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“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Link to Ken Burns’ video on Hemingway on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/video/hemingway-episode-1-writer/

“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”

― Jig (a woman) to the man in Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” from  Men Without Women

Link to Ken Burns’ video on Hemingway on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/video/hemingway-episode-1-writer/

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Let’s Talk: The Courage to Connect Join CEO of Search for Common Ground, Shamil Idriss, to discuss how to restore peace in our society through establishing a common ground. (Shamil Idriss is a guest on a recent episode of Your Undivided Attention, “Come Together Right Now.”) April 9, 2021 FRIDAY, 10AM PT / 1PM ET Come Together Right Now What can the technology sector learn from peacebuilding efforts?  SIGN UP Shamil Idriss CEO  Search for Common Ground Hope to see you there, David Jay Head of Mobilization Center for Humane Technology

(Submitted by Sara Walker)

For those following the trial, this article explains various aspects of what the Medical Examiner in the case is saying, and also what Medical Examiners do.

Beyond the trial, this is a well-written article about how Drs. think about death and how it is reported to relevant people, which could be the family of the deceased, or in this case, a judge and jury.

–Michael Kelly, HW

The Trial of Derek Chauvin

The prosecution in Derek Chauvin’s trial is trying to establish that George Floyd died from a lack of oxygen. Here, experts break down the key medical terminology surrounding his autopsies.

By Sheri Fink

April 8, 2021 (NYTimes.com)

Dr. Andrew Baker may be one of the most important witnesses to be called in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin. It was his duty to determine why George Floyd died.

Dr. Baker, the Hennepin County medical examiner, conducted Mr. Floyd’s initial autopsy and determined ultimately that his heart and lungs stopped functioning while he was being subdued, restrained and compressed by police officers.

The manner of Mr. Floyd’s death, Dr. Baker concluded, was homicide. And in the months since, almost everything he said in the autopsy report has been parsed and pored over by experts and laypeople alike.

In opening statements last week, the prosecution indicated that they would pursue an unusual strategy: challenging some aspects of Dr. Baker’s findings and introducing a reason that he did not cite — insufficient oxygen — as Mr. Floyd’s cause of death.

For their part, Mr. Chauvin’s defense team told jurors that the pre-existing heart disease, high blood pressure and recent drug use documented by Dr. Baker led to Mr. Floyd’s death from what they said was a heart arrhythmia.

As the trial nears a phase where Mr. Floyd’s cause of death will take center stage, we talked with several forensic pathologists uninvolved in the case to explain some of the terms used in the proceedings, how they determine the cause and manner of death and how this relates to the case. Here is what we learned.

What is a medical examiner?

In the United States, some jurisdictions use coroners and others use medical examiners to determine the cause of certain deaths, including those that occur in police custody. Unlike coroners, medical examiners are required to be physicians. Dr. Baker, who is expected to testify in the coming days, is certified in the field of forensic pathology and is the chief medical examiner of Hennepin County. The medical examiner’s office is an independent agency. It is not part of law enforcement.

Is there always one cause of death?

When someone dies, a death certificate is filled out for both public health and legal reasons. The form includes a cause of death in the first section and contributing factors in the second section. “We usually have to come up with one cause,” said Dr. Judy Melinek, a board-certified forensic pathologist. Everything else significant “that might be wrong with a person is ‘contributing.’”

Pathologists describe the cause of death as the immediate injury or disease that leads to death. It is the “disease or injury which starts the lethal sequence of events without an intervening cause,” Dr. Melinek said.

What is the manner of death?

The manner of death refers to the circumstances surrounding the death. There are usually five choices (a few jurisdictions include more): natural, accident, suicide, homicide or undetermined.

Homicide is often described as “death at the hands of another or others.” A homicide is not necessarily criminal — homicides can be a matter of self-defense, for example. The courts, not medical examiners, determine criminal culpability.

Is more than an autopsy considered?

In addition to examining the body, which usually occurs quickly, pathologists consider other materials such as the police report, videos, medical records and toxicology reports, said Dr. Priya Banerjee, a board-certified forensic pathologist. “We don’t practice in a black box,” she said. Until all the results of the investigation are in, she said, she typically says the case is pending further study.The Trial of Derek Chauvin ›

Are the cause and manner of death always clear?

In a vast majority of cases, the cause and manner of death are evident, forensic pathologists say. But in some situations, the professional opinions of well-trained and experienced experts can differ.

“Some cases are much more complicated than others,” Dr. Banerjee said. When an “autopsy wasn’t a slam dunk,” Dr. Banerjee said, the written cause of death can be “more verbose because it’s taking into consideration many things.”

That can occur when an autopsy does not reveal a lethal injury like a gunshot wound to the brain. “Autopsies are good at showing demonstrable changes in the body’s tissues,” said Dr. Christopher Happy, a board-certified forensic pathologist, “but they’re not good at showing things that were functional, like a seizure or respiratory depression or an arrhythmia unless there’s some lesion associated with that.”

What did Dr. Baker ultimately determine?

Dr. Baker described Mr. Floyd’s cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” The manner of death, he wrote, was homicide.

The use of the term cardiopulmonary arrest led to public confusion because some people wrongly assumed it meant that Mr. Floyd had a heart attack. Cardiopulmonary arrest means “the heart stops beating and the lungs stop moving,” Dr. Cyril Wecht said.

Some pathologists say they do not include it as a cause of death because it describes all deaths.

Dr. Baker also detailed “other significant conditions” including pre-existing ones such as severe disease of the vessels of Mr. Floyd’s heart. He also described laboratory findings of the opiate drug fentanyl and methamphetamines in Mr. Floyd’s blood. Not including these under cause of death means he concluded that “those were there before but didn’t start the lethal sequence of events,” Dr. Melinek said. Listing them “is meant to clarify” what made Mr. Floyd more vulnerable to the cause of death, she said, “not excuse it.”ImageA memorial space, called the Say Their Names Cemetery, remembering victims of police violence in Minneapolis.Credit…Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times

Here, context matters. Dr. Baker told prosecutors that if Mr. Floyd had been “found dead at home alone” with “no other apparent causes,” they wrote, it could have been acceptable to determine that Mr. Floyd died of an overdose because of the relatively high levels of fentanyl found in his blood collected at the hospital.

Instead, recordings revealed both the prolonged restraint of Mr. Floyd just before his death and also that he appeared agitated rather than lethargic, which could suggest tolerance to higher doses of fentanyl. The drug typically “causes you to become relaxed,” Dr. Wecht said.

By contrast, Dr. Melinek said, Mr. Chauvin’s defense attorneys appear to be trying to use the medical findings to convince the jury that Mr. Floyd “was essentially a ticking time bomb, already had pre-existing conditions that made this endpoint happen, not because excessive force was used.”

Only asserting that he was at higher risk of death from police restraint because of underlying health conditions or drug use would likely be legally insufficient, some experts said.

What did his preliminary findings say?

The medical examiner’s office had not finished its investigation when prosecutors filed a charging document saying that preliminary findings had shown no physical evidence to support a diagnosis of “traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” It said that the combined effects of police restraint, underlying health conditions including heart disease and “any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.”

Forensic pathologists said that in high-profile cases, it can be problematic to release findings early because they may be misinterpreted or incomplete. “I basically never release preliminary cause of death,” Dr. Banerjee said.

What did a second autopsy of Mr. Floyd find?

After the initial autopsy, forensic pathologists no longer have access to an intact body, and sometimes organs or tissues are unavailable, having been removed for further study. Even so, doctors sometimes document findings that an examiner missed in the first autopsy or that were not apparent.

“There are multiple reasons you might see something at second autopsy that’s not seen at the first and vice versa,” Dr. Melinek said.

Mr. Floyd’s family hired Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Allecia Wilson to perform a second autopsy. Both experts said that pressure on Mr. Floyd’s neck and back during his restraint by the police led him to die of asphyxia, a term Dr. Baker did not use in his official report.ImageAfter performing a second autopsy, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Allecia Wilson said that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxia.Credit…Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

The word asphyxia derives from an ancient Greek term that means “without pulse.” Doctors now use it to mean the deprivation of oxygen, which can occur for many reasons. At the center of the case is whether Mr. Chauvin’s actions led to any of them, such as inhibiting the movement of the diaphragm that allows the lungs to expand, or reducing the flow of blood carrying oxygen to vital tissues. Oxygen deprivation may occur not only from neck compression, experts said, but also from pressure on the back when someone is lying face down, and it may not leave major physical traces.

The cause of death described by both Dr. Baker and the pathologists who performed the second autopsy amounted to substantially the same thing, some experts said, which was “that external pressure in a prone position to Mr. Floyd caused his death,” Dr. Banerjee said.

Shaila Dewan contributed reporting.

(Contributed by Michael Kelly, H.W.)

Focusing on flames has been a form of meditation since prehistoric times. (Shutterstock)

Leo, use your talent of harnessing the power of fire to serve you

• ROB BREZSNY
• Apr. 7, 2021 7:00 p.m. (SFExaminer.com)
• FEATURES

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Author Susan Sontag defined “mad people” as those who “stand alone and burn.” She said she was drawn to them because they inspired her to do the same. What do you think she meant by the descriptor “stand alone and burn”? I suspect she was referring to strong-willed people devoted to cultivating the most passionate version of themselves, always in alignment with their deepest longings. She meant those who are willing to accept the consequences of such devotion, even if it means being misunderstood or alone. The coming weeks will be an interesting and educational time for you to experiment with being such a person.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the 1930s, Taurus-born Rita Levi-Montalcini was a promising researcher in neurobiology at the University of Turin in Italy. But when fascist dictator Benito Mussolini imposed new laws that forbade Jews from holding university jobs, she was fired. Undaunted, she created a laboratory in her bedroom and continued her work. There she laid the foundations for discoveries that ultimately led to her winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. I foresee you summoning comparable determination and resilience in the coming weeks, Taurus.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Religious scholar Karl Barth (1886–1968) wrote, “There will be no song on our lips if there be no anguish in our hearts.” To that perverse oversimplification, I reply: “Rubbish. Twaddle. Bunk. Hooey.” I’m appalled by his insinuation that pain is the driving force for all of our lyrical self-revelations. Case in point: you in the coming weeks. I trust there will be a steady flow of songs in your heart and on your lips because you will be in such intimate alignment with your life’s master plan.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of 6,” wrote Cancerian author John W. Gardner. But I would add that more adult Crabs accomplish this feat than any other sign of the zodiac. I’ll furthermore suggest that during the next six weeks, many of you will do it quite well. My prediction: You will blend lovability and strategic shrewdness to generate unprecedented effectiveness. (How could anyone resist you?)

