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Women Tackle Illegal Mining

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 20, 2024| 1 Comment »

Photo: Adri Salido.
From the Christian Science Monitor: “Elsa Cerda (with spear) leads Yuturi Warmi, a group of Indigenous women who guard against illegal mining in the community of Serena in the Ecuadorian Amazon.”

As a group of indigenous women in the Ecuadorian Amazon have shown, when something is wrong in your neighborhood, it pays to join with others and fight.

Al Jazeera wrote a good report on this last year.

“As a child, Leo Cerda would spend his mornings helping his family cultivate cassava, plantains and other fruits and vegetables in their chakra, a traditional garden in Kichwa communities.

“In the Ecuadorian village of Napo, traditions form a large part of family and spiritual life. At around 3 am each morning, before heading to their chakras, many families take part in a traditional tea ceremony. Once freed from his farming duties at around midday, Cerda recalled running to the river to swim and fish with friends. Fish would later be grilled on an open fire and eaten with large amounts of fruit.

“ ‘As a kid, I got to enjoy nature,’ Cerda told Al Jazeera.

“These days, however, the 34-year-old spends his days chasing gold miners from his community and campaigning against those who threaten to destroy his ancestral lands. …

“ ‘Within three years, everything changed,’ Cerda said. ‘The land has been poisoned. There are no more fish, except ones that are contaminated. People eat them, and they get sicker and sicker.’

“A recent study carried out in mining areas of the northeastern Andean foothills of the Ecuadorian Amazon, close to where Cerda lives, revealed high concentrations of toxic metals. They are up to 352 times above permissible limits established by environmental guidelines. …

“Mariana Capparelli, a researcher who contributed to the study, told Al Jazeera it was ‘very sad to see the conditions these communities are exposed to as well as the total degradation of an ecosystem that is so important for the entire planet.’ …

“Due to what critics say is an absence of sufficient government regulation, mining in Ecuador has led to environmental pollution and adverse effects on the health of Indigenous communities. In recent months, authorities have carried out several raids against illegal miners.

But with widespread state corruption and tip-offs given to miners, machinery is sometimes withdrawn immediately before police operations take place, activists say. …

“Ecuador has a national system of protected areas that aims to safeguard biodiversity and local ecosystems in national parks, wildlife refuges, marine reserves and other designated areas throughout the country. Although the government has taken some steps to protect local water systems, rivers have traditionally not been included in this system. …

“According to Andres Tapia, a spokesperson for the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, illegal mining has become ‘uncontrollable’ in parts of the country. …

“ ‘I thought I would always be able to drink from this river,’ Eli Virkina, a member of an Indigenous Kichwa community in Napo, told Al Jazeera. ‘Now I’m at this point where maybe I shouldn’t even swim in the water. That is really heartbreaking for me.’ …

“Across Napo, Indigenous communities and organizations have been monitoring, mobilizing and resisting mining activities. To defend their land, they have formed alliances and connections across riverine communities, including the Amazon’s first women-led Indigenous guard.

“In February 2022, a landmark Constitutional Court ruling recognized the rights of Indigenous communities to have a final say over extractive projects that affect their territories. The ruling ‘offers one of the strongest legal precedents in the world, which upholds the rights of Indigenous peoples to decide on the futures of their ancestral territories,’ according to the Amazon Frontlines advocacy group.

“But in December [2022], the ruling was disregarded when the government approved a mining project in Las Naves in Bolivar province without gaining the consent of affected communities.

“In the meantime, Napo has installed four alarm systems around the village to signal when miners are close by.

“ ‘In our territory, spears were not used anymore, but now we have one in at least every house because it’s part of the way we have to defend ourselves,’ said Majo Andrade, a member of the female-led Indigenous guard Yuturi Warmi. …

“Virkina says Indigenous resistance is vital to the region’s future. ‘Once [Indigenous people] disappear, it is way easier for miners and people to come in and access the river,’ she said. ‘When we have stronger Indigenous communities, we have stronger forests and a stronger river.’ More at Al Jazeera, here.

Adri Salido has a collection of beautiful pictures at the Christian Science Monitor and adds a few more comments to the story of Yuturi Warmi: “Yuturi Warmi refers to a type of ant (Paraponera clavata) that will attack when an enemy enters its territory.

“The group, which formed in 2020, joined with other Ecuadorian and international organizations to urge the government to enforce laws against illegal extraction and to restore habitat. But officials have not acted, according to Yuturi Warmi. Since then, the group has worked to ensure that no illegal mining takes place in its community. It patrols the riverbank, conducts canoe inspections, and maintains constant surveillance. So far, it has kept intruders out of Serena. 

“The situation is far different upstream, in Yutzupino, where illegal extraction has destroyed the basin of the Jatunyacu River, a tributary of the Amazon River.”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Great collection of photos.

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Getting Around an Aged Power Grid

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 19, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Hiro Yamagata, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
From Living on Earth: “VPPs are networks of small energy-producing and storage devices, such as solar panels and batteries, that are pooled together to serve the electricity grid.”

What to do about an old electrical grid that is having trouble keeping up with energy innovation? Steve Curwood, host of the environmental radio program Living on Earth, talks to the Brattle Group’s Ryan Hledik about using “virtual power plants.”

“Steve Curwood: Electric vehicles aren’t just useful for getting you and me from Point A to Point B. With smart policies they could also help decarbonize the grid. That’s because renewables like wind and solar don’t produce electricity around the clock. So there’s often a mismatch between when the power is being generated and when it’s being used. And until it’s needed, the big batteries in electric cars and trucks can help store some of that precious power.

“That’s part of the strategy called virtual power plants. A recent report by the consulting firm The Brattle Group estimates that virtual power plants could save utilities and their customers as much as $35 billion over the next decade. Ryan Hledik is a principal at the Brattle Group and joins us now. … So what exactly is a virtual power plant? Please explain how they would operate.

“Ryan Hledik: So a virtual power plant is basically a collection of customers [who] have been recruited into a program and are participating in that program and being provided incentives to participate in order to provide some of these services to the grid. It’s basically this idea where customers have a lot of flexibility in their demand for electricity. Customers who are buying electric vehicles have the ability to change when they’re charging that car to a degree, customers with smart thermostats can manage the thermostat in a way that changes when they’re cooling their home.

“So one example of this could be if you’re a customer who had made an investment in a battery at your home because you wanted to use that battery as a form of backup power during an outage, you could be paid by your local utility or another company to actually allow them to control that battery on a limited number of days per year, limited number of hours per day, to provide services to the grid from the battery. By doing this, the really interesting opportunity that we’re seeing here is, first of all, it’s a way to directly pay customers to participate in the decarbonization transition. And then in addition to that, instead of going out and building a [gas] plant that might only be used 100 hours per year, we’re able to tap into an investment that’s already been made for other reasons … and get more use out of that. …

“By encouraging customers to shift their charging to those off-peak hours in the middle of the night, when demand is low, or even in the middle of the day, when maybe there’s solar power that’s being curtailed, because you have more than you need, you can shift the charging load of the EVS into those hours to provide benefits that you otherwise wouldn’t have if the customers were to just simply drive home from work and plug their electric vehicle into the wall when they got home.

“Curwood: But what if somebody wants to get in that car right now and then wants to drive the 200 miles to Aunt Thelma’s because she called saying she has an issue?

“Hledik: That’s right and one of the important characteristics of virtual power plant programs is they are designed with constraints on how they’ll be used to make sure that customer comfort and convenience is maintained. So in the case of an electric vehicle, virtual power plant, you could have a program designed such that customers are always ensured that even if their utility is going to manage how that vehicle is charging overnight, that they will be starting the next day at 6 am with a full state of charge in their EV. …

“Curwood: What kind of money could we save in this country if we use virtual power plants rather than trying to just expand the traditional grid infrastructure?

“Hledik: We looked into the answer to that question in our study and what we found was if we reached a pretty significant but achievable level of virtual power plant deployment by 2030, we could save $15 billion to $35 billion over the ensuing decade, relative to if we were to make investments in those more conventional gas peakers and utility-scale batteries. …

“And we estimated that over that same 10 year period, at the level of deployment that I described, there can be an additional $20 billion of benefits associated with improved health and avoiding other detrimental effects that are associated with carbon emissions. …

“Curwood: What are some of the other ways that we could take advantage of that baseload that right now goes to waste? …

“Hledik: Providing customers with an incentive to shift their electric vehicle charging load into [off-peak] hours is one opportunity. But another example would be if customers were to pre cool their homes during that midday period, so that they didn’t need to run their air conditioners as much during the evening period. That’s one way to shift some of their electricity consumption to the middle of the day.”

More at Living on Earth, here. No firewall.

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World’s Biggest Comics Collection

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 18, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Nora Hickey/ Hyperallergic.
A Veronica comic strip drawn by Dan DeCarlo.

What cartoonists and comic strips did you read as a kid? My mother wanted me to be a child always, so she bought Little Lulu comics until I was into my teens. Not that I didn’t like Little Lulu, but I really, really wanted to know about the romantic adventures of Archie, Veronica, Daisy, Jughead, and all that gang. I wanted to understand why the blond was never as popular as the brunette.

Comics are an art that draws in young and old. But they have not often received attention as an art. Until now.

Nora Hickey reports at the art magazine Hyperallergic, “In an unendingly flat city nicknamed ‘Cowtown,’ the Ohio State University (OSU) erupts as an archetypal college campus. A miscellany of stone and brick buildings from various eras look over pedestrian paths bisecting green lawns. In one of these limestone, academy-coded buildings resides a museum and library dedicated to a genre long thought to be miles from the ivory tower: comics.

“The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum claims to house the world’s largest collection of cartoon- and comics-related materials, including a range of inked paper, artifacts, newspaper clips, magazines, scrapbooks, and even the drawing board used by Chester Gould, who created the Dick Tracy comic strip (1931—77).

“But it is much more than an archive: it is at once a museum, center for scholarship, and venue for events, all of it surprisingly accessible. … First, it costs nothing to attend. Also, the materials and displays are easy for anyone to understand, comics aficionado or not. And, if you — that is, anybody — want to see any of the holdings, you can request to view it onsite.  

“This approachability may be due in part to the fact that the comics genre has been routinely underestimated, despite its outsize impact. It’s one of the only historically disposable art forms — think of those painstakingly conceived, drawn, inked, and colored newspaper funny strips smeared with wet from their hasty relegation to the recycling bin. …

” ‘The Billy Ireland was founded back in 1977 through a donation from the cartoonist Milton Caniff — who was at one point one of the most successful and influential American cartoonists in American history,’ explains Caitlin McGurk, curator of Comics and Cartoon Art and associate professor at OSU. Caniff, a ‘celebrity’ artist (‘he would appear on late night TV,’ McGurk tells me) who created the widely read Terry and the Pirates (1934–73) and Steve Canyon (1947–88) adventure newspaper strips, was an Ohioan and a 1930 alum of OSU. As he prepared for retirement, he aimed to donate all of his work to the library of the university to which he felt he owed his career. ‘The libraries at OSU actually turned it down,’ McGurk told Hyperallergic in an interview. …

We show visitors the archive and people cry — especially if you’re a maker of this form that has been so long disrespected.

“Luckily, as Caniff produced newspaper comic strips, the journalism department decided to take his archives. … With Caniff’s encouragement of his fellow comic creators and Caswell’s outreach, the Billy Ireland would become a top choice for donations.

“Bill Watterson, for instance, the famously private artist of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes (1985–95), entrusted his entire backlog to the museum — the only collection in the world to hold his archive. There are also lesser-known treasures, like the namesake of the museum itself, editorial cartoonist Billy Ireland, whose fame waned after his death but was resurrected by the Museum. …

“Behind the Ink: the Making of Comics and Cartoons … explores the variety of tools and art-making techniques employed by cartoonists over the years. The other current exhibit is Depicting Mexico and Modernism: Gordo by Gus Arriola, which details the life and work of the Modernist Mexican-American cartoonist.  Then, in May, a bonanza exhibition of the sardonic, iconic Nancy goes up, accompanied by a weekend-long Nancy fest on the 24 and 25 where Nancy scholars, cartoonists, and fans will dig into their favorite wisecracking character.   

“Below the exhibition spaces are the archives themselves. ‘Since OSU is part of a land grant institution, our archive is completely open to the public, which is pretty rare,’ McGurk explains. Some highlights are zines from the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1980s, which bear the raw emotion of their creators, and scrapbooks of cartoon engravings kept by a wealthy English family in the 1700s that painstakingly depict events long past. … There’s also a collection of 2.5 million comic strips saved by a single man (Bill Blackbeard). Personally, I loved seeing the colorful mid-century manga laid out as a huge page of frenzied activity punctuated by moments of photorealistic pictures. 

“The ability to see the comics in all stages of development — from nascent sketches, to embryonic penciled pages, to White’d Out and inked final pages — is a rare treat because of how such work is typically experienced: in reproduction on a mass scale, in frequent installments. To see the original version of a comic read by so many of us feels like seeing the artist at work. …

“ ‘We show visitors the archive and people cry — especially if you’re a maker of this form that has been so long disrespected,’ McGurk said. ‘Then you see this place and you’re like, all this is for comics? This is amazing.’ “

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall but subscrptions are encouraged.

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A Language Close to Aramaic

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 17, 2024| 7 Comments »

Photo: Jastrow at Wikimedia.
Slab with dedicatory Aramaic inscription to the god Salm. Sandstone, 5th century BC. Found in Tayma, Saudi Arabia, by Charles Huber in 1884. Now in the Louvre.

Among the world’s many endangered languages is one cherished today by a branch of Christianity in Iraq, a language close to the Aramaic Jesus spoke.

Sara Hassan reports at PRI’s The World, “In a small church in Baghdad, Iraq, a couple dozen people have gathered for prayers on a sunny Sunday morning. They stand in pews facing a crimson-colored curtain and a podium with a gold Syriac cross on it. The distinctive cross has a total of 12 circles at its points to represent the 12 disciples of Jesus.

“The congregants are reciting their prayers in an ancient language called Syriac. Today, it’s spoken mostly by Christians in Iraq and neighboring Syria. The language traces its roots to Aramaic, which was the script of the original Christian Bible and spoken by Jesus Christ. And it’s part of the family of Semitic languages in the Middle East region.

“The Syriac language is disappearing, with fewer and fewer people speaking it. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.

“But now, after campaigning by some groups, a newly launched television channel, Al-Syriania, with funding from the Iraqi government, is hoping to change that. The community says it’s a good move toward preserving Syriac and in helping people stay connected with their language and culture.

“The channel has about 40 staff members and can be viewed in Iraq and around the world through satellite networks, such as NileSat and ArabSat. It’s a sister station of Al-Iraqiya, an Arabic television network that was set up in the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, which also broadcasts in Kurdish and Turkmen.

“The news bulletins for the new channel are read in classical Syriac, but many of the other programs — which include cinema, art, history, cultural events and music — are presented in a dialect of the language.

“ ‘We have daily segments, like news and morning shows, and also, documentary programs about the history of the church and historical sites,’ said Jack Anwia, the station director. ‘We also play classical Syriac songs and music, the top-100 movies, and we have correspondents reporting from the field.’ …

“In 2003, the country was home to about 1.5 million Christians. Since then, that number has dropped to about 400,000. The war caused many of them to flee to other safer countries. But much of the decline also followed the onslaught of ISIS in 2014, which targeted Christians and other minorities.

“Many of the families settled down in other countries around the world, and younger generations have tried to adopt the languages of their host countries to assimilate better, losing touch with Syriac unless it’s spoken at home. …

“[Father Qasha Shamoun, a priest at the Ancient Church of the East in Baghdad] said the security situation has improved in Iraq over the past several years, but the Christian community is so small that it’s hard to bring people together for programs. … He added that Al-Syriania has been good for providing Syriac programming and that people in his community have told him they like watching it.

