Partly, of course, spring is about the angle of sunlight, how early the sun comes up, how late it stays. I never thought I had seasonal affective disorder, wasn’t sure I believed there was such a thing. But I do find I’m cheered up by sunlight, discouraged by gray skies.
The photos today are mostly self-explanatory, but I want to point out how vibrant the moss looks in early spring. Also, the last photo is of a New England wildflower called Mayapple.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged massachusetts, mayapple, new england, photos, providence, spring, wildflower | 5 Comments »
Photo: Weliton Menário Costa via Science.
Says Science magazine: “In his winning ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ video, Weliton Menário Costa shifts his dance style to match other dancers, mimicking how kangaroos adapt their personalities to fit the group.”
This is a story about Science magazine’s annual “Dance Your PhD” competition. The winning video replicates something a researcher studied — kangaroo behavior. Runners up included dances about stream-bank erosion and moth mating.
Sean Cummings writes at Science, “In a broad grassland beneath an Australian sunset, dancers in everything from fishnets to field attire let loose an unchoreographed mishmash of steps, leaps, twirls, and twerks. There’s no unified style to the movement, but the resulting video — this year’s winner of Science’s annual ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest — carries meaning nonetheless in its joyful madness. To Weliton Menário Costa, its creator, this dance mirrors the one between individuality and conformity in kangaroos — and celebrates the value of diversity in all species.
“Menário Costa, who was awarded $2750 in the annual contest now sponsored by the quantum technology-artificial intelligence (AI) company SandboxAQ, earned his ecology Ph.D. in 2021 at the Australian National University, studying eastern gray kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) living at Wilsons Promontory National Park. Even as joeys, he found, individual kangaroos seemed to have distinct personalities. Bolder animals, for instance, would approach a remote-controlled model car driven near them whereas others shied away. These personalities aren’t set in stone, however: The marsupials modify their behavior to conform with those around them, adjusting as they move between groups.
“Menário Costa, who has since transitioned from science into a career as a singer-songwriter under the name WELI, recorded an original song, Kangaroo Time, for the contest. He then recruited a score of dancer friends representing styles from urban to classical, ballet to Brazilian funk. ‘I wanted to showcase the diversity of kangaroo behavior, and the easiest way was to get the diversity of dance we already have. I didn’t choreograph them, they were just being themselves,’ Menário Costa says. The only instruction?
Do as the ’roos do. In other words, mingle with dancers of other styles and adjust your movements in response, gradually unifying into a group effort.
“The result resonated with a judging panel of artists, dancers, and scientists. ‘There was a sense of surprise and delight in it. You could tell they were having fun through the process’ … says judge Alexa Meade, a visual artist who uses optical illusions in her work. She also praised the video’s original songwriting and costumes, as well as the simplicity and accessibility with which it explained the science relating to kangaroo group dynamics.
“Besides finding a whimsical way to teach viewers about kangaroos, Menário Costa hopes to convey the message that diversity — in all its forms — should be celebrated. ‘Kangaroos are different, just like us,’ he says. ‘Differences happen in all species—.’ …
“The project also provided a way for Menário Costa to translate his academic experiences into an accessible form for friends and family in his small Brazilian hometown. Many of them didn’t fully understand what he was doing in Australia, he says — including his grandmother. ‘Once I released Kangaroo Time, she was like, “That’s my grandson! I get it now!” says Menário Costa, who [planned] to release his first EP, Yours Academically, Dr. WELI, at the beginning of March. …
“ ‘This year’s entries did a great job of incorporating art and science to [create something] greater than the sum of their parts,’ Meade says. In the past, she explains, ‘some entries have incredible research but the dance component feels like an afterthought, or we might get some incredible dance performance, but I’m not sure what it has to do with science. It has to be a blending that accentuates both.’ The entries were so strong, the judges noted, that the second-ranked dance in the social science category might have won the whole thing if not up against the kangaroos.” Click on that one: It’s pretty funny.
You can make a dance about anything — as I learned when I was 14 and had to choreograph a dance about oxygen in combustion. You couldn’t just show Antoine Lavoisier mixing chemicals but had to somehow replicate the chemicals themselves!
More at Science, here. Hat tip: ArtsJournal.com.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Antoine Lavoisier, australia, dance your PhD, kangaroo, science | 2 Comments »
Photo: Josh Appel/Unsplash.
The New York City melting pot, where 700 languages are spoken — 150 of them endangered.
New York City attracts people from all over the world, so it’s perhaps not surprising that there are an extraordinary number of languages spoken — major languages and endangered languages.
Alex Carp’s impressive story at the New York Times digs into the details.
“Most people think of endangered languages as far-flung or exotic, the opposite of cosmopolitan. ‘You go to some distant mountain or island, and you collect stories,’ the linguist Ross Perlin says, describing a typical view of how such languages are studied. But of the 700 or so speakers of Seke, most of whom can be found in a cluster of villages in Nepal, more than 150 have lived in or around two apartment buildings in Brooklyn. Bishnupriya Manipuri, a minority language of Bangladesh and India, has become a minority language of Queens.
‘All told, there are more endangered languages in and around New York City than have ever existed anywhere else,’ says Perlin, who has spent 11 years trying to document them.
“And because most of the world’s languages are on a path to disappear within the next century, there will likely never be this many in any single place again.
“Language loss has been a natural part of human history for centuries, but it was typically small in scale and relatively confined. The lost language could sometimes leave traces in the language that overtook it, what linguists have called a ‘grammatical merger’ of intersecting societies.
“About 30 years ago, though, the linguists Ken Hale and Michael Krauss warned of a new, more dire form of loss in which a dominant language would ‘simply overwhelm Indigenous, local languages and cultures.’ Hundreds of languages were essentially gone, Krauss noted, and others were quickly fading. Several were spoken by as few as one or two people.
“As Perlin writes in his new book — Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, out this month — what stands to be lost is more than mere words. ‘Languages represent thousands of natural experiments: ways of seeing, understanding and living that should rightly form a major part of any meaningful account of what it is to be human.’
“With Daniel Kaufman, also a linguist, Perlin directs the Endangered Language Alliance, in Manhattan. When E.L.A. was founded, in 2010, Perlin lived in the Chinese Himalayas, where he studied Trung, a language with no standard writing system, dictionary or codified grammar. (His work helped establish all three.) He spent most of his time in the valley where the largest group of remaining speakers lived; the only road in or out was impassable in winter.
“After three years, Perlin returned to New York City, where he had grown up. … In 2016, E.L.A. began to map the languages spoken in the city. A vast majority were not recognized by large businesses, schools or city government. Officially, Perlin said, they were simply not there. ‘None of the communities with whom we planned to partner were recorded as even existing in the census,’ Kaufman and Perlin later wrote.
“Since their project began, Perlin and Kaufman have located speakers of more than 700 languages. Of those languages, at least 150 are listed as under significant threat in at least one of three major databases for the field. …
“A language’s endangerment is not simply a function of its size but also a measure of its relationship to the societies around it. Sheer numbers ‘have always mattered less than intergenerational transmission, Perlin writes in Language City. Until recently, in many regions of the world, dozens of languages lived side by side, each with no more than a few thousand speakers. Gurr-goni, an Aboriginal Australian language, had long been stable with 70. A language survives, Perlin writes, by sharing life with those who speak it. …
“When Perlin and Kaufman document a language, they work alongside native speakers to transcribe and translate video interviews that are recorded locally and during trips to a language’s home region. …
“To document Seke, for example, Perlin works with Rasmina Gurung, a 26-year-old nurse who happens to be one of the youngest Seke speakers in the world. Most Seke speakers, about 500 people, live across five neighboring villages in northern Nepal, near Tibet. Though the villages are within walking distance, each has developed its own Seke dialect. Like many of the smaller languages of ‘traditional face-to-face societies,’ Perlin writes, Seke has no ‘formal, all-purpose hello,’ because villagers live among the same groups of people and rarely encounter a Seke-speaking stranger. Instead, a question — Where are you going? What are you doing? — would be more common. …
“As E.L.A. produced its first language maps, the institute’s work caught the eye of Thelma Carrillo, a research scientist in the city’s Health Department. Carrillo, who is part Zapotec, was working on a Latino health initiative, but the city had what Perlin and Kaufman found to be ‘no basic demographic information’ on New Yorkers from Indigenous communities in Latin America, even though they have been migrating here in large numbers since the 1990s.
“ ‘We found ourselves in this odd position of being a conduit between the Indigenous Latin Americans of the city and the city agencies, because other organizations that work with them see them as Mexican or Guatemalan,’ Kaufman says. …
“By the start of the pandemic, the city had begun official outreach in nine Indigenous languages and recorded videos in several other endangered languages. By reaching these communities in their own languages, New York City offered what is almost certainly the first official recognition that they exist.
“Still, Perlin and Kaufman are keenly aware that the corpus they are building — word by word and sometimes syllable by syllable — might someday turn out to be a kind of fossil record.
“Outside of the office, Gurung mostly speaks Seke in voice notes to elders overseas or to tell her mother a secret she doesn’t want her sister to hear. On her first trip to Nepal with E.L.A., she ended every interview with the same question: ‘Do you think our language will survive?’ ”
More at the Times, here. Terrific maps and graphics.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged endangered, generations, languages, new york, survive | 2 Comments »
Photo via WDBJ7.
An escaped horse in Australia.
During the years that I took the commuter train to work, I saw some unusual things, but nothing as unusual as this.
Annabelle Timsit writes at the Washington Post about a thoroughbred horse in Australia who tasted a moment of freedom in an environment that to other travelers feels like anything but freedom.
“This commuter was one of the worst kinds,” writes Timsit. “Didn’t pay a fare, took up space on the platform, and caused a ruckus that slowed down trains and called security agents to the station. This particular commuter was also a horse.
“The equine traveler was captured by CCTV cameras wandering into Warwick Farm Station west of Sydney just before midnight on Friday, trotting up and down the platform, prompting other (human) commuters to jump out of its path. …
“ ‘Didn’t realize I needed to say but — horses aren’t allowed on our trains, sorry folks,’ tweeted Chris Minns, premier of Australia’s New South Wales state. …
“Footage shows that after horsing around for a while, it had a choice to make as the train pulled into the station: In or out? Yea or neigh? After staring at the train for a few seconds, the horse turned around and trotted back down the platform … or, as Transport for NSW put it: ‘The horse had planned its journey but got colt feet and decided to hoof it.’
“Security agents from Sydney Trains were alerted, ‘and trains in the vicinity were warned to run at reduced speeds,’ Transport for NSW said. …
“It later emerged that the horse had escaped from the stables of Annabel Neasham Racing, close to Warwick Farm Station, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“It’s not clear how it escaped, but Steve Railton, chief steward of Racing NSW, cited Annabel Neasham, a trainer and the owner of the racecourse, as saying that ‘an unknown person released three racehorses and a stable pony from one of her stables on Friday night.’
“ ‘One of the racehorses left the vicinity of the stable complex, while the others were captured,’ said Railton, according to the Herald. …
“ ‘I can confirm the horse has returned home, safe and sound,’ Minns said.
“Though it is not an everyday occurrence, ‘from time to time, we do find animals on tracks, particularly cows,’ said Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland, according to the Herald. … Longland said the horse may have gravitated toward the station because of its bright lighting. …
“ ‘Thankfully, we were able to warn our train drivers to look out for animals on the tracks,’ he said. ‘We were able to catch the horse not long after that.’
“Transport for NSW confirmed that the horse ‘was safely reined in and is in a “stable” condition.’ ”
Ouch! People really cannot resist terrible puns whenever there’s a quirky animal story to wrap puns around.
More at the Post, here.
Video: CityNews.
What do you suppose this taste of freedom felt like to the horse? Did it feel good? Scary? Note the reaction to the train pulling in.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged australia, commuter, escape, freedom, horse, train | 4 Comments »
Photo: Trip.com.
The Weerdsluis lock in Utrecht, the Netherlands, has an unusual fish-friendly feature.
More often than not constructions that humans think they need really don’t work for wildlife. Some creatures adapt. Others need help.
Hannah Docter-Loeb writes at Slate magazine, “It’s a rainy Friday morning in Utrecht, a town just outside Amsterdam, and I’m looking for a boat lock. The city is full of them, but I’m looking for a very special one — the Weerdsluis lock. … (A boat lock is, for the uninitiated, basically an elevator for boats. It helps raise and lower them between areas with different water levels. There are a lot of them in the Netherlands.) There are lock attendants in a booth, waiting for boats to pass.
“But if you look closely enough, you can see a camera submerged in the water. Which from my vantage point, looks like … muddy water. But I know about 1,000 people are tuning in to the footage in real time to see what’s below the muck. They are waiting to ring the fish doorbell.
