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Hockey, Cold Weather, Flu

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 9, 2020| 2 Comments »

Do you listen to the radio show Living on Earth? This environmental news program is nationally syndicated and has a free newsletter you can sign up for here. I have learned so much from it over the years.

Today I’m writing about a story that caught my attention because I have a grandson, 10, and a granddaughter, 7, who are forces to be reckoned with in the sport of ice hockey. And one of them had a quarantine episode after a teammate test positive for coronavirus. I would not want to see these two lose their favorite sport for a year when so many other things have been lost, but I guess I want to know how infection is being carried in ice hockey and what can be done.

Living on Earth reports that “outbreaks have occurred in connection with recreational and youth hockey, and researchers are rushing to pin down the role of air temperature and humidity in creating optimal conditions for contagion. For some advice about getting through winter safely, host Steve Curwood caught up with pediatrician Aaron Bernstein, the interim director of Harvard’s Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment. …

“CURWOOD: There is much that science still has to learn about Covid-19, such as why indoor recreational ice hockey has been associated with outbreaks in several states, not just in the north but also in Florida, where about a dozen people got Covid 19 after a game at a hockey rink in Tampa Bay. … Welcome back to Living on Earth, Ari! …

“Walk us through in basic terms, what about the virus might make it more dangerous for these cold weather sports? …

“BERNSTEIN: The best clues we have right now is that transmission may not be happening as much on the ice, but may be happening off the ice in locker rooms or on the bench when people may take off protective gear or sit too close with each other. We don’t really know. … But we mostly see in in other indoor settings transmission happening when you’ve got people sticking around each other for long periods of time. …

“We do know a couple of things. I mean, what’s clear is that sunlight is really good at inactivating the virus. So, you know, ice skating rinks are not in a lot of sunlight. … Here in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a lot less ultraviolet radiation hitting us from the sun.

“CURWOOD: So as we move into winter, of course, historically, the influenza virus seems to do much better in the winter. …

“BERNSTEIN: I do think we need to pay close attention to places where we’re asking people to congregate, and being careful about the appropriate precautions. … We’re breaking records in transmission as we speak and there’s a great risk that this virus can spread through the winter. The idea has been floated that herd immunity will protect [us] is reckless and dangerous. …

“[Safety is] the same dull stuff that folks have been talking about for a long time. It’s wearing a mask, it’s washing your hands, it’s keeping physical distance. And those measures can have a dramatic effect upon the spread of disease. … A lot of people, including folks like Tony Fauci and other public health leaders have strongly advised people to not gather in person, because the risks are growing so great, because the reality is that we have more cases today in the country than almost any other time. …

“Part of our action here is not just for ourselves, it’s for the people who live in [our] communities. [For the regular flu, ] there’s a vaccine. … If you take the current coronavirus season, and you add to it even a mild flu season, there are no hospital beds for people to go into. … There are a lot of people who don’t want to get vaccinated for the flu because they think it’s not that bad, or they think the flu vaccine doesn’t work. And neither of those things are true. …

“I should be getting vaccinated against the flu to protect people who are older than me, my family members who may have cancer. … Think about it. If you have a family member who’s pregnant, they often need to go to a hospital. Do you really want them to go to a hospital in which the hospital is overwhelmed with preventable influenza infections? [These] things tie together pretty quickly.”

I have to thank this show for delivering my sermon to readers. Get your shot for the seasonal flu! More at Living on Earth, here.

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Feel-Good Baking Show

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 8, 2020| 8 Comments »

There’s a television show in the UK that has become such a part of American culture that Saturday Night Live regularly spoofs it. In fact it’s from SLN that I even know about the show. Today’s article helps me understand why people love it so.

Eliot A. Cohen writes at the Atlantic, “For my physical health, there is a rowing machine, but for my peace of mind, I have learned this past year, nothing beats old episodes of The Great British Baking Show, which one can binge-watch to satiety on Netflix.

“This trick of seeking temporary refuge from the realities of a grim world by indulging in fantasies of the simple pleasures situated in some lovely part of rural England is nothing new. During the Blitz, Londoners rediscovered the joys of the 19th-century novelist Anthony Trollope. …

“Trollope is still very much worth the reading. But in our fraught times—so much easier, to be sure, than the dark days of 1940—many people like me have sought refuge in a different idyllic England of our dreams. Hence the entirely deserved popularity of The Great British Baking Show — devotees were ecstatic when, the coronavirus notwithstanding, a new season began a few weeks ago.

“Every summer for the past decade, a dozen amateur bakers have trooped into a cheerful, white party tent supplied with counters, ovens, refrigerators, and all the basic paraphernalia they need. Each week is themed — breads, pastry, biscuits. …

“The setting is the lawn of a magnificent bucolic estate in Somerset or Berkshire. Most often the sun shines, but when it does not, we know somehow that the rain is more a gentle and fructifying moisture than a miserable downpour.

