Photo: Peter Paplanus/Flickr CC BY 2.0. Blue-spotted salamanders are just fine with being supercooled. Lucky guys, they have a “natural anti-freeze.”
Got icy weather? Stay indoors if you can and read about salamanders that survive icy weather, and even benefit from it.
Nell Greenfieldboyce reports at National Public Radio (NPR), “In ancient times, people thought moist-skinned salamanders could survive in fire. That’s not true, of course, but some salamanders have a surprising ability to deal with another temperature extreme: freezing cold.
“In fact, blue-spotted salamanders can remain active even when chilled below the normal freezing point of body fluids — a state that scientists call ‘supercooled.’ That surprised researchers who recently saw these amphibians out and about at Bat Lake in Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park in late winter.
” ‘We noticed that okay, there’s still ice on the ground, the lake’s still frozen, but for some weird reason, there were blue-spotted salamanders on land,’ recalls Danilo Giacometti, a researcher who is now at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
“These salamanders live up to their name, with black bodies sporting shimmery blue spots. Besides Canada, they’re found in the northern part of the United States, across the Great Lakes region and New England. … They spend cold winters underground, but emerge from their burrows in the forests in early spring to migrate to nearby pools of water so that they can start breeding.
“It’s been known for a while that blue-spotted salamanders can occasionally be seen walking on snow, but it was thought that this happened when temperatures had actually warmed up a bit, says biologist Glenn Tattersall of Brock University in Ontario, a member of the research team. ‘The presumption that we had was that maybe they were moving over snow while the temperatures are just close to freezing,’ he says.
“When they saw these salamanders out in the frigid cold, though, the researchers had a thermal camera with them. Together with another scientist named Patrick Moldowan, they took thermal images that let them measure the body temperature of the animals. What they found is that some blue-spotted salamanders actually had body temperatures below freezing, as low as 25 degrees Fahrenheit. …
“These salamanders apparently have some kind of ability to use a natural anti-freeze that allows them to become supercooled, according to the researchers’ report in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. …
” ‘They showed that there’s activity in this supercooled state,’ says Don Larson with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who wasn’t part of this research team. … ‘They’re still able to do things.’ He says this probably helps these salamanders by letting them start their breeding as early as possible, while maybe avoiding predators that are still hunkered down.
“Amphibians can be surprisingly adept at dealing with frigid temperatures, he says. He’s been studying the Alaskan wood frog, which can freeze solid for months; its heart stops completely.
“And in Russia, there are Siberian salamanders ‘that we know can survive down to negative 40 or colder,’ he says. …
” ‘We know that there are some very extreme limits,’ says Larson, but compared to all the research that’s been done on what birds and mammals do in the winter, scientists know remarkably little about how cold-blooded amphibians get by.” More at NPR, here.
We could all use some of that “natural anti-freeze.” Maybe some government someday will fund more research.
Have you seen any blue-spotted guys where you live?
Photo: Religion News Service/Jack Jenkins. Hundreds of clergy convened at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Thursday, January 22, 2026, in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Today’s post is about faith leaders in Minnesota and beyond bearing witness to wickedness and standing up for the values they share.
On Sunday, my husband and I heard a report from our own minister, who had just returned from protesting with those leaders in Minneapolis.
Although the largest interfaith demonstration so far was last Friday, mutual support among religious leaders has been going on a long time.
In December 2025, Louis Krauss of the Minnesota Star Tribune, wrote about faith leaders seeing signs that the government was going to start its attacks with the Somali community.
“A broad swath of religious leaders packed into a south Minneapolis mosque on Thursday to show solidarity and condemn ongoing attacks … against Minnesota’s Somali community. The crowd of more than 50 inside of Umatul Islam Center consisted of imams, pastors, rabbis and leaders from other religions who took turns cheering in support of Somali neighbors [amid] reports of the increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence in the Twin Cities targeting the Somali population.”
As we know, ICE did arrive, reportedly three thousand strong. Even before the atrocities of January 24, a gathering of religious leaders was preparing to bear witness. Here are some results.
Interfaith Alliance posted this message on Sunday, January 25: “Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO ofInterfaith Alliance, just returned Friday evening from several days spent in Minneapolis marching, protesting, and rallying together with national and local faith leaders – who answered the call to do everything in their power to challenge ICE and call for them to leave Minnesota and cease terrorizing immigrants and their communities.”
Rev. Raushenbush said, “We echo the urgent demands of activists in Minnesota, including local faith leaders. ICE must leave Minnesota. … Across faith traditions, we are called to protect human dignity, care for the vulnerable, and resist systems that thrive on fear. That is why so many faith leaders and communities, in Minnesota and across the country, are showing moral leadership and courage to reject ICE.” More here.
Jack Jenkins wrote at Religion News Service, “As she stood at the pulpit at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Thursday (January 22), the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, a United Church of Christ minister, looked out at the packed sanctuary with tears in her eyes.
“Far from the typical flock of Presbyterian worshippers who frequent the church on Sundays, the more than 600 people who filled the pews represented a wide range of faiths — Christians of all kinds as well as Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and Indigenous practitioners, among others. All were religious leaders who had traveled to Minnesota on short notice, spurred by their faith to oppose … mass deportation. …
“The moment marked the beginning of a remarkable two-day religious gathering in Minneapolis. … Constructed as a mix of activist trainings, spiritual revival and direct-action protests, Minnesota faith leaders who have been actively resisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used the assembly as an opportunity to pass along lessons to clergy from other parts of the country. Amid prayers, songs and protest chants, the gathering heralded the emergence of a vast, faith-based network set on resisting the administration’s mass deportation effort.
“Religion News Service was one of only three outlets given access to the conference, which was largely organized by the local religious advocacy group Multifaith Antiracism, Change and Healing, known as MARCH. The size of the event was striking, given how quickly it came together: The public invitation was published on MARCH’s website only a week before the event began, and organizers said so many clergy wanted to take part that they eventually had to halt applications due to logistical concerns.” More at at Religion News Service.
Meanwhile, the Times of Israel noted from afar that a rabbi was among those arrested at a demonstration: “At least one local rabbi was arrested Friday in Minneapolis as hundreds of faith leaders from around the country gathered to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the Twin Cities.
“Rabbi Emma Kippley-Ogman, the Jewish and interfaith chaplain at Macalester College in St. Paul, was briefly detained by police alongside leaders of other faiths while staging a protest at the airport. In photos and video from the protest just before the arrest, Kipley-Ogman can be seen delivering brief remarks while wearing a rainbow tallit and standing in a line at the airport’s arrivals gate with several other faith leaders who hold hands and pray.” More.
Jack Jenkins filed a separate report with the National Catholic Reporter, “Around 200 faith leaders fanned out across the city on Thursday (January 22) to observe and document the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with some clergy confronting Department of Homeland Security agents, adding a visible religious presence to widespread efforts to counter the president’s mass deportation campaign in the region.
“The faith leaders, who are in Minneapolis as part of a larger convening focused on religious pushback to ICE, deployed to neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations, where DHS agents have been most active during an ongoing campaign known as Operation Metro Surge. The clergy, who hail from a range of traditions and worship communities across the country, sang on the buses as they ventured out into the street. They belted out hymns and songs popular during the Civil Rights Movement, such as ‘Woke Up This Morning.’ ” More.
A Hindu writer posted this: “I arrived in Minneapolis on Wednesday (January 21). I had come because local organizers said people were being disappeared: kidnapped off the street, detained, shot in plain daylight. I went because there was a cry for help from a devastated community.
“Nothing prepared me for what I saw. The city was a battleground where ICE feels like an occupying force.
“A Hindu organizer and activist, I went as an ally of a 50-strong Rabbis for Ceasefire delegation, some of whom I knew from our trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories in August, to see the effects of the Gaza war. I saw there firsthand what occupation looks like. Minneapolis felt occupied, too.
“On Friday we participated in Minneapolis’ citywide day of action, a general strike, for which hundreds of local businesses chose to close. Some gave free food and drink to people participating. More than 50,000 people — faith leaders among them — marched to abolish ICE in spite of frigid temperatures. The march culminated in a huge rally in an indoor stadium, where local faith leaders, union leaders, and elected officials offered speeches and prayers of defiance and resilience.
“Within that larger strike, our faith convergence took part in actions of defiance organized by MARCH. At Minneapolis Airport, 106 local clergy were arrested, while some 600 local community members and out-of-town clergy stood witness. Later, I joined a group of multifaith clergy in song, prayer, and presence at the B.H. Whipple Federal Building, where Minnesota’s ICE offices are headquartered.” More.
Photo: Lectures on Tap. A new approach to education: academic lectures in bars. For $35, you can hear, for example, an analysis of the horror-film genre by Drew McClellan, an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Here’s a new way to get some learning if traditional postsecondary education feels out of reach or unappealing. Although $35 per lecture might also be out of reach, I imagine that a really great talk could inspire someone to educate themselves.
Yahoo has kindly shared what Kailyn Brown wrote about this at the Los Angeles Times.
“A man wearing a Jason Voorhees T-shirt steps onto a purple-lighted stage and stands next to a drum set. Audience members, seated in neat rows and cradling cocktails, enthusiastically applaud. Then they look toward a glowing projector screen. Some clutch their pens, ready to take notes.
” ‘In cinema, three elements can move: objects, the camera itself and the audience’s point of attention,’ Drew McClellan says to the crowd before showing an example on the projector screen. The clip is a memorable scene from Jordan’s Peele’s 2017 film, Get Out, when the protagonist (Daniel Kaluuya) goes out for a late-night smoke and sees the groundskeeper sprinting toward him — in the direction of the camera and the viewer — before abruptly changing direction at the last second.
” ‘Someone running at you full speed with perfect track form, you can’t tell me that’s not terrifying,’ McClellan says laughing with the audience.
“McClellan is an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the cinematic arts department chair at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA). He’s presenting on two of the seven core visual components of cinema — tone and movement — as part of Lectures on Tap, an event series that turns neighborhood bars and venues into makeshift classrooms.
“Attendees hear thought-provoking talks from experts on wide-ranging topics such as Taylor Swift’s use of storytelling in her music, how AI technology is being used to detect cardiovascular diseases, the psychology of deception and the quest for alien megastructures — all in a fun, low-stakes environment. And rest assured: No grades are given. It’s a formula that’s been working.
” ‘I hunted for these tickets,’ says Noa Kretchmer, 30, who’s attended multiple Lectures on Tap events since it debuted in Los Angeles in August. ‘They sell out within less than an hour.’
“Wife-and-husband duo Felecia and Ty Freely dreamed up Lectures on Tap last summer after moving to New York City where Ty was studying psychology at Columbia University. Hungry to find a community of people who were just as ‘nerdy’ as they are, they decided to create a laidback space where people could enjoy engaging lectures typically reserved for college lecture halls and conferences. …
“Lectures on Tap, which also hosts events in San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago, is the latest iteration of gatherings that pair alcoholic beverages with academic talks. Other similar events include Profs and Pints, which launched in 2017 in Washington, D.C., and Nerd Nite, which came to L.A. in 2011 and takes place at a brewery in Glendale. At a time when the federal government is moving closer to dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, AI is impacting people’s ability to think critically, attention spans are shrinking and literacy rates are down, events like Lectures on Tap are becoming more than just a place to learn about an interesting new topic. …
“During his presentation, McClellan broke down key film concepts in layman’s terms for the diverse audience. … To illustrate his points, he played several movie clips including the 1931 version of Frankenstein and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later, both of which made several people in the audience, including myself, jump in fear. …
“Though some patrons like to go to Lectures on Tap events for specific topics they find interesting, others say they would attend regardless of the subject matter.
” ‘I felt really comfortable and I loved the social aspect of it,’ says Andrew Guerrero, 26, in between sips of wine. ‘It felt more like a communal vibe, but at the same time, I miss learning.’
“He adds, ‘I can absorb [the information] more because I’m not pressured to really retain it and because of that, I actually do retain it.’
“The relaxed environment allows the speakers to let their guard down as well.
” ‘I can play with certain elements that I maybe haven’t used in the classroom,’ says McClellan, who made jokes throughout his presentation. ‘It’s definitely looser and getting around people who’ve been drinking, they’ll ask more questions and different types of questions.’ “
More at the Los Angeles Times, thanks to Yahoo, here.
Photo: Grand Egyptian Museum via Galerie magazine. Grand Staircase at the Grand Egyptian Museum, opened in 2025 after decades of work.
One thing that struck me when I read this article on the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum was that even though it took many years to build and the original architects left the project in 2014, “the building’s overall structure and dynamic has prevailed.” How many people who departed from such a massive project could say that?
Caroline Roux has a review at Galerie magazine.
“It takes a while to drive past the Great Egyptian Museum (GEM), which officially opened at the beginning of November, and runs alongside the busy main road from Giza to Cairo. As its soaring slanting facade — an elegant tessellation of triangles in stone and glass — comes into view, there’s plenty of time to snap a few pictures. The structure is a staggering 2,600 feet long.
“Like the Great Pyramids, which stand majestically behind it on the Giza Plateau, the museum has also been constructed as a mighty treasure house for Egyptian artifacts. Designed to house 100,000 objects with 17 specialized laboratories dedicated to their conservation, GEM is the world’s largest archaeological museum dedicated to a single civilization.
“For the first time since their excavation in 1923, all 5,000 objects taken from Tutankhamun’s tomb are reunited here. Among them is the king’s iconic gold mask, with its decoration in blue and black, that has endured as the de facto symbol of ancient Egyptian civilization. In the grand entrance hall presides the 3,200-year-old statue of Rameses II, which stands 36 feet high and is carved from 83 tons of ancient red granite. The entire site covers five million square feet — roughly equivalent to nine soccer fields. It’s all about scale.
“The museum has also, rather famously, taken years to complete. The Irish-American architecture practice Heneghan Peng, based between Dublin and Berlin, won the international competition for the building in 2003, against over 1,500 applications from 82 countries. Now, over 20 years and $870 million later, it is open to the public, showing off the vast trove of breathtaking objects dating from 3100 BCE to 410 CE.
“Two tumultuous decades go a long way to account for the delay. Disruptions included the Arab Spring of 2011; the coup d’etat of 2013; the pandemic; economic collapse and raging inflation; and at least five changes at the top. …
“The space, though cavernous, is not wasted. Crowds course up the stupendous six-story staircase, flanked by escalators that create an upward-sloping landscape dotted with heroic statuary and architecture installed on the steps in a genius act of display. There are ten statues of King Senusret 1, a beautiful black granite sculpture of the Sphinx of King Amenemhat III, and the perfectly preserved doorway to his grandfather’s tomb. All are striped with dazzling slashes of sunlight that glimmers across the exhibits from skylights many feet above.
“At the top, an enormous window frames breathtaking views of the Great Pyramids of Giza, and to the right is the entrance to the twelve galleries housing the thousands of objects that reveal the complexities of the ancient Egyptian world.
Among the regulations posted on the door are ‘In an earthquake, stay away from large objects.’ …
“It is the minutiae of daily life that enchants the most. There are sets of bronze tools to thrill even today’s DIY enthusiast, models of hairstyles from bobs to up-dos designed to show elaborate earrings, travertine vessels that most likely contained make-up, and hundreds of beetle-shaped seals. Intricate plaster models reveal the tiniest details of boats and their oarsmen. A dollhouse-sized grain store comes complete with workers. On the grander side are the breathtaking spoils of burial: luxurious jewelry in glass beads and gold, leather garments, elaborately painted sarcophagi, porcelain shabtis (figurines), and gold-and-jade amulets.
“Tutankhamun commands his own gallery, starting with a fleet of bronze-and-gold chariots so sophisticated that one can only wonder why it took modern civilization another 2,000 years to invent the motorcar. State-of-the-art screens detail the tomb’s discovery, but the objects prove to be the biggest draw: the golden throne, the king’s own armor of overlapping leather scales. …
“The architects, Róisín Heneghan and Shih-Fu Peng, … perhaps would notice myriad changes. Was the monotony of material on the interior — acres of the same Egyptian marble — in their original plan? Or the ground floor’s airport-like procession of Starbucks and [pastry shops]? Still, the clever skylights, slanting walls, and direct axial relationship to the pyramids beyond feel firmly in place. …
“According to Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities, the museum is still incomplete. ‘I need three objects to come back,’ he told the BBC. ‘The Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, the Zodiac from the Louvre, and the Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.’ Even without them, the value of Egypt’s extraordinary ancient history remains as appealing as ever.”
Great photos at Galerie. More pictures at ArchDaily, here.
Photo: C. Stanish/University of Sydney. Band of Holes, known as Monte Sierpe in Peru, may have been an accounting and storage system.
Sometimes the mysteries on Planet Earth can be solved just by looking at the facts in a new way. Today’s article is on probing a geographical problem, but I can’t help wondering, What if we tried tackling other intransigent problems by just looking at the challenges differently?
Richard Luscombe reports at the Guardian, “A Florida archaeologist’s decades-long persistence has helped solve one of Peru’s most puzzling geographical conundrums: the origin and purpose of the so-called Band of Holes in the country’s mountainous Pisco Valley.
“Charles Stanish, professor of archaeology at the University of South Florida, and an expert on Andean culture, spent years studying the more than 5,200 curious hillside shallow pits known to local residents as Monte Sierpe — serpent mountain.
“He surmised during numerous field trips since the 1980s that the holes were man-made indentations created during the pre-Inca period for a rudimentary market place, then adapted by Incan civilization into a sophisticated kind of accounting and storage system, likely for agriculture.
“Rival theories abounded — from the sensible to the bizarre. [One] aired on the Ancient Aliens television program and exploited by an enterprising travel company was that they were crafted by extraterrestrial beings, perhaps to cover up the crash of their spacecraft.
“Now Stanish, in partnership with Dr Jacob Bongers of the University of Sydney, his former graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, believes he has found the smoking gun. On their most recent expedition they used advanced drone technology to conduct the first comprehensive aerial mapping of the site, producing high-resolution images revealing ‘striking patterns’ in how the holes were organized.
“The rows of holes, each between 3ft and 6.5ft wide, appeared segmented and mathematically structured, they said, a layout mirroring khipus, knotted-string devices the Inca used for counting and record keeping.
“ ‘Monte Sierpe is extremely difficult to map from the surface,’ Stanish said. ‘Even from the mountain above you can’t see its full pattern because of the permanent haze in the area. And because there were few artifacts, archaeologists couldn’t date or interpret it accurately.’
“Even more conclusive, Stanish said, were the results of microbotanical analysis of sediment samples taken from inside the holes. Fossilized seeds revealed traces of crops such as maize and wild plants traditionally used for weaving and packaging goods.
“ ‘We proved that the seeds didn’t fly in, they weren’t airborne, they had to be put there by humans,’ he said. ‘We didn’t get any, with one exception way down below, colonial-era seeds, and we got one carbon-dated to slightly pre-Inca. … And the coolest stuff was we found the reeds, the traditional reeds and the willows that the Inca and the Quechua peoples use to carry commodities, even up to the present day.’ …
“Stanish said future work will focus on further analysis of the recovered seed samples, while Bongers plans to lead an upcoming expedition for more excavation. …
“He said he hoped that authorities in Peru would recognize the historical significance of the holes, and move to protect them.
“ ‘I’m not worried about tourists, about foreigners coming,’ he said. ‘I’m worried about landowners getting the land and then irrigating it. People have to make a living. [But] this is a precious site, for the Indigenous peoples and for their pride, and it’s important to recognize that.’ “
Photos:John and Suzanne’s Mom. Joy Muller-McCoola’s fiber art piece “Rising,” at Lexington Art.
Textile artist Ann often digs me out of my rut to go see some fiber art and afterward have a nice lunch somewhere close by. Most recently, we went to a beautiful show at the Lexington Arts and Crafts Society in Lexington, Massachusetts.
I was drawn to the piece above because I love islands. This one is emerging from the sea in an unspoiled form. It felt hopeful. Below is one called “Sky with 7 Sheep.” It practically leapt from the wall.
After that, you can see the lovely “Light Breaking on Water,” by Ann Scott. And Sandra Mayo’s “The Way We Touch the World,” with the gloved hands, was intriguing.
What do these pieces mean to the artists? one wonders. What do they mean to me at a moment in time? And do meanings change?