“The doorbell ‘opened’ for the season at the end of March. Fish will gather on one side, where the underwater camera keeps watch and livestreams the view on a website. People anywhere in the world can spot a fish, and press a button (the doorbell), signaling for the lock operator to open the barrier. ….
“The idea came to ecologist Mark van Heukelum in 2021. He had been studying the barriers to fish migration in Utrecht. Like many Dutch cities, the city is laden with canals, fixed channels, and boats. Although picturesque, some of these structures physically get in the way of fish that swim through the city during spawning season. One of the most troublesome barriers to fish swimming through Utrecht: the Weerdsluis lock.
” ‘One of the main issues for fish was that the boat lock is in the way,’ van Heukelum told me over Zoom, with three little decorative fish in the background. During that initial visit, he could literally see the fish queuing up at the lock — which is typically closed in the spring, and operated manually by lock operators.
“Van Heukelum, who works as an environmental consultant, thought it would take a lot of effort and bureaucracy to implement a way for the fish to get through. But the lock operator offered a simpler solution. ‘He listened to me and said, “Well I can also open the lock right now for the fish.” ‘
“In fact, the lock operator was willing to open the lock more often, as long as he knew fish were present. Within a year, van Heukelum and his team had installed a camera, livestreaming the ecosystem below the water. …
‘A camera on the water isn’t necessarily a new thing, but the fact you can actually do something and push a button and help out, that is definitely a first,’ van Heukelum said.
“The fish doorbell launched for the first time on March 29, 2021 — unfortunate timing, van Heukelum noted, as it was just a few days before April Fool’s Day. ‘We didn’t think about it,’ he recounted. ‘Media jumped on it because they thought it was so funny, it had to be a joke.’ ”
At the New York Times, Callie Holtermann adds, “Four years later, that skepticism has subsided. Mr. van Heukelum said he had been shocked by how many people had developed an obsession with his fish doorbell. He estimated that more than 6,300 fish passed through last year thanks to their efforts.
“ ‘Realizing that people from the U.S. or Australia or New Zealand are helping to get fish past a lock in the Netherlands, it’s such a strange idea,’ he said, adding, ‘I am living on a cloud right now.’ ”
Hannah Poole sent the Slate article. More at the Times, here.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged camera, doorbell, fish, lock, Netherlands, Utrecht | 5 Comments »
Photo: Josh Miller via American Rivers.
Klamath River, California.
We have a lot of dams in this country that are now under consideration for removal, sometimes to restore land to tribes, sometimes to benefit wildlife, often for a combination of reasons.
Debra Utacia Krol of the Arizona Republic writes at AZCentral, “Tribes and environmentalists cheered last month as crews blasted out the concrete plugs holding water behind the JC Boyle and Copco I dams, the largest of four decommissioned dams on the Klamath River, allowing silt-filled water to flow down the ancient riverbed.
“Hope also flowed downstream alongside the muddy waters that the gigantic removal project supercharges the goal of restoring the environmental health of the river basin that traverses Northern California and southern Oregon.
“The water that once covered over 2,000 acres of land surrounding the river has begun to recede, revealing artifacts like old farm equipment, foundations and bridge pilings left over from pre-dam days. But local residents worry about the fate of local wildlife like deer and eagles that get stuck in the muddy grounds and mourn the loss of non-native fish that inhabited the reservoirs’ warm-water layers.
“The tribes, environmentalists and their allies celebrated the shrinking waters as an essential next step in what they say will be a decades-long process of restoring one of the West’s largest salmon fisheries and a region the size of West Virginia back to health.
“Yurok tribal member and fisheries director Barry McCovey was amazed at how fast the river and the lands surrounding the Copco dam were revealed. …
“The 6,500-member tribe’s lands span the Klamath’s final 44 miles to the Pacific Ocean, and the Yurok and other tribes that depend on the Klamath for subsistence and cultural activities have long advocated for the dams’ removal and for ecological restoration.
“Amid the largest-ever dam removal in the U.S., rumors and misunderstandings have spread through social media, in grange halls and in local establishments. In the meantime, public agencies and private firms race to correct misinformation by providing facts and real data on how the Klamath is recovering from what one official called ‘major heart surgery.’ …
“Residents and curious tourists were alarmed to see gray, sticky mud flats and masses of dead fish where the reservoirs once filled the canyons. They also were shocked to see brown, silty water running down the now-exposed river bed, miring deer in the mud. Social media feeds lamented the scene and claimed the ecosystem had been destroyed, possibly forever.
“But the people and organizations that had planned the removal had also forecast what would most likely happen after draining the reservoirs and said what looked like a gruesome scene was expected — and temporary.
” ‘Everything we’re seeing is exactly what has been predicted,’ said McCovey, adding that the large amounts of sediment moved by waters pouring out of two tunnels blasted underneath JC Boyle and Copco I dams were accounted for during the planning process. …
“The sediment now making its way to the Pacific was always destined to wind up in the ocean, he said, just as the fish convey nutrients upstream. McCovey likened the system to how the human body works.
” ‘The river is like the arteries of the earth, and the water would be the blood,'”‘ he said. And just as how a human body functions, blood transports vital elements throughout the body, McCovey added. When arteries are blocked, blood can’t convey nutrients or carry off waste, resulting in disease. ‘When you have such a blockage, you need to have surgery to have that blockage removed,’ McCovey said. …
” ‘After the river makes a full recovery, it’ll be much healthier,’ McCovey said.
“The Yurok Tribe also contracted with Resource Environmental Solutions to collect the billions of seeds from native plants needed to restore the denuded lands revealed when the waters subsided.
“The company, known to locals as RES, took a whole-ecological approach while planning the project. In addition to rehabbing about 2,200 acres of land exposed after the four shallow reservoirs finish draining, ‘we have obligations for a number of species, including eagles and Western pond turtles,’ said David Coffman, RES’ Northern California and Southern Oregon director.
“The plan included anticipating the effects removal and restoration could have on water quality and temperature, aquatic species and other species. … The company also plans to support important pollinators like native bumblebees and monarch butterflies and protect species of special concern like the willow flycatcher. And, Coffman said, removal of invasive plant species like star thistle is also underway. In some cases, he said, workers will pull any invasives out by hand if they notice them encroaching on newly planted areas.”
The long and interesting article at AZCentral, here, covers complaints by people who felt they were not in the loop and were adversely affected, what was done to compensate them and also rescue trapped wildlife, and goals for the future.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dam, environment, indigenous, Klamath River, oregon, release, removal, tribe | 2 Comments »
Photo: Adrian Susec/Unsplash.
