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Woodsman Warms Neighbors

March 30, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Landon Speers/Guardian.
A Woodstock, New York, woodsman who prefers to be anonymous, cuts logs in his yard to deliver to neighbors.

Some people do good deeds and seek no credit. At the Guardian, David Wallis wrote early this year about one of those people.

“On a chilly morning in Woodstock, New York, frozen dew turns lawns a glistening white as puffs of smoke from chimneys float across the road.

“ ‘Winter is here,’ declares the woodsman, a broad-shouldered man in a black-and-gray checked wool shirt and navy denim Carhartt overalls as he sharpens his orange chainsaw. … The woodsman, who requested anonymity, is an accomplished director, writer and producer with several popular film and TV credits on his IMDb page. But he now devotes much of his time to supplying his struggling – and sometimes freezing – neighbors with free firewood. …

‘Many people are suffering,’ said the woodsman. ‘So many more than I imagined. Quietly, just secretly, really suffering.’

“The numbers back him up. Almost half of the children in the local public school district are economically disadvantaged, meaning that they or their families receive government anti-poverty aid such as supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap) or disability funds. Affordable housing is in short supply: there are only a handful of long-term rentals on Zillow in the 12498 zip code with an average price of nearly $4,000 per month.

“A cord (128 cubic feet) of firewood, about enough fuel for a month or two, costs between $250 and $350 in Ulster county – up from about $200 before Covid. … In the world’s wealthiest nation, some people freeze to death inside their homes. … For many Americans, warmth is just another unattainable luxury.

“The woodsman has been an active activist for several years, helping refugees in Mexico stay in safe houses, distributing free masks during Covid and organizing voter registration drives with the Comedy Resistance, a non-profit organization.

“He moved to upstate New York from Los Angeles a few years ago to look after his mother, who had cancer and then Covid. He stocked a paying stand, which operated on the honor system, outside his mother’s house with bundles of wood; she donated the proceeds to local charities. But some of the bundles of wood vanished. The thefts distressed the woodsman, who recalled that a friend ‘suggested that I put a sign out on the stand that says if you if you need wood to heat your home, but you don’t have the resources, just ask me and I will deliver.’

“That conversation sparked the free firewood program. Two local librarians, Hollie Ferrara of the Woodstock Library and Elizabeth Potter of the Phoenicia Library, voluntarily spread the word about the grassroots initiative.

“ ‘Most people who work here can’t afford to live here,’ said Ferrara. ‘But there are still outlying folks who have been in their homes for a long time who basically have just about just enough money to live on and that’s about it.’ She acknowledged that librarians like her routinely act as unofficial social workers. …

“Residuals from the woodsman’s entertainment career defray some of his expenses. But Potter solicits donations for the charity from the community. Some benefactors leave gift cards for gasoline and stash them under a rock on her porch, or drop off oil for chainsaws.

“She first called on the woodsman during a power outage, a regular occurrence in upstate New York, two winters ago. An older couple had burned through their ‘last stick of wood.’ Within hours, the woodsman came to the rescue. ‘They said they and their spouse were huddled under the blankets upstairs, the fire long gone out, freezing cold, when they saw headlights in their drive and the soul-warming sound of wood being thrown on to the gravel. He got them through until the power was restored.’

“The woodsman considers his volunteerism a cheap form of therapy. ‘I’m sort of a quiet guy,’ he said. Giving away wood ‘does draw me out, pushes me out. When you interact with people, and I listen a lot, you do you learn their stories. And I’m moved by every one of them.’

“He often monitors his clients’ firewood reserves and notices that he is receiving requests for help earlier this winter than last, a sign, he believes, of increasing economic struggle. …

“When I visited him, he decided to check in with repeat customers who live about 20 minutes away from his wood lot. When driving on country roads, he eyed passing wood piles and offered reviews at 40 miles per hour. … He inspected a pile of logs strewn on the land to ensure they were not rotted. We then chatted in the house with Tom and Malley Heinlein, who had asked him to cut and split their wood. …

“Tom, the family’s main breadwinner, is gaunt and slowly recovering from Mycobacterium chelonae, a severe bacterial infection, that sapped his strength and swelled his body. ‘We’ve been happily living our independent little quirky life for all this time,’ Malley said wistfully. ‘And then all of a sudden, something trips you up.’ ” More at the Guardian, here. No paywall.

I have to say, I laughed out loud reading that, when the woodsman was a child, his mother boycotted grapes to help the United Farm Workers. I did that, too. Don’t know if there’s a direct connection, but both Suzanne and John do various kinds of good works now.

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Olive Growers Adapt

March 29, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Dominique Soguel.
Michael Antonopoulos, president of the Agricultural Cooperative of Kalamata, tells the Christian Science Monitor, “We want to adjust as soon as possible to the environment and be pioneers. Our place has to be fully ecological.”

In Greece, where farmers have grown olives for millennia, global warming has imposed a new normal. Nevertheless, writes Dominique Soguel at the Christian Science Monitor, “the result is not resignation. Rather, it’s fresh thinking and approaches.”

Soguel continues, “Olives and olive oil have become synonymous with Greece, and are credited, in part, with fueling the rise of Greek civilization. But despite a history spanning thousands of years, these culinary pillars of Greek identity are under threat. Small farmers expect this year’s harvest season, which got underway in November, to be one of the worst years on record, thanks to climate change and the irregular seasonal shifts it has wrought upon the flowering process and fruit development.

“ ‘We are collecting olives much earlier than ever before. Our producers do not recall any year like this,’ says Michael Antonopoulos, president of the Agricultural Cooperative of Kalamata. …

“He is not alone in expecting southern Europe to look like northern Africa in the span of 50 to 100 years. But Mr. Antonopoulos, a geologist and geotechnical environmentalist by training, is optimistic. He points to a series of steps that the community is taking to adapt to unseasonal temperature variations.

‘You can’t change the climate, but you can adjust.’

“[He] notes that traditional olive groves have an important role to play in combating climate change. They are carbon sinks and could easily be integrated into carbon-offsetting projects, increasingly popular but also controversial methods used to reduce the carbon footprint of a company or country. Kalamata is among six Greek cities participating in the European Union mission for 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030.

“ ‘We want to adjust as soon as possible to the environment and be pioneers,’ he says. ‘Our place has to be fully ecological. We don’t care about higher productivity. We care about sustainability. We know people in the future will appreciate that more than anything.’

“One November day in Kalamata, as the mill that serves a community of roughly 300 olive oil producers operates at full throttle, the rain outside turns to hail. … It’s been that kind of year for Kalamata’s olive crop. In 2023, it endured winter conditions during the spring and, unlike much of Greece, experienced relatively low summer temperatures. That unusual weather, coupled with low rainfall, resulted in fewer and smaller olives. …

“ ‘If you don’t have certain weather conditions at a certain time,’ explains Mr. Antonopoulos, ‘you can’t have olive oil.’

“But the mill is also representative of how Greek olive farmers are adapting to the new environment. It is designed to run as sustainably as possible. Waste compost from the mill enriches the soil of the surrounding groves. It is the first mill in the region to rely on solar panel energy, and it recently secured a deal to sell electricity to the Greek government. Further, its farmers have adjusted their pruning tactics to optimize water use. And geothermal energy heats the olive oil extraction plants. …

“ ‘It’s all about feeding the soil,’ says George Kokkinos, head of the Nileas olive oil producers cooperative in the broader Messenia region, which encompasses Kalamata. ‘Soil health is top priority.’ …

“ ‘The philosophy was to look at how olive tree cultivation adapts to climate change,’ adds Mr. Kokkinos. ‘It was the first time that we heard of the expression “climate change.” … The consequences only start to be seen and felt here in 2016.’

“One of the most visible of these consequences, he says, are warmer, humid winters. This led to the spread of fungal diseases. Another change … summer now starts in July and lasts longer. All that confuses the olive tree, which decides in February whether to flower and delivers olives in April. …

“ ‘The normal, maximum temperature for this place this time of year would have been 16-18 C [60-66 F]. Typically, we would start the harvest wearing heavy clothes. Now we harvest in our T-shirts.’

“The mitigation measures are working, he says, even though recent summer heat waves dried up thesoil. He sees evidence of that in a 30% loss of productivity this year on his grove, compared with much higher losses among those who took no measures. The techniques they tested in the project now form part of the EU sustainable agricultural policy. But he worries that the Greek government is not prioritizing action and the spread of know-how to other farmers.

“ ‘The farmer stands in the middle and does not connect the dots,’ he says. ‘The average farmer in Greece is 60 years old. It’s a hard time. That’s true. But there are opportunities. The key is to adjust.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall.

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Inspiration from a “Rat Hole”

March 28, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
“Chicago’s ‘Rat Hole’ has become an unofficial city landmark as hundreds have flocked to pay tribute to the unidentified rodent imprint,” Hyperallergic reports.

Never underestimate the capacity of humans for fun and creativity. And be glad that social media amplifies good things, not just bad.

Rhea Nayyar writes at Hyperallergic, “In less than two whole weeks, the internet has turned a mildly interesting pavement impression on a residential sidewalk slab in Chicago into a viral local tourism site and a wellspring of artistic inspiration.

“The Chicago Rat Hole is exactly what it’s named — an imprint of a rat (or perhaps a squirrel) that fell with some force on a sidewalk panel that hadn’t fully dried yet. Some locals say it’s been there for over 20 years, but all it took was one post on X [site formerly known as Twitter] to turn the Rat Hole into something just short of a national landmark.

There is so much whimsy in going about your daily life here! That’s what I love about the Rat Hole the most

“Since artist and comedian Winslow Dumaine tweeted about his pilgrimage to the Rat Hole [January 2024] hundreds of people have flocked to the city’s Roscoe Village neighborhood to pay tribute to the unidentified rodent and its signature. What began as an innocent meme crept slowly into a small monument as people started leaving loose change and cigarettes and pouring one out over the hole, and then spiraled into something major. Offerings went from coins and smokes to flowers, cards, jewelry, hats, trinkets, toys, posters, and personalized artwork as the site drew more attention on TikTok and X.

“But it didn’t stop there. People built a community around the Rat Hole. Some groups have congregated and started drinking and partying together at the site, one couple got engaged in front of it, and another held a gay wedding there, complete with a balloon arch and everything. …

“Chicago-based artist and Etsy seller Margot la Rue was quick to cement the Rat Hole into the city’s iconography by replacing the stars of the official flag with silhouettes of the imprint and adding it to the label of the locally famous Jeppson’s Malört liquor bottle motif for iron-on patches. La Rue told Hyperallergic that she visited the Hole and chatted with a neighbor who was sitting on her porch at the time.

“ ‘She said over the weekend there was a line down the block to see the rat hole,’ La Rue recounted. … ‘It is very Chicago,’ the artist continued. ‘The city is simultaneously shiny and gritty — turning a rat shape in a sidewalk into a cultural landmark is very on brand.’ …

“Anthony Hall, one half of the Chicago-based design duo Harebrained, shared that people can get their very own Rat Hole t-shirt now. … Nick, a tattoo artist who goes by Inked Skunk on social media, recently moved to Chicago from New England and was really excited by the buzz around the Rat Hole. Enamored by the culture, Nick is offering Rat Hole-inspired tattoos. … ‘Since moving here, I’ve picked up such a different energy from the people and the area itself. There is so much whimsy in going about your daily life here! That’s what I love about the Rat Hole the most — it’s just a silly reminder that life doesn’t have to be so serious.’ …

“A less permanent option for Rat Hole fans who happen to be baddies is local nail technician Jena’s (@nailswithonen) artistic nail set tribute to the landmark. …

“Perhaps the most impressive ode to the Rat Hole is its commemorative plaque commissioned by Riot Fest, Chicago’s annual punk rock music festival. … The plaque has been converted into a t-shirt as well with all proceeds directed toward benefiting the city’s Douglass Park neighborhood and surrounding community via the Riot Fest Foundation. …

“But considering that the Rat Hole sits on a residential street, the loitering, littering, and loud noises have become a nuisance for the locals. One neighbor even took to Reddit to bullet-point out how the Rat Hole frenzy has impacted their life. … To anyone looking to make a pilgrimage to the Rat Hole as its future remains unclear, remember to be respectful of the neighborhood and keep the area clean.”

More at Hyperallergic, here.

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Hands Across the Hindu-Muslim Divide

March 27, 2024 by suzannesmom

Map: Jacob Turcotte/CSM.
There are still people in India who appreciate having friends from other religions.

There is not much to celebrate about Hindu-Muslim relations in India these days, where the current power structure seems to have turned its back on peaceful coexistence. But trust the Christian Science Monitor to come up with a rare upbeat story! It’s about an interfaith friendship between Sadiq Ali, a Muslim, and Mahant Gyan Das, a Hindu, that has survived many political storms.

Shweta Desai  writes, “The light blue walls of Sadiq Ali’s living room are adorned with photos of Hindu seer Mahant Gyan Das. The two have been friends since the 1980s, when Mr. Ali was a volleyball player and Mr. Gyan Das a wrestler. They bonded over their shared love of sports, and Mr. Gyan Das regularly visited Mr. Ali’s family tailoring shop to get his tunics stitched. 

“About 20 years ago, their friendship took on a new meaning. Days of violent riots had rocked the nation and left more than 700 Muslims dead. It tore open old wounds in Ayodhya, a north Indian city where the Muslim community was still reeling from the destruction of the historic Babri mosque by a Hindu mob in 1992.  

“Sensing the need for an olive branch, Mr. Gyan Das, then head priest of the city’s historic Hanuman Garhi temple, invited 1,000 Muslims to the temple premises during Ramadan to break their daily fast. Mr. Ali helped host the feast, which still fills its organizers with pride and nostalgia – especially as Ayodhya is once again in the spotlight for Hindu-Muslim tensions.

“[Recently] Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled an opulent Hindu temple on the site where the Babri mosque once stood. 

“Like the mob which leveled the mosque, Mr. Modi and his supporters in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claim that Babri was built over the birthplace of Hindu deity Ram, and the construction of the new Ram temple has become a rallying point for India’s growing Hindu nationalist movement. …

“In such polarized times, Mr. Gyan Das and Mr. Ali’s friendship offers a reminder of what Ayodhya could have – and perhaps still can – become: a symbol of multiculturalism and tolerance.

‘Ordinary people here want to live in peace,’ says Valay Singh, author of Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Discord.

“He argues that the city’s reputation as India’s ‘ground zero’ of communal conflict overshadows its history as a heartland where different religious traditions have long intersected. In fact, he notes, the land for the Hanuman Garhi temple was donated to the region’s Hindu community by Muslim ruler Shuja-ud-Daula in the 18th century.

“ ‘It was a common tradition for the religious establishments to receive patronage from the Muslim rulers,’ he says. …

“[The] religious strife has deep roots – several weaving back toward Ayodhya. The destruction of the Babri mosque, for instance, came after decades of campaigning by right-wing Hindu groups, such as the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), and led to months of communal violence across India. In Ayodhya, Muslims and their properties were singled out. Mr. Ali’s shop was plundered multiple times. …

“Indeed, the mosque’s demolition and resulting chaos left deep fissures between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority throughout the country. 

“Those rifts grew during the 2002 Gujarat riots, which were sparked by a deadly fire on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims from Ayodhya to Godhra, Gujarat. …The following year, Mr. Gyan Das approached Mr. Ali with his idea to organize an interfaith iftar fast-breaking meal at Hanuman Garhi.

