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A Ghost Fish Returns

January 24, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Wonders of the Mekong.
Recent sightings of the “Mekong ghost” fish in Cambodia offer hope for a creature once presumed extinct.

Today’s report on the reappearance of a giant fish in the Mekong River near Cambodia is a little piece of good news in an era when governments are shrugging off saving the planet and leaving it all to those of us who care.

I first saw the good news at Yale Environment 360: “Recent sightings of the ‘Mekong ghost’ fish in Cambodia offer hope for a creature once presumed extinct. The giant salmon carp, so named because it resembles a large salmon, had not been documented by science since 2005. But scientists have now confirmed that three fish caught between 2020 and 2023 in the Mekong and Sesan rivers are members of this elusive species.

“Giant salmon carp can measure up to 4 feet long and weigh more than 60 pounds, making them a type of ‘megafish.’ The carp are in good company in the Mekong basin, which is home to some of the largest freshwater fish on the planet, including the giant catfish and giant freshwater stingray. Such creatures have been victims of excessive fishing, pollution, and the construction of massive dams.

“In the new study, published in Biological Conservation, scientists call for scanning river waters for giant salmon carp DNA and for working with local fishers to track its potential whereabouts — first steps, they say, toward protecting the imperiled species.” More at Yale e360, here.

At the Mekong Fish Network website, I found additional detail: “Dr. Zeb Hogan, who leads USAID’s ‘Wonders of the Mekong’ project, says, ‘Giant fish are flagship species that symbolize the ecological integrity of the Mekong River. The disappearance of these animals is a warning that we need to take urgent action to improve the ecosystem health of this remarkable river.’

“Several Mekong megafish species are now endangered and both the number and size of fish caught have declined. The biggest include the Mekong freshwater stingray (Urogymnus polylepis), which can have a wingspan of up to 4.3 m [14 feet], Pangasianodon gigas (Trey Reach), Catlocarpio siamensis (Trey Kolriang), and Pangasius sanitwongsei (Trey Popruy), which can grow up to about 3 meters [10 feet] in length … and Aaptosyax grypus (Trey Pasanak), Probarbus jullieni (Trey Trasak) and Wallago attu (Trey stourk), which can grow up to 20 kilograms [44 pounds]. All of these are listed by the IUCN as Critically Endangered, and current and future threats may put these species at risk of population extirpation or extinction.

“Based on a recent study by Wonders of the Mekong on traditional ecological knowledge about large and endangered fish, megafishes in the northern Cambodian Mekong Basin in Kratie and Stung Treng are very rare, decreasing in population abundance, at high risk of extinction, and decreasing in body size. Also, the population of three giant species of Mekong River fishes (C. siamensis, W. micropogon, and P.jullieni) previously thought to be in serious decline can still be found, although, their body sizes are significantly decreasing.

“Unfortunately, the Mekong Giant Catfish, P. gigas, considered critically endangered by IUCN, is still rare in this stretch of the Mekong. The presence of giant and endangered species in Mekong River deep pools demonstrates the importance of these habitats in fish conservation and provides a starting point for the preservation of these species. The decline of Mekong megafish in northern Cambodia can be attributed to a variety of causes such as threats from multiple anthropogenic pressures. These threatened fishes are all rapidly declining and could ultimately face extinction. The impact of these threats could be minimized by proper management and an effective conservation plan, such as the sustainable management of fishing.

“In light of this, since 2017, approximately 100,000 larvae of endangered fish such as Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), giant barb (Catlocarpio siamensis), striped catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus) and other species have been confiscated from illegal fishing operations or collected during research activities. These juvenile fishes are kept in a rearing facility before being released back into the river at a larger size. During rearing in ponds at Cambodia’s Freshwater Aquaculture Research and Development Center (FARDC), Mrs. Hoy Sreynov, an official of the Department of Aquaculture Development of the Fisheries Administration, does monthly monitoring to observe fish growth, feeding, and lifespan. Running this catch, raising and release program requires an understanding of conservation importance and a strong network to promote effective conservation management.”

More at Mekong Fish Network. You may also be interested in my previous post about the Mekong’s revival, here.

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20th C Nordic Welcome to Black Artists

January 23, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Debra Brehmer/Hyperallergic.
Installation view of Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin, showing the suitcase owned by classical pianist Eugene Haynes.

Looks like there was a good show last fall in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Chazen Museum of Art. Since it’s come and gone, I won’t be able to see it, but I was interested to learn about it from Debra Brehmer at Hyperallergic. I hadn’t known about the warm welcome that Nordic countries gave to African American artists in the last century.

Brehmer wrote, “An old suitcase with a small leather handle summons the presence of the person who once carried it across oceans and nations. Surrounding it in a display case are a pair of shoes, gloves, a hat, and a Bible, all owned by the Julliard-trained Black classical pianist Eugene Haynes. The suitcase symbolizes the flight of Black artists to European countries during the civil rights era and beyond. Although Paris was a well-known hotbed of artistic expats, Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century at the Chazen Museum of Art zeroes in on a far less charted corner of Black history: the artists who ventured north.

“Haynes spent summers and winters in Denmark from 1952 to 1962 while he performed across Europe. … Even the most accomplished Black artists found the Jim Crow conditions untenable — the US wasn’t only segregated, it was dangerous. 

“At this time, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark held the promise of racial equality, despite primarily White populations. And slowly, word spread. While many Black artists found solace in the Parisian avant-garde (Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes, among others), the Nordic regions, according to poet Gregory Pardlo, quoted in the exhibition catalog, were ‘hipper … for black intellectuals escaping the stifling air pollution of American racism.’ 

“One could get lost in the details of this research-heavy presentation, but an overall theme emerges: the need to get away, not just from an inhospitable place, but from the weight of always being defined by race. Distance from US discriminatory politics gave these artists room to experiment, to make art that wasn’t about being Black or the entrenched problems of their homeland. After he ventured to Scandinavia, the artist William H. Johnson painted van Gogh-influenced portraits, expressionistic sunrises, street scenes, and boats in a harbor. He had married Danish textile artist Holcha Krake. When he returned to the US in 1938, his art underwent a major stylistic shift as he produced folk art-influenced paintings that centered on Black life in Harlem and portraits of Black global activists, for which he is best recognized. …

“Harlem-born painter Herbert Gentry, who first spent five postwar years in Paris and then moved to Copenhagen and later Stockholm, chose cities with thriving jazz scenes as well as international art communities. Gentry often made abstract paintings on unstretched canvas that he could fold into suitcases for easy transport. Ronald Burns, who relocated to Denmark in 1965, pursued a Surrealist style of complex dreamlike compositions. Howard Smith, an artist and designer who arrived in Finland in 1962, worked across media with paper-cutting, laser-cut steel forms, porcelain sculpture, and collage. …

“Being in Europe, most of the artists absorbed the prevalent modernist influences, seeing themselves as part of a broader and more open public consciousness, an environment particularly supportive of Black swing and jazz musicians. … A brilliant documentary, Dancing Prophet (1971), shows dancer/choreographer Doug Crutchfield back home in Cincinnati in earnest conversation with his Baptist minister father about why he needs to leave the USA to pursue his dancing career.

To its credit, the exhibition does not offer simple conclusions.

“Instead it provides multiple perspectives on issues of expatriation, including the fact that racism also existed overseas. … Dexter Gordon expresses one attitude, quoted in wall text: ‘Since I’ve been over here, I felt that I could breathe, you know, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black, green or yellow, whatever. Actually it’s very seldom that I’m conscious of color here in Europe.’ Artist Howard Smith, who lived in Finland for 14 years, suggests a different condition: ‘I got lonesome there … I need the spiritual input, I guess, of being around Black people.’ …

“Walter Williams first ventured to Denmark in 1955 on a fellowship. He previously earned recognition for his New York City urban scenes. The new landscapes of Denmark stirred him to paint sun-infused pastoral imagery. ‘Southern Landscape’ (1977–78) portrays a young Black girl in the foreground, standing in a field of blooming sunflowers. A bouquet of flowers sprouts from her shoulders. Butterflies surround her. In the background, another Black girl appears to be picking cotton in a field with a shanty behind her.”

“The exhibition was organized by the National Nordic Museum, Seattle.”

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall. Subscriptions encouraged.

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Kenya’s Timely Seed Bank

January 22, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Brian Otieno/The Guardian.
John Okemer, a seed technician, arranges some of the thousands of seeds stored inside Kenya’s gene bank. 

As our wounded planet hurtles through space, what should we take with us to replicate the better things as needed? Noah took two of each animal, bird, fish. Some of our contemporaries are taking seeds.

Caroline Kimeu writes at the Guardian, “On a winding road in the densely forested Kikuyu highlands of south-central Kenya lies a nondescript government building: the Genetic Resources Research Institute. Opened in 1988, during the country’s ‘green revolution,’ this little-known national gene bank was set up to hold and conserve seeds from the traditional crops that were in danger of disappearing as farmers and agricultural industry moved to higher-yield varieties.

“For decades, it has collaborated with researchers studying crop genetics and others working to develop improved varieties. But as the climate crisis worsens food insecurity, the repository of about 50,000 seed and crop collections could become a lifeline for farmers.

“ ‘We were established as a conservation unit, but these are unusual times with climate change, so we’ve had to diversify our work to respond to needs,’ says Desterio Nyamongo, who runs the institute. ‘Given the erratic weather these days, smallholder farmers need a diverse mix of crops.’

“Through a project with the Crop Trust organization the gene bank is now playing a part in the comeback of indigenous crops that are resistant to drought and pests, but fell from favor and have been neglected for decades.

“It stores backups of its most unique seeds at the Svalbard global seed vault in Norway, where it has been sending collections since 2008. The international repository contains more than a million seed samples from around the world.

“Matthew Heaton, the project manager for Crop Trust’s Seeds for Resilience program, says: ‘National gene banks can be overshadowed by the larger international ones, but they are best positioned to quickly improve local resilience and nutrition because their collections are adapted to local needs and growing conditions.’

“The national gene bank is a small operation, with few staff and limited funding, and its cold rooms, which plant scientists say contain only a third of the country’s plant diversity, are almost full. The Seeds of Resilience project, launched in 2019, has supported national gene banks in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia with financial and technical support to keep resilient, healthy and nutritious crop collections, and to increase their support for farmers. …

“Farmers from the village of Obucuun in rural Busia county, on the border of Kenya and Uganda, say that before sourcing new sorghum varieties from the gene bank, growing the cereal had become challenging. Attacks by flocks of weaver birds, which can ravage entire cereal fields, increased in frequency after the wild grasses preferred by the birds became more scarce as a result of the climate crisis.

“Ruth Akoropot, a 50-year-old farmer from the area, spends hours each day watching over her crops during peak hours of attack, after studying the birds’ behavior patterns for years.

“ ‘If you don’t do that, your crop will be wiped out,’ says Akoropot, who runs the women’s sorghum farmers association, which sells bales of the grain to Kenya’s national beer brewery. …

“Most of Busia’s population rely on farming for food and to make a living, but … a number remain vulnerable to food insecurity. Flooding in April and May [in 2024] swept away farmers’ seeds and yields, exacerbating poor agricultural productivity. Old improved crop varieties sourced from the gene bank, such as Kenya’s red-headed sorghum okoto, which farmers say is less prone to bird attacks, have become community favorites in Busia after decades of disuse. …

“Tobias Okando Recha, an impact researcher for the Seeds of Resilience program, says: ‘These are crops that farmers don’t need to pump a lot of fertilizer on. With just a little fertilizer, the yield is good and they are more [resilient] than hybrid varieties. …

“Plant scientists say that while the divide between farmers and seed conservationists is narrowing, more needs to be done. …

“ ‘The gene banks are not museums, but a resource for the future,’ says Heaton. ‘By linking them with farmers, we can swiftly build local resilience and food security.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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A Few Pictures

January 21, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photos: John and Suzanne’s Mom.
A gourd-body bull by Dave Smyth is being shown at Concord Art’s juried member show, 2025. Don’t you love how artists see potential that so many of us miss?

Today’s pictures are mostly from art exhibits I attended this month. The show at Concord Art, above, was in the process of being set up when Meredith and I went. She aims to submit work for the next show and has appeared in several earlier ones.

The orange giant who is holding up the world is at the Fitchburg Art Museum, where Ann and I took in several exhibits — in particular the Bob Dilworth. Born in Virginia, Dilworth taught art for many years in Rhode Island. I liked learning more about noted 19th century Black landscape painter Edward Bannister, seen in the portrait with his wife. Dilworth’s paintings, which he often worked on for years, feature a collage-like effect from the layering of textiles, stenciling, more.

I knew about Bannister before, but was glad to read something about his wife here.

The next two photos do not show such professional work but rather are ceramics created by people of many skill levels who live in my retirement community. They made sea creatures for display in the nursing building. There’s a marine theme throughout that section, including a big salt water fish tank. I visited a friend there, and now I visit her in the memory-care building.

The final photo is actually from my December trip to New York City. There is loads of public art in Penn Station. Nice to have something to look at if your are too early for your train!

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January 20

January 20, 2025 by suzannesmom

Now is the winter of our discontent.

For some reason, I thought today might be a good day to talk about the women of the French Resistance and the power of flying under the radar.

The Library of Congress research guide on the French Resistance says, “Women had a unique ability to serve as Resistants, in some part due to views among many Nazis that women were harmless and non-threatening. … Women were by default granted much greater latitude in moving around — and when apprehended were much more likely to convince officers or soldiers of their innocence.

“Often overlooked, they served as consummate spies. Often speeding along by bicycle, women devised all manner of ways to hide items in their purses and baskets. They used baby carriages as a sort of camouflage to transport goods. …

“Women were invaluable as messengers and couriers; they carried everything from arms and ammunition to intelligence and Resistance propaganda. They also rescued airmen shot down … and operated what were called ‘escape lines’ that served to usher US and British servicemen into safety. They gathered military intelligence (some of these women even worked with Madames in brothels … where information could be gathered secretly), decoded messages, managed underground publications, ran guns, provided support for strikers, and carried out sabotage of German communications. They [worked] as typists and counterfeiters, and proved themselves brave and extraordinarily wily. …

“Recent scholarship has finally brought women Resistants out from the shadows. Women were often slower than men to write about their experiences, but as decades went on, and in some cases archives opened, more of these stories came to light.

“[One] valuable source of material are the témoignages — statements made by individuals during interviews conducted immediately after the War. Some such interviews were under the auspices of the Comité d’Historie de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale in Paris. Many of these sources can be found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France or the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. …

“Some accounts of these women and their activities can be found in reports from those U.S. servicemen, which are available in the National Archives, Washington National Records Center in [Maryland]. There are firsthand accounts of downed American airmen who were assisted by Resistants. Many of these accounts talk about being fed, given medical attention and shelter, and even being shepherded to a safehouse. For safety reasons, these women did not usually give their real names, thus they will forever remain anonymous.

“As Margaret L. Rossiter notes in her study, Women in the Resistance, some women that have gained attention for their heroic acts managed to preform them while nonchalantly preforming their day jobs.

“Jeanne Berthomier, who was a civil servant in the Ministry of Public Works in Paris, managed to deliver top-secret information typed on tissue paper to the Alliance chief, Marie Madeleine Fourcade. Mme Paule Letty-Mouroux used her position as a secretary at the Marine de Toulon in order to report the repair status of Axis ships. Mme Marguerite Claeys collected information from agents who posed as customers at the company she owned with her husband — all without his knowledge.

“Simone Michel Lévy used her job in the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone Service (PTT) to obtain intelligence [that] she managed to send to London under the code name of Emma. These women all took enormous risks and many of them were eventually caught and arrested. …

“Women from a variety of countries, including Britain and the US, served in the French Resistance. Isabel Townsend Pell … was an American socialite who joined the French Resistance during World War II — one of the few women who was part of the Maquis — purportedly due to her good aim. Going by a code name of Fredericka … she was imprisoned twice during the war, and subsequently decorated with the Legion of Honor for her service.

The stories of these women and countless others stand as testaments to the fact that no matter what role you have or where you find yourself, there is often a way to contribute to a larger cause. …

“Eighty years after their Liberation, France continues to commemorate French Resistance fighters and Allied veterans from WWII. … On May 27th, 2024, in the presence of the family of Alice Arteil, a secondary school in Le Mayet-de Montagne, was renamed in honor of French Resistant Alice Arteil. Arteil was one of the only women to command her own Resistance group. Her knowledge of the mountainous and woody terrain was invaluable for the rescue missions and the general activities of the group.” More at LOC, here.

At the website, there are other women, listed alphabetically. I loved reading about Pippa the “knitting spy,” who hid her information within a knitting kit by knotting codes onto silk. Was she thinking about Madame Defarge? What a testament to fiction being as real as real life — and sometimes more influential!

“ ‘En 1940, il n’y avait plus d’hommes. C’étaient des femmes qui ont démarré la Résistance.’ 
-Germaine Tillion, quoted in Femmes de la Résistance: 1940-1945.”

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 19, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: AFP via Getty Images.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, as part of the March on Washington.

On Monday, January 20, we celebrate the birth of civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. although his actual date of birth is January 15. Most national holidays in the US get moved to a Monday to create a long weekend. The only two exceptions I can think of are July 4, Independence Day, and November 11, Veterans Day.

I want to tell readers from other countries about MLK Jr. And there are details that many Americans don’t know either. I, for one, had no idea he was originally named Michael! Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

From Wikipedia: “Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.

“A black church leader, King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights. He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

“As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his ‘I Have a Dream‘ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches during the 1965 Selma voting rights movement. The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 [now dismantled by the Supreme Court], and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. There were several dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who often responded violently.

“King was jailed several times. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of the FBI’s COINTELPRO from 1963 forward. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. In 1964, the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide. On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War.

“In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was convicted of the assassination.” More.

On that April morning in 1968, I was driving to work in the same town where, three years later, there was an FBI office break-in that uncovered government malfeasance. I was listening to the radio, when I heard King had been assassinated. I was so sad. Scared, too, about what was happening to our country, because political assassinations seemed to be becoming a trend. Maybe we would always have to expect and somehow deal with them.

It was a turbulent time, with Americans against Americans with regard to the Vietnam War. I remember attending community discussions in which the personal vitriol took my breath away.

Nowadays, I try to remember that we got through that and can get through other things.

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Grandparents Fight Book Bans

January 18, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: JRE.
Now almost 12 and 15, these two are good readers.

I recently learned about a group called Grandparents for Truth, organized in reaction to other groups pushing book bans in schools and threatening librarians.

I am not a member, but I think reading is important and I understand enough history to know what happens to countries that start with book bans, so I thought I would share the information.

Huda Hassan wrote at MSN.com in late 2024, “Last August, a retired special-education teacher named Holly Hall joined a rally of grandparents warring against book censorship in Temecula, a small Southern California town. Locals had gathered to oppose a school-board decision to ban a social-studies reader, Social Studies Alive!, for citing Harvey Milk — the first openly gay politician elected in the state. ‘The Harvey Milk reference was in the supplemental materials,’ 72-year-old Hall says, ‘which meant that it wouldn’t have even been mentioned in some classes.’

“The world of literature is currently ablaze with rapidly escalating book bans targeting narratives and histories about gender and sexual identity, race, class, and just about anyone deemed ‘other.’

“[In 2024] alone, 1,128 books have been challenged, according to the American Library Association, which documents ongoing censorship attempts across the nation. Florida is the state with the most banned books (3,135 bans, according to PEN America), and in the 2022–23 school year, there were book bans in 153 districts across 33 states, including Texas, Missouri, Utah, and Pennsylvania.

“Earlier this year, schools in Escambia County, Florida, removed 1,600 books on gender and race from school libraries and, through this process, even banned multiple dictionaries. In August, New College of Florida, a public liberal-arts college, disposed of hundreds of library books, emptying the school’s Gender and Diversity Center. Then, this fall, major publishers — including Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins Publishers — filed a lawsuit against book-removal provisions in Florida (through HB 1069, a law introduced in 2023).

“When Hall, who taught in California for 40 years, spoke out at that rally in Temecula, she gave an impassioned speech about censorship in her state. ‘I addressed the dangers of banning books,’ she says. ‘It’s not 1933 Germany.’ Opponents attended the Temecula rally too, such as Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based parenting group formed in 2021 that’s pushing for banning books on race and what it calls ‘gender ideology.’ A few months prior, the same three school-board trustees Hall spoke against had voted to ban the school’s study of critical race theory the day they were sworn into office. This preemptive act confused many, as no courses on critical race theory had been offered at the school. …

“As parents across the country and groups like Moms for Liberty have joined the attacks on literature, grandparents like Hall are mobilizing in response, and they are afraid. ‘I am so concerned about my country, our freedom, and the world,’ Hall says.

“But she felt encouraged to speak in front of her peers and opponents last year because she knew she was not alone. She was invited to the rally by Grandparents for Truth, a national organization formed in the summer of 2023 to fight for the right to read. ‘A neighbor walked by and told me about the group. He had a sign in his yard,’ says Hall. …

“In Philadelphia, Ruth Littner, one of the earliest members to join Grandparents for Truth last summer, discovered the collective through her daughter, Alana Byrd, the national field director of People for the American Way. Like Hall, the pair are committed to countering book banning despite heckling or pushback from the police. ‘I am the daughter of two Holocaust survivors,’ Littner says on the phone from her home. ‘When Alana told me she had an initiative to fight this kind of authoritarianism, I jumped right on that. I was the first one to get the Grandparents for Truth T-shirt.’

More at MSN, here. No paywall.

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Discovery of Ancient Uzbek Cities

January 17, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Michael Frachetti.
Using a drone equipped with LiDAR (light detection and ranging equipment), archaeologists have mapped two abandoned cities in the mountains of Uzbekistan. The location of the larger city, known as Tugunbulak, is pictured above. 

Over the years, I’ve read quite a few novels from other lands and cultures, including one unsettling story about nomads in Africa and another called The Railway, by Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov. Possibly something died in translation, because I remember little of either book. Wikipedia reminds me that The Railway is about a small town on the Silk Road as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants.

Although the books did not come across as great literature, the cultures continue to draw one who hears so little about them from the American media unless it’s radio show The World. The Monitor and Reuters also seek out such stories.

Will Dunham of Reuters reports, “In the mountains of Uzbekistan, archaeologists aided by laser-based remote-sensing technology have identified two lost cities that thrived along the fabled Silk Road trade route from the 6th to 11th centuries AD — the bigger one a center for the metal industry and the other reflecting early Islamic influence.

“The fortified highland cities, located three miles apart at around 6,560-7,220 feet above sea level, are among the largest known from the mountainous sections of the Silk Road, the sprawling web of overland trade routes linking Europe and the Middle East to East Asia.

” ‘These cities were completely unknown. We are now working through historical sources to find possible undiscovered places that match our findings,’ said archaeologist Michael Frachetti of Washington University in Saint Louis, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

“The bigger of the two, called Tugunbulak, covered about 300 acres, with a population perhaps in the tens of thousands, the researchers said. It was one of the largest cities of its time in its region of Central Asia, rivaling even the famed trade hub Samarkand situated about 70 miles away. It existed from around 550 to 1000 AD. …

“The other city, Tashbulak, was only a tenth the size of its neighbor, with a population perhaps in the thousands, the researchers said, lasting from around 730-750 to 1030-1050 AD.

“Founded in early medieval times in what is now southeastern Uzbekistan, the cities were eventually abandoned and forgotten until archaeologists came across the first evidence of them while scouring a rugged mountain area, with deep ravines, steep ridge lines and forests. They deployed drone-based lidar remote scanning to map the scale and layout of the sites. …

“It revealed evidence of numerous structures, plazas, fortifications, roads, habitations and other urban features.

“Preliminary excavation at one of Tugunbulak’s fortified buildings — girded by thick earthen walls — yielded the remains of kilns and furnaces, indicating it was a factory where metalsmiths may have turned rich local deposits of iron ore into steel.

“The researchers are working to confirm steel was made there by chemically analyzing slag — a byproduct of iron and steel production — found at the site. The region in the 9th and 10th centuries was known for steel production. …

” ‘Tugunbulak in particular complicates much of the historical understanding of the early medieval political economy of the Silk Routes, placing both political power and industrial production far outside the regional “breadbaskets” such as Samarkand,’ Frachetti said.

“Tashbulak lacked the industrial scale of Tugunbulak but boasted an interesting cultural feature — a large cemetery that reflects the early spread of Islam in the region. Its 400 graves — for men, women and children — include some of the oldest Muslim burials documented in the region.

” ‘The cemetery is mismatched to the small size of the town. There’s definitely something ideologically oriented around Tashbulak that has people being buried there,’ Frachetti said.

“Islam arose on the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and rapidly spread in the successive centuries. The Silk Road enabled economic, cultural, religious and political exchanges between East and West, as the caravans that traversed its pathways toted not only a panoply of products but also people and ideas. It linked cosmopolitan Chinese cities such as Xi’an to destinations including the Byzantine capital Constantinople and the sophisticated Islamic metropolis Baghdad. More at Reuters, here.

I must say, this research sounds like fun to me. You discover a city no one knows anything about except its location on the Silk Road, and then you go back and read all the ancient documents you can on the Silk Road — the history, the legends — and look for a likely match.

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Precious Snails

January 16, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ryan Kellman/NPR.
Inside this lab in Hawaii, David Sischo and his team care for 40 species of snails. For some snails, it’s the only place they live, having been brought into captivity to stave off extinction.

If we take care of the least of Earth’s organisms, we ultimately take care of ourselves. That’s one reason why today’s story on some obscure research actually matters, even at a time when humanity seems to have bigger issues on its plate.

Lauren Sommer and Ryan Kellman report at National Public Radio about Hawaii’s “jewels of the forest.”

“When Hurricane Douglas came barreling toward Oahu in 2020, David Sischo quickly packed up and drove to higher ground. But he wasn’t evacuating his family. He was evacuating snails.

“Sischo works with some of the rarest endangered species on the planet, kāhuli — Hawaii’s native tree snails. The colorful, jewel-like snails were once so abundant, it’s said they were like Christmas ornaments covering the trees. Almost all of the 750 different species were found only in Hawaii.

“Today, more than half of those species are gone, the extinctions happening in the span of a human lifetime. Sischo and his team with Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources have the heavy task of saving what’s left.

“To stave off extinction, 40 species of snails, each about the size of a dime, live in human care inside an unremarkable trailer near Honolulu. For some, it’s the only place they’re found, their wild populations having completely disappeared.

” ‘Most people, when they think endangered species going extinct, they think of pandas and tigers and elephants, but imagine having 40 different panda species that are all as rare as pandas are,’ Sischo says. ‘That’s what this facility is.’

“This winter, one species of snail will inch toward an auspicious milestone. It will be released in a special enclosure in the mountains of Oahu, one that has been painstakingly prepared to give the snails the best chance of survival in their natural environment.

“Still, the outlook for Hawaii’s snails is uncertain, symbolizing a new era in the conservation of endangered species. Around the world, plants and animals are being brought into captivity as a last-ditch effort against extinction. But as the climate heats up and invasive species continue to spread, many have no clear path to return to nature in the near-term. That could mean they stay in human care, isolated in zoos for the imperiled. …

” ‘I don’t think people realize how fast things are changing,’ Sischo says. ‘It’s happening, like right now as I’m talking to you, there’s species blinking out, out in the wild right now.’

“To keep that from happening to Hawaii’s native snails, Sischo never turns off his phone. They rely on life support systems in the Snail Extinction Prevention Program trailer, kept in environmental chambers that control temperature and release mist to simulate their native rainforest habitat. Sensors are set up to detect any problems, alerting Sischo and his team 24 hours a day. …

“Sischo pulls out one with snails the size of a fingernail hiding among the leaves. It’s Achatinella fulgens, a snail with a pale yellow shell and a bold black stripe swirling around it. … Other snails have intricate stripe patterns, almost like they’re sporting a plaid shirt. One snail has a shell like a miniature cinnamon roll. Some are almost iridescent, glowing with golds and greens.

” ‘Our tree snails are known as the jewels of the forest,’ he says. ‘The islands were dripping in snails. They were everywhere.’

“Hawaii’s tree snails play a crucial role in the ecosystem, having evolved over millions of years on the isolated islands. They don’t actually eat leaves, instead eating the fungus that grows on them. That helps keep the native trees clean and recycles nutrients in the forest. The snails also hold an important place in Native Hawaiian culture, their shells used to make lei.

” ‘In Hawaiian tradition, snails sing,’ Sischo says. ‘They represent voice. So they were probably one of the most revered invertebrates in the world.’

“Hawaii’s tree snails were no match for the barrage of changes that humans brought. Rats eat snails, and they arrived on ships, both Polynesian and European. The snails’ habitat disappeared as Hawaii’s forests were cleared for agriculture. But the biggest threat came in the form of another snail.

“In the 1950s, a predatory snail was introduced to Hawaii from Florida. The rosy wolf snail was released to control another invasive snail, but as so many invasive species stories go, it quickly spread. Rosy wolf snails are exceptionally good at eating native snails, hunting them down by following their slime trails and ripping them from their shells.

” ‘When they encounter a slime trail, they know the direction it was going,’ Sischo says. ‘Once they’re locked in on a trail from a native snail, they go right up to it. There’s no getting away.’ “

Oh, gee. That’s exactly what I meant in a recent post about introducing a species to address a problem. What if the fix goes awry and creates new problems?

More at NPR, here. No paywall.

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Umbrella Sharing App

January 15, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Rentbrella.
An umbrella-sharing startup from Brazil.

I used to live in New York City, and one of the many characteristically New York phenomena I observed back then was what would happened in a rainstorm.

All of a sudden, from nowhere, sellers of umbrellas would appear. The umbrellas sold quickly, but most often they were poorly made. If there was a high wind, you would see them inside-out in a trash bin, dumped before the buyer even got home.

I can’t speak to the quality of the umbrellas in today’s story, but I’m guessing they are made of sturdier stuff — else how could they be shared repeatedly?

Aleksandra Halina Michalska and Carolina Pulice write at Reuters, “A Brazilian umbrella-sharing app, which has for several months been giving New Yorkers a way to cope with unexpected downpours, is now preparing to expand to Europe.

“Rentbrella launched in 2018 in Sao Paulo, a city known for torrential late afternoon summer rains. It offers an app that allows customers to borrow an umbrella from an automated kiosk and use it free of charge for 24 hours.

“If they don’t return the umbrella within that period, they are charged $2 for the second day under the U.S. price plan and another $2 for the third day. When the daily charges hit $16, the user can keep the umbrella.

“Freddy Marcos, one of the company’s three co-founders, said in an interview that Rentbrella aims to expand to at least 10 other countries in Europe in the next two years.

“The company launched in the New York boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn in October with 35 kiosks, each with 100 umbrellas, under agreements with real estate firms such as WeWork … Tishman Speyer … and Beacon Capital. Rentbrella plans to add 100 more stations throughout the United States this year.

” ‘The best thing about it is that it is free,’ said co-founder Ary Krivopisk, adding that Rentbrella aims to expand into London early this year.

“The company plans to generate revenue from advertisements printed on the umbrellas, although it has yet to sign any such deals in New York.

“The startup, which has so far raised $7 million from undisclosed investors, has around 40,000 umbrellas available in Sao Paulo.”

More at Reuters, here.

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Fish Highway in Stockholm

January 14, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: TiVa.
Installation of the fish counter at Gamla Stan in Slussen. The new fish highway in Stockholm has some of the first fish passages between the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren at Söderström in nearly 400 years.

Today’s story is about how Sweden is giving a helping hand to migrating fish that are not strong swimmers.

TiVa, an AI-powered fish-counting company, reports, “In mid-2024, a TiVA FC was installed in connection to the newly built fish migration path at Slussen in Stockholm. This long-awaited passage allows fish to freely migrate between Lake Mälaren and Saltsjön at Söderström for the first time in almost 400 years. As part of the reconstruction of Slussen, a new fish migration path has been constructed under the northern sluice quay on the side of Gamla Stan. The old Nils Ericson sluice has been converted into a passage to facilitate the free movement of weak-swimming species such as eel, roach, and perch – species that were previously hindered by human infrastructure.

“The TiVA FC fish counter delivers [improved] results, both in image quality and AI-based species and length classification. … The TiVA FC at Slussen is connected to our cloud platform fiskdata.se. Here, data is available for both the client and, in this case, for the public. … The City of Stockholm has chosen to broadcast a live stream via TiVA’s YouTube channel. Shorter streams can also be broadcasted to other platforms, like Facebook, depending on the client’s needs.

“The City of Stockholm will install an informational screen for ‘Fish TV’ on the crane structure by the fish counter. Passersby in Gamla Stan will be able to learn more about the project, see selected videos, and get updates on the latest migrations.” More at the TiVa website, here.

And from Stockholm’s website: “You can watch online the fish swimming between Lake Mälaren and Saltsjön [at fiskdata.se].

“Moving between different areas is a natural part of life for many fish species. They migrate from their breeding grounds to spawning grounds to reproduce. When humans have blocked various watercourses, this has prevented fish species from passing through. To protect the fish and promote the environment, watercourses can be restored, or, as here at Slussen, a fish migration route can be opened up.

“The primary purpose of the fish migration route is to enable passage between Lake Mälaren and Saltsjön for [fish] that do not jump, which is basically all species except salmon and sea trout. By building this route, we hope that species such as eel, roach and perch will once again be able to pass here.

“The trail is designed by experts to mimic as natural an environment as possible. Stones of various sizes have been carefully placed along the trail. Some of the stones come from Gustav Vasa’s 16th-century defensive wall, which was found during the excavations of Södermalmstorg in 2022. The water flow needs to be calm so that the fish can stop and rest. There is lighting here so that the fish can swim in pleasant light.

“The fish walking trail is located under the quay on the Old Town side and is not visible from the outside. But you can watch the fish swimming through at fiskdata.se.” More here.

Looking for comments — from Swedes and fish lovers everywhere.

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Redoing a Founding Father’s Home

January 13, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.
Bottles that were filled with cherries and other fruit were found buried in the basement of Mount Vernon.

Back in the day, little American children had early exposure to fake news in the form of a story about George Washington, invented by his biographer Mason Locke Weems. We were told to believe that even as a boy, Washington was scrupulously honest and that when accused of cutting down a cherry tree, he confessed his guilt with the words “I cannot tell a lie.”

Today’s more scientific take on our first president reveals a remote but fact-based connection with cherry trees.

Michael E. Ruane reports at the Washington Post, “The furniture in the bedroom where George Washington died will go into storage. So will his silver oil lamps, his French marble and bronze mantel clock, and most of the other contents of his elegant 290-year-old Mount Vernon mansion on the Potomac River.

“[The] bulk of Washington’s famous home is due to close for several months as it undergoes the next phase of its largest-scale rehabilitation in over 150 years.

“The $30 million project is the most complicated preservation effort since the house was saved from decay in 1860 by the private, nonprofit Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, which still owns it, said Douglas Bradburn, president of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. …

“Other parts of the house, along with the extensive grounds, Washington’s tomb, the quarters for enslaved people [yes, he owned slaves and freeing them on his death does not make up for that] and other outbuildings will remain open, Bradburn said in a recent interview. …

“The historic structure had become loosened from its foundation over time, and the work will resecure it, Bradburn said. There also will be restoration work done in the basement and on flooring, among other things. …

“Earlier repair projects have been piecemeal. [They’ve been] ‘dealing with problems as they come,’ he said. This is a chance for a more complete approach.

“The project made headlines in the spring when archaeologists digging in the basement found six storage pits containing more than two dozen bottles filled with cherries and other fruit that had been buried about 250 years ago. …

“The rehabilitation project began last year after officials realized that over time the big oak ‘sills’ that connected the mansion to the foundation had been devoured by termites and the house was no longer being held firmly in place.

“ ‘Essentially, the mansion was sitting on termite shields, or just sitting directly on brick,’ Bradburn said. ‘Lateral winds could knock it off its foundation.’ … The new sills are being made with oak from trees grown at Mount Vernon and from salvaged 18th-century oak acquired in Ohio, said Amy McAuley, Mount Vernon’s restoration manager. …

“Mount Vernon is about 20 miles south of Washington. The original house was a modest structure built for Washington’s father in 1734.

“George Washington inherited it in 1761 and expanded it dramatically over the decades — most of the work being done by people enslaved at Mount Vernon, officials said. By the time of Washington’s death in 1799, more than 300 were enslaved across the plantation there.

“Washington [was] was often away from Mount Vernon but loved the site and died there on Dec. 14, 1799.

“But by the 1850s, the mansion was in poor condition. … John Augustine Washington tried unsuccessfully to sell the mansion to the federal government and the state of Virginia.

“In 1853, Ann Pamela Cunningham, a well-to-do woman from South Carolina who was shocked by accounts of the dilapidated state of the home, founded the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union to save it, according to the website.

“At the time, tensions that would eventually lead to the Civil War were already on the rise. But the association had members from the South and the North, Bradburn said.

“ ‘That “of the Union” part was like, “If we save the house of Washington, maybe we can save the Union,” ‘ he said.”

More at the Post, here.

PS. Hannah got me wondering about how the fruit could get out of those narrow mouths on the bottles. Here’s a different photo from CNN. The cherries were small!

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A Model for What an Artist Can Be

January 12, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: Alex Barber/Contemporary Arts Museum Houston/Theaster Gates Studio.
“We Will Save Ourselves” (2024), a painting by Theaster Gates made with roofing materials.

I have blogged before about the unusual urban planner and artist Theaster Gates. Now the New York Times has done a deep dive on the many surprising facets of his work.

Siddhartha Mitter writes, “Theaster Gates is the kind of artist whose work is perpetually on view somewhere in the world. When we met for the first time, in May at his studio in Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood, he had just returned from opening exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. …

“He is known for installations that use supplies and furnishings from old buildings, paying tribute to their past lives — as homes, stores, churches. These installations serve double or even triple duty: They are works of art in themselves, but they can also become venues for parties or performances. His sculptures and paintings employ construction materials like wood, rubber and roofing tar. He’s a master ceramist and a musician and singer who performs with his experimental group, the Black Monks, in which he’s known as the Abbot.

“For years, Gates has acquired archives, and he sees their stewardship as integral to his work. Many preserve Black American cultural memory, like the roughly 20,000-volume library that once belonged to the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet, and the 5,000-record vinyl collection of Frankie Knuckles, the Chicago D.J. at whose late ’70s parties house music was born.

“He is currently advising an arts-led redevelopment project in Philadelphia and an initiative to preserve Houston’s Freedmen’s Town, a historically Black district in the city’s Fourth Ward. He chairs the diversity council at Prada, where he runs a mentorship program for designers of color, and he is developing partnerships in Japan with small family-owned businesses to produce incense and sake. …

“In his hometown, Gates is recognized as an entrepreneur who buys and restores properties on Chicago’s South Side. He puts these properties to unusual, sometimes less than practical use. The core of his holdings is a quiet half-mile stretch of South Dorchester Avenue, where he started acquiring run-down houses in 2006. He filled some with archives — thousands of art books purchased from a shuttered bookshop; LPs from a defunct record store. One house became his residence. …

“Salvage from the buildings goes into his art installations; proceeds from his art sales fund his building renovations and community programs. But they also stem from shared soil — his upbringing as the son of a roofer on Chicago’s West Side, his training as an urban planner — and commingle in his projects to the point where it would be artificial to separate them. …

“He rebuffs categories like ‘social practice’ — jargon for participative art with civic goals — but cites predecessors like Donald Judd, who made furniture as well as geometric objects, and the Fluxus movement, with its interest in everyday materials and spontaneous performances. He’s an inheritor of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp and his readymades, mass-produced and utilitarian objects that the French artist displayed as art. …

Gates sees himself as helping Chicago to ‘hold its Black self together.’

“A bureaucrat before he was ever an artist, Gates worked as an art planner for the Chicago Transit Authority from 2000 to 2005. After that, he began investing in Grand Crossing when he moved to the South Side to become an arts administrator at the University of Chicago, where he’s now a professor.

“ ‘The neighborhood had stigma, but the people were great and interesting,’ he said. He recognized the terrain: Black neighborhoods that faced disinvestment and crime but were once self-contained and self-possessed — places where, he said, ‘the Black doctor and lawyer and bus driver and maid were all on the same block, and they all went to the same church.’ By revitalizing these quotidian spaces — homes, a bank, a school, hardware stores that he has bought, often with their contents, when they were going out of business — he is summoning a kind of utopian memory in the service of new functions. … Through his investments in Grand Crossing — even when they take unconventional forms — Gates sees himself as helping Chicago to ‘hold its Black self together.’

“He took me down a side street edged by commuter rail tracks where in 2021 he opened Kenwood Gardens, a sanctuary with lawns, wildflowers and a pavilion that hosts house-music parties in the summer. It occupies 13 lots that were in decline — notorious, he said, for burned-out cars and prostitution. A wall encircling the garden is made partly from bricks that he saved from St. Laurence Catholic Church, a neighborhood anchor that the archdiocese sold and that was razed in 2014.

“ ‘When I built the perimeter wall, I didn’t own the property,’ Gates said. ‘I built the wall to stop the bad stuff.’ He then bought the lots, many loaded with tax arrears. ‘The city was quite happy to help us negotiate the land sales,’ he said, ‘because they would finally have a steward.’ Building his unauthorized wall, Gates said, was a case of tactical urbanism, as citizen initiatives that bypass city bureaucracy or goad it to action are called in the planning business. …

“[Gates] is too obviously sincere, even earnest, to come across as an operator. And yet he has both an aptitude and an appetite for policy and negotiations. In a famous deal, he purchased the former Stony Island State Savings Bank, a 1920s edifice facing demolition, from the city in 2012 for $1 and the commitment to restore it — which he funded in part by selling salvaged marble slabs at Art Basel for $5,000 each. …

“Romi Crawford, 58, a professor of visual and critical studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, described how Gates enfolds transactions into his art as ‘contract aesthetics.’ Gates has fielded periodic criticism that he is too amenable to the rich and powerful. He rejects this. … ‘If you’re talking about protesting, there are people who are better protesters,’ he said. ‘If you’re talking about getting [things] done in the city, I can do it better than most artists. I can do it better than most developers.’ …

“But despite the busy world Gates has built for himself, its center is paradoxically calm. At the studio in Chicago, I’d been struck by the quiet. His operation has downsized, he said — from 65 employees at its peak, around 2016, which he admitted overwhelmed him, to just 15.

“Next to go might be his collection of buildings, though it could take a while. ‘I did not attempt to amass a real estate holdings situation,’ he said. ‘I was simply trying to prove the point that artists can change a place.’ “

For the the rest of the long profile, click here.

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Renovating Abandoned Houses in Japan

January 11, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: @antoninjapan on TikTok.
Screengrabs from a viral TikTok video posted by Anton Wormann (pictured right), who bought an abandoned farm in Japan for $15,000. 

Here’s a young man with a novel approach to making his fortune. It involves abandoned houses, or akiya, in Japan.

In October, Soo Kim wrote at Newsweek, “Anton Wormann, 31, who is originally from Sweden, relocated to Japan in 2018 after living in New York. He recently purchased an abandoned farm for $15,000 ‘right by the beach’ in Kujukuri, a town in the Chiba prefecture of Honshu, the largest and most populous island of Japan.

“Wormann shared a tour of the abandoned property, where ‘everything was left as is,’ in a video posted on his TikTok account Anton in Japan (@antoninjapan). …

“The farm comes with 11 rooms in a 250-square-meter house (about 2,690 square feet) and 0.62-acre garden ‘where you can hear the waves,’ he said in the clip.

“Located about 150 meters (0.09 mile) from the beach in Kujukuri, the farmhouse has six bedrooms and five living rooms as well as a kitchen, a toilet, a big garage and two other smaller structures on the compound.

” ‘I bought this farm about two months ago but only recently found the time to begin renovations,’ Wormann told Newsweek. ‘The land is … located about an hour away from central Tokyo by car. The previous owners were a family with grown-up children who no longer wanted to maintain the property after it had been vacant for so long. …

“Wormann, who has a background in fashion modeling and media, now focuses on real estate projects, particularly DIY renovations of abandoned homes.

“He’s been buying and renovating vacant homes in Tokyo for the past five years and ‘wanted to take on a project in the Japanese countryside to try something new,’ he told Newsweek. Wormann is also the author of the book Free Houses in Japan, released in 2023, which explains how he earns money through renovation projects like this in Japan.

” ‘There are tons of cheap abandoned homes in Japan, but this one is the cheapest one I’ve come across in the vicinity of Tokyo that still had a great location, a big piece of land and the potential of turning gorgeous again,’ he said.

“The renovation of the abandoned farm is in its early stages, ‘but there’s a lot of work ahead,’ Wormann noted, adding that ‘my vision is to transform the farmhouse into a mix of traditional Japanese and Scandinavian design, maintaining the rustic charm while modernizing it.’

“The footage in the viral video shows a building surrounded by greenery, including a large tree near a doorway in the garden space.

“The camera later enters the home, which is cluttered with various items, from cleaning products, shoes and umbrellas to toys, random memorabilia and several boxes.

” ‘The potential of this place is phenomenal,’ he says in the clip. ‘Now the crazy part is everything is left as is by the previous owners. When I say everything, I mean everything,’ he notes, as the footage shows various items such as a bottle of ‘very old rare’ Suntory whiskey, around 20 stuffed animals, about 500 kimonos (a traditional Japanese garment), ‘loads and loads’ of games, Pokemon cards and ‘anime-related stuff,’ as well as an unopened safe.

“Holding his shirt up toward his face, he says in the video: ‘This is what nine years abandoned plus a minor water leak in the kitchen smells like.’ The footage shows a kitchen setting with several plastic buckets filled with murky water.

“He continues: ‘The worst part is we can’t start the renovation and actually see what we bought until we’ve cleaned out all these treasures. …

” ‘Some of these things are probably worth a lot but I don’t know where to start,’ he says as the video concludes.

“Wormann’s been buying and renovating abandoned homes before turning them into short-term rentals at a rate of about one house a year since moving to Japan. He finds the homes by looking through Japanese websites and has a network of brokers around him who also help find the houses.

” ‘There are many reasons why there are so many abandoned homes in Japan,’ he noted, from a declining population and a preference for newer residences to ‘a high stock of apartment and houses.’

” ‘Japanese houses and real estate also depreciates over the years, making older houses over 20 to 30 years more or less worthless, and you basically only pay for the land if you buy older houses,’ he said.”

More at Newsweek, here. I first learned about the issue of abandoned houses in Japan at the radio show The World, here. See more pictures at Koryoya.

Now watch this video from an American couple who also have made a business doing this. Very cool.

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Dance Legend Alvin Ailey

January 10, 2025 by suzannesmom

Photo: John Lindquist/Harvard Theatre Collection.
Dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey.

I have a special memory of dance icon Alvin Ailey, who early in his career came to Spring Valley (NY) High School to perform and offer a class. I jumped at the chance. I remember he gave me a moment of personal attention when I was trying to learn a step.

New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art also has memories. 

Rebecca Schiffman writes at Hyperallergic, “Alvin Ailey’s performing arts transcend the traditional boundaries of dance. The seminal dancer and choreographer created a living history of movement imbued with cultural memory and personal expression. Through his choreography and his company’s performances, he seamlessly interwove narratives of Black, American, and queer identity, exploring themes of struggle and liberation in performances that were both physically dynamic and deeply rooted in the human condition. His expansive vision of what modern dance could be — flexible, inclusive, and multidisciplinary — makes his work an ideal centerpiece for the Whitney’s first-ever exhibition dedicated to a performing artist.

“Edges of Ailey at the Whitney Museum of American Art blends performance footage, recorded interviews, and notes from the late choreographer’s personal archive with paintings, sculptures, music, and installations by more than 80 artists. As Ailey himself reflected in a 1984 interview, ‘There was movement, there was color, there was painting, there was sculpture, and there was the putting it all together.’ This holistic approach allows the two sides of the exhibition — Ailey’s life and work alongside art that relates to or is inspired by him — to coexist harmoniously, each enriching the other to compose a more complete story of American culture.

“Among the exhibition’s direct references to dance are Barkley Hendricks’s painting ‘Dancer’ (1977), depicting a Black woman in a white leotard set against a white ground; Senga Nengudi’s sculpture ‘R.S.V.P.’ (1975), evoking a body or body parts through stretched nylon pantyhose and sand; and two paintings of dancers in rehearsal by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, one of which was created specifically for this exhibition.

“These works are complemented by an 18-screen video projection of various Ailey performances, played on a loop throughout the space and accompanied by scores from Josh Begley and Kya Lou. Another section hosts videos of musicians, dancers, and choreographers who influenced Ailey, including Katherine Dunham, Maya Deren, Carmen de Lavallade, and Duke Ellington. 

“But the real lure of the exhibition lies in the opportunity to connect with the storied Alvin Ailey on a personal level through his notebooks, journal entries, letters, and other ephemera meticulously organized alongside corresponding artworks. Ailey was a scrupulous note taker, chronicling his life in painstaking detail. On Monday, September 20, 1982, he works through his daily minutiae: ‘Woke up at 10:30, call from Atlanta, watched soaps and drank tea, called Ernie at 12:13, Sylvia called at 2:00 to talk about …’ But in other entries, such as one from 1980 that states ‘nervous breakdown, 7 wks in hosp,’ Ailey’s brevity highlights the overwhelming weight of the experience of a mental breakdown, a reality that might be too heavy or painful to unpack in words. Aptly placed next to this entry is Rashid Johnson’s ‘Anxious Men’ (2016), a drawn alter-ego of the artist’s own anxieties.

“Born in 1931 into a lineage of sharecroppers in rural Texas at the height of the Great Depression, Ailey was raised by his mother after his father abandoned them. Constantly searching for work, she moved them from town to town; at one point, when Ailey was just five, he helped her pick cotton. This upbringing, steeped in the struggles of Southern Black life and the spiritual grounding of the church, profoundly shaped his most iconic work, Revelations.

“Drawing from the gospel, blues, and spirituality that surrounded him as a child, he transformed these memories into a montage of pain, hope, and redemption. Works like John Bigger’s portrait of a weary yet resilient Black man, ‘Sharecropper’ (1945), characterized by its dark and somber tones, or ‘Haze’ (2023), Kevin Beasley’s landscape painting of a few trees against a yellow sky in the South, depict histories that visually resonate with Ailey’s creations.”

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall. The exhibition, running through February 9, is accompanied by a series of dance performances. Check the Whitney website for dates and times.

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