30 January 26
Rejuvenation
Several years ago Pica planted a pineapple guava in a bed in our backyard. But then a none-too-astute landscaper hired by our landlady came along and hacked it all the way to the ground in a fit of shrub trimming. Happily over the past year it has been growing back and it is now looking pretty happy. Here is a sketch of it from today done with Derwent Graphitint pencils.
29 January 26
Olive Trees
I rode my bike over to campus today in order to sit and draw the line of olive trees along Russell Boulevard. I’ve been illustrating the borders of my journal and wanted to try series of trees across the top of a spread.
While I was drawing, I looked up and saw two raptors, a turkey vulture next to a much larger soaring bird with a white head and tail: a bald eagle! This is a very unusual bird to see in Davis — in the lower part of the county at all, in fact — and I called Numenius to see if he could catch a glimpse of it from the house (yes, we keep a yard list). He couldn’t, but I made sure to report this eagle on e-bird.
28 January 26
Dinner Shallot
The smaller portion of this shallot made it into our dinner this evening, which was stir-fried green beans and mushrooms over rice. Sketched with Derwent Graphitint pencils.
27 January 26
Young In Iran: A Comics Fundraiser
I am thrilled to report that the Sequential Artists Workshop opened a Kickstarter for young Iranian artists to tell the story of what it’s like to be young in Iran these days. It got fully funded in 3 days! They are now upping the goal to be able to print more copies and, if funds permit, to be able to pay the editors.
From the fundraising blurb:
WHY SWALLOWS?
“Why swallows?” you might ask.
When we asked our students to speak about their experience of being Iranian, we knew their works would end up being very different from one another. In fact, we had a kind of patchwork quilt in mind, one that could reflect the diversity of Iranian identity.
Yet, unexpectedly, a recurring theme kept appearing in the works: migration.
Even the students whose pieces were not directly about migration were, in different ways, still grappling with the concept.
Swallows in Iran are known for being migrants, for their freedom to travel across all lands.
Unlike us Iranians, swallows don’t need visas or security checks to make their journeys. They don’t have to struggle with travel bans.
This anthology is meant to travel, reaching different parts of the world. It is going to fly free!
That is why we chose the swallow: in its own way, this book, too, is a migrant.
Note from a birder: barn swallows, the species pictured in the book, are circumpolar, meaning they occur in all continents apart from Antarctica. They are famous long-distance migrants.
26 January 26
Back To The Moon
This upcoming journey doesn’t seem to be getting much attention now given the train wreck of current world events, but the United States is on the verge of launching four astronauts on a trip around the moon. This is the Artemis II space mission, which will start no earlier than February 6th. The launch vehicle arrived at its launch pad last week. There are monthly launch windows, so if the initial attempt has to be scrubbed, they will postpone to the next or subsequent months. The mission profile is similar to that of Apollo 8 in December 1968, although unlike in Apollo 8, the spacecraft will be sent on a “free return” trajectory to the moon (the spacecraft will not have to fire its engines to get back to Earth).
I am excited and nervous and will be following closely. 1968 wasn’t exactly a year of peace and harmony either, so there’s that.
25 January 26
Under the Banner of the Goddess
In 1979 my sister travelled across the United States with two guys, one of whom was an archeologist. They had an interesting stop in Salt Lake City where they toured a museum focusing on Mormon history. For those unfamiliar, Mormon doctrine holds that ancient Hebrews traveled to the New World and became the Nephites and the Lamanites, the goodies and the baddies among the Native Americans, the baddies having the dark skin that was “the mark of Cain.” Needless to say there is no archeological evidence anywhere in the Americas to support this, that great battles between these two factions had taken place, a fact which my sister’s friend was quick to point out (a waste of breath as it always is when confronted by the iron-clad certainty of religious belief).
Her story of this event was the first time I’d ever heard of the Mormons or, as they prefer to be called, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I went on to read about them (Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer was my first introduction to one of the fundamentalist wings of the LDS Church, one that still practices polygamy, and I have also been following various podcasts here and here over the past year or so).
The story is fascinating to me because Mormons are famously good at documenting their history, raising the question of the veracity of all revealed religion. Their founder, Joseph Smith, supposedly had the Book of Mormon dictated to him by an Angel, or he found buried gold plates which contained the text of the book (which nobody else ever saw), receiving the translation by looking inside a hat. Smith had been a fraudulent treasure seeker in upstate New York before he found religion in the early nineteenth century. (He was also a voracious sexual predator, marrying at least 30 women, some of whom were in their early teens, some of whom were already married to other men.)
L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, once said “You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.” The LDS church is a high-demand religion where unless you pay 10% of your income to the church, you are excluded from some of the highest privileges of worship, including access to the LDS temple. The result has been exploding financial growth in a church that now owns about 4% of public land in the United States and whose net worth is over $200 billion, wealth accrued not just from tithes but also from aggressive investment in tech and real estate, somewhat inconsistent with the notion that churches are accorded non-profit designations.
Religious belief is a fundamental human right. It is also true that patriarchal religions have done untold harm across the centuries, inflicting violence in the form of Crusades and other holy wars across the world, torture under the Inquisition, murder especially of women accused of witchcraft for over five hundred years, and the abuse of children on the part of clergy, protected by the very institutions charged with protecting the young.
There is now a vocal ex-mormon presence online, intent on exposing abuses and injustices inflicted on members by the patriarchal authority of old (very old) white men. By all metrics, the LDS church qualifies as a cult by Steven Hassan. Though some of the rules demanded of members seem quaint (no coffee, no alcohol, weird holy underwear), others, such as a virulent anti-gay and anti-trans agenda, are more harmful (gay teen suicides are rife in Utah; the millions of dollars poured into defeating California’s gay marriage initiative in 2008 led many young members to leave the church in droves, a massive miscalculation on the part of the church leadership). I personally have a big problem with any church intent on missionary work especially in developing countries, but Africa is a rich recruiting ground for the LDS church (though how many converts persist in their faith 10 years after their baptism is an interesting question). I also have a revulsion toward the practice of baptisms for the dead, ANY dead, your grandparents, your family who died in the Holocaust.
Curiously, though, LDS doctrine also holds that God has a wife, the Goddess, or Heavenly Mother as she is known to Mormons, a being who has given birth to billions of human spirits. Members are discouraged from praying to her or even from talking about her; it seems that a patriarchal religion that goes so far as to posit a woman of power is so afraid of her that she is made invisible. Mormon women are leaving the church in high numbers. But it doesn’t matter: the church doesn’t need their tithes anymore, not with all that accumulated wealth…
24 January 26
Sunbeam Kitty
In my Torah discussion group on Bluesky (#ParshaChat) today I introduced myself by saying “There’s quite the bifurcation between the train wreck of world events and my happiness at watching my cat enjoy a sunbeam in this room.” I was asked to share a picture, since “these things are v helpful in These Trying Times”. Here is my photo of Esme in response.
23 January 26
My New Favorite Thing is this Crosshatching
The next assigned text for the Comix Coven is My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris. Drawn on composition paper while she was recovering from West Nile Virus (a process that took seven years), the story enters the life of a young girl in 1960s Chicago, a girl who is fascinated by monsters. It has the feel of a noir detective story, a love poem to monster comics and film from that era, but what made me gasp when I first opened the book was the masterful hatching. I’m not sure what tool Ferris used (and in fact it looks like there are several different techniques in the book) but it looks like a crowquill — this must have taken thousands of hours to draw.
Also, and this is important to me — it looks as though ALL the lettering is hand-drawn. Hats. Off.
22 January 26
El Desayuno
I’ve been doing the 30-day challenge on Easy Spanish which is taking place on their Discord channel. Each day of this challenge the moderators ask us to write a little text on a theme of their choosing. I’m finding that these writing exercises are really helpful at this point in my Spanish learning. Today’s challenge was to write a small poem about either a) your breakfast b) your pillow c) dessert or d) your toothbrush. I chose to write about breakfast. Here’s the poem.
Siempre frutas secas
Higos y ciruelas pasas
Albaricoques.
Nueces y granos.
Todos remojando durante la noche.
En la mañana muy temprano
Con fuego azul y olla fuerte
Cocino el desayuno
Y lo disfruto.
21 January 26
The Naggening
Last year my mother complained persistently that one of my dad’s British pensions was now being wired to her account rather than some other way that didn’t involve a fee. She asked me to call the UK on several occasions, each time securing a promise that this was a “Mistake” and that the money would be refunded.
After her death in late September I called them again to notify them of this, and to remind them about the promised refund.
I called again this morning. It’s been referred up the ladder. Honestly, it’s not that much money and certainly not worth the time it’s taking to get it, but as my sister reminds me, she was really adamant about it.
If nothing comes of it this time, or if they say it can’t be done, I’ll be fine with that: I just want to know so I can take it off the list of things that I need to take care of (and it’s me rather than my siblings because I don’t get charged extra for international calls). You wonder if it’s simple incompetence or a simple delay tactic: leave it long enough and people will drop it because it’s too much trouble.