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Deciphering Ancient Board Games

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 5, 2021| 7 Comments »

Photo: Goban1.
The Chinese game called Go is more than 2,500 years old.

This past summer, I blogged about a new board game called Wingspan. It sounded wonderful, especially for bird lovers, like those in my family. I bought it.

Well, I think it is going to be wonderful, but the rules are really hard. Recommended for people over 14, it is still too “buch for be, “as Rudyard Kipling’s Elephant’s Child says.

Fortunately, it’s not too much for my 9-year-old grandson, who is gradually figuring it out and explaining it. Otherwise, I might have had to call on artificial intelligence experts, like those described in today’s story.

Samantha HuiQi Yow explains at Wired: “In 1901, on an excavation trip to Crete, British archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed items he believed belonged to a royal game dating back millennia: a board fashioned out of ivory, gold, silver, and rock crystals, and four conical pieces nearby, assumed to be the tokens. Playing it, however, stumped Evans, and many others after him who took a stab at it. There was no rulebook, no hints, and no other copies have ever been found. Games need instructions for players to follow. Without any, the Greek board’s function remained unresolved—that is, until recently.

“Enter artificial intelligence and a group of researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Thanks to an algorithm the team used to analyze the playability of one suggested ruleset, the century-old guesswork could soon be taken out of the Knossos game. Today, not only can its recognition as a game be further assessed, with hopes of a clearer answer in future, a version of it is also playable online.  And for the first time, so are hundreds of other games thought to have been lost to history.

“Board games go back a long way. Centuries ago, before the chess we know today, there was Chaturanga in India, Shogi in Japan, and Xiangqi in China. And long before them was Senet, one of the earliest known games, which, along with others played in ancient Egypt, may have ultimately inspired backgammon. ‘Games are social lubricants,’ explains Cameron Browne, a computer scientist at the university who received his PhD in AI and game design. ‘Even if two cultures don’t speak the same language, they can exchange play. This happened throughout history. Wherever people spread to, wherever soldiers were stationed, wherever merchants were trading. Anyone who had time to kill would often teach those around them the games they knew.’ …

“[But] the rules were typically passed on by word of mouth instead of being written down. The little that is known is left open to modern interpretation.

“It’s these lapses in board game history that gave legs to the five-year Digital Ludeme Project, which Browne leads. ‘Games are a great cultural resource that’s been largely underutilized. We don’t even know how so many of them were played, especially when you go farther back in time,’ he says. ‘So the question for me was, can we use modern AI techniques to shed insight into how these ancient games were played and, together with the evidence available, help reconstruct them?’

“As it turns out, the answer is a resounding yes. It’s been three years since Browne and his colleagues set to work, and already they have brought nearly a thousand board games online, ranging from across three time periods and nine regions. Thanks to them, games once popular in the second and first millennia BC, like 58 holes, are now just a few clicks away for anyone on the internet.

“Interestingly enough, this reconstruction process begins with the opposite. Games are first broken down into fundamental units of information called ludemes, which refers to elements of play such as the number of players, movement of pieces, or criteria to win. Once a game is codified in this manner, the team then fills in the missing pages of its rulebook with the help of relevant historical information, like when it or another game with similar ludemes was played and by whom.

“The riddle however is only partly solved at this stage. Others who do similar work–manually–usually hit a dead end here. It’s because what looks good on paper might not translate as well in reality, Browne explains. ‘The rules might make sense when you read them, but you don’t know how well they actually work unless you play the game. Quite often, rules that make perfect sense play terribly as games.’ …

“But computers can have blind spots too, in that they only measure what’s measurable. Here’s where Walter Crist comes in.” More at Wired, here.

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“Culture Pass” for French Teens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 4, 2021| 8 Comments »

France is experimenting with giving free money to kids to spend on culture. Most are buying media they already like, not high art, but maybe that’s OK.

Aurelien Breeden presents the controversy at the New York Times. “When the French government launched a smartphone app that gives 300 euros (about $348) to every 18-year-old in the country for cultural purchases like books and music, or exhibition and performance tickets, most young people’s impulse wasn’t to buy Proust’s greatest works or to line up and see Molière.

“Instead, France’s teenagers flocked to manga.

“ ‘It’s a really good initiative,’ said Juliette Sega, who lives in a small town in southeastern France and has used €40 (about $47) to buy Japanese comic books and ‘The Maze Runner,’ a dystopian novel. …

“As of this month, books represented over 75 percent of all purchases made through the app since it was introduced nationwide in May — and roughly two-thirds of those books were manga, according to the organization that runs the app, called the Culture Pass.

“The French news media has written of a ‘manga rush,‘ fueled by a ‘manga pass‘ — observations that came via a slightly distorted lens, since the app arrived just as theaters, cinemas and music festivals, emerging from pandemic-related restrictions, had less to offer. And manga were already wildly popular in France.

“But the focus on comic books reveals a subtle tension at the heart of the Culture Pass’s design, between the almost total freedom it affords it young users — including to buy the mass media they already love — and its architects’ aim of guiding users toward lesser-known and more highbrow arts. …

“Teenagers can buy physical goods from bookstores, record shops and arts supply or instrument stores. They can purchase tickets to movie showings, plays, concerts or museum exhibits. And they can sign up for dance, painting or drawing classes.

“Noël Corbin, a Culture Ministry official who oversees the project, said the pass gave France’s newly minted adults a way of looking up nearby cultural offerings — the app has a geolocation feature — and encouraged them to indulge their cultural passions.

“But it also uses incentives to push teenagers toward new, more challenging art forms, he said. … Those include recommendation lists curated by Culture Pass staff members and by popular artists and celebrities, as well as access to V.I.P. events, like a live-streamed concert at the Soulages Museum in southern France and a behind-the-scenes look at the Avignon theater festival. …

“Jean-Michel Tobelem, an associate professor at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne who specializes in the economics of culture, said that it was a laudable effort but that it would largely benefit the mainstream media. …

“There is nothing wrong with pop music or blockbusters, he stressed, acknowledging that ‘you can enter Korean culture through K-Pop and then discover that there is a whole cinema, a literature, painters and composers that go with it.’ But Tobelem said that he was unconvinced that the no-strings-attached approach of the Culture Pass would do that. …

“Naza Chiffert, who runs two independent bookstores in Paris, said the Culture Pass had already had a positive impact on her business. ‘Getting young people who read but who are more used to Amazon or big-box stores to come to us isn’t easy,’ she said, but now she has teenagers in her stores every day.

