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Young Violin Maker

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 4, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo:Sasha Arutyunova/New York Times.
South Korean violin maker Ayoung An at her studio in Cremona, Italy. 

It’s a mystery how some children get a passion for an activity at a very young age and never let it go. You can probably think of someone you know who was like that.

At the New York Times, Valeriya Safronova writes about a little girl in Korea who slept with her violin and who later learned to make violins in the Italian tradition.

“When Ayoung An was 8,” Safronova writes, “her parents bought her a violin. She slept with the instrument on the pillow next to her every night. Two years later, a shop selling musical instruments opened in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, her hometown, and An became a fixture there, pelting the owner with questions. ‘I think I bothered him a lot,’ An, now 32, said.

“As a teenager, she decided she would become a violin maker. Eventually, a journey with twists and turns took her to Cremona in northern Italy — a famed hub for violin makers, including masters like Antonio Stradivari, since the 16th century. There, An, a rising star in the violin-making world with international awards under her belt, runs her own workshop. …

“On a recent Monday, An was hunched over a thick 20-inch piece of wood held in place by two metal clamps. Pressing her body down for leverage, she scraped the wood with a gouge, removing layers, her hands steady and firm. She was forming a curving neck called a ‘scroll,’ one of the later steps of making a violin or cello. On this day, the violin maker was immersed on a commission for a cello, which shares a similar crafting process.

“Violins like An’s, made in the tradition of Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri, require about two months of work and sell for about 16,000 to 17,000 euros, or $17,500 to $18,500. …

“An was 17 when she hatched her plan to learn the craft: She would move in with an American family in a Chicago suburb so that she could attend a local high school, master English and eventually study at the Chicago School of Violin Making. There were no such schools in Korea at the time. Her parents, distraught about her moving so far away to pursue an uncertain career path, tried to stop her. …

“ ‘When I said goodbye to my parents at the airport, they were crying,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t. I was too excited.’

“Two years after moving to Illinois, she discovered that one of the best known schools for violin makers, the International School of Violin Making, was actually in Cremona. So in 2011, at age 20, she moved to a new country again.

“Cremona was home to some of history’s most famous luthiers, makers of stringed instruments: Stradivari; Andrea Amati, considered ‘the father of the violin’; and the Guarneri family. For the 160 to 200 violin makers in Cremona today, the sound quality of the masters remains the ultimate goal. …

“Around the studio, small pots of pigment, for varnishing, sat on shelves and tables alongside jars of powders — ground glass and minerals — for polishing. On a wall were dozens of knives, chisels and saws. Also present: dentist’s tools to scratch the instrument for a more antique look.

“An is the youngest member of a consortium in Cremona dedicated to upholding violin-making traditions. She is so immersed in the Cremonese method of violin making that, at the suggestion of a mentor, she created an artist’s name, Anna Arietti, to better fit in with Italian culture.

“An important moment is when luthiers place their label inside the instrument, called a ‘baptism.’ To make her label, An stamps her ink signature onto a small piece of paper — a browned page from a secondhand book, giving the impression of age. Then, using a traditional homemade mixture of melted bovine skin and rabbit skin as a long-lasting adhesive, she glues the label inside one half of the instrument. She also burns the signature of her Korean name into the instrument with a tiny heated brand.

“Afterward, the two halves are sealed together, completing the main body of the instrument. Her Italian artist’s name remains inside, intact as long as the violin is.”

More at the Times, here.

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Rohingya Boy Speaks through Photos

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on June 3, 2024| 1 Comment »

Photo: Kaamil Ahmed.
The Guardian writes: “Asom Khan, who is deaf and mute, uses his own version of [signing] to communicate with friends and family in Bangladesh.” And he takes photos that speak, too. 

What a powerful need human have to communicate! Here’s a story of a boy with the deck stacked against him many times over who wanted badly to communicate and figured out his own way to do it.

Kaamil Ahmed  writes at the Guardian, “His own sign language of sweeping, dramatized gestures is rarely fully understood by those outside Asom Khan’s closest friends and family, but the 15-year-old is able to speak through his art and photography.

“From his shelter in the Rohingya refugee camps of south-east Bangladesh, Khan takes photos to share the stories of his community – of his elderly neighbors, disabled people, and of women at work and in times of crisis.

“It was a journey that started with a photograph of him in 2017 – tears running down his face as he hung on to the side of an aid truck – that won awards for a Canadian press photographer, Kevin Frayer, as 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from massacres in what the UN described as ethnic cleansing by the Myanmar military.

“That photo has stuck with Khan, who is deaf and mute, and when he saw other Rohingya becoming photographers, using budget smartphones to document daily life, he fully understood the power of an image.

“ ‘I was inspired by other Rohingya photographers. When there were floods or fires or other issues, they would come and take pictures. I saw that there was some power in it,’ says Khan, whose friend interprets for him.

“Since arriving in Bangladesh, he has also been producing vivid paintings, sometimes of idyllic Myanmar villages scenes, others of those villages under attack and the chaos he witnessed.

“Raised by his aunt and uncle after his mother died in childbirth, Khan had no opportunity to learn formal sign language so he improvised, teaching his own version to those around him. But art and photography has given him a freedom to communicate without an interpreter. …

“The camps Khan arrived at six years ago quickly became the world’s largest, with almost 1 million Rohingya crammed into bamboo and plastic shelters. As conditions have worsened, with education, work and movement limited, international attention has died down, leaving the refugees to deal with their own problems. …

“ ‘I feel like when I show pictures of the Rohingya situation to the world, they understand a bit more what we face.’

“Frayer, the photographer now with Getty Images who took Khan’s photo in 2017, says … ‘I remember taking a few frames and then he disappeared into the crowd below. I remember feeling quite moved by how much courage this young boy showed,’ says Frayer.

“He found Khan again in 2018 and spent time with him, finally learning more of his story as they communicated through his sign language and his drawings.

“ ‘I was so moved and astounded to learn that he had taken an interest in photography. I saw in his artwork that he was incredibly talented at telling his story through his art, and that photography would indeed be a very strong tool for him,’ says Frayer.”

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations solicited.

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Study: Glasses Help Earnings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 2, 2024| 1 Comment »

Photo: Lisa Clarke.
Magnetic topper for Pair eyewear.

I was in elementary school when I got my first pair of glasses. At that time, people would say, “You look like Private Secretary,” a character in a television show of the same name. My wiseacre dad, however, couldn’t resist saying, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

Nowadays, we know that glasses not only correct vision but make a fashion statement. And as Gabrielle Emanuel reports at National Public Radio (NPR), there’s even research about the connection between glasses and income.

She writes, “Jasmin Atker calls her reading glasses her best friend – and a companion she does not take for granted. But her spectacles do something most best friends don’t do: They help her make a lot more money.

