Plowshares

I'm very moved to learn of "Rooted," a monument going up soon in Charlottesville, VA. It will be in the form of a banyan tree, open so that people can move and sit within it, open to the sky and the surrounding park, an invitation to gather, reflect and celebrate.

But this isn't just any monument. It will be made with the bronze used in an earlier statue, which used to organize this space in a completely different way - the monument to Robert E. Lee, erected in 1924, whose proposed removal provoked the "Unite the Right" deadly march in 2017. The statue was finally removed by the city five years ago, who partnered the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to reimagine the space and its history in a program called Swords into Plowshares. 

JSAAHC in turn paired Boston-based non-profit MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society) with Oakland sculptor Dana King, who "envision ROOTED not as another heroic statue but as an open civic landscape organized around welcome, gathering, beauty, and participation. Rather than asking visitors to look up at history, the project invites them to inhabit it." ROOTED was one of three compelling proposals developed (another of which involved a symbolic tree, too) and the one chosen by the community. MASS chose the baobab "for its life-giving fruit and the symbolism of resilience, interconnection and shared knowledge" - and for its "pan-African symbolism."

“The opportunities like this are extraordinarily rare,” said Jha D Amazi, principal of MASS’s Public Memory and Memorials Lab. “To transform the very material of a monument is to acknowledge that history cannot be erased, but it can be reimagined."

This will be one of a new generation of public monuments which are interactive and participatory rather than static, their meaning formed over time by communities on the ground rather than fixed once for all from above. Explains an article in Architect Magazine, "Rather than designing objects that proclaim a single historical truth, they are increasingly being asked to create places that accommodate multiple histories, invite dialogue, and evolve alongside the communities they serve. The goal is no longer to conclude historical debates but to provide civic spaces where those conversations can continue."

The form of a tree seems especially apposite here, monumental yet alive and changing, and particularly the baobab, known to be a place of gathering. On top of that ROOTED has found a way to make the opened-up tree feel like a community of people, its branches like human arms in a dance of gesture and signification. Its form is fixed, of course - at least the bronze component - but part of its empowering joy will be the awareness that its bronze has been reclaimed from hatred for love.

Luminous

Among the delights in the exhibition Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass currently on show at the Mingei Museum in Balboa Park, a powerful foursome: "Element 3" (2007) by Tammy Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo), "The Milky Way" (2014) by Adrian Wall (Jemez Pueblo), "When Stars Come to Earth" (2012) by Brian Barber (Pawnee) and "Spring Thaw Platter" (2016) by Larry Ahvakanah (Iñupiak).

Other stunners include the wall-filling "Charmed" (2012-19) by Joe Feddersen (Colville) - with a closeup, though it can't capture the slow shimmer of reflections and shifting shadows - and the glowing works of Dan Friday (Lummi), like "Schaenwyx (Salmon)" (2019).

Learning goals

August beckons, and the new academic year starts in a little less than four weeks. Am I late or early to be thinking about my syllabi? 

Neither course is new, but I'm planning a substantial overhaul of each. Last year's first year seminar "DIY Religion" was tuned to the Lang 40th anniversary and secured a budget to bring in six alum guest lecturers. This year that festive time seems like ancient history and, while I'm keeping alumni interviews, I'll have more time to direct the class sessions myself, go deeper into the problems with DIYing in religion. (Part of the windfall will be devoted to, of course, AI!)

My other class is "Religion of Trees," which I haven't had a chance to teach to really interested students in three years... during which time I've read a lot of books and written most of one myself! Haven't decided yet whether to take the class through the sequence of my book's chapters or keep something more like the course's original structure. 

Feeling out learning goals and creative ways to achieve them is always fun, but it just hit me that this won't be a fun semester whatever I do. Not just because of ongoing tumult at The New School. In the middle of week 11 of the 16-week semester fall the Midterm elections, and whatever's in store to subvert them or reject their outcomes. Ack!

Makes me want to hide in that Klimty field of California coneflowers!

Babbling

What to say about the Giant Sequoias we encountered at Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park? They're so big! And tall! Really old! And strange! 

Jared Farmer somewhere observes that people claim profound spiritual experiences around them, sensing our smallness in the face of deep time and physical massiveness, but really our thinking just stops.  

We can try analogies. I was quite taken by this pretty display of superlatives at the Giant Forest Museum, a hulking Giant Sequioa and dark towering Coast Redwood surrounded by (from left) the Tule Cypress in Oaxaca, the museum itself, a Space Shuttle launch, a stack of elephants, a Blue Whale, the Titanic, a wispy Bristlecone Pine, a tall Sugar Pine, the Statue of Liberty and an adorably diminutive dinosaur.

Each of these comparisons would permit some babbling, but in the end just deepen the sense of incommensurability between our thoughts and these remarkable existences. What could we have to say to each other?

The point when I came closest to some sense of the enormity of these trees was when my nephew climbed atop the massive rootplate of a fallen giant, which looked like a portal out of science fiction movie. To get up there he had to walk along the fallen tree to find a way to climb up, disappearing from earshot for such a long time we started to worry.

Civic engagegement

Episcopalians don't come out on top very often - but the bar seems pretty low here. "Respondents were asked which of these political acts they had participated in over the prior 12 months: Attend local political meeting, Put up a political sign, Work for a candidate, Attend a protest or march, Contact a public official, Donate money to candidate."

Let me break it down for you

Bursting our north Atlantic attention bubble the Guardian uses the phrase "climate breakdown" for times like these. 

The year 2025 saw devastating storms and rainfall across the region. It also saw ocean temperatures rise to record heights. So far, this year has brought record-breaking heatwaves. Extreme rainfall is more common and more intense because of human-caused climate breakdown across most of the world, particularly in Europe, most of Asia, central and eastern North America, and parts of South America, Africa and Australia. This is because warmer air can hold more water vapour and flooding has most likely become more frequent and severe in these locations as a result.

 (link; emphasis added)

Sequoia safari

Spending a picture-perfect weekend with some Aussie relatives at Sequoia National Park. (The namesake trees, almost impossible to take seriously, will get their own post.) Here a western tiger swallowtail alights on a leopard lily, only its wounds confirming that it's not computer-generated.

Sierra high

Overhaul!

It's the framing

Just an AI update. Claude Sonnet 5 - the free version! - is unnerving.

This was an idle query of mine about the work of a late-19th century German folklorist, most of whose books have not, to my knowledge, even been translated into English. Working this out on my own would have taken me a trip to the library at least; it took the AI two minutes. 

 

And then I noticed that I'd just been using the default, Effort: Medium, which is only the second of five levels of thorough-ness - though the default also avails itself of Thinking. And there are, I learned, other models, most requiring an upgrade ($), named Fable, Opus and Haiku. This one is just "most efficient for everyday tasks."

Rain check

This hasn't happened to me before - a flight cancelled, two days before scheduled departure! 

No reason was given, but it might be an abundance of caution in regard to the aggressive flash-floody storms which are schedule to traipse through our hood tomorrow. Our flight wasn't until Wednesday afternoon, but perhaps the incoming plane was at risk? 

Luckily, if a little inconveniently, the airline was able to reschedule for the following morning, bright and very early. (It took two agitated hours of waiting for a call-back, though.) No compensation for the stress and disrupted plans, though. 

Fingers crossed that that one flies!