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Storing Rain in Garden Fences

June 7, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Judith Jockel/The Guardian.
In the Netherlands, Harry den Hartigh installs a fence that also serves as a rainwater store.

Not to stereotype, but the Dutch strike me as exceptionally good problem solvers. (Maybe the bloggers at Cook and Drink can give an informed opinion.) Most of us know how they built their country on a delta and how today advise other places threatened with flooding.

Senay Boztas writes at the Guardian that the Netherlands is now experimenting with a new way to control water … until it’s needed.

“Good fences make good neighbors – but rain fences could make even better ones,” says Boztas. “That is the hope of housing corporations in the Netherlands, which are adopting rainwater storage in their garden fences.

“In a tidy neighborhood in Veldhoven, where the social housing provider, Woonstichting ’thuis, is installing its first such rain fence, one couple, Theo and Willy Bolder, are already seeing an increase in their popularity. ‘People are all coming round to ask what it costs,’ said Willy Bolder.

“Outside, between rattan fence panels, a series of plastic blocks have been linked to the drainage from their roof. Together, they will store up to 2,160 liters [571 gallons] of water – reducing pressure on the drains during downpours and preserving rainwater for the garden in times of drought.

“ ‘The rain is getting heavier and heavier nowadays, and if you have a cloudburst the drainage isn’t good and it comes up through the toilet,’ she said. …

“Theo added that the hotter summers were threatening the trees and their quality of life. ‘I always go fishing in a lake, it’s always full of water, but last summer it was completely dry,’ he said. …

“The couple are not the only ones to feel the effects of the climate crisis in this low-lying country. … Weather extremes are now more likely. The Netherlands was shocked by floods in Limburg in 2021, when … the River Geul burst its banks.

“Rik Thijs, deputy mayor for public space, greenery and water in nearby Eindhoven, said private and public initiatives were needed to adapt to the changing weather. ‘Our sewage system cannot cope with the rainfall that is coming, and we cannot increase its capacity, so we need to do things differently,’ he said. …

“This might mean plans to bring an old river, the Gender, back to the surface, ‘wadi‘ pools that can hold water during heavy rain, and incorporating green roofs and rainwater storage into housing developments. ‘The Netherlands is very vulnerable because we are, of course, one large delta,’ he said.

“The country’s vulnerability to water was graphically illustrated by the North Sea flood of 1953, when at least 1,800 people died, tens of thousands of animals drowned and there was huge damage to property and farmland. While the disaster, in the province of Zeeland, inspired the Delta Works sea defenses, it also left its mark on the Dutch entrepreneur Harry den Hartigh, whose company, SunnyRain Solutions, installed the storage system in the Bolders’ garden. …

” ‘I was born in Zeeland and my parents experienced the flood disaster,’ said den Hartigh. … In his youth, he also saw how Zeeland struggled to source enough fresh water for agriculture owing to brackish water from the sea, and this inspired his rainwater storage system. …

“Despite the Netherlands’ reputation for rain, it has increasing concerns about water shortages in the summer, and overheating cities. Jannes Willems, assistant professor in urban planning at the University of Amsterdam, said simple solutions at scale could make a difference. ‘Rainwater harvesting is a very easy fix,’ he said. ‘We have a water system that was built to discharge water as quickly as possible.’

“But with flood events and rain bursts, the sewers simply cannot cope. ‘You can better let it infiltrate the soil through green measures, bringing back natural elements in cities. And then, in times of heatwaves, that can lower temperatures,’ he said. …

“Matthijs Hulsbosch, a property and sustainability manager, said the fences could also make the complex’s 11,000 homes more resilient. … ‘We can fix leaks, but it might be better to prevent them through these kinds of ideas – and save a great deal of money and inconvenience.’

“Willems said it also represented a change to the idea that a country that reclaimed a fifth of its land from the sea could always bend nature to its will. ‘Fifty years ago, the Dutch water system was a good example of modernist thinking: being able to master nature,’ he said. ‘With green infrastructure, the Dutch are trying to rebrand that narrative and bring back a natural state,’ “

More at the Guardian, here.

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Hero Rat Gets a Statue

June 6, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Antony Holvoet/Apopo.
The statue of Magawa, the land-mine-sniffing rat, was unveiled on the eve of International Day for Mine Awareness. Land mines are illegal under international law because they kill so many innocents, but countries still use them. Talented rats will continue to be needed.

Probably most of you have a reason to hate rats, but it’s important to note that rats can not only be useful in science but heroic in helping clear land mines. Today’s article is about a rat that prevented so much death and dismemberment that he’s been honored with his own statue.

Sydney Page writes at the Washington Post, “Although Magawa weighed less than three pounds, his impact was monumental. The African giant pouched rat sniffed out more than 100 land mines during his five-year career, saving countless lives.

“To honor his bravery, a seven-foot statue of Magawa was unveiled [in Cambodia], where he spent his time nose-down on high-stakes missions. Magawa died in 2022, but his legacy lives on.

“ ‘Magawa was one of the best rats we’ve ever had,’ said Michael Raine, a program manager in Cambodia for Apopo — a Belgium-based nonprofit that trains animals to detect land mines. ‘Magawa was calm and focused … he was gentle and friendly with his handlers. He just had the perfect temperament.’

“Born in 2013 at Apopo’s headquarters in Tanzania, Magawa was trained as a ‘HeroRAT,’ learning to harness his strong sense of smell to detect explosives. In 2016, he was relocated to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to begin his career, quickly rising to the top among Apopo’s rats. He even has his own Wikipedia page.

“Raine said Magawa could search a field the size of a tennis court within about 20 minutes — a task that would take a human several days. …

“Apopo trains rats using positive reinforcement, teaching them to identify chemical compounds in explosives, such as trinitrotoluene. When a rat detects a land mine, it scratches the surface, alerting its handler. The rat is then rewarded with a treat, typically a peanut or a slice of banana. …

“ ‘They’re so light they wouldn’t trigger a land mine,’ Raine said. Plus, ‘they have an extremely sensitive sense of smell and they are quite intelligent.’

“Cambodia has one of the world’s highest concentrations of land mines, largely stemming from the Khmer Rouge era in 1979 and the Vietnamese occupation between 1979 and 1989.

“In the past 47 years, land mines in Cambodia have caused about 18,800 deaths and 45,000 injuries. Apopo started training mine-detection rats in 2015, which helped speed up the efforts to locate mines, though an estimated 6 million land mines remain in Cambodia, according to Apopo. … Raine said, ‘Cambodia’s target is to be land mine free by 2030.’

“Magawa’s individual impact is remarkable, Raine said. He cleared more than 1.52 million square feet — roughly 26 football fields — and detected dozens of land mines. In 2020, Magawa became the first rat to receive the PDSA Gold Medal, which rewards animal bravery and devotion to duty. …

“After retiring in 2021, Magawa spent several weeks mentoring younger rats, helping them refine their detection skills by his example. …

“The giant statue of Magawa, hand-carved from stone by local artists, was commissioned by Apopo and unveiled on the eve of International Day for Mine Awareness. In attendance were government officials, including the head of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority. Land-mine victims were also present, as well as children from a local school.

“ ‘What Magawa delivered was excellent, and it was a good way to remember him and also remind people in a nice way that there’s still a mine problem here in Cambodia,’ Raine said.”

More at the Post, here.

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A Khmer Swan Lake

June 5, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: James Higgins.
Khana Desen, Victoria Ung, Channa Sath, Rancia Phin and Sophorl Ngin as the white swans in the third act of A Khmer Swan Lake, performed recently in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Lowell, a city not far from where I live, is sometimes called a “gateway city” because it has hosted successive generations of immigrants and refugees looking for a new start. In the 1980s, the US State Department resettled many Cambodian refugees fleeing from a murderous regime. Today the imprint on the city is seen everywhere, and not just in the the delicious food immigrants always bring to a new land.

Jia H. Jung recently reported at WBUR about a production of a Cambodian version of Swan Lake by Angkor Dance Troupe (ADT).

“On a blustery spring evening,” Jung wrote, “dancers rehearse in the warm belly of the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell. Sewn into sequined silk costumes and topped with golden crowns from Cambodia, they appear like 1,000-year-old statues brought to life.

“These are the diasporic stars of ‘A Khmer Swan Lake,’ a reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s ballet by the Angkor Dance Troupe using Robam Kenor classical Cambodian dance rooted in Indian Hinduism and Buddhism.

“The Khmer White Swan, Odette Devi, is modeled after Kenorei, a half-human, half-bird of Angkorian lore. The ending of her story trades Western tragedy for transcendence — barely allegory for how Cambodian/Khmer genocide survivors and their descendants have channeled their ancestral arts to empower their regeneration.

“ ‘I want us to be seen,’ said Bora Chiemruom, executive director of the Angkor Dance Troupe. ‘We’ve been here for 40 years. We’ve shaped the arts in this city.’

“Chiemruom first arrived in Lowell as a young refugee in 1987 after she and her family fled the Khmer Rouge regime that lasted from 1975 to 1979 in Cambodia.

“When she was 16, an ADT performance replaced inner torment about her identity with awe for the richness of her heritage. But it wasn’t until 2022 that she got directly involved with the organization, bringing with her the goal of innovation and centering the troupe in the arts scene.

“She grew ADT to a staff of three employees and 25 instructors, who teach 150 to 200 pupils a year, with another 25 on the waitlist. The next challenge was figuring out how to expand upon intangible treasures that have survived up until now by staying set in stone.

“She raised the idea of retelling Swan Lake to the Merrimack Repertory Theatre (MRT) two years ago. Once the partnership went forward, the pressure to embody the story while doing justice to Khmer dance and ballet felt immense. This was also the first full-scale dance production MRT had ever undertaken. …

“She chose principal dancers Peter Veth and Chummeng Soun as the show’s creative director and program director. …

“ ‘Dancing is in my blood,’ Veth said. A son of genocide survivors, he began attending ADT’s classes as a young child in the 1990s, sneaking to rehearsals downtown.

“Ten years later, Soun was a new Cambodian immigrant kid in town, saw Veth perform and decided to follow suit. Together, they co-founded Urban Khmer Ballet, a grassroots collective incorporating traditional dance elements while carving out new spaces for creative expression.

“In preparation for A Khmer Swan Lake, the duo traveled to Cambodia last fall to work with 10 dance masters and 10 musicians – among the last living artists from before the genocide who saved their civilization’s royal arts from extinction.

“With them on the trip was Phousita Huy, artistic director of ADT and an internationally renowned Khmer classical dance master who trained at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh and moved to Lowell in 1996. …

“The team placed paramount importance on earning the permission and blessings of the masters to reproduce sacred repertoire outside of Cambodia. This vetting process was also an opportunity to document the knowledge of culture keepers in Cambodia before it’s too late.

“It wasn’t easy, but a crucial part of moving forward, according to Soun.

“ ‘This creative negotiation process is the process of transmitting information, knowledge from generation to generation,’ Soun said. ‘And that’s why this form of art perseveres in the diaspora — because it allows itself to evolve.’

“The original production score, recorded in Cambodia, features Khmer instruments playing traditional numbers with glimmers of Tchaikovsky’s familiar Swan Theme. Huy, Veth and Soun worked with the masters to preserve traditional movements in the choreography, changing formation and positioning when necessary for narrative clarity and synchronization with the music.

“Veth was in charge of making sure all interpretations would land with U.S. audiences, bridging cultural differences with modifications.”

Beautiful photos at WBUR, here. See also an article at DanceTeacher about the troupe’s leader, here.

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Film Subsidies Don’t Usually Pay Off

June 4, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Eseban Benites/Unsplash.

When I worked at the Boston Fed, some economist or other would periodically publish the latest research on whether states’ tax breaks for movie companies really generated the desired local jobs and economic boost. They usually don’t.

Today’s article implies: “It depends.”

Winston Cho writes at the Hollywood Reporter, “Findings from economists about film subsidy programs are almost universally negative: It’s a race to the bottom with negligible economic benefits for the state where the biggest winner is Hollywood.

“Consider Oklahoma. In 2023, the state was having its film moment. Major productions had been flocking to the region as it poured more and more money into its rebate program. …

“An inflection point came when Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon rolled into town. The production transformed a Northern Oklahoma city to double as 1920s Fairfax, where the killings at the center of the $200 million epic occurred. Carpenters, set decorators and landscapers, among other crew, were hired for the makeover. The thinking for the financial incentives is that the state will see a major boost to its local economy by hosting big-budget movies and TV shows.

“But  a report published on Wednesday evaluating how effective film subsidies are at creating local employment said that only 30 percent of the $100 million Oklahoma sees in production spend each year goes to in-state workers in the form of wages. The findings issued by workforce training operator Kalison Studios suggest that many of the regions touting sky-high production spending aren’t actually generating as many jobs for their residents as the figures imply.

“Some industry hotspots with relatively low local hire rates compared to the amount they give in financial incentives: Ontario (86 percent), New Mexico (82 percent), Australia (82 percent), Georgia (72 percent) and Hungary (68 percent). A few of these film hubs share structural issues related to rapid production growth outpacing local workforce development, film subsidy programs not prioritizing local hiring and senior roles being filled by more experienced workers who live in other regions.

” ‘Georgia is surprisingly low,’ says Kalison Studios founder Glenn Kalison. ‘At the same time, it has greatest opportunity for improvement. And it’s doing the most to address that. So I think that’s in their favor. But there has been a transient class moving out of Georgia and folks flying in from L.A.’

“For years, Georgia sold its filming subsidy as an investment in middle-class jobs and marketed itself as ‘Hollywood of the South.’ It was the home of Marvel Studios and … around this time, an auditor had estimated that the state only saw a return of 19 cents in tax revenue for every dollar it gave to studios, which collectively got $5.2 billion from 2015 to 2022. Still, Georgia stuck by the program.

“But as other regions instituted more attractive film incentives, the state saw fewer and fewer movies and TV shows. In 2025, production spending plummeted to $2.3 billion across 245 production after peaking in 2022 at $4.4 billion across 412 productions. Marvel Studios has left for the U.K., where workers are paid less and studios don’t have to cover the cost of their health insurance. Now, soundstages and other production infrastructure largely sit empty and unused. For studios, the chase for filming subsidies is endless …

“On the other end of the spectrum, California leads the pack in the most job creation for local residents from productions that shoot in the state. Roughly 98 percent of the $6 billion in annual production spending goes to below-the-line crew, according to the report, which estimates that movies and TV shows generate $1.9 billion per year in crew wages. Notably, many of the department heads whom productions based in other states have to fly in are local to the state.

