Photo: Oxia Palus and Lebenson Gallery London. The Hidden Picture of Beatrice Hastings by Amedeo Modigliani was created by Oxia Palus using AI technology.
Nowadays, art and science work hand in hand. Consider this story about how artificial intelligence was used to reveal an unknown painting by a great master. It starts with the practice of “overpainting.”
Suzanne’s art professor overpainted because he wanted you to sense what was underneath. But at Hyperallergic, Lauren Moya Ford writes, “Artists paint over their finished canvases for many reasons — out of frustration at a failed design, because they lack the funds to buy more material, or even to spite whoever or whatever they’ve depicted.
“The latter was the case in Amedeo Modigliani’s ‘Portrait of a Girl‘ (1917), an oil painting of a sullen, seated brunette now held in the collection of the Tate. X-ray studies of the canvas conducted by the museum in 2018 revealed that the piece was originally a full-length portrait of another woman, a slender blonde with angular, elongated features. A portion of this hidden painting — now on view at Lebenson Gallery in London — was uncovered and reconstructed by two scientists using a combination of stereoscopic imaging, artificial intelligence technology, and 3D printing.
“Neuroscientist Anthony Bourached and physicist George Cann joined forces in London in January 2019 to found Oxia Palus, a scientific project that uses machine learning to reconstruct what the duo calls ‘NeoMasters,’ or artworks that have been previously hidden from view under the layers of later paintings. Their past efforts have uncovered a Blue Period nude by Picasso, a Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci, and a landscape painting by Santiago Rusiñol that was later painted over by Picasso, the artist’s friend and mentee. To discover these ‘lost’ works, Bourached and Cann apply a neural style transfer algorithm to X-rays of paintings that are suspected to have another artwork hidden below their surfaces. The technology utilizes imagery from the scan, as well as information from the artist’s other works, to reproduce colors, brushstrokes, and other distinguishing features.
“Unlike conservators or other art specialists, Bourached and Cann bring uniquely non-art areas of expertise to the pieces they analyze.
‘George’s inspiration comes from his research on the surface of Mars for the detection of life,’ Bourached explains in a recent email to Hyperallergic. …
“Who was the woman whose likeness has suddenly been unearthed more than 100 years later? She’s thought to be Modigliani’s ex-lover and muse, the English poet, writer, and literary critic Beatrice Hastings. … The two years that the couple shared an apartment in Montparnasse were creatively productive for both: Hastings published prolifically, and is known to have posed for at least 14 of Modigliani’s portraits. But their relationship was also plagued by alcohol addictions, explosive personalities, and violent confrontations. …
“It was perhaps to symbolically scorn his former lover that Modigliani painted over her portrait in 1917, but, thanks to the two London scientists, Hastings has found a way to see the light again. As she wrote in 1937, ‘Civilized woman wants something more than to be the means to a man’s life. She wants to live herself.’ ” More at Hyperallergic, here.
Who gets the last word about what an artist shows to the world? At some point, the work no longer belongs to the artist but to the public. The only way an artist gets final say, I suspect, is to have some acolyte like Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra, who burned all the novelist’s letters after her death. Cassandra thought that whatever her sister wanted done was more important than what posterity might want.
Photo: Clive Barda. Opera singer John Tomlinson rehearses King Lear.
I remember once watching an Aida on television with staging that made my skin crawl. Here was Aida, here was her true love — both knowing they were dying — singing to each other from opposite sides of the cave, no touching. Really? You can’t always blame opera singers for bad acting when it’s the director’s staging that makes no sense.
Today I have a story for all the people who like to listen to opera but hate unnatural staging and acting. Turns out, there are singers who have longed for a chance to show what they can really do with drama.
Michael Billington writes at the Guardian, “I had coffee recently with King Lear and Goneril. To be more precise, with John Tomlinson and Susan Bullock, who play these roles in a brand new production of Shakespeare’s tragedy – one to be staged at the Grange festival in Hampshire [in July] with a cast exclusively drawn from the world of opera. …
“Its director, Keith Warner, says it started with him, Tomlinson and Kim Begley (ex-RSC before turning to opera) planning a two-person version called Lear’s Shadow. Word quickly spread and a reading of the whole play was mounted in Warner’s house. The result is a full-scale production with a dream cast. ….
“Talking to Tomlinson and Bullock, I am struck by their passion for theatre. At college, Bullock played Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and became an ardent fan of Manchester’s Royal Exchange. ‘Seeing Uncle Vanya there with Albert Finney,’ she says, ‘made me think: “This is what I want to do.” When people ask me if I’ve ever acted before, I tell them I’ve been doing it all my life. You don’t get to play Brunnhilde or Electra without being able to act – and singing a Schubert song is a drama in itself.’
“Tomlinson, who made his stage debut at the age of six as a panto sultan, was equally turned on by Manchester theatre and recalls the excitement of going to drama, dance and improv classes when a student at the Royal Northern College of Music. Both are theatrical animals as well as singers – but is there a radical difference between working on an opera and a Shakespeare play?
“ ‘There are a lot of similarities,’ says Tomlinson. ‘You start with understanding the text, letting your imagination flow and working alone before joining the cast. The big difference is that in opera, we are used to emotions being sustained for a long time and underpinned by the music. In a Handel aria you might sing “I love you” for 10 minutes on end. In a play, particularly in Lear where the king is so mind-changing and capricious, you have to be more nimble and quick-thinking.’
“Bullock concurs, pointing out that in opera the drama inevitably starts in the orchestra pit.
‘What is so liberating about a play,’ [opera singer Bullock] says, ‘is that tempo and rhythm are in the hands of the actor, rather than the composer or conductor, and can vary hugely from one night to the next. I am loving the freedom and flexibility this gives me.’
“There is still a popular canard that opera singers are inferior actors: that, at best, they stand and deliver or deploy a limited number of traffic-cop gestures. It is a myth Tomlinson especially can’t wait to demolish. … ‘I’d say that in the UK from the 1960s to the late 1990s, singers were generally very good actors. But I admit that in the last couple of decades, operatic acting has often been stymied by hi-tech design and concept-driven direction that treats the singer as one item in a visual scheme.’ …
“What have Bullock and Tomlinson discovered in rehearsal? ‘That Goneril,’ says Bullock, ‘is not a figure of undiluted evil. She is a complex woman who has suffered from a dictatorial father, who knows that Cordelia is Daddy’s darling and who, quite reasonably, asks why he needs a train of 100 knights.’ …
“For Tomlinson, the whole play is a voyage of discovery. ‘Lear begins,’ he says, ‘as a brutally authoritarian figure but gradually becomes aware of poverty, homelessness, cruelty and injustice. The last is a subject he never stops talking about. … Lear, whose relationship with the Fool is a bit like that of Boris Godunov and the Simpleton in the Mussorgsky opera, also acquires a boundless curiosity. By the end he is not so much morally redeemed as spiritually enlightened.’ “
Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM. This gourd box and ornament, on display at the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum in New Hampshire, were made by Jeanne Morningstar Kent, an Abenaki artist.
When I was editing the community development magazine for the Boston Fed, I published several articles on the Abenaki people in Vermont. I hadn’t heard of that tribe before and was intrigued to learn they also have a big presence in New Hampshire, Maine, and Canada. Nowadays, they are no longer living their lives below the radar, and a project launched in the middle of the Covid pandemic has helped.
Chelsea Sheasley reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “For years, Darryl Peasley and Sherry Gould, two friends and members of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation, heard stories about various Native American sites dotting the region around their small southern New Hampshire hometowns.
“There was the Indian Tie Up in Henniker, an overhanging rock formation said to have been a site where Native Americans camped or spent winters; a mineral springs sacred site in Bradford; and an old chimney in the woods in Hopkinton rumored to hold ties to Native culture.
“Before last summer, Mr. Peasley and Ms. Gould had visited only a few spots. That’s changed since they launched the Abenaki Trails Project in August 2020 and organized outings to explore each site with other tribe members and community partners. The project aims to create a network of sites and art installations that the public can visit to learn about Native American history and the continued presence of Native Americans in New Hampshire today.
“ ‘I want to prove that not only did we live here, we still live here,’ says Mr. Peasley, an artist who creates pouches, hats, and dance sticks in contemporary and traditional Abenaki style. He’s mulled over the idea of sharing Abenaki history more broadly ever since he heard state legislators years ago call New Hampshire a ‘pass through’ state for Native Americans, an assertion he and others say is a misconception.
“Last summer, he and Ms. Gould decided to take action. They approached select boards and historical societies in four towns, asking to work together to better document local Native American history. They’ve held hikes, paddling trips, and spoken at community events, and they plan to branch out to two more towns this summer.
“On June 5 the Abenaki Trails Project and the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association launched an art show at the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum in Warner. On display is a birchbark canoe made in the traditional Indigenous style by Ms. Gould’s husband, Bill Gould, who is Abenaki, and Reid Schwartz, a local craftsperson. They sourced all their materials, including white birch bark, spruce root, and moss, within a five-mile radius of Warner.
“Even in its early stages, the Abenaki Trails Project is ‘raising consciousness, particularly among non-Native people,’ says Robert Goodby, an archaeologist and anthropology professor at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire, who was invited to attend several of the group’s events to offer an archaeological perspective.
“ ‘The Native people have always known that they have a long history here and that these sorts of sites exist. For most non-Native people, it’s very easy to spend your whole life living in New Hampshire and never really think about the Native presence here, and I think this is a way of bringing that presence into the light, community by community,’ says Dr. Goodby, who has found evidence in archaeological digs of Indigenous people living in New Hampshire for over 12,000 years.
The Abenaki Trails Project aims to highlight positive relations between historic Native Americans and European settlers and dispel the myth that Native Americans disappeared from New England – or that they were primarily antagonistic toward settlers.
“ ‘We want people to understand that Abenaki weren’t just what you read in history books, the murderers and marauders. They helped the colonial settlers also or they wouldn’t have known how to plant corn, how to survive the winter,’ says Mr. Peasley on a recent afternoon at the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum art show, where some of his handcrafted hats are on display. …
“ ‘Because these initiatives are going on all over New England, I’m hopeful that it will help change dialogue,’ says Christoph Strobel, author of ‘Native Americans of New England’ and a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. …
“One of the highlights of the Abenaki Trails Project for Ms. Gould, a basketmaker, is how enjoyable the exploratory outings are, which bring together Native Americans and non-Native community partners like historians, geologists, and archaeologists. … Yet Ms. Gould still struggles, she says, with feeling like she lives in a ‘dual reality’ where friends know she’s Native American, but in broader society ‘a lot of people want to think that’s not true or you’re trying to appropriate someone else’s culture.’ …
“It doesn’t help that there are no federally recognized Native American tribes in New Hampshire. The Nulhegan Band that Mr. Peasley and Ms. Gould are members of is headquartered in and recognized by Vermont. …
“The project’s impact continues to ripple out. Heather Mitchell, executive director of the Hopkinton Historical Society, says that seven years ago the society created an exhibit including a paddle trip with points of interest along the Contoocook River. None of the sites included any Native history. This summer, after participating in outings with the Abenaki Trails Project, the society plans another paddle trip that will focus exclusively on Native American points of interest.”
Photo: AP via News10. It only took 60 years to fulfill a dream of being a Yankees bat girl! Fortunately, the young lady still has the same dream.
John knew I’d like this story about a grandmother achieving a late-in-life dream. ESPN was among many outlets that carried it.
“Gwen Goldman exchanged fist bumps with the New York Yankees, whom she had been admiring for decades from afar, walked onto the field and waved to the crowd.
“She got to be a Yankees’ bat girl on Monday night at age 70 — a full 60 years after she was turned down because of her gender.
“Shaking with excitement, she beamed while recounting how it felt to be at Yankee Stadium on this day for the game against the Los Angeles Angels. …
” ‘From walking in the front door of the stadium at Gate 2, to coming up to a locker with my name on it that said “Gwen Goldman” and suiting up, then walking out onto the field,’ she said. ‘It took my breath away. … It was a thrill of a lifetime — times a million. And I actually got to be out in the dugout too. I threw out a ball. I met the players. Yeah, it goes on and on. They had set up a day for me; that is something that I never would have expected.’
“Goldman retired in 2017 as a social worker at Stepping Stones Preschool, a public school in Westport, Connecticut.
“She used the Hebrew word ‘dayenu’ — which translates to ‘it would have been enough’ — to describe the different parts of her experience.
” ‘It just kept coming and coming,’ she said.
“Goldman had been rejected by then-Yankees general manager Roy Hamey, who wrote her in a letter on June 23, 1961: ‘While we agree with you that girls are certainly as capable as boys, and no doubt would be an attractive addition on the playing field, I am sure you can understand that it is a game dominated by men. [A] young lady such as yourself would feel out of place in a dugout.’
“Current Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said he had been forwarded an email written by Goldman’s daughter, Abby. In a letter dated June 23, 2021, Cashman wrote, ‘… it is not too late to reward and recognize the ambition you showed in writing that letter to us as a 10-year-old girl.’
” ‘Some dreams take longer than they should to be realized, but a goal attained should not dim with the passage of time,’ Cashman added. ‘I have a daughter myself, and it is my sincere hope that every little girl will be given the opportunity to follow her aspirations into the future.’
“Wearing a full Yankees uniform, Goldman threw out a ceremonial first pitch to New York player Tyler Wade, then stood alongside manager Aaron Boone for the national anthem.
” ‘I think it’s really cool,’ Boone said. … ‘Hopefully, it’s an experience of a lifetime.’ …
“New York extended the invitation as part of the Yankees’ annual HOPE week, which stands for Helping Others Persevere & Excel.
“Goldman posed with the umpires when the lineup cards were brought out. After the third inning, the Yankees played a video that included the letters. … She then was introduced to the crowd, walked up the Yankees dugout steps and onto the field, and waved her cap as fans applauded.”
I think I have enough June and early July photos for another round-up. Most of these were taken in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but I’m including two that Melita sent from Madrid, where (she reports with relief) foreign nationals have finally been able to get Covid vaccinations.
Working backwards from New Shoreham’s July 4th parade, I apologize that the banner is missing an apostrophe. But there was such a sense of relief and gratitude in the air, I think I can let that go. No one knows how long our relief will last — I for one, still put up a mask when I get close to strangers — but it sure felt good for one day.
Another shot from New Shoreham features a blue Lace-Cap Hydrangea. How I love that flower! It says July to me. Next, I have a photo of Great Salt Pond on a cloudy day when the waves on the ocean side of the sandbar were too rough for the grandchildren. Later on, I collaborated with them to identify the Red Admiral butterfly. My husband caught it flying around the house and let it go outdoors.
The gorgeous iris and peony from Madrid are followed by the papery bark of the river birch. Such a beautiful tree! And speaking of trees, please applaud the tree puzzle I finally finished. It took me almost six months. It was the hardest puzzle I ever did. But everyone said to do a puzzle in the pandemic.
The dry cleaner’s sign speaks for itself. It’s followed by the boat house on the Sudbury River, a kind of garter snake, more flowers, and shadows. I can never resist interesting shadows.
Photo: Franco Folini, CC BY-SA 2.0/flickr. Says Atlas Obscura, “Genetic research indicates that the turnip was likely the first Brassica rapa crop, originating up to 6,000 years ago in Central Asia.”
For something a little bit different, consider “the vegetable that took over the world.” It turns out that different cultures not only develop their own versions of music and art but their own versions of the same edible plant. It helps that the plant in question has triplicated genes.
Gemma Tarlach reports at Atlas Obscura about “the single species that gives us turnips, bok choy, broccoli rabe” …
“The plant known as Brassica rapa has quite the history, one that, after decades of debate, is finally emerging. The single species, which humans have turned into turnips, bok choy, broccoli rabe (also known as rapini), and other residents of the produce aisle, began up to 6,000 years ago in Central Asia.
“[In June] Molecular Biology and Evolution published findings from an unprecedented study of B. rapa that pulled together genetic sequencing, environmental modeling, and the largest number of wild, feral, and cultivated samples ever collected. … The paper is a significant step forward in understanding how one of the planet’s most important agricultural species might weather climate change.
“ ‘This study is really great. I like the approaches they took, and the framework they placed it in,’ says Nora Mitchell, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Mitchell, who was not involved in the research. … She says the new paper’s environmental modeling — reconstructing conditions under which B. rapa was adapted to different locations, as well as forecasting what changing conditions might mean for its future — makes the study particularly compelling. …
” ‘The work is a particular achievement when you consider both the diversity and global spread of B. rapa crops, wild relatives, and feral varieties that have escaped farmers’ fields’ … says Alex McAlvay, lead author of the study and a botanist at the New York Botanical Garden. Now, he says, B. rapa, in various forms, ‘grows from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. They grow in Oceania, they grow from Spain to Japan.’ …
“B. rapa’s ability to survive as a feral plant worldwide had created a lot of uncertainty about its origins. Botanists often look to wild relatives of crops to help understand where the plants were first domesticated. But B. rapa is everywhere and, before the new research, distinguishing truly wild species from feral escapees was almost impossible. …
“While genetic detective work is always a complex undertaking, McAlvay says he and his colleagues were particularly challenged by a ‘crazy mess’ of genes that originated in the ancestor of both B. rapa and its close relative B. oleracea, another single species that provides multiple vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and more.
‘One reason we think these species have this incredible diversity is that their ancestor had not only a duplication of their genome, but a triplication,’ says botanist Makenzie Mabry, who coauthored the new paper. …
“While humans and many other organisms inherit a single set of chromosomes, one half from each parent, some plants inherit double sets. The Brassica ancestor had three sets that, says Mabry. …
“ ‘There’s an additional layer of weirdness,’ on the road to domestication and diversification, adds McAlvay: Different cultures selected for certain traits in different parts of the plant. For example, we’re familiar with tomatoes in all colors, sizes, and flavor profiles, but they’re all the fruit of the plant Solanum lycopersicum. For B. rapa, however, ‘with turnip, you’re looking at the root, the underground stem of the plant. Tatsoi is the leaves. Broccoli rabe is the flowers,’ says McAlvay.
“ ‘In China, people saw the same kind of raw material, the turnip, and they did something totally different than the Italians and Spanish did,’ he adds, running down a list of water-rich bok choy, chunky turnips, bitter greens, jagged-leaf mizuna, and other B. rapa permutations worldwide. …
“Digging up B. rapa’s roots is more than an exercise in botanical history. … ‘Food security is a big issue, especially global food security. And with Brassica having so many crops, not only vegetables but for oils as well, it’s really important to continue producing these crop species in the face of climate change, increased drought, and nutrient changes, as well as crop blights and crop diseases,’ Mitchell explains. ‘It’s important to understand not only what happened in the past but how these plants might respond in the future, and to know what kind of genetic resources could increase diversity.’
“McAlvay believes the paper’s findings on weedy, feral varieties may prove particularly significant for breeding better B. rapa crops in the future. ‘For most of recent history, people have dismissed the stray dogs of the plant world as not particularly useful,’ he says. ‘But because they’re already adapted to really rough, tough environments, there’s some push, with the advent of gene editing, to be inspired by those turnips gone wild.’ ”
What a miracle is Nature! More at Atlas Obscura, here.
Not long ago, a teacher I work with as an English as a Second Language volunteer asked the class if, like us, their home countries had an independence day. They all did, but it seemed to me that independence from a colonizer hadn’t led to happily ever after. If their countries had flourished after gaining independence, I doubt any of them would have ended up in the USA.
It made me ask myself whether I could identify my own opinions on the building blocks of a successful country. Our recent national introspection has helped. We are looking closer at our history and asking ourselves if it’s really true we’re the only ones on the planet without a stain on our national character. Of course not.
