#anti richard alpert

[ljones41]

My Feelings on "LOST" (3.19) "The Brig"

I thought the "LOST" Season Three episode, (3.19) "The Brig" was a well written episode. But it also disgusted me to my core.

The actions of Sawyer, Locke, Ben and Richard in this episode disgusted me. I was disgusted by Ben for setting up that ridiculous test for Locke. I was disgusted with Richard for providing Locke a means to pass the test of killing his father, Anthony Cooper. I was disgusted with Locke for finally orchestrating his father's murder in order to pass Ben's test and become the Others' new leader. And I was disgusted with Sawyer for committing murder in the name of revenge, especially since Cooper's crime toward the Ford family was to con them of their money - the same con Sawyer had pulled against who knows how many other families.

This may have been a well written episode, but I dislike it. I dislike the actions of the four characters - Sawyer, Locke, Richard and Ben. And I dislike how the critics and many fans cheered over Sawyer's act of murder and tried to pass it off as "therapy" for him. And this last bit is what really disgusted me about this episode.

[digthe60s]

1966

Inflation grew as part of the effect to fund the war in Vietnam. Both the U.S. and USSR continued in their space race to see who would be the first to land a man on the moon. Race riots continued to increase across cities in America, and national guards were needed to bring back law and order. The fashions in both America and UK came from a small well-known street in London, Carnaby Street. Both women and men wore patterned pants and flowered shirts and boots, even caps utilized plastic and vinyl for a wet, shiny look. The most popular groups included the Beach Boys (with Pet Sounds), the Rolling Stones (with Aftermath), and the Beatles (with Revolver).

Major events

• Up to 200,000 people attend anti-Vietnam war protests around the world.

• Miranda Rights come into being after the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the conviction of a confessed rapist, ruling that he had not been properly informed of his right to council and to not testify against himself.

• In South Wales, on October 21, a slag heap containing unwanted rock from the local coal mine slid down Merthyr Mountain. As it collapsed, it destroyed twenty houses and a farm, before going on to demolish virtually all of Pantglas Junior School. 144 people were killed, 116 of whom were children (mostly between the ages of 7 and 10). This became known as the Aberfan Disaster.

• The U.S. Department of Transportation is created.

• The Gemini 8 space mission is aborted early after technical difficulties interrupt the mission.

• The Gemini 10 space mission launches and is completed successfully.

• NASA launches Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the Moon.

• The ATS-1 (Applications Technology Satellite) was launched by NASA during December. The ATS-1 was an experimental satellite that weighed about 750 pounds. It carried several experiments, including 2 for meteorological purposes. One of the experiments took full disk hemispheric images of the Earth every half hour. ATS-1 remained operational as it orbited around the Equator until December 1978, when it was deactivated.

• Soviet Union lands Luna 9 on the moon in February, and the U.S. follows with the Surveyor 1 soft moon landing in June.

• NASA’s final Gemini mission, Gemini 12, was launched during November. Gemini 12 carried Buzz Aldrin and James Lovell into space where they carried out several experiments during its four day mission. The main purpose of the mission was to conduct several periods of extravehicular activity, which they did successfully. The astronauts also performed a docking with the Agena spacecraft. The Gemini program paved the way for future missions in the Apollo program, which also led to the moon landing.

• The USSR’s Luna 10 spacecraft becomes the first man-made object to orbit the Moon.

• Batman, Star Trek, and The Monkees are among the new TV shows.

• Miniskirt comes into fashion.

• U.S. Population exceeds 195 million.

• The Black Panthers are formed in the U.S.

• Richard Speck murders 8 nurses in Chicago, Illinois.

• Ex-Marine Charles Whitman kills 14 and injures 31 on a killing spree at the University of Texas.

• U.S. has nearly 500,000 troops in Vietnam.

• The Draft Deferment Test is started in the U.S., as a way for students to convince the Draft Board that they would serve the nation better in the quiet of the classrooms rather than in the jungles of Vietnam.

• Race riots happen in Atlanta, and Black Power becomes a significant factor in American politics.

• The Subway Strike in New York brings the city to a stop. Within a few days, the union’s demands are met with a 15% pay rise.

• Ronald Reagan enters politics, becoming Governor of California.

• Canada introduces its earnings-related social insurance program, the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).

• The Salvation Army celebrates 100 years.

• All cigarette packets in the U.S. must carry the health warning “Caution! Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health."

• 4 people dig under the Berlin Wall to gain freedom from East Germany.

• The Arno River floods cause the flooding of the city of Florence, in Italy, with thousands of historic books, manuscripts and fine art destroyed.

• 200,000 face starvation on the island of Lombak, Indonesia.

• Cassius Clay defeats Henry Cooper in two title fights in London.

• Pakistani-Indian peace negotiations end successfully.

• Indira Gandhi is elected Prime Minister of India.

• The Australian dollar was introduced at a rate of two dollars per pound, or ten shillings per dollar.

• Pope Paul VI and Arthur Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, meet in Rome—the first official meeting between the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in 400 years.

• An earthquake in Turkey leaves 2,394 dead and 10,000 injured.

• Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (known as “the Moors Murderers”) are sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 3 children.

• The UK implements much tougher new drink driving laws.

• England defeats Germany to win at the 1966 World Cup.

• China launches China’s Cultural Revolution and begins purging intellectuals.

• Barbados, Botswana, and Lesotho achieve independence.

• Harold Wilson and the Labour Party win the British General Election.

• Jacqueline Susann has her first novel, Valley of the Dolls, published.

• Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the animated television special adapted from the book, is shown for first time on CBS.

Top 10 highest-grossing films in the U.S.

1. The Bible: In the Beginning… (dir. John Huston)

2. Hawaii (dir. George Roy Hill)

3. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (dir. Mike Nichols)

4. The Sand Pebbles (dir. Robert Wise)

5. A Man for All Seasons (dir. Fred Zinnemann)

6. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (dir. Sergio Leone)

7. Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. (dir. Byron Paul)

8. The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (dir. Norman Jewison)

9. Grand Prix (dir. John Frankenheimer)

10. Blowup (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

Billboard’s number-one music albums (in chronological order)

1. “Whipped Cream and Other Delights” by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass

2. “Rubber Soul” by The Beatles

3. “Going Places” by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass

4. “Ballads of The Green Berets” by SSgt. Barry Sadler

5. “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears” by The Mamas & the Papas

6. “What Now My Love” by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass

7. “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra

8. “Yesterday and Today” by The Beatles

9. “Revolver” by The Beatles

10. “Supremes A’ Go-Go” by The Supremes

11. “Doctor Zhivago Soundtrack” by various artists

12. “The Monkees” by The Monkees

Source: [x]

[rocknutsvibe]

50 Year Flashback: 10 Big Songs From June 1968

June 1968 was a hell of a time in America and on the rest of the planet too. The Vietnam War was yielding more casualties than ever, there were two devastating political assassinations and there was unrest in the streets. The Summer of Love already seemed like a distant memory, but on the positive side, the Rock Revolution was in full swing and music was exploding off in new directions. FM Rock radio was still in its infancy, meaning that Top 40 was still the main medium for new music, and so here are some of the big Top 40 hits from June 1968 in no particular order:

  Mrs. Robinson – Simon And Garfunkel

It’s hard to separate this song from The Graduate, the generation-defining movie in which it played a central role, a conflation that surely enhanced the song’s appeal among all the boring, self-centered and disaffected Benjamin Braddocks and Elaine Robinsons of the day.

  MacArthur Park – Richard Harris

In 1992 humorist Dave Barry conducted a readers’ poll that named this the Worst Song of All Time, but we think there are plenty worse. Sure it’s ridiculously overblown and overwrought, but songwriter Jimmy Webb deliberately set out to make it that way in the name of artistic innovation, since overblown and overwrought were still fresh Rock concepts back then.

  Yummy, Yummy, Yummy – Ohio Express

Haven’t heard this one in years and it’s not quite as bad as we remembered it, although the lead singer still sounds like a goat. You’ve got to figure that 50+ years of hearing crappy bubblegum music tends to inure one to its horrors.

  Tighten Up – Archie Bell & The Drells

By the time this reached #1 Archie Bell had been drafted into the Army and was already seriously injured overseas. Neither he nor anyone else could have predicted that this simple song – the whole thing is like a two-minute intro – would top the charts, but like all huge hits it had that inexplicable something that people find irresistible.

  Jumpin’ Jack Flash – Rolling Stones

The Stones were at a creative and a career crossroads, coming off the LSD-addled mediocrity of Their Satanic Majesties Request and needing to re-establish their standing on the Rock scene. This song did a lot more than that. If Mick and Keith were sons of the Blues, then Jumpin’ Jack Flash – the character – became the holy spirit of the Rolling Stones, and God saw that it was a gas, gas, gas.

  Tip Toe Thru’ The Tulips With Me – Tiny Tim

A lot of people badly needed an escape from the troubles of the day, and Tiny Tim provided a departure as far away from the norm as you could possibly get. More proof that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

  Sky Pilot – Eric Burden And The Animals

Anti-war songs were common by this point, but a wicked guitar solo fading into the real sounds of war was a wrinkle that gave and still gives this song a powerful punch. This was the last we would ever hear from the Animals, and it was a pretty strong way to make an exit.

  Mony Mony – Tommy James and the Shondells

I remember one night around this time in 1968, I was just a little kid and my amazing big sister Peggy let me tag along in the back seat on a run with her boyfriend to the local burger shack. He was driving a 1966 white Chevy Impala convertible with red interior, top down on a beautiful warm starry night when this song came on the radio, cranked up loud, and I was never the same after that, in a good way.

