News

Title IX Religious Exemptions

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Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal civil rights law which reads, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

All three of the higher education institutions I have taught at have complied with this law. Up until recently I had believed - mistakenly, it turns out - that any educational institution had to make a choice between adhering to Title IX and receiving federal funding, or opting out of both.

I have now learned that institutions can request religious exemptions to Title IX, receive those exemptions, and then are explicitly allowed to discriminate against their students and employees and still receive federal funding. Furthermore, the Office for Civil Rights has approved every religious exemption Title IX request filed. This includes hundreds of institutions; in late 2016 that number was at 245 and it continues to grow each year. Depending on their religious tenets, institutions can legally discriminate “on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy or receipt of abortion while still receiving federal funds.”

Last March, the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP) filed a class action lawsuit seeking to remedy this glaring civil rights loophole. As stated in the legal complaint, the institutional and legally sanctioned discrimination faced by these diverse populations includes “conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, as well as the less visible, but no less damaging, consequences of institutionalized shame, fear, anxiety and loneliness” on our taxpayer dime.

If you too find this religious exemption to Title IX to be deeply troubling, please consider donating to the REAP team (through their parent organization Soulforce, which received an 89/100 on Charity Navigator).

Scandals in the Houseplant Hobby

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There have always been scandals in the world of houseplants. Big box stores selling dyed and painted plants, cacti and succulents with dried and dyed strawflowers glued on, injected orchid spikes (spoiler - there are no naturally blue Phalaenopsis), doomed plants in glass baubles, and glued-down top dressing are some common ones. Though more specialized nurseries tend not to commit those no-nos, many do sell tinted tillandsia and single Hoya kerrii leaves without stem cuttings that will never grow without any disclaimers. Some online sellers will purposefully mislabel or sell inert seeds or parts of a plant for propagation that will never be able to grow as well, relying on time, relative cost, and the ever-present risk inherent in attempting to grow seeds or propagate to erase any blame. And now there’s a new scandal rocking the houseplant world, the full scope is still in the process of being uncovered!

Let me first set the stage. If you, like me, have been in the houseplant hobby for decades, you might have noticed that it’s become quite the fad lately. There were (and still are!) some good online forums and blogs fifteen years ago, but recently I’ve witnessed the rise of “plantubers” aka YouTube stars who do surprisingly well discussing plants, Facebook groups, and - though I’m not that active on the platform - I’ve heard tell of Instagram plant influencers, aka plantfluencers. The rise of these various social media houseplant stars and societies has helped shape what is the must-have plant and drives demand for large swathes of new hobbyists. For whatever reason, right now monstera, philodendron, rarer pothos, and calathea are all hot commodities but the variegated and atypically colored ones are by far the most sought after. I actually don’t grow any of those types of plants aside from a small Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ at the moment; I had an early experience killing a calathea and have never felt called to try again, pothos to me seem common as dirt so while I don’t mind them I also don’t prioritize them, and while I like philodendrons including monstera a lot, they’re often large plants and I’d prefer to be able to have ten or twenty plants in the space where one philodendron might live. My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ is a pretty plant though; its new growth comes in reddish orange and then over time it ages to a green. I think it cost either $3 or $4 because I bought it as a baby.

My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ plunked behind several other plants on my outside shade table this summer.

My Philodendron ‘Prince of Orange’ plunked behind several other plants on my outside shade table this summer.

I have joined or been added to quite a few of the Facebook plant groups over the years, and many are for buying and selling. I’ve always found most of the pricing on Facebook for plants to be overly high, so I think I’ve only purchased maybe three plants total from such listings. It turns out that even bearing that in mind, I was still apparently only in the more reasonably priced groups until a few weeks ago. At that time, I was invited to join two “plant purge” Facebook groups. The biggest is nuts, though I dislike the format and atmosphere of both. These groups structure their sales to be very small quantity buy-now-or-you-miss-it opportunities and build up excitement by dangling the most coveted plants ahead of time without prices and then “opening up” the sale hours to days later. This very intentionally is not meant to encourage calm research and reflection but rather hype, panic, and instant gratification; it’s basically gambling. People are buying individual plants for hundreds of dollars, regularly, in a flurry of adrenaline and a heady sense of exclusivity that rarely is accurate. Enter Philodendron ‘Pink Princess.’ It’s a variegated philodendron that has the same general shape, growth, size, and habit as my ‘Prince of Orange’ but it has green-base leaves with splashes of pink and sometimes cream variegation. It used to be sold for approximately the same price point as other philodendrons - typically somewhere between $6-20 per plant depending on size and store. Its explosion in popularity due to plant influencers means it now typically costs between $100-300 per plant, and that’s when you can find one at all. Pink is a very “in” coloration for the Instagram and Youtube plant crowd.

You now have the backstory. Recently a newcomer variegated philodendron arrived on the scene: Philodendron ‘Pink Congo’. (Newcomers do arrive sometimes - there are hybridizers and tissue culture cloners that introduce interesting new plants to the industry.) ‘Pink Congo’ was positioned and understood to be much like my ‘Prince of Orange’ in its growth habit but with pink leaves instead of orange. However, photos of ‘Pink Congo’ differed from ‘Prince of Orange.’ There were just dark green outer leaves and bright pink inner leaves. A few pictures appeared to show a different type of transition, where green patches started developing on some of the older pink leaves as opposed to the slow and total hue change on the entire leaf as per ‘Prince of Orange.'

From what I’ve read, people started paying $70-100 for ‘Pink Congo’ - mostly on these rabid Facebook groups but also occasionally on nursery websites, Instagram, eBay, and Etsy - and prices escalated from there. Then a knowledgeable hobbyist dropped a bomb on Facebook - the ‘Pink Congo’ was a fake and he had source material from an Indian vendor to prove it. He showed that the pink central leaf coloration was a temporary reaction to being gassed by ethylene and the plant would revert back to its standard green coloration in several months to a year or two and never grow more pink again. The base plant would typically sell in a $4-20 range.

Apparently some houseplant sellers knew it all along and were fine with it. Others didn’t, and decided to eat their own loss in having purchased the plants for resale so as not to lose credibility and trust. Many continue to sell them but added vaguely worded disclaimers that can be easily misinterpreted to give false hope. Meanwhile, a lot of buyers are upset that they dropped triple digits on temporary variegation, but some claim they don’t mind and plan to continue to buy ‘Pink Congo.’ A few have shared a belief that the scandal itself is the hoax, and that if anyone’s plant is reverting that it’s just an unstable variegation rather than a systemic fake.

And that’s the current scandal!

Wait… I did say it was still unfolding, so what’s that about? Apparently, philodendrons are not going to be the only ethylene-treated plants coming out of the import market! (Dun dun dun!) As far as I know, no one’s listed any other implicated plant varieties with specificity yet, but it’s a new ploy to be aware of across the hobby. I don’t know what other plants’ responses to being gassed with ethylene might look like, so any very unusual and new coloration might warrant a critical eye these days.

Eating an Ethical Diet

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I’ve been a vegetarian for ethical reasons for over twenty years, and my artwork and writings about my pieces address issues including animal rights, ethics, conservation, and ecological balance. The COVID-19 pandemic is a direct result of our generally poor relationship with meat consumption, including that of endangered wildlife. Now due to meatpacking plants, the city that I live in has topped a variety of coronavirus tracking charts in terms of spread, density, and duration. Iowa is mass torturing and slaughtering pigs as a result of the pandemic’s disruption of the processing and supply chain. Eating meat increases global warming, obesity rates, and an acceptance of cruelty and superiority that can’t help but seep into other parts of our lives.

Here’s a great Op-Ed in the New York Times that goes into more detail on all of my above points. I support eating an ethical diet and believe we need real reform in this arena as well.

Black Lives Matter

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Here in the US, there have been massive protests against racism and police brutality; these have spawned global support and protests in cities around the world. I support the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier this week I donated to the American Civil Liberties Union (more commonly referred to by its abbreviation ACLU) to support their work in suing the government and police on behalf of protesters and victims of police brutality and injustice. We need substantive reform.

Here’s a link to the ACLU donation page if you also feel called to support them!

PSLF and TEPSLF Are Still Rejecting 99% of Applicants

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When I first wrote about PSLF last November, some of my blog readers/friends/colleagues mentioned that the program had only just opened, that some of the rejections were intentional ones aimed at accessing a different Congressional fund for loan forgiveness, TEPSLF, and that given some time the overall statistics might improve.

Now that another year has passed, that’s not the case.

The Amazon is on Fire

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There is an ongoing, mostly manmade tragedy unfolding right now in the Amazon rainforest in the form of an 85% increase in forest fires over last year. Many of the fires are intentionally being set to clear trees and jungle vegetation - as well as indigenous territories - for agricultural use.

I am reminded of this standalone comic strip, which in many ways seems quite optimistic to me.

Extinctions and Other Sad Environmental News

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Here’s a well-written lament from The Atlantic about the ongoing extinctions of a huge number of native Hawaiian snail species.

Zooming out from just Hawaii, here’s a map of how many species are being pushed to the brink globally.

This is a sad photographic illustration of how littering - even when the litter is biodegradable - negatively impacts wildlife.

Human-Led Environmental Devastation in the News Again

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I’m not sure if it was possible to not hear about the horrific recent United Nations assessment on wildlife decline and extinction as it made front page news all over - but if you missed it, here’s one of the many stories covering its findings.

Relatedly, here’s an article discussing how meat consumption plays a huge role in climate change and needs to decrease by 90%. Of course, that’s only one of a multitude of corporate and cultural changes we would have to make…

The Meaning of a Whole Ecosystem

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This well-written and devastating feature in The New York Times Magazine, “The Insect Apocalypse is Here,” is worth reading. You might cry, though.

In conversation, sometimes, a student will wish mosquitoes away. I tell them that mosquitoes are an important part of the food chain for a number of species, and that while I, too, would like to be mosquito-free, we must understand that we are one small part of a whole. We may soon manage to become the whole, though, through chipping and choking everything else out. This article is about the decline of all insects and the overall functional extinction of many species - and our often unnoticed acclimation to it all.

The Degree of Global Warming

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I’ve shared before how climate scientists have a very hard time getting the public to accept and understand the reality of our present and future situation.

Now here’s another recent look at the current and projected scale of global warming and how it compares to the agreements and actual international practices regarding emissions.

A Selection of Readings

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Trump-Era Environmental Damage

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In case you haven't been following along (I do understand the appeal of attempting to ignore that Trump is in charge of the USA), here's a list put together by The New York Times compiling twenty-three environmental laws, regulations, and policies that Trump has overturned in the first hundred days of his presidency.  At least Elon Musk is trying his best to get humanity to Mars, since it seems like it'd be best if we just left Earth to the rest of the species that inhabit it and move to a lifeless planet that won't suffer as much from our short-sighted and morally questionable leadership.

Secrecy Never Breeds Corruption, Right?

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In yet another disheartening move by the new Trump administration, the United States Department of Agriculture has removed a variety of documentation regarding animal welfare and enforcement of current standards of care from their website.  In a hilariously disingenuous statement, this decision is explained as being based in part due to the USDA's "commitment to being transparent."

The EPA Was Just Frozen by the New US Administration

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The Environmental Protection Agency was just frozen, "temporarily halt[ing] all contracts, grants and interagency agreements."  It's also been placed under a media blackout.  I cannot emphasize enough how problematic this is not only for its immediate effect but also for the implications this action has in conjunction with other decisions and promises - including sharply increasing drilling and mining operations in previously protected land - already made by Trump and his team.  This will lead to short-term financial profit at the short-, middle-, and long-term expense of catastrophic environmental mismanagement.  It's not a unique decision, unfortunately, but it is still a deeply wrong one to make.

Bison Are the First National Mammal!

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How cool is this - President Obama has signed the National Bison Legacy Act making bison the first national mammal (though bald eagles are still secure in their national animal status).

To celebrate, here's a gallery of all of my bison paintings completed thus far!

Mimosa Pudica Remembers You

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Here's a neat article from The New York Times on one of the plants I work with in my interactive installations, the Mimosa pudica or "sensitive plant."  I do have to qualify their results, however, because none of the plants I've grown has ever stopped recoiling from human touch/interaction.  I wonder just how repeated their "repeated exposure" was.