Ode Magazine

A winter’s tale

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:56:50 EST

Celebrating the return of the bald eagle

In the Iowa winter, as the poet Robert Hass wrote, “a farmer’s dreams are narrow,” and autumn can inspire me with a kind of dread as I work in the garden that will soon be buried under snow. But this coming winter, as the river that runs past my window becomes a sluggish ice jam, something miraculous will happen: The bald eagles will return.

To anyone familiar with the birds primarily through American patriotic kitsch, the sight may not seem that moving. But after the bald eagle became our national symbol in 1782, Americans drove it to the brink of extinction. In 1973, two years before I was born, nature writer George Laycock chronicled the “impending disappearance of the bald eagle” in a book that details the manifold challenges facing the birds, from pollution to hunting to development. His book, Autumn of the Eagle, advocates change but reads more like a lament for a species that is already gone, complete with data charts showing the extirpation of the birds from the lower 48 states. From the 1930s to the 1960s, from west Texas to California, hunters developed the bizarre sport of aerial eagle hunting, killing thousands of eagles a year by blasting them with shotguns from the open windows of small planes.

The practice emerged as a response to sheep ranchers’ mistaken belief that the birds, which grow to nearly four feet long and have a seven-foot wingspan, could prey on young lambs, a myth akin to the persistent rumor that the birds snatch small children. But it developed into a uniquely American high-octane sport. One legendary hunter, John Casparis, bragged that he could kill 1,000 eagles a year by approaching them from behind, letting go of the controls and firing his sawed-off shotgun just before the craft stalled into a dive.

DDT was a far bigger threat. American farmers dumped thousands of tons of the insecticide on their crops each year in the 1950s and ’60s, before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring established the link to waning bird populations and helped launch the American environmental movement. As DDT made its way through the food chain in ever-more-concentrated doses, it caused eagle shells to become thin and eagle eggs sterile. Against fierce industrial opposition, the U.S. banned DDT in 1972 and the birds were protected under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. But as a child, I never saw an eagle that wasn’t in a zoo or on a dollar bill.

In Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, a character who has found a lost infant meets another who has just witnessed a death. “You have met with things dying,” he says, “and I with things newborn,” and the moment shifts the play from tragedy to comedy. The eagle’s return marks a similar narrative shift, a victory for those who spent their Januaries tramping around the frozen Midwest looking for the single eagle’s nest that remained in Iowa by 1977, holding out hope that the story could be changed if they could find and protect a viable egg. Even the most optimistic could never have predicted the resiliency of the birds and the ferocity of their comeback. In Iowa, environmentalists set a goal of 10 or 20 nests by 2010. But population growth took the U.S. Department of Wildlife by surprise. Last year, federal staffers lost count at 254 nests, nearly as many as once existed in the continental U.S. The birds left the Endangered Species List in 2007. This year, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources spotted 47 new eagle territories and stopped counting. Busloads of tourists now visit Iowa and Illinois in the winter—a trip that defies logic and comfort—to go on “eagle safaris” with leaders like Bob Motz. The retired biology teacher offers your money back if you don’t see eagles, “and I’ve never had to give it back,” he says. Indeed, although the birds face continuing threats from pollution, it must be easy money these days.

On a recent walk with my children, I lost track of how many eagles we saw fishing and nesting in trees. As one giant bird wheeled toward us and dove for fish, my daughter screamed, “Don’t eat me!” Then she returned to ignoring the bird. The lack of portentous symbolism the event held for her is a cause for celebration. For me, the eagle’s return is a scene of renewal at the time of the year that seems most barren and bleak, a reminder that a few dedicated people can change the narrative for a species or an ecosystem. For her, it’s a reason to look forward to January.

Issue: September 2011

Blocking CO2 to beat malaria

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:56:50 EST

Mosquitoes are so difficult to elude because they pursue us via the CO2 exhaled in our breath. That’s annoying when we’re relaxing outside on a summer evening, but it’s devastating for the 200 to 300 million people who contract malaria annually. More than 1 million people—the majority of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa—die every year from this mosquito-borne disease. After his wife came down with dengue fever, another mosquito-borne malady, University of California, Riverside entomologist Anandasankar Ray started looking for a way to stop mosquitoes in their tracks—and found it, thanks to ripening fruit and fruit flies.

Ray discovered that ripe fruit gives off odors that can block a fly’s CO2 receptors, which the insects use to locate food and warn each other of predators. He synthesized the chemicals, adapted them to block mosquitoes’ CO2 receptors and formulated it into an environmentally friendly spray. Ray is now seeking to commercialize the technology through his company, OlFactor Laboratories. “The fruit fly serves as a model to understand very complicated questions that could never have been asked in other insects,” says Ray, who had malaria as a kid growing up in India.

Ray’s spray is potentially important because current methods of mosquito protection, including insecticides and nets, are costly and largely ineffective. Mosquitoes develop resistance to insecticides, which pollute the environment, and net distribution is not extensive enough to reach most people. OlFactor Laboratories products will be “cost-effective in distressed economies and remote locations,” says the firm’s president, Steve Abbott. “We are developing programs that will fund deployment in places hardest hit by mosquito-borne diseases and least able to afford a campaign to protect humans and animals.”

Issue: September 2011

Clean water, clean energy

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:56:50 EST

In the prosperous West, we generally only get worked up about clean water and electricity when the bill arrives in the mail, and we discover that once again, we’ve been showering too long and leaving the lights on too often. But in many parts of the world, people can only dream of bills like these. Clean drinking water and electricity are unavailable. These people live too remotely for companies to recoup the cost of providing such amenities; thus, no one is willing to tackle the problem.

If all goes well, an idea that originates with electrical engineer Jerry Woodall will soon change this. The Purdue University professor invented an aluminum alloy that can make contaminated water potable and generate electricity in the process. According to Woodall, his idea is unique: No competing technology can extract both drinking water and electricity from any type of water using an element as common and inexpensive as aluminum.

Though Woodall patented the principle underlying his technique in 1968, he didn’t try to come up with a practical application for it until a few years ago, when he became motivated by the increasing demand for sustainable green energy. The result is a mixture of aluminum, gallium, indium and tin that weighs just 110 pounds (50 kilograms), including a reactor and a fuel cell. The lightweight design makes the device easy to transport, so people from Africa to Haiti can use it as long as a water source is available.

The electricity and water are produced when the alloy comes in contact with water, catalyzing a spontaneous chemical reaction that separates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules from one another. Feeding the hydrogen molecules into a fuel cell produces electricity, with steam as a by-product. The steam is collected, and any bacteria present are destroyed by the heat, making the condensed water potable.

The only waste product is harmless aluminum hydroxide, which, according to Woodall, could be used to smelt a new alloy without releasing CO2. He is looking for a commercial partner to build a prototype and bring the product to market.

Issue: September 2011

The secret’s in the sauce

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:56:50 EST

What my father’s recipe for pasta marinara says about the future of capitalism

As the daughter of a Neapolitan, I grew up eating pasta with marinara sauce. My father didn’t always make it from scratch, but he did so often enough for me to follow his recipe through memories. Fresh tomatoes were not always available, but we canned them so we had the base for the red sauce all year.

The name “marinara” means “mariner’s sauce.” There is some debate as to whether the sauce got its start with Spanish or Neapolitan sailors’ wives. Since Spain owned Naples during the key years (the first recorded recipe book containing the sauce, written in Naples, is dated 1692), it is a meaningless debate. The important thing is that early on, the healing aspects of tomatoes were discovered, and sailors used the sauce to cure and prevent scurvy.

Tomatoes originated in the New World, and while they probably came from Peru, they were grown at least as far north as Mexico by the time the Spanish sailed. Since the fruit could be dried and was acidic enough to stay preserved, it could be carried long distances. The mariners who carried it could survive at sea without fresh vegetables.

But at some point in history, humankind seemed to stop noticing the connection between the benefits of what we eat and our health. We moved away from herbal remedies toward pills and gadgets. A stiff neck was no longer treated with a warm hand towel wrapped firmly around our neck and fastened with a baby diaper pin. Muscle relaxants became the cure of first resort. I’ve had friends suffer a torn meniscus and have knee surgery, but most of these injuries used to heal with time and quadriceps exercises.

I admit to admiration for Luddites, but I am not one. I enjoy modern comforts. Still, I cannot help but wonder if we are getting less when we modernize. The stories in the press back me up. It turns out that women of a certain age who take calcium tablets don’t benefit as much as women who rely on diet to meet that need. Milk does it better.

I recently read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, in which he advises us to eat “real” food. I had to laugh when I read that. I remembered my mother scooping something called “Cool Whip” onto some heated pears for dessert. My father leapt to his feet. “What are you doing? Are you feeding our children plastic?” It wasn’t plastic, but it also wasn’t exactly whipped cream. In 2007, Patrick Di Justo wrote in a Wired magazine article entitled “Cool Whip” that it is mostly water and air, although it costs twice as much as homemade whipped cream.

Old-fashioned food is cheaper and better for you. Eating a garlic clove when you start to feel sick isn’t nearly as expensive as cold pills; gargling with warm salt water actually feels pretty good (I admit, eating garlic does not) and does relieve most sore throats… but where’s the profit?

How many ancient wisdoms have we let fall aside because they were more trouble and less entertaining than being a patient and getting a pill? My mom boiled water to clear her sinuses. I don’t know; maybe pills do a better job, but they cost a lot and might do some damage, too.

My father took my temperature by touching his forehead to mine. If mine felt hot to him, I had a temperature. Then came the mercury thermometer. Probably the worst part of that was uncovered in 2001 when 7.4 tons of mercury-contaminated glass from a thermometer factory was found to be polluting the area watershed after having been dumped unprotected. Unilever eventually paid a fine, closed the factory and cleaned up the mess. At least thermometers aren’t made of mercury anymore. Mercury thermometers have been banned in most of the world.

When I was upset, I was given hot milk. When it was hot out, I sat with my feet in a bucket of ice water. Sleeping pills were not even considered. Oh, and generating electricity to cool homes and retail spaces ultimately means that power companies, which typically burn fossil fuels, burn more. This leads to greenhouse gases, higher global temperatures and more air-conditioning.

One of the concerns I have with the miracles of capitalism is that it has run over the miracles of nature. Corporate profits lie behind much of the erosion of land and the poisoning of air and water. Responsible investors use a battery of approaches to shine light on these issues. But let us also be mindful of what we can do to keep alive the wisdom of prior generations and not fall prey to the marketing myth of ever newer and “better” products.

Issue: September 2011

Sonic boon

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:56:50 EST

A search for the healing power of sound

I’m lying in A bed that’s as hard as nails with a series of strings along the sides and two gongs above my head. It’s known as a gong bath, and Gwen de Jong, a practitioner of sound healing at Spirit Connection in Amsterdam, assures me it can help clear my mind. “Just give in to it, and don’t try to analyze it,” she says before we begin.

Then she asks, “What do you hope to achieve?” When I say I want to relax, De Jong puts a mask on my eyes and begins to play. While I enjoy the sounds at first, they soon become unpleasant. The increasingly intense vibrations feel like screeches; my head fills with dark thoughts. I’m this close to ending the session, but I struggle to give in to it. When the vibrations soften, I feel better. A few times, I even reach a mindless state—if only for a fraction of a second.
Afterward—my session lasted 20 minutes; they usually last an hour—Spirit Connection’s founder, Harry van Dalen, comes in and explains that the unpleasant sensation I felt is the internal battle between thoughts and the “I.” “Your ego is resisting. Some people can give themselves over right away; others take longer.” Internal battle or no, I feel remarkably relaxed afterward. Though I usually turn on my iPod after an interview, I decide this time to travel home in silence.

Most people are probably unaware that the body consists of vibrations. External sounds resonate with the sounds in our bodies; think of the sensation you feel near a speaker at a concert. It’s not so crazy, then, to imagine that external sounds might also have a therapeutic, healing effect. Anyone who listens to birds singing knows sound can relax us. But it can also heal, accomplishing everything from reducing stress to helping autistic children.

In recent years, academic studies have investigated the healing power of sound. In 2009, researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland discovered sound waves can improve mobility in older people with bone problems. The application of sound waves reduced cholesterol levels and bone deterioration. That year, research at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, produced equally positive results. Forty patients with Parkinson’s disease sat in physioacoustic chairs, seats with speakers that emit low-frequency vibrations. Afterward, the patients’ symptoms had decreased. Motor skills improved; stiffness and shaking declined

The idea that sound affects the human body is not new. Healing mantras and religious chants are centuries old. The Egyptians described incantations to heal rheumatic pain, insect bites and infertility. The Old Testament records how King Saul was cured of his depression by David’s harp music. Famous composers have also discovered the connection between sounds, music and health. Mozart used this knowledge in his music by having the antagonist in an opera sing in a minor key and the protagonist in a major key. Composer George Frideric Handel once said he hoped his music had not simply entertained his listeners but “made them better.”

Jill Purce in England is a pioneer in the field of modern sound healing. Since the 1970s, she has led workshops worldwide to teach people how to use what she says is the most powerful instrument of all: the voice. She has people sing or chant to increase awareness and dissolve blockages.

Purce grew up with the healing power of sound. As the daughter of a concert pianist and a doctor, she was surrounded by the combination of sound and healing. Rather than study music or traditional medicine, Purce wanted to investigate the healing power of sound. “I was fascinated by forms and vibrations and by the effects of sound. I soon realized that our own voices are the most powerful instruments on Earth.”

A childhood incident played an important role in this realization. Purce and her family were in a small boat when a violent storm blew up. While others worried they might drown, three women on board began to chant. “Almost at once our fear dissolved. Waves of strength surged into us until finally we were overcome with feelings of bliss and enchantment.”

In addition to exploring the effects of sound and vibrations, Purce studied with Tibetan lamas beginning in the late 1960s. The lamas sing in overtones, higher-frequency components of the fundamental note that is chanted. “These monks sang in tones that resonated with their internal and external vibrations.

That’s when I realized that this way of chanting is the most effective way to create peace in the body and to reach a higher state of being.”

In Purce’s workshops, overtone chanting is a central component of discovering the power of sound. “I prefer to work in groups. Then you resonate not only with yourself and with nature but also with each other. That has the greatest effect.”

People with all kinds of health issues, from multiple sclerosis to depression, say Purce’s workshops help them. Purce herself is reluctant to claim any healing powers. “I don’t call myself a healer. What I actually do is help people heal themselves with an incredibly powerful tool: their own voices.” The basic principle underlying sound healing is that of resonance. Every object is in a constant state of vibration, goes the theory. Sound and light can affect matter, just as they affect the vibrations that matter produces. Because the human body is not made of a hard substance such as metal, it is receptive to the energy contained in sound.

The body also resonates. Each of our organs, bones and tissues has a frequency. And just like instruments, the body can get out of tune. When the components of the body vibrate at normal frequencies, we say we are “healthy.” If part of the body begins to vibrate at a nonharmonic frequency, we speak of “disease.” Research has shown that some sounds in our voices are under stress. These sounds correspond to imbalances in the body. Changing our voice patterns changes the frequencies in our brainwaves and reduces illness.

Purce is not bothered by the fact that traditional Western medicine views her methods as airy-fairy. She has another way of looking at it. “My husband is a biologist, so I know scientists want to see proof,” she says. “But I see proof in the doing of it.”

The academic world is, in fact, already acquainted with the positive effects of sound. In the mid-1960s, French physician Alfred Tomatis explored the relationship between sound pollution and hearing damage. He spent years researching the interplay between the voice, the auditory system, the body and the mind. According to Tomatis, the ear is a generator that feeds the brain with energy during the prenatal phase (when the baby is in the womb). During prenatal development, the ability to listen can be damaged without damage to the baby’s hearing.

Tomatis’ therapy, which is now used primarily for children with dyslexia or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, consists of re-experiencing the development of the ability to listen. Children treated by this method are fed music containing high tones through headphones. These are either Mozart’s symphonies or Gregorian chants, and using a special device, the “electronic ear,” they are filtered down to the level of sound in liquid, as a baby in the womb would hear them. During therapy, the child will also be exposed to his or her mother’s voice. The high tones (16 to 20 kHz) are the primary source of the method’s healing effect. Research has shown that these tones stimulate the brain in such a way that concentration and the ability to learn are enhanced. The subject responds with greater alertness and has more energy. Though the technique offers no guarantees, the results are positive. After treatment, children are able to listen and read better.

Aaltje van Zweden is well aware of sound’s positive effects on children with mental disabilities. She and her husband, violinist Jaap van Zweden, founded the Papageno Foundation 15 years ago. Papageno employs music therapists who help autistic children communicate through music. The couple’s experience with autism introduced them to the healing power of music, sound and rhythm.

“When our son was 5, he responded strongly to certain music. Whenever I played the song ‘Jesus to a Child’ by George Michael, he became very upset. He couldn’t talk then, but years later he told me that the song made him sad,” Van Zweden remembers.

Although her son is 21, he still meets with a music therapist. “Our therapists always come to the children at home. My son looks forward to it, though he usually isn’t interested in anything. During last week’s session, I even heard him describe his week in the form of an opera!”

Music can also stimulate quicker recovery in people who have had strokes. Researchers at the University of Helsinki came to this conclusion by measuring what patients were able to do one week after a stroke. Then researchers had stroke victims listen to music, audio books or nothing. Three months after their strokes, verbal memory had improved by 60 percent in patients who had listened to music.

Physical therapy also makes use of sound. Physical therapists, podiatrists and manual therapists use tuning forks to diagnose nerve problems. For example, manual therapist Petra de Lange of the Open Hart bodywork practice in Enschede, the Netherlands, works with phonophoretic sonopuncture, a therapy that uses tuning fork vibrations. According to De Lange, this method can regulate physical, emotional and mental discomfort and stimulate meridians, chakras and nadis, the channels of energy and consciousness in traditional Chinese medicine. “All matter, color, bodily parts and organs are made of vibration,” De Lange says. “This is no airy-fairy alternative nonsense but something you can simply measure with technological instruments. Just like waves in water, vibrations affect each other.” Tuning forks can go deeper than hands. “The vibrations from the tuning forks affect muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints. The therapist can see whether the body picks up the tuning fork’s vibration.”

Sound waves are used primarily to make diagnoses and perform prenatal ultrasound testing, but studies into the use of ultrasound waves to treat cancer are in full swing. Researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology and the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam have recently begun using a new technique for detecting prostate cancer. The method employs ultrasound and microbubbles. The gas-filled microbubbles are administered intravenously and react differently to ultrasound waves than do human tissue and blood. Because blood vessels in tumors display a different pattern than those in healthy tissue, tumors are easy to recognize in these ultrasound images, and researchers can determine how aggressive a cancer is by looking at the blood vessel pattern.

“Whether we’re aware of it or not, our moods are determined by the vibrations present,” says De Lange. “Think of the times you’ve walked into a place and felt something in the atmosphere. ‘There’s something in the air,’ we say. That something is vibration or frequency.”

Harry van Dalen has also discovered the power of sound—not from an academic or spiritual viewpoint but a technical one. For years, he has sold audiovisual equipment; then he started to see the need to go deeper. “About six years ago, I visited Tibet,” he says. “I went through a special initiation using mantras that completely overturned my life. I can’t explain it, but in 10 seconds my whole life passed before me. Back home, I landed in a kind of identity crisis: Who am I, really?”

Van Dalen began to explore spirituality and meditation techniques. While studying Buddhism and Gnosticism, he discovered that sound plays a crucial role in healing. He founded Spirit Connection with De Jong and Jansen to explore that idea in the West. The practice not only offers classes but incorporates gong baths, Himalayan singing bowls and Ohm forks, all tools that work with sound, vibration and the energy of the body. Most of his clients have stressful jobs. “People under a lot of stress use sound therapy techniques to learn how to relax and how to better deal with specific situations. To really reach a higher level of consciousness, you have to achieve inner silence. And, paradoxically enough, you achieve that silence the fastest through sound.” But while Van Dalen is a firm believer in the power of sound, he won’t promise miracles. “I won’t claim that you can fight cancer with gong baths. But I do believe stress makes people sick. And if you can fight that stress using sound, why wouldn’t you try?”

Issue: September 2011