Birding in Costa Rica: Len’s Presentation

The Washtenaw Bird and Nature Alliance (WBNA), formerly called the Audubon Society, invited Len to give a talk about our recent birding trip to Costa Rica. The talk — which included a number of our photos and additional material about Costa Rica and its bird life — took place Wednesday, April 17 at the Ann Arbor District Library. You can watch this talk on the library’s Youtube Channel here. 

Len and the library tech support person preparing for the talk.
The library has excellent video projection equipment.

A Heron Rookery and Some Turtles

 Herons

The herons are nesting at Kent Lake MetroPark.

Turtles

A Few Smaller Birds

And the Cranes

Photos © 2024 mae sander

Beautiful Weather at Last

Cooking and Eating Outdoors

Finally, the weather has become warm and sunny. Sunday we ate lunch outdoors, and cooked dinner on the grill. Sitting at the outdoor table is such a pleasure after months of cold and rainy weather. Will this last? I hope so.

Lunch in the back yard: a tortilla casserole and some La Croix water.

While Len was making a fire, Carol, Nat, and I enjoyed great bread that Len had baked earlier in the day.
A ray of sunshine descends to the bread like the light in a medieval or renaissance painting.

Some sherry seemed like the perfect drink with the fresh bread.

Marinated chicken and red bell pepper on skewers: first grilling of the season.

Carol baked an orange and almond pie. The red fruit slices are blood orange.

Spring in the Arb

Saturday we took our first walk in the Arboretum for months. We found that the boardwalk is currently under construction, and that there’s still a huge project to remove many large trees that fell in a major storm last year. Despite these issues, the woods and the river were very pretty while we were walking, and we saw quite a few different species of birds. My favorites were a bluebird and two red-tailed hawks.

Blog post and photos © 2024 mae sander

University of Michigan Museum of Art: “Angkor Complex”

A visitor to the University of Michigan Museum of Art (not me!)

“Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia” is a current exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. In a recent visit to the museum, we enjoyed this very well-thought-out selection of art works and historic information. The exhibit deals with the raw memories of many survivors of a horrifying era in Cambodian history. Specifically: “Between 1975-1979, when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia, about a quarter of the country’s population died of infectious diseases, weapon wounds, and malnutrition.” (UMMA Website)

Works of art in the exhibit include historic sculptures from the famous temples of Angkor Wat, built during the empire that lasted from the ninth to the fifteenth century; artifacts from the French colonial era, such as postcards and photos; and many works by survivors of the genocidal era of Pol Pot in the twentieth century. As always in this museum, the documentation is fascinating, and contributes to one’s understanding of the meaning and origin of the art works.

“Full Circle, Unbounded Arc,” 2015.
These clay pots were intentionally broken and repaired by Cambodian artist Amy Lee Sanford (b. 1972)
They evoke the work that is done in archaeological reconstructions, and the process of loss.

“Seated Buddha-Abhaya Mudra,” 2012, by Sopheap Pich (born 1971).

This sculpture made from bamboo, rattan, wire, and plywood recalls traditional stone sculptures of the Buddha. The museum documentation explains:

“Sopheap Pich's decision to make the sculpture primarily from bamboo and rattan pays homage to the Khmer fish-trap tradition, which he experienced as a child, when he helped his father make traps to catch fish. Thus, he seems to be asking whether the new Buddhism being practiced in Cambodia today is a snare, or if a venerable religion is being systematically dismantled, leaving only its armature.”

 

French Colonialism, 1863-1953

A postcard from the Colonial Exposition of 1922 in Marseilles, showing the exposition buildings that echo the architecture of ancient Cambodia. I enjoyed seeing a large number of historic postcards included at the museum. (source)

I learned a lot about French colonialism in viewing the exhibit; in particular:

“When Cambodia became a French protectorate in the second half of the nineteenth century, Angkor Wat loomed large in the colonial imagination, and France began to reposition Angkor Wat as its own cultural patrimony. Architectural fragments and sculptures from the temple were transferred to French collections, and facsimiles of its buildings were erected in Marseilles and Paris.”

 

Appreciating a Painting from the Exhibit

“Dead and Reborn Again,” 2016

Leang Seckon, Cambodian artist, born in 1974 is the creator of this mixed-media work titled “Dead and Reborn Again.” The explanation on the label describes the story behind this creation: 

“Dead and Reborn Again was inspired by the repatriation in 2016 of the head of a seventh-century sculpture of the Hindu deity from the Musée Guimet in Paris to the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, where it was reunited with its original body. In the upper middle section, winged beings bring Harihara's head to crown his decapitated body to the left. The body is situated in a field of skulls, an obvious reference to the Khmer Rouge's notorious Killing Fields, where countless people were slaughtered. On the right, Harihara is whole again, celebrated by jubilant dancers, butterflies, and animals. This evocation of the violence done to the bodies of both sculpted deities and humans in Cambodia is also a call for the continued restoration and regeneration required if the country is to recover from the destruction wrought during colonialism, civil war, and the Khmer Rouge.”

Detail of “Dead and Reborn Again.” I was especially interested in this as I have been to the Musée Guimet
many times and I suspect that I have seen this scupture. However, this exhibit made me much 
more aware of the colonial history that brought many Asian artworks to Paris museums.

I looked up the return of the stone sculpture from Paris to Cambodia, and learned that it had been sold in 1889 to the French collector Emile Guimet, who founded the museum. Here is a photo of it (source)

I’ve shown only a small number of the works from this exhibit, trying to convey the complex history that was presented. The Cambodian genocide was particularly destructive to the country’s artists, and the emergence of the new generation presented here is clearly a triumph of art over hideous totalitarian monstrosity. The stories of the artists contain a number of brutal actions that they experienced, As children they lived through the splitting up of their families and the uprooting of whole sectors of the population. They witnessed the destruction of vast numbers of human beings as well as artistic, educational, and cultural properties.

Elsewhere in the Museum

As we often visit the museum, on this visit we did not look at many other exhibits. However, we looked in some of the drawers where there are tiny objects that are stored in darkness to protect them — exposed to light only when someone is actually viewing them. Here are three to which I felt a connection:

A tiny etching of a dancer by Edgar Degas, 1891.

Viewers of the solar eclipse of April 17, 1912, in Paris. Photograph by Eugène Atget.

A small etching by the American artist Whistler.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

This week in Michigan and Indiana

Visiting Indiana

As I’ve said, we went to Indiana to see the eclipse and we were lucky with the weather, not so lucky with the traffic after the eclipse was over. Driving towards Fort Wayne, on the way to Lafayette last Sunday, we stopped at a relatively new state rest stop on the freeway near the Michigan border. I photographed this interesting bit of local history:

Enjoying Our Garden In Spring

Reading About an Unusual Woman: Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life by Vivian Gornick 
(published in 2011)

This book is a biography of a famous woman, Emma Goldman (1869-1940). Emma Goldman was an anarchist by conviction. She was also a gifted and powerful speaker and influencer of large numbers of people during the late 19th and early 20th century in the US. She famously encouraged workers to believe in their rights. For example, this famous quotation: “Demonstrate before the palaces of the rich. Demand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right.” (p. 37)

Gornick’s biography effectively describes both Emma Goldman’s life and her ideas. I particularly was interested in the explanations of the political philosophy of anarchy along with its intellectual history. (Anarchy does not just mean chaos!) I enjoyed reading the author’s summary of the 19th century development of a variety of radical ideas and how they were expressed by Emma Goldman and her contemporaries. Emma Goldman’s ideas about women’s rights and her work with Margaret Sanger in support of “birth control” (a term invented by Sanger) are still tragically relevant today.

I liked the comparison of politics in the era before World War I to a similar flourishing of idealistic politics in the 1960s and 1970s — an era when author Vivian Gornick herself was active in the Woman’s Movement and other political dramas. In this later burst of radicalism, Emma Goldman’s life and thought again became admired and somewhat influential.

 Emma Goldman’s success up until around 1916 was impressive, but ultimately her political ideas became so threatening that she was arrested, convicted, jailed, and then deported from the US to Russia. During World War I she served a jail term for violating the Espionage Act, a law that prohibited speech about military conscription and other war-invoked issues. The remainder of her life was much less successful — her long exile from her adopted country, the USA, was a sad aftermath to her popularity before the war. 

The journal Mother Earth was Emma Goldman’s creation, and she published and edited it from 1906-1917 when the US government shut it down as many American freedoms came under threat, including freedom of speech and of the press. The June, 1917 issue shown here was among the last before her arrest. The image of a tombstone stating “In Memoriam American Democracy” reflects her conviction that laws like the Espionage act were destroying American ideals— one of many ways that her time can be compared to the 1970s as well as to our time. (The modern Mother Earth News, founded in 1979, borrowed the name from this original.)

Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life is about Emma Goldman and the era when she was influential, but it’s also about the author, Vivian Gornick (b. 1935) and her time. In fact, a recent New Yorker article says: “Gornick was a red-diaper baby, the daughter of passionate socialists. It was only natural, when she closed her eyes at night, that she imagined herself not in the arms of a tall, handsome stranger but on a soapbox, as the second coming of Emma Goldman.” (source)

I also read a few of Emma Goldman’s essays. I was especially intrigued by these words from her essay “Woman Suffrage” —

“I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly.”

Walking Along the Huron River

In urban gardens like our own, we’ve been seeing early spring flowers and spring green and blossoms on trees. Outside of town, at Dexter Metropark, it’s still pretty wintery, as the city has a warming effect from all the heated buildings. We took a walk in a park along the Huron River through a wooded area where the trees are still quite bare. I made one striking observation: the graffiti under the bridges have remained nearly unchanged in three years.

 

This week: April, 2024

In July, 2021– the graffiti haven’t changed since then.

This week: April, 2024

In July, 2021: not much change here either.

Photo taken during our walk this week.

I wonder why these bridges have never been re-graffitied!

Blog post and all photos © 2021, 2024 mae sander

Shared with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and Sami’s Monday Murals

Two Days in Indiana

During a total eclipse, the moon obscures the. entire disc of the sun, and you see the corona, or gaseous outside of the sun.
At the edge, you can see solar flares escaping between the mountains of the moon.
Len took this photo that shows some of these flares. Each one is hundreds of times the size of the earth.

Total Solar Eclipse, April 8, 2024

Viewing a total solar eclipse is a rare opportunity, and as everyone told us, it was deeply exciting. We were fortunate — and my brother Arny was diligent — in finding a very pleasant and convenient location from which to watch: a private event at Eagle Creek Foundation in Indianapolis. Attendees enjoyed lectures, three meals, parking, and lots of space on the grounds of the foundation’s building. The weather was beautiful — warm, only slight cloud cover, and no rain. 

We set up at a location where we would be able to see the sun throughout the eclipse, which started at 1:50 PM, reached totality at 3:06 PM, and ended at 4: 23. Totality lasted for three minutes and 49 seconds — that’s VERY fast!

Getting ready to listen to a presentation about the eclipse. The little girl’s shirt depicted celestial objects,
including the sun.

Setting up equipment: Len’s tripod has a tracking device so that
the camera always picks up an image of the sun.

Arny set up several devices for tracking and photographing the sun throughout the eclipse.

At lunch… hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, and soft drinks!

Using nearly opaque viewing glasses is essential to avoid damaging one’s retina
Except during totality, it’s very dangerous to look directly at the eclipse.

As the eclipse begins, the shadow of the moon takes a bite out of the sun’s disc.

Total Eclipse

The entire world seems to be in total darkness, but on the horizon there is light from the distant area
where there is not totality. It’s called a 360° sunset.

The moment when the first rays of the sun come from behind the moon’s shadow.

Totality is ending: a sliver of bright sunlight comes from behind the moon.

At left you can see the shadow of a colander that we brought for viewing.
At right: during the eclipse, the shadow becomes a crescent instead of a circle.
This is due to the effect of light going through a slit (like the small holes in the colander.

In Lafayette

We stayed in West Lafayette where my sister lives, and left in the morning of the 8th to drive to Indianapolis to watch the eclipse. Our departure was at around 9 AM on the day of the eclipse (April 8) and we arrived at Eagle Creek Park in around an hour. As everyone predicted, traffic after the eclipse was insane !! and the return trip took almost three hours.

White pelicans are migrating through Lafayette this week. Len and Arny went to see them.

Wabash River bridge looking towards downtown Lafayette from our hotel room window.

My sister saved us some Hamantaschen from Purim.
She uses my mother’s recipe.

The trip home was fortunately uneventful. Just outside of Lafayette, we passed
this truck accident but fortunately there wasn’t much of a slowdown.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

All photos © 2024 by mae and len sander