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Older Dancers Charm Pro Basketball

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

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Photo: Stephen Gosling/NBAE
The Wizdom is a dance team made up of exuberant and talented woman, no longer kids, who are good enough to dance at pro-basketball games.

I have listened to WBUR’s sports show Only a Game for years and was worried when host Bill Littlefield left. There was no need to worry. The program still excels at human-interest sports stories that draw in people like me as well as genuine sports fanatics.

Gary Waleik filed this one on some high-energy, over-50, pro-basketball dancers.

“Last year, Anna Cruse began to experience dread,” he writes. It was around the time her youngest was leaving for college, and she wondered what she would do with an empty nest. What was she good at? …

“To answer those questions, Anna Cruse had to look back at something she was good at four decades ago. In 1978, Anna Cruse was 21 years old. …

” ‘I was driving home from work one day and heard an ad on the radio for tryouts,’ Anna says. The NBA champion Washington Bullets were holding auditions for their dance team. ‘And I thought, “Hmmm … I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna go and try out.” ‘ …

“She made the 1978–1979 Washington Bullettes dance team.

” ‘All of it — the friendships and the performances, even the practice — it was all exciting,’ Anna says.

” ‘[But] in the fall of ’79, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.’ After a year of fighting, Anna beat the cancer and returned to her job as a word processing specialist, but not to the Bullettes. … Sometimes, when Anna watched dancers at an event or on TV, she’d remember how much she loved being one. …

“The years flew by, and Anna’s two oldest kids left their home in Greenville, South Carolina. Then, in March of 2018, the Washington Wizards held a 40th-anniversary celebration of the franchise’s only NBA title — from back in the days when they were still the Bullets.

” ‘And so they invited all the players back, and the coaches,’ Anna says. ‘And then any of the dancers through the years — I think there were about 60 of us — and we got to perform at this event. It sure reminded me of how enjoyable it was.’ …

“In early September, about a month after her daughter left home, Anna got an email. The Wizards were holding tryouts for a new dance team — or perhaps a new older dance team. It was for dancers 50 and older and was sponsored by the AARP. It would be called ‘The Wizdom.’ …

“In late September of 2018, undeterred by the eight-hour drive from her home in Greenville, she tried out for The Wizdom. … Anna had hardly danced over the previous 40 years. She says there were more than 80 dancers at the tryout, ranging in age from 50 to 76.

‘Absolute characters,’ Anna says. ‘Totally uninhibited. Comfortable in their own skin, and just entertaining folks.’ …

“Late one night, she got an email. … Anna Cruse had been chosen as one of the 20 members of the Wizdom over-50 dance team. …

“The Wizdom got just four practices in before their debut on Nov. 24, 2018.

” ‘The fans … so gracious. And the affirmation from them, and the excitement of the fans to this over-50, like, “What are these women out there doing?” Anna remembers. ‘When we came off the court that first game, I mean, these ladies were screaming and hugging.’ ”

More at Only a Game, here.

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Reinvigorating Canals

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 7, 2019| 11 Comments »

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Photo: John Sturrock
“A modern mania for canal developments is reshaping cities by offering oases of calm in fast-moving town centres,” says the Guardian.

When our kids were small, the Barge Canal (otherwise known as the Erie Canal) was as familiar to them as their friends’ backyard, as the elementary school, as the Hicks and McCarthy luncheonette. It ran right through town. I remember taking a canal-boat ride up and down (vertically) through the locks with a visiting grandmother and a picnic lunch.

In today’s story, John Vidal writes at the Guardian about a new focus on canals in England.

“Every second Monday of the month, a small group of volunteers meets in the training room of a Birmingham supermarket. They discuss what has long seemed to many of their friends a crazy and probably doomed idea: how to excavate a contaminated 40-year-old waste dump, create an urban marina, restore three miles of derelict canal and build several new bridges and locks.

“Last month, however, the meeting of the 18-strong Lapal Canal Trust committee was joyous. After 20 years of trying to restore this short stretch of the 200-year-old Dudley No 2 canal, permission had finally been granted, they were told.

“What’s more, a feasibility study showed that the plan – which would link the suburbs of California and Selly Oak by water – could be a catalyst for nothing short of the economic and ecological renaissance of a large area of south Birmingham.

“The new canal will generate jobs but also provide space for new houses, as well as pollution-free walking, boating and cycling routes. The marina for 60-100 boats will stimulate businesses and bring in tourists. The wildlife corridor created along the canal will attract herons, otters, fish and waterfowl. And although the whole project will cost about £5m, the study said it would pay for itself in six years.

“ ‘It will improve life in the city. It will complete an old canal loop around the city – we owe it to the future to restore it. … No one is objecting and we have nearly raised the first £250,000 – enough to start work,’ says the Lapal trust CEO, Hugh Humphreys.The Lapal plan is one of at least 80 canal renaissance projects currently making British towns and cities suitable for populations seeking tranquility, leisure space and new ways to move around. …

“It’s not just happening in Britain. … But few countries have as many urban canals as the UK, a legacy of British industrial might – and now a golden opportunity for transformation. Some, such as the Aldcliffe yard development in Lancaster, will see just a few expensive houses built on old industrial canal works; but many seek to create large new ‘liveable’ urban communities in what were some of the Britain’s polluted places, such as Wolverhampton, Leeds, Manchester, Lancaster, Glasgow, Liverpool and Birmingham. …

“Three things unexpectedly changed everything. A postwar infant canal leisure industry emerged; dozens of passionate heritage charities like the Lapal trust voluntarily restored many of the old waterways; and water proved to be the vital ingredient to kickstart a new, property-based canal mania.

“ ‘The restoration of the canals in the 1950s and 60s was thanks to a remarkable act of defiance by unpaid volunteers against the authorities,’ says canal historian Mike Clarke.

“ ‘Volunteers were vital. It’s unlikely there would be many canals today without them. The government, many influential people, and the British Waterways board, were all happy to see the majority filled in. … They told the government, “if you want to complain, take us to court.” …

” ‘They formed isolated stretches of peaceful country within the urban environment. Planners eventually saw them as an asset, and government at last understood their potential for leisure.’ …

” ‘The job is only half done in Britain,’ says Alison Smedley, policy officer of the Inland Waterways Association. ‘The restoration of Britain’s canal system is in full flow but there is so much left to do. … There are still about 1,800 miles left to be restored, although many [canals] have been filled in and are unlikely ever to be reclaimed,’ she says. …

“Canal and River Trust (CRT), the government-part-funded charity set up in 2012 to take over and manage the 2,000 miles of state-owned canal formerly run by British Waterways, [calculates] that about 10 million people a year visit the canals to fish, walk, cycle, observe wildlife or go boating. …

“In addition, canals have become a real alternative for people unable or unwilling to buy city property. .. Ten years ago 10% of the boats on British waterways were used as primary residences. It is now 26%, says the CRT. …

“ ‘Almost unnoticed, the canals have become important sanctuaries for urban and rural wildlife,’ says Simon Atkinson, head of conservation at the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust. … Otters, water voles, kingfishers, ducks, herons, fish, dragon- and damsel flies, even rabbits, are seen on the 100-odd miles of Birmingham canals, some of which are classed as local nature reserves. …

“ ‘If development is done well, it can enhance nature. The canals have never been more important, but it could go the other way. There is a real opportunity for high quality inner-city development and nature to flourish together.’ ”

For me as a lover of Dickens (the novels, not the man), I can’t think of English canals without thinking of the dark spirit of Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend. In fact, maybe I’m ready to read that one again.

Learn more about the benefits and challenges of canal popularity here.

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Offsetting Your Carbon Footprint

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

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Photo: Loren Kerns, Flickr
Many carbon offset projects reduce carbon in the atmosphere by protecting forests. Cool Effect offers other, carefully vetted offsets. The average American creates 17 tons of carbon pollution every year, so at $5 t0 $13 a ton, offsetting your footprint is a real deal.

When an arborist came to our house to remove a dangling limb on our big old tree, I was so sad to learn that the whole tree was diseased and had to come down. Not only was it beautiful, it was removing carbon from the atmosphere, which helps reduce global warming. I made a donation to the the Arbor Day Foundation, as an offset, but that’s not as good as keeping an ancient tree.

Here is what a recent episode of the radio show Living on Earth had to say about some good carbon offsets.

“Carbon-intensive activities, including global air travel, have been growing for decades. For individuals and companies interested in reducing their carbon footprints, carbon offsets promise to mitigate the damage caused by flying and other emissions sources through the investment in projects that either sequester carbon, like reforestation or forest conservation, or develop alternative energy infrastructure that reduce future emissions. Cool Effect CEO Marisa de Belloy discusses her non-profit crowdfunding platform that sells these offsets with host Bobby Bascomb.

“BASCOMB: [What] do people choose to offset with your carbon emissions offset program? …

“DE BELLOY: They’ll offset a flight, they’ll offset their trips to work; some will offset their entire year. The average American emits about 17 tons of carbon pollution every year. And so some people like to wipe that clean by offsetting that at Cool Effect. These are people who are committed environmentalists who are already doing what they can do in their daily lives, to reduce their impact. And that might be eating less meat, it might be traveling less often, it might be having an electric car or solar panels. …

“BASCOMB: [Give] me some examples of projects that participate.

“DE BELLOY: [Each] of these projects will have met the requirements of an independent standard, they’ll have been verified independently of us, and then we do our own very deep due diligence that lasts a couple of months on each project, to make sure that they’re doing exactly what they say they’re doing. …

“We have a project, for example, in Vietnam that installs biogas digesters, which is a very simple technology that takes animal waste, and turns it into clean cooking fuel for homes. We have a project in the United States that’s protecting the forest, or another one protecting grasslands; a project in Honduras that is providing clean cookstoves for families down there who were basically dying from air pollution from cooking over open fires. …

“They all are truly additional, meaning they’re truly having an impact on the planet and then they also all have their own set of co-benefits. [For] the cookstove project, it’s the health of the families. In some cases, it’s local jobs. In some cases, it’s protecting wildlife or a whole forest ecosystem and the people who live there. [The] key thing that underlies all the projects is that we have made sure that they’re actually doing the work of verifiably reducing carbon emissions.

“BASCOMB: And how do you actually verify that? I mean, how do you know that this project wouldn’t have been done anyway without this money? …

“DE BELLOY: [A] couple of different ways, but one is you have to understand what their financial model is, both when they started the business and currently. Is there a profitable way to do what they’re doing without the revenue from carbon offsets? And if the answer is yes, then the project is likely not additional. Another way to look for additionality is regulatory additionality. So, is there a law in place that’s requiring this business or this nonprofit to do what it’s doing? …

“BASCOMB: And then once you’ve identified a good project to work with, how do you guarantee the longevity of that? I mean, I saw that you have one in Brazil, protecting the Amazon, and Brazil is a famously lawless area, especially with the new president that really doesn’t encourage conservation. How can you be sure that those trees will still be standing 10 years from now, or that the landowner won’t take that money and then clear cut in a different area?

“DE BELLOY: [On] the trees still standing portion, that’s built into the methodology, so they will no longer be able to offer credits if those trees start disappearing. And each of the methodologies includes a certain buffer amount of trees, you know, because trees do die, and you can have natural fires and that sort of thing. And we take a particularly conservative approach to these projects, if there’s any doubt that, you know, the cook stove was in use, or the tree was still standing, or, you know, the animals were still having access to these grasslands, then a credit is not issued for that amount. So wherever there’s doubt, the credit is not issued. …

“[The cost for an offset] goes from about $5 to about $13 a ton. So if you think about the average American having 17 tons of carbon pollution every year, it’s a really reasonable amount of money to spend to wipe away that impact that we’re all having.” More from Living on Earth, here.

The best example I know of someone practicing what they preach is young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who is traveling from Canada to Chile without using fossil fuels. Read this.

Photo: New York Times
So as not to use any airplane’s fossil fuels, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Malizia II, a zero-emissions racing yacht.
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A New Generation of Farmers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Thomas Newman
Jennifer Sharrock, left, is a beginning farmer in Palmer, Alaska. When she needed land to expand, she was matched with land owner Jan Newman through the Alaska Farmland Trust.

I’ve posted a few times about beginning farmers and, in particular, Letterbox Farm in rural Hudson, New York (here). Sandra’s niece and her partners at Letterbox Farm are perfect examples of a hopeful trend in farming: young people getting serious about agriculture and bringing in new and sustainable approaches. It’s incredibly hard work, but they love it.