That got me thinking that I never posted pictures of some works that I liked last fall at Concord Art. So I’ll add them now and wind up with my own attempt at an artsy photo. We can call it “Dawn at the Gym.”
Here is Nancy Mimno’s “Dragon.”
Sarah Bossert created “Four and Twenty Blackbirds.”
Photo: RetuRO SGR. A notice for the RetuRO scheme, above. In the two years since launch, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has frequently hit 94% in Romania.
Romania was for the longest time behind the rest of Europe in initiatives like recycling. But once the stakeholders there saw how a modern system could benefit everyone, it made surprisingly fast strides.
Andrei Popoviciu writes at the Guardian, “In the Transylvanian village of Pianu de Jos, 51-year-old Dana Chitucescu gathers a sack of empty polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, aluminum cans and glass every week and takes it to her local shop.
“Like millions of Romanians across cities and rural areas, Chitucescu has woven the country’s two-year-old deposit return system (DRS) into her routine.
“It is a simple scheme: when buying soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, the customer pays an extra 0.50 Romanian leu [$0.11] per bottle and gets the money back when returning the packaging, cleaned and in its original shape, to a collection point (usually the same shops where the goods were bought).
“Chitucescu makes about 40 leu a week from recycling her and another family’s bottles. ‘That covers the food for my seven cats,’ she said.
‘It’s a great system, everyone in our village uses it, there’s always a queue at the shop.’
“Her weekly walk is one tiny part of a national shift that, until recently, seemed impossible. Romania’s recycling rates were among the lowest in the EU, but in the two years since the scheme launched, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has skyrocketed to as high as 94% in some months.
“ ‘It is a zero to hero story,’ said Gemma Webb, the chief executive of RetuRO, the company running the system in a public-private partnership with beverage packaging manufacturers and the state. ‘The products are clean, there is little contamination, they can be recycled easily and we have full traceability as well, so we know every bottle that goes on the market.’
“[Between] the system’s launch in November 2023 and the end of September 2025, according to the company … more than 500,000 tons of high-quality recyclable materials have been collected. ‘We are the largest fully integrated deposit return system globally.’
“The scale of Romania’s turnaround is even more striking given where the country started. For more than a decade, the country has sat at the bottom of Europe’s recycling statistics. …
“But in 2018 the government began discussions about the scheme; in 2022 RetuRO began work, and on an extremely tight timeline including the construction of nine counting and sorting centers nationwide, the scheme launched in late 2023. …
“Starting later than other countries may have been an advantage, says Raul Pop, the secretary of state in the environment ministry and a waste policy expert because Romania could use modern software and traceability tools.
“It is on a return-to-retail model: shops that sell the containers must either install reverse vending machines or process the packaging manually. There is also a financial incentive for them, which helps them cover processing costs, and RetuRO reinvests all profits back into operations. … A recent study found that 90% of Romanians say they have used the system at least once and 60% return packaging regularly.
“Other countries, Pop explained, ‘suffer from their own inertia’ because they introduced their systems decades ago and are now stuck with outdated models. For them, shifting to new systems risks confusing consumers, even if it could improve collection rates. …
“Romania has also introduced a supportive legal framework, which means retailers can be penalized if they refuse returns – even the smallest village shops must accept containers if they sell the products or they risk fines, while big chains have automated return points.
“After the success with beverage containers, there are plans to expand the system to cover other types of packaging. ‘If you can put a bottle of water, you can also put a bottle of vinegar, a jar or a milk carton,’ said Alexandra Țuțuianu of Ecoteca, Romania’s first waste management NGO. …
“Environmental groups have praised Romania’s system, but warn that it covers only a small slice of the country’s overall waste stream. ‘It’s the largest environmental program, an example of good practice, we praise it, we like the system a lot, but it is not enough, it does not solve the waste problem in Romania,’ said Țuțuianu. …
“Even with a hypothetical 100% return rate for beverage containers, the overall waste recycling rate would only rise marginally. Re-use, Elena Rastei of the NGO Zero Waste Romania argued, needed to be looked at more closely.
“ ‘Collection solves the problem of visible waste, but re-use changes its nature. When packaging circulates – returned, washed, refilled – it becomes a resource, not waste. A single, reusable bottle can replace 20 to 50 single-use bottles, cut carbon emissions, and support a truly circular economy.’ “
Photo: Samuel Cruz/Unsplash. New research shows that constantly breaking your focus is bad for brain health.
In one of my routine harangues, I like to say that “notifications” are part of a tech conspiracy to ensure that we are never allowed to finish a thought. I can’t tell you how much I hate notifications. I try to block them on every feature of my phone.
To back me up, there is lots of research indicating that constant phone checking undermines cognitive health. It is even associated with dementia. When you yourself are instigating the constant checking, not just a push notification, you really better do something.
The Washington Post invented a composite figure from the new data — “Amy” — to illustrate just what is going on with your brain.
Amaya Verde and Luis Melgar report, “For many of us, checking our phones has probably become an unconscious reflex, similar to breathing or blinking. And like Amy, a composite character who illustrates usual patterns of phone usage, we are interacting with our phones a high number of times.
“Glancing at your phone can begin to compromise your cognitive skills once it passes a certain threshold. Studies from Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. and Keimyung University in South Korea found that checking your phone about 110 times a day may signal high risk or problematic use.
“Over eight years of research involving teenagers and millennials, Larry Rosen, a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, observed that participants checked or unlocked their smartphones between 50 and more than 100 times per day, on average every 10 to 20 minutes while awake. …
” ‘The phones and digital media are reinforcing for our brains, activating the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. The phones create a compulsive habit loop where we check without thinking and experience withdrawal when we don’t check or don’t have access to our phone,’ said Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
“According to a survey conducted by YouGov in May on phone use, when Americans were asked where they place their devices before going to sleep, 8 out of 10 said they keep them in their bedrooms, most often next to their beds. …
People underestimate how often they check their phones.
“When asked in the same survey how many times they pick up their devices each day, most respondents believed they did so about 10 times. A study by the Singapore Management University found that frequent interruptions to check our devices lead to more attention and memory lapses. Unlike total screen time, the frequency of smartphone checks is a much stronger predictor of daily cognitive failures. …
“The habit is widespread. YouGov found that more than half of Americans check their phones multiple times during social activities such as eating with others or meeting friends.
“At work, during a 30-minute meeting, 1 in 4 people admitted to checking their phone at least once. After each workplace interruption, it can take more than 25 minutes to regain focus, said Gloria Mark, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine.
“Most people receive push notifications throughout the day, such as messages, emails and alerts, many of which originate from social media platforms. ‘Our constant need for connection increases the brain’s biochemistry, particularly anxiety-producing chemicals such as cortisol, which nags at us to “check in” upward of 100 times a day,’ Rosen explained. … ‘Whatever generational differences that were studied when the smartphone and social media arrived are now basically minimal.’ …
“German researchers from Heidelberg University found that after just 72 hours without smartphone use, brain activity began to mirror patterns typically seen in substance withdrawal. The investigation suggests that short breaks from smartphone use can help reduce problematic habits by reorganizing our reward circuits, making them more flexible.