“The contestants are supervised by Paul Hollywood, an experienced baker (and race-car driver), and, in later seasons, Prue Leith, the chancellor of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh and a restaurateur, an author, and a journalist. … They have two sidekicks, in the current version of the show: Matt Lucas, an actor and a comedian, and Noel Fielding, a comic who is weird but amiable, if you like Goth.

“A decent-tasting cake is not enough. … Prue is intimidating enough in her Professor McGonagall way: ‘This is rather a mess, isn’t it?’ and ‘Hmmm. Claggy. What a pity.’ But the hard man of the show is Paul Hollywood. …

“In the days of the empire, he would have been a regimental sergeant major, looking an unhappy private in the eye three inches from his face, pointing at a fleck of lint on an otherwise impeccable uniform, and saying, ‘Your uniform is filthy, you horrible little man.’ … He is one heck of a baker.

“In The Great British Baking Show, there are standards. If it looks a mess, the judges will say so, and the bakers swallow hard and acknowledge their failures. … The vaguely obscene puns — which never seem to grow tired — about flabby buns and the dreaded ‘soggy bottom’ allow no sympathy for the vagaries of fate. Results, not good intentions or effort, are what matter.

“And yet, the show is animated by the warmth of humanity. … There are college students and grandmothers; carpenters and lawyers; soldiers, sailors, and personal trainers; immigrants (or their descendants) of varying hue from Hong Kong and Jamaica and Mumbai. They are remarkably nice to one another.

“When one of the bakers is having a crisis — a cake separating in the middle, a collapsing gluten-enhanced edifice, cracked biscuits — the others rush to help out. … They even hold hands, some of them, in that agonizing wait as the sidekicks menacingly intone, ‘The bakers now await the judgment of Prue and Paul.’ In the face of a really serious meltdown, even Hollywood can be heard to murmur, ‘It’s just a bake, mate.’

“To watch The Great British Baking Show is to believe that the average guy and gal can do remarkable things, that good nature is compatible with excellence, that high achievement will be recognized, that honest feedback can lead to improvement, that there are things to life beyond work. …

“To watch it is to know that, Brexit or no Brexit, and despite royal scandals, political cock-ups, and the occasional omnishambles, there will always be an England. And that is a comforting if possibly delusional thought.

“In short, as the Brits would say, The Great British Baking Show is brilliant, thoroughly joined up, and fit for purpose. To watch it is to feel refreshed, inspired, and confident, ready to return to work with a strong heart and a clean conscience, knowing that somewhere in rural Wiltshire or Somerset, Noel and Matt will say every week in voices of varying and unmodulated creepiness, ‘Bakers! On your marks, get set, bake!’ ”

More at the Atlantic, here.

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Dizzying Heights for Murals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 7, 2020| 11 Comments »

Last month, I pondered the challenges presented over time by public art in the form of statues of historical figures. In the past, art that could last through the ages — Michelangelo’s “David,” for example, and the stone lions on the Greek island of Delos — was highly valued. Even painted frescoes were made to last, with pigments worked into plaster.

Nowadays, murals on buildings are proliferating, and I’m thinking that transitory art like that is a good idea. It’s OK for them to be painted over, worn out, or recreated with a new vision.

Today’s story is about a group of artists in Colorado doing just that.

Shanna Lewis reports for KRCC, “Bright colors have blossomed once again on the concrete face of Pueblo’s Arkansas River levee. Paintings are going up in an effort to reclaim a lost public art space and the title of the world’s largest outdoor mural.

“Muralist Valrie Eisemann of LaVeta is among the first of four artists to work on the new levee wall. Using paint donated by a local recycling company, as well as some that she bought herself, she’s creating a colorful mandala. …

“Muralists have to rope up for safety to work on the steeply sloped concrete. But that isn’t slowing any of them down.

“Each artist will bring their own unique vision and ideas to the project. Celeste Velazquez of Pueblo said her imagery is of a native woman that references the Azteca community, as well as Toltec and Olmec cultures.

“ ‘She’s going to have like four arms, almost like a shaman and there’s going to be the spirit Quetzalcoatl in the back of her in her native tent,’ Velazquez said.

“Puebloan Thomas Garbiso’s piece is a mountain view along I-70. … Aurora artist Kalyn Connolly’s design is of a deer with Colorado flora and fauna on its antlers, including columbines, crows and white butterflies.

“All the artists are excited to be among the first brush paint on the levee since construction to repair it started six years ago. … According to [artist and levee mural coordinator Cynthia Ramu], since the 1970s, hundreds of people helped create the murals that once lined the levee.

“ ‘Eventually, it became like a storybook for a lot of people,’ Ramu said. … Some of [the story] is literally underfoot because the concrete with the old murals was torn off during the repair project and then ground up and used to create a walking trail for the top of the levee. …

“She said, ‘I feel so excited at the possibility. It’s kind of like moving forward. It’s just endless possibility.’

“Pueblo Arts Alliance director Karen Fogelsong agreed. … ‘One of my favorite things is to see beautiful art go on yucky cement,’ Fogelsong said. ‘So let’s put beauty on top of it. On viaducts on levees, on the sides of buildings, wherever we can make it beautiful.’

“Fogelsong thinks if Pueblo can regain the world record, it’ll draw tourists to the area to see it. The current record is held by a mural in South Korea that’s more than 254,000 square feet — so a lot of art is needed again to beat that.

“It could happen though. More applications for new murals are rolling in and creative energy is flowing along this part of the Arkansas River.”

More here.

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Ice Cream Shop Doing OK

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2020| 3 Comments »

Although many food shops have struggled in the pandemic or even had to close, Howdy Homemade, an ice cream parlor in Dallas, is doing just fine. That’s because all sorts of people who believe in its mission stepped up to support a GoFundMe.

Jake Lourim writes at the Washingoton Post, “Tom Landis was 46 when he gave all he had to open a business he felt called to run. On Dec. 26, 2015, the ice cream store Howdy Homemade opened in Dallas, employing mostly people with special needs, from servers to cashiers to managers. ‘Howdy,’ as Landis calls it, thrived as locals praised the store’s mission and liked the ice cream, too.

“And then the consequences of the novel coronavirus pandemic almost wiped out Landis’s creation.

“The store began operating at a loss in March, when stay-at-home orders decimated sales, and it continued that way through the hot summer. By September, Howdy faced the possibility of closure, so Landis closed the original location and moved to a nearby, cheaper spot.

“On Sept. 1, a supporter named Jaxie Alt set up a GoFundMe page to save the shop. Within six weeks, the page raised $100,000 and kept Howdy in business. As a bonus, Landis acquired a truck so that Howdy could serve ice cream more safely.

“The store is now open again and appears poised to become a national operation. Potential franchisers have popped up in Asheville, N.C., El Paso and Las Cruces, N.M. Landis and his vice president, Coleman Jones, who has Down syndrome, took a road trip last week for meetings in San Antonio about putting Howdy ice cream in the massive H-E-B grocery chain and in Austin about opening a Howdy store on campus at the University of Texas, Landis’s alma mater.

“Landis grew up in Bethesda, Md., with a mother who battled polio. … He said he felt moved to serve the special-needs community in part because of his ailing mother, in part because of inspiration from a former football coach and in part because of a calling from God.

“Landis spoke [admiringly] about the work of former Alabama coach Gene Stallings, who had a son with Down syndrome and became a vocal advocate for those with special needs. …

“Landis’s store became one of Texas’s top employers of special-needs workers, and his hope was that Howdy’s success would change the way companies thought about hiring people with special needs. But when the pandemic sparked an unemployment crisis, Landis saw his cause pushed to the back of the line. …

“[He] was undeterred. He remains proud of five years in business with zero employee turnover and knows his employees with Down syndrome and autism have a place in the economy, in any industry. …

“ ‘[Most people] don’t want to do the same thing over and over and over and over again. And then God designs people with special needs, and they actually thrive on it,’ [he says].

In 2015, … Landis told Jones about possible hiring opportunities, and the next day Jones called Landis to follow up. Jones, now 24, started as a bus boy at one of Landis’s Texadelphia restaurants and said he ‘started at the bottom and worked up to the top’ — he’s now the vice president of Howdy Homemade.”

More at the Washington Post, here.

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The Un-Amazon Emporium

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 5, 2020| 7 Comments »

Like many of you, I avoid using Amazon as much as possible because it is just too big, puts too many others out of business, and mistreats employees.

It wasn’t always like that. I was a customer who thought Amazon was wonderful, was impressed that I could find anything there, loved getting purchases delivered fast. Now I try to find alternatives.

I was happy to read about a new site for independent bookstores because I had found that ordering from my favorite local shop took forever in the pandemic’s early days. This might be more efficient.

Alison Flood writes at the Guardian, “It is being described as a ‘revolutionary moment in the history of bookselling’: a socially conscious alternative to Amazon that allows readers to buy books online while supporting their local independent bookseller. And after a hugely successful launch in the US, it is open in the UK from today.

“Bookshop was dreamed up by the writer and co-founder of Literary Hub, Andy Hunter. It allows independent bookshops to create their own virtual shopfront on the site, with the stores receiving the full profit margin – 30% of the cover price – from each sale. All customer service and shipping are handled by Bookshop and its distributor partners, with titles offered at a small discount and delivered within two to three days.

“ ‘It’s been a wild ride,’ said Hunter, who launched the site in the US in January. ‘Five weeks into what we thought was going to be a six-month period of refining and improving and making small changes, Covid-19 hit and then suddenly we were doing massive business.’

“Initially starting with 250 bookshops, more than 900 stores have now signed up in the US. … By June, Bookshop sold $1m worth of books in a day. The platform has now raised more than [$7.5m] for independent bookshops across the US.

“ ‘We were four employees plus me, working at home, getting up as early as we could and going to bed as late as we could, trying to make it all work. It was a real white-knuckle ride,’ said Hunter. ‘But it was extremely gratifying because the whole time we were getting messages from stores saying, “Thank God you came along, you’ve paid our rent, you’ve paid our health insurance this year.” ‘ …

“Bookshop is a B Corporation, created with the mission ‘to benefit the public good by contributing to the welfare of the independent literary community.’ Rules state that it can never be sold to a major US retailer, including Amazon.

“Hunter believes the reason for Bookshop’s quick success is readers’ fondness for their local booksellers. ‘Bookstores have been in trouble for a while because of Amazon’s growth, but this pandemic has really accelerated it. Amazon has gotten much more powerful, while there are 100-year-old stores that are hanging on for survival,’ he said. …

“Hunter had been planning to launch Bookshop in the UK in 2021 or 2022. But after seeing the success of the platform in the US, shops, publishers and authors in the UK asked him to step up the timeline. … The UK arm of the company will be run by managing director Nicole Vanderbilt, the former international vice-president of Etsy. …

“Bookshops make no financial investment, with all customer service and shipping handled by Bookshop, and, in the UK, by distributor Gardners. … Each independent that joins has its own ‘storefront’ page, where customers can browse virtual tables of recommended books.

“For example, a user can see what the owner of The Shetland Times Bookshop (‘Britain’s most northerly general bookshop, situated over 60 degrees north and closer to Norway than to London’) personally recommends, in lists such as ‘wonderfully funny picture books I’ve read to the bookshop staff,’ and ‘books to help you take life in your stride.’ …

“ ‘It’s hard for us to compete with someone that’s got its own warehouse and sells books sometimes at a loss, or at very small profit margins. We just can’t do that. So it’s nice that Bookshop.org is going to rival Amazon in a way we couldn’t on our own or even collectively,’ said Georgia Eckert, of Imagined Things bookshop in Harrogate. ‘You’ve got to have the reach, a site that’s big enough, run by a proper team of people dedicated to it. We’re all running our own businesses and haven’t got time to be doing that.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Scottish Village Takes Over

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 4, 2020| 6 Comments »

Buccleuch, Buccleuch. It has a familiar ring to it. Didn’t we stay at the Buccleuch Arms on our honeymoon trip through Scotland? I think so, but it’s been 50 years, so …

I do clearly remember the beautiful rolling hills of the Scottish Lowlands and the black-faced sheep wandering over the roads like they owned them, which of course, they did. So whether or not I was ever in the Buccleuch environs, I love today’s story about a Scottish village’s determination to preserve 8 square miles of beauty.

Severin Carrell writes at the Guardian, “A village in southern Scotland has succeeded in buying a large part of Langholm Moor, a famous grouse moor held for centuries by the dukes of Buccleuch, among the UK’s most powerful hereditary peers.

“Buccleuch Estates said on Monday it would be selling just over 2,000 hectares (about 5,000 acres) of Langholm Moor [to] the local community, which plans to create a leading new nature reserve and community regeneration project.

“The deal, the largest ever community buyout in the south of Scotland, follows months of fundraising by the Langholm Initiative, which only succeeded with hours to spare before the deadline of 31 October.

“Kevin Cumming, the initiative’s project leader, said he was thrilled with the deal. ‘Community ownership can be a catalyst for regeneration, which we want to show can be done with the environment at its heart,’ he said. …

“Buccleuch Estates told the campaigners it would continue talking about the possibility of buying the remaining 2,100 hectares that covers much of the former grouse moor, which would involve the Langholm Initiative raising [almost $3 million more]. …

“The Langholm buyout is one of three community land sales involving Buccleuch in south-west Scotland, all part-funded with taxpayers’ money.

“Earlier this year, Buccleuch Estates sold 300 hectares of land around the village of Newcastleton and has offered to sell 1,560 hectares of moorland, pasture and brownfield land to a community trust at Wanlockhead in the Leadhills for nearly [$2 million]. …

The Langholm Initiative hopes the moorland regeneration, ecotourism and rural industries it plans to fund will bring enough money to plough back into community regeneration and bring in new residents.

“The scheme will focus on creating a new nature reserve called Tarras Valley, including restoring Langholm’s ancient peatlands and protecting the area’s threatened populations of hen harrier. The initiative hopes its reforestation and peatland restoration projects will attract subsidies from programmes funding measures to combat global heating.”

People who inherit vast lands they cannot afford to keep up either have to sell them or get creative. They can end up being owned by the land — a status I do not envy. I’m thinking of people I knew who inherited Rokeby on the Hudson River and rented it out for weddings and such, including the shooting of a pretty wild art film. I’m glad the Buccleuch Estates are trying to help others preserve what is sold off.

More at the Guardian, here.

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America the Beautiful Challenge

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 3, 2020| 6 Comments »

Today’s challenge features my favorite lines from “America the Beautiful,” the 1895 poem by Katharine Lee Bates, with music by Samuel A. Ward. The challenge is to sing it along with me — outloud — without choking up.

“O beautiful for spacious skies,
“For amber waves of grain,
“For purple mountain majesties
“Above the fruited plain! …

“America! America!
“God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
“Confirm thy soul in self-control,
“Thy liberty in law.”

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Why Did the Fox Steal the Sandals?

Posted in Uncategorized on November 2, 2020| 10 Comments »

Got to reblog this post so you can see some of the funny answers I have had over two years. Today I heard from Jessica, who actually has a YouTube channel showing foxes stealing things: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6cpOtpwo4XYb4Mc2auvf6A

Suzanne's Mom's Blog

mammals-3218028_1280Why do foxes steal so many shoes?

A recent article by Daniel Hurst, reporting from Tokyo for the Guardian, prompted a web search but no definitive answers. Apparently foxes steal shoes. OK, but why and why so many?

“It began at midnight,” Hurst wrote. “A six-hour police stakeout to catch the shoe-loving thieves who had pilfered 40 pairs of sandals from a neighbourhood in Japan. Finally, the officers found the main suspects: a pair of sly foxes.

“ ‘I can’t believe that foxes stole my sandals,’ a resident, 36, told the Mainichi newspaper. …

“Five police officers were involved in the stakeout in the early hours of 20 May. This culminated in the discovery of two foxes in the garden of an empty house, with 40 pairs of shoes scattered around a burrow, the Mainichi reported.

“Kyoto city zoo’s chief, Naoki Yamashita, speculated that the foxes ‘could have been…

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Coronavirus Songs from Africa

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 2, 2020| 9 Comments »

When pandemic restrictions caused the cancellation of African musicians’ concerts, many took the coronavirus battle into their own hands, without having to be asked by any government to create a public service announcement.

Public Radio International’s The World reports on the wave of Covid-19 songs giving Africans reliable information and warning against fake health news on social media.

“When graduate student Dipo Oyeleye heard the song ‘We Go Win (Corona)‘ by Cobhams Asuquo, a Nigerian singer-songwriter,” the radio show reported in September, “he knew what his next research project would be: a study of the myriad coronavirus songs that flourished in Africa at the pandemic’s onset on the continent. …

” ‘I love artists using the moment to create music that actually helps to disseminate the right information to the general public,’ Oyeleye told The World.

“Originally from Nigeria himself, Oyeleye studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is now researching COVID-19 songs from Nigeria to Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo to Ghana, among many other places across the continent. Oyelele has been able to compile and track the impact of at least 50 songs from various African artists.

“Unlike the US, where very few artists have taken on COVID-19 as a subject in songs, African musicians quickly turned to their songwriting as a form of communication and to disseminate crucial public health information: social distancing, washing hands and staying home during lockdowns. 

” ‘This is a major [pandemic that] directly affects everybody, including the musicians. Some of them had to cancel their shows. I think the personal became political,’ Oyeleye explained. 

“Having battled epidemics such as the Ebola virus, most Africans are used to governments that call on musicians to produce ‘edutainment,’ or songs with a message to sensitize the public. 

“But Oleyele says that what makes the coronavirus songs different is that it was not ‘necessarily initiated by the governments. It’s just, you know, individuals lending their voices to help prevent the spread of the virus.’ 

“Some artists took a direct public health approach, while others used humor or religion to ease fears and connect with various communities. And some songs were specifically meant for people who could only communicate in local languages. There’s really something for everyone. …  

” ‘Wash your hands / love each other / we go win o,’ [Asuquo] croons at the piano.

“In [a] reggae-inspired song, Bobi Wine opens with the bad news that ‘everyone is a potential victim’ of the virus, but also a potential solution … and calls it ‘patriotic’ to social distance and isolate if sick with possible virus symptoms.” More at PRI’s The World, here. Extra details at the Washington Post, here.

I’m impressed with these musicians. Will we get songs to slow the spread here, too?

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Artists Consider the Face Mask

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 1, 2020| 5 Comments »

I’ve really enjoyed how artists have addressed the pandemic situation, whether designing socially distant ballets and theater or specifically coronavirus-related paintings, constructions, and photos.

Today we learn from Hyperallergic that the lowly face mask has been a particular inspiration. Hakim Bishara reports on a Denver exhibition of artistic face coverings.

“Face masks in all forms and colors have become an essential part of our lives. … A new exhibition at the Vicki Myhren Gallery at the University of Denver comes to remind the nonbelievers and the COVID-fatigued among us that face masks are not only crucial to our health but that they can also be delightful means of self-expression.