“One important consideration: California’s film subsidy program prioritizes in-state spending and below-the-line jobs. Jumanji, which was awarded $44 million for filming in the state, hired 538 crew members, the vast majority of whom are local. …

“The report lends credibility to the posture of Gov. Gavin Newsom, lawmakers and industry advocates in L.A. pushing for even higher filming subsidies in California, all of whom say the state should protect a legacy industry. Many have pointed to the fall of Detroit’s automotive industry, which left thousands without jobs. Findings from the state’s legislative analyst last year on the financial incentives are more nuanced than other regions: There’s not much evidence that expanding the tax credit would benefit California’s economy as a whole, but the increase could be worthwhile to maintain the state’s share of production and volume of jobs in the film and TV industry. …

“In 2021, there were more than 141,000 workers in California in the film and TV recording industry who collectively earned $19.2 billion in wages, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those figures plummeted to 121,000 workers who collectively earned $17.5 billion in 2024, the most recent year the data is available. …

“Other regions that have high local job creation rates include the U.K. (98 percent), New York (95 percent) and British Columbia (93 percent). All have decades of sustained production and the infrastructure to support Hollywood.”

Read more at the Hollywood Reporter, here. These programs continue to be popular with residents because it’s fun to watch camera crews filming famous actors, even if it doesn’t do that much for the economy.

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Just Sit in the Car and Think

June 3, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Alexander Lunyov/Unsplash.

I loved this article about sitting in the car and recharging your battery with a little solitary quiet. I myself like having many short naps, but this can work, too. As long as no one is waiting for my parking space!

Aya Diab and Adithi Ramakrishnan posed this question recently at the Boston Globe: “Have you ever pulled into the driveway of your home or a parking lot spot and just … stayed there?

“Maybe it’s a few minutes, or half an hour. You might be scrolling on your phone, belting out a favorite song or just staring into the distance.

“Scroll through TikTok and you’ll find countless videos of people wondering aloud why they’re doing the same thing: arriving at work, home, the gym, and then just sitting in their car. Some get there early on purpose. Others stay long after they’ve parked. …

“It turns out, science has a few ideas for why people do this. Whether in a car, on a sidewalk or just outside a door, that temporary pause can act as a buffer between one part of the day and the next. And while there isn’t an extensive body of research to back it up, experts say this can be good for you — if you keep a few things in mind.

” ‘A lot of times we’re just going 100 miles an hour,’ said Jenny Taitz, a clinical psychologist who runs her own practice in Beverly Hills. ‘But if we can literally stop, like slow down, take a step back, observe, proceed mindfully, maybe like a few minutes to reset between activities, it kind of gives you an ability to be intentional.’

“Brief moments alone can help reset emotions when moving from one thing to another — like leaving work stress behind before coming home.

“ ‘By taking a brief little break, you can at least take a moment to relax and prepare before moving forward,’ said psychologist Anthony Vaccaro with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Vaccaro sits in his parked car for a few minutes after arriving home from work, turning up the speakers to listen to just one more song.

“People seek out these breaks to process, recalibrate and shake off the gloom. And doing it in a car make sense because ‘it’s an in-between space,’ according to psychologist Thuy-vy Nguyen with Durham University in England and founder of Solitude Lab, which studies how being alone affects and rejuvenates us. The car is an environment people can have total control over, from the temperature to the music.

“Scientists say taking brief moments to decompress during the workday and after can improve mood, sharpen focus and boost energy levels.

“When it comes to breaks in the car, though, whether that pause helps — or hurts — depends on how the time is spent.

“ ‘If you’re in your car scrolling and thinking about something that’s upsetting to you or ruminating, you know, in your head spiraling, the parked car is not a reset. It’s the stressor,’ said Taitz.

“Scrolling on your phone can pull your attention toward what’s happening on the screen, which can in turn make it harder to decompress.

“If sitting in a parked car has become a habit, be mindful of how you’re spending the time. Take a few moments to slow your breathing, listen to a familiar song or make a simple plan for how you want to show up next — whether that’s feeling calmer, more patient or more focused. …

“ ‘You could change your blood pressure in five minutes,’ Taitz said, referring to simple techniques like slowing your breathing or relaxing your body.

“There’s a difference between a helpful reset and avoidance. If the parked car breaks are making you late for important meetings or dinner with friends, or it feels difficult to get out of the car and confront the rest of the day, they may do more harm than good — or indicate that something more serious is going on. …

“Decompressing in a car can be about more than just shaking off stress. The sheer volume of information people take in every day can make a quiet pause even more essential and rewarding.

“ ‘We’re always juggling so much, not taking a lot of time to slow things down,’ Taitz said. Trying to find those moments can allow for things to be happier and more joyful and fulfilling.’ ”

More at the Globe, here. Do you do this?

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Yay for Earlier Curtain Times!

June 2, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jon Tyson via Unsplash.
Some theaters are experimenting with earlier curtain times.

I never understood why evening theater performances invariably started at 8 pm. Where was it written that they couldn’t start earlier? Perhaps the custom goes back to some 19th century dinner hour.

Nowadays my husband and I prefer matinees as we don’t love driving in the dark and we retire early.

Lily Janiak writes at the San Francisco Chronicle (via MSN) that some theaters are asking audiences what they actually want — and are experimenting with earlier curtain times.

“I turned on my phone after The Book of Mormon,” she writes, “to take note of the show’s runtime, as part of my job as theater critic, and had a moment of cognitive dissonance. Only 9:30 p.m.?

“It was true, even though I’d just seen a full Broadway musical.

“This season, ATG San Francisco – which presents touring shows at the Orpheum, Golden Gate and Curran Theatres – moved three of its curtain times earlier. With occasional exceptions, Tuesday throughThursday evening showtimes are now 7 p.m. …

“American Conservatory Theater [ACT] and Berkeley Repertory Theatre have become earlier birds, too. Three years ago, Berkeley Rep reset its Tuesday showtimes from 8 to 7 p.m., and next season, Managing Director Tom Parrish told the Chronicle, it’s rescheduling Saturday evening showtimes from 8 to 7:30 p.m. ACT, meanwhile, made two changes for its 2024-25 season, moving Sunday from 7 to 6:30 p.m. and Tuesday from 7:30 to 6:30 p.m.

“Berkeley Rep made its Tuesday change years ago after seeing increased demand for Wednesday performances, which have long been at 7 p.m., Parrish noted. Now, after seeing lower demand for Saturday evenings in more recent years, he had a hypothesis: ‘Maybe the performance time was the issue.’

“The company surveyed 1,519 audiences, and sure enough, 90% said they’d be as or more likely to attend Saturday shows if they were moved earlier. Its 2026-27 season’s change is in response to those results. …

” ‘We’ve had zero complaints,’ said General Manager Jamie Budgett, who acknowledged his strategy is capitalizing on post-pandemic work schedule flexibility.

“But for patrons who live further away, an early showtime can be prohibitive. … Leaving work isn’t always an option. … Others point out there’s such a thing as too much time before a show. Audiences can ‘lose steam,’ as San Francisco resident and performer J.A. Valentine put it, and actors can spot ‘Friday night fatigue in the seats.’

“If earlier showtimes strain farthest-flung audiences, ACT Marketing Director Adam Thurman pointed out they can reduce other patrons’ late-night anxieties. …

“In any case, more of his single-ticket buyers are coming from the city as opposed to surrounding counties – 40% now versus 25% before the pandemic. … Patron Debi Durst pointed out. ‘Sometimes it’s more difficult to find a WAV (wheelchair accessible vehicle) taxi later in the evenings,’ she said.