“Experts offered simple ways to break unhelpful device habits. ‘Make the phone less reinforcing by turning off notifications, deleting all but the most necessary apps, going grayscale and powering the phone off between use. I also recommend leaving the phone behind on occasion, just to remind ourselves we can still navigate the world without our phones,’ Lembke said.”
Composite photo: No Taste Like Home/Emily Cataneo. Alan Muskat teaches North Carolina kids about foraging as part of his afterschool program in fall 2025. Tour guide Dimitri Magiasis shows off some mushrooms he foraged.
My childhood friend Ursula seems to have mostly recovered from the devastation of 2024’s Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. She has gone back to teaching weaving, for example, but I’m still waiting to see the promised photo of her home’s restoration.
Life goes on if you survive disaster, and most people make adjustments to how they were living before. We need to keep learning.
An experienced forager has begun teaching young learners in Asheville about a side of nature that’s more benign than hurricanes. Emily Cataneo has report at the Guardian.
“Juniper Stewart just turned 12. She … knows how to identify a Pilobolus mushroom, which grows on ‘cow poop,’ according to Juniper. She can confidently harvest plantain leaf, a ubiquitous wild plant that’s tasty in salads and sautées, and useful as a poultice on stings and poison ivy. She has paper bags full of sourwood leaves drying at home to make tea, and she’s delighted by the fact that when you touch jewelweed seed pods, they explode.
“Juniper’s deep knowledge of the wild plants around her home in western North Carolina stems from her involvement in an after-school program that taught kids in Asheville and surrounding towns how to forage. For three days a week [last] fall, foraging guides brought groups of students ages five to 12 from City Mountain Public Montessori out to forests and fields to learn about the plentiful berries, mushrooms, leafy greens and even flavorful sticks in their own backyard.
“The program is the brainchild of Alan Muskat, a ‘philosoforager’ who runs No Taste Like Home, an educational company that for the past 30 years has taught locals and tourists alike how to plumb the bounty of the southern Appalachians, one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. …
“Muskat hatched his idea to teach kids in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the storm that devastated Asheville in September 2024 [to] serve as a ‘different kind of hurricane relief.’
“Muskat has built his life philosophy on the idea that many of society’s ills stem from our fear of the natural world, our tendency to live in opposition to it rather than in harmony with it. After the hurricane, he wanted to impart those lessons on young people who lived through the storm. …
“ ‘It felt a little to me when the hurricane happened that we were in a dress rehearsal for what could happen with [future] natural disasters,’ [Juniper’s mother] said. ‘The grocery store shelves were completely bare and people were eating government-rationed food, which is not as healthy as making a big chickweed [salad].’ …
“During the after-school program, a bus brought the kids from school to an educational site outside Asheville. Led by a No Taste Like Home guide, the kids would ‘run around and find things, and ask if they were edible,’ according to Jemma Ferrington, nine, whose house was destroyed in the hurricane and who participated in the program. She added: ‘I’d identify lots of things, like some mushrooms that had gills, and some that had a sponge at the bottom.’ …
“The program has faced some setbacks. … A staff member questioned Muskat after he let kids eat white milk cap mushrooms, which in large quantities can irritate the stomach, and pushed him to remind kids that not all white mushrooms are safe to eat (‘he was right’ about the second complaint, Muscat acknowledged in an email, adding that one of the ‘golden rules of foraging is, don’t overgeneralize’).
“In addition to the after-school program, No Taste Like Home has run two foraging field trips, with plenty of chaperones to keep an eye on kids, which they hope to repeat in 2026. …
“[Guide Dimitri] Magiasis, who discovered the world of foraging while studying to be a naturopath in Seattle, has worked for Muskat for nine years, leading a couple tours per week. …
“[Recently] Magiasis gathered the group near a rushing brook to explain that they’d be ‘meeting’ plants such as cool-weather greens, herbs and spices, and mushrooms, although this fall has brought a drought to the region that’s rendered the mushroom population sparse.
“That’s just a part of foraging, said Magiasis. The practice forces you to redefine the way you think about food availability. ‘You go into the grocery store and find onions, apples, lettuce 365 days per year,’ he said. ‘Nature doesn’t work that way. She’s going to provide what she’s going to provide.’ …
“On the tour, Magiasis is strict about safety. When we’re looking for chickweed, he points out the plant’s chief identifying features: the leaf edges are smooth, not serrated. They’re shaped like spades, or hearts, and furry on only one side. He checks each person’s leaf before they’re allowed to eat it, then counts one, two, three before we pop them into our mouths.
“For many, safety is a big question around foraging, especially for kids. Ten to 12 mushroom species in western North Carolina are deadly, for example, and a couple hundred more will make you extremely sick. But guides and parents alike stressed that knowledge is power and that for them, it’s actually more dangerous not to teach their kids how to forage.”
Art: L.M.F. Doyère, “Mémoire sur les Tardigrades,” Annales des sciences naturelles: Zoologie et biologie animale, 1840. Tardigrades are one of the life forms that survive under extreme conditions.
Science writer Alex Riley has hope for our planet, but his hope doesn’t necessarily include humans. Maybe if more of us appreciated and learned from science, he would feel differently.
At the Christian Science Monitor, Erin Douglass interviews Riley about the adaptive life forms he studied for his new book, Super Natural.
“In Super Natural,” she writes, “award-winning science writer Alex Riley casts his inquisitive, generous gaze upon … the far-deep, far-up, and far-flung life-forms that inhabit Earth’s less move-in-ready biomes. From snailfish and wood frogs to painted turtles and tardigrades, these remarkable creatures display a knack for thriving – or at least carrying on – in a niche of their own. …
Erin Douglass “You describe finding solace in nature as a boy growing up in the 1990s. Do you have an early memory that stands out?”
Alex Riley “I grew up in North Yorkshire, so northern England. It was very rural, very picturesque, but very lonely as well. You had to find your own interests.
“We had this pond at the bottom of the garden, and frogspawn was there. It’s very mundane for grown-ups – a frog turns from a tadpole to a froglet to a frog – but for me to watch that was enthralling. Even today, that strikes me as something incredible: There are transformations going on around us, whether it’s caterpillars to moths or tadpoles into frogs. I think that metamorphosis was really crucial to my upbringing.”
Douglass “You organize the book by conditions – heat, cold, depth, height, etc. Why did you choose this framework?
Alex Riley “I didn’t want to make it too complex. I wanted a layperson to pick up this book, look at those chapters, and say, ‘OK, I understand these environmental stresses, and I want to learn more about them.’
“In the book’s sequence, I started with water – or lack of water – because water is so associated with life. That’s what NASA used to search for extraterrestrial life. Everything that we know in terms of life on Earth has involvement with water and requires it in their cells. We evolved from water. “
Douglass “What’s behind the title?
