reproduction happens

A sunny day this week Donna and I took a walk around Wildwing Lake. On the island heronry there were many very large and demanding young great blue herons clacking their beaks loudly, asking their parents for food. if you click on the image, it gets very large and you can see a heron on the tree top right in the center. The heronry is gradually being taken over by egrets, who were in a different, earlier stage of courtship, with the males fanning out their showy tail feathers in a white spray and others flying past with twigs in their mouths, presenting them to the females to build new nests high in the trees.

And there were several swans to be seen, one with five cygnets, all very close to the boardwalk out past the heronry.



And then, at the edge of the trail not very far from the parking lot, another bird family was foraging. i've never seen a sandhill crane chick before.



We took Iris and Ivy to our county vet for worming (they get them from rodents and birds they hunt and eat) and there were three little chestnut foals in the pasture.

The bluebirds are nesting in one box here; sparrows in the other, but i cleaned out the latter nest before eggs were laid. There are so many unfamiliar bird calls; "warblers migrating through," says Dan, "and a warbling vireo. Easy to hear but you'll never see it." Orioles calling and streaking orange as they fly over the pond.

In the pond, two big snapping turtles were floating in the water side-by-side, their shells touching, enjoying a moment of post-coital bliss. A little later we watched while the female (she's a little smaller) snapped out her long neck in a flash and grabbed a careless goldfish. There are lots more goldfish, ranging from xs to xxxl, more than we could have imagined. And plenty of frogs and tadpoles at different stages.

So on it goes. More soon.

aristotle, remember sappho

And now for something completely different. This is the paper I wrote for the philosophy class I took this spring at Washtenaw Community College. Several people have asked to see it, so here it is. I won't be hurt if you skip this one.

Philosophy 205: Ethics
Professor Corinne Painter
April 24, 2008


Aristotle, Remember Sappho: Friendship and Morals
in Ancient Greece and 21st-century America

Julia Henshaw


In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle devotes books VII and IX to an eloquent and extensive discussion of friendship. For him, friendship is an important ingredient in the essential and ultimately desirable state of happiness, which flows from the virtuous actions in life. The contemporary field of feminist ethics (and its subset of lesbian ethics) has explored friendship as a significant characteristic of women’s relationships, leading to changes in a woman’s moral understanding and actions. It seems quite that modern feminists have found a kinship of philosophical ideas with Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, as he might be considered the quintessential philosopher of the heteropatriarchy, writing in his Politics that women are weak creatures, to be ruled by their fathers and husbands, suitable only for bearing sons. Nevertheless, the appeal of Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics is its flexibility and emotional consideration of others, in contrast to the impartial abstract ethical principles espoused by the canonical Western male philosophers (e.g., Kant and Mill) who have dominated the discourse over the centuries.
In this paper, I will consider Aristotle’s concept of friendship as it relates to the establishment of a virtuous character for an individual (always a person of his class, an elite, male citizen of Athens), thereby leading to the ultimate goal of happiness throughout a man’s life. In contrast, as I will show, the contemporary feminist position sees one aspect of friendship as a valuable extension of moral agency and moral growth, in support of the feminist agenda of change, which hopes to overturn the lingering sexist prejudices of western society. Inspired by Sappho’s community of young women on the island of Lesbos, lesbian ethicists such as Marilyn Frye go further, advocating a separation of women from men as the only way true equality can be achieved. For if the rules of dogmatic ethical systems are those imposed by a dominant group on a subordinate class, in an ideal society formed by equal women of good will, there would be no need for rules as such.
Contemporary feminist virtue ethicists certainly take a different approach to friendship than the traditional Aristotelian one, broadening the understanding of friendship and its relation to morality. In order to establish this, I will briefly outline the principal ideas of the classical philosopher and then discuss a few of the main tenets of feminist philosophy, especially regarding the importance of friendships among women. On the basis of my consideration, I shall maintain that the contemporary approach to and understanding of virtue ethics is far more suitable to the conditions of the modern, more or less liberal and diverse society in which we live, men and women alike.


Aristotle on Friendship
As is well known, Aristotle wrote extensively on the importance of friendship to happiness (eudaimonia is the Greek word, which is sometimes translated as “flourishing,” rather than “happiness.” In any case, this is a lifelong project, not a fleeting sense of pleasure or enjoyment). He writes, “It is necessary for the happy person to have friends” (NE 1169b 23) and “Life is difficult for one who is alone” (1170a 5). He differentiated between three kinds of friendship, those of utility (such as colleagues in business affairs), those of pleasure (such as persons sharing in agreeable activities such as sports and romantic liaisons), and most importantly, those based on the outstanding good character of a friend (1156a-1156b). It is of these “true” friends that he writes extensively. He comments that these mutually beneficial friendships will be formed by likeminded equals (1159b 3-7), will be lasting, and cannot be sustained if too great in number, as an abundance of time must be spent in a friend’s company: “It is not possible for people to know one another until they use up the proverbial amount of salt together (1156b 26-29). Given the culture of Athens in the 4th century B.C.E., it goes without saying that these gratifying friendships will only be formed between male citizens; friendships with foreigners, women, or slaves could at best be characterized as “imperfect” friendships. In the “perfect” or “virtuous” friendships enjoyed between virtuous equals, a man identifies closely with his friend, loving him as he loves himself, and wishes to act virtuously to the benefit of the other. This also accrues benefits for himself, as he acts benevolently and appropriately, and thus practices such virtues as generosity and courage . Unlike our own, Aristotle’s society highly valued homosexual relationships between mature men and adolescent boys, but these would not have been equals in societal standing. He does take the trouble to comment that “when the bloom of youth fades,” lovers may remain friends, if they have “become fond of each other’s characters” (1157a 11-12). (Since any close relationships between women were hardly significant for men in the ancient world, perhaps that allowed lesbian liaisons to go unnoticed. Or perhaps they might have been considered only less valued “friendships of pleasure,” certainly not friendships of virtuous equals.)
In a remarkable passage that reveals a significant attitude among male friendships that seems familiar today, Aristotle wrote, “Someone of a manly nature…is reluctant to make his friend share [pain]…in general he does not permit others to express grief with him because he himself is not apt to express grief. But girlish women and womanish men enjoy having people lament with them…”(1171b). Thus it seems that these masculine friendships will be satisfying, intimate, and of mutual benefit only when life is going well for both parties. Perhaps, given their privileged position in ancient society, most things did go well for Aristotle and his cohort most of the time, but it is imaginable that occasionally a man might feel pain and wish to express grief to a sympathetic friend. But such an emotion lies clearly in the denigrated province of women, the weaker sex, and effeminate men. By excluding the sharing of expression of painful events, a man limits the genuine intimate understanding of a significant part of his friend’s life.
It is a commonplace to observe that women form close friendships more easily than men, and American women typically have a larger circle of intimate friends with whom they can share both their joys and sorrows than contemporary men enjoy (e.g., Carol Gilligan, p. 154, quoting Daniel Levinson, The Seasons of a Man’s Life.) For example, my friend Joe says that when his marriage ended, his wife had a large circle of friends to support her, when he had almost nowhere to turn to find a sympathetic person to understand and share his grief.