“Atker, 42, is a grandmother who lives in Manikganj, Bangladesh, on a small family farm. It started as a cattle farm producing milk. After she got glasses through the nonprofit groups VisionSpring and BRAC in 2022, Atker says, her improved vision enabled her to set up a vegetable patch. She even learned how to grow mushrooms. She now sells mushrooms as well as pumpkins, watermelon and spinach at the market. Atker estimates that her monthly income has jumped from 9,000 to 10,000 Bangladeshi taka to closer to 15,000 to 17,000 taka – the equivalent of about $150.

” ‘Before, when I tried to cut vegetables and wanted to see if there were any insects or not, I couldn’t see properly,’ Atker says, speaking through an interpreter. ‘After [I got] the glasses, the average time that I take for each task has reduced significantly. And I can do more work … [and] I have this sense of independence.’

“There’s now data that suggests Atker’s story is common. For the first time, researchers have directly linked glasses and income. The study – published April 3 in PLOS ONE – found a dramatic increase in earnings with a very low-cost change: a new pair of reading glasses.

“The researchers went to 56 villages in Bangladesh and found more than 800 adults ages 35 to 65 who are farsighted – that is, they could not see well up close. Half were randomly selected to get glasses; the other half got glasses after eight months. In that time, the researchers found that income grew by 33% for those with glasses – from a median monthly income of $35 to $47 – and that people who were not in the workforce were able to start jobs after getting reading glasses. …

” ‘In a lot of low- and middle-income countries, glasses are still tightly regulated,’ says Dr. Nathan Congdon, a co-author of the study and chair of Global Eye Health at Queen’s University Belfast. People often have to get a prescription from a vision specialist before they can purchase glasses, even reading glasses. This proves to be a huge hurdle for those living in poverty and those in remote areas, he says.

“The study did more than quantify the income gains from glasses. The researchers also taught community health workers in just a few hours how to help people pick the right reading glasses. …

” ‘It’s a little bit like buying a pair of trousers where you’ve got small, medium, large, extra large – four or five, six different sizes,’ says Congdon. This makes reading glasses easier and cheaper to produce.

” ‘The glasses themselves cost maybe $3-4. And using village health workers, we can make the cost of delivery very inexpensive as well,’ said Congdon. ‘So the whole thing can really just be a handful of dollars to deliver something that’s potentially quite life changing.’

“This study’s findings fit with past studies that link glasses to productivity. For example, Congdon was involved in a study, in India, where tea pickers given glasses were more productive. Similarly, cataract surgery has been shown to increase economically valuable activities by 40% to 50%.

“The villagers in the study worked in a wide range of professions: shopkeepers, farmers, craftspeople and weavers, for example. Only about a third of them were literate. So the reading glasses weren’t for reading as much as for other daily tasks, like threading a needle, quickly figuring out change at a cash register or weeding and sorting grain on a family farm.

“What the participants had in common is they had presbyopia – as do over a billion people today. This condition happens naturally as people age. …

“Congdon would like to see regulations loosen to improve access to reading glasses. He says the regulations, the cost and a general lack of awareness have meant many people who need glasses go without. When searching for participants, his team met almost nobody in the Bangladeshi villages with glasses.

“Congdon, who is an ophthalmologist himself, largely blames his own profession. ‘Ophthalmologists and optometrists may be advising the government that they should tightly regulate access to these products [to] strengthen their professions. They may see themselves as gatekeepers of quality,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t be recommending that we just hand out distance glasses, but I do think that for near [vision] glasses that’s a reasonable thing to do.’

“He says some for-profit companies and countries have successfully experimented with providing people with glasses. ‘Dozens of companies in coffee, tea, chocolate, textiles and other visually intensive sectors – they started to offer these programs, all across India and in many African countries,’ Congdon says.” More at NPR, here. No firewall.

I work with an ESL teacher who sees to it that students who need glasses take advantage of special programs. You have to jump through some hoops, but glasses make a huge difference in their lives.

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Biodegradable Shoes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 1, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: OatShoes.
One of the companies vying to be first in sustainable footwear is Oat. Plant your shoes when done, the company says!

I try to follow sustainable practices, but shoes for an old person’s feet need to be pretty strong, which means that when they’re worn out, the pieces end up in a landfill. So now I’m wondering if the recent initiatives to improve the sustainability of shoes can work for me.

Here are some thoughts from the Washington Post.

Daliah Singer writes, “Thomas Bogle was logging dozens of miles on the spruce- and pine-lined backcountry trails that weaved around his home in Steamboat Springs, Colo., as he trained for an ultramarathon. His mind wasn’t focused on his target pace, though. Instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about the micro bits of plastic and rubber the soles of his shoes were shedding on the forest floor.

“With every step we take, our shoes leave behind an invisible trail of toxic contaminants that can potentially harm the soil, water and animal health.

“Nearly 24 billion pairs of shoes were produced in 2022. Each contains myriad plastics and synthetic, petroleum-based rubber. Of the 500,000 tons of microplastics that seep into the world’s oceans each year, up to 35 percent come from synthetic textiles, including footwear, according to one estimate, from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Footwear alone accounts for 1.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, not that far below the airline industry, which is responsible for around 2 percent.

“Though shoe brands have taken strides toward sustainability, from offsetting carbon emissions to swapping out materials in the upper sections of shoes, they have largely overlooked soles. Now a slew of companies are starting to focus underfoot by developing new plant-based soles that won’t leave plastics behind when they degrade.

“Bogle, who spent eight years working in product development at a footwear company, is now working on an outsole from plant byproducts, while Keel Labs, a sustainable materials company started by two fashion design students, is making soles out of seaweed-based fiber. Native Shoes has a line of slip-ons made from an algae-based material, and Unless, a plant-based streetwear company in Portland, Ore., rolled out a shoe made entirely of biodegradable materials in conjunction with NFW.

“Shoes are designed ‘to last 1,000 years, and we use [them] for 100 days,’ said Yuly Fuentes-Medel, program director of climate and textiles at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Americans alone toss out 300 million pairs of shoes every year. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only about 13 percent of clothing and footwear is recycled in the United States.

“That’s partly because of the complexity of the shoemaking process. The average sneaker is composed of more than 130 individual pieces, according to Fuentes-Medel, who recently helped create the Footwear Manifesto, a report on how to make the industry more sustainable. Manufacturinga pairrequires at least 100 steps on average, including stitching and gluing, she said. That makes it nearly impossible to recycle them or take them apart to reuse their materials.

“The plastics in shoes also pose problems while consumers are wearing them. A 2022 study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials suggests abraded plastic from shoe soles reduces soil’s capacity to hold water and impedes photosynthesis. Another study, published in Science of the Total Environment, attributed mass coho salmon die-offs to 6PPD, a chemical added during tire manufacturing that is also found in footwear. …

“Bogle had an idea to create an entirely plastic-free shoe outsole — the component that was the first to wear out on his shoes during his long runs in the Colorado wilderness. He enlisted Gene Kelly, a professor of pedology (or soil science) at Colorado State University and a fellow runner, who helped develop a shoe sole made of beeswax, vegetable oils and plant byproducts such as leaves and husks from corn, hemp and other crops.

“Bogle’s company, Solum, partners with farmers and producers across the country to grow and harvest the materials, before converting them into bio-pellets and blending them with natural rubber to craft the sole.

“Instead of shedding toxic chemicals, Bogle explained, Solum’s soles deposit biologically derived nutrients back into the soil as they naturally wear down over time. A consumer survey by the company found that the average lifetime of a shoe outsole is around three years. Solum’s break down about 11 percent faster by design.”

Check out BlueView shoes and Ponto, too.

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Estonians Trust the Government

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis/AP.
Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid speaks during a news conference in Lithuania, Aug. 14, 2020.

Americans these days do not have much trust in government. It’s unfortunate because government does many good things. But a suspicious attitude has gained hold over the American mindset in the last few years. That’s why I look with envy at an Eastern European country that’s working really well because of a high level of trust — plus the efficient use of technology.

Lenora Chu explains at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Getting married is now one appointment easier in Estonia. The world’s most digitally integrated country launched the sacred union into the e-governance stratosphere last year – where it joined nearly every other government service you can imagine.

“Estonian citizens were already able to file taxes online, vote online, and access digital prescriptions. All of this digital activity hinges upon the Estonian smart identification system – which allows for state-recognized digital signatures – and a public trust in digital governance that’s been hard to replicate in other countries.

“ ‘I actually own my data – I can always track when someone looks at my data,’ says Kristiina Veerde-Toompalu. ‘I trust [my government].’ …

“Ms. Veerde-Toompalu got married in July, and applying online for the certificate saved her and her fiancé a special trip to her hometown’s city registrar. ‘We don’t have to go somewhere and announce our intention to get married,’ she says. …

“To deploy digital services successfully requires Estonians to trust the act of offering up to the cloud everything from birthdate and birthplace to tax information, salary, and medical diagnoses. That public trust took decades to cultivate, and ultimately relies on Estonia’s tight and transparent system of regulation.

“ ‘Paper files are not safer, because you cannot tell who looked at an analog file,’ says Kersti Kaljulaid, who served as president of Estonia from 2016 to 2021. ‘Estonian e-governance is a tightly regulated environment. … The data belongs to citizens, and you have control over who looks at your data, and you can ask them why they did. This is a luxury compared to an analog world, and I believe this is why we have this in-built trust.’

“It takes decades to build up the kind of comfort Estonia has with digitization, says Linnar Viik, a leading Estonian information technology scientist and government adviser since 1995.

‘Trust in digital channels didn’t happen overnight. It was kind of word of mouth and private and personal experience.’ …

“Trust also had to flow from leadership to the tech industry, and it did. ‘That is another layer of trust, whether you as a leader trust the experts on something you don’t understand. The politicians started to listen to the technology people and gave them space,’ says Mr. Viik.

“One such example: In 2000, Mr. Viik was allowed to convert Cabinet meetings from paper-based – at the time, they required knee-high stacks of printouts – to completely digital after one conversation with the prime minister.

“ ‘He asked, “Do we have any other examples around the world of paperless government?” ‘ recounts Mr. Viik. ‘I said, “No.” He said, “Cool, OK, do we have money for that?” ‘

“The Cabinet budget had $85,000 left for printing in that fiscal year, and Mr. Viik spent it on hardware, software, and training for Cabinet ministers and staff. What resulted was the paperless e-Cabinet: a fully wired room that drew global media attention. …

“Now Estonians not only vote and pay taxes online, but also buy property, register cars, sign job and rental contracts, and apply for unemployment benefits digitally. Nearly every service linked with a government office can be done digitally. And for many services,  citizens need not even apply, as certain entitlements are automated. That includes parental allowances and child support. Digitization also extends to health care, with every provider required to submit patient information to a centralized digital health authority. …

“ ‘The connotations [around trust] are different in different countries,’ says Mr. Viik. … ‘Other European Union governments – particularly Germany, which has a long history with government surveillance – want to mitigate all risk before digitizing. In Estonia, we would rather say, “Let’s start doing things,” and only then we can find out what are the problems we need to mitigate,’ he says.

“The paradox is that people already offer up enormous amounts of personal data to Google, Facebook, and other companies that are not only foreign but also governed independently, Mr. Viik says. ‘The institution you can control and govern is your own government – but you don’t trust? Why you don’t trust your government who is under your control?’ “

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall.

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Publisher Aims to Save Trees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 30, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: Claudia Wolff/Unsplash.
Do books use too much paper?

Those of us who still prefer a solid book to a pale, digital imitation may sometimes wonder whether we are encouraging the use of too much paper, especially since overstocks can end up in landfills.

Curiously, at least one publisher is thinking along the same lines.

Elizabeth Segran writes at Fast Company, “Over the past three years, HarperCollins’s designers have put their skills toward a new mission: saving paper. In an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of each book, they’re tweaking fonts, layout, and even the ink used. The goal is to pack more into each page, while ensuring that the pages are as readable as ever. And so far, these subtle, imperceptible tweaks have saved 245.6 million pages, equivalent to 5,618 trees.

“HarperCollins’s Christian publishing division, Zondervan Bibles, first came up with the idea of using design to save paper. Bibles have historically used upwards of 2,500 pages. In 2015, Zondervan’s designers determined that if they used different fonts and adjusted the page layout, they could reduce the number of sheets used. It would also cut HarperCollins’s printing costs. They developed a new compact typeface called the NIV Comfort Print. Ultimately, it saved more than 350 pages per bible, resulting in a total savings of 100 million pages in 2017. Stacked up, that would be the equivalent to four times the height of the Empire State Building.

“Tracey Menzies, the VP of creative operations and production at HarperCollins, wanted to see if the company could apply these learnings to other kinds of books. … The team got to work. They tested their theories with a large book in their catalog — more than 600 pages — by creating 50 versions of it using different fonts. HarperCollins uses a wide range of off-the-shelf fonts in its books, rather than custom ones. As the team ran the experiments, they observed that some fonts were more compact, resulting in fewer total pages, while remaining easy to read. So they curated a list of 15 fonts they determined are the most eco-friendly, which will be the preferred fonts from now on.

“In the end, the designers found that clever font selection, coupled with a thoughtful layout design that reduced white space, resulted in more words per page. For instance, in one example, the same text set to Garamond Pro resulted in many more words on the page compared to Bembo. Both fonts are fairly similar, with a classic serif look. And when you place them side by side, the differences are imperceptible. ‘The goal is to make these changes without the reader even seeing the difference,’ says Menzies.

“But there were also many complexities in the process. For instance, they had to consider the heaviness of the font. One font they used frequently is Bodoni, which was first created in 1798, and appears frequently in HarperCollins books. As a very heavy font, they realized they could fit more words on a page, while keeping it readable. But they also found that with very large letters, like subheadings, the ink would bleed through the paper, making it hard to read the words on the next page.

“ ‘The designer is always balancing out not just a single page, but also what’s on the page before and the page after,’ says [Leah Carlson-Stanisic, associate director of design at HarperCollins]. ‘Ultimately, this ended up with finding fonts that used less ink, in addition to less paper, which is also better for the planet.’

“Still, there is complex math involved with cutting pages from books. Printers produce very large sheets, which are then cut and folded into what ultimately becomes segments of 16 pages. When trying to cut pages from the book, designers need to be able to remove multiples of 16 pages. For the book So Fetch, for instance, using a more eco-friendly font saved nearly a million pages in total over the entirety of its print run. ‘We want to make sure our big titles, by prominent authors, are using these eco-fonts,’ says Carlson-Stanisic. ‘It adds up a little bit at a time, saving more and more trees.’ …

” ‘When we experimented with these fonts, we realized they weren’t a limitation at all,’ Menzies says. ‘It was simply a different approach that didn’t sacrifice aesthetics. Now, our designers are constantly questioning how we do things and thinking about ways to make things more sustainable.’

More at Fast Company, here.

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Bicyclists Can Fight Back

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 29, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: FoxLocal via the New York Post.
The Atlanta Magnet Man has a system for saving bikers from flat tires.

Multitasking Americans like to do more than one thing while exercising. Some people listen to podcasts on their walk. Some turn the elliptical toward the TV. I try to do breathing and meditaion on the treadmill.

Now, here’s a guy who picks up bike-damaging metal while exercising. Cathy Free has the story at the Washington Post.

“Alex Benigno was sick of changing his flat tires. He was getting them all the time … on his bike tires when he biked after work. ‘I’m really good at getting flat tires, and I was tired of patching them all the time,’ he said.

“He looked into it and learned that metal road litter is a nationwide problem, often caused by nails or other sharp objects spilled from trucks, and sometimes even done deliberately. In the United States, a vehicle tire is punctured every seven seconds, causing 220 million flat tires a year, according to a report by Autoily.

“Benigno decided to do something about it. … About a year ago, he bought 10 strong magnets for $160 online, attached them to the underbelly of his bike trailer, then went for a ride through Atlanta late one afternoon to see how many nails, screws, bottle caps, flattened cans and pieces of metal wire he could attract. Benigno rides a stand-up bike because of his back surgery 12 years ago.

“During his first 10-mile trip with the magnets attached, the underside of the trailer picked up about six pounds of sharp metal bits.

“ ‘From there, I decided to keep going out after work every day, added more magnets and tried all kinds of configurations with them to get to where I was collecting even more,’ he said.

“He attached a broom to the trailer to help sweep more metal into the magnets, and he selected different areas of the city to ride through each time.

“By December, he said he was picking up about 50 pounds of debris every 10 days, scraping it off the bottom of the trailer each night and storing it in bins in his car and home or at the photo supply shop where he works.

“When he started an Instagram page in January to alert people to the problem of metal debris in the streets, Benigno called himself the ‘Atlanta Magnet Man.’ His videos and posts quickly built a following, and Georgia Public Broadcasting shared the story of his street cleanup efforts.

“People immediately began to post thank you messages, sharing their own stories of flat tires.

“ ‘Midtown is the worst,’ wrote one person. ‘I have had a couple of flat tires in recent years with all the construction.’ …

“Benigno posted one of his cycling videos on YouTube last month to give people a better idea of how much debris his magnets pick up.

“When Laura Lewis, an Atlanta scrap metal artist, found out what he was doing, she offered to take the mess he’d collected off his hands.

“ ‘I gave her the whole batch — 410 pounds worth,’ Benigno said. ‘I love that she can do something with it.’

“Lewis said she’d been looking for some smaller metal pieces to add more detail to her sculptures. …

” ‘They send out street sweepers to clean the streets, but they really can’t catch all the small bits,’ Benigno said. ‘Because some of these things are so little, they’re flipped around by the sweeper, and when someone runs over them, there goes another flat tire.’ “

I love that an artist can use Benigno’s trash. It’s amazing what certain people find a use for, but you’re lucky if you find them. We once replaced a copper roof, and a copper sculptor was thrilled to get free material for her work.

More at the Post, here.

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The Magpie and the Dog

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 28, 2024| 5 Comments »

Photo: Vivek Doshi/Unsplash.
A magpie. Magpies in Australia are part of the Artamidae family. 

Covid may have made us more nervous about the interaction between humans and wild animals, but who can resist all the adorable videos suggesting it can work? Here’s what happened when a magpie in Australia got a bit too much attention on social media.

Annabelle Timsit writes at the Washington Post, “Peggy and Molly are typical best friends. They hang out. Play. Sunbathe. But in one important way, they are an unusual pair: Peggy is a dog, and Molly is a magpie.

“A couple in Queensland, Australia, rescued Molly in 2020 after she fell from a nest. The magpie bonded with their Staffordshire terrier, Peggy, and became somewhat of a social media celebrity.

“Through their Instagram account @peggyandmolly, the couple, Juliette Wells and Reece Mortensen, chronicle the dog and magpie’s daily adventures for 813,000 followers. …

“But Peggy and Molly’s rising popularity also attracted the attention of wildlife authorities. The Department of Environment, Science and Innovation (DESI) successfully demanded that Molly be surrendered into its care after receiving complaints from members of the public, saying that Wells and Mortensen did not have the proper permits to look after a wild bird.

“Now, Peggy and Molly could soon be reunited — after fans called for Molly to be sent back, and Queensland Premier Steven Miles said Tuesday that Wells and Mortensen can ‘secure the appropriate license’ to care for the magpie. … The update from Miles, who is the head of government in the northeastern Australian state, comes after Wells and Mortensen mounted a public campaign to regain care of Molly. …

“After the public outcry, Miles had said that wildlife authorities stood ‘ready to train Molly’s parents to be wildlife caregivers, to get them the right certification, so Molly can be reunited with her family.’ …

“Peggy and Molly are the latest animals to get caught up in tensions between pet owners and wildlife authorities. Social media videos of animals exhibiting unusual or humanlike behavior are growing in popularity, but experts say many wild animals are not meant to live in domesticated settings, and they have warned about risks to the animals and their owners because of the spread of disease.

“Wells said she was walking outside in the fall of 2020 when she came across a baby magpie that had fallen from its nest. She rescued it from ‘certain death,’ she said, and brought the magpie home.

“ ‘Peggy needed something to nurture and Molly needed nurturing,’ says a website about their story, and the duo became ‘besties.’

