U.S. Air Force, F-117 (Nighthawk) single-seat, twin-engine jet fighter-bomber, the first Stealth Bomber.
08.21.90 : 08.21.22
As I sat down to compose this essay, I thought to begin recounting an event that took place summertime over 30-years ago, I then realized that it likely occurred on this very date and that a similar event was happening today. I don’t know whether to attribute this to a recollection emerging from subconscious or mere coincidence. I am referencing the Chicago Air and Water Show, an annual summertime event along Lakefront Drive at North Avenue Beach. It is being held today, Sunday, August 21st.
In 1990 while a student at the Art Institute, I attended the show with my boyfriend, Dean. He built the holography lab at the museum school with the hope of graduating into a tenure-track position on the faculty. Instead, his friend Eduardo Kac, obtained the professorship and has supervised the lab since.
Kac is a Brazilian–born Jewish-American artist who came to attention at the start of the 21st century for having coined the terms, ‘holo-art’, ‘bio-art’, and ‘transgenic art’ as genres. [Transgenic art uses synthetic or natural genetic material to create new forms of life and integrate them into society.] He gained notoriety for having genetically modified a rabbit to glow fluorescent green, a chimera named, Alba. More recently, Kac collaborated with the French Space Observatory to send an artwork into outer space. In an online Q&A forum from summer 2000, Kac responded to an inquiry on the ethics of genetic engineering, "I'm not against biotechnology in principle, but at the same time I do not agree with many practices, such as the patenting of life."1 The interview—as I read it more than two-decades later—features commentary on aesthetics and ethics that seems relevant today. I was intrigued by Kac’s comment on his artwork, “Genesis”:
Genesis conflates several societal forces into one element -- the synthetic gene -- to clearly expose the fact that the gene is a site of plastic manipulation, of social invention, of meaning construction…2
10.19.90 : 04.20.03
We didn’t know it then, but within months of the Air Show, scientists would set out to map the Human Genome. Within a span of little more than a decade, mankind would possess nature’s genetic blueprint for Homo Sapiens, the human species. Francis Collins—former NIH Director who supervised the U.S. government response to the Covid-19 pandemic through phases of lockdown and mass-vaccination (2020-21)—led the Human Genome Project for its duration (1990-2003). [Aside: the first fully sequenced genome of an organism was of a germ (the bacterium, H. influenzae, 1995).]
It is hard to reconcile the scientific technology of the Human Genome Project with the lifestyle of the times. I think of how Dean and I lived then. No computer, let alone cell phone or Internet. No GBS; paper maps. We didn’t even have a fax machine. As I recall, that winter we would wrestle with the T.V. antenna to get a clear picture of the news broadcasts of the Gulf War. I remember obscure night vision footage broadcast from the battlefield.
08.02.90 : 02.28.91
The war (it accrued a variety of names including the Persian War) had begun earlier that August when Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait compelled President George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher to coordinate an allied military force in the Middle East. They alleged prior Iraqi deployment of biological and chemical agents on Iranian and Kurdish troops to galvanize support of the mission. Although it is remembered for its tank battles, the Gulf War began with a bombing raid launched by Nighthawks, January 1991.
That was what drew us to attend the air show; we went to see the Nighthawk, then called ‘the Stealth Bomber.’ The secretive military aircraft was being unveiled to the public. Although it was the first time that we had heard of it and assumed it was new, that summer was actually the last issue of the original model, F-117. It had been operational for nearly a decade. Because its revelation was to have been the show-stopper, it was left to the finale, in accordance with the spectacular disposition ‘to go out on a high note.’
After the better part of a hot day under the sun, the crowd was growing dazed and confused, anxious to see the Bomber. The aircraft had been talked-up by the press but no pictures of it had been released, supposedly for reasons of security. Families had comfortable encampments at a lake shore park, equipped with chairs, blankets, umbrellas, coolers with food and drink. Dean and I sat barefoot on the grass, played Frisbee. Then—all of a sudden—I saw it! It looked like a bat! Or the tip of a small, black, arrow –like a charcoal spearhead. It sped by within a matter of minutes, maybe a single minute. It was utterly silent.
To my recollection, there was no announcer broadcasting to the crowd. The other planes had drawn sonic attention to themselves and some seemed downright clunky. Due to its comparatively small stature and silent motor, the Stealth Bomber came and went without anyone seeing it. (How was it that I saw it? Chalk that one up to bat radar.) Dean caught a glimpse after I shook him and pointed upwards. As we headed out, we noticed others packing up. It was getting late and they were giving up. They were disappointed, some complained. Something must have happened to preempt the fly-by. The hype led them to expect bells and whistles.
SR-71 1966 : F-117N-FO 1983 : R-07 1990
Built by Lockheed Corp. (now, a division of Lockheed Martin) The F-117 Nighthawk was the first stealth aircraft designed around the concept of evading detection by radar and other sensors. The first issue with operational capability wash achieved in 1983. The last series was delivered summer, 1990.
No trespassing sign, Jersey Shore, photographed by the author August 1, 2022.
A few weeks ago, I spent vacation in New Jersey, The Garden State. I went ‘down the shore’. The ocean was glorious. Despite being infested. The waters were riddled with lantern-flies, odd moth-like bugs with a red wing. There were so many afloat that there was no getting around them. I found that a breast stroke would sweep them away, momentarily clearing a path forward to swim. (That was my technique; ‘the brush-off’.) Kids were having a field day with them, burying the bugs in the sand as a matter of civic duty. Apparently, the lantern-fly is an agricultural pest indigenous to Asia with the “potential to greatly impact agricultural corps and hardwood trees.”3 People suspect the bugs came over from China in a cargo container.
I took a walk around a lagoon that is adjacent to the beach. I spent summers at a house there during childhood with my extended family. Halcyon days. An undeveloped property at the juncture of the river inlet bore a sign that warned trespassers that the land was surveilled by drone, “This property is being monitored by a SR-71 Blackbird.” I stopped to take a photograph of what I thought to be a curiosity with my smart-phone. [Who knew, the Blackbird was launched the year after my birth, 1966; I had just heard of it…]
A few hours later, while walking the boardwalk nearby, I spotted a drone flying overhead. It was about the size of a coffee table book and had a light that flashed green and red. I ignored it, assuming it was a toy that a boy was playing with on the beach. We used to play with kites on the beach when I was a kid.
My friend and I wandered from the shore to Main Street and were soaking up its charm (outdoor cafes, ice cream parlors, and shops). Evening advanced to twilight. Then, I sensed it. The drone was hovering directly above my head. As I looked up, it suddenly—effortlessly—lifted itself high into the sky above us. It went straight up as though retracted like a Yo-yo on a cord. My friend estimated that it went up 500 feet. Then it flashed red.
German Air Force’s, Horten–5, circa 1944
1944– 59
I recently learned about the Top–Secret “Operation Paperclip,” in which U.S. government agents arranged for the safe passage of Nazi scientists, doctors, and engineers and established the intellectuals at American institutions where their knowledge was appropriated and repurposed. Over 1600 Nazi elites were recruited and Americanized. Many were installed at N.A.S.A. and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Among the most famous prisoner–emigres were V-weapons engineers turned rocket scientists such as, Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus. Von Braun had been an SS officer credited with engineering the first long-range ballistic missile, the V-52. Installed at the U.S. Army and later at N.A.S.A., his ingenuity devised the launch mechanism that enabled the U.S. Space Program’s successful missions to the Moon. Debus became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center at N.A.S.A.
The Stealth Bomber took its design prototype, from a Luftwaffe, “All Wing Horten–5,” Reimar and Walter Horten’s design in response to an imperative for light bombers that was issued by Hermann Göring. With the intention of absorbing electromagnetic waves (and thereby escaping detection by radar), Reimar Horten planned to shield the aircraft with a coat of charcoal dust using wood glue as a binder.
Today, the U.S. military coats stealth aircraft with Graphene and metamaterials (EnMATS) that use holographic technology to produce camouflage via optical illusion. I have lost touch with Dean. It is feasible that as an expert holographer he might be involved with these design applications. An example is the Valkyrie XQ-58, an autonomous or unmaned vehicle equipped Geomancer technology. Allegedly, it is enabled to perform witchcraft, to cast spells on lands and people. How’s that for a Wunderwaffe? It completed its first successful flight in 2019 in Arizona, where I’ve lived for nearly two decades.
I want to take a moment to recommend some viewing, including a lecture and two documentaries on Netflix.
Annie Jacobsen, author of “Operation Paperclip,” and “Area 51: an uncensored history of America’s top secret military base,” discusses her research at a 2014 book tour.
“Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis,” 2021
Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy, filmmakers.
It compiles animation with archival interviews of World War II veterans conducted in 2006 by the National Park Service. The interviews focus on two German-speaking soldiers, Arno Mayer and Peter Weiss, among Jewish–Americans who enlisted to combat the Nazis in World War II. Instead, due to their language capability, they wound up in the surreal position of performing a dual role as spy–interrogator and hospitality guide for Nazi prisoner–emigres at a luxury camp outside of Washington, D.C. called “P.O. Box 1142.” (The camp was bulldozed in 1946. According to the filmmakers, its documents and recordings were classified or destroyed). Their chief accomplishment was helping discover the underground factory, Peenemünde, where Von Braun and his crew had been building V-2 rockets.
Luke Holland, filmmaker.
Released in the U.S. this year.
This film comes recommended by an artist and friend who suffered two toe injuries on trips with me. One resulted from a marathon trek through Berlin led by yours truly. (I have a bad habit of walking people to the brink of collapse.)
The documentary consists of interviews of Hitler Youth, SS officers, and average Germans. It takes the premise that evil is most dangerous when spread across a population by complacency and indifference, a sentiment encapsulated by Hannah Arendt’s assessment of Adolf Eichmann as the embodiment of “the banality of evil.” The film begins with the following quote from a writer who survived Auschwitz:
Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous.
More dangerous are…the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.
—Primo Levi
Holland’s interviews do well to convey the collectivist ethos of National Socialism that compelled conformity, compliance, and censorship. Nazism exploited the human instinct to belong and to go-along with what is socially condoned. The film conveys how the imperative for the common good was made to override individualism. This is an essential component of the totalitarian mindset that is hard to fathom. But it is essential to understand in order to appreciate the Nazi embrace of eugenics and the disavowal and sacrifice of the disabled and elderly as ‘useless eaters’. Human life was not thought to be dignified in itself; rather, humanity was held under pseudo-scientific scrutiny by man, respected when deemed healthy and able to contribute to the common good.
The Hitler youth—now elderly themselves—explain how they were indoctrinated into group-think and turned against their parents. Some still struggle with cognitive dissonance and remain reluctant to acknowledge the wickedness of eugenics, held up as euthanasia by the Nazis.
A former SS officer featured in the film confesses to having been in attendance at the Wannsee Conference, mesmerized over how attendees drank tea and coffee while calmly plotting the Final Solution. As part of his self-imposed penance for what he now understands to have been an embrace of a monstruous mindset, he speaks at schools. In a heated exchange with teenage students, He warned, “Don’t let yourself be blinded!”
07.20.1847 : 07.20.1969 : 07.20.2013
A few summers ago, I went to the House on Wannsee after enjoying a visit to Max Liebermann’s home on the Lake. It’s a short walk (in my opinion) from Liebermann’s house. The lake setting is idyllic in summertime. It reminded me of the inlet. The Nazis confiscated Liebermann’s home.
[I Googled Liebermann and discovered that he was born on July 20, 1847.]
My uncle, Dr. William Thomas Pecora, Director of the USGS (1965-1971). He later served as Under Secretary of the Interior.
One of my earliest memories is my father taking me to the front porch of our shore house on the inlet one summer evening to show me the moon. It was July 20, 1969. In my memory, the sky was dark and the moon was full. He pointed to it and said that I can always remember that on the eve of my fourth birthday, Americans landed for the first time on the moon.
[Another childhood memory that took place on the front porch at night involved the neighbor from across the street. He frantically ran out of his house screaming. A bat had gotten inside and he freaked out.]
The moon landing was a special event for all Americans, but maybe especially for my dad because his uncle Bill was a geologist who helped the government develop satellite technology to surveil the Earth. He became under-secretary of the Department of the Interior after serving as Director of the U.S. Geological Survey. He worked with N.A.S.A. The National Land Imaging Program offers a scholarship and hosts a conference in his name. A rock is named after him. It is called, ‘Pecoraite’.
I don’t know what to make of being a descendant of an architect of the Landsat Satellite Program let alone being tracked by a drone while visiting the seashore. Earlier on my vacation, a friend who had grown weary of my contrarian opinions, mocked me as a conspiracy theorist and denier of the moon landing. I don’t know what to make of that either.
