Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Mapping Underground Fungi

January 3, 2024 by suzannesmom

Sometimes called a Fairy Circle, fungi like these tell a story of what is going on underground.

I don’t know as much about about fungi as New Zealand blogger Spores, Moulds, and Fungi — who posts some amazing photos from time to time — but in recent years, I have gotten interested in mushrooms and more.

Part of the reason is that I am noticing that they are beautiful. But also, as Jonathan Moens reports at the Washington Post, a few bags of dirt with the right fungi “could make the planet more resilient to climate change.”

Moens begins his story in Kazakhstan.

“A team of scientists loaded into a gray minivan [earlier] this year and drove for hundreds of miles west through the Kazakh steppe — a vast region marked by endless open plains of grass, abandoned farms and flower-filled meadows.

“It’s a desolate, semiarid landscape, but just a few inches below the ground may lie one of the most diverse fungi ecosystems on Earth.

“Across much of the planet, thin, wildly interconnected filamentous structures — known as ‘mycelium’ — hold the earth together. When these underground fungi come together, they form sophisticated systems known as ‘mycorrhizal networks.’ The Kazakh steppe, which stretches from the north of the Caspian Sea to the Altai Mountains, is one of the largest dry steppes in the world and is predicted to have a wild diversity of mycorrhizal fungi. But as the region becomes increasingly desert-like, many of these fungi may disappear.

” ‘There’s a time limit, 100 percent,’ said Justin Stewart, an evolutionary ecologist who led the mapping expedition. ‘If we collect a sample when it’s already a desert, then we’ve already lost all that diversity.’

“The Kazakhstan mission is part of a worldwide project led by the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, or SPUN, a scientific research organization dedicated to mapping out underground fungi. The goal is to sample soil in 10,000 biodiversity hot spots across the world to create a global picture of what species of fungi exist and where.

“The team identified these areas using a predictive map based on thousands of observations and environmental data. In it, the Kazakh steppe stood out because of its wide-ranging diversity of ecosystems.

Understanding which mycorrhizal fungi survive in the harsh temperatures there may help scientists determine how these fungal communities might adapt to the climate crisis as droughts, fires and desertification become more prevalent.

“The researchers chose three areas of the steppe, each with a different climate: They began in the southern deserts, then drove out west to an area dominated by vast grasslands, agricultural lands and meadows. They ended north, near the Russian border, where they entered a forest ecosystem.

“At each site they took tens of samples by mapping out a grid with measuring tape, pounding a tube into the ground to extract the soil and storing this soil in a plastic bag for mixing. These samples may help scientists unlock secrets that could one day help ecosystems capture more carbon dioxide and restore soil health — as well as the trees, plants and animal life that rely on it. …

“Mycorrhizal fungi often form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. They trade essential nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon, and act as an extended root system, allowing plants to access water they can’t reach.

“These networks may also prove to be invaluable for transporting carbon underground, a study published in June found. About 13 gigatons of carbon fixed by vegetation — equivalent to about one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in one year — flows through underground fungi, according to an analysis of nearly 200 data sets.

“In the steppe, these plant-fungal benefits may be short-lived, however. While deserts are a natural part of Kazakhstan’s ecosystem, more than half of the country’s vegetation and drylands is at risk of becoming desert as well. The main drivers are large-scale intensive agriculture and increasingly warm and dry temperatures brought by climate change. …

“As the minivan moves northwest toward Kostanay, a city about 100 miles away from Russia’s southern border, the clay-red, barren landscapes give way to endless fields of grass. Herds of horses reared for meat consumption trot along the wide expanse while eagles circle the skies in search of prey.

“For hundreds of years, the steppe was a region of nomadic herders. In the 1950s, under Soviet rule, the government mobilized thousands of young volunteers to produce as much grain as possible in order to alleviate food shortages, an initiative known as the virgin lands campaign.

“The fields were extensively plowed, which degraded the soil, and were later abandoned because they were not productive. ‘It had an impact on vegetation, on steppe species — it’s now very fragmented in the northern part,’ said Alyona Koshkina, a researcher at the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan, a national conservation group.

“The farming damaged the fungi networks, too, by ripping them out of the ground and stripping the soil of nutrients. The researchers hope the samples here give them more information on what kinds of fungi are able to survive in such unfavorable conditions, and compare it to other sites, such as forests and meadows.

“Over the years, the fields have had time to slowly recover, but they face new threats. Since 2021, the Kazakh government has been working on a nine-year project to bolster the livestock sector in the steppe.

“While grazing of the grasslands can help these ecosystems thrive, overgrazing may lead to further desertification, Koshkina said. To restore the steppe would mean winding back the clock to its pre-Soviet era, when the region was largely undisturbed or ‘pristine,’ she said. …

“Conservationists agree that the health of aboveground vegetation is inextricably linked to that of below-ground biodiversity. As such, mycorrhizal fungi may play an important role in shaping the steppe’s future. …

“Studying the steppe’s fungi could help scientists figure out whether they could thrive in other, similar climates. One way to test this would be via inoculation. If, for instance, SPUN’s work revealed that pristine steppes had higher mycorrhizal diversity compared with more degraded land, those same fungi could be transferred elsewhere to test whether they improve soil quality.”

More at the Post, here. A good person to follow at X, formerly known as Twitter, is Sam Knowlton, @samdknowlton, who works with fungi to improve soil health in agriculture.

See also the Guardian, here, where Fiona Harvey has more about mapping the world’s fungi. She quotes Jane Goodall, adviser to the SPUN project: “An understanding of underground fungal networks is essential to our efforts to protect the soil, on which life depends, before it is too late.”

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

Recent Photos and a Song

January 2, 2024 by suzannesmom

I have a great attachment to my anthurium (above), which my niece and nephew gave me in early 2020 after my sister died. The plant told me her name was Gladys. I like to wish her Good Morning and ask how she’s doing.

Artist Kit Howard Burns, a college classmate, saw a great blue heron in the root of a fallen tree. Isn’t it great?

Next, you may think you see a bench, but it’s really a story of sun and shadow. I look everywhere for these stories in winter, when they may appear only for a few moments.

The annual gingerbread competition at the Colonial Inn inspired the next artwork, Verrill Farm’s version of the Barbie movie. My husband pointed out the pretzel fence, which I missed at first.

I’m still trying to figure out the characters I saw in the bushes near Jeanne’s house. Tell me what they are, if you know. The woman looks like a Disney gal, but are those soldiers that I see climbing a nearby branch? They look dangerous.

On New Year’s Day, I took advantage of the cold and quiet to trespass on the temporarily unused golf course. Nearly every day I walk along the road that runs beside it, and I always feel tempted to disobey the “No Trespassing” signs. I wonder if 2024 is going to be a year of disobedience.

Neighbor Lynne Stinson’s beautiful photo of the moon coming through clouds says to me 2024 could be almost anything.

Finally, here’s a version of “My Way” you may like. I never cared much for the song when it was all about Frank Sinatra doing it his way, but notice how much more meaningful it seems in Spanish. I heard this on the jazz station, wicn.org. Check it out.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Climate Confuses Haiku Poets

January 1, 2024 by suzannesmom

Photo: Justin McCurry/The Guardian.
A path along the Sendaibori river in eastern Tokyo, Japan, that is dotted with tablets showing haiku by Matsuo Bashō, Japan’s most revered poet. 

Happy New Year, Everyone! This year I want to do more things to reduce carbon emissions. Eat less beef? Compost more? Drive less? Turn down the heat and air conditioning? Some things are harder to do in community living, but I will find a way to influence group conservation.

Among the many areas threatened by climate change, there is one you probably never have thought about: the haiku!

Justin McCurry, writing at the Guardian, is not entirely joking.

“Wooden tablets dotted along a path between office buildings and the Sendaibori river in eastern Tokyo mark the start of a journey by Japan’s most revered poet that would result in his greatest collection of verse. The tablets showing haiku by Matsuo Bashō are steeped in the seasonal certainties of the late 1600s. There are references to full moons, chirping cicadas and, of course, cherry blossoms.

“Awareness of the seasons, and the seamless transition from one to the next, is found in myriad aspects of Japanese life [including] haiku poetry. Almost four centuries later, Bashō’s words continue to inspire admiration and countless amateur exponents of the 17-syllable form. But they are also a reminder that haiku faces what some of its enthusiasts fear is an existential threat: the climate crisis.

“The poems displayed at regular intervals along the Sendaibori promenade are intended to evoke the cooler climes of autumn, but this year they feel off kilter even though it is late September. …

“One of the poems encapsulates the feeling of seasonal misalignment.

“Ishiyama no
“Ishi yori shiroshi
“Aki no kaze

“A whiteness whiter
“than the stones of Stone Mountain
“The wind in autumn

“Bashō wrote those words after a visit to a hilltop temple in Komatsu, near the Japan Sea coast, on 18 September 1689. Read contemporaneously, they would have evoked the arrival of cooler, crisper days. … Today, though, they belong not just to another century, but to an age of symmetry between culture and the seasons that is being irrevocably blurred by the climate crisis.

“Japan is no stranger to extreme weather, but summers once described as uncomfortably muggy are now so hot that they represent a real threat to human life, especially among Japan’s large and growing population of older people. …

“The climate crisis is wreaking havoc on the Saijiki – the ‘year-time almanac’ of thousands of seasonal words that are widely acknowledged as acceptable for inclusion in haiku. A kigo could refer to a particular plant or animal, the weather, seasonal festivals, the sky and the heavens. When read at a corresponding time of the year, it is supposed to stir emotions in the reader.

“ ‘With kigo, you’re compressing three or four months into a single word,’ says David McMurray, a haiku poet who has curated the Asahi Shimbun newspaper’s Haikuist Network column since 1995. ‘Take the word mosquito … the entire summer is packed into that one word, and it conjures up so many images.’

“The premature first pops of sakura buds in spring and and the arrival of typhoons in the summer instead of the autumn are two notable examples of seasonal dissonance.

“ ‘The seasons are important to haiku because they focus on one particular element,’ adds McMurray, a professor of intercultural studies at the International University of Kagoshima. … ‘The risk is that we will lose the central role of the four seasons in composing haiku, and the Saijiki will essentially become a historical document. The Saijiki is very specific in the way it presents the words. But they no longer reflect reality.’ …

” ‘Take koharubiyori, a kigo of late autumn to early winter used to express a day of warm, mild, sunny, almost springlike weather in the midst of harshly cold days, associated with a sense of soothing and comfort,’ [Etsuya Hirose, a professional haiku poet] told the Nikkei business newspaper. ‘Nowadays, more days are warm at that time of year, so you can’t really empathize with that kigo, that season and emotion.’ …

“According to Toshio Kimura, a poet and director of the Haiku International Association, warmer, more unpredictable weather is blurring the transition from one season to the next, but haiku has the versatility to [adapt]. ‘The purpose of haiku is not to praise seasons themselves, but to try to see the human essence through nature.’ “

Read at the Guardian, here, about how an “understated form of environmental activism is now making its way into haiku.” No paywall.

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

Advice: Practice Handwriting

December 31, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: WedMD.
People who let their handwriting go often need small-motor exercises later. Ideas for working on hands with osteoarthritis may be found at WebMD, here.

It’s always something, isn’t it? We like the convenience of keyboarding — not to mention suggested words popping up in text messaging, saving us strokes — but what if there’s a downside? What if our hands lose their versatility?

At the Washington Post, Gina Rich notes that “Writing by hand may feel difficult for many of us as we engage less in fine motor activities and use devices more. …

“Handwriting is a fine motor skill that isn’t innately learned; it needs to be taught and practiced. It also is a skill that benefits us by stimulating our brain: We remember information better when we write it down by hand, research shows.

“But for many of us, handwriting can feel difficult as we turn to smartphones, other devices and even robots for many of our hand tasks.

“And with cursive dropped from Common Core State Standards in 2010 in the United States, children have few opportunities to learn and practice; for some, handwriting has been relegated to an extracurricular activity.

“The problem isn’t only that we’re practicing less. Technology has changed the way we use our hands. Also, the more time we spend on our devices, the greater the probability of problems with our hands and wrists, such as pain, weakness and nerve changes.

“ ‘It’s like going to the gym,’ said Mellissa Prunty, an occupational therapist at Brunel University London and chair of the National Handwriting Association in the United Kingdom. ‘When you write for long periods of time but you don’t do it often, you are going to feel tired and fatigued.’

“The hand-brain connection is stronger when we write something by hand vs. typing it, said Paula Heinricher, an occupational therapist and national presenter for Learning Without Tears, which trains educators in subjects, including handwriting. Although we might be able to take more notes on a keyboard than by hand, ‘there’s also research that shows when you write by hand, there is a deeper brain connection and a deeper understanding, and you retain that information longer,’ she said. …

“The ability to write quickly and legibly also has a critical link with academic performance. A 2013 study found that children who had good handwriting skills in preschool performed better in reading and math in second grade. And in a 2019 study of 141 first-graders in four schools in Italy, children who were taught cursive developed better reading and writing skills compared with a control group. …

“While there is little hard evidence that fewer students are taking notes or completing assignments by hand now compared with years past, children’s use of devices has increased, especially in the pandemic years, parents said.

There’s no benefit to using one part of the hand so extensively, Inal said, but there are risks.

“But devices aren’t the only culprit. In general, we’re not engaging in as many fine motor activities as in the past, said Ritu Goel, a certified hand therapist at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

“With keyless entry, for instance, many of us no longer turn a key to unlock our car or the front door; instead, we push a button or tap out a code. So the lateral pinch, a fine motor motion, ‘is becoming a little less used in day-to-day activity,’ Goel said. …

“With the repetitive pinching motion of texting, ‘only one muscle is doing really hard work,’ said study author Esra Erkol Inal, associate professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation at Reyap Hospital Istanbul. There’s no benefit to using one part of the hand so extensively, Inal said, but there are risks. …

“A study of neurology patients at a Turkish university found that people diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome spent more hours per day on their smartphones than those without hand or wrist complaints. …

“Even as we continue to use technology and devices, we can bolster our handwriting muscles with a few strategies.

“Make sure your smartphone isn’t too big. If our smartphone is large relative to our hand, we wind up reaching across it more, which can cause thumb pain, Goel said. You should be able to hold your smartphone comfortably in one hand with a good grasp.

“Use devices mindfully: Her teenage patients scoff, but Goel advises texting with the index finger — not thumbs — while holding the smartphone in the other hand. Give yourself cues to take breaks from scrolling, such as by setting alarms on your phone. And don’t forget posture: When working at a desk, Inal stores her phone in a smartphone stand and strives to keep herself vertical, rather than hunched over.