  Reach Out Of The Darkness – Friend & Lover

The husband-and-wife team of Jim and Cathy Post threw three song fragments together and somehow managed to catch the zeitgeist of the day – well it was groovy that people were finally getting together – but many people thought they were singing “freak out in the darkness”, which would have been even groovier.

  I’d Like To Get To Know You – Spanky And Our Gang

This one is a real cultural artifact, it’s almost as if 1968 is the only year it could have been made. They called it “sunshine pop”, and it is certainly that (Spanky McFarlane could really sing), but the real highlight is the semi-psychedelic breakdown in the last part of the song, because in 1968 even the poppiest of pop songs wanted to be just a little bit trippy too.

  Other Big Hits In June 1968 Include:

A Beautiful Morning — Rascals Think — Aretha Franklin This Guy’s in Love — Herb Alpert Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing — Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell Angel Of The Morning — Merrilee Rush Love Is All Around — The Troggs Stoned Soul Picnic — The 5th Dimension The Horse — Cliff Nobles & Co.

from Rocknuts https://ift.tt/2I1LFgJ via IFTTT

[didanawisgi]

Is Yoga Kosher?

How a Modern Orthodox Jew struggled to reconcile her yogic practice with her Judaism by TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER, JANUARY 05, 2010

“A few years ago, freshly moved to Los Angeles, I started practicing yoga. I was feeling anxious and worried, and if I were still a New Yorker, I’d have gone on anti-depressants. But I’m a big believer in doing what the Romans do, and, as it turned out, yoga helped a lot. Now, in class, as I take my first bow—a stretch upward, followed by an open-armed dive to my toes—I am no longer thinking about survival. Instead, with room to breathe and think, I instead wonder about the implications of bowing, of doing yoga in the first place. Yoga, with its meditation, with its mysterious secrets and ties to Hinduism and Buddhism, isn’t just a physiological practice; it’s a spiritual one. And I am a Modern Orthodox Jew. By practicing yoga, I’m now forced to wonder, am I practicing a religion outside my own? Am I sinning before God?

When I first took up yoga, this question never occurred to me. I was dealing with a difficult time, but I had also abandoned my religious upbringing. I was at peace with a secular life that included some high-holiday observance and crippling guilt when I didn’t observe Passover. Now, married to a man who converted so that we could be together, I find myself running an Orthodox home. (You know the old joke: don’t date a non-Jew unless you want to end up really religious.) I’m surprisingly happy in my lifestyle, but I’m also realizing that a true immersion in yogic practice may very well be a violation of my Jewish one.

There is a statue of Ganesh, the Hindu diety, in the yoga studio I attend. At the end of the class, my instructor says, “Namaste,” and bows toward the class. In turn, we bow back. I am bowing toward the teacher, but also toward the statue. Namaste means, “The Divine in me salutes the Divine in you.” During many of the meditation sessions, we are asked to put our hands in “prayer position,” which is what it sounds like: hands joined together at the heart. The more I thought about it, the more I worried that yoga might be its own religion, and that I might be committing a sin—worshipping an idol, even—by practicing it.

This might seem like a niggling question of minutia, but Judaism, especially Orthodox Judaism, is a religion filled with niggling questions of minutiae—how an animal is slaughtered, at what angle, exactly, a mezuzah should be affixed to a door post. There are serious implications to committing idolatry, whether you do so accidentally or not. In the Talmud (Sanhedrin 74), it states that there are only three sins in which a person is commanded to die rather than commit the sin: the second and third are incest and murder. The first is idolatry.

That was the Lubavitch rebbe’s rationale when, in 1977, he forbade his followers from practicing yoga, transcendental meditation, and the like. “In as much as these movements involve certain rites and rituals, they have been rightly regarded by Rabbinic authorities as cults bordering on, and in some respects actual, avodah zarah,” he wrote, using the Hebrew term for idolatry. “Accordingly Rabbinic authorities everywhere…ruled that these cults come under all the strictures associated with avodah zarah, so that also their appurtenances come under strict prohibition.”

But, of course, I’m not a Lubavitcher. So I asked my yoga teacher at City Yoga in West Hollywood, Linda Eifer, a Conservative Jew, what she thought. “Yoga is not a religion,” she said, emphatically. “It’s a spiritual practice that combines the body, the mind, and the spirit. It’s based on an ancient Indian tradition that includes inspiration from statues, which are a mythology that combine human and divine characteristics.” But, aside from the statues, that’s pretty much what my religion is to me.

David Adelson, a Reform rabbi in New York who is enrolled at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a two-year program that includes yoga retreats and text study, offered a distinction. “If I’m in a church around Christmastime, I sing and even say ‘Jesus’ in the hymns. I know that I am just singing because I like singing, and in no way praying, so it doesn’t worry me,” he said. “Yoga feels just a bit dicier because I am a full participant in the experience, not an observer. But I believe in general that to constitute avodah zarah, you probably need some kavana,” or intention.

Kavana is an interesting thing. Intuitively, it would seem that a religion demanding absolute morality would be concerned with intention. But, actually, that’s not really the case. If you eat bread on Passover, even accidentally, you have sinned. If you give charity but grudgingly, the charity still counts for the good. On Yom Kippur, we repent for sins we didn’t even know we did. And then there are Hannah’s sons—seven Jews who chose to die rather than bow to Antiochus, the Greek ruler who tried to forcibly convert Jews in 167 BCE. Bowing but not meaning it wasn’t an option. Judaism is concerned not just with your actions but also very much with how your actions appear to others. Bowing is the physical manifestation of idolatry, whatever your intention. “Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves,” says Leviticus 26:1, “and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it.”

But let’s ignore that for a second, and accept Adelson’s argument that intention does matter. Even so, don’t I intentionally practice yoga? And while Eifer, my yoga teacher, had said she doesn’t find yoga incompatible with Judaism because her status as a Jew isn’t compromised by her practice of yoga, I have a more literal view of Judaism and what it expects from me. I believe that I’m supposed to practice only Judaism. I don’t believe the practice of another religion makes me an adherent of that religion, but I do believe that I choose to only practice Judaism. The rituals and chanting that was expected of me in yoga seem like another religion to me—and practicing another religion is practicing another religion.

But Srinivasan, the senior teacher at the worldwide Shivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers, says I have it backwards. “Yoga is not a religion, but a science of religion,” he explained. “It applies to all religions. It’s not that yoga comes from Hinduism. Hinduism originates in yoga. Buddhism comes from yoga, too.” Srinivasan doesn’t see how spiritual yoga practice and Judaism are incompatible. “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach used to come to our Ashrams,” he said. “He understood we were talking about the same thing. Hasidic mysticism and Kabbalah are very much in line with yogic thought.”

I explain to Srinivasan that the approach may be similar—even some of the text and ideas may be similar—but that only proves my point that yoga is a religion. “There is yoga in every religion,” he responded. “Yoga means ‘union’ or ‘absolute consciousness’ with God. Don’t look at the differences; look at the similarities. Yoga is beyond words or institution. When you use the word ‘religion,’ people want to know what books you read, what language you speak.” He also says that though some sects of yoga won’t even use the word God, the tradition is similar to monotheism. “We’re all talking about the same God,” he said. To him, the statue of Ganesh at the front of many yoga studios is the same God to whom Jews pray. “Don’t confuse the map for the actual place,” he said. “God is everywhere. There is no conflict here. There is respect for that diversity. To explain God is to limit God.”

So could I just be bowing in front of this statue without bowing to the statue? I asked Pinchas Giller, an Orthodox rabbi who practices yoga at the same studio I do. “Many Hindus argue these days that their deities are just archetypal principles,” says Giller. “But any third-grader in Hebrew school will tell you that those are idols. Veneration and offerings are unacceptable. I avoid classes where the teacher is too into the mythos. It’s hard to escape the impression that if you take some of the practices too seriously then it could be avodah zarah.” Giller practices yoga for the exercise and only for the exercise, he’s careful to say.

Chanah Forster, a Hasid and yoga teacher in Brooklyn, may have found a solution. “Yoga absolutely is a religion,” she says. Before she became religious, Forster lived on an ashram, where she became certified to teach yoga. She still teaches it, but with an approach tailored to her current audience. There is no chanting in her class—not even Om, the vibrational sound recited at the start of most yoga classes. She describes poses, but won’t use their traditional Sanskrit names. She also won’t say their English translations, like Downward-Facing Dog. “Instead, I’ll say to raise your hips to the ceiling,” she explained to me. “The Sanskrit names have a spiritual meaning. If you don’t call these poses by their Sanskrit names, it’s just exercise.” Forster believes that when you do any of these things—chant, say Om, speak in Sanskrit—you are opening yourself up spiritually to outside influences. “These aren’t just words,” she said. “They have meanings and repercussions to your neshama”—your soul—“and they are at odds with Jewish spirituality.”

But despite all these things at odds with Judaism, yoga seems to have a strong pull on Jews. In the past few years, several yoga minyans, prayer services in which yoga stretches accompany liturgy, have gotten underway. At least half of the people who frequent my yoga studio, as well as many of its teachers, are Jewish. India is a hotbed of Israeli tourism and the great Hindu leader Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert, a nice Jewish boy. (The author Rodger Kamenetz wrote a whole book, The Jew in the Lotus, about Jews struggling to understand and relate to Eastern spirituality.) But though unresolved, it’s a debate that’s new to me and that has new urgency for me as I’ve returned to religious observance.) The Kabbalistic viewpoint asserts that we are born with a pintele yid, a Jewish spark always searching for spirituality. If you live in America in 2010, your pintele yid may be a little malnourished, and whether because of assimilation or a lack of Jewish practice, some Jews seek to feed this hunger outside of the synagogue.

And the question of yoga’s compatibility with Judaism might just be an unanswerable one. In Adelson’s Reform world, it’s the Jew’s intention that matters. But in the Judaism I know, the one I have chosen to participate in, intentions, or even wishes, are not the only things to consider. My Judaism is a Judaism that is preoccupied with my physical life as much as my spiritual one. It has laws for when I eat, what wear, how I wash my hands. The problem isn’t what yoga might ask me to think or believe; it’s what it asks me to do. And despite my physical flexibility—you should see my frog pose—I don’t have the same spiritual agility.

Further practice of Judaism has not, historically, helped me become more open-minded. But perhaps that is where yoga can be an asset, not a detriment, to my religious practice. Yes, yoga walks a fine line (verboten to some; certainly not to all). But maybe my uptight approach to religion requires yoga and its nuances of illicit practice to help me remain flexible in my spirit, as well as my body. Maybe having something that isn’t so easy to reconcile, a gray area, is good for me.”

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a correspondent for GQ and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.

[armeniaitn]

Armenian Academics For Black Lives Matter

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/armenian-academics-for-black-lives-matter-28718-02-07-2020/

Armenian Academics For Black Lives Matter

A scene from a recent Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo: Armen Adamian)

Three Armenian doctoral students from UCLA—Natalie Kamajian, Armen Adamian and Lilit Ghazaryan—penned the following statement to express solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement. This initiative is intended to unite Armenian academics globally across various disciplines in their commitment to advancing anti-racist methodologies, perspectives and practices.

***

We, a group of Armenian academics, want to collectively express our support for the Black Lives Matter movement. As educators and knowledge producers, we cannot be neutral in the face of systemic oppression fueled by anti-Black racism in the United States and around the world. This is a call to all Armenian academics to actively dismantle white supremacist logics in both our personal and professional lives.

In understanding our own Armenian experience, we acknowledge that historical injustices are often reproduced in present hierarchies of power. We know that the Black experience is defined by perpetual injustice rooted in chattel slavery—specifically systematic marginalization, mass incarceration, manufactured poverty, and ultimately murder. Furthermore, the United States is a settler-colonial project founded on the genocide of Indigenous nations. This legacy of stolen land and stolen labor is a foundational element of the US capitalist enterprise. The Armenian past—rife with state-sanctioned oppression, genocide, dispossession, and exile—informs our position today. In recognizing these connections, it is our ethical obligation to challenge hegemonic systems of power in all of its forms. 

At this critical juncture, we are reminded of the key role played by scholarship during social justice movements. We, as Armenian academics, promise to actively fight against structural anti-Black racism. We must interrogate our role in the reproduction of white supremacy. We must take issue with our direct or indirect investments in establishments that racialize, exploit, and impoverish communities. To do this, we call on our colleagues to decenter whiteness and eurocentrism in our pedagogies and curricula, and to make concerted efforts to engage the methodologies of Black radical thinkers. We also pledge to advocate for police divestment at our respective colleges and universities, and to help reimagine new strategies for public wellness and communal safety. Lastly, we will work towards building solidarity with other scholars of color (in particular Black and Indigenous) to advance meaningful allyship.

We, the undersigned, profess a vested interest in disentangling Armenianness from the mythology of whiteness. We promise that the knowledge we produce will be radically anti-racist and will side with those who are oppressed by harmful ideologies and repressive systems of power.

Natalie Kamajian, Ph.D. student, Culture and Performance, UCLA

Armen Adamian, Ph.D. student, Ethnomusicology, UCLA

Lilit Ghazaryan, Ph.D. student, Anthropology, UCLA

Signatories as of July 2, 2020

1. Melissa Bilal, Ph.D., Distinguished Research Fellow and Lecturer, Center for Near Eastern Studies and Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA 2. Janice Okoomian, Assistant Professor of English/Gender and Women’s Studies, Rhode Island College 3. Shushan Avagyan, Assistant Professor, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, American University of Armenia 4. Tamar Shirinian, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville 5. Hourig Attarian, Associate Professor, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, American University of Armenia 6. Karena Avedissian, Ph.D., Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham 7. Susan Pattie, Honorary Senior Research Associate at University College London and former Director of the Armenian Institute in London 8. Arto Vaun, Chair, English & Communications Program, & Director, Center for Creative Writing, American University of Armenia 9. Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Associate Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies, MIT 10. Nelli Sargsyan, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Marlboro College, Vermont, USA 11. Hrayr Attarian MD, Professor of Neurology, Northwestern University Chicago, USA 12. Seta Kabranian-Melkonian, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Services,  University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA 13. Markar Melkonian, Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, California State University, Northridge, USA 14. Elyse Semerdjian, Professor of History, Whitman College 15. Houri Berberian, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine 16. Sophia Armen, Ph.D. Student, Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego 17. Rosie Vartyter Aroush, Ph.D., Armenian Studies, Gender & Sexuality Research, UCLA 18. Sebouh David Aslanian, Professor of History, Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History, and inaugural Director of Armenian Studies Center, Promise Armenian Institute, UCLA 19. Khatchig Mouradian, Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University 20. Sylvia Angelique Alajaji, Associate Professor of Music, Franklin & Marshall College 21. Talar Chahinian, Lecturer, Armenian Studies Program and Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine 22. Jesse Arlen, Ph.D. Candidate, Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, UCLA 23. Arpi Melikyan, Ph.D. student, Department of French and Francophone Studies, UCLA 24. Meline Mesropyan, Ph.D., Fellow researcher at Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University 25. Sona Tajiryan, Ph.D. Candidate, History Department, UCLA 26. Aram Ghoogasian, Ph.D. student, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University 27. Astghik Hovhannisyan, Ph.D., Visiting Researcher at International Research Center for Japanese Studies/ Senior lecturer at Russian-Armenian University 28. Jennifer Manoukian, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA 29. Gabriella Djerrahian, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University 30. Nora Lessersohn, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University College London 31. Carina Karapetian Giorgi, Ph.D., Department Chair of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Sociology Faculty at Antelope Valley College 32. Christian Garbis, Lecturer, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, American University of Armenia 33. Yevgenya Jenny Paturyan, Associate Professor, Political Science and International Affairs, American University of Armenia 34. Hrag Papazian, Adjunct Lecturer, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, American University of Armenia 35. Tsolin Nalbantian, University Lecturer, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Leiden University 36. Rafik Santrosyan, Ph.D. in Linguistics, Adjunct Lecturer at the College of the Humanities and Social Sciences, American University of Armenia 37. Aram Kerovpyan, Ph.D., “Akn” Center for Modal Chant Studies, Paris 38. Anna Aleksanyan, Ph.D. Candidate, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University 39. Vahram Elagöz, Ph.D., Adjunct faculty, Acopian Center for the Environment, American University of Armenia 40. Nora Tataryan, Ph.D., Adjunct faculty, Cultural Studies, Sabanci University, Istanbul 41. Sevan Injejikian, Ph.D. Candidate, University College London (UCL), Adjunct Faculty, American University of Armenia (AUA) 42. Deanna Cachoian-Schanz, Ph.D. student, Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania 43. David Kazanjian, Professor, University of Pennsylvania 44. Karen Jallatyan, Manoogian Post-doctoral Fellow and Lecturer, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 45. Joanne Nucho, Assistant Professor, Pomona College 46. Suzie Abajian, Ph.D., SPUSD School Board Member, Orange County Department of Education Administrator, former adjunct faculty at LMU and Occidental College 47. Veronika Zablotsky, Mellow-Sawyer Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, University of California, Los Angeles 48. Dzovinar Derderian, Ph.D., University of Michigan 49. Richard Antaramian, Assistant Professor of History, University of Southern California 50. Ararat Sekeryan, Ph.D. student, Slavic Languages & Comparative Literature, Columbia University 51. Michael Pifer, Ph.D., Lecturer, University of Michigan 52. Marianna Hovhannisyan, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego 53. Helen Makhdoumian, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 54. Movses Pogossian, Professor of Violin, Director, UCLA Armenian Music Program, Herb Alpert School of Music, University of California, Los Angeles 55. Lori Khatchadourian, Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University 56. Kim Hekimian, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Nutrition in Pediatrics, Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons 57. Sevan Beukian, Ph.D., Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Department of Women and Gender Studies, University of Alberta, Canada 58. Anahit Galstyan, Ph.D. student, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara 59. Ann R. Karagozian, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Inaugural Director, The Promise Armenian Institute, UCLA 60. Hayarpi Papikyan, Ph.D., Adjunct Faculty, American University of Armenia (AUA) 61. Alexandra Boghosian, Ph.D. student, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University 62. Ayda Erbal, Lecturer, Department of Politics, New York University 63. Zoe Sherinian, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Oklahoma 64. Robin Garabedian, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 65. Rachel Goshgarian, Associate Professor of History, Lafayette College 66. Anahit Manoukian, Ph.D. student, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley 67. Margaret Sarkissian, Professor of Ethnomusicology, Smith College 68. Aram Goudsouzian, Professor of History, University of Memphis 69. Alique Berberian, Ph.D. student, Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA 70. Arin A. Balalian, DrPH student, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University 71. Laure Astourian, Assistant Professor of French, Bentley University 72. Jolie Mandelbaum, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, University of Missouri 73. Bedross Der Matossian, Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 74. Arpi Siyahian, Ph.D, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 75. Kristine Martirosyan-Olshansky, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Scholar, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California Los Angeles 76. Misak Khachatryan, Psy.D. Student, The Wright Institute 77. Elise Youssoufian, Ph.D. student, Philosophy and Religion, concentration in Women’s Spirituality, California Institute of Integral Studies 78. Marine Sargsyan, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Roma Tre University, Italy 79. Armine Ishkanian, Associate Professor in Social Policy and Executive Director, Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity,  International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics, UK 80. Christopher Sheklian, Ph.D., Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center 81. Anna Nikoghosyan, Lecturer, Yerevan State University 82. Sossie Kasbarian, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics,  University of Stirling, Scotland 83. Kohar Avakian, Ph.D. candidate, American Studies, Yale University 84. Lisa Gulesserian, Preceptor on Armenian Language and Culture, Harvard University 85. Victor Agadjanian, Professor, Department of Sociology and the International Institute, UCLA 86. Arlene Voski Avakian, Professor Emeritus, Department of Women. Gender, Sexuality, University of Massachusetts Amherst 87. Christina Mehranbod, Ph.D. Student, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University 88. Artyom H. Tonoyan, Research Associate, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 89. Lilit Keshishyan, Ph.D., Lecturer, The Writing Program, University of Southern California 90. Shushan Karapetian, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Institute of Armenian Studies, University of Southern California 91. Lara Tcholakian, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Management & Organization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 92. Anahid Matossian, Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, University of Kentucky 93. Vazken Khatchig Davidian, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford 94. Kevork Oskanian, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Birmingham 95. Kamee Abrahamian, Ph.D. Candidate in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute 96. Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D., President, International Association of Genocide Scholars, and Founding Co-Editor, Genocide Studies International 97. Marc Mamigonian, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, Director of Academic Affairs 98. Naneh Apkarian, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education, Arizona State University 99. Armen Karamanian, Ph.D., University of Technology Sydney 100. Kristin Cavoukian, Ph.D., Sessional Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto Mississauga 101. Haig Armen, MDM, Associate Professor of Design, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC 102. Ara Sanjian, Associate Professor of History and Director of Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan, Dearborn 103. Hagop Gulludjian, Ph.D., Lecturer, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles 104. Lalai Manjikian, Ph.D., Professor, Humanities Department, Vanier College, Montreal, Quebec 105. Serouj Aprahamian, Ph.D. Candidate in Dance Studies, York University

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[cksmart-world]

The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

By Christopher Smart

December 26, 2019

BLESS THE INLAND PORT PROTESTERS

We live in a country where you won't get arrested for protesting. Well, not exactly. Protests are as American as tea bags and when elected officials screw up or sell out, it's our right, our duty even, to protest. And that brings us to the proposed Inland Port in Salt Lake City — where trucks and trains from all over would bring freight to a sea of warehouses and then shipped elsewhere by more trucks and trains. Last summer, a group of folks who didn't cotton to the idea of a lot more traffic and a lot more air pollution, among other things, including a heavy-handed state government, decided to make their displeasure known. A protest at City Hall ended up at the Salt Lake Chamber across the street, where the Inland Port Authority was to meet. Cops came and all hell broke loose. In the end, 10 protesters were charged with felonies and four with misdemeanors. Last week, Salt Lake City police, after a review, said their officers did nothing wrong — of course not. And that's the price of protesting, particularly on private property. The D.A. is going to make an example of the “Inland Port 10,” who are now staring down the barrel of the criminal justice system. And they're going to need a lot more than your prayers. As for you would-be protesters out there — watch your six, freedom isn't free.

TILTING AT REALITY

OK, this is serious. Our commander in chief has blown the whistle on the proliferation of windmills. They are a clear and present danger. (We couldn't possibly make this up.) Windmills are unreliable, cause cancer and kill birds. "I never understood wind," Trump said. "You know, I know windmills very much. I've studied it better than anybody I know. It's very expensive. They're made in China and Germany mostly..." he said in a recent speech. Fortunately, the president has made time in his busy schedule to highlight these urgent matters, like those water-saving toilets that “you have to flush 10 or 15 times.” And dishwashers — what happened to dishwashers? “Women tell me,” Trump said, that their water-saving dishwashers are terrible. But those issues pale in comparison to windmills. "I told the story about the woman,” Trump told his rapt audience, “she wants to watch television and she says to her husband, 'Is the wind blowing? I'd love to watch a show tonight, darling. The wind hasn't blown for three days. I can't watch television, darling. Darling, please, tell the wind to blow.'" It's all true, of course, but what about those damn blenders?

DREAMING OF A GREEN SKI SEASON

Soon, you won't have to drive up the canyons to go skiing. Gondolas could whisk you from Starbucks to Alta, Snowbird, Brighton, Solitude, Park City or Deer Valley, according to a story in The Salt Lake Tribune. No more traffic jams, no more parking headaches. The proposal is the long awaited solution to the inconvenience of crawling up the canyon in your car needing to go potty. All those nice folks who make money from skiing want to get more people up the canyons in order to make more money and the automobile is getting in the way. Just think, we could get 10 times the amount of skiers and boarders on the slopes. CA-CHING. Think of the profits. Think of the stats SKI UTAH can boast: 27 bazillion skier-days in a single season. Of course, there will be those grouchy old people who say putting more and more people on the mountain diminishes the sport and all the good stuff that goes with it. But those poor backward folks are only thinking of the experience. That's so selfish. They should be considering profit margins, return on investment and all those greenbacks. Just ask the Utah Travel Council, which is supported by your tax dollars, after all. You won't get any thank yous, of course, but you can take heart knowing that you helped make skiing so much more crowded and profitable. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what they call success.

EVANGELICALS IN A HOLY TWIT

Last week, Mark Galli, the outgoing editor of  the magazine “Christianity Today,” editorialized that Donald Trump should be removed from office because he is “a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused” and has “no loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.” Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It sent shock waves through the evangelical community. Nonetheless, many of them continue to see Trump as Heaven sent. At the same time, others, including Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, heathens and pagans have wondered why, after all Trump's lying, bamboozling and extracurricular fornicating could they possibly hold that view, while also praising Jesus of Nazareth as the Savior. A new NPR-PBS poll found 75 percent of white evangelical Christians approved of Trump, compared with 42 percent of adults overall. Some see Trump evangelicals as hypocrites. But those Trumpers seem unfazed on account of The Donald bestowed upon them two anti-abortion Supreme Court justices and promised them religious freedom (the ability to legally discriminate against gay and trans people). What else really matters. Thank you, Lord.

Post Script

Well, that just about does it for another Christmas Holiday here at Smart Bomb, where the staff continues to puzzle over the Three Kings of the Orient who brought gifts to the Baby Jesus in the manger — and why He took up carpentry before starting Christianity. But maybe it's best not to over-think these things. Speaking of spirituality, Baba Ram Das (real name Richard Alpert) has died at age 88. He and Timothy Leary helped popularize LSD in the 1960s as an avenue to greater consciousness. Ram Das was a guiding light for Wilson and the band, too. Among other things, he wrote a best seller in 1971 called “Be Here Now.” Ram Das then traveled to India to find true enlightenment without drugs and returned to this country some years later as a New Age guru. No Santa for him, but he died contented — it's that inner peace thing. Despite Trump's massive tax cuts it looks like most Santas didn't have a lot of extra cash this season. Billionaire Santas and corporate Santas do have a lot more, but don't believe in the spirit of giving so much. (The top 91 corporations in this country paid no federal tax at all.) Once again Trickle Down Economics is proven to be nothing more than a fable that won't go away, kinda like the Three Kings.

All right Wilson, since the band is practically three sheets to the wind anyway, why not unfurl the spinnaker and sail us out into the New Year: We were born before the wind / Also younger than the sun / Ere the bonnie boat was won / As we sailed into the mystic / Hark, now hear the sailors cry / Smell the sea and feel the sky / Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic...

[kathleenseiber]

‘Nanopieces’ may deliver drugs to treat incurable bone cancer

Researchers have used nanotechnology to identify a potentially groundbreaking treatment for an aggressive bone cancer that has proven disappointingly unresponsive to existing therapies, a new study shows.

The new approach to treating chondrosarcoma, a rare cancer that typically afflicts adults and has poor survival rates, appears in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

The research, using a mouse model, suggests that deploying nanoparticles might offer an innovative and effective way to penetrate tumor cells. These “nanopieces,” as the research team calls them, could then deliver nucleic acid therapeutics directly inside the cancer cells and slow tumor growth.

Richard Terek, chief of musculoskeletal oncology at Rhode Island Hospital, an orthopedic oncology surgeon with the Lifespan Cancer Institute, and a professor of orthopedic surgery at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has long researched ways to fight chondrosarcoma.

For the current study, he teamed up with molecular and nano-medicine researcher Qian Chen, director of the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Skeletal Health and Repair at Rhode Island Hospital and a professor of orthopedic research and medical science at Brown.

“What is most novel about the work is that we have used a special type of nanoparticle, which we call a ‘nanopiece delivery platform,’ developed by my collaborator Dr. Chen, for systemic delivery of anti-microRNA sequences (antagomirs),” Terek says.

