Human Flower Project
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Friday, August 27, 2010
N. Korean Mission: In Lieu of Kim
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter traveled to North Korea and, with help from flowers, managed the release of an American citizen and, perhaps, much else.
A girl greeted Jimmy Carter at Pyongyang’s airport with
flowers and a salute Wednesday, Aug. 25.
Photo: Reuters
There’s flying under the radar. There’s also flying over the radar – a mode of transportation accessible to a select class of travelers. Ex-U.S.-presidents qualify if, like Jimmy Carter, they’re internationally known human rights advocates who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, flew to Pyongyang, North Korea, August 25. Their trip was ostensibly to secure the release of a U.S. citizen, Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for entering the country illegally. That was the Carters’ official purpose. But such a high-profile visit suggests lots more diplomatic knitting: to gain North Korea’s cooperation in nuclear disarmament? to begin normalizing relations with the U.S.? to ease somehow the animosity between the two Koreas since the sinking of a S. Korean ship in March? Who knows? That’s what flying over the radar is all about.
The New York Times reported, “Gomes is believed to have entered North Korea in support of Robert Park, a fellow Christian activist from the United States, who crossed into the country from China in December to call on [N. Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il] to release all political prisoners. Mr. Park was expelled after some 40 days.”
But Gomes remained in custody and, according to several sources, had attempted suicide since his incarceration in April.
Carter made the trip as a “private citizen” rather than a U.S. official, opening the way for many friendly gestures that would not at present be possible for the Obama Administration. (Even so, South Korean leaders were said to be incensed at the visit).
Ceremonial flowers appeared throughout the Carters’ short stay, maintaining an air of kind formality. Upon his arrival in Pyongyang, the ex-president was welcomed by a young girl, who handed him a bouquet and extended a vivacious salute. Baring his signature smile, he accepted the flowers and “blew her a kiss before getting into a black stretch Mercedes-Benz.”
Culture & Society • Politics • Secular Customs • (1) Comments • Permalink
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Hawaii’s Delegation to Selma
A feminist and psychologist in London amplifies our story of how leis joined the March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and others wore leis as they marched from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965.
Photo: WFA/Associated Press, via the Guardian
Many thanks to Nona Ferdon for filling in some of the gaps in our story of flowers in the history-making March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. We noted that several of the Civil Rights marchers, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wore leis.
“You wondered how they got there,” Nona writes of the floral garlands. “We took them. There were five of us representing Hawaii on the march.“
In our earlier story we had credited the pastor of Honolulu’s Kawaiahao Church, Rev. Abraham Akaka, who had befriended Dr. King the previous year, with sending the leis. He, in fact, may have been behind this effort in some way, but Nona, who delivered the flowers, doesn’t recall ever meeting Rev. Akaka or hearing of his involvement in this gesture. “I don’t know who organized on the leis,” she writes. “It was all on short notice and we showed up at the airport around 5 in the afternoon. There was no publicity or anything like that, we just said goodbye to some friends and left. Taking leis was just something that anyone from Hawaii would do almost automatically.” Only after the march, when the leis had made their glorious statement, did the flowers inspire curiosity. Floral garlands around the neck weren’t, and still aren’t, a common sight in the Deep South.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Trespassing for Power Fungus
In the disputed highlands along the border between China and India, a strange medicinal plant provides military cover.
Cordyceps sinensis, a fungus from the Himalayas,
inhabits and grows from the bodies of insects (here a
caterpillar)—and that’s just the beginning.
Photo: Heathen Healing
It’s referred to as the “Chinese love flower” but we don’t think that’s a very nice thing to say about the Chinese, or love—or flowers either. Just look at it.
This is a fungus, Cordyceps sinensis—an entomopathogenic fungus, meaning it grows on and, in time, into and out of insects. That’s hard on insects—lethal, as a matter of fact—as well as enormously weird and disgusting (just our opinion).
You might call its growth habit an “incursion.” But it’s human incursion into the fugus’s habitat, the very high territory along the China/India border, that prompted the Telegraph’s recent story about this plant.
Indian officials are claiming that small groups of Chinese troops, forces with the People’s Liberation Army, have been coming across “the disputed MacMahon Line” that separates the two countries. Dean Nelson writes that crossing the line “remains highly sensitive for both countries which fought a border war in 1962 in which China captured but later returned Tawang district, which it claims is part of Tibet” – also considered disputed territory. This moist, mountainous environment, between 10,000-12,000 feet in altitude, is where Cordyseps sinensis grows.
Friday, August 06, 2010
With White, for Hiroshima
White flowers reappear in ceremonies remembering the tens of thousands who were killed by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. After 65 years, participation may mean progress.
People gathered in mourning, respect, anger and pacifism at the cenotaph in Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 2010.
Photo: New York Times
On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. 80,000 people were killed instantly, and by the end of the year, tens of thousands more had died of radiation poisoning and other injuries.
Today, for the first time, a U.S. dignitary—John Roos, the ambassador to Japan—joined the mayor of Hiroshima and thousands of others at a memorial rite.