“Still, some worry that the pass will be a financial windfall for people from privileged backgrounds while doing little to help others expand their cultural horizons. …

“Opponents accuse Macron of throwing cash at young people to court their vote before next year’s presidential election and choosing an unregulated approach instead of funding existing cash-strapped outreach programs, like those run by youth community centers, that broaden access to culture in a more structured way.

“France’s Culture Ministry counters that it plans to introduce the pass to middle-school students, first in a teacher-managed classroom setting, and gradually increasing amounts of autonomy and money, until students reach 18. It also says the pass enables cultural institutions to reach young audiences, which are usually hard to attract, directly on their smartphones. …

“Gabriel Tiné, an 18-year-old osteopathy student in Paris, has spent over €200 from his pass at Citeaux Sphère, a Parisian record store, where he and a friend were thumbing through vinyls on a recent afternoon. … Tiné said he liked the idea, especially the ability to splurge on musical instruments or art classes.

“ ‘I wouldn’t say no to attending a jazz concert or something like that,’ Tiné said, although he added that the app hadn’t enticed him to buy those tickets.”

More at the Times, here.

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Filling a Void in Lebanon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 3, 2021| 10 Comments »

Photo: Marwan Naamani/picture alliance/Getty Images
Amelia at the Christian Science Monitor says, “As its economy and government collapse, Lebanon has become almost unrecognizable to its own people. Now, they are rallying around each other.”

When corrupt leadership creates a failed state, ordinary people may step up.

Taylor Luck has the story of Lebanon’s struggle today.

“Each day for Safa is the same: a race for a solution. Her husband, a construction worker, has been without work for six months. The two now worry about how to make their nearly bare cupboard – and the $30 in their bank account – stretch to make their next month’s rent. Her children skip one to two meals per day.

“ ‘We have no government, no services, no electricity, no currency, no hope,’ says Safa, who did not wish to use her full name. ‘Who can we even turn to?’

“It is a question being faced by many Lebanese: What happens when a state fails, and no one is there to help?

“In Lebanon – in the midst of what the World Bank is calling the worst economic collapse the world has seen since 1850, and in the aftermath of the third-largest nonnuclear explosion in human history – people are finding hope as scarce as the medicines and baby formula disappearing from store shelves.

Yet some are finding solace in leaning on one another, and, thanks to civil society groups that are refusing to give up, strength to make it through another day. …

“ ‘No one is coming to save us,’ says Beirut resident Rayan Khatoun.

“Her response, starting two years ago, was to help found a grassroots network that identifies the needs of vulnerable Lebanese families and launches fundraising appeals on social media.

“With support from the Lebanese diaspora abroad, the network, called All of Us, has helped hundreds of families, providing rent money to keep some off the streets, and providing others with dry food staples whose shelf life is unaffected by electricity cuts. …

“The collapse of Lebanon’s economy and the decline of government services have been a work in progress for years, the product of worsening political gridlock and corruption among competing sectarian elites.

“What began as a very visible failure to deliver basic services, such as trash collection, worsened as the country defaulted on its international debt and the economy crumbled. A grassroots protest movement two years ago sprang up to demand systemic political change, even before the pandemic and the devastating blast at the Port of Beirut destroyed for many Lebanese the last shreds of government function or accountability. …

“Lebanon has now become unrecognizable to its people. Beirut and most of Lebanon are in darkness. Out of cash, the national electricity provider turned off its generators completely [in October]. In the best of times, it provides one to two hours of electricity per day. …

“As the Lebanese say, ‘The surprises just keep coming.’ … It now costs more than 300,000 Lebanese pounds – nearly half the monthly minimum wage – for 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of gasoline. …

“ ‘Our coping mechanism is to make fun of the situation, slave the next day just to survive, come back home and rest a little,’ says Ms. Khatoun. ‘People just don’t have the energy to be angry.’

“The economic crisis is felt by all classes, but is crushing the working class. … [But] the fact that Lebanese’s misery is caused by financial and government mismanagement, rather than by earthquakes or war, makes it a tough sell to donor countries, many of whom insist that Lebanon stand on its own feet. …

“To help compensate for a failing government social safety net, the World Food Program is providing food parcels to 100,000 of the most vulnerable families across Lebanon, and modest cash assistance to 1.6 million people. …

“Unlike in previous crises, wealthy Gulf Arab states, the international community, and even Iran are not coming to Lebanon’s rescue with big-ticket bailouts. Instead, Lebanese are stepping up themselves, trying to do good where they can with rapidly dwindling resources. …

“Volunteers soldier on also at Embrace, a mental health care group whose emotional support and suicide prevention hotline, Lifeline, has become a critical service in the wake of last year’s port blast. …

“[But] dozens of Embrace’s volunteers have left Lebanon because they too, exhausted, can no longer afford life in the country. Embrace is already training the next batch of staff. … Says Rêve Romanos, a clinical supervisor and psychotherapist at Embrace. ‘Hopelessness is a recurrent theme for all of us.’

“But small things can help people cope, Dr. Romanos says. ‘Sometimes, just being able to vent, talk it out, and have someone listen can make a difference.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Art & Nature, Nature & Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 2, 2021| 9 Comments »

There were quite a lot of opportunities for photos on sunny October days this year, and I’m not even counting funny pictures from Halloween in Providence, where one grandchild was Harry Potter, another was Princess Aurora, Suzanne was the Fairy Godmother from Disney’s Cinderella, and Erik had turned into a vampire after getting vaccinated (as some would have you believe).

I didn’t get to see my young Captain Marvel and her scary brother the Mummy in person. Fortunately, their mom sent a dramatic action shot.

I do try to be a bit restrained with family photos on social media, so today I will show you other shots I’ve collected. The photo above is of a kind of mandala that a Providence resident is in the process of creating near Blackstone Park. She encourages passersby to add something. I added more red leaves.

On the library lawn back home, I got to see Dr. Seuss’s famous Thing One and Thing Two and Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar. There was also a “walking” book, consisting of signs showing page spreads. The current choice is The Water Protectors, by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade (illustrator).

My husband had been reading about Ralph Waldo Emerson — particularly about the influence that Quaker thinker George Fox had on him — and so decided it was high time to visit Emerson’s house. Among other things we learned was the fact that in the early 1800s, people didn’t know that tuberculosis was contagious. Emerson’s first wife died of it at age 18. Also, the original Emerson family still owns the home. It’s a rather dark and gloomy place, though. I preferred the recently restored barn and took a picture there.

Moving right along, I have art for you from the Umbrella. The two pieces of door art are “Pop Art on the Trail,” by Howie Green, and “Remember the Future,” by Amy Cramer.

Then there’s the art center’s fabulous annual Art Ramble in the Hapgood Wright Town Forest, which I generally hold off on visiting until the first frost kills off the mosquitoes that breed in Fairyland Pond.

The Shibori hanging series, “Windblown,” is by Kiyomi Yatsuhashi. The beautiful Luna Moth Life Cycle is by Jude Griffin. The lungs of the forest are depicted by Barbara Ayala Rugg Diehl (BARD) in a work called “In and Out.”

The next photo shows Lisa Nelson’s “Waves of the Aerial Sea.” And last but not least is a huge dragonfly, or “Ethereal Dreamer,” by Laurie Bogdan and Kimberley Harding.

Thanks for joining me in New England.

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Refugees in Greece Get a Library

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 1, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: Book Aid.
Says Book Aid International, “With very little to do in the camps, many [refugees] enjoy coming to the library to read.“

Having learned from the Guardian in early 2020 how Greek refugees were enjoying the services of a mobile library, I was happy to find a post from this year that says it’s still going — despite Covid challenges.

Book Aid reports, “ECHO is a mobile library based in Athens, Greece. Founded in the summer of 2016, its mission is to provide people seeking asylum with books, learning resources and a shared community space whilst they live in the camps. …

“We spoke to one of the coordinators of ECHO, Becka, about the library, the people who use it and the ways it impacts the many lives it reaches. 

People often say, ‘If the library wasn’t there, people would still be living,’ and yes, they’d be alive, but they’d be existing.

“ ‘The educational services within the camps are extremely limited, the WiFi is patchy or non-existent and these camps are not safe places. There is no neutral community space, nowhere you can just relax that’s warm and comfortable, like a library. If we wanted to set up permanent library spaces it would be extremely challenging, so we bring in our lending library service once a week. Even though it’s just once a week and it’s an outside space, which isn’t ideal, we have a rug for children and we have spaces for adults so people come to us to relax and learn. 

” ‘There’s very little to look forward to in these camps, and one of the very few things you can actually do is sit and read a book, either for study or for the sake of exploring a different world. With the pandemic affecting our access to the camps, it’s clear that people notice when we’re not there. Covid-19 has exacerbated a situation which was already very bad. …

” ‘Thanks to Book Aid International, English books are fortunately one of our less stressful things. These are one of our most used resources because they support people who are learning English. Greek is a very challenging language, and not everyone living in the camps will settle in Greece for life.

” ‘There is no effective long-term integration programme or much holistic support for refugees. Most people imagine Greece as a sort of stopping off point; so learning English can be a useful tool for the future. It’s part of building up self-reliance and self-confidence to be able to support yourself in a new life in Europe. Without access to books that becomes really difficult.

” ‘For many people, like young mothers, grappling with the alphabet and being able to start to have basic conversations in English can be extremely empowering. It’s almost like repairing that sense of “I am capable, even in really terrible situations, of taking control of my own learning to benefit me and my children for the future.” …

” ‘People like new books… who doesn’t!? It makes a difference seeing something that is not battered and torn. It’s like, “this is for me. Everything else in this camp and this life is old and horrible. But here is a new book that they brought for me to use.”  

“I think people often say, “If the library wasn’t there, people would still be living,” and yes, they’d be alive, but they’d be existing. For our library users and friends in the camps, books are invaluable.’ ”

Read more at Book Aid, here, and at the Guardian, here.

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Pumpkins and More

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 31, 2021| 5 Comments »

Huge selection of pumpkins and gourds at Wilson Farm, Lexington, Massachusetts.

Most people regard Halloween as simple fun — a moment to indulge in humanity’s playful side. That’s especially true for the very young, if not for the gruesome-looking teens or mischief makers. I always love seeing the littlest ones in their Spider-Man, Snow White, or witch costumes,

But even the creepy stuff is sometimes fun. I went trick-or-treating with John when he was 10, and we loved being startled by what we thought was a bundle of old clothes on the Dallas family’s front steps when it suddenly started moaning.

Back at the house, I would usually put on Halloween-ish records and turn up the volume: “Night on Bald Mountain,” “The Ride of the Valkyries,” a pre-Cats version of TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (narrated in a spooky voice by Robert Donat), and the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross song below, “Halloween Spooks.” Not sure anyone else listened to that background music, but it always got me in the mood.

Nowadays, we alternate between John’s neighborhood Halloween and Suzanne’s. Since we went to his in 2019 and did nothing in the pandemic, we will be with our younger grandson and granddaughter today.

Enjoy a few pre-Halloween photos from around these parts.

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Demand for Vinyl Records

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 30, 2021| 7 Comments »

I love my vinyl records and can easily understand the renewed demand for them. They’re so popular, there isn’t enough vinyl or pressing equipment to create all the new ones wanted right now. I sympathize, but what should I do with my anti-plastic concerns? Buying vintage is always a good solution for getting products that don’t hurt the environment, but new bands can hardly use vintage vinyl.

Ben Sisario wrote recently at the New York Times about the challenges.

“Within the Indianapolis office of Joyful Noise Recordings, a specialty label that caters to vinyl-loving fans of underground rock, is a corner that employees call the ‘lathe cave.’ There sits a Presto 6N record lathe — a 1940s-vintage machine the size of a microwave that makes records by cutting a groove into a blank vinyl platter. Unlike most standard records, which are pressed by the hundreds or thousands, each lathe-cut disc must be created individually.

