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They Play Vintage Baseball

October 21, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM Staff.
The Portsmouth Rockinghams huddle before the game. Players’ uniforms are period-accurate but made from lighter fabric rather than wool.

There’s something about Americans’ love of baseball that’s different from every other sport. At least it seems that way to me.

And now I’m learning that baseball mania even may extend to playing games using the costumes — and the rules — of the sport’s earliest days.

Kelenna Onukwugha writes at the Christian Science Monitor about an almost forgotten type of baseball in Newbury, Massachusetts.

“They pitch lofty underhands instead of fastballs, wear no gloves, and follow the score scrawled on a big green chalkboard. Welcome to the competitive league of vintage base ball – note, two words – played according to rules used in Massachusetts in the 1864 version of the game.

“For many years now, members of the Essex Base Ball Organization have gathered at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury to compete in period-accurate uniforms. The daughters of player Jason Andree enjoy being scorekeepers.

“ ‘It’s pretty cool watching … a game from the past come to life,’ says 12-year-old Tess Andree, who sits in a lawn chair shaded by the large scoreboard behind her. She talks between sips of flavored seltzer water as her 8-year-old sister, Piper, skips by.

“Each team in the organization is based on an actual base ball team that played in the Bay State in the 19th century. The league consists of the Lynn Live Oaks, the Newburyport Clamdiggers, the Lowell Base Ball Nine, the Essex Base Ball Club, and the Portsmouth Rockinghams.

“On this day, Lowell faces Portsmouth in a doubleheader. There are no bleachers, so spectators set up lawn chairs encircling the field. A vintage base ball game can be played in roughly 90 minutes, compared with the average Major League Baseball one, which lasts about two hours and 45 minutes.

“One player, Tom Soare, described the vintage sport as a cross between a softball game and a Civil War reenactment. He and some of his teammates have grown out what he calls “Civil War-era accurate” beards.

“Sporting the most memorable beard of all was Jeff ‘Graybeard’ Peart, the team’s longtime official umpire. After his death in 2024, some players began wearing black pins with his silhouette on them to pay homage. They say he called a fair game, and remember him fondly for the vintage black suit and top hat he wore on the field, and of course, for his signature long beard.

“Now, the game operates on the honor system. Players call their own outs and referee the game. They maintain a friendly energy, though some calls are lightly debated. Ultimately, the day isn’t about winning or losing. “If you see a guy on a different team make a good play, you’re going to clap,” says Robert Nichols, who has attended nearly every game since 2013. “That makes it more enjoyable because you don’t have any skin in the game,” he adds, stroking his Chihuahua Ellie in the lawn chair they share.

“The league’s fans like the fun, relaxing atmosphere, says Brian Sheehy, a former history teacher who serves as president of the Essex Base Ball Organization. And it doesn’t hurt that the price of admission tops off at just $5 per person.

“ ‘You have your baseball enthusiasts; you have your history enthusiasts who come,’ says Mr. Sheehy. ‘It does feel like a community around the ballfield.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. Great photos!

See also Historic New England, here, which adds, “These fun, historically accurate games feature underhand pitching without gloves. A ball bounced once and caught is an out! Snacks, baseballs, and cards are available for purchase. …

“They are based out of Newbury, Massachusetts, and have four teams. They teach the history of baseball through games and demonstrations, offering youth clinics and lectures on baseball history at historical societies, libraries, and other civic organizations.”

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A Man with Dementia Plays a Man with Dementia

October 20, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Matt McClain/Washington Post.
What does dementia look like? To share the reality with others, Samuel A. Simon chronicled his own dementia in a one-man play.

Today I offer a long article from the Washington Post about a man sharing his experience of dementia in a play. The Post writes in the present tense, but I suspect that since the piece was published months ago, the actor may no longer be able to continue his feat.

It’s a sad story and a brave one, reminding us that we have the freedom to deal with life’s challenges however we want.

The Post‘s Michael Brice-Saddler begins, “He props his smartphone against a pile of books and adjusts the settings so the screen won’t go dark. He sets a timer. Then he waits.

“Eyes closed, Samuel A. Simon traces his breath from his ankles up through his chest, checking in with each part of his 80-year-old body before he begins. A purple binder holding a play script rests in his hands; the opening lines come from memory. …

“Simon was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease in 2022. As his memory has grown less reliable, he has turned his experience with the disease into a one-man play, Dementia Man, An Existential Journey, performing it publicly as a way to hold on to a sense of self. …

“Outside of the play, much of Simon’s day is organized around staying present at medical appointments, keeping up with a calendar that includes volunteering at his synagogue and advocacy work in Northern Virginia, and the small conversations he and his wife, Susan, return to again and again as they try to stay ahead of what’s changing.

“After faltering during his latest run-through, Simon tries to recall the name of a doctor he mentions in his script. He pictures circling the name in his mind, then tries again.

“ ‘It’s the first doctor I see,’ he tells Susan. Another pause. ‘God, what do I call him — doctor who?’ After several more beats, the name arrives: Dr. Howard.

“Simon sometimes gestures toward his wife for help during rehearsals, and she quietly feeds him the next line. During the actual performances, while sitting in the front row, she knows not to rush him through these moments. …

“The exchange reflects an undercurrent in the play that pulls audience members without Alzheimer’s into what the disease can feel like from the inside.

“ ‘Vanishing is my worst fear,’ Simon will say onstage.

“Remembering one’s lines before a live audience is daunting — even without a disease that steadily erodes memory. Simon has chosen to take on that challenge anyway. For nearly three years, he has performed Dementia Man in small theaters and public libraries across the country. He has also turned the work into a book, using it as a way to hold on to a sense of who he is and the life he remembers living.

“That life includes his years as a young lawyer working alongside renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader on property tax reform. It also includes a nearly 60-year-long marriage that sprang from a chance encounter in El Paso when they were dating other people. ….

“Simon has long described himself as a troublemaker — someone wired to push at systems that are dysfunctional and don’t sit right with him. In 2016, the system that stopped functioning properly was his own.

“That year, Simon found himself driving on the wrong side of the road about 10 miles from his home in McLean, Virginia, alerted by a chorus of honking horns. … Several months later, it happened again — this time on the familiar drive home from the local diner where he and a good friend ate lunch every Friday. Simon told no one.

“What finally overwhelmed him were episodes he struggled to describe at the time: moments when his body and mind seemed to separate, when he felt himself slip into what he would later call the ‘Nothingness Place’ — a sensation he has likened to floating, briefly, outside himself. …

“Eventually, Simon spoke up. … In 2018, Simon was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, a condition that can precede dementia but does not always progress the same way. The label helped explain some things, including the slips and disorientation, but it offered little clarity about what came next.

“This uncertainty lingered until 2022, when Simon was told his cognitive impairment was caused by early-stage Alzheimer’s. … Encouraged by friends, Simon began to consider bringing the experience to the stage. …

“After performances, Simon says, he is often approached by people who have lost a parent or spouse to dementia — thanking him for offering a lens into what their loved ones might have been going through.

“Susan remembers feeling overwhelmed at first, watching her husband perform Dementia Man. There were nights she sat in the audience with tears in her eyes, watching intimate moments from their shared life take shape onstage.

“Now, she says, the feeling is different. ‘Thank God he has a purpose.’ ”

More at the Post, here.

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A Win for Indian Country

October 19, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Angel White Eyes.
At the sacred prairie of Pe’ Sla in South Dakota, indigenous and environmental groups banded together to halt drilling. They chased out the mining company one week.

As one indigenous leader tells the story, “All we had were our prayers.”

But according to Shilpi Chhotray at the Guardian, protesters “knew it was bad optics to drag an Indigenous prayer camp off a mountain on camera.”

She begins, “When two Oglala Lakota scouts heard drilling was expected to begin on Pe’ Sla, the sacred prairie in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they set out on back trails. They needed to find out where. That’s when they saw a deer break ahead and a red-tailed hawk soar above them – less like a coincidence than being led, the scouts said. Over a rise, they came upon a road freshly cut to the dirt. They followed it, past a parked truck. ‘Oh my god,’ one of them said, seeing a drill turning. ‘They’re drilling now!’

“What happened next was something that almost never happens in Indian country: a coalition of tribes and organizers banded together and drove out a mining company in a matter of days.

‘We’re just not used to winning,’ said Dr Valeriah Big Eagle, who directs the Black Hills work of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy nonprofit based in Rapid City. …

“The fight to protect ancestral land from mining is a common one, and the struggles are often long, hard and lost. In March, the government handed Oak Flat, an Apache holy site in Arizona, to a copper company to gouge out one of the largest mines in North America – a transfer the tribe is still in court trying to reverse. In April, the Senate voted to strip protections from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, a watershed in Ojibwe treaty territory where the bands still hunt, fish and gather; the battle has since moved to the statehouse. The consequences of losing aren’t abstract: poisoned water, sacred ground turned to open pit, and the lasting health toll extraction leaves on Native land while the profits flow elsewhere.

“But at Pe’ Sla, what the Great Sioux Nation calls the ‘heart of everything that is,’ the coalition broke the pattern, moving on every front at once. It was a lesson, they said, in what organized power can still win.

“The threat arrived the way these things usually do: as paperwork. On 27 February, the US Forest Service quietly approved exploratory drilling by Pete Lien & Sons, a local mining and construction-materials company. They could drill 18 boreholes on national forest land, at least 10 of them inside a two-mile buffer around the central meadow that the tribes and the agency had agreed to protect. It was waved through with a ‘categorical exclusion’ that skipped environmental review on land prayed over for thousands of years.

“Pe’ Sla holds a sacred place in the world of the Great Sioux Nation. Wizipan Little Elk Garriott – the president of NDN Collective and a former Interior department official – describes it beginning with the sky. It is where Fallen Star came to Earth, and where, in a world scoured by fire and water, the people went inside to survive and later emerged. It’s also where traditionally foraged plants like the timpsula, the prairie turnip with its short spike of purple flowers, grow, and its root, high in calcium, is the real gift. Pe’ Sla is a church, a pantry and a pharmacy at once – the ceremony, the food and the medicine all right there in the ground. The ground that was almost drilled open.

“What the company was drilling for only sharpened the insult. Graphite is a ‘critical mineral’ of the energy transition, the stuff in electric-car batteries. Which means the drills boring into the birthplace of a people were there to help save the planet. …

“Even though the permit drew broad opposition – from tribes, local officials and the public – the Forest Service granted it anyway. So the coalition of tribal nations, the NDN Collective and two environmental groups escalated.

“The legal front moved first: in early April, NDN Collective, the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance and Earthworks sued the Forest Service, and nearly every tribe in the Dakotas filed a second suit of their own. But the courts were slow and the company was quick. When Pete Lien & Sons learned a restraining order had been filed, it went to round-the-clock drilling, boring as many holes as it could before a judge ruled. …

“Before dawn on 30 April, organizers sent up a drone and found the company had moved overnight, its crews now on two lit pads across the highway. The convoy had already set out – a caravan of about a dozen vehicles strung along the highway under a high, bright moon. With the ground still frozen, they climbed the Forest Service roads. At the only road in, 40 of them blocked the way behind them and put their bodies on the drill pads so no rig could run.

“ ‘It was supposed to be one day, to make a statement,’ Robert Bordeaux, a Sičáŋǧu Lak̇ot̄a poet who joined the occupation, told me for Peace & Riot. ‘It went so well we decided to stay.’

“For seven days, they lived on those pads – intergenerational by design: a youth council out front and elders anchoring the camp. They held it through helicopters overhead, three lines of police and private security, and a night that fell to 10 degrees with no fires because the hills were experiencing a drought. They stayed warm with hand warmers and each other. Even then, the scouts said, the camp felt strangely calm – held, protected – as if the relatives they’d prayed to were with them. …

“On 4 May, a federal judge halted the drilling, finding the plaintiffs were likely to prove that the Forest Service had unlawfully waved through a supposedly under-a-year project whose permit required three years of work. Still, the organizers didn’t leave – they didn’t trust a company that could pay a fine to stop. Days later, Pete Lien & Sons wrote to the Forest Service withdrawing its plan.”

More at the Guardian, here. The Guardian notes that “the story was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.“

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New York Art Is Meant for Everyone

October 18, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Marcus Maddox/New York Times.
Diya Vij, New York’s commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs, was appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani in February 2026.

New York City has often seemed different from the rest of the world, and that’s especially so today with Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as mayor. People are watching New York to see what it will be like under his community-focused vision.

One thing we can already see is that it will aim to bring more people, especially young people, into the arts.

Sonia Rao wrote at the Gothamist in August, “Diya Vij was appointed commissioner of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs — or DCLA — in late February, which puts her at six months overseeing the country’s largest municipal funder of artists and cultural programming. The department supports more than 1,200 organizations across the five boroughs, including major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Queens Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo as well as smaller nonprofits supporting public arts programming at the grassroots level.

“Matters of the DCLA should concern all New Yorkers because, well, our tax dollars are funding it. But Vij said in a Wednesday interview with Gothamist that the department’s impact goes further: A healthy arts scene is vital to the city’s overall well-being.

” ‘We know the presence of art in a neighborhood leads to better outcomes in health, safety and education,’ she said. ‘We know it matters to the economy, to people’s bodies, to their relationships, to their ability to find each other. On a policy level, it’s essential to the full life of a New Yorker.’

“Vij holds a prestigious and powerful position in the cultural world. But she said that she wouldn’t have been as eager to take it on had she not been asked by Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She was encouraged by his administration-wide focus on affordability, she said, as ‘artists are leaving the city for the first time in a really long time.’ …

“Budget negotiations consumed many of Vij’s earliest months on the job. DCLA received $323 million in the 2026-2027 budget, the highest amount ever allocated to the department. It allowed for the establishment of the Cultural Stability Fund, which Vij described as a pool of quick-fix grants intended to help struggling arts organizations, nonprofits and community organizations solve ‘the crises of the day.’

“ ‘Sometimes that’s like, your boiler burst or your rent just skyrocketed — everyday crises that might be the end of your business,’ she said.

“The fund, which will distribute $10 million annually over the next three years, will also help offset cuts to federal arts funding, rising health care costs and other financial pressures.

“One of the keys to sustaining a healthy arts and culture scene is making it accessible to New Yorkers, Vij said. Among the department’s most recent initiatives is a partnership with the Theater Development Fund, which encouraged New York City high schoolers to enter a lottery giving away more than 2,000 free tickets to Broadway shows such as Buena Vista Social Club or Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). …

“Arts organizations ‘need these young people coming in, having their first encounters with art [and] going even deeper if they want to: joining a teen council, doing summer youth programs,’ Vij said. ‘They are really diving in, because that’s the next generation of audience, of artists, of playwrights, of costume designers, of set designers.’

“Vij was introduced to New York’s vibrant arts scene as a teenager making the trek from suburban Connecticut to see Broadway shows and concerts. But it wasn’t until she worked at the Queens Museum as a curatorial fellow that ‘my entire universe [began] to shape around art,’ she said. Eventually, she followed the Queens Museum’s longtime director Tom Finkelpearl to DCLA when then-Mayor Bill De Blasio appointed him commissioner.

“As part of her work in the department’s special projects unit, Vij helped launch a Public Artist in Residence program, which embedded arts in local government. …

“ ‘Having that stint in city government before really prepared me’ for being commissioner, Vij said. ‘I came in [with] eyes wide open about the ways that being stewards of taxpayer dollars is really different than working in a private organization.’ …

“ ‘With anything you do, you also have to think about who you might be inadvertently leaving out, or what might be the unintended consequences of that. … The mayor has such a clear agenda and a clear way to get there. The pothole politics of it is really all of our mandates. How are people seeing that we’re working for them?’

“Vij plans to continue drawing on her past stints at arts organizations such as Friends of the High Line and Creative Time as inspiration for how ‘art and life should be intertwined.’ She was just a few months into a leadership role at Powerhouse Arts, a Brooklyn nonprofit, when she got the DCLA offer.

“ ‘I’ve been a part of a lot of different organizations, some really big, some really small,’ she said. ‘The throughline is that I’ve worked with artists that love working with the community, that think community engagement is a big part of their art practice, and that are very interested in how art can be a catalyst to material change in the city.’ …

“ ‘Something that is really important to me is being able to [devote] as much attention to individual artists and cultural workers as we do to the cultural organizations, from a policy perspective,’ she said. She added that New York City has funded the arts since the late 1800s, and she hopes to keep artists living and working in the city by helping alleviate some of their most pressing financial concerns.

“ ‘There’s a space for all the practices … the avant-garde, the experimental, the political,’ she said. ‘All of it can happen here. But I truly believe it only happens here because there is robust public funding.’ ”

More at Gothamist, here.

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Star Trek Muppets

October 17, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jan Thijs/Paramount+.
After 60 years, Star Trek has had a muppet takeover.

I find it reassuring that in dark times, creative people still give us fantasy. And I love how supposed fantasy-haters get drawn in. I know a few grumps (usually guys, but not always) who think fiction in general is a waste of time when you could be learning new facts. Huh! The deeper realities may be beyond skeptics.

Which leads us to the value of science fiction and playing.

Duncan Barrett writes at the Guardian, “When it comes to the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the life forms in question are less flesh-and-blood and more fabric-and-felt – as the series becomes the latest sci-fi show to embrace the magic of puppetry.

” ‘Level-Five Transporter Accident’ follows in a longstanding Trek tradition that sees crew members undergo unfortunate transformations while beaming up to the ship. This time, the crew suffers an even greater indignity: thanks to a spot of boldly sewing from the legendary Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the Enterprise team are reconstituted into – quite literally – a bunch of muppets.

“ ‘I thought it would be a big swing for us, but we spent a lot of time discussing how to do it as a Star Trek episode,’ says Strange New Worlds showrunner Henry Alonso Myers. ‘[I] knew if it didn’t feel like Star Trek then it wouldn’t work.’ …

“Despite Star Trek’s six-decade commitment ‘to seek out new life,’ the franchise has remained a puppet-free zone.

“ ‘Star Trek made a big commitment to makeup early on,’ says Dr Chris Nunn, assistant professor of film at the University of Birmingham. ‘So aliens would typically be played by human actors under heavy prosthetic masks, and that trend has continued.’

“So why the unexpected course-correction from a franchise about to enter its seventh decade? The answer, it turns out, is less about the magic of puppetry and more about the tropes of modern TV production.

“ ‘Doing a puppet episode is a TV concept,’ says Myers. ‘One of the things we try to do on Strange New Worlds is go for big swings that haven’t been done before in Star Trek.’ …

“For advice, Myers turned to former Angel showrunner Jeffrey Bell, who worked on the fan-favourite episode Smile Time, which sees its titular vampire, played by David Boreanaz, transformed into a puppet while investigating a sinister Sesame Street-style mystery.

“In Strange New Worlds, Myers flipped the format on its head, keeping Ethan Peck’s Spock as flesh and (green Vulcan) blood, while forcing the rest of the Enterprise crew to become chaotic, muppety versions of themselves.

“ ‘Spock was the obvious character to run into this problem,’ says Myers. ‘Because he’s so logical.’ The episode’s director, Jordan Canning, agrees. ‘Spock was 100% the right choice,’ she laughs. ‘He’s the ultimate straight man.’

“Like the hit Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian, Strange New Worlds uses a giant LED screen known as the Volume rather than building physical stage sets. Sci-fi actors must be particularly adept at playing make-believe, but according to Canning, the puppets made things easier for Peck. …

“ ‘It’s like Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary,’ says Nunn. ‘That movie wouldn’t have worked if they’d added the alien in post [production]. The fact that Gosling was reacting live in the moment is what made their relationship feel genuine.’

“For Dawn Dininger, one of five puppeteers who operates Grogu in The Mandalorian, it’s a double-edged sword. ‘The actors always forget that he’s a puppet.’ she says. ‘They just think he’s a baby and start rocking him and playing with him. They never talk to us, even though we’re the ones controlling him. They forget we’re there.’ …

“Dininger was unprepared for the cult status the character would almost instantly accrue. Now, when top Hollywood actors appear opposite the puppet – as Sigourney Weaver recently did – it’s the A-listers who are starstruck.

“ ‘It’s like tagging along with a famous person!’ laughs Dininger. ‘Nobody knows who you are, but they all know him, and they get excited as soon as they see him on set.’ “

More at the Guardian, here.

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High School Class Does Real Archaeology

October 16, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Mexico Solidarity Media.
In August 2026, the Consulate General of Mexico in Boston, Massachusetts, received the voluntary restitution of 1,132 archaeological objects belonging to Mexico’s cultural heritage. High school students were involved.

What an amazing opportunity for high school students in Farmington, Connecticut!

As Christopher Harland-Dunaway, Mallory Yu, and Juana Summers reported at National Public Radio, students were able to do real archaeology cleaning up valuable Mexican artifacts found in a dumpster.

Juana Summers
“It isn’t every day that a person finds archaeological artifacts lying around, let alone in a dumpster. Well, that is exactly what happened with more than 1,000 objects dating back to Mexico before Spanish conquests. Luckily, the artifacts also found their way to high school archaeology teacher Jeremy Pilver, who’s also a professional archaeologist. And now those artifacts are being returned to Mexico, where they came from. And Jeremy Pilver is with us now to talk all about this. … Can you tell us what some of these artifacts are? …

Jeremy Pilver
“They’re largely ceramics and ceramic shards with a variety of different iconographic patterns, designs and colors. There was a very small bird pendant for a necklace. There was what I believe to be a small plug earring that would have been worn in somebody’s ear. …

“About 2.5 years ago, my wife’s uncle, Matthew [Pioggia], was in Western Massachusetts, and they were clearing out an old house, and, you know, there were all kinds of things thrown in the dumpster. And as he’s looking at the dumpster of these discarded materials, he’s just seeing things that he’s never seen before. He knows I’m an archaeologist. …

“I received this series of images, and my jaw nearly hit the floor. I didn’t know the culture, and I didn’t know the exact dates of their origin, but I knew they were real, and I knew I immediately had a responsibility to rescue these materials. So I frantically called him and said, can you get them out of the dumpster? He crawled into the dumpster and spent the next four hours digging out. …

Summers
“What was it like seeing all of these things in person for the first time after this kind of wild story?

Pilver
“It was unbelievable. But I also saw the state of the materials. You know, the boxes and the materials were covered in debris and dust, and, you know, there had been mice and all kinds of things. So I knew this was not going to be a small task. This was going to have to involve a pretty significant mobilization of labor.

Summers
“It took nearly two years to go through everything — classify, clean, catalog and document all these objects, and you ended up getting help from your high school archaeology students. Tell me about their involvement. …

Pilver
“They were amazed. You know, you hear a lot about challenges in the classroom and difficulties motivating students and getting off their phones or whatever it may be. Well, just present them with a real-world challenge, and you will see them demonstrate, you know, the utmost excellence.” More at NPR, here.

I first read this story at a website called Mexico Solidarity, which posted an article from the August 17, 2026 edition of La Jornada.

“The Consulate General of Mexico in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, received the voluntary restitution of 1,132 archaeological objects belonging to Mexico’s cultural heritage, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) reported. The handover represents one of the largest archaeological sets received by that consular representation in recent years and constitutes an example of academic, ethical, and professional cooperation and of cultural diplomacy for the protection of heritage. …

“The documentation delivered to the consulate by Jeremy Pilver, a teacher and archaeologist at Farmington High School, regarding their provenance, will be used to establish datings and obtain other data useful for research.

“For nearly two years, more than 40 high school students participated in the classification, surface cleaning, cataloging, preparation of an inventory and a digital database, photographic record, documentation, and professional packing of the collection for its restitution.”

More at Mexico Solidarity, here,.

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In China, Thoreau Has New Relevance

October 15, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Appalachian Mountain Club.
Each year, half a million people visit Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

It seems that Thoreau is popular with young adults in China these days. And as today’s story shows, they have adapted his insights to their own needs.

Julia Du writes at Literary Hub, “When I translated Walden in 2012, I was not a Thoreau scholar. I was an immigrant chasing the American dream: two kids, two cars, two houses, a long commute to a corporate job.

“Translating Walden became my escape hatch. While the rest of life accelerated, I built a small tent in the woods of language and spent my evenings with Thoreau. When I finally finished the translation, I learned that mine was not the second Chinese Walden. Not the tenth. At the time, there were already nearly thirty.

“Today there are over three hundred. And according to Peter Alden, a renowned Concord naturalist and staff member of the Shop at Walden, approximately one-third of all visitors to Walden Pond are now Chinese. …

“Why do the writings of a nineteenth-century American hermit resonate so powerfully with twenty-first-century Chinese readers, particularly young adults?

“Thoreau warned us that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. In China today, that desperation has been given a name: Neijuan — involution. The term originally comes from anthropology, describing societies that grow more complex without becoming more productive. Chinese youth repurposed it to describe something they feel in their bones:

a workplace culture of endless, irrational competition for shrinking rewards. Everyone rowing harder; the boat goes nowhere.

“You see it in the ‘9-9-6’ schedule — nine in the morning to nine at night, six days a week — which remains widespread despite being technically illegal. You see it in mountains of performative paperwork, reports that exist not to communicate anything, but simply to demonstrate effort. … You see it in the pressure that begins not at the office but in childhood, as students compete for schools, graduates compete for jobs, workers compete for promotions, each rung of the ladder more crowded than the last.’

“If Thoreau were alive today, he might say that China has industrialized quiet desperation.

“The pushback has a name too: tang ping — lying flat. … It does not mean doing nothing. It means refusing the endless escalation … in search of something the rat race cannot offer: time, stillness, inner peace, a life that feels like one’s own. …

“The most widely circulated Thoreau quote among this generation is this: ‘The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.’ …

“From this reading, they coined a phrase: 精神瓦尔登湖 — the ‘Spiritual Walden.’ Not a pond in Massachusetts, but an internal sanctuary built amidst urban clamor, where one recovers what they call ‘the natural rhythm of breathing.’

“Users post photos of a plant-filled apartment or a weekend camping trip. … These readers are not moving to the woods. They are using Thoreau to justify minimalism — fewer luxury goods, less pressure to compete for a higher salary, a simpler life that costs less of what Thoreau would call life itself.”

More about seeing Thoreau with new eyes at Literary Hub, here. No firewall.

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More Bad News About Screen Time

October 14, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Paul Miller/AAP.
Researchers disagree on how much use of electronic devices is good for kids.

Computers in schools are here to stay. It’s hard to imagine how kids will get along in the world without knowing how to use use them and how to search online.

But where is the point that electronic devices begin to damage rather than boost learning?

Sally Weale writes at the Guardian, “Jared Cooney Horvath is on a mission. In the wake of global campaigns for smartphone bans in schools and social media restrictions for under-16s, the neuroscientist wants to raise the alarm about educational technology in classrooms.

“A former teacher, Horvath believes the use of screens and digital tools in schools is undermining how children learn and develop. ‘This might be one of the hardest truths our generation has to face,’ he writes in his book, The Digital Delusion.

“ ‘Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age,’ he says. ‘For nearly two centuries, the west experienced steady generational progress. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last. Until now.’

“Starting around the year 2000, something changed. ‘Across the west, IQ scores began to fall – even as time spent in school kept rising,’ writes Horvath. Scores in international tests started to drop. Why? ‘The answer lies in the meteoric rise of educational technology.’

“According to a recent Department for Education report, the UK educational technology – or edtech – market generated an annual [profit] of about £6.5bn [~$8.7bn]. …

“ ‘We’ve been making some incredible strides on the screen-based childhood stuff which even two years ago, I did not think was going to happen as fast as it did,’ he said. ‘But it’s not just about getting rid of screens for entertainment. It’s about reducing them as much as possible for academic learning as well.’ …

“The uptake of laptops in schools – especially in the US where he lives – began in earnest in 2010-12, Horvath said, but it was when Covid hit a decade later that ‘every school had to pivot digital as a Band-Aid … rightly so. Better to have something than nothing.

“ ‘But when Covid finished you would assume they’d rip that Band-Aid off, but the vast majority of schools didn’t. They just stayed digital.’ …

“He cites recent scores from the program for international student assessment (Pisa) which takes place every three years and tracks the academic performance of 15-year-olds across dozens of countries.

“In 2012, 2015 and 2018, Pisa asked students how much time they spent using digital devices during a typical school day. ‘The more time students spent on screens at school, the further their scores fell,” Horvath said. ‘On average, those who used computers for more than six hours per day scored 66 points lower than their peers who didn’t use them at all.’ ” …

“Rose Luckin is an emerita professor of learner-centered design at the UCL Knowledge Lab in London and a recognized expert on AI in education [says, however] ‘In terms of that Pisa data, if you look at it on computer use and outcomes, actually moderate school device use is associated with better results than no school device use. It’s just that the heaviest daily use is the worst.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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New App Reduces Missed Shifts

October 13, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR.
Ebert Velasquez Ramos works at the drive-through at a McDonald’s in Morningside, Md. He doesn’t have a car, so he sometimes turns to Escalate, a startup that provides Uber vouchers for workers who need last-minute rides.

Anyone who has interacted with low-income working families knows how little it takes to fall into a hole. One of the most important needs is reliable transportation to a job — or at least a backup for emergencies. That insight from two people who knew the nonprofit world led to an app that’s a win-win.

Andrea Hsu reports at National Public Radio’s Planet Money, “At 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, the drive-through at a McDonald’s just off the Capital Beltway is still busy with the late breakfast crowd. Inside the window, Ebert Velasquez Ramos takes an order. …

“The new high school graduate has been at this job for about a month. It’s his first job ever — and so far, so good. The bosses like how personable he is. And he’s been reporting for his shifts on time, every day, something he worried could be a challenge.

“Velasquez Ramos doesn’t have a car, and getting here by bus isn’t easy. Some days, he’s able to catch a ride from a friend or a family member. But when no one’s been available, he’s turned to Escalate, a startup that began piloting its employee support app at seven McDonald’s restaurants in suburban Washington, D.C., late last year. Through the app, he’s been able to quickly get a voucher for an Uber, which gets him to work on time. …

“Escalate is the brainchild of Sienna Daniel and Sean Segal, two veterans of the nonprofit world. For years, they focused on helping unemployed and underemployed people gain the skills needed to land jobs and launch careers. They ran bootcamp-style training, hoping to open up new pathways to work.

“But they saw that workers kept battling the same practical problems. Cars broke down. Childcare fell through. Absences piled up, and people could not hang onto their jobs.

“[Daniel] has seen this phenomenon play out among her own family members in Ohio, who have struggled with poverty and work. ‘My dad, who is 73 years old, and my grandmother, who is 94 years old, still support them every day,’ says Daniel. ‘Driving them to work. Picking them up.’ …

“Segal says through their nonprofits, they’ve seen that people really want to work. And they need the paychecks — even when they’re only making minimum wage.

” ‘It can be viewed as not a quality job and not a living wage, but it’s the job they can get and they have right now. And it’s the way they’re supporting their families, so it’s really important,’ he says.

“Feeling as if they were pushing a rock up a hill, Daniel and Segal began to think anew about their work. What if they could help the population they’ve been so passionate about, while also solving an absenteeism problem that can cost companies tens of thousands of dollars a month? …

“That was the genesis of Escalate, a name they gave to both their startup and its app. If businesses could give people what they need to get to work, exactly when they need it, callouts will drop, they posited. Maybe they could get workers and employers to show up for each other.

“In 2025, Escalate received a grant from the state of Maryland to run a pilot with Hopkins-Navies Ford Management, a McDonald’s franchise with seven locations in Prince George’s County, Md.

“For six months, employees would have access to Escalate’s app, through which they could request last-minute help with emergencies: An Uber voucher when transportation is the problem. A grocery gift card if a worker was short on food. A Visa gift card they could use to pay a family member or neighbor to watch their kids. …

” ‘Having that app, and having our employees make it to work, has been crazy beneficial for us,’ says Imani Ford, who operates the franchise with her mother, Mary Hopkins-Navies. …

“Initially, employees were skeptical of the Escalate app. …

“The real turning point came in late January, when a winter storm hit. Snow quickly turned to ice. Getting to work became a monumental challenge. Johnson remembers checking the cameras outside their stores and seeing workers battling the elements to make their shifts. …

“Veronica Allmon was among those who didn’t want to miss a shift. But her primary mode of transportation is an electric scooter. The roads and sidewalks were treacherous.

” ‘I would have called off until, you know, the snow’s melted, the ice is not there anymore,’ she says. Instead, she used the Escalate app to get an Uber. And she made it to work that day. And the next day. …

” ‘No other job that I’ve worked at ever went this far for their employees,’ she says.”

More from NPR, here.

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Bonding with Eagles via Webcam

October 12, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo:San Dimas Raptor Rescue Center/AP.
Jackie the bald eagle at the San Dimas Raptor Rescue Center in San Dimas, California, on 18 July 2026.

Wild creatures do many of the same things people do — for instance, hunting down food, raising offspring. And they face daily challenges. Eagles, for example. Those who watch live streams of eagles often find themselves identifying or finding inspiration to persevere in tough times.

That’s why an eagle who lived in California lake was widely mourned when she died.

Dani Angulano writes at the Guardian, “The bald eagle Jackie made her home on the shore of southern California’s Big Bear Lake for most of her 14 years. But her death earlier this week drew international attention.

“The Los Angeles Times described her as ‘arguably the world’s most famous bald eagle.’ For years, millions of people tuned into a live stream of Jackie’s nest, watching her rear her eaglets, work out life with her mate, Shadow, and, perhaps most memorably, incubate her eggs while almost completely buried in snow.

“She developed a huge following of devoted fans who tuned in day after day. And she became a pioneer of non-profit fundraising, showing the conservation movement a new path to reaching the broader public and connecting people directly with nature.

“Following Jackie’s death [in August], Friends of Big Bear Valley, the environmental education non-profit that manages the live stream, received thousands of comments and emails from people sharing what the eagle meant to them, said Jenny Voisard, the group’s media manager. …

“Trisha Dale Green, a local wildlife photographer who has been observing eagles for nearly two decades, runs a Facebook page sharing her photos of the raptors to about 177,000 followers. … ‘These eagles have changed many people’s lives, including my own,’ she said.

“Gloria Ackman, a retired English teacher in southern Illinois, had occasionally tuned in for years. But after her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer in February 2025, the couple began watching constantly. The cameras offered a glimpse of another world, she said.

“ ‘These magnificent eagles face so many challenges. Yet they stayed focused on each other, on their eaglets and on survival,’ Ackman said. ‘It was just so inspirational, their determination and resilience. I like to think that we embraced those qualities ourselves as we were dealing with the hardest thing we’ve ever had to. … It doesn’t matter what your politics are, what your religion is, what your country is – you can look at these eagles and just be awed by nature,’ she said. …

“Like P-22 with the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, Jackie and Shadow inspired conservation efforts. Friends of Big Bear Valley raised $10m in funding this year, including a $5.5m donation from the OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, to permanently conserve land on the lake.

“The group fundraised for months to buy a 63-acre (25-hectare) plot of land, known as Moon Camp, that serves as a key ecological corridor and included the ‘last undisturbed shoreline’ on the lake. …

“After the death of Ackman’s husband in December, she kept tuning into the live stream. She celebrated when Jackie and Shadow laid a second clutch after the first was eaten by ravens earlier this year. And, in Jackie’s absence, she has continued to watch Shadow carry on without his mate.

“ ‘Shadow is standing tall there on the pine, looking out over Big Bear, and seeing his big, beautiful world, and that gives me that inspiration to carry on and still see that beauty,’ she said.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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The Goats That Took the Bus

October 11, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Instagram/TriMet.
Two pygmy goats hitched a ride aboard a Portland, Oregon, public bus in August.

I commuted by train and bus for around 20 years and the most interesting things I saw were musicians and fancy shoes. Having read today’s story, I feel indignant: how come I never saw barn animals try to get on board?

Neil Vigdor wrote at the New York Times that such things can happen.

“There was not a moment to spare. The doors to the TriMet bus, which was heading west on Tuesday morning toward downtown Portland, Ore., had started to close when they opened for two stragglers. Neither paid the fare. …

“Not in the case of these two juvenile goats, which transit officials and the police said had escaped from their enclosure and ventured onto a lime green FX2-Division bus.

“Security camera footage chronicled their strange escapade, showing some other passengers doing a double take before … the driver reopened the doors. …

” ‘They don’t have a valid pass,’ the driver playfully told the other passengers as the goats exited the bus.

“The goats belong to a family that lives less than two blocks from the bus stop and are named Billy the Kid and Billy the Goat, Lrae Anderson, who identified himself as the owner, said in an interview on Friday.

“ ‘I couldn’t believe that they actually went across the busy street and tried to get on the bus and all that,’ Mr. Anderson said. …

“Mr. Anderson, 48, a rapper who also goes by the name Copper Loc, said his children — he has four sons — sometimes forget to close the gate of the goats’ enclosure.

“A neighbor brought the goats back to their home the same day, Mr. Anderson said, noting that he had since installed a lock and improved the fencing. Mr. Anderson said the family acquired the goats about three months ago after moving to the property at the suggestion of a friend, who told him they would feed on plentiful blackberries from sticker bushes on the property. …

“Footage of the horned interlopers, which TriMet posted on Wednesday to Instagram, had amassed more than 5.4 million views, according to the transit agency. …

“Not every passenger paid much attention to the escapees, video footage from inside the bus showed.

“ ‘I see the one lady,’ Mr. Anderson said. “She’s sitting there and she’s on her phone and she didn’t even notice the goats on the bus.’ …

“As he was preparing for a rap show in Seattle scheduled for Saturday, Mr. Anderson said the episode had provided musical inspiration.

“ ‘I’ve already started making a song about the goats,’ he said.”

More at the Times, here.

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Eating an Apple Attracts a Crowd

October 10, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Tierney L. Cross/Washington Post.
Carl Endrulat, right, and his girlfriend Jenny Mandl were behind the “Eat an Apple With Me” event in Washington, DC.

October is the time for apple picking most places, but it was a hot day in August when Washington, DC, focused on apples. On that day, a lot of strangers arrived in Malcolm X Park to eat an apple together.

Liam Scott writes at the Washington Post, “Carl Endrulat is a Pink Lady type of guy. The first time he ate one was euphoric. …

“Endrulat’s love of apples reached a new high when about 1,000 people gathered at Meridian Hill Park in Northwest Washington to eat an apple together. Endrulat organized the ‘Eat an Apple With Me’ event with his girlfriend, Jenny Mandl. …

“There’s no deep or hidden meaning in the event, Endrulat said. The wackiness is the point. ‘It’s really an exercise in silly joy,’ said Endrulat, who works as a software engineer for a Defense Department contractor.

“Bringing people together was the goal, too, Mandl said. ‘People yearn for community,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense.’ …

“At the park, which is also known as Malcolm X Park, the cascading fountain was flowing, and hundreds of people were bustling around. Temperatures were high. Spirits were higher. Apples were everywhere.

“Red Bull brand ambassadors were on site, passing out free white peach energy drinks. ‘Gotta support the whimsy,’ Bryce Waweru said as he hawked cans.

“Nearby, Rose Dallimore, 26, and her friends wore red papier-mâché apple hats that Dallimore’s mom had made for them.

“ ‘It’s an awesome way to bring people together for something that isn’t super high stakes, which is needed in DC,’ Dallimore said.

“Jack Wilson, 38, came with his two kids, 4-year-old Wilhelmina and 7-year-old Thomas. Wilson said his son asked him why they were eating apples in the park.

“ ‘And the answer was because it’s silly, and it had been a while since we’d done anything silly,’ Wilson said.

“Madison Gee came with a few friends for what she called her ‘impromptu bachelorette party.’ The DC Tutoring and Mentorship Initiative took advantage of the crowd to sign up volunteers. …

“When Endrulat and Mandl first posted the event on Partiful in June, Endrulat didn’t think more than 20 or 30 people would come. But then Mandl reached out to several Partiful employees on LinkedIn. One responded and put the event on the app’s discover page. ‘Then it started blowing up,’ Mandl said.

“The event grew so popular that Endrulat and Mandl had to get a permit from the National Park Service. On Wednesday, the couple met with representatives from D.C. police and the park service to go over final details. …

“At first, Endrulat and Mandl were planning to provide apples to the attendees. Mandl had visions of her car overflowing with the fruit. But they said the National Park Service told them that public health concerns meant they couldn’t offer any fruit that people eat the skin of. Oranges and bananas were okay, the park service said. … So they pivoted to making the event BYOA: Bring Your Own Apple.

“Why apples? Why not? …

“The fruit is also a comedy bit for Endrulat: His Instagram is filled with pictures of him eating apples in front of sites like the Charging Bull in New York’s financial district and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There’s also one of him eating an apple while running a race.

“It’s really funny to me to have a photo of some notable thing behind me while I’m eating an apple,” Endrulat said.

“At 2 p.m., a collective crunch filled the park as hundreds of people took a bite of their apples at the same time. Juice dripped down their chins, and Endrulat took a selfie.”

Almost as silly as the outhouse races of Minnesota! More at the Post, here.

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Comedians Dealing with Hecklers

October 9, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images.
Comedian George Jessel performing at the Tappan Zee Motor Inn in Nyack, New York, in 1966.

When I was small, which was quite a while ago, a close family member had a sad drinking problem. Having had one too many back in the day, he went to hear comedian George Jessel and got thrown out for heckling.

That’s why I was particularly interested in today’s story about how comedians handle hecklers. Nick A. Zaino III wrote about it at the Boston Globe.

“For a stand-up comedian, dealing with a vocal audience is often just part of the job, for better or worse. Sometimes it’s magic, sometimes it ruins the vibe. More recently, audiences have come to expect more interaction thanks to the influx of crowd work videos on social media. Those were already on the rise pre-COVID, but the effect intensified as more people experienced comedy online during lockdown. For working comics, the results have been mixed.

“Stand-ups have very practical reasons for posting a lot of crowd work clips. They’re easy to produce if a comedian is touring or playing out regularly, and they don’t have to ‘burn’ material they want to save for a special or a TV set. ‘They’re posting the stuff to keep people interested,’ says Boston comic Corey Rodrigues. … ‘Some people are better at it than others.’

“But some watching have come away with the impression that a live comedy show is mostly crowd work. ‘A lot of people have never been to a live show,’ adds Rodrigues. …

“ ‘COVID caused people to see a lot of comedy because they were stuck in their houses watching YouTube and all the different social media channels,’ says comedian and Boston Comedy Festival founder Jim McCue, ‘so I think that had an effect on people.’

“And they may be more enthusiastic to talk back and break up the show. As Rodrigues said, some comics handle it better than others. And heckling has always been a part of the live experience, going back at least as far as vaudeville audiences tossing tomatoes at an act they didn’t like. But dealing with the disruptions is a separate skillset from writing material to deliver, and not every comedian is interested in developing that. …

“Says comedian Josh Gondelman … ‘The audience participating in a stand-up set by chiming in and by answering questions or shouting something out is a more prevalent expectation — that’s a feature of comedy, rather than an interruption.’

“McCue has used crowd work in his act for decades. He’s adept at interacting with his audiences, but it’s not his whole act, and sometimes people look down on him for it. …

“Some comedians leaned into their audience interaction and get a label of a ‘crowd work comic.’ Matt Rife took the label personally and signed off his first Netflix special, ‘Natural Selection,’ with a message about believing in himself after 12 years of stand-up, and then a mic drop with the words, ‘But what do I know? I only do crowd work, right?’

“But not every comedian who does it has gotten flack for it. Paula Poundstone is a master of crowd work, stashing away details about different audience members and weaving them together as the show goes on. Todd Barry released The Crowd Work Tour special, for which he came onstage with no prepared material, in 2014 — way before social media made it trendy. …

“If a comedian is having a bad set, or they’re not a very polished act yet, that opens them up to problems. If a comic is doing well, and someone still tries to draw attention to themselves, the rest of the crowd might even drown them out without the comedian even having to step in. ‘Most of the people in that room showed up to laugh and have a great time,’ says Rodrigues. ‘So if you are providing that, that’s what they want.’

“Kelly MacFarland has noticed the effect of social media on audience behavior, but she has more than two decades of stand-up experience to fall back on. ‘There’s definitely a shift in the way that you’ve got to hit hard and fast,’ she says. ‘Audiences are used to instant gratification with their phone, iPad, computer, streaming services. I feel like I’m teaching them what to expect, and to trust me they’re going to like it. For the record, I always love the audience. Quiet, wild, loud, or sweet. Without them, there’s no show. You have to adapt and stay true to yourself.’ ”

More at the Globe, here.

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Art and Nature Photos

October 8, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photos: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
Providence’s Seekonk River in early October.

I’ve been enjoying the changing seasons so much lately, I often forget to take a picture of what I see. I’m just walking along and thinking, “How wonderful!”

Nevertheless, I have a few nature scenes for you today, and art pieces from a fascinating mosaic show by Cynthia Fisher at Umbrella Arts.

The first shot below is from a tree I pass when taking walks in New Shoreham. My app calls it a Chinese chestnut.

Next is an exotic-looking fungus said to be edible. It’s a Black-staining polybore on a red oak stump. I didn’t take a bite!

Kristina gave me a sweet-smelling lavender wand, an example of a French folk tradition involving sticks of lavender woven with ribbon. I had never seen one.

The first of Fisher’s mosaics here honors the American “tapestry,” the rainbow of skin colors (and personalities and traditions and cultures) that shows the best of us. Next we see Fisher’s modern version of ancient art, including cave paintings and figures from pyramids. The lovely blue mosaic drew me in but turned out to be a harsh commentary on what we have allowed plastics to do to our waterways. It’s called “PFAS,” pollutants you may know as “forever chemicals.”

Last is the stream by the Nashoba Bakery in Concord, Massachusetts, a favorite spot to eat a sandwich or pastry. The water is very low, reflecting the drought this year.

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The Vanishing Sea Star

October 7, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jennifer Adler.
Three-year-old sunflower stars explore the kelp forest for the first time. They come in a rainbow of colors but are all the same species.

The kind of starfish or sea star I recall seeing as a child on Fire Island is the echinaster serpentarius, I remember how after a big storm they would wash up on the shore by the thousands. We children in our ignorance would collect handfuls and dry them out at home. We imagined there were plenty more in the sea.

Now we know that sea stars — and their habitat — are in grave danger. Today’s article explains more,

John Ryan writes at National Public Radio, “On a spring morning so blustery that the National Weather Service issued a small craft advisory, a Samish Indian Nation research boat, called the Chinook (Yómech), set out from Anacortes, Washington, just east of the San Juan Islands.

“A team of divers crammed into the cabin as the small craft bounced and slammed across Rosario Strait. They were on their way to pick up precious cargo: 20 endangered sunflower stars, raised by hand in a lab at Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

“Sunflower stars are one of the Pacific Ocean’s most endangered sea creatures. For the past year, University of Washington researchers have worked closely with the Samish Indian Nation to bring this 24-armed creature back from the brink of extinction after a vast underwater pandemic nearly wiped it out.

“The choppy waters of Rosario Strait were only the latest obstacle in the tribe’s effort to bring sunflower stars back to traditional Samish territory.

” ‘I’ve had dreams about this day. I’ve had nightmares about this day,’ said Samish Nation biologist Sam Strauss. ‘Many things have already gone wrong that I didn’t anticipate, and I’m sure there will be a couple more.’

“The stars were supposed to be turned loose [October 2025]. Then divers found the deadly sea-star wasting disease — the cause of the species’ near-annihilation — surging throughout the San Juans. They called off the release. Six months later, it was back on.

“Sunflower stars can grow more than 3 feet wide and are the fastest of all sea stars. They cruise the seabed at up to 5 feet per minute in search of sea urchins or sea cucumbers to grab for a meal.

“They’re considered a keystone species, whose presence or absence can reshape a whole ecosystem. But the speedy predators have been unable to outrun a wasting disease that’s killed billions of sea stars. It took researchers a decade to pinpoint the Vibrio bacteria behind the disease that dissolved sea stars into goo. Researchers say ocean heat waves, amplified by climate change, helped the bacteria grow.

” ‘We definitely have lost a lot of sea stars,’ University of Washington research scientist Jason Hodin said. “We’ve lost 90% of our sunflower stars, we think.’

“Hodin runs the sea star lab at the university’s Friday Harbor Laboratories. ‘This was a really, really big outbreak,’ Hodin. “It spread from northern Mexico all the way to Alaska, affecting dozens and dozens of sea star species.’ No species was harder hit than the sunflower star.

“International scientists declared the once-common species critically endangered. …

“Inside the sea star lab, tanks of filtered seawater harbor hundreds of sunflower stars, from microscopic larvae up to adults as big as stop signs.

“The researchers have figured out by trial and error how to breed these little-studied animals. They’ve also cured some of them when wasting disease got into the lab. …

“Sunflower stars were never a big part of Samish culture, unlike salmon. … But the stars have played a supporting role in Samish culture by protecting kelp. Many kelp forests on the West Coast have been stripped bare by sea urchins. Sunflower stars prey on urchins, which protects kelp. …

“A dozen labs up and down the West Coast are currently raising sunflower stars, with small releases planned later this year in California and Oregon. It is unlikely biologists will ever raise anything close to the 5 billion sunflower stars lost to wasting disease.

“But they hope to raise enough of them to point the species, and kelp forests, toward recovery.

More details at NPR, here. No paywall.

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