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Ordinary Folks vs Petrochemicals

July 7, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Rhonda Dumas / PieFace Photography.
Cyclists gathering along the Mississippi Riiver are protesting fossil fuels and chemical plants in low-income Louisiana neighborhoods.

Sometimes it’s funny how we light upon a worthy cause that we end up supporting for years. Finding the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and being really impressed with the courage and success of people who appeared to have no resources was like that. It was a textile artist I was following on Instagram who introduced me to them. Here’s the latest from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

Sara Ravits writes at Gambit, “Cathy Laurino leads a group of cyclists to an ancient oak tree, just a few blocks from a massive Shell chemical plant along the Mississippi River in Norco, Louisiana. It’s the first stop along the seven-mile Down by the River Bike Ride in St. Charles Parish, a roving, interactive history lesson hosted by the environmental nonprofit and watchdog organization, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

“Along the way, the group learns about the region’s history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the acceleration of climate change caused by the fossil fuel industry in the region known as ‘Cancer Alley.’ It culminates at the site of the largest uprising by enslaved people in U.S. history, which took place along the Mississippi River in 1811.

“The bike ride is pretty much for anyone, says Laurino, the program’s director, especially people interested in the petrochemical industry’s history in Louisiana and the people fighting against it. …

“In the shaded green space sandwiched between a chemical plant and its affiliated refinery, Laurino kicks off the ride on a somber note, telling the tragic story of Leroy Jones, a 16-year-old Black teenager who was killed following an industrial explosion in 1973. Unbeknownst at the time to the residents in the tight-knit Black neighborhood known as Diamond, there was a gas leak at the nearby plant, which had been in operation for about two decades. So when Jones went to rev up his mower and help his elderly neighbor Helen Washington with her lawn, the engine instantly ignited and engulfed him in flames. Washington’s house exploded, killing her instantly.

“Jones, meanwhile, ran toward the oak tree and collapsed as neighbors rushed to douse him, but he ultimately died as a result of his injuries. Fifteen years later, there was another deadly explosion.

“Laurino tells the group that following Jones’ death, his mother Ruth was given a $500 check ‘for her troubles.’

“That insulting act eventually became a galvanizing point in the Diamond community’s long— and ultimately successful fight — for relocation away from the plant, though it would take decades.

“ ‘It ignited a fire in the community,’ Laurino tells the group. ‘They were like, “Absolutely not. We will not let this go. That’s completely unacceptable.” ‘

“The Louisiana Bucket Brigade has long conducted ‘toxic tours’ of the region for journalists, environmental lawyers and other activists, but in 2010 Executive Director Anne Rolfes decided to turn it into a bike-forward event and open it up to the public. The program has since grown its curriculum and partnered with local universities and professors, including Lisa Flanagan from Xavier and Tulane’s Laura Murphy and Kristen Wintersteen. …

“The ride has two tracks: an exploration of history and the telling of present-day environmental justice work. That latter track is updated by Harry ‘Pastor Joe’ Joseph, an activist and nearby resident who is involved in rallying against a petrochemical complex taking shape in nearby Ascension Parish. …

“The Down by the River Ride also leans into the activism and leadership of Margie Richard, a former resident of Norco and a retired teacher who led the charge against Shell for years. … Throughout the next five stops along the way, much more of Richard’s story comes to light. That includes the tales of her enslaved ancestors, who participated in the 1811 slave revolt and whose energy Richard has long channeled in the fight for environmental and racial justice.

“In 1989, Richard founded the group Concerned Citizens of Norco, which eventually teamed up with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. She was also behind the successful push to get the residents of the Diamond community finally resettled in 2002.

“She remains legendary when it comes to organizing against the petrochemical industry. She famously once showed up to an international meeting in the Netherlands to confront a Shell executive while carrying a sealed container of air that she’d collected in her hometown.

“ ‘She said, “You’re polluting us, and you’re pretending like it’s not happening” … . And she singled out this executive specifically and said, “You’re going to do something about this, right?” And he said (in front of everyone at the meeting) “Yes.” And that’s when she knew the relocation was going to happen,’ Laurino says.”

Lots more at the Gambit, here.

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Hooray for World Cup Fan Zones

July 6, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Carlos Muñoz.
Cape Verdean fans watched the national team play at the PVD Fan Zone in Providence, R.I.

I’m into the World Cup more than usual this year, mostly because the kids and grandkids are but also because so many fun things are happening close to home.

Carlos R. Muñoz wrote recently at the Boston Globe that the fan zone in Providence, Rhode Island, for example, has not only been fun but a great unifier.

“Since the World Cup began,” he wrote, “fans of international football have flooded into the PVD Fan Zone at Station Park in Providence, turning an underused green space into what Mayor Brett Smiley calls the best display of the city’s ‘rich diversity.’

“The Fan Zone has attracted more than 70,000 visitors, and after the FIFA Fan Festival Boston shut down following the end of the World Cup group stage, the Providence spot is the only remaining FIFA-sanctioned event outside Boston Stadium.

“FIFA required host cities to run fan festivals throughout the tournament, which ends with the World Cup Final on July 19, but relaxed its requirements because of funding, according to the Sports Business Journal.  

“ ‘From the outset, FIFA worked closely with Host Cities and local stakeholders to help shape meaningful fan experiences beyond the stadiums that are community-led, fan-oriented and aligned with the spirit of the FIFA World Cup,’ FIFA wrote in an email. …

“A fan festival costs about $1 million a day to operate, according to Fortune. The PVD Fan Zone costs about a third of that amount, according to Joe Wilson, the director of Art, Culture and Tourism for the City of Providence, and producer of the Fan Zone. City officials have committed to keeping it open for the full World Cup.

“Wilson said that cities struggled to pay for security and to make sure that city service costs were being covered. Station Park is located between the Amtrak/MBTA train station, the State House, and Providence Place mall and is an open area that is not typically used for events.

“ ‘Every city who had some kind of interface with FIFA and the World Cup were grappling with a variety of challenges related to budgets, scheduling, and safety,’ Wilson said. ‘One piece that made us say “39 days” is that we already have infrastructure footprint that we cannot move without using cranes that we’re securing 24/7. If we have to secure it, we might as well be open.’

“Providence did an economic impact assessment of life in the city two years ago, according to Wilson, and found that between 5 and 9 p.m. the city is ‘as international a city as Los Angeles’ with communities that have rich, strong immigrant populations who love football. …

“Wilson said the state’s ‘built-in audiences’ and proximity to Boston Stadium attracted groups like the Tartan Army and Ghana fans to Providence. Ghana’s national football team is staying at the Graduate Hotel [in Providence] and practices at Bryant University [in Smithfield].

“ ‘This is the first time this format of a World Cup is taking place over a continent, so even down to the logistics of this, we’re producing the singularly largest sustained event in the history of the city,’ Wilson said. …

“The World Cup has been a unifying event, Smiley said. ‘In the context of a moment where there’s so much stress and strife and division, this has been a really wonderful moment for communities to come together,’ he said. ‘It’s been entirely peaceful and family friendly, and just a nice and joyful occasion.’ …

” ‘We’re not doing this to make money for the city itself, and if the Fan Zone proper breaks even in terms of city impact, but all our businesses thrive, then it will have been a success,’ Smiley said. ‘We’ll have a full accounting of the city’s investment in the Fan Zone by the time we’re done and I’m optimistic that we’ll cover a lot of our expenses.

“City Councilman John Goncalves, whose ward covers much of downtown Providence, said the Fan Zone has been an incredible celebration of soccer, culture, and community.

“ ‘As Team Cape Verde, we’ve seen firsthand how the Fan Zone has united thousands of people around pride, identity, and joy,’ he said. ‘The energy has been incredible.’ …

“Smiley said the turnout for the Cape Verdean matches is one of his tournament highlights.

“ ‘That was a near record attendance night,’ he said. ‘We think we had about 8,000 fans that evening, and not only did I get to see and experience that energy, but to have 8,000 fans at night in a place with adult beverages and have zero issues.’ ”

More at the Globe, here.

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Why Teens Are Swarming

July 5, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: USA Network/Reuters.
“Crush Reloaded” event at Tybee Island, Georgia, in April.

Every year, the town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island, braces itself for the Fourth of July and the likely arrival of crowds of underage teens hauling kegs to the beach. This year they arranged for extra state police to come to the island to support local police, who vowed to be firm about any risky activity. (I assume whoever stole a car July 2 and dismantled a stone wall on the West Side has learned what that means. But by the way, who leaves their keys in an unlocked car over the Fourth?)

‘Most of us experienced [teen years] as a tough time in life. We should be reminded of that. We need some patience,’ says Mr. Martinez.

Patrik Jonsson at the Christian Science Monitor wrote about a recent Georgia “swarm.”

“For Cabriel Lewis, it was an ‘epic’ teen takeover. When he was just 15, he joined tens of thousands of other teenagers to rush onto tiny Tybee Island, Georgia, a barrier island beach town with only one causeway road on and off. They were trying to take part in ‘Orange Crush,’ a controversial, annual spring break beach bash here. Gridlock ensued, people were injured, ambulances got stuck, and mayhem ruled deep into the night.

“ ‘It was a lot of fun,’ says Mr. Lewis, now 18. ‘But I also feel lucky to have gotten off the island alive.’

“Unruly teen gatherings have long been an integral part of American culture … but driven by social media organizing and the potential for viral fame, a new wave of teen ‘takeovers’ is presenting big problems – and opportunities – for communities across the U.S. …

“Like the often artistic ‘flash mobs,’ in which a group rushes in, performs an unexpected act (like the 4,000-person silent disco in London’s Victoria Station in 2006, or the five-minute frozen pose by some 200 people in New York’s Grand Central Station in 2009), modern ‘teen takeovers tend to be social-media-driven gatherings that happen fast, with kids disappearing into crowds when police arrive. That makes it difficult for authorities to hold the youthful participants accountable for any property damage – including dented car roofs from stomping on them or unruly other behavior. …

“Questions are being raised about how communities can tweak responses to the often unruly teen takeovers, rather than just punishing errant teens or their parents. City leaders also acknowledge they can do better. After all, they say, hanging out, taking on risky adventures, and prioritizing peers’ attention over possible consequences are deemed normal behavior for teens trying to establish independence.

‘“This is the kind of thing we, as teenagers, have always done,’ says Jennifer Breheny Wallace, a fellow at the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, referring to the youth gatherings in malls and parking lots.

“But times are different, these leaders note, and some teens talk about a sense of irrelevance, whether related to changing media norms, invasive, high-stakes technology, or a polarized political environment – a tricky mix for young people.

“ ‘When we are made to feel like we don’t matter, we can either withdraw or act out in extremes,’ says Ms. Wallace. Teen takeovers ‘are a collective assertion of this need to matter.’

“Here on Tybee Island, a teen takeover on the beach pier in early April ended when gunfire erupted. The teens fled and the police chased, but no one was arrested and no bullet casings were found. The TV show ‘Inside Edition’ even asked Mayor Brian West for a comment.

“ ‘I think [the producers] were expecting this shocked, unprepared small town mayor who was horrified by all of this,’ says Mr. West, who, years ago, became the legal guardian to three teenagers who had nowhere else to go. ‘They didn’t get that. I said, “Look, we do this every year. It’s a big deal, but we know how to handle it.” ‘ (Interestingly, he says, the interview never made it to air.)

“While Mayor West said his goal was to end Orange Crush, citing safety risks, drug and gun concerns, and traffic gridlock, he refocused on creating safe spaces for teens to gather, even as they push boundaries. That revamped gathering, held this year, is now rebranded as ‘Crush Reloaded.’

“Other cities and towns are learning on the job. … Focusing solely on either curfews or parental accountability can fall short, according to research by Charlotte Gill, a criminology professor at George Mason University, who has found that crime sometimes increases during curfews.

“Former Chicago police officer Louis Martinez, now an associate professor of criminal justice at Oakton College in Des Plaines, Illinois, agrees. The call, he says, is to address a mix of needs around discipline, respect, and meaningful relationships in families, schools, neighborhoods, and communities. …

“Many communities, in fact, are moving to balance their response. …

“ ‘Have fun,’ 2nd District Council member Marquinn McDonald said to teens at a news conference in Chicago announcing one such event. ‘Come out, kick it, do your thing, but do not destroy.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Remote Village Powered by Ingenuity

July 4, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Mark Saludes.
Rodolfo Sagban stands inside a newly built micro-hydro facility in remote Nabuangan village, Philippines.

The Iran war has been a fiasco in almost any way I can imagine. Except for the increased focus on renewable energy, energy sources that don’t have to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, newly weaponized by Iran.

Mark Saludes writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “In a mountain village in the northern Philippines, electricity does not arrive through transmission lines or come from burning imported fossil fuel. It flows from a local river.

“Each night, as lights flicker on inside scattered homes, the power is generated by a small turbine turning steadily in the dark – built, maintained, and managed by the community itself.

“ ‘We don’t have to rely on outside power facilities. We decide when to switch it on and off,’ says Rodolfo Sagban, chairman of the Lapat Micro Hydro Power Association in Nabuangan village, located in Apayao province. ‘Most importantly, everyone in the village can access it, regardless of economic status.’

“The Iran war that began in late February has drawn attention to the Philippines’ fragile, import-dependent economy, as electricity costs, transport fares, and even food prices continue to climb. Roughly 3.6 million households across the Philippines live off the electrical grid – including about 1.2 million that rely on government-run, diesel-fueled power plants. These households have been hit especially hard by the global energy shock. 

“But in Nabuangan, these big-picture pressures barely register. Decentralized, renewable-based systems such as the one built here are shielding some communities from energy price spikes and grid instability – and they could offer a way to strengthen the country’s overall energy resilience.

“ ‘The real solutions are already here: community-led, small-scale energy systems that live in harmony with nature,’ says Joan Carling, a co-founder of Indigenous Peoples Rights International.

“Nabuangan’s first micro-hydro system – a simple, streamside structure – began operating in 2002. Water is diverted into a narrow intake and collected in a small reservoir. From there, it flows quietly through a long pipe that slopes downhill. Gravity creates enough water pressure to spin a small turbine inside a concrete enclosure. Power lines carry the electricity to homes across the village. 

“Over time, the system has expanded to two other villages in the area, Bubog and Sitio Simud. A fourth facility is under construction to provide electricity to Sitio Lapat, and is expected to be operational within a few months.

“Together, these water-powered energy stations form a small but stable network. 

“ ‘If other villages want a micro-hydro, we will teach them,’ says Mr. Sagban. ‘We will teach them how to manage it because management is what’s important.’

“Community members contribute labor to build and maintain the local systems. Decisions are made collectively. The forest that feeds the river is protected, because it is essential to the system’s survival. 

“Faith Joy Bonifacio, a resident of Sitio Lapat who has worked overseas as a contractor, runs a small internet hub powered by the village’s micro-hydro system and solar panels. The setup allows locals to charge personal devices, access all kinds of information, and stay connected without leaving the village.

“ ‘We don’t have a mobile signal here,’ she says. In the past, ‘we had to climb mountains just to send a message.’

“Reliable electricity also extends working hours, supports small businesses, and improves access to education. The changes have been gradual and they make a real difference. But they would not have been possible without a commitment from the community. 

“ ‘Unity among the people is very important,’ Mr. Sagban says. ‘Without it, these projects would not have been possible.’ …

“Says Gerry Arances, executive director of the Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED), ‘Every disruption in supply quickly ripples through the economy.’ … Mr. Arances says decentralization is one part of a practical response to the current uncertainty in global energy markets. 

“ ‘This does not mean dismantling the national grid, which remains essential for large industries and urban economies that require high-capacity power,’ he says. ‘But for much of the country, especially remote and underserved communities, decentralized and community-managed systems can serve as a strong complement.’ ” 

More at the Monitor, here.

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How Art Slows Ageing

July 3, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: David Levene/The Guardian.
A man engages with Laure Prouvost’s art installation ‘Above Front Tears Oui Float’ at the Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norway. 

I can’t get enough of emerging research on what activities are good for your brain. It’s interesting that so many of the studies focus on the role of art.

As Denis Campbell wrote at the Guardian in May, “Singing, painting or visiting a gallery or museum helps people age more slowly, according to the latest study to link taking an active interest in art and culture with improved health. The findings are the first to show that both participating in arts activities and attending events, such as viewing an exhibition, lead to people staying biologically younger.

“ ‘These results demonstrate the health impact of the arts at a biological level. They provide evidence for arts and cultural engagement to be recognised as a health-promoting behavior in a similar way to exercise,’ said Prof Daisy Fancourt, the lead author of the research and the head of the social biobehavioral research group at University College London.

“However, slower ageing does not necessarily mean someone will live longer. … Previous studies have suggested a link between arts engagement and longer lifespan, but much more research would be needed to establish potential causal effects on longevity.

“[A new test] showed that those who undertook an arts activity at least once a week were on average a year younger biologically than those who rarely engaged in such pursuits. Those who exercised once a week were only six months younger by that measure.

“The benefit the arts confer on the pace at which people age is so dramatic that it is comparable to the difference between smokers and those who have given up smoking, the researchers say. …

“Said Dr Feifei Bu, a senior author and also a UCL academic, ‘This builds on a growing body of evidence about the health impact of the arts, with arts activities being shown to reduce stress, lower inflammation and improve cardiovascular disease risk, just as exercise is known to do.’

“The results, published in the journal Innovation in Aging, are based on blood test and survey response data from 3,556 adults taking part in the UK Household Longitudinal Study. It uses blood samples to estimate people’s biological age and the pace at which they are ageing.

“Participants were asked how often over the last year they had taken part in singing, dancing, painting, photography or crafting, or had attended an art exhibition or event, visited a heritage site such as a monument or historic building or park, or been to a museum, library or archive. …

“Evidence is emerging that the arts can improve both mental and physical health. In 2019 the World Health Organization published a report, by Fancourt and Saoirse Finn, which highlighted initiatives such as playing music to patients before surgery and using the arts with people with dementia. In the latest study, the middle-aged and older adults aged 40 or above received the biggest boost to the pace at which they aged as a result of taking part in the arts.

“ ‘Across the arts sector we have known for a long time that getting creative yields extraordinary benefits for our health, and this latest research adds a vital new piece to the puzzle, proving that arts and culture can even slow down the biological clock,’ said Mark Ball, the artistic director of the Southbank Centre, a multi-arts venue in London.

“The Southbank complex was born in 1951 out of the Festival of Britain. Its description as ‘a tonic for the nation’ was not a coincidence, Ball said. ‘It was an explicit recognition that, after the destruction and gloom of the second world war, the country needed to be convened through the arts to find a sense of optimism and healing. That sentiment is enduring and is needed now, more than ever.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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An Affinity for Accents

July 2, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: De’Andre Bush via Unsplash.
Some movie actors have a natural gift for accents. Do you?

Back when I was involved in community theater, it often seemed to me that asking an amateur to learn an accent was too big an ask. The actors usually wanted to do it, but the results could be painful. Today’s story is about learning to do dialects successfully.

At the BBC, Sophie Hardach wrote, “Some people can pick up new accents instantly. How do they do it? And can I learn to speak like an office worker in Cincinnati with the help of some new science? Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer, a dialect coach, is smiling at me from my computer screen as she prepares me for my first-ever attempt at acting.

” ‘You’re an American office worker who lives in Cincinnati,’ she says, ‘and you’re coming home and you’ve got armfuls of shopping, and you have to get everyone’s attention because you want people to put the shopping away.’

“She briefly pauses, then switches to an American accent as she gives me my line: ‘Hi, I’m home! Where is everybody?‘ 

“In real life, I’m a German-born journalist living in England, I’ve never been to Cincinnati, and I’ve never tried speaking in an American accent in my life. But we’re having a video call because Scapetis-Tycer, who is an associate professor in voice, speech and dialects at the University of Connecticut, has co-authored a research paper on what makes some people so good at changing accents. And the best way to fully grasp her insights is, surely, to have a go myself. …

“Since ‘American accent’ can mean many things – there are, after all, countless different accents spoken in the US – she picks a version some call General American, which can for example be heard in Cincinnati but also other places. 

“Over the next few minutes, Scapetis-Tycer teaches me to raise the back of my tongue, project my voice diagonally forward and up, widen my mouth, change my ‘o,’ and create an American ‘r’ sound with my tongue and back teeth. … My first efforts produce an oddly strangled sound that’s nothing like her sample line. Clearly, I’m going to have a lot to learn from her research. In fact, as it turns out, there’s a lot of hidden, complex work all of us do when hearing and voicing accents – even without being professional mimics.

“A basic definition of an accent is that ‘it’s a way of speaking that’s shared by members of a language community,’ says Emily Myers, a professor in speech, language, and hearing sciences at the University of Connecticut, who teamed up with Scapetis-Tycer for the paper on accent imitation. This could be a group of people from the same region, city, country or age group, Myers explains. The accent may include pronouncing words in a certain way, but also, aspects such as melody, a high or low pitch, and fast or slow speech. …

“In a performance accents matter because ‘they are telling us part of the story, where the characters are from, what identities they hold.’ says Scapetis-Tycer, who trains actors at the university’s drama department, as well as at a theatre.

“Hearing and understanding the accent, and its regular sound patterns, is the first step in trying to imitate it. ‘For instance, where I’m from in the Upper Midwest, people will say something like “baig,” with the vowel like in “bagel,” for “bag,” ‘ Myers says. If you hear that accent for the first time, your brain has to figure out that this Midwestern ‘baig’ is the same as your ‘bag,’ and that this pattern probably also applies to other ‘a’ sounds.

“Considering this complex brain work, it’s no wonder listening to speech in an unfamiliar accent involves a bigger cognitive effort than hearing a familiar one. But it gets easier with practice, research suggests: the more we hear a given accent, the less effort we have to make to understand it. Studies suggest that we may even unconsciously start to mimic the other accent a little, because humans often adjust to each other’s ways of speaking.

“Once your brain has figured out how the accent works, the next step is to try and produce it. … In the case of my fake Cincinnati-based accent, for example, one of my core tasks was to move my voice further towards the back of my mouth to create a more American English sound, rather than using the front part, which produces a more British English sound, according to Scapetis-Tycer, the dialect coach.

“Accent imitation ‘is an incredibly complex system that involves this internal model and then somehow, feeding it out,’ Myers concludes. And, she says: ‘Some people are extraordinarily good at it.’ 

“To find out what their secret is, Myers, Scapetis-Tycer and their colleague Hannah Olson asked 92 north American English speakers to imitate samples by native speakers of three different accents: Yorkshire, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. 

“The researchers also tested the participants on a selection of skills thought to potentially play a role in being good at accents, including whether they had a good ear for music, and how well they were able to rapidly produce sounds in a tongue-twister test. … The researchers also tested the participants’ personalities for traits to do with being open to new experiences, and enjoying social interactions.

” ‘Interestingly enough, the very best predictor of whether you would be good at [imitating accents] is the tongue twister task,’ Myers says. People who were able to move their mouth very, very quickly to copy the rapid-fire sound of the tongue twister, also did well in the accent-imitation task.”

Lots more at the BBC, here. I have a brother who moved from the East Coast to the Upper Midwest and seemed instantly to start talking like a native. Are you a sponge for accents?

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A Traveling Bookstore

July 1, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ruth Fremson.
The owner of Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore & Textual Apothecary, Rita Collins, photographs young customers at a Global Community Day festival.

Today’s story touches on the hunger for reading material that is shared by people of all ages and nationalities. Suzanne’s Mom’s Blog blog has investigated this love of books in numerous posts about traveling libraries. Today’s post is about a traveling bookstore.

Ruth Fremson writes at the New York Times, “Rita Collins’s white Ford transit van has more than 100,000 miles on it, earned on drives through all but 10 of the United States. Parked in front of the Grand Bakery in Dadeville, Ala., on a recent cloudy morning, she watched as a woman walked by, glanced at the van, did a double take, and hesitated.

“ ‘It’s a bookstore,’ Collins said with her big, characteristic smile. …

“Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore Textual Apothecary (its name painted on the sides and back of the van) is a vehicle for the cross-pollination of people and conversation. That’s what has evolved since Collins, now 74, began imagining her retirement dream more than a decade ago — not just selling high quality, inexpensive books, but setting her love of people, places and the wonders of a good read all in motion together.

“Over the years Collins taught, opened a bakery/cafe and did social-services work for older adults. She left the United States after 9/11, and eventually taught English in Romania and the Czech Republic.

“At 60, she said, she decided it was time to return and figure out her next steps. She took a course with the American Booksellers Association, seeking to learn what it would take to open a bookstore in Eureka, the small Montana town where she lived.

“Ultimately she decided that Eureka didn’t have the adult population to support an independent bookstore. Nor did she have the desire to be tethered to a brick-and-mortar business six days a week, impinging on her love of travel. …

“She brainstormed with friends, googled traveling bookstores and got advice from the owner of the only one she could find, located in Swansea, Wales.

“In 2013 her dream became a reality with a minimal investment: a van fitted with wooden shelves at a 15 degree angle so that the 700-book inventory stays in place while she motors around the United States. (Think a library bookmobile that goes well beyond a neighborhood or two.) She named it after Saint Rita, the patron saint of impossible causes. …

“Each year Collins picks a region, plans a precise itinerary and sets up in all sorts of locations: farmers’ markets, festivals, brew pubs, museums and birthday parties, among them. She has been invited to speak to church congregations and book clubs.

“While all the books are donated, Collins curates to be sure the ones on sale are in excellent condition. Hardcovers are $9 apiece, paperbacks $7, children’s books a dollar. …

“She is so often asked what her favorite book is — and has such difficulty answering — that there is a section titled ‘Favs’ for her own ever-changing choices. During this year’s five-week swing through the South, it showcased books by Anne Michaels, Ann Patchett, Willa Cather, Atul Gawande, M.L Stedman and Anthony Doerr, among others.

“During her journeys people frequently give her books, replenishing her stock, though the exchanges can go both ways. At the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., Collins gifted a copy of Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, to Pat Ammons, the center’s director of communications, to thank her for having the bookstore there. …

“Collins does not sleep in the bookstore, but stays mostly in people’s homes, with friends or friends of friends. Sometimes she is hosted by complete strangers.

“Unlike other bookstores, hers offers the singular advantage of one-on-one service for each customer. And the books are just the starting point. …

“She says, ‘When you come, you’re probably going to have a conversation with me. It has allowed me to meet so many different kinds of people.’ …

“Once, in Colorado, a woman who had no money gave her two dozen eggs in exchange for some books. Recently, in Raleigh, N.C., a woman showed up with a gold-framed, 100-year-old lithograph of St. Rita and insisted she accept it as a gift. …

“While there are library bookmobiles and other bookstores housed in trucks — and more food trucks than ever — Collins believes hers is the rare traveling bookstore. She wishes there were more, pointing out that there is little overhead and a lot of freedom to open and close at will.”

More at the Times, here.

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Turn Off Autocomplete

June 30, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Petar Milošević via Wikimedia.

I had a chat about artificial intelligence recently with author Francesca Forrest. She is really serious about avoiding AI wherever she encounters it. I tend to like it OK when it suits me: for example, when doing a search for information.

But I can sense there is something deeply insidious about it, even apart from the way it guzzles all our water resources.

There is one supposedly “helpful” feature that irritates me a lot. Autocomplete. It not only makes horrendous mistakes with slang, people’s names, and foreign words, but it suggests apparently harmless words that I simply was not intending to write. If I want to say that a relative had to go to rehab, you might think it’s fine to say “he went to rehabilitation.” But that’s not what I was going to say. It’s not the way I talk. And what else will I end up writing if I feel lazy some day?

So I turned off Autocomplete.

At Scientific American, I find that Claire Cameron agrees that autocomplete is annoying. And she describes new research suggesting it is even more insidious than it appears.

“Autocomplete suggestions,” she writes, “are perhaps one of the most annoying ‘useful’ tools for writing: increasingly integrated into anything online that requires you to input text, autocomplete harnesses artificial intelligence to suggest what to write in e-mails, surveys, and more.

“The tools are meant to save time (though many find that assessing and rewriting the suggested text takes longer than writing it from scratch). But these AI tools can also change how you express yourself. An AI writing assistant could make your writing sound more polite, for example — or boring. And now a new study led by researchers at Cornell University suggests AI autocomplete can even change the way you think.

” ‘Autocomplete is everywhere now,’ said Mor Naaman, a professor of information science at Cornell, in a statement. The research builds on work, published in 2023 by Naaman and his colleagues, that suggested short autocomplete suggestions could sway opinions. Since then the use of such tools has exploded. ‘It has become clear that bias explicitly built into AI interactions is a very plausible scenario,’ he said.

“The researchers asked participants to fill in an online survey with questions about hot-button social and political issues. Some were prompted with an AI autocomplete answer that was deliberately biased toward one side of the issue. For example, participants who were asked whether they agreed that the death penalty should be legal might receive an AI suggestion that disagreed.

“Across all the different topics in the survey, participants who saw the AI autocomplete prompts reported attitudes that were more in line with the AI’s position — including people who didn’t use the AI’s suggested text at all. Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI.

“Interestingly, the people in the study didn’t tend to think the AI autocomplete suggestions were biased or to notice that they had changed their own thinking on an issue in the course of the study. Warning the participants that they might be exposed to misinformation by the AI didn’t temper the persuasive effect either.

“ ‘We told people before, and after, to be careful, that the AI is going to be (or was) biased, and nothing helped,’ Naaman said. ‘Their attitudes about the issues still shifted.’ ”

See Scientific American, here.

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Moomintroll Video Game

June 29, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Hyper Games.
Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson created the happy/sad Moomintroll children’s books. Hyper Games is using the stories in video games.

I’m always surprised to learn that there are people who never heard of Moomintroll or his multitalented Finnish-Swedish creator, Tove Jansson. I knew about the Moomin cartoons even before I met my Swedish son-in-law. (What I didn’t know was that Jansson wrote books for adults, too, including a novel I discovered recently concerning retirees in Florida. It was translated by someone I once worked with.)

The topic today is about what a video game company is doing with Moomintroll and his family. It could almost lure me into gaming.

Lewis Gordon writes at the Guardian, “Sleepy, happy-sad, and imbued with the mildest peril, Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories may seem an unlikely fit for the action-heavy medium of video games. Rather than embark on swashbuckling adventures, these milk-white, hippo-esque creatures prefer to potter about Moominvalley, only venturing further if the weather conditions are just right.

“Yet a small Norwegian video game studio, Hyper Games, is now on its second exquisitely charming Jansson adaptation. The first, 2024’s ‘Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley,’ put players in control of the wily free spirit Snufkin as he dismantled overly ordered nature parks (and evaded authority-loving wardens). The latest, ‘Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth,’ sees young Moomintroll wake up at night in the dead of winter. With his parents still hibernating, the creature is all alone, thrust into a cold and unfamiliar world.

“On this lonesome journey, Moomintroll must reckon with the idea that his snoozing parents won’t be around for ever. ‘[It is] a brush with mortality,’ says lead writer David Skaufjord, who sees the premise, an adaptation of the 1957 novel Moominland Midwinter as emblematic of a franchise which dares to challenge its younger audience with loss, grief, melancholy and nostalgia. ‘Children’s television can be soft-handed,’ he says. ‘The Moomin stories aren’t.’

“In the first 20 minutes of the game, the freezing temperatures claim the life of a squirrel. But Too-Ticky, the androgynous woman who lives by herself in Moominpappa’s boathouse, takes a philosophical outlook on the animal’s passing. ‘Death is a part of life,’ she says serenely. ‘Something is always changing.’

“So much of Jansson’s work, Moomin or otherwise, finds meaning in life’s transitions: humid summer to crisp autumn; sweltering afternoon to cool evening; the still moments that arrive after a storm. Jansson, a writer, illustrator, and political cartoonist, spent many years on the small islands scattered across the Gulf of Finland, folding these experiences into crystalline descriptions and illustrations of the natural world, which the Moomins live in harmony with.

“Though Hyper Games is based in Norway rather than Jansson’s Finland, its Scandi developers were able to draw on a similarly deep relationship with nature. ‘We have all grown up in a country where there’s six to seven months of winter,’ says Skaufjord, “’nd if you don’t learn to enjoy winter, you basically have a bad time half of the year.’ Like these game makers, the summer-loving Moomintroll must undergo his own snowy acclimatization: in doing so, there is a lesson for him and players – of adapting to, and accepting, one’s new circumstances.

“But ‘Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth’ makes enjoying such a chilly time of the year easy: you can fling snowballs and create pathways in knee-high drifts. Even shoveling snow is fun, accompanied by satisfying audio-visual puffs of powdery white stuff. There are many more light and breezy interactions like this, carefully calibrated for both non-gamers and young children alike. …

“I’ve been playing ‘Winter’s Warmth’ with my three-year-old daughter: she sits on my lap as I point at things on the screen, her tiny thumb directing Moomintroll about the enchanting world. ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be played,’ says Skaufjord. ‘That’s how I wrote it.’ …

“It may look like an effortless translation, but the approval process with Moomin Characters Ltd, the company whose job it is to oversee Jansson’s original creations, is rigorous, says the game’s art director Marcus Kjeldsen. … For the previous Snufkin game, Skaufjord wrote that the abrasive teenager Little My should react gleefully about getting rich. But, as the approvals team stressed, capitalism is a construct that has not yet graced the bucolic Moominvalley, so the line was tweaked. …

“There is a reason these stories continue to resonate. They have an anti-fascist bent in their unusual and non-traditional configurations of people and family. But there is also a disquieting sense that the unspoiled Moominvalley sits on the brink of great change. Both games deftly capture these timely aspects of Jansson’s treasured work.”

More at the Guardian, here. Please look at the art.

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‘Transit Deserts,’ ‘Food Deserts’

June 28, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Nina Westervelt/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
A bus stop in Memphis, Tennessee, where transit issues make it hard to shop for groceries. 

You’ve heard of “food deserts,” places without a convenient market, especially a market with fresh produce. Now consider how people without easy access or a car can get to a store located at a distance.

Lela Nargi writes at the Guardian, “Zen’Yari Winters’ job, at a pet shop in East Memphis, Tennessee, should be a 20-minute trip from her house. She leaves herself three hours to get there. ‘The bus is always, always late,’ she said – if it shows up at all.

“It’s not just her work commute that’s affected by the time-consuming guessing game that is riding with the Memphis Area Transit Authority (Mata). The only full-service grocer in the Chelsea-Hollywood area where she lives closed in 2025. To shop for food in person, she could take two buses for a 13-mile (20km) trip to Walmart. But she risks waiting at bus stops for hours with perishables – or shelling out about $24 for an Uber back.

“So instead, every two weeks, she buys at least $35 worth of groceries online to avoid a $6.99 fee for a smaller order and pays a $7 monthly delivery charge not covered by her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits. …

“Winters is just one of 16 million Americans without cars and one of almost 25 million living in a ‘transit desert‘ where the public transportation supply is lower than demand. For them, accessing healthy, affordable food is both an inconvenience and an extravagance. …

But cities such as Memphis; Providence, Rhode Island; and Duluth, Minnesota, have gone in the opposite direction and cut service.

“These actions were driven by what Art Guzzetti, the vice-president of policy, mobility, technical services and innovation at advocacy group American Public Transportation Association, calls a ‘transit fiscal cliff’ affecting some cities as $70bn in Biden-era funds to prop up Covid-beleaguered transit systems runs out. This is all while food insecurity rises across the US. …

“That cliff has forced some transit agencies to economize by rerouting buses and cutting back on their frequency. They’re also getting rid of stops, which Sierra Arnold, a microeconomist at Xavier University in Cincinnati, found led to fewer purchases of healthier foods. …

“Rhode Island’s state transit authority cut service on 45 of its 63 routes in September 2025, to save money on low-ridership lines. Sherman Pines, a Newport resident, said this happened on top of a Covid-era budget-saving measure that reduced service in his town during the non-touristy, non-summer months, making bus service unreliable. A nearby supermarket allows residents to walk groceries home in store carts. But Pines called the store ‘horrible, pricey, small’ – anyone who wants to travel farther afield contends with long waits for a city bus and at least one transfer.

“An added hazard: too few bus shelters. That’s just hard on an elderly person to stand there for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, it’s raining, it’s snowing,’ Pines said.

“The epidemiologist Ric Bayly documented these sorts of experiences in a 2025 Tufts University-led study on Rhode Island’s bus-food connection. He found that even with double the time to travel to and from a grocery store, less than half of residents had healthy food access via bus as opposed to a car, leaving him to conclude that ‘public transit is just a terrible way to get food,’ he said. ‘It’s just so difficult to deal with the weather, the weight, the carrying, the trouble you have getting on a bus with a cart of food, [because] the transit authority in Rhode Island allows bus drivers to forbid entry with a food cart.’

“Deborah L Wray, a 70-year-old Providence resident, had her cart rejected from the bus only once. Until recently, Wray could catch the 92 bus every half an hour across the street from home and ride it to Price Rite, the closest supermarket to home. These days, the bus runs every two hours. …

“Price Rite also doesn’t accept the Medicare UCard she uses to buy the healthy foods she needs to eat as someone with diabetes. For that, she takes a different bus to Stop & Shop; she prefers to stretch her Snap benefits by hitting the sales at Market Basket, which is serviced by yet another bus. Some evenings, she eats peanut butter and other shelf-stable items from a pantry box delivered to her building. That’s a short-term fix for ‘when you ain’t got nothing, so us elderly don’t have to eat dog food,’ she said.

“A survey of 100 Duluth residents uncovered similar transportation-related hassles. Covid-reduced bus routes, long wait times, too little space for shopping carts, and bad weather were the primary barriers residents identified in purchasing healthy, affordable foods. The city recently set up a transportation commission in an attempt to improve.

“But changes are ‘sometimes beneficial, and other times they’re not, and we heard many comments that the revamps have actually made things worse,’ said Stephany Medina, a food justice policy developer who worked on the survey. Respondents pointed out that a changed bus stop now required crossing a major highway to reach a supermarket.

“The city of Somerville, a city outside Boston that had a food insecurity rate of 35% in 2025, exemplifies the difficulty in connecting under-resourced communities to the foods they prefer to eat. Residents might use buses to reach food pantries. But ‘the biggest thing we hear is that people would like to be able to get to places that are outside of Somerville, and they’re hard to get to without a car,’ said Alissa Ebel, the city’s healthy communities coordinator. …

“During and after the Covid pandemic, Somerville tested a program called Taxi to Health that gave out vouchers for taxi rides to grocers including Super 88. Vouchers are one form of demand-responsive transit (DRT), a flexible and more cost-efficient alternative to fixed-route bus systems. Another model, called microtransit, launches fleets of smaller vehicles such as vans to connect residents to supermarkets, sometimes on a sliding scale based on income. Students of Kathleen Hoke, a public health law professor at the University of Maryland’s Carey School of Law, developed one such system for Duluth residents in tandem with Medina’s survey.

“Some communities have sought to solve their transit and food problems with mobile grocery stores that let people shop in their neighborhoods, since many people prefer to pick their own groceries. Guzzetti, from American Public Transportation Association, sees promise in having city planners move away from prioritizing cars in new developments. When deciding where to build, ‘make transit access a foremost, high-level consideration in location decisions,’ he said.

“For residents of Memphis, who are stuck with the built environment they already have, a new potential solution is emerging. A privately funded non-profit called MyCityRides is teaching residents how to drive gas-powered scooters to counteract the reality that, as [Kelsey Huse, a local activist and urban planning student] said, ‘the bus is not perfect and cars are expensive.’

“Winters completed a day of scooter school and is practicing her driving. If she passes her motorcycle test, MyCityRides will sell her a scooter for $150 a month paid out over three years. ‘Riding a scooter would be so much cheaper and easier than riding the bus and getting stuck at the bus stop for hours,’ she said.”

Pretty sure scooters won’t help the elderly, but it’s good that some cities are working on this challenge.

A range of other solutions are at the Guardian, here.

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Can We Move a City Back from the Sea?

June 27, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Reuters.
A new study warns that erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up New Orleans in a few generations.

Today’s article asks the question “Can We Move a Major City?” Although it’s about about New Orleans, it could apply to Boston and other cities with a tendency to flood.

The most dramatic moving project I have witnessed was moving the New Shoreham Lighthouse back from a cliff edge, and that was the kind of task no one takes lightly.

Oliver Millman writes at the Guardian, about an even bigger task.

“The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately,” he writes, “as the city has reached a ‘point of no return’ that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded.

“Ongoing sea-level rise and the rampant erosion of wetlands in southern Louisiana will swallow up the New Orleans area within a few generations, with the new paper estimating the city ‘may well be surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico before the end of this century.’

“Low-lying southern Louisiana faces multiple threats, with rising sea levels driven by global heating, compounded by strengthening hurricanes, also a feature of the climate crisis, and the gradual subsidence of a coastline that has been carved apart by the oil and gas industry.

“Southern Louisiana is facing … the loss of three-quarters of its remaining coastal wetlands, which will cause the shoreline ‘to migrate as much as 100km (62 miles) inland,’ thereby stranding New Orleans and Baton Rouge, according to the study. … This scenario makes the region the ‘most physically vulnerable coastal zone in the world,’ the researchers state, and requires immediate action to prepare a smooth transition for people away from New Orleans, which has a population of about 360,000 people, to safer ground. …

“ ‘While climate mitigation should remain the first step to prevent the worst outcomes, coastal Louisiana has evidently already crossed the point of no return,’ added the perspectives paper, published in the Nature Sustainability journal. A perspectives paper is a scholarly article that provides an assessment, rather than new data.

“Billions of dollars have been spent to fortify New Orleans with a vast network of levees, floodgates and pumps erected after 2005’s catastrophic Hurricane Katrina. But the growing threats to the city mean the levees, which already require hefty upgrades to remain sufficient, will not be able to save the city in the long run, the new paper warns.

“ ‘In paleo-climate terms, New Orleans is gone; the question is how long it has,’ said Jesse Keenan, an expert in climate adaptation at Tulane University and one of the paper’s five co-authors. …

“City, state and federal leaders should begin work to help support people moving away from the New Orleans region in a coordinated way, starting with the most vulnerable communities, such as those in Plaquemines parish who live outside the levee system, Keenan said …

“New Orleans faces obvious challenges – situated in a bowl-shaped basin below sea level, the city already has 99% of its population at major risk of severe flooding, the worst exposure of any US city according to a separate study released last week.

“ ‘Even compared to all other US cities, New Orleans really stands out, which is alarming,’ said Wanyun Shao, a co-author of this study and a geographer at the University of Alabama.

” ‘There is no specific timeline to how long New Orleans has left but we know it’s in big trouble. They are facing one of the highest sea level rises in the world and I don’t know how long human effort can fight against that tide. It’s like a time bomb.’ …

“A major pressure upon this southern cultural hotspot is that its surrounding land is briskly receding. Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost 2,000 sq miles of land to coastal erosion, equivalent to the size of Delaware, with a further 3,000 sq miles set to vanish over the next 50 years. The rate of land loss is so rapid that a football pitch-sized area is wiped out every 100 minutes.

“To help counter this, Louisiana last decade settled upon a new sort of plan that eschewed building yet more flood defenses and instead sought to harness the Mississippi River’s natural ability to rebuild land. Levees and other infrastructure have, until now, straitjacketed the naturally meandering Mississippi and pushed the sediment it carries straight into the Gulf of Mexico, rather than replenish the coastal wetlands.

“The so-called Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project, which broke ground in 2023, would help restore a more natural flow in the Mississippi Delta and allow sediment to build up in coastal areas where it has been lost. More than 20 sq miles of new land would be created over the next 50 years under the plan, the project estimated.”

Read more at the Guardian, here.

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Can Bison and Ranchers Coexist?

June 26, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: John Stember.
An environmental organization called American Prairie says the northern grasslands of Montana are the only place left in the United States where an entire prairie ecosystem could be restored.

Are you familiar with the musical Oklahoma! and the song that goes, “the farmer and the cowman should be friends”? I can’t help thinking of it as I read this New York Times article about a group called American Prairie, which believes bison and and cattle should coexist.

Jack Healy reports that the federal government wants to evict hundreds of bison from their sanctuary in Montana and replace them with cattle. …

“ ‘This is a part of our country’s heritage,’ said Alison Fox, executive director of American Prairie, a deep-pocketed nonprofit that has spent two decades buying ranches and grazing leases on public land in northern Montana to create the newly embattled home for bison.

“The conflict centers on 900 bison owned by the group, which was allowed by multiple administrations … to graze on federal lands, much to the consternation of politically conservative ranchers who wanted the land for cattle.

“This winter, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management reversed course and canceled the bison grazing permits. Citing the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, the agency said the federal grasslands where the animals grazed should go to livestock being raised for food, not bison largely enjoying their right to roam. The agency deemed the bison to be wildlife, not production livestock.

“Conservation groups condemned the decision, as did Native American tribes, who say the anti-bison effort threatens their own herds as they try to revive bison populations that were hunted to near extinction by 19th-century settlers.

“But Montana ranchers like Perri Jacobs celebrated. … ‘These lands are here for food,’ said Ms. Jacobs, whose family has raised cows in northern Montana for nearly 110 years. ‘We have to understand that progress and time march forward. Bison just don’t fit on the landscape anymore.’ …

“The bison fight fits squarely in a larger war over the West, as the [administration] pushes to open more public land to oil drilling, mining and logging. …

“ ‘We must ensure that public lands remain accessible and productive, rather than being locked away for the vision of special interests,’ Gov. Greg Gianforte said after the federal permits were canceled.

American Prairie argues that cows and bison can coexist, and is trying to undo the Bureau of Land Management’s decision.

“The bureau, it said, scrapped decades of successful land policies by arbitrarily redefining what constitutes ‘livestock’ in the American West. … American Prairie says it will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to alter fence lines and haul bison away from lands where they belong.

“That argument falls flat with many ranchers along the rolling plains of Phillips County, which is larger than Connecticut and stretches south from the Canadian border to the Missouri River Breaks. Signs along cattle gates and wire fences declare, ‘Save the Cowboy, Stop American Prairie.’

“The enmity began when American Prairie began buying ranch land and the accompanying grazing leases more than 20 years ago, with the aim of building one of the largest nature reserves in the country. Its property and grazing lands have grown to about double the size of Los Angeles.

“The resentment has sharpened since the Covid-19 pandemic, as wealthy out-of-staters drove up land prices with dreams of snagging their slice of a state that’s been called ‘The Last Best Place.’ …  

“American Prairie … says it tries to be a good neighbor. Its bison are tagged and vaccinated, and kept behind well-maintained electrified fences to keep them from traipsing into cattle fields. It leases land not occupied by bison to local cattle ranchers, and has opened up public access through much of its land. It sends live bison to help tribes expand and diversify their herds, and donates meat to local food pantries.”

More at the Times, here. Update: The change went through and American Prairie sued. More about that here.

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New York’s High Line and the Buddha

June 25, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Rhea Nayyar/Hyperallergic.
Frontal view of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s High Line commission “The Light That Shines Through the Universe” (2026) in New York City.

It’s always a tragedy when warfare destroys art. I remember how I felt for Buddhists when the Taliban destroyed the famous Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 in Afghanistan.

Now, an exhibit honoring those statues has appeared on New York City’s beautiful elevated park, the High Line. Rhea Nayyar at Hyperallergic describes seeing it and what it signifies to her.

“Between the sea of sky-blue high-rise windows and the traffic funneling toward the Lincoln Tunnel, a large sandstone Buddha stands tall on the High Line, inviting Manhattan to embrace a moment of tranquility.

“Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s ‘The Light That Shines Through the Universe‘ (2026), the park’s fifth site-specific commission, was selected from nearly 60 proposals. It was recently installed at West 30th Street and 10th Avenue, and is on view through Spring 2027. The 27-foot-tall sculpture stands out from its contemporary surroundings not only because of its warmth and timeworn quality, but because it resurrects a critical piece of destroyed cultural heritage — the Bamiyan Buddhas.

 “ ‘This sculpture creates a friction with the surroundings here in New York. It’s not sleek like everything else you can see here,’ High Line’s art director and chief curator Cecilia Alemani said to Hyperallergic. ‘It offers a hint to the public that temporality is not necessarily a straight line, that things can come back.’ …

“The Bamiyan Buddhas, enormous reliefs that dated back to around the 6th century, were hewn into a sandstone cliffside of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan, a region along the Silk Road trade route that became a prominent Buddhist site. Of the two figures, the larger Buddha was affectionately referred to as ‘Salsal,’ which translates to ‘the light that shines through the universe.’ …

“Nguyen, who has recast or reinterpreted artillery associated with the Vietnam War throughout his practice, took the same approach to make the sculpture’s hands, which are disconnected from the sandstone body. He told Hyperallergic that he was able to source artillery brass from Afghanistan through a friend’s network across the Bamiyan region and bring it over the Pakistani border. There, he recast them into the shapes of mudras — symbolic hand gestures used extensively in Buddhist and Hindu iconography — before transporting them to Vietnam, where the sandstone was sourced and carved.

“Glinting from the sun overhead, the right hand invokes the Abhaya mudra, which signifies fearlessness, while the left hand connotes compassion and sincerity through the Varada mudra.

“Nguyen stated that his statue was not a replica of the lost cultural heritage, but rather an “echo.”

“ ‘ You keep a story, idea, or memory alive by retelling,’ he explained. ‘When I engage in this process of remaking, it’s like retelling the story. It gets translated through my hands and eyes.’

“Though it feels particularly timely because of the ever-evolving United States- and Israel-led violence in Iran, Alemani noted that Nguyen’s proposal had been selected a long time ago. ‘It’s a testimony to the strength of the artist’s voice that sometimes, the works we select become even more relevant when we install them,’ Alemani said.”

More at Hyperallergic, here.

Do you agree with the writer that the sculpture is telling us that history repeats itself? Do you have other reactions? I feel it’s also about humanity refusing to let good things be destroyed entirely.

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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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