Uncle Bill was a fencer on the U.S. team competing in the 1936 summer Olympics held in Berlin. I wonder how he felt about visiting Nazi Germany; whether he walked in the opening ceremony.
Years ago, I visited the stadium with a Canadian designer named Janice. In my recollection, we were the only ones there and I had exhausted her by encouraging walking a great distance. I recall being overcome by unease in a tunnel entrance.
Janice had bought a condominium in a stylish art district of Berlin, formerly the Jewish quarter. A synagogue dominates the district which seems like a quaint village. [Armed guards stand posted before the temple.] Interspersed with the street cobblestones are brass plaques –name plates of people who were disappeared on the spot.
After visiting the stadium and a social event nearby we returned to her place, but she didn’t invite me inside. She said she was still renovating and would be embarrassed to show me the work-in-progress. Instead, we sat outdoors at a café across the street. Twilight, then night fell. It was then that she began to confide in me.
Janice had previously relayed that buying the condo had been exhausting. There was a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork, requiring lawyers. She had complained that renovations were stressful and complicated; more onerous than anticipated. She expressed envy over the perceived simplicity of my life as one unburdened with the responsibility of property. She was an interior designer whose business involved remodeling. Having seen a restaurant and a museum lounge that she designed in Scottsdale, I was confident that her home abroad would be spectacular despite the toil.
That night, Janice was keen to divulge secrets that required confidentiality: she was being spied on. (By whom? That was left unspecified). She was dating a former British intelligence officer (Who was he? He was left unnamed). Most disturbingly: if she should suddenly show up dead, I should know to tell the police that she was murdered. Whew…. I hardly knew her and frankly, I didn’t know what to make of any of this. It was late, we were tired. She had perhaps drunk too much wine. In retrospect, I wonder whether I should have recognized a mental condition and encouraged her to seek help.
I barely understood German, but I turned on the T.V. from time to time and always for “Columbo” on Sunday night. That’s my show. I had the news on one morning as I got ready to go out. It was about a month before the trip to the stadium. I was eager to meet up with a friend at an art gallery in the Tiergarten district. Like Janice, I was keen on the Berlin art scene. I noticed that the military was holding graduation as I switched off the T.V. and rushed out. I was running late.
I had a good distance to walk from the subway to the gallery and was a bit put-off by an unanticipated throng of tourists that had gathered there. Buses and people were all over the place. I had not factored in a delay and needed every second to get to the meeting place on time. I wondered, “What the heck is going on?” as I maneuvered through the tourists like a native New Yorker.
Somehow, I found myself ushered into a courtyard. Then I stopped for a moment, thinking, “Oh well, if you’re late, you’re late.” Posters hung outdoors; they bore portraits. Who were these people? A wreath had been laid. The tourists had come as a pilgrimage to the spot. I suddenly realized: I was at Bendlerblock. It was July 20, 2013. Then I understood the Bundeswehr graduates its cadets on the anniversary of Operation Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate Hitler. [I now realize that former SS rocket engineers sent man to the moon on the anniversary of Operation Valkyrie.]
04.05.1986
I first visited Berlin on spring break in 1986, while studying abroad in France. I traveled to East Berlin—then part of the German Democratic Republic (D.D.R.)—in April with four college buddies, entering via Checkpoint Charlie in the American Sector monitored by U.S. troops. We were required to exchange a specific amount of currency and instructed to spend it in the D.D.R.
As I recollect, we spent a strange day in the East of walking past façades scarred by machine gunfire, looking at socialist realist murals, and dining in a cafeteria that seemed to be frozen back in time to the Khrushchev–Kennedy era. I think we even went bowling. Maybe that’s how we wound up in the cafeteria.
Upon returning to the German Sector checkpoint early evening, yours truly didn’t have the savvy to lie when asked by the guards whether I dispensed with my money. The others had bought champagne and the like and produced receipts. I had refused to comply with what I perceived to be a coercive policy. I was honest (another habit of mine) and replied, “No, and I have no intention of being a pawn in your economic system.” That was it.
A fight ensued and before I knew it, all four gals took the side of the guard against me. [It really ought to have been the other-way-around.] They later confided that they had been afraid that I was going to get us all jailed in a communist country. Although the guard and I had come to the agreement that I could put the remainder of my money in a safety-deposit box at the checkpoint where it could be allowed to fester indefinitely, my friends ganged up on me and made me return East to spend the money. So, we went back in for a second time. I bought everyone drinks and dinner. We had planned to go out in West Berlin and enjoy the nightlife there, maybe go dancing at this place that had been recommended. But here we were instead, downing beer late into the night at some tavern in the D.D.R.
We returned to the checkpoint with all the receipts and were good to go when I realized that something fundamental was amiss. My pocketbook! I had left it at the tavern! It held my camera, passport, visa, credit cards, student id’s, cash… I had been discombobulated from the altercation, upset by how my friends had turned against me.
So, I went back in for a third time. But now things were different. It was late at night, approaching curfew. The streets were dark and empty except for guards who patroled armed with Kalashnikov’s [I understand now that they were likely Wieger StG-940’s.] If I had imagined entering the Twilight Zone earlier in the day at the cafeteria, now nothing was left to the imagination. I ran like a ‘bat-out-of-hell’ to the tavern, confident that the soldiers wouldn’t shoot someone running into the country. To my great relief, it was still open. My purse still hung on the chair where I had left it. Everything was left untouched.
Walking back to the checkpoint with trepidation as curfew struck I was conflicted, relieved and terrified. But all went well. It was past midnight, we had worn ourselves out and blew off the plan to go out dancing. We didn’t know that within the hour the disco would be bombed in a terrorist attack. Two Americans would be among the dead. It was April 5, 1986.
When I returned to Berlin summer of 2013, I found myself cornered by a gang of Turkish–German kids as I left the Jewish Museum. The leader of the pack said, “If I had a gun, I’d blow your brains out.” He said this in German and I understood it with the aid of a gesture. Why they hated me, I don’t know. Maybe they could tell I was a tourist, an American? Did they think I was Jewish, was that what they hated about me? After they had inflicted their terror, they dispersed on bikes. I was so frazzled, that I wandered past my intended destination and drifted. I wound up at another museum, fittingly, The Topography of Terror, adjacent to Checkpoint Charlie.
[BTW: I can’t get over Whoopi Goldberg claiming that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race. As a journalist on an ABC news program broadcast around the world, she denied the Holocaust its eugenics platform. I think she said something to the effect that, “It wasn’t about race. It was white people against white people.”] [BTW: As I write this, I realize that the ‘whoops,’ came to mind just now because I tend to confuse the Topography of Terror Museum with the Tolerance Museum. I used to run an arts mentoring program for at-risk kids in New York City. The theme for the artwork was Tolerance. I participated in a discussion about it on the set of the View.]
[BTW: Another aside that comes to mind because of Terror and Tolerance: I heard yesterday that the 9/11 Museum is closing. It seems to have just opened. Last year was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. I can’t believe it’s almost the 21st anniversary. That morning, I was headed to the World Trade Center by PATH train. Had my mother not told me to reschedule an appointment to later in the morning, I would have been in the towers as they fell. [The City put the mentoring program’s Tolerance posters in the public art exhibit with Tribute in Light.]
Enough wandering commentary. Back to my story.
As summer drew to a close, I stopped by Janice’s place and rang the buzzer hoping to get a glimpse of it before leaving town. I was then in the process of walking another friend towards personal injury and she was keen to sit down. No answer.
After I left town, we lost touch. Months passed. Then, late spring, I received word that Janice was dead. The mutual contact called to deliver the bad news. By then, I was an artist-in-residence in Berkeley, California studying generative art, programing artwork with code. Janice had been found in a car in the middle of the Arizona dessert with a bullet wound to the head. It had been deemed suicide by the police. Apparently, after she had completed renovation, a neighbor’s plumbing flooded her condo. It was thought to have been too much financial stress.
I felt duty-bound to summon the courage to relay the bizarre account of what Janice told me to the F.B.I., but I learned that the highest authority in such cases was the Sheriff’s Office. My report lacked substance. There were no leads.
Thanks for reading. Please share and scroll past the notes to leave comments.
Peace and love,
Poppy
Shona Reed, organizer, “Eduardo Kac responds to the questions submitted by the Genolog community,” Genolog, July-Sept 2000, as featured on Kac’s website, accessed Aug 23, 2022
Ibid.
State of New Jersey, Department of Agriculture, Spotted Lanternfly
https://www.nj.gov/agriculture/divisions/pi/prog/pests-diseases/spotted-lanternfly/