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Teacher Takes Infant as Family Recovers

May 9, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: John Moore / Getty Images
Stamford elementary school teacher Luciana Lira, 42, kisses baby Neysel, then 2 1/2 weeks, before showing the newborn for the first time to his mother Zully, a Guatemalan asylum seeker gravely ill with COVID-19, and her son Junior, 7, via Zoom.

I wanted my blog to be the first place you saw this story, but you can’t keep a good story down. Yesterday I noticed that the Washington Post had picked it up from a May 2 report by Christine Dempsey at the Hartford Courant. Read on.

“One month ago,” Dempsey wrote, “Luciana Lira, a bilingual teacher at a Stamford elementary school, got a call from a parent like no other. The mom, gravely ill with the coronavirus and about to deliver a premature baby, could barely breathe. ‘Miss Lira?’ she said in Spanish. ‘I need help.’

“The call set off a chain of events that led to Lira agreeing to take the woman’s newborn while the mother and her other family members recover from COVID-19. The 42-year-old educator spent most of April teaching online during the day and warming up bottles and feeding the baby at night, all while looking after her own son, husband and in-laws.

“For the baby’s mother, Zully, recovery has been slow. Her breathing tube was removed only on April 18, and she still is testing positive for COVID-19. Zully’s son — Lira’s student — Junior, 7, also tested positive, as did Zully’s husband, Marvin. …

“In the urgent phone call, Zully asked Lira to call her husband, Marvin. She gave Lira his number.

“At the time, Lira wouldn’t have known Marvin if she walked into him, she said. … But after Zully’s April 1 request, Lira was now on the phone with him, speaking Spanish, and he was a mess.

” ‘All he could do is cry. And cry. And cry,’ Lira said. …

“Lira realized she needed to act as an interpreter for the family. So she went to the hospital, but was turned away when staff learned that she was not a relative. A few days later, with Marvin’s approval, she was allowed to receive medical information on behalf of the family. Lira was now the point person for communication between Marvin and Stamford Hospital. In addition to talking to Marvin, she has been communicating with family members as far away as Guatemala.

“Her role was stressful. Zully was doing very poorly. She delivered her 5-pound, 12-ounce baby boy while in a medically induced coma, Lira said. …

“While Zully lay in a hospital bed, unaware she had given birth, the conversation turned to the baby, who eventually was named Neysel. …

“Marvin, who strongly suspected he, like his wife, had COVID-19, was afraid his newborn would contract the disease. He had no available relatives who could take the baby home. …

“ ‘Mrs. Lira, I know I can’t ask you this,’ he said one day, according to Lira.

“ ‘I said, “Don’t even say it because I’m going to,” ‘ Lira said. ‘ “You don’t even have to ask. My answer is yes.” ‘

Marvin insisted on making Lira’s husband Alex — who only knows a little bit of Spanish — part of the conversation before she brought a strange baby into the house, she said. ‘Marvin is amazing, a very, very responsible man,’ she said. ‘Even the nurse was crying.’ ..

“A colleague from school set up a gift registry for baby items. People donated supplies and food, she said. Then came the day of discharge. Donning a mask, gloves and protective covering, Lira took a car seat and headed to the hospital. … Marvin, who, like Lira, also was wearing head-to-toe protective gear, was standing on the opposite corner of the room, recording the moment from a distance with his phone.

“ ‘Oh … my … God. Hi, Baby,’ Lira said. The baby opened his eyes, looked at her and blinked, as if trying to figure out her role in his new life. …

“Since he arrived at her house, Neysel has been doing ‘amazing,’ said Lira, who sounds upbeat even when she’s dog-tired. ‘I work full time during the day, and at night, the baby’s up.’ Asked when she gets sleep, she laughed. ‘I’m getting strength from God.’ …

“Lira is more worried about Zully than herself. While her condition gradually improved, and Zully was discharged, she is far from recovered. She is having trouble walking. Lira said doctors wanted Zully to go into a rehabilitation center, but Zully and Marvin lack the insurance to pay for it because they both got laid off from their jobs at the beginning of the health crisis, essentially falling victim to the coronavirus twice. …

“ ‘My dream would be to have her home, with the baby, for Mother’s Day,’ she said.”

More at the Hartford Courant, here, and at the Washington Post, here.

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Drive-By Dance Performance

May 8, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Devin Muñoz
” ‘Cooped-Up’ is a contemporary dance performance viewed entirely from behind car windows,” reports Margo Vansynghel at Crosscut.

I’m fascinated by all the different ways the arts are reaching out during our lockdown. Some efforts come off better than others, and a given organization may be kind of lame on one evening and on another delightful. We’re all learning as we go.

In this story, Seattle dancers offer performances for an audience in cars.

Margo Vansynghel writes at Crosscut, “Gedney Barclay sat in her idling car in a North Seattle Safeway parking lot, awaiting instructions. She could feel herself getting anxious. … She looked around — unsure of what would happen next — and glanced at the phone in her hand. The call from an unknown number would come anytime now. And then there would be no turning back.

“Barclay wasn’t involved in some kind of nefarious plot. She was about to participate in ‘Cooped-Up: Drive-in Dances for Cooped Up People,’ a contemporary dance performance by local company LanDforms, in which audience members view the proceedings through their own car windows. …

“Guided by pins on a digital map and a downloaded soundtrack — featuring songs,  poetry, a couple of old voicemail messages and mysterious clues — ticketed audience members drive through the city and visit performers at their homes. The dancers perform from porches, sun rooms, front yards, alleys and balconies while the audience, cocooned in 20 cars (one per household), drives up to watch at 10-minute intervals.

“ ‘It’s a wild journey all over Seattle,’ says LanDforms’ Leah Crosby. She and co-director Danielle Doell describe the show as a whimsical mashup of a drive-in movie, scavenger hunt, escape room and ‘durational performance’ tailored to and inspired by COVID-19 restrictions. Basically, they say, it’s like curbside pickup of food-to-go, but for dance. The first, mid-April performance of Cooped-Up sold out almost instantly. …

“Crosby and Doell are among the many local artists finding front yard and window workarounds to the stay-at-home order and ban on gatherings.

“Earlier in March, artist Rachel Kessler and On the Boards director Betsey Brock staged a citywide performance titled ‘Going the Social Distance,’ for which they collected song requests (and home addresses) from participants, donned cheerful costumes and biked to people’s houses blasting the songs through Bluetooth speakers. Isolated fine art photographers are venturing out to photograph people from a safe distance either outdoors or behind windows. In late April, KEXP radio DJ John Richards started broadcasting live concerts from his front yard. …

“Cooped-Up deals explicitly with our new corona-colored reality. In seven different dances created collaboratively over Zoom, the participating dancers bring their personal quarantine experiences (and corresponding cocktail of emotions) to the makeshift stage. However whimsical, the show doesn’t shy away from expressing the loneliness and the boredom specific to this cultural moment. …

“On a Zoom call with production manager (and frequent collaborator) Ari Kaufman in late March, the duo wondered: ‘How can we make a live performance right now?’ Doell says. …

“When Doell, who is also a youth educator, noticed that cooped-up kids in her neighborhood had been hunting for the stuffed animals neighbors placed in windows as a way to pass the time, she wondered, ‘Maybe we can make kind of a dance teddy bear hunt?’ …

“These are not improvised performances. Everything is timed to the minute, if not to the second: when the first audience member’s car leaves; when they should arrive at the next location; where every car should theoretically be at each point in the performance; when the next song is supposed to start; and when each dancer resumes their short loop. ….

‘At any given time during the show, there are basically seven miniperformances happening simultaneously, Crosby says. That’s a lot to keep track of.

“During the five-hour run of the show, she sits in her room in West Seattle, headphones on, surveying multiple screens and spreadsheets like an air traffic controller. Meanwhile, pacing in his kitchen about a dozen miles away, production manager Kaufman has his phone at the ready, in case a car gets lost or runs into any trouble. …

“The dancers, including Doell, say [they] miss the collective warmups and preshow rituals, the murmur as the audience trickles into the theater. When they’re done, there’s no applause. It’s a new shade of loneliness. But also one that has Doell reconnecting with her neighborhood, she says.

“ ‘A lot of neighbors were poking their heads out and being like: “Wow, what is happening?” ‘ Doell recalls. …

” ‘Normally, the audience member’s job is to pay money and then sit face-forward in a dark room where their identity is masked,’ she says. [In this performance, they] have to figure out where to go. Follow the clues. Find the dancer. Park by the gray garbage bin, not the green one — and don’t knock it over while backing up. …

“[Audience member Barclay] hadn’t ventured outside her neighborhood for a long time. Driving through the city was a poignant reminder of something she already knew: So many people, in house after apartment after studio, were going through the same isolation, the same loneliness. But for a few hours, from the relative safety of her car, Barclay felt like she’d made a connection — rekindled the kind of mutual appreciation between dancer and audience that electrifies live performance.

” ‘It made me feel way less alone,’ she says.”

More here.

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Valuable Russian Art Found

May 7, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Vasnetsov Brothers Art Museum
In Soviet times, avant-garde art such as Ilya Mashkov‘s Landscape (1911) were hidden in the provinces for fear of censorship and persecution. Recently the authenticity of a cache uncovered in a small history museum was verified.

I can never resist a story about antiquities that have just been unearthed or long-lost art that has been found. Rediscoveries give me hope that other losses may be retrieved. Even intangibles such as, say, nationwide respect for science, concern for the marginalized, friendly collaboration, kindness.

Today I want to tell you about exceptional art once labeled “degenerate” that was recently authenticated. Surprisingly, in the first five years after the Bolshevik Revolution, the works were considered OK and were part of a traveling show. It was only later that they fell out of favor.

Sophia Kishkovsky reports at the Art Newspaper, “A leading Russian avant-garde expert says he has identified dozens of works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova languishing in an obscure history museum in the Kirov region, [500 miles] from Moscow.

“Andrey Sarabyanov says he was ‘astounded’ at what he found in the basement store of the Yaransk Museum of Local Lore, in a town of fewer than 16,000 people. Discoveries included three watercolours by Kandinsky, a gouache by Stepanova and a ‘completely unknown’ work by Rodchenko from 1915 — a painting on cardboard that is now being restored.

“Sarabyanov, the editor of a Russian avant-garde encyclopaedia that will be published in English in 2022, believes the works were abruptly abandoned after featuring in an early Soviet travelling exhibition in 1921. …

“Sarabyanov learned of Yaransk’s hidden treasures from a local cultural official, Anna Shakina, during a 2017 visit to the regional capital, Kirov, where the Vasnetsov Brothers Art Museum holds a rich avant-garde collection. Shakina’s 2008 dissertation research had unearthed the catalogue of the 1921 exhibition, for which the early Bolshevik government transported more than 350 works by 20th-century artists around the region by horse-drawn cart.

“According to records, 85 of the works remained in Yaransk. Around half were transferred to Kirov in the 1960s for restoration and hidden in storage due to censorship from the Soviet authorities, which had long since banned avant-garde art. They are now openly displayed as part of the Vasnetsov Brothers Art Museum’s collection. Sarabyanov knew those pieces from visits in the late Soviet era and in 2015, when he was preparing a Moscow exhibition of forgotten avant-garde art from provincial museums.

“Together with Shakina — now the Kirov museum’s director — and Natalia Murray, a lecturer at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, Sarabyanov plans to reconstruct the 1921 exhibition at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, reuniting the works divided between Kirov and Yaransk. The show is currently scheduled to open in September. The whereabouts of the 250-plus other works are still unknown but alternative pieces will be lent by the Slobodskoy Museum and Exhibition Center.” More here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Married Soviet avant-garde artists Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova are pictured here in the 1920s.

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Finding Entertainment Online

May 6, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Humorous online show from Philadelphia: Thursdays at 6 pm, here.

Many of us have been bingeing on the new online offerings for education, entertainment, or simply communicating.

But not everyone has time to check things out. In the beginning, I was sending lots of online links meant for kids. But as John pointed out, two working parents teaching themselves to home-school might not have the bandwidth even to click and see if the links were actually cool.

They are definitely busy. I’ve been busy, but I do have time to try links for my own entertainment and to pass along a few to friends.

As I mentioned yesterday, a took an online seminar on TikTok. It was presented by First Draft, an organization that offers resources for journalists and has a focus on spotting and countering fake news. The webinar was way above my level, but it got me interested in learning more about TikTok. I do like social media.

Meanwhile, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, theater-going is pretty much shut down. But I saw a very good 20-minute play by David Mamet and his actress wife Rebecca Pidgeon at the Great Barrington Public Theater site “Bear Tales: Six Feet Together,” here. The play is about the famed, hard-drinking journalist Dorothy Kilgallen (1913-1965) and promotes a theory about the Lindbergh baby that was completely new to me. For more of Great Barrington Public Theater’s “Bear Tales,” click here.

I moonlighted for many years as a theater reviewer, and I reviewed the Boston Theater Marathon for New York-based TheaterMania.com a number of times. So I was interested to see how scores of 10-minute Theater Marathon plays would be handled in the pandemic. Turns out, the Boston Playwrights Theater decided to Zoom one new play at a time. What is nice is that you can enjoy extra features after watching the play: discussions among the playwright, the actors, the director, and more. Each person is, of course, at home. Catch new plays at noon until May 18, here.

Nancy Greenaway, the poet I know from New Shoreham, alerted me to an online reading organized by Connecticut’s Arts Café Mystic and scheduled for the last day of National Poetry Month. I watched that, too.

There was a lot of variety, and it was kind of fun to see what indoor or outdoor home settings the readers had chosen for a backdrop. Some people read classic favorites from the canon, some read their own poems. I got a kick out of a poem by Stephen Dobyns about an old man who heard his dog suggesting fun things to do that they once used to do. The suggestions seemed to dead-end. Finally the dog suggested that they go back in the house and make a big sandwich. We leave the old man looking in the fridge “for answers.”

Dobyns has been a college professor and a mystery writer as well as a poet. I heard him once in person and got the message that he really didn’t like to mix his poetry side with his novel-writing side, but I sure did love his entertaining Charlie Bradshaw/ Saratoga detective series.

You can listen to the poetry reading here. Click on “In This Together.”

For entertainment on Thursdays at 6 pm, you might like “I Put on Pants for This,” by Philadephia-based comedy troupe 1812 productions. My husband and I found plenty of laughs in the episode about comedians Mae West, Sophie Tucker, and Moms Mabley. Go here here to access the 1812 productions.

For those who like Sondheim’s music — and many people do — there’s a YouTube tribute from an astonishing number of stars, including Sutton Foster, Josh Groban, Jake Gyllenhaal, Patti LuPone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Audra McDonald, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Randy Rainbow, Meryl Streep, and Raúl Esparza.

The video is more than two hours, though. I watched it in chunks, here. It’s also a fundraiser for ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty).

I’ll wrap up today by mentioning an amazing collection of 175,336 photographs you can access for free at the Library of Congress, here. It’s from the period of the Great Depression (Dorothea Lange, anyone?) and is labeled “Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information.” It’s a beautiful reminder that when artists are out of work, a certain kind of government will pay them to document hard times.

Take Me to the World: Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration

 

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Teens Teach Parents to Dance

May 5, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Natalie Bell
Natalie Bell and her kids, says CBC, “have been making Tik Tok and Instagram videos together to pass the time while they’re isolating at their home in Winnipeg, Canada.”

The other day, I took an online seminar on how to do TikTok. Just because. But even before I read today’s story, I was pretty sure you would need a teenager in the house to move to the next level. (Namely, the level beyond downloading the app.)

Rachel Bergen at CBC Manitoba writes, “Families cooped up together during the COVID-19 pandemic are turning to Netflix, board games and puzzles to get them through — but a few are going renegade and taking on TikTok dance challenges.

“Take Pat Tetrault and his three daughters in La Broquerie, Manitoba, who found they had an abundance of time on their hands and decided to use it making TikTok videos together.

” ‘They showed me a few TikToks that I thought were hilarious, so I said, “What the heck, let’s do something crazy. Let’s get something done,” ‘ he said.

“TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, with more than 800 million people around the world using the app regularly to create and share short videos. It’s mostly popular with teens, who often post videos of themselves taking on dance challenges. …

“Although Tetrault is still going to work, his daughters are home and isolated from their friends. It can be challenging, he said, but the videos are ways they can have fun together — and his daughters can make fun of their dad. …

“Making creative videos is a great outlet, says parenting commentator Ann Douglas. The parenting book author and columnist for CBC Radio says children and teens are likely feeling very vulnerable and out of control, so parents ceding control of activities allows kids to take a bit more ownership of a challenging situation.

” ‘I think it’s great to let kids take the lead on some of the activities because right now, a lot of kids are feeling like they’ve lost all control over their life,’ she said. … ‘One thing kids can control is coming up with a way to have fun.’

“Tetrault’s daughters control their TikTok videos and, apparently, his dance moves.

” ‘I’ll be honest with you. I’m old school. I’m not a big dancer. … The girls are teaching me all sorts of new stuff. … We’re actually getting closer because of it. … It’s a different avenue of connecting with them.’

“Natalie Bell is also making TikTok videos using her account @pegcitylovely with her children to pass the time.

‘We try to do things more now as a family than we ever have before because, of course, it used to be just the business of the day. … It’s just something fun. There’s no stress, there’s no pressure. It’s just if we want to do it, we do it,’ Bell said. ‘We have fun and we don’t care who sees it.’ …

“In Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Nellie Guimond, Alexa Haley and Lily-Jade Haley create daily videos on TikTok featuring their mother, Cindy Guimond, and their dad, Éric Haley — whom they are teaching to dance.

” ‘Showing this to the world, to our family and friends, was really entertaining for everyone, and everyone loved it. I think that’s the main reason for our little popularity … his goofy side that people didn’t think he would, or could, show,’ Nellie said in a CBC Quebec AM interview.

“Lily-Jade said making the videos keeps them happy and connected.

‘Sometimes we laugh about our dad, because he doesn’t get the moves right away,’ she said. …

“[Parenting commentator] Douglas said there are many creative ways parents can connect with their children during the pandemic, and they don’t need to use social media to do it.

“For example, it can be an opportunity to try new things in the kitchen and access a kind of ‘improvisational inspiration,’ she says. ‘What if you only have these five or six ingredients? And what could you Google and find a recipe for? And how might it really turn out?’

“For parents of craft-loving kids, Douglas suggests making signs with community-minded messages to put in the window for others to see.”

OK, but if you ask me, TikTok videos of dancing dads who don’t know how to dance sure beats signs in the window.

More at the CBC, here.

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The Post-Covid Restaurant

May 4, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Anne Lakeman/Mediamatic ETEN
Testing the Serres Séparées safe-eating concept at Mediamatic restaurant in the Netherlands.

My husband keeps saying he can’t imagine that going to restaurants will ever be the same after coronavirus. In fact, he says, if nice restaurants continue doing takeout, maybe we should just stick with that.

Of course, restaurant owners are already thinking about these issues.

Byron Mühlberg reports from the Netherlands that the possibility of future guests requesting their own separate spaces has got some restaurateurs thinking creatively.

“With Dutch restaurants, bars and other catering services engulfed in uncertainty over how they might adjust to the 1.5-meter society,” he writes, “one Amsterdam restaurant is set to experiment with a brand new way of condoning off its guests: Using enclosed greenhouses.

“Mediamatic ETEN, part of a larger arts and entrepreneurship center focusing on sustainability, is a vegan restaurant. … From May 21, the restaurant will begin taking in guests, only this time they will be seated inside Serres Séparées (‘separated greenhouses’), enclosed glass structures, each equipped with a table for two or three diners.

” ‘This was one of the most feasible ideas from a large list of ideas we had when brainstorming,’ Mediamatic’s founding partner Willem Velthoven told NL Times. …

Initially, no more than three guests will be allowed to dine inside each greenhouse, even though there is the capacity for more. ‘[This is] is because we are now careful with our optimism,’ Velthoven explained. …

” ‘Bigger groups could [come] now, but then they should be families. For now, bigger groups are being discouraged because, from our experience, they are just louder and then you get the excited behavior causing spittle to fly and so on, and that’s the kind of behavior that would make the virus spread faster,’ Velthoven said. …

“Catering industry association KHN told NL Times, ‘We sent a protocol to the government two weeks ago, containing advice on how best to open the 1.5 [meter] distance. It is crucial that the government provide perspective quickly.’

“While KHN said it would not yet advise restaurants to reopen on June 1, renowned catering tycoon Laurens Meyer … questioned the idea of people becoming too careful with space.

” ‘We have to realize that there will always be some kind of virus. Whether it is worse than the flu, we have to see. If there is nothing left of our economy, we will no longer be able to afford health care and that will also cost human lives,’ explained Meyer.

“Velthoven, on the other hand, disagrees with Meyer’s approach, urging caution before advising restaurants to open their doors to the public without careful examination. ‘It’s about others and not just yourself in this case,’ he said. …

“Velthoven also understands the business argument, even though he has spent a career looking for creative solutions to problems instead of blunt responses. He ultimately wondered what the government’s plan is for the catering sector if those businesses are ordered to stay closed for a longer duration. If billions of euros are being diverted to KLM, he wonders what the government will be able to do to bail out his industry.

” ‘If I am not allowed to do anything the rest of this year, it’s finished,’ he lamented.” More at NL Times, here.

If you have heard of other good ideas for restaurants and bars in our cautious Covid-19 world, please share them in Comments. Pretty sure that there’s a large group of potential patrons who will be looking for the safest way to dine out — at least until a vaccine is widely available.

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Bonus: Bee Hotel in Sweden

May 4, 2020 by suzannesmom

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After I posted yesterday about the bee hotels and other pollinator-friendly initiatives in Costa Rica, I received several delightful photos taken by Lolo Dahlsten in Sweden. A member of Erik’s extended family, Lolo writes, “I had some fun Saturday a week ago when I made this bee hotel. The metal part is actually two zinc shelves tied together with some tarred rope. The other day I put some moss and dandelions on the roof 🌻🌱🐝 Today there’s only the moss left.”

Of course, I had to show you all that bee hotels are a real thing — not just in Costa Rica. And it looks like you can also bring your bee hotel indoors for company at dinnertime.

Hat tip: Stuga40

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Citizenship for Bees

May 3, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Curridabat Municipality
A bee hotel, part of Curridabat’s drive to welcome and protect pollinators. Costa Rica takes environmental issues seriously, which has made it a popular destination.

Some folks believe that many of the troubling aspects of our world will get fixed after coronavirus. Some say that’s unlikely. Others expect everything to get worse — problems such as inequality, nationalism, and environmental degradation.

The only prediction I’m confident about is that it will be a long time before we know. Meanwhile, stories from around the world are showing us options — often completely different ways of being.

Consider this story. Patrick Greenfield reports at the Guardian that a suburb of San Jose, Costa Rica, is taking environmental quality very seriously. In fact, the attitude toward nature nationwide has made this part of Central America a desirable destination in normal times. We ourselves went there when the kids were young.

” ‘Pollinators were the key,’ says Edgar Mora, reflecting on the decision to recognise every bee, bat, hummingbird and butterfly as a citizen of Curridabat during his 12-year spell as mayor.

‘Pollinators are the consultants of the natural world, supreme reproducers and they don’t charge for it. The plan to convert every street into a biocorridor and every neighbourhood into an ecosystem required a relationship with them.’

“The move to extend citizenship to pollinators, trees and native plants in Curridabat has been crucial to the municipality’s transformation from an unremarkable suburb of the Costa Rican capital, San José, into a pioneering haven for urban wildlife.

“Now known as ‘Ciudad Dulce’ – Sweet City – Curridabat’s urban planning has been reimagined around its non-human inhabitants. Green spaces are treated as infrastructure with accompanying ecosystem services that can be harnessed by local government and offered to residents. Geolocation mapping is used to target reforestation projects at elderly residents and children to ensure they benefit from air pollution removal and the cooling effects that the trees provide. The widespread planting of native species underscores a network of green spaces and biocorridors across the municipality, which are designed to ensure pollinators thrive. …

“The metropolitan area surrounding San José is home to more than 2 million people – about half of the population of Costa Rica – despite covering less than 5% of the country’s area.

“Were it not for the lush volcanic peaks that surround Costa Rica’s central valley, it would not be immediately obvious that you were in the heart of one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. Humans dominate and the country’s cloud forests, pristine coastline and emblematic sloths can feel a long way from the concrete and traffic.

“ ‘We attract a lot of tourists because of nature and conservation but there is still friction in the city,’ says Irene Garcia, head of innovation at the mayor’s office in Curridabat, who oversees the Sweet City project. …

“By the middle of the century, the UN projects that 68% of humanity will live in towns and cities, placing further pressure on ecosystems and rapidly vanishing habitats.

“But many urban planners are trying to change this relationship and the importance of green spaces in towns and cities has been recognised in a draft UN agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, often referred to as the Paris agreement for nature.

“Sweet City is just one of a number of biocorridors around the country that allow the genetic spread of species to maintain their strength. In Central America, this concept has developed since the early 2000s following an agreement to form a biocorridor network to connect jaguars.

“ ‘Grey infrastructure makes the city warm up too much. So the idea to connect green areas is to cool down parts of the city, return the ecosystem services that were there previously but have deteriorated,’ says Magalli Castro Álvarez, who oversees Costa Rica’s network of biocorridors with the National System of Conservation Areas (Sinac).

“ ‘Inter-urban biocorridors have a double objective: they create ecological connectivity for biodiversity but also improve green infrastructure through roads and river banks lined with trees that are linked with the small forested areas that still exist in metropolitan areas. They improve air quality, water quality and give people spaces to relax, have fun and improve their health.’

“Many Costa Ricans are happy to speak about the policy benefits of schemes such as Sweet City, as their response to the challenges of bringing nature into the city is part of a deeper national sentiment. It is not in this tiny Central American country’s DNA to behave as if humans were somehow set apart from nature. …

“Says the country’s president, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, who credits Costa Rica’s tradition of pacifism and respect for nature with its desire to tackle big environmental issues, ‘Even though we have a small territory, its characteristics allow us to have 6% of the biodiversity of the world in our land.’ ”

More here.

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Shadows

May 2, 2020 by suzannesmom

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As usual on sunny days, I’m paying a lot of attention to shadows, and thinking about shadows often calls to mind these words from A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended—
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.

Although Shakespeare is referring to the characters as shadows or perhaps the actors, I’m wondering whether we’re the ones who are shadows. But if so, who is slumbering and seeing visions? When I go down that path, I get all snarled up. Better back off.

Today I was planning to share light and darkness in the form of photos going back to Easter (which seems a long, long time ago for some reason), including photos of shadows. Doesn’t the picture above make you think of a New England painter best known for projecting loneliness?

Sandra M. Kelly sent pictures of the Easter Sunrise Service in New Shoreham and a statue that the folks on the island call Rebecca. Please note she’s wearing her mask.

I used a Sharpie for my hard-boiled eggs this Easter as I had no dye. There were 8 other Easter eggs representing the people who would have come here but for coronavirus. We ate them. 🙂

Kristina Joyce shot the cactus. It bloomed for her twice this Easter. She told me that had never happened before.

On April 18, we had snow, which surprised the flowering bushes at my neighbor’s. The Trout Lilies persevered.

There follow random items that caught my eye on my walks. The mystery vegetable arrived with my farm produce order Thursday. It turned out to be ramps (as in the awesome history of Appalachia called Ramp Hollow) and we sauteed the whole thing, minus roots. We saw online that you don’t cultivate ramps. They need to be foraged. They tasted like a very sharp onion.

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“Poor People Helping Poor People”

May 1, 2020 by suzannesmom

Photo: Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Note that they are wearing gloves! Members of Chelsea Collaborative in Massachusetts pray before opening the doors to a pop-up food pantry. Covid-19 food distribution has been operating for about a month with food donated by local businesses and food pantries.

A sad but hardly surprising aspect of the Covid-19 plague is that the poor, minorities, and immigrants are often the most affected. A community in the Greater Boston area has been learning that the hard way. But in Chelsea there is a spirit of helping your neighbor that is a lesson for us all

Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker writes, “Gladys Vega’s office at the Chelsea Collaborative does not normally resemble a food pantry. But normal times ended in Chelsea roughly six weeks ago.

“’We probably have 2,000 people lined up, and I’m giving out food in an hour,’ she said when I talked to her Thursday afternoon.

“In a state that has become a hot spot of the coronavirus, hard-hit Chelsea might be its white-hot center. But the frightening prevalence of COVID-19 is only part of the reason her nonprofit has become such a popular spot.

“The city’s status as home to a large population of undocumented immigrants has taken on new meaning in recent weeks. The people Vega advocates for are being shut out of other means of assistance, such as stimulus checks — one more way the pandemic has deepened the divide between haves and have-nots.

“ ‘They don’t have income,’ Vega said. ‘And now they are not able to pay bills or buy food.’

“Vega is giving out not just donated food, but diapers and other supplies as well. For this, she has relied upon a network of donors cultivated over many years.

“That’s where her friend Bob Hildreth came in. Hildreth is a wealthy philanthropist, having made many millions in finance. After walking away from that he founded a nonprofit in Lynn to help poor families, especially immigrant families, save up to send their children to college by matching their savings. …

“Hildreth told me he thinks this is a critical time for philanthropists to do as much as possible to help those the federal government won’t.

“ ‘I don’t think my fellow philanthropists are acting fast enough,’ Hildreth said. “’When you need food and drink you need it within a week. I think this requires an extraordinary effort to get money to grass-roots organizations.” …

“The tragedy in Chelsea has mobilized donors large and small, Vega said. A produce collaborative has contributed food. A group of women in Cambridge have made regular deliveries of diapers and baby formula. Local bodegas that may not survive the lockdown are donating to the food supply.

“ ‘I’ve been so blessed,’ Vega said. ‘Two weeks ago I was crying because I had no food and I had a list of 200 people looking for food. Today we delivered 65 boxes of 25 pounds of food for people with COVID who can’t come out of the house. We call ahead and leave it outside.’

Especially striking has been the philanthropy of Chelsea residents with relatively little to give. ‘A man on Social Security gave me $10,’ Vega said. ‘A woman I don’t know gave me her stimulus check. She said, “You don’t know me, but I want to help.” It’s been the most beautiful show of poor people helping poor people.’

“By Vega’s reckoning, Chelsea’s recovery will be a long haul. The city had been turning around, but that’s been stopped in its tracks. As of last week, Chelsea had the highest per capita number of coronavirus cases in Massachusetts.

“ ‘The coronavirus in one month has taken five years of progress,’ she said. ‘This is a war zone right now.’

“Still, she and her staff keep performing their daily triage operation, with no plans to slow down. She said she’s getting about two to three hours of sleep a night. For now, that’s enough.

“ ‘You see the line and it gives you energy,’ she said. ‘You don’t have time to think about pain. You just continue to go.’ ”

I crossed paths with philanthropist Hildreth in my last job, and I can attest that he is sets an example for philanthropy. But what touches me the most is that people who don’t have much are giving such a big chunk of what they have.

More at the Globe, here, and at the Chelsea Collaborative, here.

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Save This Monkey, Save Many Species

April 30, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Maria Magdalena Arrellaga
The beautiful golden lion tamarin is like the proverbial canary in the coal mine. If this species goes, others will, too. Activists in Brazil are working to protect its habitat.

I really like the Science section of the New York Times. Right before we all began isolating, I had started reading headlines to a grandson and letting him pick an article we could read and talk about. He picked one about a planet small enough to fit in a living room. The tiny planet was a real thing, but we learned that it was only passing through Earth’s orbit.

Alas, who knows whether any grandchild will still be up for reading science articles with me when/if I ever get out of quarantine.

I believe this story about a beautiful endangered monkey in South America would have been of interest.

As James Gorman reported, “The golden lion tamarin, one of the world’s most charismatic primates, has a dark face that can look inquisitive, challenging, almost human, framed in an extravagant russet mane.

“The endangered New World monkey weighs less than two pounds. It lives only in Brazil, and only in the Atlantic coastal forest there. Tamarins spend their time high in the trees, up to 100 feet off the ground, in small groups of up to eight or so animals, with one breeding pair among each group. …

“The golden lion tamarin has always had its human admirers, many of them in the Old World. Europeans imported the animals as pets in the 1500s, and they can be seen in portraits of Spanish royalty.

“But deforestation, agriculture and development destroyed much of its habitat, as the pet trade continued into the 20th century. By the 1970s, only about 200 animals survived.

“In 1992, the Golden Lion Tamarin Association (Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado) was founded in Brazil. In concert with international conservation groups and supported by a dedicated U.S. charity, Save the Golden Lion Tamarin, the group began to buy up land to create connected conservation areas. And zoos around the world, like the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., contributed to reintroducing the animals to the wild.

“The population had reached 3,700 in the wild, according to Luis Paulo Ferraz, the director of the association, but suffered its first population decline last year, when yellow fever killed hundreds of the tiny monkeys. … Today there are about 2,500 tamarins living in about five million acres of forest. But only some of those forest acres are connected. …

“ ‘Our main goal,”’ Mr. Ferraz said, ‘is to create a viable population in the long term.’ What that means in numbers is a population of 2,000 tamarins with a connected conservation area of 2.5 million acres, milestones the group hopes to reach by 2025. Scientists say such a size is necessary for the population to be self-sustaining.

“One challenge to getting connected areas was the widening of a major coastal highway, BR-101, which cuts through large chunks of Atlantic forest. The improvement of the highway created a barrier that isolated several forest areas and their more than 700 tamarins from three other large forest fragments.

After negotiations and lawsuits, the conservationists managed to get the construction company to agree to build and pay for a forested overpass for animals, the first in Brazil, with a tunnel and forest canopy connections, to enable the tamarins and other animals to pass from one side to the other. …

“As with many other conservation campaigns, the golden lion tamarin is the beloved and beautiful poster animal for the preservation of a habitat that includes many plants and less compelling animals, like sloths and frogs. The forest also provides a watershed for human use.

” ‘We are not only talking about one species,’ Mr. Ferraz said. ‘We are talking about the environment.’ ”

Click here for more of the story — and some gorgeous pictures.

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16th Century Black Classical Composer

April 29, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: VAN

How’s your Latin? It might help in appreciating this post about 16th century classical music. Then again, you don’t need Latin to understand that a black classical composer from that long ago should not be forgotten. Garrett Schumann reports the story at an online magazine called VAN.

” ‘Only then can his creative genius begin redounding, as it should, to the glory of Black music history,’ writes the musicologist Robert Stevenson in his 1982 article, ‘The First Black Published Composer.’

“Stevenson’s subject was Vicente Lusitano (ca. 1520-ca. 1561), an African-Portuguese priest and musician who enjoyed an international career. Stevenson heralds works like the motet ‘Heu me domine”’ (1551), which exemplifies the composer’s unusual embrace of chromatic counterpoint. …

“Of Lusitano’s compositions, ‘Heu me domine’ has received the most attention from modern scholars and performers, but it is not the only example of his remarkable creativity. In a 1962 essay, Stevenson reproduces a passage from Lusitano’s motet ‘Regina coeli’ to highlight its adventurous chromatic writing, and notes that other works in Lusitano’s 1551 motet collection feature extremely uncommon combinations of accidentals. Musicologist Philippe Canguilheim, in a 2011 essay regarding Lusitano’s unpublished counterpoint treatise, writes that Lusitano is ‘particularly tolerant’ of dissonance, a practice he justifies in the text by citing Pythagoras and Boethius.

“The alluring counterpoint and voice leading of ‘Heu me domine’ connect to improvisation techniques which Lusitano outlines in his counterpoint studies. As Canguilheim notes, these works make pioneering arguments regarding canons and the productive interplay between composition, free improvisation, and structured improvisation.

“ ‘Heu me domine’ is one of just two pieces in Lusitano’s output that 20th-century scholars have transcribed into modern notation — until last month, it was the only piece of his to be recorded. The other work, a 1562 madrigal called ‘All’hor ch’ignuda,’ was recently arranged for woodwind trio and recorded by multi-instrumentalist Misty Theisen. …

“Ironically, Lusitano’s obscurity originates in the most famous episode of his career. In 1551, while in Rome, Lusitano was drawn into an aesthetic dispute by fellow composer Nicola Vicentino (1511-ca.1576), an argument which gained so much attention that a Vatican tribunal convened to issue a verdict. Lusitano won, and Vicentino paid a fine, but, for years afterward, Vicentino published egregiously disingenuous descriptions of the proceedings with the aim of damaging Lusitano’s reputation.

“A 17th-century source in Rome attests that Lusitano’s name was scratched off copies of the widely-published introduction to his counterpoint treatise, and it is plausible he faced other reprisals that went undocumented. These developments likely led to Lusitano’s relocation to Germany sometime after 1553,  where he converted to Protestantism, married, and continued his career until his death. …

“Lusitano’s obscurity also shows the influence of collective action on a composer’s legacy. Vicentino worked hard to distort and erase Lusitano’s achievements, but these efforts only retained their impact because other scholars and artists have — perhaps out of convenience or ignorance — uncritically reproduced Vicentino’s version of the facts.

“Whether any of these developments are related to racial bias is difficult to prove. Nevertheless, composers with historically excluded identities, like Lusitano, have been extraordinarily underserved by institutions of classical music performance and scholarship. Reports from Bachtrack.com analyzing programming from more than 160,000 classical performances around the world between 2014 and 2019 show a population of just 15 white men constitute the 10 most-programmed composers in each of those five performance seasons. Recent research by Philip Ewell exploring the intersection of music theory and critical race theory also compellingly asserts that institutionalized music scholarship is structured in a way that ignores the achievements of women and people of color.”

It’s a long article, but interesting. Read it here.

Hat Tip: Arts Journal.

Douglas Lawrence leads the Australian Chamber Choir at St Martin-in-the-Fields in “Heu me domine” (1551), by Vicente Lusitano, the first published Black classical composer.

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Students Sail Home

April 28, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Sky News
Dutch students sail across the Atlantic to get home after coronavirus blocks their flight.

Of all the nutty adaptations caused by Covid-19, this is one of the most unusual. A group of Dutch students who were on an educational sailing trip in the Caribbean were unable to fly home. So they sailed all the way back over the Atlantic Ocean.

Aleksandar Furtula (with contributions from Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague) reports at the Washington Post, “A group of 25 Dutch high school students with very little sailing experience ended a trans-Atlantic voyage Sunday that was forced on them by coronavirus restrictions.

“The children, ages 14 to 17, watched over by 12 experienced crew members and three teachers, were on an educational cruise of the Caribbean when the pandemic forced them to radically change their plans for returning home in March.

“That gave one of the young sailors, 17-year-old Floor Hurkmans, one of the biggest lessons of her impromptu adventure. …

“ ‘The arrival time changed like 100 times. Being flexible is really important.’

Instead of flying back from Cuba as originally planned, the crew and students stocked up on supplies and warm clothes and set sail for the northern Dutch port of Harlingen, a five-week voyage of nearly 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles), on board the 60-meter (200-foot) top sail schooner Wylde Swan. …

“The teens hugged and chanted each other’s names as they walked off the ship and into the arms of their families, who drove their cars alongside the yacht one by one to adhere to social distancing rules imposed to rein in the spread of the virus that forced the students into their long trip home.

“For Hurkmans, the impossibility of any kind of social distancing took some getting used to. … Her mother, Renee Scholtemeijer, said she expects her daughter to miss life on the open sea once she encounters coronavirus containment measures in the Netherlands.

“ ‘I think that after two days she’ll want to go back on the boat, because life is very boring back at home,” she said. ‘There’s nothing to do, she can’t visit friends, so it’s very boring.’ …

“Masterskip, the company that organized the cruise, runs five educational voyages for about 150 students in all each year. Crossing the Atlantic is nothing new for the Wylde Swan, which has made the trip about 20 times.

“The company’s director, Christophe Meijer, said the students were monitored for the coronavirus in March to ensure nobody was infected. He said he was pleased the students had adapted to life on board and kept up their education on the long voyage.

“ ‘The children learned a lot about adaptivity, also about media attention, but also their normal school work,’ he said. ‘So they are actually far ahead now of their Dutch school colleagues. They have made us very proud.’

More at the Washington Post, here. A Reuters article with other details is here.

 

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A Month in a Mask Factory

April 27, 2020 by suzannesmom

 

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Image: Phantom of the Opera

It may sound like a scenario for a Phantom of the Opera sequel, but a month in a mask factory, nights included, is what 43 workers at Braskem America in Pennsylvania experienced when their company tackled a rush order of a key ingredient in personal protective equipment (PPE).

Meagan Flynn writes at the Washington Post, “At his factory just off the Delaware River, in the far southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, Joe Boyce clocked in on March 23 for the longest shift of his life.

“In his office, an air mattress replaced his desk chair. He brought a toothbrush and shaving kit, moving into the Braskem petrochemical plant in Marcus Hook, Pa., as if it were a makeshift college dormitory. The casual office kitchen became a mess hall for him and his 42 co-workers turned roommates. The factory’s emergency operations center became their new lounge room.

“For 28 days, they did not leave — sleeping and working all in one place.

“In what they called a ‘live-in’ at the factory, the undertaking was just one example of the endless ways that Americans in every industry have uniquely contributed to fighting coronavirus. The 43 men [worked] 12-hour shifts all day and night for a month straight, producing tens of millions of pounds of the raw materials that will end up in face masks and surgical gowns worn on the front lines of the pandemic.

“No one told them they had to do it, Braskem America CEO Mark Nikolich said. All of the workers volunteered, hunkering down at the plant to ensure no one caught the virus outside as they sought to meet the rocketing demand for their key product, polypropylene, which is needed to make various medical and hygienic items. …

[Said] Boyce, an operations shift supervisor and a 27-year veteran at Braskem America, …’We’ve been getting messages on social media from nurses, doctors, EMS workers, saying thank you for what we’re doing. But we want to thank them.’ …

“Nikolich said the company has shifted its production lines to focus on making that key ingredient, polypropylene, given the high demand due to covid-19. The company then sells the product to clients that turn it into a nonwoven fabric, which medical manufacturers ultimately use to make face masks, medical gowns and even disinfectant wipes, among other items. …

“Nikolich said the plants decided to launch the live-ins so employees could avoid having to worry about catching the virus while constantly traveling to and from work, and so the staff at the factory could be closed off to nonessential personnel. They were paid for all 24 hours each day, with a built-in wage increase for both working hours and off time, the company said. …

“Boyce said some guys brought their Xbox consoles and TVs, and even a cornhole set, to stay entertained. They stayed active at the on-site gym, which ‘has never been used so much before,’ Boyce said, and stayed extra busy in the kitchen. A skilled cook, Boyce and others asked corporate for more pots and pans and a stove. …

” ‘We had to kind of adapt. We came up with a chart for housekeeping chores so we could all clean the bathrooms and clean up after meals,’ Boyce said. …

“But being separated from family got harder as time went on, said Boyce, a father of two teenagers. Some guys counted down the days. One missed the birth of his first grandchild. Visitors weren’t allowed.

“So on Day 14, the families organized a ‘drive-by visit.’ ”  Read more at the Washington Post, here. Although the Washington Post is typically behind a firewall, you can sign up for the Coronavirus newsletter for free here. It’s really good.

Photo: WPVI
Greeting local news station WPVI staff, Braskem America workers finally clock out on Sunday after living and working inside the factory in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, for 28 days.

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Robot Dog Checks Patients

April 26, 2020 by suzannesmom

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Photo: Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe
Research scientist Hen-Wei Huang talked about Spot the robot during a demonstration at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

When Boston Dynamics first launched its robot dog, people regarded it more as a toy with fancy tricks than as a serious partner in the working world.

Then came coronavirus.

As Hiawatha Bray reports at the Boston Globe, the robot’s remarkable agility is one reason it has become useful for screening potential Covid-19 victims safely.

Bray writes, “At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the first encounter a potentially infected person might have is not with a doctor or nurse swathed in protective gear, but with a talking, animal-like robot that looks like it might have wandered off the set of ‘Star Wars.’

“Spot, the agile walking robot from Waltham-based Boston Dynamics, gained Internet notoriety for showing off its dance moves on YouTube. But now it’s going to work in the real world, striding into the danger zone, armed only with an iPad. The robot is posted just outside the hospital, not so much as a sentinel, but as an intake worker that will help doctors safely interview people who fear they may have been infected with the coronavirus. …

“The yellow-and-black Spot robot, which resembles a large dog, is positioned inside a big white tent set up in front of the hospital’s main entrance as a triage area for potential COVID-19 cases. It is fitted with an iPad that displays a physician located safely inside the hospital who can use the device’s camera to see the patient’s physical condition. The doctor can talk to the patient through the built-in microphone and a mounted speaker, asking standard diagnostic questions.

“The physician is also able to remotely control Spot, directing the machine to move around for a better perspective of the patient. …

‘Most people have been very excited to be interacting with this robot and mostly see it as something that is cool and fun,’ [said emergency room doctor Farah Dadabhoy].

“Michael Perry, Boston Dynamics’ vice president of business development, said that as early as February the company began receiving inquiries from hospitals worldwide. Was it possible, they asked, to use a Spot robot to conduct triage interviews? …

“Many had set up their COVID triage areas outdoors, on lawns or in parking lots. On such uneven surfaces, ‘traditional robotics doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘We need something that can handle this difficult terrain.’ …

“Doctors at the Brigham had also been looking into automated triage. In cooperation with engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they worked on remote diagnostic sensors, but they needed a robot to carry them. So in March they reached out to Boston Dynamics.

“The result was a specially modified Spot, featuring the iPad and a little carrying pouch mounted near the robot’s ‘tail.’

“There’s nothing flashy about the pouch, but it’s quite practical. It allows Spot to deliver small items such as bottled water to infected patients, without the need to send in a nurse. Personnel can’t approach a COVID-infected patient, even for something as simple as giving him a bottle of water, without putting on safety gear. … With the medical version of Spot, health care workers can just put the bottle in the pouch and have it marched over to the patient. And the moisture-resistant robot is designed to be sanitized easily.

“The current version of Spot is only good for conducting interviews. But the Brigham will soon deploy an upgraded model with cameras that can measure a patient’s respiration rate and body temperature, with no need to make physical contact. …

The company said it is giving its medical hardware and software designs at no charge to any robotics company that cares to use them. Perry said Boston Dynamics has already had talks with a Canadian maker of wheeled robots.

Read more at the Globe, here.

Spot the Robot Dog in an earlier career as a YouTube dancing sensation.

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