“Some survey data backs up all these trends. Californians spend seven more minutes sleeping per day and 19 minutes less working per day than the rest of the country does, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey.

“The same data also shows we also spend more time preparing and eating food per day, which would seem to be a strike against earlier show times.

“Yet at Italian eatery Tratto – a block away from the Toni Rembe and the Curran, and a frequent partner with ACT on special events – the leadership team is in favor of earlier curtain times. General Manager Ricardo Bosco and Brian Fenwick, who is managing director of the Marker Union Square, where Tratto is housed, hope to persuade theater patrons to come by post-show for a drink, dessert or full meal. Such demand is nonexistent now, they said, though Tratto is reliably packed before curtain times.

” ‘I won’t be opposed to extending (restaurant) hours if I know that the show is going to bring in people after,’ Bosco said. ‘We can be pretty flexible when it comes to that.’ …

“Fenwick said Tratto’s success is so tied to neighboring plays and musicals that now its Fridays are the lightest days of the week if the theaters are dark. This reflects the popularity of work-from-home that day and a decline of after-work nights out.

“Still other structural factors might push Bay Area patrons and theaters toward earlier evenings. One is a graying Bay Area. …

“But Broadway’s been moving curtain times earlier since the beginning of the millennium as well. Among evening performances listed on Broadway.com on Thursday, April 9, 30 shows had 7 p.m. curtain times; 10 at 7:30 p.m.; 11 at 8 p.m. and another had multiple entrance times starting at 7:15 p.m.”

More at the San Francisco Chronicle via MSN, here.

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Balancing Third Grade and a Grammy

June 1, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Dee Dwyer for NPR.
Grammy winners Aura Valentina Simmons, 8, and her father, Harold Simmons II, sing during a morning practice session in their home recording space before she goes to school in Charles County, Maryland. They go by the stage names Aura V and Fyütch.

It must take a special kind of parenting to help a child deal with being in the limelight. There are so many cases of celebrated children who more or less crashed and burned. Of course, there’s Shirley Temple, who went on to a fine career as a diplomat.

I am definitely rooting for the young star in today’s story.

Ava Berger reports at National Public Radio (NPR), “Aura Valentina Simmons, aka Aura V, may be the youngest-ever individually named Grammy winner, but in her third-grade classroom, she uses the same blocks to figure out fractions as everyone else.

” ‘I don’t really know about Grammys,’ Pragat Patel, Aura’s desk mate, said with a shrug this week.

” ‘That’s the energy I like — chill,’ Aura said, giggling. …

“Aura and her dad, Harold Simmons II, who uses the stage name Fyütch, won music’s biggest prize in February. Their album, Harmony, won the Grammy for best children’s music album. Before Aura’s win, Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter had been the youngest individual Grammy winner.

” ‘I would say it’s the biggest experience I’ve ever had in my whole entire life so far,’ 8-year-old Aura said.

“The 13 songs, which took over two years to write and record, follow themes of love, positivity and inclusion. In ‘I Am Love, I Am Light,’ Aura sings, ‘I love myself, I love me.’

” ‘I like to sing about that because it’s empowering,’ Aura said. ‘It gives hope to people.’ …

“Before heading to school on a recent Tuesday, Aura and her father, wearing matching pops of yellow, practiced in a basement studio at their home in Charles County, Maryland. Aura stays with Simmons during the week because he has a more flexible schedule than her mom, who is a teacher.

“Aura pulled out a violin while Simmons warmed up on the piano. … The pair fell into perfect sync and belted out their album’s title track, ‘Harmony.’ …

“On the red carpet in Los Angeles in February, Aura and Simmons also wore matching colors — this time, lavender. Aura said her fluffy skirt and matching sparkly handbag got lots of attention. …

“Simmons said he was ‘freaking out’ before the announcement, but Aura had a different concern.

” ‘ “Can you get me some popcorn?” ‘ Simmons recalled his daughter asking. ‘I am frozen and I say, “Girl, I’m so sorry — I cannot move right now.” ‘

“When they finally got to the stage to accept the Grammy, Simmons spoke about the power of children’s music.

” ‘Children’s music is more than a genre,’ Simmons said. ‘It is an intention of artists who have dedicated our crafts to educating, entertaining and empowering the next generation, which is our highest calling to care for our children globally.’

“Now, Simmons reflects on what has happened since that history-making moment: ‘Seeing the impact that it’s created — our father-daughter relationship, being a Black dad and daughter — has really put into perspective how important representation is in what we do.’

“Simmons never planned to get into children’s music. His journey started when he was 7, and he performed as a young orator in his hometown of Gary, Indiana.

“After college, as he pursued a full-time music career, Simmons taught music production and poetry to young students.

“Then, when Aura was around 6, she asked to use the microphone and play on the keyboard with her dad. …

“Their first song as a duo, ‘I Am Love, I Am Light’ in 2024, ‘went crazy,’ he said.

“Simmons had a new goal: making music that captured the life he wanted to model for his daughter — with friendship and love. …

“Now, he wants her to have her own solo career. But Aura is adamant. ‘I want to still perform with Daddy,’ she told her dad, leaning in to hug him. …

“She feels like she has two lives: one of autographs and fans and one of math games and buddies at school. … ‘I wanna learn too. I’m an ordinary girl, just like everybody else,’ Aura said.”

More at NPR, here.

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This Tiny Town Could Be Yours

May 31, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: The Guardian.
The entire population of Australia’s Cooladdi (two residents) has packed up, and the town is officially for sale.

Are you up for a completely different lifestyle? Perhaps you would like to buy this town in Australia. It has a postal address, but at the moment, no residents. It does get visitors from time to time.

Ima Caldwell reports at the Guardian, “In the heart of outback Queensland in Australia, more than [500 miles] west of Brisbane, sits a town with its own postcode and exactly two residents. Now, the entire population of Cooladdi is packing up – and the town is officially for sale.

“For [US$280,000, UK£200,000] buyers will get the Foxtrap Roadhouse, a four-bedroom home, and the keys to the town. …

“Cooladdi – whose name reportedly stems from a local Indigenous word for ‘black duck’ – is one of Australia’s smallest towns. Its official status is anchored by the local post office, which operates out of the roadhouse. Because of this, Cooladdi retains its own postcode: 4479.

“The town’s two residents, Carol Yarrow and Jo Cornel, took over the roadhouse in February 2023. They had a three-year plan to bring the quiet stopover back to life. Now, that time is almost up. … They are ready to hand over the reins.

“The new owners will wear many hats. Running Cooladdi means serving as the postie, the publican, the cook and the shopkeeper.

“ ‘The food and the pub are probably one of the main jobs; we also do the mail runs as part of the post office,’ says Yarrow, who grew up on a station between Quilpie and Windorah. No stranger to remote hospitality, she has spent years running motels and hotels. …

“Cooladdi was once a bustling railway hub with a population that peaked at roughly 270. But as the local sheep industry shrank and the trains eventually stopped coming, the town slowly emptied out. The school closed its doors for good in 1974.