Film buffs, it turns out, are not only creative about making movies, they’re creative about ways to screen movies. That’s because a different locale can lend a whole new feeling to the movie-going experience.
Bryn Stole writes at the New York Times, “Some of international cinema’s biggest names gathered on [a Tuesday in February] at the Berlin International Film Festival as the event honored Martin Scorsese with a lifetime achievement award. Before accepting his trophy, Scorsese listened as the German director Wim Wenders gave a laudatory speech to an audience including celebrities and local dignitaries.
“Just around the corner, parked in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, a group of Berlin’s taxi drivers crammed into the back of a worn-out taxi van to watch a double-feature capped by Scorsese’s 1976 movie Taxi Driver.
“Klaus Meier, who has been driving a cab in Berlin since 1985, handed out bottles of soda and beer, popping the caps with the blade of a pocketknife. Irene Jaxtheimer, who runs a taxi company, passed around homemade popcorn. A generator outside the cab powered a modest television, a DVD player and a small electric heater.
“The unconventional screening, just outside a centerpiece event for one of Europe’s most prestigious film festivals, was part of the makeshift TaxiFilmFest. Running through Sunday, it is partly a protest over the miserable state of the taxi industry these days and partly a counterfestival to celebrate the taxi cab’s iconic place in the urban cultural landscape.
“It’s also in objection to an exclusive partnership deal between the festival, known locally as the Berlinale, and the ride-hailing giant Uber to ferry filmmakers between the city’s movie theaters during the event. … Beeping horns from the busy street outside — some of them coming from sleek black Uber vehicles emblazoned with the Berlinale logo — blended with the street scenes from Taxi Driver playing on the tinny television speakers. ‘Ah, I really miss those mechanical fare boxes!’ Meier said as the fares ticked away in the onscreen cab of the movie’s unhinged antihero, Travis Bickle, who drives around mid-’70s New York with growing hatred and menace.
“The back-seat festival is showing only taxi-themed flicks, and the potential repertoire is deep. Meier polled friends and fellow taxi drivers about which films to show, and said he had received dozens of suggestions about movies in which a cab plays a starring role.
“The early feature on Tuesday was Barry Greenwald’s 1982 quirky slice-of-life documentary Taxi! about some odd characters driving cabs in Toronto. The previous evening, a small rotating crowd beat the rain to catch portions of the 1998 French action-comedy Taxi, a lighthearted flick from the director Gérard Pirès about sinister, Mercedes-driving German gangsters, hapless Marseilles cops and a lead-footed rookie cabdriver who turns out to be the only person fast enough to catch the criminals.
“An early hit at the TaxiFilmFestival, which kicked off last Thursday, was Under the Bombs, a Lebanese drama set during the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. In the movie, a Beirut taxi driver is hired to drive a woman into the war-torn south of Lebanon in hopes of finding her sister and son. Meier described it as ‘Shakespearean’ and ‘a masterpiece,’ and Berndt said it was clearly the ‘most moving taxi film’ he’d ever seen.
“But the clear favorite among attendees was Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, a quirky, episodic 1991 film about taxi drivers and passengers in five cities around the world. The selection for TaxiFilmFest’s Sunday night finale had yet to be chosen, and Meier said he remained open to suggestions. …
“The festival attendees, squeezed into the back of the van on Tuesday, also reminisced about better days for taxi driving, such as ferrying around American and British soldiers from the occupying Allies stationed in West Berlin. (The French troops, the small crowd agreed, had less cash and rarely hailed cabs.) …
“The days before the fall of the Berlin Wall were ‘blissful times, hard to even imagine anymore,’ said Stephan Berndt.” More at the Times, here.
See also my 2014 post about a theatrical production in a taxi in Iran, here.
By the way, I hated the movie Taxi Driver when I saw it around 1976 — and walked out. Still don’t get what’s to like. You?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged berlin, cinema, fest, film, germany, movie, taxi | 2 Comments »
Photo: John Labarbera.
Company 360 Dance Theatre in the show Nine.
To follow up on my recent post about deaf actors performing for general audiences, I have a related story about the use of signing in dance. I always felt that watching signing was like watching dance.
Lauren Wingenroth writes at Dance Magazine, “For Deaf audiences, watching performances with traditional sign language interpretation can feel like watching a tennis match: Their focus has to toggle between whatever is happening onstage and the interpreter, often off to the side, who might be communicating what the music sounds like or what’s being said. That’s if the performance even has an interpreter, which all too often is not the case.
“But attend a Company 360 Dance Theatre performance and the tables are turned. The Fredericksburg, Virginia–based company, led by choreographer Bailey Anne Vincent, who is Deaf, incorporates American Sign Language into all its productions. ‘If you’re a Deaf person, you’re in on the story more than a hearing person,’ says Vincent.
“For Vincent, using ASL in her choreography — which might mean incorporating a sign to emphasize an emotion a character is feeling, or to communicate what a lyric is saying — is both an artistic choice and an accessibility-related one. Though her audience is mostly hearing, ‘I still try to approach all our shows assuming there might be someone who is Deaf in the audience,’ she says. But it’s also just a natural extension of the fact that ASL is Vincent’s preferred language. ‘When I choreograph, the way that my mind thinks is in my own language,’ she says. …
“Deaf actress and dancer Alexandria Wailes feels similarly. ‘Dance and using ASL are both so embedded in who I am, as part of my identity,’ says Wailes through an interpreter. ‘I can’t really separate one from the other.’ …
“To get a sense of the deepening relationship between dance and ASL, look at choreographer and performer Brandon Kazen-Maddox’s career thus far. A GODA (grandchild of Deaf adults) and native ASL signer, Kazen-Maddox was long one of the New York City performing arts scene’s go-to interpreters, a reliable presence at performances, talkbacks, and more.
“But in 2019, choreographer Kayla Hamilton asked Kazen-Maddox to join her New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks piece not as an interpreter but as an artist. ‘She asked me to represent all sounds in sign language, and also use my body as a dancer,’ says Kazen-Maddox. ‘It was the most mind-shifting thing for me.’ …
“The experience was the beginning of a shift in Kazen-Maddox’s career, away from simply facilitating communication between Deaf and hearing individuals as an interpreter and towards an emerging genre Kazen-Maddox calls ‘American Sign Language dance theater.’ …
“Always key to this work, says Wailes: Deaf or Hard of Hearing performers who are ‘bilingual’ in dance and ASL. ‘If you’re trying to be more inclusive, great,’ she says. ‘Who are the people who are onstage? What are their lived experiences and how does this reveal itself in the work?’ …
“Until recently, Betsy Quillen experienced performances for Deaf audiences and hearing audiences separately. ‘It’s one or the other — it’s very isolated,’ says Quillen, who is a Hard of Hearing actor and theater director. …
“So when choreographer William Smith asked Quillen to collaborate with him on a piece for Roanoke Ballet Theatre that incorporated sign language, they had a clear goal: to make something that both Deaf and hearing audiences could understand and enjoy.
“ ‘My specific role was making sure that Deaf eyes would understand it, and that we were making our Deaf audiences feel welcomed and included and respected,’ says Quillen. ‘But we also made sure to show our hearing audience that this piece is made even more beautiful because we’ve included the Deaf audiences — that all of this ASL in every part of the production is enhancing the experience for everybody in the audience.’ “
More at Dance Magazine, here.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ASL, choreography, dance, deaf, sign language, theater | 1 Comment »
Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CMS Staff.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the upscale Boston Back Bay neighborhood “worked with nonprofits to create affordable housing and apartments for formerly unhoused people, at 140 Clarendon.”
My friend Lillian and her siblings are among the few Black families that own their building in Boston’s upscale Back Bay. That’s because Lillian’s mother had the foresight to buy it in installments many years ago. Nowadays the area is prohibitive for most families, whatever their race. And as we know, affordable housing is usually fought tooth and nail in such communities. But …
Troy Aidan Sambajon writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Garry Monteiro pauses and looks down, twiddling his thumbs. He contemplates the biggest change to his life last year. There’s a glint in his eye that wasn’t there before.
“ ‘To be honest with you, the refrigerator was a big deal,’ Mr. Monteiro chuckles, speaking in a community room at the 140 Clarendon building in Boston’s upscale Back Bay neighborhood. … But, he adds, the biggest change is having somewhere to call his own. Before moving into his apartment, the former mail courier spent nearly every night for two years on an assigned bunk at a men’s shelter.
“His routine was dictated by the shelter’s hours. He had to be out by 5:30 a.m. and back before 8 p.m. He spent his days looking for jobs or with his siblings. Every day, he worried about making it back by curfew. If he didn’t, he’d have to sleep outside. …
“The 140 Clarendon building is the rare story of a wealthy community finding solutions to homelessness. When private hotel plans stalled at the address in 2020, the neighborhood took charge. Community associations and developers backed a permanent supportive housing community – complete with on-site social services – in the heart of one of Boston’s most expensive neighborhoods.
“ ‘With homelessness numbers rising everywhere and the lack of affordable housing overwhelming, this project in the Back Bay is a welcome development,’ says Howard Koh, faculty chair of the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at Harvard University. Dr. Koh and his team say that 140 Clarendon is ‘highly unusual,’ because instead of worrying about property values, residents in a high-end neighborhood rolled out the welcome mat. …
“ ‘The collaboration of all the partners, public and private, to make such progress is a great example of how people can … rise to the challenge,’ Dr. Koh says of 140 Clarendon.
“The 111 studio apartments that now house Mr. Monteiro and his new neighbors also come with support services and case managers. The idea isn’t new, experts on ‘housing-first’ solutions say. Studies have shown the most cost-effective way to combat homelessness is to prioritize putting people in homes before securing other services. … What’s remarkable about 140 Clarendon is that Back Bay’s neighborhood and business associations signed letters of support, inviting the project onto their streets….
“ ‘It is one of those all-too-rare occasions when the public sector, the private sector, and nonprofits were able to come together and provide at least some relief,’ says Martyn Roetter, chair of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, who signed one of the letters. …
“For nearly 100 years, 140 Clarendon has anchored the neighborhood’s educational and cultural character. The building was owned by the YWCA and, at various points, has housed the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, the Snowden International School, and a 210-unit boutique hotel.
“In 2019, the YWCA decided to sell the property. The first buyer planned to evict all tenants and face-lift the exterior to make way for a ritzy private hotel. When the pandemic sank the hotel market, a new developer – Beacon Communities – stepped in, while Pine Street Inn agreed to provide on-site services to formerly houseless tenants. ‘It checked all our boxes, and the location couldn’t be better,’ says Jan Griffin, vice president of Pine Street Inn. The 13-story brick-faced building has elevators and is easily accessible to public transit, grocery stores, the Boston Public Library, and churches. …
“The Back Bay neighborhood associations – which wanted to preserve the historic brownstone and its commercial tenants – had caught wind of the development plans. In two public letters of support, the associations advocated for affordable housing to be expedited in the neighborhood. …
“In addition to 111 apartments for people experiencing homelessness, 99 other units were made into affordable housing. All the commercial tenants supported the plan, which allowed them to remain in the building. ‘The fact that the local businesses and the neighbors wanted it is a really nice testament to how that neighborhood is leaning in to trying to end homelessness on their streets with housing rather than criminalizing people for existing in their neighborhood,’ says Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance To End Homelessness.
“When Mr. Monteiro arrived at Pine Street’s shelters in 2021, his only possessions were the clothes on his back and a canvas messenger bag from his past life as a courier. … After 20 years of working, Mr. Monteiro left it all behind to take care of his parents. ‘I knew basically that once they passed away, I would have to start over,’ he says. ‘And I’d still do it again.’ “
More at the Monitor, here. No paywall. Subscriptions encouraged — and very reasonable.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged affordable housing, Back Bay, boston, neighbors, yes in my backyard | Leave a Comment »
Photo: Adri Salido.
From the Christian Science Monitor: “Elsa Cerda (with spear) leads Yuturi Warmi, a group of Indigenous women who guard against illegal mining in the community of Serena in the Ecuadorian Amazon.”
As a group of indigenous women in the Ecuadorian Amazon have shown, when something is wrong in your neighborhood, it pays to join with others and fight.
Al Jazeera wrote a good report on this last year.
“As a child, Leo Cerda would spend his mornings helping his family cultivate cassava, plantains and other fruits and vegetables in their chakra, a traditional garden in Kichwa communities.
“In the Ecuadorian village of Napo, traditions form a large part of family and spiritual life. At around 3 am each morning, before heading to their chakras, many families take part in a traditional tea ceremony. Once freed from his farming duties at around midday, Cerda recalled running to the river to swim and fish with friends. Fish would later be grilled on an open fire and eaten with large amounts of fruit.
“ ‘As a kid, I got to enjoy nature,’ Cerda told Al Jazeera.
“These days, however, the 34-year-old spends his days chasing gold miners from his community and campaigning against those who threaten to destroy his ancestral lands. …
“ ‘Within three years, everything changed,’ Cerda said. ‘The land has been poisoned. There are no more fish, except ones that are contaminated. People eat them, and they get sicker and sicker.’
“A recent study carried out in mining areas of the northeastern Andean foothills of the Ecuadorian Amazon, close to where Cerda lives, revealed high concentrations of toxic metals. They are up to 352 times above permissible limits established by environmental guidelines. …
“Mariana Capparelli, a researcher who contributed to the study, told Al Jazeera it was ‘very sad to see the conditions these communities are exposed to as well as the total degradation of an ecosystem that is so important for the entire planet.’ …
“Due to what critics say is an absence of sufficient government regulation, mining in Ecuador has led to environmental pollution and adverse effects on the health of Indigenous communities. In recent months, authorities have carried out several raids against illegal miners.
But with widespread state corruption and tip-offs given to miners, machinery is sometimes withdrawn immediately before police operations take place, activists say. …
“Ecuador has a national system of protected areas that aims to safeguard biodiversity and local ecosystems in national parks, wildlife refuges, marine reserves and other designated areas throughout the country. Although the government has taken some steps to protect local water systems, rivers have traditionally not been included in this system. …
“According to Andres Tapia, a spokesperson for the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, illegal mining has become ‘uncontrollable’ in parts of the country. …
“ ‘I thought I would always be able to drink from this river,’ Eli Virkina, a member of an Indigenous Kichwa community in Napo, told Al Jazeera. ‘Now I’m at this point where maybe I shouldn’t even swim in the water. That is really heartbreaking for me.’ …
“Across Napo, Indigenous communities and organizations have been monitoring, mobilizing and resisting mining activities. To defend their land, they have formed alliances and connections across riverine communities, including the Amazon’s first women-led Indigenous guard.
“In February 2022, a landmark Constitutional Court ruling recognized the rights of Indigenous communities to have a final say over extractive projects that affect their territories. The ruling ‘offers one of the strongest legal precedents in the world, which upholds the rights of Indigenous peoples to decide on the futures of their ancestral territories,’ according to the Amazon Frontlines advocacy group.
“But in December [2022], the ruling was disregarded when the government approved a mining project in Las Naves in Bolivar province without gaining the consent of affected communities.
“In the meantime, Napo has installed four alarm systems around the village to signal when miners are close by.
“ ‘In our territory, spears were not used anymore, but now we have one in at least every house because it’s part of the way we have to defend ourselves,’ said Majo Andrade, a member of the female-led Indigenous guard Yuturi Warmi. …
“Virkina says Indigenous resistance is vital to the region’s future. ‘Once [Indigenous people] disappear, it is way easier for miners and people to come in and access the river,’ she said. ‘When we have stronger Indigenous communities, we have stronger forests and a stronger river.’ More at Al Jazeera, here.
Adri Salido has a collection of beautiful pictures at the Christian Science Monitor and adds a few more comments to the story of Yuturi Warmi: “Yuturi Warmi refers to a type of ant (Paraponera clavata) that will attack when an enemy enters its territory.
“The group, which formed in 2020, joined with other Ecuadorian and international organizations to urge the government to enforce laws against illegal extraction and to restore habitat. But officials have not acted, according to Yuturi Warmi. Since then, the group has worked to ensure that no illegal mining takes place in its community. It patrols the riverbank, conducts canoe inspections, and maintains constant surveillance. So far, it has kept intruders out of Serena.
“The situation is far different upstream, in Yutzupino, where illegal extraction has destroyed the basin of the Jatunyacu River, a tributary of the Amazon River.”
More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Great collection of photos.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged amazon, ecuador, environment, gold, indigenous, mining, pollution, women | 1 Comment »
Photo: Hiro Yamagata, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
From Living on Earth: “VPPs are networks of small energy-producing and storage devices, such as solar panels and batteries, that are pooled together to serve the electricity grid.”
What to do about an old electrical grid that is having trouble keeping up with energy innovation? Steve Curwood, host of the environmental radio program Living on Earth, talks to the Brattle Group’s Ryan Hledik about using “virtual power plants.”
“Steve Curwood: Electric vehicles aren’t just useful for getting you and me from Point A to Point B. With smart policies they could also help decarbonize the grid. That’s because renewables like wind and solar don’t produce electricity around the clock. So there’s often a mismatch between when the power is being generated and when it’s being used. And until it’s needed, the big batteries in electric cars and trucks can help store some of that precious power.
“That’s part of the strategy called virtual power plants. A recent report by the consulting firm The Brattle Group estimates that virtual power plants could save utilities and their customers as much as $35 billion over the next decade. Ryan Hledik is a principal at the Brattle Group and joins us now. … So what exactly is a virtual power plant? Please explain how they would operate.
“Ryan Hledik: So a virtual power plant is basically a collection of customers [who] have been recruited into a program and are participating in that program and being provided incentives to participate in order to provide some of these services to the grid. It’s basically this idea where customers have a lot of flexibility in their demand for electricity. Customers who are buying electric vehicles have the ability to change when they’re charging that car to a degree, customers with smart thermostats can manage the thermostat in a way that changes when they’re cooling their home.
“So one example of this could be if you’re a customer who had made an investment in a battery at your home because you wanted to use that battery as a form of backup power during an outage, you could be paid by your local utility or another company to actually allow them to control that battery on a limited number of days per year, limited number of hours per day, to provide services to the grid from the battery. By doing this, the really interesting opportunity that we’re seeing here is, first of all, it’s a way to directly pay customers to participate in the decarbonization transition. And then in addition to that, instead of going out and building a [gas] plant that might only be used 100 hours per year, we’re able to tap into an investment that’s already been made for other reasons … and get more use out of that. …
“By encouraging customers to shift their charging to those off-peak hours in the middle of the night, when demand is low, or even in the middle of the day, when maybe there’s solar power that’s being curtailed, because you have more than you need, you can shift the charging load of the EVS into those hours to provide benefits that you otherwise wouldn’t have if the customers were to just simply drive home from work and plug their electric vehicle into the wall when they got home.
“Curwood: But what if somebody wants to get in that car right now and then wants to drive the 200 miles to Aunt Thelma’s because she called saying she has an issue?
“Hledik: That’s right and one of the important characteristics of virtual power plant programs is they are designed with constraints on how they’ll be used to make sure that customer comfort and convenience is maintained. So in the case of an electric vehicle, virtual power plant, you could have a program designed such that customers are always ensured that even if their utility is going to manage how that vehicle is charging overnight, that they will be starting the next day at 6 am with a full state of charge in their EV. …
“Curwood: What kind of money could we save in this country if we use virtual power plants rather than trying to just expand the traditional grid infrastructure?
“Hledik: We looked into the answer to that question in our study and what we found was if we reached a pretty significant but achievable level of virtual power plant deployment by 2030, we could save $15 billion to $35 billion over the ensuing decade, relative to if we were to make investments in those more conventional gas peakers and utility-scale batteries. …
“And we estimated that over that same 10 year period, at the level of deployment that I described, there can be an additional $20 billion of benefits associated with improved health and avoiding other detrimental effects that are associated with carbon emissions. …
“Curwood: What are some of the other ways that we could take advantage of that baseload that right now goes to waste? …
“Hledik: Providing customers with an incentive to shift their electric vehicle charging load into [off-peak] hours is one opportunity. But another example would be if customers were to pre cool their homes during that midday period, so that they didn’t need to run their air conditioners as much during the evening period. That’s one way to shift some of their electricity consumption to the middle of the day.”
More at Living on Earth, here. No firewall.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged demand, electricity, grid, peak, power, storage, virtual power plant | 2 Comments »
Photo: Nora Hickey/ Hyperallergic.
A Veronica comic strip drawn by Dan DeCarlo.
What cartoonists and comic strips did you read as a kid? My mother wanted me to be a child always, so she bought Little Lulu comics until I was into my teens. Not that I didn’t like Little Lulu, but I really, really wanted to know about the romantic adventures of Archie, Veronica, Daisy, Jughead, and all that gang. I wanted to understand why the blond was never as popular as the brunette.
Comics are an art that draws in young and old. But they have not often received attention as an art. Until now.
Nora Hickey reports at the art magazine Hyperallergic, “In an unendingly flat city nicknamed ‘Cowtown,’ the Ohio State University (OSU) erupts as an archetypal college campus. A miscellany of stone and brick buildings from various eras look over pedestrian paths bisecting green lawns. In one of these limestone, academy-coded buildings resides a museum and library dedicated to a genre long thought to be miles from the ivory tower: comics.
“The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum claims to house the world’s largest collection of cartoon- and comics-related materials, including a range of inked paper, artifacts, newspaper clips, magazines, scrapbooks, and even the drawing board used by Chester Gould, who created the Dick Tracy comic strip (1931—77).
“But it is much more than an archive: it is at once a museum, center for scholarship, and venue for events, all of it surprisingly accessible. … First, it costs nothing to attend. Also, the materials and displays are easy for anyone to understand, comics aficionado or not. And, if you — that is, anybody — want to see any of the holdings, you can request to view it onsite.
“This approachability may be due in part to the fact that the comics genre has been routinely underestimated, despite its outsize impact. It’s one of the only historically disposable art forms — think of those painstakingly conceived, drawn, inked, and colored newspaper funny strips smeared with wet from their hasty relegation to the recycling bin. …
” ‘The Billy Ireland was founded back in 1977 through a donation from the cartoonist Milton Caniff — who was at one point one of the most successful and influential American cartoonists in American history,’ explains Caitlin McGurk, curator of Comics and Cartoon Art and associate professor at OSU. Caniff, a ‘celebrity’ artist (‘he would appear on late night TV,’ McGurk tells me) who created the widely read Terry and the Pirates (1934–73) and Steve Canyon (1947–88) adventure newspaper strips, was an Ohioan and a 1930 alum of OSU. As he prepared for retirement, he aimed to donate all of his work to the library of the university to which he felt he owed his career. ‘The libraries at OSU actually turned it down,’ McGurk told Hyperallergic in an interview. …
We show visitors the archive and people cry — especially if you’re a maker of this form that has been so long disrespected.
“Luckily, as Caniff produced newspaper comic strips, the journalism department decided to take his archives. … With Caniff’s encouragement of his fellow comic creators and Caswell’s outreach, the Billy Ireland would become a top choice for donations.
“Bill Watterson, for instance, the famously private artist of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes (1985–95), entrusted his entire backlog to the museum — the only collection in the world to hold his archive. There are also lesser-known treasures, like the namesake of the museum itself, editorial cartoonist Billy Ireland, whose fame waned after his death but was resurrected by the Museum. …
“Behind the Ink: the Making of Comics and Cartoons … explores the variety of tools and art-making techniques employed by cartoonists over the years. The other current exhibit is Depicting Mexico and Modernism: Gordo by Gus Arriola, which details the life and work of the Modernist Mexican-American cartoonist. Then, in May, a bonanza exhibition of the sardonic, iconic Nancy goes up, accompanied by a weekend-long Nancy fest on the 24 and 25 where Nancy scholars, cartoonists, and fans will dig into their favorite wisecracking character.
“Below the exhibition spaces are the archives themselves. ‘Since OSU is part of a land grant institution, our archive is completely open to the public, which is pretty rare,’ McGurk explains. Some highlights are zines from the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1980s, which bear the raw emotion of their creators, and scrapbooks of cartoon engravings kept by a wealthy English family in the 1700s that painstakingly depict events long past. … There’s also a collection of 2.5 million comic strips saved by a single man (Bill Blackbeard). Personally, I loved seeing the colorful mid-century manga laid out as a huge page of frenzied activity punctuated by moments of photorealistic pictures.
“The ability to see the comics in all stages of development — from nascent sketches, to embryonic penciled pages, to White’d Out and inked final pages — is a rare treat because of how such work is typically experienced: in reproduction on a mass scale, in frequent installments. To see the original version of a comic read by so many of us feels like seeing the artist at work. …
“ ‘We show visitors the archive and people cry — especially if you’re a maker of this form that has been so long disrespected,’ McGurk said. ‘Then you see this place and you’re like, all this is for comics? This is amazing.’ “
More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall but subscrptions are encouraged.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, cartoon, comics, museum, ohio | 2 Comments »
Photo: Jastrow at Wikimedia.
Slab with dedicatory Aramaic inscription to the god Salm. Sandstone, 5th century BC. Found in Tayma, Saudi Arabia, by Charles Huber in 1884. Now in the Louvre.
Among the world’s many endangered languages is one cherished today by a branch of Christianity in Iraq, a language close to the Aramaic Jesus spoke.
Sara Hassan reports at PRI’s The World, “In a small church in Baghdad, Iraq, a couple dozen people have gathered for prayers on a sunny Sunday morning. They stand in pews facing a crimson-colored curtain and a podium with a gold Syriac cross on it. The distinctive cross has a total of 12 circles at its points to represent the 12 disciples of Jesus.
“The congregants are reciting their prayers in an ancient language called Syriac. Today, it’s spoken mostly by Christians in Iraq and neighboring Syria. The language traces its roots to Aramaic, which was the script of the original Christian Bible and spoken by Jesus Christ. And it’s part of the family of Semitic languages in the Middle East region.
“The Syriac language is disappearing, with fewer and fewer people speaking it. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.
“But now, after campaigning by some groups, a newly launched television channel, Al-Syriania, with funding from the Iraqi government, is hoping to change that. The community says it’s a good move toward preserving Syriac and in helping people stay connected with their language and culture.
“The channel has about 40 staff members and can be viewed in Iraq and around the world through satellite networks, such as NileSat and ArabSat. It’s a sister station of Al-Iraqiya, an Arabic television network that was set up in the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, which also broadcasts in Kurdish and Turkmen.
“The news bulletins for the new channel are read in classical Syriac, but many of the other programs — which include cinema, art, history, cultural events and music — are presented in a dialect of the language.
“ ‘We have daily segments, like news and morning shows, and also, documentary programs about the history of the church and historical sites,’ said Jack Anwia, the station director. ‘We also play classical Syriac songs and music, the top-100 movies, and we have correspondents reporting from the field.’ …
“In 2003, the country was home to about 1.5 million Christians. Since then, that number has dropped to about 400,000. The war caused many of them to flee to other safer countries. But much of the decline also followed the onslaught of ISIS in 2014, which targeted Christians and other minorities.
“Many of the families settled down in other countries around the world, and younger generations have tried to adopt the languages of their host countries to assimilate better, losing touch with Syriac unless it’s spoken at home. …
“[Father Qasha Shamoun, a priest at the Ancient Church of the East in Baghdad] said the security situation has improved in Iraq over the past several years, but the Christian community is so small that it’s hard to bring people together for programs. … He added that Al-Syriania has been good for providing Syriac programming and that people in his community have told him they like watching it.
“Hundreds of Syriac books and manuscripts have still survived decades of war and migration. In fact, right before ISIS fighters captured large parts of northern Iraq in 2014, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Najeeb Michaeel, rescued a collection of centuries-old Syriac manuscripts as he fled.
“Now, many of them are preserved at the Digital Center for Eastern Manuscripts in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, which is supported by UNESCO, USAID and the Catholic Dominican Order.
“Back at the news station, Anwia said that it’s important not to lose Syriac. ‘It is one of the oldest languages of Iraq,’ he said. ‘And it needs to be protected from extinction.’ ”
More at The World, here.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aramaic, iraq, language, Syriac, vanishing | 7 Comments »
Photo: Jace Downs/AMC via AP.
A scene from the show The Walking Dead. Producers of season two of Walking Dead: Dead City are looking for extras in Boston. Click here.
Despite research from the Federal Reserve and others showing that film tax credits hurt the finances of states more than they help, they remain enormously popular.
Jon Campbell writes at the Gothamist about a recent New York study that is skeptical about this kind of tax credit. He also reports that many people just want to believe.
“New York’s $700 million-a-year tax break for film and TV productions isn’t providing taxpayers with a good return on investment, according to a new analysis commissioned by the state itself.
“The state Department of Taxation and Finance quietly released a 359-page report late last month analyzing New York’s major tax incentive programs, which are meant to attract and retain businesses. The analysis, authored by consultant PFM Group, was required by lawmakers two years ago.
“The results show a decidedly mixed bag, with some tax breaks — including the state’s marquee Excelsior Jobs Program — performing well, the report found. But the return for the state’s Film Tax Credit, which Gov. Kathy Hochul and lawmakers boosted by $280 million annually last year, was not nearly as positive.
‘Based on an objective weighing of the costs and benefits, the film production credit is at best a break-even proposition and more likely a net cost to the state,’ according to the report.
“For every dollar the state gave in tax breaks from 2018 through 2022, the Film Tax Credit drew an estimated 15 cents in direct tax revenue, the analysis found. …
“The state’s biggest industry-specific tax break belongs to the film industry, which gets $700 million a year to film or do post-production work in the Empire State. Hochul and legislative leaders are big supporters of the program, which has helped lure hundreds of productions over the years.
“The tax break can be considerable. It covers up to 30% of a film’s qualified production costs, with another 10% available if productions are filmed in certain counties north of New York City. The credit is also refundable, meaning the state pays out the excess money if it exceeds a film production’s tax bill. …
“Beyond the lackluster return on investment, PFM’s report surmised that much of the filming that occurred in New York would have happened regardless of the tax credit. … When adding indirect and induced jobs — employees who don’t work directly on production but whose employment stems from it — that return rises to 31 cents. …
“[A] prior state analysis, crafted by Regional Economic Models Inc., estimated the Film Tax Credit generated $1.70 in state and local tax revenue for every dollar the state gave up in 2021 and 2022.
“E.J. McMahon, founder of the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank, argued that the prior analysis was too simplistic and assumed the film industry wouldn’t have created any jobs without the tax breaks. PFM’s analysis, he wrote, was ‘meatier’ and ‘less credulous.’ …
“PFM estimated the Excelsior program has a return of $5.25 in tax revenue for every $1 the state forgoes, when including indirect and induced jobs.
“[State Sen. James Skoufis, a Hudson Valley Democrat who pushed for the new report in the state budget] said the report’s findings on the Film Tax Credit fell in line with his expectations.
“ ‘There are some of us, myself included, that believe that the Film Tax Credit and the associated entertainment tax credits are such a bad deal that they ought to be repealed,’ he said. ‘But the politics is the politics in the state Legislature, and that continues to remain an uphill climb.’ …
“Josh Levin, vice president for state government affairs for the Motion Picture Association’s Northeast Region, said New York’s Film Tax Credit is ‘essential’ for ensuring the state ‘retains its position as a top hub for production activity and union jobs.’ …
“Lawmakers extended the Film Tax Credit for an additional 10 years. It’s scheduled to run through 2034.” More at Gothamist, here.
Maybe constituents’ delight in seeing movies being filmed in their neighborhoods is what motivates lawmakers. In that case, how about accounting for it differently — as a state expense for resident entertainment?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged economy, entertainment, film tax credit, research, return on investment, skepticism | Leave a Comment »
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