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Staring at flames had benefits for our primitive ancestors. As they sat around campfires and focused on the steady burn, they were essentially practicing a kind of meditation. Doing so enhanced their ability to regulate their attention, thereby strengthening their working memory and developing a greater capacity to make long-range plans. What does this have to do with you? As a fire sign, you have a special talent for harnessing the power of fire to serve you. In the coming weeks, that will be even more profoundly true than usual. If you can do so safely, I encourage you to spend quality time gazing into flames. I also hope you will super-nurture the radiant fire that glows within you. (More info: tinyurl.com/GoodFlames)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Physicist Victor Weisskopf told us, “What’s beautiful in science is the same thing that’s beautiful in Beethoven. There’s a fog of events and suddenly you see a connection. It connects things that were always in you that were never put together before.” I’m expecting there to be a wealth of these aha! moments for you in the coming weeks, Virgo. Hidden patterns will become visible. Missing links will appear. Secret agendas will emerge. The real stories beneath the superficial stories will materialize. Be receptive and alert!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Jungian psychoanalyst and folklore expert Clarissa Pinkola Estés celebrates the power of inquiry. She says that “asking the proper question is the central action of transformation,” both in fairy tales and in psychotherapy. To identify what changes will heal you, you must be curious to uncover truths that you don’t know yet. “Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open,” says Estés. I bring this to your attention, Libra, because now is prime time for you to formulate the Fantastically Magically Catalytic Questions.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In April 1933, Scorpio-born African American singer Ethel Waters was in a “private hell.” Her career was at an impasse and her marriage was falling apart. In the depths of despondency, she was invited to sing a new song, “Stormy Weather,” at New York City’s famous Cotton Club. It was a turning point. She later wrote, “I was singing the story of my misery and confusion, of the misunderstandings in my life I couldn’t straighten out, the story of the wrongs and outrages done to me by people I had loved and trusted.” The audience was thrilled by her performance, and called her back for 12 encores. Soon thereafter, musical opportunities poured in and her career blossomed. I foresee a parallel event in your life, Scorpio. Maybe not quite so dramatic, but still, quite redemptive.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I love to see you enjoy yourself. I get a vicarious thrill as I observe you pursuing pleasures that other people are too inhibited or timid to dare. It’s healing for me to witness you unleash your unapologetic enthusiasm for being alive in an amazing body that’s blessed with the miracle of consciousness. And now I’m going to be a cheerleader for your efforts to wander even further into the frontiers of bliss and joy and gratification. I will urge you to embark on a quest of novel forms of rapture and exultation. I’ll prod you to at least temporarily set aside habitual sources of excitement so you’ll have room to welcome as-yet unfamiliar sources.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn poet John O’Donahue suggested that a river’s behavior is worthy of our emulation. He said the river’s life is “surrendered to the pilgrimage.” It’s “seldom pushing or straining, keeping itself to itself everywhere all along its flow.” Can you imagine yourself doing that, Capricorn? Now is an excellent time to do so. O’Donahue rhapsodized that the river is “at one with its sinuous mind, an utter rhythm, never awkward,” and that “it continues to swirl through all unlikeness with elegance: a ceaseless traverse of presence soothing on each side, sounding out its journey, raising up a buried music.” Be like that river, dear Capricorn!

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?” wrote philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In response to that sentiment, I say, “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” Even if you will live till age 99, that’s still too brief a time to indulge in an excess of dull activities that activate just a small part of your intelligence. To be clear, I don’t think it’s possible to be perfect in avoiding boredom. But for most of us, there’s a lot we can do to minimize numbing tedium and energy-draining apathy. I mention this, Aquarius, because the coming weeks will be a time when you will have extra power to make your life as interesting as possible for the long run.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I know of four different governmental organizations that have estimated the dollar value of a single human life. The average of their figures is $7.75 million. So let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you are personally worth that much. Does it change the way you think about your destiny? Are you inspired to upgrade your sense of yourself as a precious treasure? Or is the idea of putting a price on your merit uninteresting, even unappealing? Whatever your reaction is, I hope it prods you to take a revised inventory of your worth, however you measure it. It’s a good time to get a clear and precise evaluation of the gift that is your life. (Quote from Julia Cameron: “Treating yourself like a precious object makes you strong.”)

Homework: Send brief descriptions of your top three vices and top three virtues. FreeWillAstrology.com

Stranger Apologies

By Kevin Dorst

4/3/2021  (kevindorst.com) This post was inspired by a suggestion from Chapter 2 (p. 60) of Jess Whittlestone’s dissertation on confirmation bias.) ​ Uh oh.  No family reunion this spring—but still, Uncle Ron managed to get you on the phone for a chat.  It started pleasantly enough, but now the topic has moved to politics. He says he’s worried that Biden isn’t actually running things as president, and that instead more radical folks are running the show.  He points to some video anomalies (“hand floating over mic”) that led to the theory that many apparent videos of Biden are fake. You point out that the basis for that theory has been debunked—the relevant anomaly was due to a video compression error, and several other videos taken from the same angle show the same scene. He reluctantly seems to accept this. The conversation moves on. But a few days later, you see him posting on social media about how that same video of Biden may have been fake! Sigh. Didn’t you just correct that mistake? Why do people cling on to their beliefs even after they’ve been debunked?  This is the problem; another instance of people’s irrationality leading to our polarized politics—right? ​Well, it is a problem. But it may be all the thornier because it’s often rational.Real-world political cases are messy, so let’s turn to the lab.  The phenomenon is what’s known as belief perseverance: after being provided with evidence to induce a particular belief, and then later being told that the evidence was actually bunk, people tend to still maintain the induced belief to some extent (Ross et al. 1975; McFarland et al. 2007). ​A classic example: the debriefing paradigm.  Under the cover story of testing subjects’ powers of social perception, researchers gave them 15 pairs of personal letters, and asked them to identify which was written by a real person and which was written by the experimenters. Afterwards, they received feedback on how well they did. Unbeknownst to the subjects, that feedback was bogus—they were (at random) told that they got either 14 of 15 notes correct (positive feedback), or 4 of 15 correct (negative feedback). Both groups were told the average person got 9 of 15 correct. As a result of this feedback, they come to believe that they are above (or below) average on this sort of task. Some time later, subjects are “debriefed”: told that the feedback that they received was bunk, and had nothing to do with their actual performance. They’re then asked to estimate how well they would do on the task if they were to perform it on a new set of letters. The belief perseverance effect is that, on average, those who received the positive feedback expected to do better on a new set of letters than those who received the negative feedback—despite the fact that they had both been told that the feedback they received was bunk! So even after the evidence that induced their belief had been debunked, they still maintained their belief to some degree. And rationally so, I say. Imagine that Baya the Bayesian is doing this experiment. She’s considering how well she’d Perform on a future version of the test—trying to predict the value of a variable, P, that ranges from 1–15 (the number she’d get correct). She doesn’t know how she’d perform, but she can form an estimate of this quantity, E[P]: a weighted average of the various values P might take, with weighs determined by how likely she thinks they are to obtain. Suppose she starts out with no idea—she’s equally confident that she’d get any score between 1–15:Then her estimate for P is just the straight average of these numbers: E[P]  =  1/15*1 + 1/15*2 + … + 1/15*15  =  8 Suppose now she’s given positive feedback (“You got 14 of 15 correct!”)—label this information “+F”.  Given this feedback, she can form a new estimate, E[P|+F] of how well she’d do on a future test—and since her feedback was positive, that new estimate should be higher than her original estimate of 8. ​Perhaps, given the feedback, she’s now relatively confident she’d get a good score on the test—her probabilities look like this:Then her estimate for her performance is roughly 13: ​E[P | +F]  ≈  0.25 *15 + 0.2*14 + 0.15*13 + …    =  13 Now in the final stage, she’s told that the positive feedback she received was bunk.   So the total information she received is “positive feedback (+F), but told that it was bunk”. What should her final estimate of her future performance, E[P | +F, told bunk], be? Well, how much does she believe the experimenters?  After all, they’ve already admitted they’ve lied to her at least once; so how likely does the fact that they told her the feedback was bunk make it that the feedback in fact was bunk?  Something less than 100%, presumably. Now, what she was told about whether the feedback was bunk is relevant to her estimate of her future performance only because it is evidence about whether the feedback was actually bunk. Thus information about whether the feedback was bunk should “screen off” what the experimenters told her.  (If a hyper-reliable source told her “The feedback was legit—they were lying to you when they told you it was bunk”—she should go back to estimating that her performance would be quite good, since the legitimate feedback was positive.) Upshot: so long as Baya doesn’t completely trust the psychologist’s claim that the information was bunk—as she shouldn’t, since they’re in the business of deception—then she should still give some credence to the possibility that the feedback wasn’t bunk.