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Black Bears Return

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 8, 2022| 21 Comments »

Photo: Stanley Forman.
A bear seen in Middleton in August represents the surprising Massachusetts black-bear comeback.

I’m sure you know it’s Fat Bear Week and time to vote on your favorite grizzly based on how successful the bear has been fattening up to hibernate.

Everybody loves bears — almost as much as dinosaurs. The advantage is that bears are still around. In fact, in today’s story we learn about a bear comeback. One caveat: it’s not safe to play with bears, anymore than with dinosaurs.

Billy Baker at the Boston Globe reports that black bears, once nearly extinct in Massachusetts, have staged their comeback without any help from wildlife officers.

“The story of the black bear that is coming to a suburb near you begins one day in the fall of 1969,” Baker reports, “when two bears showed up along a road in the northern Berkshires, in the tiny town of Florida, and appeared to be drunk.

“Back then, black bears were barely hanging on in Massachusetts, at the losing end of a 12,000-year fight with humans and [development], and the tiny population of survivors was believed to live somewhere nearby, along the border with Vermont.

“Still, these two bears were different. They hung around, happy for the crowds that came to watch them. Game wardens said the ‘tipsy bears,’ as they became known, were drunk from too many apples fermenting in their bellies.

Wardens even went so far as to briefly close the hunting season to give the bears time to ‘sober up’ before someone took a shot at them.

“Ultimately, it turned out the bears were comfortable around humans because they were semi-tame, raised by a guy in Shelburne as a roadside attraction for his gift shop on the Mohawk Trail, then released when he couldn’t afford to feed them. But all the fanfare forced the state’s wildlife experts to acknowledge that ‘we didn’t really know anything about bears in Massachusetts, other than there are some,’ according to Jim Cardoza, then a young biologist for MassWildlife.

“Thus began a five-decade effort to understand and conserve black bears in the state, a project that has succeeded beyond most people’s wildest dreams. …

“Starting in 1970, just after the ‘tipsy bears,’ the state shortened the bear hunting season to a single week, from 10 weeks since the early 1950s, and tasked Cardoza with figuring out how many bears lived in Massachusetts and the history that brought them there.

” ‘I was able to learn that at the time of Colonial settlement, bears were widespread in the state, except for very Southeastern Massachusetts and the islands,’ Cardoza said. But as settlement advanced inland to the Connecticut River Valley and the Berkshires, bears saw their forest habitat turned into farms, and their status lowered from king to pest; farmers could, and still can, legally kill any bear destroying their crops, at any time.

“They nearly disappeared in the decades between the end of the Civil War and the onset of hunting regulations in the early 20th century. By the mid-1970s, when Cardoza finished his study, he estimated there were only 80 to 100 bears in the state, all in the Berkshires. With such a small base, conservation goals were modest.

“ ‘The dream would have been to see them get established in western Franklin and Hampshire County,’ he said, but worried even that was a stretch. It wasn’t.

“By the early 90s, bears were thriving in the western part of the state, with an estimated 1,000 throughout the Berkshires and nearby hill towns. At the time, the Connecticut River was seen as a natural barrier to the east for all but the most adventurous young males. Yet over the next three decades, as the bear population in Western Massachusetts became more concentrated, females crossed the river in search of unoccupied territories, spreading throughout Central Mass., crossing endless natural and man-made barriers, including highways here, there, and everywhere.

“By 2011, the last time the state attempted a proper bear census, their numbers had grown to about 5,000. More incredible was how they were doing it, showing time and again an incredible resourcefulness, especially among breeding females, who figured out how to raise young in the woods behind a Target. …

“ ‘The expansion east is just a natural phenomenon of population expansion,’ said John Organ, a conservation scholar and former University of Massachusetts professor who recently joined the board of MassWildlife. ‘Bears are territorial, so those bears that are entering the population are looking for new unoccupied territories, and much of the state has returned to habitat where they can do quite well, even into Eastern Massachusetts.’ …

“If there’s anything biologists have learned in these five decades of studying bears, it’s that there is no overestimating their resourcefulness.

” ‘We had very little to do with [their success]. Bears are just extraordinary animals,’ said John McDonald, a professor at Westfield State University who did his doctoral research on Massachusetts black bears three decades ago. ‘What’s been satisfying is to see our predictions come true.’ …

“They’ve learned to live around people almost entirely without incident. The reverse cannot be said; with no natural predators, humans remain the chief source of bear mortality. Between 25 and 65 are killed by vehicle collisions each year, according to state environmental police records, but the actual number is likely much higher.

“Hunters now have three seasons when they can target black bear, but it remains a fringe pursuit, largely due to the extreme difficulty, after the state outlawed the use of traps, snares, bait, and dogs to hunt them. Most of the 200-250 bears harvested each year are by opportunistic hunters in tree stands waiting for deer.

“Yet as the number of bears increases, MassWildlife has stepped up efforts to get more hunters into the woods pursuing them, both to thin the population and to keep them from losing their fear of humans. …

“The best way to keep the bears at bay is exceedingly simple, specialists said: Get rid of birdfeeders and put electric fencing around chicken coops. They are the two biggest attractants to backyards and hardly anyone had either a few decades ago.”

Oh, dear! Give up my birdfeeder? I am a block from the train and my town is almost urban. Probably I will never see a bear here. If I do, good-bye birdfeeder. More at the Globe, here.

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Beavers to the Rescue

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 7, 2022| 8 Comments »

Photo: Svetozar Cenisev/ Unsplash.
When vegetation that beavers flood is dying, neighbors object to the smell. But often they like the lake that comes later.

There was a woman in my town who was up in arms about beavers flooding part of her property to build a dam. That is, she was angry until the odor of dying grasses dissipated and a beautiful lake appeared.

According to Catrin Einhorn at the New York Times, farmers out West are finding other reasons to appreciate the work of beavers.

She reports, “Horace Smith blew up a lot of beaver dams in his life. A rancher here in northeastern Nevada, he waged war against the animals, frequently with dynamite. Not from meanness or cruelty; it was a struggle over water. Mr. Smith blamed beavers for flooding some parts of his property, Cottonwood Ranch, and drying out others.

“But his son Agee, who eventually took over the ranch, is making peace. And he says welcoming beavers to work on the land is one of the best things he’s done.

“ ‘They’re very controversial still,’ said Mr. Smith, whose father died in 2014. ‘But it’s getting better. People are starting to wake up.’

“As global warming intensifies droughts, floods and wildfires, Mr. Smith has become one of a growing number of ranchers, scientists and other ‘beaver believers’ who see the creatures not only as helpers, but as furry weapons of climate resilience.

Last year, when Nevada suffered one of the worst droughts on record, beaver pools kept his cattle with enough water.

“When rains came strangely hard and fast, the vast network of dams slowed a torrent of water raging down the mountain, protecting his hay crop. And with the beavers’ help, creeks have widened into wetlands that run through the sagebrush desert, cleaning water, birthing new meadows and creating a buffer against wildfires.

“True, beavers can be complicated partners. They’re wild, swimming rodents the size of basset hounds with an obsession for building dams. When conflicts arise, and they probably will, you can’t talk it out.

“Beavers flood roads, fields, timber forests and other areas that people want dry. They fell trees without a thought as to whether humans would prefer them standing. In response to complaints, the federal government killed almost 25,000 beavers last year.

“But beavers also store lots of water for free, which is increasingly crucial in the parched West. And they don’t just help with drought. Their engineering subdues torrential floods from heavy rains or snowmelt by slowing water. It reduces erosion and recharges groundwater. And the wetlands beavers create may have the extra benefit of stashing carbon out of the atmosphere.

“In addition to all that, the rodents do environmental double duty, because they also tackle another crisis unleashed by humans: rampant biodiversity loss. Their wetlands are increasingly recognized for creating habitat for myriad species, from salmon to sage grouse.

“Beavers, you might say, are having a moment. In Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management is working with partners to build beaver-like dams that they hope real beavers will claim and expand. In California, the new state budget designates about $1.5 million a year to restoring the animals for climate resiliency and biodiversity benefits.