Riley “There’s a double meaning there. You Americans say ‘super’ for ‘very’ – so all of this stuff is very natural. But there’s also this supernatural element that’s sort of inexplicable. We can’t even comprehend how fungi survived in Chernobyl on the reactor that exploded, and actually used the radiation for their sustenance. We can’t imagine what it’s like to live in complete darkness and have no association with sunlight.” …
Douglass “You call the tardigrade ‘the poster child of life’s resilience.’ What makes these tiny beings so amazing?”
Riley “They’ve been studied since the 1770s, and we’re still trying to uncover how they are so tough. They’re adorable: Under a microscope, they look like little bears with a piglike snout, eight chubby legs. Even their movement is adorable. They don’t just swim or walk – they bumble through grains of sand and moss, and in the seabed. And yet, they’re almost indestructible.”
Douglass “Which creature impressed you the most?”
Riley “The microbes that live in the subsurface. There’s water down there, and there’s radiation from the rocks, and that radiation splits the water and it produces hydrogen. All these microbes need is that hydrogen and something to accept it; chemosynthesis is what they’re doing, but it’s very, very basic. We didn’t know that life could exist below the surface, below soil level. But these microbes have been found 5 kilometers down into the bedrock.
“If we’re going to find extraterrestrial life, say on the moons of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter, these are worlds that are ice-covered, and they’re going to be dark. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. If there is going to be life elsewhere, then these little microbes in the subsurface seem to be a good example of what it could be like.”
Douglass “You emphasize that endurance over the ages is only possible with ingenuity – and being different. Would you say more about that?”
Riley “Life has to be different in order to survive, because to compete for resources, it pays to go against the grain. If you’re a snailfish living 8,000 meters down in the Mariana Trench, you’ve got a pretty good life because you’ve pushed into this extreme that no other fish can get into. You have no predation, and you’ve got all the anthropods you can possibly eat. These oddities are actually a natural part of what life on Earth does. …
“For humans, our ingenuity was our intelligence, for all of its costs and all of its negatives. It will be ingenuity – in renewable energy sources and other forms of technology – that will enable us to live sustainably on this planet. …
“There’s this comfort that I get from thinking in deep time – not in political, five-year slots, but thinking beyond a human lifespan. What’s going to come next? Perhaps life will be more symbiotic because we have been so extractive. It’s a spectrum of hope that I have. I think we can, we have to, live more sustainably. But even if we don’t, life will adapt.”
Art: Michael Francis Reagan. Adirondack Park covers one-fifth of New York State — larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, and many other national parks combined. It differs from those national parks, says the Nature Conservancy, in that it combines existing towns, businesses, recreation, and wilderness.
When I was very young, I used to visit a great aunt who had a “camp” in New York State’s beautiful Adirondacks. It’s all coming back to me as I read Ginger Strand’s article in the Nature Conservancy magazine.
She begins by describing a meeting she had with scientists at Follensby Pond.
“This place served as timberland for over a hundred years and was privately owned by different families, but it still has a primeval feel … a unique, interlinked landscape of forest, streams, wetlands and rare silver maple floodplains. In 2008, The Nature Conservancy bought this vast parcel of land from the estate of the former owner. In addition to Follensby Pond, the 14,600-acre property includes 10 miles along the Raquette River, a prime paddling waterway that makes up part of the longest inland water trail in the United States. …
“It was widely expected that TNC would sell the land to the state of New York. Instead, to the surprise of everyone, including itself, TNC concluded that the property needed a special level of management and protection, and kept it. In 2024 the Nature Conservancy sold two conservation easements to the state. The easements opened part of the parcel to recreational access and designated the rest of it as a freshwater research preserve with managed public access. …
“The 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, covering one-fifth of New York state, is the largest park in the lower 48 states. But it differs from national parks, like Yellowstone or Yosemite, and state parks, which are typically set aside for recreation or wildlife. Managed by two state agencies, the park has no gates or entry fees, and it’s peppered with small towns, farms, timberlands, businesses, and hunting camps, all nestled among forests, mountains, rivers, and lakes. All told it is one of the largest tracts of protected wilderness east of the Mississippi, and if it had a heart, it would be right about at Follensby Pond.
“Follensby Pond is not really a pond, but rather a 102-foot-deep lake slightly larger than Central Park. For the local Haudenosaunee and Abenaki, it was a hunting area, accessed via canoe routes that traversed the Raquette River, the historic ‘highway of the Adirondacks.’ … Tourists sought it out until the 1890s, when a timber company bought the land. In private hands, it became a family retreat as well as timberland. …
“In 2008, the Nature Conservancy closed on the Follensby property. Just about everyone expected the organization to sell it to New York state to become part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. But with the economy entering a recession, the state had no funds to buy another big parcel. Under no time pressure to transfer the land, TNC began studying it. …
“To start, TNC hosted a ‘bioblitz,’ bringing 50 scientists — geologists, soil scientists, ecologists, fish experts — onto the land to survey its flora and fauna. What the science showed was that this property wasn’t just historically vaunted; it was ecologically significant. The lake in particular held a ‘functioning ecosystem that is almost as intact as they come,’ says Michelle Brown [Michelle Brown, a senior conservation scientist for TNC in New York]. …
“This lake harbors a population of freshwater lake trout. And not just any lake trout — ‘old-growth’ lake trout, according to past research led by McGill University. Because of the minimal fishing at Follensby, the trout have been able to grow older than similar trout might in other lakes. …
“The trout’s length here can reach 2 to 3 feet; the record one here weighed 31 pounds. That’s a prized quarry for someone who has been obsessed with fishing since he was four. Yet [Dirk Bryant, who directs land conservation for TNC in New York] loves the idea of keeping the pond and these fish protected.
” ‘The hardest thing for me as an angler was to learn to think differently. … But we’re thinking about our fisheries in climate change. The lake trout is our timber wolf, our apex predator.’ Now, he says, many of the lakes that used to have the trout don’t have them anymore.
“In fact, a 2024 study found that soon only 5% of the lakes in the Adirondacks will be capable of supporting native populations of trout. … Follensby Pond is one of a rare few cool enough and healthy enough to support lake trout. …
“ ‘If you have some intact waters that can support native populations, those are the places that will support adaptation to climate change, as well as providing brood stock for restocking other waters,’ Bryant says. ‘You don’t hunt wolves in Yellowstone.’ …
“Still, when the ‘brain trust’ floated the idea of protecting the pond as a freshwater preserve, it was a surprise to many. … Paddling guidebooks in particular had been anticipating that the Follensby parcel would soon be accessible. The Adirondacks team looked for ways to balance protecting the lake with not turning the area into a conservation fortress.
“ ‘There were all these different needs: public access, Indigenous access, hunting clubs with leases, the fishery, the town,’ [Peg Olsen, TNC’s Adirondacks director] says. ‘We wanted to honor and respect all the stakeholders.’