“MASK … celebrates the centuries-long use of masks as ritual and ornamental objects throughout human history with new works by a group of 41 artists. The dozens of masks are positioned on mannequin heads throughout the gallery space. While some of the face coverings on display are not functional, they are a creative reminder of the times, and the creativity that can emerge from isolation. …

“As the COVID-19 crisis continues to worsen in Denver, the gallery says that it hopes that the exhibition will ‘call attention to the [significance] of masking as an issue of public health and a demonstration of civic responsibility.’ …

“As part of the exhibition, the gallery has joined forces with RedLine Contemporary Art Center in Denver to fabricate free, functional masks that will be distributed to members of the community.

“Ranging in style from the classical to the otherworldly, the masks on view offer inventive notions of what face-coverings can look like. Serge Attukwei Clottey’s science fiction-esque mask appears to be constructed from plastic pipes and found industrial materials. Elizabeth Morisette’s avian mask is a beak made out of zippers. Kate Marling designed a mask that invokes a classical sculpture as if freezing half of her face in stone. Trey Duvall’s ‘COVID19 (Mask for the Art World)’ covers the mouth area with a brick fastened over surgical hand gloves, perhaps hinting at the silencing of certain voices. By contrast, Tobias Fike attached a sizeable megaphone to a mask titled ‘Mouthpiece.’

“A virtual panel discussion with some of the featured artists will be held on November 5.”

A selection of the works, including images of some of the artists modeling their masks, may be viewed at Hyperallergic, here.

Looking for an unusual mask for yourself? Check out the variety at Etsy, here, where you can also get beautiful masks by a family member of mine, good for preventing foggy glasses.

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Autumn Turns to Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 31, 2020| 7 Comments »

Oops!

Massachusetts got a tree-bending snowfall October 30 while leaves were still attached to everything. I don’t know if we should call it an October surprise or a Halloween surprise, but it’s likely to add to the reasons kids will long remember this year’s mask-required Halloween.

For today’s photo round-up, let’s start with what autumn looked like in these parts before the snow. Amusing, colorful, thought-provoking.

In an annual event on the library lawn, people put up scarecrows to represent their favorite storybook characters. I love the face-shield wielding Wild Thing below kicking a coronavirus soccer ball.

As pumpkins came out in yards, flowers continued to bloom on fences, and sometimes the woods seemed to bloom like flowers.

One day I got it in my head that the white-pine needles on our yew branches looked like wishbones, so I set up a silly shot.

The carved stone marker is located near a retirement home in town. I had never noticed before that it has a word about local celebrity Henry Thoreau.

The mother-baby sculpture is a peaceful one outside a hospital in Boston, where I had to go for an annual checkup. Overall, it wasn’t a peaceful experience because there were so many people. The safety protocols were good, but I am definitely not used to crowds.

OK, the luscious dahlia is not mine. Melita sent it from Madrid, where she reports a State of Emergency has been decreed until May 9!

After the dahlia is my attempt at creating a Maxfield Parrish.

Stay safe, stay warm, but try to get out in the fresh air for a bit every day.

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The Diary Hunters

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 30, 2020| 8 Comments »

People throw out very private things, usually without realizing it. When I was volunteering for my college’s used bookstore years ago, a piece of writing fell out of a book my neighbor had donated. I wish I hadn’t seen it. It was a very sad poem about a son that cried for his father after a divorce. It wasn’t for my eyes.

Amelia Tait writes at the Guardian book feature the Observer about things like that — diaries that people write for themselves but that may end up years later in the hands of a stranger. According to the article, very few people consciously give their diaries away.

“Sally MacNamara,” Tait reports, “has long told her four children that if there’s a fire in her Seattle home, they should rescue Olga first. … The ‘Olga’ that is so precious to the 63-year-old online seller is a 118-year-old diary written by a woman of the same name. Beginning in 1902, the diary chronicles the experiences of a young immigrant who was raised in a strict religious environment in America. [MacNamara] purchased the diary online in 2005 – it is now one of her most prized possessions.

“Over the past 35 years, MacNamara has read more than 8,000 strangers’ diaries. As a child, her mother would take her ‘dump diving’ to salvage objects – when she discovered an old, handwritten piece of paper in the trash one day, she was immediately intrigued. …

“At first, MacNamara bought diaries in antique shops, but when a friend introduced her to eBay in 1998, she began using the auction site to buy and sell. …

“While MacNamara has more than two decades’ experience trading strangers’ secrets, her hobby has recently become more widespread. On YouTube, videos entitled ‘I bought a stranger’s diary’ are incredibly popular – an October 2019 video racked up 300,000 views, while the video that started the trend in December 2017 has been watched by over 6.4 million people.

“Clearly the mystery and intrigue of reading someone’s personal history can be compelling. But should we be troubled by the inherent voyeurism? Or – as Observer literary critic Kate Kellaway once said on the subject – ‘do people who keep diaries secretly hope someone will read them?’

“Joanna Borns, 35, is a writer from New York with 10,000 YouTube subscribers. Borns first started the YouTube trend for reading strangers’ diaries three years ago – since then, she’s purchased five diaries, which cost between [$26 and $52] each. ‘It’s interesting to see how you’re similar to a totally random stranger,’ Borns says. …

“Borns thinks ‘a lot’ about the ‘moral aspects’ of her videos. … ‘I certainly don’t want to broadcast anyone’s personal information – I do change the names,’ she says; she also avoids sharing ‘dark’ thoughts that diarists recorded. …

“Victoria is a 58-year-old from Cheltenham who has been selling love letters and diaries online since 2004 (she has asked to be identified by her first name only). She procures diaries in flea markets and car boot sales for up to [$26]. … ‘You go to one of these car boot sales and you find a box and it’s scruffy and insignificant and it’s wet, and you open it up and it’s a bundle of wonderful yellowing letters tied up with a ribbon,’ she says, ‘You’re just blown away.’ …

“Although the trend is undeniably voyeuristic, many collectors have a grander purpose. Polly North is the 41-year-old director of the Great Diary Project. …

“She believes historians can learn about marginalised people via journals. Yet North also receives a huge number of donations from modern diarists, who can opt to make their journals immediately available or can seal them for decades (amazingly, most people are happy to have their diaries read and shared straight away).

“North’s favourite is from a ‘virtually illiterate’ woman who was brought up in a trailer park in California and is still alive. ‘There’s no capital letters, there’s no punctuation… It’s stripped down, it’s raw, it doesn’t tick any conventional literary boxes, but it still achieves something that’s magical.’ ”

More at the Observer, here.

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Six-Foot Tutus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 29, 2020| 11 Comments »

Never underestimate the power of artists to work around obstacles! In today’s story, a dancer, a choreographer, and a costume designer figured out a socially distanced way to get dancers back to dancing. Anna Bailey reported the story at BBC Radio.

“Acclaimed Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta says ‘it feels great’ to be venturing back to staging indoor performances for a live audience in the UK after months of being prohibited from doing so because of the pandemic.

” ‘It feels great because we’ve been in lockdown for far too long and it’s a kind of career where if you don’t exercise your body for a week you go back and pay for it,’ says Acosta. …

“Acosta and the Birmingham Royal Ballet are following in the footsteps of The Royal Ballet in London which recently performed in front of a live audience in a reduced capacity auditorium.

“But Acosta is going one step further by introducing socially distanced costumes in the form of extra wide tutus for the brand-new mixed bill Lazuli Sky.

“It is the first one-act ballet commissioned and presented by Acosta since he took over as director of the Birmingham company at the start of the year. It is also due to be performed at Sadler’s Wells in London at the end of [October and online Nov. 1].

” ‘When we started, we wanted a piece where nobody would touch each other and so the dancers will be wearing elongated structures that are not static but are constantly moving and creating different shapes, evoking your imagination,’ explains Acosta about the spiral-shaped costumes. …

” They’re great in terms of aesthetic and a record of the time that we live in,’ Acosta adds.

“He has devised Lazuli Sky with the help of his designer Samuel Wyer and the award-winning choreographer Will Tuckett.

The influence for their costumes came from the crinoline skirts worn by fashionable women in the 19th Century to protect themselves from smallpox, cholera – and unwanted male advances. …

” ‘The tutu has always been a socially distanced piece of clothing; a stiff skirt that sticks out half a metre from your body. So it’s taking that idea and going “let’s just push it a little bit further,” ‘ says Tuckett. ‘The movement is dictated by them and the dancers have been fantastically adaptive and collaborative. Both male and female dancers wear them and so far there have been no upsets.’ …

“In Tuckett’s production the tutus with [6.5-foot] trains will also act as part of the set, as the production crew are unable to move props during performances due to the risks of the virus.

” ‘We’ll be projecting images onto the skirts,’ says Tuckett, ‘and when the dancers come out on stage it’s hypnotic and other worldly. They also look like sails and flowers when they all open out, they completely fill the space.’

“Nature is at the heart of Lazuli Sky, which stands for ‘bright blue sky’ and focuses on the upsides of the pandemic, such as open skies and birdsong, rather than the downsides. …

” ‘It’s incredible, there were no planes flying, levels of contamination and pollution dropped, and I got to see the beauty of it all,’ says Acosta [of his time in quarantine]. ‘I just hope that people will take notice of this and try and find a solution to help the planet. We want to give people hope.’ …

” ‘It’s unnatural for human beings not to touch and we have this tribal aspect of who we are to be social beings and our art form has always been about interaction physically,’ he says. ‘If you take that away from us, I’m not sure what kind of art form you would get if you’re not able to do Sleeping Beauty touching each other.

” ‘But we will wear masks on stage if we have to, and the dancers and musicians are very disciplined, we take ourselves very seriously in that regard.’ …

“So, is he the man to champion bringing ballet back during the pandemic, particularly having overcome his own challenges growing up in Cuba?

” ‘Well yeah, I just want for the people, especially those in Birmingham, to try and break the stigma that ballet is yesterday and something distant,’ he says. ‘My story, everybody has heard it and what ballet has done for me, and I want to bring that same enthusiasm to everybody, challenge people’s perceptions and do the best I can to achieve diversity and a healthy turnout of audiences from different backgrounds.’ “

More at the BBC, here.

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New Life for Dead Malls

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 28, 2020| 6 Comments »

Looking back, don’t you feel like you always knew malls would go the way of the Dodo as soon as online shopping started taking hold? I had no idea, but now I imagine I was ahead of the curve. I wonder how many people in the 1990s were already pondering what to do with empty mall real estate in future decades.

There will probably always be a need for someplace like a mall for people to gather with friends and maybe have an indoor walk when the weather is bad. Maybe retail shops for people who’d rather see items up close — or try them on before buying — will survive, but they’ll never fill all that space.

In today’s article, we learn about a conversion effort at a mall in Washington State.

In June, Patrick Sisson wrote at Bloomberg’s City Lab, “The multiple crises impacting the U.S. economy — the botched response to the coronavirus and the resulting economic fallout, and lack of spending power — have delivered a new gut punch to brick-and-mortar retail, a sector that was already reeling.

“More than half of all U.S. department stores in malls will be gone by 2021, one real estate research firm predicts, and surviving retailers may not be far behind; once-mighty brands such as Cheesecake Factory and the Gap are skipping rent payments, Starbucks is closing physical locations, and developers see a future for big box stores as office complexes. …

“At the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, a suburb north of Seattle, an adaptive reuse project already in progress suggests that America’s vast stock of fading shopping infrastructure could indeed get a second life as places to live. …

“Developers are turning a wide swath of the 41-year-old shopping center into Avalon Alderwood Place, a 300-unit apartment complex with underground parking. The project won’t completely erase the shopping side of the development: Commercial tenants will still take up 90,000 square feet of retail. But when the new Alderwood reopens, which developers expect will happen by 2022, the focus will have shifted dramatically. …

“Lynnwood may offer an ideal testing ground for the long-term opportunities in large-scale suburban mall-to-housing conversion. The suburb of roughly 40,000 people is a commuter bedroom community for Seattle, which has been struggling mightily with a severe housing shortage. …

“ ‘There have been some great examples of this kind of redevelopment, such as Tyson’s Corner in Virginia, but it’s very specific to individual cases, and very expensive,’ says Nick Egelanian, president of retail consultancy SiteWorks, who predicts up to a third of malls will be vacant due to the economic fallout from the pandemic. ‘If it’s a good location, you can backfill that with residential, hotel, office and entertainment.’ …

“Brian Lake, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who focuses on housing issues, believes that, minus the hurdles put up by zoning regulations and red tape, such commercial conversions should be happening everywhere. From a construction standpoint, conversions are simple.

‘We need to open up every opportunity possible to develop new affordable housing,’ he says. ‘Fannie Mae estimated we need an additional 2.5 million units just to satisfy the long-term demand, and that’s before this year’s crises.’

“Converting commercial real estate to housing may be the best use of land in such an over-retailed country. Big shopping centers tend to be centrally located and connected to transit. … During a time of housing shortages, Lake believes that transforming empty commercial buildings is a ‘moral imperative.’

“The Alderwood redevelopment brings challenges. … So the city is working on a housing action plan to make sure social services and education arrive in the community, not just new apartments. The mall may be evolving, but the desire, and challenges, in creating a community-oriented development still remain.

“ ‘You can have acres and acres of housing, but without a community, is it a place?’ [David Kleitsch, the city’s economic development director,] says. ‘Does it fulfill somebody’s experience?’ ”

More at City Lab, here.

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Ta-Dah! A Map of Elferterre

Posted in Uncategorized on October 28, 2020| 4 Comments »

Notes From the Hinterland

I’m coming down the homestretch with the proofing for my new YA fantasy, Out of Time. By mid-November, I should be done. Fanfare, please! I certainly won’t be sorry when that arduous job is done.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be blogging until the proofing is finished. More than likely, posts will be sporadic.

However, I did want to share our first-ever map that will be in Out of Time.The map was created by my husband, Clif, and it features the country of Norlander, which is in the magical realm of Elferterre, where Maya and her new team—Will, Jay, and Lexie—must travel.

In Elferterre—green and mysterious with a touch of steampunk—Maya, Will, Jay, and Lexie encounter allies and foes, including a talking cat, a witch, sprites, ogres, imps, and a mechanical horse. All the while, Magic swirls around Elferterre, enhancing the good and bad in every…

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