“ ‘We need to get beavers back to work,’ Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary of natural resources, said in a webinar this year. ‘Full employment for beavers.’ (Beaver believers like to note that the animals work for free.) …

“Instead of killing beavers, the federal government should be embracing them as an important component of federal climate adaptation, according to two scientists who study beavers and hydrology, Chris Jordan of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, and Emily Fairfax of California State University Channel Islands.

“ ‘It may seem trite to say that beavers are a key part of a national climate action plan, but the reality is that they are a force of 15-40 million highly skilled environmental engineers,’ Dr. Jordan and Dr. Fairfax wrote this year in a perspective article in the research journal WIREs Water. …

“When human-beaver conflicts arise, they can be addressed without killing the animals, experts say. Paint and fencing can protect trees from gnawing. Systems like the Beaver Deceiver secretly undo their handiwork with pipes that drain water from beaver settlements even when the animals keep building. Such measures are actually a more effective solution than removing the animals, according to advocates, because new beavers tend to move into empty habitat.

“If coexistence is impossible, a growing number of groups and private businesses are seeking to relocate, rather than kill, nuisance beavers.

“ ‘We put the nuisance in air quotes,’ said Molly Alves, a wildlife biologist with the Tulalip Tribes, a federally recognized tribal organization just north of Seattle that moves unwanted beavers to land managed by the United States Forest Service.

“The group’s impetus was a desire to expand the extraordinary habitat that beavers offer salmon, a culturally and economically important species. When they started in 2014, the Tulalip Tribes had to invoke their sovereign treaty rights to relocate beavers because doing so was illegal in their area under Washington State law. After a lobbying push, beaver relocation is now legal statewide and the tribes are advising state officials on a program to train others in best practices.”

More at the Times, here. Hat tip: John.

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Square Dancing in Australia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 6, 2022| 6 Comments »

Photo: Stef King.
Members of the venerable Gidgegannup’s square dance club near Perth have begun teaching the moves to a new generation.

The topic of square dancing brings both happy memories and uncomfortable ones. The uncomfortable occasions were the result of my mother trying to manage my social life by pressing into service a philosophy professor whose many avocations included square-dance calling. That meant that I, an uncool teenager, had to invite kids I barely knew to an old-fashioned kind of party under her watchful eye.

But in and of themselves, square dances are loads of fun, and I usually got into it despite my reluctance. There’s one I remember as awkward that my little sister remembered as magical.

Today’s story is about square dancing in Australia and how the seniors who love the camaraderie and the exercise are trying to introduce the tradition to a new generation.

Emily Wind writes at the Guardian, “Less than an hour north east of Perth sits Gidgegannup, a small township known for its picturesque hiking trails and agricultural shows – plus a vibrant square dancing community that has endured through the decades.

“Despite the challenges of Covid-19 and declining membership, passionate members of the town’s square dancing club have kept the tradition well and truly alive.

“ ‘We like to see people having a go at square dancing,’ club caller Ken Pike says.

“ ‘It doesn’t matter what age, what race, color, creed or religion … you’re all the same once you’re on the square dance floor and we just want people to have fun.’

“Pike resurrected the Gidgegannup Square Dance Club in 1985 after it closed in the late 70s. He did so after members of the local Country Women’s Association branch showed a keen interest in learning. …

“A square dance involves four couples (eight dancers) dancing together in a square formation. Rather than having to remember a complete routine, dancers only need to learn specific moves that are shouted out by the ‘caller’ in different variations.

“The Gidgegannup club hosts fortnightly dances, each with a different theme. … Rosemary Corbin, the president of the club, said there were about 60 people at the western dance, with many traveling from Perth. …

“Carol and John Parsons first saw an ad for square dancing in the local paper in 1979. They went along and gave it a go with their two daughters and are still going along each fortnight. … For the couple, now both in their 80s, square dancing not only provides them with a fun social activity, but real health benefits by keeping active.

‘Our doctor is thrilled with us; she doesn’t have to worry about us because we get plenty of exercise,’ Parsons said. ‘It is very important for your mental health as well.’

“One of the appeals of square dancing is that it can be done anywhere; once you know the moves, you can attend any club in Australia – or around the world – and dance with strangers as if you’re old friends.

“While there are some dedicated dancers who have attended the Gidgegannup club for decades, numbers have declined in recent years and the group is eager to see more young people get involved so the next generation can learn the moves.”

I actually know someone in Massachusetts who joined community square dancing after her divorce and met a guy there who also thought it might be a fun way to meet people. They have been together for decades now. I don’t know if they are still square dancing.

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall.

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Kenyan Women Keeping the Peace

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 5, 2022| 2 Comments »

Photo: Paul Stremple.
Beatrice Karore, a community leader involved in peace building during Kenya’s elections, stands outside a local vocational college in Mathare that served as a polling station.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Often they are women. We know that not all women are peacemakers, but many are. They see where differences of opinion can get out of hand and take action.

Today’s article is about peacemakers in Kenya trying to change the pattern of violent election periods. The story was written before the country’s Supreme Court made its decision on the recount. If you can’t stand suspense, skip to the end.

Mukelwa Hlatshwayo writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “The Kenyan presidential elections are over, but peace campaigner Beatrice Karore’s work is not done.

“One recent cloudy morning in Nairobi, the founder of Wanawake Mashinani – Swahili for Grassroots Women – walks to her office in Mathare, one of the most densely populated slum areas in the Kenyan capital. 

“Sliding a heavy-duty padlock off a thick metal door, Ms. Karore and her team file into the tiny room that serves as their headquarters, and sit on blue plastic chairs. Over loud music blaring from a nearby shop, Ms. Karore begins with a prayer for a good ‘walk for the peace’ ahead.

“Ms. Karore is one of dozens of grassroots peace activists across the country who sprang into action in the months leading up to Kenya’s Aug. 9 presidential elections. Now, as the country waits for a final verdict on disputed results, that work has become increasingly important.

“The Supreme Court is due to hand down a judgment on Sept. 5, after opposition candidate Raila Odinga challenged official results that showed him losing to William Ruto by a margin of 200,000 votes. A former prime minister, Mr. Odinga has blamed five previous presidential election losses on rigging – claims that have sparked deadly riots in the past. 

“For now, an uneasy calm is holding. But some campaigners fear the Supreme Court verdict could yet unleash the violence that followed disputed polls in 2007, when more than 1,200 people were killed, and again in 2017, when more than 100 people died. 

“As her team walk out of their modest office into narrow passageways crammed with shacks, Ms. Karore says she knows the current lull is far from guaranteed. ‘We [are still] doing peace campaigns to empower the community,’ she says.

‘We realized that when there is no peace, everyone loses.’ …

“Some analysts believe that the relatively peaceful election campaign, in which the main candidates ran on social and economic issues, rather than demanding voters’ ethnic loyalty, points to a maturing democracy. 

“Widely touted reforms to the electoral process, including the effective registration of voters in the diaspora, may have given more Kenyans a sense of greater transparency. And battered by two years of COVID-19 lockdowns and rising costs of living, most Kenyans would prefer to accept the Supreme Court verdict than go to an election rerun, analysts say. …

“The manner in which Kenyans navigate the decision by the court will set a precedent for future disputes across Africa. … Even if the fragile peace holds, electoral watchers caution it will take more than one election cycle to show Kenya has left violence in the past. …

“For the past two presidential elections, Ms. Karore’s team has organized the kind of ‘holistic’ monitoring that Kenya’s human rights commission says will transform how communities like Mathare – which typically bear the brunt of any unrest – participate in the post-electoral process. Wanawake Mashinani has held several community meetings at which faith-based leaders have encouraged people to remain calm. It’s given safety tips to residents on election day. 

“And in a neighborhood that’s neglected by officials, where violence, drug abuse, and crime are prevalent, perhaps the group’s most important work is also the simplest: It checks in on residents and listens without judgment. 

“On this August morning ‘peace walk,’ Ms. Karore stops first to talk to a group of women selling hair-care products outside a corrugated iron-roof shack. Speaking in Swahili, she asks them how they are and how things have been since the elections. The discussion is light and jovial; the women laugh at a joke about a fake flour scandal doing the rounds in Mathare. 

“One vendor, a young woman called Kim, says that things have been quiet and business has been slower. She tells the group they are glad major protests didn’t break out after the results were announced, because that would have meant they would have lost everything. 

“ ‘Anything small can trigger violence on the streets,’ Ms. Karore says. ‘Many people leave their homes and go to rural areas at this time, or where people of their same tribe live.’

“Research has shown that when marginalized communities feel that their favorite candidate loses an election due to irregularities, they are more likely to resort to violence. Human rights organizations say the unrest often breaks out along ethnic and identity lines. …

“As Ms. Karore and her team walk deeper into the township, checking in on neighbors and store owners, they are greeted by passersby who recognize them from previous door-to-door visits.

“Buoyed by the work of peace campaigners across Kenya as a whole, the political atmosphere has been significantly calmer than in two previous elections. A range of activists, from artists to religious leaders, have been galvanized into action in recent months. A campaign by artists in Kibera, Kenya’s largest township, displays works that celebrate the country’s ethnic diversity. Another group of activists organized a ‘peace caravan’ across the country, carrying messages urging voters to remain calm during the heated polls.

“Still, violence and intimidation persist. … In Mathare, Reagan Victor Ondigo says he barely escaped with his life when a mob of men tried to burn down his home as he and his family slept. … He blames politicians for whipping up ethnic grievances, but he’s cautiously hopeful that those perceptions are slowly changing.

“ ‘I hope that my daughter will know that freedom is there,’ he says.”

Looks like Kenya’s Supreme Court decision was accepted by both sides. More at the Monitor, here.

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Wisdom of a Water-Poor Nation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 4, 2022| 8 Comments »

A sheep farmer in northern Jordan fills up water containers for his flock at a spring that for generations has been used to water livestock — Souf, Jordan, Aug. 24, 2022.

Either there is too much water or too little. In New England, where I live, there’s a drought, but when we get a heavy rain, the roads flood, the storm drains overflow, and instead of water going into the places where we need it, it washes into the sea.

Today’s story shares advice on water from those who have had little over the centuries and have learned to conserve.

Taylor Luck reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “In towns and cities across Jordan, ‘water day’ announces itself with a cacophony of high-pitched screeches filling the air. Motors groan and strain to pump a trickle of water from ground-level pipes up five stories to aluminum and plastic rooftop storage tanks – tanks that will hold a family’s water for an entire week or more.

“Families race to and fro across their apartments to run the pumps, do laundry, wash dishes, and water the garden before their 12-hour period is up. If they miss it, they have to wait until the next week – or perhaps weeks – for the next trickle.

‘Water day is more important than an anniversary or birthday in our household,’ says Um Uday, a working mother of five in West Amman.

“In Jordan, the second-most water-poor country in the world, people have long learned to live without the constant running water that most American families take for granted. Yet the dwindling resources due to climate change and population growth mean the most effective innovation in parched Jordan is not novel water distribution schemes, technology, or dam construction – but how people change their daily lives to get the most out of each drop. …

“In largely arid Jordan, water resources are less than 90 cubic meters (almost 24,000 gallons) per person annually, a fraction of the 500 cubic meters (about 132,000 gallons) per capita the United Nations defines as ‘absolute water scarcity.’

“Instead of supplying constantly running water, authorities release water through networks to a given village or neighborhood for one day on a weekly or twice-monthly basis as part of a rotation. The water distribution schedule is designed to distribute water equally in different parts of the country, without waste, while maximizing the rapidly diminishing reserves. …

“Suleiman, a retired air force officer who gave only his first name, stops his pickup at a roadside natural spring in the village of Souf, 35 miles north of Amman, to fill containers for his thirsty flock of sheep. As they have for generations, area residents come to this spring to stock up on water for livestock or washing; a second, purer, cold-water spring 2 miles up the hill is used for drinking water. With official water distributed to the village for a few hours once a month in the summer, these springs have become a main source. …

“Suleiman says, wiping his brow from the noon sun., ‘We have to make the most of each water source we have.’

“Yet this year has been particularly hard; Jordan’s Ministry of Water and Irrigation described 2022 as ‘the most difficult year’ yet. A shift in weather patterns means Jordan is witnessing a slight decline in rainfall. The rainfall it now receives occurs in intense, shorter time periods in concentrated areas, leaving its network of dams struggling to catch the torrential runoff.

“The dams are dry or nearing dry; green patches of earth mark where once mighty reservoirs stood. Plans to desalinate seawater at Aqaba, the nation’s only port, are two decades off at best and are costly. … With the capital getting priority for dam and aquifer water, towns and villages north and south of Amman bear the brunt of shortages – often going months without fresh supplies as summer demand spikes.  

“Um Mohamed, a widowed mother of four in Bayt Idis, a hilly, tree-dotted village in northern Jordan, heads one of thousands of households going without state-supplied water for the summer.

“On this day she purchased from a licensed private well 3 cubic meters (792.5 gallons) for $21 – enough for her family’s weekly consumption, but taking 15% of her monthly income. She will try to make it last one month. Like many, she is sticking to tried-and-true methods to stretch out each drop.

“She does the dishes in a single bucket of water placed in the sink, careful not to splash out of the bucket. Once she soaps and rinses the pots, dishes, and silverware, she pours the food-clouded water onto a few of her plants, watering in a rotation.

“Showers are timed and scheduled. Laundry is hand-washed in a large plastic basin utilizing the same water. Her backyard is dotted with jugs and buckets filled with water from her purchase; they will be used to water the plants and wash the floors over the next two weeks.

“ ‘We have entire summers where we don’t get water from authorities, so we have to rely on ourselves,’ she says. ‘If we don’t manage what we consume, then we consume ourselves.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Want to read a novel about building a well in a dry land? Try Red-Haired Woman by Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. It’s kind of dark, though.

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Saving Rohingya Storytelling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Oxfam.
Folktales help preserve the threatened Rohingya culture.

To understand anything about a foreign culture, you need to turn to its arts: the music, the crafts, the folktales, for example.

Stephen Snyder at PRI’s the World reports about a threatened culture holding on by a thread far from home: “Mohammed Rezuwan is on a rescue mission: The 24-year-old who lives in Cox’s Bazar — the world’s largest refugee camp — is working to save Rohingya traditional stories before a generation of storytellers dies off.

“Rohingya people have lived in the region for over a thousand years, but Myanmar’s government considers them foreigners from neighboring Bangladesh. Over the last four years, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been driven out of Myanmar [Burma] by government troops and local militias. Many now live in dozens of refugee camps.

“ ‘We, Rohingya people, have our own culture, tradition. We are on the brink of losing all of them, unfortunately,’ Rezuwan said in a WhatsApp voice message from Kutupalong, one of more than two dozen encampments in Cox’s Bazar, on the coast of Bangladesh.

“The crowded area accommodates families who live in tents and shelters along narrow alleyways. United Nations figures put the exile population in the camp at nearly a million — four times the number of Rohingya still living in Myanmar.

“Rezuwan lives in a bamboo shelter with his wife, his mother, a brother and a sister. The family fled their home in Maung Daw, in the Rakhine district of Myanmar, on Aug. 25, 2017, as their village was set ablaze in a campaign that has forced most Rohingya out of Rakhine.

“ ‘I remember the gunshots ringing out like thunderclaps, the bullets strafing the sky like clouds of hungry locusts,’ Rezuwan wrote in the author’s note of his book, Rohingya Folktales: Stories from Arakan, as told by Rohingya refugees. …

“In 2020, after several years at Cox’s Bazar, he took on the role of folklorist — recording stories passed along in the oral tradition by Rohingya elders. …

“Rezuwan speaks his native Rohingya and learned to speak and write Burmese in school, but his English is largely self-taught. He spent a year collecting material for his English-language book, and the online version now includes 19 stories from storytellers in several of Cox’s Bazar’s camps.

“Research was no easy task. Rezuwan doesn’t have a car or bike, so he walked, sometimes up to five miles, to meet with each storyteller and record his or her story on the phone. …

“ ‘The hardest part is finding and meeting the people from different sorts of camps,’ Rezuwan said. ‘After all, not everyone has the same talents to remember the stories — just because they are uneducated — and so, finding the right person to tell the story was finding a gem from the ocean.’

“The Rohingya language is primarily spoken, without a standardized written script. Rezuwan translated the stories by playing back his recordings and, word by word, constructing English versions of the tales. He then pasted them into WhatsApp and sent them to his editor and friend, Alex Ebsary, in Buffalo, New York, who corrected grammar and word usage. Ebsary said he intentionally edited the stories with a light touch.

“ ‘Folktales are not a universal language,’ he said in a phone interview.

‘If you read these folktales, some of them are quirky. They’re kind of not even the morals that I would think of when thinking of a folktale.’ …

“Rezuwan said his mother used to tell him the story known as ‘A Hunter and a Flock of Heron.’ The version he collected from Rashid Ahmod, a 60-year-old resident of Kutapalong, was essentially the same story he heard as a boy, he said.

“The story is about a hunter who catches a group of beautiful herons in his net. The herons all try to escape by flying around in all directions, Ebsary explained. Rezuwan said the moral of the story is that birds — and people — can’t manage to go anywhere until they cooperate.

“Rezuwan and Ebsary both singled out a story from the collection called ‘A Queen’s Dream,’ which could serve as an allegory for Rohingya as an ethnic minority.

“The story is about a powerful queen who has a vivid dream about torrential rains after a period of drought. Everyone who drinks from the rain loses their minds. So the queen sends advisers to warn everyone.

“ ‘But of course, they don’t listen and everyone drinks the rain and goes mad. And in the end, the queen decides to join them by drinking the rain herself,’ Rezuwan said.

“The moral of the story is that if a country’s majority are wrongdoers, they have the power to ‘force [the] entire country into a very bad situation,’ Rezuwan said. ‘It’s what we are facing right now.’

“Rohingya have long faced discrimination and marginalization in their home country. The United Nations has called it ‘a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.’ If life in Myanmar was untenable, Rezuwan said, ‘in [the] camps, it seems like we are facing the second genocide.’

​​”Since coming to Kutupalong, Rezuwan has organized an educational network where Rohingya children — unable to attend schools — can follow the same curriculum taught in Myanmar. …

“ ‘I wanted the international community to know about our culture, about tradition and about the existence of Rohingya people in Arakan,’ he said.

“Arakan, the name Rohingya people give to their homeland in Myanmar, no longer appears on any maps of the region.”

More at PRI’s the World, here. There is no firewall. You can also listen to the recording of the show there.

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Guest Housing for Performers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 2, 2022| 2 Comments »

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle.
Mark Morrisette, facilities director, and Susie Medak, managing director of Berkeley Rep, at a building that will host performers in the pricey Bay area.

Every day, it seems, I read a story on how the current cost of housing affects a different group of people. Yesterday it was about elderly people in Rhode Island becoming homeless and advocates asking the governor to lift local restrictions to house them.

Today it’s about arts leaders using their characteristic creativity to figure out a solution for visiting performers in one of the most expensive regions in America.

Lily Janiak  reports at the San Francisco Chronicle, “Across the breezeway from Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s new Medak Center, fuchsia light from the set of the new musical Goddess streamed through an open loading bay door, like a portal to Narnia.

“Such a sight might frequently greet the company’s out-of-town actors, directors, designers and playwrights — as well as its fellows, Berkeley Rep’s interns — when they wake up each morning and walk next door to work from their new home.

“But the 42,885-square-foot, $26.2 million center, which plans to host a dedication ceremony on Sept. 3, isn’t just about short commutes. It marks a historic and visionary investment in artist housing in a region with ballooning real estate costs.

“Berkeley Rep’s outgoing managing director, Susie Medak, the center’s namesake and the driving force behind its construction, remembers when housing out-of-town artists cost the company $300,000 to $400,000 per year. These days it’s more like $2 million. Before the pandemic postponed the most recent season opening, Berkeley Rep had committed to paying for 7,000 nights at a nearby Marriott hotel for this past year. …

She remembers when housing out-of-town artists cost the company $300,000 to $400,000 per year. These days it’s more like $2 million.

“Assuring comfort and quiet was another objective for the Medak Center. In a university town, a living situation that looked promising during daylight hours might be beset by 3 a.m. parties.

“ ‘I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had to move actors in the middle of a run,’ Medak said.

“The new center, located next door to Berkeley Rep’s Roda and Peet’s theater, has 45 units with capacity for 128 occupants. Fellows will share three-bedroom units. When Berkeley Rep’s not using those rooms, it plans to rent them to other nonprofits. …

“The building also features a classroom and a studio workshop space, which could host anything from movement classes to small experimental performances. … Other amenities include new storage space, a third-floor terrace with gardening beds for organic produce for residents, and a covered loading dock for the theaters so crews no longer have to load and unload sets while exposed to the rain.

“The building has key-card access, laundry on every floor and full kitchens in every unit. It’s also Gold LEED-certified for environmental efficiency.

“A trendy gray palette marks the interior. For one wall of the exterior, Berkeley Rep has commissioned a four-story mural by Oakland artist Cece Carpio to honor Ohlone peoples, on whose ancestral and unceded lands Berkeley Rep now sits.

“The theater has owned the property where the Medak Center was built since 1991, but for years it contained an empty lot and a warehouse. The project was a decades-long dream until Signature Bank helped finance it. The theater company finally broke ground in 2019.

“One comparable local facility is the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Ute and William K. Bowes Jr. Center for Performing Arts, which opened in 2020 and can house 400 conservatory students and 10 visiting artists, as well as 52 students from the San Francisco Ballet School. Those students pay for rooms, however, while Berkeley Rep’s fellows get free housing as part of their contract as workers.

“ ‘The Bowes Center brought together a range of our ambitions: positioning the institution right in the middle of Civic Center, providing much needed additional performance and teaching space, giving our students beautiful, safe accommodations in a place where they can work and live,’ said President David H. Stull.

“That means, for example, a guest artist such as superstar Chinese pianist Yuja Wang might live and create and record music in the same building as students. …

“The San Francisco Ballet School has been able to increase student beds from 40 to 52 since the Bowes Center opened, said Jennie Scholick, director of education and training.  And now that students live right next to where they take classes, as opposed to a bus ride away in Pacific Heights, the school can accept younger students.

“At Berkeley Rep … the company’s first fellows [were] set to move into the new building Sept. 26, followed by visiting artists in Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor program, and then the cast and creative team for Wuthering Heights later in the fall.

“The board’s commitment to the Medak Center through pandemic delays and uncertainty, Medak said, was ‘the greatest statement of our intent to exist on the other side of this pandemic. Building this building is a statement of optimism.’ ”

It’s not something every city will have the priorities or resources to tackle, but it’s an inspiring idea, don’t you think? More at the San Francisco Chronicle, here.

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Still Plenty of Photo Ops

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2022| 7 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
My teabag tag: “The difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment.” In fall, it hits us that wild asters are flowers. Bees go bananas for them. The bees knew all along.

Happy October. Time to gather recent photos to share. I use only my phone for photography, I’m sorry to say, so if you want to see what a real camera can do with nature scenes in my region, check out bloggers like jmankowsky and her site From My Window, here.

The first two pictures below are by Sandra M. Kelly and were taken at the Painted Rock in New Shoreham, Rhode Island.

In the Massachusetts town where I live, there are lots of painted doors, an Umbrella Arts initiative. The one pictured, over by the parking lot for two childhood homes of Louisa May Alcott (the Wayside and the Orchard House), features four kinds of poems for the four seasons.

The next two photos were taken at the Umbrella’s annual woodland art show. The theme this year had to do with getting out of balance with nature. The problem is, most of the artists thought they had to use a lot of plastic to express themselves on the topic. John and the kids and I really didn’t like all the plastic. The real-life frogs in the wetlands were fun though.

The mural off Thoreau Street has been wearing well. I wrote about its development in 2012, here.

I loved the sign at my older granddaughter’s soccer game. Also loved hearing blogger Will McMillan, Carole Bundy, and Molly Ruggles (not shown) singing at Porchfest.

In the second-to-last picture, Boston’s Post Office Square is a lovely urban oasis. And I close with shots of the boat house and the nearly dry Sudbury River in September.

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Artists Bonding at Potlucks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 30, 2022| 3 Comments »

Photo: Jon Swihart.
Belly dancer performance and artist lecture at a potluck in Santa Monica. (The potluck founders are moving to a state where they will have to remember to call a potluck “hot dish.”)

A sense of community is important to us all. Today’s story is about artists in California using the act of breaking bread together as a way to build bonds and reduce isolation.

“When artists Jon Swihart and Kimberly Merrill move from Santa Monica to Minneapolis … they will be leaving behind both a cherished home and a remarkable artistic and social legacy. Inspired by their friends Mark Ryden and Marion Peck’s recent move out of state, the couple decided it was time for a change. …

“Paying the home’s mortgage for decades solely by working as an artist is something Jon considers one of his greatest accomplishments. Another is the role he played — along with Kim — in hosting 162 potlucks in their verdant backyard, each one featuring artists or other creative producers who spoke about their life and work.

“ ‘Painting can be so isolating,’ Jon notes. ‘So sometime in the late 1980s I started inviting artists over to the house to talk about their work. Word spread quickly and people started asking if they could join us. The potlucks officially launched in 2003 after we became a couple. At Kim’s suggestion we started using the backyard — and supplying plates and plastic cutlery — and things really took off.’ By the time COVID-19 forced Jon and Kim to discontinue them in 2020, the artist potlucks had taken on a life of their own, drawing as many as 200 people at a time from an email list of over 2,500 names. …

“The backyard potlucks followed a consistent formula that worked because so many people stepped up to contribute and help out. Around 6pm on a Saturday night, a long table filled up with potluck delicacies — both store bought and homemade — while a drink table was stocked with wine and beer. Jon and his tech crew would set up for the artist slideshow as Kim greeted visitors in her studio at the back of the house.

“The house itself, although only 1,300 square feet, was one of the attractions. Built in 1927, its tile floors, beamed ceilings, and arched doorways offered a sense of warmth and comfort. On top of that, Jon’s trove of antiques and art objects — which include a painting attributed to Jean-Léon Gérôme that was later authenticated on the show popular British TV show Fake or Fortune — provided sophisticated eye candy.

“Over time an extraordinary variety of artists stood under the lanterns in Jon and Kim’s backyard, discussing not just their work, but also the events and challenges of their lives.

‘I would tell the speakers to avoid art theory,’ Jon recalls, ‘and instead talk about how a passion for art sustained you through disasters and triumphs.’ …

“Every now and then a potluck broke the mold. At one unforgettable event, a group of fire-spitters recruited from the Venice Beach boardwalk performed on the sidewalk in front of the house, stopping traffic and astonishing the neighbors. Another off-the-charts event was art historian Gerald Ackerman’s talk, which was also a celebration of his 80th birthday. 

“As artist F. Scott Hess recalls: ‘Jerry, the world’s foremost authority on Jon’s favorite artist, Jean-Léon Gérôme, was a longtime friend of all of us. That night in Jon’s backyard there were theatrical recreations of Gérôme paintings, with costumes as close to the originals as was possible. And there was a belly dancer as well. Jerry was thrilled with the acting out of Gérôme’s ‘The Duel After the Masquerade,’ with Brian Apthorp as the wounded harlequin taking a good 10 minutes to die.

“To cap off the evening, Jerry was given a Gerald Ackerman Action Figure, in its original box, a creation of Peter Zokosky, with all the extras a topnotch art historian would need.

“The popularity of the potlucks brought innovations. Trekell Art Supplies began sending merchandise for one-dollar-ticket raffles that raised money to support the events. Artists also began to donate prints or small works of art to be included in the raffles. Artist Eric Davis soon began creating buttons that included a logo and event date along with the featured artist’s name and work. … Davis made between 40 and 100 buttons, which were given away for free: a total of over 7,500 in a span of 14 years.

“ ‘They were open events and anyone could come,’ Swihart comments. Art dealers, critics, students, and collectors began to attend, especially after Greg Escalante — a dealer and the founder of Juxtapoz Magazine — talked them up. Thousands of complete strangers streamed through the house. Amazingly, nothing was ever stolen, which gave Jon and Kim a new faith in humanity. …

“During many of the artist talks — held under strands of paper lamps and a glowing moon — there was absolute silence among the audience. The energy was positive, even magical, and artists who might have seemed unapproachable before laid themselves bare. Again and again the talks humanized artists by revealing them as people who had struggled and who, at some point, had been afraid to experiment with their art. 

“One notable speaker — Robert Williams, the legendary underground comic and ‘lowbrow’ artist — told the crowd how the dominance of Abstract Expressionism had inhibited the development of representational art when he was a student. Because Jon and Kim’s potlucks were not sponsored by an organization or institution, contrarian points of view, like those offered by Williams, were respected and even welcomed. … From Swihart’s point of view, having Robert Williams speak at a potluck was ‘like having Eric Clapton stop by to play in my garage band.’ …

“ It was a cauldron for friendships, conversation, networking, alchemy, and artistry,’ recalls Eric Davis. … Artist Peter Zokosky comments: ‘Even at the time, you knew something rare and miraculous was happening. Jon gave a forum to 100-plus artists over the years, and never once did he give a slideshow of his own work.’

“ ‘The potluck was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life,’ Jon states. ‘We had so many artists on our wishlist when COVID shut them down, but it was time to bring it to an end.’ ” 

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall.

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Farmer, Age 12

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 29, 2022| 10 Comments »

Photo: Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal.
Brayden Nadeau, seen here at age 10, shows off vegetables he grew on his grandfather’s land in Auburn, Maine.

How great to see a kid who’s into agriculture! Cathy Free at the Washington Post reports on a 12-year-old farmer in Maine who got hooked on farming at age 2. There’s a lot to ponder here about what a close relationship with a grandparent can lead to.

“Brayden Nadeau was 2 when he helped his grandpa steer a John Deere tractor, and he was 3 when he helped feed the hogs and chickens on the family farm in Minot, Maine.

“At age 5, when he was asked by his kindergarten teacher what he hoped to do for a living one day, nobody was surprised when Brayden said he was going to be a farmer, said his mother, Kari Nadeau. …

“Brayden, now 12 and in seventh grade, is already on his way to achieving his career goal. On his own initiative, he does much of the work on his grandfather Dan Herrick’s 25-acre farm, and on the 275 acres that neighbors let Herrick use to grow hay, Kari Nadeau said. Brayden plants, tends and harvests produce, and sells his bounty.

“For the past two years, he has run Brayden’s Vegetable Stand, selling fresh food such as corn, cabbage and tomatoes. He used his savings to buy a new store structure in May 2021 for about $7,000 and install it at the edge of his grandfather’s farm. He posts live updates on Facebook about what’s fresh each day.

“He works on the farm and at his store 10 hours a day in the summer, and four hours a day (mostly after school) when school is in session. He’ll restock his store before school at 7:30 a.m. and leave an honor box for customers to drop in their money.

“Brayden said he puts most of his earnings into savings, but uses some of the money to add improvements to his veggie stand, such as a new floor.

“ ‘I’ve become his employee,’ joked Herrick, 64, adding that he still harvests hay on the farm but has allowed Brayden to take over most other responsibilities. ‘I taught him the basics, and he took it from there. … Brayden pretty much runs the show now. [He] knows how to use the equipment better than I do.’

“Brayden said it’s his favorite way to spend his days. ‘I really enjoy it — even getting up at 5 in the morning,’ he said. ‘I’m not into video games and goofing around on my phone like some of my friends. I’d rather be busy on the farm.’ …

“Maine was among the top five states with declining farmland between 2012 and 2017, according to a survey done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In rural towns like Minot in southern Maine, many families eventually sell their farms or stop working the land because their children find other ways to make a living, said Herrick, who has farmed for most of his life.

“ ‘It’s a hard job, and you really have to enjoy doing it,’ he said. …

“Brayden’s sense of duty to the farm has also helped to foster a close relationship with his grandparents, said his grandmother, Marie Herrick, 60.

“ ‘Nobody has ever asked Brayden to do this — there’s just nowhere else he’d rather be,’ she said. ‘It’s been a joy all these years to watch him learn everything he can from Dan.’

“At 6:30 every morning, one of Brayden’s parents drives him two miles to the Herricks’ farm, and he goes to work.

“Brayden said he feeds the livestock (100 chickens, 60 pigs, 30 laying hens, 20 turkeys and six cows), cleans stalls, picks ripe produce and gathers eggs. Then he stocks the shelves in his vegetable stand, which he operates until Thanksgiving.

“Every spring, he said, he starts his vegetables from seed, then puts them into the ground. To make the task of caring for the plants easier, he recently bought a drip irrigation system with money he’d saved from his produce sales. …

“His customers said they look forward to seeing what he has to offer each day, from broccoli and tomatoes to eggplant and summer squash. Brayden also sells bacon and sausage made from his grandpa’s hogs and loaves of his grandma Marie’s fresh zucchini bread, as well as jars of her zucchini relish.

“ ‘Zucchini is probably the favorite thing I plant,’ he said. ‘It’s always been amazing to watch something grow from an itty-bitty seed.’

“Some of his customers feel the same way about watching Brayden grow.

“ ‘He’s the hardest-working kid I’ve ever known,’ said customer Wendy Simard, 48, who was also Brayden’s reading teacher at Minot Consolidated School. …

“Simard said that when she taught Brayden in first grade, he was drawn to books about farming, and liked drawing pictures of tractors, pigs and cows.

“ ‘Now he comes in to tell our pre-K students all about vegetables, and he’ll bring in a baby pig at the end of every year to show the kids,’ she said.”

More at the Post, here.

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Why You Need a Good Copyeditor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 28, 2022| 6 Comments »

William Shakespeare.
Even the Bard made mistakes.

Blogger Asakiyume and I met in the 1990s when we were both copyediting at a management magazine where a witchy person taught us the nitty gritty of the trade. There was another person who would argue with our capitalization, wording, or punctuation decisions by saying she had a PhD in English. As if that had anything at all to do with the work-a-day craft! Those of you who value good copyediting may get a kick out of today’s article from a site called the Millions.

Ed Simon writes that the work of print setter is the old days was “laborious, and for smaller fonts, such as those used in a Bible, the pieces could be just a millimeter across. Long hours and fatigue, repetitive motion and sprained wrists, dim light and strained eyes — mistakes were inevitable.

“The King James Version of the Bible has exactly 783,137 words, but unfortunately for the London print shop of Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, official purveyors to King Charles I, their 1631 edition left out three crucial letters, one crucial word — ‘not.’ As such, their version of Exodus 20:14 read, ‘Thou shalt commit adultery.’ …

“Literature’s history is a history of mistakes, errors, misapprehensions, simple typos. It’s the shadow narrative of expression — how we fail because of sloppiness, or ignorance, or simple tiredness. Blessed are the copyeditors. …

“A 1562 printing of the sternly doctrinaire translation the Geneva Bible prints Matthew 5:9 as ‘Blessed are the placemakers’ rather than ‘peacemakers’; an 1823 version of the King James replaced ‘damsels’ in Genesis 24:61 with ‘camels,’ and as late as 1944 a printing of that same translation rendered the ‘holy women, who trusted God … being in subjection to their own husbands’ in 1 Peter 3:5 as referring to those pious ladies listening to their ‘owl husbands.’

“But not all errors seemed as innocent. … A 1653 printing stated that it was the unrighteous who would inherit the earth, a 1716 edition records Jeremiah 31:34 as telling us to ‘sin on more,’ and a 1763 volume replaces the penultimate word ‘no’ with ‘a,’ so that Psalm 14:1 reads ‘the fool hath said in his heart there is a God.’ … In a 1612 errata … Psalm 119:161 had the first word of the line ‘Princes’ replaced, so that it now read, ‘Printers have persecuted me without cause.’ …

“Depending on whether ambiguity is a mistake or a strength, the law often codifies uncertainty. The U.S. Constitution isn’t particularly long — only a few pages — and yet it’s filled with grammatical and spelling errors, as well as confusing syntax that bedevils contemporary citizens. … Significant are the idiosyncrasies in punctuation: commas are placed between nouns and verbs, errant commas in the Second Amendment makes it unclear as to whether the right to bear arms is reserved for individuals or only ‘well regulated militias,’ and a semicolon in Article VI seems to invalidate the Constitution itself. ‘The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.’ Strictly speaking, the end stop of that semicolon implies that ‘all Treaties made,’ and not the Constitution, shall be the supreme law of the land, and yet we’ve always just assumed it’s an obvious typo. …

“Theodor Dreiser‘s An American Tragedy describes a pair of lovers as being ‘like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea,’ while Daniel Defoe tells us that Robinson Crusoe stripped naked, swam out to his sinking ship and retrieved supplies, which he then stored in his pockets on the returning laps. …

“For all his genius, the Bard was often uninformed or lazy, author of a veritable comedy of errors. The Winter’s Tale references landlocked Bohemia as having a coast. In Julius Caesar, Cassius uses a clock some 14 centuries before they were invented, and in The Two Gentlemen of Verona they sail from that titular city to Milan, a geographic impossibility. …

“In his 1816 poem, John Keats famously compares the experience of his first reading George Chapman‘s Homeric translations to being ‘like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/He stared at the Pacific,’ except the first European to see the western coast of that ocean was actually Vasco Núñez de Balboa. Did Keats just not know this, or was this intentional? Does the purposefulness or not of the inaccuracy matter to how we read the lyric? …   

” ‘A slip of the tongue can be amusing,’ notes Sigmund Freud in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. … While campaigning for Mitt Romney in 2012, Senator John McCain said, ‘I am confident with the leadership … President Obama will turn this country around,’ inadvertently endorsing the governor’s opponent.”

Some of this is too funny! Read it all here, at the Millions. It’s a long article. No firewall.

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Best Museum Bathrooms

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 27, 2022| 7 Comments »

053017-rockc-wall-Artipelag-bathroom
Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
The ladies room at the Artipelag museum in Sweden.

My friend Penny always knew where to find the nicest public bathrooms in Philadelphia. It turned out to be an important bit of knowledge. Where I live now, the reliable church bathroom has been closed since Covid, but the national park bathroom is available most of the year. And Debra’s Natural Gourmet just added two gorgeous public bathrooms in the new branch, Debra’s Next Door. I always buy something when I go into a shop to take advantage of its facilities.

Meanwhile, have you noticed how glam the museum bathrooms have gotten in recent years? Hyperallergic shared a great list for your amusement (and hour of need).

Sarah Rose Sharp wrote, “A recent poll by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) asked museum professionals to submit their nominations for best museum bathrooms, and the results prove that Marcel Duchamp was only the first, but not the last, to find art in the commode. Joseph O’Neill, a content manager and editor for the AAM, dutifully compiled the results.

“ ‘Every month, we put out questions for museum people to connect around, and we were surprised as anyone to find out how much enthusiasm there is for this fun topic,’ O’Neil told Hyperallergic. …

“The most-mentioned nominee was Smith College, home to two famous artist-designed bathrooms: The men’s bathroom was designed by Sandy Skoglund while the women’s bathroom designed by Ellen Driscoll. [Patti: Do you know about these?] …

“Next up is the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Obviously, bathrooms are going to be a point of pride for an institution founded by the manufacturer of bathroom implements, including sinks, toilets, and more. But JMKAC has gone above and beyond, with the ‘Sheboygan Men’s Room,’ furnished with hand-painted porcelain tile and bathroom fixtures by once-artist-in-residence Ann Agee; Cynthia Consentino’s ‘The Women’s Room’; and Matt Nolen’s ‘The Social History of Architecture (men’s washroom).’ …

“Coming in third, the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia, garnered praise for its bathroom series, A Head of Its Time: A Brief History of Going at Sea. …

“Of course, modern artists know that everything can be art, so it’s no surprise that SFMOMA is placed fourth on the list for its series of monochrome bathrooms in different colors on every floor, designed by the architecture firm Snøhetta. ‘This one makes me feel like I’m peeing in a Kubrick movie,’ commented Instagrammer Gabriel Toya-Meléndez.

“Fifth on the list is the Glore Psychiatric Museum, located on the site of a former psychiatric hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri. … The themed bathrooms are full of mind games, including hauntings, phobias, and worst of all, Sigmund Freud. …

“In sixth place, there was a collective mention of various 21c Museum Hotel locations. Never content to limit visitor experience to the galleries, all 21c locations feature art that extends into elevators, on the hotel art TV channel, through lobbies, and yes — even into the bathrooms.

“The Charleston Museum snagged seventh place with its cheeky chamber pot installation in the restroom. … The Baltimore Museum of Art celebrated hometown hero John Waters, granting his request that the museum’s bathrooms be renamed in his honor in exchange for his donation of his private art collection to the museum. The result is four new all-gender washrooms. …

“The Denver Art Museum closed came in ninth with its set of Singing Sinks, designed by Denver artist Jim Green. … The sinks are installed in the second-floor bathroom at the Martin Building Welcome Center, and sing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ while they run.

‘You can get the sinks to sing in canon if you time it right,’ nominator Melody Lowe told the AAM.

“Finally, the Carle Museum rounds out the top 10. [Asakiyume and I have been to that one!] The picture book museum was founded by Eric Carle, author of the iconic children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. … All the urinals feature a tiny fly.”

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall.

I also want to draw your attention to the bathroom at Artipelag, a beautiful museum in Sweden. My photo, above, doesn’t do justice to what Trip Advisor calls “The World’s Most Beautiful Bathroom“!

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Not Just a Trailer Park

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 26, 2022| 13 Comments »

Image: Nations Online Project.
At an unnamed trailer park in Northern Virginia, residents help one another.

One recent morning as I returned from my walk, I was stopped by a woman even older than me walking slowly with a cane. She wanted directions to the hospital, apparently to visit a patient. “But,” I said, “you can’t walk there! It’s over a mile!” “I have to get to the hospital,” she said.

After trying unsuccessfully to come up with other transportation options for her (my own car was in the shop), I gave her directions and off she went. I hope she made it. Sometimes women are beyond amazing.

In August, Theresa Vargas at the Washington Post, wrote about how a group of immigrant women turned a manufactured-housing park into a real community.

“The heat was unforgiving and the mosquitoes were biting, but the women who filled the foldout chairs in Imelda Castro’s backyard didn’t seem bothered. During the pandemic, that small strip of greenery tucked behind a Northern Virginia trailer park has been a haven for them. It has served as a classroom, an office and a community play space.

“That backyard is where the women learned from a health-care worker what medical services their children are entitled to receive. That backyard is where a DJ played music on Día del Niño, Day of the Child, and the community invited a police officer to take a swing at a piñata. ‘She had never hit one before!’ said a woman who captured that moment on video. That backyard is where, every Friday, the women form an assembly line and empty with impressive efficiency a truck filled with fresh produce and other goods, and then make sure everyone in the trailer park who needs food gets it.

“ ‘If we didn’t have this community we’ve built, we’d be very vulnerable,’ Rosalia Mendoza said in Spanish as she sat in one of those foldout chairs. ‘We’re united, and it makes us stronger. What affects one trailer affects the whole community.’ …

“That’s why the women want people to know what they’ve created in that trailer park on Route 1. From a shared struggle, they have built something special — a network of moms who regularly check on one another, inform one another and push one another.

To spend time with those moms is to recognize this: Alone, some could find themselves drowning. But together, they’ve been able to do more than tread water.

“ ‘This is unique,’ Patricia Moreno said of the community. ‘This is not everywhere.’

“Moreno has spent the last two decades as an outreach worker for Anthem HealthKeepers Plus, a job that takes her into low-income communities throughout Northern Virginia to teach residents about their Medicaid benefits. Her fluency in Spanish and willingness to go into even the most neglected of neighborhoods has made her a welcome presence among Latino immigrants who don’t trust easily authority figures.

“Moreno first learned about the women when one of them, Ana Delia Romero, called to ask whether she could come speak to them about health care. …

“The population of the trailer park is one that nonprofit workers often worry about. The majority of the residents are immigrants from Central and South America, and their families are tied to the local economy by threads that are usually among the first to be severed during economic downturns. Most of the men work in construction and restaurant jobs, two industries that were hit hard during the pandemic, and many of the women don’t work because of a lack of access to transportation and child care. In the last few years, several families have gone weeks without income, and some have faced eviction.

“Moreno said many people in the communities she visits are hesitant to ask for help, or accept it, but these mothers have worked hard to turn their trailer park into a village. They watch one another’s children. They give one another rides. They invite people to come teach them about subjects that will benefit their families and their neighbors. …

“ ‘I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a system like this,’ Moreno said.

“On the day I visited, she sat with eight of the women in the foldout chairs. Also there was Ivana Escobar, director of collective impact for United Community, a nonprofit that provides food to the trailer park and support to the women.

“ ‘We go to every community in this area,’ Escobar said, ‘and these women have made something stronger than anywhere else.’

“As the women tell it, Ana Delia Romero, who is partially blind, is the one who started bringing them together. She was the first person in the community to test positive for the coronavirus, and she ended up in the hospital for six days. After she recovered, she started volunteering with the Health Department. She knew many Latinos were hesitant to learn about the virus and the safety precautions they could take, and she wanted to help get that information to more people.

“She also wanted to make sure none of her neighbors was going hungry during the pandemic. She got involved with free food-distribution efforts and started knocking on her neighbors’ doors to ask whether they had enough to eat. …

“Escobar said that Romero asked United Community whether a truck could deliver food to the trailer park, and now, a truck comes every Friday. When it arrives, the women unload the contents and distribute them. On the day I met the women, all but one were wearing a United Community T-shirt. Escobar said they don’t get paid by the organization. They handle the food distribution as volunteers.

“ ‘The women here, they mobilized themselves,’ Escobar said. ‘You wouldn’t even know they’re struggling because of how they show up.’ …

“ ‘When Ana asked, “Who wants to volunteer?” the answer was “Me, me, me,” ‘ Elizabeth Villatoro said. ‘This community doesn’t have excuses. Ana doesn’t say, “I lost my vision, I can’t do anything.” Alberta doesn’t say, “I have children with special needs, I can’t do anything.” We do what we need to do.’ “

More at the Post, here.

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The Man Behind the Snowman

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 25, 2022| 6 Comments »

When Suzanne and John were small, we really got into the holiday books by British author-illustrator Raymond Briggs: the grumpy Father Christmas who gets sick on his vacation in the south of France, the silent, genial Snowman.

My husband pointed out this obit on Briggs.

Richard Lea reported at the Guardian, “Raymond Briggs, the writer and illustrator who delighted children and inspired adults with bestselling cartoons and picture books, died on Tuesday morning aged 88, his publisher Penguin Random House has said.

“Ranging from the enchanting magic of The Snowman to a devastating apocalypse in When the Wind Blows, Briggs created a host of much-loved characters including his angst-ridden Fungus the Bogeyman and his curmudgeonly version of Father Christmas. A career spanning six decades brought him numerous awards, with television adaptations making him a fixture of British Christmas viewing. …

“Born in 1934, Briggs went to the local grammar school in Wimbledon. His decision to leave school at 15 to go to Wimbledon Art College may may have puzzled his milkman father, but he was not dreaming of becoming Michelangelo.

” ‘I never thought about being a gold-framed gallery artist and was only pushed into painting when I went to art school,’ he told the Guardian in 2004. ‘I went there wanting to do cartoons.’

“Briggs’s interest in commercial art was met with horror at college – one teacher spluttering, ‘Good God, is that all you want?’ – and after national service Briggs met with more snobbery while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. But when he left at 23, his talent for drawing realistic images from memory meant it was not hard to find work as an illustrator for magazines, advertisers and books.

“As the 1960s dawned, Briggs had begun to despair at the quality of the books he was illustrating. ‘They were so bad that I knew I could do better myself,’ he told the Guardian, ‘so I wrote a story and gave it to an editor hoping he would give me some advice. But instead he said he would publish it, which shows what the standard was like if a complete novice who had never written anything more than a school essay could get his first effort published.’

“The Strange House was published in 1961 and five years later, his 800 illustrations for an edition of The Mother Goose Treasury won him the prestigious Kate Greenaway medal. Jim and the Beanstalk, a warmhearted sequel to the traditional tale, came in 1970.

“In 1973, he won a second Kate Greenaway medal and a wider audience with Father Christmas. This 24-page strip cartoon imagines Santa Claus as a grumpy old man, grumbling his way through his busiest day of the year: Christmas Eve. We follow him as he wakes up – ‘Blooming Christmas here again!’ – and sets off on his round, the sparse dialogue a litany of complaints about ‘Blooming aerials,’ ‘Blooming cats,’ ‘Blooming soot,’ ‘Blooming chimneys’ and all the ‘Stairs, stairs, stairs.’ …

“The same spirit infused Briggs’s 1977 Fungus the Bogeyman, which imagined Fungus living in dank, smelly tunnels evoked in a palette of mud brown and acid green. Heading out at night to frighten people on the surface, Fungus ponders the futility of existence: ‘There must be more to life than this.’ The Guardian declared it suitable ‘for children over the age of 10 – or adults – with murky minds and horrid senses of humor,’ while the Times called it ‘the ideal picture book for an age of punk rock and general glorification of ugliness.’ It sold 50,000 copies within a year.

“Briggs turned next to pastels in 1978’s The Snowman, a wordless story about a boy whose snowman comes to life. But this magical story was still grounded in harsh reality; the next morning, the boy wakes to find only the snowman’s hat and scarf listing on a pile of melting snow. ‘I don’t have happy endings,’ Briggs told the Radio Times in 2012. ”I create what seems natural and inevitable. The snowman melts, my parents died, animals die, flowers die. Everything does. There’s nothing particularly gloomy about it. It’s a fact of life.’

“Channel 4 didn’t duck the issue with its 1982 animated version, but sugared the pill by adding a visit to Father Christmas and a soundtrack with a piping choirboy. Despite acknowledging the need for a film to be commercially viable, Briggs told the Guardian in 2015 that he hated it at the time and still found it corny. But the animation became a fixture on festive TV schedules, lending Briggs a Christmassy reputation that only grew after television versions of Father Christmas in 1991 and Fungus the Bogeyman in 2004 and 2015.

“Meanwhile, Briggs turned away from fantasy, with picture books tackling nuclear war (When the Wind Blows), the British invasion of the Falklands (The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman) and an account of his parents’ marriage (Ethel and Ernest). But he rejected the idea that his work was divided into books for adults and books for children.

“ ‘There are a few books which are obviously for small children,’ he told the Guardian in 1999, ‘but I don’t usually think about whether a book is for children or adults. After a child has learned to read fluently, at about eight or nine, then the whole idea of categorizing them seems a bit daft.’

“Briggs’s final book Time for Lights Out, a ‘hotchpotch’ of drawings, verse, memories quotations published in November 2019, looks death square in the face. In it, he imagines ‘future ghosts’ looking around his house in Sussex: ‘There must have been / Some barmy old bloke here,’ he writes, ‘Long-haired, artsy-fartsy type, / Did pictures for kiddy books / Or some such tripe. / You should have seen the stuff / He stuck up in that attic! / Snowman this and snowman that, / Tons and tons of tat.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall.

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A Better Idea on Homelessness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2022| 4 Comments »

Photo: Genna Martin/Crosscut.
Writes Crosscut, “In their roles as King County support services specialists, Kirk Rodriguez, right, and Joe Barnhart walk the area around the King County Courthouse and City Hall Park, as they build relationships with those who live or hang out in that area, … using their own lived experiences with homelessness to form connections.”

After a recent post on better approaches to homelessness, Hannah sent me a link to a New York Times opinion piece by Maia Szalavitz.

“The needs of homeowners and businesses and those of people who are unsheltered often conflict, ” she writes. “Community leaders, faced with increasing crime and disorder, frequently see police sweeps as the only answer, while advocates for homeless people argue that this response is merely a stopgap that does more damage than good.

“But what if there was a way to stop shifting ‌‌people from encampments to jails to shelters to hospitals and back again? In Seattle a unique collaboration among businesses, neighborhood groups, the police, advocates and nonprofits is fighting cynics and misperceptions driven by politics to cut homelessness.

“The coronavirus pandemic presented Seattle with a crisis and an opportunity. In early 2020, authorities closed congregate shelters, emptied jails and stopped new arrests for minor crimes. Lisa Daugaard, a lawyer, saw a rare chance to develop a new approach to addressing homelessness that didn’t involve law enforcement.

“She’d already had success in getting officials to cooperate across siloed systems: In 2019, she won a MacArthur ‘genius’ award for helping to create a program originally called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, which has now been replicated in over 80 jurisdictions across the United States.

“Instead of re-incarcerating homeless people who typically already have long histories of minor arrests, police departments that participate in LEAD refer them to case management services. The program has an overall philosophy of harm reduction, which, in addition to securing shelter, focuses on improving health, rather than mandating abstinence from drugs and other risky behaviors. LEAD originated as a collaboration of public defenders, the police and prosecutors, who put aside differences to work on solutions.

“Peer-reviewed research published in 2017 by the University of Washington found a 39‌‌ percent reduction in felony charges for participants (a group of over 300 people suspected of low-level drug and sex work activity in downtown Seattle) in LEAD compared with controls and an 89‌‌ percent increase in the likelihood of being permanently housed for participants after they started case management. ‌‌

“At the height of the pandemic, when the police were ordered not to make minor arrests or referrals to LEAD, Ms. Daugaard decided to try something new. With federal pandemic funds becoming available and desperate hotel owners newly open to being paid to house nontraditional guests, she said she saw ‘our chance to show that there is another way.’

“Ms. Daugaard and her colleagues created a program now known as JustCare. JustCare staff members, rather than police officers, would respond to urgent calls about encampments. After building trust with ‌‌local homeless people, the workers would move them into housing without strict abstinence requirements and then help clean up the site. The police would be contacted only as a last resort.

“An early success involved an encampment on a major thoroughfare, Third Avenue‌‌, where around two dozen tents were ‌‌erected directly outside the popular local restaurant Wild Ginger, which had closed under pandemic restrictions. A co-owner, Rick Yoder, wanted to reopen the restaurant in the summer of 2021, but he told me, ‘I couldn’t get the windows repaired because the guy said, “I’m not going near those tents.” ‘ …

“Outreach workers from JustCare managed to house ‌‌those living in the encampment and clean up the site without police reinforcement. …

‌”The work begins with no-strings offerings of items like food, water and clean needles‌‌. These regular visits help‌‌ demonstrate trustworthiness and defuse fear about coercion. Creativity is also a must: Conflicts arise over everything from open drug use to burning items for heat. Workers neutralize tense situations with humor and compassion and by recognizing that often bizarre behavior is driven by fundamental needs like hunger, thirst and exhaustion.

“Alison McLean owns a condo in the Pioneer Square neighborhood and contacted JustCare for help dealing with tents that started being pitched against her building during the pandemic. …

“JustCare began its outreach. ‘Maybe two weeks later, they were like, “We found housing for everybody,” ‘ Ms. McLean said. …

“Between the fall of 2020 and this past spring, JustCare closed 14 encampments and placed over 400 people in hotels and other lodging.”

More at the Times, here. Thanks, Hannah. Good tip.

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