Feminist Friendships
“It is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex…yet it is the masculine values that prevail.” Virginia Woolf, 1929
In contrast to the classical masculine understanding of friendship and its proper role in our lives, women throughout the ages have typically formed networks of intimate women friends and family members. In contemporary feminist thought these friendships bring a rich variety of benefits to one another and to society. The connections between women are often formed by their virtuous feelings of responsibility and care for others in their communities, which are based on emotional responses to the predicaments as well as the accomplishments and pleasures of their friends. Women, at least since the time of Aristotle and surely before, have not been afraid to share difficulties, pain, and grief with their friends. Importantly, this level of trust allows them to enjoy a rich intimate relationship based on sharing the full range of life experiences, including much morally valuable experience.
While there are many ways in which feminists approach the subject of friendship between women, I wish to focus on the aspects of moral agency that lead to furthering the values of the feminist agenda of change for equal opportunities in the contemporary world (Marilyn Friedman, pp. 195-203). As girls and young women are taught our first lessons in values and morality from our family and later from our schools, these come from the broader society that still retains abundant evidence of the millennia of insidious sexism that has permeated western society. But as times and customs have changed so drastically in the post-modern world and the extended family has become more fragmented, women have placed an even greater emphasis on the need for support from their close friends. Women are willing to share a whole range of their thoughts, emotions, experiences, hopes and fears with their friends. The sense of mutual trust that arises from a reciprocal friendship allows an individual woman to be exposed to a wider range of life’s experiences than her own, and she may well find that her own sense of morality is changed and expanded.
For example, while it is possible to find other ways of being in the world though literature both fiction and nonfiction, movies, and television, when friend A sees her friend B living and acting in the real world, and when friend B is fully available to reciprocate, sharing her experiences and values that may differ from those learned in her family and society, and frankly answer questions about her life, this can result in a change in friend A’s own morality (Marilyn Friedman 201-02).
This, I would submit, differs from Aristotle’s relatively comfortable and rather cozy description of friendship between men, who seem to have had no interest in rocking the boat and changing values in the men’s club. Why would the privileged citizens controlling Athenian society ever wish to do so? But contemporary thinking women, still a subjugated class, wish to have the same rights and privileges as men, and in order to do so, must act to bring about societal change.

If you are squeamish

Don’t prod the
beach rubble.

Sappho, fragment 84 (ca. 600 BCE)


On a personal note, here is an example of how a friendship opened the possibility of significant new values for me. In 1975, I was married, had two children, was teaching classes in feminist art history, and had read extensively about feminism and lesbianism. Although I had had close friendships with women all my life, I thought I had never known a lesbian, and never considered a woman as a sexual partner. Then, on July 4, sitting around the swimming pool in Detroit while our young children splashed in the water, my close friend S told me that she’d been having an affair with a woman in Toronto, a safe distance away in those closeted times. In fact, she was sharing her grief, as the relationship had ended. I was very surprised, but not shocked or appalled. S next joined a group called “Sappho Sisters Rising” and made her way in and out of several relationships. I watched, shared in her joys and sorrows, met some of her new friends and saw that their values were good ones. Thus I understood that a loving relationship with a woman that included a sexual component could contribute more to my happiness and personal growth than the distant emotional chilliness of my husband. I eventually took the leap, asked for a divorce, and entered into a lesbian relationship myself. In my marriage I always felt like a second-class citizen. The feminist movement of the 1970s allowed my intellectual understanding of women’s compromised position in society and this led to an increase in my moral authority, which I believe was helpful to the students I was then teaching. It also led to other satisfying accomplishments in work, deepening friendships, and a feeling that I was indeed now flourishing.
Opportunities for learning diverse values and life styles from friends of different backgrounds classes probably were few in ancient Athens, but would Aristotle have taken advantage of them if they had? As a member of the privileged upper class, he would have had scant motivation to do so.
Lesbian ethicists, such as Mary Daly and Marilyn Frye, have postulated an ideal separatist Lesbian Nation, where, according to Frye, there would be no dominant and no subordinate class, and all women would be truly equal. In this case, they argue that no form of rule-making ethics would be necessary (in Claudia Card, pp. 58-59). While this seems impossibly idealistic, it does raise the question of whether dogmatic ethical rules are put in place by a ruling group seeking to control others.
An idea of Sarah Hoagland’s caught my attention. In Lesbian Ethics, she proposes, “I think we would do well to dissolve the rigid distinction between friend and lover.” (p. 174). Indeed, I know of more than one couple of women living together in very long-term passionate and exemplary relationships, who have never felt the desire to be lovers in the sexual sense. Part of the feminist agenda has been to dispense with the ancient Greek terminology rigidly separating eros, phillia, and agape, concepts developed and propagated by men, and consider the more complex expression of range of possibilities in freely chosen loving friendships between women.
By exploring, however briefly, feminist concepts of morality in the variety and richness of friendships between women, I have found these much more compelling and useful than the more limited and segmented Aristotelian discourse, and certainly closer to my own morality, the way I can personally feel a kind of happiness in living in the world.
Tell everyone

Now, today, I shall
Sing beautifully for
My friends’ pleasure

Sappho, fragment 1

Of course Aristotle would have known of Sappho and her community of women; the fragments of her poetry have been found all over the ancient Mediterranean world. Fragments, not entire books. But her name and that of Lesbos, the lovely Aegean island, still resonate in Western minds 2,600 years later as “The L Word” is in its sixth season on Showtime TV.