“Around that time, Beryl and Bob Fox built the Foxtrap Roadhouse. It was an unusual investment, but it made sure Cooladdi remained a key meeting point. …

“Managing the sale is Becky Jeisman from Charleville Real Estate. Located within the Murweh Shire Council, Cooladdi’s closest major centre is Charleville, a town of 3,000 where an average house sells for about $210,000. Jeisman says the roadhouse would suit empty nesters, a keen young group, or a family wanting a lifestyle change.

“The new buyer has the potential to drastically change the town’s population. … ‘If a group of four people buy it, then the population will double.’

“For those tired of city life, Yarrow says Cooladdi offers a great ‘change of pace’ and a laid-back lifestyle.

“Beyond the titles of publican and postie, Jeisman says that the new owners will inherit a far more important role: maintaining the ‘general camaraderie’ at the heart of an isolated community.

“As she and Cornel prepare to wipe down the bar and pour their final beers, there is hope that Australia’s smallest town has some life left in it yet.” More at the Guardian, here.

It’s an amusing idea, buying a town, but I can’t really imagine it working out well. I’m afraid some folks in Australia are having trouble facing reality.

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A Magical Forest in England

May 30, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: James Hodgson/Alamy.
Kielder Water is one of the largest man-made lakes in Europe. 

I like reading about different parts of England, whether in novels or the blogs of people who know whereof they speak because they live there. (Bereaved Single Dad is especially good on the topic of Yorkshire.)

Annabelle Thorpe describes a beautiful Northumberland forest at the Guardian. Her article is full of helpful travel tips for readers who plan on going.

“Deep in Kielder Forest, on the northern side of the vast Kielder Water stands Silvas Capitalis, a giant, two-storey timber head, one of the most striking of the 20 sculptures tucked between the pines. It’s an eerie sight, almost shocking; its mouth ajar, as if astounded by all it sees. It’s my first visit to Kielder,” writes Thorpe, “and my face has been wearing a similar expression since I stepped out of the car at the lakeside trying to take in the scale of the landscapes unfolding around me.

“Kielder doesn’t look like England – at least, not the England I know. For a start, it’s vast; 250 sq miles (648 sq km), with 158m trees, mostly sitka spruce conifers planted by hand. And even though it’s a plantation, there’s a wilderness feel that reminds me of Finland or Canada; a great swathe of nature at its most intense. It’s a working forest, involving 500 full-time jobs (not including tourism) and 2026 marks the centenary of the very first plantings, when the UK was in need of timber reserves after the demands of the first world war.

“The desolate moorland around Kielder Castle had been identified as a suitable site for a new forest by Roy Robinson, who was instrumental in the creation of the Forestry Commission in 1919. ‘He was a visionary,’ says Alex MacLennan, part of the Kielder team for more than 20 years. ‘It was hard farming country, but perfect for forestry. Originally, there were eight villages planned, to house the timber workers. But three decades later, when the first trees were ready to be felled, mechanization and new tools such as chainsaws meant they only needed three.’ …

“ ‘It’s given a very different feel to the place,’ says Gary Storey, general manager of Waterside, ‘and a chance to replant with different species, native to the UK – silver birch, oak, aspen, wild cherry – something other than the sitka spruce.’

“The careful management of Kielder has made it a benchmark for forestry in the UK, not least for the low-impact tourism that has been carefully folded in. Aside from Kielder Waterside, there are a handful of places to stay. … “ ‘We’re not Center Parcs, and we’re never going to be,’ says Liz Blair, director of the Kielder Partnership, when we chat over coffee. ‘But we’re working to make sure it’s accessible and welcoming for everyone, however you want to enjoy it.’

“Many people who visit, including me, set off along the Lakeside Way; a 26-mile (42km) route that encircles Kielder Water, linking the sculptural works and immersing walkers and cyclists in the dense forest. When I visit, the silence that hangs between the trees feels almost thick enough to touch. … But if Kielder is quiet by day, at night it becomes almost unworldly; a pitch-black void, bereft of almost all signs of life, save for the bright stars of England’s first dark sky park (the Northumberland international dark sky park). …

“It’s the Northumberland dark skies festival when we visit. … Kielder is a place of superlatives; England’s biggest forest, the UK’s largest human-made lake by capacity, the darkest skies – along with quite possibly the most terrifying mountain bike trails in the country. The Deadwater Double Black Downhill opens officially on 1 May, a rock-strewn, ledge-filled, vertiginous route that I wouldn’t want to walk, let alone cycle. It’s one of several new initiatives planned to celebrate the centenary, including a new Room on the Broom trail for kids, based on the book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler; the Kielder celebration weekend (4-6 Sept); and the reopening of Kielder Castle in the summer after extensive renovations.

“The forest may be vast, but it’s just one part of the Northumberland national park; the least populated and least visited of the UK’s 15 national parks. Coming from the built-up south-east, there’s an extraordinary beauty in the stark, untouched landscapes – a stillness, a peace, unmatched by anywhere closer to home.”

More on visiting Kielder Forest at the Guardian, here.

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The Miracle of Tiny Gardens

May 29, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Annette Hornischer/American Academy in Berlin.
Kate Brown, MIT Professor and author of Tiny Gardens Everywhere.

It’s reassuring to think that small actions of many people can have a significant influence on what happens in the wide world.

In April, Kendra Nordin Beato of the Christian Science Monitor interviewed Kate Brown, a woman used to thinking very big, about how small improvements to improve urban living can play a role in saving the planet.

“Kate Brown, a professor of environmental history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an award-winning author,” says Beato, “has examined the wake of large-scale disasters and the massive challenges they create.

“On a smaller scale, Dr. Brown is also an avid gardener. Her most recent book, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City, probes gardens as small patches of resilience, resistance, and regeneration.

“By studying histories of select European and North American urban gardens, she explores how these spaces helped to build communities centered on cooperation and mutual support. They also hold a promise, she says, for cities as places of sustainable food production. …

Kendra Nordin Beato
“What drew you, as an environmental historian, to this subject of urban gardening?

Kate Brown
“I wrote two big nuclear histories – and then about the environmental and health effects of Chernobyl, which were profound. As I worked on these big histories, I would think, once people find this out, it is going to change everything. And then it doesn’t.

“Countries are threatening each other as if it is the Cold War all over again with nuclear weapons. And then I started to think that maybe part of the problem, maybe these big histories – problems on a planetary scale – add to our sense of anxiety, apathy, you know, that we can’t do anything about it. I can’t get a U.N. resolution passed. So what can we do? We can do something on a very local level; we can do something in our own backyards.

“I love to garden. As you see in the book, my friend and I decided to plant a food forest around this mothballed school. And there I was, out in the street, and I got to know my neighbors in this really amazing way. I had lived there for 15 years and all it took was just to be out with a shovel in my hand to meet the guy who is always a porch sitter and get to know the kids who are running around. So that’s where I started to connect the simple act of planting a garden – especially in a visible place, whether that’s a front yard or public land – with community.

Beato
“One theme in your book explores how regenerative it is to extract life from seemingly little pockets of wasteland. …

Brown
“We call gardening recreation for a reason: because it’s fun. Gardeners find it fascinating to go out, mess around, see what happens, see what works. And it’s the small scale of it that makes it enjoyable, not drudgery. 

“Gardeners work with the environment. You treat your soil well; every worm is sacred. I abandon my garden every summer here in Cambridge [Massachusetts] for two months. I pack in the seeds, I set up a sprinkler that goes off at 5 every morning, and I have a lot composted from my kitchen compost. And when I come back, there’s really no space for weeds because all these plants – the beans are growing in the squash, the melons I didn’t even plant are vining their way around the potatoes and the garlic – all I have to do is come back and harvest, because this little space is self-propagating. …

Beato
“Why do you think gardens can strengthen, as you call it, civil societies?

Brown
“Not all community gardens are the same. [For instance, consider 19th-century factory workers in Berlin who] go to the edge of the town and they see all these sand dunes, basically. And so they take manure and the scraps from the brewery and the scraps from the sugar beet factory, all this organic material, and they build soils. … First it’s these miserable little gardens on sand, these poor little struggling plants. But then, within 10 years, they’re quite lush. And then, in another 10 years, most of the infrastructure is botanical. And so, people come together in these self-actuated communities, and they are living there, too. They start to build the sinews of what we would now call a social security network. They take up collections for people whose shacks burned down, unemployment collections, microloans to one another, and these places become very resilient. They weather war and famine. …

“We just did a YouGov Poll and asked a cross section of Americans what they do with their front-yard gardens. And 16% of Americans use their front yards to grow food. Then we asked: Did you get a lot of pushback? Did your neighbors complain? … Most of them – well over 60% – said, ‘Oh, my neighbors just compliment me. And a lot of them ask for advice because they want to do the same.’ So we found that these front-yard gardeners clustered together. Once somebody broke the mold, others wanted to follow. And so, we’re thinking there’s a quiet revolution against the institution of the American lawn that’s going on regardless of political affiliation. 

“In case you are thinking, ‘Oh, this can’t happen in a big country. This can’t be part of modern life,’ think of the Soviet Union [when it was a] nuclear superpower. By the 1990s, 96% of the potatoes people were eating were coming from tiny garden plots. We can go a long way toward feeding ourselves with these tiny urban spaces.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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A Choir for Brain-Injury Recovery

May 28, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Maxine Wallace/Washington Post.
Participants feel joyful while singing in a choir that helps stroke and brain injury survivors restore what was lost.

Hope no one’s getting tired of posts on healing through music. I really like them, especially as there’s a lot of stroke in my family and I feel like I’m in the queue. Today’s article, from Washington DC, focuses on rehabilitation after stroke and brain injury.

At the Washington Post (via MSN), Jasmine Golden interviewed several patients in the program.

“Susan Robinson flipped through printed pages of lyrics as she sat alongside her fellow singers. Microphone stands were lined up nearby. The lunch-hour performance was set to begin just after noon. But Robinson had arrived at 11 a.m. Thursday. She wanted enough to time to warm up and relax, she said.

“Five years earlier, Robinson, a wife, mother, and retired speech and language pathologist at D.C. Public Schools, experienced a stroke while she was asleep. She now has weaker mobility on her left side.

“ ‘The first thing I said is, “I’m going to beat this,” ‘ recalled Robinson, 63. …

“Now, she’s part of a choir of other stroke and brain injury survivors who have found community through the neurologic music wellness program at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital in the District. …

“ ‘All right,’ Dana Griff, who leads the program, said to the crowd with a smile. ‘Y’all ready?’

“Griff played the piano as the choir began with ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ referred to as the Black national anthem. …

“Griff, 31, a board-certified music therapist, came up with the idea for a choir to provide continued care for people who have completed inpatient rehabilitation or who have otherwise passed through the hospital. The choir officially launched last July, and Thursday marked its third performance.

“Since it began, participants have seen some encouraging changes, they said. Singing is improving 41-year-old Brandie Stinson-Brown’s memory, restoring 54-year-old Tiffany King’s confidence and giving Harriet White, 68, who sang in several groups before her stroke, the ability to harmonize again. …

“The choir is part of a wellness program at the hospital that uses music to stimulate neurologic change in the brain and help patients with speech, movement, coordination and mood, Griff said. Philanthropy keeps the program going. Donors, some of whom are referred to as ‘grateful patients,’ include former patients of MedStar who want to give back.

“Most choir members met through the hospital’s expansive adaptive programming, including sports and fitness, and are considered outpatient.

“Robinson began her physical therapy with circuit training. She remembers singing along to tunes with others at the hospital. Griff, who met Robinson and participants in various programs, proposed a choir. They jumped on the idea.

“Griff remembers seeing a choir perform adorned in red robes when she was a child, sparking her interest in musical assembly. While the hospital’s choir doesn’t have robes, its members do wear matching light-blue shirts emblazoned with their group name — Vocal Cortex, a group of people ‘coming together to form one,’ Griff said. …

“Members of Vocal Cortex say they’re family who love one another. They go to movies, spend time on park trails and eat dinner together. And every Thursday afternoon, about a dozen assemble for choir practice. …

“King said, ‘Being able to come together and just sing from our hearts is a beautiful thing.’

“At the recent lunchtime performance, songs ranged from gospel to groovy. The choir sang Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody,’ ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ by the Tokens and a mix of other tunes reflecting the members’ preferences, Griff said. …

“Ellsworth Slye, 69, performed a solo midway through — ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot/Swing Down Chariot’ — his deep tone matching the sincerity of the lyrics. … ‘Sing it, Slye!’ someone from the crowd shouted.

“Deonte Gay, 36, listened from his table. An outpatient in therapy himself, he had watched the choir practice for weeks. Gay said that he joked with the group about singing louder, but he knows all too well what can happen to one’s voice after a life-altering brain injury. Gay survived a shooting nearly 17 years ago. …

“Gay said, ‘Sometimes you gotta push yourself a little harder, and you gotta get your wind patterns up.’ …

“Throughout the half-hour performance, a smile never left Robinson’s face.

“ ‘We’re able to bounce back and celebrate life and sing,’ she said of performing.”

More at the Post via MSN, here.

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Releasing Bats in Ukraine

May 27, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Dan Bashakov/AP.
A volunteer of the Ukrainian bat rehabilitation center shows the wing of a rescued bat to people before returning bats to the wild in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 4, 2026.

I wonder how some celebrations emerge and become yearly events. Do they start with one person or family being excited about something — perhaps the return of a certain bird in spring — and the next thing you know, a whole community is having annual cookouts and parades?

Derek Gatopoulos and Vasila Stepanenko at the Associated Press and have a story about an annual celebration in Ukraine, war or no war.

“As night falls over a nature park on the edge of Kyiv,” they write, “children crowd around volunteers who carefully open cloth bags and release bats into the twilight.

“As each one takes flight, snapping through the air, more than 1,000 spectators cheer and applaud — families, off-duty soldiers, and bat enthusiasts, a few dressed in Goth outfits.

“Hundreds of bats, many rescued from war-torn areas in the east of the country, were released [in April] at one of multiple events around Ukraine planned to coincide with the arrival of spring.

“ ‘This is important for us as an organization because these are on a red list of endangered animals. Preserving them is very important,’ said Anastasiia Vovk, a volunteer at the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center, which organized the release. All 28 bat species in Ukraine are listed as protected animals due to declining populations.

“For many attendees, the event offered welcome relief and an excuse for a family outing after a harsh winter marked by subzero temperatures, nightly Russian drone and missile attacks and crippling power cuts.

“Late Saturday, children, many wearing bat-themed T-shirts and hats, watched as volunteers fed the animals mealworms with tweezers before letting them go. Some were allowed to wear gloves and handle the bats themselves.

“ ‘Life goes on despite the war,’ said Oleksii Beliaiev, a 54-year-old Kyiv resident who attended with his family. … Beliaiev runs a small printing business and spends time volunteering for army projects.

“The war has displaced animals as well as people. Buildings destroyed by shelling damage bats’ shelters, and explosions terrify the tiny mammals, experts say.

“ ‘In winter, bats hibernate, and if they are disturbed, they can die. They reproduce slowly — one or two offspring per year — so populations recover very slowly,’ said Alona Shulenko, who headed Saturday’s release. ‘As natural hibernation sites disappear, bats move into cities, into cracks in buildings and balconies. But repairs or destruction of these places can kill entire colonies,’ she said.

“All Ukrainian bat species are insect-eating and legally protected. … The charity says it has rescued more than 30,000 in total, including 4,000 bats last winter.

“ ‘We are all living in wartime, and everyone has their own struggles,’ Shulenko said. ‘But we are doing what we know best. … If we stop what we are doing, thousands of bats will die.’ ” More at AP, here.

I know some of you may be thinking, “Ugh. I really don’t like bats!” So I can’t leave this topic without saying a word about why bats are important.

Much of the information below applies to bats globally, not just in the US.

“Few of nature’s animals are as misunderstood as bats. We at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [FWS] want to set the record straight and help others understand the importance of bats. Though often feared and loathed as sinister creatures of the night, bats are vital to the health of our environment and our economy. …

“Bats play an essential role in pest control, pollinating plants and dispersing seeds. Recent studies estimate that bats eat enough pests to save more than $1 billion per year in crop damage and pesticide costs in the United States corn industry alone. Across all agricultural production, consumption of insect pests by bats results in a savings of more than $3 billion per year. While many bats eat insects, others feed on nectar and provide critical pollination for a variety of plants like peaches, cloves, bananas and agaves. In fact, bats are the sole pollinator for the agave plant, a key ingredient in tequila! A third bat food source is fruit, leading to yet another important role in the ecosystem – seed dispersal. Fruit-eating bats can account for as much as 95% of the seed dispersal responsible for early growth in recently cleared rainforests.

“Unfortunately, bats are declining across the globe. Many bats are needlessly killed because people do not understand the important role bats play in a healthy ecosystem. For bats that hibernate in caves, the need for winter shelter during hibernation puts them at another disadvantage. Human activity resulting in loss of habitat and disruptions during hibernation are detrimental. Making matters worse, a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome has claimed the lives of more than 5 million bats since its discovery in 2006 and has spread across North America at alarming rates. …

“Across the continent, we’re working with partners to protect bats, research treatments to halt the spread of white-nose syndrome and raise awareness about just how incredible, and vulnerable, bats are. More than 15 bat species are currently listed as federally endangered, threatened or under review in the candidate or petition process under the Endangered Species Act. … One recent study led to the discovery of a large summer roost for Indiana bats in Missouri — a single tree was providing refuge to more than 150 endangered Indiana bats!”

More at FWS, here.

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Translation Isn’t Just Words

May 26, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Patrick Hendry/Unsplash.
AI can translate the individual words, and perhaps common phrases, but without nuance, all you get is fog.

I worry a lot about AI in education, especially as, in my volunteer capacity teaching English as a second language, I see repeatedly how it interferes with learning. How to Copy and Paste — that is what students are learning, I fear.

At the Conversation, Gareth Barkin, professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies at the University of Puget Sound, explains why students may not even get an accurate translation of individual words when they use AI.

“A friend in Indonesia recently told me about a conversation he had with ChatGPT,” he writes. “He had typed a question in Indonesian – Bahasa Indonesia – about how to handle a difficult family dispute. The chatbot responded fluently, in perfect Indonesian, with advice about communication strategies and conflict resolution. The grammar was flawless. The tone was appropriate. And yet something felt off.

“What the AI offered was advice rooted in American cultural assumptions: prioritize your own preferences, communicate directly, and if family members don’t respect your boundaries, consider cutting them off.

“The response was in Indonesian but shaped by values that centered individual autonomy over the consensus-building, social harmony and collective family dynamics that tend to matter more in Indonesian social life.

“My friend was skeptical enough to notice the mismatch. … Many users might not. That is what prompted my research, published in the International Review of Modern Sociology, into a pattern I found across major AI systems: Even when they were fluent in several languages, the language models retained their Western worldview. I call this ‘epistemological persistence.’ …

“Large language models – LLMs – like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can now speak dozens of languages with remarkable fluency. That fluency creates the impression that AI understands local cultures.

“Producing grammatically correct Indonesian, Arabic, Swahili or Hindi, however, does not change the underlying worldview through which these systems reason. It does not alter how they think about people, relationships, responsibility or what counts as a good outcome.

“Those assumptions are shaped by training data drawn predominantly from English-language sources based in the United States. Meta’s open-weight model LLaMA 2 was trained on approximately 89.7% English-language text; LLaMA 3 includes only about 5% non-English data. Major commercial models don’t publish equivalent breakdowns but draw heavily on the same sources. Arabic, the fifth-most-spoken language globally, accounts for under 1% of content in large training datasets. Languages with tens of millions of speakers, including Bengali and Hausa, barely appear.

“Beneath the surface of these multilingual conversations, English functions as a hidden intermediary. A study by researchers at the University of Oxford found that LLMs routinely conduct their core reasoning in English, even when prompted in other languages. They translate the output at the final stage. A user receives flawless text in their preferred language, but the underlying logic originates elsewhere.

“To examine how this plays out in practice, I ran experiments with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. I asked questions in both English and Indonesian about concepts such as education, responsibility, well-being and several Indonesian terms that resist direct translation into English. These included terms such as ‘gotong royong,’ which describes a tradition of communal mutual assistance.

“Then I asked questions about education in both languages, using the word ‘pendidikan’ in Indonesian. The answers were consistently centered on individual development, personal autonomy, critical thinking and preparation for the labor market.

“What largely disappeared were the dimensions of pendidikan that Indonesian educational traditions have historically emphasized. In Indonesia, education has long been focused on ethical discipline. …

“The Indonesian concept of ‘malu’ offers a starker example. Often translated as ‘shame’ or ’embarrassment,’ malu has been analyzed by anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Tom Boellstorff as something closer to a shared social awareness.

“A person might feel malu when speaking out of turn in front of elders, or when a family member’s behavior reflects poorly on the household. It regulates conduct and signals awareness of one’s position within a web of relationships. It is cultivated, not merely felt. It is a form of relational awareness rather than a private psychological event.

“When asked directly to define malu, the models acknowledged its social dimensions. In scenario-based questions that simply used the word without asking for a definition, however, all three fell back on the English translation of shame, consistently framing it as an individual emotional experience.

“One representative response framed malu as a normal emotional reaction to be managed through self-reflection and confidence-building – a personal psychological problem rather than a social one. The relational dimensions of the concept disappeared entirely, replaced by the language of individual emotional regulation. A distinctly American worldview travels inside the translation, largely unannounced. …

“As media scholar Safiya Umoja Noble argues about algorithmic systems more broadly, what looks like a technical outcome is actually a structural one, shaped by who has the wealth and infrastructure to build these systems. …

“The main exceptions are Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. They represent a genuine alternative to the U.S.-dominated pipeline, though research shows they operate through a distinctly Chinese cultural lens. Asked about a workplace disagreement, for instance, they tend to advise silence or indirect phrasing to preserve harmony rather than the direct, private correction that Western models recommend.”