“The work has been performed in cell culture and in a mouse model. We have been able to inhibit metastatic pathways and slow down the spread of cancer. This approach is in keeping with current strategies to turn cancer into a chronic disease. An advantage of the nanopiece platform is its safety and ability to penetrate into the tumor matrix and deliver the cargo to the tumor cells.”

“This has very strong translational value in developing treatment for chondrosarcoma, a lethal disease that currently does not have any effective treatment,” Chen says. “Dr. Terek devoted his whole career in developing treatment for this disease, and this may be the most promising potential treatment so far.

“The nanopieces delivery platform, which we developed at Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, is able to penetrate the tumor, reduce tumor growth, and prolong survival period in the mice model. Based on these promising pre-clinical data, the next step is to develop biologic therapeutics specifically targeting human chondrosarcoma.”

The National Institutes of Health supported the work.

Source: Brown University

The post ‘Nanopieces’ may deliver drugs to treat incurable bone cancer appeared first on Futurity.

‘Nanopieces’ may deliver drugs to treat incurable bone cancer published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[caveartfair]

When Timothy Leary Got Artists to Take LSD

Timothy Leary. Courtesy of the Timothy Leary Archives, the New York Public Library, and the Futique Trust.

Timothy Leary below the porch of the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, c. 1966. Courtesy of the Timothy Leary Archives, the New York Public Library, and the Futique Trust.

In the 1960s, a one-time Harvard researcher helped transform psychedelic substances into counterculture mainstays. Though even ancient cultures had used plants to produce hallucinogenic experiences, Timothy Leary gave psilocybin mushrooms and LSD a particular political and creative meaning. Ultimately, the drug-induced trips of the ’60s yielded a new aesthetic that still resounds throughout artistic practices today.

Leary, who’s associated with the iconic mantra “turn on, tune in, drop out,” was born in 1920 and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Ph.D. in psychology. He joined Harvard’s faculty in 1959, and a year later, at the age of 40, tried psilocybin mushrooms (“magic mushrooms”) for the first time. (Harvard eventually fired him.)

The middle-aged academic was so enthusiastic about the experience and its salubrious potential that he became, perhaps, psychedelic drugs’ greatest evangelist in the country, advocating their powers to aid “mind expansion.” As he infiltrated American bohemia, Leary helped establish our contemporary conception of creativity as a component of well-being, a quality to be unlocked by an open, receptive mind.

Experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who met Leary once, doesn’t quite agree. “Creativity, who cares about creativity?” he told Artsy recently. “Art was even in the caves 50,000 years ago. Creativity has been part of humanity since the beginning. Timothy Leary did not invent it or change it. It comes from heaven.”

From a Visit to Timothy Leary, Millbrook, 1965. Jonas Mekas Nina Johnson

From a Visit to Timothy Leary, Millbrook, 1965. Jonas Mekas Nina Johnson

In the summer of 1965, Mekas journeyed out to the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, a commune of sorts where Leary had moved with Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass) in 1963. The setting was idyllic: lush fields, a 64-room white mansion with elegant green turrets, and a trampoline for the children. Leary and Alpert often hosted weekend workshops for what their brochures called “external support for consciousness expansion.” In addition to Mekas, notable artists from a variety of cultural realms—jazz musician Charles Mingus, writer Allen Ginsberg, and writer Ken Kesey and his band of “Merry Pranksters”—visited throughout the 1960s.

Mekas recalled a brief walk he took with Leary, who offered to supervise him if he wanted to try LSD. “I said no, I do not want to take LSD, because my greatest drug experience was Rimbaud,” Mekas said, referring to the French poet. “Rimbaud sent me to inner spaces, and no matter what I try, nothing did what Rimbaud did to me.” They walked in silence back to the mansion, and Leary didn’t bring up LSD again. Instead of tripping, Mekas read and shot footage for the rest of his time in Millbrook.

Later, Mekas overlaid his quick, disjointed clips of the tranquil setting with audio from a real interview between a journalist and a sheriff who’d raided the mansion (assistant district attorney G. Gordon Liddy, who ultimately went to prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, instigated many raids on Millbrook throughout the 1960s). The sheriff describes the mansion as a den of iniquity, a humorous contrast to Mekas’s shots of dewy grass and happy kids. Through the ironic juxtaposition, the filmmaker underscored the tensions between the era’s authorities and counterculture activists.

Eventually, in 1966, Mekas did try LSD. Filmmaker and performance artist Barbara Rubin (who also famously introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground) supervised the trip. Mekas wasn’t enamored. He pointed out that psychedelics were really more popular on the West Coast, that their impact has been somewhat exaggerated in popular culture.

Timothy Leary with Rosemary Woodruff standing next to him during a communal dinner at Millbrook, New York, 1967. Courtesy of the Timothy Leary Archives, the New York Public Library, and the Futique Trust.

A new book of collected archival material and commentary, entitled The Timothy Leary Project: Inside the Great Counterculture Experiment, evidences that at least a couple Abstract Expressionist painters were more enthusiastic about acid than Mekas was. On December 31, 1960, Allen Ginsberg wrote to Leary, “[Willem de Kooning] said a month ago he wanted to try mescaline-type drugs. If you’re in NY while I’m gone, phone him.…I saw Franz Kline yesterday & explained the situation, he said he was ready to turn on any-time.” In January, Ginsberg followed up with specific instructions on how to reach the elusive de Kooning. “If you phone, ring twice, hang up & ring again,” he wrote.

Throughout the era, artist Adrian Piper dabbled and made colorful, fractured self-portraits. Yayoi Kusama created her psychedelic mirror rooms and surrounded herself with LSD users (whether she herself indulged is unclear). Directly inspired by Leary’s theories of art, she created a performance called Self-Obliteration (1967) in which she covered herself and other objects with polka dots. Her mirror rooms also manifest her interest in psychedelic perception.

In his 2011 book Are You Experienced?: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art, Ken Johnson argues that even Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) and Richard Serra’s massive steel sculptures are in debt to hallucinogenic aesthetics. Admittedly, LSD didn’t help all the artists who took it: Peter Doig used it in high school and literally dropped out.  

Leary, for his part, faced charges of drug possession beginning around 1965, getting arrested many times but escaping significant jail time (and lobbying publicly for support). He seemed unconcerned with the allegations, appearing in public to support the era’s radical, peace-promoting discourse. Leary got evicted from Millbrook in 1968 and simply grooved on. He attended one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous “Bed-Ins” in Montreal the next year, in which the couple stayed in bed, protesting America’s ongoing aggression in Vietnam. Alongside Ginsberg, Leary sang Lennon’s anti-war tune, “Give Peace a Chance.”

Left to right: Rosemary Leary (face not visible), Tommy Smothers (with back to camera), John Lennon, Timothy Leary, Yoko Ono, Judy Marcioni, and Paul Williams recording “Give Peace a Chance,” 1969.

Yet as the decade came to a close, major changes occurred nationwide, and in Leary’s personal life. Disco culture emerged, and the era-defining drug of choice shifted from LSD to cocaine. Leary finally went to jail for drug possession in 1970, but escaped from the institution with the help of a radical activist organization called the Weathermen (or the Weather Underground). He found refuge in Algeria with Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers.

American narcotics agents eventually recaptured Leary in Afghanistan, and Leary returned to prison in 1973. His plight amplified his fame, and Governor Jerry Brown pardoned him in 1976. But by 1980, Leary’s star had fallen enough to necessitate a new book entitled Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary?

If you’re wondering what happened in the following decades, Leary moved to Los Angeles, dabbled in politics, raised a family, and eventually—throughout the 1980s and ’90s—got into computers.

The psychedelic advocate died in 1996, but over the past few years, “microdosing”—taking small amounts of psychedelics—has made the substance popular again. A recent onslaught of articles, podcasts, and books about the benefits of psychedelics suggests that Leary was really onto something. Within the past few years, writers from Ayelet Waldman to Michael Pollan have published first-hand accounts of their beneficial experiences with the drugs.

Independence Ball: a U.S. festival poster, 1966. Wes Wilson Forum Auctions

Bob Dylan, 1966. Milton Glaser michael lisi / contemporary art

In Pollan’s new book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, he writes about how researcher James Fadiman even developed an optimal “creativity dose”: 100 micrograms of acid. (Caution to the inexperienced: A typical acid dose is between 50 and 150 micrograms, according to the major psychoactives website Erowid.org, while another outlet suggests 300 micrograms for confident users.) Silicon Valley, in particular, has embraced microdosing as an innovation-enhancer.

“The whole notion of cybernetics, the idea that material reality can be translated into bits of information, may also owe something to the experience of LSD, with its power to collapse matter into spirit,” Pollan writes. He suggests that it’s not just individuals, but entire occupational communities who can use psychedelics to think differently about their fields of study. (Leary himself manifested an interest in technology: In the 1980s, he developed about a dozen video games, one of which included graphics by Keith Haring and writings by William S. Burroughs.)

In a new memoir about his experiences with psychedelics, entitled Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, Tao Lin describes how this drug-induced creativity works on an internal level. He writes, “Psychedelics I would immediately rate 10 on a 1–10 scale for boredom relief.…They seem to catalyze the imagination through stimulation…but also at least two other ways, bringing in emotion and the unconscious.” He distinguishes psychedelics from drugs and promotes the compassionate feelings and mystical experiences generated by the former. Even if Lin doesn’t discuss him directly, Leary’s spirit pervades the book.

Untitled, 2003. Fred Tomaselli James Cohan

For contemporary artists, LSD still offers creative possibilities. Before giving it up in 1980, painter Fred Tomaselli was known to indulge. “LSD had been a formative influence on how I saw the world,” he once told the Brooklyn Rail. “LSD has colonized part of my DNA and I’m trying to put that into my work.” And cartoonist R. Crumb credits acid trips with the style he maintains today: He’s said that recurring acid visions continue to inspire him.

As for the younger generation, Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe once developed an entire immersive project, “Bright White Underground,” creating a kind of LSD “safe house” as they infiltrated and redecorated Los Angeles’s modernist Buck House.

But psychedelics may have had the greatest effect on graphic design, advertising, and paper-based art. Wes Wilson and Milton Glaser, for example, created posters, logos, and campaigns filled with bright colors that appeared to vibrate or swirl (Wilson, at least, used acid himself). The style owes much to the hallucinatory visions offered exclusively by psychedelics—these experiences, ultimately, gave hipness its own enduring visual language.

from Artsy News

[digthe60s]

1967

The continued presence of American troops increased further and a total of 475,000 were serving in Vietnam. The peace rallies were multiplying as the number of protesters against the war increased. In the middle east, Israel also went to war with Syria, Egypt and Jordan in the six-day war, and when it was over Israel controlled and occupied a lot more territory than before the war. In the summer, cities throughout America exploded in rioting and looting, the worst being in Detroit on July 23, where 7,000 national guards were bought in to restore law and order on the streets. In England, a new type of model became a fashion sensation by the name of Twiggy, and miniskirts continued to get shorter and even more popular. Also during this year, new discotheques and singles bars appeared across cities around the world, and the Beatles continued to reign supreme with the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 1967 was coined the “Summer of Love” when young teenagers got friendly, smoked pot and grooved to the music of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds. The movie industry moved with the times and produced movies that would appeal to this younger audience, including The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Cool Hand Luke. TV shows included The Fugitive and The Monkees, and color television sets became popular as the price came down and more programs were made in color.

Major events

• Arab forces attack Israel, beginning the Yom Kippur War.

• Ariel-3, the first all-British made satellite, was launched into an orbit around the Earth during May. The satellite was launched with the help of NASA from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and it carried five experiments from British universities. The experiments measured atmospheric noise, high altitude oxygen levels, low frequency radiation, medium frequency waves, and electron density and temperature. After its launch it orbited the Earth every 95 minutes and relayed data back to the United Kingdom until 1970, when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere.

• The first successful human-to-human heart transplant takes place in December. Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the operation on the 53-year-old patient Louis Washkansky. The operation took place at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The transplant was successful and Washkansky’s body did not reject the organ, although he did die just 18 days later due to double pneumonia brought on by the immunosuppressive drugs that he had to take. After the success, Barnard continued to perform successful heart transplants with the survival times of patients increasing gradually as technology advanced.

• The arguments in the Loving v. Virginia case were argued at the U.S. Supreme Court in April. The case centered on Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, an interracial couple from Virginia that got married in Washington, D.C., in the late 1950s. When they went back to Virginia they were charged with breaking the state’s law which banned interracial marriage and were jailed. The Lovings sued the state of Virginia and argued that the ban violated the Fourteenth Amendment and was unconstitutional. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that state bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional and that they were solely based on racial discrimination. The decision made interracial marriage legal throughout the United States.

• The publication of Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed puts pressure on the government and the automobile industry to improve safety in cars.

• Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Pirate radio stations become illegal.

• On March 18, the SS Torrey Canyon supertanker runs aground off the South of England, causing a large oil spill and ecological disaster. The tanker leaked over 100,000 tons of crude oil into the sea. The oil reached the coasts of the Channel Islands and France, and the oil slick spanned about 270 square miles. The spill was the worst in history at that time and prompted tighter international regulations for ships.

• NASA launches the Lunar Orbiter 3 spacecraft.

• Gibraltar holds referendum on staying with Britain or joining Spain.

• The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, one of rock’s most acclaimed albums.

• The Expo 67 begins during April in Montreal, Canada.

• The town of Winneconne in the state of Wisconsin declares its sovereignty in July.

• The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is released.

• Dr. James H. Bedford became the first person to be cryonically preserved after his death in January. Bedford, a 73-year-old psychology professor who died of kidney cancer, asked to be preserved with the hope that he could be revived in the future. He was frozen within hours of his death by the Cryonics Society of California. Robert Prehoda, Dr. Dante Brunol, Robert Nelson, and Dr. Renault Able all took part in the process, during which Bedford’s body was injected with chemicals meant to help preserve him better in cold temperatures, stored in a “cryocapsule” and kept in a bath of liquid nitrogen at -196º C. He has remained at the Alcor Life Preservation Foundation since 1982, after being transferred to several different facilities.

• A series of tornadoes strike the Chicago area, killing more than 60 people and creating millions of dollars worth of damage.

• The 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which deals with succession to the Presidency, is ratified.

• Teachers go on strike throughout the U.S., demanding pay increases to keep pace with inflation.

• Cassius Clay is stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing induction into the U.S. Army.

• The RMS Queen Elizabeth II is launched by Cunard.

• Francis Chichester arrives back in Plymouth, after sailing round the world single-handed.

• President Lyndon B. Johnson asks for a 6% increase on taxes to support the Vietnam War.

• The Public Broadcasting Act establishes the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

• Inflation costs of living range from 1.8% to 5.8%.

• Biafra proclaims its independence from Nigeria.

• Race riots break out in a number of cities in the U.S., including Cleveland, Newark, and Detroit.

• United Kingdom and Ireland apply officially for EEC membership.

• Typhoon Emma leaves 140,000 homeless and more than 300 dead.

• The People’s Republic of China tests its first hydrogen bomb.

• Britain devalues the pound by lowering the exchange rate from $2.80 to $2.40.

• The British Road Safety Act, which allows for the use of the “breathalyser” to detect motorists over the legal limit of alcohol, goes into effect.

• 40,000 anti-Vietnam war protesters fill the Kezar Stadium in San Fransisco, California.

• U.S. Navy pilot John McCain is shot down in his A-4 over North Vietnam and spends 5 ½ years in prison.

• A soccer riot in Sivas, Turkey, kills 41 people.

• The Monterey International Pop Festival in California features ‘60s music icons including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, The Steve Miller Band, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Grateful Dead.

• Otis Reading dies in a plane crash, aged 26.

• Barbra Streisand performs on Central Park before an audience of 135,000 people.

• The Carrol Shelby Mustang GT-500 Fastback is released.

• The musical Hair opens off-Broadway.

Top 10 highest-grossing films in the U.S.

1. The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols)

2. The Jungle Book (dir. Wolfgang Reitherman)

3. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (dir. Stanley Kramer)

4. Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn)

5. The Dirty Dozen (dir. Robert Aldrich)

6. Valley of the Dolls (dir. Mark Robson)

7. You Only Live Twice (dir. Lewis Gilbert)

8. To Sir, with Love (dir. James Clavell)

9. The Born Losers (dir. T. C. Frank)

10. Thoroughly Modern Millie (dir. George Roy Hill)

Billboard’s number-one music albums (in chronological order)

1. “The Monkees” by The Monkees

2. “More of The Monkees” by The Monkees

3. “Sounds Like…” Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

4. “Headquarters” by The Monkees

5. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles

6. “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry

7. “Diana Ross & the Supremes: Greatest Hits” by The Supremes

8. “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.” by The Monkees

Source: [x]

[themindfulword]

ON TURNING 70: A reverie at dawn

A 1950 Chevy

A 1950 Chevy, similar to the one owned by the author's family

The family's early '50s apartment building in the central city. Across the alley, long gone, was the Burger Bar mentioned. I remember our 1950 Chevrolet: how the leather seats smelled, and how our skin stuck to them on a hot summer day when we were going on an outing, loading the car in front of the Burger Bar across the alley from the apartment building where we lived in the bowels of St. Louis. Sort of an image of postwar America … that and maybe cowboy shows on TV. I moved on to primary school after we moved to the suburbs, and there, my idyllic life was shattered one day by a cataclysmic psychic event.

The alley—the scene of lots of childhood play—behind the house in the inner suburbs, to which the author's family moved in 1953. I was in my room one Saturday, trying on a new pair of blue jeans Mother had left for me. As I admired my body in the full-length mirror on one of the doors, I happened to notice that the other door, across the room, was cracked open and a pair of eyes were staring at me. That seconds-long glance by my mother at a vulnerable moment seemed to light me on fire! When I came to myself, my body felt like a burned-out, crashed airplane. A seven year-old boy, I sat there feeling I could never leave the room again: not for dinner, school or anything. I did leave, of course, but carrying a deep burden of shame that had to wait 20 years for release. I finally went down to dinner awhile after being called, but only after changing my pants. I became, for the next two decades, “the Khaki kid,” refusing to wear blue jeans and unable to even utter those words. Much of my vulnerability had fled to exile somewhere deep inside. To compensate, I developed a parent-and-teacher-pleasing persona. I went through the rest of childhood with that "in-house elder brother" to deflect frightening input and protect my vulnerable side.