References

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Joe Sachs, Newburyport, Mass., Focus Publishing, 2002.

Card, Claudia. Feminist Ethics, University Press of Kansas, 1991.

Daly, Mary, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Boston, Beacon Press, 1978.

Friedman, Marilyn, What Are Friends For?: Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1993.

Frye, Marilyn, “A Response to Lesbian Ethics: Why Ethics?” in Claudia Card 1991.

Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development,
Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1982.

Griffiths, Morwenna, and Margaret Whitford, Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy, Bloomington and Indianapolis, University of Indiana Press, 1988.

Hoagland, Sarah Lucia, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value, Palo Alto, Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988.

Mohin, Lilian, ed., An Intimacy of Equals: Lesbian Feminist Ethics, London, Onlywomen Press, Ltd., 1996.

Nye, Andrea, Philosophy and Feminism at the Border, New York, Twaine Publishers, 1995.

Pollit, Katha, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Sappho, A New Translation by Mary Barnard, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1958 [unpaginated]

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on line: various articles, passim.

Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, New York, Harcourt Brace, Inc. 1929, pp. 76-77.

winner's choice: The Dirtiest Word in Museums

As one of the winners of an honorble mention in the March photo i.d. contest, Maya Hoptman has chosen the topic for a blog entry: The Dirtiest Word in Museum Practice. if you have not worked in a museum, you may be surprised to learn that this word is LABELS.

Maya worked in publications at the DIA for many years, and she should know. "Labels create chaos and anger. Arguments about labels are the only things that make grown curators and educators cry," she said in a recent interview.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is to show examples of two labels submitted to the Publications Department for editing. Let us suppose that these are for a new acquisition that will soon go on display in the beautifully renovated galleries.




A Mellon intern, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, working in the Europeam curatorial department was asked to write a label for it:

CHOUS
Italy, late Medicean
Tin-glazed majolica
Gift of Maya Hoptman, Judith Ruskin, Susan Higman-Larsen, Tracey Glab, and by exchange, Susan Rossen and several anonymous donors (2008.1)

This handsome and rare Chous reflects the many strands of Mediterranean culture that come together in the late Medicean period. The shape (not to be confused with the similar Oinochoe, shape 2) derives from Greek red-figure ware; it is believed to be a vessel specially developed for serving a type of honeyed wine made from fermented berries of Asphodelus lutea enjoyed at the midsummer festival of the Roman goddess Luna. The rope around the globate spout refers to the one used to bind Odysseus to the mast of the ship as he sailed through the straits of Messina, between the terrifying Scylla and Charibdis (Odyssey bk 9, 7-11). The dragon motif is often found in Etruscan art and speaks of the possible Anatolian origin of these enigmatic ancient peoples, who, like the Medici, occupied Toscana. The red fleur-de-lis is the symbol of the Medicean dynasty of Firenze. An inscription in brown slip on the base reads "Italy 169." The significance of the number is not known. The exact site of manufacture of the Chous is uncertain. Nothing is known of its provenance beyond the compelling fact that it was found in a garage sale in Ogunquit, Maine, in 1999.

Similar fine examples of Chous may be found in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien; Ny Karlsberg Glyptotek, Kopenhavn; a similar object was recently acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.



Meanwhile, an intern in the education department has also submitted a label:

PITCHER
Italian, 20th century
Ceramic
Gift of several donors (2008.1)

Do you have any pitchers in your house? What do you use them for? A long time ago someone used this pitcher for a cool drink in summer. Do you like lemonade? Do you like dragons? Have you ever seen a real dragon? How did you feel about it? How many dragons can you count on this pitcher?