(800 words left)Crucial point: if she’s unsure whether the feedback she received was bunk, her final estimate for her future performance should be an average of her two previous estimates. ​Conditional on the feedback actually being bunk, her estimate should revert to it’s initial value of 8: E[P | +F, told bunk, is bunk] = 8. Meanwhile, conditional on the feedback actually being not bunk, her estimate should jump up to it’s previous high value of 13: E[P | +F, told bunk, not bunk] = 13. When she doesn’t know whether the feedback is bunk or not, she should think to herself, “Maybe it is bunk, in which case I’d expect to get only a 7 on a future test; but maybe it’s not bunk, in which case I’d expect to get a 13 on a future test.”  Thus (by what’s known as the law of total expectation) her overall estimate should be an average of these two possibilities, with weights determined by how likely she thinks they are to obtain. So, for example, suppose she thinks it’s 80% likely that the psychologists are telling her the truth when they told her the feedback was bunk.  Then her final estimate should be: E[P | +F, told bunk]  =  0.8*8 + 0.2*13  =  9. This value is greater, of course, than her original estimate of 8. (The reasoning generalizes; see the Appendix below.) By exactly parallel reasoning, if Baya were instead given negative feedback (–F) at the beginning, she would instead end up with an estimate slightly lower than her initial value of 8; say, E[P | –F, told bunk]  =  7. As a result, there should be a difference between the two conditions.  Even after being told the feedback was bunk, both groups should wonder whether it in fact was.  Because of these doubts, those who received positive feedback should adjust their estimates slightly up; those who received negative feedback should adjust them slightly down. Thus, even if our subjects are rational Bayesians, there should be a difference between the groups who received positive vs. negative feedback, even after being told it was bunk: E[P | +F , told bunk]    >   E[P]   >   E[P | –F, told bunk]. The belief perseverance effect should be expected of rational people. A prediction of this story is that insofar as the subjects are inclined to trust the experimenters, their estimates of their future performance should be far less affected by the feedback after being told it was bunk than before so.  (The more they trust them, the more weight their initial estimate plays in the final average.) This is exactly what the studies find. For subjects who are never told that the feedback was bunk, those who received negative feedback estimated their future performance to be 4.46, while those who received positive feedback estimated it to be 13.18. In contrast, for subjects who were told the feedback was bunk, those who received negative feedback estimated their future performance at 7.96, while those who received positive feedback estimated it at 9.33. There is a statistically significant difference between these two latter values—that’s the belief perseverance effect—but it is much smaller than the initial divergence.  As the rational story predicts. Another prediction of this rational story is that insofar as psychologists can get subjects to fully believe that the feedback really was bunk, the belief perseverance effect should disappear. Again, this is what they find.  Some subjects where given a much more substantial debriefing—explaining that the task itself is not a legitimate measure of anything (no one can reliably identify the real letters).  Such subjects exhibited no belief perseverance at all. Upshot: in the lab, the belief perseverance effect could well be fully rational. Okay. But what about Uncle Ron? Well, obviously real-world cases like this are much more complicated. But it does share some structure with the above lab example. Ron originally had some some (perhaps quite low) degree of belief that something fishy was going on with Biden. He then saw a video which boosted that level of confidence. Finally, he was then told that the video was bunk. So long as he doesn’t complete trust the source that debunks the video, it makes sense for him to remain slightly more suspicious than he was originally.  How suspicious, of course, depends on how much he ought to believe that the video really was bunk. But even if he trusts the debunker quite a bit, a small bump in suspicion will remain. And if he sees a lot of bits of evidence like this, then even if he’s pretty confident that each one is bunk, his suspicions might reasonably start to accumulate.    If that’s right, the fall into conspiracy theories is an epistemic form of death-by-a-thousand-cuts. The tragedy is that rationality may not guard against it. What next? If you​ liked this post, consider sharing it on social media or signing up for the newsletter. For more on belief perseverance, check out the recent controversy over the “backfire effect“—the result that sometimes people double-down on their beliefs in the face of corrections. See e.g. Nyhan and Reifler 2010 for the initial effect, and then Wood and Porter 2019 for a replication attempt that argues that the effect is very rare.

Marie Equi, born on this day in 1872, was a radical medical doctor, gay rights advocate, Wobbly, and Anarchist convicted of sedition for speaking out against American involvement in World War I.

Providing care for poor and working-class patients, she also regularly provided birth control information and abortions at a time when both were illegal. As a political activist, she was a vocal opponent of World War I and advocated civic and economic reforms, including the women’s right to vote and an eight-hour workday.

After witnessing first-hand the brutality of police repression of a cannery workers’ strike, Equi aligned herself with anarchists and the radical labor movement. While participating in the strike, she was clubbed by a policeman after becoming enraged at watching a pregnant women be dragged away by police.

Equi was also a lesbian who maintained a primary relationship with Harriet Frances Speckart (1883 – 1927) for more than a decade. The two women adopted an infant and raised the child in an early U.S. example of a same-sex family. In 1918, Equi was convicted under the Sedition Act for speaking out against U.S. involvement in World War I. She was sentenced to a three-year term at San Quentin State Prison, but was released after ten months.

(Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)

By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

Something strange blankets the city and the soul in the first days of spring. The weary, the rushed, even the dispossessed surrender to a certain nonspecific gladness. They smile at you, you smile at them — under the blessing rays of the vernal sun, we are somehow reminded of what we humans were always meant to be to each other and to this stunning, irreplaceable planet we share with innumerable other creatures. In attending to nature at its best and most buoyant, we suddenly attune to the best of our own nature. This, perhaps, is why the modern environmental conscience was jolted awake by the terrifying notion of a silent spring, bereft of birdsong and bloom.

That vernal exhilaration is what Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830–May 15, 1886), poet laureate of nature, celebrates in a letter to her brother Austin, composed in the spring of her twenty-third year, just as she was falling in love with the love of her life, whom Austin would soon marry. (This beautiful, harrowing tangle of heartstrings occupies a large portion of Figuring.)

Emily Dickinson at seventeen. The only authenticated photograph of the poet. (Amherst College Archives & Special Collections, gift of Millicent Todd Bingham, 1956)

On a May Saturday in 1853, Emily writes to Austin:

Today is very beautiful — just as bright, just as blue, just as green and as white, and as crimson, as the cherry trees full in bloom, and the half opening peach blossoms, and the grass just waving, and sky and hill and cloud, can make it, if they try… You thought last Saturday beautiful — yet to this golden day, ’twas but one single gem, to whole handfuls of jewels.

Enraptured by nature, Dickinson spent her days in a sunny bedroom wallpapered with botanical patterns, in a house surrounded by flowerbeds and blooming trees. I wonder if she saw the magnolias the way I do, taken with their bittersweet beauty — for a week or so a year, their blossoms stun with a splendor that vanishes always too soon, as if to remind us that everything we love eventually perishes and yet this perishability is not reason for sorrow but reason to love all the harder.

Pages from Emily Dickinson’s herbarium.

This eternal dance of love and loss animated Dickinson since the earliest age. Most of the flower specimens in the astonishing herbarium of her girlhood — an elegy for time and the mortality of beauty at the intersection of poetry and science — were collected in the spring, then meticulously pressed and arranged onto the pages of this curious catalogue of imagined immortality and bulwark against impermanence. This inescapable interplay between beauty and perishability, which lends life so much of its sweetness, is at the heart of Dickinson’s vast body of work — nowhere more intensely than in this poem devoted to spring, composed in the autumn of her life:

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay —

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

Photograph by Maria Popova

Complement with Dickinson on making sense of loss and her ode to resilience, then revisit Neil Gaiman’s stirring poem paying tribute to the ecological and cultural legacy of Silent Spring.