The "habit"

The people around me in my world must have noticed something was going on with me, especially when, not long after that, I erupted in a system of severe nervous tics—repeatedly raising my shoulders, jerking my head, lifting my arms and quickly turning my palms up and down several times in succession. I’m not entirely sure, even now, how to read this behaviour. It may have been that I wanted to hit someone. The only response it ever drew was the annoyed admonition, “Don’t do your habit!” Everyone had their hands full of their own issues, I imagine, and didn’t have the capacity to look very closely at me. Eventually, the twitches more or less went underground. Even today, though, long after the psychological aspect of my conflict has been resolved and the shame lifted, I still sometimes feel the physical impressions of the tic, like a ghost working at my muscles. I was able to function with apparent normality through elementary school, where I was first encouraged as a writer by my sixth-grade teacher; junior high, where I had an exhilarating taste of First Love; high school, and briefly being a “big man on campus” (and very much “believing in my publicity”); and college, where I became radicalized politically after an incident of manhandling by campus security. At age 21 I took LSD and—rather predictably, I think, because of the unfaced trauma I carried from childhood—things began to unravel. Eventually, I suffered a nervous breakdown, mitigated after a year by anti-depressant pills, which were relatively unknown then.

Finally, healing

Meher Baba, as he appeared in the late 1920s All of this somehow got me to my “appointment” for a genuine Awakening. One day in January 1971, in the words of the songwriter Ira Gershwin, “Love walked right in.” As I questioned an old friend about his belief in Meher Baba, his Spiritual Guide, a transcendental Love began flowing out of a photo of Baba on the wall, and completely enveloped me and the entire world. This experience began the healing period of my life. However, healing, too, unfolded in stages. Five years after my Baba experience, I suffered another breakdown that was possibly even more devastating than the first. This one seemed to be generated by pressure to bring my old wounds to the surface—pressure I tried hard to resist. Through a series of events that seemed to bear a clear divine stamp, I found myself, six months later, sitting in a room across from Ram Dass (AKA Richard Alpert), hearing him ask me the question, “What are you thinking about?”

A recent photo of Ram Dass at his home on the island of Maui In response, I poured out all the shaming desires, some of which seem to have resulted from my early trauma, that I’d never been able to tell anyone about. Each time I was rewarded by, “You’re beautiful!” or “I love you!” from the dear man sitting near me, who seemed uniquely suited to lead such a troubled soul through the maze of his sexual shame and out the other side.

A brief disclaimer

A 1992 painting by the author, depicting recovery from the trauma described in the article. A protective goddess safeguards the figure's space. I’ve told these stories elsewhere in some detail, and mention them here only in passing, as landmarks on this day of my turning 70, an age I never thought I’d reach. Looking back now, I can see the unfolding and spreading in myself through various stages of life, like the slow growth of a great tree after its first sprouting, way back then after the Second World War. It hasn’t been an easy road, even after such Blessed healing connections. Some periods were marked by “infestations” of problems that led to stunting; but then, other cycles with ample rain, sun and nutrition, so to speak, led to more luxurious branches, representing creative Inspiration and the ability to work and love—the two elements Sigmund Freud spoke of as the hallmarks of maturity.

Early morning peace

And here I sit, surveying all of this in an early morning of quiet peace on my 70th birthday. This peace remains unaltered by the current shenanigans in my country’s political sphere. I love to quote Kierkegaard’s witty, pithy maxim: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Truly, there is no clue what’s coming, as we “live forwards.” As of now, though, I’m still spending 30 hours a week doing music and stories and bubbles and companionship with small children, working in a preschool aftercare program. I do “Food Rescue” deliveries for White Pony Express twice a week. My wife Barbara and I share a blessed life in a lovely home. I write and paint and play music on a regular basis. It seems about as good as it gets in this realm of Impermanence. Once again, this morning, Barbara and I spoke of our amazing good fortune.

The image of aging

I’ve been realizing lately that I have no image of a septuagenarian in our society. To the child I was, such a one is just an old person—retired, for the most part. But I’m here, going strong. In fact, sitting here in the quiet, without a mirror to see my white hair, I could be the 20-year-old I once was. In daily activity, I’m really only limited by a mild back injury I got digging a ��special” hole to surprise my preschoolers several years ago in the sandbox. The mystery, the miracle of life continues to unfold. A person does his or her best to “witness” to the wonder of it all, but in the end, it’s like the Incredible String Band sang, way back in the '60s: “Whatever you think, it’s more than that, more than that...”

«RELATED READ» IT DIDN’T START WITH YOU: How a traumatic family history can both hurt and heal us» image 2: Wikimedia Commons; image 5: Wikimedia Commons; image 6: ramdass.org; image 8: 5DWallpaper.com; all other images by Max Reif Read the full article

[anthonycharlestabone]

Having trouble viewing? View in Browser Monday, October 23, 2017 TOP OF THE MORNING Welcome to Fox News First. Not signed up yet? Click here.   Developing now, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017: Obama-era Russia uranium deal investigation widens Trump warns House Republicans of midterm trouble if they don't pass tax reform Bernie Sanders seeking Senate reelection as independent, feeding 2020 buzz North Korea tension: Air Force reportedly preparing to put B-52 bombers on alert Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to be sentenced after pleading guilty to desertion   THE LEAD STORY: The House Oversight committee has started investigating an Obama-era deal in which a Russian-backed company bought a uranium firm with mines in the U.S. ... The uranium agreement was reached while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Some investors in the Russian-backed company, Uranium One, had relationships with former President Bill Clinton and donated to the Clinton Foundation. When asked on "Fox News Sunday" if a criminal investigation would be coming, Rep. Ron DeSantis, a member of the House Oversight Committee, responded: "It could be criminal." He cited statutes of limitations that may limit prosecutions of any crimes that may arise from the 2010 deal. From Fox News Opinion: Media won't touch Russian uranium story tied to Hillary Gregg Jarrett: The Clinton cover-up, brought to you by the same guys who are investigating Trump Judge Jeanine: Obama and Clintons 'sold us out' with Russia uranium 'racketeering operation' TRUMP TO HOUSE GOP - PASS TAX REFORM OR PAY THE PRICE: President Trump has warned House Republicans that voters will not be kind to them if they stand in the way of his push for broad tax reform ... In a conference call Sunday that included Vice President Pence, Trump told the House GOP to approve the Senate's version of the budget framework, which was narrowly passed Thursday night, to pave the route for tax reform. Sources familiar with the phone call told Fox News that Trump warned of big trouble for House Republicans in the approaching midterms if they fail to advance tax reform. House Speaker Paul Ryan on the call told Republicans he hopes to pass a revised version of the Senate bill this week. 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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: How Renaissance Painting Smoldered with a Little Known Hallucinogen

Follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (c. 1550/1575), oil on panel, Samuel H. Kress collection

A fungal infection known as ergotism influenced Northern Renaissance painting to an extent that a majority of art institutions have yet to grapple with. During the Renaissance ergotism was colloquially known as St. Anthony’s Fire, named for the third-century desert Father who had hallucinatory bouts with the devil.

In 1938 the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally synthesized the psychedelic drug LSD-25 for the first time from ergot fungi — the same fungus that causes the disease ergotism — while researching pharmaceuticals for postpartum bleeding. Some of the symptoms of ergotism closely resemble the effects of LSD, which makes sense given that the same or similar alkaloids are present in both the fungus that causes illness and the drug. Looking at depictions of St. Anthony in the paintings of Renaissance masters, the influence of the disease on the history of art starts to become clear.

During the time of the Renaissance, ergotism was a phantasmagoric event with an onset that was difficult to distinguish from the bubonic plague: it came on first as nausea and insomnia, then developed into sensations of being engulfed in flames while hallucinating over several days, and often ended with the amputation of one or more limbs due to gangrene, or ended in death. In some locations, the symptoms associated with ergotism were considered to be the first step towards hell.

Ergot growing on rye (image courtesy Wikimedia commons)

The illness is contracted by ingesting ergot fungus, which appears on cereal grains when the growing conditions are right — most commonly on rye. The last known severe outbreak occurred in the French village of Pont-Saint-Espirit in 1951. The outbreak was documented in the British Medical Journal, which describes symptoms such as nausea, depression, agitation, insomnia, a delirium that includes feelings of self-accusation or mysticism, and hallucinations that commonly include animals and fire. A non-fiction book about the 1951 outbreak, written by American author John G. Fuller, titled, The Day of Saint Anthony’s Fire, describes specific ergot-related psychotic episodes. For example, there is the afflicted man who thought he was an airplane and jumped out the asylum’s second floor window with outstretched arms expecting to fly, telescoped both his legs upon landing, and then ran 50 meters at full speed on shattered bones before being wrestled to the ground by eight other men.  All in all, the accounts of symptoms from the 1951 outbreak resemble both acid causality tales hyperbolized as anti-drug propaganda, and descriptions from the LSD how-to manual coauthored by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, titled The Psychedelic Experience.

Some art historians, such as Bosch scholar Laurinda S. Dixon, have proffered for decades that the symptoms of ergotism influenced painters like Jheronimus (aka Hieronymus) Bosch and Matthias Grünewald. In looking further at depictions of Saint Anthony — from medieval folk art, a plethora of Renaissance work, to a series of paintings by surrealist artists, such as Max Ernst’s 1945, “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” — a pattern begins to develop in which a mimesis of visual hallucinations associated with ergotism is clearly present. For instance, Gustave Flaubert’s novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony, contains not only hallucinatory imagery congruent with the effects of ergot alkaloids, but also contains in the opening passage of the novel a clear symbol of a known cause of ergot poisoning: a description of a loaf of black bread inside the hermit saint’s cabin.

