul makes it clear that as written documents they are not the source of early Christianity but its product.
For David Fitzgerald, these issues and more lead to a conclusion that he finds inescapable:

Jesus appears to be an effect, not a cause, of Christianity. Paul and the rest of the first generation of Christians searched the Septuagint translation of Hebrew scriptures to create a Mystery Faith for the Jews, complete with pagan rituals like a Lord’s Supper, Gnostic terms in his letters, and a personal savior god to rival those in their neighbors’ longstanding Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman traditions.
 
Even if one accepts that there was a real Jesus of Nazareth, the question has little practical meaning: Regardless of whether or not a first century rabbi called Yeshua ben Yosef lived, the “historical Jesus” figures so patiently excavated and re-assembled by secular scholars are themselves fictions.

The presence of mythic tropes or legendary elements in the gospel stories has been broadly accepted and documented, while the imprint of any actual man who may have provided a historical kernel — how he may have lived, what he may have said, and how he died — is more hazy than most people dream.” ~

https://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/here-are-5-reasons-to-suspect-jesus-never-existed/

Caravaggio: Rest on the Flight from Egypt, 1597

Oriana:

Paul was fixated on the imminent second coming and the promise of immortality — in a perfect “spirit body” rather than as a resurrected corpse. When Paul wrote his epistles, the Nativity story didn’t yet exist. Likewise many teachings (or what we’ve come to accept as such) are not relevant to the second coming. Even if Paul was familiar with some of them, they simply didn’t especially interest him. He was obsessed with the imminent coming of the  “kingdom of heaven.”

Now, just because something is a fiction (or call it a myth, or a legend) doesn’t mean it has no value. The nativity story is heart-warming and easily understood: a child is born in a barn — “because there was no room for them at the inn” — presumably with animals looking on. Whether it’s “mythologized history” or “historicized mythology” is besides the point when it comes to the emotional appeal of the kind of love that’s universally understood: a new baby, the loving, protective parents, gifts for the baby, the angels singing, the shepherds kneeling down, and even the animals appearing to be affectionately curious.

By the way, Mary and Joseph (Miriam and Yosef) were not likely the real names of the parents (assuming historicity). They were chosen for their special dignity in ancient Judaism — the sister of Moses and a major patriarch. A lot of the details in the gospels seem to have been chosen so as to fit in with established Judaism, e.g. you flee to Egypt and then you leave Egypt.
**

ending on beauty:
 
Nowhere whistles through the air, the galactic wind —
now here our fragile defense against the milky vastness,
the timeless, personless dark.

~ Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Sunday Prayer