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Siberians Get a First Photograph

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Andrew Sullivan‘s Nov. 24 “Face of the Day” leads one to a delightful website about a photography adventure in Siberia.

“Two years ago,” writes Sasha Leahovcenco, “I had the amazing opportunity to go literally to the end of the earth to photograph people who never had their photo taken.

“At schools, churches, homes and hospitals I could give people a moment to forget their troubles and just smile for the camera. But while shooting with nomadic reindeer herding families it was me who was most deeply touched by the experience. For although my hosts had few material possessions they shared with me something rare in the world – a sense of peace and satisfaction with life.

“This March we are going back on a new journey across Chukotka. We are going to travel over 1,000 miles and reach out to the most unreached places in Chukotka. We will visit people who have never had visitors in their life, stopping by every village and tribe on the way, giving them warm clothes, shoes, gifts, and simply showing them grace and love.

“The very exciting part of the trip will be taking pictures of the natives, printing them on the spot, and handing them to the villagers. This will be the very first time that these people had ever had their photo taken. …

“Our documentary film about this journey, will bring the voices of this land to people all around the globe. We hope to engage humanity’s deep rooted fascination with nature and desire to understand humanity. Perhaps by getting a glimpse of this nomadic way of life we will reflect on this modern world and what in our lives is truly important.”

Check it out here.

Photo: Sasha Leahovcenco

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Arts Jobs for UK Youth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

ArtsJournal.com is a great source of leads from around the world, which is why I sometimes come up with stories from far away places like Belarus. The ArtsJournal blog covers art, theater, film, books, dance, music, media — and interesting creativity tidbits from the world of psychology.

Recently a link to the British publication The Stage highlighted a story about UK policymakers taking steps to build the next generation of artists.

Nicola Merrifield writes that the national strategy, Building a Creative Nation, “is calling upon the UK’s 107,000 creative sector employers to each recruit a person aged 16 to 24 by 2016.

“The initiative is designed to ensure that young people are able to gain paid jobs in arts organisations. It will urge employers to join organisations such as the Royal Opera House and Ambassador Theatre Group in signing up to the Fair Access Principle, which encourages responsible recruitment practices.

“As part of the campaign, Creative and Cultural Skills, the sector’s leading body for skills development, will create 5,500 apprenticeships, paid internships and traineeships across the UK by 2016.

“This is part of CC Skills’ £15 million Creative Employment Programme launched earlier this year to combat unpaid internships in the arts sector, which aims to subsidise 6,500 training schemes for people aged 16-24. This scheme, which was financially supported by ACE, has seen employers take on 1,000 unemployed people so far.

“Industry leaders including former Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall, ticket provider Live Nation’s international chief operating officer Paul Latham and Dirty Dancing founding co-producer Michael Jacobsen are backing the Building a Creative Nation strategy.

“Pauline Tambling, joint chief executive of CC Skills, said: ‘We’re looking to build upon the work that our supporters have been doing to help young people into work across the creative industries, which has already achieved so much.’ ”

More.

Photo: Tristram Kenton
Laura Evelyn in “Once Upon A Christmas” by Look Left Look Right in Covent Garden Piazza

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Boys Taking Ballet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 23, 2013| 3 Comments »

Photo: Diana Martin, Chatham Daily News
Benjamin Alexander studies at Canada’s National Ballet School

I loved the movie Billy Elliott, about an English boy who is drawn to the fun and beauty of ballet after his mother’s death casts a deep pall over the family. His macho dad and brother, coal miners toughing out a bitter strike during the austere Thatcher years, are appalled and even hostile. But it’s hardly a spoiler to say that art wins the day.

Recently I read an article about contemporary Billy Elliots and was intrigued. They all seemed very matter-of-fact about their interest.

Isabel Teotonio in the Toronto Star writes, “This year, Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS) has the highest percentage of boys in its entry-level Grade 6 class in its history: 65 per cent. …

“The phenomenon isn’t confined to NBS. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, dance was the 10th most popular ‘sport’ for boys aged 5 to 14 in 2012, with participation rates rising in recent years.

“And in the United Kingdom, an August survey of 1,000 children aged 2 to 12, done by retailer Mothercare and charity Save the Children, found more boys (8 per cent) than girls (5 per cent) wanted to become a dancer. In order of preference, the top jobs for boys were doctor, soccer player, dancer and teacher. For girls: doctor, teacher, soccer player and dancer.” More.

As I was poking around the web for more, I found this WordPress blog listing programs for boys. The blogger led me in turn to a nice story by Ellwood Shreve in the Chatham Daily News, here, about an enthusiastic NBS student, above.

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Early Learning Outdoors

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2013| 2 Comments »

It might be getting a bit cold for the outdoor classroom, but this article by Melanie Plenda in the Boston Globe suggests that not even snow will stop these preschoolers from learning about nature.

“In the back of the farmhouse at Drumlin Farm Community Preschool in Lincoln sit five chickens surrounded by a gaggle of preschoolers — eyes wide, waiting. The teacher opens the egg box door, and the students, staying slow and small like they were taught, peer in.

“ ‘And when they find an egg there,’ says Paula Goodwin, director of the school, ‘we ask them to make a nest with their hand, and they very gently pass the egg from one to another. And it’s a very special time, because they don’t need a lot of special instructions except to look for a child whose hands are in the shape of a nest. … It’s one of the magical moments in the school year. They are so generous with sharing the egg, and they may not have even learned each other’s names yet.’

“Drumlin is a nature- and farm-based preschool, which means that rain or shine, maybe not sleet but definitely snow and temperatures down to 15 degrees, the 14 3- to 5-year-olds are outside learning math, science, language, and how to be curious. Visiting captive wildlife, doing farm chores, and taking part in planting activities provide opportunities for all kinds of learning.” More.

Judging from my three grandchildren, I’m pretty sure no kid needs to “learn how” to be curious (“Poppa, what is the sun for?”), but we all hope for schools that continually encourage their curiosity.

Photo: Porter Gifford

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Cape Breton, Morse Code, and Service

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2013| 2 Comments »

Cousin Claire fell in love with Cape Breton, Canada, some years ago. As she does all things, she dug deep — into its history, geography, and people. (I wrote about her efforts to help protect the crumbling Gabarus seawall, here.)

Now Claire has published an oral history of one of Cape Breton’s best known residents, Mildred Gray.

From Amazon: “Mildred Gray is acknowledged as the last surviving government-employed Morse Code operator and one of the last surviving manual switchboard operators in the Canadian Maritime provinces.

“Between the 1940s through the 1970s, Mrs. Gray was a one-woman 911, information and referral service, spiritual advisor, and companion to people giving birth and people dying. This comprehensive oral history includes maps, historic photographs, a 50-page section of Highlights of Gabarus History, and an extensive bibliography.”

Claire says in her introduction, “Gabarus is a place both beautiful and real. The windswept rocky shore contrasts with the warmth of community.

“As Mrs. Gray points out, the old values still live here. Wherever you live in the world, you can learn about how to live a good life by following the story of Mrs. Gray and her community of Gabarus in guiding us all to be useful, compassionate and honorable. You will see
that Mrs. Gray and her family and neighbors, whether they are
Methodist or not, live by John Wesley’s directive to ‘Do all the
good you can. By all the means you can. … As long as ever you
can!’ ”

Find the book here.

Photo: http://www.risingtideexpeditions.ca/
Cape Breton

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UK’s Hull Named City of Culture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

As the New Yorker magazine was wont to label quirky British news items, “There’ll always be an England.”

Today’s tidbit is from the BBC, courtesy of my web-surfing spouse. Will Gompertz writes about the fierce competition to be crowned Cultural City of 2017.

Hull won. There seems to be a bit of bad blood among the losers.

“Hull has been named the UK’s next City of Culture, beating Leicester, Dundee and Swansea Bay to the right to hold the title in 2017. Hull, known for being the home of poet Philip Larkin, the Ferens gallery and the Truck theatre, will follow the 2013 City of Culture, Londonderry.

“The UK government chooses a new destination every four years, with the aim of helping tourism and the economy. Hull council leader Stephen Brady said winning was ‘a real game-changer.’ …

“TV producer Phil Redmond, who chaired the City of Culture panel, said Hull was the unanimous choice because it put forward ‘the most compelling case based on its theme as “a city coming out of the shadows.” ‘ …

“Swansea’s city council said losing to Hull was a ‘bitter disappointment.’ In an apparent swipe at the winners, council leader David Phillips said the residents of Hull ‘had to have something to look forward to.’ He added his team wouldn’t give up, as ‘there were too many good ideas in the bid, we’re not going to let them slip through our fingers.’

“Leicester’s Mayor Peter Soulsby expressed similar sentiments, saying: ‘We don’t need to wait until 2017 to show ourselves off. We are going to do it now.’

“In Dundee, bid director Stuart Murdoch simply said the city was ‘broken-hearted.’

More.

Almost makes you want to visit the losers to make them feel better.

Photo: http://www.bbc.co.uk
The Hull Truck theatre company’s £14.5m new home, 2009.

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Speaking in Code

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

Did you ever have a secret language?

I spoke a lot of Goose Latin when I was about 10. (How-fow do-foo you-foo spee-feak goo-foose La-fa-ti-fin? Tha-fat i-fis my-fi se-fee-cre-fet.) I don’t think my mother had much trouble cracking the code.

I have always been interested in how people disguise what they are really thinking when they speak, and I once made a video about having an extremely polite tea with someone I didn’t like, using a voiceover for my true thoughts.

A more serious reason for speaking in code was described in a Boston Globe article by Joshua J. Friedman last month.

“To communicate while living under an authoritarian regime requires a special sort of linguistic creativity. As a new paper by Nassima Neggaz in the journal Language, Discourse & Society reports, one solution that Syrians have found is to speak in codes. …

“Neggaz interviewed approximately 20 members of several close groups of relatives and university friends in Homs, Hama, and Damascus about the codes they used between 1980 and 2011. She found that members of one group, to speak of someone who was hiding from the regime, would say that the person was ‘sick,’ mardan. Members of another group would say that he was ‘studying’ (‘am yadruss) or that he was ‘taking exams’ (‘andu fhussat).

“To describe someone who was being detained or who was in jail, it was common to say that this person was ‘at his aunt’s house’ (huwa fi bayt khaltu). To suggest that a person was an informer, some speakers would say khattu heluw: ‘His handwriting is beautiful.’ ” More here.

Image: Christoph Niemann for Time, content.time.co

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Les Miz Comes to Town

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

street-piano-promotes-les-mizSunday I went to a local production of the musical Les Misérables. I was one of the few people in America, I think, who had never seen it in any form, and I thought it was time. Besides, I had put an ad in the season program for Suzanne’s company, Luna & Stella, and wanted to pick up a couple copies.

Hard to imagine the Concord Players is only an amateur theater. They did a great job. And I guess the word has gotten around because they are sold out for the run.

I don’t love the story (having overdosed on French revolutions of all periods after reading A Tale of Two Cities once too often), and I think the dialogue in the musical is clunky. But I loved the performances and many of the songs, and I admired all the things that go into a good production — sets, costumes, sound, lighting, orchestra. The Concord Players are well known in the Greater Boston area for their production values, and they draw talent from all over.

Good job, Guys!

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Young Swedish Muslim Fights Antisemitism

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Siavosh Derakhti, the 22-year-old son of Iranian immigrants. is the founder of Young People Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia. He hails from Malmö, “a dynamic and diverse city of some 300,000 in southern Sweden.”

Gary G. Yerkey interviewed him for a story in the Christian Science Monitor.

” ‘Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia are huge problems in Malmö,’ Derakhti says. ‘I can’t accept that Jews are leaving my hometown [because of anti-Semitism]. I told the [US] president [who was in Sweden on an official visit] that I would never give up the fight for equal rights for all people.’ …

“Derakhti says he focuses on educating young people about the evils and dangers of anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia. He has done that by speaking to students and teachers at schools around the country, holding workshops for educators and others, and pressing the authorities to work toward ‘increasing awareness and understanding between different groups,’ he says. …

“For his work, Derakhti earlier this year was presented with the Swedish government’s Raoul Wallenberg Award – named after the late Swedish diplomat who is credited with saving thousands of Hungarian Jews in 1944.” More at the Monitor.