“Hundreds of Syriac books and manuscripts have still survived decades of war and migration. In fact, right before ISIS fighters captured large parts of northern Iraq in 2014, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Najeeb Michaeel, rescued a collection of centuries-old Syriac manuscripts as he fled.

“Now, many of them are preserved at the Digital Center for Eastern Manuscripts in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, which is supported by UNESCO, USAID and the Catholic Dominican Order.

“Back at the news station, Anwia said that it’s important not to lose Syriac. ‘It is one of the oldest languages of Iraq,’ he said. ‘And it needs to be protected from extinction.’ ”

More at The World, here.

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Film Tax Credits Tempt States

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Jace Downs/AMC via AP.
A scene from the show The Walking Dead. Producers of season two of Walking Dead: Dead City are looking for extras in Boston. Click here.

Despite research from the Federal Reserve and others showing that film tax credits hurt the finances of states more than they help, they remain enormously popular.

Jon Campbell writes at the Gothamist about a recent New York study that is skeptical about this kind of tax credit. He also reports that many people just want to believe.

“New York’s $700 million-a-year tax break for film and TV productions isn’t providing taxpayers with a good return on investment, according to a new analysis commissioned by the state itself.

“The state Department of Taxation and Finance quietly released a 359-page report late last month analyzing New York’s major tax incentive programs, which are meant to attract and retain businesses. The analysis, authored by consultant PFM Group, was required by lawmakers two years ago.

“The results show a decidedly mixed bag, with some tax breaks — including the state’s marquee Excelsior Jobs Program — performing well, the report found. But the return for the state’s Film Tax Credit, which Gov. Kathy Hochul and lawmakers boosted by $280 million annually last year, was not nearly as positive.

‘Based on an objective weighing of the costs and benefits, the film production credit is at best a break-even proposition and more likely a net cost to the state,’ according to the report.

“For every dollar the state gave in tax breaks from 2018 through 2022, the Film Tax Credit drew an estimated 15 cents in direct tax revenue, the analysis found. …

“The state’s biggest industry-specific tax break belongs to the film industry, which gets $700 million a year to film or do post-production work in the Empire State. Hochul and legislative leaders are big supporters of the program, which has helped lure hundreds of productions over the years.

“The tax break can be considerable. It covers up to 30% of a film’s qualified production costs, with another 10% available if productions are filmed in certain counties north of New York City. The credit is also refundable, meaning the state pays out the excess money if it exceeds a film production’s tax bill. …

“Beyond the lackluster return on investment, PFM’s report surmised that much of the filming that occurred in New York would have happened regardless of the tax credit. … When adding indirect and induced jobs — employees who don’t work directly on production but whose employment stems from it — that return rises to 31 cents. …

“[A] prior state analysis, crafted by Regional Economic Models Inc., estimated the Film Tax Credit generated $1.70 in state and local tax revenue for every dollar the state gave up in 2021 and 2022.

“E.J. McMahon, founder of the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank, argued that the prior analysis was too simplistic and assumed the film industry wouldn’t have created any jobs without the tax breaks. PFM’s analysis, he wrote, was ‘meatier’ and ‘less credulous.’ …

“PFM estimated the Excelsior program has a return of $5.25 in tax revenue for every $1 the state forgoes, when including indirect and induced jobs.

“[State Sen. James Skoufis, a Hudson Valley Democrat who pushed for the new report in the state budget] said the report’s findings on the Film Tax Credit fell in line with his expectations.

“ ‘There are some of us, myself included, that believe that the Film Tax Credit and the associated entertainment tax credits are such a bad deal that they ought to be repealed,’ he said. ‘But the politics is the politics in the state Legislature, and that continues to remain an uphill climb.’ …

“Josh Levin, vice president for state government affairs for the Motion Picture Association’s Northeast Region, said New York’s Film Tax Credit is ‘essential’ for ensuring the state ‘retains its position as a top hub for production activity and union jobs.’ …

“Lawmakers extended the Film Tax Credit for an additional 10 years. It’s scheduled to run through 2034.” More at Gothamist, here.

Maybe constituents’ delight in seeing movies being filmed in their neighborhoods is what motivates lawmakers. In that case, how about accounting for it differently — as a state expense for resident entertainment?

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A Magazine Kept Secret in Wartime

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin/Jewish Museum Berlin/ Convolute 816/Curt Bloch collection
Het Onderwater Cabaret, 1943. The satirical magazine, now on exhibit in Berlin, was produced by a German Jew hiding in a Dutch attic during the war.

Both the New York Times and the Guardian reported recently that a German Jew, hiding like Anne Frank in a Dutch attic during WWII, produced an angry, humorous magazine because he could. His magazine was in the news thanks to an exhibit in Berlin.

Nina Siegal writes at the Times that many people hid in attics during the war but that Curt “Bloch’s experience was different because, in addition to sustenance and care, his helpers brought him pens, glue, newspapers and other printed materials that he used to produce a startling publication: his own weekly, satirical poetry magazine.

“From August 1943 until he was liberated in April 1945, Bloch produced 95 issues of Het Onderwater Cabaret, or the Underwater Cabaret. … Writing in both German and Dutch, [he] mocked Nazi propaganda, responded to war news and offered personal perspectives on wartime deprivations.”

Charlie English at the Guardian has more from the perspective of Bloch’s daughter, Simone, now 64.

“As the daughter of antiques dealers, Simone Bloch grew up in a New York house filled with rare and mysterious materials. The dining room was packed with precious volumes, including a collection of small, hand-written magazines, illustrated with collages in a dadaist or surrealist style.

“ ‘All of my parents’ books were kind of intimidating,’ Simone, now 64, says. ‘But this was weirder. It wasn’t something I would ever want to pick up.’

“She found them a little creepy, with their frequent images of Adolf Hitler and other wartime leaders. It was only many years later that Simone came to understand that these magazines represented her father’s resistance to the Holocaust.

“Born in Dortmund in 1908, Curt Bloch was the first in his family to go to university, studying law in the German capital, which at that time was the centre of the buzzing avant-garde cabaret scene. Curt was Jewish and objected to Hitler from the first. In 1933, when Hitler introduced a law banning Jews from civil service positions unless they had fought in the first world war, Bloch wrote a biting response to the authorities, declaring that, no, he hadn’t served in the war since he was only five when it had broken out. When the Gestapo came knocking, Curt was ready. He slipped out of a top floor window with some cash he’d hidden, and fled across the rooftops, eventually reaching Holland.

“But he wasn’t safe for long. The Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, and … Bloch took refuge in the crawlspace above the attic of a small suburban house in Enschede, on the German border. It was here that he began to produce the first issue of his magazine. He wrote in fountain pen, made collages from cuttings and stitched the pages together by hand. He called his volume the Underwater Cabaret in reference to the Dutch term for people in hiding, ‘divers,’ and to the favored form of political theatre in Weimar Berlin. Friends in the Dutch resistance helped circulate the Underwater Cabaret to 30 or so other ‘divers.’ They would bring the issue back a week later, by which time Bloch had prepared a new one.

“Alongside political commentaries, Bloch published highly personal writing. His mother Paula and little sister Hélène had followed him to the Netherlands, and had also gone into hiding. In May 1943 they were detained. … He devoted several poems to Hélène, one of which contained the lines: ‘Stay strong against the hatred, betrayal, and scorn / And when the war someday comes to an end / I will go looking for you.’

“Writing this kind of material was extremely dangerous. … Why take the risk? Simone believes it was a way for her father ‘to fight his own despair.’ It was a demonstration that, even in such circumstances, resistance was possible. ‘It’s getting away with something when you can’t get away with anything,’ Simone suggests. …

“In all, Bloch produced 95 magazines. The last issue is dated 3 April 1945. By that day Enschede had just been liberated, and Bloch could leave his hiding place. He travelled back to Amsterdam, where he met and married an Auschwitz survivor, Ruth Kan. In 1948 they emigrated to the US. …

“It was only recently, after years of research conducted in part by her daughter, Lucy, that Simone came to understand the full significance of the zine as a rare literary monument capturing a terrible period in history.”

More at the Times, here. And at the Guardian, here. Is it any wonder that today’s Germany is a loyal supporter of Israel? Unlike America, I suggest, Germany has reckoned with the weight of history.

All 95 copies of the Underwater Cabaret are on loan to the Jewish Museum Berlin, where an exhibition will run to 26 May.

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When the Characters Are Deaf

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 14, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: Signature Theatre.
A behind-the-scenes look at the rehearsal process for the musical Private Jones, featuring deaf and hard-of-hearing artists.

When we were watching the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building, we noticed efforts by the producers to be inclusive. For example, a key character is deaf. When he is on, he uses sign language and we read subtitles. A few other characters use signing for his benefit. He can also read lips.

A push for diversity and inclusion is not happening only in streaming services. At the Signature Theatre in Virginia, for example, deaf and hard-of-hearing characters powered a whole musical.

As Thomas Floyd has the story at the Washington Post.

“Signing, singing and soundscapes are intermingled on a late-January afternoon at Signature Theatre’s Arlington, Va., rehearsal studio, where the cast of Private Jones is marching through the world-premiere musical’s opening scene.

“Loosely inspired by Gomer Jones, a deaf sniper who fought in World War I, the show opens in rural Wales with an 8-year-old Jones getting a lesson from his gruff father in sharpshooting and hard truths. As the only scene before Jones loses his hearing, it uses radio-play-like foley effects to create the sounds that will echo in the character’s head through the rest of his life — and give deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences visual cues to associate with those sounds.

“When Johnny Link, the hard-of-hearing actor playing Jones, raises a prop rifle, another performer flaps an umbrella to conjure the sound of birds fluttering overhead. A ratchet replicates a rifle cocking. A snare drum stands in for a gunshot. All the while, two actors narrate — one in spoken English, one in American Sign Language — and writer-director Marshall Pailet reminds his cast to be aware of the open captions that will flank the stage at every show. …

“Accessibility is a guiding principle for [writer-director Marshall Pailet], the hearing playwright and composer who wrote the book, music and lyrics for Private Jones. … The musical features a cast of hearing, hard-of-hearing and deaf actors performing dialogue in three languages — English, ASL and British Sign Language — while also delivering Pailet’s Celtic-inspired score. To Pailet and Alexandria Wailes, the show’s director of artistic sign language, no scene should be staged without careful consideration of how narrative intent is both seen and heard.

“ ‘If the piano does something that is supposed to evoke an emotion and there’s not a visual equivalent of that, we haven’t done our job,’ Pailet says. ‘Theater is taking psychology and turning it into behavior. So everything is visual, everything is behavioral, and it’s also therefore a perfect medium for sign language, which is a visual language. It exists to be seen.’

“Pailet acknowledges that the origins of Private Jones are fairly mundane: He was interested in writing a World War I trench warfare story — specifically exploring how being asked to commit violence can reorient a person’s worldview — when he came across an article with a couple of sentences about the deaf Welsh sniper. …

“After traveling to Wales … and tracking down war records he believes belonged to Jones, Pailet took an early iteration of the show to Connecticut’s Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in January 2020. He subsequently connected with Wailes, the ASL master on the Oscar-winning film CODA, and the duo began swapping ideas during the pandemic on how to better integrate deaf and hard-of-hearing perspectives.

“While the show features a narrator performing in ASL, Wailes pitched the idea of also incorporating British Sign Language during dialogue exchanges between characters who would have spoken in that wholly different dialect. …

“Finding the right actor to enlist as Jones — a deaf character who tricks his fellow soldiers into thinking he’s hearing and carries much of the show’s vocals — also proved critical. As a musical theater performer who has used hearing aids since childhood, Link came with connections to the hearing and deaf worlds that the character bridges. …

“ ‘I have never felt so seen in a character,’ Link says. ‘Truly, this is one of the most special projects I’ve ever worked on because it pulls from different parts of my life. I feel a lot of the things that Gomer feels. I just knew I had to do it.’

“Pailet says unfamiliar perspectives are at the core of Private Jones, which uses its innovative soundscapes to place the audience in Jones’s shoes while interrogating how people empathize with or dehumanize those they don’t understand. …

“Having spent the better part of five years developing the show, Pailet hopes this isn’t his last shot at envisioning Jones’s journey onstage.”

More at the Post, here.

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House of Trees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 13, 2024| 3 Comments »

Photo: Mitchell Joachim/Terreform ONE.

Most builders rely on steel and concrete in construction, but the production of those materials is bad for the environment. That’s why innovative thinking in architecture is so important. At Fast Company, Nate Berg describes one unusual experiment.

“In a forest along the Hudson River north of New York City, a strange new building is slowly rising. The strangeness of the building is that it’s meant to be occupied by humans, animals, and plants. The slowness of the building is that it’s made out of — made by, really — growing trees.

“Fab Tree Hab is a 1,000 square foot tent-shaped pavilion that uses grafted white willow trees to form its walls and roof. Using a computer-designed scaffolding system to precisely guide their growth, these trees are bent to create a living canopy that will, through specifically placed tree grafts and planter boxes, fill out the form and structure of the almost-entirely bio-based building. The scaffold can eventually be removed and reused elsewhere. Within 10 years, it would be a kind of multi-armed and interconnected mega tree house. It’s a prototype that could show how buildings may eventually be grown rather than built.

“The project comes from Terreform One, a nonprofit art, architecture, and urban design research group led by architect Mitchell Joachim. The idea behind this project has had a tree-like maturation period, starting from seed around 2002. Habitat for Humanity had launched a design competition looking for new approaches to building suburban housing. At the time, Joachim was pursuing a PhD in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, exploring the application of ecological processes to design.

“Along with fellow doctoral researchers Lara Greden and Javier Arbona, he began to explore new ways ecological processes might be applied to the design brief of getting massive amounts of housing built. …

“The idea of shaping trees into usable structures goes back thousands of years. ‘You can find examples of this within illuminated manuscripts, within the bible,’ Joachim says. The main problem, though, is that these structures take a long time to grow.

“Joachim and his collaborators began thinking of ways to accelerate the process. Initially they explored growing trees hydroponically, and transplanting them into a scaffold. This would have given them height very quickly, but the strength of the trees would have been less than naturally grown trees. With hopes of turning this tree-based system into a viable approach to building, Joachim and his collaborators decided they also needed that strength.

“By this point, Joachim was years into the research process, and had launched Terreform One. In looking at other methods for growing trees quickly, the team learned about biomass farms, which grow trees that are harvested and burned to create electricity. These farms grow tightly packed rows of trees that rise dozens of feet in height within just a few years. The tall, slender trees seemed perfect for use in the scaffold Joachim and his team envisioned. The design shifted and the project was reoriented around replanting white willows harvested from a commercial biomass farm.

“The Fab Tree Hab pavilion that’s now standing in the forest in New York is made up of these replanted trees. Planted together in clusters, the trees make up a few dozen vertical ribs of the pavilion. Designed to graft together over time into a thicker tree, each cluster forms what will be a pillar of the building.

“While they’re still young and pliable, the clusters have been bent into the mass timber scaffold, which is itself a unique piece of architecture, appearing somewhat like an upside-down boat hull. The ribs of the scaffold guide the trees upwards and along the path of what will eventually be a sloping pitched roof. In the wall space between the vertical trees, the scaffold is outfitted with planters and habitat for other plant and animal species, each made from biodegradable materials like hand-crocheted jute and bioplastic. After a year’s growth, it’s estimated that the tree elements will be able to physically support the weight of these planters and habitat structures.

“ ‘It is kind of a land coral, or a terrestrial reef. It attracts all kinds of things to live inside it and around it and underneath it and then thrive in that section of the forest,’”’ Joachim says.

‘On day one we had frogs move into the shelter.’

“About halfway up the arched pavilion, additional planters create space for the Fab Tree Hab’s key architectural element. This is where additional trees can be grafted onto the tree structure as it matures, enabling the building to rise even taller. …

“ ‘The point of the entire structure is a prototype to really get this right so that this could be replicated anywhere,’ Joachim says. He envisions the system being scaled up, made into a kit of parts people could use to grow, say, a garage or a backyard pergola, and eventually even a house. There could be tree-walled museums grown over a decade, or even opera houses with resonant walls of willow timber that are alive and still growing.”

More at Fast Company, here. No paywall.

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Native Speech at School

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 12, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: Riley Robinson/Monitor Staff.
Kawehnokwiiosthe teaches the Mohawk language to students from both sides of the US-Canada border at the Akwesasne Freedom School, St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, northern New York.

Today many languages are in danger of dying out as the elders who speak them die off and young people don’t learn them.

Fortunately, in some places there are efforts to educate new speakers. Consider this Mohawk language school at a reservation in upstate New York.

Sara Miller Llana writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Students and teachers, as well as some parents, sit on two wooden benches running the length of the hallway of their school, organized not by age or grade but by their clans.

“They take turns reading from the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, which translates from the Mohawk language to ‘Words before all else.’ These words, which recognize all life forces in creation, mark the day’s start at the Akwesasne Freedom School.

“But the 60-odd students here wouldn’t understand these lessons if it weren’t for this little schoolhouse at the United States-Canada border that for decades has been fighting to preserve Mohawk language and culture. ‘This makes us who we are, and if we don’t have this, who are we going to be?’ asks teacher Kawehnokwiiosthe, whose name in English means ‘She makes the island beautiful.’ …

“Kawehnokwiiosthe turns to her young pupils, who introduce themselves by their clans – Wolf, Bear, and Eel – and state that they are wisk, or age 5. Every class in K-8 that students take is full language immersion.

When a child asks a question in English, Kawehnokwiiosthe responds in Mohawk.

“Most parents pay tuition with a quilt sold at an annual auction in August. The school is run as a co-op, where parents do the cleaning (along with the students) and the maintenance work. Students come from American and Canadian sides of the border, but the school has never accepted funds from either government, says Alvera Sargent, who heads the nonprofit Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School and is one of the last first-language speakers of Mohawk.

“That makes her precious, says Waylon Cook, former teacher and now project manager of the school’s nonprofit arm. ‘We treasure our first-language speakers,’ he says. … ‘If you lose [Mohawk], you can’t go to France like you could to learn French. There is nowhere else to do it but here.’ More at the Monitor, here.

Meanwhile, in the state of Washington, there’s an effort to bring Native language teaching into public school, too.

Lauren Gallup wrote at Northwest Public Broadcasting, “A number of Washington state public schools are partnering with tribes to bring Indigenous languages into classrooms in an effort to rectify the marred history of Native American boarding schools.

“Rachael Barger is a teacher on special assignment with Bethel School District, one of the districts partnering with the Nisqually Tribe to bring its Southern Lushootseed language into the classroom for a small subset of students. 

“5% of Bethel’s student population identifies as American Indian, Alaskan Native, two or more races or Hispanic and Native. Barger serves over 200 Title VI Indian Education Program students for the district. Title VI is a federal program that aims to meet the specific needs of Native American students. 

“The tribe and district have partnered, so far, to bring the language classes to two elementary schools for students who qualify for Title VI. Bethel School District had 461 qualifying students this last school year, which is around 2% of its student population.  Barger said those students were excited to learn the language because it felt unique to them. …

“The tribe’s partnership with the Bethel schools is part of the Nisqually Language Resource Center which started two years ago.

“ ‘It makes — it chokes me up,’ said Catalina Sanchez, research coordinator for the center. ‘It’s just something new that we’ve always needed in our community. So I’m proud of us for finally getting our own program in our schools and in our community.’

“The language work being undertaken by the tribe is part of broader efforts to expand and uplift culture and identity for the tribe. 

“ ‘You’re starting to see everything kind of awakening right now here in Nisqually,’ said Willie Frank III, chairman of the Nisqually Tribe. …

“Frank said he thinks it’s a perfect time to focus again on the tribe’s cultural traditions. ‘What I was taught was to tell our story, and, you know, keep building our people up,’ Frank said, ‘and that’s what we’re doing with all this great work in here. I think about the art, the culture and the language; that’s going to be something that sustains us.’ ” 

More at Northwest Public Broadcasting, here. No paywall for either article.

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The Crane and the Human

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 11, 2024| 14 Comments »

Photo: Chris Crowe/Smithsonian National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute.
The endangered white-naped crane is difficult to breed in captivity. But then a zoo keeper in Virginia bonded with one.

This year marked the death of a white-naped crane called Walnut, a bird unusual not only for her rarity but for her predilections. Let’s go back a few years and learn why she was unusual.

At the Washington Post in 2018, Sadie Dingfelder wrote about the crane that fell for a human.

“Early one summer morning, as rain is misting the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a middle-aged man is courting a crane. Chris Crowe, 42, bends forward in a slight bow and then flaps his arms slowly, like wings. ‘Hey, girl, whatcha think,’ he coos.

“Walnut has heard that line before. The stately bird ignores Crowe, reshuffles her storm-cloud-gray wings, and snakes her head gracefully to the ground, looking for something tasty to eat.

“ ‘Come on, now,’ Crowe says. The zookeeper grabs a fistful of grass and tosses it into the air. This is Crowe’s sexiest move — a sly reference to building a nest together. Walnut looks up, curiosity glinting in her marigold eyes, but then she returns to probing the soft, wet ground with her bark-colored bill. She’s simply not feeling romantic. …

” ‘Try getting in the van,’ Crowe calls to me. I follow his suggestion, and, almost immediately, Walnut starts responding to Crowe’s overtures. She returns his bows and then turns away from him and holds her wings loosely away from her body. Kneeling behind the bird, Crowe rests a hand gently on her back. …

“This strange cross-species seduction has helped ensure that white-naped cranes continue to exist, at least in captivity, says Warren Lynch, a fellow zookeeper at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

‘It’s amazing, what Chris has accomplished with Walnut,’ Lynch says. ‘This isn’t something just anyone can do.’

“When Walnut arrived at the Front Royal, Va., endangered species breeding center, back in 2004, she was the most genetically valuable white-naped crane in captivity. At 23, she had yet to produce a single chick. … Walnut hatched on July 2, 1981, in an old horse barn in Baraboo, Wis. … Volunteers named her, somewhat randomly, after their favorite dessert at a nearby diner, a walnut cream pie.

“The foundation was in full-tilt crane-making mode, trying to churn out as many of the rare animals as possible, recalls former ICF ornithologist Michael Putnam. When a pair of cranes produced eggs, staff would put the eggs in an incubator, which would prompt the pair to make more.

“Walnut’s parents [were] captured illegally in China and smuggled to Hong Kong. … They were intercepted by local authorities and eventually shipped to the [International Crane Foundation].

“Though it would have been better to return the birds to the wild, international tensions in 1978 made that impossible, Putnam recalls. Plus, no one knew exactly where in China they had been captured, or what the birds might have been exposed to during transit. ‘We didn’t want to release birds that might carry diseases and put them back into the wild flock,’ Putnam says.

“This kind of poaching is less common today, but the white-naped crane population is falling fast because of a more relentless foe: booming human populations, which are overtaking, polluting or draining the wetlands that the birds need to survive. ‘One pair of cranes, to breed, usually requires huge wetland areas,’ Archibald says. ‘It may be several acres, it may be several hundred acres.’

“In addition to demanding vast areas of untrammeled wilderness, these difficult birds seem almost drawn to marginal places. For instance, one of the white-naped cranes’ most important wintering grounds is the 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. There, in a strange, de facto nature preserve, white-naped cranes and their even-more endangered cousins, red-crowned cranes, root for tubers among the land mines they are too light to trigger. If tensions between the Koreas subside, however, the cranes will be in trouble. Farmers are already clamoring for access to the nutrient-rich land, and developers are planning for a reunification city and deepwater port.”

The long and fascinating article at the Post is here, but paywalled. So check out Walnut’s history at the Guardian obit, here.

It reads in part, “Walnut, a white-naped crane and internet celebrity, has died at the age of 42. She is survived by eight chicks, the loving staff at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, and by Chris Crowe – a human zookeeper whom Walnut regarded as her proxy mate for nearly 20 years. …

“Walnut was hand-raised by people and bonded with her human caretakers. That preference continued when she came to the institute – she showed no interest in breeding and even attacked male crane suitors. … As the offspring of two wild-caught cranes, Walnut’s genes were not represented in US zoos. So convincing Walnut to breed was regarded as a priority.

“Crowe, according to a zoo statement, won her over by ‘observing and mimicking’ the institute’s male white-naped cranes’ actions during breeding season. … Once Crowe had gained her trust, he was able to artificially inseminate her using sperm from a male crane.

“The unique arrangement was very successful and Walnut laid fertilized eggs that eventually hatched eight chicks. The fertilized eggs were given to other white-napped crane pairs who tended to them as their own. …

“Earlier this month, keepers noticed that Walnut wasn’t eating or drinking, even her favorite treats, frozen-thawed mice, peanuts and mealworms, couldn’t spark her appetite. The bird declined and, surrounded by an animal care team, died peacefully, an autopsy revealing the cause of death to be renal failure. …

“Crowe said, ‘Walnut’s extraordinary story has helped bring attention to her vulnerable species’ plight. I hope everyone who was touched by her story understands that her species’ survival depends on our ability and desire to protect wetland habitats.’ ”

Makes me think of the book Birdy — only the guy really thought he was a bird. Remember that?

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He Was Once a Dancer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on April 10, 2024| 7 Comments »

Photo: Safeed Rahbaran/New York Times via the Las Vegas Sun.
“George Lee at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, on Jan. 16, 2024. Lee was the original Tea in ‘George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,’ ” says the New York Times. “A documentary filmmaker found him and a lost part of ballet history in Las Vegas.”

Several of my good friends from college are Chinese. I don’t know if I am stereotyping my friends, but having come from a throughly impractical family, I was impressed at once with what seemed to me a startling level of practicality. Practicality about what kinds of courses to take for what kind of well-paying jobs; even practicality about potential marriage partners.

So one of the things that struck me about the mother in today’s lovely story was the way she helped her son earn rice during the Japanese occupation of China and her advice to him when they headed to America.

Siobhan Burke reports at the New York Times, “Among the blaring lights and all-hours amusements of downtown Las Vegas, in a sea of slot machines at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino, George Lee sits quietly at a blackjack table, dealing cards eight hours a day, five days a week, a job he’s been doing for more than 40 years.

“Lee, 88, was likely in his usual spot when the filmmaker Jennifer Lin was sifting through old photos at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2022, wondering what had become of a dancer with a notable place in ballet history. Pictured in a publicity shot for the original production of ‘George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,’ in the role known as Tea, was a young Asian dancer identified as George Li.

“For Lin, a veteran newspaper reporter turned documentarian, the picture raised intriguing questions. In 1954, when the photo was taken, it was rare to see dancers of color on the stage of New York City Ballet, the company Balanchine co-founded. Who was this young man, this breaker of racial barriers, this pioneer? Was he still alive? And if so, what was he up to?

“ ‘I became absolutely obsessed with trying to find out what happened to George Li,’ Lin said in a video interview.

“In just over a year, that obsession has blossomed into a short film, Ten Times Better, that chronicles the unexpected story of Lee’s life: from his childhood in 1940s Shanghai, where his performing career began; to a refugee camp in the Philippines, where he fled with his mother, a Polish ballet dancer, in 1949; to New York City and the School of American Ballet, where Balanchine cast him in ‘The Nutcracker’; to Flower Drum Song on Broadway, his first of many musical theater gigs; and ultimately, to Las Vegas, where he left dance for blackjack dealing in 1980. (He changed the spelling of his last name in 1959, when he became a United States citizen.) …

“ ‘So many years I haven’t done ballet,’ Lee said over coffee at the Four Queens on a recent Sunday, after his shift. ‘And then suddenly Jennifer comes and tries to bring everything up.’ …

“Lin was not the only one who had been searching for Lee. In 2017, while organizing an exhibition on ‘The Nutcracker,’ Arlene Yu, who worked for the New York Public Library at the time and is now Lincoln Center’s head archivist, was puzzled by the relatively few traces of him in the library’s vast dance collection. ‘Whereas if you look at some of his peers in ‘The Nutcracker’ in 1954, they went on to careers where there was a lot more documentation.’ …

“Lee, in his heyday, was a dancer to know. At just 12, he was already winning public praise. In a preview of a recital of the King-Yanover School in Shanghai, the North China Daily News called him an ‘extremely promising young Chinese boy, whose technique is of a very high standard.’ A reviewer wrote that he ‘already may be said to be the best Chinese interpreter of Western ballet.’ (Lee saved these newspaper clippings and shared them with Lin.) …

“Lee’s mother, Stanislawa Lee, who had danced with the Warsaw Opera, was his first ballet teacher; as a child, he would follow along with her daily barre exercises. Shanghai had a significant Russian population, and with that a robust ballet scene. To earn money, Stanislawa arranged for her son to perform in nightclubs — ‘like a polka dance, or Russian dance, or sailor dance,’ Lee said. The clubs would pay them in rice. …

“In 1951, an American friend of Lee’s father sponsored them to come to New York, where he introduced Lee to the School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s affiliated school. As Lee narrates these twists and turns in the film, one memory anchors his recollections. Before they immigrated, his mother issued a warning. ‘You are going to America, it’s all white people, and you better be 10 times better,’ he recalls her saying. ‘Remember that: 10 times better!’

“The footage of Lee in his 20s suggests he took that advice to heart. In television appearances — with the company of the ballet star André Eglevsky, and in a number from Flower Drum Song on the Ed Sullivan Show — his power and precision dazzle.

“ ‘He was good; he was really good,’ [Phil Chan, cofounder of Final Bow for Yellowface, an initiative focused on ending offensive depictions of Asians in ballet] said. ‘Clean fifth, high jump, polished turns, stick the landing — the training is all there. He’s already 10 times better than everybody else.’ …

“In a 1979 interview heard in the film, the former City Ballet soloist Richard Thomas, who took over the role of Tea, raves about Lee’s peerless acrobatic jumps: ‘He was wonderful! Balanchine choreographed a variation for him that none of us have ever been able to equal.’

“As Lee remembers it … the City Ballet makeup artist put him in full yellowface, and Balanchine insisted he take off the makeup. ‘He is Asian enough! Why do you make him more?’ he remembers Balanchine saying. Lee was costumed in the Fu Manchu mustache, queue ponytail and rice paddy hat often associated with the role, now widely critiqued as racist caricatures. But he said he didn’t take offense. ‘Dancing is dancing,’ he said. …

“He pieced together jobs for more than 20 years, often unsure of what would come next. He was dancing in a Vegas revue, ‘Alcazar de Paris,’ now in his 40s, when a blackjack dealer friend suggested he go to dealer school. ‘I can’t dance all my life,’ he remembers thinking.” More at the Times, here.

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All the Bugs You See

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 9, 2024| 5 Comments »

Photo: Paula Levihn-Coon/Texas Observer.
Volunteers look at a photo on David Cook’s camera to see the insect he captured.

Because I follow Alex Wild, curator of entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, on Mastodon, I learn more about bugs and Texas than I ever expected to know. Both Texas and bugs turn out to be pretty interesting.

Kit O’Connell has an article at the Texas Observer about an Austin nature preserve that is a good place for most bugs (maybe not yellowjackets).

“The prey is already dying when the hunters arrive. The sky is dark gray, the air thick with the threat of rain. But that hasn’t stopped over a dozen from gathering. They’re mostly, but not exclusively, older folks — frequently retirees with the ability to take a weekday morning off — and they’re armed with Digital SLR cameras and macro lenses.

“Valerie Bugh [I hope her name is not pronounced bug] crouches down over the squirming spots on the stone of the shady courtyard entrance to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, prodding at the poisoned insects. Bugh, a gray-haired local naturalist, isn’t responsible for the state of these southern yellowjackets (Vespula squamosa), but she’ll take advantage of it for a photo opportunity. Someone on staff at the center discovered their nest and sprayed them just before the bug hunters arrived, and the entire hive is trickling out from their hidden home in a low rock wall. …

“ ‘I’m trying to find one that doesn’t look dead,’ she said. Soon, she’d even manage to document the hive’s queen as it haplessly tried to flee the toxins — a rare catch, though a grim beginning for a weekly ritual that largely focuses on the living. 

“Bugh is the author of 10 short fold-out pamphlets with color photos, with titles like Spiders of Texas: A Guide to Common and Notable Species and Unusual Insects of Texas: Caddisflies, Mantides, Lacewings, Walking Sticks, & More. That’s just one of her jobs: She’s also second clarinet in the Austin Opera. …

“Every Thursday morning from February through mid-December, Bugh and her team of volunteers in the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Fauna Project explore a winding path, gradually aiming to cover the entire grounds over the course of a year, in order to inspect more than 650 species of native plants in the gardens and the 50-plus species of oaks in the Texas Arboretum for their occupants. 

“With this diversity of native plants comes a diversity in insect population too. … [Since 2010] she’s identified almost 3,000 species of insect including over 50 bees, 345 flies, and over 500 different beetles. It’s not unusual to find a new species to add to the garden’s known tiny inhabitant list every week. 

“As Bugh gets moving, other bug hunters follow her in a pack. One by one and in pairs they break off. … The group also documents signs of larger animals, from mammals to amphibians, but their main focus is on these tiny crawling creatures, since bugs are the most plentiful fauna present both in this garden and worldwide. 

“The bug hunters move in a little cluster, calling out when they find something new for Bugh to examine. The salt marsh moth (Estigmene acrea) caterpillars are everywhere.

“ ‘If it’s a salt marsh, I don’t want to know about it,’ declares Bugh dismissively, though with good humor. Their hairy bodies remind me of an asp, the caterpillar with a nasty sting. But they’re actually harmless to the touch. Bugh is just frustrated because there are too many of them. Unlike other caterpillars, the salt marsh moths will eat almost any plant, building its hairy cocoons all over. ‘Every single plant is their host,’ Bugh said. …

“As she moves around, her tone becomes more of a graduate lecture in entomology, no doubt similar to the insect walks she sometimes leads around Austin. Her volunteers are here to hone their skills at macro photography, to learn from a preeminent local expert, and to expand their naturalist knowledge. Many are members of the Texas Master Naturalist program. …

“ ‘It’s an insect safari,’ said volunteer Katherine Baker, who told me she relished the challenge of macro photography after over a decade of experience in more general nature photography. She’s been helping count the fauna for about four years now, and always feels among kindred spirits here. But they all orbit around Valerie, returning to her for advice or an ID after wandering off.

“ ‘Her knowledge surpasses everyone … she’s just amazing,’ Baker said of Bugh. 

“The gray morning clouds are starting to burn off. As it warms up, the butterflies and others will begin to emerge from the foliage where they’re resting during the rainy, humid part of the day. 

“ ‘Aha, here’s where the bumblebees are,’ Bugh declares with delight as some are pointed out to her. ‘These are workers and look how docile they are, they’re barely moving.’ …

“On the day we visited, the team spotted seven different kinds of grasshoppers, two types of katydids and one cricket. Hunters often spot the American bumblebee, Bombus pensylvanicus, which is thriving in Central Texas even as its numbers dwindle elsewhere. But lately, its Sonoran cousin (Bombus sonorus) has been showing up more and more in the bug counts. 

“ ‘That doesn’t bode well for desertification,’ Bugh told me. ‘We’ve had a lot of Western species moving in, birds too, which means the habitat is great for them and a little drier than we’re used to for everyone else.’ …

“ ‘The ecosystems are moving east, including tornado alley. It’s not great for the people in the way, and not great for us on the edge of deserts. Think of Austin without any trees. I really like trees,’ Bugh says wistfully.”

More at the Texas Observer, here. The author can be found @oconnell on Mastodon.

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Ice Shacks for the Arts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2024| 2 Comments »

Photo: Ben Hovland/MPR News.
Art Shanty #1 stands on the frozen surface of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis.

I once read that an eggshell is simultaneously one of the most fragile and also the most durable of Nature’s materials. Isn’t art like that, too? Both lasting and ephemeral?

Consider the on-again off-again role of ice in artistic output, from New Year’s Eve ice sculptures to colonies of working artists on frozen lakes. Alex V. Cipolle reported at Minnesota Public Radio about the latter.

“In the winter of 2004, something funny was afoot on Medicine Lake. There were ice fishing houses like always. But on the frozen lake, away from the fishing holes, was another shanty. This one was made with shiny red vinyl, a circle window and a wood sign hanging from the door that said, ‘The Poet is In.’

“The inhabitants weren’t fishing. Instead, they hosted birthday parties and built a heart-shaped ice skating rink for Valentine’s Day. They had a sleepover and screened the icy horror flick The Thing.

“This was the first-ever Art Shanty, created by local artists Peter Haakon Thompson and David Pitman.

“ ‘I had been talking with a couple of friends and was trying to convince them that we should build this shanty that we were going to put on Medicine Lake for the winter as our sort of fort-clubhouse-art studio,’ recalls Thompson.

“ ‘Just the creativity of what the possibilities were, were endless,’ Pitman adds. ‘As we’ve sort of seen 20 years later.’

“Twenty years later, one shanty has become a village, and a circle of artist friends became an arts nonprofit — Art Shanty Projects —  annually programming two weeks of free art events on ice. Now on Lake Harriet, Jan. 27 to Feb. 11, the frozen lake becomes a temporary arts community with about 20 shanties, each with a different theme, which host live performances, yoga sessions, and a polar bear (‘Lady Bear’) that walks the grounds. …

“To mark the 20th anniversary of the little red shack, the Art Shanty Projects team has recreated it, calling it Art Shanty #1.

“ ‘I had been going through old photos,’ says Erin Lavelle, the artistic director for Art Shanty Projects. ‘And the picture of the original shanty is just so iconic.’ … Lavelle wanted to bring in new artists to activate the classic shanty, so she tapped Richard Parnell and Tony Chapin, both based in Minneapolis and longtime shanty artists. During December and January, they rebuilt Art Shanty #1 in the Ivy Arts Building in South Minneapolis, using photos of the original as a guide. 

The original shanty was built with found materials and red-vinyl-covered plywood lifted from a Walker Art Center dumpster, says Thompson. 

“ ‘In the spirit of the way they had built theirs, we repurposed a lot of materials,’ Parnell says. Parnell volunteers in public schools so had access to gymnastic floor mats and plexiglass COVID shields that were being thrown out. The floor mats are now insulation and the shields are windows. …

“Thompson and Pitman, who are no longer officially involved with the event, say they are excited to see the shanty recreated, and the art shanty village flourishing two decades on.

“ ‘I don’t think either of us anticipated that it would be something that would continue hardly for any time at all,’ Thompson says. …

“ ‘What really excited me was seeing all these other people coming up with ideas for similar things within the limitations that were kind of set in this unregulated land,’ Pitman says.

“ ‘Relatively unregulated,’ Thompson adds, laughing. (The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol board and the Department of Natural Resources require permits.) …

“The growing art village hopped from Medicine Lake to White Bear Lake and now Lake Harriet, and has had a few evacuations due to melting ice. In 2023, Art Shanty Projects moved it ashore for ‘Plan Beach.’ … 

“Today, the Art Shanty Projects is sometimes jokingly referred to as ‘Burning Man on Ice.’

“ ‘I’ve always been rankled by the whole Burning Man, Frozen Man comparison,’ Thompson says. The ever-expanding Nevada festival has become infamous for its impact on the environment.  With the art shanties, Thompson says, ‘We’ve followed this “Leave No Trace” ethos on the ice.’ ”

More at MPR, here. No paywall.

This year was one when the ice colony had to evacuate. The New York Times has that story here.

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A Book Once Read Under the Table

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 7, 2024| 4 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
The original version of this classic was not published in Russia until long after the author’s death.

I’m rereading Michael Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita because I liked it the first time and because a new movie based on the book is getting into trouble in Russia just like the book did.

Talk about book bans! The old Soviet Union was big on banning books, as a Ukrainian friend of John’s told me some years ago. He explained how people had to read unauthorized copies of The Master and Margarita under the table with a flashlight. Why?

On my current reading, I’m paying close attention to the why and how the fanciful elements — the Devil and his shape-shifting minions — must have looked to the government. I guess that satirizing the communist state’s slogans, its hostility to religion, and the way it drove free-thinking creatives into insane asylums was frowned upon.

Christopher Vourlias writes at the magazine Variety about a new film version that’s running up against Russia’s propaganda machine today.

“Just days after the Russian blockbuster The Master and Margarita surged to the top of the domestic box office, Kremlin cronies, pro-war propagandists and an army of online trolls have waged a campaign to discredit the film and its director, Michael Lockshin, a U.S. citizen who was raised in the Soviet Union and has been outspoken in his opposition to the war in Ukraine. …

“Produced by Amedia, Kinoprime and Mars Media Entertainment, The Master and Margarita cost an estimated $17 million, making it one of the most expensive Russian movies ever made. Notably, it also received financing from the state-backed Russian Cinema Fund, a fact that has also stoked the ire of many of the propagandists who are driving the current controversy.

“The Master and Margarita, which was written by the Kyiv-born Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov between 1928 and 1940 and published posthumously in Moscow magazine in the 1960s, is widely considered one of the great works of 20th century literature. It is a towering achievement of Soviet satire, heralded for its stinging social commentary and pointed critique of authoritarian rule during Stalin’s reign.

“Lockshin’s big-budget adaptation of this celebrated novel, a blistering critique of Soviet power and authoritarianism … quickly shot to the top of the box office, grossing more than 600 million rubles ($6.7 million) as of Feb. 1.

“Within days, pro-government bloggers, media and TV personalities began waging a campaign against Lockshin, the U.S.-born son of a Russian-American scientist who spent a large portion of his childhood in the Soviet Union and currently lives in Los Angeles. …

“Several screen adaptations of the novel have previously been made, including a popular TV mini-series released in 2005. However, Bulgakov’s iconic cult novel has never been fully realized on the big screen, only adding to the anticipation surrounding Lockshin’s blockbuster, according to influential film critic and radio host Anton Dolin, who says it’s hard to overstate the importance of Bulgakov’s novel on Russian society and culture. ‘A proper film based on it was a dream for everyone,’ he says. …

“German star August Diehl (A Hidden Life, Inglourious Basterds) was ultimately cast in the role of Woland, the Devil-like figure whose arrival in Moscow sets the plot into motion. Russian stars Yevgeny Tsyganov [as the Master] and Yuliya Snigir [Margarita] were cast in the other lead roles.

“The film was shot over the course of four months in 2021, at which point Lockshin returned to L.A. to edit the footage. Universal Pictures International was originally slated to release the movie domestically in 2023. Those plans were upended, however, with Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which prompted Universal and other Hollywood studios to pull out of the Russian market. …

“As the war in Ukraine unfolded, Lockshin freely shared his opposition on social media, though his politics went largely unnoticed at the time in Moscow, where he was still a little-known director. That quickly changed, however, when The Master and Margarita became a box-office smash and a cultural phenomenon.

“For those who have watched the space for public dissent in Putin’s Russia gradually vanish since the Ukraine invasion, the vitriol directed at the filmmaker has stuck to a familiar playbook. ‘The mechanism of persecuting inconvenient people is well established and works like a clock,’ says Anna Mongayt, a presenter and creative producer of the Russian opposition network TV Rain, which was forced from Russia after being shut down by the authorities in 2022.

“ ‘In two years, everyone who disagreed with the war and was ready to talk about it out loud was erased from culture,’ Mongayt says. ‘No amount of fame can save you here.’ “

More at Variety, here. No paywall.

Fortunately, I don’t need to read this once-banned book under the table in the US of 2024. At least not yet. Let’s don’t ban books, America. For one thing, we can always navigate around books we don’t like. For another, banned books never stay banned.

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Teen Chef Joins Fancy Eatery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 6, 2024| 7 Comments »

Photo: Boston Globe.
Teenage phenom and pastry chef Piper McAloon.

Some folks are still figuring out their calling when they are on Social Security. Others, like this chef in Bristol, Rhode Island, discover it when they are 11 years old.

Andrea E. McHugh has the inspiring story at the Boston Globe, “When she was a little girl, Piper McAloon had a natural curiosity when it came to baking, and was influenced by popular pastry-centric reality television shows. In her family kitchen, her parents Robin and Patrick encouraged her culinary creativity. What was once an 11-year-old’s lighthearted hobby morphed into the now 17-year-old’s career path.

“The high schooler, who lives in Bristol with her parents and sister, maintains a vegan diet. She applied for a job at Foglia when the plant-based restaurant opened in the summer of 2022, hoping she’d land a server position. But when chef/owner — and fellow vegan — Peter Carvelli, who was just named a semifinalist for 2024 Best Chef Northeast by the James Beard Foundation, saw her self-taught pastry skills for himself, he had other plans.

“Andrea E. McHugh: How did you hear about Foglia?
“Piper McAloon: Someone told me that there was a new vegan restaurant opening and so I reached out, never thinking I’d be their pastry chef — maybe I’d be a waitress. And I told [Peter Carvelli] about all my baking, and he was like, ‘I want you to be my pastry chef.’ I was so shocked. …

“Have you always adhered to a plant-based diet?
“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 11, and I’ve been vegan for about the past two and a half years. I think I was just kind of losing interest in meat, and like, the ethics of it, and then I cut out dairy. It was a very slow process, and eventually, I cut out eggs and other products. I didn’t have to go vegan, but I’m glad I did. I feel so much better.

“Dairy is used in a lot of baking. How did you learn about vegan alternatives when it comes to pastry?
“It’s a big learning curve, learning how to switch everything. I’ve gotten the hang of it, and there’s so many people doing it now. At Foglia, we’re also nut-free, so I can’t use almond milk or any cashew [products]. … I learned so much from videos online and YouTube, I would just absorb so much information. I’ll see something and be like, ‘Hey, I could do this with this or that,’ and completely just take the inspiration and make it my own. Ground flaxseed and water, it gets really thick, and you can use it to replace eggs in different recipes. Aquafaba is more for say, macarons, and whipping, like you would an egg white. …

“How has this experience at the restaurant expanded your business skills?
“Oh, it’s awesome. My boss, Peter, is such a great mentor. We’re always working together and he’s very, very supportive of me doing my own thing. I’ve also done a couple of pop-ups at the restaurant. I create a limited menu and he lets me use the restaurant during the afternoon because they’re only open for dinner, and I set up kind of like a mini-bakery, and people come in to buy food and I do all the accounting for it, and he helps me. We use Toast [a restaurant point-of-sale and management system], and if I have a special order for someone, he’ll let me use the kitchen.

“What are you making right now for Foglia?
“Panna cotta is one of the things that’s a staple right now. It’s gluten-free and really good. It’s kind of like a custard. Generally it’s made out of gelatin, but I use something called agar, which is big in vegan baking for pastry cream, actually. We also have what we call a brownie snowball. …

“What do your future plans look like?
“I’m going to Johnson & Wales in the fall, the Baking & Pastry Arts associates program, and then eventually I want to open a vegan bakery. It’s two years, and right after that I want to, I don’t know, travel and experience food everywhere else, and learn from them, and then eventually, probably a couple years after college, open my bakery. I’m very excited about it — it’s been my dream since I was 10.”

More at the Globe, here. What did you want to be when you were 10? Did you do it? I think I wanted to be an actress. Or maybe a ballerina.

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