“At first, the tailor was baffled. He reminded Ayodhya’s most influential seer that after breaking fast, Muslims must offer the namaz prayers. Will the Hindu seers accept prayers to Allah on the temple’s premises? Mr. Gyan Das was confident they would.

“In November 2003, with fanfare and high security, saffron-robed priests from several local temples welcomed their Muslim guests, serving them fruits and yogurt. Around sunset, calls of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ mingled with the sounds of conch shells and temple bells, as rows of Muslims bowed down to read the namaz. Both sides prayed together for peace and brotherhood to prevail across the country.

“The Muslim community reciprocated. After the iftar, hundreds of seers marched to Mr. Ali’s home to break the Hindu Ekadashi fast with seviyan, a traditional sweet prepared by Muslims on festive occasions. …

“The iftar [inspired] Yugal Kishore Shastri, one of few outspoken Hindu priests who have left the far-right and put their faith in the spirit of Indian secularism. Mr. Shastri says he split from the VHP after discovering that there was ‘no evidence of an ancient Ram temple under the mosque structure.’ …

“Although it’s getting harder for activists to cut through the vitriol and bring communities together … ‘There will always be a place for people who work for Hindu-Muslim peace,’ he says.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Saving Rhinos in Namibia

March 26, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM.
Ebson Mbunguha (right) and Sebulon Hoeb track endangered black rhinos in the Torra Conservancy near Palmwag, Namibia.

On Facebook and Instagram this past week, I’ve been following the adventures of an intrepid high school classmate who is in Africa for up-close and personal encounters with lions and elephants. I’m impressed at what a good traveler she is at our age, when I would be stressing over the time change, Covid exposure, what foods I can digest — every little thing. But, oh, the wonders she is seeing in Tanzania!

Today’s article is about one African wonder, the threatened black rhino. The people of Namibia truly love their rhinos and are doing all they can to protect them.

Sara Miller Llana writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “The rhino trackers trek a mile into the open desert plains of northwest Namibia. They stop 300 feet from a desert-adapted black rhinoceros grazing on the rocky hillside.

“Rhinos have poor eyesight, so the windy day works in the trackers’ favor, making it harder for the animals to locate them by sound or smell. Sebulon Hoeb, the principal field officer of Save the Rhino Trust Namibia, wants to get closer, but his partner today, Ebson Mbunguha, has his binoculars trained at the distance. He tells the group to back away. He has identified this rhino: Matty 2. She is 4 years old, which means her mother probably has a new baby and could appear on the open plain at any moment. There are no trees to climb if the crew is suddenly surrounded by creatures that can weigh as much as 3,000 pounds. Plus, they’ve identified her. Their job is now done. 

“Every day and every night, trackers from Save the Rhino Trust, alongside rangers from the local community, patrol 25,000 square kilometers (just under 10,000 square miles) in Namibia’s northwest, the only place in the world where this desert-adapted subspecies of the black rhino is still truly wild. Even if these animals are spotted from a distance, the trackers know them so well that they can identify them from their behaviors, roaming patterns, and physical features like birthmarks. It’s all documented on small pieces of paper that pile up back at Save the Rhino Trust headquarters in the pinprick of a town, Palmwag.

“The trackers are not just building a living database of conservation or scientific study; patrolling is the best tool they have against rhino poaching. And the work is paying off. 

“Rhino conservationists discourage publishing the price of horns on the black market, in order to deter criminal activity, but rhino horns are in high demand, especially in China and Vietnam. After years of successfully clamping down, Namibia saw rhino poaching increase by 93% last year over the year before, according to the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism. But here the community hasn’t logged a rhino poaching in three years. That’s because, within the structures of Namibia’s community conservation model, safeguarding the animals is more lucrative than selling them on the illegal market. …

“The desert-adapted rhino, one of the oldest mammals on Earth, has roamed this arid, red-earth region that glows at sunrise and sundown for millennia. Its presence is depicted in the ancient cave art found in nearby Twyfelfontein, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But in the 20th century, European hunting all but eradicated its numbers. Between 1960 and 1995, black rhino numbers dropped by 98% to fewer than 2,500. 

“Save the Rhino Trust was established in 1982, when only 50 black rhinos roamed this area. Forty years later, Namibia hosts almost 35% of the world’s remaining black rhino population, although the exact number is tightly guarded. ‘That’s a state secret,’ says Simson Uri-Khob, the CEO who has dedicated his career to saving the rhino. 

“When Namibia gained its independence in 1990, it became the first country in Africa to protect the environment in its constitution. It also created community conservancies – lands with defined borders and governances outside the national park structure, where the communities themselves benefit from the resources, including animals, on their homelands. Today the government counts 86 communal conservancies covering more than 20% of the country’s territory. Many of these conservancies thrive by running lodges that draw tourists to see wildlife, in turn fueling local economies.

“Steve Galloway, chairman of the Community Conservation Fund of Namibia, says community conservation represents the best of both worlds. It puts large tracts of land under environmental protection – but not at the expense of people. ‘You bring in tourists, and you grow vegetables for those tourists and curios for those tourists. You do hiking trails, and you create a whole ecosystem,’ he says. …

“The rhino rangers start the day under a starry southern sky in the Namibian desert. … It’s no easy job. A 24/7 operation demands that the rangers live in tents for three weeks at a time, doing most of their tracking on foot. They get a bonus for how many kilometers they walk and how many sightings they log. It can be dangerous. ‘I’ve had to run for my life many times,’ says Mr. Hoeb.”

More at the Monitor, here. Good pictures. No firewall, but are subscriptions encouraged.

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Rare Mineral Found by Accident

March 25, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: F.Kemner/LfU Bayern.
The rare mineral Humboldtine is known only from about 30 sites worldwide. This specimen was found unexpectedly in a mineral collection in Germany.

I’ve often blogged about surprise discoveries of plants or animals thought to be extinct and about the unearthing of long-buried human artifacts. Today’s story by David Bressan at Forbes magazine is on the surprise discovery of a rare mineral that was hiding in plain sight. It makes me think there will be an endless supply of of things to discover in the future because we keep forgetting what we have.

“During a survey of an old mineral collection now hosted at the Bavarian Environment Agency or LfU Bayern in Germany,” Bressan writes, “experts discovered fragments of Humboldtine, one of the rarest minerals found on Earth.

“Humboldtine is known from only 30 localities worldwide, including quarries and mines located in Germany, Brazil, the U.K., Canada, the U.S., Hungary, Czech Republic and Italy. It rarely forms tiny crystals and is most commonly found as a yellow, amorphous mass. Humboldtine forms when carbon compounds and iron-oxide react with water and is one of the few ‘organic minerals‘ containing carbon-oxygen-hydrogen groups in their crystalline structure.

“Humboldtine was first discovered by German mineralogist August Breithaupt in a weathered brown coal deposit near the municipality of Korozluky in Okres Most in the Czech Republic. [It was] scientifically described in 1821 by Peruvian geologist Mariano Eduardo de Rivero y Ustariz, who named the mineral after the German 19th-century naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. …

“In 2023, during the digitization of the archive of the LfU, a letter written by a coal mine owner and sent in 1949 to the agency was found. The letter mentions the presence of Humboldtine in coal seams of the Matthiaszeche near the town of Schwandorf, a town on the river Naab in the Upper Palatinate. The agency asked for some samples for further analysis to confirm the discovery. But no follow-up documentation seems to exist.

“But intrigued by the note, Roland Eichhorn, head of the geological department at the LfU, and colleagues decided to check the vast historic mineral collection — comprising over 130,000 rock and mineral samples — hosted in the agency’s basement. If any samples were ever sent in, they still could be here. In one drawer of the systematic mineral collection, where minerals are ordered according to their chemical composition, they found some fragments of a yellow mineral labeled ‘Oxalit,’ German for organic minerals, still inside an old cardboard box. The label also showed that the samples came from the locality mentioned in the letter.

“Modern chemical analysis confirmed the discovery made 75 years earlier; the six fragments, the largest almost the size of a nut, are indeed Humboldtine. Together with other samples, this doubles the amount of Humboldtine known so far. …

“The Matthiaszeche, a former open-pit mine for brown coal, was closed in 1966 and subsequently flooded. There is no chance of getting any more Humboldtine from this locality.”

More at Forbes, here.

I love that geologist Eichhorn was curious. Bless his heart. That’s how discoveries get made. And I also think curiosity is what keeps us all going.

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Save a Kid, Save a Country

March 24, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Sophie Neiman.
Ms. Acogo spent several years on the street before receiving vocational training as a tailor from Hashtag Gulu in Uganda.

Recently, PRI’s The World broadcast a valuable but scary series on orphanages in Uganda, nearly all of which are bad. For children from impoverished or abusive homes, the alternative may be life on the streets.

In an issue last December, the Christian Science Monitor‘s Sophie Neiman wrote about how one city’s concerned citizens began helping street children reach for a better life.

“In the sticky evening,” she begins, “two boys in torn clothes dart between shop verandas and wrestle in the dust, trading jokes that quickly turn to insults. Onlookers grunt disapprovingly, angry at the noise. More groups of rowdy children will soon stream into the back alleyways of [the small city of Gulu] in northern Uganda, eking out a life in its underbelly.

“By day, the children pick through discarded plastic bottles trying to gather enough of them to sell. At night, they hang out in the shadows of dance clubs or sleep under pieces of cardboard between shop shelves that normally hold fruit.

“Steven Onek strolls over to the squabbling boys. Speaking in a calm and quiet voice, he breaks up their argument. A few minutes later, around another street corner, he comforts a teenager sporting a deep cut on his head, providing the boy with some money to see a doctor. 

“Such situations are commonplace for Mr. Onek, who is a program officer at Hashtag Gulu, a small organization supporting the city’s homeless children. For him, it is not so much a job as a calling.

‘Helping a child, one child out of the street, I feel like I have helped the whole nation,’ he says, smiling.

“The name Hashtag Gulu points to its history. Friends sharing on social media the problems they saw in their city decided to do more than that. At first, their efforts were all volunteer-based. The friends bought food for homeless children and comforted them when they could.

“ ‘If you were in our network, you were free to do anything, for any young person or child. You didn’t have to report to anyone,’ co-founder and director Michael Ojok said of Hashtag Gulu’s early days.

“Eventually the group grew into a fully registered community organization, as activists attempted to address the added problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Now, Hashtag Gulu reunites homeless children with their family members [if possible] and provides them with vocational skills. It is also a rare safe haven, running a free clinic as well as counseling and arts programs.

“Some of the children Hashtag Gulu works with are as young as seven, but its beneficiaries can be as old as 25. Most have nowhere else to go. Others have dropped out of school to make a living on the street, returning to their homes and families only rarely. 

“Gulu is a place accustomed to hardship. For some three decades, between the late 1980s and early 2000s, the city was the epicenter of an uprising against the government mounted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, notorious for forcibly recruiting some 20,000 child soldiers. A grim parade of boys and girls would flood into the city each night and sleep under its market stalls and in church yards, hoping to avoid capture by the rebels, before returning to their villages at dawn.

“Today, the children are often escaping family abuse or neglect, hoping to make it on their own. Mr. Dong, who asked to use a pseudonym, fled to the streets when he was six years old. His mother had died giving birth to him, and the women his father brought home with him were physically and emotionally abusive.

“Without parents to look out for him, he fell in with other children for safety. ‘I got a family outside of my family,’ he says. They helped each other find food; they also offered some protection in a community that viewed them as troublemakers, and from police officers quick to make arrests. …

“While collecting scrap metal a few years ago, a blade fell and cut Mr. Dong’s foot. He came to Hashtag Gulu for free medical treatment. After healing his injuries, workers provided him with piglets and agricultural training. Mr. Dong, now 16, lives with an aunt and continues to care for his pigs. …

“Hashtag Gulu also works with other local organizations to provide employment. At Taka Taka Plastics, which transforms waste into home goods, some 20 children who once lived on Gulu’s streets have been given jobs.

“Their Taka Taka earnings have enabled those young people to rent their own rooms, buy and cook their own food, and even start side businesses, says co-founder Paige Balcom, an American living in Gulu. 

“A municipal survey conducted two years ago estimated that there are some 2,000 children living rough in Gulu. So far, Hashtag Gulu has managed to reach about half of them with its programs. …

“Looking forward to the holiday is Ms. Acogo, also a pseudonym. Like Mr. Dong, she fled abuse at home, arriving on the streets in her early teens.

“ ‘We would go to night clubs, and there were men who would always support us. That is how we survived,’ she recalls quietly.

“Ms. Acogo became pregnant by one of those men. Hashtag Gulu helped her train as a tailor, and reconnected her with her grandmother. 

” ‘I didn’t know where to start from, how to raise this child,’ she recalls, holding her one-month-old baby. ‘Other women at home are now supporting me and guiding me into motherhood.’ “

More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Subscriptions sought.

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Releasing Wolves into the Wild

March 23, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jerry Neal/Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Via Christian Science Monitor: “Wolf 2302-OR runs into the wilderness as Colorado Parks and Wildlife released five gray wolves onto public land in Grand County, Colorado, on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023.”

Rewilding involves trade-offs. That’s why reintroducing the gray wolf with the scary eyes to its old haunts requires taking the needs of many constituencies into account.

As Sarah Matusek reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “A new era dawned in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains [in December] with the release of five gray wolves. 

“The reintroduction of the wild canines to Colorado fulfills a voter-passed plan to begin restoring the endangered species here by the end of 2023. The first batch of furry predators, flown in from Oregon, bounded out of crates in Grand County, Colorado, across an undisclosed meadow. 

“Wolves are contentious in the western United States, with disagreement about the threats they may pose versus their ecological benefit. A judge last week denied a last-minute lawsuit from the Colorado cattle industry seeking to block the release.  

“Despite the culture-war status of wolves, their release has also spurred cooperation. Many ranchers, wolf advocates, scientists, and wildlife officials have engaged in knowledge-sharing and strategizing around conflict reduction. …

“Gray wolves, wildlife experts say, are native to the Centennial State. Killed off in Colorado by the 1940s, some have since migrated here across state lines. Colorado biologists recorded the birth of wild wolf pups in the state’s north in 2021. 

“The animal is subject to a patchwork of protections. Listed as endangered in Colorado, for instance, the gray wolf loses that status once it crosses the northern border into Wyoming. Gray wolves are protected nationally under the federal Endangered Species Act, with exceptions in the northern Rocky Mountains. 

“After the 2020 vote, Colorado got special permission from the U.S. government for its state restoration plan. This generally allows management flexibility in Colorado, such as killing wolves that attack livestock.

“The Colorado cattle industry sued state and federal wildlife agencies last week seeking to block the rollout of the plan. The Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ and Colorado Cattlemen’s associations argued that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to produce a certain environmental study on wolf impacts that federal law required.

“On Friday, a U.S. district judge denied the plaintiffs a temporary restraining order. Their arguments, the court found, didn’t merit halting Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s wolf plan, which ‘would be contrary to the public interest.’  

“Thirty to 50 wolves could be reintroduced on Colorado’s Western Slope over the next three to five years, according to the state’s wolf management plan. 

“The Western Slope, a largely rural area, sits west of Denver and several other population centers, which carried the pro-wolf vote. The outcome underscored an urban-rural divide in a Democratic-led state that used to trend more purple.

“Supporters, including environmentalists, argue for restoring a natural balance. ‘Wolves, for millennia, have been one of the primary engines of evolution and the drivers of ecological health throughout the Northern Hemisphere,’ says Rob Edward, strategic adviser at the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. 

“He cites an example in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. An abundance of elk there has depleted vegetation ‘in the absence of their primary predator, gray wolves,’ says Mr. Edward,. …

“Critics, including agricultural producers, raise concerns about predation of wild and cultivated animals. ‘There’s obviously the concern with the impacts to our own livestock, both financial and emotional,’ says rancher Greg Peterson, a member of the Gunnison County Stockgrowers’ Association. ‘It’s traumatizing when that animal suffers.’ …

“Wolves may help reduce elk overbrowsing and bolster habitat diversity, [Kevin Crooks, director of the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence at Colorado State University] says, based on research in national parks like Yellowstone, which reintroduced gray wolves in 1995. But the science also suggests that ‘wolves were likely not solely responsible’ for ecosystem changes there.

“And while wolves could harm individual livestock, he says, in terms of ranching concerns, research shows that a rebound of wolves is unlikely to have a major economic impact on the cattle industry. Yet that’s cold comfort to one Colorado ranching family that’s already seen several livestock deaths and injuries from wolves since 2021, reports the Washington Post.

“In an effort to bridge trust gaps, Dr. Crooks’ center has compiled peer-reviewed research and crowdsourced funds for nonlethal wolf mitigation, like fencing or guard dogs. The university has also engaged Western Slope stakeholders like Jo Stanko, who runs a ranch with her husband near Steamboat Sp​​rings in northwestern Colorado.

“As a voter, Ms. Stanko says she cast her ballot in 2020 against wolf releases. Though she still has concerns, three years later she holds an attitude of acceptance – and hope for solutions around wolves and ranchers sharing land. Her family continues to train livestock dogs and install new fencing, and Ms. Stanko hosted a dialogue with wolf advocates and other ranchers last year. 

“ ‘We’ve got to learn to have – and relearn how to have – civil conversations with each other,’ she says.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Ancient Wisdom vs. Drought

March 22, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Jack Thompson.
From the Christian Science Monitor: “Farmers in Ndiob, Senegal, are experimenting with ‘zaï’ planting pits, an ancient practice to conserve moisture even during acute droughts.”

With climate change and drought in Africa affecting crop yields, some farmers are adopting ancient techniques for conserving water.

Jack Thompson writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Rain is like alchemy for farmer Thialla Badiane in the Sahel region of Senegal. Suddenly, it transforms dusty dunes into rich verdure, barren plains into crop-laden fields. 

“But rain is increasingly scarce here on the edge of the Sahara desert. Temperatures are rising by 50% more than the global average and threatening Mr. Badiane’s most precious resource to feed himself and his seven children. 

“Annual rainfall could drop by 38% in Senegal in the coming decades, a threat to the way of life for the nation’s 8 million farmers. Already the growing climate emergency means rainfall has become more unpredictable, water scarcer, and droughts longer.

“So in Mr. Badiane’s hometown of Ndiob, hundreds of farmers seeking to combat those effects have revived an ancient farming technique – with a 21st-century twist. ,,,

“Mr. Badiane [drills] repeatedly into the thick crust of the earth with a giant motor-powered corkscrew, leaving a pattern of perfectly spaced holes. In one hectare, he will drill 10,000 holes for his millet seeds, a planting technique known as zaï. 

“Originally from neighboring Burkina Faso, zaï is the traditional technique of making small indentations in the ground that capture rainfall and increase the fertility of the soil. It’s painstaking work, but a lot easier than digging the holes by hand with a hoe. …

“Millet has been making waves on the international stage … because the crop can grow on arid land, can survive extreme heat, and is high in protein and micronutrients.

“And with his modern take on an ancient practice, Mr. Badiane has increased his yield of millet by 50% – though research shows zaï can triple production. If it were to become widespread, this Indigenous technique could help farmers become more resilient to a changing climate. …

Zaï combats [water runoff] by creating pockets for the water, making sure it doesn’t run off and take nutrients and minerals with it. 

“This is the ambition of Ndiob’s Mayor Oumar Ba, renowned in Senegal for his commitment to agroecology, a form of sustainable farming based on millennia of Indigenous knowledge and innovation. …

“Across the continent, many officials, scientists, and ordinary citizens are already looking to adapt. Faced with increasingly unpredictable weather in Ndiob, Mr. Ba traveled to Burkina Faso, a landlocked nation that gets even less rain than Senegal, to search for ways to beat intensifying drought. Four years ago, he brought back zaï. 

“ ‘Before, it used to rain consistently for five months; it would start in June and end in November,’ says the mayor’s agricultural advisor, Mame Kor Faye. ‘Now, not one farmer can tell you when the season will start.’ …

“Drought is a vicious circle for farmers: As rainfall decreases, the soil compresses. When it finally does rain, the dehydrated, packed  land cannot absorb the water and the top layer of fertile topsoil washes away. … ‘Zaï is a solution to this scarcity of water and to restore the fertility of our soils,’ Mr. Faye says.

“For Mr. Badiane, the planting plots are a double win.  Under the burning November sun, he bends over each small pit and delicately places a handful of rich, dark fertilizer. It’s a far smaller amount than he used when he composted his entire field. 

“Prices of fertilizer have skyrocketed since Russia, the world’s top exporter, invaded Ukraine and supplies were squeezed. Since then, animal manure, an alternative to chemical fertilizer, has been in short supply.

“ ‘The reason zaï interested me is because I wanted to save on organic manure,’ Mr. Badiane says. ‘Before, you didn’t have to pay for manure – livestock herders would give it to you. Now it’s hard to find, and you have to pay.’ 

“ ‘When the rain falls on the manure, it retains the humidity that the plant needs,’ says Isidore Diouff, an agronomist from the Senegalese nongovernmental organization Enda Pronat and who has been leading the zaï experiments in Ndiob. He kneels down to inspect a newly planted seed in its pit. ‘You can go 20 days without rain, and the pit will still be damp.’ 

” ‘Four months later, Mr. Badiane admires his ready-to-be-harvested, fingerlike plants. Nurtured by the moist soil, their soaring leaves tower over the 6-foot-tall farmer. Assessing the plant’s density and weight, Mr. Badiane predicts a good yield.”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Subscriptions encouraged.

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The Compostable Shoe

March 21, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo composite: Alessio Mamo.
Compostable shoes are being created using 3D printing. 

Overthinking things can lead to a kind of paralysis. You want to do the right thing for the environment, you look for clothes not made with synthetics, wear the clothes many years, finally give them to Goodwill for others to use, and recycle raggedy textiles safely. But you know that a lot of this is still going to end up on the beaches of some African country. How can you do more? Do enough?

And what about shoes?

Well, one step at a time. You have to trust that every little bit helps.

At the Guardian, Patrick Greenfield writes that there is now such a thing as a compostable shoe. “The shoes may not immediately strike you as the future of mainstream fashion. Pale and porous, they resemble a cross between a beige Croc and the long-net stinkhorn fungus found on forest floors. Their creators, however, hope this will be the next huge breakthrough in sustainable footwear: the world’s first 3D printed, made-to-measure, compostable shoe, which can be broken down at the end of its life, in an attempt to stem the flow of millions of shoes into landfill each year.

“Fashion is among the world’s top polluting industries. It is responsible for about 10% of global carbon emissions and consumes huge amounts of water and land for production. Modern shoes are among the hardest items to produce sustainably because of their complexity, say industry experts, and there are few reliable statistics about the number manufactured every year for the world’s 8 billion humans. There is an almost total dearth of statistics about their environmental impact.

“Most shoes are composed of a mixture of synthetic fabric, rubber, plastic and metal, which is often held together with strong adhesives, and they are incredibly difficult to dispose of. The vast majority are bound for landfill once used, where they could take hundreds of years to break down. There are efforts to pioneer recyclable trainers [sneakers] for the world’s $70bn (£55bn) industry, with some brands offering services if customers post back.

“To produce its new compostable model, the London-based shoe company Vivobarefoot has joined forces with a material science company, Balena, to create prototypes of the shoes, which are not yet available for sale. They will be manufactured based on in-store foot scans and then printed over 30 hours. Once they have worn down, the footwear can be returned for composting at an industrial facility. …

“Says Asher Clark, a co-founder of Vivobarefoot. ‘This is about reimagining the way things are done from linear, offshore production to the world’s first scan-to-print-to-soil footwear. It is a vision for cutting out a lot of waste in supply chains and providing an end of life solution for the footwear industry.’

“There are caveats to the sustainability claims of the shoes, says Clark, which will be sold for between £200 [$255] and £260 [$331]. BioCir flex, the patented thermoplastic used to make them is 51% biological materials, 49% petrochemical. It cannot be thrown on a compost heap at the end of the garden to break down – it needs to go to a composting plant. …

“ ‘There is a trade-off between the biodegradability and durability: that is the key tension. The external factors that break down physical products are things like light, heat and moisture,’ he says. ‘The challenge is to make a shoe that will handle all those elements but also respond to the elements that start to break it down at the end of its life.’ …

“Glue and other binding materials can make shoes difficult to recycle, even when new substances are used for their main components, such as cactus ‘leather’ – a material made from the leaves of the nopal cactus – and grape-skin derivatives, says Luca Mosca, fashion lead at the sustainability consultancy Quantis. He says it is still hard to say what constitutes an environmentally friendly shoe, and that consumers should use them for as long as possible. … ‘Shoes are very complicated products.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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A Pocket of Religious Amity

March 20, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Sarah Aziz.
Muslims and Jews in Kolkata, India, have a long history of friendship. Shaikh Wasim, one of six Muslims who work as caretakers in Kolkata’s synagogues, stands outside his place of work.

All religions teach peace and friendship. So why do they go to war with each other? Sometimes humans make no sense.

In India, which under the current Hindu prime minister is known for repression of Muslims, one city has a surprising story to tell. Not about Hindus and Muslims, alas, but about Jews and Muslims. And the story is especially welcome in this time, when the war in Gaza has made relations worse in other parts of the world.

At the Christian Science Monitor, Sarah Aziz explains how Kolkata, India, is different.

‘The Oct. 7 attack profoundly affected the Jewish community in Kolkata, but failed to sour Jewish-Muslim relations.’

“Dilawar Mondal gently bends the stems of a centuries-old myrtle plant to examine its aromatic leaves, used in the Jewish ritual bath for the dead. It is among the myriad plants, shrubs, and trees that he has tended to for the last eight years in Kolkata’s only Jewish cemetery, established in the early 19th century by Jewish merchants from Baghdad and Aleppo.

“He pauses to check the time – the sun is overhead, which means he’ll soon need to take a break to perform Zuhr, the afternoon Muslim prayer.

“Many of the city’s Jewish institutions – including synagogues, schools, and the cemetery – are maintained by Muslim caretakers. The intertwined communities have offered each other hope, security, and strength amid rising global hostilities following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. …

“The camaraderie and respect between the Jewish and Muslim communities of Kolkata can be traced back to the establishment of the cemetery, says Owaiz Aslam, founder of the Kolkata-based Indian Pluralism Foundation, which promotes interfaith harmony among Indian youth.

“Historical records show Shalom Aaron Obadiah Cohen, the founder of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Kolkata, reached out to a Bengali Muslim friend regarding the cemetery.

“ ‘They were new to the country and needed help,’ Mr. Aslam says. ‘The Muslim friend offered him a plot of his own land free of cost, but … Cohen insisted on giving his friend a gold ring as a token of solidarity between the two communities, which continues even today.’ … 

“More than a century later, the Baghdadi Jews in Kolkata assigned a Muslim family from the neighboring state of Odisha the job of caring for their synagogues, explains Navras Jaat Aafreedi, an expert in Jewish history who teaches at Presidency University in Kolkata.

“Since then, several generations of that family have continued to serve the three synagogues in Kolkata – Beth El, Maghen David, and Neveh Shalom – even as the Jewish population here has dwindled.

“Fewer than 15 Jewish residents remain, most of them older. But women’s rights activist Jael Silliman, who grew up Jewish in Kolkata, says that the synagogues still hold special significance.

“ ‘These three beautiful spiritual spaces mark our presence in the city, and recall and embody our history in a place where we flourished and prospered through trade and business endeavors,’ says the scholar, noting with pride that Kolkata is home to the only two synagogues protected by the Archaeological Survey of India as important heritage sites.

“Today, the synagogues draw tourists from all over the world, and in November, Mr. Aslam initiated an interfaith Jewish-Muslim prayer ceremony at the Beth El Synagogue, where he prayed for the safe return of the hostages taken from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7.

“ ‘As a Muslim, my heart cries for innocent children and adults suffering in Israel as well as Gaza,’ he says.

“At the same synagogue, Shaikh Wasim shows up for work in his pristine uniform, Beth. El’ embroidered on his breast pocket and a white topi, or Muslim skullcap, on his head. With reports of a global uptick in antisemitic attacks against synagogues and other Jewish institutions, Mr. Wasim and the five other caretakers who currently oversee Kolkata’s synagogues are no strangers to fear. 

“ ‘I am afraid, like any other human being,’ he says. ‘But the deep love that the Jewish and Muslim people in Kolkata share always pulls me back to the synagogue, no matter the circumstance.’

“[Jo Cohen, secretary for Jewish Community Affairs in Kolkata] says the Oct. 7 attack profoundly affected the Jewish community in Kolkata, but failed to sour Jewish-Muslim relations.

“ ‘The Muslim caretakers of the synagogues and the cemetery, alongside my Muslim friends, are as close to me as ever. The Israel-Gaza situation has not affected our relationships in the slightest,’ says Ms. Cohen, who also serves as honorary secretary at the city’s Jewish Girls’ School, where the majority of the students are Muslim. 

“Later, while cleaning around the synagogue, Mr. Wasim echoes Ms. Cohen’s sentiments. ‘I pray for the violence and bloodshed to end, so that Jewish and Muslim communities can coexist in peace like they do in Kolkata,’ he says. …

“ ‘Ultimately, a Jew and a Muslim are praying to the same God, even if they call Him by different names,’ [Cohen] says.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Food and Justice in Louisiana

March 19, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM.
Konda Mason, founder of the nonprofit Jubilee Justice, poses at her farm in Alexandria, Louisiana, May 7, 2023. She teaches Black farmers a sustainable and environmentally friendly method for growing rice.

There are people who try their hand at many different things over a lifetime until something clicks. Or until all the pieces converge to make a new whole.

Consider Konda Mason, currently of Louisiana. Diane Winston has a long article about her at the Christian Science Monitor.

“It’s past daybreak on a muggy July morning when Konda Mason reaches the farm, a 5-acre plot in rural Louisiana. Mindful of the heat to come, several workers are already weeding, and Ms. Mason – her daily meditation and yoga done – is ready for a busy day.

“She’ll field calls from farmers and suppliers, check the progress of the industrial rice mill she’s building, and meet with a journalist curious about why a Black Buddhist from Oakland, California, is growing rice in a red county of a very red state. …

“A slender, muscled woman with waist-length dreadlocks, Ms. Mason sees the farm as the apex of her efforts as a social entrepreneur and eco-spiritual activist. Today she’s sporting a red bandanna to shade herself from the sun, but in her nearly 70 years, she has worn many hats. She’s been a concert promoter, filmmaker, and supporter of Black innovators and problem-solvers. As with her other endeavors, this new project manifests the values that have guided her life: love, justice, community, and a willingness to leap into the unknown.

“ ‘I was taught by my family that I had a role to play in making this world a better place,’ Ms. Mason told listeners in her keynote address at the 2015 Wisdom 2.0 forum in San Francisco. …

“ ‘The question I ask myself is, how can you go deeper, what do you have to let go of in order to do that, and are you willing to do it?’

“This time, going deeper meant leaving her home, her sister, her partner, and her friends to promote what she hopes is a revolution in rice production. Her goal is to support a more sustainable and less expensive way to grow rice, in hopes of staunching the loss of Black-owned farmland. Working alongside an agronomist from Cornell University, she uses what’s called the System of Rice Intensification, common in developing nations but new to American farmers. Going deeper has also meant mastering the complexities of soil and weed management, crop rotation, fertilization, the milling of rice, and bringing it to market. Equally complex, of course, is working in a region where race relations are historically fraught. …

“Though deeply committed to Buddhism, Ms. Mason is not an evangelist. At the farm, she rarely discusses her practice, and if she does, she talks about mindfulness, not Buddhism.

“ ‘Konda’s had many lives, and I never thought there would be a home for her,’ says Dianne Houston, a longtime friend. ‘But the combination of working on the land with people who share her beliefs about social justice – all the boxes are checked.’

“Ms. Mason’s work on the 3,700-acre former plantation is equal parts passion project, spiritual mission, and response to the loss of 12 million acres of Black farmland over the past century. … Since arriving in Louisiana in 2020, Ms. Mason has grown a network of nearly a dozen Black farmers whom her team visits regularly. Her agronomy colleagues offer technical assistance, and she provides rice seed and access to loans. She secured a centrally located, solar-powered industrial mill for processing the plants, and has a distributor to help with marketing. When she’s not working the land or promoting the project, Ms. Mason sometimes dons another hat, leading intentional conversations across racial and economic divides.

“Both the farming project and the conversations are part of Jubilee Justice, a nonprofit Ms. Mason created to help change a system that she says has profited by discriminating against people of color and despoiling the planet. It’s the natural outcome of her lifework. …

“in 1973, when she arrived for her first year at the University of California, Berkeley, … a new friend introduced her to yoga and broadened her taste in music. Soon Ms. Mason was running the Berkeley Jazz Festival, a well-funded community program sponsored by the university. Ultimately, she left school to team up with the manager for Sweet Honey in the Rock, a Black, female a cappella group whose music blended blues, gospel, and jazz. The two joined forces to promote female musicians. 

“ ‘We would put a Native American group with a Black group or a lesbian group,’ she says. ‘We kept building coalitions. We did it all over the country.’  …

“[Some years later in Louisiana] she helped organize a gathering of progressive women; most of the wealth-holders were white, and the activists people of color. Among the attendees was Elizabeth Keller, a white woman and devout Christian. Her grandfather had purchased a former plantation in Louisiana, hoping to ‘redeem’ the land, but he never did. When he died, he left all 3,700 acres to her.

“At the gathering, Ms. Keller spoke about the farm and her desire for healing there. She had prayed for someone to show her the way, and, to her surprise, Ms. Mason seemed to be the answer to that prayer.  The plantation could be redeemed, Ms. Mason realized, by using the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) to cultivate a pilot crop and develop a network of Black farmers to adopt the technique. 

“Ms. Keller, acknowledging that Ms. Mason ‘saw something I couldn’t,’ agreed to let her use the land.  Now Ms. Mason needed expertise. She cold-called Erika Styger, the Cornell agronomist, who knew from working with farmers around the world how SRI increases crop yields, improves the soil, cuts costs, enhances profits, and reduces the environmental impact of rice production. It took some convincing, but in the end, Ms. Mason’s vision and practicality persuaded her to provide technical assistance.”

Read more at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Subscriptions are encouraged and are reasonably priced.

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The Surfer Girls of Bangladesh

March 18, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: SBS News.
The surf club in Cox’s Bazar teaches girls in Bangladesh how to surf.

From the little I know about Bangladesh, it’s a hard life there. It’s hard even for a man, even for a famous one like Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who has drawn the resentment of the country’s prime minister. But for most females, it’s almost out of the question to have any kind of independent life.

Today’s story suggests that some young women in Bangladesh are bucking tradition. Rhiona-Jade Armont writes at SBS News, “Along one of the longest uninterrupted beaches in the world, two young surfer girls paddle out past the break.

“The conditions out here are rough and unruly, but these fearless teens cling to their boards, waiting for the perfect wave to ride back to shore.

“Here, in the coastal town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, Shobe and Ayesha are not your average 13-year-olds.

“ ‘Everybody says I live like a boy,’ Shobe says. ‘I go everywhere wearing a t-shirt. I’ve been surfing since childhood, so people are used to seeing me like this.’

“Girls in Cox’s Bazar are often expected to follow a set path, including working from a young age, marrying early and bearing children. Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world.

“Parents who struggle to earn a steady income often marry off their teenage daughters, despite it being illegal until age 18. … Shobe’s older sister was married at 13. …

“These girls often come from poorer households and are more likely to miss out on a full education. But a small surf club has given girls like Shobe a chance to change their fate and do something they love. …

“Blazing a new trail has meant breaking tradition, and girls like Ayesha have fought hard battles at home. Her father has been the toughest to win over.

“ ‘If I tell [people] my girls do surfing they ridicule us,’ he says. ‘I want a good future for them. I don’t want to live from their earnings. Now that they are 14 and 15 years old, I have to think about their marriages.’

“For Ayesha, the pressures at home only drive her further away. ‘I don’t feel good at home. That’s why I spend as much time as I can at friends’ home or school.’

“Ultimately, she always ends up where she feels the most free. ‘My best friend is the sea.’

“For Shobe and Ayesha, surfing provides a future filled with possibility. They’ve excelled in local competitions, but the next stage is seeking out opportunities to compete on the international circuit.

“Shobe in particular dreams of one day being a famous surfer and representing Bangladesh. But fame is not only a shiny way to a new life. It’s a means of finding family who she’s lost contact with and receiving recognition.”

More more at SBS News, here. No firewall.

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New York Tackles Floods

March 17, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP.
Construction underway on a flood resiliency project in East River Park in Manhattan in October 2022. Hello, Boston! See this?

For years there have been voices crying in the wilderness about the danger Boston faces from flooding. A city originally lifted from the sea like the Netherlands, Boston has powerful “progress” fanatics that have allowed the Seaport area to be overbuilt in the last 20 years. The Boston Globe’s David Abel even made a movie about it, calling the city’s touted Innovation District the Inundation District.

Meanwhile, in New York City, politicians have heeded a painful lesson from Hurricane Sandy.

Andrew S. Lewis writes at Yale Environment360, “On a recent morning in Asser Levy Playground, on Manhattan’s East Side, a group of retirees traded serves on a handball court adjacent to a recently completed 10-foot-high floodwall. Had a sudden storm caused the East River to start overtopping this barrier, a 79-foot-long floodgate would have begun gliding along a track, closing off the playground and keeping the handball players dry. In its small way, this 2.4-acre waterfront park is a major proof of concept for a city at the forefront of flood resilience planning — a city working toward living with, and not against, water.

“The Asser Levy renovation, completed in 2022, is part of East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR), the largest urban resiliency project currently underway in the United States. Over the next three years, at a total cost of $1.8 billion, ESCR will reshape two-and-a-half miles of Lower Manhattan’s shoreline. But ESCR is just one link in a much larger, $2.7 billion initiative called the BIG U — a series of contiguous flood resilience projects that runs from Asser Levy, near 25th Street, around the southern tip of Manhattan, and up to Battery Park City, along the Hudson River. When finished, the BIG U will amount to 5.5 miles of new park space specifically designed to protect over 60,000 residents and billions of dollars in real estate against sea level rise and storm surges.

“The BIG U was conceived in the aftermath of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, which flooded 17 percent of New York City and caused $19 billion in damage. Like Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Sandy helped push New York … toward embracing the Dutch concept of ‘living with water,’ which emphasizes building infrastructure that can both repel and absorb water while also providing recreational and open space.

“In New York, ESCR, like any large infrastructure project slated for a densely populated place, has moved in fits and starts. Still, New York is making significant progress. ‘Anything that’s on the scale of Manhattan is always going to be so much bigger and more complicated,’ says Amy Chester, director of Rebuild by Design, the post-Sandy design competition from which ESCR was born. ‘And yet a lot has been done.’

“The ESCR project area encompasses a flood-prone wedge of Manhattan’s natural topography — a ‘pinch point’ between two higher stretches of shoreline. Some 400 years ago, when the island was inhabited by the Lenni-Lenape, this shoreline was woods and marsh that never rose more than a few feet above sea level. Tidal creeks drained from uplands dense with American chestnut, aster, and goldenrod, winding through spartina meadows to the river. Today, that landscape is lost beneath four separate public housing complexes, whose roughly 10,000 residents count on East River Park to buffer their homes from a waterway that has risen 8 inches since the mid-20th century.

“Because ESCR is the first segment of the BIG U to get underway, its path has been rocky, from debates about its final design, to budget cuts, to new concerns about the evolving risks of climate change, including the extreme rain events that New York experienced this year. …

“In 2018, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio quietly revamped the design: it would be faster and cheaper, the mayor’s team said, to wipe the park clean, elevate the landscape with more than a million tons of fill, then build anew on top.

“Unlike the kind of permeable buffers championed by the Dutch, the raised park would function more like a hard barrier. … Opposition to the redesign remains, but many residents of the public housing complexes, which are at high risk of flooding, support it. In the fall of 2021, demolition crews got to work. …

“The park will be landscaped with pathways and vegetation beds that snake around and through sports fields, an amphitheater, and playgrounds to form a terraced topography that will function as a berm to keep water from city streets. More floodwalls and retractable gates will run the park’s length and extend into surrounding streets, where archaic infrastructure will be overhauled so stormwater is less likely to mix with wastewater during flooding. …

“Other segments of the BIG U are also underway. In the Battery, at the city’s southern tip, the waterfront is being elevated with fill. Next, floodwalls, higher-capacity drainage, and new park space will be installed. Similar projects to protect the historic South Street Seaport area and the Financial District remain in the planning and design phase. …

” ‘Building a level of resilience capacity across society is critically important,’ says Henk Ovink, the former Netherlands Special Envoy for International Water Affairs and one of the creators of Rebuild by Design. ‘If you don’t invest in the most vulnerable links, the chain breaks.’ ”

Read more at Yale e360, here. No firewall. Donations solicited.

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Music for Refugee Teens in Sweden

March 16, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Anna Svanberg/Nobel Prize Outreach.
The Dream Orchestra started with just 13 members. Now there are more than 400, including this group performing at a Nobel Foundation event in Gothenburg, Sweden, in December 2023. 

Sweden has long been a country that took in refugees, but what I know from family members there is that Sweden doesn’t always do a good job helping immigrants integrate and feel at home. That’s why the orchestra leader in today’s story stands out.

As Mostafa Kazemi, originally from Afghanistan, recalls, the conductor told him that of course he could play an instrument even though he thought he couldn’t. “He’d been in Sweden for a matter of months,” Catherine E. Shoichet at CNN reports. “No one had talked to him like this before.”

The long and interesting article about the Dream Orchestra begins, “Ron Davis Álvarez stood on a train platform in Stockholm, stunned by what he saw. The Venezuelan orchestra conductor was visiting Sweden as part of a university exchange program. … He watched throngs of people getting off trains, their faces drawn and exhausted. Volunteers raced past him to hand out bananas and water to the new arrivals.

“ ‘I was completely in shock, seeing all of these young boys arriving,’ Álvarez recalls. He asked someone what was going on.

“The answer: ‘They are from Syria and Afghanistan. Many of them are unaccompanied. They traveled here alone.’

“ ‘What will happen to them?’ Álvarez asked. No one knew. …

“Álvarez was there watching, and he had an idea. That idea would change his life, and the lives of hundreds of others he hadn’t met yet. …

“It wasn’t long before Álvarez was back in Sweden. He’d been tapped as the artistic director of El Sistema Sweden, based in the coastal city of Gothenburg. … As he began his new role, the memory of what he’d seen months earlier on the train platform remained seared in his mind.

“El Sistema Sweden’s work was focused on younger children enrolled in Swedish schools. The youth he’d seen pouring into the train station were already in their later teenage years. It’s an age when many might assume it’s too late to learn an instrument.

“Álvarez knew it wasn’t. And he knew he had to try to help them. … With a handful of instruments on loan, he visited schools to drum up interest. Eventually, he recruited a group of 13 youth from Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea and Albania. He dubbed them the Dream Orchestra.

“ ‘I remember coming into the room and there were a lot of girls and boys, and I was nervous,’ Álvarez says in a short film about the orchestra featured on its website. … Many of the Dream Orchestra’s members had never played an instrument before they joined. They came from different countries. They didn’t speak the same languages. …

“Mostafa Kazemi lights up when he recalls the day he met Álvarez in 2016.

“ ‘Which instrument do you play?’ the conductor asked him.

“ ‘I can’t play,’ Kazemi replied.

“Álvarez’s response was confident and unflinching: ‘Yes, you can. Come and pick which one you want.’

“Kazemi, originally from Afghanistan, was 16 years old at the time. He’d been in Sweden for a matter of months. No one had talked to him like this before. So a few weeks after the Dream Orchestra began, Kazemi became one of its first members. He picked the cello. …

“The small ensemble rehearsed on Fridays and Saturdays. Those were Álvarez’s days off, and also a time when he knew it was important to keep young people occupied and off the streets.

“At first, teaching the group wasn’t easy, Álvarez recalls. He was used to instructing younger Spanish-speaking students who came from similar backgrounds. This would require a different approach.

“Álvarez spoke English, and some of the other members of the Dream Orchestra did, too. But still, misunderstandings were frequent, even comical at times. Body language was key to overcoming those obstacles. So was finding a way to connect more deeply with each person – to learn what music they liked and where they came from and who they were.

“Another key part of Álvarez’s approach with these older students: giving them the confidence to make mistakes.

“I tried to build confidence – first the confidence of the sound.’ …

“ ‘Ron was full of energy all the time,’ Kazemi says. ‘And that made us want to do more and more and more. We were practicing at home. I even brought some more students. I told my friends. … And everyone told their friends, and everyone came to orchestra.’ …

“Now, eight years later, the Dream Orchestra has more than 400 members from nearly 20 countries who speak around 20 languages between them. …

“As [Álvarez] sees it, politicians and world leaders could learn a lot from this music ensemble.

“ ‘I see the orchestra like society,’ he says. ‘When you are in an orchestra, you need to learn how to hear each other, how to listen to each other, compassion, how to empathize.’

“That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges over the years. Some students at first struggled with taking direction from female conductors and teachers, Álvarez says, and tensions have boiled over at times between members of the orchestra whose home countries have a history of conflict with each other.

“Some conductors might direct their orchestras simply to play on and ignore these difficulties. Álvarez says he addresses them directly. He wants the orchestra not only to be a safe space, but a place where its members can grow and learn to live together.

“ ‘We are all people that need to respect each other. It’s difficult because you cannot erase this history, but you can rewrite the future,’ he says.”

More at CNN, here. No firewall.

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