Today’s post is also about young people getting into farming and is part of a Christian Science Monitor series on the topic. Reporter Sarah Matusek addresses young farmers’ need for land and creative ways older farmers can provide it.

“Jan Newman became an accidental alpaca farmer. She took up knitting in the 1990s at home in Palmer, Alaska, to supply her first child with natural-fiber clothing, and one thing led to another. She innovated again in 2013 when she founded Grow Palmer, a public food program that plants edible gardens around town. These days, Ms. Newman is pondering retirement. …

“Jennifer T. Sharrock is just starting out. She left an insurance career this year to pursue market farming and permaculture full time through her Seeds and Soil Farm. The beginning farmer began teaching permaculture design three years ago, but her popular classes quickly outgrew her space. Buying more land wasn’t financially feasible.

“So she placed an ad in Alaska Farmland Trust’s FarmLink program, a kind of ‘dating service’ for land seekers and owners. When Ms. Sharrock received an answer to her ad, her heart skipped a beat. She saw it was from Ms. Newman, whom she’d met through Grow Palmer. They also turned out to be neighbors.

“ ‘It’s a match made in heaven,’ said Ms. Sharrock, who has started on four acres of Ms. Newman’s property.”

The two women’s agreement is unlike other FarmLink arrangements.

” ‘There’s actually no money changing hands,’ says Ms. Newman, who calls the younger farmer’s regenerative agriculture plan ‘the best stewardship possible.’ …

“Land-link pairings like the one in Palmer represent one possible step toward solving a nationwide puzzle – how to help experienced farmers exit out of agriculture while building an on-ramp for new producers.

” ‘I get a sense there are more young people who don’t necessarily have farm backgrounds, who are taking agriculture entrepreneur courses, and they are starting to jump into farming,’ says Jim MacDonald, an economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Along with access to capital, access to land is one of the greatest hurdles faced by beginning producers in the United States. One sign of the barriers to entry: The average U.S. farmer’s age has taken a long-term climb over the past several decades, now reaching 57.5, according to the USDA’s latest census figures. While there has been some increase in the number of producers under age 35 – partly due to how the census now defines them – this group remains vastly outnumbered. …

” ‘As someone retires, that’s an opportunity for two or three other young people. There’s no shortage of people that want to farm,’ says Michael Langemeier, an agricultural economics professor at Purdue University in Indiana. …

“In Alaska, 46% of the state’s producers are beginners – the largest share of any state. Amy Pettit, executive director of Alaska Farmland Trust, says the demand for more locally grown food is one of the factors pulling new farmers north. …

“But buying land for many new farmers remains out of reach. … Land availability is another concern. ..

“ ‘There is a sense of urgency,’ says Tim Biello, who coordinates the Hudson Valley Farmlink Network in New York. ‘The history of our use of agricultural lands suggests that we’re not getting more.’ …

“Launched by the American Farmland Trust, Hudson Valley Farmlink Network is among the most active, with 175 matches since 2014. Mr. Biello, the network’s coordinator, attributes the success to individual attention and relying on the localized expertise of 17 partner organizations. …

“Mr. Biello says that matches shouldn’t be the only metric for measuring a land-link program’s impact. He points instead to the trainings, events, and one-on-one assistance that have reached more than 10,000 farmers and farmland owners. …

“Ms. Newman hopes the new farmer will remain on the land long term.

“ ‘I just can’t wait to see this evolve,’ says Ms. Newman. ‘It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened on the property since our alpacas left.’ ”

More here.

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Queens, New York, a Language Museum

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

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Photo: Ann Hermes/Christian Science Monitor
Daniel Kaufman, founder of the Endangered Language Alliance, is recording and preserving the many endangered languages of New York.

A number of people who follow this blog are interested in endangered languages and what is being done to save them. Recently, I saw this article on the treasure trove of rare languages that is found in — of all places — Queens, New York. Here it is.

Harry Bruninius writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Like many immigrants who live near the busy subway hub in Jackson Heights, Tenzin Namdol usually talks to her family and friends with a shape-shifting array of tongues.

“She’ll jump from colloquial Tibetan to standard English in the middle of a conversation almost without a thought, and then start speaking what she says has become a third hybrid of slang, combining the phonetics of both. She also speaks fluent Hindi. ….

“Despite this easy fluency in a number of very different languages, Ms. Namdol becomes wistful when it comes to one she hasn’t quite mastered – the native tongue of her mother, whose people speak a rare Himalayan dialect called Mustangi.

“There are only about 3,000 people left in the world who still speak Mustangi, and most live in a remote Himalayan region in western Nepal. But a few hundred or so of these speakers, including Ms. Namdol’s mother, now reside in the New York borough of Queens.

This also happens to be the most linguistically diverse neighborhood on earth, scholars say.

“With as many as 800 distinct languages, Queens has a diversity of tongues and dialects unprecedented in human history – and its epicenter is here amid the concentrated din of Jackson Heights. …

” ‘Sadly, my mother didn’t pass down her language to me,’ says Ms. Namdol, whose family lived among the Tibetan diaspora in Dharamshala, India, before emigrating to New York. …

“Part of this classic story, too, has been the well-intended reactions of immigrant parents like her mother, who raised her daughter to speak the lingua franca of their wider community, the standard Tibetan used for commerce, government institutions, and the traditions of Buddhism. What use could a language like Mustangi offer her daughter?

“ ‘Now if I go to a gathering of my mother’s people, I’m not able to understand their words, so they don’t really identify me as one of their own because I don’t know their language,’ says Ms. Namdol. …

“For the past year, she has begun to learn the words of Mustangi, volunteering with the Endangered Language Alliance, a nonprofit in Manhattan that works with immigrant communities to preserve their dying languages.

“Collecting the stories of local Tibetans in their native tongues, she’s been recording them for the alliance’s project ‘Voices of the Himalayas,’ learning more about some of the other seven languages spoken in Jackson Heights’ Tibetan diaspora, including her father’s native tongue, Kyirong, a three-tone Tibetic language spoken mostly in Nepal. …

” ‘This  neighborhood in particular is like, I would say, the Noah’s Ark of languages,” says Daniel Kaufman, a professor of linguistics at Queens College and the executive director of the Endangered Language Alliance. … And it’s really just a coincidence, Dr. Kaufman says, that Jackson Heights happens to be at the crossroads of language diversity. The immigrant communities clustered here happen to be from countries that already have the most spoken languages in the world. …

“Alex Paz, however, may be one of only a handful of people living in New York who speaks P’urhépecha, an indigenous pre-Columbian language spoken in southern Mexico.