“They landed on a compromise. The conservation easements sold to New York state create two distinct areas on the Follensby property. On nearly 6,000 acres along 10 miles of the Raquette River, one easement creates new public access for hiking, paddling, camping, hunting and fishing. The other easement protects a nearly 9,000-acre section around Follensby Pond as a freshwater research preserve, guided by a public-private consortium, to collaborate on research and preserve the lake’s unique ecosystem. While making Follensby a living laboratory, it also provides for Indigenous access and managed public access aimed at education.
“Like the wider Adirondack Park, with its combination of private lands, active towns and protected wilderness areas, it, too, will be an ongoing experiment in balancing environmental preservation with human communities.”
Read more at the Nature Conservancy magazine, here.
When a woman in Minneapolis died at the hands of government forces recently, I was impressed with a wise Twitter comment about how much you really have to look at something before speaking. @JeninYounesEsq began by saying, “I’m a former defense attorney and currently a civil liberties attorney with no political dog in this fight. I watched the video at least 10 times from different angles and at different speeds and waited to offer an opinion, which I still reserve the right to change if additional information changes the calculus.”
I thought about that when reading a Sarah Bahr “Times Insider” piece at the New York Times. It’s about how we all can train ourselves to notice more.
Bahr says, “When the New York Times reporters Larry Buchanan and Francesca Paris read about a Harvard art history professor who directed her students to spend three hours looking at a painting or a sculpture of their choice, they were intrigued. The assignment was designed to force students to slow down, to really focus on what is in front of them.
“So, Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Paris, who work on [the Times] Upshot desk, wondered: Could they recreate this experience virtually for Times readers?
“ ‘That is the hope of the series: Can we train you to focus? Can we help you think about these things in slightly different ways?’ said Mr. Buchanan, who has a fine arts background and whose work often explores the intersection of art and journalism.
“The first edition in the series titled ‘Test Your Focus: Can You Spend 10 Minutes With One Painting?‘ was published in July of [2024] — and readers, it turned out, were up for the challenge. One in four readers stuck with that painting, James Whistler’s 1871 ‘Nocturne in Blue and Silver,’ for the full 10 minutes — or, at least, kept it open in their browsers.
” ‘Giving readers a small but mighty reminder that you can slow down is a pretty powerful thing,’ Mr. Buchanan said of the more than 750,000 readers who spent some quality time with Whistler. ‘We were surprised how many people stayed.’ (The highest success rate of the series to date, he said, has been one of the Unicorn Tapestries from the late Middle Ages.)
“Each new installment in the series, which arrives on the first Monday of each month in the inboxes of newsletter subscribers and also appears online, draws from a mix of well-known and lesser-known work. Past challenges have included an Indian painting made in the foothills of the Himalayas in the early 1800s; Pieter Bruegel’s ‘Hunters in the Snow‘; and Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night.’ … The most recent edition features the Dutch artist Margareta Haverman’s ‘A Vase of Flowers.’
“Mr. Buchanan, Ms. Paris and Nico Chilla, a graphics multimedia editor at the Times who produces the interactive elements of the series, introduced their first abstract work in April: Lee Krasner’s ‘The Seasons.‘ A technical glitch meant that some readers initially saw a blue square for 10 minutes, but many stuck with the exercise anyway.
“After producing the series’s initial Whistler piece, Mr. Chilla, who has a background in digital design, worked with Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Paris to solicit feedback from readers about their experiences.
“ ‘The time was visible always in the first one, and people didn’t like that,’ he said of the on-screen timer, which they removed after the first challenge. ‘And we initially had a few prompts for how to look at the artwork, but a lot of people complained: “The words are getting in my way.” ‘ …
“Though the pieces offer ultraclose zoom capability, overall, they are purposefully free of distraction.
“ ‘We really want simplicity — just you and the image,’ said Mr. Buchanan, adding that the team had vetoed developing a challenge around a sculpture (for now), fearing that the 360-degree viewing experience required to fully take it in would be too distracting.
“For the team that works on the series, the project has been an enlightening experience. Mr. Buchanan said he had begun noticing subtle things in his own life, like how cracks zigzag across the sidewalk, or the way light hits the water, or the way a plant is squeezed against a rock. …
“Ms. Paris, who proudly proclaims herself the ‘art newbie’ on the team, adopted the exercise in real life, spending an hour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Théodore Géricault’s 1818 painting ‘Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct.’
“ ‘It was a great hour,’ she said. ‘I like to think it’s made me linger a little longer with art and nature. It’s not life-changing, but I’ve never regretted the extra time I spent looking.’ …
“Readers’ comments have also been gratifying, Mr. Buchanan said. One man even devised his own version of the challenge: Look at a single piece of art for a total of 100 hours. He sends Mr. Buchanan periodic updates about his quest via email.
“ ‘I love that this has taken on a life of its own,’ Mr. Buchanan said.” More at the Times, here.
Would you want to try this, too? Maybe at a blog that has great art or photos. Rebecca at https://fakeflamenco.com/, for example, often does intriguing things with her camera. And Artist Meredith Fife Day has looked carefully for hours at the ficus she has painted in all its moods.
Photo: Chewy C. Lin. Ken Daniel, a Marshallese sailor, wears brain-recording equipment aboard a research vessel in the South Pacific.
A cool thing about scientific research today is the increased outreach to indigenous people for help with mysteries that others know little about.
Alexa Robles-Gil writes at the New York Times, about one such effort.
“When leaving an atoll of the Marshall Islands, in the Pacific, Alson Kelen prefers to sail after sunset. It’s like navigating with his eyes closed — allowing him to feel the up, down and sideways movement of every swell. ‘That’s how the Marshallese navigate,’ he said. ‘They navigate with their stomach.’
“For thousands of years, Marshallese navigators used traditional wave-piloting techniques to travel vast expanses of ocean. Wave piloting is the art of feeling and reading the swells and waves that hit and emanate from the region’s atolls. After a lifetime of studying these and other patterns, navigators pass a test devised by their chiefs to become a ri meto, or person of the sea.
“In the mid-1940s through the 1950s, nuclear testing by the American military displaced some Indigenous populations of the Marshalls. The ancient and sacred art of wave piloting was kept alive by a small group of people, among them Capt. Korent Joel, one of the last known experts in traditional navigation, who trained his younger cousin, Mr. Kelen. Captain Joel died in 2017.
“In early August, a team of international researchers, along with Marshallese sailors, set sail on a two-day voyage to study the cognitive process of way-finding at sea — and, more broadly, to help preserve the ancient art of navigation, which is having a cultural revival in the Pacific islands. Maria Ahmad, a Ph.D. student in cognitive neuroscience at University College London, devised the project after living on the Marshalls for many years. …
“Humans find their way across cities and forests by relying on visual landmarks. But the ocean, an ever-changing environment with no fixed visual markers, presents a more complex — and higher-stakes — challenge for the brain.
