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The Music of the Spheres

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Thibaut Roger/NCCR PlanetS/PA.
The planets surrounding the HD110076 star orbit it in neat ratios depending on their closeness to it. 

Where I went to high school, we memorized Bible verses every week. I always liked the words from this time of year: “The star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.” So I’m going to say that today’s post on stars is a seasonal post.

At the Guardian, Nicola Davis delves into new star research from the journal Nature.

“Six planets that orbit their star in a coordinated dance have been discovered by scientists, who say the finding could help shed light on why planets in our own solar system move to their own beat.

“The newly discovered planets orbit a star that sits about 100 light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, with a mass about 20% smaller than our Sun.

“Not only is their makeup different from planets within our solar system, but their movements appear to be tied together: the team said the time it takes one planet to travel around the star was related to that of the next planet by a neat ratio.

“ ‘This system has this very delicate resonant configuration,’ [said] Dr Rafael Luque, co-author of the research from the University of Chicago. The team said such ‘resonance’ should be common within planetary systems, arising from gravitational interactions between planets that begin as they form.

Astronomer Hugh Osborn, a co-author from the University of Bern, converted the resonance among these planets’ orbits into music.

“However, in reality only about 1% of observed planetary systems show resonance – and even fewer involve as many as six planets moving in a coordinated fashion. …

“The team added that the newly discovered planets sit close to their star, with temperatures of 170-650C, and have diameters two to three times that of Earth but smaller than Neptune, making them ‘sub-Neptunes.’ The masses of the planets and their densities were elucidated using ground-based measurements. …

“ ‘Even though we have found so many planets like these ones outside of the solar system, we do not know much about them,’ said Luque.

“Luque added that with six sub-Neptunes of varying sizes, temperatures and masses around the same, bright star, astronomers now had a way to explore how and why such planets differed. …

“Data from [Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] has revealed that one planet had a nine-day orbit while another took 13 days to orbit the star. Subsequent data from the European Space Agency’s Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite (Cheops), suggested yet another planet took 20.5 days to orbit the star.

“The team realized these orbits formed neat ratios: the first planet from the star makes three orbits in the time it takes the second planet to make two orbits, and the second planet makes three orbits in the time it takes the third planet to make two orbits.

“The discovery led the team to propose that the orbits of the other three planets in the system also would be related by simple ratios. Further observations confirmed they were right.”

More at the Guardian, here. You should know that Dr Hugh Osborn, a co-author from the University of Bern, converted the resonance among these planets’ orbits into music. Listen to that music in an audio clip of about 2-1/2 minutes at Public Radio International’s The World, here. Very special.

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The Cookie Cutter Maven of Vermont

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Ann Clark Cookie Cutters.
Cow cookie cutters are among the many unusual shapes at this Rutland, Vermont, company.

When I started downsizing to move to the new place, I passed along or weeded out all sorts of possessions. Although I wanted to try making Christmas cookies in the new, tiny kitchen, I decided I didn’t need two Christmas trees, two snowmen, two stars. But today’s story makes me want to add shapes like cows, pigs, sharks, and ice cream cones.

Jordan Barry writes at Seven Days Vermont, “For many holiday bakers, the first step in the festive process is a trip into the depths of a forgotten cupboard. Behind lidless Tupperware and single-use appliances, they’ll find a jumble of gingerbread people, stars and trees. And, if those cookie cutters are good ones, there’s a high likelihood they were made in Vermont.

“Inconspicuously tucked into the warehouse land of Rutland’s Quality Lane, Ann Clark is the United States’ largest producer of cookie cutters, selling 4 to 5 million per year. Founded in 1989 by the artist for whom it is named and now led by her son, Ben Clark, the company sits behind only Chinese mega-manufacturers on the global cookie cutter scale. And as it continues to grow, the family-owned operation is expanding into all aspects of the baking biz, from food coloring to cake mixes.

“Cookie cutters are just one of the items that Ann’s art inspired, Ben told Seven Days on a tour of the facility in early November. … The convivial CEO described a folksy drawing of a pig that his mother and his business-consultant father had made into cutting boards, Christmas tree ornaments, coasters and cookie cutters to sell at trade shows. The cookie cutter, with a handmade recipe card tied to it, was the runaway hit.

“Soon, that pig was joined by a cow and a sheep. In those days, the family focused on selling their cookie cutters to gift stores and making custom promotional ones for businesses such as McDonald’s and Under Armour. Now, Ann Clark has an arsenal of roughly 3,500 shapes — around 700 of which are currently available — that range from simple numbers to holiday staples to a ‘fashion doll head,’ which surged in sales this summer around the release of Barbie.

“New shapes can be made in a day, inspired by trends, pop culture moments, competitors’ products, and creative ideas from employees and bakers around the country. There’s a cookie cutter for each of the year’s ’26 events,’ Ben said — a list that includes Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

“Of all 3,500, Ann’s favorite shape is the watering can. It became Ben’s sentimental favorite, too, after they realized it was the company’s worst seller. Any shape that does worse is immediately cut. …

“The company works with many of the top cookiers in the world, who test new shapes and send their elaborately decorated samples to Ann Clark HQ. Digital content manager Annora McGarry catalogs them in a ‘cookie library’ and stores the physical cookies in an office closet for use in photo shoots.

“Ann Clark cookie cutters’ high-profile fans include the team at King Arthur Baking in Norwich. The companies have worked together ‘for many years, and they are a wonderful partner,’ said Nathalie Morin, associate product manager at King Arthur.

“Cookie cutter designs should have enough detail to be easy to decipher, without small, pointy elements that will make dough stick or overbake, she explained. Metal cutters make the crispest cut, and rolled edges make pressing down more comfortable. …

“The cutters’ American-made status is a selling point for many, Ben said, but not always for the most obvious reason. … ‘It’s really about lead time.’

“When a shape runs out at the Ann Clark factory, it takes the production team just about nine minutes to change the die — a heavy metal block in the shape of a cutter’s final form — and start a replacement run. The new cutters are packaged and shipped by the following morning, whereas it could take months to import replacements from China, Ben said. During the busiest times of year, 12 to 15 employees across two shifts change dies 50 times a day, producing up to 500 cookie cutters per run. …

“When the business started, a company called Creative Products made the cookie cutters in Pennsylvania. Ann Clark slowly brought manufacturing in-house over the course of seven years, eventually acquiring Creative Products — and its accounts with stores such as Sur la Table, Williams Sonoma, Bed Bath & Beyond and Crate & Barrel.

” ‘We realized we’d been trying to convince gift stores that a cookie cutter is a great gift,’ Ben said. ‘Every kitchen store already knows what a cookie cutter is and why it’s great. We could barely keep up.’ …

“The team tested a host of private-label products, including food coloring, sprinkles, icing mix and meringue powder. The food coloring, like the pig design that launched a cookie cutter empire, was the clear winner. It kept selling out, and the manufacturer couldn’t keep up. With the help of food scientists, the Ann Clark team developed its own recipe and built a separate, food-safe facility down the road.

“That facility now produces 3,000 tubes of food coloring a day, along with products such as royal icing and fondant.

” ‘The food coloring is amazing,’ said Paulina Thompson, who launched her Essex Junction home-based biz, Paulina’s Sweets, in February 2021. ‘You can achieve the colors really fast, especially for that Christmas red that everybody wants.’ “

More at SevenDays, here.

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Better Schools for Rural China

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Ann Scott Tyson/Christian Science Monitor.
This photo from 1992 shows Bai Guiling teaching multi-grade primary students in a cave classroom carved from a hillside in the village of Yangjiagou. It had no electricity and few books.

Today’s story is about two women who transformed education in rural China. It’s written by Ann Scott Tyson of the Christian Science Monitor, who wanted to follow up on an article she wrote 30 years ago.

“After a 12-hour train ride, I’ve reached a remote village on China’s Loess Plateau, where I’m searching for a teacher I wrote about 30 years ago. I can still picture Bai Guiling juggling lessons for four grades in a dim cave classroom carved from the yellow earth. Her dedication to the needy village children was unforgettable. Now, I want to revisit her story as a window into education in rural China today. 

“But no one in the dusty hamlet in northern Shaanxi province has heard of Teacher Bai or even remembers the school. … I flip through my notebook looking for the phone number of the only person who might be able to help – a Chinese American woman who years ago took a special interest in Teacher Bai. 

“Sitting in my taxi while the police watch from down the road, I tap her U.S. number into my phone and wait for what seems like forever.

“ ‘Hello?’ a frail but chipper voice answers. It’s Lin-yi Wu.

“A few days earlier, in mid-May, I’d tracked down Ms. Wu, a retired librarian, at a senior living home in Walnut Creek, California. The nonagenarian was recovering from a fall – taken while jazz dancing – but was in good spirits. …

“Born the daughter of a well-to-do Shanghai antiques merchant in 1933, Ms. Wu received an elite education that bore no resemblance to Teacher Bai’s bare-bones cave classes. She rode rickshaws to a stately Shanghai middle school run by American missionaries. After graduating from the top-flight Peking University, she was retained to teach French. A formative moment came when Communist Party authorities exiled her and her husband-to-be, English professor Hung-sen Wu, to labor in a hardscrabble mountain village outside Beijing in 1958, during Mao Zedong’s commune movement.

“ ‘My eyes were opened to see how the majority of Chinese lived,’ Ms. Wu told me. For that, she was grateful. But she also witnessed how Mao’s failed communes slashed farm output, leaving bok choy wilting in the fields and piglets dying in the street. A massive famine ensued, forcing villagers to eat leaves and corncobs. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. From 1959 to 1961, tens of millions of Chinese starved. 

“Once back at Peking University, Ms. Wu was shocked when authorities spread propaganda about a bumper harvest, rejoicing with music and gongs. ‘People are dying, and they celebrate the big harvest? That was the last straw,’ she said. ‘I could never live under a government that tells such a lie to the detriment of its people.’ In 1961, the couple fled via Hong Kong to the United States. …

“Forging a life in America, the Wus never lost the desire to help their destitute countrymen. Then, in April 1992, they opened the Christian Science Monitor and read my article about Teacher Bai’s struggles. At once, they each decided – without a word between them – to use their savings to build the village a proper school. … She penned a letter to me in Beijing, asking to contact Teacher Bai.

“But where is Teacher Bai now? I ask over the phone. ‘I don’t know where she lives, but I remember her village was in Ansai County,’ Ms. Wu tells me. ‘And I have her daughter’s phone number.’

“I open my road atlas and scour the map of Ansai, two counties away from where I am. Suddenly it makes sense – there are two villages with the same name, Yangjiagou, and I’m in the wrong one.   

“Her smile and warmth are infectious. After 30 years, I instantly recognize Teacher Bai when I see her waiting for me at the train station in the nearby city of Yan’an, a meeting arranged by her daughter. It feels like we never lost a beat. Driving a borrowed car, she whisks me into the rugged countryside. …

“ ‘Look at this old classroom!’ she says, peering through the worn wooden lattice of the cave’s front window at the peeling mud-and-straw walls. ‘I taught here for five years. We were so poor,’ she says. …

“Born in 1964 to a farming couple in a cave high on a barren hillside a few miles away, Ms. Bai was the eldest of five children – four girls and a boy. Food was scarce in the wake of China’s famine. They ate boiled thistles and cornhusk buns. ‘That counted as good food,’ she says. …

“ ‘I want to popularize the importance of primary education,’ she told me back in 1992. … Her dream: to rally the villagers to build a new school. …

” ‘The article you wrote changed my fate, and the fate of three generations of my family.’

“Not long after my 1992 trip, a local official came to find Teacher Bai. Breathlessly, he told her a group of overseas Chinese and Americans wanted to build a new primary school at Yangjiagou – and they named her to be in charge. …

“Back in the U.S., Ms. Wu excitedly tallied the funds. After a benefit dinner, greeting card drive, and garage sale – combined with her $4,000 in savings – she’d amassed more than $8,000 as of 1994. It was enough to build Yangjiagou a new school, the first by her new organization, Friends of Rural China Education (FORCE). …

“Through a Catholic church with contacts in Hong Kong, she found a nun who would soon travel to mainland China to teach. They arranged for the nun to hand-deliver $8,000 in cash to Teacher Bai at the train station in Guangzhou, across the border from Hong Kong. ‘I will never forget what Teacher Bai told me,’ recalls Ms. Wu. ‘She said, “I will guard this money with my life.” ‘ “

It’s actually a very long article, but how can I not love it? Read the whole beautiful thing at the Monitor, here. No firewall.

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New York’s Boroughs in Gingerbread

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2023| 5 Comments »

Photo: MCNY via Hyperallergic.
The Museum of the City of New York had a gingerbread display for the first time last year. This is John Keuhn’s gingerbread interpretation of Madison Square Park in Manhattan.

I had a nice little foray into holiday gingerbread early last week, between getting over Covid at the new place and the Paxlovid rebound.

My older granddaughter had a kit that was easy enough for even me to work on. Don’t you love the way the world is going with gingerbread? In Boston, an architectural society located near my old job is on its ninth year of amazing displays. (See BSA, here.)

Today’s story, from Hyperallergic, is about a gingerbread exhibit in New York. Elaine Velie reported in 2022, “The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is trying out a different type of exhibition this year, and it looks delicious. Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off, up through January 16, features seven bakers’ edible replicas of New York City’s five boroughs (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island).

“ ‘I can speak from personal experience about how difficult it is, said Jonah Nigh, one of the competition’s judges and a semifinalist on the reality show Baking It, where he was asked to create a gingerbread house. ‘You can measure everything as much as you want, but when you put it in the oven, you have no control over how much it shrinks and expands.’ …

“Nigh told Hyperallergic he especially enjoyed Sans Bakery’s miniature of Long Island City, Queens. ‘I love really small details,’ Nigh gushed, adding that it was so transformed it no longer looked gingerbread. That project belonged to Erica Fair, who has run the gluten-free bakery since 2010. She wanted to represent the iconic parts of her neighborhood and decided to recreate the seven line subway car, the iconic Silvercup film studio, and the graffiti visible below as people cross the East River from Manhattan.

“The baker explained that weather plays an outsized role in the success of the fickle medium: She initially planned to make her work twice as big, but her original house broke in half during the city’s early November heat wave. For her final product, Fair used Pez candies as bricks and mixed luster with vodka (it evaporates quicker than water) as paint. She also built a few Christmas trees with gummy bears.

“John Kuehn represented Manhattan and won the contest’s ‘grandest’ prize [above]. He had never made a gingerbread house before, but had worked as an architect, and his expertise is evident in the final product, a replica of Midtown’s Madison Square Park. Kuehn’s final version includes carefully constructed miniatures of the Flatiron Building and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower. He started working in early October and said that he spent around eight hours a day on the project until it was due before the judges in early November. …

“The bake-off and exhibition are a new initiative for the East Harlem museum, but one that will likely become a tradition, according to MCNY Chief Operating Officer Jerry Gallagher. The museum put out a call for both professional bakers and amateurs across the city and assembled an impressive team of judges. In addition to Nigh, the deciding panel comprised Bobbie Lloyd, who runs Magnolia Bakery; Nadine Orenstein, a drawings and prints curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who also serves as a judge for the annual National Gingerbread House Competition; painter-turned-baker Colette Peters, who designs elaborate cakes and teaches decorating with her namesake Colette’s Cakes in New Jersey; Melba Wilson, who owns the popular Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem; and Amy Scherber, at the helm of Manhattan’s beloved Amy’s Bread for 30 years.

“All seven displays won distinctions ranging from ‘most resilient to ‘best overall,’ the first of which was awarded to L’Appartement 4F Bakery’s recreation of a Brooklyn brownstone, which partially collapsed soon before it was set to be judged.”

Great photos at the paywall-free Hyperallergic, here. This year, the same museum invited 23 bakers from across the five boroughs to create gingerbread displays on the theme of “Iconic New York.” Read about that here.

Video: MCNY
This year’s gingerbread display at the museum.

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Using Farce to Heal Kosovo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 19, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Atdhe Mulla.
The play Negotiating Peace had its premiere at Pristina’s Oda theatre in October, before going on tour. 

Wars eventually end, but the peace that follows is often uneasy. Art can bring some laughs into people’s lives and add to the accumulation of small things that make a more lasting difference.

Philip Oltermann writes at the Guardian, “When political leaders present war as the only solution, it is up to artists to remind people that finding peace is still possible. That is the starting point for a Kosovo-based theatre company, Qendra Multimedia. …

“The lesson it draws, and the genre it chooses to present its findings, is unexpected: the Kosovan playwright Jeton Neziraj’s Negotiating Peace shows the diplomacy of peace as a farce, albeit a necessary one.

“Dramatizing roundtable talks between the fictional warring countries of Banovia and Unmikistan, the play is a frenzied comedy in which vain generals can only be lured to the negotiating table by promises of Hollywood films celebrating their actions. Opposing parties get drunk while negotiating demilitarized zones, mix up drafts of ceasefire agreements and sign on the wrong dotted line. Maps of disputed territories are partitioned with paper scissors until holy lands turn into showers of confetti. …

“ ‘When you talk about serious things, you must not talk about it in a serious way,’ said Orest Pastukh, a Ukrainian actor who is one of five members of Qendra’s multinational cast with first-hand experience of their country going to war. ‘If we would speak seriously about war and peace, everybody would go mad.’

“The play … is loosely based on the Dayton accords that in 1995 brought a halt to the three-and-a-half-year Bosnian war, the deadliest chapter in the breakup of Yugoslavia. At its premiere at Pristina’s Oda theatre last week, it also mixed in elements of the peace settlement that four years later ended the war in Kosovo. …

“To end that conflict between Serbs and Kosovo-Albanians in the breakaway province, Nato acted more swiftly and aggressively than it had done in the Bosnian war. In downtown Pristina, gratitude for the US’s assertive leadership in the peace talks is still palpable. There is a statue of a waving Bill Clinton, a bust of Madeleine Albright and a street named after Richard Holbrooke. …

“It may seem surprising, therefore, that in Negotiating Peace, moral certitudes come wrapped in sarcasm and not in pathos. The Holbrooke-type character, Joe Robertson, played by Harald Thompson Rosenstrøm, a Norwegian, is not just a ‘beast of peace’ but also ‘a schizophrenic, a brutal Mazarin.’ …

“ ‘When I read Holbrooke’s memoir To End a War, I realized that the negotiating table was also a kind of stage,’ Neziraj said on the eve of his play’s premiere. ‘And a dramatic stage on which actors were acting quite bizarrely,’ involving negotiators staging walkouts and new political borders ‘being drawn on napkins.’

“He said studying the Dayton agreement, as well as the Oslo accords signed between Israel and Palestine in 1993, had robbed him of the illusion that peace talks were structured conversations led by experts in their fields. ‘They are the fruit of the wills of individuals at a certain moment,’ Neziraj said. …

” ‘War doesn’t end when you lay down your arms,’ Neziraj said. ‘We in Kosovo live in an interim state, which is not war but neither a fully fledged peace.’ …

“Neziraj is aware of his own cynicism, and Negotiating Peace eventually manages to snap out of it. Towards the end of the play, the summit looks like a failure: faith in the UN is shot to shreds, there are calls for a second conference organized by the EU.

The chief negotiator appeals to the audience for advice to break the deadlock.

“As the play tours around the Balkans, the company intends to invite different real-life witnesses on to the stage. In Pristina the job fell to Aida Cerkez, a veteran Associated Press correspondent who covered the siege of Sarajevo from the Bosnian capital. Her 10-minute monologue changes the mood of the play.

“ ‘The only precondition for peace is to get everybody around the same table,’ she said after the curtain call. ‘And to get everybody around the same table, you have to militarily weaken the dominant side. As long as one side can think it can win, there’s no reason to sit down at the negotiating table. In Bosnia, that condition was met by Nato bombing. …

” ‘Peace is not the absence of armed conflict,’ she said. ‘In Bosnia we are living the absence of armed conflict, not peace. But that’s not nothing. It’s a lot.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. No paywall.

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An Owl in the Typewriter Eraser

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 18, 2023| 1 Comment »

Photo: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
“Typewriter Eraser,” by Claes Oldenburg, at Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin, August 2022.

When I saw this a year and a half ago in Madison, I loved so much that Claes Oldenburg was drawn to the artistic possibilities of a typewriter eraser that I took a picture.

More recently, a larger, outdoor version of that eraser drew in an owl.

Alisa Tang has the story at the Washington Post.

“It was the morning of Friday the 13th, and staff members were tending the grounds of the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden when they spotted something amiss: feathers sticking out of the blue bristles of the gigantic typewriter eraser.

“As they stepped in for a closer look, they realized a barred owl was stuck in the brush of ‘Typewriter Eraser, Scale X‘ — the garden’s six-meter-tall steel-and-fiberglass sculpture of the once-common office relic.

“The bird was still. But as the gardeners approached, it turned its head and blinked. …

“Brett McNish, the garden’s supervisory horticulturist, wrote in an email, ‘Occasionally, we see hawks momentarily perched on other taller sculptures in the garden, but never on Eraser. This is the first Owl seen in the garden.’ …

“There is a lot of wildlife in the garden, including dozens of species of birds and small mammals, McNish wrote. Hawks mainly like to sit on ‘Graft,’ a stainless steel sculpture of a leafless tree, though they tend not to stay for long. …

“Then came Friday the 13th and the extraordinary owl in the eraser. It was unclear how the owl got into its predicament, but staff members sprang into action. ‘It clearly needed help,’ McNish wrote.

“Workers hauled out a ladder and steadied it under the eraser. McNish, feeling ‘slightly anxious’ because of the bird’s thrashing as staff members neared, put on goggles and heavy-duty rose-gardening gloves for protection. He climbed the rungs and extracted the bird.

“The gallery’s sculpture conservation department provided a quilted cotton blanket normally used to move artwork to swaddle the owl, and McNish said that within an hour of its rescue, the owl was delivered into the care of City Wildlife, an animal rescue center in D.C.

“ ‘It was extremely lethargic, and it looked really sad,’ said Jim Monsma, City Wildlife’s executive director. ‘An owl during the day should not just be lying there in a box. It should be trying to fly away. It looked like it had just given up.’ …

“Staff members evaluated the owl, X-rayed it and found no broken bones. But its right shoulder was swollen, its ‘gums’ were pale, and it wouldn’t eat, said Sarah Sirica, a veterinarian and City Wildlife’s clinic director.

“The clinic put the owl on pain and anti-inflammatory medication, injected it with an electrolyte solution around the base of its leg and put it in a private room in a large cage that was lined with cloth so it wouldn’t damage its wings. The clinic bought frozen dead mice, thawed them and left them in the cage overnight — which is when owls normally eat — but the owl didn’t touch the food.

“So staff members hand-fed it: One person held the owl, while another, sometimes Sirica, wore gloves, opened the owl’s beak and put pieces of chopped-up thawed mice into its mouth, ‘a finger-length down,’ Sirica said.

“After about a week, Sirica deemed the owl healthy enough to travel; the swelling on its shoulder had gone down, and its gums were pink again. On Oct. 21, a City Wildlife volunteer drove the bird to Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research in Newark, Delaware. Upon arrival, staff at the facility placed it directly inside a 100-foot-long, gravel-floored flight enclosure for ‘prerelease flight conditioning,’ said Lisa Smith, the executive director of Tri-State Bird Rescue.

” ‘It gives them the opportunity to have a long flight. Then we can evaluate that they are flying properly — you can’t do that in a small enclosure,’ Smith said. ‘You have to see multiple flaps. Also, the enclosure is 20 feet high, so you want to make sure they can get from the ground up and make it from one end to the other at that height.’ …

“Tri-State Bird Rescue has admitted … ducklings that fall into storm drains, and birds that lose their nests during storms or get caught in sticky glue traps. But eraser owl was a novelty. …

“Tri-State Bird Rescue normally will return an adult bird of prey to the area where it was found, but it avoids transporting younger raptors because they can injure their wings in the carrier. Besides, as juvenile birds of prey become adults, they often have to find territory away from where they were raised anyway, Smith said. … ‘For the birds’ safety, we tend to release them here. It’s good habitat. It’s migration season.”

More at the Post, here.

And just for no reason, here’s a handy expression you can use the next time you are in Sweden: “Det är ugglor i mossen.” There are owls in the marsh. Erik’s mother says, “It is something that is not quite OK or not reliable. You should really not believe it. It’s a sort of feeling.” Maybe “I smell a rat”?

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Caribbean Seed Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 17, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Botanique Studios & Thomas Barzilay Freund.
“Louise Edwards has been making jewelry from tamarind seeds for more than 50 years,” the Guardian reports.

Today’s story is bringing back memories. I’d completely forgotten that as a child I had a seed necklace like one of these. I have no idea where my mother got it. Maybe on my parents’ trip to St. Thomas. Did you ever see one?

Sarah Johnson writes at the Guardian, “For a little more than 50 years, Louise Edwards has been collecting tamarind seeds that grow wild on the Caribbean island of Antigua to create earrings, mats and belts.

“Edwards grew up surrounded by women stitching the seeds, but today she is one of only five remaining master artisans on the island, all in their 70s.

“ ‘It’s a dying art,’ she says. ‘We will soon give it up when we can’t see.’

“Practiced for centuries in the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, home to about 100,000 people, seed work began among enslaved African women forcibly brought to the islands and post emancipation it became a source of income. …

“Anne Jonas, secretary to the governor general of Antigua and Barbuda, with the help of Barbara Paca, the country’s cultural envoy, have applied for funding to expand free workshops to teach seed art.

“In 2017, Jonas founded Botaniqué Studios, dedicated to revitalizing the practice. ‘This is extremely transformative in terms of my appreciation for what we consider to be uniquely Antiguan and Barbudan heritage artisanship,’ says Jonas. …

“Seed work is laborious. Wild tamarind (Leucaena leucocephala) is one of the world’s 100 most invasive species; it grows everywhere, and collecting seeds causes no environmental damage.

“The seeds are boiled in sea water and kept moist, before being strung together by hand – Edwards has lost a number of fingernails during her career due to accidentally stabbing her finger with the needle. Once the seeds dry, they remain hard for decades.

“It takes Edwards an hour to make earrings, but more intricate pieces, such as placemats, can take a week. ‘The young ones don’t want to do it. They say it’s too much work and not enough money for the work they put into it,’ Edwards says.

“But the workshops are a start to renewing interest, says Jonas.

“Denise Walcott, 47, went to her first workshop in June with her 16-year-old daughter. ‘My daughter likes it, and I love it,’ she says. ‘The pieces are beautiful and the designs are so intricate. … This is an Antiguan culture and it should be a way of life for us. It is something that is empowering for us to use as an avenue to go along with our tourism industry.’ …

“As well as the Botaniqué website, Jonas showcases products on social media. Seed work featured as part of Antigua and Barbuda’s offering at the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s longest-running cultural festivals, and is on display at the Frank Walter exhibition at the Garden Museum in London.

“Michelle Donawa, another workshop attendee, learned seed art from her grandmother and is working on a book. ‘It’s something to preserve culture, as well as an educational tool,’ she says. …

“ ‘I think if young people see this, and how you can make something so beautiful that can [also bring in an income], they’d become very interested, especially if they are at home with nothing to do,’ says Walcott. ‘I really hope to see this being produced in Antigua on a larger scale, and exported.’ “

Folks, if you ever despair of humanity, think about how humans make art out of everything they see. More at the Guardian, here. No firewall.

And for a different kind of seed art, see my recent post on the Minnesota State Fair, here.

Photo: Thomas Barzilay Freund.
Botaniqué Studios Best of Both Worlds necklace. Style meets sustainability.

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Music That Reduces Pain

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 16, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Laura Chouette/Unsplash.
A study by McGill University in Montreal, Canada, asked participants to listen to different types of music and rate how it affected their pain levels.

The other day on the radio I heard a doctor talk about treating pain in the age of the opioid crisis. His ideas sounded risky and seemed based on a study of one — himself. Having been in recovery from opioid addiction for 15 years, he found he could handle a lot of opioids when he broke his leg. He didn’t get addicted again.

Can every recovering addict do that? Seems like there ought to be better ways. So far, opioids are the only thing that works for severe pain. Today’s story talks about a way to reduce suffering, but only a little.

Nicola Davis writes at the Guardian, “If you are heading to the dentist, you may want to turn up a rousing Adele ballad. Researchers say our preferred tunes can not only prove to be powerful painkillers, but that moving music may be particularly potent.

“Music has long been found to relieve pain, with recent research suggesting the effect may even occur in babies and other studies revealing that people’s preferred tunes could have a stronger painkilling effect than the relaxing music selected for them.

“Now, researchers say there is evidence that the emotional responses generated by the music also matter.

“ ‘We can approximate that favorite music reduced pain by about one point on a 10-point scale, which is at least as strong as an over-the-counter painkiller like Advil [ibuprofen] under the same conditions. Moving music may have an even stronger effect,’ said Darius Valevicius, the first author of the research from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

“Writing in the journal Frontiers in Pain Research, Valevicius and colleagues report how they asked 63 healthy participants to attend the Roy pain laboratory on the McGill campus, where researchers used a probe device to heat an area on their left arm – a sensation akin to a hot cup of coffee being held against the skin.

“While undergoing the process, the participants [listened] to two of their favorite tracks, relaxing music selected for them, scrambled music, or silence.

“As the music, sound or silence continued, the participants were asked to rate the intensity and unpleasantness of the pain. …

“When the auditory period ended, participants were asked to rate the music’s pleasantness, their emotional arousal, and the number of ‘chills’ they experienced – a phenomenon linked to sudden emotions or heightened attention, that can be felt as tingling, shivers or goosebumps.

“The results reveal participants rated the pain as less intense by about four points on a 100-point scale, and less unpleasant by about nine points, when listening to their favorite tracks compared with silence or scrambled sound. Relaxing music selected for them did not produce such an effect. …

“Further work revealed music that produced more chills was associated with lower pain intensity and pain unpleasantness, with lower scores for the latter also associated with music rated more pleasant.

“ ‘The difference in effect on pain intensity implies two mechanisms – chills may have a physiological sensory-gating effect, blocking ascending pain signals, while pleasantness may affect the emotional value of pain without affecting the sensation, so more at a cognitive-emotional level involving prefrontal brain areas,’ said Valevicius, although he cautioned more work is needed to test these ideas. …

“The researchers say it is not yet known if moving music would have a similar chill-creating effect in those who do not favor it, or if people who favor such music are simply more prone to musical chills.

“What’s more, they say the size of the study might mean some relationships cannot be detected, while the relaxing music may not have been played for long enough for an effect to have been seen.”

More at the Guardian, here. No paywall. Guardian readers voluntarily donate to support the news.

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Art Behind Bars

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Riley Robinson/Monitor Staff.
Artist Danny Killion poses in his gallery, Weathered Wood, in Troy, New York. He is one of many who have benefited from the Prison Arts Program.

Some folks have no sympathy for people in prison and would begrudge any type of cultural program that might help them. “If they wanted to do [art, music, a GED …], they shouldn’t have committed the crime.”

But many of us know that life circumstances and not always conscious decisions can accumulate until someone is in big trouble. I like the Norwegian approach to corrections, here, and the often small but meaningful work that is done in the US.

Troy Aidan Sambajon wrote about an example at the Christian Science Monitor.

“On a long table, Jeffrey Greene prepares bundles of colored pencils for delivery to Connecticut state prisons. …

“Finished artwork lines the shelves of this airy warehouse, home to the permanent collection of the Prison Arts Program. Mr. Greene reaches up to a high shelf and retrieves a model RV, rendered in detail down to the windowsills. The shingles were cut from cardboard with a nail clipper and glued with a mixture of floor wax and nondairy creamer. Another artist unraveled a prison blanket and crocheted the threads into a 3D horse. …

“[Mr. Greene] has known his students for years, even decades. He can describe the medium they use and the metaphors their pieces convey, and has seen how the artistic process helps students deal with issues like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

‘Art unsettles habitual modes of thought and gives you the opportunity to think differently,’ says Robin Greeley, professor of art history at the University of Connecticut.

” ‘It can disrupt your whole routine and can create a sense of wonder.’

“The Prison Arts Program is one of the oldest correctional arts programs in the United States. It’s the longest-running program of Community Partners in Action, a criminal justice nonprofit based in Hartford. …

“Mr. Greene never intended to work in the prison system. After graduating from Hamilton College in New York, he volunteered to teach art workshops in prison on a whim. But he’s never forgotten the impression left by his first day on the job. 

“ ‘Everyone’s developing in this artificial, man-made, absurd, adversarial environment. It’s ridiculous,’ recalls Mr. Greene. …

“ ‘What drives Jeff really is the ability to show the humanity of the prison, of the people that are incarcerated,’ says Beth Hines, director of Community Partners in Action. ‘They know they can count on him when they get out.’

“In each prison he visits, Mr. Greene instructs his students to create art that only exists because they exist. He says it’s about more than finding a hobby while behind bars: ‘They are people that are coming out into the world with this incredible empathy and curiosity.’ Even if they never leave the prison system, he adds, that mindset can have a positive effect on others. …

“For years, Natasha Kinion felt like she’d been swallowed alive in prison. ‘I was guilt-ridden. I was shameful. I was really broken,’ she says in a phone interview. 

“A mother of four who has experienced domestic abuse and substance addiction, Ms. Kinion spent 13 years at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. There she started making abstract art. 

“ ‘It took me at least the first six years of my incarceration to really open up and allow the healing process to start,’ says Ms. Kinion. …

“Mr. Greene helped Ms. Kinion send her artwork to her children. Her daughter Mayonashia Jones once received a drawing of a butterfly trying to fly with broken wings. She remembers thinking of her mom and wondering, ‘Has she always felt like that?’ …

“Since her release in 2019, Ms. Kinion has published a book about her journey, titled Stand Up You’ve Been Down for Too Long, and has opened her own digital art company, Dezigning Deztiny. 

“ ‘I never told him this … but Jeff is really my hero,’ says Ms. Kinion.

“Danny Killion had little interest in art when he was robbing banks in Connecticut. Then he was caught and sentenced to 12 years in prison. ‘Prison can be a very cold, hard environment,’ says Mr. Killion. …

“He spent 10 years in the Prison Arts Program, learning to concentrate on the artistic process and find solace in a concrete cell. 

“ ‘I’ve never met anyone who’s a more profound teacher,’ says Mr. Killion, who finished his sentence in 2007. As he found his feet in society, Mr. Greene would drop by, offering art materials and a listening ear.

“After working in construction, Mr. Killion began creating furniture using driftwood from the Hudson River. In 2013, he opened his own art studio and gallery, Weathered Wood, in Troy, New York. He traces his transformation back to those first classes with Mr. Greene. …

“This year, Mr. Killion unveiled his first public commission, a sculpture of twisted scrap metal depicting a man breaking through chains, installed at Old New-Gate Prison, a historical site in East Granby, Connecticut. Mr. Greene was there too, both men now standing outside prison gates.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Finding Black Santa

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 14, 2023| 3 Comments »

Photo: SantasJustLikeMe.

Last season, Elizabeth Chang and Lateshia Beachum had a story at the Washington Post about finding a Santa of your child’s ethnicity. I’ve been saving it up.

“Shortly after noon on a winter Friday, a group of families line up to see one of the Washington, D.C. area’s most sought-after celebrities, a superstar they tracked to the center court of a suburban Maryland shopping mall.

“That luminary, enthroned on a bright-green couch and surrounded by giant red-and-gold packages, is Black Santa.

“This particular Black Santa — at the Mall at Prince George’s, in the majority-Black county of the same name — was ‘the only one I could find,’ said Erin Heard. She traveled there from neighboring D.C. with her husband, Correll Heard, and their 3-year-old son, Micah, who turned out to be a bit trepidatious of the jolly old elf.

“Correll said that when he was young, Santa was ‘just an old White guy with a beard. I don’t think I really thought about it.’ But after you become a parent, he said, ‘you want to see your child see someone who looks like him doing the same things other people do.’

“Although the D.C. metropolitan region is very diverse, with Caucasians making up less than half the population, there is a serious dearth of non-White St. Nicks. Victoria Clark, marketing director for the mall, said that Black Santa has been a staple there for decades, attracting a lot of returning families. ‘It’s a big draw to have an African American Santa,’ she said.

“Kiaira Reeves was there with her almost-1-year-old son, Kalani. ‘Representation is very important to me,’ she said. ‘We even went to Target and got wrapping paper with Black Santa.’ …

“Research into diversity in media suggests that minority children who see Santas who look like them can feel increased self-confidence and self-esteem, said Nekeshia Hammond, a psychologist in Brandon, Fla., while White children benefit by experiencing cultural diversity.  ‘Representation does positively affect children,’ she said.

“But there is a long way to go until Black Santas are easy to find. Parents seek Black Santas through online groups, their network of friends, TikTok videos from parents who have found one. …

“Edwina Walker thought living in predominantly Black Prince George’s County meant it would be easy to give her grandson the same experience she had as a child, when her own grandmother took her to meet a Black Santa in a mall in New Jersey. … But when Walker started to look for a Black Santa near her Oxon Hill home, she came up short. Eventually, she consulted a national Facebook group for people trying to find a Black Santa and drove nearly an hour to Columbia, Md., for the photo. …

“Houston and other areas of Texas have Pancho Claus. The Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District offers a visit from an Asian Santa. The Disney theme parks introduced Black Santas last year, to acclaim.

“The Mall of America near Minneapolis — the largest mall in the country — is perhaps leading the charge. This year, The Santa Experience there has had its most diverse lineup ever with six Santas: two Black, one Asian who speaks Cantonese and three White, one of whom speaks Spanish.

“ ‘It just makes sense,’ said Lando Luther, who owns the two Santa Experience locations at the mall. ‘There are so many different cultures that celebrate Christmas. And we believe that representation matters, and for a child to see themselves in such a positive figure is important.’ ”

More at the Post, here.

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Cross-Border Orchestra

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland.
The peace proms involves 6,000 children from schools all over the island, from diverse backgrounds and abilities.

Today’s story is not necessarily a holiday topic unless peace is a holiday topic. … Well, there’s that.

Niall McCracken wrote at the BBC about one longstanding Irish peace initiative.

“The passion of 15-year-old Cara is written all over her face as she takes her handmade violin from its case. She is one of the youngest musicians in the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland.

“I’m in Dundalk, County Louth, in the Republic of Ireland,” McCracken continues, “to watch her and more than 100 other young musicians rehearse ahead of a series of concerts. Cara, from County Down, plays in the strings section of the orchestra that emerged out of the Northern Ireland peace process.

“It was set up in 1995, a year after republican and loyalist paramilitaries announced ceasefires. This followed more than a quarter of a century of violence in Northern Ireland.

“The key aim was to use music to connect young people from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds on both sides of the Irish border. Almost 30 years on, this remains the central goal of the 140-member orchestra.

“Cara attends a Catholic girls’ grammar school in Ballynahinch and has always loved music.

” ‘I started playing violin and piano when I was young. You have to practise a lot but it’s taught me so much about perseverance,’ she said. … ‘There are still aspects of life in Northern Ireland that can make it difficult to meet people from different backgrounds. … Going to the orchestra has been great because I’ve made friends from all sides of the community, all over the country.’

“The orchestra has also ignited Cara’s love for different types of music. ‘I just wouldn’t have listened to things like Ulster-Scots music, simply because I just wouldn’t have been exposed to it because it wasn’t played where I live. But I love the pipes they use and getting to become immersed in that Ulster-Scots music and culture has given me a whole new perspective.’

“The orchestra combines Ulster-Scots culture, including bagpipes and Lambeg drums, with Irish traditional instruments such as uilleann pipes, the harp, the fiddle and bodhrán (drum). They also have their own take on some of the biggest pop, rock and dance songs in the charts.

“A diverse range of music has been key to the project’s success, according to the orchestra’s founder Sharon Treacy-Dunne.

“She is originally from Hackballscross, a rural village in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland, a few miles south of the border with Northern Ireland.

” ‘Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, and as a young teacher in Dundalk in the early to mid-90s, before the ceasefire and the Good Friday peace agreement, I remember being really worried about what I was seeing,’ she said. … ‘Then in 1994 when we reached this momentous ceasefire, as a teacher I thought I needed to be some sort of role model. The only thing I knew was music.’

“Sharon began writing to schools on both sides of the Irish border about taking part in the orchestra. She said: ‘To be honest it took a while to bring some of the Protestant schools on board, but music was the answer. Once we made it clear that we were also using music that was important to them with instruments such as pipes and Lambeg drums, that was a huge turning point.’ …

“Being part of the orchestra also means young people like Cara had the chance to perform at New York’s famous Carnegie Hall on St Patrick’s Day earlier [in 2022].

” ‘It was unbelievable, I could never have imagined having an opportunity like that, but music just opens up so many doors,’ she said.

“The New York concert was part of a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The deal brought an end to 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles.”

More at the BBC, here. No paywall. Upcoming events orchestra here.

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Local Mermaid Instructor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 12, 2023| 6 Comments »

Photo: Brett Stanley.
The Ocean State’s Jesse Jewels as a mermaid.

Some readers may remember reading in a 2021 post (here) that the US has not one but two mermaid museums! Through that article, I myself learned that spending your free time as a mermaid or merman is a real thing. And quite an industry for waterproof-costume makers.

Today we hear from Emily Olson at ecoRI News, that there’s a mermaid in Rhode Island who’s a serious activist for the ocean.

“When she was young, Jessie Jewels imagined herself a mermaid, moving effortlessly beneath the waves, hair billowing in the current as she played with her ocean friends. But too soon she outgrew her imaginary mermaid tail and contented herself — at least for a while — with exploring the sea on two legs. …

“Jewels is a free diver certified by the National Association of Underwater Instructors, a SCUBA diver, a kayaker, and a Save The Bay beach captain, a role that tasks her with organizing beach cleanups. And in 2021, she revisited the ocean of her childhood imagination when the siren song of mermaiding reached her ears.

“ ‘I found out there’s a culture of mermaids and mermen and mertheys who approach mermaiding as a hobby and athletic sport, and it called to me,’ said Jewel, who willingly succumbed to temptation and donned — or grew, as she’d say — a tail of her own.

“She slowly became more immersed in the culture and decided to test her skills by entering the Miss Mermaid USA pageant, which is similar to Miss USA, but with a twist. ‘You wear the dresses and do all the glam and answer all the questions, but we also do underwater modeling and swimming to show our grace, poise, and distance abilities,’ she said.

“Breath holding is also part of the competition and Jewel can hold hers for 2 minutes, which may sound like a lot to a landlubber, but is a mere fraction of what some professional aquarium mermaids can do.

“Jewels won the Miss Mermaid USA state competition in 2021, 2022, and 2023. She uses her platform to advocate for the importance of clean waterways and draw attention to her work with Save The Bay.

“ ‘I am constantly on Narragansett Bay, and I have seen how things have changed,’ she said. ‘There is a lot of debris floating on the surface, and underwater, there’s a big problem with algae and bacteria, exacerbated by overfishing. I’m in that water, so I see the problems. We’re losing our wild places.’

“She also believes in keeping Rhode Island waters accessible, a value she shares with Save The Bay. …

“When Mermaid Jessie Jewels appears at children’s birthday parties, she encourages them to be stewards of the sea and protect aquatic life. She’s also a mixed-media artist, and a portion of every piece of mermaid-related art she sells goes to Save The Bay. …

“For those who want to join the merfolk community, Jewels hosts mermaid makeovers and photo shoots at her art studio, but she recommends that anyone who wants to learn to swim like a mermaid take a swimming class with a focus on safety. And she stresses the importance of always having a swim buddy.

“And Jewels is really strong, partly due to her months of training last year that led her to the merlympics — an athletic competition for mermaids. The competition requires athletes to don their tails and swim lengths in a pool and navigate an underwater obstacle course. … ‘It was a very, very challenging competition, but super fun,’ she said.

“To learn about Jessie Jewels’ classes and entertainment, visit jessiejewelsart.com. To join her at a Save The Bay beach cleanup, visit savethebay.org.”

More at ecoRI News, here. No paywall.

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Toys for Migrant Tots

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 11, 2023| 4 Comments »

Photo: Natacha Larnaud for CBS News.
From CBS News: “Jacqueline and her two kids sit at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas, hours after being released from Border Patrol custody on April 30, 2021.”

This is the season of the couple who had no place to rest — and the baby who whose gifts were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Will all the newly displaced children of 2023 have any gifts?

Theresa Vargas wrote at the Washington Post last year about a program for migrant children that made some little travelers very happy.

“The young boy in the red and black jacket didn’t need to look through the toys sitting on the blanket in front of him. As other children walked past stuffed animals, puzzles and building blocks, looking for items that called to them, he made his way straight to a dump truck almost half his size. If you had peeked in on that moment, which took place outside a Virginia church, you would have seen that boy holding the truck tightly. …

“Days before the volunteer collective Food Justice DMV planned to hold the giveaway event on Dec. 17, founder Denise Woods sent out an SOS, letting supporters know that volunteers didn’t have enough food or toys this year to give to the migrant families they serve in the Washington region. What makes the group’s toy collection different from the many others that take place at this time of year is volunteers gather secondhand items and get them to families who might fall beyond the reach of other organized efforts, because of language barriers and deportation fears.

“ ‘It pains me that people who have lost all coming here, may not celebrate Navidad the way they deserve and the way we want: a warm plate of food from home: beans, rice oil and maseca and a side of gifts,’ Woods wrote in an email at the time. …

“People in D.C., Maryland and Virginia started looking through their homes and gathering the toys their children and grandchildren no longer used. They then drove them to one of several places that were collecting items on behalf of Food Justice DMV.

“They brought puzzles and board games and art kits. They brought a toy stove, a toy shopping cart and a bike. They brought small stuffed animals and medium stuffed animals and jumbo stuffed animals. …

“Thousands of people throughout the Washington region responded. All it took was learning that children around them might go without to decide they wouldn’t let that happen. …

“By the time the giveaway event arrived, volunteers were carting truckloads of items to a church in Falls Church. There, migrant families found them spread across blankets and tables. Children who might not have received anything for Christmas left with their arms full and their parents left carrying bags of items. …

“[One teen] said her mom is from Guatemala and works hard at her cleaning job to pay the rent and keep the family fed, but that doesn’t leave much money for her to buy presents during the holidays. That day at the church, the teenager said, her mom and the whole family left smiling.

“ ‘We were so thankful,’ she said. ‘I just want to thank everyone so much.’ …

“ ‘For so long I think we felt, not accurately, that no one really cared, because we were existing on fumes and praying we would make our food costs,’ Woods said. ‘Now we know people do care and care deeply.’ …

“The strangers who came together to help the families recognized the system is broken, not people, she said.”

More at the Post, here.

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Jewish Christmas Entertainment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 10, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian.
Debbie Chazen, Gemma Barnett and Josh Glanc, the stars of JW3’s holiday pantomime in London.

There’s a kind of Christmas entertainment in England (English friends: correct me if I am describing this wrong) called a pantomime, or panto. I have read about it but never seen it. It’s kind of like the old, slapstick Punch and Judy show, but without puppets.

This year, a comedy troupe in London is doing a takeoff of Christmas panto in a Jewish storytelling style.

Deborah Linton writes at the Guardian, “What else would you call ‘Britain’s first professional Jewish pantomime’ but Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Pig? And where else would you set it but north London, at Hanukah? At the JW3 centre in London – an arts and community venue. …

“The cast of the first professional stage production to merge two great traditions in Jewish storytelling and festive panto are gathered around a table sharing their experiences of both. And the crossover, it transpires, is richer and more obvious than one might first imagine.

“Comedy, community, a fairytale quest and a flawed hero are ‘at the heart of every panto,’ says the show’s writer, Nick Cassenbaum. ‘But I think it comes from … the Talmud, too.’ …

“So, too, the panto dame, he says – in this instance Mother Hoodman, Red’s eccentric mum who appears on stage heavily made up, wigged and wearing a voluminous dress modeled on a Hanukah dreidel singing You Spin Me Round – has a natural home in both traditions. ‘A panto dame is warm, loving and says the wrong thing. It’s a Jewish mother,’ says Cassenbaum. …

“Audiences will be immersed in a production that combines Jewish humour and music (imagine new lyrics to Jewish artists including Amy Winehouse, Doja Cat, Paul Simon and Craig David) with traditional panto magic – lots of slapstick comedy, a scene where the leads get lost in the woods, and cartoonish baddies – as it transposes the millennia-old Hanukah miracle into a fairytale fit for 2023.

“Cassenbaum’s premise is that Red, a hard-working young scientist pushing against the plans her mum – the dame – has for her to marry a Jewish doctor, sets out on a quest to find enough sustainable energy to power her village through Hanukah. … The wolf, the main antagonist in the storybook version, is replaced here by a hyper-capitalist pig, the best known non-kosher animal of the lot. Although, Cassenbaum explains, ‘in my mind, all the characters are Jewish, even the pig, who as a city boy who made a lot of money under Thatcher, maybe isn’t so open about his Jewishness.’

“Cassenbaum, a former street performer … was interested ‘in how we could hold both things – something that was really British, all the panto techniques, but something that also felt unashamedly Jewish. With panto, you have to pick from the canon of fairytales. Red Riding Hood is such a short story, you’re not so set with the script. I wanted to make something that can hold Jewish traditions, dense Jewish jokes and reflect certain Jewish archetypes, so you’ll see the ex-black-cab driver and a wolf who is a neurotic mess.’ …

“It mirrors the generational Jewish experience – and the immigrant humor that accompanies it. ‘Humor is our biggest cultural export. It’s truth humor,’ says Josh Glanc, an award-winning Australian comedian who plays the pig. …

” ‘In British popular theatre, Jews were there from the [beginning] – Bud Flanagan (who sang the theme tune to Dad’s Army), writers Barry Cryer and Marty Feldman – but they weren’t “out.” Then, with more modern comedians, like Matt Lucas and Sacha Baron Cohen, the Jewishness is secondary to the joke. Through it all, there’s something about using community and humor as a way of fitting in and being part of things, a means of assimilation.’

“Gemma Barnett, who plays Red, agrees. ‘It’s intense self-awareness,’ she says. … ‘Red’s constantly trying to work out if she believes what her mum believes. I love the character.’ …

“East London-born musical director Josh Middleton, a world-leading klezmer (eastern and central European Jewish folk) musician, has given Streisand and other Jewish artists a klezmer flavor, via accordion and violin live on stage, as well as a lyrical rewrite and song sheet, in pure panto style. …

“ ‘Let’s take the premise of rewriting pop songs, because that’s what people expect at panto, but let’s do people of Jewish descent. … I want them to recognize the songs and enjoy that familiarity, and I want them to feel they’re at a Jewish panto,’ says Middleton.”

More at the Guardian, here. No paywall, but they do rely on donations.

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Train Layout’s Bark Miniatures

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 9, 2023| 2 Comments »

Photo: Elaine Velie.
The New York Botanical Garden’s annual Holiday Train Show features nearly 200 miniature landmarks, all made of natural materials. This miniature is the Guggenheim Museum.

Probably because gifts of toy trains have long been associated with Christmas, model train displays are big at the holiday season. When I was working at the Fed, I loved the seasonal layouts at nearby South Station. (See below.)

Now Elaine Velie is reporting at the art newspaper Hyperallergic about a particulticularly artistic setup in New York.

“Inside the New York Botanical Garden’s (NYBG) Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, a miniature Guggenheim Museum sports a mushroom-cap roof, the Statue of Liberty is made of palm fronds, and the Brooklyn Bridge is supported by a dizzyingly intricate arrangement of tiny twigs. The scaled-down landmarks are just a few of the nearly 200 NYC buildings constructed using natural materials at NYBG’s annual Holiday Train Show, where around 20 doll-size conductors barrel and weave over a half-mile of track.

“The show begins outdoors, where trains circle jagged mountains and zoom above giant snowdrop flowers and rabbits in a fairytale-style enchanted forest, carting pinecones, bark, and acorn tops.

Photo: New York Botanical Garden.

“Laura Busse Dolan runs the Applied Imagination company that creates the structures in the exhibition. Dolan’s father, Paul Busse, founded Applied Imagination in 1991, and a year later, the botanical models maker displayed 15 buildings in NYBG’s first Holiday Train Show. Each year, a team of 15 artists adds new work to the show, and NYBG changes the exhibition’s layout and plantings. …

“This year’s train show is the biggest to date and stars Coney Island’s long-gone giant elephant, Manhattan’s demolished old Penn Station, Hudson Valley mansions, a miniature Central Park, and a host of museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick, and the Guggenheim, among other structures.

“ ‘I think Frank Lloyd Wright would very much approve of this,’ Dolan said of the mini-Guggenheim made of ‘cobbled together’ pieces of shell fungus. Another standout is a copy of NYBG’s Mertz Library. It’s decorated with black walnuts that an NYBG staff member collected. …

“The grand finale can be found in the conservatory pond room. City landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Staten Island Ferry, the Plaza Hotel, and even the Oculus float on the stagnant water and line the stone fountain. …

“ ‘We’re in awe of the beauty,’ [visitor Mary] Trester said. ‘And the craft of the artists — the attention to detail and everything they do.’

“The Holiday Train Show is open through January 15, 2024.”

Extraordinary pictures at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall.

Photo: Suzanne’s Mom.
Model train at South Station Boston.

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