From the Jules Verne classic 20,00 Leagues Under the Sea came a film with Kirk Douglas and a memorable Giant Squid. (Disney will probably sue if I embed a pirated trailer. See the official one here. It has the Giant Squid in it.)
Until very recently, no one could prove that such a thing as a Giant Squid even existed. I have seen renderings of what sailors might really have seen when they described a Giant Squid: for example, a whale with an octopus wrapped around it. And I just learned that the mythological Kraken may be the result of people seeing a Giant Squid and thinking it was a supernatural monster. (Oh, surely not the gentle Kraken of The Island of the Aunts!)
Here’s what made my day: the wonder and delight in the voice of the woman videotaping the first Giant Squid ever caught on camera, a creature that hangs out in the deep sea off Chichi island, Japan, where expeditions going down 3,000 feet have sought him for years.
You can hear Tom Ashbrook’s guests talk about this triumph at WBUR’s OnPoint program.
“For thousands of years, sailors have told stories of giant squids. In myth and cinema, the kraken was the most terrible of sea monsters. Now, it’s been captured — on a soon-to-be-seen video.
From National Public Radio: “Even after decades of searching, giant squids had only been seen in still photographs. Finally, in last July, scientists filmed the first video of a live giant squid swimming some 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
“Edie Widder is the ocean researcher who shot the footage, which is slated to be released in a Discovery Channel documentary later this month.
“She told Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered, the elusive creature could have been as much as 30 feet long” More.
(I am spatially challenged and embarrassed to admit how many decades it took me to figure out that Captain Nemo traveled in his Nautilus 20,000 leagues horizontally, not straight down.)
Photograph: Edie Widder/Discovery Channel
A giant squid stars in this still image taken from the first-ever video of giant squids.
John sent me a good New Yorker story about “the Arslanköy Women’s Theatre Group, an all-female theatre group, based in rural Turkey, which is writing and performing plays.
“Ümmiye Koçak, who is now in her mid-fifties, was a forty-four-year-old farmworker with a primary-school education when she caught the theatre bug from a school play that a local school principal, Hüseyin Arslanköylü, had staged the previous year,” writes Elif Batuman.
“Ümmiye had never seen a play before, and it seeped into her thoughts. For a long time, she had been puzzling over the situation of village women and the many roles they had to play. In the fields, they worked like men; in villas, they became housekeepers; at home, they were wives and mothers.
“In 2000, with other women from her village, Arslanköy, she formed the Arslanköy Women’s Theatre Group. The group met every night at the school, after the women had worked ten- or twelve-hour days on farms. Their first production, a contemporary Turkish play called ‘Stone Almonds,’ sold out a theatre in the provincial capital of Mersin, and was written up in the national press.” Continued here.
I’m wondering about the mysterious figure at the left here. Hamlet’s father? But he doesn’t show up after people die, or does he? It was always a somewhat confusing play. As my father used to say, quoting I know not who: “The king dies, the queen dies, Ham dies — I calls it a helluva play!”
Photograph: New Yorker magazine
“Hamlet” performed in a mountain location near Arslanköy at dawn.
I was standing around chatting with friends while waiting for the train tonight. We were all complaining about the weather. When I said we should count ourselves lucky because it’s 35 degrees F below zero in Minnesota, a woman standing near me piped up saying that she was from Alaska and it’s 60 below there.
So this is about balmy Curacao.
Santiago Ortega writes at AlertNet (a “free humanitarian news site”) about Curacao’s plan to turn seawater to energy.
“A Dutch company called Bluerise B.V. and the company that owns Curacao’s airport – Curacao Airport Holding N.V. – are exploring building a small 100-kilowatt marine power plant that will use the temperature of the seawater as a power source.
“In the tropics” — ah, the tropics! — “the sun heats the ocean surface and keeps it warm all year long. But at a depth of one kilometre (0.6 miles), sunlight can’t reach and warm colder waters, circulated from the Arctic.
“Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) works by deploying a pipeline in the ocean to pump cold, deep water to the surface and take advantage of the difference in its temperature with the warm surface water.
“Cold and warm waters are used in a process to condense and evaporate ammonia, causing it to move inside a closed-pipe circuit. Evaporated ammonia powers a turbine that generates electricity, and then is condensed to continue the cycle.
“The downside of the process is that the difference in temperatures is not very large, so the efficiency of the process – and thus the power production – is low when compared to conventional power plants. The bright side is that the energy resource is as abundant as the ocean itself.” More.
Photograph: R. Norman Matheny/Christian Science Monitor
Costumed dancers perform a folk dance for tourists in Curacao, a Caribbean island nation that is considering using seawater to generate electricity.
Thank you, Gwarlingo, for tweeting this. Looks like there’s hope for us all.
“All your excuses are invalid,” says Dustin Kurtz in an article at the Melville House site about “the seventy-five year old winner of a prize for emerging writers.
“The semiannual Akutagawa prize was awarded in Japan this past Wednesday, and this season’s winner was Natsuko Kuroda. The Akutagawa prize, begun in 1935, is awarded for stories published in newspapers or magazines by new or emerging authors. Kuroda is seventy-five years old.
“Her story, ‘ab Sango’ (it can be previewed and purchased here) is unusual in that it uses no pronouns for its young principle characters, and is written horizontally across the page from left to right, rather than the standard top to bottom. The result is strange and beautiful, and hints at a genealogy of Popper-esque fairy tale formulae, of mathematics or of sociology, and all of which is given subtle cultural freight by Kuroda’s horizontal lines. But again — because it bears repeating — this intriguing emerging writer is seventy-five years old.
“Kuroda is in fact the oldest writer ever to be given the Akutagawa prize, and she is nearly as old as the prize itself. Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the award’s namesake and perhaps Japan’s most celebrated story writer, famously killed himself when he was less than half her current age.
“Upon receiving the prize, Kuroda said, ‘Thank you for discovering me while I am still alive.’ ” More.
Photograph: Melville House, an independent book publisher in Brooklyn, NY.
I’m going to repost the Poem-a-Day that Poets.org sent this morning. Readers who are into poetry may like it because it is Walt Whitman. (Even when Whitman writes prose, it sounds like poetry.) Readers who are into history may like it because it is Lincoln.
“March 4th.–The President very quietly rode down to the Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because he wish’d to be on hand to sign bills, or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin temple of liberty and pasteboard monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o’clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look’d very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach’d to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native Western form of manliness.) By his side sat his little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders, riding around the carriage. (At the inauguration four years ago, he rode down and back again surrounded by a dense mass of arm’d cavalrymen eight deep, with drawn sabres; and there were sharpshooters station’d at every corner on the route.) I ought to make mention of the closing levee of Saturday night last. Never before was such a compact jam in front of the White House–all the grounds fill’d, and away out to the spacious sidewalks. I was there, as I took a notion to go–was in the rush inside with the crowd–surged along the passage-ways, the blue and other rooms, and through the great east room. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine Band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything to be somewhere else.”
I have written a few times about the crowdfunding site Kickstarter (for example, in this post about a great documentary I saw).
I even participated in one campaign because Liz told me about a Pomona College professor who wanted to raise a small amount to publish a book on the artist Ben Shahn.
Sometimes there is a little sweetener (I was offered Ben Shahn note cards). Sometimes donors just want to see the thing get off the ground. If you don’t meet your goal in the allotted time, no one pays.
My impression is that Kickstarter is most suited to products that are ready to roll. Lisa Kocian wrote in the Boston Globe recently about a product I would definitely like to buy.
“U-Turn Audio, founded by three Lexington High grads, is a few steps closer to bringing its affordable, sound-obsessed vinyl turntable to the mass market.
“In March, the trio won a $2,500 Prototype Fund grant from Northeastern University’s Center for Research Innovation. Seven or eight prototypes later, the three friends are trying to raise the $60,000 needed to start manufacturing their Orbit turntable, which will retail for about $150, according to Bob Hertig, one of the company’s cofounders.” More.
Tonight, with 28 hours left in U-Turn’s Kickstarter campaign, the team has raised more than 300% of their goal. (Note that different levels of funding are associated with different rewards, here.)
A few of my readers will see “Waitsfield, Vermont” and think “skiing.” That’s because they were skiing there a couple weeks ago.
But this post is about the man who launched American Flatbread in Waitsfield in 1985, franchising his restaurant concept in other states and using his business success as a platform to advocate for the environment and other causes.
“In the fall of 1979,” writes Mike Ives for the Christian Science Monitor, “George Schenk stuffed all his worldly possessions into his pickup truck and moved from upstate New York to central Vermont. After settling in the sleepy ski town of Waitsfield, he began working as a dishwasher, freelance photographer, and live-in baby sitter.
“He also apprenticed at local restaurants and learned from chefs who were cooking in ways that emphasized local and regional ingredients. By 1985, Mr. Schenk was selling his own ‘flatbread,’ a variation on the brick oven-style pizza he’d eaten as a teenager, topped with Vermont produce.
“Serving nutritious food, he realized, was a good way to promote the kind of community values he’d absorbed in his Connecticut childhood and the ecological principles he’d embraced in his previous careers as a farmer and forester. …
” ‘I felt as though the environmental dimension of food needed a voice,’ Schenk recalls.
“Today, American Flatbread operates three popular Vermont locations, exports frozen pizzas nationwide, and is franchising its restaurant concept in other states.
“But profit isn’t Schenk’s only priority: For more than two decades he has donated thousands of his flatbreads to the poor and sick. He’s also held an average of eight benefit bakes each year to raise money for those in need.”
Although his political views and “civil disobedience” actions have often raised hackles, the people who know him best defend him.
“They insist his commitment to his employees and community is sincere and unwavering,” writes Ives. ” ‘I don’t always agree with George, but I always appreciate him,’ says Amy Shollenberger, former executive director of Rural Vermont, a nonprofit farm advocacy group. ‘He loves everybody, wears his heart on his sleeve — and walks his talk.’ ”
Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto
George Schenk founded American Flatbread pizza as a way to showcase local produce and advocate for both community and global causes.
Global Envision is part of an effort at the nonprofit Mercy Corps “to foster a richer conversation about global poverty.”
Last fall, Global Envision’s Erin Butler set off to investigate technologies that help schools in impoverished parts of of the world.
“For some students, hopping on the school bus is hopping into the classroom. Four communities are using solar-powered mobile classrooms to overcome inaccessibility to the power grid.
“Last week,” writes Butler, “we looked at a bus in Chitradurga, India, that brought modern computer technology to students in energy-poor rural schools through solar power. SELCO, a private energy company, engineered the bus with 400 watts of solar modules, 10 laptops, fans, and lights.
“Circumventing the area’s erratic power supply with its solar panels, this bus provides much-needed modern computer education and exposure to the advantages of solar energy. Motoring through rural villages in Chitradurga since January 2012, the bus has reached ’60 schools and 2,081 children,’ the New Indian Express reported in early September. …
“Where there’s more water than land, boats replace buses, and with rising sea levels, low-income Bangladeshi students have difficulty getting to school altogether.
“Pushed to inaccessible riverside settlements that lack basic infrastructure, students often can’t get to school due to monsoon flooding. Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a nonprofit organization started by Mohammed Rezwan, rides the rising tides with his solar-powered floating schools.
“Trained as an architect and personally experienced with soggy school disruptions in Bangladesh, Rezwan rode a brainwave that led him to floating schools. Combining the best of traditional boat design and modern sustainable practices, the organization’s 54 boats have been operating since 2002 and have served over 90,000 families.”
Photograph: Jayanta Shaw/Reuters/File
Students in Kolkata, India, check out their solar sunglasses as they prepare to watch the transit of Venus across the sun. The sun is being harnessed in India and Africa to power mobile solar classrooms for students.
In 1972, an idealistic young man graduated from Duke University and returned to St. Louis.
There Joe Edwards became both a successful entrepreneur and “a powerful force for civic good,” writes Marjorie Kehe in the Christian Science Monitor. …
“Casting about for a career, he decided to bank on his love of music and opened Blueberry Hill, a small restaurant and bar that featured live performances. For his venture he chose a storefront on Delmar Boulevard, a retail area that locals call The Loop (named for the trolley that once used to turn around there).
“Back in the 1920s and ’30s The Loop was an elegant shopping street, and up through the ’50s it remained a major draw for young St. Louisans …
“But by the early 1970s the street had become a ghost town. About half The Loop’s storefronts were vacant or boarded up, and crime was rampant. Edwards remembers sweeping up debris and broken glass in front of Blueberry Hill each morning and feeling despair.
” ‘Within a week of opening Blueberry Hill I realized that I wouldn’t make it if the neighborhood didn’t make it,’ he says.
“And so began his campaign of gentle persuasion. ‘I talked to other residents, to city hall, to the police,’ Edwards says. He reminded them of what many seemed to have forgotten – that The Loop was a valuable asset, graced with appealing architecture and a rich history. He formed The Loop Special Business District and served on committees that worked on issues from lighting to sanitation to flower planters to security.
“But Edwards’s best move was to become a success. ‘The business establishment has been willing to listen to him because he’s been so successful,’ says Bill McClellan, a columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. ‘He’s an unusual combination – a hippie-visionary-business type.’ ”
Read more about how one person made a big difference in a city he loved.
Photograph: Ann Hermes/Christian Science Monitor Joe Edwards sits in the display window of his restaurant Blueberry Hill on Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis.
I am grateful to my friend Mary Ann for posting a link to this story on Facebook today.
Julian Guthrie writes in the San Francisco Chronicle:
“Starting in the summer of 2000, a man named Someguy launched 1,000 blank, leather-bound journals into the world to encourage creativity and see how art could connect people.
“The journals trickled back in from places as far flung as Iraq — reaching 40 countries and 50 states — and were filled with gorgeous drawings, political musings, disturbing rants, and poetic vignettes of daily lives.
“The journals, registered and tracked online, were eventually turned into a book, displayed at museums in San Francisco (at the Museum of Modern Art), Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Ariz., and featured in a documentary.
“More than 12 years later, the global art experiment has a new twist: The idea has now been adopted by Bay Area children’s hospitals, where young patients use the journals as a way to connect with other children going through something similar.
“Brian Singer, the San Francisco artist whose handle is Someguy, has been touched by this latest chapter in his social experiment.
” ‘I have heard stories of the impact of these journals, of kids opening up in ways they hadn’t before,’ says Singer, who built a website, 1001journals.com, to help others start similar projects. …
“Singer, 39, who grew up in Cupertino, lives in Noe Valley and commutes by shuttle to his job at Facebook in Menlo Park, where he manages a design group. …
“He remains interested in the phenomenon of sharing among strangers and looking at how to connect people through a physical artifact. Tangible items ‘drive connections in the real world,’ he said.
“There are still many of Singer’s original blank journals out in the world that may one day return.
” ‘They travel on their own,’ Singer says, ‘like a message in a bottle.’ ”
“How will the world find the water to feed a growing population in an era of droughts and water shortages?” asks Fred Pearce of Yale Environment 360 by way of the Christian Science Monitor.
“The answer, a growing number of water experts are saying, is to forget big government-run irrigation projects with their mega-dams, giant canals, and often corrupt and indolent management.
“Farmers across the poor world, they say, are solving their water problems far more effectively with cheap Chinese-made pumps and other low-tech and off-the-shelf equipment. Researchers are concluding that small is both beautiful and productive.
“ ‘Cheap pumps and new ways of powering them are transforming farming and boosting income all over Africa and Asia,’ says Meredith Giordano, lead author of a three-year research project looking at how smallholder farmers are turning their backs on governments and finding their own solutions to water problems. …
“The report says better support for this hidden farmer-led revolution could increase crop yields threefold in some places …
“But such help could be a while coming, because much of the revolution is happening out of sight of governments and international organizations. In Ghana, the study found, small private irrigation schemes cover 185,000 hectares – 25 times more land than public irrigation projects. ‘Yet when I asked the agriculture minister there about these schemes, he hadn’t even heard of them,’ says Colin Chartres, director of IWMI.”
Photograph: Noor Khamis/Reuters/File
Boys from Nalepo Primary School draw water using a manual pumping machine in a semi-arid region south of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
I’m not sure where I first read about Studio H, but I think you will be interested in this high school that engages students in hands-on construction from design to delivery.
The website explains: “Studio H is a public high school design/build curriculum that sparks community development through real-world, built projects. Originally launched in rural Bertie County, North Carolina, Studio H is now based at REALM Charter School in Berkeley, CA.
“By learning through a design sensibility, applied core subjects, and industry-relevant construction skills, students develop the creative capital, critical thinking, and citizenship necessary for their own success and for the future of their communities.
“Over the course of one semester, students earn high school credit and have the opportunity to design, prototype, and build a full-scale community project. Our students have designed and built some crazy chicken coops for families in need, and a 2,000-square-foot farmers market pavilion.”
My husband, who has made a lot of business trips to Japan (and also has been reading my posts about 100-year-old workers), pointed me to something interesting at the Japan Times.
Jiji writes, “A business project focused on selling decorative leaves for use in Japanese cuisine is attracting overseas attention to Kamikatsu, a mountain town in Tokushima Prefecture. …
“The [Irodori, or bright colors] project, which succeeded in commercializing colored leaves grown in local mountains and fields and now claims members from nearly 200 farms, has become a vital industry in Kamikatsu, which has a population of less than 2,000. …
“The average age of the farmers involved in the project is 70, and many are women. Some earn more than 10 million [yen, more than $100,000] a year from the business.
“Irodori members use tablet computers to check for updated information on orders. The leaves are grown in their own mountains and fields, then distributed to markets across Japan via an agricultural cooperative. …
“According to the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which promotes international visits to Kamikatsu, the response to its English DVD on the Irodori project was huge. It has been translated into Bengali, Spanish and French.
“Tomoji Yokoishi, 54, who came up with the Irodori idea and is president of the managing company, said perceptional shifts are responsible for its success.
“The project turned regular leaves into a valuable resource and turned its elderly into a workforce, Yokoishi explained.”
I’m guessing that the phrase “for use in Japanese cuisine” doesn’t mean anyone eats the leaves. They are probably used to decorate tables where Japanese cuisine is served. Do you think?
Among the many things that are a fun about a blog is checking out the likes to my entries and learning about common interests. I also love thinking about the people I know who may be reading. Then there are the thoughtful comments from strangers.
Cynthia, for example. She came to the blog after searching on the late, amazing ceramicist Anne Kraus and finding my post “The Mysterious Tea Cups of Anne Kraus.” She says she knew the family.
My entries on new farmers have a led to a nice exchange with an Ohio farmer, DrJeff7, who raises traditional livestock at Heritage Breeds Farm. Here is one of his comments:
“There is definitely a shift toward buying local and buying organic/ grassfed, and all natural. We are staring up with similar goals in mind. I am concerned about the fact that farms continue to ‘go out of business,’ yet the animals get absorbed by larger and larger farming conglomerates. (i.e. factory farms). Their argument is that it is a necessary evil if you want to feed the world. I think that the world needs to move away from supposed progress and head back to the days of traditional farming, where animals see the light of day and chemicals are nowhere to be found (or limited to the best extent).”
And there came a day when I really needed to see this title at 5kidswdisabilities, a WordPress blog: “Beyond One’s Own Problems.”
Listen to this mom. “I work with a social/educational/recreational group for teens with disabilities. When first getting this group together at the beginning of the school year, I asked them what they wanted to do as part of our program. Every single one of them said they wanted to ‘help other people.’ Here are students with a variety of disabilities and medical needs, and they wanted to help others! They were mature enough to look beyond their own problems to the problems of others.
“Various suggestions were tossed about … They chose making sandwiches for the homeless. …
“They worked as a team and made 165 sandwiches and twelve dozen cookies. As they worked, they talked about who might get to eat them, what kind of bad luck may have fallen upon that person and so forth. They talked with much empathy, and not once during their conversation did they mention their own problems. They were caring about the problems of others.
“After the sandwiches were made, I drove up to Traveler’s Aid, a local spot where the homeless hang out. The kids … walked and wheeled to the front desk which, fortunately, was wheelchair accessible. The crowd murmured appreciatively, politely, thankfully. The kids faces beamed as they turned around and came back to the van. They were no longer disabled, but capable of helping others. Suddenly, their problems were not as bad as the people who thanked them; people without shelter and food.”
The Facebook page of my friend Alden, the oboist, linked to an article on Benoit Rolland, winner of a 2012 MacArthur Award. Alden said Roland reminded him of the sushi genius in “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” a film about a very intense and innovative perfectionist.
The story that Kathleen Burge wrote for the Boston Globe suggests just how inventive Rolland is. “For his entire professional life, Benoît Rolland has been making bows for stringed instruments with one goal: making music easier to play.
“ ‘If a musician is not comfortable with the bow, the bow becomes an obstacle, and he or she cannot be free to play,’ Rolland said. …
“This fall, Rolland, who lives in Watertown with his wife, was rewarded for his innovations and artistry over a career that has included making about 1,800 bows. He was named one of 23 MacArthur Foundation fellows, and given an unrestricted grant of $500,000. …
“Over the years Rolland has made bows for some of the world’s most famous musicians, including violinists Yehudi Menuhin and Anne-Sophie Mutter.
“Kim Kashkashian, a violist who teaches at New England Conservatory, has asked Rolland to make two bows for her.
“ ‘He actually will listen to you play and watch you play and instinctively understand the style of your playing, the particular sensuality of your bow and string relationship,’ said Kashkashian, also a leader with the local Music for Food program.
“Each of the bows Holland made for her has distinctive qualities. One works especially well if she is playing chamber music with a piano, Kashkashian said. ‘The second bow he made for me, which has a really deep chocolatey sound, I would tend to use if I were playing completely alone.’ ”
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