We shouldn't call it a celebration

I spent the afternoon at the Detroit Institute of Arts and their current exhibit of Van Gogh in America. The artist, who died in 1890 at the way too soon age of 37, did not set foot in America. The framing story of the exhibit is this artwork first being scorned, then embraced by American art museums and American collectors. The timing of the exhibit is because now is 100 years since the DIA was the first American museum to buy a Van Gogh. The purchase was criticized because so few people could make sense of the artist and his art. He was just too modern. Van Gogh as modern seems strange – we’ve seen Picasso, and Pollock. But his work, and that of his contemporaries, no longer went for accuracy in reproducing a scene and that was revolutionary. A show in 1928 that included Van Gogh’s work and one in 1935 that was exclusively his work and that traveled the country turned public perception of the artist. The last room of the exhibit includes a video of scenes from the Vincente Minnelli film Lust for Life, a biopic of Van Gogh’s life. This video criticizes that movie for portraying it subject as a “tortured genius” – that his artwork was a result of his mental anguish. That is not correct. Yes, Van Gogh did spend time getting treatment for mental illness. But his letters to his brother Theo show his desire and ability to create art were done through careful and deliberate steps. Alas, the Minnelli film still colors our perceptions of Van Gogh. I finished the book Winter’s Orbit by new author Everina Maxwell. It is both a gay romance and science fiction – and I like both of those. Prince Kiem of Iskat is thought of as the most disappointing of his generation of forty cousins. He is called before his grandmother the Emperor and is told he’ll have to give up his playboy ways because tomorrow he must marry Count Jainan of Thea. Iskat and Thea and a few other planets are to sign a Resolution in one month. That Resolution requires a marriage between an Iskat prince and a Thean diplomat. The marriage is the next day because it is the day after the end of the one month of mourning of Taam, who was Jainan’s previous partner. The wedding is not much more than the two of them signing the marriage contract. That night is awkward because Kiem assumes his new partner is still mourning and Jainan assumes he’s being rejected for being unworthy. Yeah, these guys are bad at communicating. The Auditor in charge of assuring all aspects of the Resolution are proper is taking way too long to agree the marriage is proper. And the palace Internal Security has flagged Jainan. The whole thing smells of cover-up. Figuring out what is being covered up takes our lads that whole month. That does give them time to fall in love before those trying to do the cover-up put them in grave peril. How much the humans of Iskat and Thea differ from earth humans of today is not explained. Jainan and Kiem are given only sparse descriptions of height and skin color. So one wonders about orientation and gender identity. Kiem admits to bedding both men and women. Jainan keeps his mouth shut. We do get another glimpse because men wear some sort of amulet made of wood and women wear one made of flint. Nonbinary characters wear neither. Does that imply men and women have become hard to tell apart? Or is the convention a handy way to alert another person to preferred pronouns? Since Kiem’s bisexuality is not remarked on does it imply a large portion of the population is also bisexual? That aspect of the story isn’t explained, it just is. In the decades that I’ve been reading science fiction magazines at one point an editor explained that a good science fiction story includes some new feature of science that is critical to the story. He used the example of an old Western story given a new setting and replacing bullets with lasers. But the new story is essentially no different than the Western. I felt much of this book is the same. The fancy wristbands central to their work and communication aren’t all that different from a smartwatch. This federation of planets could just as easily be a federation of nations on one planet (I felt Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar series – and I’ve read and enjoyed them all – had the same issue). It isn’t until we’re 85% of the way through the story that we see a technology that is both something we don’t have now and critical to the story. Even with this quibble I enjoyed the story. While in a bookstore yesterday to buy the latest issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine I saw a book with two young men on the cover. It is Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore. The description says it follows the outline of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original with the difference that both Nick and Jay Gatsby are transgender. The six online reviews declare it to be wonderful. But since I didn’t care much for the original (and avoided the DiCaprio movie) I won’t be buying this one. A little note on that page says this book is part of the Remixed Classics series. A search brought up: A Clash of Steel a remix of Treasure Island in which the lead pirates are a lesbian couple. Travelers Along the Way a remix of Robin Hood with a lesbian couple, though this is about the Crusades and not Nottingham Forest. And Teach the Torches to Burn a remix of Romeo and Juliet, in which the lovers are gay (won’t be released until next August) – the lovers of the original are already doomed because of the hatred of the two families so I’m not interested in a huge scoop of homophobia on top of it. I didn’t check out the details of the remixes of Little Women, Wuthering Heights, Jekyll & Hyde, Secret Garden, and Pride & Prejudice. I will agree it is important for us in the LGBTQ community to see ourselves in some of the literary classics. I suppose it is good business to supply such versions. Just don’t expect my dollar. Recently Niece declared that Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is much more interesting than the original. I haven’t read it, nor have I read classics updated with vampires and werewolves. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated two days ago. I didn’t report on the numbers a week ago because election day delayed timely updating. As of two days ago the peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 1910, 1503, 1551, and 1183. Yes, the data is going in a good direction. A predicted increase with new variants hasn’t yet hit Michigan. I’ve been hearing Michigan’s data is no longer capturing the whole picture. Those doing home tests aren’t reporting cases to the state. So I considered looking at other sources of data, such as sewage sampling. Michigan provides that data, but through maybe a hundred individual sampling locations and without any composite data. Alisa Chang of NPR spoke to Lauren Frayer stationed in Mumbai about the United Nations estimating the world now has 8 billion humans on it. While the population growth of China and India may be slowing, the growth in Africa is not. I’m puzzled and annoyed that the UN is calling this a celebration. I suppose, as Andrea Wojnar, the India representative for the UN Population fund, says, we should celebrate people living longer and that there is a decline in maternal and infant mortality. But the world can’t handle so many people. Some say it can, but climate change and a scarcity of water (implying a future scarcity of food) show our world can’t. And rapid population growth (did we add a billion people in just 15 years?) means there are too many women with a lack of education and a lack of family planning – generally unempowered. There is also the problem that the population growth is mostly in poorer countries while the countries with declining population have much higher rates of consumption and environmental damage. Today marks the 15th anniversary of when I started publishing this blog. This is post 4979. There have been almost 340,000 page views since the system has been keeping track starting in June 2010. By the time I started posting I had already spent three years writing up LGBTQ news alerts to send to family and friends. That was prompted by the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.