A Mother’s Job is Never Done!! HAPPY MOTHER”S DAY to all you wonderful, tireless, kind-hearted mothers out there…Not sure who to attribute this photo to—it was posted on René’ Volpi’s substack.
The Secret Inner Life of Dogs
Click image to hear more about dog expert Alexandra Horowitz. Photo courtesy Frenchy the dog…
Have you wondered why your dog is always with the nose to the ground--what could all that sniffing mean to them? Or what they are thinking when they give you that stare?...Do they understand and have a sense of time? Do they get bored?
Alexandra Horowitz, author of new book The Secret Inner Life of Dogs as well as multiple other books on the subject answers those questions and many more. As Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Associate Professor and director of the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, she has dedicated her life to the study of animal cognition and most specifically about dogs.
Oprah Winfrey sat down with Alexandra Horowitz and what follows is their very informative just short of an hour conversation--everything you wanted to know and more.
Other books by Alexandra Horowitz
When Society Tolerates Evil by Monika Zgustova
Author, Journalist and Translator Monika Zgustová
Originally from Czechoslovakia, her family fled Prague when she was a teenager when the Russians invaded and she and her family ended up in the States, where her father taught linquistics at the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana (he spoke 16 languages, Monika speaks six). I have watched Monika's career blossom over the years--as the author of many successful fiction and nonfiction books, a translator of prominent Czech and Russian writers into Spanish and Catalan, including such luminaries as Václav Havel, Milan Kundera, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and she even wrote the Catalan Russian dictionary!
Monika has lived in Barcelona for many years now and regularly contributes articles and editorials in Spain's El País and La Vanguardia newspapers, The Nation and CounterPunch in the United States and Lidové Noviny in the Czech Republic. She is one of the most intelligent people I know and it is my honor to include this article, featured in El País and Counterpunch, where she reflects on tyranny, in my substack newsletter:
"In communist Prague, my father was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for his dissident activities. My mother suffered, and in her attempts to halt that downward spiral, she made small gestures to appease the authorities. Her concessions consisted of the fact that, like most people, during communist holidays—the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Labor Day, and others—she would place small Czechoslovak and Soviet flags in the windows of our Prague apartment and let them fly together, even though doing so was not strictly mandatory, but was well-regarded by the regime.
My parents are an example of the two attitudes displayed by citizens whose country becomes authoritarian, dictatorial, or totalitarian: a small group of people rebels and maintains its opposition to the regime despite the circumstances (which may include frequent interrogations, threats, imprisonment, and torture, as in my father’s case). The vast majority of citizens, however, choose to make concessions to the regime (like my mother), or to engage in full-fledged collaboration. .
During my student years in the United States, where my parents eventually fled with their teenage children thanks above all to my mother’s courage, I spent a few months in Argentina, which at that time was under military rule. There, too, I observed behavior similar to the totalitarianism of my childhood. I saw a resigned society, because dissidents were in prison or in exile. In Buenos Aires, people rarely went out; the cafés were almost empty. People had little money and much fear. However, some people from various professional backgrounds told me that at first they had welcomed the military because, after years of guerrilla warfare, they wanted peace and security. And I asked them if it was possible to enjoy peace under a regime that controlled and mistreated society. .
When the Argentine junta eventually expelled me from the country for having questioned a military officer’s statement at a meeting of interpreters for the World Cup, where I was supposed to work, I was glad because, like any society under a dictatorship, Argentina was a blind and self-absorbed community that turned a deaf ear to the reality of lives violated and tormented. .
Years later, I interviewed several women in Moscow who had been sentenced to the gulag during Stalin’s time. Those women told me that even in the labor camps—that microcosm of a society under tyranny—those two essential attitudes existed: that of rebelling and that of complying. Some women stood up to the guards and the camp leaders despite the consequences their defiance might bring: if not instant death, then harsh punishment. Other women, the majority, in their search for peace, remained obedient. Strangely enough, a higher number of daring women survived the gulag compared to the pusillanimous prisoners because the guards laughed at their fear, relished their panic, and punished the terrified women with a sadistic glee. .
Something similar also occurred in the Nazi concentration camps. The Czech journalist Milena Jesenská, a steadfast, intrepid woman who remained inwardly free even as a prisoner, used to rebel through acts of disobedience to the rules: she arrived late for roll calls at the Ravensbrück camp, brought wildflowers into the office where she worked, sent clandestine messages to other prisoners, and jotted down notes for her planned book on tyranny. Strangely, the guards rarely called her out on it. What was the reason? The explanation is simple: they knew that the Czech prisoner did not fear them. The other prisoners in her Ravensbrück barrack adored Milena for her attitude, but most of them were unable to imitate her: fear of the consequences overwhelmed them. One of the few women who gradually learned Milena’s fearlessness was her best friend Margarete Buber-Neumann, who survived imprisonment in Stalin’s gulag and another in Ravensbrück and was able to tell future generations how an attitude that tolerates tyranny gives wings to the oppressor. .
But let’s return to Russia, this time to contemporary Russia, the one that has Putin as its president and Stalin as its deity. Three decades ago, there were plans in Siberia to open museums dedicated to the gulag. Recently, the Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen traveled there to investigate this topic. Her guide was Inna Gribanova, a former enthusiast of historical memory. “However,” Gessen told me, “over the past few decades, Inna has become a different person: she didn’t found any museum; on the contrary, she now claims that the testimonies of the gulag exaggerated their horrific experiences. And to top it all off, she has become a Putin voter.” “How do you explain this?” I asked in astonishment. “She got tired of belonging to the minority,” Masha replied." In the United States, where I used to travel for work several times a year over the past three decades and where I’ve stopped going since Trump’s second term began, part of society doesn’t want to acknowledge what’s happening. When I ask my American friends why, aside from the No More Kings protests, there are few reactions to the gradual destruction of democracy, they reply: “We don’t act because we’re numb." "Numb?” “Yes, from so much sudden change.” Political science professors at American universities tell me: “This can’t last.” I am stunned: so while armed troops control the streets and airports, while raids are carried out on the homes of immigrants and political opponents, and the number of paramilitary groups loyal to a single man grows, a large part of American society repeats with resignation: “This will pass; this cannot last.”
When in 1990 the opponent of communist totalitarianism, Václav Havel, was elected president of democratic Czechoslovakia (and later the Czech Republic), in his speeches he praised the acts of resistance against the regime carried out by “powerless” individuals and blamed Czech society, which through its passivity and complacency had allowed forty years of tyranny. A state of inaction similar to the one Havel referred to has taken hold of the United States. But when a society grows accustomed to the violation of laws and goes about its daily tasks without reflection, as if everything were normal, that’s the beginning of the end. .
A few weeks ago, I was struck by the words I read in The Guardian in an article by the writer Colm Tóibin, who lives in New York: “I learned first hand not only what evil is like but how evil is tolerated. What is strange about being in America in the time of Trump is how ordinary it is, how what was unimaginable just over a year ago is suddenly, shockingly no longer a surprise.” .
Authoritarian politicians are relying on the apathy of society. Backed by tech moguls, they encourage people to spend long hours scrolling and listening to loud music through headphones. They aim to make the society deaf, blind, and submissive while they, the autocrats, take over the world. .
That is why, instead of closing their eyes and letting themselves be deafened, societies in danger of falling under autocracy should imagine what life would be like in five or ten years if they allowed authoritarianism to take hold. The horror they would see should compel each individual to make every possible effort to prevent that imagined future from becoming reality. .
Playlist:
Music about Boats
Pam Smilow. The Tropics, mixed media on canvas. 50” x 80” approx.
David Gray Sail Away
Susan McKeown and Chanting House Albatross
Grand Funk Railroad I'm Your Captain
Mazzy Star. Quiet, The Winter Harbor
Tom DiMenna sings Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Crosby Stills & Nash Southern Cross and
Wooden Ships
Otis Redding, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
Stanley Samuelsen The Water is Wide
Pam Smilow. The Dock of the Bay, mixed media on canvas, 50” x 80”
Painting of the Week
Pam Smilow Spring Tree in Bloom mixed media on canvas 50” x 38”.
Charity of the Week:
ACLU
Book of the Week
About The Author
New York City based contemporary artist, Pam Smilow, began writing the creative lifestyle blog “things we love” in an effort to foster a sense of community during times of isolation and reflection. To read more about her and her art, visit her website and check out the essay written by Frank Matheis entitled The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow.