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My Sister’s Locket

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 15, 2019| 9 Comments »

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In the picture above, my sister had already had a recurrence of glioblastoma. But, you know, while there’s life, there’s hope. We went on a junket to Provincetown.

Not long before our trip, Suzanne, who pays regular visits to antique shows in Brimfield, Massachusetts, found the perfect locket for my sister. By some implausible alignment of the stars, it was inscribed on the back with both my sister’s name and her husband’s name. Suzanne does keep an eye open for particular designs for particular customers, but only magic could have turned up a locket with both those names.

Later, Suzanne found a similar design for me. It had my husband’s initials on the back.

Longtime readers know that this blog got its start when Suzanne said that she needed a blog for her jewelry business and that if I took it on, I could write about anything I liked. The offer of freedom was too good to refuse as my knowledge of jewelry, despite having a grandmother in the business, too, did not extend to a post a day. And I wanted to write a post a day.

Here’s a thing to know about Suzanne’s company, Luna & Stella. From its founding a decade ago, it’s been about relationships and the meaning that special pieces of jewelry can convey. At first, Suzanne’s emphasis was on her line of contemporary birthstone jewelry, which remains popular. But as she began to introduce antique lockets created with the craftsmanship of the famed Rhode Island jewelers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, she learned something interesting. Customers not only appreciated the beauty of their lockets but also felt a connection to the previous owners. Some people chose to keep the time-worn pictures inside instead of having Luna & Stella size and place images of their own family and friends.

Do check out Luna & Stella for a holiday gift of meaningful jewelry, here. You can use the discount code CarolineFriend at checkout. And Suzanne even has an installment plan now.

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Choir on Both Sides of the Border

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 14, 2019| 5 Comments »

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Photo: Zulekha Nathoo/CBC
Singer Linnea Leidy, 20, says she has relatives in Mexico and hopes the drop-in choir event on two sides of the border can “defuse some of the myths around these families who live around here.”

Sometimes our country feels noble for providing aid somewhere, and that’s OK. But how do we feel when other countries do the same for us — for example, when other countries stepped up because we failed to provide timely aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria? I think we need to be grateful and accept graciously, not get a chip on our shoulder. A similar dynamic can be seen in journalism. If we aren’t covering it, it’s great that another country does. Not sure if US journalists captured the following story, but I’m glad Canadians did.

Zulekha Nathoo reported at CBC about a Toronto choir that arranged a special friendship event at the US-Mexico border.

“The Toronto-based singing group Choir!Choir!Choir! staged a performance [in October] at the U.S.-Mexico border, saying the decision was based on a desire to foster community rather than on politics alone.

“With a barbed wire fence and border patrol dividing two groups of drop-in singers, one located on the beach at Border Field State Park in San Diego, Calif., and the other just metres away in the border town of Tijuana, Mexico, the popular choral group performed a rendition of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ by The Beatles. …

“About 300 people took part on the U.S. side and 500 across the divide in Tijuana.’We’re just trying to create a moment that can be shared and that will bring people hope,’ said Daveed Goldman, co-founder of Choir!Choir!Choir!. …

“Tens of thousands of migrants from across Central America are seeking asylum. … It has led to stiffer immigration policies, including forced family separation.

‘These people are no different than the rest of us,’ said Linnea Leidy, 20, who came to sing. She said she has family in Mexico. ‘[This event] can help defuse some of the myths around these families who live around here.’

“A short walk from the singers is the famous Friendship Park, a bi-national space at the border where residents from both sides can meet their loved ones through a guarded fence. The spaces in the fence barely allow a pinky finger to fit through. …

” ‘There are things that we can’t solve by singing, obviously,’ said Molly Clark, who works at ArtPower at University of California San Diego, which helped organize the event. ‘But I hope that in the end, we just feel more connected to one another.’

“Choir!Choir!Choir!, which invites audience members to join singalongs around the world in an effort to build a sense of community, was founded by Goldman and fellow Canadian artist Nobu Adilman in 2011. The pair teaches a song’s arrangements to participants before performing it live as a group. In addition to travelling across Canada, the duo has put on shows around the U.S. and in Europe. …

“Adilman, who was directing singers on the Tijuana side, couldn’t be seen through the fencing, but his voice could be heard on the San Diego side through loudspeakers set up near the stage.

” ‘We stand with you,’ Adilman told the Tijuana crowd. ‘We just want you to know: you have a lot of friends who you haven’t met yet.’ ”

Choir!Choir!Choir! does these events a lot and probably has the logistics and partnerships down to a science, but I’m still impressed with the organizational chops.

More at CBC, here.

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Homeless Young People

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 13, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Tom Parsons on Unsplash
Concern for homeless youth continues to grow.

Since I read Sarah Smarsh’s memoir Homeland, I have had to recognize that my difficult childhood was not as difficult as many other people’s. And my difficulties were never exacerbated by the relentless poverty Smarsh’s farming family experienced despite always working hard.

Still, I identified with some aspects of her story, like the wish to run away. In the book, Smarsh would decide to live with a different relative from time to time, which seemed to help her get her head together for a while. I never ran away, but even as an adult, I used to fantasize about ways a child might do that successfully. I finally concluded it’s not possible, despite The Boxcar Children and their apparent self-sufficiency.

It may not be possible to do so successfully, but children and teens do run away. Tristan Hopper and Kaitlin J. Schwan write about youth homelessness in Canada at The Conversation and suggest some ways to help them.

“Despite decades of policy and programming, youth homelessness remains an urgent issue in many communities across Canada. [Twenty] per cent of people experiencing homelessness are youth. Particular groups — Indigenous youth, racialized youth and youth who identify as LGBTQ+ — are at increased risk of homelessness due to intersecting forms of structural and systemic inequity. …

“Given this, there has been an increased focus on homelessness prevention across Canada and globally. … Research shows that meaningful and accessible activities like sports and arts can have significant impacts on youth social connectedness, better developmental outcomes, improved mental health and recovery from trauma. …

“Youth homelessness is a complex social issue affecting people between the ages of 13-24 who are living independent of parents or caregivers and do not have the means to acquire safe and secure housing. …

“A key component of youth homelessness prevention is not only preventing youth from experiencing homelessness in the first place, but also preventing young people from re-entering life on the streets. …

“Social exclusion, loneliness and limited social networks are particularly common issues for those who have recently left homeless status. These experiences powerfully contribute to mental health decline, substance use, feelings of hopelessness and subsequent returns to homelessness.

“Young people exiting homelessness may be housed in locations that are isolated from services, community centres and childcare. This distance can create barriers to accessing meaningful activities and can present challenges to social and political inclusion.

“All young people deserve stable and safe housing, and also the opportunity to be engaged in meaningful activities, [which include] resources that encourage social inclusion … Social inclusion may also mitigate risks of eviction. For example, neighbourhood groups may help navigate conflicts with landlords. This inclusion may help in the development of a new identity as young people re-articulate their sense of selves in a new community.

“Some studies show that youth experiencing homelessness view artistic activity and sports engagement as absolutely critical to their wellbeing, recovery and exits from homelessness. … Recreational sport participation can have several physical, psychosocial, emotional and developmental benefits. … However, for sport programming for homeless youth to be purposeful, the social, political and cultural barriers to participation must be addressed, including time and place of programming, cost of access and cultural acceptance.

“Research has shown that for Indigenous youth, re-connection with cultural practices — including sports — can be a critical component in connectedness and meaning. … We need to [invest] in frontline prevention programming that includes sports and arts activities driven by the needs and interests of the young people they serve.”

More at The Conversation, here. (I believe social scientists like these are doing good work, but their writing is awfully dry. For more-engaging and specific writing on youth in trouble, try UTEC, here.)

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What’s Next for the Manhattan of the Desert?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 12, 2019| 3 Comments »

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Photo: Achilleas Zavallis
Will these ancient, mudbrick, high-rise buildings survive the war in Yemen?

When I read fantasies to grandchildren, I explain that although passing through a wardrobe into another reality is not true, the feelings of the characters and the challenges they confront are. In fact, sometimes the issues of our world are made clearer through a fantasy lens.

Some fantasies I read just for my own pleasure. Having just finished Book Two of Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust, I’m thinking about the way selfish monetary interests fuel the real world’s endless Middle East wars. In Pullman’s trilogy, a certain rose oil from the region of the old Silk Road has been found to have priceless properties, and behind-the-scenes power brokers are focused on trying to control it. Rose oil is a stand-in for whatever countries in the real world try to control, frequently another kind of oil.

One of the fiercest Middle East wars wars today is being fought in the small country of Yemen, and the report below is about amazing cultural sites we might not have heard about but for this disaster. I hope that spreading stories about the risks for civilians and cultural treasures will lead to more people demanding peace.

Bethan McKernan writes at the Guardian, “On the edge of the vast Empty Quarter desert that dominates the Arabian peninsula, white and brown towers rise together out of the valley floor like tall sandcastles. Once they welcomed weary caravans traversing the Silk Roads: now they stand as testimony to the ingenuity of a lost civilisation.

“This is the ancient walled city of Shibam, nicknamed the ‘Manhattan of the desert’ by the British explorer Freya Stark in the 1930s, in modern-day Yemen, a country also home to an untold number of other archeological treasures. The kingdom of Saba, ruled by the legendary Queen of Sheba, and many other dynasties of the ancient world rose and fell here, their fortunes linked to Yemen’s position at the crossroads of early frankincense and spice trades between Africa and Asia.

“Today, as a result of Yemen’s complex civil war – now in its fifth year – many of the country’s wonders have been damaged or are under threat. While the destruction pales in comparison to the human cost of the conflict, the country’s rich cultural heritage has also been ravaged. …

“Shibam, a 1,700-year-old settlement in the valley of Hadramawt, has largely escaped direct violence, but is still suffering from years of neglect, despite being a Unesco world heritage site.

“Named for King Shibam Bin Harith Ibn Saba, it is one of the oldest – and still one of the best – examples of vertical construction in the world. In the 16th century, Shibam’s inhabitants found they had run out of space to expand. To compensate, they began to build carefully on a rectangular street grid, and instead of spreading out, they built up …

“The city’s 3,000 residents still largely follow the traditional living pattern, with in some cases up to 40 family members in the same tower. Animals and tools are kept on the ground floor and food is stored on the second. Elderly people live on the third and the fourth is used for entertaining. Higher levels are occupied by more nimble families, with childless newlyweds on the roof. …

“Shibam is largely self-sustaining: its farmers and shopkeepers cater to the small population and many men are employed baking the straw and mud bricks used in construction. As in many Yemeni cities, goats and chickens roam the streets.

“ ‘Lots of young people have left,’ said Ali Abdullah, 28, who was looking after his family’s goats along with his 10-year-old brother, Majid.

‘Shibam is beautiful but there is no reliable money to make here unless they start preserving the buildings again.’ …

“Since Yemen’s Arab Spring revolt in 2011, funding to help preserve the city has dried up, as has the once steady flow of tourists, said Salim Rubiyah, the head of the local association responsible for looking after the public buildings inside Shibam’s walls. …

“Said Rubiyah, ‘I worry that this will be the last generation who are able to make a life here and appreciate the city’s beauty.’

“Elsewhere in Yemen, the story repeats itself. … In Sana’a, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, ancient sites have been razed by Saudi-led coalition bombing [paid for, sadly, by the US]. … Despite Unesco having provided the coalition with a no-strike list of historical sites when the campaign began in 2015, sites such as the Castle of Taiz have been targeted, as well as the Dhamar Museum.

“ ‘We are nervous about the politicisation of heritage and the militarisation of archaeology during the conflict,’ said Sama’a al-Hamdani, director of the Yemen Cultural Institute for Heritage and the Arts. … ‘You can’t be the destroyer and the saviour at the same time.’ ”

More here.

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Ancient Infographics

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 11, 2019| 3 Comments »

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Photo: Wolfenbüttel Digital Library of the Herzog August Bibliothek
A 6th century CE manuscript called the Codex Arcerianus shows how Roman land surveyors marked off, measured, and mapped property lines.

The website Hyperallergic always has interesting articles about art and art-related fields. This one, which reviews a book about how the ancients handled the graphical representation of information, shows that useful information was conveyed in art long before anyone thought of a term like infographics.

Sarah E. Bond has the report on classicist and historian Andrew M. Riggsby’s book.

“In Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World, Riggsby looks at the historical use of visual information technologies and the Roman use of what many today might term ‘infographics’ in the period from the founding of Rome in 753 BCE until 300 CE — just a few years before the ascent of the emperor Constantine and the empire-wide growth of Christianity. …

“Going beyond simple lists, Riggsby examines the rarified use of tables of contents, alphabetized lists, and indices. … Prior to the rise of the codex format, which we would later simply call a ‘book’, organizing was not done by pagination within scrolls, but rather by rows and chapters within a particular scroll. Riggsby reiterates the rarity of Roman tables of contents within literary works, but there was an abundance of indices.

“In public, Romans also encountered public inscriptions with lists of consuls and also calendars, called fasti. These calendars used abbreviations and color coding: marking each set of nine days under the month alphabetically, A through H, in order to signal the nine-day market cycle, highlighting special festival days, and often noting the civic or religious import of the day with the letters F, N, or C. These fasti are also a stark reminder that when there are no formal weekends (and there weren’t in antiquity)

one needed to travel to the forum and read the calendar to know about all the festival days off from work or state business. …

“Clocks were an important type of informational device that allowed Romans to measure time, but they can also double as art pieces and statements of wealth. While the technology governing timekeeping may have changed, for Romans in antiquity it was important to visually represent time — even if the length of Roman hours were not completely standardized, as ours are, and could vary by time of year. …

“There are even more numerous examples of portable models of sundials one could carry that could err widely based on the latitude, season, and time of day. But, just like the Rolex or Apple Watch of today, portable watches might have been seen as more of a fashion trend for the elite rather than a technology that was always accurate. Perhaps the most inventive portable sundial is one found at the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, which is shaped like a ham. …

“Mosaics of Knowledge underscores the fact that there were no modern data graphics such as the scatterplot, pie chart, bar graph, timeline, or musical staff notation in the Roman world. However, Romans did have occasion to use diagrams and maps, particularly when representing property lines as recorded by professional land surveyors.

“Romans did not make extensive use of textual illustrations in literary and historical works, but the handbooks for the Roman land surveyors collected and passed down through the Imperial Period were an exception to this rule. Additionally, the survival of building plans from antiquity gives yet another window into how Romans abstracted and then represented space for viewers.” More here.

No amount of fashion craving would induce me to carry around a heavy bronze ham to tell the time.

Photo: Carlo Raso via Flickr
A portable vertical sundial from Herculaneum, shaped like a ham, is exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Naples.

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Extreme Christmas Cooking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 10, 2019| 8 Comments »

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Photo: Arty McGoo
These artistic Santas are an example of Arty McGoo’s cookie handiwork.

Before I share today’s story about Christmas cookies that are works of art, I want to tell you what Sandra does every Christmas for her extended Italian family in Connecticut. Sandra, you should know, is beloved of a large network of friends and family for her kindness, insight, moral support, good sense, and many other sterling attributes — not least of which is her cooking skill.

At Christmas, her family produces a prodigious feast, and her role is to make the cheese-filled anolini below, which she serves with chicken soup. She’s ahead of the game today having made and frozen roughly 1,100 of the small, ravioli-like dumplings.

Photo: Sandra M. Kelly
It’s traditional among Sandra’s Italian family members to serve anolini in chicken soup as one of the Christmas-dinner courses. She’s already made and frozen 1,100.

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Nina Keck reported a story about another edible art form at National Public Radio [NPR] last year.

“For many people the holidays wouldn’t be the holidays without baking and decorating cookies. But a growing number of creative bakers, known as ‘cookiers,’ are taking their art to a whole new level.

“Mary Thode of Chittenden, Vt., is one of them. This time of year, she bakes all sorts of cookies — some of the recipes were her mother’s, she says, which bring back nice memories.

” ‘But I do like a painted cookie,’ she says, nodding toward the nine coffee cups on her dining room table that are each filled with different colored frosting. … Thode makes cookies all year — baby-bottle shaped ones for shower gifts and pumpkins at Halloween. But during the holidays, she’ll bake about 700 cookies, half of which she’ll paint, often with many layers of different colored frosting. …

“Thode is among a growing number of people, who’ve changed bite-sized treats into an art form. Many, like Thode, are hobbyists, who give their cookies away as gifts. But it’s also big business. Some of the most elaborate designs by top artists sell for $150 per dozen, or even more. …

“Elizabeth Adams [is] known in the cookie world as Arty McGoo. McGoo has made a career out of cookies. The California resident has more than 80,000 followers on Facebook and now devotes most of her time to teaching others her craft. …

“The popularity of decorating cookies has been great for companies like CK Products, which manufactures and distributes things like edible glitter, sprinkles, meringue powder and piping gel. …

“Ann Clark Cookie Cutters, a family-owned business in Rutland, Vt., that began in 1989, has also ramped up production. CEO Ben Clark says 52 employees work two shifts and their assembly line churns out 22,000 cookie cutters a day. …

“Clark says llamas are big this year: ‘We immediately said “let’s do a llama.” And are our creative director said we’re going to do two; we’re going to do one that looks like a llama and we’re gonna have one that’s more of a cartoony llama. … Ten days later [both] those products were dominating Amazon as the llama cookie cutter.’ ”

More here. By the way, next year’s serious cookie convention, Cookie Con, will be held in Louisville. Get your tickets here.

The cookies my grandchildren made at the church’s craft workshop Saturday are works of art that have meaning for me. This one is by my youngest grandchild.

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The Poor Spread a Little Money Around

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 9, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Nichole Sobecki for NPR
The cypress sapling above was purchased with money received from the charity GiveDirectly in 2017. More recently, the charity teamed up with researchers to study the impact of cash grants on a wider Kenyan community.

Here’s a new way to look at “trickle down.” Unlike the wealthy, who are more likely to put extra cash into savings, poor people who receive cash actually spread the wealth around. Read about the results of a new study in Kenya.

Nurith Aizenman reports at National Public Radio [NPR], “Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world’s poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren’t the only ones who benefit.

“Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study, says that until now, research on cash aid has almost exclusively focused on the impact on those receiving the aid. And a wealth of research suggests that when families are given the power to decide how to spend it, they manage the money in ways that improve their overall well-being: Kids get more schooling; the family’s nutrition and health improves.

“But Miguel says that ‘as nonprofits and governments are ramping up cash aid, it becomes more and more important to understand the broader economy-wide consequences.’

“In particular, there has been rising concern about the potential impact on the wider community — the people who are not getting the aid. …

“Miguel and his collaborators teamed up to conduct an experiment with one of the biggest advocates of cash aid. It’s a charity called GiveDirectly that, since 2009, has given out more than $140 million to impoverished families in various African countries.

“The researchers identified about 65,000 households across an impoverished, rural area of Kenya and then randomly assigned them to various groups: those who got no help from GiveDirectly and a ‘treatment group’ of about 10,500 families who got a one-time cash grant of about $1,000. …

“Eighteen months on, the researchers found that, as expected, the families who got the money used it to buy lots more food and other essentials. But that was just the beginning.

” ‘That money goes to local businesses,’ says Miguel. ‘They sell more. They generate more revenue. And then eventually that gets passed on into labor earnings for their workers.’

The net effect: Every dollar in cash aid increased total economic activity in the area by $2.60.

“But were those income gains simply washed out by a corresponding rise in inflation?

” ‘We actually find there’s a little bit of price inflation, but it’s really small,’ says Miguel. ‘It’s much less than 1%.’

“The study — recently released through the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research — also uncovered some evidence for why prices didn’t go up: A lot of local businesses reported that before the cash infusion they weren’t that busy.

“So when they suddenly get more customers, they don’t have to take extra steps like hiring more workers that would drive up their costs — and their prices. In economic parlance, there was enough ‘slack’ in the local economy to absorb the injection of cash.

“Eeshani Kandpal is an economist with the World Bank who has done research of her own on cash transfers — including a study that found that a cash aid program in the Philippines did drive up the cost of certain perishable food items. …

“The new study has a far broader scope, says Kandpal — encompassing not just a much larger number of participants but a vast range of goods and businesses whose pricing practices the researchers meticulously monitored.

” ‘It’s a super credible, interesting study,’ says Kandpal. ‘And very carefully done. … I’d be curious to see if they persist in the longer run,’ she says. ‘Eighteen months is certainly not short. But it’s not terribly long either.’ …

“Michael Faye, co-founder and president of GiveDirectly, says even if it turns out that a one-time cash infusion provides only a temporary boost, ‘I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.’ ”

And wouldn’t you rather see poor folks getting more money than wealthy people and corporations? I myself am doing OK and would really like to experience a more equitable world in my lifetime. More here.

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Helping a Neighbor at Christmas

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 8, 2019| 6 Comments »

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Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff
Craig and Bobby Giurleo carried wreaths out of their shop for customers. Millbrook Farm, family run for generations, was badly wounded this year by a construction road closure. Then some caring neighbors organized a cash mob.

Six years ago I participated in a cash mob to help a longtime family-run five and dime threatened with bankruptcy. (My post on that.) I was only one of many who bought a lot of great stuff that day, and I’m happy to say the shop is still going.

Recently, another group of local well-wishers did something similar for a family-run farm, where summer and fall sales had gone down 90 percent thanks to an unconscionable road closure.

Deanna Pan wrote at The Boston Globe, “To reach Millbrook Farm from Boston, you must go out of your way. Take Route 2 west into historic Concord, past thickets of snow-drenched woods and picturesque Colonials. If you know where you’re going, you’ll find it, after a series of right turns, tucked back on the Cambridge Turnpike before the road abruptly closes to anyone passing through.

“The family-run nursery — which specializes in flowers and hanging plants in the spring, pumpkins and mums in the fall, and Christmas trees and wreaths in the winter — has survived its share of troubles.

“Sal Giurleo, 80, the brusque family patriarch, started the business 31 years ago, following in the footsteps of his father, an Italian immigrant who grew vegetables for First National grocery stores in the 1940s and ’50s. …

“When construction began on the Cambridge Turnpike this spring, sales at Millbrook Farm plummeted. Although part of the turnpike remained open, roadwork made it virtually impassable. Construction vehicles and machinery frequently blocked both lanes. Until recently, the road was dug up and unpaved. …

Shaun Giurleo, 50, Sal’s youngest son, estimates that by midsummer and fall, sales had plunged 90 percent.

“At their lowest point, they saw no more than one customer a day. Sal had to take out two loans, totaling $52,000, to keep the business afloat. They had no choice but to sell their flowers and plants wholesale at a fraction of the price they would normally charge their customers. …

“The Giurleos prepared for a tight Christmas. Sal worried he would have to take out another loan and sink deeper into debt. He was determined to stay open, no matter the cost. In late November, news of the Giurleo family’s plight proliferated across Facebook, Nextdoor, and e-mail as residents of Concord and beyond urged their friends and neighbors to patronize the struggling Millbrook Farm. …

“The Giurleos’ Christmas miracle arrived early, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Millbrook Farm was unusually busy for a weekday, which Shaun thought was odd. But nothing could have prepared the Giurleos for what happened on the Friday after the holiday. From 9 a.m. until sundown, cars parked up and down the turnpike, as many as 20 at time. The crowds were unlike anything they’d ever seen, driving from as far as Natick and Saugus.

“It was the busiest day in Millbrook Farm’s history. Shaun guesses they sold between 350 and 400 Christmas trees, about half their lot. Saturday was even busier. … At least 10 customers paid for two trees when they only took home one. Another customer asked the Giurleos to charge him $500 for a single tree. …

“ ‘We had a million people here. We weren’t ready. We didn’t know,’ Sal said later, chuckling, …

“Millbrook Farm is now replenishing its inventory with help from other garden centers and wholesalers in the region.

“Inside the storefront [in December], an ebullient Shaun worked the cash register. Despite the weather, the nursery was humming with customers, picking up vibrant wreaths that Shaun had carefully decorated with handmade bows and other baubles, and whatever trees were left until Sal’s shipment arrived.

“The Giurleos won’t recoup all of their losses from the past year, but their business will survive until the next season. Thanks to the influx of sales, Sal immediately paid off his debts.” More here.

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Art in Time of War

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 7, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Dalloul Foundation
Installation view of the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon. The private museum is not expected to open to the public for a few years.

Today’s article brings up the dilemma I mentioned recently about trying to share something interesting when the situation on the ground is changing fast and the thing described could disappear overnight. (My version of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “You can’t step in the same river twice.”)

In September,  Rebecca Anne Proctor of artnet News attempted to capture the fluid art scene in Beirut, Lebanon, amid daily antigovernment protests.

“Hanging in the booth of Saleh Barakat Gallery during the 10th edition of the Beirut Art Fair last week was the latest work by Lebanese painter Ayman Baalbaki: a large-scale depiction of Beirut’s Piccadilly Theatre in its present, ruined state, priced at $250,000. Painted in fleshy red and black brushstrokes, the empty, ghostly theatre in Hamra serves as a potent reminder of both the city’s rich cultural history and its present economic predicament.

“Bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, the little Levant country of Lebanon is used to continuous states of economic and political woe. Yet after its parliament approved a 2019 austerity budget in late July in an attempt to rescue the economy from spiraling debt and unlock billions of dollars in international aid, many believe the country is now experiencing some of its darkest days yet. …

“The country has also been deeply affected by the Syrian refugee crisis. Lebanon, home to a population of six million, is currently hosting more than 950,000 Syrian refugees, according to the UNHCR. There are also mounting tensions with Israel—in late August, Israeli drones struck an Iranian-backed Palestinian militia in the Eastern Bekaa Valley. …

“ ‘The crisis is very present and things are very tough, but what do you do in such a moment?’ asks the prominent Beirut art dealer Saleh Barakat. … ‘It’s either you close or you make a decision to continue. We took the latter decision. We want to resist by moving on in a positive way.’

“One small silver lining, he says, is that artists feel less pressure to churn out commercial material, freeing them up to experiment. … Often, that results in art that reflects the world around them.

“Most recently, Barakat mounted ‘Interminable Seasons of Migration,’ an exhibition of sculptures made out of bits of car metal by Lebanese artist Ginane Makki Bacho that portrayed the millions of refugees escaping conflict in Syria.

‘I wanted to show the tremendous exodus of people fleeing the war with or without expectation or hope of a secured destination,’ the 71-year-old artist says. …

“Even in times of crisis, however, the art market manages to chug along, and Beirut is home to a number of deep-pocketed collectors who can ride out the storm … ‘It was a really good week,’ [Barakat] says. ‘I was very surprised.’

“The fair remains under the leadership of its founder, French-born Laure d’Hauteville, who has worked to raise the profile of the event. … She claims that ‘the fair has not at all been affected by the economic crisis — we had more museum groups and collectors than ever.’ …

“ ‘I remain an optimist,’ says Mazen Soueid, an economist and advisor to Lebanon’s prime minister, of Lebanon’s future. ‘Resilience is part of the country’s DNA; a lot of the downside is due to the regional rather than the local factors. Let us be frank: the region is at war; and for a country in the middle of a region at war, we are actually still holding up.’ …

“Indeed, the new austerity measures seem not to have dramatically affected Beirut’s rising crop of new museums. … Among them is the Beirut Museum of Art (BeMA), dedicated to Lebanese art and slated to open in 2023. …

“There’s also the Dalloul family collection, known as the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), comprising more than 4,000 Modern and contemporary Middle Eastern artworks. Their private museum is scheduled to open within the next three years. …

“[Some dealers are] facing challenges they never could have anticipated. ‘We are going through a huge crisis,’ says Joumana Asseily, owner of Marfa’ Gallery, … They new austerity measures have affected Asseily’s ability to transport artworks abroad. … Recently, she tried to reclaim three works that were lent to a traveling exhibition in Europe, only to be asked at customs to pay for the objects as if she had purchased them.

“ ‘It’s a nightmare. … I still have artworks stuck in customs — it’s been around eight weeks. [But] even if it is a struggle, I want to stay and work. There are great artists, a great scene, and amazing energy in Beirut.’ ”

More here.

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Photos from the Fall

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 6, 2019| 7 Comments »

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I was hurrying along Walden Street on a cold and rainy Sunday, awkwardly carrying parcels and a heavy umbrella, when whom should I see but a couple of historical reenactors. So of course I had to put everything down in the damp and find my phone to take a picture. I still don’t know what the occasion was for the guys above or who they were supposed to be, but this sort of thing happens all the time where I live.

Here are a few more photos, going back to October.

First, I wanted to show you the finished mural by Shepard Fairey in Providence. I posted the work in progress here. The sign by RISD Coworks is just one example of the welcome that Providence and the Rhode Island School of Design give to artists in general.

And speaking of RISD, my husband and I took my sister’s husband to the RISD art museum at Thanksgiving, and he loved it. I took pictures of some art I liked below, but I also want to tell you about an auditory installation that meant a lot to us.

In one room, a museum guard pointed out a circle of chairs on a dais and an old-fashioned microphone. You could vaguely hear a tape of voices looping softly in the background. The guard said that one could speak into the microphone and in a few seconds, one could hear the words projected and amplified. I stepped up and said to my sister, who died in September, “Hey, Nell, wherever you are. We’re thinking of you.”

The effect of hearing those words resonate around the room a moment later was spectral, indescribable. We felt we were communicating.

I close with the ruined wall in Providence that features a constantly changing array of artworks. And then one of my shadow pictures, this one taken in late afternoon in the local cemetery.

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That Elusive Viral Video Ad

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 5, 2019| 4 Comments »

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Photo: Thomas Jones
Hafod Hardware in Rhayader, Powys, Wales, has a story to tell about generations working in a family business. Its low-budget, Christmas advertising video has gone viral.

The Holy Grail of many small businesses is a video ad that touches people in such a meaningful way that it goes viral. I am not sure if going viral necessarily generates a lot of business, but it definitely generates attention.

Consider, for example, this hardware store in Wales. Unless you lived nearby, you would not actually be able to shop there regularly. But I think that after seeing this video, you might go out of your way to buy something one day and take a selfie.

Copied more or less from the style of a department store giant with a huge ad budget, the ad has managed, on a shoestring, to draw a large following. According to the Guardian, that’s because the small family business has a real story to tell.

Stuart Heritage’s report starts with the department store. “This year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, in which a dragon tries to kill several people then holds up a pudding, reportedly cost £7m [$9,190,300] to make. And that’s fine. It’s a good advert, and John Lewis has a reputation to uphold, and you can’t really put a price on the half a morning of vaguely duty-bound Twitter buzz it generated.

“However, by no means is it the best Christmas ad this year. That plaudit now goes to Hafod Hardware, a tiny independent family-run hardware store in Rhayader, Powys, whose ad cost just £100 [$131.35] to make. …

“A little boy wakes up. He brushes his teeth, eats his breakfast and goes to work. He opens the shop, fixes a broom; he cleans the counter and restocks the shelves. He serves a customer, does a bit of accounting, serves another customer. At the end of the day he switches off the light, bends down to pick up a Christmas tree and – PLOT TWIST! – he’s actually a 30-year-old man. The strapline comes up: ‘Be a kid this Christmas’. …

“The advert is being hailed as a celebration of traditional Christmas spirit, the strength of the independent, and the importance of community. … [But] while it’s impressive that the shop has only spent £100 on the ad – and that was to pay for an engineer to record the song on the soundtrack – it still manages to crib pretty heavily from the John Lewis playbook. There’s a kid. There’s a tree. There’s a slowed-down cover version of a well-loved song. …

“But let’s not be too mean-spirited. The fact is that the Hafod Hardware advert packs an almighty punch, because of the history of the shop itself. It has been open since 1895, fending off competition from bigger companies with every step; and it’s a true family shop, passed down through the generations.

“The grandfather in the advert is the nephew of the founder, the man at the end (his son) runs the shop with him and the little boy could feasibly grow up to run the shop after him. Any old idiot can get a kid to sweep up a shop, but the magic of the ad is that it shows the real flesh and blood lineage of Hafod Hardware. It’s the beating heart of the community, and has been for years. No amount of money can buy that.”

If you were making a video for your business that you hoped would click with a large audience, what would you put in it?

More at the Guardian, here.

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When Snow Melting Machines Aren’t Enough

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2019| 3 Comments »

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Photo: Vidar Ruud / NTB scanpix
Snow being cleared in Oslo, Noway, in 2018.

As I write to you from a New England village where snow piles are removed by heavy equipment in the middle of the night, I’m remembering that even the “melting machines” of Norway cannot keep up with the challenge.

Here’s a 2018 report from the Norwegian version of The Local.

“According to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, 2018 has seen twice as much snow as expected, compared to normal levels, and up to 10,000 people are reported to have complained to the city’s Urban Environment Agency (Bymiljøetaten) about the hazardous nature of [Oslo’s] roads and paths, writes broadcaster NRK. …

” ‘In the last few weeks it has been difficult to get around our city, especially for those who aren’t so good on their feet. The plowing budget is almost used up and the Urban Environment Agency has therefore requested more money,’ Lan Marie Berg, head of Oslo Municipality’s environment and traffic department, told NRK.

“The municipality has therefore agreed to allocate an extra 53 million kroner (5.4 million euros) for clearing snow this year. … The Urban Environment Agency will also be given funding to remove ice and snow from paths and roads in residential areas.

“According to the agency, 750 cars have been towed in the capital this winter to allow ploughing vehicles to access necessary areas. 25,500 tonnes of grit had already been spread by the end of January, a significant increase on the 15,000 tonnes spread throughout the entirety of last winter, writes NRK.

“In Oslo, an ice melting machine located at the city’s harbour — nicknamed ‘Terje’ — takes care of much of the snow removed from streets. But with the machine having reached capacity, other solutions must be found by the municipality, including piling snow in streets and parking lots.

” ‘We cannot continue to transport all snow from Oslo at the moment, because deposit sites are closed. In some places, snow must therefore be placed at the side of the road,’ said Urban Environment Agency director Gerd Robsahm Kjørven to NRK. …

” ‘It is snowing now and the snow must be removed. That’s why we’re making the money available, and we’ll have to find space for it before we produce a revised budget for the municipality,’ Robert Steen, a councillor on Oslo Municipality’s finance committee, told NRK.” More here.

Ya gotta do, what ya gotta do. Monday night I was in Providence and, going to bed early, had no idea that a street-parking ban went into effect at midnight. I moved my car into Suzanne and Erik’s driveway at 5 a.m. and, fortunately, hadn’t gotten a ticket by then. I had to walk extra carefully as I had not brought along my lovely Nordic boots with the studs on the bottom. I can definitely relate to the environment and traffic department head’s comment about “those who aren’t so good on their feet”!

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Technology to Probe Ancient Scrolls

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 3, 2019| 3 Comments »

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Photo: Diamond Light Source Ltd
Here’s the team taking on the challenge of reading scrolls charred by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Recent technology is making the impossible possible.

In the always-new-angles-in-archaeology department, here’s a recent story about using advanced technology to read ancient scrolls once thought beyond deciphering.

Nicola Davis writes at the Guardian, “When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 it destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, their inhabitants and their prized possessions – among them a fine library of scrolls that were carbonised by the searing heat of ash and gas.

‘But scientists say there may still be hope that the fragile documents can once more be read thanks to an innovative approach involving high-energy x-rays and artificial intelligence.

“ ‘Although you can see on every flake of papyrus that there is writing, to open it up would require that papyrus to be really limber and flexible – and it is not any more,’ said Prof Brent Seales, chair of computer science at the University of Kentucky, who is leading the research.

“The two unopened scrolls that will be probed belong to the Institut de France in Paris and are part of an astonishing collection of about 1,800 scrolls that was first discovered in 1752 during excavations of Herculaneum. Together they make up the only known intact library from antiquity, with the majority of the collection now preserved in a museum in Naples.

The villa in which they were found is thought to have been owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator who was assassinated in 44BC.

“Experts have attempted to unroll about half of the scrolls through various methods over the years, although some have been destroyed in the process and experts say unrolling and exposing the writing to the air results in the ink fading.

“Seales and his team have previously used high-energy x-rays to ‘virtually unravel’ a 1,700 year old Hebrew parchment found in the holy ark of a synagogue in En-Gedi in Israel, revealing it to contain text from the biblical book of Leviticus.

“However, while the En-Gedi scroll contained a metal-based ink which shows up in x-ray data, the inks used on the Herculaneum scrolls are thought to be carbon-based, made using charcoal or soot, meaning there is no obvious contrast between the writing and the papyrus in x-ray scans. …

“As a result the team have come up with a new approach that uses high-energy x-rays together with a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning. The method uses photographs of scroll fragments with writing visible to the naked eye. These are used to teach machine learning algorithms where ink is expected to be in x-ray scans of the same fragments, collected using a number of techniques.

“The idea is that the system will pick out and learn subtle differences between inked and blank areas in the x-ray scans, such as differences in the structure of papyrus fibres. Once trained on the fragments, it is hoped the system can be used with data from the intact scrolls to reveal the text within. …

“As for what the scrolls contain, the researchers say they are excited.

“ ‘For the most part the writings [in opened scrolls] are Greek philosophy around Epicureanism, which was a prevailing philosophy of the day,’ said Seales. Another possibility is that the scrolls might contain Latin text. While classical libraries are believed to have had a Greek section and a Latin section, only a small proportion of scrolls from Herculaneum have so far been found to be in Latin, with the possibility there is a Latin section within the villa yet to be excavated.

“Dr Dirk Obbink, a papyrologist and classicist at the University of Oxford who has been involved in training the team’s algorithms, … is hoping the scrolls might even contain lost works, such as poems by Sappho or the treatise Mark Antony wrote on his own drunkenness. ‘I would very much like to be able to read that one,’ he said.”

More here.

Hmmm, the scrolls are from the home of Caesar’s father-in-law? I never heard mention of him, and now all I can think about is he must not have raised his daughter to be “above suspicion.” Or was she falsely accused?

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A News Outlet Designed for Teens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 2, 2019| 3 Comments »

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Photo: theCramm
Olivia Seltzer is the 15-year-old founder and sole writer of theCramm. She started theCramm after the 2016 presidential election to help young people keep abreast of news they care about. 

I am dazzled by the young people who are making themselves heard above the din of these trying times: environmentalists such as Greta Thunberg and ThisIsZeroHour, gun-safety-advocates such as David Hogg and Emma González, who both survived the February 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida — and many others. Now from TeenVogue, a remarkably mature truth-telling magazine, comes this story about a teen who saw a void and started her own news outlet. And she’s not the only one.

Rainesford Stauffer writes at Teen Vogue, “In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, Olivia Seltzer, now 15, noticed a shift at school.

” ‘Basically overnight, all we could talk about was politics and what was going on in the world,’ she tells Teen Vogue. Many of her peers in Santa Barbara, California, had parents who were undocumented immigrants, so the issues in the news hit close to home. Suddenly the personal felt very much political. ‘This massive interest in the news and politics came with an equally massive gap in the media,’ Seltzer continues. ‘Traditional news sources are primarily written by and geared toward an older demographic, and unfortunately, they don’t always connect to my generation.’

“That’s a problem, and an urgent one. Though a free press is crucial to democracy, more than one in four local newspapers have closed since 2004, and more Americans are getting their news from social media than traditional print media. Keeping young people engaged is necessary to foster civic engagement, and Seltzer wants to help close the gap.

“In February 2017, she launched theCramm, which offers a daily look at major stories from around the world, distilled into a newsletter that lands in email and text inboxes each weekday. Every day, she rises at 5 AM to read the news before school, poring over outlets, including the BBC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, Politico, and Reuters, among others, to ensure readers are receiving an ‘unbiased point of view with the news.’