Considered an ‘isolate’ among human tongues, P’urhépecha is not only rare, but also one of a kind, linguistically unrelated to any other known language in the world.

“ ‘There are things that can only be said in my language,’ says Mr. Paz, an immigrant from the small mountain town of Ocumícho in the Michoacán region of southern Mexico. ‘Even at home, I can see how my language is disappearing, and this means a lot of cultural aspects, too, because language – once we lose our language, I think that’s the essence of who we are.’ …

“Mr. Paz, too, has been volunteering for the Endangered Language Alliance, trying to locate and collect everything that’s been written in P’urhépecha over the past few decades. And while he hasn’t found anyone else in New York who speaks his language, Mr. Paz has been immersed in it as he never has before, putting what he finds into a database and then providing word-by-word translations into English and Spanish – a complex and complicated task, he says, since many of his language’s words contain concepts nearly impossible to translate. …

“ ‘It’s like the language is the only thing that we have left, and its concepts,’ Mr. Paz says. ‘I don’t want to read somewhere, or have to say, “Back in the day in Michoacán we used to speak this language, P’urhépecha.” It’s sad, and I want to at least try to keep it alive.’ ”

More here.

Photo: Mark Lenihan/AP
The No. 7 subway train arrives at the 82 Street Jackson Heights station in Queens. Jackson Heights is one of the more diverse neighborhoods in New York City. 

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Weird Experience at Piano Competition

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 3, 2019| 7 Comments »

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Photo: Heather Khalifa / Philadelphia Inquirer
Pianist Tianxu An lived through every performer’s worst nightmare when he suddenly had to play the wrong piece.

I don’t know about you, but I have often had what might be called the Performer’s Nightmare. Sometimes it takes the form of the Teacher’s Nightmare (a classroom full of utterly uncontrollable kids) or the Actor’s Nightmare (onstage in a big role with no idea of my lines). Maybe you have had it for a PowerPoint presentation at work. I don’t even want to imagine what a Surgeon’s Nightmare might be like, but I believe we’ve all had one of these scary dreams.

For the pianist in this story, nightmare became reality.

As Peter Dobrin reported at the Philadelphia Inquirer, “It sounds like the musical version of a classic anxiety nightmare. You walk out on stage, sit down at the piano for a concerto, and the orchestra starts playing a different piece than the one you were prepared to perform.

“And yet a few weeks ago it was all very real to Tianxu An, who lived through the strange episode in the finals of one of the most prestigious competitions anywhere.

“The Curtis Institute of Music student, just 20, was ready to play the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in June. When conductor Vasily Petrenko brought in the orchestra for its brief introduction, the sound that came at An was that of Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.’

‘I was really surprised,’ said An. ‘The problem was I needed to react in that kind of fast way, so there was no time for me to begin with some kind of emotion.’

“Rather, it was pure muscle memory, he said.

“Now [that is, in July 2019] the Philadelphia-based pianist is getting ready to play the same Rachmaninoff piece with considerably more intentionality. He is soloist in the work Tuesday at the Mann Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra in an all-Rachmaninoff program led by conductor Elim Chan.

“In Moscow, An was a full beat late in his entrance, but caught on fast and says he soon felt at ease in the Rachmaninoff, which he had prepared but did not expect to come until after the Tchaikovsky, in the final round of the competition. …

“Competition officials apologized for the mix-up, which they called a ‘gross error’ on the part of an employee. In the end, An was awarded fourth place plus a special prize for ‘courage and self-possession.’ …

“ ‘I really feel thankful for this competition,’ says An, ‘because for me to be in the round of the 25 people going to Moscow, that for me has already been luck.’ …

“Competitions, he says, can challenge him to ‘play better and in a more complete way. I think the nature of human beings is we tend to relax, we don’t want to challenge ourselves. Competition is a way to objectively push, to force us to play better. …

” ‘I think I projected and played the emotions I wanted. That’s the good part. But for maybe the bad part, because the order was switched, my physical strength was not equally distributed. Because maybe I put too much strength in the first piece.’
…

“Next time, at the Mann, when the conductor begins with a gust of four 16th notes, both the character and piece may come across differently. For one thing, the pianist will be expecting it.”

This is what my husband calls Type Two Fun: fun to talk about later, not so much fun at the time. More at the Inquirer, here.

Note the pianist’s astonishment when the conductor started the wrong music at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

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Alaska’s Fat Bear Week

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 2, 2019| 11 Comments »

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Photos: N. Boak
Brown Bears at Katmai National Park and Preserve gain a lot of weight during the spring and summer to prepare for winter hibernation. Alaskans and friends around the world compete to vote on which bear looks the fattest.

I just learned about a funny competition that even the inventive, competition-loving Finns hadn’t thought up. The story was on the wonderful radio show Living on Earth.

“RADIO HOST STEVE CURWOOD: The rangers at Katmai National Park in southern Alaska are hosting a fishing derby, but in this case it’s not the biggest fish that wins, it’s the biggest one who catches fish.

“These contestants are very large bears, the eight and nine footers of Katmai, which is home to the largest concentration of brown bears in the world. These bruins can lose as much as one third of their weight while sleeping through the long cold Alaska winter, so summer and fall, they pack on extra pounds with sockeye salmon.

“And to let the public decide which bear appears to have caught and eaten the most fish, park rangers host a fat bear contest each year. People can watch the live stream of the bears snagging fish on the Brooks River in Katmai and then go to Facebook to vote for the ursine angler they think should be named the fattest. For details of the fat bear tournament Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb spoke with Katmai media ranger Naomi Boak.

“BOAK: It’s like March Madness for bears. We create brackets, and we have head to head matchups. And people from all over the world vote for who they think is the fattest bear this year at the Brooks River. And we have several bear cams here which stream live the activities of the bears all season. …

“BASCOMB: I was watching the live stream online and it’s really fun just to watch these bear stand so stoically, and try and catch the salmon coming upstream. And that’s how they’re fattening up right now. Right?

“BOAK: Yes, and they’ve been doing that all summer. We have one of the largest sockeye salmon runs here on the Brooks River. And it was a great salmon run; last year was record breaking. And the bears came back nice and healthy. And this year was another great year. The bears are really obese, and they’re working very hard to be as fat as they can for their winters hibernation. …

“When they go into hibernation in the winter, they’re not completely asleep. But they do not eat; they lose maybe 30 to 40% of their fat stores. So if they’re not fat enough, they’re going to have a hard time surviving the winter.

“And when they come out of hibernation in early spring, there’s not a lot of food around. So they’re eating grasses, it’s not very nutritional, they will continue to lose weight. And for sows, it’s important for them to get fat because they won’t get pregnant unless they’re fat. With bears, there’s what’s called delayed implantation. So the bears mate early in the season. Spring and early summer, mostly. But the eggs don’t implant in the uterus until the sow is fat enough. …

“BASCOMB: You have some before and after photos on your website of some of these bears, and I gotta say they’re pretty shocking. I mean, you can see the same bear when it comes out of hibernation in June, as you mentioned, and again in September, they hardly look like the same animal. …

“BOAK: No, they don’t, which is why we want to celebrate what they’ve done all summer. And to really let the public know. And it’s hard for us to identify the bears from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, they look so different. They change colors, they shed their coats, and the coats are different. …

“BASCOMB: Last year’s winner, Beadnose I think her name was, looks more like a furry hippo or something than a bear. Her belly is practically dragging on the ground. Does she have some kind of special technique to get so big, you know, how is she catching her fish better than the other bears?

“BOAK: Well, yes, she was very successful. But bears have different fishing techniques. They can be on the lip of a falls, which is a delicate balancing act, but it’s a very great position to be in. Beadnose liked to do that. Another technique that the really big guys like is to fish in the jacuzzi, which is the eddy right below the falls. It’s where the fish wait to make the jump up the falls. And these bears are big enough. So they can sit down on their haunches and with their front paws, fish. And so they don’t have to move. They just have to fish with their front paws. … Bears don’t like to get their ears wet so they will snorkel. …

“Bear 747 is certainly a fan favorite. He is humongous. He looked like he was ready to hibernate back in July. Bear 435, Holly, who is a very famous female here. She has had several litters, and she actually adopted a lone yearling a few years ago. So it’s made her a fan favorite. She is also gi-normous. She does look like a hippo. …

“CURWOOD: For links to the live stream of the fat bears of Katmai go to our website LOE.org.”

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Protecting Louisiana’s Native Culture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2019| 5 Comments »

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Photo: Lex Talamo
Houma artist Lora Ann Chaisson works on palmetto stitch basketry at the Native American Crafts day at Northwestern University. Crafts using palmetto are threatened by climate change.

A recent interview conducted by Tegan Wendland on National Public Radio (NPR) provided new-to-me information on how climate change is jeopardizing an indigenous culture.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro introduced the story thus: “When storms like Hurricane Barry batter Louisiana’s coast and water replaces marshland, people move away. And that puts at risk a unique cultural mix — Europeans, Africans and Native Americans all living off Louisiana’s land and water. As Tegan Wendland of member station WWNO reports, the state is trying to preserve some of their traditions before they disappear.

“WENDLAND: Janie Luster walks through crunchy oak leaves in the humid Louisiana air to a stand of green palmetto in the shade. She reaches her arm deep down into the stems and starts hacking.

“JANIE LUSTER: Takes a sharp knife, pointed knife. And this is where you have to be careful, a little spider there. There’s also ants.

“WENDLAND: She pulls out a stem and unfolds it like a giant fan. … We’re in Houma, about an hour southwest of New Orleans. Luster will dry the leaves out and tear them into strips and use them to weave baskets — not just any basket — the Native American Houma half-hitch.

“LUSTER: We were the only tribe in the whole country to make this type of basket.

“WENDLAND: The art of the half-hitch has already been lost once before, generations ago, when tribal members were forced to assimilate. But Luster researched it and brought it back in the ’90s. Today, she’s brought a big stack of dried palmetto into a classroom in the offices of the United Houma Nation, where about 15 students of all ages are gathered around a table. … It’s a laborious process. It can take several days just to weave one basket. Pretty much everyone’s struggling. But 15-year-old Rhett Williams’ fingers dart fast. … He’s attended a few of these classes. Now his mom gets mad when she catches him weaving instead of doing his homework.

“RHETT: Growing up, you know, you’re not in touch with your elders. Now that I’m getting in more within the tribe and, like, learning culture and tradition, I’ve realized, like, I was, like, deprived of, like, the true tradition and culture.

“WENDLAND: Many in Williams’ family have moved north over the years, joining the exodus after every devastating coastal storm. Some areas have lost more than 40 percent of their population over the past several decades. Hurricanes and saltwater intrusion from rising seas are also killing off the palmetto and other plants sacred to the Houma. That worries Maida Owens, director of the Louisiana Folklife Program.

“MAIDA OWENS: When people move, you know, some things get left behind. And one of the things that frequently is left behind is something that relies on natural materials. … If it doesn’t move with the people, then the tradition may not continue.

“WENDLAND: The state estimates that thousands more will have to migrate as the coastal erodes. But Owens is happy to see that some young people, like Rhett Williams, are embracing these folk traditions.”

More at NPR here and at the Shreveport Times, here.

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In Russia, A Disappearing Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 30, 2019| 4 Comments »

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Photos: James Hill for the New York Times
A student at the Higher School of Folk Art in the village of Kholui, Russia.

Years ago, a Massachusetts industrialist who was fascinated by Russian religious icons turned his large collection into the Museum of Russian Icons, a site worth visiting if you are ever near Clinton, Massachusetts.

But after the Russian Revolution outlawed religion, icons stopped being made for a long time. Resourceful icon painters developed a new art form — lacquer boxes that drew on the same skills as the icons and were collectible in their own right. Then the Wheel of Fortune turned again. Icons are now on top, and the new art form is endangered.

Neil MacFarquhar writes at the New York Times, “Once upon a time, the small, picturesque Russian village of Palekh gained fame far and wide for producing religious icons.

“Then one day, a revolution came and its adherents, growling, ‘There is no god,’ banned such art.

“Hundreds of artists eventually learned to adorn lacquer boxes instead, painting scenes from Russian fairy tales or romanticized versions of country life. These delicate miniatures made the village famous anew, especially after foreign collectors plunked down tens of thousands of dollars buying an art form considered uniquely Russian.

“Then the fickle wheel of history rotated once more. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the renaissance of the Russian Orthodox Church revived icon painting. It is miniature art now facing extinction.

‘It is going to be lost,’ said Yevgeny A. Sivyakov, 71, an accomplished miniaturist. ‘It is a frightening period right now.’

“The youngest generation of artists shows little interest, he said. ‘Everyone speaks of commerce — what is the point of developing lacquer miniatures when good money is being paid for icons, for frescoes?’

“Stunning antique icons and miniatures fill the collection of the State Museum of Palekh Art. The boxes are adorned with characters from Russian fairy tales — princes and princesses, the legendary firebird and Baba Yaga, a sorceress — replacing the Virgin Mary and the saints. The four seasons were a favorite theme, with countless troikas dashing across snowy fields.

“Each papier-mâché box, blackened with mud from the Teza River, is a blaze of meticulous detail. To paint faces, for example, the artists commonly used a brush made of just one hair from a squirrel’s tail.

“The egg tempera paint gave the boxes a polished glow, enhanced by rubbing them with bone. In addition, the Palekh tradition of edging in gold every person, animal and sometimes every leaf made the details pop out of the black background. …

“When icons were banned, [icon painters] floundered about for alternatives, including book illustrations and set designs.

“Then Ivan I. Golikov, a painter, stumbled upon a small exhibition in Moscow featuring 18th-century Asian painted lacquer boxes. In December 1924, Mr. Golikov founded the Ancient Russian Painting Workshop in Palekh. Throughout the Soviet years, a single collective produced the boxes.

“Palekh attracted both Russian and foreign visitors. Virtually everyone in Palekh will tell you that the Soviet Union earned some $1 million annually in hard currency off the boxes, which Western collectors considered a rarity.

“Lacquer boxes, as did all things following the Soviet Union’s demise, experienced a period of anarchy. Cheap fakes flooded the market and prices collapsed. If a shoebox-sized lacquer box that required a year to paint once sold for more than $40,000 abroad, that same box would earn about $5,000 today.

“Something smaller — a glasses case, for example — goes for $121 in the Palekh museum store. An imitation in Moscow costs less than $5. Demand for originals has fallen sharply. Few Russians can afford such prices, and foreign collectors died out.

“Sergei Bobovnikov, an antiques dealer in St. Petersburg, said there might be 150 regular buyers in the country, with an antique piece commanding $350 to hundreds of thousands for an original by Mr. Golikov or other founders of the Palekh school. ‘They invented a whole new style,’ Mr. Bobovnikov said.”

Learn what has happened since here.

Top: a Soviet-era Palekh board painted in 1975 and entitled “Holiday of Russian Winter in Palekh.” Bottom: detail from a Soviet-era Palekh plate, painted in 1955, entitled “Flourish, land of the Kolhoz!”

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Native Life Brightening Kids TV

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 29, 2019| 7 Comments »

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Photo: WGBH Educational Foundation
In the PBS program Molly of Denali, Alaska Native Molly Mabray helps her mom run a trading post in an Alaskan village.

In the old days, TV shows meant to educate children tended to be dry and clunky. Sesame Street began to move the bar, and now my grandkids and other children are learning a lot from shows that are fun, like Wild Kratts and the Octonauts. They amaze me with the facts they produce to correct my misperceptions about nature.

Now they are giving a thumbs up to a new show about indigenous people in Alaska.

Mandalit del Barco wrote about it at National Public Radio (NPR), “For decades, animated children’s stories included negative stereotypes of Indigenous people. …

“More recently, Disney and Pixar got kudos for more authentic representations of Native people in the films Moana and Coco. Now, TV networks and streaming services are reaching children with realistic portrayals on the small screen — where they consume most of their media.

“The new PBS show Molly of Denali is the first nationally distributed children’s series to feature an Alaska Native lead character. She’s 10 years old; her heritage is Gwich’in, Koyukon and Dena’ina Athabascan. She lives in the fictional village of Qyah, population 94. She goes fishing and hunting, and also looks up information on the Internet and on her smartphone.

“Molly is computer-savvy,’ says the show’s creative producer, Princess Daazhraii Johnson. ‘I think it’s really important for us to show that, because we are modern, living people that are not relegated to the past. That stereotype, that romanticized notion of who we are as Native people, is rampant.’

“Johnson says when she travels, she still meets people who assume all Alaskans live in igloos and are Eskimos — ‘which isn’t a term that people really even use anymore up here,’ she says. ‘We have 229 federally recognized tribes in Alaska; we have 20 officially recognized Alaska Native languages here. We are so diverse and dynamic.’ …

“In one episode, Molly learns that her grandfather stopped drumming and singing as a child when he was taken away to a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. ‘At the school we weren’t allowed to sing the songs from our people,’ an elder tells her. ‘We were made to feel bad about who we were.’

“Johnson says this storyline really happened to one of the elders on the show’s advisory board. It’s a kid’s show, so it has a happy ending: Molly and her grandfather sing together.

” ‘We’re just over the moon about Molly of Denali, because this is exactly the type of thing that can really began to shift perceptions in this country,’ [Crystal Echo Hawk, CEO of the media watchdog group IllumiNative] says.

“Echo Hawk says that for years, Hollywood didn’t produce stories about or by Native people because it didn’t think a market existed for them. But that, she says, was shortsighted. Her organization polled more than 13,000 Americans, and found that nearly 80% of them said they want to learn more about Native peoples. …

“For several decades, the Australian and Canadian Broadcasting Corporations have spotlighted shows by and about their indigenous populations. Now, Netflix is partnering with three Indigenous cultural organizations to develop the next generation of First Nation creators across Canada.

“And in the U.S. and in Latin America, Netflix is running the animated film Pachamama. The story centers on a 10-year-old boy in an Andean village who dreams of becoming a shaman. His people suffer under both the Spanish conquest and the Incan Empire.

” ‘It’s told from the point of view of the Indigenous people,’ says Juan Antin, who wrote and directed the film. … Antin, who is from Argentina, says he was inspired by his travels with his anthropologist wife in Bolivia and Peru. ‘There, I fell in love with the culture of Pachamama, which is how the indigenous people call Mother Earth, having respect, love to the Earth,’ he says.

“The Cartoon Network series Victor and Valentino features two half-brothers in a fictitious Mesoamerican village, exploring myths that come to life. For example, they follow the dog Achi into the land of the dead, where they encounter a chupacabra and other legends.

“Animator Diego Molano, whose heritage is Mexican, Colombian and Cuban, … says it’s about time networks began showing cartoons with Indigenous characters and themes. He just hopes it’s not just a fad.”

More at NPR, here, and at the New York Times, here.

 

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Music Before Surgery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 28, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Linda Ibbotson
Recent research has found that music-based therapy may be a suitable alternative to anti-anxiety benzodiazepines administered to patients before an operation.

Years ago, after my own bout with cancer — a kind that, unlike my sister’s, is often curable — I took a dance class with patients and former patients. There was one elderly woman whose cancer was quite advanced.

One day, her daughter, who was also in the class, told us her mother was lying in bed upstairs in the hospital and had been unconscious for hours. The teacher suggested we take the music and our dance moves upstairs and perform the familiar, gentle routines at her bedside. It was quite a lovely moment.

Since then I have heard of church groups and nonchurch groups that sing at bedsides, and I have come to believe that even a patient who shows no clear response can hear and appreciate the music.

In this story from the Irish Times, music is also being used to calm patients before surgery.

Emer Moreau writes, “Music-based therapy may be a suitable alternative to anti-anxiety benzodiazepines administered to patients before an operation, new research has found.

“Results of a clinical trial published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) showed listening to music had similar effects to that of a sedative offered to calm the nerves before the use of regional anaesthesia.

“The trial, carried out in the University of Pennsylvania, had 157 participants randomly assigned to receive either 1-2mg of midazolam, a type of benzodiazepine, or to listen to Marconi Union’s Weightless series of music. The track is considered to be one of the most relaxing in the world.

“Both groups showed similar reductions in pre-operative anxiety among participants.

“Anxiety is common among patients due to undergo an operation, and can affect postoperative recovery due to increased levels of stress hormones in the body. …

“There are currently 88 music therapists in Ireland, who work in a variety of contexts, including educational settings, care for dementia patients, palliative care, neo-natal settings, oncology, burn treatment, acquired brain injury and stroke. Dr Hilary Moss, the Course Director for the MA in Music Therapy in the University of Limerick, said that music therapy is usually employed alongside other treatments, rather than replacing them.

“The therapy works by ‘engaging in enjoyable activity to change our perception of pain,’ she said. ‘It’s not a cure, but it helps – many patients show significant improvement.’

More here.

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The Sound of Plants Growing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 27, 2019| 5 Comments »

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Photo: Dana Cronin/NPR
As part of the “Sonic Succulents” exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, visitors are encouraged to touch plants and listen to what that contact sounds like.

Although inevitably preoccupied today, I always find that writing a little or even editing a little is comfortable for me. So I scrolled through the list of possible topics that I store for the blog and found one that fits my mood. It’s about listening to the sounds of plants as they grow and as we touch them.

Dana Cronin reports at National Public Radio (NPR), “There’s an old belief among farmers that on a quiet night, if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of corn growing.

“A new exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden proves that theory to be true.

“The exhibit, ‘Sonic Succulents: Plant Sounds and Vibrations,’ is the artist Adrienne Adar’s vision come to life.

“Adar is a sound artist based in Los Angeles. She’s passionate about the natural world and says her goal is to show people that plants aren’t that different from us: They grow, breathe and even communicate in their own ways.

“And so, back in May, she planted a patch of corn within the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and has surrounded it with large yellow megaphones that visitors can stick their heads inside to listen to what a growing stalk sounds like.

It turns out the sound is almost extraterrestrial.

” ‘It can be a little bit meditational … children were sitting on the ground and putting their heads in the lower horns and just hanging out,’ she said. …

“Adar says she’s inspired by the work of scientists like Monica Gagliano, an ecologist at the University of Western Australia, whose research focuses in part on how plants, like animals, are sentient beings with cognitive abilities. They can learn, remember and have their own methods of communication. Gagliano has done experiments showing that plants are able to detect specific vibrational frequencies, like the sound of water, and grow toward that sound.

“Adar was fascinated with the idea that plants are sentient. In conceptualizing the exhibit, she says audio was the most effective way to get that idea across. …

” ‘If you hear something in your apartment moving, you kind of assume it’s an animal. You always think there’s an alive quality,’ she said.

“Inside the exhibit there’s a long line of potted plants, including cacti, palm plants and succulents, paired with headphones. Visitors are encouraged to touch the plants, at which point tiny microphones embedded in the planters pick up the vibrations of the touch and make it audible.

“Adar says she wants visitors to hear those sounds and realize the impact we have on plants … ‘Listen to what it feels when you touch it,’ she said. ‘So when you step on a plant … maybe next time it changes the behavior.’

“The exhibit runs through Oct. 27.”

More at NPR, here, where, for example, you can listen to the sound of corn growing.

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Hospice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 26, 2019| 42 Comments »

092619.-Geo-Washington-Bridge-from-NYP-windowJPGI have been standing at the hospital window, eating granola and looking west at the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River as the sun comes up. On the far shore is a town where my siblings and I grew up. I remember when my baby sister came home from the hospital years ago. I got off the school bus and saw this tiny creature with a very red mouth sleeping by the front door in a cradle.

Hello, New Day!

I am with my sister. For her, there will not be many new days. She is in hospice. That is where the brain cancer called glioblastoma lands its victims more often than not. I am feeling so angry at this disease. I told the physician assistant that when you go on the web, it says the cancer is rare. Huh! Everyone I mention it to knows someone who has it or had it. The PA admitted they are seeing a lot of cases now.

No one seems to know what causes glioblastoma. Radiation was mentioned. But from what? Worse, no one knows how to cure it. “Let’s try this, let’s try that.” Some of the treatments provide a little respite.

Yesterday my sister’s latest cancer-related episode was diagnosed as pneumonia, and the amount of poking and fiddling and blood taking from now-invisible veins was just too much. Her doctor explained the situation and helped my sister and her husband come to the conclusion that glioblastoma was going to win against my lovely little sister very soon and that she’d rather be comfortable than poked and prodded to no avail.

So here we are. Our brothers have flown in. John and others have called. Suzanne got my husband to babysit so she could come by train. We’ll all be saying good-bye.

The cancer diagnosis was only one year and two months ago. One year and two months.

Anyone concerned about the increase of this and other mysterious brain cancers might want to find a brain cancer research center to give to. There is actually a ton of research going on, and perhaps surprisingly, all the centers seem to be collaborating. Something is bound to break through one of these days.

 

 

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Milestone for California Condor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 25, 2019| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Zion National Park
California condor chicks No 1,000 and 1,001 hatched in May this year, signalling a success for the species.

They are ugly and mostly unloved. But today, when so many creatures are going extinct, one can only rejoice to see that these guys are coming back. They are California Condors.

Maanvi Singh writes at the Guardian, “Nestled among the red-rock cliffs of Zion national park and the Grand Canyon, California condor chicks No 1,000 and 1,001 blinked into this world. Their birth signalled success for a decades-long program to bring North America’s largest bird back from the brink of extinction.

“As a result of hunting, diminishing food and dwindling territory, the number of birds in the wild numbered just 22 in the early 1980s. Lead poisoning was also a major killer, caused by inadvertently ingesting bullets that hunters left inside dead animals that the enormous birds, which have a wingspan of 9.5ft and weigh up to 25lb, scavenged for food.

“Facing imminent extinction, the few remaining wild birds were placed into a captive breeding program in 1987 and slowly released back into the wild starting in the early 1990s. Biologists estimate that the 1,000th and 1,001st chicks hatched in May this year, but they were only able to confirm their existence over the past several days, because the raptors build their nests inside caves carved into steep, sometimes inaccessible cliffs. ‘You know, condors can be secretive,’ said Janice Stroud-Settles, a wildlife biologist at Zion National Park in Utah. …

“The 1,000th hatchling’s parents were both born in captivity, and the mother has already lost two chicks. Her firstborn probably died – as many baby condors do – in an initial, unsuccessful attempt to fledge (AKA fly) the nest. …

“ ‘We’re hoping this chick will successfully fledge once it’s old enough to fly – sometime in the fall,’ Stroud-Settles said, noting that the nesting site she chose has a large ‘porch’ area where the growing chick can practice flapping before taking its perilous first flight. …

“But the species is still classified as critically endangered by the IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature] and faces multiple threats, including the ongoing menace of lead poisoning.

“A law that went into effect this month has made it illegal to use lead ammunition to hunt any game in California. In Utah and Arizona, however, conservationists have taken a different approach. Because a straight ban could alienate hunters, conservationists are encouraging locals to reduce their use of lead bullets through a voluntary program. …

“The total living population of California condors now numbers more than 500, with more than half in the wild. The oldest bird being tracked in the condor restoration program is 24, but researchers estimate that California condors can live up to 70 years. They are very gregarious animals who get together in large groups and ‘like humans, tend to mate for life,’ noted Stroud-Settles.”

If this bird can be brought back from the brink of extinction, maybe all sorts of things threatened by human ignorance can be brought back, too. Elephants, butterflies, insects, trees. Maybe even — dare one hope? — our wobbling democracy.

More at the Guardian, here.

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Lessons from a Dancing Parrot

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2019| 5 Comments »

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Photo: Irena Schulz
This is YouTube personality Snowball the dancing parrot.

Internet videos of cute animals doing surprising things can sometimes lead to research that expands scientific knowledge. Such was the case with Snowball, better known on YouTube as the dancing parrot.

Ed Yong writes at the Atlantic, “Before he became an internet sensation, before he made scientists reconsider the nature of dancing, before the children’s book and the Taco Bell commercial, Snowball was just a young parrot, looking for a home.

“His owner had realized that he couldn’t care for the sulfur-crested cockatoo any longer. So in August 2007, he dropped Snowball off at the Bird Lovers Only rescue center in Dyer, Indiana — along with a Backstreet Boys CD, and a tip that the bird loved to dance. Sure enough, when the center’s director, Irena Schulz, played ‘Everybody,’ Snowball ‘immediately broke out into his headbanging, bad-boy dance,’ she recalls. She took a grainy video, uploaded it to YouTube, and sent a link to some bird-enthusiast friends. Within a month, Snowball became a celebrity. When a Tonight Show producer called to arrange an interview, Schulz thought it was a prank.

“Among the video’s 6.2 million viewers was Aniruddh Patel, and he was was blown away. Patel, a neuroscientist, had recently published a paper asking why dancing [was rare in animals.] …

“Patel reasoned that dancing requires strong connections between brain regions involved in hearing and movement, and that such mental hardware would only exist in vocal learners — animals that can imitate the sounds they hear. …

“In 2008, he tested Snowball’s ability to keep time with versions of ‘Everybody’ that had been slowed down or sped up. In almost every case, the parrot successfully banged his head and lifted his feet in time. Much like human children, he often went off beat, but his performance was consistent enough to satisfy Patel. …

“Meanwhile, Snowball was going through his own dance dance revolution. Schulz kept exposing him to new music, and learned that he likes Pink, Lady Gaga, Queen, and Bruno Mars. He favored songs with a strong 4/4 beat, but could also cope with the unorthodox 5/4 time signature of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five.’ …

“In 2008, Patel’s undergraduate student R. Joanne Jao Keehn filmed these moves, while Snowball danced to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ and ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun.’ And recently [she] she combed through the muted footage and cataloged 14 individual moves (plus two combinations). Snowball strikes poses. He body rolls, and swings his head through half circles, and headbangs with a raised foot. …

“His initial headbangs and foot-lifts are movements that parrots naturally make while walking or courting. But his newer set aren’t based on any standard, innate behaviors. He came up with them himself, and he uses them for different kinds of music. …

“Snowball’s abilities are all the more impressive because they’re so rare. Ronan the sea lion, for example, was recently filmed bobbing her head to music (including, again, the Backstreet Boys), but she was trained. And when [another researcher, Adena Schachner,] combed through thousands of YouTube videos in search of animals that could be charitably described as dancing, she found only 15 species that fit the bill. One was the Asian elephant, which sometimes sways and swings its trunk to music. The other 14 species were parrots.”

Are any of you owners of parrots? I wonder if you have seen dancing behaviors. Read more here. And be sure to note the videos of early and late Snowball moves.

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