‘It’s incredibly laborious,’ said Karl Hofstetter, the label’s founder. ‘If a song is three minutes long, it takes three minutes to make every one.’

“This ancient technology — scuffed and dinged, the lathe looks like something from a World War II submarine — is a key part of Joyful Noise’s strategy to survive the very surge of vinyl popularity the label has helped fuel. Left for dead with the advent of CDs in the 1980s, vinyl records are now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format, with fans choosing it for collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality. After growing steadily for more than a decade, LP sales exploded during the pandemic.

“In the first six months of this year, 17 million vinyl records were sold in the United States, generating $467 million in retail revenue, nearly double the amount from the same period in 2020, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. …

“Yet there are worrying signs that the vinyl bonanza has exceeded the industrial capacity needed to sustain it. Production logjams and a reliance on balky, decades-old pressing machines have led to what executives say are unprecedented delays. A couple of years ago, a new record could be turned around in a few months; now it can take up to a year, wreaking havoc on artists’ release plans.

“Kevin Morby, a singer-songwriter from Kansas City, Kan., said that his latest LP, ‘A Night at the Little Los Angeles,’ barely arrived in time to sell on his fall tour. And he is one of the lucky ones. Artists from the Beach Boys to Tyler, the Creator have seen their vinyl held up recently. …

“For Joyful Noise, the vinyl crunch has also presented a puzzling problem. Up to 500 V.I.P. customers pay the label $200 a year for special editions of every LP it makes. But the production holdups mean the label cannot predict which titles will be ready during 2022. …

“The label’s solution is to make lathe-cut singles for each of the eight albums it intends to release next year, as placeholder bonuses while its customers wait. Doing so will cost Joyful Noise money and time — Hofstetter groaned as we calculated that eight records with five minutes of music per side, cut 500 times each, would take 666 hours of lathe work — but the label sees it as a necessary investment. …

“The pandemic shut down many plants for a time, and problems in the global supply chain have slowed the movement of everything from cardboard and polyvinyl chloride — the ‘vinyl’ that records (and plumbing pipes) are made from — to finished albums. In early 2020, a fire destroyed one of only two plants in the world that made lacquer discs, an essential part of the record-making process.

“But the bigger issue may be simple supply and demand. Consumption of vinyl LPs has grown much faster than the industry’s ability to make records. …

“ ‘What worries me more than anything is that the major labels will dominate and take over all of the capacity, which I don’t think is a good idea,’ said Rick Hashimoto of Record Technology Inc., a midsize plant in Camarillo, Calif., that works with many indie labels. Others say the big labels are just a convenient target. The real problem, they believe, isn’t celebrities jumping on the vinyl bandwagon but that the industrial network simply has not expanded quickly enough to meet growing demand.

“ ‘Am I mad that Olivia Rodrigo sold 76,000 vinyl copies of her album?’ said Ben Blackwell of Third Man, the record label and vinyl empire that counts Jack White of the White Stripes as one of its founders. ‘Not at all! This is what I would have dreamed of when we started Third Man — that the biggest frontline artists are all pushing vinyl, and that young kids are into it. If someone is mad that that prevents some other title from being pressed,’ Blackwell continued, ‘it feels a little bit elitist and gatekeep-y.’ “

More at the Times, here.

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Making Next-Wave Cambodian Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 29, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: Laura Mam.
The artist’s mother writes the Cambodian lyrics. It makes her feel like a teenager again. She says, “This is what I would have wanted to be, you know, be silly, be brave,”

In today’s story, a pop star of Cambodian heritage stumbles on the fun of sharing her parents’ language with audiences hungry for a contemporary vibe.

Quinn Libson reported the story for National Public Radio (NPR) in February 2020.

“Laura Mam is one of Cambodia’s biggest pop stars, but she wasn’t born or raised in the country. She’s American, and even though both of her parents are originally from Cambodia, she hardly spoke a word of the country’s language, Khmer, when she first became famous there.

“Laura’s fame happened almost by accident. It all started 10 years ago, at her mother’s house in San Jose, Calif. It was Christmas Eve and Laura was home after graduating with a degree in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.

” ‘I had been writing music and my mom was kind of interested in what I was doing. I think I went to her room and I was playing this song. I was like “Hey mom, could you write lyrics in Khmer on top of it?” ‘ Laura says. …

” ‘The first song, I didn’t understand what I was doing and I didn’t know how to rhyme,’ Thida says.

“But Thida gave it a try, and it turned out she had a knack for it. They called the song ‘Pka proheam rik popreay,’ which means ‘morning flower is beautifully blossoming.’ A few months later, Laura and some friends made a music video and uploaded the song to YouTube, not expecting much.

“The morning after the music video went live, they woke up to a big surprise. The video had reached 75,000 views in the course of a single night. But it wasn’t just about the numbers. The viewers’ reactions stunned them.

” ‘The comments were all just like “Yes! Original Cambodian music, oh my god!” ‘ Laura remembers. The comments came streaming in from all over the world. …

” ‘I was from Phnom Penh. And when I was growing up the music scene was huge. During that time there were all these new artists writing all these new sounds, new music,’ [Thida] says.

“This was the early 1970s and Cambodia was in the middle of a music renaissance. … While most fathers at the time might have discouraged their young daughters from diving headfirst into Phnom Penh’s music landscape, Thida’s father was different. …

“Thida says. ‘It was a beautiful childhood I had here in Phnom Penh until the war.’

“[In] the background of Thida’s childhood, bombing campaigns by the United States as part of the Vietnam war and political upheaval meant Cambodia was growing more and more unstable. And in the countryside, a radical Marxist insurgent group — the Khmer Rouge — was steadily amassing power. …

“Educated, urban families like Thida’s were considered politically suspect and were forced to live under intense scrutiny in regime-controlled villages.

” ‘As a child, I was wild,’ Thida says. ‘And then [during] the Khmer Rouge, I had to shut down the feeling. It’s as if there’s a lid put on top of something that bubble[s].’ … When the Vietnamese army swept through Cambodia in 1979, Thida’s family fled across the border to a camp in Thailand. And in 1980, when Thida was 19, she and her family came to California as refugees.

“Thida wanted her children to grow up feeling fully American — Laura and her younger brother had American friends and spoke English at home — but at the same time, Thida found ways to weave bits of Cambodia into their lives. Much of that revolved around music. …

“The Khmer Rouge had targeted and killed musicians. … The Cambodian music industry that came after had been shaped by that grim reality. The result was a country whose airwaves were flooded with cheaply produced, karaoke-style covers.

” ‘There was no pride in that kind of music for me,’ says Laura. Thida agrees. … ‘We were longing for something of our own. It’s a quiet longing.’

“The global reaction to the song they wrote showed Laura and Thida they weren’t the only Cambodians who felt that way. So they wrote more. … The process wasn’t always easy. For Thida, helping Laura transform her lyrics from English to Khmer often meant not just translating words, but translating culture as well. …

‘I would write these very American songs with such American attitude and then my mom would have to translate it into this really good girl who doesn’t break any of the rules and just loves with all the poetry of her heart,’ Laura says.

“But they got better at melding their points of view, and Laura’s fame in Cambodia started to grow. But fame alone wasn’t the goal: For both women, the real mission was to foster a more creative Cambodian music industry. To do that, Laura saw she’d have to leave California behind. …

“Moving to Cambodia opened Laura’s eyes to what was happening behind the scenes of the country’s music industry. ‘Once I got here, it was realizing that it’s not that people can’t do original music, it’s that they aren’t allowed to. [Karaoke] houses were like “No, you can’t do original music because that would be only one album a year and I need to sell 12 to 25.” ‘

Read more about this mother-daughter success story and why they created their own production company, here.

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In the Time of Silly Rhymes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 28, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: Maxpixel.net.
When Suzanne got Basil as a kitten, he looked a lot like this.

I hesitate to do a post about the rhymes I made when my children were small because there are several actual poets who read the blog. I have no aspirations in the poetical line.

What got me on the train of thought, though, was a memory I had the other day about the cat we once had, Basil.

I remembered how when the kids were young, if they were bored or restless, I sometimes said out of the blue, “Let’s pretend Basil is a fox.”

That always stopped them in their tracks. I mean, how does one pretend a cat is a fox in the first place? The kids were usually able to find something to entertain themselves after that break in the mood.

I liked to make up silly rhymes about Basil. There was a counting rhyme that still comes into my head sometimes when I count. And there was this one:

Basil, Basil, you’re a cat
Never try denying that.
Stand up for your kitty mother,
Turn your back on no cat brother.
When the cat god calls your name,
Let there be no cause for blame.
Future generations all
Will praise the cat who heard the call.

Then there was an attempt at lyrics to be sung in winter to the tune of “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.”

What is the reason that we’re all freezin’
And the birdbath is filled with ice?
Why does my Omni go sideways down the street?
Why do my children wear baggies on their feet?

What normal fellow whose brains aren’t Jello
Would keep fighting this cold war?
What is the reason that we’re all freezin’,
And what did we move here for?

The music teacher that Suzanne had in elementary school actually used that one in a class.

Suzanne’s friend Joanna was amused by the goofy ending of this one back in the ’80s:

Think how lovely it would be
Living always by the sea,
Eating muffins with your tea.
And jam.

Finally, I offer a nonsense poem called a double dactyl. (A dactyl is a rhythm with a hard stress first, followed by two light ones, as in the name “BEV-er-ly.”)

I just had to try it out after reading an entertaining book by the real poets John Hollander and Anthony Hecht. The form is described in the encyclopedia Britannica, which says in part, “One line in the second stanza must consist of a single word. According to the introduction to Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (1967), edited by the poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, this single word should appear ‘somewhere in the poem, though preferably in the second stanza, and ideally in the antepenultimate line,’ though that ambivalence has, for some, hardened into a rule that the word must appear in the poem’s sixth line. (Jiggery-Pokery credits Hecht, the scholar Paul Pascal, and Naomi Pascal, his wife, with having invented the form over lunch in Rome in 1951.)”

If I remember correctly, my double dactyl went as follows below. (I had to look up the Greek word, which means “rosy-fingered.” I used to know such things, and double dactyl rules encourage throwing in other languages.)

Higgledy-piggledy
Fabius Maximus
Waiting for Hannibal
Wasn’t a dope.

Dixit the Cunctator
Demosthenistically
Dawn ῥοδοδάκτυλος
Always brings hope.

l sent it to Hecht, who had a teaching job not far from our home at the time, and he liked it. I think because it followed all the rules.

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Giant Puppet Strides Across Europe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 27, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock.
A giant puppet representing migrant children, Little Amal, has crossed Europe “on foot” from Syria. She is seen here in Antwerp, Belgium.

‘We’re not politicians, we’re saying to people: remember refugees are people. We hope that the memory of this odd, beautiful child walking through a village or city or over the mountains helps change the weather a little bit.’

I liked this visceral approach to helping those of us who have no need to migrate to feel the humanity of those who do.

Harriet Sherwood wrote about the idea at the Guardian in September, “The transcontinental odyssey of Little Amal will begin its final stage this week when the giant puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl reaches the shores of the UK after walking thousands of miles across Europe.

“Bells will chime and choirs will sing as Little Amal appears on the beach on Tuesday in Folkestone, Kent, after making the same cross-Channel journey that has been taken so far this year by more than 17,000 people seeking refuge from conflict, hunger and persecution. …

“ ‘It’s been challenging, it’s been difficult at times, but it’s also been amazing and incredible,’ said David Lan, one of the producers of The Walk, who has been ‘on this journey right from the beginning three years ago, and on every step of the way’ since Little Amal left Gaziantep near the Turkish-Syrian border at the end of July.

“The idea of Little Amal’s journey in search of her missing mother evolved from The Jungle, a highly acclaimed play about young refugees in a camp near Calais that opened at the Young Vic in London in 2017. The play’s producers, the Good Chance theatre company plus Lan, Stephen Daldry and Tracey Seaward, came up with the idea of taking its message of displacement, loss, dignity and hope to villages, towns and cities across Europe.

“Little Amal, whose name means hope in Arabic, was created by Handspring, the company that made the equine puppets in War Horse. She stands 3.5 metres (11ft 5in) tall and is operated by a team of eight puppeteers working shifts to control her legs, arms and facial features. …

“Since leaving Gaziantep, Little Amal and her entourage of about 25 people have navigated Covid border requirements to cross from Turkey to Greece and then through Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France to the UK.

“Along the way, they have taken part in concerts, parties and workshops. In Rome, Little Amal was blessed by Pope Francis. In many places, thousands of local people have walked with her through their town or village.

“But the most powerful connections had been with refugees, said Lan. ‘People who are marginalised, shoved to the side, see a representative of themselves or their children centre-stage and being celebrated. That’s very moving.’

“Only in one place has the welcome been less than warm. In Kalambaka, a village in northern Greece, which is home to ancient Greek Orthodox monasteries built into rocks, the village council decided not to receive a ‘Muslim doll from Syria,’ as the mayor described Amal. ‘It’s distressing, but it’s how the world is,’ said Lan.

“In London, Little Amal will celebrate her 10th birthday on Sunday 24 October at a party at the V&A. Children from all over the capital have been invited to join in musical performances and workshops. Yotam Ottolenghi is coordinating a team of chefs to create a giant birthday cake consisting of several hundred cupcakes in a rainbow of colours and flavours.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Polar Bear Hybrid

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 26, 2021| 5 Comments »

Photo: Philippe Clement/Getty Images.
“Pizzly” bears have a physical appearance that is a mix of grizzly and polar bears.

I love the environmental radio show Living on Earth, and I’m grateful that they post transcripts of programs even though natural speech requires a lot of editing. One thing I try to edit out is every “So” at the start of a sentence. When did we start doing that? I first noticed the verbal tic in 2005 at a new job. When did you?

From Living on Earth …

“HOST BOBBY BASCOMB: The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on earth, it actually rained on the Greenland ice sheet in August for the first time ever. And sea ice recently reached its minimum extent for 2021. It was the 12th lowest amount of ice since scientists began keeping records. And for the endangered polar bear, a warming Arctic is bad news. With their habitat melting, polar bears are having trouble finding food. At the same time grizzly bears are moving north and, in some cases, mating with polar bears, creating a hybrid animal known as a pizzly bear. Larisa DeSantis is a paleontologist and associate professor of biology who studies pizzly bears at Vanderbilt University. …

“How do these hybrids compare with the parent species of grizzly and polar bears?

“LARISA DESANTIS: A pizzly bear is essentially an intermediate between these two. It’s a hybrid species, and it’s actually fertile. … Polar bears tend to have really elongated skulls. And this is because they’re really well suited for being able to hunt seals in sea ice. [They] get into those holes and effectively hunt those seals. The grizzlies have much shorter skulls, and they’re able to exude really high bite forces to be able to eat really hard foods when needed. And so essentially, this pizzly is intermediate between those two, you can also see that their coloration is sort of intermediate. [They’re] a bit lighter in coloration than a grizzly, but darker in coloration than a polar bear. … They’re better swimmers than grizzlies, not as good as polar bears. [As] we’re dealing with a warming Arctic, we really don’t know how these pizzlies will do in the future, and they may be better suited for the warming Arctic than the polar bear.

“BASCOMB: Now, many hybrid species, like ligers, or mules, are sterile and can’t produce offspring themselves. But I think you just said that pizzly bears actually can reproduce. Does that make them their own species? …

“DESANTIS: The polar bear and the grizzly bear are really sort of a unique situation. They diverged roughly around 500,000 or 600,000 years ago. They’re pretty closely related to one another in the grand scheme of things. And they also look quite different from one another, right? These are different bears, we know they’re different species. They do completely different things in their ecosystems. They’re of different ecological niches, for example. … But you’re absolutely right, you know, they can produce these fertile hybrids, that’s really interesting. And we know that it’s actually able to persist. …

“BASCOMB: So then would you say pizzly bears are their own species?

“DESANTIS: I wouldn’t go that far. They are a hybrid. And hybrids occur pretty frequently in nature. And typically we see hybridization occurring, you know, over and over and over in particular regions where two different species are coming together. And so it’s not surprising that we see hybrids of these two bears, especially since they’re closely related. And this is because essentially, the brown bears, the grizzly bears, are moving north due to Arctic warming. The polar bears are actually having to retreat from the sea ice, the lack of sea ice, and they’re having to come further inland and often travel further south or look for other food resources. [New studies show] that they’re trying to eat [seabird] eggs. …

“This elongated skull [is] not well suited to eating just sort of any type of food source, right? It actually has biomechanical constraints that prevent it from, you know, eating really hard things. And so it’s sort of having to scavenge potentially, to find different food resources. It’ll find these bowhead whale carcass sites, that’s where the grizzly bears can also be as well. And they’re coming into increased contact and occasionally mating. …

“BASCOMB: With polar bear populations declining so dramatically with the loss of sea ice, and with climate change, as you were just saying, how likely is it that they will ultimately be replaced by pizzly bears or even grizzly bears if it gets much, much warmer? And for that matter, how would a different apex predator in the Arctic affect the whole ecosystem?

“DESANTIS: [We] really don’t know the answer to that. But what we need to do is actually monitor the polar bears, continue to monitor grizzlies, and also monitor these pizzlies, and see how they do. So as I mentioned, hybrids normally aren’t better suited than either parent species, right? But in this case, with the environment changing, they may be our hope for an Arctic bear. And what we do know about predators across the globe, and through time is that apex predators especially are really key to the functioning of ecosystems, right. This is why wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, because the elk populations were sort of out of control, wreaking havoc on the vegetation, things were out of balance. [The pizzly] may give us hope for an Arctic bear in a world in which we have Arctic warming.”

More at Living on Earth, here.

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Ithaca Decarbonizes Buildings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2021| 11 Comments »

Photo: benedek/Getty Images.
Downtown Ithaca, New York. The city has a plan to lower the climate footprint of thousands of buildings across the city.

My family is trying to disentangle itself from fossil fuels. Too slowly, I fear. I have a hybrid car, and my husband has been working with an electrician to change out the gas stove for an electric one. Suzanne and Erik are looking into electric for cooking, too. John has an all-electric car and solar panels on the roof.

The thing is, I’m sure I would have started this process much sooner if I had realized earlier that gas was bad. I’ve been in my current home nearly 40 years, and I assure you that 40 years ago, I hadn’t a clue.

In Ithaca, New York, there are people who had a clue long before I did, as Mike De Socio reported at the Guardian in August.

“When Fred Schoeps bought a 150-year-old building in downtown Ithaca, New York, a decade ago, he was one of only a handful of building owners dedicated to ending their reliance on fossil fuels and reducing their carbon footprint.

“His three-year renovation of the building, comprising three apartments above a skate store, included installing energy-efficient windows and insulation, plus fully electric appliances, heating and cooling systems.

“But while that was an achievement on its own, said Schoeps, Ithaca cannot address climate change one building at a time. ‘In order to move the needle, you’ve got to think in terms of a thousand [buildings],’ he said.

“Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s new director of sustainability, is trying to do exactly that. The upstate New York city of 30,000, home to Cornell University and Ithaca College, adopted a Green New Deal in 2019, a big part of which involves decarbonizing thousands of privately owned commercial and residential buildings across the city.

“Ithaca’s main climate objective is to eliminate or offset all of its carbon emissions ​​by 2030. The focus on retrofitting buildings – installing electric heating systems, solar panels and battery storage as well as reducing energy use and greening the electric grid – promises to tackle an often-overlooked but significant contributor to climate change:

buildings make up nearly 40% of US carbon emissions. …

“Ithaca is exploring a new solution to fund and motivate building owners to decarbonize: private equity.

“Aguirre-Torres has helped Ithaca – which has a total budget of less than $80m – raise $100m by offering investors entry to a large-scale program he pitched as low risk with the potential for lots of cashflow. The goal is to create a lending program providing low- or no-interest loans and quick implementation of sustainable technology. …

“For most homeowners, the program would help them swap out a gas furnace for an electric heat pump, or a gas stove for an electric one – changes that would otherwise involve high upfront costs. Aguirre-Torres says the program will also train a new green workforce in Ithaca. …

“The plan aims to create 1,000 new jobs by 2030, and the city has promised to redirect 50% of the financial benefits of its Green New Deal plan to low-income residents, although there are few specifics on how this will work.

“Conversations with investors started earlier this year. Covid-19 had already battered Ithaca’s finances, said Aguirre-Torres, and it was clear the city would never be able to fund this energy transformation alone.

“These discussions quickly revealed a problem: how do you keep a lending program affordable? ‘What we needed to do was bring down the cost of capital even further,’ Aguirre-Torres said.

“The city is addressing this by trying to reduce risk. It aims to create an economy of scale by sizing the program for 1,000 commercial and residential buildings in the first 1,000 days, which will mean more consistent work for contractors and lower material costs. Ithaca plans to use a $10m loan loss reserve, backed by New York state, that would act as a guarantee for lenders in case any borrower defaults. It will also secure insurance to protect against catastrophic losses,’ such as a massive default due to another pandemic, Aguirre-Torres said. …

“Ithaca’s reliance on private equity may be new, but the cash incentives and on-bill repayment programs have precedent in states around the country, such as New York and California.

” ‘We’ve seen this work,’ said Ethan Elkind, the director of the climate program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. Utilities and municipalities have long been offering upfront dollars to ratepayers to encourage them to upgrade lightbulbs or home insulation.

“However, these types of improvements may be an easier sell than swapping out a gas range or fireplace. Consumer preference for natural gas appliances is one of the biggest barriers to home electrification. Cost is another. ‘If you have the money to do something to your house, putting in a new bathroom or kitchen is much more appealing to people than an invisible efficiency upgrade that pays for itself over eight years,’ Elkind said.

“Anne Rhodes has a different view, however. The 76-year-old Ithaca homeowner, who earns about $20,000 a year, is using an existing state incentive program to insulate her home and replace her oil heating system with electric heat pumps. In addition to the climate impact, she said the upgrades will make her home more comfortable to live in.”

More at the Guardian, here.

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A Film That Raised Consciousness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 24, 2021| 4 Comments »

Photo: Cinetic.
From the award-winning Korean film Parasite.

Movies can raise consciousness and lead to change, often positive change. Although the wonderful flic we watched last night, The Loins of Punjab, was mostly for laughs, I think some people would take away a heightened awareness of prejudice, and what it can be like to live in a society where too many people see a terrorist behind every brown skin.

Today’s post is about a hopeful side effect of the award-winning Korean movie Parasite, which led the government to look into the plethora of barely habitable basement apartments dividing the country’s haves and have-nots — and begin to make a plan.

As Monica Castillo wrote at Hyperallergic in February 2020, “Weeks after Bong Joon-ho’s historic win at the Oscars, his film Parasite is still making headlines. … Parasite may now pave the way for housing reform in South Korea.

“The country’s government announced it would launch an initiative to help families like the movie’s working-class Kims to improve housing conditions. The Korea Herald reports that the South Korean government, Korea Energy Foundation, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government will offer ‘3.2 million won per household to enhance heating systems, replace floors, and install air conditioners, dehumidifiers, ventilators, windows, and fire alarms’ to 1,500 families in semi-basement apartments who make less than 60 percent of the median income. …

“In Parasite, the Kims live in a cramped, dingy semi-basement apartment that becomes easily flooded when heavy rains fall. They envy the wealthier Park family that lives in an elevated area with a spacious modern mansion, and hatch a plan to get each member of the Kim family in the employment of the Parks. …

“The film’s clear class distinction between the haves and the have nots also inspired many designers. In a look at the fan art and advertising inspired by the movie, Mubi found several instances where artists visually interpreted the movie’s theme on class through metaphors. Parasite’s attention to architecture featured in a number of the pieces, as several artists incorporated both Park and Kim family homes into their designs. The works ranged from digital illustrations both intricate and deceptively simple to photographic composites reimagining the movie’s many twists and turns. 

“Even in the official movie poster, there are hints of a difference between the two families, as the post points out that the Kims have black censor bars over their eyes and the richer Parks have white censor bars. For the French release not long after its Cannes premiere, the Parasite poster featured the Kim family barefoot and the Parks in shoes, a nod to their well-heeled background.”

More at Hyperallergic, here.

At Mubu, you can check out posters the movie inspired and the emphasis on inequality. What an array! Adrian Curry wrote, “All great works of art inspire more great art and Parasite has been a gloriously fecund host for poster designers to feed off, inspiring ingenious commercial campaigns and fan art alike. The original Korean poster — the first glimpse any of us got of this soon-to-be sensation back [in April 2019] — was designed by Kim Sang-man, a film director (Midnight FM), art director (Joint Security Area), and composer. …

“Its placid yet ominous domestic scene, rendered undeniably creepy by the censor bars across the protagonists’ eyes … featured half the major players (not least that boxy, modernist home, the ultimate star of the film) and a number of significant objects (the teepee, that ornamental rock, those legs…) without giving much of the game away. One thing I didn’t register until quite recently is how the bars across the eyes are color-coded by family: black for the Kims, white for the Parks.”

I didn’t see Parasite. Did you? Did you think it made a case for affordable housing? A case against inequality?

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Fall Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 23, 2021| 18 Comments »

The Boston Marathon was in October for the first time, after missing two Aprils because of Covid.

We ourselves had to hustle a little to get to the Boston Marathon as the new technology told us Erik was running faster than expected and might reach our viewing spot before we could get there. Fortunately, we arrived with a few minutes to spare.

Erik’s final time was a hair over three hours. The photo above is of runners near where we stood. It was a happy day, and although runners had to be vaccinated or show a recent test result, it had a welcome feeling of maybe-life-will-get-back-to-normal-sometime. And the sun was shining.

On a drizzly day, I went up to the Brush Gallery in Lowell to see Meredith‘s lovely exhibit. The artist herself came over from her studio in her rain gear, and I learned some interesting things about how she thinks about color and how she works. The first painting below was my favorite.

On another day, I took photos at Concord Art‘s juried show. The piece using corrugated cardboard was by David Covert. The wax art suggesting a dreamy ocean was Elvira Para’s. Nadya Volicer’s unusual sculpture was made from paper pulp and charcoal.

I couldn’t resist shooting an urban mural even though it wasn’t far enough along for me to understand what meaning flowers, a fish, a rooster, and a barefoot woman walking on chairs, might convey.

Meanwhile, nature has been making its own art, and there have been many beautiful days to enjoy it.

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The Durability of the Protest Library

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 22, 2021| 2 Comments »

Photo: Anamni Gupta/Indian Express.
One aspect of the 2019 Shaheen Bagh protest organized by Muslim women against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act was the emergence of free libraries.

Most Americans don’t keep track of politics in India, but it was hard to miss the news back in 2019 when the Modi government decided to change the rules about who could be counted as a citizen. Muslim women organized a protest that spread across the country from the original site in Shaheen Bagh. One aspect has remained.

As Harshvardhan reported at India’s National Herald in January, “The Shaheen Bagh protest site is gone, but its legacy continues to inspire those who dream of a more egalitarian and democratic India. Led mostly by Muslim women, the Shaheen Bagh protest site inspired one of the most aesthetically-pleasing and thought-provoking experiments with protest art in recent times. Walls and streets of Jamia Millia Islamia and Shaheen Bagh protest site exploded with creativity as students and artists camped there and experimented with ideas. …

“One of the most distinctive contributions of the Shaheen Bagh movement was the introduction of a ‘protest site library.’ The idea of a ‘protest library’ came up during the Occupy Wall Street protest, one of the largest popular demonstrations in the United States. Occupy protesters erected a tent and established a ‘People’s Library’ in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in November 2011. This one of its kind library held over 5000 volumes of books along with magazines and newspapers, and was finally razed down by the police.

“Since then, the concept of a ‘People’s Library’ captured the imagination of protesters all across the world. It travelled to Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013 when people resisted the commercialisation of public spaces. Make-shift libraries cropped up in different parts of Spain during the anti-austerity 15-M movement (2011-15) and then it travelled to Hong Kong during the pro-democracy movement there.

“At Shaheen Bagh, a group of students decided to convert a bus stand into a makeshift library in the heydays of the anti-CAA protests [CAA stands for the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019]. The ‘Fatima Sheikh Savitribai Phule Library’ captured the imagination of people and soon the make-shift library started to attract a lot of donors and also inspired similar libraries at different anti-CAA protest sites.

“The year 2020, an otherwise gloomy year dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic … ended on a high note with the farmers’ uprising against the three farm bills, passed by the BJP-controlled Parliament in haste. … By blocking the entry points of nation’s capital, farmers are actually attempting to block the privatization and corporatization of Indian economy. Along with that, the protests are also a powerful assertion of the right to dissent. …

“It is but natural that such a huge protest in terms of both mobilization and concerns will also develop into a rich site for cultural production enriching the protest repertoire of the country. In one of the most innovative moves, protesting farmers launched their own bi-weekly newspaper. … They also set up libraries at the protest sites. [It] clearly carried on the legacy of the Shaheen Bagh protests. Now, we can be sure that protest site libraries are going to feature every time there is a sustained peoples’ movement.

“The first library came up at Tikri Border, Pillar no 783. On December 22 [2020], a group of students began the ‘Shaheed Bhagat Singh Library’ with a single book stand with almost 200 books standing against a yellow tent. Farmers at Tikri border welcomed the idea and people could be seen browsing through the limited books available there. Soon the idea picked up and similar libraries came up at Singhu border as well as Ghazipur border while attempts were being made to establish one at Shahjahanpur border. …

“From the anti-CAA movement to the anti-farm law movement, the protesters have been accused of being ‘uneducated’ and … of ‘not having ‘read the law’ or ‘not knowing what they are protesting against or for.’ …

“The protest-site libraries stand as proof that these people are not ‘uneducated folks’ [but] are mature enough to develop a concrete socio-economic-political understanding and act upon it.”

More at the National Herald, here. Search Suzanne’s Mom’s blog on the word “library” for examples of other unusual libraries around the world.

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