More at the Conversation, here. I wonder if any of you who speak different languages have run into any of these translation issues.

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Secret Mall Apartment

May 25, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Michael Townsend.
The documentary Secret Mall Apartment includes real-life footage from an early-2000s experiment in which eight artists secretly created a living area in Providence Place mall in Rhode Island.

My husband and I recently saw a fascinating documentary — rough on production values because the camera was mostly handheld, but utterly fascinating. It’s about a mall in Providence that I got to know pretty well in the off hours when I needed a sheltered place for my early walk, when the only other people around might be shop employees or panhandlers and there was nothing to buy but coffee.

At Ocean State Media, Pamela Watts wrote about what else was going on at the mall.

“It’s one of the most improbable episodes ever to come out of Rhode Island,” she wrote, “and now it’s a documentary playing at movie theaters nationwide. The film, Secret Mall Apartment, reveals how a local artist and seven friends lived inside Providence Place Mall, undetected, for years.

“Rhode Island art teacher Michael Townsend is the mastermind behind the outrageous plot to reclaim empty industrial space and turn it into a clandestine clubhouse.

“Townsend was living in artist studio apartments near Providence Place in 2003 when developers informed residents their mill residences would be torn down as part of a revitalization plan for the capital city.

“ ‘We lost a home. We gained the home, but in the act of gaining the home, we had to do a little bit of trespassing. OK, a lot of trespassing,’ admits Townsend.

“ ‘When the mall was being built, I saw a space where I could not figure out what it would be used for, and we went looking for that anomaly in the architecture, snuck ourselves in, took out our flashlights and there it was,’ said Townsend.

“He said they gained access through an unlocked door at the back of the mall. Inside, the urban explorers discovered stairwells and crevices all leading them from the mall to their hideout. They smuggled in furniture and the space was equipped with electricity via an extension cord plugged into the mall.

” ‘I had a habit that whenever we were there for any amount of time and we knew we were using electricity, I would always go to where the mall offices were. And I would put a $20 bill in an envelope that said, “Thank you for the resources.” And I would slide under the door,’ Townsend said.

“For four years, even with security cameras, they never got caught. ‘We spent a lot of time in the mall, so we understood the rhythms of where people were walking, where the cameras were. Most of our actions always happen in broad daylight. That’s the best time to do things because that’s when crime doesn’t happen,’ Townsend said.

“But in 2007, their crime was uncovered by two young security guards, who actually used the mall apartment a few times before informing their superiors. ‘I will say the Providence Police did find it hilarious, they were deeply amused by it,’ said Townsend.

“He was charged with misdemeanor trespassing, received a suspended sentence and was banned from ever entering the mall again. Now, eighteen years later the documentary using video footage Townsend recorded of their escapade is the basis for the new film. And Providence Place allowed Townsend back in, to receive a hero’s welcome at the mall’s cinema for the premiere.”

More at Ocean State Media, here, at Architectural Digest, here, and the Providence Journal, here.

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Building a Believable Accent

May 24, 2026 by suzannesmom

Photo: Real Hot Tip.
Canadian casting director and Russian dialect coach Kate Yablunovsky.

It’s not easy to create believable accents for actors, whether in the theater, on tv, or in film. Recently, my husband and I saw an American portrayed in the British television series Endeavor. He sounded like an American, all right, but not one from Boston, which is what he was supposed to be. It was distracting.

At “Science Quickly,” an offering from Scientific American, Kendra Pierre-Louis interviewed the accent coach for the show Heated Rivalry.

Kendra Pierre-Louis
“I’m obsessed with the TV show Heated Rivalry. …

“The romance, the hockey, the tension … The Russian? I mean, one of the things that both you and I have talked about so much is how the American actor Connor Storrie, who co-starred as the Russian character Ilya Rozanov, pulled off speaking so much Russian and perfected his accent. … To help us understand the linguistics behind the hit TV show, we talked to Heated Rivalry’s Russian dialect coach, Kate Yablunovsky. … Can you tell us a little bit more about dialect coaching? Like, what is it, and how did you get into doing this work?

Kate Yablunovsky
“Well, dialect coaching, I specialize specifically in Russian, Russian, Ukrainian, and it’s about preparing an actor to speak with as much of an authentic accent, which it’s not always what it sounds like. It’s not always just to be authentic. Sometimes, actually, it’s the opposite; sometimes it’s to take the perfection out of the accent so that the character feels authentic.

“This is something that I got into very unexpectedly. It started when a smaller production in my city, they had some Russian-speaking characters, and they couldn’t find a local Russian dialect coach. And I was casting that film, and they were like, ‘Maybe you should coach them as well.’ And I jumped into the water, and it took me on a journey because I learned so much through that very first experience. And I had to start to develop all kinds of techniques and exercises and try to understand speech therapy and everything that goes into it to be able to get [the] best of a result for them as possible. …

Pierre-Louis
“Before we get into the work that you did on Heated Rivalry, what are some of the hardest sounds in Russian for English speakers to pick up? …

Yablunovsky
“It’s usually the vowels that kind of, you know, in English, they would feel like they’re two letters, but it’s actually [a] one-letter vowel that you have to pronounce with other consonants. … Now, i’agine, the way we say in Russian ‘you’ is ‘ты.’ So imagine now adding T to the sound ‘ы.’ It’s ‘ты.’ … I love you in Russian is: “я тебя люблю.’ …

“And if we go into, into accent coaching, it’s just that the l in the name Ilya is softer in Russia. So it’s not “IL-yah”; it’s “Il-YAH.”

Parshall
“There’s so many nuances that you kind of don’t know until you get into it. …

Yablunovsky
“Totally. It’s a whole world. But, you know, a lot of actors kind of misunderstand Russian, so they come with this kind of idea that it has to be aggressive. … Connor Storrie because he was incredible and he really took the challenge, like, head-on. … I told Connor, you know, ‘If you’re willing, I’m willing that we show up every day and work on the Russian, and that’s the best way that we’re gonna make it work.’ And he totally went into it, and we were meeting every day, including weekends. …

“He was always very interested in Russian culture. He was listening to Russian music, Russian rap. It was fun to work in that way ’cause we would exchange, like, music ideas and cultural anecdotes. So he had some insight into the Russian culture, and that helped a lot…. H was, like, miles ahead of anybody, and with everything that he had on his plate, you know, the challenge was just to run that marathon—and stay sane.

Parshall
“Something that people have noticed is when Connor speaks Russian in the show it seems like his face looks very different than the way it does when he’s just kind of himself, Connor Storrie. And I know this—in accents there’s this thing called oral posture, which is, like, how you hold your mouth and your tongue and everything. And speaking other languages I feel like my mouth changes shape entirely. And we were just kind of curious, like, do you coach people on changing the shape of their mouths in order to help understand how to make sounds? …

Yablunovsky
“English is very forward, right: the lips, the teeth, the breath. Well, Russian is more in the far back in the mouth, and there’s a heavier tongue base. So once you change all that it alters psychology. And that’s why, actually, you can hear different people who speak more than one language, when they speak different languages the sound of their voice changes because of how differently they intonate and possibly also their face.

“So Connor’s facial expressions is something that he brought to the table; that’s his creation. But it’s inspired from the fact that all of those things that I’ve explained, you know, they alter your psychology, and it’s part of the character. “

More at Scientific American, here.

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