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Donner Summit’s Snowfall Lab

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 2, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Central Sierra Snow Lab.
This is how the three-story Central Sierra Snow Lab on Donner Summit looked in 2011. The lab contains one of the longest sets of manually collected data on snow in the world.

As my neck of the woods gets back to normal (some family members got over two feet of snow last weekend), I’m thinking about places with traditionally high snowfall and wondering what might be happening under climate change. Step one: keeping good records.

Julie Brown reported at SFGate in November 2021, “At the top of Donner Summit, an old cabin rests in a thicket of tall trees. The structure is three stories tall, including the basement. Still, in the heaviest of winters, the snow drifts are deep enough to bury the front door, so the only way into the building is through a window on the top floor.

“The cabin is the home of an obscure laboratory, called the Central Sierra Snow Lab, that holds records of snowfall on Donner Summit dating back to 1878. That makes the laboratory’s measurements one of the longest sets of data on snowfall in the world — and many of those records were written by hand, in long-form cursive penned on dated entries in small red notebooks.

“The lab is just five minutes off an exit on Interstate 80. But there are no signs to mark the way to the cabin, which stands at the end of a dirt road and a steep hill. Even among UC Berkeley researchers and the biggest snow nerds in Tahoe, the laboratory has remained hidden, quietly collecting data for decades without much fanfare. 

“Then, two years ago, the laboratory and its valuable collection of data were almost lost amid the pandemic, university budget cuts and a hiring freeze. To save the laboratory, a small group of researchers banded together to prove the value of the work being done there, find funding and hire new blood to take the lab into the future. … A new station manager, who is an atmospheric scientist, moved in, and Google Maps even knows the lab’s location now.

“ ‘It was mind-blowing to me,’ said Robert Rhew, about the first time he visited the snow lab five years ago. Rhew is a faculty member in the department of geography at UC Berkeley and the director of the Central Sierra Field Stations, which includes the snow lab and Sagehen Field Station in Truckee. 

‘There’s this research gem just hanging out in the forest near Donner Pass, collecting all sorts of important data for California’s snowpack and for the future of water in California,’ Rhew said. …

“The Central Sierra Snow Lab is unlike those with stark white walls and spotless counters. Inside the old cabin, closets are stuffed full of winter boots and outdoor gear. Signs are posted to advise occupants to leave the doors open; the cabin is so old its walls tend to sway beneath the weight of the snowpack, making the doors stick shut in their frames. …

“ ‘You just continually find things,’ said Andrew Schwartz, the lab’s new researcher and station manager. Since he moved in, he’s spent a lot of time cleaning and organizing. ‘You find all kinds of weird stuff, peek through cabinets and look at what’s in them. And then you take a closer look and oh, there’s some $15,000 instrument in there.’ …

“The earliest records of snowfall stored at the laboratory come from the transcontinental railroad. The Central Sierra Snow Lab was built in 1946 by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Weather Bureau. … Since 1946, researchers at the laboratory have measured every inch of snowfall, stomping out into the snow with a ruler and a scale at 8 a.m. sharp. 

“Because of the Central Sierra Snow Lab, we know that the winter of 1982-1983 was the biggest winter since 1970, which is how far back the digitized records go. That winter, 671 inches of snow fell at the lab. That’s more than 55 feet. 

“Today, the Forest Service owns the building and the land, but UC Berkeley oversees the laboratory and the research. In 1996, Berkeley hired a snow researcher named Randall Osterhuber, who would become the lab’s longtime steward and sole employee. …

“During the tenure of Osterhuber, the snow lab hosted many research projects, including testing new technologies to measure how much water is in the snow, called the snow-water equivalent. This is an essential reading for California because it helps researchers understand how much water is stored in the snowpack, and subsequently, how much water will melt come spring and flow down the watershed into the lower elevation reservoirs and valleys. More than 60% of California’s water supply comes from the Sierra Nevada, according to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

“The data that Osterhuber presided over is also invaluable for determining trends in climate. The lab’s contributions were mostly for public knowledge, used by numerous government agencies. …

“The University of California was in a period of budget austerity, Rhew said, and the pandemic put even more pressure on already limited funding. The snow lab was at risk of being zeroed out in the budget. … Rhew convened a meeting for anyone in the landscape of research institutions and government agencies who had a vested interest in the snow lab to garner support to keep the lab’s work going. 

“ ‘It was very clear to everybody that we need to continue,’ Rhew said. …

“For Schwartz, who just finished a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences in Australia, the job was a great fit. … When he arrived, though, the laboratory was abandoned save for the spiders and the mice. The internet was too slow to even send an email, and a lot of things needed to be fixed. 

“Behind the cabin, scientific equipment stands atop rickety scaffolding that could easily topple over. So Schwartz is building a new platform with a sturdy foundation to hold all that scientific equipment safely.

“He is also liberating the data, taking all those handwritten records in the red notebooks that are collecting dust on a shelf and putting them online so they’ll be available to anyone who wants to use them. He built a new website. He started posting snow measurements from recent storms and historical observations on a Twitter account he set up for the lab.

“ ‘A large portion of the knowledge that we have on snow hydrology now, on meteorology and climate in the region, is directly due to this lab,’ Schwartz said.”

At SFGate, here, there are more pictures, and you can read about research on atmospheric rivers the lab is undertaking. No firewall.

Our big snowfall last weekend reminded me of past snowfalls. Who remembers 2015, when I made ice globes?

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Plastic-Recyling Update

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 1, 2022| 10 Comments »

Photo: Obinna Obioma via BBC.
Nigerian photographer Obinna Obioma using creative ways to display an iconic West African plastic bag.

Suzanne liked a recent plastic-recycling article in the New York Times, and we thought you would like it, too. (The Times blocks people from sharing photos, so the one above is from the BBC. You can also check out fashions made of plastic at the Guardian, here.)

Times reporter Ruth Maclean writes from Senegal, “A crowd of people holding curved metal spikes jumped on trash spilling out of a dump truck in Senegal’s biggest landfill, hacking at the garbage to find valuable plastic.

“Nearby, sleeves rolled up, suds up to their elbows, women washed plastic jerrycans in rainbow colors, cut into pieces. Around them, piles of broken toys, plastic mayonnaise jars and hundreds of discarded synthetic wigs stretched as far as the eye could see, all ready to be sold and recycled.

“Plastic waste is exploding in Senegal, as in many countries, as populations and incomes grow and with them, demand for packaged, mass-produced products.

“This has given rise to a growing industry built around recycling plastic waste, by businesses and citizens alike.

From Chinese traders to furniture makers and avant-garde fashion designers, many in Senegal make use of the constant stream of plastic waste.

“Mbeubeuss — the dump site serving Senegal’s seaside capital of Dakar — is where it all begins. More than 2,000 trash pickers, as well as scrubbers, choppers, haulers on horse-drawn carts, middlemen and wholesalers make a living by finding, preparing and transporting the waste for recycling. It adds up to a huge informal economy that supports thousands of families.

“Over more than 50 years at the dump, Pape Ndiaye, the doyen of waste pickers, has watched the community that lives off the dump grow, and seen them turn to plastic — a material that 20 years ago the pickers considered worthless.

“ ‘We’re the people protecting the environment,’ said Mr. Ndiaye, 76, looking out at the plastic scattered over Gouye Gui, his corner of the dump. ‘Everything that pollutes it, we take to industries, and they transform it.’

“Despite all of the efforts to recycle, much of Senegal’s waste never makes it to landfills, instead littering the landscape. Knockoff Adidas sandals and containers that once held a local version of Nutella block drains. Thin plastic bags that once contained drinking water meander back and forth in the Senegalese surf, like jellyfish. Plastic shopping bags burn in residential neighborhoods, sending clouds of chemical-smelling smoke into the hazy air.

“Senegal is just one of many countries trying to clean up, formalize the waste disposal system and embrace recycling on a bigger scale. By 2023, the African Union says, the goal is that 50 percent of the waste used in African cities should be recycled. …

“The recycled plastic makes it to enterprises of all stripes across Senegal, which has one of the most robust economies in West Africa.

“At a factory in Thies, an inland city known for its tapestry industry to the east of Dakar, recycled plastic pellets are spun out into long skeins, which are then woven into the colorful plastic mats used in almost every Senegalese household.

“Custom-made mats from this factory lined the catwalk at Dakar Fashion Week in December, focused this time on sustainability and held in a baobab forest. Signs were constructed out of old water bottles. Tables and chairs were made of melted down plastic.

“The trend has changed the focus of the waste pickers who have worked the dump for decades, gleaning anything of value. …

“The government says that in a few years, the giant landfill will close, replaced by much smaller sorting and composting centers as part of a joint project with the World Bank.

“Then, most of the money made from plastic waste will go into government coffers. The waste pickers worry about their livelihoods.” More at the Times, here.

As great as it is to keep reusing plastic, it would be best not to make it at all for most purposes. It eventually breaks down and ends up in the ocean and our bodies. When I read “plastic mayonnaise jars” in the article, I wanted to remind you that, at least in the US, there are lots of things you can buy in glass if you look: glass mayonnaise jars, glass olive oil jars, glass mustard jars, glass pasta sauce jars, glass lemon juice bottles, and more. I even get milk in glass bottles. Glass is better than plastic. And you can get both laundry and dishwasher detergent in cardboard.

Check out my 2019 post on Cambodian fashion made from recyclables, here.

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Updating Historical Tours

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2022| 11 Comments »

Photo: Kirk Brown/via Boston Globe.
Kirk Brown is the founder and CEO of the Black think tank Melanin MeetUps. The group launched The Better Together Project, which is demanding an end to what it calls the glorification of plantation houses, and the use of their grounds for parties and weddings.

In recent years, tourists at plantations in the South and stately homes in the North have started giving more thought to the people who kept the mansions running. There’s so much that wasn’t in our school histories. I, for one, was amazed to learn that when the colonial farmers fought the British at Concord’s North Bridge April 19, 1775, many of the folks minding the farm were slaves. What? In Massachusetts? Yes.

So I was interested in a recent Boston Globe story about a new, more thorough, house tour. Jon Marcus wrote, “After she graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Carolyn Michael-Banks worked as general manager for a tour company in Washington, D.C., where she quickly noticed that certain people and events were being left out of the script.

“ ‘We had absolutely nothing in there about African-American history,’ said Michael-Banks, who is Black. … So she added information about the Black abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass. About Benjamin Banneker, a Black surveyor who helped lay out the district. About how enslaved people were among the builders of the White House.

“Then the CEO called. ‘His question to me was, “What’s all this Black stuff?” ‘ Michael-Banks remembered.

“Today Michael-Banks runs her own tour company, A Tour of Possibilities, in Memphis, which visits the birthplaces and workplaces of cultural icons including Aretha Franklin and Black investigative journalist Ida B. Wells, landmarks of the civil rights movement and sites of the city’s slave markets and lynchings.

‘History can be uncomfortable but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it,’ Michael-Banks said. …

“Offerings like these are popping up all over the country, by and about people often excluded from the narratives delivered on those jump-on, jump-off bus and trolley tours.

“There are women’s history tours of Philadelphia, St. Louis, Buffalo, and Detroit, and LGBTQ tours of Charleston, S.C., St. Louis, New York’s West Village, and San Francisco’s Castro district. Native Americans tell their own stories on Navajo Tours USA in New Mexico and Nez Perce Tourism in the Pacific Northwest. The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle offers tours of Chinatown that cover its history and not just its food.

“There are growing numbers of tours focused on Black history and culture, not only in Memphis, but in Austin, Texas; Birmingham, Ala.; Charleston; Chicago; Miami; Savannah, Ga.; Selma, Ala.; and Washington. Atlanta has Black history and civil rights tours and a cycling tour of off-the-beaten-track neighborhoods called Civil Bikes. In Tulsa, Okla., there are now tours of the places where the Tulsa Race Massacre occurred.

“A ‘truth and reconciliation’ tour of Montgomery, Ala., is run by a nonprofit from an office in a building where the words ‘white’ and ‘colored’ are still chiseled in the wall above a water fountain. And Alexandria, Va., last year launched a Black history trail and an Underground Railroad-themed tour. …

“Several house and plantation museums including Monticello and Belle Grove Plantation in Virginia and the Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery near Nashville, have started telling more about the enslaved people who built and worked at them. The state of Nevada last year converted the Stewart Indian School into a museum to illustrate the story of how Native American children were taken there to be assimilated. …

“When historic sites are treated solely as places for entertainment, said Stephanie Rowe, executive director of the National Council on Public History, ‘it becomes easier to focus on the furnishings and the stories of success and riches. But when we approach these sites as places to learn about our pasts, we’re called to broaden the narratives’ to include such things as who did the work, and under what conditions.

“In fact, said Paul Melhus, CEO of ToursByLocals, whose guides increasingly focus on the people who have been left out, ‘the history of America is the history of Black people. And gays are part of American history, and Hispanics. It’s all real, and you don’t really understand anything if all you’re doing is just looking at the pretty houses.’

“Others want to do more than change the script. The Better Together Project is demanding an end to what it calls the glorification of plantation houses, and the use of their grounds for parties and weddings.

“ ‘These were labor homes,’ said Kirk Brown, founder and CEO of the Black think tank Melanin MeetUps, which launched the project. … ‘Why is there this glamorization of these homes? It’s depressing and it’s disrespectful and it prevents us as a country from truly healing.’ …

“ ‘We haven’t been able to express ourselves in a way that’s proud,’ said Stacia Morfin, a member of the Nez Perce, or Niimíipuu, tribe and CEO of Nez Perce Tourism, which she started after finding that none of the tourism-related businesses in her part of Idaho were run by descendants of tribal people. … ‘The marginalized and the indigenous people are taking that power back.’ ”

More at the Globe, here.

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Dancing to Heat a Building

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 30, 2022| 5 Comments »

Photo: SGW3 Club.
Glasgow club recycles dancers’ body heat for energy.

Today’s dance article was written by my former boss’s daughter, Margaret Fuhrer, in December, after the environmental summit in Scotland. (Her father was a wonderful boss, by the way, and a good sport. His daughter’s dance-writing career has roots in her childhood Nutcracker performances in which he gamely played Mother Ginger.)

Fuhrer reports at the New York Times that a club in Glasgow is using the heat from dancers’ bodies as alternative energy to power the building.

“At SWG3 — an arts center in Glasgow, Scotland, that hosts some of the city’s largest dance parties — tickets for club nights sold briskly during the summer and fall of 2021, before the arrival of the Omicron variant. ‘The appetite for these events has been stronger than ever, and it’s fueled by the long period of time we were all denied it,’ said Andrew Fleming-Brown, SWG3’s managing director. ‘We’ve missed that shared body-heat experience, being packed together in a full venue.’

“What if dance-floor catharsis could be good not only for the soul but also for the planet? This month, SWG3 and the geothermal energy consultancy TownRock Energy will begin installing a new renewable heating and cooling system that harnesses the body heat of dancing clubbers. The plan should eventually reduce SWG3’s total carbon output by 60 to 70 percent. …

“There is poetry in the idea: the power of dance, made literal. ‘Conversations about sustainability can be pretty abstract,’ said David Townsend, the founder and chief executive of TownRock. ‘But if you can connect it to something people love to do — everyone loves a dance — that can be very meaningful.’

“A mutual friend introduced Townsend and Fleming-Brown in 2019, after Fleming-Brown expressed interest in exploring low-carbon energy systems for SWG3. Townsend, 31, is a regular on the club scene and had been to the location several times. …

” ‘Trying to do a geothermal well would have [cost millions],’ Townsend said. ‘Instead, we thought, why not collect the heat you’ve already got in your customers and then use the ground to store it?’ …

“Dr. Selina Shah, a specialist in dance and sports medicine, said club dance floors can be especially good at creating heat. ‘If it’s really high-energy music, that generally results in very fast and high-energy movement, so you’re looking at a significant level of heat generation — potentially even the equivalent of running,’ she said.

“To capture that energy at SWG3, TownRock developed an application for an already widespread technology: the heat pump. … The SWG3 system, called Bodyheat, will cool the space by transferring the heat of dancing clubbers not into the atmosphere, as in conventional cooling, but into 12 boreholes approximately 500 feet deep. The boreholes will turn a large cube of underground rock into a thermal battery, storing the energy so it can be used to supply heat and hot water to the building.

“Development of the system began in 2019. Pandemic shutdowns, and the financial uncertainty that came with them, paused the project for several months. But with their events calendar emptied, SWG3 leadership had time to develop a larger sustainability plan for the building, setting the goal of achieving ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2025. ‘That moment allowed us to pause and really assess what’s important to us as an organization,’ Fleming-Brown said. ‘We decided to make it a priority.’

“Bodyheat became a central component of the plan when work on the project resumed in fall 2020. The first phase of installation should be complete by early spring [2022], and will provide heating and cooling to SWG3’s two main event spaces. Later phases will offer hot water to the bathrooms and heating to the foyer and art studios. At that point, SWG3 will be able to get rid of its three gas boilers, reducing its annual carbon output by up to 70 metric tons.

“The system is not cheap. … Glasgow’s hosting of the 2021 United Nations global climate summit created ‘a lot of momentum behind this kind of project,’ Fleming-Brown said. A grant from Scotland’s Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Program covered half of the costs for phase one, and a government-backed low interest loan helped with the rest.

Fleming-Brown estimates that savings on energy bills will make the investment recoverable in about five years. …

“Dancing has been used to generate energy before. More than a decade ago, the Dutch company Energy Floors introduced a line of tiles that convert dancers’ steps into electricity. Club Watt in Rotterdam installed the tiles to media fanfare in 2008, and they have since been used in hundreds of other projects. …

“Kinetic dance floors make only small quantities of electricity. Bodyheat should have a more meaningful impact on carbon output, though broadly speaking, dancing isn’t a very efficient way to make body heat. … Gyms, with their emphasis on aerobic exercise, seem like more obvious fits for projects that harness the work of the body. Townsend mentioned that in addition to capturing body heat, gyms could use equipment like stationary bikes to help generate electricity.

“Dancing may not be the best source of renewable energy, but it has proved important in another way: storytelling. There is something vaguely grim about harvesting heat from gym rats pumping away on treadmills. Energy born of dancing — born of joy — captures the imagination in a different way. …

“To help tell the Bodyheat story to the crowd at SWG3, Fleming-Brown and Townsend are considering ways to illustrate the amount of heat dancers create, perhaps with a large thermometer, or a heat map similar to those used on weather reports.”

More at the Times, here.

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Crossings Safe for Animals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 29, 2022| 10 Comments »

Photo: Living Habitats and National Wildlife Federation.
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing should be completed over the Route 101 freeway on the western side of Los Angeles County by 2023, allowing mountain lions to easily cross eight lanes of traffic.

As the human species userps habitat from other species, there are at least a few efforts to mitigate the damage. At Curbed, Alissa Walker reports on California’s plans to build a freeway overpass that by 2023 should substantially expand the habitat of local mountain lions. It will be the largest animal crossing anywhere.

At the Guardian, Patrick Greenfield has an overview of safe passages around the world for elephants, tigers, sloths, and more.

Greenfield writes, “From a tiny railway bridge for dormice in the UK to elk, deer and bears benefiting from a slew of new animal crossings in Colorado, wildlife bridges are having a moment. …

“In January [2021], we reported on Sweden’s plans to build a series of ‘renoducts‘ to help reindeer traverse the country’s main roads. … In southern California, work is due to begin on the largest wildlife bridge in the world in 2022, to connect isolated mountain lion populations north of Los Angeles that are becoming dangerously inbred. [And there’s $350m of the] $1.2tn infrastructure package for wildlife bridges to lessen the multibillion annual cost of collisions.

” ‘Ten years ago, wildlife bridges were experimental. We didn’t know whether they would work or not. Now they’ve shown they get huge reductions in collisions. In some cases, 85% to 99% reductions,’ says Rob Ament, a road ecology expert at Montana State University. ‘You can design them for many species. Even out in the plains, we’re getting moose crossings in North Dakota.’

“Wildlife bridges are found on every continent: there is an elephant underpass near Mount Kenya; the Netherlands has a network of ecoducts that may help the country’s first wolf pack in more than 140 years gain a foothold across the densely populated country; suspended water pipes are helping Java’s endangered lorises; [below]; and a bison bridge may help the animals cross the Mississippi.

“Here are five projects from around the world helping animals make their way.

“Alligator Alley, Florida. The 129km (80-mile) stretch of road between Naples and Fort Lauderdale bisects the Everglades, an enormous wetland that is home to thousands of alligators, deer and the endangered Florida panther. … Dozens of underpasses and fencing help wildlife navigate the road.

A camera trapping exercise found panthers, black bears, skunks, deer, bats, birds and even fish use the crossings. …

” ‘Fencing is critical along Alligator Alley. It is a 10ft-high chain link fence with three-strand barbed wire on top. That’s to keep the wildlife off the roadway and on the crossing,’ says Brent Setchell, a design engineer at Florida Department of Transportation, who identifies potential crossing sites by monitoring road collisions with panthers and bears. ‘The fascinating thing is we just started monitoring the crossings four or five years ago. We found an abundance of wildlife.’

“ ‘The tunnel of love’ on the Great Alpine Road, Australia. Stretching through the Victorian Alps in south-east Australia, the Great Alpine Road posed an existential threat to a colony of critically endangered mountain pygmy possums. Even though there are only about 150 of the marsupials on Mount Little Higginbotham, testing revealed genetic differences between sub-groups separated by the road, which are also threatened by fire, disappearing food sources and invasive species. Conservationists decided to build a ‘tunnel of love’ between the isolated groups to improve mixing and strengthen their chances of survival. …

“India’s tiger corridor. India’s first dedicated wildlife underpasses were a hard-fought victory for environmental campaigners. The nine crossings in the Pench tiger reserve were a court-ordered mitigation measure on the country’s longest road, the 4,112km National Highway 44, which runs down the middle of the country. Collisions with big cats still happen on the multi-lane motorway, but environmentalists say the underpasses have highlighted the need for more wildlife crossings on India’s road network. A 2019 camera trapping exercise found at least 18 species use the crossings, including tigers, wild dogs, sloth bears, civets and leopards. …

“Bhutan’s elephant crossing. Nearly 700 Asian elephants roam Bhutan’s forest on the eastern edge of the Himalayas. The small Buddhist country sandwiched between China and India is known for its dramatic landscapes and environmental leadership, as one of the few carbon negative countries in the world. On the 183km east-west motorway, Bhutan’s first elephant underpasses were constructed to help the threatened animals move through the landscape. Monitoring from 2015 to 2017 found that 70 groups of elephants were recorded near the passes, with three-quarters passing through the structures.

“Sloth bridges in Costa Rica. Wildlife passes are not always bridges or underpasses. In Costa Rica, canopy bridges are used to help sloths, monkeys and other wildlife cross roads to combat collisions, dog attacks and electrocutions on power lines. The rope bridges, which cost about [$200], are installed by the Sloth Conservation Foundation in areas where rainforest has been interrupted by human development on the country’s Caribbean coast. Crossing roads is often deadly for the slow-moving creatures and the canopy bridges also help combat inbreeding. ‘People look at them and think that they’re so poorly equipped to survive because you see them crossing roads and trying to move around and they look so awkward and useless,’ Rebecca Cliffe, head of the Sloth Conservation Foundation, told Bloomberg earlier this year. ‘But if you put them in a well-connected rainforest, then they are masters of survival.’ ”

Read the Guardian story here. Want more? The article at Curbed on the world’s longest animal bridge is here. Both of these publications are free although donations are encouraged.

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Rent-a-Pub

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 28, 2022| 4 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe.
Brothers Craig and Matt Taylor built a miniature Irish-style pub on wheels, dubbed the Wee Irish Pub. Want to rent it?

Journalist Steve Annear at the Boston Globe gets all the fun assignments. This report is about a perfect little Irish pub available for rent.

“At first, brothers Craig and Matt Taylor thought building a miniature Irish-style pub on wheels, a traveling taproom they could rent for private events and parties, would just be a hobby — a pandemic project that would take their minds off the world’s problems and let people enjoy the familiar comforts of crowding into a bar (albeit a very small one) at a time when it had become almost impossible to do so.

“But within days of launching the ‘Wee Irish Pub’ in September, it became clear that the fireside chat-turned-business venture was going to be much more than a side gig. …

“ ‘The floodgates have opened,’ said Craig, 58. ‘We are getting requests [to rent it], at least two an hour, for the last week.’

“The idea to construct a tiny Irish pub, complete with a small bar, stools, bench seating, and many of the other features found in traditional venues of its kind, had been in the back of Craig’s mind for years, since he read about an inflatable Irish bar that people could rent for a day in their own backyard. …

“ ‘I had been talking about it sort of as a pipe dream that would never happen,’ said Craig, who works in marketing.

“But as the Reading residents found themselves spending a lot of time around a fire pit in Matt’s backyard early in the pandemic — one of the few activities that was still safe and allowed — the possibility surged to the forefront, like the head on a perfectly poured pint of Guinness.

“ ‘We’d talk about it night after night,’ said Matt, 49. ‘Finally it was like, “Alright, let’s just do this.”

‘It’s kind of the perfect pandemic project because people were having backyard get-togethers and staying outside.’

“Last February, after batting around the notion and discussing logistics, they decided to try their luck. They bought a large trailer for the tiny pub to be built on, so it could be towed from place-to-place upon request.