I’m impressed that a young person would understand so clearly that tolerance for his own family and religion is so closely tied to tolerance for all.

Photo: Karin Nylund/Utrikesdepartementet/Swedish MFA Siavosh Derakhti founded Young People Against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia in his native Sweden.

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Change a Letter, Get a National Team

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »

If you’re a country called Ireland and your soccer team doesn’t make it into the 2014 World Cup competition in Brazil, what do you do?

Change the “r” in your name to “c” and adopt another team.

I like David Trifunov’s headline at the Global Post, where you can read the background: “Iceland closes in on World Cup bid. Wait … Iceland has a soccer team?”

He continues, “Iceland is now one game away from becoming the smallest nation ever to advance to a World Cup. … It started in 2008 when the national economy, under the weight of an inflated currency, tanked.

“The modest Iceland soccer league cut ties with nearly all its more expensive foreign players, leaving the door wide open for homegrown talent. They took advantage, getting the experience they needed. …

“Ireland is one frustrated World Cup nation that has taken notice. At least the fans have. Eoin Conlon and friends were lamenting their country’s failed attempt to reach Brazil when he realized there’s only one nation that deserves their support now.

“ ‘And we kind of laughed, saying: “Well, that’s as close as Ireland’s going to get to Brazil. It’s only a letter difference. A ‘c’ for an ‘r.’ We might as well be brothers,” Conlon told Public Radio International.

“So they struck up a website and Twitter profile to encourage Irish football fans to back tiny Iceland.

“ ‘There are only about 320,000 people in Iceland,’ Conlon told PRI. ‘So if they were a county in Ireland — I’m calling them the 33rd county — it would [be] only the fifth-largest county in Ireland.’ ”

More here.

Photo: (AFP/AFP/Getty Images)
Iceland’s striker Kolbeinn Sigthorsson, right, and Croatian defender Vedran Corluka vie for the ball during their World Cup playoff in Reykjavik on November 15, 2013. 

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The Humans of New York

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

A quirky book of photos and interviews has rocketed to the top of the NY Times bestseller list, demonstrating once again the value of doing what interests you.

Julie Bosman at the NY Times reports on Brandon Stanton’s success with taking portraits and asking subjects both mild questions and questions “so personal they might make Oprah Winfrey blush. …

“Hundreds of his pictures and interviews have been compiled into a book, Humans of New York, which has become an instant publishing phenomenon. After its first week on sale last month, the book landed in the No. 1 spot on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. …

“Mr. Stanton grew up in an Atlanta suburb and attended the University of Georgia. After graduating as a film major, he found a job in Chicago as a trader, and on the weekends, he spent hours photographing that city.

“But after he was laid off in 2010, Mr. Stanton decided to shift to a completely new career. He moved to New York, where he didn’t know a single person. …

“After several months, he began moving in a different direction, interviewing his subjects and asking them about their lives, their struggles, their disappointments and their hopes.

“Most people brushed him off. … But his project gradually attracted an audience, mostly people in their 20s who left enthusiastic comments on his website. When his Facebook page had collected more than 200,000 followers, Mr. Stanton decided it was time to collect the pictures into a book.

“St. Martin’s Press, part of Macmillan, was the only publisher willing to print the book in hardcover.”

Good for St. Martin’s! Bet Stanton’s editor, Yaniv Soha, is laughing at all the naysayers now — laughing all the way to the bank.

More at the NY Times.

Photo: Brandon Stanton
The quote in the caption is presumably from the girl’s parents: “We ordered her those pants, and as soon as they arrived, she cut off the bottoms and made a pair of gloves.”

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Female Prisoners Get a New Start

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2013| 4 Comments »

On Sunday my husband and I took in the painful stories of several formerly incarcerated women who work on getting their lives back on track with Mary Driscoll at OWLL. The occasion was the performance of a collaborative theater piece called Hidden Faces of Courage.

All the women had the cards stacked against them from childhood on and had little hope of a better future after serving time. A recurring theme was the near impossibility of finding work with a criminal record.

So it was with particular interest that I read an article in UU World today about a café in North Carolina that is giving such women a second chance at life, starting with helping them earn an income.

Michelle Bates Deakin writes, “There’s a classic Catch-22 for women who have served jail time. It’s nearly impossible to get a job with a criminal record, and without a job and an income, it’s hard to keep from reoffending.

“The Rev. Melissa Mummert, a community minister in Charlotte, N.C., has dedicated the past decade to helping solve this conundrum, providing career and life coaching to female prisoners …

“In August, she helped open a new takeout restaurant in downtown Charlotte run by women released from jail. Second Helping gives formerly incarcerated women valuable job skills, income, and new starts at life.

“ ‘I kept hearing the same theme from so many women: “When I hit the jail door, I can’t get a job, because there is so much employment discrimination against people with criminal records,” ‘ said Mummert. Second Helping helps women leaving jail or prison land that all-important first job.”

Monique Maddox is one of the beneficiaries of the effort. “Maddox has worked at Second Helping since November 2011, when it opened its first coffee cart. She credits Second Helping with giving her opportunity. ‘Each and every one of us value our freedom today,’ she said. ‘I would never give it up.’ ”

More.

Photo: UU World
Rev. Mummert helped open the Second Helping café in Charlotte. It employs and trains formerly incarcerated women.

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Philippines

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »

This extra post is just to give you suggestions for where you can send donations. Send love through your thoughts. Send donations to Doctors without Borders or one of these other relief organizations, here. You can specify which disaster you want your aid to go to. I personally do unspecified in case other disasters follow and the money is needed for them.

Thank you, Asakiyume, for the list.

Photo: NBCNews

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A Restaurant Founded on Gratitude

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 13, 2013| 4 Comments »

Pavithra Mehta writes at Yes! Magazine about a network of restaurants where guests are asked to “pay it forward.”

Mehta’s explanation is a little far out for me, but I know I wouldn’t mind eating at one of these places. They sound cheerful. And I would be happy to pay it forward.

“In Berkeley, Calif.,” Mehta writes, “the Karma Kitchen restaurant bases its business on the concept of gratitude. Each visitor can pay nothing or voluntarily pay for a meal for a future guest. …

“The bill comes with a note that explains their meal was a gift from someone who came before them. If they wish to pay it forward, they can make a contribution for someone who comes after them …

“More than six years [after its founding], Karma Kitchen is still going strong. It has served more than 30,000 meals and now has chapters in half-a-dozen cities around the world. And it is all sustained by gratitude.

“Karma Kitchen works on the deceptively simple premise that the heart that fills, spills. The nature of gratitude is to overflow its banks and circulate. It does not stand still. But remove that ineffable quality from the equation, and the virtuous cycle breaks down.

“The sociologist Georg Simmel called gratitude ‘the moral memory of mankind.’ It serves to connect us to each other in small, real, and human ways. Remove it from the fabric of our lives, and all relationship becomes an endless series of soulless transactions.”

More at Yes! here.

Video: Seva Café , Gujarat, India

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More Advantages to Music

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 12, 2013| 5 Comments »

The NY Times contains a Science section on Tuesdays, and it always has delightful tidbits. Today Sindya N. Bhanoo writes that if you had music lessons at a young age, the experience may benefit you in old age.

“A new study reports that older adults who took lessons at a young age can process the sounds of speech faster than those who did not.

“ ‘It didn’t matter what instrument you played, it just mattered that you played,’ said Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience.

“She and her collaborators looked at 44 healthy adults ages 55 to 76, measuring electrical activity in a region of the brain that processes sound.

“They found that participants who had four to 14 years of musical training had faster responses to speech sounds than participants without any training — even though no one in the first group had played an instrument for about 40 years.” More here.

Now, of course, I am looking back and trying to count how many years of piano lessons I had as a kid. I’m sure it was at least the four Kraus deems necessary. But I hardly ever practiced, so probably the effect was small.

The serious pianist below was sitting on my lap when the picture was taken in 2011.

at-the-piano

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