“A decade ago, researchers on a similar voyage documented Mr. Kelen’s understanding of the ocean as he sailed from one atoll, Majuro, to another, Aur, on a traditional Marshallese sailing canoe. The goal was to begin to understand how wave pilots successfully make their way from one destination to another despite the complexities of fluid dynamics. On board were an anthropologist, a physicist and an oceanographer, but no neuroscientists.
“This time around, the researchers hoped to answer more cognitive questions: How do people know where they are at sea? And how can that skill set be preserved? The crew comprised neuroscientists, a philosopher, a Marshallese anthropologist and two Marshallese sailors. Every 30 minutes, the people aboard the vessel had to draw their location, or at least where they thought they were, on a map — including the direction that the waves seemed to be coming from. …
“ ‘What is it that they are getting right over the rest of us?’ said Hugo Spiers, a neuroscientist at University College London who has studied navigation for more than two decades and was among the passengers. …
“Also on board were hundreds of pounds of technology: accelerometers to measure the boat’s speed; a watch on everyone’s wrist to measure heart rate; eye-tracking technology, to document where people were gazing; equipment to record brain activity relative to swell movement; a mounted 360-degree camera that captured changes in the sails and clouds; and more.
“In earlier research, Pablo Fernandez Velasco, a philosopher at the University of Stirling in Scotland, spent months in Siberia studying the Evenki people. … Dr. Fernandez Velasco has also collaborated with Dr. Spiers to study the brains of London taxi drivers, revealing just how efficiently they can plan routes. …
“The findings from the Marshall Islands voyage could also have implications for the study and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, the researchers said. With Alzheimer’s, the hippocampus becomes smaller over time, and disorientation is an early symptom.
“That research could benefit residents of the Pacific islands, where there is a high incidence of Alzheimer’s but little public awareness. … Explaining the disease requires complex translation, added Jerolynn Neikeke Myazoe, an anthropologist and translator on the voyage: ‘We don’t really have a specific word for it.’
“Although the project is still in the early stages of processing data, Mr. Kelen, who leads a canoe and sailing school in the Marshalls, finds the project promising for the Marshallese. ‘The most relevant thing to do is look back on how our ancestors survived on these rocks,’ he said. ‘This is the only weapon we have — our tradition, our culture. He added: ‘A navigator is a culture-keeper of the ocean.’ ”
More at the Times, here. Great pictures. (A tip of the hat to Hannah for the link!)
Photo: David B Torch. Recently the Norwegian National Ballet tackled the delicate subject of a 19th century rebellion by the indigenous Sami people. The non-Sami dancers wondered if they had the right to tell the story.
Indigenous reindeer herders called the Sami have a presence in the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia — and the sort of history indigenous people have experienced around the world. Was the Norwegian National Ballet reckless in trying to bring a 19th century Sami rebellion to life using non-Sami dancers?
Lisa Abend wrote at the New York Times in November, “Far in the north of Norway, a test of sorts was underway. Two weeks earlier, the ballet ‘Lahppon/Lost‘ had premiered at the Opera House in Oslo. Created by a Sami artist about a Sami uprising, and danced by the Norwegian National Ballet, the work had opened to largely positive reviews. But last Friday, ‘Lahppon/Lost started a two-night run in Kautokeino, a cultural capital for the Indigenous Sami people and the very town where the rebellion it depicts took place.
“ ‘The audience was five times bigger in Oslo, but I was more nervous here,’ said the creator and co-choreographer of ‘Lahppon/Lost,’ Elle Sofe Sara, whose ancestors participated in the uprising. ‘I knew that so many descendants of the rebellion would be there, and … I was asking myself: “Have we done it in a good way?” ‘ …
“When the work premiered at the Opera House on Oct. 31, it was the first time a piece by a Sami choreographer had been presented on the main stage. It was also part of a recent wave of commissions from leading arts institutions that have recognized Norway’s long history of forced assimilation of and discrimination against the Indigenous group, which is widely considered Europe’s oldest. …
“For Ingrid Lorentzen, the Norwegian National Ballet’s artistic director, who commissioned the work, and for the company’s dancers, none of whom are Sami, the performance raised questions about whether they had the right to tell the story. …
“Said Lorentzen, ‘Are we again stepping over the voices that we are trying to create space for?’ …
“For the Sami, the Kautokeino rebellion remains a sensitive subject. During the 1852 uprising, Sami followers of a strict Christian sect attacked Norwegian authorities, including the local sheriff and priest. … In the aftermath, church and state stepped up their efforts to ‘Norwegianize’ the Indigenous group, which continued into the 1960s.
“For well over a century, the rebellion was shrouded in shame among the Sami. But a political and cultural awakening in the 1970s prompted a gradual re-evaluation, and today the causes and meaning of the Kautokeino uprising are contested, with some viewing it as an example of religious fanaticism and others considering it an early Indigenous rejection of the authorities’ ongoing suppression of Sami rights and culture.
“Among the predominantly Indigenous audience that filled the seats of Kautokeino’s Sami National Theater, several attendees confessed to pre-curtain anxiety . … ‘I was so nervous,’ said Ayla Nutti, 20. ‘I was worried they wouldn’t get it right.’
“It was precisely the uprising’s complexity that drew Sara to the story. From her research, she knew that the episode still carried a heavy emotional burden. ‘We did interviews with descendants, and some of them didn’t want to talk about it, or they would talk and then tell us to delete the conversation,’ she said. …
“The dancing in ‘Lahppon/Lost’ is intensely physical, and much of it was devised by Sara’s collaborator, the Icelandic choreographer Hlin Hjalmarsdottir. The dancers whip the ground with fury and twist their bodies with an energy that oscillates between tortured and ecstatic. Combined with video close-ups of the dancers’ faces, and striking costumes from the Danish designer Henrik Vibskov, the muscular movement gives ‘Lahppon/Lost’ a contemporary feel.
“Yet the work remains thoroughly Sami. Much of that character can be attributed to Lavre Johan Eira, who performs a Sami form of throat singing called joiking that is believed to convey the living essence of its subject. ‘Lahppon/Lost’ opens with Eira’s haunting version of a joik. …
“By all accounts — and two standing ovations — they succeeded. ‘Sometimes when you see non-Sami dancers, there is a distance between them and the Sami stories,’ said Kristin Solberg, the director of a Sami theater in Mo i Rana, Norway. ‘But these dancers embodied them and gave movement to the land. I felt like I was watching my story.’
“[Reindeer herder] Sokki found himself in tears. ‘It didn’t matter that the dancers weren’t Sami,’ he said. ‘They made the rebellion come closer. It was magic.’
“In the intimate space of the Kautokeino theater, the performers felt that magic, too. And it didn’t end with the curtain. As they stepped outside after the final show, the Northern Lights were casting swirling bands of luminescence against the night sky. ‘It’s the perfect ending,’ said [dancer] de Block. ‘We released the spirits tonight.’ ”
More at the Times, here. Lots of great little videos.
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