Two kinds of curls

In Robert Kamper’s side yard in Round Rock on April 11th two kinds of curls made themselves known to me. The more obvious even had the word in their common name: blue curls (Phacelia congesta). The other curls—smaller, much more tightly wound, and harder to see—were tendrils of a Passiflora species, either incarnata or lutea; further development will reveal which one.

 

UPDATE: From the flowers that emerged on the vine shown in the bottom picture, Robert Kamper is able to say the plant is Passiflora incarnata.

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The most obvious and unarguable source of black innocence is the victimization that blacks endured for centuries at the hands of a race that insisted on black inferiority as a means to its own innocence and power. Like all victims, what blacks lost in power they gained in innocence—innocence that, in turn, entitled them to pursue power. This was the innocence that fueled the civil rights movement of the ’60s, and that gave blacks their first real power in American life—victimization metamorphosed into power via innocence. But this formula carries a drawback that I believe is virtually as devastating to blacks today as victimization once was. It is a formula that binds the victim to his victimization by linking his power to his status as a victim. And this, I’m convinced, is the tragedy of black power in America today. It is primarily a victim’s power, grounded too deeply in the entitlement derived from past injustice and in the innocence that Western/Christian tradition has always associated with poverty.

Whatever gains this power brings in the short run through political action, it undermines in the long run. Social victims may be collectively entitled, but they are all too often individually demoralized. Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life.

That passage is as pertinent today as when Shelby Steele wrote it in 1988—actually even more pertinent because it’s 34 years later and many people still haven’t gotten his message. You’re welcome to read the full Harper’s article, “I’m Black, You’re White, Who’s Innocent? Race and power in an era of blame.”

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

The long floral stalks of gulf vervain

What distinguishes gulf vervain, Verbena xutha, from other kinds of verbena here is its long and slender flower stalks, which can be straight, curved, or sinuous. The first picture shows you some at the Riata Trace pond on July 30th. When I found a group out in the open I got down on the ground and aimed upward for an artsy minimalist portrait.

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Glenn Loury has written an inaugural essay for The Journal of Free Black Thought. In the essay he quotes a sentence from Ephesians and says that “Bad ideas are the ‘principalities and powers’ that reside in the heads—the ‘high places’—of flesh-and-blood people. These bad ideas need to be combated and overcome by good ideas.” In so saying, he pushes back against the censorship that has rapidly become common in our media. Loury notes that the new journal “is dedicated to the principle that in a liberal democracy, viewpoint diversity and the airing of ideas—all ideas, even ideas that we’re told aren’t properly ‘black’—are essential components in the struggle of good ideas against bad.” That sounds like a good idea to me.

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman

Volcanoes in Austin

When most people think of Austin they don’t think of volcanoes. Nevertheless, this region was once volcanically active. Whether the sinuous brown strata in a cliff along Onion Creek in far southeast Austin in this picture from July 19 are igneous, I’m not sure, but an expanse of rock a few minutes’ walk away from this spot clearly suggests an origin as congealed flows of lava.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

So say I’m a servant of sinuous stalks

Behold a sinuous inflorescence of downy gaura, also known as velvet gaura and velvetweed, on June 30 in Great Hills Park. The scientific name recently got changed to Oenothera curtiflora from Gaura parviflora.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Halberdleaf rosemallow

On August 26th I photographed this halberdleaf rosemallow flower, Hibiscus laevis, that had been planted alongside the pond behind the Central Market on North Lamar (the same place that yielded the recently shown photograph of a dragonfly on a horsetail). This species of mallow is native in various parts of east Texas and grows as close to Austin as two counties away.

After two days of poison ivy, I expect today’s post will come as a relief to many of you.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman