Feeds:
Posts
Comments

A Sort of “Airbnb for Refugees”

September 8, 2017 by suzannesmom


Photo: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
Mohammed, a Palestinian, bakes cheese twists with his host family in London.

Here’s another example of individuals in the UK stepping up to give refugees a welcome — while providing themselves with an experience that feels more meaningful than donating money or sending “thoughts and prayers.”

Alicia Canter, Kate Lyons and Matt Fidler write at the Guardian,
“It’s a simple premise: people with a spare room in their house are matched with a refugee or asylum seeker in need of somewhere to stay.

“And it’s a popular one: before 2015, Robina Qureshi’s organisation, called Positive Action in Housing (PAIH), used to provide about 600 nights of shelter a year to people with nowhere to go. In the 18 months since September 2015 this has risen to 29,000 nights.

“ ‘We were getting bombarded with people. … They said, “I want to do something.” ‘ …

“There are numerous points in the asylum process that asylum seekers and refugees can find themselves becoming destitute and homeless. Perhaps the most common is when they have their claim refused – at which point support payments stop and they are forced to leave their accommodation.

“People in this situation often find themselves homeless, without the right to work or receive benefits, unable to approach the local authority for help, and yet, in many cases, feeling unable to return to their home country. …

“ ‘The ones I feel really sorry for are the people who have been left destitute for years on end. People take them in and let them be human, and take them into a warm home where people care for them,’ says Qureshi.

‘What the hosts found out was that they were meeting a need in themselves – a need to give. Our society is so wealthy and our houses are stuffed full, but there’s that need to help others.’

“Mohammed, 35, from Palestine, [lives] with Joanne MacInnes, an actor and activist, in west London, and on weekends her daughters Malila, 12, and Eve, 14. …

“MacInnes has hosted six people in her house, but Mohammed is, she and her girls agree, their favourite. ‘He’s the nicest of them all,’ says Eve.

“Currently the family are trying to find Mohammed a wife. He uses his local mosque’s dating service, but says that because of his precarious immigration status he is not considered a desirable match. …

“Mohammed says he was shy when he moved in and nervous about how the family would respond to him.

“ ‘First time I come in here, I’ll never forget, Malila gave me a hug and speak with me,’ says Mohammed. ‘I was shy, Malila come in straight away, hug and speak with me and is not shy, you know. Eve is shy and Eve after two weeks spoke with me. And Joanne spoke with me. I feel family. Listen, I don’t speak English, but I hope you understand me. My dad is dead, my mother is dead [and] my sister. Joanne, Mali and Eve are my family.’ ”

More here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments »

Providence is Good at Saving Places

September 7, 2017 by suzannesmom


Photo: Heidi Gumula/DBVW Architects
After the Mercantile Block in Providence, Rhode Island, was restored, it became a hub of activity once again.

Rhode Island in general is good at preserving historic sites, offering developers monetary assistance in the form of generous tax credits. Providence in particular has a history of successful efforts to renovate properties for new uses.

At the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Jared Foretek writes about one: “When the Providence, Rhode Island nonprofit AS220 set out to purchase its third downtown building, it knew the Mercantile Block had exactly what it was looking for. Its sheer size — 50,000 square feet, four stories, and a basement — made the 1901 structure perfect for the diverse uses the artist-run organization had in mind. There was storefront space for creative businesses, office space for local nonprofits, and room for 22 live/work studios for local artists.

“Built in 1901, the building was once the hub of a bustling commercial strip in downtown Providence [and] remained a destination until the middle of the 20th century, when the Mercantile and its surrounding neighborhood fell victim to the same economic and migratory forces that ravaged urban cores around the nation.

“The building was nearly vacant when AS220 — an organization dedicated to creating artist space in Providence since 1985 — undertook a $16.9 million rehabilitation in 2008. …

“A meticulous restoration of the building’s four-story facade by DBVW Architects has helped revitalize the entire streetscape and inspired building owners to take up rehabilitations nearby. The mixed-use redevelopment has benefited the broader community as well, with affordable storefronts for local small businesses, office space for Providence-based nonprofits, and subsidized live/work studios for artists. …

“The renovation also allowed locally owned small businesses — some long-time tenants — to lease newly desirable downtown storefronts at low cost. For a restaurant like Viva Mexico!, one of just a few Latino-owned businesses in the downtown area, affordable space with good real estate is hard to come by. …

“ ‘It’s a story that a lot of communities have. Artists live in places that are semi-legal or if they’re legal, they’re underdeveloped. And as soon as spaces become viable and interesting, artists get pushed out, and low-income people get pushed out,’ said Shauna Duffy, AS220’s Managing Director. ‘So our mission is to create these spaces and create this community. And that involves having a permanent place for artists to live affordably downtown in Providence.’ ”

More.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

Choosing to Embrace Refugees in the UK

September 6, 2017 by suzannesmom

4948

Photo: The Guardian
One recent immigrant from Pakistan was welcomed into the home of Jo Haythornthwaite of Maryhill Integration Network in Glasgow, an example of individuals stepping up to help refugees.

The hostility to immigrants that fueled the Brexit vote in Britain gets all the attention, but there are other voices. There are always other voices.

Gregory Maniatis writes for the Open Society Foundations about refugee outreach across the British Isles.

” ‘I can’t solve the whole Syrian crisis, but I can do something, for a few people.’ The words of Olwen Thomas, from the port of Fishguard in Pembrokeshire, southwest Wales, probably sum up the feelings of many people around the world, as we follow news reports about the terrible difficulties that have faced refugee families fleeing the conflict in Syria, as well as other crises around the world.

“Thomas, and other members of her community, are now doing something significant through their involvement in the Fishguard Refugee Sponsorship Group. The group was one of the first to respond to a UK scheme first announced last July by the British Home Affairs Minister Amber Rudd and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby — the leader of the Anglican Church.

“Under the Community Sponsorship program, local groups agree to sponsor refugee families and help them integrate into life in the UK by assisting with things such as finding housing, securing access to medical and social services, arranging English language tuition, and supporting them towards employment and self-sufficiency. …

“One Welsh group in the small town of Cardigan has raised £12,000 as part of its application to the scheme. Vicky Moller, a member of the group, told the BBC … ‘People are very, very keen to help.’

“The sponsorship model being launched in towns and cities across England and Wales is partly inspired by a hugely successful effort launched in Canada in 1979, when the mayor of Ottawa, Marion Dewar, mobilized an effort by community groups to settle 4,000 mostly Southeast Asian refugees. To date, Canadian communities and citizens have resettled almost 300,000 refugees through its private sponsorship program. …

“Chris Clements, a director of Social Finance UK, … has noted the shortcomings of ‘traditional’ refugee resettlement in the UK, which has left many refugee families isolated and struggling to adapt to their new surroundings. This in turn results in high rates of unemployment, depression, stress, and other problems.

“Community sponsorship, Clements says, ‘enables local people to take responsibility for resettling a refugee family, supporting and empowering them to rebuild their lives.’ ”

More here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Goal to Reduce Dementia by 30 Percent

September 5, 2017 by suzannesmom


Photo: Alamy
Exercise and social activities could help to reduce the risk of developing dementia in later life, according to a new report.

Although there is no cure yet for dementia, lifestyle changes have the potential to reduce new cases by as much as one-third.

Nicola Davis writes at the Guardian about a recent report from the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention and care. The study suggests that many “dementia cases might be avoided by tackling aspects of lifestyle including education, exercise, blood pressure and hearing. …

“ ‘There are a lot of things that individuals can do, and there are a lot of things that public health and policy can do, to reduce the numbers of people developing dementia,’ said Gill Livingston, professor of psychiatry of older people at University College London and a co-author of the report. …

“ ‘We expect it to be a long-term change that will be needed for exercise; joining a gym for two weeks is probably not going to do it,’ she said.

“Clive Ballard, professor of age-related diseases at the University of Exeter medical school and also a co-author of the report, added that the evidence suggests individuals should also try to follow a Mediterranean diet, maintain a healthy weight and keep an eye on their blood pressure. …

“The results reveal that as many as 35% of dementia cases could, at least in theory, be prevented, with 9% linked to midlife hearing loss, 8% to leaving education before secondary school, 5% to smoking in later life and 4% to later life depression. Social isolation, later life diabetes, midlife high blood pressure, midlife obesity and lack of exercise in later life also contributed to potentially avoidable cases of dementia, the report notes. …

“They admit that the estimate that more than a third of dementia cases could be prevented is a best case scenario, with the figures based on a number of assumptions, including that each factor could be completely tackled. …

“Fiona Matthews, professor of epidemiology at Newcastle University who was not involved in the report, said that interventions for depression and social isolation could still prove valuable. ‘If we could actually resolve some of that issue, even if it is not 100% causal, it is likely we might be able to slow [dementia] progression – even if [an individual] is on a pathway to developing dementia already,’ she said.

“She added that the proposed areas for action could offer myriad health benefits beyond lowering dementia risk. …

“The authors pointed out that an intervention that delayed dementia onset and progression by even a year could decrease the number of people with dementia worldwide in 2050 by nine million.”

More at the Guardian, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

Prisoners Help Solve Crimes

September 4, 2017 by suzannesmom


Photo: YouTube
One of the calendars used in the Dutch prison system to encourage prisoners to help solve cold cases.

Here’s a new twist on solving cold cases. It’s being implemented in the Netherlands, and I was going to say, “Trust the creative Dutch to come up with this idea!” But it turns out they got the idea from the United States.

Daniel Boffey writes at the Guardian, “Prisoners across the Netherlands are to be issued with calendars for their cells featuring unsolved murders or disappearances as part of a drive by the Dutch police to crack unsolved cases.

“The so-called cold case calendars will be handed to all 30,000 prisoners in the country after a trial run in five jails in the north resulted in 160 tips to the police.

“Each week of the year in the brightly coloured 2018-19 calendars will be illustrated with a photograph of a missing person and details of the case. The hope is that many of those in jail will know details of some of the crimes or may have heard other criminals chatting about them. …

“Jeroen Hammer, the calendar’s inventor, told Dutch newspapers the calendars had also proved popular with bored prisoners, although some had regarded the initiative as an attempt to turn them against their own. …

“The calendar has been printed in Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, English and Russian to maximise its impact, and a €800,000 reward is being made available for those whose information ends in a successful conviction. …

“The police say they can offer anonymity to people in certain cases.

“ ‘There is no penalty for keeping information about a criminal offence committed. Therefore, you do not have to fear persecution if you have been sharing information, even after years of deliberation,’ they said.

“The idea of the calendars was borrowed from the United States, where every year several states distribute a deck of cards containing information about cold cases among prisoners.”

More here. Someone should study whether participating prisoners are motivated mostly by the reward, by boredom, by outrage at certain crimes, or something else.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

Australia’s Indigenous Art Evolves

September 3, 2017 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jon Cattapan/Dominik Mersch Gallery
The Decade Positions, by Jon Cattapan (2017).

I’ve been reading arguments lately about “cultural appropriation” — both from those who think artists should stick to their own culture and from those who think that artists who imagine how people from a different culture feel are building understanding.

I thought about the controversy as I read this article on Australia’s indigenous dot art by Brigid Delaney at the Guardian.

“For a long time,” she writes, “the dot painting has been synonymous with Aboriginal art. Emerging out of the remote Northern Territory community of Papunya in the early 1970s, the first dot paintings were produced when art teacher Geoffrey Bardon encouraged his Indigenous students to paint their stories in murals on the school wall.

“But long before that, circles and dots were used in ceremonies in the form of body paint or marks on the ground. The Papunya people drew on this knowledge in their art, painting stories, ceremonies and rituals, first on walls and then on canvas and board.

“dot, dot, dot […], a new exhibition at Sydney College of the Arts, tackles some of the issues around the use of Papunya dots in paintings, but also looks at why so many artists – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – are attracted to using dots in their work.

“Curator Janelle Evans, a lecturer at Sydney University, a Wingara Mura fellow and Dharug artist, told Guardian Australia that the exhibition had its genesis in 2006, when she conducted an interview with Australian artist and political activist, Richard Bell. ‘He was talking about Aboriginal art as something constructed by the art market.’ …

“The ubiquity of the dot painting was so powerful that Indigenous artists working in different mediums had trouble attracting the interest of the international art market. At the same time, the market became flooded with cheap fakes and rip offs, alongside mass-produced tack such as tea towels made overseas and sold to tourists. …

“In situations like this, Indigenous people rarely see the profits of their artefacts being used, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and appropriation.

“Queensland MP Bob Katter has taken up the cause, putting a private member’s bill before parliament that seeks to amend consumer law to ensure that profits from Indigenous art and artefacts go back to Indigenous communities. …

“What about artists using the dot who are non-Indigenous? It could be seen as cultural appropriation, although Evans says it’s not that clear cut.

“ ‘Non-Indigenous artists who work with dots can work without appropriation. Within the dot, there’s a whole world that can be created. Artists have always referred to other artists in their work but appropriation becomes an issue when you are copying someone’s style. You need to bring your own inquiry to into what you are doing.’ …

“dot, dot, dot […] … focuses on showing work from artists who interpret the dot beyond the style of central and western desert artists and ‘in ways that are non-derivative,’ says Evans.”

More here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Dolly Parton and a Company that Mails Books

September 2, 2017 by suzannesmom

Photo: DollyParton.com.

For years, country music legend Dolly Parton has been giving back to the community with an initiative to boost child literacy. It started small in Tennessee and spread across the world.

What’s interesting, writes Melville House editor Ryan Harrington at mhpbooks.com, is that the small Knoxville mailing service that her foundation tapped to help in the literacy effort has kept up with the demand.

“Way way back in 2012,” writes Harrington, “we wrote about the international impact of Dolly Parton’s child literacy initiative, Imagination Library. We offered this bit of background on the project:

Launched by singer/actress Dolly Parton, the Imagination Library is a literacy program run by Parton’s Dollywood Foundation that sends enrolled children a free book every month from the month of their birth until they enter kindergarten. Growing up in rural Sevier County, Tennessee, Parton had friends and relatives who were illiterate, which was part of what led her to start a literacy program in her home county. The Imagination Library has been reproduced in 566 counties in the US, across 36 states, as well as in Canada. …

“The story of Dolly’s project is one of non-stop growth — and the once-tiny Knoxville company contracted to manage the original mailings has kept up with an amazingly increased volume.

“Direct Mail Services began its relationship with the Dollywood Foundation twenty years ago, mailing 1,000 books per month to children around Sevierville. A few years later, the foundation announced that the program would be open to any communities across that US that wanted to participate, and Direct Mail Services’ business exploded. …

“The company is preparing for more growth, as the foundation remains committed to expanding its reach. [Cortney Roark reporting for the Knoxville News Sentinel says], ‘Five percent of the U.S. population younger than 5 years old receives a book through the program. The goal is to reach 10 percent by 2024.’ ”

I could easily imagine a small company crumbling under such sudden high demand, so congratulations to Direct Mail Services for rising to the challenge.

More at Melville House, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments »

Rwanda’s Nearly Universal Health Care

September 1, 2017 by suzannesmom

Photo: Martina Bacigalupo for The New York Times
An American pediatric specialist during a radiology teaching session with pediatric residents in Kigali, Rwanda. In the past 15 years, Rwanda has worked to build a near-universal health care system.

We like to think that American medical care is top drawer, but in some developing countries, access, at least, is much better. Would you believe Rwanda, where Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health and others have offered help to local leaders?

Eduardo Porter has the story at the NY Times, “Rwanda’s economy adds up to some $700 per person, less than one-eightieth of the average economic output of an American. A little more than two decades ago it was shaken by genocidal interethnic conflict that killed hundreds of thousands. Still today, a newborn Rwandan can expect to live to 64, 15 years less than an American baby.

“But over the past 15 years or so, Rwanda has built a near-universal health care system that covers more than 90 percent of the population, financed by tax revenue, foreign aid and voluntary premiums scaled by income.

“It is not perfect. A comparative study of health reform in developing countries found that fewer than 60 percent of births there were attended by skilled health workers. Still, access to health care has improved substantially even as the financial burden it imposes on ordinary Rwandans has declined. On average, Rwandans see a doctor almost twice a year, compared with once every four years in 1999.

“Rwandan lives may be short, but they are 18 years longer than they were at the turn of the century — double the average increase of their peers in sub-Saharan Africa. …

“In some dimensions of health care, [Rwanda] gives the United States a run for its money.

“Its infant mortality rate, for one, dropped by almost three-quarters since 2000, to 31 per 1,000 births in 2015, vastly outpacing the decline in its region. In the United States, by contrast, infant mortality declined by about one-fifth over the period, to 5.6 per 1,000 births. …

“Critically, Rwanda may impress upon you an idea that has captured the imagination of policy makers in even the poorest corners of the world: Access to health care might be thought of as a human right.”

Read how poor countries, such as Ghana, Peru, Vietnam, and Thailand, are acting on that belief, here. At the rate they’re going with access, it is reasonable to suppose that more citizens will choose a medical profession and that quality improvements will follow.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Reading Mystery Novels

August 31, 2017 by suzannesmom

I’ve been an inveterate reader of mysteries since my Nancy Drew days, and Asakiyume, who follows my mini reviews of mysteries and other books at GoodReads, suggested that I blog about what I think makes a good mystery. Maybe other readers of these books will chime in.

I like a book that is literate by normal fiction standards. There should be at least one likable character, several plausible perps, no cliches, and loose ends tied up in the conclusion. You should be able to look back in the story and see that clues were carefully laid, and not just in the last quarter. But the clues should be puzzling as you read along. The reader’s brain should be engaged at all times, trying to figure out where the plot is headed.

I like the bad guys or gals to be caught, not to die a natural death or commit suicide, which always feels like a cop-out.

Some people say that Bleak House was the first detective mystery. Dickens certainly sets a high standard for all the measures I value.

I am often drawn to a mystery because of a locale that’s exotic, at least to me, and I find that many authors, even if they have a weak plot, do research into the setting that I appreciate. Still, I may have to take a long break from this genre as I am getting extremely frustrated with increasing inconsistencies, carelessness about plots, typos, and the hostility to readers that starts to appear when authors feel too much pressure to keep churning out more books.

It’s hard to define what I mean by hostility to readers. I noted it, for example, in Martha Grimes, Walter Mosley, and others I once loved but had to stop reading. It has something to do with throwing favorite characters at the reader in a perfunctory way with no new shades. It has something to do with the bones of the formula being too visible, to the point that you can almost see the writer at her desk with her chart of what has to happen in each chapter. And it has something to do with endings that fail to tie up loose threads. I often feel resentment from an author about the pressure from readers to keep delivering this exact sort of book when perhaps the author would prefer to tackle a completely different genre.

Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

Robotics Contest Breaks Barriers

August 30, 2017 by suzannesmom

Photo: Cliff Owen/Associated Press
The Afghan team at the opening ceremony of the First Global robotics competition in Washington in July.

Did you read about the ups and downs of the young Afghan girls who ran into the travel ban when they tried to come to July’s robotics competition in Washington?

Emily Cochrane wrote about it at the NY Times.

“It took an international outcry and intervention from President Trump and other officials to allow [six] girls from an Afghan robotics team to receive visas after two rejections, letting them travel to the United States for participation in First Global, an international robotics contest.

“For three days in the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, where an African-American woman was once denied the right to sing before an integrated audience in the 1930s, the Afghan girls in head scarves were stars on an international stage, with cameras, lights and whispers trailing them from practice to competition. …

“Wai Yan Htun, 18, a member of Myanmar’s team who stopped to get the Afghans’ signatures on his shirt, said: ‘We love them. They’re like superheroes in this competition.’ …

“In the competition, teams of three, equipped with kits that included wheels, gears and two video game controllers, chased down blue and orange balls, which represented clean and contaminated water. In two-and-a-half-minute rounds, teams guided the robots to sweep the balls into openings based on their color.

“ ‘It’s way more fun, way more exciting than bouncing a ball,’ said Dean Kamen, one of the organization’s founders and inventor of the Segway. ‘That’s not a competition out there. That’s a celebration.’ …

“The six students were chosen from an initial pool of 150 applicants. They built their robot in two weeks, compared with the four months some of their competitors had, because their kit’s shipment was delayed. …

“While the team did not place in the top ranks overall, their final performance, they agreed, was better than they had hoped for. …

“ ‘I am so happy and so tired,’ Alireza Mehraban, an Afghan software engineer who is the team’s mentor, said after the competition concluded.

“Mr. Mehraban said the contest had been an opportunity to change perceptions about the girls’ country. ‘We’re not terrorists,’ he said. ‘We’re simple people with ideas. We need a chance to make our world better. This is our chance.’ …

“ ‘God made this planet for something like this, all the people coming together as friends,’ said Alineza Khalili Katoulaei, 18, the captain of the Iranian team, gesturing to the Iraqi and Israeli teams standing nearby. ‘Politics cannot stop science competitions like this.’ ”

More at the NY Times, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Do “Eyes on the Street” Reduce Crime?

August 29, 2017 by suzannesmom


Photo: NextCity
A Philadelphia street scene

The ideas of writer Jane Jacobs, well-known for her influence on city planning, continue to be tested. Is it true, for example, that having a lot of “eyes on the street” reduces crime? Jared Brey writes at NextCity about efforts in Philadelphia to find out.

“In the five-and-a-half decades since Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her core contention — that urban vitality and safety are a function of small-scale density, a mixture of uses and ‘eyes on the street’ — has become conventional wisdom in urban theory. …

“In June, a team of researchers released a paper, titled ‘Analysis of Urban Vibrancy and Safety in Philadelphia,’ that attempts to begin a quantitative analysis of Jacobsian theory by bringing together publicly available data sets related to crime, business activity and the built environment. The study is the first of a series they have planned.

“In order to test the ‘eyes on the street’ notion, the authors — three statisticians at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an architect — investigated the correlations between public safety and population density, population count, zoning, business activity, and business hours. They also designed a model of ‘business vibrancy,’ meant to serve as a proxy for Jacobs’ concept of eyes on the street, based on the density of businesses in certain areas and the amount of ‘excess business hours’ on them — meaning blocks with businesses open longer than what the authors calculated to be the citywide average. …

“Among the authors’ findings:

* Population density is not as strongly associated with crime rates as population count.
* More crimes occur on blocks with more businesses, but fewer in the direct vicinity of businesses that have longer-than-average operating hours.
* Crime rates are higher in neighborhoods with high rates of vacancy, but within high-vacancy neighborhoods, fewer crimes are reported in the direct vicinity of vacant properties. …

“ ‘What it says is measuring human activity is subtle and difficult,’ [co-author Shane Jensen, a statistics professor at Wharton,] says. ‘Yes, it does seem like there is something to this concept of eyes on the street, but I don’t think it’s just as simple as making sure that there’s businesses on every street corner and stuff like that. If anything, the more high-resolution you break this down, the more insight you can glean.’ ” More at NextCity.

Here’s my question: as online shopping causes retail storefronts to close, how do we preserve any “eyes on the street” at all?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

It’s Still Summer

August 28, 2017 by suzannesmom

People I know are feeling wistful now that kids are heading back to school and the most beautiful days of the year have a strong hint of autumn in them.

But it’s still summer, and we should enjoy it (while also sending good vibes and more tangible support to hurricane victims in Texas).

The first of today’s photos is a Narrowleaf Evening Primrose. It took quite a Google search to find the name of this wildflower/weed. It usually blooms in our area toward the end of summer.

Again this year I tried to capture the progress of the exotic lotus blooms in a neighbor’s pond, but for some reason the full flowers I saw just hung their heads in a dispirited way, and I never got a good shot of the final glory.

I have been in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts as usual. I got to the Public Garden in downtown Boston, as you can see from the photo of Mrs. Mallard and the kids — and the shot of the swan boats at rest.

Other than that, lots of tempting shadows indoors and out. And a new fish-identification sign in Galilee promoting fish from Rhode Island fishermen.

417-Narrowleaf-Evening-Primrose

82017-shadows-blowing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

081917-lotus-blooms-and-showerheads

082017-lotus-opening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

082017-BI-Greenway-stile

082617-lakeside-sculpture-RI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

082517-fish-sign-Pt-Judith-RI

082517-Mrs-Mallard-Boston

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

082517-swan-boats-Boston

082417-graveyard-fungus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

082417-shadows-enter-the-painting

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments »

Trainy McTrainface Launched in Sweden

August 27, 2017 by suzannesmom

Artist's impression of the MTR Express' newly unveiled Trainy McTrainface

Photo: MTR Express
Artist’s impression of a Swedish rail company’s newly unveiled Trainy McTrainface.

Heraclitus said you cannot step in the same river twice. (It is never the same river; the water is always new.) But as if they actually could keep stepping in the same river, human beings keep trying to replicate whatever was once popular.

It was kooky enough to try naming a boat Boaty McBoatface, now the popularity of that name is supposed to give a boost to a similarly named train.

Alex Hern writes at the Guardian, “It’s happened again. A public vote to name four trains running between the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg has resulted in one of the four being called Trainy McTrainface in an echo of the name chosen by the British public for the new polar research vessel.

“Trainy McTrainface received 49% of the votes in a poll, jointly run by Swedish rail company MTR Express and Swedish newspaper Metro. …

“The other trains have already been named by the public: one is named Estelle, after the five-year-old daughter of Sweden’s Princess Victoria, the next in line to the Swedish throne.

“Another is named Glenn, after a long-running joke that everyone in Gothenburg is called Glenn.

“The joke has a basis in fact: the name is particularly common in the city and its surrounding area, with its popularity stemming from the 1980s, when local football team IFK Göteborg had four players all called Glenn in its lineup. Forty-three per cent of voters supported the name Glenn. …

“The public vote was eventually overruled in the case of Boaty McBoatface and the ship named the RRS Sir David Attenborough, with an onboard submersible receiving the Boatface appellation.

“MTR Express said the McBoatface decision had led to disappointment worldwide and it hoped the name Trainy McTrainface would ‘be received with joy by many, not only in Sweden.’ ” More at the Guardian, here.

Even if you believe in the wisdom of crowds, using a crowd to name a product rarely results in an inspired selection. I remember how disgusted Ursula’s mother was after a food company to which she had submitted creative names for a new margarine made the boring choice of Blue Bonnet.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

The One and Only Self-Cleaning House

August 26, 2017 by suzannesmom

Photo: Shane Young
The late Frances Gabe in 2002 demonstrating how her self-cleaning house worked. You needed an umbrella.

Like the idea of a self-cleaning house? Once you’ve read about the discomfort of living in one, you will have a much more positive attitude about cleaning your house the old-fashioned way.

I got a big kick out of Margalit Fox’s obit at the NY Times for the late Frances Gabe, an inventor who hated housework. Everything in Gabe’s house was waterproof so that an indoor “rain” could wash over it all without damaging furniture. The rain was followed by “wind.”

“Her remarkable abode — a singular amalgam of ‘Walden,’ Rube Goldberg and ‘The Jetsons’ — remained the only one of its kind ever built,” wrote Fox. “The reasons, recent interviews with her associates suggest, include the difficulties of maintaining the patent, the compromises required of the homeowner and, just possibly, Ms. Gabe’s contrary, proudly iconoclastic temperament.

“ ‘She was very difficult to get along with,” [Allyn Brown, Ms. Gabe’s former lawyer and a longtime friend], said, warmly. ‘She had an adversarial relationship with all her neighbors and she didn’t do anything to discourage it.’  …

“The [house], the newspaper The Weekend Australian wrote in 2004, was ‘basically a gigantic dishwasher.’

“In each room, Ms. Gabe, tucked safely under an umbrella, could press a button that activated a sprinkler in the ceiling. The first spray sent a mist of sudsy water over walls and floor. A second spray rinsed everything. Jets of warm air blew it all dry. The full cycle took less than an hour.

“Runoff escaped through drains in Ms. Gabe’s almost imperceptibly sloping floors. It was channeled outside and straight through her doghouse, where the dog was washed in the bargain.”

Read Fox’s delightful obit about Gabe here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Ohio’s National Center for Choreography

August 25, 2017 by suzannesmom


Photo: NCCAkron
The National Center for Choreography is an initiative of the University of Akron in Ohio.

There’s a national center for everything else, why not choreography? Why not Akron? This Midwest university is thinking big.

Steve Sucato writes about its new concept at Dance Magazine. “For countless dancemakers without their own space, there is no place to call home. Enter the new National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron. Its mission: to support the research and development of new dance by providing choreographers, dance companies, arts administrators and dance writers access to the world-class facilities in the University’s Guzzetta Hall and other venues on campus. …

“The Center opened with the support of the University of Akron and a $5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. [Last] month it [hosted] its first official artist residency when it welcome[d] choreographer Tere O’Connor, July 17–28.

“The Center’s founding executive/artistic director, Christy Bolingbroke, says it needs to be adaptable so as not to impose a certain way of working on any artist.

“One way of doing that is to offer several types of residencies: space, for use of the studio facilities; research, in which choreographers can explore alongside academic scholars; laboratory, in which choreographers and dancers can work without the expectation of a finished project; technical, for dancemakers and/or production designers to experiment in a theatrical venue; and commissioning, where artists receive funds in addition to time and space. …

“Overall, the Center is interested in curating dancemakers it can support on a long-term basis. ‘We are trying to shift the paradigm from just final-product–oriented residencies,’ says Bolingbroke.”

More at Dance Magazine, here. And kudos to the Knight Foundation for recognizing that the coasts do not have a monopoly on the making of art.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »