Of time, immigration and home
Photo composition by Kledia Spiro in her solo exhibition “Too (un)Familiar? ‘‘ through May 2 at Kingston Gallery, Boston. The gallery says she “creates a multimedia experience combining photography, video performance, augmented reality, and installation that challenges ideas surrounding immigration, the sense of home, and the passage of time. Using the Wachusett Reservoir in Sterling, Mass., as her home ground and starting point, Spiro has photographed this same location over the last 12 months. She contrasts this to her life as an immigrant {she is a native of Albania}, stating: ‘Nature seems to have a self-cleaning mechanism, its own method of repurposing and recycling. When you’re an immigrant, you only know repurposing and recycling. There is no self-cleaning mechanism in immigrant homes. Everything is precious because you don't know when you may lose it again, even if just subconsciously.…Over time, every memory becomes fragmented, like a distant dream.”’
Wachusett Reservoir, after the Quabbin Reservoir, the second-largest body of fresh water in Massachusetts
He preferred to dig
Louis Agassiz's grave in the famous-dead-person-rich Mount Auburn Cemetery, which straddles Cambridge and Watertown, Mass. It’s a boulder from the moraine of the Aar Glaciers, near where he once lived in Switzerland.
“I cannot afford to waste my time making money.’’
— Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), Swiss-born geologist and biologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history.
He emigrated to the United States in 1847 after he visited Harvard University, where he went on to become professor of zoology and geology, to head its Lawrence Scientific School and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.
He made vast institutional and scientific contributions to zoology, geology, and related areas, including writing multivolume research books. He is particularly known for his contributions to ichthyological classification, including of extinct species such as megalodon, and to the study of geological history, including the founding of glaciology.
But unfortunately, a Creationist, he resisted the Darwinian theory of evolution and shared in the racism of his times.
Louis Agassiz
Grace Kelly: Floating turbines may be part of New England offshore-wind network
Floating turbines come in various styles.
— Joshua Bauer/U.S. Department of Energy
From ecoRI News (ecori.org)
The winds and airs currents swirling around the oceans of this blue marble have the potential to power our cities and towns. And locally in coastal New England, the race to harness the power of coastal wind has been accelerating.
Last year then-Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo signed an executive order that called for an ambitious, yet somewhat vague, “100 percent renewable energy future for Rhode Island by 2030” — a good portion of which would be from offshore wind.
“There is no offshore wind industry in America except right here in Rhode Island,” Raimondo said at the time. She was referring to the groundbreaking five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm, a 30-megawatt project that was the first commercial offshore wind facility in the United States.
Today, there is a slightly different picture forming, and other New England states, notably Massachusetts and Maine, are looking into becoming a part of a regional offshore wind network.
During a March 18 online presentation, Environment America discussed a recently released report detailing the overall potential that offshore wind has, specifically in New England. The discussion also included presentations from experts in the field of offshore wind.
“We found that the U.S. has a technical potential to produce more than 7,200 terawatt-hours of electricity in offshore wind,” said Hannah Read of Environment America, a federation of state-based environmental advocacy organizations. “What we did was we compared that to both our electricity used in 2019 and the potential electricity used in 2050, assuming that we transition society to run mostly on electric rather than fossil fuels, and what we found is that offshore wind could power our 2019 electricity almost two times over, and in 2050 could power 9 percent of our electricity needs.”
On a more granular level, Read said Massachusetts has the highest potential for offshore-wind-generation capacity, and Maine has the highest ratio of potential-generation capacity relative to the amount of electricity that it uses.
Massachusetts is entering the final stages of the federal permitting process for the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project, which is slated to start construction next year and go online in 2023.
“We have some real frontrunners here in New England and we have a huge opportunity to take advantage of this resource,” Read said. “When you look at the New England as a region, it could generate more than five times its projected 2050 electricity demand.”
While Rhode Island and Massachusetts are looking to more traditional fixed-bottom turbines, in coastal Maine, where coastal waters are deeper, researchers at the University of Maine are testing prototypes for floating wind turbines.
“The state of Maine has deep waters off its coasts. If you go three nautical miles off the coast … you’re in about 300 feet of water,” said Habib Dagher, founding executive director of the Advanced Structures & Composites Center at the University of Maine. “Therefore, you can’t really use fixed-bottom turbines.”
To mitigate this, Dagher and his team have been building and testing floating turbines for the past 13 years, using technology from an unlikely source.
“There are three different categories of floating turbines and ironically enough we have the oil and gas industry to thank for developing floating structures,” Dagher said. “We borrowed these designs … and adapted them to floating turbines.”
Many of these floating turbines rely on mooring lines and drag anchors to keep them from floating away, and they come in various styles.
Dagher noted that while other states are able to pile-drive turbines, they should consider floating turbines as another way to fit more wind power into select offshore areas that could become crammed full.
“We’re going to run out of space to put fixed-bottom turbines. We have to start looking at floating … on the Massachusetts coast and beyond, in the rest of the Northeast,” he said.
Shilo Felton, a field manager for the Audubon Society’s Clean Energy Initiative, addressed another issue facing offshore wind: bird migration patterns. Focusing on the northern gannet, a large seabird, she explained that while climate change itself is negatively affecting bird populations, it is important to take care that offshore wind doesn’t make the situation worse.
She noted that Northern Gannets experience both direct and indirect risks from offshore wind. “Direct risks are things like collision, indirect risks are things like habitat loss,” Felton said.
But Felton also acknowledged that since we don’t really have lots of large-scale wind projects in the United States currently, it’s hard to really say how much those risks will impact bird populations.
“We don’t have any utility-scale projects yet, so we don’t really know how the build out in the United States is going to impact species,” she said. “So that requires us to take this adaptive management approach where we monitor impacts as we build out so that we can understand what those impacts are.”
Overall, the potential that offshore wind holds as a viable mitigation tactic in the fight to curb and eventually eradicate greenhouse-gas emissions is great. But, as speakers noted, implementation has to be done thoughtfully and thoroughly.
Referring specifically to Maine, Dagher said, “The state is moving on to do a smaller project of 10 to 12 turbines, and that would help us crawl before we walk, walk before we run. Start with one, then put in 10 to 12 and learn the ecological impacts, learn how to work with fisheries, learn how to better site these things before we go out and do bigger projects in the future.”
Grace Kelly is an ecoRI News journalist.
Bristol Myers Squibb plans big expansion in Devens
A Bristol Myers product in 1909
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
“Bristol Myers Squibb, a New York-based biopharmaceutical company, recently added a 244,000-square-foot expansion to its Devens, Mass., facility to further the company’s efforts to battle cancer. The new addition is expected to begin operations by the end of the year and will be at the forefront of cancer technology for producing Breyanzi, a CAR-T cell therapy designed to treat lymphoma in patients.
“CAR-T cell therapy is a highly specialized process involving genetically modified cells that are personalized to attack a patient’s cancer cells. It generally takes weeks to isolate, freeze, dilute, and monitor the modified cells before the patient can receive an infusion. Though Breyanzi only recently won FDA approval in February 2021 and is a relatively new technology, the Devens expansion seeks to enhance CAR-T cell manufacturing capability for Bristol Myers-Squibb. The site is also expected to add hundreds of jobs.
“Krishnan Viswanadhan, a senior vice president for the company’s global cell therapy franchise, stated, ‘I’m really excited about what cell therapy has to offer.’’’
Read more from the Worcester Business Journal.
Devens is a regional enterprise zone and Census-designated place in the towns of Ayer and Shirley, in Middlesex County, and Harvard, in Worcester County, Massachusetts. It is the successor to Fort Devens, a military post that operated from 1917 to 1996. The population was 1,840 at the 2010 census.
Street scene at Fort Devens in the early 20th Century
Fort Devens Military Cemetery
Promote what you're good at
Dome Inside Boston’s Quincy Market on a pre-pandemic day, serving as as the seating area for the food court at the complex. The sign boards of old businesses decorate the walls.
— Photo by Jyothis
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It’s happy news that Marsella Development Corp. wants to establish a (Boston’s) Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall complex-style food hall on the ground floor of One Union Station in Providence, in the space that, pre-pandemic, housed the high-end Capital Grille and Bar Louie. With COVID-19 having probably permanently reduced the number of people, often armed with expense accounts, who work in downtowns, or in offices in general, the outlook for establishments like the Capital Grille doesn’t look all that good.
But the plan to put in that space a dozen restaurants of varying cuisines and price ranges makes a lot of sense for a state with such a rich food culture. It could become a destination for many people, including tourists, especially in synergy with Waterplace Park and WaterFire. The food hall would presumably feature a lot of local food, such as produce from local farms and fish. It could become quite a destination.
Heaven on earth?
Village Green Inn, on the town green in Falmouth Mass. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
— Photo by John Phelan
Statue of Katherine Lee Bates outside the Falmouth Public Library.
Never was there lovelier town
Than our Falmouth by the sea.
Tender curves of sky look down
On her grace of knoll and lea.
Sweet her nestled Mayflower blows
Ere from prouder haunts the spring
Yet has brushed the lingering snows
With a violet-colored wing.
Bright the autumn gleams pervade
Cranberry marsh and bushy wold,
Till the children's mirth has made
Millionaires in leaves of gold;
And upon her pleasant ways,
Set with many a gardened home,
Flash through fret of drooping sprar
Visions far of ocean foam.
Happy bell of Paul Revere,
Sounding o'er such blest demesne
While a hundred times a year
Weaves the round from green to green.
Never were there friendlier folk
Than in Falmouth by the sea,
Neighbor-households that invoke
Pride of sailor-pedigree.
Here is princely interchange
Of the gifts of shore and field,
Starred with treasures rare and strange
That the liberal sea-chests yield.
Culture here burns breezy torch
Where gray captains, bronzed of neck
Tread their little length of porch
With a memory of the deck.
Ah, and here the tenderest hearts,
Here where sorrows sorest wring
And the widows shift their parts
Comforted and comforting.
Holy bell of Paul Revere
Calling such to prayer and praise.
While a hundred times the year
Herds her flock of faithful days!
Greetings to thee, ancient bell
Of our Falmouth by the sea!
Answered by the ocean swell,
Ring thy centuried Jubilee!
Like the white sails of the Sound,
Hast thou seen the years drift by,
From the dreamful, dim profound
To a goal beyond the eye.
Long thy maker lieth mute,
Hero of a faded strife;
Thou hast tolled from seed to fruit
Generations three of life.
Still thy mellow voice and clear
Floats o'er land and listening deep,
And we deem our fathers hear
From their shadowy hill of sleep.
Ring thy peals for centuries yet,
Living voice of Paul Revere!
Let the future not forget
That the past accounted dear!
”The Falmouth Bell,’’ by Falmouth, Mass., native Katherine Lee Bates (1859-1929), poet, professor and social reformer best known as the author of the lyrics of “America the Beautiful’’. She’s buried in Falmouth’s Oak Hill Cemetery (close to the graves of many relatives of New England Diary editor Robert Whitcomb).
The reference to Paul Revere is that the bell in Falmouth’s First Congregational Church (built 1796), where Ms. Bates’s father was briefly the minister, was cast by Revere’s shop.
Along Vineyard Sound in the Falmouth Village of Woods Hole
— Photo by ToddC4176
And takeout doesn't work
“If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.’’
— Bill Parcells (born 1941), coach of the New England Patriots in 1993-1996, on not being given enough money to recruit and retain star players.
Beyond dermatology
“Somber Skin” (detail), (cheesecloth, acrylic, sawdust, string), by Sylvia Vander Sluis, in her joint “Material Witness’ show with Virginia (Ginny) Mahoney, opening in June at Fountain Street Fine Art, Boston. Ms. Sluis’s studio is in Lancaster, Mass.
The gallery says of her work:
“Sylvia Vander Sluis unites contradictory materials in visceral forms that reflect the human condition. Industrial and domestic media are combined in raw, emotional constructions. Inspired by the folds of rosin paper, the transparency of cheesecloth, and the grit of gravel, Vander Sluis creates metaphors for the dualities of life. In one sculpture, plaster gauze holds Styrofoam precariously on structures of willow branches. Her work honors both the fragility and strength of the human spirit.”
First Church of Christ in Lancaster. It was designed by famed architect Charles Bulfinch and built in 1815–1817.
A little decorum, please
Not exactly asking for this
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Rhode Island state Sen. Jonathon Acosta calls a proposed Senate dress code mandating that such traditional business clothing as jackets and collared shirts for men and blouses for women be worn in the chamber is somehow ‘’oppression’’ by white culture. In fact, such clothing, whatever its origins in Western culture, has long since become near-universal as a sign of seriousness, decorum and respect for the organizations that people work for. Just look at what people wear in international organizations.
Consider that officials of China, the ultimate non-Western power, all wear “Western” business clothes. I don’t think that they feel oppressed by this.
Peddle faster
“Resistance” (encaustic on panel), by Hélène Farrar, of Manchester, Maine, from her “What We Carry’’ series. Her work will be shown in New England Wax’s (newenglandwax.com) show “Layering: The Art and Experience of Hot Wax,’’ at the Cotuit (Mass.) Center for the Arts June 26-Aug. 7.
Rope's Beach, in Cotuit, looking onto Cotuit Bay. Cotuit has drawn many artists to work and show there , mostly in the summer, since the late 19th Century.
Part of this long popular summer-cottage lake is in Manchester, where Ms. Farrer lives and works.
Llewellyn King: Chesterton on a donkey's divine assignment
Caricature of G.K. Chesterton, by Max Beerbohm
WEST WARWICK, R.I
Who, in God’s name, praises the donkey? The answer is G.K Chesterton, the English writer (1874-1936). Chesterton, a convert from Anglicism to Catholicism and a force in literary life in London, wrote a little masterpiece for Palm Sunday, which Christians celebrate today.
He also wrote much else, including a celebrated essay defending orthodoxy, and the “Father Brown” detective stories, the television version of which can be seen on PBS.
Like Chesterton, I celebrate the donkey on Palm Sunday. The lot of the donkey hasn’t been a happy one. It has been man’s worst-treated servant, having been forced into labor over thousands of years.
Donkeys are probably among the most abused animals on Earth. Anyone who has visited poor, agrarian countries, whether in Africa, Asia or Latin America, has almost certainly seen donkeys carry loads too heavy for them, sacks of grain, lumber or people — cruel burdens for the little animal.
In this service, donkeys die young at between 12 and 15 years old. If kept decently and as pets they live 30 to 50 years, rivaling horses, which, more prized, have had a somewhat easier time down through the millennia.
There are an estimated 40 million donkeys in the world, including about 5 million feral ones in Australia which, like the rabbits, are considered pests.
Chesterton was as prolific, as he was enormous, weighing maybe 300 pounds and standing over 6 feet. He wrote 80 books, hundreds of poems and short stories, and over 4,000 newspaper columns and essays. He was notorious for his untidy dress, being compared to an unmade bed by a friend, missing trains and not knowing where he had gotten off.
In the years immediately before his death, in 1936, he became a huge BBC Radio personality because of his ability to ad lib during broadcasts of essays, giving these a human, unrehearsed quality. He was also a wit and was friendly with the wits of his time, including Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw. He said to the physically trim Shaw once that he looked as though the country was suffering from famine and to which Shaw replied, “You look as though you caused it.”
The Gospels have it that Jesus rode into Jerusalem the Sunday before Easter on an ass and throngs of the faithful laid down palm branches in their path.
Courtesy of the Poetry Foundation, here is Chesterton’s poem, first published in 1927, to the beast of burden, and its divine assignment:
“The Donkey’’
When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
Donkeys as beasts of burden in Colombia
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Web site: whchronicle.com
Eastern Orthodox fresco in Nativity of the Theotokos Church, Bitola, Republic of North Macedonia
— Photo of fresco by Petar Milošević
The ultimate backstop
Conan O’Brien in 2019
“When all else fails, there’s always delusion.’’
— Conan O’Brien (born 1963) TV host, comedian and writer. He was born and raised in Brookline, Mass.
Look homeward
The Sarah Orne Jewett House, in South Berwick, Maine, shortly after her death
“What has made this nation great? Not its heroes but its households.’’
— Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), an American novelist, short-story writer and poet, best known for her works set along or near the Maine C. She’s considered an important practitioner of American literary regionalism. Her most famous book, The Country of the Pointed Firs, seems to be based on summer stays on the St. George Peninsula, where she got to know a lot of the locals. See red map below.
'Evening in Sugar Orchard'
A ‘‘sugar house,’’ where the sap from sugar maples is boiled down to make syrup. The season is now ending in northern New England.
From where I lingered in a lull in March
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare
Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,
And so be added to the moon up there.
The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.
The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.
They were content to figure in the trees
As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.
And that was what the boughs were full of soon.
— Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Don Pesci: Critical Race Theory is intellectual tripe
The Indian Harbor Yacht Club in rich Greenwich, Conn., a town where admission is all about money, not race.
VERNON, Conn.
Mike Winkler, a progressive – very progressive -- Connecticut state representative from Vernon, tumbled into a postmodern mare’s nest when he attempted, poorly, to discriminate between different kinds of discrimination.
During a public hearing on bills before the state General Assembly Planning and Development Committee, Winkler said that Greenwich Housing Authority member Sam Romeo had counted Asian-Americans among minorities suffering from invidious discrimination. Winkler had just suggested that Greenwich officials had deployed zoning regulations to deny access to African-Americans, and here was a Housing Authority member claiming that 37 percent of the population of Greenwich were members of minority groups.
Well, yes, Winkler grudgingly conceded. However, “You count Asians and other minorities that have never been discriminated against,” Winkler said during the hearing, at which point the frigid waters of Critical Race Theory closed over Winkler’s head. Critical Race Theory holds that the law and legal institutions are inherently racist, and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded, is a social construct used by white people to advance their own political and economic interests at the expense of people of color.
As a matter of history and common sense, one must admit that Winkler may have had a point: There are different kinds and degrees of discrimination. But, flourishing the wrong end of the point, he ended up stabbing himself.
Surely all participants in the conference shown on YouTube would agree there are differences in degrees and kinds of discrimination. The discrimination that Martin Luther King Jr. bravely faced during three protest marches from Selma, Ala., to the state capital of Montgomery surely was different in kind and ferocity than that faced by some black and white Americans attempting to move into Greenwich. In the matter of discrimination, things have improved remarkably since dogs were set on Selma protestors in 1965.
If Greenwich had ever relied on redlining to maintain what Critical Race Theorists may regard as the purity of the towns’ racial stock, those provisions have long since been swept from zoning regulations throughout all of Connecticut’s municipalities. Times change, sometimes for the better.
No, no, nearly everyone from butcher to baker to candlestick maker cried, more or less in unison. The price of admission to Greenwich is dollar-related. Not everyone can afford to live in Greenwich. If state Senate President Martin Looney has his way, soon progressive Democrats may impose a tax on Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” mansions, which would have the unfortunate effect of making access to wealthy towns throughout the state even less attractive to people of color who might be able to afford the price of the mansions. Zoning provisions in Greenwich do not exclude potential admission to the town for reasons of race, religion or color -- provided that the potential applicants have sufficient greenbacks in their bank accounts.
Howitzers were fired at Winkler from every direction. Republican state Sen. Tony Hwang, an Asian-American, stepped forward to turn against Winkler a point often advanced by Critical Race Theory-soddened Democrats. According to an account in a Hartford paper, “Winkler, a white man, simply cannot grasp the pervasiveness of Asian-American bias, ‘‘ Hwang said. ‘You believe they have been discriminated less. You have never been in their shoes.''' Democratic Atty. Gen. William Tong, the state’s highest-ranking Asian-American elected official, joined in. Tong “recalled being asked during a debate in the House whether Asian- Americans count as people of color. ‘Let me assure you that Asian-Americans count and the hate and discrimination against us is real,’ Tong said Tuesday.’’
The public scourging followed its usual course, and the sinner eventually showed repentance, apologizing for his ill-considered statement. “My comments are inexcusable, especially with the recent rise in violence against Asian-Americans,” Winkler said, according to a piece in CTMirror. “There is a long, painful history of Asian-Americans experiencing racism in this country, and I sincerely regret that I ignored that history and those experiences in my comments.”
No one knows at this point whether Winkler will receive an absolution from the new priests of Critical Race Theory. And no Republican office holder has yet emerged to claim that Republicans generally were not willing to surrender to Democrats pride of place in the matter of resisting aggressions against blacks. In past times, the Democrat Party had supported slavery, Jim Crow, the Klu Klux Klan, and the loosing of dogs on courageous protesters such as Martin Luther King Jr. who fought for freedom.
So it goes. No one seems willing to close on the chief point – that, while traces of both racism and discrimination may still exist somewhere in America’s dark cultural backwaters, the beast has largely been caged. Times really have changed. King actually won his battle for freedom, one of the reasons the nation celebrates Martin Luther King Day.
If we are determined to proceed along lines indicated by Critical Race Theory, Democrats, historically associated with the raw racism of the post-Civil War period – Woodrow Wilson, an early progressive, approvingly showed in the White House in 1915 the film Birth of a Nation, a celebration of KluKluxery – should change the name of their party, so warmly have Democrats in the past embraced racism and discrimination. This is worse than nonsense. It is reckless and silly nonsense.
The view that the sins of the father should fall like an executioner’s axe on the necks of their distant grandsons and granddaughters is, combined with cancel culture, a petard that may be used to destroy the foundational principles that King referred to in his “I have a dream Speech.”
Zoning regulations in Greenwich are not “inherently racist” because they are not racist at all. The Greenwich zoning board is not motivated by racism. And Critical Race Theory is intellectual tripe. You cannot denounce a racist past by bleaching it out of history books, and racial McCarthyism -- according to which any member of a presentday political party is deemed racist because the political party with which they associate had in the past promoted racism – is every bit as destructive as political McCarthyism, when the imputations are wrong and unjust.
It’s long past time for everyone to grow up.
Don Pesci is a Vernon-based columnist.
Jill Richardson: Racism against Asian-Americans is pervasive
The gate at the entrance to Boston’s Chinatown
Stop AAPI Hate is a nonprofit social organization that runs the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, which tracks incidents of discrimination, hate and xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the United States. It was formed in 2020 in response to increased racially motivated violence against Asian people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
From OtherWords.org
As our nation grapples with its legacy of anti-Asian racism, it’s important to consider the subtler forms of racism, too. Racism occurs on a spectrum, from social degradation all the way to — as we saw recently in Atlanta — mass murder.
I cannot speak for Asians, nor do I wish to. But as a white woman who majored in East Asian studies and learned Chinese in college two decades ago, I learned a lot about biases others may not see.
It started with my parents. My mom loves “culture” and “languages” — but it turned out that her affection didn’t extend to Chinese. “I’m sorry,” she would say to me on the phone. “I just don’t find China interesting.”
What an odd thing to say.
My parents could appreciate that my language skills would be an advantage in my job, but the all-consuming love I had for learning about China? That was weird. By “culture,” my mom meant European culture.
My non-Chinese peers, meanwhile, treated Chinese as if it were incomprehensibly foreign, like it could be understood by nobody.
Once, after college, I went to a Chinese restaurant with co-workers. The server’s English was shaky, but I could communicate with him easily in Chinese. I watched a co-worker act as if the waiter was not capable of communication at all, which was rude and dehumanizing.
At school, peers would say things to me like “Ping ping ting ting — hey what does that mean in Chinese?” I hope I replied, “You just said ‘I’m an idiot,’” but I think usually I was too stunned to respond.
Other times, when people heard I studied Chinese, they would try to relate by saying things like “Oh, my aunt’s been to Japan.” They are actually different countries. Imagine saying “You’re studying French? My aunt’s been to Germany.”
The comment I heard the most was “Did you know they eat dogs in China?” Imagine if a routine response to telling someone you’re American is, “Don’t they eat testicles in the U.S.?” (Google “Rocky Mountain oysters” if you aren’t familiar.) It’s the same.
If I was able to learn this much about anti-Asian bias just by telling people I’d studied Chinese, imagine what Asians and Asian Americans experience.
My experience differs from those of Asians and Asian Americans because the micro-aggressions I encountered were about a passion of mine, but not about my identity, culture, or family. I can opt out of dealing with these micro-aggressions at will because I’m white.
Unlike me, Asian-Americans are still treated like perpetual foreigners, even though some of their families got here decades before mine did. My family emigrated to this country about a century ago — after the passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese people from coming here but before the KKK-supported 1924 immigration act that would have kept my Eastern European ancestors out.
I’m just another white woman. Nobody calls me “exotic” or sexually fetishizes me for my race. Historically, racism has been carried out in the name of protecting people like me from non-white others, not in the name of protecting others from me.
These less violent forms of anti-Asian racism still contribute to a pattern of dehumanization that can lead to the kind of racist, sexist violence we saw in Atlanta. We as a nation condemn anti-Asian racism in all its forms.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a Ph.D in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A caricature of a Chinese worker wearing a queue in an 1899 editorial cartoon
Lightning rods, earthquakes and Divine Providence
“When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin [and his lightning-rod] ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the 'iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin,' Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God's wrath at the 'iron points.' In a sermon on the subject he said, 'In Boston are more erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.' Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare.”
― Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher and mathematician, in “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity’’
A religious tract’s take on Boston being shaken by the Cape Ann earthquake of 1755.
Danse macabre
“Untitled” (paint on canvas), by Carolyn Mae Lassiter, in her show “A Journey Through My Heart and Mind,’’ at the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, through April 20.
The gallery says that these “vibrant and uniquely executed paintings and drawings are inspired by dreams, spirituality, life in the country, family and animals.’’
The invasion
Edwin Way Teale’s writing cabin on his farm in Hampton, Conn.
"The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents. Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around us, goes flooding away to the north."
— Edwin Way Teale (1899-1976), American writer, natuuralist and photographer, in North With the Spring