“About a year later, Peggy had five puppies. Molly ‘became very close to all’ of them, and ‘now has an incredible bond’ with one of them, named Ruby, according to the website.

“In the past 3½ years, near-daily videos posted on the @peggyandmolly Instagram account have shown Molly, Peggy and Ruby sharing toys and napping next to each other in the sun — and suggest that the magpie even learned to imitate Peggy and Ruby’s bark. In another video, Molly puts a wing over its friend on a dog bed. …

“Australian authorities have warned the public that some magpies can be ‘aggressive towards people’ when defending their nests, particularly during what’s known as ‘magpie swooping season,’ typically between July and November. Videos of Australians being chased by magpies have gone viral, and the Queensland government has warned the public to ‘stay safe from swooping magpies.’ ”

Molly the Magpie returned home on April 15, according to @SevenJMiles on the bird site.

More at the Post, here.

PS. If you see two Blue-Throated Piping Guans on the loose (Monster and Chip), they escaped from Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence during a recent storm. Read here.

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Indigenous Veterans

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Anna Mulrine Grobe/The Christian Science Monitor.
US veteran Bernadine Tyler stands at a memorial to Navajo code talkers on the Navajo Nation, in Window Rock, Arizona.

On this Memorial Day, let’s take a look at the indigenous people who have served in our military.

Anna Mulrine Grobe  writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “In her work with U.S. military veterans here on the Navajo Nation, Bernadine Tyler routinely logs 1,200 miles a month driving across an area the size of West Virginia, over high windswept plains dotted with rust-red mesas.

“Roughly one-third of homes here on America’s largest reservation don’t have electricity or running water, so Ms. Tyler, herself a member of the Navajo Nation and an Army veteran, brings services directly to her fellow vets, most of whom are over the age of 65. 

“She points out the occasional gas station and folks walking on the dusty shoulders of pot-holed roads. There’s a bus, ‘but it’s very unreliable and only runs one route,’ says Ms. Tyler, program lead for the Diné Naazbaa Partnership (DNP), which serves the Navajo Nation and receives funding from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. …

“For vets without transport or refrigerators, she carries bags of ice to fill the convenience store coolers that many use to chill their food and medications. She enlists volunteers, including her sons, to help haul water and chop wood for warmth in the winter. 

“The particular challenges of accessing this care came to light during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Native American veterans living in small multigenerational homes without running water on closed tribal lands died at significantly higher rates than other former service members. The VA subsequently pledged to better serve America’s Native American community. 

“In 2020, the VA created the first advisory committee for Native American veterans. It held its first meeting in 2022 and began issuing its recommendations last year. Though they aren’t binding, the suggestions of some committees have an acceptance rate of 90%, according to the agency. …

“With this year’s 2024 defense spending bill, lawmakers also granted the Native American Indian Veterans a congressional charter, making it the first-ever group dedicated to the interests of Indigenous people in the U.S. to get the status. It is a development that took the NAIV nearly 20 years of lobbying to achieve. With the charter, NAIV can testify before Congress and, ideally, more easily help the VA process benefits claims. 

“The hope is that these developments will not only improve care, but also foment faith that, even after decades of neglect, change is possible – particularly among the 57% of Native American veterans who say their top reason for joining the military was a desire to serve their country. 

“Native American veterans are among America’s most patriotic, says Adam Pritchard, a researcher at Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families. ‘It’s a very important step in the right direction to acknowledge their history of the service and their ongoing needs.’ 

“ ‘Our history has much mistrust,’ Ms. Tyler says. Good-faith efforts to fix a long-broken system and build it up, she adds, can help heal old wounds, too. 

“In 1943, Thomas Begay joined the U.S. Marines. He was 16 or 17 years old – he’s not sure which. … He wanted to be an aerial gunner, Mr. Begay told the recruiter. [The recruiter sent him] to become a code talker. While he and his fellow troops practiced the top-secret tribal language with a twist, their basic training was more ad hoc than the Marine norm. 

“ ‘They got us a rubber boat, and they just dumped us way out in the ocean and said … “Learn how to get to shore,” ‘ he recalled in a 2013 discussion cataloged by the National Archives.

“Months later, after landing at Iwo Jima in February 1945, Mr. Begay and his fellow code talkers were hailed as instrumental in taking the island – and later with helping to win the war. Their code was never broken. …

“Today, Mr. Begay is living in a house where bad plumbing has damaged the floors and ceiling. ‘It’s not safe for him,’ says Karen Shirley, community coordinator for DNP, which is helping him apply for VA grants to fix up his home, or get Mr. Begay a new one. 

“ ‘How can we not support this great warrior who helped save this country, and just get him the housing he needs?’ Ms. Tyler says.”

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Subscriptions are reasonable.

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A Fan Who Tracks Banksy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Fareth Fuller, PA.
Valentine’s Day Mascara is one of Banksy’s murals in Margate, Kent.

I like Banksy’s stealth art a lot and have seen works — or imagined I’ve seen works — in both Boston and New York. But Loraine Holmes is a super fan, and she really knows what’s what.

Hayley Coyle writes at BBC News, “Rumblings a few weeks ago about a new piece of work by world famous street artist Banksy appearing in London meant it was not long before social media was awash with rumors.

“About 200 miles away in Leeds, one of those caught up in the buzz was Loraine Holmes, a self-confessed Bansky super fan and co-founder of a Facebook group charting the elusive graffiti artist’s work.

“Within an hour of Banksy’s new tree-themed mural in Finsbury Park being ‘claimed,’ Mrs Holmes was already at the spot — one of the first in the world to view the fresh and, as she put it, ‘raw’ mural.

“After being tipped off the night before, Mrs Holmes, 61, had taken an early train from Leeds. …

” ‘I spent a total of about five hours there, just taking it all in and observing people,’ she added.

“Banksy’s latest offering, which he later confirmed on his Instagram account was one of his, was a green spray-painted wall depicting foliage, with a stencil of a person holding a sprayer standing next to it.

“Mrs Holmes was one of the lucky ones who got to see it before it was covered in plastic and surrounded by wooden boards after it was defaced with white paint.

“The self-confessed super fan is such a hardcore Banksy aficionado that she said she also once drove 14 hours from Leeds to Margate and back so she could spend just 10 minutes taking some photos of his mural in the Kent seaside town. …

“Mrs Holmes co-founded a Facebook super fan group called Banksy Locations in 2020 with fellow street art enthusiast Jay Tompkins. The group now has 20,000 members worldwide and covers ‘every single aspect of Banksy’ from the 1990s to today, Mrs Holmes said.

“The group also shares information on what condition Banksy’s works are in and where they can be found. In fact, Mrs Holmes said it was members of the Banksy Locations group who ‘unofficially confirmed’ the new London mural before the artist himself.

“Mrs Holmes, a senior business analyst, said she first discovered Banksy’s works in 2018 after seeing some of them online. Her admiration for the anonymous artist ‘spiraled’ and she said that now he would be her ‘Mastermind specialist subject.’

“She said: ‘It started out with me not knowing much about graffiti, but after I saw some pictures I liked on eBay, I started doing some research, read a few books and joined a few groups.’ …

“Mrs Holmes said other Banksy-related adventures included traveling to Paris while suffering with a broken ankle to see Man with Dog. She had undergone surgery a few weeks before to have screws put in her leg, but that did not put her off the journey.

” ‘I still managed to see six Banksy pieces that weekend,’ she recalled. … Mrs Holmes now has plans to visit San Francisco and Los Angeles in the near future to see more of the artist’s work.”

More at the BBC, here.

Photos below: John and Suzanne’s Mom.

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Migrant Girls in Scout Troop

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 25, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Girl Scout Troop 6000.
Girl Scouts of Greater New York’s Troop 6000 is a first-of-its-kind program designed to serve families living in temporary housing in the New York City shelter system.

Kindness and compassion are not dead. You just need to know where to find them.

Consider New York’s Girl Scout Troop 6000, which reaches out to migrant children.

Sara Herschander reports for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Once a week in a midtown Manhattan hotel, dozens of Girl Scouts gather in a spare room made homey by string lights and children’s drawings. They earn badges, go on field trips to the Statue of Liberty, and learn how to navigate the subway in a city most have just begun to call home.

“They are the newest members of New York City’s largest Girl Scout troop. And they live in an emergency shelter where 170,000 asylum seekers and migrants, including tens of thousands of children, have arrived from the southern border since the spring of 2022.

“As government officials debate how to handle the influx of new arrivals, the Girl Scouts — whose Troop 6000 has served kids who live in the shelter system since 2017 — are quietly welcoming hundreds of the city’s youngest new residents with the support of donations. Most of the girls have fled dire conditions in South and Central America and endured an arduous journey to the U.S.

“Not everybody is happy about the evolution of Troop 6000. With anti-immigrant rhetoric on the rise and a contentious election ahead, some donors see the Girl Scouts as wading too readily into politically controversial waters. That hasn’t fazed the group — or their small army of philanthropic supporters. Amid city budget cuts and a growing need for services, they are among dozens of charities that say their support for all New Yorkers, including newcomers, is more important than ever.

“ ‘If it has to do with young girls in New York City, then it’s not political,’ said Meridith Maskara, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. ‘It’s our job.’ …

“Last year, Troop 6000 opened its newest branch at a hotel-turned-shelter in Midtown Manhattan, one of several city-funded relief centers for migrants. Though hundreds of families sleep at the shelter every night, the Girl Scouts is the only children’s program offered. …

“Last January, the group began recruiting at the shelter and rolled out a bilingual curriculum to help scouts learn more about New York City through its monuments, subway system, and political borders. …

“With few other after-school opportunities available, the girls are ‘so hungry for more’ ways to get involved, says Giselle Burgess, senior director of the Girl Scouts of New York’s Troop 6000.

“Seven years ago, Burgess, a single mother of six, built Troop 6000 from the ground up after losing her rental home to developers. While living in a hotel-turned-shelter, she got the idea of creating a troop for girls like her daughters. It was the height of ‘NIMBYism,’ she says, the not-in-my-backyard movement opposed to local homeless shelters.

“At the time, she asked: ‘Who’s gonna give us a chance?’

“As it turns out, ‘the donations started pouring in,’ she says. A New York Times profile lead to a groundswell of philanthropy. … So, when the mayor’s office floated the idea of starting a troop at the Midtown shelter, the Girl Scouts were ready. …

“Troop 6000 employs bilingual social workers and a transition specialist versed in supporting children who’ve experienced trauma. But otherwise, it operates much like any other Girl Scout troop. Most importantly, says Maskara, the troop offers a glimmer of consistency to children who often must pack up, move homes, and switch schools in the middle of the academic year. Scouts are encouraged to continue participating even when their families move. …

“ ‘Keeping the girls connected is what matters the most for us right now,’ says Burgess. ‘There’s a lot of emotion, frustration, and hurt.’ Around 50 scouts who have left the shelter participate in a virtual troop. ‘We want to be able to encourage the girls and let them know it’s not over,’ she says. ‘We’re still here.’ “

More here.

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Mariupol Theater’s New Home

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Kasia Stręk/The Guardian.
Actors from Mariupol theatre and new recruits of the renewed theater, now in Uzhorod, rehearse for a piece called Poets Lived Here, depicting how lives have been changed by the war.

As with all stories about war zones like Ukraine, one hopes that positive news published yesterday — or a few months ago — is still true today. Consider an article by the Guardian’s Shaun Walker written in March that was a testament to the resilient spirit of the Ukrainian people.

“When the bombs hit the Mariupol Drama theatre, Vira Lebedynska did not hear a boom or a blast. From the recording studio in the theatre’s basement, where she was sheltering along with a few other theatre employees, the sensation was more like a vacuum.

“ ‘There was a whoosh, and a feeling that the air was being sucked out of the room,’ she recalled. A few seconds earlier, her cat Gabriel had suddenly tensed, perhaps sensing the sound of a plane overhead. … The 65-year-old actor and vocal trainer was one of about 20 theatre employees among the more than 1,000 people sheltering in the theatre as the Russian army laid siege to Mariupol in March 2022.

“The strike, believed to have been carried out with two 500kg bombs dropped from a Russian aircraft, came despite widespread knowledge that it was the biggest civilian shelter in the city. …

“[Now] in Kyiv, Lebedynska will perform in Mariupol Drama, a play based on the memories of four actors who were sheltering inside the theatre, all of whom speak about their own experiences from the stage.

“The four are among a small group of actors and staff from the theatre who have resurrected the troupe in Uzhhorod, in the far west of Ukraine. Performances take place in the vast, boxy auditorium of the city’s main theatre, which has offered up its stage for the Mariupol troupe. There are also occasional tours; [The March 16] performance will be the Kyiv premiere of Mariupol Drama. Props are minimal while costumes have been sewn from scratch or bought in local secondhand shops, but the spirit and sense of duty is high.

‘The body of our theatre has been destroyed, but the heart still beats here in Uzhhorod,’ said Hennadiy Dybovskiy, the theatre’s recently appointed 63-year-old director, who is originally from Donetsk.

“In Mariupol Drama, each of the actors brings a real artifact on to the stage that reminds them of their time sheltering in the theatre. For Lebedynska, it is cloakroom tag number 392; staff of the theatre wore the tags around their necks to identify themselves to others who might need help finding their way around. For 24-year-old Dmytro Murantsev, it’s the one-piece Spider-Man pyjama suit that he wore throughout the siege, as it was his warmest item of clothing.

“Also on stage in the play are Ihor Kytrysh, 43, and his wife, Olena Bila, 42 who have both acted at the Mariupol theatre for more than two decades. They left the theatre the day before the explosion, risking a drive across the frontline to get out of the city.

“They feel grateful they made it out, with their son, but like most people from Mariupol, they feel a sharp sense of loss for everything they left behind. …

“Lebedynska said she ignored her son’s pleas to leave Mariupol in the buildup to the war because she did not think full-scale war was possible. When the hostilities started, she took a rucksack of important possessions and Gabriel the cat, and made her way to the theatre. She and a few other theatre colleagues set up camp in the recording studio in the basement. …

“ ‘There weren’t that many people at first, but then someone opened the theatre doors and people started streaming in. They had heard there would be an organized evacuation from the theatre, but there was no evacuation so in the end everyone stayed there,’ she recalled.

“People cooked food on open fires outside, and carried various sets and props from the storerooms to sleep on. On occasion, some people tried to leave and drive out of Mariupol, but they often came back some hours later, saying they had been shot at.

“Lebedynska does not remember the aftermath of the strike clearly. … She walked for two hours through the ruined city, in a dressing gown, before stopping to stay the night in an apartment on the edge of Mariupol with the windows blown out. …

“It can feel strange playing with a skeleton troupe to a mostly empty auditorium, in a theatre a thousand miles from Mariupol in the opposite corner of Ukraine. But Dybovskiy said it was an important act of defiance to keep going. ‘This is the only professional collective that is flying the flag of Donetsk region. We won’t let the Russian Orcs appropriate our Donetsk theatre traditions,’ he said. …

“[Meanwhile, a] newly Russianized troupe has already been on several tours to Russian regions, and Moscow has sent in actors and directors to work in occupied Ukrainian territory. The theatre frequently takes part in ‘patriotic’ concerts devoted to Russian national holidays and its orchestra is called on to play military marches. …

“Lebedynska said that in the months after she had fled to Ukraine-controlled territory, she still had some contact by telephone with fellow actors who had stayed. ‘I think a lot of them had simply been waiting for the “Russian world” to come.’ …

“Murantsev said he thought these views were more of a coping mechanism, for people who could not bear to leave their home town. ‘I don’t think there were many super pro-Russian people there, I think they just feel “outside politics” and want to stay quiet,’ he said.”

There will come a time after the war, a time of rebuilding. And it will have to start with healing these sorts of divisions. Meanwhile, a reduced but feisty Mariupol theater will grow in the west.

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations encouraged.

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Repairing School Instruments

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The Last Repair Shop, above, is a 2023 American short documentary film directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers. 

I listen every day to WICN, a jazz station in Worcester, Massachusetts. Besides providing wonderful music, the station does good works that I appreciate. For example, they collect unused school instruments to donate to local public school students. Both Suzanne (oboe) and John (sax) let me take the instruments they hadn’t touched for years to WICN and donate them.

Other school districts also offer free instruments, but few have a reliable way to repair any that need work. Now, publicity for an Oscar-winning film about a repair initiative in one district is spreading inspiration.

Sheena Goodyear reports at CBC Radio, “Steve Bagmanyan is putting retirement on hold — and he couldn’t be more thrilled about it. Bagmanyan is the supervisor at a warehouse in Los Angeles, where a small, but mighty, team of music lovers repair musical instruments for thousands of public school students. 

“One of the last programs of its kind in the U.S., it has struggled to stay afloat over the years. But now, thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary short The Last Repair Shop, donations are pouring in. …

“The Last Repair Shop tells the story of the L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) Musical Instrument Repair Shop, where 11 technicians service about 6,000 instruments each year for more than 1,300 schools across the city.

“It spotlights the shop’s staff, including Bagmanyan, as well as the students who benefit from their work, showing how music has changed each of their lives in momentous ways. 

“In an interview with As It Happens earlier this year, co-director Ben Proudfoot, a Halifax native, called the film ‘a vehicle to get people to stand up and cheer for music and arts education around the world.’

“Now, that’s exactly what people are doing. Proudfoot and co-director Kris Bowers have teamed up with the Los Angeles Unified School District to create ‘The Last Repair Shop Fund,’ hosted online by Paypal. …

” ‘Ben and I can’t think of a better impact for our film to make,’ Bowers said in a press release. … As the money comes in, Bagmanyan says he and the school district have big plans — new equipment, upgraded tools, more technicians and, if possible, an apprenticeship program.

” ‘Maybe some high school kids would be interested in learning the trade since there’s not many repair people left really,’ Bagmanyan said.

“Ever since The Last Repair Shop was nominated for best documentary short at the Academy Awards, Bagmanyan says life has been a whirlwind. After years of toiling in relative obscurity, he and his colleagues are now attending screenings, doing media interviews and going to red carpet events. 

At one of the first screenings, they met some of the students who rely on the public school instruments they repair — many of whom could never afford an instrument out of pocket.

” ‘It was very rewarding,’ Bagmanyan said. ‘I felt very proud. I always did, but when I met students and actually went to all the screenings, it’s a different way of feeling proud. It’s like you actually see who you’re doing it for.’

“One of those students, violinist Porché Brinker, was featured in the doc and shared the stage with Proudfoot and Bowers when they won the Oscar.  Bagmanyan and the other technicians were watching proudly from the balcony.

” ‘To see the way that everyday people have shown up to make sure that kids like Porché have a working violin in their hand is truly moving, and goes to show that good old fashioned generosity and goodness is still very much alive,’ Proudfoot told CBC in an emailed statement. …

“But the most amazing thing to come out of the film, Bagmanyan says, are the boxes of hand-written, thank you letters that keep arriving at the shop from L.A. public school teachers and students, he says. …

” ‘Every note is our Oscar. Every thank you email from a teacher, that’s our Oscar,’ he said. …

“Funding cuts and furloughs over the years meant that by the time he took over as supervisor in 2013, [the repair team was down to six from 30].

“With new funding and attention from the Oscars win, he’s aiming to ‘bring it — at least partially — back to its capacity.’ “

More at CBC, here.

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The Car-Free City

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 22, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Marek Lumi via Unsplash.
Barcelona, 2023.

How do you get people to change behavior? Even if they know something is good for the world and good for themselves (driving less, for instance), how do you get them to do it? Often people won’t change until they feel the reality of disaster.

But as Andrew Kersley reports at Wired magazine, “people hate the idea of car-free cities — until they live in one.” He notes that one of the best ways to get them started is “from the ground up.” Read on.

“London had a problem,” he begins. “In 2016, more than 2 million of the city’s residents—roughly a quarter of its population — lived in areas with illegal levels of air pollution; areas that also contained nearly 500 of the city’s schools. That same air pollution was prematurely killing as many as 36,000 people a year. Much of it was coming from transport: a quarter of the city’s carbon emissions were from moving people and goods, with three-quarters of that emitted by road traffic.

“But in the years since, carbon emissions have fallen. There’s also been a 94 percent reduction in the number of people living in areas with illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that causes lung damage. The reason? London has spent years and millions of pounds reducing the number of motorists in the city.

“It’s far from alone. From Oslo to Hamburg and Ljubljana to Helsinki, cities across Europe have started working to reduce their road traffic in an effort to curb air pollution and climate change.

“But while it’s certainly having an impact (Ljubljana, one of the earliest places to transition away from cars, has seen sizable reductions in carbon emissions and air pollution), going car-free is a lot harder than it seems. Not only has it led to politicians and urban planners facing death threats and being doxxed, it has forced them to rethink the entire basis of city life.

“London’s car-reduction policies come in a variety of forms. There are charges for dirtier vehicles and for driving into the city center. Road layouts in residential areas have been redesigned, with one-way systems and bollards, barriers, and planters used to reduce through-traffic (creating what are known as ‘low-traffic neighborhoods’ — or LTNs). And schemes to get more people cycling and using public transport have been introduced. The city has avoided the kind of outright car bans seen elsewhere in Europe, such as in Copenhagen, but nevertheless things have changed.

“ ‘The level of traffic reduction is transformative, and it’s throughout the whole day,’ says Claire Holland, leader of the council in Lambeth, a borough in south London. Lambeth now sees 25,000 fewer daily car journeys than before its LTN scheme was put in place in 2020, even after adjusting for the impact of the pandemic. Meanwhile, there was a 40 percent increase in cycling and similar rises in walking and scooting over that same period.

“What seems to work best is a carrot-and-stick approach — creating positive reasons to take a bus or to cycle rather than just making driving harder. ‘In crowded urban areas, you can’t just make buses better if those buses are still always stuck in car traffic,’ says Rachel Aldred, professor of transport at the University of Westminster and director of its Active Travel Academy. ‘The academic evidence suggests that a mixture of positive and negative characteristics is more effective than either on their own.’ …

“Urban driving doesn’t make up the majority of a country’s car use, but the kind of short journeys taken when driving in the city are some of the most obviously wasteful, making cities an ideal place to start if you’re looking to get people out from behind the wheel. That, and the fact that many city residents are already car-less (just 40 percent of people in Lambeth own cars, for example) and that cities tend to have better public transport alternatives than elsewhere. …

“But as effective as policies to end or reduce urban car use have been, they’ve almost universally faced huge opposition. When Oslo proposed in 2017 that its city center should be car-free, the backlash saw the idea branded as a ‘Berlin Wall against motorists.’ The plan ended up being downgraded into a less ambitious scheme consisting of smaller changes, like removing car parking and building cycle lanes to try to lower the number of vehicles.

“In London, the introduction of LTNs has also led to a massive backlash. In the east London borough of Hackney, one councilor and his family were sent death threats due to their support for the programme. Bollards were regularly graffitied, while pro-LTN activists were accused of ‘social cleansing.’ It was suggested that low-traffic areas would drive up house prices and leave the only affordable accommodation on unprotected roads. ‘It became very intimidating,’ says Holland. ‘I had my address tweeted out twice, with sort of veiled threats from people who didn’t even live in the borough saying that we knew they knew where I lived.’ …

“Any attempts to reduce urban car use tend to do better when designed from the bottom up. Barcelona’s superblocks program, which takes sets of nine blocks within its grid system and limits cars to the roads around the outside of the set (as well as reducing speed limits and removing on-street parking) was shaped by having resident input on every stage of the process, from design to implementation. Early indicators suggest the policy has been wildly popular with residents, has seen nitrogen dioxide air pollution fall by 25 percent in some areas, and will prevent an estimated 667 premature deaths each year, saving an estimated 1.7 billion euros.” More at Wired, here.

What local policies for helping you use your car less would you welcome?

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Nurse in Ukraine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 21, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor.
Ukrainian senior nurse Oksana Sokhan waits to treat wounded soldiers near the southern war front in Zaporizhzhia district, Ukraine, in February.

You don’t need to save the whole world. Just do something where you are. That is a bit of wisdom I heard on the radio last week from a woman who had served as a judge in Massachusetts. In her youth, she had fought apartheid in her home country when the battle seemed hopeless. But as we know, many hands together made a difference in South Africa.

Scott Peterson writes at the Christian Science Monitor about a nurse in Ukraine who is also making a difference.

“From all her years of caring for wounded soldiers, the Ukrainian nurse recounts one transcendent moment of comfort she provided early in this war that she says she’ll never forget. …

“Not long after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Oksana Sokhan found herself in an evacuation minibus, wedged between two stricken soldiers in the dark, as the vehicle tried to safely get away from the front line.

“The wounded men were agitated and anxious, disoriented and determined to get up and move. Ms. Sokhan had no sedatives – but she had within her the key to calming them. She began singing Ukrainian lullabies to the wounded fighters, and stroking them as a mother would. Their anxiety eased. If she stopped the soothing singing for a moment, she saw their anxiety surge again.

“ ‘I was surprised myself that it worked – surely it worked on a subconscious level for both of them. … I didn’t know what else to do; we didn’t have any medicine.’ …

“Ms. Sokhan may be just one senior nurse, but she is emblematic of the legions of Ukrainian military medics devoted to preserving the lives of the country’s outnumbered forces. …

“Ukraine’s liberation of Kherson in September 2022, for example, and the monthslong grinding fight for Bakhmut late last year pushed Ms. Sokhan and her colleagues to the limit. During both campaigns, the medical teams regularly saw 100 casualties come through their doors daily. …

“ ‘Everyone here, we all live for one day. If we survive today, it’s good,’ she says. ‘I’ve learned not to not build plans.’ …

“Ms. Sokhan never expected to be a front-line nurse in Russia’s war, either. … She was a decade ago at the opposite end of the country, in the far west, taking care of people at a sprawling resort.

“When Russian troops invaded Ukrainian Crimea in 2014, she recounts, her daughter and son-in-law, who were on the peninsula to ‘live close to the sea,’ called her in alarm. They told her the Russians had issued an ultimatum: Take Russian passports and denounce Ukraine, or leave. … They moved back to their hometown of Lysychansk, but within a month, Russian and pro-Russian proxies were there, too, seizing control. The family had to walk more than 4 miles, with a 4-year-old and all the belongings they could carry, before fleeing west.

“ ‘I got very angry,’ recalls Ms. Sokhan. ‘I quit that job and went to the military office to sign up for the army.’ …

“Ms. Sokhan focuses on doing what she can to contribute to the well-being of Ukraine’s wounded soldiers.

“ ‘We want to save everyone,’ she says. … ‘What’s uplifting and inspiring are our guys, people who come here wounded, who are cold and hungry and dirty,’ says Ms. Sokhan. ‘But all they say is, “Doc, quickly get me fixed up; I’ve got to get back to my guys.” ‘ “

More at the Monitor, here.

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