“When it was finally delivered in April, they got to work on construction, a joint effort bolstered by Matt — ‘an IT guy by trade’ with a penchant for carpentry.

“ ‘I’m definitely more about the overall impression and the ambiance,’ said Craig, who took a genealogical tour of Ireland in 2018 with his family, visiting the homeland of his wife’s ancestors. ‘Matt is precise to the micro inch on making sure that every rafter is exact.’ …

“They sourced materials from online marketplaces like Craigslist, and repurposed and recycled old furniture and other items to try and give it an authentic look and feel. Their siblings and other close family members pitched in considerably.

“Within months, the cozy pub had it all: A Sláinte sign graced one wall, under a weathered horseshoe. A framed map of Ireland hung above an electric fireplace. The small bar was installed, with a refrigerator and taps for kegs. A plaque dedicating the project to Craig’s late father-in-law — who was of Irish descent — went up behind the benches, forever holding a seat for him.

“The design of the cream-colored cottage is similar to mobile pubs built by the Irish-based company The Shebeen, which brought one of its units to Boston in 2015.

“The Wee Irish Pub, which can fit up to 12 people inside, finally rolled to its first event — a company gathering in Melrose — in September. It hasn’t slowed down since. …

“The company, officially dubbed ‘Tiny Pubs,’ is based in Reading. But the brothers will deliver the bar to people’s doorsteps up to 30 miles away (or more, depending on the situation). Rentals cost between $800 and $1,200 per day, with Craig and Matt arriving to help with the set-up in the afternoon and then whisking it away the following day. …

Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe.

“Most people are renting it to celebrate a milestone birthdays and retirement parties, the brothers said. But they recently received one call from a customer who has a terminally ill relative who had always wanted to visit Ireland, but no longer can.

“Instead, ‘they’re bringing the pub over to her in the driveway, to have a little taste of Ireland,’ Craig said. ‘It’s very sweet.’ More at the Globe, here.

I want to expand on the idea of bringing a bit of Ireland to a patient who can no longer travel. I remember when Animals as Intermediaries (now the Nature Connection) was founded in Massachusetts in 1983. It all started with asking an elderly, disabled woman what would cheer her up and receiving the answer, “Bring me the ocean.” The nonprofit’s founder was able to bring her a collection of items that really made her feel like she was near the ocean. Read about that early, perhaps better, version of virtual reality here.

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The Man Who Flew the Jetpack

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 27, 2022| 6 Comments »

Photo: AP via Niagara Gazette.
Jetpack pilot William P. Suitor flew to the top of the flagpole at Super Bowl XIX in 1985.

When inventors were taking the cartoon Jetsons television show seriously, there was a man who stood ready to test a Jetsons-type invention. Today, despite his memorable flight at the Super Bowl and elsewhere, he keeps a low profile.

David A. Taylor reports at the Washington Post, “For many years, I wasn’t sure if what I saw was real or some sort of hopeful childhood vision: I was in a large crowd on the National Mall and a figure in a white spacesuit wearing a jetpack suddenly floated off the ground. He was flying! After rising straight up, he swept forward, then swooped back above the crowd. … My father was working as a NASA engineer. But this was way cooler.

“Then I forgot about it, for decades. But about a year ago, the image popped into my mind and I decided to do some research. I came across a 1967 newspaper clipping with a black-and-white photo. Billed as fun for children, the Pageant of Transportation included a ‘rocket belt’ flying man.

“The caption named the rocket man as Bill Suitor. In the photo he floats midair with a balloonist near the Washington Monument. I wondered if Suitor was still around. A Google hit said he’d given a talk in April 2021 in Maine to a local historical society, which agreed to pass along my request to contact him. Further research showed Suitor started flying the rocket belt as a teenager. He had flown the Buck Rogers-inspired jetpack more than any other human: By one count, he has logged 1,000 flights.

“When one day I got a phone call from just outside Buffalo.

‘I’d like to keep the idea of jetpacks alive,’ Suitor said when we spoke. ‘But I’ve become a nonbeliever.’

“Suitor got started in his space-age career when he was 19, not from dreams of being an astronaut (he was planning on architecture), but thanks to his lawn-mowing job. ‘I had never been outside of western New York,’ he told me. His neighbor was Wendell Moore, a rocket engineer with Bell Aviation who was working on a secret project for the U.S. Army: developing a tool to revolutionize battlefield mobility. Moore recruited his lawn boy as a guinea pig, Suitor joked. After tests, Bell Aviation made a short film to prove the concept.

“For that film, the company got permission to fly into historic Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario. It was a fine summer day, and the late sun cast long shadows. Suitor rose off the sea wall on the Niagara River and flew over the fortress. Soaring over historic buildings with Shaker rooftops … suddenly he realized the bird shadow was him. …

“Suitor’s first gig on the road was at the Sacramento racetrack and fairgrounds, just months after his first flight. ‘The higher you go, the nicer it is,’ he told the Sacramento Bee. ‘You feel free as a bird.’ …

“In early 1965, Suitor learned he was heading to Paris within a week. He and another Bell rocketeer would be stunt doubles for a scene in a new James Bond film, Thunderball. He couldn’t believe it: the popularity of Bond and Sean Connery as Bond was soaring after Goldfinger. In London, Suitor was outfitted in a gray suit matching Connery’s in the film, but made of a special flame-resistant Dacron.

“In Paris, Suitor was assigned a driver and taken west of the city. His mission: escape a chateau’s third-floor balcony, scoot over the castle wall, and land near the waiting Aston Martin. The director begged the flyboys not to wear their helmets: It didn’t match the shot of Connery. But they refused.

“The March day was chilly, which caused ignition problems. On his second flight, ‘I hit the cobblestones like a ton of bricks and bounced into the air.’ …

“One thing to consider about rocket-powered solo flight is the noise. The Bell model produced an earsplitting 130 decibels. The jetpack was powered by hydrogen peroxide, with steam shooting through two nozzles. It ‘screams rather than roars,’ said Suitor, ‘a high-pitched, very annoying noise about 16 inches from your ears.’

“Of that day when I saw him in 1967, Suitor’s main memory is of an air-cushion vehicle hovercraft, skimming over the Mall carrying the day’s VIP, Alan Boyd, the first U.S. secretary of transportation. Someone asked Suitor if he could fly up and circle the basket where the balloonist was hovering. ‘I loved flying unusual requests,’ he recalled. …

“Mike Neufeld, a senior curator at the National Air and Space Museum, said the rocket belt, or rocket pack, found its moment, though it never proved to be practical. ‘It was basically the Cold War, and the military was willing to throw money at some very crazy ideas.’ (It also tested a flying saucer.)

“But the jetpack, captivating as it was, was doomed. ‘It failed as a technology because its flight time was limited to a little over 20 seconds,’ Neufeld [said]. Even with later versions managing 30 seconds, ‘it’s basically a great stunt device.’ …

“Now 77, [Suitor] keeps a low profile, spending time on his woodworking and home projects, occasionally giving talks to groups about his rocket man exploits. … He was recently back from a family trip to Europe, where, driving toward Normandy, they suddenly came upon a building that looked familiar. It was the chateau of his James Bond adventure.

“ ‘It was surreal,’ he said. ‘As we were driving into the village, I could see the deer through the trees.’ It was the stone stag atop the chateau’s entrance, which he’d last seen as Bond’s airborne double.”

More at the Post, here.

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The Youngest Elder

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2022| 5 Comments »

Photo: Weronika Murray.
Dana Tizya-Tramm, the youngest chief in his First Nation’s history, is leading the fight against climate change.

Today’s story is about a young man who overcame personal challenges to become a leader of his tribe in the fight against climate change.

Tik Root writes at the Washington Post, “Perched on the edge of the Porcupine river, Dana Tizya-Tramm pointed upstream to a stand of black spruce trees that jutted into the partially-frozen water. They were like lemmings marching off a cliff. Those at the tip were falling into the river, while those in back awaited the inevitable.

“ ‘Drunken forests,’ said Tizya-Tramm, a cigarette between his fingers. He says neither he nor the elders remember there being such a pronounced lean in the past. It comes at least in part, he explained, because the earth no longer stays frozen year-round, even [in Old Crow, Yukon].

“This stretch of the Porcupine runs past the approximately 250-person community of Old Crow. The most northwest habitation in Canada — roughly 80 miles above the Arctic Circle — the town sits at the heart of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation. September temperatures had already dropped below freezing, and Tizya-Tramm buttressed himself with tan moose hide mittens and a black puffy jacket. Embroidered on the right sleeve was ‘Chief.’