“Stretch and strengthen: If your hands are cramping, Goel recommends tendon gliding exercises, movements to bend and straighten different joints. You can also perform what’s called a prayer stretch by bringing your palms together with your elbows out and pointing your fingertips upward for a wrist extension. Reverse the exercise with a wrist flexion, directing your fingertips down so the backs of your hands touch. In addition, Goel suggests rolling your hands across therapeutic putty, Play-Doh or a small rolling pin.

“Completing tasks without assistive devices will help strengthen the small stabilizing muscles in your hands. For instance, using a manual can opener engages your gripping and pinching muscles, Kruse said.”

More at the Post, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

When Tribes Regain Land

December 30, 2023 by suzannesmom

Map: Wikipedia.
Eastern Abenaki tribes (Penobscot, Kennebec, Arosaguntacook, Pigwacket/Pequawket). Indigenous people often exhibit the best stewardship of natural resources.

What can we learn from people who have been taught from infancy how to live in harmony with the natural world? In an op-ed at the Washington Post, Bina Venkataraman suggests that “in Maine, a return of tribal land shows how conservation can succeed. …

“On a recent morning at the Penobscot Nation headquarters, moose mating rituals dominated the office banter: the wacky way a lovesick moose had stumbled around someone’s pickup truck [when] he heard a hunter’s [mating call]. …

“The Penobscot Nation’s record of caring for nature while still using it — hunting moose and duck while keeping their populations steady, selectively harvesting timber to preserve forests and restoring rivers to support fisheries — inspired an effort to return a 31,000-acre tract of forested land to tribal ownership.

“Late last year, the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group, bought the parcel from an industrial timber company, and today it announced it will give the land to the tribe once it pays off $32 million in loans. …

“The land is close to Mount Katahdin, sacred in Penobscot tradition, and to an 87,000-acre national monument created in 2016 in the North Woods of Maine. It contains 53 miles of streams in the watershed of the Penobscot River, which has been for the tribe a central highway and a source of food and water.

“The transfer is part of a movement to return lands to Indigenous stewardship and work with tribal communities to protect biodiversity. The hope is both to restore justice for tribes that were long ago stripped of their ancestral homelands and to learn from long-standing Indigenous practices new ways to save a beleaguered planet. The pending land return in Maine, or ‘rematriation’ as some Indigenous people call it, stands out because of its scale — many previous land returns in the eastern United States have been on the order of hundreds of acres — and because the Penobscot will decide how the land will be managed.

“This is a significant change. For most of the past two centuries, Western conservationists have largely ignored Indigenous people’s knowledge of landscapes and wildlife, along with tribes’ historic claims to the land. But that is no longer tenable. Worldwide, Indigenous-managed lands host 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, by some estimates, and encompass much of the world’s remaining intact forests, savannas and marshes. If environmentalists and political leaders hope to conserve more natural landscapes … collaboration with tribal nation leaders is critical.

Modern environmentalism has been deprived of Indigenous knowledge, in part, because it has seen nature as something apart from humans.

“Early thinkers hold some responsibility for this. John Muir, long lauded as the father of the national parks, believed that natural landscapes needed to be stripped of the Native Americans who lived on them to create his ideal of pristine wilderness. In the Muir tradition, the U.S. government drove tribal people out of areas that today are considered America’s most beloved landscapes — Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades — a history documented by David Treuer, an Ojibwe writer.

“The federal government created the National Bison Range in 1908 by evicting tribal members from more than 18,000 acres of the Flathead Indian Reservation — ignoring century-old practices for keeping up the bison herd. Only recently has the government returned the land to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, whose successful traditional methods for maintaining the herd are featured in a forthcoming ABC documentary.

“When Henry David Thoreau … traveled to the Maine woods in the 19th century, he distinguished between ‘scientific men’ and Indian guides, even as he acknowledged the latter’s navigational expertise. It’s laughable now to think that communities that had inhabited a place for centuries, gaining intimate knowledge of the natural features, flora and fauna and passing down that knowledge across generations, could have less to offer scientifically than settlers encountering those lands for the first time. Yet it was only last year that the U.S. government formally recognized how much tribes can contribute to ecological knowledge of their ancestors’ landscapes. …

“For decades, tribal members in Maine advocated bringing down Penobscot River dams that once powered saw and paper mills to restore an Atlantic salmon fishery. The Penobscot method of timber harvesting, which leaves 75- to 100-foot buffers of trees around rivers and streams, creates ideal conditions for salmon. Salmon like to spawn upriver in shady pools, created by allowing the forest at a river’s edge to thicken and birch trees to fall into it. …

“Some evidence suggests that, globally, the track record for Indigenous management of wildlife is at least as good as that of formal conservation. Researchers have shown, for instance, that Indigenous-managed lands in Canada, Australia and Brazil contain biodiversity equivalent to that of areas designated for conservation.

“But perfect alignment between tribes and environmental groups doesn’t always happen. The economic challenges that many tribes face — and their efforts to acquire land to reclaim sovereignty — often force tough decisions about development, gambling and heavy industry. Some tribal nations have greenlighted oil and gas drilling. The Penobscot have allied with conservationists to oppose a proposed zinc mine in northern Maine because of its likely harm to fisheries. But several tribal members expressed to me their misgivings about wind farms, which most environmentalists see as essential to combat climate change.

“Penobscot leaders have varying visions about how they might one day develop the land that is now being returned to them. Some imagine using it to adapt to sea-level rise — by building housing or growing food; others envision ecotourism lodges or a cultural center that could be accessed by the general public. In the near term, tribal leaders aim to make it accessible to hikers and hunters with permits and to offer public access to the national monument via an old logging road.

“In other parts of North America, co-management of conservation areas is becoming more common. … Groups such as the Trust for Public Land and the Nature Conservancy are brokering more land returns and collaborating with tribes to manage ecologically important landscapes. But more private landowners, philanthropists, nonprofit groups and governments should mimic the efforts in Maine. …

“Environmental movements might have better protected nature if they had long sought to conserve cultures and communities along with land. Earning the trust now of people who have inherited wisdom for living in balance with nature will give conservation a fighting chance on a warming planet.”

More at the Post, here.

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

Leadership at 97

December 29, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: The Guardian.
Ninety-seven-year-old equestrian and botanist Margaret Bradshaw is the chief caretaker of some of the UK’s rarest flowers. 

Where we live now, the majority of people are not as involved in the world as they used to be. But there are those who stay “in the fray,” embracing all the abrasions and adjustments that rubbing up against the world brings.

At the Guardian, Phoebe Weston reports on Margaret Bradshaw, 97, of Teesdale, UK, who fights to preserve a unique mix of plants in her region and intends to keep moving. Often on horseback.

“Margaret Bradshaw crouches on all fours on Widdybank Fell in Teesdale, being drenched by sheets of horizontal rain. The 97-year-old botanist mumbles the names of arcane plants as she scours the damp ground.

“This part of the uplands is a seemingly empty landscape, heavily grazed by sheep, but it hides botanical treasures that have been here for more than 10,000 years. Some of the plants can’t be found anywhere else in the UK and – until Bradshaw arrived on the scene – many were unaccounted for.

“Bradshaw is the chief caretaker of some of the country’s rarest flowers. She has spent seven decades obsessively studying the unique arctic-alpine flora of Teesdale, in the north of England. …

“Where once they were widespread in Britain, now only fragments remain, and 28 species are threatened with extinction.