The Isenheim altarpiece closed (image courtesy Wikimedia commons)

So why is St. Anthony associated with ergot? The devout will often look towards the legend of Anthony’s temptations when faced with mental or emotional anguish. This is because the devil is said to have tempted Anthony with mirages of jewels, and dressed up as seductive women to deter the hermit from his asceticism. As the devil was tormenting Anthony, the saint was said to be wandering through the Egyptian wilderness. The events of Anthony’s story as recounted by his original hagiographer, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, also read as hallucinatory, with a blend of imagery, ecstasy and madness. From Life of Saint Anthony by St. Athanasius:

For when they cannot deceive the heart openly with foul pleasures they approach in different guise, and thenceforth shaping displays they attempt to strike fear, changing their shapes, taking the forms of women, wild beasts, creeping things, gigantic bodies, and troops of soldiers. But not even then need ye fear their deceitful displays. For they are nothing and quickly disappear, especially if a man fortify himself beforehand.

The notion that the harmful hallucinations will cease if the subject is fortified beforehand, is a reoccurring theme not only in Life of Saint Anthony, but also in the instructions for tripping on LSD given in The Psychedelic Experience: 

At this time you may see visions of mating couples. You are convinced that an orgy is about to take place. Desire and anticipation seize you, You wonder what sexual performance is expected of you. When these visions occur, Remember to withhold yourself from action or attachment. Humbly exercise your faith. Float with the stream. Trust the process with great fervency. Meditation and trust in the unity of life are the keys.

This simple comparison between the texts of a third-century hermit and the megalomaniacal ‘60s drop-out prototype, Timothy Leary, is not enough to clearly demonstrate a correlation between Anthony and psychedelia. What this investigation does make clear is why the hagiography became important to those in the 17th century suffering from symptoms similar to LSD effects in the time before modern medicine first discovered the cause of ergotism.

Aside from the instructions for how to cope with hallucinations, Athanasius’s text also uses imagery that appeared in Renaissance painting, and finds a kinship with symptoms of ergot as described in the British Medical Journal and The Day of St. Anthony’s Fire. According to John G. Fuller, Zoopsie — from the French word meaning hallucinatory visions of animals — was rampant among the afflicted in Pont-Saint-Espirit, who experienced tormenting visions of serpents, tigers, giant spiders, etc. Anthony was tormented by similar visions over and over again, according to St. Athanasius:

the demons as if breaking the four walls of the dwelling seemed to enter through them, coming in the likeness of beasts and creeping things. And the place was on a sudden filled with the forms of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves…”

The Isenheim altarpiece outer wings opened (image courtesy Wikimedia commons)

Bosch provides the most fertile ground for art lovers wanting to believe that hallucinogenic fungi may have a significant place in art history. This is partially because the painter has a special connection to Anthony, depicting the saint over twenty times throughout his life — one of his most famous paintings being the Anthony triptych. In the town where Bosch grew up, there was a church dedicated to the saint, which the artist almost certainly attended with his family when he was young. The painter lived at a time when knowledge of ergotism would have been near its peak before the cause of the disease was discovered. By the early 16th century (he died in 1516), there would have been at least forty major outbreaks of St. Anthony’s Fire across Northern Europe since the 9th century, with one 1418 outbreak in Paris killing as many as 50,000 by some estimates.

Laurinda S. Dixon presents some of the most convincing evidence to date that Bosch’s imagery was directly influenced by Saint Anthony’s Fire. In a (1984) essay titled “Bosch’s St. Anthony Triptych — An Apothecary’s Apotheosis,” the author finds a common ingredient in medieval medicine used to treat ergot — mandrake root — and the distillation furnaces used to make that medicine. Examining the Bosch painting with the use of high resolution photos available on boschproject.org, Dixon argues that the bulbous buildings, often depicted with a stream of smoke coming out of the top, are nearly identical to the shapes found in contemporaneous schematics of apothecary furnaces.

Other notable imagery in the Anthony Triptych includes the fire raging in the background — fire is found in many Bosch paintings, and is common in other painters’ depictions of Saint Anthony as well. A pair of magi in the center panel are serving musicians a concoction made from berries and herbs — one of the magi with wide-eyes and perhaps intentionally dilated pupils. Anthony is depicted in all three panels, recognized in Bosch paintings by his blue robe and a tau cross either painted on the robe or dangling as jewelry. It’s amusing that in the center panel, Anthony has the look of a strung-out Dead Head at the end of two-day acid trip, with his raised index and middle finger looking simultaneously like a Christian hand gesture and a hippie peace sign. Just below the Grateful Dead Anthony in the center panel, there is another symbol of ergotism — an amputated foot clearly laid on a rag.

Moving on from Bosch, there are scores of paintings that contain depictions of Anthony with many of the same symbols that imply ergotism. A painting attributed to a follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows Anthony in his hermit cabin, as well as flying through the sky on winged beasts. There is a common rumor that ergot alkaloids cause those under their influence to believe they can fly, both in accounts of the disease and in anti-drug propaganda. Again, as in Bosch’s triptych, we see the apothecary furnace on the left side of the painting, this time with a scared looking face peaking out the top — and of course the two fires raging in the distance.

Flemish Painter Jan Mandijn’s vision of Anthony contains a similar set of ergot indicia:  apothecary tools, fire, the saint flying through the air, gangrene. Add to this an odd grass bursting through the roof of the hermit’s cabin, with dark tips that look similar to images of the fungus growing on rye.

Jan Mandijn, “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” (circa 1550) oil on panel, height: 61.5 cm (24.2 in). Width: 83.5 cm (32.9 in). (image courtesy Wikimedia commons)

Moving from the Flemish region to what was then Western Germany, sculpture and woodworker Nikolaus Hagenauer (aka Nikolaus von Hagenau) is surrounded by perhaps the most solid historical evidence that Anthony was a symbol of ergot poisoning for Northern Renaissance artists. Hagenauer’s sculpture of Anthony, carved with virtuosic dexterity in the round from a walnut log, displays subject matter that is congruent with the earliest legends of Anthony — the saint struggling with a single demon underfoot. However, when the artist’s masterwork is taken into consideration — the Isenheim altarpiece which Hagenauer was commissioned to create with painter Mathias Grünewald — the ergot narrative takes flight.

Around the year 1070 C.E., Saint Anthony’s purported remains were moved to La-Motte-Saint-Didier, a commune in southeastern France. The relics of the saint were said to have healing properties that could cure Saint Anthony’s Fire, and in 1095 the Hospital of the Brothers of Anthony was founded with the primary objective of treating those afflicted with ergot poisoning. Four centuries later, Grünewald and Hagenauer were commissioned to paint an altarpiece in nearby Isenheim for a monastery run by the Brothers of Anthony.

The Isenheim altarpiece is in an unusual position for a work of art, in that it was made with the direct intention of soothing physical ailments, as well as symptoms of psychosis. Each of the altarpiece’s nine paintings and its woodcarvings relate to an element of recovery from the symptoms of ergotism. Art historian Horst Ziermann wrote that “it is conceivable that miraculous cures or the relief of symptoms did, in fact, occur at the alter.” Critic David Levi Strauss labeled the work “therapeutic realism.” According to Ziermann, the afflicted would recite prayers in front of the altarpiece that would have been similar to the following: “Anthony, venerable Shepherd, who renders holy those who undergo horrible torments, who suffer the greatest maladies, who burn with hellfire: oh merciful Father, pray to God for us.”

The Isenheim altarpiece inner wings opened (image courtesy Wikimedia commons)

In its original setting the altarpiece would have been illuminated by candles or sunlight through stained glass windows. Unfolding theatrically in three distinct sets of paintings, the wooden frame connected with hinges, each of the three views like an act in a play — or like the three bardos of Timothy Leary’s manual. The monastery where the altarpiece was kept was a place of concentrated prayer for the suffering. The monks would have had little means to treat patients, aside maybe from offering a place to lie that was more comfortable than the street, some warm food, and ointments to sooth the burning of open wounds. The primary tool for healing from ergot related ailments would have been prayer, and relief from the worries of facing hell in the afterlife was redemption through Christ — all which are reflected in the altarpiece.

The alternating horror and mystical ecstasy found between the second and third views of the altarpiece align with accounts of ergot-related mania and psychic anguish, as they do with descriptions found in The Psychedelic

Nikolaus von Hagenau, “Untitled” (ca. 1500) made in Strasbourg, Alsace, present-day France; walnut; 44 1/4 × 17 1/4 × 10 3/4 in., 66 lb. (112.4 × 43.8 × 27.3 cm) (courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Experience. The vivacious colors in the second panel recall descriptions of the most ecstatic of those poisoned in Pont-Saint-Espirit, while also sharing elements of the brighter elements of Bosch. The third view returns to Anthony, who is as tormented as ever in the right wing. Most telling is the gangrenous person looking up at the besieged saint from below — his green skin covered in boils that ooze puss and blood, and his belly bloated due to starvation.

The counterculture use of ergot alkaloids proved to be a threat to the dominant mainstream US culture of the 1950s, causing their prohibition. Could the same have happened during the first half of the second millennium, in respect to Christian culture and ergot? Albert Hofmann contributed to an essay titled “The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries,” which proposes that ergot alkaloids may have been present during the ancient Greek religious festival known as the Eleusinian mysteries.

Whether appearing as a drug or disease, the visual language of the Northern Renaissance was clearly influenced by the ergot fungus. Further research into this historical intersection will offer a better understanding of the way artists have responded to forces of temptation and torment with visual representation and might do so in the present day.

The post How Renaissance Painting Smoldered with a Little Known Hallucinogen appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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