“Seltzer works with an editorial team that helps research stories and finds inspiring individuals to interview for the newsletter, an advisory board comprised of ‘trusted adults,’ and ‘theCramm Fam,’ ambassadors from around the world who promote theCramm. …

“A recent survey by Common Sense Media found that 78% of American teens ages 13 to 17 say it’s important to them to follow current events. Young adults are more likely to consume news through social media sites than they are traditional news organizations, online or in print, but that isn’t necessarily a negative when it comes to news. Teens who use social media are more likely to be civically engaged, and smartphone users who engage with social media report they’re more regularly exposed to people who have different backgrounds, and feel like they have more diverse networks. …

“Instead of staring at cable news, they’re pioneering new ways to engage with the stories that meet them where they are. This isn’t just a matter of style, like how theCramm breaks down big stories into witty, need-to-know facts; it’s medium too. Seltzer … decided to create an option for people to receive theCramm via text. ‘I don’t think other news sources or a lot of people are aware that young people don’t really use email addresses,’ she says. …

“Sofia Frazer, a 16-year-old activist, runs the account @dailydoseofwokeness, which has over 30,000 followers and features story highlights on Sudan, mental health, and the 2020 presidential candidates, among others. After reading about the murder of Virginia teen Nabra Hassanen and the livestreamed police killing of Philando Castile, Frazer realized important stories weren’t being discussed with the depth they deserved. ‘In this day and age, the news is more inflammatory than it is informative,’ she tells Teen Vogue. …

“Frazer feels that Instagram makes it possible to get young people thinking about current issues. … She says, ‘If we want to continue the global conversation about young people taking the lead, people need to know how to access these kids and how to grab their attention.’…

“Within Instagram, there are different ways of reaching audiences and starting conversations. [Sixteen-year-old Anjali Kanda, an admin for the Instagram account @brown.politics,] engages followers via polls on Instagram stories and records videos, like the one she recently posted explaining the scandal surrounding financier and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. ‘People also tend to reply back to stories with questions or actually wanting to start an open discussion,’ she says. ‘I’ve gotten some really thoughtful insights from people replying to stories.’ …

“Seltzer points out that textbooks exist for math, science, English, and history — areas of study and focus from kindergarten onward. Media literacy doesn’t receive the same kind of attention in school. ‘We don’t have any source to learn about politics and what’s going on in the world,’ she says. ‘We’re just expected, when we turn 18, to all of a sudden be able to vote and know who we’re going to vote for. It takes time to actually cultivate a political knowledge and standing.’ ”

More here.

 

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Syria’s Secret Library Was Run by Teens

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 1, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photos: Local Council of Daraya City
This image from 2014 shows young people who rescued books for a secret library in besieged Daraya, Syria.

As much as I love stories about good things happening in bad times, I always wonder when I post them whether the oasis in Kabul or the library in Syria is still going. Was it there in July when a news outlet’s article was written? Was it there yesterday? Sometimes I search the internet to find a follow-up on, say, the multireligion soccer team that was never expected to win. Sometimes I leave it to you.

Despite the ambiguity of this July 2019 comment from VOA, a book on the heroic library started by Syrian teens is still worth talking about:

[Abdul] Basit and his team of volunteers were among those who had to flee Daraya to northern Syria, leaving the library behind. Unable to take the books, the members tried to conceal the library by blocking its entrance with pieces of shattered concrete. Despite their efforts, Syrian government forces were able to find the makeshift library. The fate of thousands of books remains unclear, according to Basit, who has been unable to return home.

At The New York Times, Dunya Mikhail reviews Mike Thomson’s book Syria’s Secret Library: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege.

“In a region that sways ‘on the palm of a genie,’ as the Arabic saying goes, where bullets and explosions are more familiar than bread, you would not expect people to read, let alone to risk their lives for the sake of books.

“Yet in 2013 a group of enthusiastic readers in Daraya, five miles southwest of Damascus, salvaged thousands of books from ruined homes, wrapping them in blankets just as they would victims of the war raging around them. They brought the books into the basement of a building whose upper floors had been wrecked by bombs and set up a library. As Mike Thomson recounts this unlikely story in Syria’s Secret Library, this underground book collection surrounded by sandbags functioned, as one user put it, as an ‘oasis of normality in this sea of destruction.’

“There, the self-appointed chief librarian, a 14-year-old named Amjad, would write down in a large file the names of people who borrowed the books, and then return to his seat to continue reading. He had all the books he could ever want, apart from ones on high shelves that he couldn’t reach. He told his friends: ‘You don’t have TV now anyway, so why not come here and educate yourself? It’s fun.’ The library hosted a weekly book club, as well as classes on English, math and world history, and debates over literature and religion.

“Advertising the library’s activities without compromising its security was a dilemma; patrons relied on word of mouth for fear that it would be targeted by the Syrian Army. By the time the library was founded, Daraya, a site of anti-government uprising and calls for reforms, had been under siege by the army for more than a year. Its 8,000 remaining residents — from a prewar population of about 80,000 — faced near-constant bombardment and shortages of food, water and power….

“Thomson, a radio and television reporter who covered the war in Syria for the BBC, dedicated months to interviewing the library’s founders and their friends via Skype and social media. When the internet went down in Daraya, his sources recorded comments on their phones as audio diaries they could send on to Thomson when the connection was restored. His book is a compassionate and inspiring portrait of a town where, one of the founders tells him, ‘fuel for our souls’ was an essential need.

“The books ‘help us understand the outside world better,’ another founder, a local dental student, said. Likewise, Thomson’s book may help the outside world better understand Syrians. …

“In the same spirit of piling books under Daraya’s shattered streets, local artists painted graffiti art on the walls of ruined buildings. In a moving image drawn by Abu Malik, a local artist nicknamed Banksy, a little girl stands on a pile of skulls writing the word ‘hope’ high above her head.” More.

Are you good at research? Maybe you could help me find out what has since happened to the library. I volunteer with displaced Syrians and others at a resettlement agency in Providence, and I feel a personal interest in this war-torn country.

The artist Abu Malik next to his mural amid the ruins of Daraya in 2014.

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