“At just 34 years old, Tizya-Tramm has risen not only through elected ranks, but from the depths of addiction and trauma to become the youngest known leader in the First Nation’s history. And he’s used that mandate to aggressively combat what he says is among the most pressing threats to his people: climate change.

“The shifting Arctic is squeezing the Vuntut Gwitchin on multiple fronts. Tizya-Tramm says less predictable caribou migration patterns have meant some villages can go years without a successful hunt, and the spawn of certain salmon species has dropped so low that fishing has been severely restricted in recent years. …

“Climate change is even threatening the First Nation’s identity as ‘people of the lakes.’ Scientists say that increased temperatures and higher precipitation have led to wetter conditions and thawing permafrost, which have contributed to the disappearance of dozens of large lakes in the region over recent decades. One study found that between 1950 and 2007, such ‘catastrophic drainages’ became five times more frequent.

“ ‘The hunters and trappers in our community, our harvesters, they’re the experts out on the land,’ said Lorraine Netro, a Vuntut Gwitchin elder. ‘They’ve been seeing and noticing the changes for the past 40 years.’

“These slow shifts can mean immediate hardship. When there’s less meat or fish, there’s more shopping at the Arctic Co-Op, the sole grocery store in town, where all the goods must first be trucked from Winnipeg to Whitehorse and then put on a plane north. A gallon of milk costs (CAD) $13.99. A bag of chips is $8. Tizya-Tramm remembers seeing a watermelon for $80 once. …

“One of the most expensive products in Old Crow, though, is diesel. Since 1961, the town has gotten its electricity through the use of gigantic generators, with fuel that’s flown in at a cost of nearly $11 per gallon. … So it’s hardly a surprise that one of the first questions Tizya-Tramm was faced with as Chief was: What are you going to do about climate change?

“It’s an issue that had been on his radar for years. As a Vuntut Gwitchin government councilor, part of his purview was the First Nation’s renewable energy efforts. While earlier feasibility studies indicated that solar was the best option, Tizya-Tramm inherited a proposed agreement that would have left the Vuntut Gwitchin owning less than half of the system. He helped renegotiate a deal in which the First Nation would own the entire solar array and sell the power back to the grid. The utility company would own the batteries and distribution network.

“By the Vuntut Gwitchin government’s estimate, the system would provide the community with about a quarter of its electricity needs — especially during the long, Arctic summer days. That would save tens of thousands of gallons of fuel per year, which at the astronomical prices in Old Crow is worth over (CAD) $400,000 annually. But the upfront cost for the solar power system was staggering: $7-9 million. Finding funding would take time.

“[Tizya-Tramm] recalled a community meeting after he became Chief during which the group discussed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s bleak assessment of where the planet was headed. On the way home, he said he had an ‘epiphany.’

What if he declared climate change an emergency for his people? …

“Within a week the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation had approved the declaration, which stated that ‘climate change constitutes a state of emergency for our lands, water, animals and people.’ …

“As news of Old Crow’s announcement spread, the town became a rising star in the climate world. Later that year, the Gwitchin built on the momentum when they voted to target net zero emissions by 2030. And, Tizya-Tramm was invited to speak around the globe. …

“Back home, Tizya-Tramm found that money for the solar project was now much easier to come by. ‘It went from knocking on doors, to them already being open when we approached,’ he said.

“The funding came primarily from the provincial and federal governments — support that Tizya-Tramm emphasizes was certainly deserved. Aside from suffering under years of colonial oppression, he said the First Nation is helping Canada achieve its goals under the Paris climate accord.

“Watching the Vuntut Gwitchin’s climate renaissance, Tizya-Tramm couldn’t help but see a personal parable. ‘It’s a terminal diagnosis,’ he said of climate change. ‘The entire world as a species needs to make the journey I did as an individual.’ …

“Tizya-Tramm was born into a history of Indigenous trauma. … By 13 his parents had divorced, and Tizya-Tramm was attending school either high or on hallucinogens. He then progressed to dealing drugs himself, building a client base within his friends. Then there was the fighting — both in school and outside of it, where he would face people far older. … He robbed and was robbed. On a few occasions he was stabbed. Then a suicide attempt became multiple attempts.”

At the Post, here, you can read about the slow, painstaking steps that allowed Tizya-Tramm to put all that behind him and gradually become the leader he is today.

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Really a Lot of Red Crabs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 25, 2022| 8 Comments »

Photo: Christopher Andrew Bray/Wikimedia.
A massive red-crab migration happens on Christmas Island, 932 miles northwest of Perth, Australia.

The annual red-crab migration on Christmas Island would be something to see. I hope the crabs survive human invasion better than the armadillo-like mole crabs (sand crabs) of my childhood on Fire Island. A Google search tells me that those have survived in North Carolina at least.

Photo: Outer Banks.
Mole crab, also called sand crab.

Here’s a report from the Ocean Conservancy on red crabs.

Katie Hogge writes that the name Christmas Island “traces back to 1643, when an English voyager sailed past it on Christmas Day. Today, nearly two-thirds of this incredibly biodiverse island is protected as a national park. While Christmas Island contains wetland, rainforest and marine ecosystems that host many remarkable creatures, there’s one species that steals the spotlight each year: Gecarcoidea natalis, appropriately nicknamed the Christmas Island red crab. …

“Every year as the first notable shower of the rainy season begins, a truly awe-inspiring event happens on Christmas Island: Millions of red crabs begin their annual migration across the island, moving with unwavering determination to reach the shoreline where mating and spawning occur. It’s estimated that 40 to 50 million of these crabs participate in the migration each year, braving tough terrain and prowling predators to play their part in establishing the species’ next generation.

“Once the migration begins, it will continue for around three weeks until the optimal spawning time when female crabs propel their eggs into the sea. The actual calendar dates for this event vary each year, but they usually occur sometime in October or November. ….

“The lunar cycle is why this migration, mating and spawning happens so consistently within the same time frame year after year. Without fail, the red crabs always spawn together before the sun rises during the final quarter of the moon as the high tide begins to turn. However, depending on how close the first rainfall occurs to this optimal lunar time frame, the crabs may have to dash to their destination faster in some years than others … and somehow, they always know exactly how fast they need to move to make their deadline.

“This mission to the sea isn’t an easy one, either. The journey across the island requires the crabs to avoid the threat of traffic as they move across roads (though some wildlife bridges have helped with this), and the heat of the sun can cause them to become dehydrated and easily exhausted. Although adult red crabs have no natural predators on land, their populations have been greatly affected by an invasive species known as ‘yellow crazy ants’ (Anoplolepis gracilipes). These invasive insects blind the crabs with acid, and scientists estimate they’ve killed tens of millions of crabs since they first arrived on the island.

“The challenges don’t end when the crabs reach their destination, though. First, male crabs who complete the journey must dig their own breeding burrows, and since millions of crabs are looking for space to burrow at the same time, this can become quite the competitive task. Once a male and female crab have successfully mated within a burrow, females will stay put, incubating their broods for a couple of weeks as the eggs develop. An amazing fact about mommy red crabs: They can produce up to 100,000 eggs per brood! …

“Once the moon reaches its last quarter phase, all the mother crabs know: It’s time to move! As the tide moves out before the sun breaks the horizon in the early morning, the females gather at the water’s edge and release their eggs into the waves. …

“As soon as the eggs are released into the water, larvae are triggered to hatch from the eggs, eventually developing to their final larval stage known as megalopae. For a couple of days, these tiny ‘almost baby crabs’ will group together near the shore until they finally grow into their full form as baby crustaceans. …

“These babies are tiny! Only about half a centimeter when they first arrive onshore, they’re so tiny that as millions of them emerge onto the shore, the unassuming eye may mistake them for a reddish algae covering the rocks and sandy shoreline. It will take these tiny trekkers a little more than a week to reach the protection of the edge of the forest, where they live and grow for the first few years of life. Once they reach ages four or five, the young crabs will participate in the migration that their species is famous for.

“Unfortunately, while so many eggs are released into the water, the majority of red crab larvae never get the chance to begin the trip home. These millions of larvae are an important food source for marine animals like manta rays and whale sharks that gather near Christmas Island each year for a festive seasonal feast. Most years, few baby crabs ever come out of the sea, and some years, no crabs make it out at all. But fear not: one to two times each decade, a massive number of baby crabs somehow make it to the beach, establishing a troop of enough survivors to keep the population at a healthy level. …

“Yet, as arduous as the red crabs’ annual journey to lay the foundation of the next generation is, there’s another danger to their survival that’s becoming increasingly threatening each and every year: climate change. Research notes that because these animals rely on the seasonal natural cycle of a wet season, anything causing potential changes in rainfall can throw off the entire process (or even eliminate the chance a migration will happen at all).  As such, both the red crabs and animals that depend on them for sustenance face new and greater risks to their survival.”


Are there critters where you grew up as a child that seem to have disappeared? I miss the mole crabs, fireflies, and those salamanders called red efts. I know they are still around, but I haven’t seen any in decades.

More at Ocean Conservancy, here.

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Shovel a Driveway

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 24, 2022| 8 Comments »

Photo: Filip Mroz/Unsplash.
A coach told his team the day’s workout would be shoveling for old folks at no charge. Where were these guys when I needed them?

I don’t know if there are any coaches reading this blog, but I just had to spread an idea that a football coach at a Pittsburgh high school had after a snowstorm. Over the years, there have been several storms when I was home alone and really needed the kind of help described here. Once the snow was so high, I had to climb over my picket fence.

Cathy Free writes at the Washington Post, “Pearl Moss looked out her front window in Bethel Park, Pa., and was instantly worried. A major snowstorm that pummeled the Pittsburgh area and the East Coast over the weekend had dumped nearly a foot of snow in her driveway, and there was more on the way.

“ ‘I thought, “What am I going to do? There’s no way I can get out there and shovel myself out,” ‘ said Moss, 74, surveying the white landscape on Monday. …

“A few hours later, there was a knock on her door. Moss peeked out and was surprised to see two teenage boys standing on her porch with shovels.

“ ‘I couldn’t believe it — they were going to shovel me out,’ she said. ‘And they didn’t want a single penny to do it.’

“David Shelpman, 16, and Aidan Campbell, 17, live in the same neighborhood as Moss and are on the football team at Bethel Park High School. Head Coach Brian DeLallo had emailed them and other team members Sunday to inform them that their Martin Luther King Jr. Day workout in the school gym wasn’t going to happen.

“DeLallo also posted a notice on Twitter with some instructions. ‘Due to expected severe weather, Monday’s weightlifting workout has been cancelled,’ he wrote. ‘Find an elderly or disabled neighbor and shovel their driveway. Don’t accept any money — that’s our Monday workout.’

“Shelpman and about 40 other team members put on their snow gear and took their assignment seriously.

“ ‘I grabbed some shovels and drove over to pick up Aidan, and we spent the next eight hours shoveling driveways and sidewalks for people that we knew couldn’t do it for themselves,’ said Shelpman, an offensive and defensive lineman for the Bethel Park Black Hawks.

“ ‘It was a fun way to spend the day,’ he said. ‘We just kept going until we’d done six houses. We even skipped out on having lunch. It made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself.’ …

“Braedon Del Duca, a guard for the Black Hawks, shoveled out five houses with two of his friends, Colton Pfeuffer and his brother, Tanner Pfeuffer.

“ ‘I like helping other people, and I love the snow, so it was fun to get a workout outside,’ said Del Duca, 16. ‘It was cool to see how happy people were when we showed up.’ …

“ ‘My dad went to school here, and he also used to shovel snow around the community,’ he said. ‘Whenever there’s a snow day, it’s just what you do when you’re on the football team.’

“DeLallo, 51, said the ‘shovel day’ ritual was started in 2002 by former head coach Jeff Metheny, who is now retired.

“ ‘I was on staff as an assistant coach when he started it, and it’s something everyone is proud to keep going,’ he said.

“In Bethel Park, a Pittsburgh borough with about 32,000 residents, community support of the football team is strong, DeLallo noted.

“ ‘Our games are always well attended, so giving back is the right response,’ he said. ‘Most of our kids know the older people in their neighborhoods, and shoveling snow is a way to connect outside of the usual Friday night football game.’ …

“Other high schools in the area do similar service projects in the community, DeLallo said.

“ ‘The feedback has been awesome, but we’re not the only ones making a difference,’ he said. ‘When you get 11 inches of snow, this is something a lot of communities have stepped up to do.’

“Pearl Moss said she’s grateful for the teens, adding that if they hadn’t shown up when they did, she probably would have been stuck in her house for a while.

“ ‘Those kids did a fine job, and I’ll never forget it,’ she said.”

I believe many teens would like to help neighbors but don’t know where to start. Do you have online neighborhood bulletin boards in your area where people can post needs or trade services — say, a batch of homemade cookies for shoveling the front walk?

We have a pretty reliable paid service right now, but I had a new neighbor offer to help out with his snowblower in the last storm, and you can bet I will keep him in mind. I find it’s unusual for New Englanders to volunteer their help in this way. Please correct me if that has not been your expeience!

More at the Post, here.

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Teen Promotes Neglected History

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 23, 2022| 5 Comments »

Photo: Prasidha Padmanabhan.
Prasidha Padmanabhan, 16, founded WEAR (Women for Education, Advocacy and Rights), a nonprofit with an executive board made up entirely of students.

The teen in today’s story not only pointed out the absence of women of color in her school’s history curriculum. She influenced a large school system. That takes a special kind of patience.

Theresa Vargas reports at the Washington Post, “If you happen to get into a conversation about American history with Prasidha Padmanabhan, you will have to keep reminding yourself of this: She is only 16. The names of historically overlooked women flow from her in the same way the names of modern-day A-list celebrities flow from other kids her age.

“She can tell you about the lives of Rebecca Lee Crumpler (the first African American woman to become a doctor), Queen Liliuokalani (the first woman and last person to rule Hawaii) and Claudette Colvin (a Black teenager who refused to give up her seat on a bus before Rosa Parks did). …

“She can tell you why, if you know about Paul Revere, you should also know about Sybil Ludington. Ludington was 16 when she rode through the night during the American Revolution to warn militia members of a British attack. …

“The teenager has not only spent the last few years learning about the historic and too-often unseen roles of women, and in particular women of color, but also has worked to make sure students in one of the country’s largest school systems have a chance to learn about them.

“During the pandemic, Prasidha went from seeing people on social media talk about repealing the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, to creating a student-led nonprofit, to working with educators from Fairfax County Public Schools to add more women’s history to curriculum offerings.

“Her collaboration with school officials is ongoing, but so far, she has worked with social studies teachers to create Civil War material made available for sixth-grade U.S. history lessons, and she has written minibooks about Native American women for the school system’s young readers.

“ ‘She like many others noticed that when it comes to the stories we tell about Indigenous people in our K-12 classrooms, too often Native American people do not show up as individual people with lives and interests and contributions,’ says Deborah March, who works for Fairfax schools as a culturally responsive pedagogy specialist, a position that calls for her to support teachers and curriculum writers. ‘She created these short, accessible, image-laden biographies so that our younger elementary school learners can encounter Native American women as full human beings whose lives are worthy of study.’

“Days ago, the U.S. Mint prompted public celebrations and conversations across the country. The Mint announced that coins from the American Women Quarters Program — which honors the remarkable contributions of women — had been shipped. …

“That these women’s names will soon be in our hands and in front of our faces should give us joy. It should also cause us to pause and think about why many people still don’t know their stories and what women we should have learned about but haven’t. …

“Prasidha is a first-generation Indian American and says those comments she saw online in 2020 about taking away women’s right to vote made her think about what she had learned in her history classes about women. She, like most people, had been taught about Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Susan B. Anthony. But she couldn’t recall learning about what women did during the Civil War or during other notable periods.

“She told her parents she wanted to start an organization that would focus on getting those stories told. From that conversation grew WEAR (Women for Education, Advocacy and Rights), a nonprofit with an executive board made up entirely of students.

One of Prasidha’s first actions through the organization was to create a Change.org petition calling on Fairfax Schools to integrate women’s history into elementary and middle school curriculum. … The petition drew more than 5,000 signatures.

“Prasidha recalls the day she was at home, engaged in virtual learning, and an email caused her to let out an excited yell. She says it was from March saying she wanted to meet and talk about a possible collaboration between the school system and WEAR.

“ ‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ March says of her first encounter with Prasidha, who is a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. … ‘It was exciting for me to connect with a student who was on fire for just and equitable access to learning experiences that tell a complete story.’

“March says everyone benefits when educators take seriously the type of questions Prasidha and WEAR are raising: ‘What if we broaden the story? What if we rethink whose lives and contributions are deemed worthy of study in our classrooms and textbooks?’

“ ‘I think students have a better chance of seeing their power to shape our systems and institutions when they encounter lots of different examples of what that can look like, examples of diverse people as the doers and movers of history,’ March says. ‘It would be a shame if students came away from their K-12 education thinking they have to become a president or a general if they want to make a difference in the world.’

“March says she, her colleague Jen Brown and three social studies teachers met with Prasidha weekly at one point to work on the Civil War material that is offered to sixth-grade teachers. Prasidha was also invited in August to speak to educators. Her presentation was titled, ‘Expanding and Transforming Women’s History for K-12.’

“Brown recalls Prasidha telling participants about Susie King Taylor, who was born into slavery and attended school in secret. At 14, she became the first Black teacher to openly educate African Americans in Georgia, and she later served as a nurse for the Union army during the Civil War.

“ ‘I had never heard of Susie King Taylor, before Prasidha introduced me to her, and was so grateful for the opportunity to learn about her and other women who did extraordinary things,’ Brown says.

More at the Post, here.

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India’s Rural Folk Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Ozy.
Thirty-year-old Abhinav Agrawal is helping India’s rural folk musicians survive and thrive. He uses a backpack studio developed by Latin Grammy winner Gael Hedding to go where the musicians are.

If there’s a moral to today’s story, it might be, “Stay close to your interests, to things you love.” Young Abhinav Agrawal loved India’s rural folk music.

As Tania Bhattacharya reported at Ozy in fall 2020, “In 2016, Abhinav Agrawal set off to Rajasthan to record folk musicians on the go and set them up with CDs, a website, videos and business cards free of cost so they can market themselves.

“His first find was Dapu Khan of the Merasi heritage community in Jaisalmer. But after Agrawal returned home to New Delhi, he couldn’t contact Khan. ‘We suddenly saw an article in the paper that claimed he had died as a result of communal violence,’ says Agrawal. Heartbroken, the musician-entrepreneur headed to Jaisalmer to look for Khan’s son, who began to cry the moment they met.

“As Agrawal consoled him, Khan’s son was surprised to hear his father had died. ‘But he’s in Germany, performing!’ The tears were of joy and gratitude, and Agrawal’s experiment of empowerment had succeeded.

“India’s countless folk communities are in dire need of funding and technical and creative upskilling to revitalize themselves in an increasingly globalized world. Live and festival-centric performances, which is all these musicians have known through generations, barely bring in money, and an online presence has become mandatory for creative mileage. Many music traditions are dying out, with practitioners taking up menial labor to make ends meet. And the pandemic has dealt a fatal blow, with performances off the table for the foreseeable future.

“Cue 28-year-old Agrawal, whose passion for folk music birthed the nonprofit Anahad Foundation in 2012, and the creation of the BackPack Studio that remains one of a kind in India. Developed by Latin Grammy winner Gael Hedding for Anahad, the portable recording studio is a high-quality wireless recorder with 12 mics that can run on battery for three days and shoot 4K videos. It’s designed to meet rural Indian challenges such as lack of electricity and the unwillingness on the part of musicians to leave their hometowns (and daily livelihoods) to travel to studios in cities.

“Anahad, meaning ‘limitless,’ is also aimed at preserving India’s oral folk traditions, and has extensively covered artists from Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Punjab and Rajasthan — helping 6,000 artists in all.

“Born and raised outside New Delhi in the historic city of Bulandshahr, Agrawal is a trained classical vocalist and tabla player, and was heavily influenced by folk songs. Much of the region’s traditional music revolves around nature and seasons, and Agrawal ‘felt closer to nature through music.’ Growing up, his town was very green, but rapid urbanization adversely impacted its scenic beauty.

‘When components of nature like the trees and birds began to disappear, the tradition of singing songs about them also began to die,’ Agrawal adds.

“With architects for parents, Agrawal also studied architecture but combined his love for nature and heritage by exploring the connection between music and urban spaces, because ‘architecture is frozen music.’ He formed an open music society, experimented with folk songs and set off on lengthy train journeys recording traveling artists and burning CDs for them. ‘All I had was a laptop, mic and sound card,’ says Agrawal. ‘But an interesting pattern emerged — these artists began to sell out their CDs.’

“He formed Anahad soon after, but the reality of running a nonprofit in India proved daunting. ‘I realized I needed business knowledge,’ says Agrawal. He headed to Berklee College of Music for an advanced degree, writing a thesis on how to design a music-based nonprofit in India.

“His organization now attacks all elements of a musician’s life, from approaching event promoters to legal tutorials. The idea has always been to empower these musicians toward dignified livelihoods as opposed to giving them handouts, which is unsustainable. Many singers have broken down in tears listening to their playbacks because they couldn’t believe how beautiful they sound. …

“Having raised some $400,000 over the years from the likes of Google as well as author and philanthropist Sudha Murthy, Anahad is now developing its own music distribution system via an app that will allow artists to earn through streaming. …

“ ‘His compassion for artists is beautiful, with no sense of envy despite being a musician himself,’ says partner and Anahad managing director Shuchi Roy. ‘At the same time, he is very tactical in thought.’ Roy, who is a lawyer and has practiced in India’s Supreme Court, handles all copyright and intellectual property issues for the nonprofit.

“Like a musical score, Agrawal’s journey has had its highs and lows — his music society’s first-ever recording that is yet to be released because the lead singer died a week after recording; dealing with depression after returning to India from Berklee in 2016; and making it to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list last year. ‘Whenever I’m frustrated with work, I play my music and instantly feel better,’ he says. ‘Now I carry my guitar everywhere.’ ”

More at Ozy, here. There’s music on Spotify, here.

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Benin Artist’s Great-Grandson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 21, 2022| 6 Comments »

Photo: BBC.
Monday Aigbe standing alongside a statue of his great-grandfather, one of the sculptors of the famous Benin Bronzes.

You have probably heard that art museums around the world have started to return to Africa the bronze sculptures stolen from Benin. In today’s post we learn what the return of the bronzes means to the local people.

Mayeni Jones, the BBC’s Nigeria correspondent, reports, “On the bustling streets of Nigeria’s Benin City, residents cannot wait to get their Bronzes back — for them their return symbolizes reparations for some of the wrongs committed by British troops during the colonial era.

“A statue of a cockerel is one priceless artifact soon to be welcomed home, after Jesus College handed it over to a delegation from Nigeria at a ceremony at Cambridge University on Wednesday.

“It is one of thousands of metal sculptures and ivory carvings made between the 15th and 19th Centuries and looted by British troops in 1897 from the West African kingdom of Benin, in modern day Nigeria’s Edo state.

” ‘I feel happy that the work of my great-grandfather will be coming back to Benin,’ says Monday Aigbe, who, like his ancestor, is a sculptor. He runs a foundry in Benin City, the capital of Edo state, where his craftsmen work quietly on brass statues.

“The skilled workers fashion a myriad of shapes out of metal, including busts of the Oba — the title of the traditional king of Benin — as well as statues of animals and carved doors.

“They have been making bronzes here for six generations. In the middle of the foundry is a large statue of Mr Aigbe’s great-grandfather. He worked for Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi when the raid took place on the Royal Palace more than 120 years ago.

‘It makes me upset because they came, they destroyed the palace, they made my great-grandfather run from the city to the village,’ says Mr Aigbe.

“The loot was amongst the most valuable African artworks ever made — and was sold or gifted to private collectors and museums around the world.

“With more and more of the stolen artifacts expected back in Nigeria — [the] University of Aberdeen in Scotland will also be returning one of its Bronzes — Mr Aigbe plans to take his children to see them when they go on display.

“This will be at the Edo Museum of West African Art — a grand initiative by the governor of Edo state to house all the returned Benin Bronzes. The authorities say it will not be completed for at least five years – construction on the building, set to be designed by famous British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye, has yet to start. …

“The British government has argued that the Benin Bronzes ‘properly reside’ in the British Museum, which has the largest collection of them in the world — with more than 900 pieces. Hosting the ancient objects in London also ensures they are accessible to the world, the UK authorities say.

“But it is an argument that [Theophilus Umogbai, deputy director and curator of the National Museum Benin] takes exception to, saying that most Nigerians will never get to see them there given visa and travel costs. …

” ‘When I saw the Bronzes in the British Museum I was happy at first. Then that thought was replaced by the feeling that these objects were incongruously sitting where they shouldn’t be. They should be back home.’

“Twenty-eight-year-old artist Joe Obamina agrees — as he believes it is the past that inspires the future. In his sunlit studio in Benin City he makes pixellated paintings — inspired by his childhood spent indoors, playing Tetris. …

” ‘Each pixel is a continuous story. Besides the overall image, I tell other stories inside each cube,’ says Mr Obamina. …

“One painting depicts the Idia mask, one of the most famous Benin Bronzes. It is said to be a carving of the face of the mother of an oba from the first half of the 16th Century.

” ‘My painting of the Idia mask was inspired by the ongoing restitution of the Benin Bronzes,’ says Mr Obamina.

” ‘We grew up without seeing the actual mask, just the replicas. Our heritage has been scattered, so I had to paint something to depict that: the scattered heritage that is abroad. But nevertheless we still have our own identity and cultural practices. That’s why when you take a picture of it with your phone you can still see the mask in full.’ …

” ‘These artifacts being returned is going to mean a lot, because it will help me connect with my ancestors.’ “

More at the BBC, here. For another take and some additional pictures, check out a story by Sylvie Corbet and Thomas Adamson at the Associated Press (AP), here.

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Koalas Hiding Out

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 20, 2022| 11 Comments »

Photo: Daniel Norris via Unsplash.
Koalas, decimated by Australian bush fires in recent years, may be surviving at higher elevations than previously expected.

Researchers in Australia are trying to unravel a mystery about koalas in order to protect them. But some koalas may be doing OK on their own.

Michael E. Miller reports at the Washington Post that the scientists “had been stalking the remote, fire-scorched stretch of forest for an hour in the sizzling midday sun when Karen Marsh spotted something on the trunk of a tall mountain gum.

“ ‘Do you see all the claw marks?’ the ecologist asked a student research assistant, pointing to scratches in the wood above a blackened base. ‘Something definitely likes going up this tree.’

“Marsh peered up at the canopy of eucalyptus leaves, hoping to catch a glimpse of the animal she and a small team had spent weeks searching for — a koala. But one of Australia’s most iconic animals is getting harder to find.

“Two years ago, when bush fires supercharged by climate change killed or displaced an estimated 3 billion animals, thousands of koalas were among the dead. Between the blazes, drought, disease and deforestation, almost a third of the country’s koalas have disappeared since 2018, according to one conservation group. The federal government is weighing whether to label half the country’s koalas as endangered.

“The collapse is especially severe in New South Wales, where the bush fires destroyed 70 percent of some koala populations and a state inquiry warned that the species will probably go extinct before 2050 without urgent government intervention.

“Marsh and her colleagues had come to Kosciuszko National Park on a mission. For decades there had been speculation that koalas roamed its 1.7 million mountainous acres.

Now, with the 2019-2020 bush fires boosting funding and urgency, the scientists aimed to determine whether koalas were hiding in one of the country’s best-known wilderness areas.

“The discovery would do more than just increase the known number of koalas. It would also add to growing evidence that koalas can live at higher elevations, raising hopes that the marsupials might survive global warming better than feared.”

According to the Post, koalas were hunted nearly to extinction from the late 18th century to the early 20th. Even after hunting was outlawed, they “continued to suffer from a chlamydia epidemic and a habitat shortage as eucalyptus forests were paved for subdivisions. Although adapted to Australia’s frequent dry spells, the animals couldn’t cope with a climate-change-fueled drought in 2018 and 2019 that saw dehydrated koalas literally dropping from trees.

“Then came the Black Summer bush fires, which burned more than 20 percent of Australia’s forests. Marsh, a research fellow at Australian National University in Canberra, watched as the blaze roared to within a few hundred yards of her house. She and her colleagues began receiving calls from people who had rescued koalas, some badly singed but others simply emaciated.

“ ‘They were in awful condition,’ Marsh said of the roughly 30 koalas that ended up at the lab. As nocturnal animals, even a small rise in temperature can make koalas less hungry. But heat can also play havoc with a koala’s ability to break down the toxins in eucalyptus.

“While Marsh and her colleagues nursed the koalas back to health, they were pleased to see the notoriously picky eaters were able to consume some types of epicormic growth, the green shoots that sprout from burned eucalyptus trees and can be especially toxic. That enabled the researchers to release the animals into the scorched landscape a few months later. When they did, they were surprised to find that koalas that had survived in the bush were doing just as well.

“ ‘Essentially, they recovered by themselves in the wild,’ Marsh said, adding that the findings, though still provisional, suggest koalas that survive bush fires are less susceptible to starvation than feared. …

“Scientists have long speculated that the stunning wilderness surrounding Australia’s highest peak could harbor koalas, but a 1940 sighting was followed by decades of silence. Then, in 2016, a motorist spotted a male koala crossing a highway running through the park and snapped a picture. The incident sparked renewed interest, and in the past three years, National Parks cameras set up to detect invasive species such as foxes and deer in Kosciuszko have captured images of koalas on four occasions. …

“With the koala mating season ending this month, the researchers have only a few more weeks to search for the animals in Kosciuszko. But they are only now recording some of the most promising sites, and the first batch of audio files have already come back with lots of potential hits.” More at the Post, here.

Should we be worried that human activity, often the cause of devastation to the koala world, should be pushing into a sanctuary? Those humans better not be carrying anything flammable!

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Karen, a Burmese Language

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 19, 2022| 7 Comments »

Photo: Jaida Grey Eagle/Sahan Journal.
Remona Htoo, an immigrant from Mynamar (Burma), with her book My Little Legs at Como Lake in St. Paul, MN on January 13th, 2021. (Minnesota in January? She must be freezing!)

Since 2016, I’ve had the privilege of meeting people from vastly different cultures as I volunteer to help teachers in English as a Second Language classes, currently online.

Right now, I’m thinking of one woman who was originally from Myanmar (Burma) and who spent many years in a refugee camp in Thailand. She eventually landed in Rhode Island with her husband and children. It was there that I met her.

Myanmar is unfortunately known mostly for brutal military rule and suppression of rights activists and minorities. Among those minorities are the Karen people. I knew a little about them, but had not met any until the ESL class. There is good reason to believe that their language and culture are in danger of being lost, particularly as English becomes the primary language for their children.

Andrew Hazzard has a story on a Karen woman who decided to do something about that. The article was published at Sahan Journal, “the only independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit digital newsroom fully dedicated to providing authentic news reporting for and with immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota.”

Hazzard writes, “Remona Htoo didn’t have any children’s books growing up. Now, she’s publishing one of her own. 

“Htoo was born into a Karen family fleeing the civil war in Myanmar. She spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Thailand before her family resettled in Idaho, in 2007. At the time, the 12-year-old spoke no English. 

“Refugees don’t choose where in the U.S where they end up. A significant population of Karen people came to Minnesota, but only 20-odd families landed in Idaho, Htoo said. …

“While attending college at a small Christian university, she began taking trips to the Sawtooth Mountains, where she fell in love with the landscapes of mountains, pine trees, and clear lakes. 

“ ‘It was me trying to cope with stress, trying to cope with the trauma I had. It was a healing mechanism for me,’ Htoo said. 

“Ten years ago, she met a young Karen man online who lived in St. Paul: More than 17,000 Karen people live in the city and neighboring Maplewood. The two shared early childhood experiences in the refugee camps and struck up a relationship. Now, the two are married, with a 22-month-old daughter, Emma, and live in St. Paul’s east side. 

“Htoo, 27, began taking her daughter on outdoor adventures: backpacking and camping in the summer; and sledding in the winter. The family goes near and far to experience nature. … In the summer, the family hits the road to visit national parks like Glacier, in Montana. Emma has already seen 10 national parks — more than many adults. …

“ ‘After I became a mom, I realized there are no children’s books in Karen,’ she said. ‘I wanted to read a book in Karen for my daughter.’ 

“So, Htoo took action. She wrote and self-published My Little Legs, a book she said is about ‘being outdoors and what your little legs can do.’  Emma, her daughter, served as inspiration for the main character. She wears a traditional Karen shirt in the illustrations, created by local artist Mikayla Johnson. The book is bilingual, with English and Karen script. 

“There are very few children’s books, or books in general, published in Karen in the United States, and much of what exists originated in St. Paul. … St. Paul Public Library recognized the need for more Karen language literature. The library system has published three children’s books in Karen since 2015, according to spokesperson Stacy Optiz. The most recent is Children’s Stories, a collection of five traditional Karen folk stories, released in 2021.

“My Little Legs targets families with children ages 1–3. In compiling the tale, Htoo looked back at Emma’s own development milestones, like learning to crawl and walk. She also wanted to create an outdoor adventure story that featured southeast Asian characters, and to inspire a curiosity about the Karen people for other American readers. 

“ ‘I don’t think people think we are the outdoor type,’ Htoo said. 

“People of color make up about 20 percent of Minnesota’s population, but only 5 percent of state park users, according to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources data. Many Minnesotans of color feel isolated in outdoor spaces. In response, groups like BIPOC Outdoors Twin Cities emerged, where people can find diverse friends to hit the trails or go fishing.” 

Readers can order Htoo’s book by emailing NawHaChu@gmail.com. More at Sahan Journal, here.

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