As label editor in the Publications Department, what do you do? Laugh? Cry? There is no budget to hire an outside writer.

amphibian of the week

the American toad (Bufo americanus)

even though toads live on land, they breed in water so that the eggs can be deposited in water. this male has come to the pond to attract any available female. we know he's a male because JM watched with the binos while he puffed up his throat like a balloon and slowly let out the distinctive long trill. it's one of the best spring sounds, especially at night, when many males are calling. one starts, another joins in, the first dies down, a third enters, the second dies down, and the first is ready to call again. i watched a smaller male calling this afternoon. his pitch was higher; the lower bass of a nearby individual did indeed seem more stereotypically masculine. we don't know if either toad got lucky.

all those unattractive warts on the toad's back hold a milky fluid poison that can make many animal predators very sick. however, the main predator is the garter snake, which is immune to the poison. the fluid is only dangerous to humans if it is swallowed or gets in the eyes.

you can see why toads don't have the following that frogs do, even though one toad can eat up to 1,000 insects a day.

and how did the term "toady" come to mean a suck-up syncophant? the dictionary says that it derives from "toad-eater," the assistant working for a 19th century charlatan in a scam where the assistant ate a toad (probably not Bufo americanus) that was supposedly poisonous and was "cured" by the charlatan.

getting into the groove

"and how was your trip to new york?"

hey, we saw a lot of friends and had a lot of fun.



regular readers of the blog may find it interesting to know that the jiving woman on the left is the mysterious M. (i hope this doesn't give too much away.)

photo by JW

winner's choice: the Dog with the Name

i can't find my 1958 St. Anne's School yearbook, but i'm sure that one of the attributes characterizing me was having "the Dog with the Name." My friends would say, "tell us your dog's name again." and now, 50 years later, here comes that dog into my life again.

you will recall that the winner and honorable mentions of the March photo contest were awarded the prize of either writing an entry for the blog or suggesting a topic that i would treat for the blog.

the first request was from Sally Smith, who asked me to write "something about that dog you had with the long name." Sally is one of my Virginia cousins, so she has a long memory of Henshaw family hyperbole.

the dog: a beautifully marked purebred german shorthair pointer, liver and white. one of a series of hunting dogs that my father owned. these dogs lived in a kennel in our back yard. they were working dogs, trained to follow the scent of quail, and instinctively freeze on point when the bird was found to be nearby. in addition to being an excellent shot, my father was known as a very good trainer and sometimes he took a young dog in to work with for a friend. these bird dogs were not pets; they never came in the house. he would hide an old sock soaked in quail blood somewhere in the long grass and say to the dog, "hunt dead. hunt deeeead" to train them to retrieve a bird he'd shot, which was not necessarily part of their nature.

my father was very gentle and patient with them, rarely raising his voice. he was generous with pats on the head and milkbone treats and the dogs looked up to him adoringly with their big, brown, liquid eyes. when they saw that he was putting his guns and hunting jackets in the car, their tails wagged furiously and they smiled expressively.

other bird dogs we had while i grew up were named Judge and Arizonia, "Zonie" for short.

we called the Dog with the Name "Jeff." that was his nickname. his full name was

Thomas Jefferson Washington Jackson Paul Dabney Alonzo Anselmo Anthony Archibald Airpump Funkhouser Blinko Dynaflow Demarkley Randolph Montmorency Garbage Scow Henshaw.

a good memorization task for a child.

i liked Jeff a lot. he was trim, athletic, and tolerated the games i liked to play with him. my mother said that Jeff used to keep an eye on me when i was a little girl out playing in the yard, guarding me.

Jeff once took just a tiny nip at a mailman's pants and thereafter was required by law to wear a muzzle. this was a contraption of leather straps, which suggested a bridle to my horse-crazy mind, so i rigged up some long rawhide boot laces to make reins. you can see that the brown markings on his back suggested a saddle. i would have liked to ride him but i was too large and heavy.




my grandfather Nevil Henshaw died long before either Jeff or i were born, but i think i can detect his influence on Jeff's name, particularly in the string of "A" names. he was a novelist and a short story writer. one anecdote about him is that he would often change the names of family and friends: "you're not a Sarah today; you're a Nancy," or "Frank can't be right; Harold does the trick." and then that would be your new name until he changed it again on a whim.

maybe this influenced my father, who encouraged me to add names after the A's. Dynaflow comes from the automatic transmission introduced by Buick and much praised by my salesman father. Demarkley and Randolph were the surnames of two sisters who were artists and great friends of my mother (this was Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Randolph IV, not to be confused with Mrs TJR V, formidible headmistress of St. Anne's) . i think Montmorency was a name my father suggested to add some British class to the end, just before the more realistic Garbage Scow. Jeff did have a tendency to wolf down any tasty garbage he found, just as our faithful Annie did.

so thanks to Sally for suggesting this nostalgic topic and thanks to JM, who helped scan the photos and does clever things with photoshop to make them look great. all the strange layout mistakes that happen are the result of my ineptitude.

escape from nature

as lovely as spring is here, we are ready to escape all the blossoming crab apples and lilacs; to cease planting lettuce, radishes, spinach, and carrots; give up pruning the persistent box elders; stop pulling out the garlic mustard (surely the invasive plant of the week). not to say cutting the grass and ripping out crabgrass from the neglected perennial borders.

enough already. we're off to new york for a long weekend of seeing friends and being exposed to high culture.

but i wouldn't want to deny you the pleasure of the wildflower of the week: jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum). it's hard not to think of georgia o'keefe when these appear back in the swamp. there are male and female flowers. this one is male.

apologies, updates, this and that

my apologies for the annoying layout on the previous wildflowers post, with the type all poetically arranged down the column. like several other layout features, i can't seem to change it. in edit mode, there is a button you can click to see a "preview" of your post and it doesn't look at all like that. typically, blogger "help" is no help. the most time-consuming aspect of this all is getting the photos organized.

next, about the barn collapse across the road (see "ethical decision-making" in april). a few days after i called the township, there was a visible clean-up of some of the scattered debris and more yellow caution tape was installed. whether or not this has anything to do with the phone call, and whether or not they have taught the horses to read, i don't know. the three walls are still standing. thanks to those of you who urged me to call.

the winner of the photo i.d. contest, susan higman larsen, has not yet decided what she wants for her prize; we eagerly await her decision. one of the honorable mentions, sally smith, has now made a request, and it will soon be posted. it may not have a photo, the subject being something from the depths of the past, although not pre-daguerre. and you other honorable mentions: any ideas?

thanks for reading and since the photos are so popular, i'll close with one: marsh marigolds at kensington metro park. if you click on the image it becomes huge, or at least it does on my mac.

wild wild wildflowers revised

the weather has been so warm that there is a wildflower explosion going on. let me reaffirm that all the photos here are taken on our property, unless otherwise noted. readers of the blog often comment that they really like the photos. as a person striving to be a writer, i try not to take this personally.

from top to bottom: the woods are full of the regular white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum), the state wildflower of michigan. here they are competing with the umbrella-like leaves of the may apple (Podophyllum peltatum; also called mandrake: "get with child a mandrake root..." doesn't that refer to ginseng?), which hasn't bloomed yet. these trilliums aren't "endangered" but are "protected," meaning "do not disturb."




next, an unusual white trillium with a green stripe on its petals. is this a different species or a variety of white? i don't see any reference to such a flower.




and then, the white nodding trilluim (Trillium cernuum; also called Wake Robin), which has the flower blooming on a short stalk dangling below the leaves. likewise, these are protected in michigan but listed as rare and endangered in other states.





and finally, a red nodding trillium in bud, pretty rare, as it doesn't show up in any of my wildflower books but there is one on a website without a Linnean binominal designation (see what visiting Linnaeus's home in uppsala will do for you). there is a red trillium, but it clearly isn't nodding, being Trillium erectum; also called "stinking benjamin," as its flower is said to have an unpleasant odor. i didn't sniff the red nodding one. the few red individuals are blooming way far back in our woods, near the swamp.





more soon on other topics. be warned that some may have to appear without photos.