One Glorious Fourth at the Robbins House, a freed slave’s preserved home in my town, I got to hear the whole Declaration of Independence read aloud, and I winced about items I hadn’t remembered, such as the wording about King George using the local “savages” against the colonists. Even more revelatory that day was a reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (Read it here.)
So what makes a country that lives up to its ideals after independence? For starters, I’d say that all adults vote. The corollary to that is that everyone gets a good education so their votes will be informed and based on facts.
Then there are a few things we managed to get into our constitution, things that need to be eternally protected, like the right to free speech and the freedom of the press — to uncover government corruption, for example. There needs to be a structure that enables local resources to be used for good jobs so that people can have homes and other requirements met. There needs to be a fair system of justice in which wrongs are righted as much as possible.
When I think of ESL students from, say, Guatemala, I know that a country’s resources are not always used fairly for all the people. If that were so, those students wouldn’t have become immigrants. The resources have continued to be plundered after “independence,” the government is corrupt, the press is not allowed to say so, and gangs fight everyone over the little that is left.
My knowledge of these things is not deep, but off the cuff, that’s how see what a country needs to be a successful democracy, and I’m hoping you will add some of the important things I’m sure I’ve forgotten. I wonder if we began to think of this holiday as Independence and Introspection Day, we might move a little closer every year to our ideals.
Photo: Alfredo Sosa/Christian Science Monitor. Farmers who aren’t climate-action types may nevertheless be proponents of profitable wind energy. In Knox County, Illinois, the farmers above were glad to get a contract with Orion Energy for a 300-megawatt wind farm that is bringing in extra money for them and tax revenues for the county
One precept that my reading of fiction keeps hammering home to me is that people are complicated. A character doesn’t have to be one of the good guys to do something good or one of the bad guys to do something bad. Similarly, in real life, you don’t have to be on one side of a political divide to find value in something the opposing side values.
This article from the Christian Science Monitor provides an example.
Stephanie Hanes writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “For five generations, Andrew Bowman’s family has worked the land in Oneida, population 700-ish – a flat and fertile swath of Illinois his father always said was good for growing crops and kids. Today, he farms soybeans and corn, as well as specialty popcorn, which he sells under the label Pilot Knob Comforts. Mr. Bowman hopes to have a new resource to harvest soon, as well: wind.
“This past year, Mr. Bowman took a lead representing local landowners in negotiating with Orion Renewable Energy Group, one of the many companies installing wind farms across Illinois, to build a new 100-turbine project in his part of Knox County. Clean energy would not only help keep the local school open and support the fire department and library, he says, but would also offer a new income stream to farmers who agree to lease some of their land for the project – some $30 million over 25 years, according to the proposal. …
“For Mr. Bowman, embracing wind power is part of stewarding the land for the next generation – and one of many steps he and his brother-in-law, Matt Hulsizer, have taken to ensure resiliency on their 1,800 acres. They are acutely focused on soil health, low tillage, and reducing fuel consumption; they have tried organic practices and are investigating cover crops to retain nutrients and prevent erosion.
“But none of this is because they are trying to fight climate change.
“They care deeply about the environment, they say; after all, they live and work in it. But they cringe at the cries for climate action, and they bristle when city people suggest their outdoor, low-consumption life is problematic. … If human-made climate change is happening, they say – something they find dubious – they doubt there’s much anyone can do to stop it.
“For them, tending soil and harvesting wind for clean energy – two initiatives climate scholars say are crucial for reducing carbon emissions – is simply about taking the best steps economically
“And that, scholars point out, is a tremendous shift.
“For years, the dominant narrative of climate action was one of trade-offs and costs – that saving the world as we know it meant taking hard steps to reduce carbon emissions, and likely sacrificing jobs and lifestyle in the process. …
“[But] economic shifts, whether around clean energy or electric vehicles, regenerative agriculture or green construction, may be starting to defuse much of the debate over climate change.
“Instead, climate action has merged with economic progress – particularly when it comes to clean energy. And although climate activists say this awakening won’t by itself put the nation on track to meet the Paris Agreement goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, some suggest it is making that path less arduous, while creating new opportunities and connections for those across the ideological spectrum.
“ ‘There’s an argument that’s been around for a long time, that somehow the economy and the environment are at odds and we can’t do two things at once,’ says Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, an organization of business groups focused on environmental action.
‘What we’re seeing today is that there’s never been more clarity about the economic costs of climate change, or the economic potential of climate action.’
“The narrative of “climate versus jobs,” though, is an enduring one. For decades, environmental protection has been presented in terms of extra costs such as regulations on businesses, requirements for companies, and restrictions on activities. While this wasn’t always divisive – the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency were both highly bipartisan measures, for instance – it has increasingly become a dividing line. …
“Where the left has seen necessary checks on industry for the preservation of the natural world, and the potential for a clean environment to lead to new economic prosperity, the right has seen challenges to businesses, job losses, and economic hardship. Both sides have studies that support their views. Climate action has followed a similar pattern. …
“ ‘We’ve seen that constant conversation about jobs versus climate action,’ says Catrina Rorke, vice president of policy for the Climate Leadership Council, a centrist bipartisan group that promotes policies to price carbon. ‘We think it’s woefully incorrect. We think aggressive climate action can actually unlock a lot of economic activity.’
“In large part, says Stephen Cohen, former director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, this is because a climate action economy is simply a modern economy – one that is moving away from a stagnating World War II-era industrial approach and into a newly automated, technologically innovative, and cleaner system. …
“ ‘It’s 100 years later and it’s time to modernize,’ he says. … ‘Most of the farsighted businesspeople – they know all of this. It’s how they think about the world.’
“This isn’t just about fossil fuels versus clean energy, he and others say. From the auto industry’s shift to electric vehicles, with all of the connected grid and battery production, to the construction industry’s work retrofitting old buildings, to wind and solar energy jobs, the impact of climate-connected development is broad. It is also spurring a new wave of innovation and entrepreneurship, scholars say.
“None of this means the end to the underlying political tension surrounding climate action. … Nor does this new economy benefit everyone. In any industrial shift, Dr. Cohen points out, some skills and jobs become obsolete. And when it comes to a climate-connected economy, those hardships are concentrated in particular communities, such as in West Virginia and Wyoming, that were built around fossil fuel extraction. In other words, it’s easy to focus on the story of a coal town dying because of a shift in the energy sector. The hardship is concentrated. It’s harder to tell a story when the benefits are diffuse, and everywhere.
“ ‘The losers are more specific and more easily identified – the winners might not exist yet,’ says Wolfram Schlenker, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Earth Institute.
“Still, Americans increasingly see a price to pay if rising temperatures go unchecked. The number of Americans who believe global warming will harm people in the United States a great or moderate amount grew from 51% in 2014 to 61% last year, according to polling by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
“Here in Illinois and elsewhere, most workers have jobs that aren’t directly focused on climate change. But ‘green’ growth, from the booming renewables market to energy-efficient construction projects, is everywhere. As a trip across the state shows, the positive economic story of industry that could be categorized as climate-related – even if those involved wouldn’t categorize it as such – is getting easier to observe.”
More at the Monitor, here, where among other topics you can learn about the battle between a fungi protein and chicken nuggets.
Photo: Sierra Mar via Forbes. A California restaurant has initiated impressive air-quality controls post-pandemic.
In the beginning, we were wiping everything down with bleach. I know I kept sharing a video from a doctor who’d worked with Ebola protocols. And for quite a while, I was treating all my groceries as if they could kill me.
Then we learned Covid was contracted mainly through the air, in invisible droplets from people breathing. So now that it’s possible once more to eat indoors in restaurants, the wary among us are asking how well restaurants are doing on ventilation.
“When California’s Monterey County allowed restaurants to reopen in March, indoor dining returned to the cliff-perched Sierra Mar, known for its spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean.
“The Big Sur restaurant now featured some new pandemic touches: 18 tabletop mini-purifiers, 10 precisely distributed HEPA air purifiers, an upgraded heating and air conditioning system, and four sensors measuring the air quality in real time.
“The bar was closed, and at a table in the back sat someone new: an engineering professor whose specialty is air quality.
‘If this is going to work right, the ventilation keeps up with the head count,’ explained the expert, Mark Hernandez of the University of Colorado.
“Every 15 minutes, he would walk to the front desk to check how many people were now seated indoors. Then he would compare that number to the air’s current levels of carbon dioxide and particulate matter, to see how much exhaled breath lingered in the air and what expelled aerosols it could contain.
“Indoor dining remains risky, as the pandemic rages on, propelled by highly transmissible new coronavirus variants that threaten gains from widespread vaccination. The virus has been brutal for the restaurant industry. … Thousands of restaurants already have shut down permanently.
“Those struggling to hold on are considering a broad range of air ventilation and filtration techniques to keep customers and staff safe. Sierra Mar’s new air-quality experiment, partly funded by a regional foundation, cost about $30,000. That’s a hefty expenditure that might be out of reach for many restaurants running on thin profit margins.
“Mike Freed considers it a worthy investment. He’s the managing partner of the Post Ranch Inn, the exclusive resort that contains Sierra Mar and caters to an affluent eco-conscious traveler. Since the setup, if successful, could potentially be utilized in other restaurants and indoor spaces, the Washington Post asked several experts on indoor air to review the restaurant layout and strategy. They agreed it should work to make the dining experience considerably safer, while noting 100 percent safety is unattainable.
“These experiments in the restaurant industry may usher in a new data-driven relationship with indoor air, with people able to judge where they dine, vacation and work based on the quality and transparency of real-time readings. …
“[One] interior air circulation has been designed, says Hernandez, as a ‘seat belt in a place where you can’t control your peers … This is long overdue for public places.’
“At a time when its vista is clouded by recurrent wildfires, the Post Ranch Inn now displays the restaurant’s air quality updates on its website, so diners can time their escape around what they want to eat — and breathe.”
Check the Post, here, for a variety of new air-quality gizmos. For example: “An air purifier about the size of a water bottle [that] sits on each table. It can’t clean a lot of air quickly, but it can direct filtered air in a small area. And it runs on batteries.
“While the portable air purifier can be tilted toward a person’s face, Hernandez positioned it straight up, to reduce the risk of unmasked diners infecting others by breathing across the table. Instead, the device, made by Wynd and marketed as a personal air purifier, should push any shared or unfiltered air aloft”!
I keep thinking how the the pandemic has created new opportunities for obscure products like that and has also made rock stars out of certain kinds of engineering professors. Those are among the changes we’ll keep.
Photo: Margaret Jankowski. Students in a 2013 sewing class test their new skills on a suite of machines donated by the nonprofit Sewing Machine Project to a community center in New Orleans.
There have always been a few followers of this blog who quilt, weave, knit, crochet, or sew, and I’m hoping they will like today’s focus on a nonprofit that harnesses the multifaceted power of sewing. Richard Mertens reported about it at the Christian Science Monitor.
“A tsunami helped Margaret Jankowski understand the real value of a sewing machine. Like many girls of her generation, she had learned to sew at an early age. Her mother taught her on an old Singer Featherweight, and she learned the basics by hemming her father’s handkerchiefs. As an adult, she bought her own clothes off the rack but sewed for her first child. … She taught classes at a sewing shop, ‘preaching the gospel of sewing,’ she says. …
“Then, in December 2004, a tsunami hit Sri Lanka and other coasts around the Indian Ocean, leveling communities, hurling wooden fishing boats far inland, and killing 230,000 people. … What touched Ms. Jankowski most deeply was the story of a woman returning to her ruined village. The woman had worked for years to save enough to buy a sewing machine, enabling her to work as a tailor and giving her a future. Now it was gone. …
“She resolved to send sewing machines to Sri Lanka. ‘I thought maybe I could collect a few of these machines that people are getting rid of anyway,’ she says. She explained her idea on a local news program and was inundated with machines. She raised money for voltage converters and shipping, and in 2005, with the help of the American Hindu Association, sent five boxes each to five orphanages in India and Sri Lanka, each packed with toys, medical supplies, fabric, and the most precious cargo – a sewing machine.
“ ‘They were used to sew for kids,’ she says. ‘They were also used to teach kids a trade, which I felt was really important.’
“It didn’t end there. Ms. Jankowski went on to start the Sewing Machine Project, a small organization that redistributes used machines. It’s a mission that springs from a love for an old craft and a belief in its practical and redemptive possibilities today. …
“In 16 years the project has shipped 3,350 machines around the world – and across town. It’s sent them to coffee pickers in Guatemala, women who help vulnerable girls in Guam, and war widows in Kosovo. It’s sent them to programs that help refugee women in Detroit, incarcerated women in Mississippi, and sewers of Mardi Gras outfits. … In these and other places, unwanted machines find new uses. In many places sewing can be a livelihood, whether in a factory job or at home.
For those trapped in poverty, Ms. Jankowski says, sewing ‘is a way out.’
“Sewing is also a way forward for immigrant and refugee women in Detroit, says Gigi Salka. Ms. Salka is the director of the B.O.O.S.T. training program at Zaman International, a nonprofit that serves poor and marginalized women and children, including immigrants and refugees, in the Detroit area. … Zaman began offering a two-year sewing instruction program. Graduates earn money doing alterations and creating made-to-order clothing, often from their homes. …
“The pandemic disrupted the classes but also created new opportunities for the women. ‘We gave them fabric. They took machines home. They made masks,’ Ms. Salka says. ‘In a population where five dollars makes a big difference, any supplemental income, any extra dollar is a dollar they can have. … Sewing is very empowering. You see it in a population that’s lost hope; the ability to create a product is very powerful to them. They’re so proud.’ …
“This idea is being tested in Rankin County, Mississippi, where a local woman, Renee Smith, persuaded prison officials to allow her to start a sewing program for women in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. Her aim was to get help producing reusable menstrual pads for girls in countries like Uganda and Haiti where girls frequently stay home from school while menstruating, or quit school altogether because they lack access to sanitary supplies. … The inmates were glad to have something to do, she says, but sewing for distant schoolgirls also gave them a sense of purpose. …
“Some of the biggest beneficiaries of the Sewing Machine Project have been the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans, an African American community known for the elaborate feathered and beaded suits they wear for Mardi Gras. That effort, too, started with a disaster. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the city, hitting African American neighborhoods especially hard. Cherice Harrison-Nelson, also known as Queen Reesie and an early collaborator with the Sewing Machine Project, says that making Mardi Gras suits is an important cottage industry in the city, but that many people lost their machines in the hurricane.”
Photo: Jörg Gläscher via DesignBoom. A photographer built nine massive waves of deadwood in a forest near Hamburg, Germany.
A few years ago, I blogged about seeing Patrick Dougherty’s giant stick sculptures in Salem, Mass. He was getting a lot of attention at the time, and I studied up on him at the Smithsonian.
So I was reminded of Dougherty and the beautiful possibilities of sticks when John sent me a link to an article at This Is Colossal. The German photographer JörgGläscher, or @joerg_glaescher on Instagram, is the artist. (Colossal was tipped off to the story at This Isn’t Happiness.)
Grace Ebert reported, “As the fear of a second wave of COVID-19 swept through Germany in the fall of 2020, photographer and artist Jörg Gläscher decided to channel his own worry into a project that felt similarly vast and domineering. ‘I was working (with the idea of) the pure power of nature, the all-destroying force, which brings one of the richest countries in the world to a completely still stand,’ he tells Colossal. …
“Between November 2020 and March 2021, Gläscher spent his days in a secluded location near Hamburg, where he gathered deadwood and constructed nine massive crests — the largest of which spans four meters high and nine meters wide — that overwhelm the forest floor in undulating layers of branches and twigs. Each iteration, which he photographed and then promptly destroyed in order to reuse the materials, overwhelms the existing landscape with pools of the formerly thriving matter.
“Gläscher’s installations are part of a larger diaristic project he began at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, he published a few magazines to present the works that range from photography to sculpture in one place. … Find more of his multi-media projects on his site and Instagram.” Great photos here.
I like thinking about an artist pursuing a project suggesting tidal waves when, like him, we were all isolating ourselves from the tidal wave of Covid. There is something intriguing about his taking the waves apart and reconstructing them in different forms. Doesn’t coronavirus do that, too?
The Covid Art Museum on Instagram was and still is an artistic response to the pandemic. And considering that the pandemic wave hasn’t yet crested worldwide, I’m sure we’ll be seeing other, Covid-inspired artworks — not to mention, more art from sticks.
As Patrick Dougherty has said, “A stick is an imaginative object. … I think we have a kind of shadow life of our hunting and gathering past, especially in our childhood play. Because a stick — a piece of wood — is an object that has an incredible amount of vibration for us.”
Photo: Otherlab via the Smithsonian. Saul Griffith’s latest venture, Otherlab, is a research company reminiscent of the “invention factory” created by Thomas Edison.
Here’s an Australian inventor who aims to stop global warming. I especially like his ideas about a substitute for lithium batteries — not just because it could save money but because lithium and other rare minerals are the new “blood diamonds.” Mining them is bad for Nature, bad for communities.
Rachel Pannett writes at the Washington Post, “During a TED talk, Australian inventor Saul Griffith wanted to show his audience how much a person’s individual choices can affect the planet.
“The person, in this case, was himself. And so, the tall engineer with tousled brown hair pulled up a chart on a big screen behind him on the stage.
“On display was an exhaustive audit of his personal energy impact, calculating the carbon footprint of every action in his life down to his underwear, toilet paper and taxes.
“The founder of a wind power company and a dedicated bicycle commuter, Griffith was ashamed to discover that he was consuming much more power than the average American. In short, a planet hypocrite, he told his audience. …
“Since that TED talk 10 years ago, Griffith’s San Francisco lab has attracted $100 million in capital from investors and spun out a dozen companies.
“The 47-year-old, who won a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in 2007 for his prodigious inventions ‘in the global public interest,’ from novel household water-treatment systems to an educational cartoon series for kids, has spent the past decade working to solve climate change through technology. His solution: mass electrification.
“While most environmentalists have taken aim at the fossil fuel industry, Griffith wants to decarbonize each American household — replacing every gas cooktop, furnace and hot water heater with electric devices. Otherwise, he says, efforts to reach net-zero carbon emissions will fall short.
“Most of Griffith’s tinkering happens in a nearly century-old former factory in San Francisco’s Mission District. … From every available space on the ceiling and walls, Griffith’s team has hung bicycles — from cargo bikes to a four-seater electric model.
“Otherlab, which Griffith co-founded more than a decade ago, is where the Australian and two dozen other scientists are trying to find a way to stop global warming.
“One of the lab’s current projects aims to radically redesign offshore wind platforms. Another team is designing a solar-powered scooter set for launch this year. They also designed a tracker system that helps solar panels follow the sun’s path through the day.
“ ‘Things don’t stay on paper very long,’ said Joanne Huang, Otherlab’s special projects lead, who joined the company in 2019. ‘It is like a build-it-and-see kind of place. It’s very fun in that way.’ …
Griffith believes climate change is solvable, and he imagines a cleaner future that looks better than what we have now. …’There is every reason to believe the future can be awesome.’
“In the first-floor workshop, Huang and Hans von Clemm, an engineer, were recently working on modular cubes designed to stack neatly in the corner of a person’s garage to store excess energy from rooftop solar systems. The heating and storage systems are being tested in several homes in California, including Huang’s. Their hope is to store electricity from rooftop solar panels for far less than the cost of a lithium battery — making the technology accessible to more people. …
“For the task, Griffith has assembled an eclectic team. Von Clemm is a former ski instructor; Huang was a competitive snowboarder.
“Von Clemm, who joined Otherlab as an intern in 2016, remembers the day he interviewed for the job. Griffith asked to see his hands, which were calloused and covered in cuts. The week before, von Clemm had been building a knife drawer for his mom. ‘All right,’ Griffith said approvingly.
“He then handed the young engineering student a piece of paper and a pen and asked him to draw a working bicycle in 60 seconds. Von Clemm said his hands were shaking. When he finished, Griffith declared: ‘Okay, you can start tomorrow.’
“Griffith’s vision for addressing the devastating impact of climate change bucks tradition. Instead of just focusing on shutting down coal and gas-fired power plants and polluting industries and switching to renewable power generators, he wants to also focus on suburban life. … There is little use in having wind or solar power if your stovetop, furnace and water heater are powered by gas.
“Griffith acknowledges this could be a tough task — furnaces are not easy to swap out like appliances such as refrigerators: Typically, you replace them only when they are broken. …
Yu Hua in Jia Zhangke’s Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue. The film documents life in rural Chinese villages over the past seven decades.
There’s a new documentary covering 70 years of life in China. In an interview at Hyperallergic, Jia Zhangke, director of Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, tells Jorden Cronk about some of the challenges of extracting personal memories from elderly people raised with a group mindset.
“Moving fluidly between fiction and documentary, the work of Chinese director Jia Zhangke assumes many forms, often within the same film. His latest, Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, is a documentary portrait of rural China, told through the lives and words of four authors — Ma Feng, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong — whose work collectively spans from the 1949 communist revolution to the present day. Combining reflections on each era’s politics with memories of the authors’ rural upbringings, Jia charts the cultural evolution of China in intimate strokes. … Jia and I connected on Zoom to discuss hidden histories and the generation gap separating today’s Chinese youth from their rural roots.
“Hyperallergic: I’ve heard you refer to the new film as the third in your ‘Artists Trilogy.’ At what point did you begin to conceive of the film as such?
“Jia Zhangke: I shot the first two films in the trilogy back-to-back. In 2006 I made Dong, about the painter Liu Xiaodong, and in 2007 I made Useless, about the fashion designer Ma Ke. Immediately after I thought I would make the third part, about artists who are either architects or city planners. … I had found quite a few architects and city planners that would be perfect for the project, but they didn’t seem to want to share on camera the things I wanted to capture, so we postponed the project.
“It wasn’t until recently that I started to think again about the third installment. For the past few years, I’ve been going back and forth between Beijing and Jia Family Village [Note: no relation to the director], and while I was there, I noticed that they are facing many issues — and not uniquely Chinese issues, but global issues in terms of the younger generations leaving rural areas for urban settings. Nowadays in these rural areas, you tend to see mostly older people; younger people don’t stay in these areas for long. So now when these younger generations have children, they will have no connection or memories or understanding of their rural or agricultural roots. …
They’re very old. … We had to spend a lot of time during post-production finding a coherent logic and structure in what they were saying, to properly distill their memories.
“H: How did you come to the four main subjects of the film? Do they have certain characteristics or writing styles that you felt were particularly suitable to the story you were trying to tell?
“JZ: As I was thinking about who I could call on to tell these rural histories, one particular element in Jia Family Village stood out: a literary tradition with very strong connections with the first writer depicted in the film, Ma Feng. He was born and raised in Jia Family Village, and he often wrote about the region. I thought I could use writers born in similar areas who have been writing about these regions as a way to make this documentary come alive. …
“Ma Feng, he was born in the ’20s and most prolific in the ’50s and ’60s, while Jia Pingwa mostly wrote in the ’70s and ’80s, Yu Hua about the ’80s and ’90s, and Liang Hong about anything from the ’90s until now. So it made sense for me to put these authors together as a kind of relay to talk about their formative years, and even though they have some overlap, the most important eras for each of them represent specific moments in time. …
“But more interesting for me was that I could capture each author’s unique way of storytelling and their worldview through the way they talk through their memories, lives, and history, as well as how they depict their characters. … In addition to learning about the last 70 years of rural history, you’re witnessing the evolution of Chinese literature.
“H: Ma Feng is the only writer who’s no longer alive. How did you decide to have his daughter speak for him?
“JZ: For me, to put together a comprehensive understanding of these rural areas during Ma Feng’s time, it wasn’t sufficient to rely only on his daughter, because I really needed that firsthand account. That’s the reason why, in addition to the daughter, I included two village elders, both in their 90s. These elders had direct experiences and interactions with Ma Feng that I relied on to offer eyewitness testimony to what happened during this period. All three of them talk about the collectivization of society that occurred during Ma Feng’s time. When we look back and rethink the ideas from that era, we might now have different assessments, viewpoints, or understandings of these concepts, but what I want to articulate with the film is that we have to admit that this happened, no matter how we interpret what happened. Through these three people, I wanted to capture the social and historical contexts for these things.
“However, this also posed a couple of problems with regards to interviewing them. They’re very old, of course, but they also come from a society that focused on collectivism rather than individualism, which means that it is very difficult for them to talk from a first-person, or ‘I,’ perspective. It was a challenge to interview them in such a way that they would open up in front of the camera and share their private and subjective memories. And since they are old, they tend to not talk in chronological order, and instead jump around, skip ahead, and flash back in a way that isn’t always coherent. We had to spend a lot of time during post-production finding a coherent logic and structure in what they were saying, to properly distill their memories.
“H: Is this hesitancy to talk from a first-person perspective one reason you chose to shoot the interviews from multiple angles and from what seems like a quite a distance?
“JZ: For me, the compositions evolve in a natural way within the film’s structure. For the first interviews, I wanted to things to be impressionistic, so we started with images of old people eating, and through that group concept slowly but surely segue into individual memories. In other words, I wanted to locate a visual concept that would take us from the collectivist to individualist way of viewing memories.
“H: Much of the film is about the official record of Chinese history and the personal experiences of each author, and how those are quite different. In general, what is the public’s understanding of these events?
“JZ: In terms of the grand narrative, the ‘official’ version of history is pretty much the same for everyone, at least in terms of how people understand the big historical junctures. However … everything is stated in such an abstract or statistical way. That’s why I think films like this are very much needed. You can’t feel abstract or statistical histories. There’s no impact — it’s meaningless. What’s missing are visceral connections with history. Of course, there are many ways you can hide certain parts of history. But what’s more important to realize is that what’s often hidden is not necessarily what happened, but how things happened.”
Photo: Facebook. Jonny Rhodes, owner of the acclaimed Houston restaurant Indigo, is putting his energy and reputation behind a social justice movement focused on food.
I’ve written a lot of posts about food deserts and efforts nationwide to help low-income communities get access to fresh and nourishing produce. Today’s story adds to the series, highlighting how a successful Houston restaurateur decided to make food equity his business.
Victoria Marin writes at the Washington Post, “By most accounts, Houston chef Jonathan ‘Jonny’ Rhodes has already achieved tremendous success. Just a few years removed from culinary school, he has worked in several Michelin-starred kitchens and is running his own celebrated restaurant. Nonetheless, he says, everything in his career has brought him to this moment, confronting food justice against the backdrop of what is perhaps the biggest movement against … police violence in history. …
“A restaurant, even a revered one, has never been enough for Rhodes, who says the pathway to real freedom is through the security and sustainability that comes with land ownership. He has been laying the groundwork since he opened his neo-soul food restaurant, Indigo, by building out a market of preserved and canned pantry items supplemented by produce from the modest garden next door. His intention: to eventually open a full-service grocery store and, further down the line, start a farm to supply the store
“Rhodes decided to open Indigo in Houston’s Northline neighborhood, just outside of where he grew up, in part because he wanted to prove that fine dining belonged there, even if local law enforcement — and some Yelp reviewers — may have thought otherwise. But he has long had bigger aspirations for the project he undertook two years ago: He wants [to show our] ‘people what we’re capable of. … It makes them curious. And as it makes them curious, they create, they start asking questions. And when they start asking questions, they create their own ideas, and ideas are dangerous to the establishment — so instead of telling people to stay safe, we tell them to stay dangerous.
“What constitutes ‘staying dangerous’ in Rhodes’s mind? It starts with Indigo’s unconventional, barrier-breaking premise: The five-course soul food menu is made up of dishes designed as much to convey flavor and beauty as to elicit dialogue about the food history of the African diaspora, with such names as Violence of Hunger; Hijabs, Hoodies & Afros; and Descendants of Igbo. Everything that’s cooked is prepared over a wood-fired grill because it’s historically accurate and because Rhodes and his team … couldn’t afford the $10,000 necessary to install a gas kitchen when they opened. Once or twice during the meal, Rhodes steps into the dining room, surrounded by African art, books about slave foodways and posters emblazoned with revolutionary quotes, and presents a deft treatise on the inspiration behind each dish, encouraging guests to consider the intersections between past and present. …
“The 13-seat restaurant, which offers only two seatings per night, four nights per week, has become one of the most covetedreservations going. But reviews and awards have never been Rhodes’s goal. And neither is just conversation, though conversation is a big part of the Indigo experience. … For Rhodes, who served in the Marines before starting a family, going to culinary school and then getting a degree in history, the war for natural resources has long been an apt metaphor for the black American experience. ‘African Americans have been subdued because we don’t control any natural resources,’ he says. …
“The communities Rhodes describes are commonly called ‘food deserts,’ usually densely populated neighborhoods marked by a severe lack of fresh produce coupled with an often devastating abundance of alcohol and processed food. But Rhodes and other food justice advocates around the country consider the term a misnomer. A more accurate phrase, they say, is ‘food apartheid.’ …
“According to Karen Washington, co-founder of New York City’s Rise and Root Farm, calling it apartheid allows us to ‘look at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith and economics. You say “food apartheid,” and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty.’ …
“Covid-19 has disproportionately laid siege on black Americans, something Rhodes sees as inseparable from food apartheid because of the interconnectedness between urban blight, food insecurity and health-care inaccessibility. The pandemic expedited his team’s plans. When states started shutting down in March, Indigo closed for a few weeks and then, like many other restaurants across the country, pivoted to groceries when it reopened. Unlike most other restaurants, though, Broham Fine Soul Food and Groceries isn’t a temporary endeavor. Rhodes is seizing this opportunity to do his part to dismantle food apartheid, through a sustainable, community-oriented, black-centered soul food market. …
“For Rhodes, this moment is ripe with possibility: Earlier this year, he and his team purchased six acres of land just outside the city so they can start farming on a larger scale. (Always resourceful, they’re repurposing the wood they’re clearing for cooking, building fencing and growing mushrooms.)”
More at the Post, here. Additional information at Houstonia magazine, here.
Denver is now constructing what is likely the largest sewer heat-recovery project in North America.
I have no idea what leads one to a career in sewers, but judging from this story, it can involve tackling really interesting challenges to help the environment.
As Sam Brasch reported at National Public Radio, “A secret cache of clean energy is lurking in sewers, and there are growing efforts to put it to work in the battle against climate change.
“The U.S. Department of Energy estimates Americans wash enough energy down the drain every year to power about 30 million homes. The sources are often everyday items inside homes. Think hot showers, washing machines and sinks. Evolving technology is making it easier to harness that mostly warm water.
“Denver is now constructing what is likely the largest sewer heat-recovery project in North America, according to Enwave, a Canadian energy company set to operate the system.
“Over the next few years, a $1 billion remodel will turn the 250-acre site, home to the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo, into a hub for art, education and agriculture. The revamped National Western Center will include about a million square feet of new indoor space, all of which will be heated and cooled with energy from the sewer pipes below.
“Brad Buchanan, the CEO leading the redevelopment, said the project has already changed how he thinks about the best location for real estate. Big pieces of sewer infrastructure have long repelled development. Now he imagines they might be sought out as a way to save energy costs and avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
The National Western Center estimates the project will help it annually avoid the carbon equivalent of driving an average gas-powered car around the equator 250 times. …
“The technology to harvest sewer heat isn’t complicated. At the National Western Center, construction crews have already completed a pit exposing the main sewer line. The wastewater inside stays a mild 55 to 75 degrees year-round,local officials say,no matter the weather outside. That consistent temperature can be tapped to heat and cool above-ground buildings.
“The key is a massive heat pump, which will be housed in a central plant on the campus. The device works like a reversible air conditioning unit. In the winter, it will transfer energy from the sewage into a clean-water loop connecting the buildings, adding heat to indoor spaces. The process can then be flipped to keep things cool in the summer.
“And to answer an obvious question: No, the raw effluent is never exposed to the air, so people occupying the buildings won’t get hit with waves of sewer stink. …
“If sewer energy catches on, one reason could be the potential benefits for wastewater districts. That’s because warm sewage causes its own environmental problems. In Denver, wastewater is often hotter than the South Platte River, its final destination after running through a treatment plant. This ‘thermal pollution’ can imperil native plants and wildlife. …
“The National Western Center has moved to protect its supply in the event of a kind of sewer-heat gold rush. The City and County of Denver, a partner in the project, exercised a three-year option for exclusive access to the energy inside the pipelines running through the campus. Buchanan, the project CEO, said it amounts to a new sort of environmental resource. Instead of mineral rights or water rights, his development holds sewer thermal energy rights.
” ‘We have it protected because we’re counting on that energy in perpetuity,’ he said.”
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