“ ‘Everything about Teesdale is unique,’ says Bradshaw with pride – and the authority of someone who has just written a 288-page book on the subject.

“Teesdale’s Special Flora: Places, Plants and People was published as part of the Princeton Wild Guides series in February. The ‘Teesdale assemblage’ is celebrated because it is a mix of alpine-arctic flowers and southern European species; nowhere else in Britain do they all grow together.

“Now, though, the area’s unique attributes are under threat. Bradshaw has been recording rare plants here since the early 1950s and has witnessed great declines. [She] first heard about Teesdale when she was a student at Leeds University almost 80 years ago. ‘It stuck in my mind,’ she says. ‘I knew it had a special flora.’ She moved to the area, having never been there before, and did a doctorate in botany at Durham University.

“After a 20-year stint in Devon from 1980, she returned to Teesdale and found all plants had ‘decreased substantially.’ Since the 1960s, plant abundance has dropped by 54% on average. Some have essentially disappeared, such as the dwarf milkwort, down by 98%, and the hoary whitlow-grass, down by 100% (there is now just one recorded plant). …

“She says: ‘We’ve got various buildings in the country – Stonehenge, Durham Cathedral, and others; if they were crumbling away, there would be groups and money helping stop it, because people would say: “We can’t let this happen.” These flowers’ communities are much, much older, and in some respects they are more beautiful.’

“The main reason for the decline of these plants is an unusual one – not enough sheep. The number of sheep on the fells had been reduced by half by 2000, as the uplands were generally believed to be ‘overgrazed.’ Bradshaw says while some upland areas are ‘sheepwrecked,’ reducing grazing on Teesdale has been devastating. Longer grass overshadows the delicate flowers, taking away the light they need to grow.

“As a result of her findings and her work with farmers who graze the land – as well as Natural England, which manages it – sheep numbers are increasing and the timing of grazing is being carefully managed. This has led to the partial recovery of some plants.

“But the question of other factors looms: the effects of artificial fertilizers; rabbits, which have their own impact on grazing; and the climate crisis. …

“Bradshaw is committed to working these mysteries out – and is a model for how to live in your 90s. At 93, she set up Teesdale Special Flora Research and Conservation Trust to record rare plants and find people to continue her work in the future. A keen horse rider, at 95 she did a 55-mile (88km) horse trek across Teesdale, raising almost [$13,000] for the trust. I ask her the secret to longevity. ‘Just keep going,’ she says. ‘Keep at it. Don’t sit down and just watch the telly.’ ”

Check out the wildflower photos at the Guardian, here. No paywall.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Train Your Sense of Smell

December 28, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Trude Jonsson Stengel via Unsplash.
An artistic nose from Sweden. New research finds a connection between a healthy sense of smell and a healthy memory — meaning less dementia.

Back in the 1980s, we experimented with using a kerosene space heater for a cold room. The first time I smelled that burning kerosene, I was taken back to age 4 and the week my brother and I spent in a home that used kerosene heat. What about you? Can you think of memories triggered by a smell?

Nicola Davis reports at the Guardian, “Whether it is the waft of clove-studded oranges or the crisp fragrance of a fir tree, the festive season is filled with aromas that conjure Christmases past. Now researchers say our sense of smell, and its connection to our memory, could be used to help fight dementia.

“Our senses can worsen as a result of disease and old age. But while impairment to hearing or vision is quickly apparent, a decline in our sense of smell can be insidious, with months or even years passing before it becomes obvious.

“ ‘Although it can have other causes, losing your sense of smell can be an early sign of dementia,’ said Dr Leah Mursaleen, the head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, adding it was a potential indicator of damage in the olfactory region of the brain – that is, the part of the brain responsible for smell.

“That has led to researchers examining whether loss of smell could be used to diagnose conditions such as Alzheimer’s long before symptoms such as memory loss set in – an approach, experts say, that could allow patients access to drugs such as lecanemab early in the course of the disease, when they work best to slow cognitive decline.

“But just as research has suggested the use of hearing aids could reduce the risk of developing dementia, questions are being asked about whether bolstering our sense of smell could do the same. Could a declining sense of smell be a risk factor for cognitive decline, not just a symptom?

“ ‘Olfaction is intimately involved in many brain processes, and especially the emotional processing of stimuli,’ said Prof Thomas Hummel, of Technische Universität Dresden. Indeed, smells, memories and emotions are often tightly bound, with research revealing recollections triggered by scent tend to be rooted in our childhood. …

“Neurons involved in the olfactory system are also involved in other systems in the brain. Indeed, as Hummel and others note, some areas of the brain play a key role in cognitive and olfactory processes. As a result, if the sense of smell becomes dysfunctional, cognitive processing might also be affected.

“A number of studies have found that exposure to certain odors can either boost or hinder cognition. …

Work by Hummel and colleagues has suggested smell training in older people can improve their verbal function and subjective well-being.

“More pertinent still, a small study published last year, by researchers in Korea, revealed that intensive smell training led to improvements in depression, attention, memory and language functions in 34 patients with dementia compared with 31 participants with dementia who did not retrieve such training. …

“Intensive scent training takes time and effort. In an attempt to solve this problem, Dr Michael Leon, professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, and his team have come up with a device called Memory Air that emits 40 different smells twice a night, while people are sleeping – an approach Leon says allows ‘universal compliance.’ The hope is that exposing people to more smells, even when they are asleep, could strengthen their olfactory abilities.

“The team is about to start a large trial with the gadget among older adults without dementia, building on a smaller study that suggested the approach could improve memory performance in such participants. ‘We will then start a large trial with Alzheimer’s patients using that device,’ said Leon.

“In another small study, Dr Alex Bahar-Fuchs, a clinical neuropsychologist at Deakin University, Australia, is looking at whether training cognitively healthy older adults to distinguish smells using a scent-matching memory game can help improve wider aspects of memory and cognition, compared with using a similar game based on matching pictures. The approach, he said, goes further than passive exposure to odors by setting cognitive tasks for participants.

” ‘We believe that the neuroplastic properties of the olfactory centers in the brain might make it more likely that improved performance on olfactory memory will generalize, or transfer, to memory functions more broadly,’ he said.

“Meanwhile, Prof Victoria Tischler, at the University of Surrey, is working to learn more about how our olfactory function changes as we age normally.

“As part of their work, the team hopes to produce olfactory training kits suitable for healthy older people, those with mild cognitive impairment, and those living with dementia in care homes.

“Tischler said it was important to cherish our most enigmatic sense. ‘I would advise the public to look after their sense of smell, much like they look after other aspects of their sensory health,’ such as their eyesight, she said.”

Well, I’m convinced. I’m now going around ripping orange peels and sniffing them, breathing in ground coffee, chocolate, Christmas tree needles.

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall; donations encouraged.

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

Michelangelo’s Secret Room

December 27, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Bargello Museums, Florence.
Drawings believed to be by Michelangelo in the Stanza Segreta, or Secret Room, at the Museum of the Medici Chapels, part of the Bargello Museums and the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence.

It’s pretty unusual to find works by a master like Michelangelo centuries after his death, but that’s what happened in Florence in 1975. Now visitors — on a limited basis — are being allowed into the room where Michelangelo once hid out. It seems that even in hiding he couldn’t stop drawing.

Sarah Cascone reports at Artnet, “Guidebooks to the Italian city of Florence have long noted that the Basilica of San Lorenzo is home to a secret room believed to have been decorated by Michelangelo while the famed Renaissance master was in hiding from the pope for two months in 1530. Now the chamber, which is part of the the Museum of the Medici Chapels (itself one of the fives sites of the city’s Bargello Museums), will be open to the public for the first time. …

“The stunning drawings of the Stanza Segreta, or Secret Room, were rediscovered in 1975. That’s when Paolo Dal Poggetto, then director of the Museum of the Medici Chapels, tasked restorer Sabino Giovannoni with trying to clean part of the walls of a narrow chamber beneath the church’s mausoleum, which had been designed by Michelangelo in 1520.

“The corridor, measuring about 32 feet long, 10 feet wide, and eight feet tall, had been used it to store coal, until it had been sealed shut some 20 years prior. It was accessible only by narrow stairway beneath a trap door that had been concealed beneath a wardrobe amid a pile of unused furniture and decor.

“The initial plan was to potentially create a new tourist entry and exit point from the museum. But what Giovannoni found changed everything. Hidden under two layers of plaster, he soon realized, the walls were covered in large-scale charcoal and red chalk sanguine drawings executed with the confidence and ease of a master draftsman.

“ ‘The moment you enter that room you simply are speechless,’ Paola D’Agostino, director of the Bargello Museums, told the New York Times, adding that as your eyes adjust to the low light ‘you start seeing all the different drawings and all the different layers.’

“But why would Michelangelo have been sequestered in this subterranean space, with just a single window letting in light from the street above?

“At the time, the artist’s main patrons, the Medici family, had just returned from exile, having been overthrown by a populist revolt in 1527. Because Michelangelo had worked on behalf of the republican government, supervising the city’s fortifications, Pope Clement VII — a member of the family — had sentenced him to death.

“Hiding beneath the basilica was a way for Michelangelo to lay low until he was back in the pope’s good graces. Fortunately, the Medicis ended up forgiving Michelangelo about two months later, lifting the death sentence and allowing him to leave his (freshly decorated) hiding place to resume work on the family’s tombs at the basilica. …

“Be forewarned that there will still only be limited access to the Secret Room. The museum is making just 100 tickets — priced at €32 ($34), including access to the Medici Chapels — available for each week, with 15 minute slots for groups of four. There is a 45-minute gap between each visit, to limit the works’ exposure to light.” More at Artnet, here.

The Times, here, adds a description of “an imposing nude near the entrance, which has the sketch of a face in profile and looking forward. Experts say it evokes Michelangelo’s ‘Resurrection of Christ.’ [And some] scholars have suggested that Michelangelo could have drawn sketches of a falling man that resemble the central figure of his ‘The Fall of Phaeton.’ Some even think a flexed and disembodied arm on the wall evokes his David statue. What is certain, Ms. D’Agostino said, is that ‘nothing of this kind exists in the world of 16th-century drawings.’ ”

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

The Old Folks & the Curling Team

December 26, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Team Hood via the Guardian.
New Zealand curling skip Anton Hood with fan and Chartwell Colonel Belcher resident Bill Dench. The New Zealand team found a good place to live while in training — a retirement community in Calgary, Canada.

This is a story about a retirement community, a team from the other side of the world, and the unexpected benefits of co-housing.

Scott Cacciola reported at the New York Times early this year, “Ben Smith never could have imagined spending the winter at a retirement home in Calgary, Alberta, sipping Caesar cocktails with three of his best friends — Anton Hood, Brett Sargon and Hunter Walker — while their octogenarian neighbors play bridge and tabletop shuffleboard.

“In fact, the four men, who are professional curlers from New Zealand working on their Olympic aspirations in one of the world’s most celebrated curling hotbeds, have made themselves at home since moving into the Chartwell Colonel Belcher Retirement Residence, a senior living community on Calgary’s west side. They are the building’s newest tenants — and its youngest. …

“The story of how a team of young men wound up occupying two suites at a Canadian retirement home … involves luck, economics and word-of-mouth generosity among Calgary-area curlers. In the process, the arrangement has showcased the virtues of intergenerational living.

“ ‘Oh, we really were just shocked,’ said Bertha Esplen, 97. ‘We really were. Because all of a sudden we get curlers from New Zealand in our building. Man, that was great. We couldn’t wait for them to come.’

“Since arriving in September [2022], the team has financed its curling dreams by landing day jobs — Mr. Smith, 24, for example, works as a plumber four days a week — while acclimating to life in a sprawling community of surrogate grandparents and well-intentioned back-seat curlers.

“At least one resident has asked for a practice schedule so that he can taxi over to the Calgary Curling Club, where the team trains and Mr. Hood, 23, moonlights as an assistant ice technician, and offer advice. …

“They nitpick because they care. That became clear to Mr. Sargon a few weeks ago when he joined Mr. Hood at a curling tournament in Okotoks, about 25 miles south of Calgary. As soon as their match began, Mr. Sargon and Mr. Hood realized that they had their own fan club. Fourteen residents, armed with bag lunches and homemade signs, had made the trip via charter bus to cheer them on in a loss to a team led by Mike McEwen, one of the top curlers in Canada.

“For those unfamiliar: Curling is a winter sport that involves pushing heavy granite rocks down a long sheet of ice toward a target. And while it is hugely popular in Canada, curling does have some historical ties to New Zealand. Miners from Scotland brought an outdoor version of the game with them to the country during the gold rush of the 19th century, and it has persisted as a popular activity whenever the ponds on New Zealand’s South Island are cold enough to form a thick slab of ice at the surface. …

“Finding the game was easy enough for Mr. Hood, Mr. Smith and Mr. Walker, 21, all of whom grew up in Naseby, New Zealand, a small resort town that, for many years, was home to the Southern Hemisphere’s only dedicated indoor curling rink. Mr. Sargon, who is from Auckland, learned the game on hockey ice. …

“Mr. Sargon soon met the others through curling circles and formed a team. But to truly grasp the sport’s many nuances and reach their long-term goal of qualifying for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy — a process largely based on results at the world championships — Mr. Sargon and his teammates knew that they would need to immerse themselves in the game. That meant training in Canada. …

“The team spent several weeks training in Calgary last year ahead of the inaugural Pan Continental Curling Championships, which the city hosted. … Over the summer, Mr. Hood was chatting with Kim Forge, who sits on the board of the World Curling Federation, when he mentioned the team’s plans. The challenge, he told her, was finding affordable short-term housing in Calgary. …

“She posted a message on Facebook soliciting help from the Calgary curling community in locating ‘very cheap rent’ for Team Hood. …

“The post soon found its way to Cassandra Murray, a retirement living consultant at Chartwell Colonel Belcher who is a former competitive curler. She was brainstorming with Christine Taylor, a colleague, when they came up with a potential solution.

“ ‘You probably won’t want to do this, but we do have a couple of spare rooms,’ Ms. Murray wrote the team via Facebook Messenger.

“It should be noted that while Team Hood has a couple of sponsorships … curling is not an especially lucrative profession. … So when Ms. Murray offered them a place to stay for free, aside from a few dollars a month for utilities, they were thrilled. They also were glad to find a situation where they could blend more easily with the fabric of the city than they had last winter. What better way to do that than to share a roof with some of Calgary’s most esteemed residents? …

“Karl Berg, a director of regional operations and sales for Chartwell, endorsed the idea, citing a renewed emphasis on ‘socialization’ among its residents in the wake of the pandemic. He also was aware of a successful intergenerational living experiment in the Netherlands, where the presence of a few college students in a nursing home gave their older neighbors a greater sense of connection to the outside world and increased their mental stimulation.

“ ‘It’s been awesome watching people’s faces light up when we talk to them,’ Mr. Sargon said, ‘and now we’re really starting to get know more of them. Everyone buys into what we’re trying to do as well, which is cool. Everyone wants to tell us their curling story.’ ”

More at the Times, here, the CBC, here, and the Guardian, here.

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

Enemies Breaking Bread

December 25, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Wild Gratitude.

Many of us know about the World War I Christmas truce, when as many as 100,000 soldiers on European battlefronts lay down their arms for a night.

I’ve been saving up a similar story by Dave Kindy at the Washington Post — this one from World War II. It’s a lovely one, with a Loaves and Fishes angle.

“On Christmas Eve 1944, heavy snow blanketed the Hürtgen Forest in Germany, near the Belgian border. Inside a tiny cabin deep in the woods, 12-year-old Fritz Vincken and his mother, Elisabeth, listened to warplanes and artillery shells as the Battle of the Bulge neared its climax. …

“Months earlier, the mother and son had moved to the isolated cottage when their home in nearby Aachen had been destroyed by Allied bombing. For Fritz, who first recounted his story in a 1973 article for Reader’s Digest, the remote cabin offered a reprieve from the death and destruction of World War II.

“They were alone because Fritz’s father, Hubert, who baked bread for the German army, had recently been called into service as Allied armies pressed closer to Germany. …

“Less than two weeks earlier, the tranquility of the Hürtgen Forest had been shattered when Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt unleashed 30 divisions hidden in the nearby Ardennes Forest of Belgium for the last major German offensive of World War II. Vicious fighting erupted across the Western Front, including around the Vincken cabin, as Allied armies desperately tried to repel the surprise attack amid blizzard conditions.

“As mother and son prepared Christmas Eve dinner, they were startled by a knock on the door. The closest neighbors were miles away. With Fritz by her side, Elisabeth opened the door and saw three young soldiers, all armed. Two were standing; the third was lying in the snow with grievous wounds. The men spoke a language unknown to the Vinckens. Fritz realized they were Americans.

“ ‘I was almost paralyzed with fear, for though I was a child, I knew that harsh law of war: Anyone giving aid and comfort to the enemy would be shot,’ Fritz later remembered.

“Elisabeth also knew the penalty for harboring Americans. But the soldier bleeding in the snow was young enough to be her son. She motioned for all three to enter the tiny cabin. Fritz and his mother helped the severely injured man into a bed and tended to his wounds.

“None of the Americans spoke German, but Elisabeth and one of the men communicated in French. Elisabeth, seeking to stretch their meager meal to accommodate the guests, told Fritz, Go get Hermann.’

Hermann was a rooster being fattened in case Hubert made it home for dinner. He was named for Hermann Göring, a Nazi leader for whom Elisabeth had little regard.

“Suddenly, there was another knock on the door. Fritz opened it, expecting to see more Americans lost in the forest. Instead, he was alarmed to find four German soldiers. The young men had become separated from their unit and were looking for shelter from the cold.

“Elisabeth went outside to speak with the new arrivals, telling them they were welcome to spend the night but had to leave their weapons outside. When the young Wehrmacht corporal started to object, Elisabeth looked at him sternly and said, ‘It is the Holy Night and there will be no shooting here.’

“While the Germans placed their weapons next to the woodpile, Elisabeth went back into the cabin and returned with the Americans’ guns. When they were all gathered inside, the enemies stared at each other in stony silence. …

“Elisabeth took command of the scene, Fritz wrote in Reader’s Digest, and had the combatants mingle close together. …

“When the wounded American started moaning, one of the Wehrmacht soldiers examined him. He had been a medical student before the war. … Eventually, everyone began to relax. Both groups of soldiers searched their backpacks for food to share. The Wehrmacht corporal contributed a bottle of red wine and loaf of rye bread.

“Soon the soup was served. Elisabeth bowed her head and said grace. Fritz remembered seeing tears in his mother’s eyes and noticed that some of the soldiers wept too, perhaps thinking of their families far away or feeling grateful that they wouldn’t have to fight on Christmas Eve. …

“Fritz always hoped to meet the soldiers again, though he knew his chances of seeing the Germans were not good, given their staggering casualty rate at the end of the war. He thought publicity might help, starting with his 1973 Reader’s Digest article, which President Ronald Reagan mentioned in a 1986 speech. In 1995, Fritz appeared on national television, telling his story on Unsolved Mysteries to host Robert Stack.

“A nursing home chaplain in Frederick, Md., saw the episode and remembered a resident telling a similar story. He contacted the TV producers about Ralph Blank. In 1996, Fritz flew to Maryland to meet with Blank, who was 76 and in poor health. They recognized each other immediately. …

“The reunion was filmed and shown on Unsolved Mysteries later that year. At one point during the episode, Ralph turned to Fritz and said, ‘Your mother saved my life.’ For the former German boy who was now an American citizen, that moment was the high point of his life.”

More at the Post, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Grateful at Christmas

December 24, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photos: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
My older granddaughter made a gingerbread house from a kit, and I helped a little with decorating.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. A few photos for Christmas Eve.

In addition to helping out on the gingerbread house, I managed (on the peaceful days between Covid and the Covid rebound) to make the cookies from John’s preschool recipe in the tiny new kitchen. Sometimes it feels like we are in a boat cabin here.

On a recent walk in the lovely Sleepy Hollow cemetery, I noted that some family couldn’t bear thinking of their departed loved one without a decorated tree. So they brought a living one to the cemetery. I want to get one like that next year as I just found out cut trees are not allowed here.

Still, it looked cute when it first went up.

The Nativity scene was from another walk.

Now be sure to listen blogger Will McMillan sing John Bucchino’s song “Grateful,” here. It expresses my exact feelings, and Will is so good at conveying the emotional side of every song.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 17 Comments »

The Music of the Spheres

December 23, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Thibaut Roger/NCCR PlanetS/PA.
The planets surrounding the HD110076 star orbit it in neat ratios depending on their closeness to it. 

Where I went to high school, we memorized Bible verses every week. I always liked the words from this time of year: “The star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was.” So I’m going to say that today’s post on stars is a seasonal post.

At the Guardian, Nicola Davis delves into new star research from the journal Nature.

“Six planets that orbit their star in a coordinated dance have been discovered by scientists, who say the finding could help shed light on why planets in our own solar system move to their own beat.

“The newly discovered planets orbit a star that sits about 100 light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices, with a mass about 20% smaller than our Sun.

“Not only is their makeup different from planets within our solar system, but their movements appear to be tied together: the team said the time it takes one planet to travel around the star was related to that of the next planet by a neat ratio.

“ ‘This system has this very delicate resonant configuration,’ [said] Dr Rafael Luque, co-author of the research from the University of Chicago. The team said such ‘resonance’ should be common within planetary systems, arising from gravitational interactions between planets that begin as they form.

Astronomer Hugh Osborn, a co-author from the University of Bern, converted the resonance among these planets’ orbits into music.

“However, in reality only about 1% of observed planetary systems show resonance – and even fewer involve as many as six planets moving in a coordinated fashion. …

“The team added that the newly discovered planets sit close to their star, with temperatures of 170-650C, and have diameters two to three times that of Earth but smaller than Neptune, making them ‘sub-Neptunes.’ The masses of the planets and their densities were elucidated using ground-based measurements. …

“ ‘Even though we have found so many planets like these ones outside of the solar system, we do not know much about them,’ said Luque.

“Luque added that with six sub-Neptunes of varying sizes, temperatures and masses around the same, bright star, astronomers now had a way to explore how and why such planets differed. …

“Data from [Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite] has revealed that one planet had a nine-day orbit while another took 13 days to orbit the star. Subsequent data from the European Space Agency’s Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite (Cheops), suggested yet another planet took 20.5 days to orbit the star.

“The team realized these orbits formed neat ratios: the first planet from the star makes three orbits in the time it takes the second planet to make two orbits, and the second planet makes three orbits in the time it takes the third planet to make two orbits.

“The discovery led the team to propose that the orbits of the other three planets in the system also would be related by simple ratios. Further observations confirmed they were right.”

More at the Guardian, here. You should know that Dr Hugh Osborn, a co-author from the University of Bern, converted the resonance among these planets’ orbits into music. Listen to that music in an audio clip of about 2-1/2 minutes at Public Radio International’s The World, here. Very special.

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

The Cookie Cutter Maven of Vermont

December 22, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ann Clark Cookie Cutters.
Cow cookie cutters are among the many unusual shapes at this Rutland, Vermont, company.

When I started downsizing to move to the new place, I passed along or weeded out all sorts of possessions. Although I wanted to try making Christmas cookies in the new, tiny kitchen, I decided I didn’t need two Christmas trees, two snowmen, two stars. But today’s story makes me want to add shapes like cows, pigs, sharks, and ice cream cones.

Jordan Barry writes at Seven Days Vermont, “For many holiday bakers, the first step in the festive process is a trip into the depths of a forgotten cupboard. Behind lidless Tupperware and single-use appliances, they’ll find a jumble of gingerbread people, stars and trees. And, if those cookie cutters are good ones, there’s a high likelihood they were made in Vermont.

“Inconspicuously tucked into the warehouse land of Rutland’s Quality Lane, Ann Clark is the United States’ largest producer of cookie cutters, selling 4 to 5 million per year. Founded in 1989 by the artist for whom it is named and now led by her son, Ben Clark, the company sits behind only Chinese mega-manufacturers on the global cookie cutter scale. And as it continues to grow, the family-owned operation is expanding into all aspects of the baking biz, from food coloring to cake mixes.

“Cookie cutters are just one of the items that Ann’s art inspired, Ben told Seven Days on a tour of the facility in early November. … The convivial CEO described a folksy drawing of a pig that his mother and his business-consultant father had made into cutting boards, Christmas tree ornaments, coasters and cookie cutters to sell at trade shows. The cookie cutter, with a handmade recipe card tied to it, was the runaway hit.

“Soon, that pig was joined by a cow and a sheep. In those days, the family focused on selling their cookie cutters to gift stores and making custom promotional ones for businesses such as McDonald’s and Under Armour. Now, Ann Clark has an arsenal of roughly 3,500 shapes — around 700 of which are currently available — that range from simple numbers to holiday staples to a ‘fashion doll head,’ which surged in sales this summer around the release of Barbie.

“New shapes can be made in a day, inspired by trends, pop culture moments, competitors’ products, and creative ideas from employees and bakers around the country. There’s a cookie cutter for each of the year’s ’26 events,’ Ben said — a list that includes Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

“Of all 3,500, Ann’s favorite shape is the watering can. It became Ben’s sentimental favorite, too, after they realized it was the company’s worst seller. Any shape that does worse is immediately cut. …

“The company works with many of the top cookiers in the world, who test new shapes and send their elaborately decorated samples to Ann Clark HQ. Digital content manager Annora McGarry catalogs them in a ‘cookie library’ and stores the physical cookies in an office closet for use in photo shoots.

“Ann Clark cookie cutters’ high-profile fans include the team at King Arthur Baking in Norwich. The companies have worked together ‘for many years, and they are a wonderful partner,’ said Nathalie Morin, associate product manager at King Arthur.

“Cookie cutter designs should have enough detail to be easy to decipher, without small, pointy elements that will make dough stick or overbake, she explained. Metal cutters make the crispest cut, and rolled edges make pressing down more comfortable. …

“The cutters’ American-made status is a selling point for many, Ben said, but not always for the most obvious reason. … ‘It’s really about lead time.’

“When a shape runs out at the Ann Clark factory, it takes the production team just about nine minutes to change the die — a heavy metal block in the shape of a cutter’s final form — and start a replacement run. The new cutters are packaged and shipped by the following morning, whereas it could take months to import replacements from China, Ben said. During the busiest times of year, 12 to 15 employees across two shifts change dies 50 times a day, producing up to 500 cookie cutters per run. …

“When the business started, a company called Creative Products made the cookie cutters in Pennsylvania. Ann Clark slowly brought manufacturing in-house over the course of seven years, eventually acquiring Creative Products — and its accounts with stores such as Sur la Table, Williams Sonoma, Bed Bath & Beyond and Crate & Barrel.

” ‘We realized we’d been trying to convince gift stores that a cookie cutter is a great gift,’ Ben said. ‘Every kitchen store already knows what a cookie cutter is and why it’s great. We could barely keep up.’ …

“The team tested a host of private-label products, including food coloring, sprinkles, icing mix and meringue powder. The food coloring, like the pig design that launched a cookie cutter empire, was the clear winner. It kept selling out, and the manufacturer couldn’t keep up. With the help of food scientists, the Ann Clark team developed its own recipe and built a separate, food-safe facility down the road.

“That facility now produces 3,000 tubes of food coloring a day, along with products such as royal icing and fondant.

” ‘The food coloring is amazing,’ said Paulina Thompson, who launched her Essex Junction home-based biz, Paulina’s Sweets, in February 2021. ‘You can achieve the colors really fast, especially for that Christmas red that everybody wants.’ “

More at SevenDays, here.

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

Better Schools for Rural China

December 21, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Ann Scott Tyson/Christian Science Monitor.
This photo from 1992 shows Bai Guiling teaching multi-grade primary students in a cave classroom carved from a hillside in the village of Yangjiagou. It had no electricity and few books.

Today’s story is about two women who transformed education in rural China. It’s written by Ann Scott Tyson of the Christian Science Monitor, who wanted to follow up on an article she wrote 30 years ago.

“After a 12-hour train ride, I’ve reached a remote village on China’s Loess Plateau, where I’m searching for a teacher I wrote about 30 years ago. I can still picture Bai Guiling juggling lessons for four grades in a dim cave classroom carved from the yellow earth. Her dedication to the needy village children was unforgettable. Now, I want to revisit her story as a window into education in rural China today. 

“But no one in the dusty hamlet in northern Shaanxi province has heard of Teacher Bai or even remembers the school. … I flip through my notebook looking for the phone number of the only person who might be able to help – a Chinese American woman who years ago took a special interest in Teacher Bai. 

“Sitting in my taxi while the police watch from down the road, I tap her U.S. number into my phone and wait for what seems like forever.

“ ‘Hello?’ a frail but chipper voice answers. It’s Lin-yi Wu.

“A few days earlier, in mid-May, I’d tracked down Ms. Wu, a retired librarian, at a senior living home in Walnut Creek, California. The nonagenarian was recovering from a fall – taken while jazz dancing – but was in good spirits. …

“Born the daughter of a well-to-do Shanghai antiques merchant in 1933, Ms. Wu received an elite education that bore no resemblance to Teacher Bai’s bare-bones cave classes. She rode rickshaws to a stately Shanghai middle school run by American missionaries. After graduating from the top-flight Peking University, she was retained to teach French. A formative moment came when Communist Party authorities exiled her and her husband-to-be, English professor Hung-sen Wu, to labor in a hardscrabble mountain village outside Beijing in 1958, during Mao Zedong’s commune movement.

“ ‘My eyes were opened to see how the majority of Chinese lived,’ Ms. Wu told me. For that, she was grateful. But she also witnessed how Mao’s failed communes slashed farm output, leaving bok choy wilting in the fields and piglets dying in the street. A massive famine ensued, forcing villagers to eat leaves and corncobs. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. From 1959 to 1961, tens of millions of Chinese starved. 

“Once back at Peking University, Ms. Wu was shocked when authorities spread propaganda about a bumper harvest, rejoicing with music and gongs. ‘People are dying, and they celebrate the big harvest? That was the last straw,’ she said. ‘I could never live under a government that tells such a lie to the detriment of its people.’ In 1961, the couple fled via Hong Kong to the United States. …

“Forging a life in America, the Wus never lost the desire to help their destitute countrymen. Then, in April 1992, they opened the Christian Science Monitor and read my article about Teacher Bai’s struggles. At once, they each decided – without a word between them – to use their savings to build the village a proper school. … She penned a letter to me in Beijing, asking to contact Teacher Bai.

“But where is Teacher Bai now? I ask over the phone. ‘I don’t know where she lives, but I remember her village was in Ansai County,’ Ms. Wu tells me. ‘And I have her daughter’s phone number.’

“I open my road atlas and scour the map of Ansai, two counties away from where I am. Suddenly it makes sense – there are two villages with the same name, Yangjiagou, and I’m in the wrong one.   

“Her smile and warmth are infectious. After 30 years, I instantly recognize Teacher Bai when I see her waiting for me at the train station in the nearby city of Yan’an, a meeting arranged by her daughter. It feels like we never lost a beat. Driving a borrowed car, she whisks me into the rugged countryside. …

“ ‘Look at this old classroom!’ she says, peering through the worn wooden lattice of the cave’s front window at the peeling mud-and-straw walls. ‘I taught here for five years. We were so poor,’ she says. …

“Born in 1964 to a farming couple in a cave high on a barren hillside a few miles away, Ms. Bai was the eldest of five children – four girls and a boy. Food was scarce in the wake of China’s famine. They ate boiled thistles and cornhusk buns. ‘That counted as good food,’ she says. …

“ ‘I want to popularize the importance of primary education,’ she told me back in 1992. … Her dream: to rally the villagers to build a new school. …

” ‘The article you wrote changed my fate, and the fate of three generations of my family.’

“Not long after my 1992 trip, a local official came to find Teacher Bai. Breathlessly, he told her a group of overseas Chinese and Americans wanted to build a new primary school at Yangjiagou – and they named her to be in charge. …

“Back in the U.S., Ms. Wu excitedly tallied the funds. After a benefit dinner, greeting card drive, and garage sale – combined with her $4,000 in savings – she’d amassed more than $8,000 as of 1994. It was enough to build Yangjiagou a new school, the first by her new organization, Friends of Rural China Education (FORCE). …

“Through a Catholic church with contacts in Hong Kong, she found a nun who would soon travel to mainland China to teach. They arranged for the nun to hand-deliver $8,000 in cash to Teacher Bai at the train station in Guangzhou, across the border from Hong Kong. ‘I will never forget what Teacher Bai told me,’ recalls Ms. Wu. ‘She said, “I will guard this money with my life.” ‘ “

It’s actually a very long article, but how can I not love it? Read the whole beautiful thing at the Monitor, here. No firewall.

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

New York’s Boroughs in Gingerbread

December 20, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: MCNY via Hyperallergic.
The Museum of the City of New York had a gingerbread display for the first time last year. This is John Keuhn’s gingerbread interpretation of Madison Square Park in Manhattan.

I had a nice little foray into holiday gingerbread early last week, between getting over Covid at the new place and the Paxlovid rebound.

My older granddaughter had a kit that was easy enough for even me to work on. Don’t you love the way the world is going with gingerbread? In Boston, an architectural society located near my old job is on its ninth year of amazing displays. (See BSA, here.)

Today’s story, from Hyperallergic, is about a gingerbread exhibit in New York. Elaine Velie reported in 2022, “The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is trying out a different type of exhibition this year, and it looks delicious. Gingerbread NYC: The Great Borough Bake-Off, up through January 16, features seven bakers’ edible replicas of New York City’s five boroughs (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island).

“ ‘I can speak from personal experience about how difficult it is, said Jonah Nigh, one of the competition’s judges and a semifinalist on the reality show Baking It, where he was asked to create a gingerbread house. ‘You can measure everything as much as you want, but when you put it in the oven, you have no control over how much it shrinks and expands.’ …

“Nigh told Hyperallergic he especially enjoyed Sans Bakery’s miniature of Long Island City, Queens. ‘I love really small details,’ Nigh gushed, adding that it was so transformed it no longer looked gingerbread. That project belonged to Erica Fair, who has run the gluten-free bakery since 2010. She wanted to represent the iconic parts of her neighborhood and decided to recreate the seven line subway car, the iconic Silvercup film studio, and the graffiti visible below as people cross the East River from Manhattan.

“The baker explained that weather plays an outsized role in the success of the fickle medium: She initially planned to make her work twice as big, but her original house broke in half during the city’s early November heat wave. For her final product, Fair used Pez candies as bricks and mixed luster with vodka (it evaporates quicker than water) as paint. She also built a few Christmas trees with gummy bears.

“John Kuehn represented Manhattan and won the contest’s ‘grandest’ prize [above]. He had never made a gingerbread house before, but had worked as an architect, and his expertise is evident in the final product, a replica of Midtown’s Madison Square Park. Kuehn’s final version includes carefully constructed miniatures of the Flatiron Building and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower. He started working in early October and said that he spent around eight hours a day on the project until it was due before the judges in early November. …

“The bake-off and exhibition are a new initiative for the East Harlem museum, but one that will likely become a tradition, according to MCNY Chief Operating Officer Jerry Gallagher. The museum put out a call for both professional bakers and amateurs across the city and assembled an impressive team of judges. In addition to Nigh, the deciding panel comprised Bobbie Lloyd, who runs Magnolia Bakery; Nadine Orenstein, a drawings and prints curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who also serves as a judge for the annual National Gingerbread House Competition; painter-turned-baker Colette Peters, who designs elaborate cakes and teaches decorating with her namesake Colette’s Cakes in New Jersey; Melba Wilson, who owns the popular Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem; and Amy Scherber, at the helm of Manhattan’s beloved Amy’s Bread for 30 years.

“All seven displays won distinctions ranging from ‘most resilient to ‘best overall,’ the first of which was awarded to L’Appartement 4F Bakery’s recreation of a Brooklyn brownstone, which partially collapsed soon before it was set to be judged.”

Great photos at the paywall-free Hyperallergic, here. This year, the same museum invited 23 bakers from across the five boroughs to create gingerbread displays on the theme of “Iconic New York.” Read about that here.

Video: MCNY
This year’s gingerbread display at the museum.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »