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30 Years at the Guys’ Book Club

June 24, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Maxine Wallace/Washington Post.
Above, a men’s book club that meets every month in Maryland. The club celebrated its 30th anniversary in May.

Although my book club experience years ago didn’t work for me, I know what such reading groups have meant to friends of mine, especially the long-lasting groups. Most people I know have been in women’s groups, a few in co-ed ones, but this is my first time reading about a long-lasting men’s book group.

Maggie Penman writes at the Washington Post, “On a sunny Sunday afternoon in late April, eight men in Silver Spring, Maryland, gathered for a monthly tradition that began 30 years ago: a book club meeting.

‘The club is an eclectic group of men, mostly in their 70s — a former high school English teacher, a retired diplomat, an Israeli Army veteran — and they read widely. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry. Faulkner, Dostoevsky, J.K. Rowling. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. …

“Whoever is hosting chooses the book, and on this day it was Michael Slott’s turn. The only rules are that the book is generally available at the library and ideally no more than 400 pages long. Slott broke both with his choice of the obscure 1974 science fiction novel, The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (592 pages in some editions).

“The discussion began with someone asking for a show of hands of who finished the book — about half had. This is slightly lower than their usual batting average. … Dave Main said the book was very much of its time. ‘When I read a book, I think about when it was written,’ Main said. ‘This is totally a Cold War novel.’ …

“Mozena argued that the book didn’t age well because of the dearth of female characters and people of color. …

“After about 45 minutes, Slott brought out leftover chocolate cake from his wife’s recent birthday, and the conversation moved on to other books, specifically the older ones that the group thought had aged well (they had all loved Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five) and the ones that hadn’t (many of them were disappointed when they reread Joseph Heller’s Catch-22). …

“The book club was started by Schneider in May 1996 during a very different time in his life, when he was still working and had young kids at home.

“ ‘I can’t imagine how I did it,’ Schneider said. He worked in the labor movement, advocating for health and safety regulations for construction workers, and his days were long; he left the house before 7 a.m. and often didn’t return until 6 p.m. ‘But, you know, one book a month, it’s not a lot to read.’

“At first it was just him and a few neighbors — a way of getting people together. He and Bill Arnold had kids around the same age, so they met through the PTA; Ted Schroll and Slott lived on his street. Some people have come and gone, but the original members remain. Everyone attributes its longevity to Schneider’s commitment and organizational abilities — he maintains a list of books the group has read — the document is nine pages long, single-spaced — and sends reminders about meetings.

“ ‘I think the really difficult thing about keeping a book group going is picking good books,’ Schneider said. His daughter is a librarian and often gives recommendations. When in doubt, the group will fall back on classics or prize winners, though that isn’t a foolproof method. …

“Since the group takes turns choosing books, the men often suggest something they’ve already read and liked, knowing they’ll have seven friends with whom to discuss it. Favorites have included Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing and A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall.

“As the April meeting wrapped up, the group discussed who would host in May (Mozena) and what book they would read next (he chose The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, a ghost story set in a Minneapolis bookstore).

“Despite having had criticisms of that night’s book, Mozena made a point of thanking Slott for suggesting it, especially since he wouldn’t have chosen to read it himself.

“ ‘It’s worth taking the time to read books,’ Mozena said.”

More at the Post, here. I do admire people who are game to read something they would never have chosen for themselves. I probably I lose out by not being like that, but there’s so much I already want to read — and read again.

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Ukraine’s ‘Origami’ Deer Goes to Venice

June 23, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: David Levene/Guardian.
Zhanna Kadyrova’s sculpture arrives at the headquarters of Unesco in Paris, on its way to the Venice biennale. “It has become a symbol of hope” in Ukraine.

The Venice Biennale is a celebration of art and culture from countries around the world. What different nations send to the event shows what they think they stand for and what they want others to know. This year, war-torn Ukraine didn’t try to send high art but a sculpture that has become a symbol of hope.

Charlotte Higgins reported at the Guardian in May, “On a perfect spring day in Paris, the deer is first visible in the distance, poised between an avenue of just-budding plane trees in the 7th arrondissement. Its head is raised, its body poised. Seen there among the trees, it really could be a wild animal. In reality, it is a concrete deer, and not even a particularly naturalistic one, since it has the distinct look of origami about it. The sculpture is a play of scale and weight, as if feather-light folded paper has been enlarged and transformed into heavy concrete.

“The deer is strapped to a flat-bed truck, and it is being driven into the grand modernist headquarters of Unesco, the UN agency that looks after heritage, culture and education. It will stand there for a day in its gardens, with Alexander Calder’s Spirale for company and the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop. It is the last stop on a long overland journey across eastern, central and western Europe before it crosses the Venetian lagoon and docks in Venice for the 2026 art biennale, where, from this month, it will be the most prominent component of Ukraine’s national pavilion.

“The deer sculpture is by Kyiv-based artist Zhanna Kadyrova, who has been making resonant work reflecting the violence of the Russian attack of Ukraine since 2022. The work, however, predates Russia’s full-scale invasion. In 2018, she was commissioned by the city of Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk region, to help regenerate a large park. It was one of a number of efforts to invest in the cities of Ukraine’s east after Russian-backed separatists took over chunks of territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. She and her partner, Denys Ruban, worked in the city for several months. …

“Fast forward to the summer of 2024. More than two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pokrovsk was on the frontline. Kadyrova’s friend Leonid Marushchak – an educator, historian and now co-curator of Ukraine’s Venice pavilion – was at that time organizing perilous evacuations of museum collections from frontline towns. … Marushchak said: ‘I saw the deer was still standing there. I called Zhanna to find out if she was not against the evacuation of the sculpture. We went to the local museum – some of the staff were still working. They said they understand that they have to evacuate it, but they had no idea how to do it.’

“Marushchak began negotiating with the city authorities – whose first priority, as drone and artillery attacks heightened in their intensity, was not a slightly odd contemporary concrete sculpture in the park. His ‘trick,’ as he called it, was to undertake to evacuate a statue of Mykola Leontovych, too – a beloved Ukrainian composer who wrote the renowned, evocative Carol of the Bells. …

“A moving film, which will also be shown in Venice, documents the process. While the men are at work, Kadyrova asks locals – some about to leave for ever, some determined to tough it out come what may – what they think of the sculpture. Some are nonplussed, but others clearly love it, and the conversation is bound up with the ache of leaving a place, maybe for good. …

“It was last year that Kadyrova and Marushchak, with fellow curator Ksenia Malykh, proposed a project centering on the sculpture for Ukraine’s Venice Biennale pavilion. … And so, early this spring, the sculpture set out on its journey to Venice – a slow and circuitous one through Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, Brussels and finally Paris.

“Along the way, it has paused in each city, often in grand imperial architectural settings in which it was never intended to be seen, designed as it was for a park in a small, industrial city. And over the course of its journey, it has accrued more and more meaning and significance. Refugees from Pokrovsk, Kadyrova tells me, regularly come to see the deer, and a new tradition has arisen, of touching it and making a wish.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Richie Rich Hires an Orchestra

June 22, 2026 by suzannesmom

Representing a puzzling trend in the classical music world, pianist heiress Marina Quasha has become a conductor without traditional training. She is now music director of the German-Romantic Orchester and recognized for paying her musicians well.

What does it take to become an orchestra conductor these days? Sometimes all it takes is a love of music and money in the bank.

Jeffrey Arlo Brown writes at the Baffler, “On the evening of February 18, the Deutsch-Romantisches Orchester (DRO) gave a performance in Berlin’s Funkhaus, a one-time radio broadcasting center converted into a chic concert hall. It was a classical concert like any other — except for the guest list, five-course banquet, and glaring mismatch between the skill levels of the professional instrumentalists and their conductor, a relatively unknown young musician named Marina Quasha.

“Just after 7:00 p.m., Quasha strode to the podium in the cavernous concert hall. A kind of gray mist hovered above the orchestra. She gave the audience a tiny combination bow-nod. She then raised her hands and launched into conducting the overture to Verdi’s opera Rigoletto, followed by arias selected from Tosca and Macbeth, and, finally, Brahms’s First Symphony. Her work smacked of inexperience: Beautiful individual solos were undermined by an overall loud, blunt, and sludgy sound, a sign of missing vision and restraint. She let phrases that needed distinction bleed together and neglected the subtle countermelodies that give the music richness. Her hands beat timid time, and the musicians often ignored her tempo — they barely even looked at her.

“After the concert, attendees and musicians alike filed into the banquet hall, where three long tables with thin candles, handwritten place cards, and elegant menus waited. Amid the chatter, a musician gushed about the DRO’s innovative approach to reaching new audiences, as if we weren’t at an invitation-only concert followed by a luxurious dinner. Others, commenting on Quasha’s conducting ability, offered a masterclass in the art of the polite non-compliment. ‘It’s quite an exciting project.’ ‘She has something in her heart.’ ‘We all have room to grow.’ Perhaps they felt reluctant to bite the hand feeding them — and me — [oysters] and citron caviar.

“In between courses, Quasha popped by where I was sitting and mentioned that she was going to Malta, where she was applying for citizenship in the hopes of competing for the country in horse show jumping at the 2028 Olympics.

“Later, I forwarded a recording of the concert to two musicians whose ears I trust without telling them who made it. The first, a pianist, sent me a list of six general problems and thirty-seven significant but more specific issues including timestamps. ‘The moments when the music mostly plays itself were fine,’ he said, ‘but the parts that actually required conducting skills were sorely lacking.’ The second, an accomplished conductor, told me, “I sense that the orchestra doesn’t trust the conductor.’ … Nevertheless, he said, he could tell the conductor was working with ‘an expensive instrument.’

“Expensive, indeed: Quasha later told me the Funkhaus concert had cost over $290,000. Seventy-seven percent of orchestras in the United States had annual budgets under $300,000 in 2022, according to the League of American Orchestras. Why did all this energy, skill, and money flow into a concert led by a conducting neophyte? The answer lies in a concerning trend new to classical music: the rise of pay-to-play, boutique musical experiences for the ultra-wealthy.

“The musical adventuring of socialite-turned-soprano Florence Foster Jenkins and [others] show that rich people never really lost their desire to prove themselves in the musical realm. But the last decade or so has seen a striking rise in pay-to-play arrangements, a situation that recalls the days when orchestras belonged to princes. These experiences allow people with money but little musical ability to roleplay composer and conductor — for a price. This development flows naturally from this era’s extreme inequality as well as classical music’s precarious state, even in such historically generous countries as Germany. It risks reshaping the art itself to align with the whims of wealthy dilettantes.

“Examples abound. In 2012, Alexey Kononenko, a former mathematician at the mysterious hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, began a career as a composer. Despite never having learned to play an instrument, a rudimentary grasp of music theory, and a ratio of inspiration to imitation that would embarrass a large language model, Kononenko, who goes by the stage name Alexey Shor, has had his works performed all over the world by many of its best musicians. …

“Or consider Susan Lim. Last May, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of London Choir, and the outstanding pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet gave a performance of a composition by the surgeon and AI booster, who hired musicians to turn her inchoate ideas about technology into music and allow herself the privilege of calling herself a ‘songwriter.’ The work depicts a stuffed lion’s journey from to inanimate toy to sentient companion by way of lyrics like ‘It’s a beautiful invention / Robotics, artificial intelligence / It’s the new medication.’ …

“All this make-believe art making has an uncanny quality. The concerts look and sound a lot like normal concerts, with professional musicians picking up the wealthy dabbler’s slack. The overall effect is hard to localize at first, but it boils down to this: Rich people are building their own classical music world, one where the long years of intense training, fierce competition, and harrowing precarity musicians endure to master their craft matter less than … cold, hard cash. …

“At least Quasha is giving some musicians sorely needed well-paid gigs. But pay-to-play schemes for wealthy dilettantes risk undermining the important thing in classical music that is still largely working — its commitment to artistic excellence — hollowing it out completely in the process. The danger is partly political: Will cash-strapped governments like Germany’s see projects like the DRO and decide they don’t need to pay for its uniquely diverse publicly funded network of 129 professional orchestras if a rich person is happy to pick up the tab for starting their own?”

More at the Baffler, here. You’re allowed one free article.

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Dad Jokes for Father’s Day

June 21, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Westend61/Getty Images.

I’m wondering if Father’s Day is part of other people’s family traditions and, if so, how everyone celebrates. Wikipedia lists 100 countries that have some kind of recognition, but it doesn’t give many details.

The dads in our family usually receive gifts or get a special outing. And, of course, children have been known to make beautiful cards. What about entertainments? Does anyone perform for their father or tell dad jokes?

Sarah Lemire at Today writes, “Did you hear about the father who lost his left leg? He’s all right now. How about this one: My dad said he wanted something groundbreaking for Father’s Day. So I got him a shovel. …

‘Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to also give Dad a thoughtful card with a few heartfelt sentiments written inside to remind him that when it comes to dads, he’s simply the best.

“In the end, however, laughter is the real gift, and [here’s] everything you need to deliver the perfect punchline this Father’s Day. …

“I was going to tell my dad a pizza joke for Father’s Day. But I decided it was too cheesy.

“For Father’s Day, I got my dad a book on anti-gravity. Now he can’t put it down.

“My dad opened a gym once. But it didn’t work out.

“Why did the golfer cry? He was going through a rough patch.

“My dad is really bad at golf. I told him to join the club. …

“My dad used to steal soap, but eventually he came clean.

“I took my dad camping for Father’s Day. It was in tents.

“My dad used to be addicted to the hokey pokey. But then he turned himself around.

“My father ate a frog. Now I’m worried he’s going to croak.

“Why do golf announcers whisper? They don’t want to wake up the spectators. …

“My father spilled invisible ink all over himself. He’s at the hospital waiting to be seen.

“My dad quit his job as an archeologist. Now his career is in ruins.

“The last time my dad played baseball he got arrested. Apparently he tried to steal second base.

“My dad’s computer caught a cold. He must have left a window open.

“My dad said he wanted something groundbreaking for Father’s Day. So I got him a shovel. …

“I never liked my dad’s facial hair. But now it’s starting to grow on me.

“My dad bought a pair of camouflage pants. Now I can’t find him.

“My father doesn’t like trees. He thinks they’re shady.

“For Father’s Day, my dad asked for a gift with no strings attached. So I bought him a broken guitar. …

“I got my dad a book about glue once. He couldn’t put it down.

“My dad won’t play cards in the jungle. He says there are too many cheetahs.

“My grandfather got fired from the keyboard factory. He wasn’t putting in enough shifts.

“My dad wanted to listen to music while we were fishing. So I put on something catchy.”

More bad jokes at Today, here.

And you might like to read about Sonora Dodd, who started Father’s Day in Spokane, Washington, in 1910. Her dad had raised six children after their mother died, and she wanted to see him get some credit. More here.

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Mauritania’s Ancient Manuscripts

June 20, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Kang-Chun Cheng.
Habott opening a book on Sufism interpretation in the family library.

I had to do a little research before sharing today’s article about a family’s work to preserve ancient manuscripts. I’m sorry to say that my geography is weak, and I didn’t know where to find Mauritania.

According to Wikipedia, Mauritania is a country in Northwest Africa, situated in the middle of Mali, Senegal, Algeria, and Western Sahara. Its full name is the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

At the Dial recently, Kang-Chun Cheng described the history of the manuscripts and focused on why climate change and desertification is threatening them.

“Dressed in a boubou, a traditional Arab robe, ” Cheng writes, “Mohammed Abdullah Ould Gholam Habott, 51, puts on gloves before delicately handling the ancient manuscripts. He opens a book about Sufism, a mystical practice within Islam, and then another about its interpretation. Gingerly, he thumbs through the pages of Arabic script.

“Habott is the custodian of his family’s library and has been for 24 years. The size of a large sitting room, the library contains more than 1,000 pieces of Quranic manuscripts, legal texts and scientific writings –– some of the oldest in West Africa — ranging from mathematics to astronomy. It’s one of three such libraries still open to the public in Chinguetti, an ancient desert village in northern Mauritania.

“Established around 777 AD, Chinguetti — meaning ‘spring of horses’ in the extinct Azayr language — is home to roughly 4,800 people. The unforgiving environment makes survival feel like a concession; temperatures can exceed 43 degrees Celsius [109.4 F] during the day, then plummet down to 10 degrees after the sun sets. …

“Designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996, Chinguetti once served as an important trading outpost for the Mediterranean Timbuktu caravan route and a resting spot for religious pilgrims en route to Mecca. Small libraries were built to maintain and organize holy writings left behind by generations of transient pilgrims. Today, tourists and researchers travel great distances to look at them.

“Books are stored in storage cabinets, on open shelves and in wood and glass display cases. With few windows, the libraries are kept relatively dark and the texts out of the hot sun, but the rooms are far from temperature controlled. These simple preservation methods may not be enough to withstand changes to the desert climate.

“Temperatures here are rising up to 1.5 times faster than the global average, rainfall is plummeting, and sandstorms are becoming more common. While the texts are relatively safe in the arid desert air, the fates of the libraries themselves are precarious. Desertification threatens to bury towns. With fewer trees and vegetation, sand can more easily migrate onto the streets. In some places, dunes reach window height and pour into people’s homes.      

“The libraries in Chinguetti are owned and overseen by families, custodial positions passed down through generations. From a young age, Habott was captivated by stories that his grandfather told him of pilgrimages to Mecca and traveling to Andalusia, Spain, to purchase Moorish texts. His family’s library has existed since the 1800s and, as the eighth custodian, Habott tells me he felt proud of the culture and heritage the libraries carried. …

“His two sons, aged 12 and 18, don’t share this dream. Chinguetti’s remoteness and lack of resources (access to electricity only stabilized in 2013) mean there are very few economic opportunities. Many young people have little incentive to stay; the city’s population has been steadily declining for years as youth travel elsewhere for blue-collar work and a larger life. …

“ ‘An ocean of sand is coming,’ Habbott says from the dry coolness of his library. ‘I ask Allah to keep this family going.’ ”

A nice collection of photos may be enjoyed at the Dial, here. No firewall.

In case, like me, you had never heard of the Dial, here’s what they say about themselves: “We created The Dial in 2023 to make space for daring writing unconstrained by geography. English-language journalism is growing perilously small in voice, in ambition and in subject. We see an opportunity to publish stories from the point of view of those on the ground — with the world itself as our center of gravity, rather than Brooklyn. We trained as editors at The New York Review of Books, Politico’s European newsroom and the Atlantic.” I like the sound of their goals!

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Some Thoughts on Juneteenth

June 19, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Amy Edmunds.
Edith Edmunds, 99 at the time NPR interviewed her, is pictured with one of her Underground Railroad “code” quilts.

June 19th, or Juneteenth, is a date long celebrated in the Black community and now more widely honored. According to Wikipedia, the name refers to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas.

Vanessa Romo reported a while back at National Public Radio (NPR) about Edith Edmunds and the connection between African American history and quilting.

“For Edith Edmunds, the art of quilt making is inextricably linked to the Black struggle for freedom. That’s why she plans to be sewing on Juneteenth.

” ‘It’s what I love to do’ she told NPR in a phone interview.

“Edmunds, who is 99 years old, has been making quilts since she was seven, when she first learned to sew on a pedal-powered treadle machine using scraps of fabric. But it wasn’t until 50 years ago, after reading a magazine article, that she learned how runaway enslaved people in the South used encoded messages in quilts to make their way north along the Underground Railroad.

” ‘In the spring and summer it was common for people to hang their quilts and wall hangings outside on fences, or bushes, or out of windows and it happened that that was the same time of year many enslaved people tried to escape,’ Edmunds explained.

“For those not in the know, the decorated quilts would simply go unnoticed, but for those looking for signs, ‘the quilts conveyed messages to people who were about to escape, who were planning to escape, and also for people that were on the run,’ she said. …

“Both of Edmunds’ grandfathers were born into slavery in Halifax County, Va. They were still children when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. … Edmunds said she often thinks about them while she’s sewing.

” ‘I think about what my ancestors must have gone through in slavery,’ she said.

“So, what better way to mark the day 160 years ago when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, on to spread the news that slavery had been outlawed — two years earlier — than to spend it in communion with her family’s past.

“Edmunds’ daughter, Amy Edmunds, told NPR that she’s been helping her mother learn more about the secret language of quilts. They were especially inspired after reading Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, which relies on an oral history relayed by the descendants of enslaved people in South Carolina. In the 1999 book, the authors decode the 10 patterns that make up the Underground Railroad Quilt Codes.

“The first pattern Edmunds learned to make — the one she read about in the magazine decades ago — is called the ‘monkey wrench.’

” ‘It tells the enslaved to get ready for a journey, so when they saw it they knew the time was near,’ she said.

“Since then she’s completed several quilts, mastering each of the coded blocks. The ‘north star’ told runaways to follow the light of the north star as they traveled at night. A ‘bow tie’ square warned a fleeing slave to clean up and change their clothes so they wouldn’t stand out among free Black people. The ‘drunken pair’ told the enslaved not to walk straight but to walk zigzag so that they couldn’t be tracked. A log cabin with a black center indicated a safe house, while a log cabin with a light center conveyed they should stay away.

“If a person on the run stumbled upon a quilt with a ‘shoofly’ block on it, it meant they’d reached someone who could provide safe, temporary shelter, Edmunds said.

” ‘This was a person who would secretly hide the enslaved in a cave, in a church, or even in a graveyard,’ she said, adding that they could be a Black or white person who was involved in the Underground Railroad. ‘A shoofly risked their own freedom for a stranger.’

“Over the years, Edmunds and her daughter have sought to learn as much as they can about their family history and the history of the coded quilts. Amy Edmunds said it’s been a challenging endeavor.”

That’s because there is no written history, making experts skeptical.

” ‘There is no evidence of it at all,’ Tracy Vaughn-Manley, a Black Studies professor at Northwestern University, told NPR in an interview last year.

“Vaughn-Manley, who studies Black quilting, said the theories posited by Jacqueline Tobin, a women’s studies professor at the University of Denver, and Raymond Dobard, an art historian from Howard University, who co-wrote Hidden in Plain View, are not substantiated. …

” ‘No letters, no notes, nothing that would signify that quilts were used as codes,’ Vaughn-Manley said.

“But other academics, including Mary Twining-Baird, an Atlanta-based quilt scholar and emeritus professor of English and Folklore at Clark Atlanta University, have stood by Tobin and Dobard’s research.

” ‘If people’s lives are at stake, then it stands to reason that there would be no trace of the quilts,’ Twining-Baird told the Smithsonian in 2019.

‘She added: ‘Of course there is no documentation! Literally, if anyone found out they could lose their lives.’

“This is the argument Amy and Edith Edmunds make as well. In fact, the younger Edmunds notes the long history of pictographs and symbols, like the Adinkra, which are used in fabric and pottery across West Africa.

” ‘They’re a form of language to help people to be able to communicate, across boundaries. And so. It would make sense that these designs and these symbols would be used to convey messages. It would be something that was already a part of the culture,’ she said.

“Edith Edmunds, who is two months shy of her 100th birthday, [said Juneteenth] ‘gives me a chance to talk about the Underground Railroad with urgency. … The younger generations don’t know what really happened back then — with the Underground Railroad. So I hope I’m opening somebody’s eyes and their minds.’ “

More at NPR, here.

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A Park for Park Avenue

June 18, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners.
Architects have submitted two designs for a park on a section of New York’s Park Avenue. This is the scheme with a bike lane.

Back in the day, when I was going to high school and living during the week with my mother’s sister, Park Avenue was not much of a park. I remember daffodils in spring, but they were surrounded by an iron fence.

Today I learn that there are plans to make big changes. At Markets Today (via MSN), Christopher Bonanos shares his opinions about a proposed park project.

“Two summers ago, the city announced that it was taking a good hard look at (as every politician seemed to phrase it) ‘putting the park back in Park Avenue.’ … A century ago, the median down the middle of Park Avenue was much more welcoming than it is today, a place with seating and substantial plantings where you’d consider spending time.

“Starting in the 1920s, the city added a traffic lane on each side by paring the median down to a narrow strip, creating a pleasant but not useful viewing garden. In 2024, the city announced a call for proposals wherein those two lanes would be reclaimed from traffic for leisure and greenery. It was a once-in-a-century opportunity, because the aged Metro-North tunnel running under the avenue is being reconstructed, allowing its roof above to be rethought. …

“The rebuilt mall, the announcement said, would extend from 46th Street, where it emerges from the pass-throughs at the Helmsley Building, up to 57th Street. Each half of Park Avenue would go from four lanes to three. [Recently] we got a first look at plans produced by the firm Starr Whitehouse, and here they are. …

“The biggest difference between the two design schemes is a protected bike lane that snakes its way up the western side of the median, present in one rendering and absent from the other. The proposed park is, unlike its 1910s forebear, not symmetrical or uniform in shape. Carve-outs for left-turn lanes alter its form on every other block. … Bollards at the ends of each section will permanently keep errant (or malicious) drivers out of the median.

“That said, there’s somewhat less greenery and more paving than you might expect: The center islands have no plants at the corners, for example. …

“The best aspect of all: There’s seating! God bless everyone involved for rejecting the tools of hostile architecture and incorporating built-in masonry benches. That makes sense, given that office workers’ lunchtime and smoke breaks are a major use case for this project. They do set up the prospect of clashes between camped-out people and the police (and maybe Park Avenue office tenants’ security teams, too) over those spaces, and at the risk of sounding cynical, you can bet that the cops will prevail. But perhaps those conflicts will not arise as often as you’d expect. Judging by the newish seating in the plaza a few blocks away between Grand Central Terminal and One Vanderbilt, it will not be permanently occupied by unhoused people.

“The bike lanes are, at least when seen at the macro level of these renderings, not quite refined yet. They’re going to need a lot of visual cues and signage to keep walkers, cyclists, and cars out of one another’s way. The bike path runs through the crosswalks, and disabled or slow-moving pedestrians, or those who are simply inattentive, will have to contend with riders zinging through at high speed. If the bike lane is sharply delineated with curbs, that will help a lot. …

“One question that comes up is what knock-on effects will arise from shearing off car lanes. Some of the car trips now using them will simply disappear, as they do every time the inverse of induced demand, known as ‘reduced demand,’ kicks in. … To me, looking at both proposals, the plan that’s all park seems much more workable at a day-to-day ground level. I’d offer that the bike lane might instead be set on the outside edge of Park Avenue, at the sidewalk curbs, away from the median, even if that means shaving a couple of feet off the park to make room. Or we could perhaps shift the bikers over one short block to Madison Avenue. …

“An easy guess is that, if all of this turns out to be popular and successful, similar changes will happen all the way to 96th Street. … The question then becomes whether affluent residents of Park Avenue on the Upper East Side will approve of the greenery more than they will grumble about constraints upon their cars and drivers.

“Given that this is far too businesslike a city to ever go all out and turn an avenue into a full-on park — that is, to build our own version of the Rose Kennedy Greenway — it’s going to be a real public asset.”

More at MSN, here.

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More States Are Protecting Books

June 17, 2026 by suzannesmom

Publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) celebrated Right to Read Day in Albany on April 20, during National Library Week. Clockwise from top left: Skip Dye, senior vice president of library sales and digital strategy; Eric Rosswood of New York Authors Against Book Bans; Dan Novack; Rosie Stewart; and student advocate Kaya Richards of SUNY–Buffalo.

Supporters of libraries and the First Amendment are often taken off guard when supporters of book bans get going. But they just need a little time to get organized. See how they’re starting to influence lawmakers in US states.

Nathalie op de Beeck writes at Publishers Weekly (PW), “In an encouraging turn, advocates of the right to read are noticing signs that legal pushback and public pressure are influencing state legislatures. States are fine-tuning imprecise language around librarianship and rethinking broad terms such as ‘appropriate’ and ‘harmful to minors’ — a promising development — although they’re also continuing to test constitutional limits.

“In Idaho, two challenges to the censorious Idaho House Bill 710, known as the Children’s School and Library Protection Act, have resulted in amendments to Idaho state code, even though the district court has yet to issue a ruling. While the amendments make the code more specific, they also establish a reading age category of ‘adolescent minors,’ ages 13–17, and indicate that many lawmakers believe libraries engage in ‘government speech.’

“Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, two recent bills aimed at limiting the freedom to read have failed. Wisconsin AB 5, a proposed act that would have required ‘school boards to make textbooks, curricula, and instructional materials available for inspection by school district residents,’ was vetoed by Wisconsin governor Tony Evers in October 2025. Another bill, AB 961, mandating conspicuous ‘warning labels for explicit content’ on ‘visual, written, or auditory material,’ was introduced in January and ‘dead’ as of March 23.

“And in Alaska, a bill favoring libraries has been proposed. Senate Bill 238, a library standards policy introduced by Fairbanks state senator Scott Kawasaki, was endorsed by the state chapter of Authors Against Book Bans during National Library Week, April 19–25. It sets guidelines for protecting librarians from criminal or civil liability, ensuring that material is ‘taken as a whole’ when under review, and requiring that complaints come from residents from the library’s jurisdiction.

“So what accounts for these more nuanced approaches to the First Amendment and the Supreme Court’s Miller test for obscenity?

” ‘It’s hard to assign directionality to it, when there are so many countervailing things going on nationwide,’ said Rosie Stewart, senior manager of public policy at Penguin Random House. ‘Concern about midterms’ could be a driving force. …

” ‘We’ve had success in blue states that want to protect from book banning at the local level, but these efforts have moved to purple or even red states, to the point of Alaska now moving this forward,’ Stewart added. PRH is also watching Virginia Senate Bill 19, which codified Miller language and passed on April 6, and Arizona Senate Bill 1435, a book ban bill likely to be vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs.

“Sarah Lamdan, the executive director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, thinks many legislators are kicking the tire and testing for weakness in the constitutional language. …

“Lamdan pointed to a key finding from the ALA’s State of America’s Libraries Report: Approximately 91.7% of titles challenged in 2025 were targeted by pressure groups and government decision makers, whereas only 2% of challenges came from parents, and 1.4% came from individual library patrons.

“Those who challenge the freedom to read ‘are well-funded,’ Lamdan told PW, ‘so when they do something blatantly unconstitutional, they have the capacity to try again. It’s relentless because it’s a national political campaign.’

“John Chrastka, executive director of nonprofit advocacy organization EveryLibrary … called the situation ‘unmoored and highly weaponized ahead of elections.’

“[He argued that] ‘the family is not universal, but “appropriate” and “inappropriate” are used in the censorship contexts as universal terms. … Moving that conversation into one of relevance/irrelevance is important’ for library collection retention and development.

“Stewart, of PRH, credits book industry advocates for their nonstop effort to defend reading rights. ‘In the last couple years, our side has gotten so much more organized,’ she said. ‘In almost every state, there is a coalition that can activate, and it’s much broader than just the libraries fighting for themselves. It includes publishers, booksellers, and authors—that’s how we were able to kill most of the bills that came forward in Iowa this session.’

” ‘It’s a messy playing field,’ Stewart said, ‘but I guess I’m saying, I’d rather be us than them.’ “

More at Publishers Weekly, here.

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More Countries Harvest Rainwater

June 16, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Suzanne Bearne.
Above, Nancy Elena Quiros Correa, who says the climate in Medellín, Colombia, has become hotter and wetter. Many neighbors collect containers to store rainwater for washing clothes and flushing toilets.

Remember my recent post about storing rainwater in garden fences (here)? Well, ingenuity is not limited to the Netherlands. People around the world are realizing that climate change calls for storing water. In Medellín, Colombia, violent gangs are no longer getting all the attention, and residents are free to work on the normal challenges of life.

Suzanne Bearne explains at the Guardian.

“In his home on a steep hillside in the neighbourhood of Golondrinas in Medellín, Róbinson Velásquez Cartagena stands proudly next to two large tanks of water – a rainwater harvesting system he designed and built to help reduce the risk of flooding and landslides.

“It is one of the nature-based solutions that Velásquez and others in the community have proposed as part of a disaster risk and climate crisis adaptation plan for Comuna 8, a growing informal settlement of 150,000 people in Colombia’s second-largest city. …

“Neighborhoods such as this, where brick houses with corrugated metal roofs are densely stacked on unstable ground, are susceptible to landslides and floods. In 1987, a devastating landslide killed 500 people in the area.

“Organizations and residents such as Velásquez Cartagena came together and, in 2020, began to develop the Local Agreement for Inclusive Climate Action, in line with the Medellín city council’s Climate Action Plan. …

“The plan was formally launched in August 2023 by several organizations, including Medellín’s disaster risk management department (DAGRD), the housing and habitat committee for Comuna 8, and Heriot-Watt University in the UK. …

“The plan comprises eight measures to address climate risks, including managing rainwater, reforestation to control erosion and sedimentation on hillsides and in ravines, and establishing eco-gardens and agroforestry systems. While the city aims to implement similar plans across all 21 comunas, challenges remain in securing government support and funding for grassroots initiatives.

” ‘I started the rainwater harvesting system because I wanted to prove that it can reduce the risk of disasters by reducing the water that runs on to the streets, which can flood when it rains,’ says Velásquez Cartagena, a community leader. … His system collects water from the rooftop drainage and stores it in containers; he then uses the water for his washing machine and toilet.

“Originally a disaster-management scheme, the plan was expanded by the community to [outline] climate risks and vulnerabilities, a heat map, past floods and landslides, responsible stakeholders and action points.

“ ‘In the plan, there are nature-based solutions, with several that are not that expensive or hard to make,’ says Velásquez Cartagena. …

“In the El Pacifico neighbourhood, Nancy Elena Quiros Correa oversees a small 9 metre by 3 metre (30ft by 10ft) plot that was set up as a community tree nursery last year.

“ ‘The nursery will prevent rocks from falling, soak up water when it rains, and increase biodiversity,’ she says. …

“Other projects include a rainwater-harvesting system installed at a local community center last year and an ecological restoration garden.

” ‘The garden will restore nature and stabilize the land,’ says Harry Smith, a professor in global urbanism at Heriot-Watt University, who has worked with Comuna 8 on environmental projects for the past 10 years. ‘But it also stops one of the problems they have there, which is land invasion as people continue to build new homes on land that has been sold illegally by armed groups.’

“While the plan was being approved, the community ‘hit the ground running,’ says Smith. ‘They wanted to do some pilot projects to show that they don’t need to wait for the municipality to come along and do things.’

“Velásquez Cartagena is working with community leaders to produce a user-friendly guide to the plan, with engaging graphics, that can be printed and shared on social media. …

“Juan David Moreno, the head of the technical team at DAGRD, says: ‘The work in Comuna 8 was a pilot, and we developed it for the rest of the communities. … In some communities, you have different needs,’ says Moreno. ‘We assessed the terrain, the community needs and the different hazards. … The main lesson from Comuna 8 was that we needed to work closely with the people, as they live in the territories and know the local hazards.’ …

“Despite all of their work, Quiros Correa still has reservations about what the plan will achieve. ‘I now have a more realistic view of the local government actions. Everything that we have achieved here has involved fighting and negotiating with the local government.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here. What is your community doing? In our town, anyone who builds hard surface like a macadam parking lot is now responsible for controlling water runoff.

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What a Play about Refugees Can Teach

June 15, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Rich Ryan.
Actor Comfort Dolo played the character Helene in Mixed Blood Theatre’s production of The Jungle in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

How do immigrants in refugee camps process their experiences, and how do the rest of us benefit from what they learn about cooperation? One way is through theater.

Myah Goff wrote at Sahan Journal in April about the St. Paul Art Crawl and a refugee play presented by the Mixed Blood Theatre.

“For immigrant and refugee communities, telling stories becomes a means of survival in the disorientation of being uprooted from home — a way to endure, to remember and to imagine a future beyond displacement. 

“In 2015, stories were the currency of the ‘Jungle,’ a refugee camp in Calais, France, where thousands sought refuge at the height of the European migrant crisis. 

“This weekend, Mixed Blood Theatre is bringing the Jungle to the stage, while artists across the Twin Cities are keeping cultural stories in motion at the St. Paul Art Crawl, a local record shop and the Minnesota History Center. 

“In 2015, as millions of refugees fled war and persecution across the Middle East and North Africa, a makeshift encampment known as the Jungle re-emerged in Calais, a port city in northern France. 

“While the world watched the European migrant crisis from afar, London playwrights Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy drove to the camp in a car packed with supplies. 

“ ‘It was a town, in a way — a shanty town,’ Robertson said. ‘They were building restaurants and cafes, schools and mosques, a marketplace and legal advice centers. There were lots of volunteers coming to build women and children’s centers, and we were like, “Well every town needs a theater.” ‘

“Within weeks, the duo fundraised for a geodesic dome, gathered donated lights and staging, and returned to Calais to live in a tent alongside residents for seven months.

“As migrants faced uncertainty, displacement and made frequent attempts to cross into the United Kingdom, a robust arts community began to take shape inside the Good Chance Theatre.

Residents staged stand-up comedy, music, storytelling, kung fu, circus acts and theater performances. 

“ ‘It was a place where people could share and express who they were and what was happening to them in this strange and challenging moment,’ Murphy said. ‘But also a place to go and have fun, and escape those things.’ 

“The Jungle — a site that Robertson described as a ‘miraculous place’ for the way its residents showed up for one another — was demolished by French authorities in 2016, leaving a void that Robertson and Murphy felt a responsibility to fill. …

“Murphy said, ‘That injustice propelled us into thinking about telling that story with some of the people we’ve met in the Jungle camp, alongside other actors.’ 

“This weekend, their play The Jungle makes its regional premiere at Minneapolis’ Mixed Blood Theatre, directed by Mark Valdez. 

“ ‘There’s this lovely moment in the play where the police show up and the people of the Jungle just kneel,’ Valdez said. ‘It’s this peaceful resistance that we will all recognize [after our recent experience with ICE] and hopefully this play makes space for us to think about how to work together now to ensure better policies in a system that is deeply broken.’

“The Twin Cities has ‘proven that we care for our neighbors and that we will take care of each other,’ Valdez added. ‘The European refugee crisis took place 10 years ago and there’s something about that distance that gives us enough space to look at our current issues without feeling the direct heat of what we’re going through right now.’ ” 

More at Sahan Journal, here.

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TopDog Law Ads Go Viral

June 14, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Maggie Shannon/Washington Post.
John, seen at his home studio, records four commercials a week for TopDog Law, a personal injury firm.

I don’t picture myself ever wanting to use one of those aggressive personal-injury law firms that seem to shout at me from giant billboards along the highway, but today’s article from the Washington Post does make me curious about the guy who does one firm’s radio ads. Have you heard the TopDog Law ads?

Elahe Izadi wrote about him recently at the Washington Post.

“Terrell ‘Lucky’ John settles into his office chair, cues up ProTools, scrolls to find the instrumental track thumping in his head all day, and hits ‘play.’

“ ‘I don’t even know what’s going to come out of my mouth,’ he later explains. ‘When I sit down, and I hear the music, it’s like, okay, what are we gonna talk about?’ …

“John bops his head and taps his fingers in the air to the up-tempo, bass-heavy and chattering Baltimore club-like house beat, and lets the words come to him. He mouths them silently. Then he clicks ‘record,’ and his voice explodes into the microphone.

” ‘What you know ’bout getting bit by dog?! What you gonna do if that dog chase you?! That’s a serious question. Whatchu gonna do? And I’m talking to the insurance companies … If you ever get into an accident, you want to call the dog! Let the dog go chase! Let the dog go bite! … TOOOOOOP DOOOOG LAW!‘

“A little over a week later, his words would be blasting out of car stereos across the country.

“John is an unusual kind of radio star. He’s not a DJ, or a talk host, or even a musician. But as the pitchman for the personal injury firm TopDog Law, for whom he records four commercials a week that air in cities across the country, his voice may be among the most heard on radio today. They’ve made him internet-famous, and they’ve made him good money, too: John says his contract for TopDog Law advertising is worth a little more than $1 million this year.

“But to describe what John makes as just ‘commercials’ doesn’t quite capture what’s happening here. These are operatic sagas. Emotional journeys. Slightly unhinged poems. Bellowing over dramatic music and with a produced reverb echo, John unspools scenarios that may prompt philosophical reflection and require the services of a personal injury attorney.

” ‘I don’t know if this is karma. I don’t know what this is. I went to the store today, and I got into an accident. Doctor’s telling me I may never be able to work again in my life. My mom is tellin’ me everything’s gonna be all right. She called TopDog. Wife tellin’ me we about to be rich. Brother tellin’ me you about to be a millionaire. Like I give a … about some money right now! You know I’m paralyzed?! You know I’m paralyzed from the neck down from this accident?!

” ‘All I tried to do was go to the store! And y’all talkin’ to me about some …ing money?! I don’t give a … about money, man. Talkin’ about a mill, two mill. Man, I can’t walk, man!‘

“This work on terrestrial radio has become the stuff of memes. ‘I’ve see them on YouTube. He rapping without rapping,’ the rapper Jadakiss said of John’s work during a July episode of his podcast with Fat Joe, ‘Joe and Jada.’

“ ‘Every time I hear them on the radio, I turn them up,’ replied Fat Joe. …

“ ‘Who is this guy?’ one person asked. ‘I’ve been trying to find him to see what face matches the voice lol.’

“This guy is 47, and his face has an innocent, boyish quality. When in normal-conversation mode, John comes off as mild-mannered. Measured. Polite. … His path to radio viral-ity began when he was a nightlife promoter in Philadelphia, and he’d tag along with his mentor during his club commercial recording sessions. One time, John thought, hey, let me try this. Something instantly clicked. He started recording radio spots for a now-shuttered gentlemen’s club called Club Onyx. …

“When the pandemic hit, he took a step back from nightlife and dove into voice-over work. He began making ads for car dealerships — work he still does — and personal injury firm Big Al. Then TopDog Law came calling. …

“John’s aim is simply to create something unforgettable, so that, should you find yourself suddenly needing legal help, only one name comes to mind: ‘TopDog Law.’

“He starts by picking the instrumental track, using copyright-free tracks available on YouTube that he’s downloaded. … He listens for a few minutes. Sometimes he has a fragment of an idea his wife mentioned to him — ‘Okay, you’re in the airport and the dog sniffing you, bites you’ — or something he’s observed, like the self-driving cars in L.A., will visit his mind. John picks it up from there, and silently mouths the words to the beat to see if he can get the whole story in under the 30- or 60-second time limit — he saves a few seconds for the needed disclaimers.

“Then he hits record, and starts yelling into the microphone, eyes closed. … ‘I’m visualizing everything I’m saying as I say it.’

” ‘Am I gonna die? No, you’re not gonna die. But you gonna be in this hospital for the next six months. Can you tell me what happened? No. I can’t tell you what happened right now. Why? Because you don’t need to know that right now. I wanna know what happened! I want you to tell me now! You really wanna know what happened? Okay. Imma tell you. You was hit by a tractor-trailer. You was on the expressway. It’s bad. You want me to keep going? … You just waking up out of the coma. You’ve been in a coma for the last two weeks! You want me to keep going? Yes! You’re paralyzed. Car accidents, medical malpractice, it’s Toooop Dooooog Law!‘

“Some voice actors worry about being replaced by artificial intelligence, and John does, too, but ‘I think it’d be hard for AI to’ make these ads,’ he said. ‘It’s so unhinged and so random.’ ”

More at the Post, here. Or look for John on YouTube.

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Rare Books Rescued on Cliff Edge

June 13, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Sicilian Unit of Firefighters.
Firefighters recovered 350 volumes from a library on the edge of a cliff after a January landslide in Sicily tore away an entire slope of town and carved a chasm.

I wonder if firefighters are taught “Don’t look down.” Being a little acrophobic myself, I can hardly imagine how the book rescuers in today’s story kept from getting dizzy. People I know get dizzy just looking at their feet.

Lorenzo Tondo wrote at the Guardian about the mission.

“Firefighters in Sicily have rescued about 400 rare books from a library in Niscemi that hangs on the edge of a mudflow,” Tondo said, “after a devastating landslide in January tore away an entire slope of the town and carved a [2-mile] chasm.

“The library stands on the lip of the precipice gouged out by the landslide, with part of the building in effect hanging in mid-air. The recovery operation … was preceded by a detailed study of floor plans and interior photographs to map the position of the books.

“Firefighters drilled through the wall of a building behind the structure and, entering for minutes at a time, strapped the bookcases together and hauled them backwards to reach the books.

“The library holds about 4,000 books of literature, history and general nonfiction, including a number of rare editions dating from before 1830 on Sicilian history. Among its most precious treasures is a 16th-century book.

“ ‘It was like pulling off a bank heist,’ said Salvatore Cantale, the provincial commander of the fire brigade in Caltanissetta. ‘We had to be quick and try to take away as much as we could.’

“A drone streamed live aerial images to a monitor on the ground, while laser sensors fixed to the section teetering over the drop were used to detect the slightest movement. A separate device monitored vibrations and subtle shifts in the building’s tilt.

“The landslide began on 25 January when the ground started to shift, cracking asphalt and tearing through buildings. Some later collapsed into the void, along with a stretch of road where cars and vans had been parked. More than 1,600 people have been evacuated from the town.

“Many of the volumes remain in the basement, which is considered the most at-risk area. Officials are weighing up the use of robots, though none suitable are available in Niscemi. … Cantale said, ‘The problem is that this building is effectively a single reinforced-concrete structure. If it collapses, it will go all at once.’

“Cantale said the geologists working next to the firefighters expected the landslide’s front to retreat by another 10 to 15 metres, dragging further buildings down the slope with it, including the library.

“He said: ‘According to the geologists, rather than crumbling, the library is more likely to slide downhill as a single block. If that happens, we have already assessed that it may actually be easier to recover the remaining books once it has fallen.’ “

More at the Guardian, here.

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Can’t Get Enough of Elvis

June 12, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Neon.

Which of the many versions Elvis presented to the world do you think of when you hear the name Elvis Presley? I confess I can’t limit myself to only one. Whether it’s the kid who was fascinated by Black Gospel music or the bloated addict in Las Vegas, I remain a fan.

At the Guardian recently, Jim Farber interviewed movie director Baz Luhrmann about a new Elvis movie, and boy, does this article make me want to see it!

“In the spring of 1972, a film crew trailed Elvis Presley everywhere he went to capture a pivotal moment in his career – his first tour in nearly a decade. Ironically, one of the most crucial things that happened during that project occurred way off camera. ‘We really wanted to get an interview with Elvis on film,’ said Jerry Schilling, a confidant and employee of the King who at that time was working for the company behind the movie. ‘But he was tired when we were going to do it and for whatever reason we never wound up getting anything on camera.’

“They did, however, get Presley to talk casually on tape for about 40 minutes, during which he said things he never put on record before. That was enough to raise concerns for his notoriously censorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who insured that little of that talk saw the light of day during his lifetime.

“Now, more than five decades later, significant parts of that audio tape are finally being heard in a new film by Baz Luhrmann, who four years ago directed the global blockbuster biopic Elvis. His follow-up, titled Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert, is far from the conventional concert movie its title implies, thanks in key part to that interview. The tape ‘was our lightbulb moment,’ said Lurhmann by Zoom from his office in LA. ‘Because Elvis was off camera when it was taped, I think he was really unguarded and really open hearted. We thought, “What if we use this in the film so that Elvis tells his story himself?” ‘

“Quotes from that interview wound up functioning as the film’s thematic spine, connecting a mad swirl of images, voice overs and editing derring-dos that turn the movie into what the director calls ‘a dreamscape poem of Elvis.’ …

“The story he told here began as a kind of accident. While making the first Elvis movie, Luhrmann heard rumors about unseen footage from two important concert films from the early 70s, Elvis: That’s the Way It Is and Elvis on Tour. Using the considerable resources he had at his disposal, he sent researchers into Warner Bros’ vaults, improbably located in underground salt mines in Kansas. There, they found 59 hours of never-before-seen film negatives.

“Combining that with rare Super 8 footage from the Graceland Archives and other bits he came across, Luhrmann and his team were able to spiff up the footage, then painstakingly match to it sound sterling enough to achieve the look and fidelity worthy of the Imax treatment. …

“His performance in the film proves even more arresting than the look or sound, which may come as a surprise to some viewers given the time frame. Two years before the earliest footage here was filmed, Elvis managed a creative resurrection on his 1968 TV special with a performance that wholly resuscitated the spark and edge of his early years. Its success went a long way towards making up for the long period in the 60s when his image and spirit were drained by his roles in a string of laughably rote Hollywood films. …

“His performances from 1970, swirled with the tour footage from 72, show both the depth of Elvis’s personal dynamism and the range of his vocal command. Those karate chop moves, big collars and grand gestures that later became satiric here thrill. Key to that was the star’s rapport with the army of musicians, backup singers and orchestral accompanists that support him. The first thing that hits you is the sheer velocity of the music they make together. Performances of rockers like Polk Salad Annie and Burning Love are bullet-train fast. Gospel numbers, like ‘Oh Happy Day’ and ‘How Great Thou Art’ show Elvis’s operatic range while R&B standards like ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ bear his soul. Throughout we see how Elvis directs the band and the singers, altering the arrangements as they go to build up and tear down a song in mounting waves. ‘It’s all happening in the moment,’ Luhrmann said. ‘It’s not a show where they go through twelve numbers and hit all the marks. He makes it up as he goes along.’

“That comes through most clearly in the rehearsal footage included in the film. ‘That’s where you see that Elvis was the most underrated producer in music,’ Schilling said. ‘He’s fixing the musicians, fixing the backup singers, and fixing the music overall. Elvis wasn’t just a great artist, he was a great listener.’

“Case in point is an extended version of ‘Suspicious Minds’ where Elvis’s patterns of calls and responses with his backup singers, the Sweet Inspirations, so delight them they giggle with joy. ‘It wasn’t like it was Elvis and then the back-up singers and the band,’ Schilling said. ‘He saw himself as part of the band.’

“The most valuable player in their ranks has to be guitarist James Burton, whose licks and leads consistently toughen the beats and elaborate the melodies. … Schilling said, ‘He’s the most humble guy and yet the most talented.’

“Another aspect of Elvis revealed by the footage is his eager banter with the crowd. At one show he jokingly introduces himself as Fats Domino; At another he takes a swig from a woman’s cocktail on a front table to her delight. Lurhmann believes Elvis consciously devised such moment to counteract the common view of him as ‘a Greek God with the voice of Orpheus. Being goofy and funny was his way of disarming the audience and letting them know he is, in fact, a human being.’ ”

Lots more at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations welcomed.

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Enjoying New England in Spring

June 11, 2026 by suzannesmom

For some reason, I haven’t been taking as many photos as usual. On recent perfect days, I just drink in the beauty and laugh at the number of bird calls — so many that even the Merlin app has trouble keeping track.

Still, there are some photo ops I can never resist: wisteria, for example. Above, you see Suzanne and Erik’s wisteria in a flourishing state. Ten years ago, when Farmor first provided the playhouse and our granddaughter took over (then age 1), the wisteria was a bit of a baby, too.

The playhouse is now old and worn, and the wisteria has grown up with our young lady. (Note the second wisteria over near the grill.)

Poppies are also irresistible. This one is in one of the garden boxes where I live. We have unusually big raised beds here. Unfortunately, not enough to please all the gardeners who left growing at home when they downsized.

In the woods near the boardwalk, there are lots of wildflowers — including the mayapple below, the trillium, and the marsh marigolds.

On a sunny day, my camera was drawn to the paperweight a colleague gave me when I left a job in Minneapolis, quite a while ago now. I think of her when I see it. I appreciated getting a little piece of art.

Speaking of art, the ceramics biennial at the Umbrella was outstanding, with its focus on nature and how we humans relate to the natural environment.

Finnuala Hart Gerrity made the “Hickory Moth Tea Set.”

Linnea Pappas-Byers won grand prize for the intriguing “Two Futures,” which seems to demand close scrutiny and reflection. Which future will be ours?

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Gardening for Brain Health

June 10, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Lane Turner/Globe Staff.
Janis Kreiger tended to a garden on Appledore Island off Portsmouth, N.H., in May 2025.

Most of the retirement communities I have visited give residents an option of doing a little gardening. Even where I live there’s a score of beautiful raised beds — and a long waiting list. Folks grow food they plan to eat and flowers to brighten their apartments, but I’d say the main reason they garden is that they love it.

But as Cheyenne Buckingham explains at the Washington Post (via the Boston Globe), there are numerous side benefits.

” ‘Gardening likely supports cognitive health,’ said Smita Patel, an integrative neurologist and sleep medicine physician at Endeavor Health. ‘Not because it definitively prevents dementia, but because it bundles physical activity, mental engagement, stress reduction and other healthy lifestyle habits into one activity.’

” ‘The research [on this topic] is more compelling than you might expect’ [adds] Jordan Weiss, an assistant professor in the division of precision medicine and the Optimal Aging Institute at New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

“One recent study that included nearly 137,000 participants aged 45 years and older found that people who engaged in regular physical activity, including activities such as gardening and yard work, were less likely to report memory problems and limitations in daily functioning connected to cognitive decline. The link appeared to be partly explained by higher physical activity levels and lower rates of depression.

“ ‘Gardening independently touches nearly every lifestyle factor brain-health research has already confirmed matters: physical movement, stress reduction, social connection, sleep quality and sustained mental engagement,’ Weiss said. …

“A separate longitudinal study, which tracked participants from childhood into older adulthood, found that those who reported gardening (anywhere from ‘rarely’ to ‘frequently’) at age 79 had better thinking and memory skills – and showed stronger cognitive performance relative to their childhood baseline – than those who never gardened.

“However, the gardeners didn’t experience slower cognitive decline between ages 79 and 90. The findings suggest that gardening may support cognitive aging from childhood to late adulthood, but it may not protect against conditions such as dementia late in life.

“This points to a broader takeaway: ‘These are large associational studies that do not give us enough evidence to recommend gardening as a specific way to stave off dementia,’ said Anna Nordvig, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian.

“But that doesn’t mean it can’t help you stay mentally sharp throughout the years. Gardening engages multiple brain systems at once, including movement, sensory processing, automatic functions and higher-level thinking, Nordvig pointed out.

“As some of the experts mentioned, gardening is a complex activity that may support cognition in multiple ways. Here are some of the specific ways it might help.

“Digging, planting and weeding all fall under low-to-moderate-intensity aerobic movement, which helps improve blood flow to the brain and is associated with a lower risk of cognitive decline, Patel said. … Exercise also increases levels of BDNF, a growth factor that helps maintain the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for forming new and long-term memories, and one that often shrinks in dementia, said Ashwini Nadkarni, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. …

“ ‘Beyond physical benefits, gardening provides mental stimulation — planning, remembering plant care and problem-solving — which engages memory and executive function, supporting slower cognitive decline over time,’ Patel said.

“It also engages multiple cognitive systems simultaneously, which ‘may help build the brain’s resilience against decline,’ Weiss added.”

More tips about supporting brain health at the Globe, here.

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