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For the Love of a Phone Booth

February 23, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo:  Joshua Bright/The Guardian.
British phone booth enthusiast Derek Harris, who protected his village’s last remaining telephone box. 

When Suzanne was doing her junior year abroad in Spain, she got me a print of the Richard Estes painting of telephone booths, which is in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. She knew I was a fan of old-time phone booths that you hardly see anymore.

Turns out I’m not the only one. There’s an enthusiast in the UK who went the extra mile to preserve an iconic red one. Emine Saner wrote about him at the Guardian.

“The caller display flashes up: ‘Derek in the K6’ it reads. On the line is Derek Harris, ringing from the red phone box he saved for his village. When he saw, on the agenda for the parish council meeting, that BT had earmarked it for closure, Harris knew he had to fight it.

“ ‘It’s fighting for what is valuable, cherished,’ he told me when I went to meet him in February [2025] sitting over coffee in a cafe near Sharrington, the Norfolk village that has been his home for more than 50 years. … It’s a K6, for Kiosk No 6, designed in 1935 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

“For a few weeks, Harris, then 89, became a media star. One of the criteria for keeping a phone box in use is that at least 52 calls have to be made from it in a year (fewer than 10 had been made in 2024). As the campaign picked up speed, one day a queue of people made more than 230 calls from the K6. Harris sparked a national conversation about the continuing need for kiosks in an age of mobiles. Behind the scenes, he was a tenacious activist, sending constant emails to his MP, councillors, and of course, BT [British Telephone]. … In March, BT decided to reverse its decision.

“Harris stresses it was a community effort. … ‘It would have been impossible to have pulled this thing off had not so many people – local MP, district councillors, everyone – taken up the call to action. … Quite a lot of people are getting fed up with being oppressed by big organizations.’

“[When] I met Harris, I was struck by how he seemed to view the phone box as a living being, with such affection for it. If it had been turned into a library, as other red phone boxes have, it would cease to be. As a functional kiosk, he said, ‘it would be alive.’ I was thinking about this, driving home later that day, when I pulled into a car park for a rest and checked my phone. … I read with dismay that he had recently been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. ‘It struck me that this K6,’ he wrote, ‘designed in the year of my birth, is deserving of being saved from a death sentence.’ …

“The campaign gave Harris a sense of purpose at a time when he was coming to terms with bad news. ‘It’s been a good achievement,’ he says now. ‘There’s life in the old boy yet.’ What does the retained phone box mean to the village? ‘Oh they’re overjoyed,’ he says.

“Since his victory, Harris has called me a few times over the year, stopping at the telephone kiosk while out on his walk, to say hello, complain about a politician, tell a story or two. It doesn’t hurt to keep the call numbers up. …

“Harris turned 90 in July, and was celebrated by his village with a garden party. His card from the parish council featured a picture of his beloved red phone box, and he was given a phone box fridge magnet.” More at the Guardian, here.

I think it’s cool that the journalist forged an ongoing connection to her interviewee. It reminds me of something Sophia Loren once said about an interviewer who missed out because he wasn’t interested in making her a friend.

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Kids in India Who Love Chess

February 22, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Viraj Nayar for NPR.
Ten-year-old Keashaanth, with a notebook and chessboard in front of him, follows along as his coach Selvabharathy leads a class at the Madras School of Chess in Chennai.

Our whole family takes an interest in chess, partly because Suzanne and Erik’s son is so good at it. He has represented his state and age group in two national competitions so far. That’s why I notice chess stories like today’s, which comes from NPR (National Public Radio).

Omkar Khandekar writes, “On a balmy morning [in fall 2024] in the coastal Indian city of Chennai, dozens of fans perched on their seats as they watched an elite-level tournament unfold. … On stage, some of the world’s best players were gathered for the annual  Chennai Grand Masters. After a thrilling tiebreaker, 25-year-old Indian prodigy Aravindh Chithambaram prevailed. The audience broke into applause. …

“This level of attention is wild, says the world’s 11th-ranked chess player, Levon Aronian, who was the runner-up. Even he, an Armenian-American, is stopped on the streets here. ‘I can understand that happening in a country like Armenia with a population of three million. … ‘But for that to happen in India, I think that speaks to the popularity of the game.’

“Chess has seen a worldwide resurgence since the pandemic-induced lockdown. … With more leisure time, people began playing on streaming platforms like chess.com and on YouTube. India has been among the biggest beneficiaries of the boom.

“The country has 85 grandmasters — an elite group of chess players — and some of the youngest top-rankers in the world. Last year, both of its men’s and women’s teams swept the Chess Olympiad — the Olympics of chess — held in Budapest, Hungary. At the World Chess Championship in Singapore, held in December, Indian national Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest-ever world champion at age 18.

“This is a remarkable shift. After decades of Russian and European chess dominance, the spotlight is on India, the likely birthplace of the ancient game. Many historians believe that modern chess originated from chaturanga, an ancient Indian board game that spread to the world via traders, pilgrims and conquerors. Within India, it’s the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and its coastal capital Chennai, that has emerged as the epicenter of chess. …

“At the Madras Chess Academy, children trickle in after school. They sit in a windowless room, surrounded by portraits of chess legends, including world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, once a student here.

“Many of these dozen or so kids spend their weekends sparring at chess tournaments across Chennai. If they perform well, trainers like Selvabharathy — he only has one name — invites them to stand before the class, and orders the other kids to clap, as he did on a recent day. …

“Chess coach Vishnu Prasanna started this academy two years ago. He says the day before NPR visited, one parent walked in with their 3 ½-year-old child to train. Another parent, Suresh Dasarathan, proudly shared his 6-year-old son’s daily routine: Wake up at 7, an hour of chess practice, school, then an hour of chess coaching at the club, then homework and bedtime at 9 p.m. …

“Parents often play a crucial role in the success of young prodigies. Gukesh’s father Rajinikanth often put his day-job as a surgeon on hold to double up as a de facto manager of his son. … But one 6-year-old girl, Rivina, says some parents at chess tournaments also get overbearing. ‘They will say, “I will give you dinner only if you win this game,” ‘ she says. …

“In 1995, India got its first world champion in Chennai-born Viswanathan Anand. Today, his successors in India are often called ‘Vishy’s kids.’ Now 55, Anand is still among the world’s top 10 players. … Anand thinks the culture surrounding chess has changed because now, it’s something you can make a living from. That’s key in a country where good-paying jobs are scarce.

“The Indian government often gives high-ranking players a job in the public sector — a dream opportunity for many because of the job security and perks: monthly pay, housing allowance, pension, insurance and paid leave they can use to practice. High-ranking players can win prize money in a newly launched global Chess League. Many also work as chess coaches. …

“Some chess watchers say there’s a major obstacle to India becoming the world’s unchallenged chess power: the English language. Most chess books, software and classes are in English. The government’s 2011 population census found that a little more than 10% of Indians fluently speak the language. Most English-speakers in India are from the country’s country’s middle and upper classes.

“One man wants to move beyond that. Two years ago, Venkatesh Enumalai founded the Tamil Chess Channel on YouTube. It teaches the basics of chess in Tamil, a language spoken by some 80 million Indians, concentrated in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The channel has more than 80,000 followers and millions of views, including among Tamil-speakers in Sri Lanka and the United States. One of his students there, he says, became a state champion in Illinois recently.

“Buoyed by such success stories, Enumalai quit his day job with the sales team of a pharma company and started a chess club in Chennai, offering coaching at a little over $10 a month so even poorer children can afford it. He says he intends to travel and conduct chess boot-camps for students in the rural parts.

“As the world’s most populous country, India has the numbers on its side. Enumalai says it just needs a nudge to become a chess powerhouse. ‘If we can nurture so many people at the bottom level, maybe we will be able to become a number one nation.’ “

More at NPR, here.

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Mardi Gras Regrets

February 21, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Grounds Krewe.
In the interest of environmental protection, barriers were set up to block discarded Mardi Gras parade throws and party trash from going down storm drains.

New Orleans likes to have fun, and whether it’s a funeral with a brass band playing “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” men high-stepping in feathers to welcome the New Year (Mummers), or the abandon of Mardi Gras before the solemnity of Lent, parades produce litter. A lot of litter.

That’s why environmentally oriented New Orleanians have decided to do something about cleaning up.

As Jackie Delamatre writes at the New York Times, “In recent years, the city’s huge, weekslong party has been producing more waste than ever: an average of 1,123 tons per year for the last decade, according to the city’s Sanitation Department.

“ ‘It’s an environmental catastrophe,’ said Brett Davis, who runs a nonprofit group, Grounds Krewe, that’s trying to make Carnival greener.

“The New Orleans area is especially vulnerable to climate change because of hurricanes and coastal erosion. Yet, for weeks of ebullient parading, which culminate on Tuesday, those problems are forgotten as float riders fling plastic beads, cups, doubloons and foam footballs at teeming crowds. In the moment, these baubles can seem like treasures. Within days, though, what was caught, as well as the excess left on the streets or dangling from oak trees like Spanish moss, ends up in the trash.

“Now, a coalition of nonprofit organizations, city officials and scientists is trying to clean up the party. … It’s not just that all this party detritus is swelling landfills. A 2013 study found that more than 60 percent of Mardi Gras beads contained unsafe levels of lead. And in 2018, the city discovered 46 tons of beads clogging catch basins that are essential for clearing floodwaters. …

” ‘When I was a kid, we caught everything that came off the floats,’ Mr. Davis said. ‘There was a big hoopla about who was going to get it. Now it’s a carpet, a river of waste.’ …

“Mr. Davis came to believe that, by reusing beads, he was just ‘recirculating toxic, plastic junk no one wants,’ he said. Now, he has pivoted to waste prevention, building a catalog of sustainable throws.

“To date, he has sold more than $1 million of these festive but practical items, including jambalaya mix, native flower starter kits and plant-based glitter. He has also recruited a cadre of volunteers, from fifth graders to retirees, to help package the goods.”

Read at the Times, here, about scientists inventing sustainable Mardi Gras beads containing okra seeds. Imagine yourself cooking the okra you grow in your gumbo and reliving happy New Orleans memories.

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America’s First Glass House

February 20, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum.
The House of Tomorrow at the 1933 World’s Fair. A $4 million project is restoring the 12-sided home to how it looked 90 years ago.

I love the big windows where we go in the summer. On an island, the line about glass houses and throwing stones has a completely different meaning. That’s because in hurricane season and midwinter, stones thrown up by high winds are a real danger. For much of the year. it’s necessary to hook ugly plastic shutters over the windows to protect the glass.

In 1933, some architects thought glass houses were the wave of the future. In Chicago at that time, no one was thinking about hurricanes.

As Lee Bey says at WBEZ Chicago, “Few people alive today have seen the exterior of the House of Tomorrow when it was a futuristic attraction at Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair.

“Designed by architect George Fred Keck, the 12-sided modernist exhibition home was America’s first glass house. … But when the Keck house and four other Chicago World’s Fair homes were relocated to Beverly Shores, Indiana, in 1935, its original floor-to-ceiling exterior glass walls were replaced by a facade with much smaller windows. … Workers last month installed glass exteriors walls on the dodecagon-shaped structure, restoring the home to the way it looked at the start of the fair nine decades ago.

“The work is part of a $4 million exterior restoration of the lakeside home, which, along with the other former World’s Fair homes, is owned by the nonprofit Indiana Landmarks and sits within the federally owned Indiana Dunes National Park. …

“Of Chicago’s two fairs, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition is the more famous. … But while the 1893 fair celebrated humankind’s previous 400 years, the 1933 exposition, which opened at the start of the Great Depression, looked to the future and the technology it could bring.

“The two-story House of Tomorrow was a perfect fit. Its glass facade allowed natural light and solar heat into the home decades before they became commonplace. The glass marvel had air conditioning, a GE dishwasher, an attached garage and refrigerator that kept things cold without having to get a giant block of ice delivered and placed inside. The home also had a built-in airplane hangar.

“Keck funded the home’s construction and even designed some of its furniture. He recovered his costs by charging a 10-cent admission.

“ ‘This house is an important step in 20th century American modern architecture,’ said Charles Hasbrouck, director at bKL Architecture, who is overseeing the project.

“The House of Tomorrow was among a series of exhibition homes built for the fair. … After the fair, developer Robert Bartlett had the five houses shipped across Lake Michigan and re-erected Beverly Shores, the new town he was developing.

“The House of Tomorrow now has triple pane glass, which is a far better insulator than the original glazing. [Todd Zeiger, director of the Northern Regional Office of Indiana Landmarks] said the new glass walls are nearly as transparent as the ones Keck designed. …

“Each of the 12 new panes weigh nearly 1,000 pounds and required a team of specialists to set them in place. The home’s structural systems had to be beefed up to accommodate the added weight. …

“The homes had fallen into disrepair in the late 20th century. But that changed in 2000 when Indiana Landmarks entered an agreement with the National Park Service that allowed the homes to be leased for free for 30 years to anyone who could pay to restore the properties.

“The deal saved four of the homes, but the House of Tomorrow, with its complex construction and its one-of-kind structure and foregone condition, turned off potential suitors.

“So the groups turned to the federal government to fund the exterior restoration and were awarded the $4 million fix-up costs from the Great American Outdoors Act, funded through the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“The renovation will also give the house its first elevator, and the garage will be restored to its original self. Part of the airplane hangar space will be converted to bedrooms.”

More at WBEZ, here. Would you like to live in a glass house?

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Adopting an Elementary School

February 19, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Nicole Asbury/Washington Post.
Ellie Salb, a first-grader at Fields Road Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, works on an activity alongside retiree Bobbi Sandrin.

When I was researching retirement communities, I was impressed the Hebrew Life’s Newbridge on the Charles in Dedham, Massachusetts, had a school on the campus where interested residents could volunteer. The Rashi School’s website says, “Over the course of their Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 8 education, every student experiences multiple touchpoints with NewBridge residents, and many form lasting relationships with their senior neighbors.”

I was reminded of that in reading Nicole Asbury’s article at the Washington Post on a similar arrangement.

“Six-year-old Ellie Salb was about to have one of her favorite days of the week: the day when ‘Granny B and ‘Granny M’ come to her first-grade classroom with stickers and sweets.

“Bobbi Sandrin and Marcia Klein are two former teachers who live in a retirement community about a half-mile away from Fields Road Elementary School in Gaithersburg [Maryland]. They’re part of about a dozen other seniors who volunteer at the school each week, a project that one of the community’s residents pitched earlier this year.

“Stephani Sausser, who teaches Ellie’s first-grade class, said the effort has had a positive impact in her classroom.

“Klein, known as ‘Granny M,’ has a background in reading recovery, Sausser said, and will read with students one-on-one to help them build skills like sounding out words and putting sounds in words together. Sandrin, or ‘Granny B,’ typically focuses on reading comprehension assignments.

“Sausser said their presence has been a big help, since she can spend more time in the classroom digging into students’ skills and tailoring lessons for them. … The partnership between the school and senior living community started in January with a cold email.

“Bob Karp, 86, had recently moved to Gaithersburg to be closer to his daughter and grandson after spending about 30 years in Boston. But after a few months of getting settled, he said — with a slight chuckle in his voice — he was starting to get ‘impatient about doing something.’

“Karp, the son of a former principal in Boston, grew up hearing conversations about public schools at the dinner table. So when he learned there was an elementary school close to his new home, he wrote to principal Joshua Williams with a request: ‘I would very much like to meet with you to discuss volunteering options for our residents including several who taught in the Montgomery County Public Schools.

“Karp was uncertain about how the request would land. But about three days later, Williams replied. He loved the idea.

“Karp, Williams and another resident named Jim Pattison met later that week to discuss how to make it work. … Before the current school year started in August, the principal asked teachers what support they needed, and in return, the volunteers said what they thought they could help with. Karp said they had a “match day,” like residents do in medical school.

“The school hasn’t had a partnership like this before, said Williams, who is in his second year leading the Gaithersburg school. The school serves a diverse population of about 450 students, and about half receive free or reduced-priced meals. Since the initiative started, the senior community has also raised about $4,000 to buyT-shirts for the students to wear on field trips and a school tree and garden beautification project. …

“Pattison usually comes every Friday, but recently missed a shift because he was in the hospital. He sent an email to second-grade teacher Mandy Huang explaining his absence. To his delight, several of the second-graders sent him ‘get well’ cards — some of which made him laugh.

“During his most recent visit, he was chuckling again after some children tried guessing how old he was. Some of the kids guessed he was over 100 years old.

“Pattison, who is 74, said those interactions are meaningful to him. … ‘It’s a way for us to get out of ourselves, not to be so wrapped up with our aches and pains — complaints that come with old age.’

“Most of the volunteers rotate around the building’s three third-grade classrooms, a grade level that experts say is critical for students to master reading skills. Five of the retirees help with small group reading.

“Quinn Liston, 8, said she’s gotten better with some of her words since she has started to read aloud with the volunteers. … ‘It’s really fun to read with them, because you think you’re scared to read and mess up the words,’ she said. ‘But actually, when you mess up the words, the people help you.’

“On a recent visit, Janice Faden was in the middle of reading a graphic novel with third-grader Dereck Romero Núñez. ‘He’s so expressive. We’ve talked a little bit about crash, bang and the words that sound like they mean,’ Baden said. She explained to him that those words were a use of onomatopoeia in stories.

“As if on cue, Dereck’s finger landed on a block of text that depicted a rocket flying off. He sounded it out: ‘Ka-ka-boosk!’ “

More at the Post, here.

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Carbon Capture from Sewage

February 18, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jonathan Wiggs/Globe.
A New Haven, Connecticut, carbon-capture start-up is testing its concept at this sewage facility in Fall River, Massachusetts. Limestone gets mixed in with waste water at the bottom of the tank to draw out carbon.  

Nowadays most of us don’t think much about sewage. Out of sight, out of mind. But I regularly read novels that were written before indoor plumbing, and I often think about how awful those chamber pots and outhouses must have been. I feel grateful for the people who do think about sewage today.

Kate Selig reports at the Boston Globe about a New Haven, Connecticut, company turning sewage into a tool for fighting climate change.

“At the edge of a picturesque bay in this historic city,” she writes, “a deep waste water tank harbors an unlikely climate experiment.

“Near the base, a narrow tube spits out a milky stream that’s as thick as roux. The liquid, a mix of treated waste water and a naturally occurring mineral, is swirled in with the sewage. The combination kick-starts chemical reactions that pull carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that drives climate change, into a harmless bicarbonate ion.

“CREW Carbon, a startup founded in New Haven, is betting that this simple combination could turn dirty water into a powerful climate solution. It has partnered with waste water treatment plants along the East Coast, including the facility in Fall River, to put this approach into action. As a bonus, municipalities often find that limestone is a cheaper and more effective way to treat waste water than conventional methods. …

” ‘We don’t need massive new infrastructure or subsidies,’ said Joachim Katchinoff, the company’s cofounder and CEO. ‘And because our process delivers real operational and cost benefits, it creates a win-win for utilities and for the planet.’ The company grew out of research at Yale and was founded in 2022 by Katchinoff and Noah Planavsky, a geochemist and Yale professor. …

“When the water flows out of the plant, the company says, the dissolved ions eventually make their way to the ocean, where they can be stored for thousands of years. Katchinoff estimated that a single treatment plant can remove thousands to tens of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide annually. The startup sells carbon removal credits, a way for companies to pay to offset their climate pollution. CREW Carbon is one of the first companies to deliver credits in New England.

“The municipalities benefit as well. Some waste water treatment plants see cost savings and increased safety for workers by using limestone instead of chemicals for controlling pH. The limestone also can yield cleaner water flowing out of the plant. And in some cases, CREW Carbon is sharing revenue with the treatment facility from the carbon credits it sells. …

“The company’s first partnership was with the local utility in New Haven. Since then, it has grown to have six full-scale projects, most located on the East Coast. It delivered its first carbon credits in the spring, making it the first company in the world to have done so using waste water alkalinity enhancement, as the method is known. Alkalinity is a measure of the water’s ability to neutralize acids.

“In the coming years, the startup has committed to delivering about 70,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal, the equivalent of taking over 16,000 gas-powered cars off the road for a year, to a coalition of companies that includes Alphabet and McKinsey. …

“On a recent day, Jonathan Mongie, a project manager for Inframark, which operates the Fall River plant, leaned over a tank where waste water treated with limestone was being disinfected.

“ ‘I can see deeper than we’ve ever seen before,’ he said, observing the clarity of the water. The limestone increased the amount of solid particles in the waste water separated out using gravity. The plant was already meeting stringent discharge standards, Mongie said, but the limestone has improved the cleanliness of the water flowing into the bay. …

“Planavsky, the Yale professor, said CREW Carbon’s approach is not a silver bullet for the climate crisis. Instead, he said, it could be part of a future integrated approach where many industries each do their relatively small part. (Though Planavsky is a cofounder, he does not receive any money from the company.)

“Some scientific questions remain about waste water alkalinity enhancement, especially what happens after the water leaves the treatment plant. Tyler Kukla, a research scientist at CarbonPlan, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions, said the chemical reactions that occur within the waste water plant are well understood and take place within a closed system, making them easier to monitor. However, he said, it is less clear what happens to the carbon as it travels out to the ocean.

” ‘This is a work in progress,’ he said. ‘We can make measurements that we feel very confident about in many cases, but there is still a part of the system that is a little bit fuzzy to us.’ “

More at the Globe, here.

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Teens Fight Food Waste

February 17, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo:  Josh Reynolds for the Boston Globe.
From left, Boston City Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata, Sofia Hennessy, 17, Julianne Jang, 15, and Arrianna Sun, 17 carry donated boxes of food from college dining halls.

Today’s article about civic-minded teens addressing the problem of food waste makes me feel both admiration and guilt. Although I’m proud of composting our uneaten food, I know we waste more more than we should. The portions at my retirement community are large, and I haven’t yet done what some other residents do, which is ask for half portions of certain things.

Katarina Schmeiszer writes at the Boston Globe about teens that pick up good but unused food and donate it to people experiencing food insecurity.

“On a crisp evening in November, Arianna Sun and Sofia Hennessy stepped inside the Dunkin’ [Donuts] on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain. The bell jingled, and they were greeted by two workers who recognized them and immediately grabbed a bag of food. Unlike the other customers, Sun and Hennessy weren’t stopping in for a quick snack; they were collecting food to bring to a local church down the street.

“Growing up, Sun learned never to waste food.

Her grandfather lived in China during the Great Chinese Famine, she said, and he witnessed extreme hunger and starvation.

“ ‘He would always make sure at the dinner table [that] I finished every last grain, and that’s something that I think is really instilled in me,’ Sun said.

“His words inspired her to volunteer at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain in 2022, where she cooked meals twice a week. Along the way, she made a startling discovery: community businesses tossing out unsold goods at the end of the day. … ‘There was just perfectly fine food being thrown away on the same exact street, so I wanted to try to do something about that,’ she said.

“Sun and Hennessy, both 17, are seniors at Boston Latin School. Their campaign against food waste began when they were sophomores. The pair asked local businesses to give them the food instead of throwing it out at the end of the night. They first approached Dunkin’ on Centre Street and then The Real Deal, a family-owned restaurant. And with those willing partners, NoVasta, Latin for ‘no waste, was born.

“It started out as a small school club whose members volunteer to collect food waste from local businesses and bring it to a drop-off center, such as the church. The club also organizes food drives and raises money to buy items in bulk from wholesalers like Costco.

“Over the past two years, NoVasta has become part of the national Zero Waste Coalition. Club chapters have been started at other US schools and abroad. …

” ‘It’s given us a lot of hope to see that even though it’s such a big problem, there are a lot of people — whether it’s students or city councilors or people our age or restaurants — that are willing to work and find ways to contribute to this cause,’ Hennessy said. …

“The growing problem prompted Boston City Councilor Gabriela Coletta Zapata and others to propose an ordinance in 2023 to create a citywide food recovery program. … Zapata has been working with Sun and Hennessy to try to implement a city-wide food recovery program, which would be established with the ordinance that councilors are working to pass. …

“Through online forums and social media, Sun and Hennessy were able to connect with other high schoolers who noticed the same patterns in their communities: food going to waste while people were going hungry. …

” ‘Every single student we talked to noticed the same issue in their own city, and they’ve sort of just been waiting for a catalyst to start it.’ “

More at the Globe, here.

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The Rise of Merlin (the App)

February 16, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Nature Picture Library//Alamy.
A mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus) in a bush in an industrial estate in North Wales, UK, November 2025.

Today I want to combine two Guardian articles about birding because they are closely related. The first one, by David Batty, highlights a study on how being around birds can improve your mental health. The second is on the Merlin app, which can help connect you.

The mental health study, “led by academics from King’s College London, [found] that everyday encounters with birds boosted the mood of people with depression, as well as the wider population.

“The researchers said the findings suggested that visits to places with a wealth of birdlife, such as parks and canals, could be prescribed by doctors to treat mental health conditions. They added that their findings also highlighted the need to better protect the environment and improve biodiversity in urban, suburban and rural areas in order to preserve bird habitats.

“The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, tracked 1,292 participants’ everyday encounters with birds [in 2024] via a smartphone app called Urban Mind. …

“The artist Michael Smythe, of Nomad Projects, which helped King’s College London develop the smartphone app for the study, said the research also posed questions about the link between health inequalities and access to nature, with other research showing deprived areas often had less green spaces than affluent areas.

“Nomad Projects co-founded Bethnal Green Nature Reserve Trust, which built a pond last summer that Smythe said had attracted an ‘enormous diversity of birds.’

“ ‘It’s a very therapeutic complex, biodiverse, abundant space within a massive housing estate between four artery roads,’ said Smythe. ‘It’s now a place where people go en masse every day just to relax.’ ”

Then there’s Patrick Barkham‘s piece on a phone app that a lot of us have been using for more than a year: Merlin.

“Merlin is having a moment. The app, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in New York, which listens for birdsong and identifies the species singing, has been downloaded 33m times, in 240 countries and territories around the world. … Every month, there has been a 30% increase in new users of the app, whose sound identification function was launched in 2021.

“Merlin has been trained to identify the songs of more than 1,300 species around the world, with more birds added twice a year. Different songs make distinct patterns on spectrograms and Merlin is trained to recognize these different shapes and attribute them to a species. …

“Angela Townsend from Bedfordshire began using Merlin after going on a nightingale walk one spring and being overwhelmed by the range of bird-voices in the evening chorus. She has found it has steadily built up her bird knowledge. …

“Mary Novakovich, author of My Family and Other Enemies, is another recent adopter. She has found it particularly useful when traveling across Croatia, where her parents are from. ‘I love putting a name to a face and a name to the sound,’ she says. “It really brings you closer to the natural world. …

“Merlin is not flawless, however. The first time Kasper Wall, 12, tried it in his Norfolk garden, it detected a northern cardinal and a brown-headed cowbird – North American species not found in Britain.

“ ‘I think it was figuring out where we live,’ says Wall, who enjoys using it even though he is now an extremely knowledgeable birder. ‘A couple of weeks ago we were looking at a large group of goldcrest and it came up with a firecrest. I thought, “Oh, there must be a firecrest in here too” and 30 seconds later we saw one, which was the first I’d ever seen. I like it and it’s very good but I wouldn’t say that it’s better than the best people at identifying bird-calls. …

“Wall enjoys fooling Merlin with his uncanny impressions of a curlew, barn owl and greenshank.

“[Naturalist Nick] Acheson doesn’t use Merlin. He welcomes it, but points out it can replace learning. ‘Anything that gets people out, thinking about and reacting to nature is a great thing,’ he says. ‘But there’s certainly a risk that people don’t learn and just abdicate responsibility for learning to Merlin.’

“He has noticed a glitch where Merlin interprets a certain type of chaffinch call as a redstart, leading to people being absolutely adamant that there is a rare bird in their garden. … John Williamson, who works as a guide for Norfolk Wildlife Trust, has found Merlin repeatedly identifying high-pitched calls as a spotted flycatcher, a bird that is very unlikely to be found in the middle of Hickling Broad nature reserve’s large reedbeds. …

“That said, Williamson finds it a ‘good tool’ and welcomes how it is encouraging new people to enjoy birdsong. … ‘I find it impressive that an app can empower people to go out into nature, he says.”

More on Merlin at the Guardian, here, and on mental health through birding, here.

I love birds myself, although at the moment I am really put out with goldfinches. They strip the feeder of seeds in a day, aggressively pushing out other birds, and they mess up my little balcony with droppings. But I’ll get over it. What is your relationship with birds?

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MIT Aims To Prevent Next Pandemic

February 15, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Craig F. Walker/Globe staff.
Using nasal swabs, scientists are collecting viral samples from the willing on Boston streets.

It’s both surprising and reassuring how groups that in normal times can expect some federal assistance (for instance, food pantries, artists, scientists) often manage to keep going in a time of government hostility. It makes me think of what ants do after you knock over their anthill. Recently, I heard a US scientist say that he always has a plan B and C for funding sources. Even funders from foreign countries.

Today’s story of persistence is about MIT scientists who think it might be a good idea to anticipate and prevent the next pandemic.

Hiawatha Bray writes at the Boston Globe, “On a bright, brisk December day, two people stood in front of Boston’s Old South Church, asking passersby to shove cotton swabs up their noses, for science — and for two bucks.

“And despite the aching cold, quite a few said ‘yes.’ Dozens by early afternoon, hundreds on a typical day. and with each swabbed-out nostril, Simon Grimm gets a little closer to his goal — a reliable method for early detection of the next major pandemic.

“ ‘We want to understand what pathogens are circulating in the population,’ said Grimm. ‘To do that, you need samples from many different people, and one straightforward way to collect them at scale is recruiting volunteers on the street.’

“Grimm, a physician born and educated in Switzerland, is a technical program manager at SecureBio, which was spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Now an independent nonprofit, SecureBio has launched the Nucleic Acid Observatory, a team of scientists working on new ways to monitor the spread of diseases.

“They’re best known for searching through sewage. In cooperation with the University of Missouri, the observatory regularly tests for viruses in the sewer water of 20 US cities ranging from Boston, New York, and Chicago, to Milan, Mo. and Ottumwa, Iowa. They’ve also tried sampling toilet waste from international airplane flights landing at Logan Airport to see if anything unpleasant is coming in from abroad.

“But COVID, like many other pathogens, is an airborne virus, so testing sewer water only gets the scientists so far. That’s why the observatory last year launched Zephyr, a program that uses nasal swabs to monitor the viruses people are carrying. Even if a person isn’t infected, the viruses tend to stick around inside their nostrils. Test enough people, Grimm believes, and you’ll get a good idea of the ebb and flow of viruses in the local population. All Grimm had to do was find a few thousand people willing to poke around in their own noses for a few seconds.

“Turns out, this isn’t so hard, if you give people a financial incentive.

“Grimm figured that every nasal passage has its price, but how much? When the program started a year ago, he experimented. A dollar was too little, while five dollars would quickly drain his funds. They hit the sweet spot about six months ago, when they hit upon the idea of a two-dollar payment, in the form of a brand-new $2 bill. Since then, SecureBio has paid out about $20,000 in swab money and collected 10,000 swabs.

“Genevieve Speedy and Liam Nokes oversee the nose swabbing and dole out the cash. Speedy is a student at Boston University, majoring in genetics. She took the swab job hoping it’ll impress future employers. … Nokes signed on after speaking with members of a swab team working the T station in Harvard Square.

“ ‘I’m really interested in microbial ecology,’ said Nokes, who recently graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in mathematics, and who’s planning to pursue either a medical degree or a PhD. …

The swab donors had a variety of motives.

“Brittany Bernie was doing her bit to protect public health. ‘I did this to stop the germs and the whole spread of everything and make sure we’re all safe,’ she said. The money played no part in her decision.

“The same went for another woman, Alex Million. “‘I think it’s important to detect the next pandemic,’ she said. ‘To protect people and get the vaccine.’

“But for Eric Saarinen, the price was right. ‘I was walking by and they asked … you need a $2 bill?’ Saarinen said.

“It’s not much money, but it’s hard to resist a brand-new $2 bill. It’s a denomination you don’t often see in the real world, making the gift something of a collector’s item.

“The experiment poses no threat to privacy, the researchers say. All donations are anonymous. Volunteers swab out their own nostrils, then dunk the swab into a communal test tube partly filled with liquid. … Grimm’s team isn’t interested in individuals. They’re trying to track viruses spreading through the population at large.

“The samples are taken to a laboratory where human DNA is filtered out and discarded. Technicians home in on RNA, the genetic material found in many infectious viruses, including influenza, polio, West Nile fever, and of course COVID. They use gene-sequencing machines to identify these RNA samples, then match them with known viruses.

“Over time, this method can measure how many people have come in contact with these viruses. In addition, the tests can spot viruses that aren’t identical to known pathogens, but are genetically close enough to merit a closer look. If these new viruses begin to show up frequently in the swab tests, it’s a clear signal that they’re spreading through the population.

“For now, the swabs are being collected only in the Boston area. But if the method proves its worth, it could become part of a nationwide early warning system for the pandemics of the future.”

And, perhaps it will be states that fund it. More at the Globe, here.

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Seniors in Sweden Keep Learning

February 14, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: DCPhoto/Alamy.
In Sweden, over-55s can study at Senioruniversitetet for a relatively low fee.

An aunt and uncle on my father’s side were always voracious for education, and when they retired, they took learning vacations with Elderhostel [now called Road Scholar]. More recently, two different friends of mine enjoyed hearing Road Scholar’s academic lecturers on a trip to the Panama Canal, although my sense is that the excursions are heavier on things like indigenous dance performances than they used to be.

Miranda Bryant reports at the Guardian that in Sweden, seniors are teaching one another rather than hiring outside professionals. Reader Stuga4, for example, helped to teach a class on a recent Nobel economics prize winner.

Bryant writes, “record numbers of retirees are enrolling in a university run ‘by pensioners for pensioners’ amid increased loneliness and a growing appetite for learning and in-person interactions.

“Senioruniversitet, a national university that collaborates with Sweden’s adult education institution Folkuniversitetet, has about 30 independent branches around the country which run study circles, lecture series and university courses in subjects including languages, politics, medicine and architecture.

“The Stockholm branch, which is Sweden’s largest, has become so popular since it was founded in 1991 that it is now run across multiple venues across the capital by about 100 volunteers. Its most popular event, the Tuesday lectures, gets about 1,000 people each week.

“Recent Stockholm lectures have included ‘The art of awarding Nobel prizes’ by a former member of a Nobel committee, ‘Disinformation and AI – the threat we invented ourselves’ and ‘From soap to cultural heritage/canon and vice versa.’

“Inga Sanner, chair of Senioruniversitetet in Stockholm, said membership nationally was at an all-time high. … In 2023 there were 2,099 events held across Sweden attended by 161,932 participants, according to Folkuniversitetet. This year, that number is projected to increase to 177,024 participants across 2,391 events.

“Gunnar Danielsson, secretary general of Folkuniversitetet, said: ‘The desire to learn for pleasure’s sake, or for the sake of learning as such, is a joy to experience in a society which is increasingly obsessed with learning and education as [only] preparation for work.’

“Sanner, a retired history professor, said older people were ‘more and more alert’ and that there is a ‘fantastic hunger for education.’ She added: …

“The wider societal role that Senioruniversitetet plays is becoming increasingly important, she said, and the learning and wellbeing of its members has a knock-on effect to their families and beyond. …

“For many of their volunteers, their office in central Stockholm is like a workplace. ‘It is very meaningful work, but also you have such a lovely time and meet others.’ Sanner said the demographic of its membership does, however, tend to be ‘too homogenous,’ adding that they need to do more to extend their reach to a more diverse audience.

“Susanne Abelin, 66, a former journalist from Norrtälje, near Stockholm, volunteers on the university’s newsletter and is learning Italian. Ageism is rife in Sweden, she said, and palpable in day-to-day life. ‘You are seen more or less as an idiot.’ … But Senioruniversitetet, where over-55s can learn for a relatively low fee, is ‘a bit of the Swedish welfare system that is still left.’ …

“Joachim Forsgren, 71, a former physician who now volunteers for the Stockholm branch, has given lectures on ‘man and drugs’ and tuberculosis. …

“By volunteering, he said, ‘we are contributing to some kind of democracy project. This is really trying, especially in this day and age, to get people interested in what is going on.’ Amid the rise of online disinformation and populism, the university helps people to ‘look critically at the amount of information we are almost drowning in every day.’ “

There’s a Harvard-affiliated program like the one in Sweden, with retirees teaching courses in their field. My understanding from friends who have participated is that it’s quite demanding, for both the teacher and the student. More at the Guardian, here.

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When Valentines Became Ubiquitous

February 13, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Creative Commons.
A popular Victorian-era Valentine Day’s card by Jonathan King,1860-1880, London Museum.

Do you make Valentines? It’s always been a favorite activity for me. I like cutting up different kinds of paper and I like having some kind of holiday on my horizon when the hyperactivity of the Christmas season is over. I’m the kind of person who, if her fruit cup arrives with a lacy doily underneath, saves it for valentines.

Today we look into research from Christopher Ferguson, associate professor of history at Auburn University in Alabama, to learn how Valentine cards were first manufactured in quantity.

Prof. Ferguson writes at the Conversation, “When we think of Valentine’s Day, chubby Cupids, hearts and roses generally come to mind, not industrial processes like mass production and the division of labor. Yet the latter were essential to the holiday’s history.

“As a historian researching material culture and emotions, I’m aware of the important role the exchange of manufactured greeting cards played in the 19th-century version of Valentine’s Day.

“At the beginning of that century, Britons produced most of their valentines by hand. By the 1850s, however, manufactured cards had replaced those previously made by individuals at home. By the 1860s, more than 1 million cards were in circulation in London alone.

“The British journalist and playwright Andrew Halliday was fascinated by these cards, especially one popular card that featured a lady and gentleman walking arm-in-arm up a pathway toward a church.

“Halliday recalled watching in fascination as ‘the windows of small booksellers and stationers’ filled with ‘highly colored’ valentines and contemplating ‘how and where’ they ‘originated.’

” ‘Who draws the pictures?’ he wondered. ‘Who writes the poetry?’ In 1864 he decided to find out.

“Today Halliday is most often remembered for his writing on London beggars in a groundbreaking 1864 social survey, ‘London Labour and the London Poor.’ However, throughout the 1860s he was a regular contributor to Charles Dickens’ popular journal All the Year Round, in which he entertained readers with essays addressing various facets of ordinary British daily existence, including family relations, travel, public services and popular entertainments.

“In one essay for that journal, ‘Cupid’s Manufactory‘ … Halliday led his readers on a guided tour of one of London’s foremost card manufacturers. Inside the premises of ‘Cupid and Co.,’ they followed a ‘valentine step by step’ from a ‘plain sheet of paper’ to ‘that neat white box in which it is packed, with others of its kind, to be sent out to the trade.’

“ ‘Cupid and Co.’ was most likely the firm of Joseph Mansell, a lace-paper and stationery company that manufactured large numbers of valentines between the 1840s and 1860s. …The processes Halliday described, however, were common to many British card manufacturers in the 1860s, and exemplified many industrial practices first introduced during the late 18th century, including the subdivision of tasks and the employment of women and child laborers.

“[Halliday] noted how the card with the lady and gentleman on the path to the church began as a simple stamped card, in black and white … priced at one penny.

“A portion of these cards, however, then went on to a room where a group of young women were arranged along a bench, each with a different color. … Using stencils, one painted the ‘pale brown’ pathway, then handed it to the woman next to her, who painted the ‘gentleman’s blue coat,’ who then handed it to the next, who painted the ‘salmon-colored church.’ …

“These colored cards, Halliday noted, would be sold for ‘sixpence to half-a-crown.’ A portion of these, however, were then sent on to another room, where another group of young women glued on feathers, lace-paper, bits of silk or velvet, or even gold leaf, creating even more ornate cards sometimes sold for 5 shillings and above.

“All told, Halliday witnessed ‘about sixty hands’ – mostly young women, but also ‘men and boys,’ who worked 10 hours a day in every season of the year, making cards for Valentine’s Day.”

Lots more at the Conversation, here. Do you usually recognize Valentine’s Day in some way? How?

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A Genome Bank to Save Marine Life

February 12, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: David L Ryan/ Boston Globe Staff.
A view of a Forbes sea star at Northeastern University’s Ocean Genome Legacy Center.

As I was reading today’s story, an image kept coming to mind: an image of someone in a burning house running out with a few precious items.

You’ll see why when you read Kate Selig’s article at the Boston Globe on a genome bank.

“On a rocky outcropping a few miles northeast of Boston Harbor,” she writes, “scientists are racing to build a library of tissue and DNA from ocean creatures — before it is too late. It’s a last-ditch effort. As global warming drives ocean temperatures ever higher, some species have vanished and the populations of others have plummeted. If climate change continues unchecked, many marine species could face a mass extinction, rivaling the worst in earth’s history.

“To preserve the oceans’ historical record, researchers in Nahant, a peninsular town jutting into the Atlantic, are collecting samples from marine organisms around the world and distributing them to scientists.

“ It’s not difficult to do,’ said Dan Distel, a marine biologist who serves as the director of Northeastern University’s Ocean Genome Legacy Center. ‘It’s not expensive to do. And of course, if we miss the opportunity, it’s too late.’ …

“The Nahant collection has informed hundreds of studies, providing a baseline understanding of how species are doing while also tracking global trends. The repository houses common local species, such as spiky sea urchins and flatfish with their eyes trained skyward. But there are also some ‘real weirdos,’ as Distel described them. A prized specimen from the Philippines is a preserved giant shipworm, a glistening, tubular creature that lives in a tusk-like shell. A petite marine mussel the size and shape of a plump grain of rice rests in a small jar.

“A whiteboard at its entrance decorated with drawings of fish, sea stars, and a crab displays the current count: over 31,000 DNA samples and 28,000 tissue samples.

“Distel is the ringmaster behind the menagerie. … In addition to his work at the center, he has dedicated much of his career to studying shipworms, a type of worm-like clam notorious for gnawing through submerged wood. Distel was part of an international team that discovered a live specimen of the giant shipworm, a find that drew international attention. …

“ ‘These guys are a great example of a nearly extinct species,’ he said, with a touch of reverence. ‘There’s only one place in the world where we know they can still be found.’

“As humanity continues to burn fossil fuels, the world’s oceans have stood as a bulwark to the most extreme impacts of climate change by swallowing much of the excess heat trapped by greenhouses gases. But that has come at a staggering cost.

“The surface layer of the ocean has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century. In the Gulf of Maine, which is warming much faster than most ocean surfaces on the planet, the higher temperatures are forcing out lobsters, altering the migration patterns of whales, and fueling a population boom of invasive green crabs.

“The center was founded in 2004 by Donald Comb, a Massachusetts biotechnology pioneer. … Comb, who loved the oceans, decided to put up the funds to build a biorepository focused on marine species. The center became the first ocean-focused public DNA bank in the United States. …

“Large samples preserved in jars are stored in shelving units and a repurposed tool chest. They infuse the center with what students call ‘the low tide smell.’

“The real action takes place in the freezer room. Four mechanical freezers, rigged with alarms and known as ‘minus 80s’ for their low temperatures, store small tubes that contain the complete genome of an organism. A single freezer can fit thousands of samples. The center also has a liquid nitrogen freezer that chills samples so quickly that living bacteria can be revived. …

“Angela Jones, a Northeastern PhD candidate in marine and environmental sciences, has supplied the center with samples from her doctoral research on sea stars, studying two species in New England that have undergone steep population declines. …

” ‘It’s important to understand what the species are like now so that we can understand how they change under worsening conditions,’ she said.”

More at the Globe, here.

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The Role of Casting

February 11, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for BAFTA.
Owen Cooper and Shaheen Baig, Adolescence casting director, at the Bafta garden party in Los Angeles last August. 

We’ve been watching a very funny British television “thriller” with Christopher Walken called The Outlaws. The ability of the actors to make the danger plausibly nail-biting while also handling the comedy is impressive.

That got me thinking how perfectly the roles have been cast. Which then got me thinking about Walken’s wife, a New Shoreham neighbor, who is known for having cast some pretty big shows. The Sopranos, for example.

Casting is an invisible art that makes all the difference in success. Today’s article by Stuart Heritage at the Guardian shows why.

“At the Emmys in September,” he reports, “Adolescence all but swept the board. It won best limited series. It won awards for writing, for directing, for cinematography. Three of its actors – Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Owen Cooper – all took home awards. But Adolescence also earned another Emmy for a craft that often goes overlooked: best casting.

“Shaheen Baig was the woman responsible for casting Adolescence. … There’s no question that the award was deserved. As the woman who populated Adolescence with actors, Baig is ultimately the woman who discovered Owen Cooper. Despite its incendiary subject matter and technical wizardry, Cooper was the beating heart of the series. So revelatory was his performance – in turn heartbreakingly vulnerable and incandescently vicious – that it was hard to believe he was just 14 years old at time of filming, let alone that this was his first ever role. …

“Cooper’s discovery came as the result of a highly targeted six-month search for someone to fill the role. Baig knew that the show would be filmed in the north of England, so that was where she and her team set to work.

“ ‘I chose five cities,’ she says. ‘We then thoroughly researched those cities. We created databases. We looked at schools, youth groups, art groups, music groups. We talked to people that ran the clubs.’

“Once she was convinced that she had a good grasp of the cities, she put a flyer together. ‘We sent it out on social media, and all the places that we had spoken to, and then we essentially street cast,’ she says. ‘We go, we talk to people, we hand out flyers, we engage with people. It’s a lot of work, and it takes time, but that’s how you get the best results.’

“After this phase, Baig and her team received 600 audition tapes to sift through, and gradually went about whittling them down. ‘In the first rounds, we got people to do little improvs, and then every subsequent stage became a little bit more sophisticated. We would see people in the room, do a bit of improvisation with them. Then we’d recall, get them to work from script, until we got down to five.’

“Baig is keen to stress that every one of the final five candidates was ‘brilliant,’ and they all ended up with roles on the show. Nevertheless, Cooper stood out. … ‘We wanted to push him to see where he could go, and he had this extraordinary focus for somebody so young. I mean, that’s a rare find.’ …

“One of the issues with making filmed entertainment, be it movies or TV, is that people often assume that a director or showrunner controls everything from the top down. [The interviewer asks] is there a sense that this is changing at least when it comes to casting?

“ ‘It’s a collaboration, but like every other department – like a cinematographer, an editor, a costume designer – a huge amount of work and skill goes into creating a cast,’ she says. ‘I think it’s really great that it’s suddenly being recognized.’ …

“After starting her career as a production assistant in the 1990s, Baig found herself being drawn more and more towards actors. She eventually became an assistant to Debbie McWilliams, the James Bond casting director, before setting up shop on her own at the start of the century. …

“ ‘There weren’t really many other people like me,’ she says. ‘Working-class, from Birmingham, mixed race.’ … And so she began to work with Open Door, an organization that seeks to help young actors who lack the resources and financial means to attend drama school.

“ ‘Being able to go to drama school is a privilege, and it can feel quite a long way away for many, many people,’ she says. ‘Applying for drama school is expensive. Travel to your auditions is expensive. Open Door has worked really hard to break down some of those barriers. We work with people on movement, on voice, on auditions. We pair people with buddies, so they have somebody to connect to who has got a career. It’s all about making sure there are people in our industry that are recognizable to you.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations needed.

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Chile’s 1740-Mile Wildlife Corridor

February 10, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Pablo Sanhueza/Reuters.
The Sarmiento de Gamboa glacier in the strait of Magellan.

The conservation effort in today’s article would never have been possible without the dedication of many conservation-focused individuals, including donors. The participation of one of those donors, the founder of clothing company Patagonia, should interest my younger grandson. He loves the company for its sustainable policies.

John Bartlett wrote recently at the Guardian about how the dedication of conservation-minded individuals has benefited Chile.

“Chile’s government is poised to create the country’s 47th national park, protecting nearly 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of pristine wilderness and completing a wildlife corridor stretching 1,700 miles (2,800km) to the southernmost tip of the Americas.

“The Cape Froward national park is a wild expanse of wind-torn coastline and forested valleys that harbors unrivaled biodiversity and has played host to millennia of human history.

“ ‘I have been to many exceptional places, and I can tell you that the Cape Froward project is the wildest place I have walked through,’ said Kristine Tompkins, the renowned US conservationist at the heart of the project. ‘It’s one of the few truly wild forest and peak territories left in the country, and the richness of the Indigenous history in the region makes a case for these territories to be preserved for all time.’

“It is the 17th national park created or expanded in Chile and Argentina by Tompkins Conservation and its successor organization, Rewilding Chile. The groups have spent the best part of a decade knitting together a patchwork of land purchases and state-held properties to create the park. In 2023, they signed an agreement with the Chilean government to donate the land to become Cape Froward national park.

“[Last] February, a population of 10 huemul, an endangered deer species, was found in the park, and a network of cameras regularly captures wild pumas and the endangered huillín, a river otter. The area also encompasses 10,000 hectares [~25,000 acres] of sphagnum bogs, a spongelike moss which stores carbon deep below the ground.

“Benjamín Cáceres, the conservation coordinator in the Magallanes region for Rewilding Chile, is a native of Patagonia who first visited Cape Froward at the age of 12 with his conservationist father, Patricio Cáceres. ‘My father was always a dreamer,’ he said. ;When he found out about an abandoned lighthouse all those years ago, he brought us here as a family.’ …

“The San Isidro lighthouse is one of seven designed and built by the Scottish architect George Slight along the treacherous strait of Magellan. It was abandoned in the 1970s and itinerant fishers would come by to salvage wood until the roof collapsed. Now, Patricio and Benjamín’s vision for the restored lighthouse is becoming a reality. It has been converted into a museum of the natural and human history of the area and – together with a cafe on the beach below – will become the entry point for the new national park.

“Dotted along the shoreline are delicate archaeological sites that enshrine the history of the Kawésqar, a nomadic Indigenous people who navigated fjords, rocky beaches and forests in canoes carved from trees. …

“ ‘The area was widely inhabited by nomadic canoeists who lived by fishing and gathering food,’ said Leticia Caro, a Kawésqar activist who belongs to the Nómades del Mar community. ‘For our community, it is very important to protect this area, where you can also see the different ways of inhabiting the land and seas, and the interaction with other peoples like the Yagán, Selknam and Tehuelche.‘

“Long after Indigenous communities had settled in the area, the waters of the strait of Magellan, which the Kawésqar call the tawokser chams, became the link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. … The murky depths have claimed many lives and spawned legends. Treasure troves lie in the depths, and sealed bottles of rum have washed ashore over the centuries. …

“There are still a number of steps before the national park officially comes into existence.

“An Indigenous consultation process, a legal requirement for large-scale projects in Chile, was held in September but fell flat. Chile’s environment ministry said it would make ‘every effort’ to advance with plans for the park by March. But if no progress is made after two years, the lands revert to the ownership of Tompkins’ organizations.

“ ‘Each of the park projects we have developed has specific reasons for being considered essential for conservation,’ said Tompkins, who was the chief executive of Patagonia outdoor clothing for 20 years until 1993. ‘And in this sense Cape Froward is a piece of an ecological puzzle that, over time, should ensure that key biodiversity sites within Chilean Patagonia are permanently protected.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Creating the ‘Avatar’ Language

February 9, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: 20th Century Studios/AP Photo/picture alliance.
Varang (played by Oona Chaplin) is the leader of an aggressive Na’vi clan called the ‘Ash People‘ in Avatar.

Several of us here are interested in languages, including invented languages. I worked on learning Esperanto for a while in the 1980s and still speak it haltingly. That’s why I’ve indulged in a few posts about languages that have been created for shows — like Klingon in Star Trek. (Click here to the read the post “Sweden Opens Klingon Center.)

Elizabeth Grenier writes at DW about a man who got “to invent a new language that is heard by millions.” Linguist Paul Frommer talked to DW about how he developed the Avatar aliens’ language.

” ‘It’s been quite a remarkable event in my life,’ says linguist Paul Frommer, recalling his first encounter with James Cameron. Searching for someone to develop a constructed language for a science-fiction film, the renowned director had sent an email to the linguistics department of the University of Southern California. …

” ‘My life really hasn’t been the same ever since,’ Frommer tells DW ahead of the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third film of the epic franchise, 20 years later.

“Cameron’s premise for the language was that it should sound ‘nice’ — ‘of course, that’s a subjective kind of thing,’ says Frommer. It also had to be easy enough for actors to learn it, as it was clear from the start that there wouldn’t be any electronic manipulation of the characters’ voices. …

“Even though there are different aspects of Na’vi that can be compared to other languages, it can’t be directly linked to any single one. ‘I wanted to make it unusual,’ says Frommer.

“Describing the process of developing the language, Frommer refers to the different ‘modules’ used in linguistics — the building blocks he worked with.

“First of all, at the core of a language are its phonetics and phonology, or its ‘sounds and the sound system,’ he explains. …

“He included, for example, ejective sounds — popping sounds that can be heard in parts of Africa, Asia and Native American languages. He also included unusual combinations of consonants in the language, basically ‘taking familiar sounds, but putting them together in unfamiliar ways.’

“Then, Frommer determined the language’s morphology, which is how words are built. … Even though he was inspired by constructions that also exist in other human languages, he ‘took certain things and put them on steroids.’

“For example, there are five levels of verb conjugation: the present, the immediate past, the distant past, the immediate future and the distant future. Word order is also very flexible in sentences. The function of a word in Na’vi is not determined by its placement in a sentence, but through declension, with six different cases. The German language, by comparison, has four grammatical cases — nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), dative (indirect object) and genitive (possession). [Like Latin.] …

“With each film in the franchise, new colloquialisms and dialects are developed to reflect the way the different Na’vi clans speak. The vocabulary thereby keeps expanding, and Frommer estimates there are now more than 3,000 Na’vi-language words. …

“Fans of Star Trek or J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Lord of the Rings famously demonstrate their enthusiasm for these complex fictional universes by learning Klingon or Elvish, which are also constructed languages — or ‘conlangs.’ 

“Similarly, there is now a community of Na’vi learners around the world, with a printed dictionary and a wealth of online resources for those who are interested in the language.’ ” More at DW, here.

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