Suzanne's Mom's Blog

A Black Female Cartoonist

April 15, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Publishers Weekly.
Groundbreaking cartoonist Barbara Brandon-Croft — and friends.

I enjoyed reading Michael Cavna’s interview with this cartoonist for many reasons, including the fact that she attended Syracuse University. That’s where I went to grad school and I feel a kind of kinship with people who went there — grad or undergrad.

Cavna starts the Washington Post article with the story of the artist’s first pitch to a publisher.

“Barbara Brandon-Croft wrote a pitch that, 34 years later, has lost none of its punch.

“ ‘Few Black Cartoonists have entered national syndication since the 1970s,’ began the boldfaced heading to her letter to newspaper syndicates. ‘None have been Black Women.’

“What Brandon-Croft was offering the gatekeepers of such mass distribution was not a shaming as much as a way to course-correct. They could overcome their lack of representation while also reaching new audiences. ‘We all gain from the Black experience,’ she wrote in the letter. ‘Moreover, everyone’s to gain from the Black female experience in particular.’

“Her precise verbal strike caught the eye of legendary Universal Press Syndicate editor Lee Salem. … He knew excellence when he saw it, replying to her: ‘It’s rare to have such a good ear for nuance and character.’ She was on her way.

“As the next decade dawned, she became the first African American woman ever to have a comic strip, ‘Where I’m Coming From,’ syndicated to the mainstream press.

“The trail Brandon-Croft blazed is being celebrated in a beautiful hardcover retrospective, Where I’m Coming From: Selected Strips, 1991-2005 [I’m giving you the Bookshop.org link because I avoid Amazon]. The overdue salute not only provides a nostalgic trip through the lives of Brandon-Croft’s nine central female characters; the book also includes essays and letters that spotlight just how unique her achievement was.

“ ‘I felt like I was pushing against history,’ the Queens-based Brandon-Croft says last month during a Zoom interview. Yet she was undaunted in her early 30s, a fledgling Detroit Free Press cartoonist who was full of ‘nerves and spunk.’ …

“The steps encapsulated the cartoonist’s job, according to her late Washington-born father, Brumsic Brandon Jr., whose comic ‘Luther,’ launched in 1968, is credited with being one of the first mainstream strips ever to have an African American lead character. …

“None of those ‘60s-born strips, though, was created by female writers or artists. And none of them centered on adult experience. In that era, ‘Out of the mouths of babes seemed the most palatable way to introduce Blacks to the funny pages,’ she wrote in her 1989 syndicate pitch letter. It was high time for a change.

“What she delivered in her strip was a circle of friends who have an uncanny way of drawing in the reader through casually conversational tones, sometimes breaking the fourth wall. The talk was eclectic, easily shifting from international politics to office politics — and including such topics as dating and parenthood, feminism and racism, even the obstacles to self-love and respect. …

“The strip’s nine women who so resonate with readers include Cheryl (‘an in-your-face kind of person who has her strong opinions,’ Brandon-Croft says); the spiritually Zen Alisha (‘she believes the world should get along’); Judy (‘a good friend when you need somebody to talk to’); Lekesia (‘fun and very socially conscious’); Nicole (‘kind of a full-of-herself airhead’); the fair-skinned Monica (‘she looks White but she’s very militant — she talks about the idea of colorism’). Brandon-Croft also created Lydia, through whom the cartoonist meditated on motherhood. …

“The strip also stood out because its characters were rendered mostly as talking heads and expressive hands. … For Brandon-Croft, the aesthetic of characters without bodies served a larger purpose.

“ ‘I’m tired of women being summed up by their body parts,’ she wrote in a 1992 article for the publication Cartoonist PROfiles, continuing: ‘I’m interested in giving my women a little more dignity. I want folks to understand that women — in addition to breasts — have ideas and opinions. Look us in the eye and hear what we’re saying, please!’ …

“Brandon-Croft would attend Syracuse University, where she drew for the school paper. She says there were few Black students in her visual arts program, where Brandon-Croft flourished and found her footing. She also reveled in some of her non-arts classes, in which she would ‘learn about human relationships,’ she says — which would serve her well as a keen social observer on the comics page.

“Once out of school, she had no plans to become a cartoonist, despite delighting in ‘Peanuts’ and Mad magazine as a child. She entertained the idea of being an artist, perhaps a fashion illustrator. She had worked as a writer for Essence for several years when an opportunity came along. An editor at the Detroit Free Press sought a new creator to help diversify the paper’s comics and contacted Brandon-Croft’s father. Could he recommend someone?

“He looked to his daughter. Here was her chance. She headed to his family basement studio and went to work creating ‘Where I’m Coming From,’ which in 1989 began appearing in the Free Press.”

More at the Post, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged african american, Black woman cartoonist, comics, funny papers, Groundbreaking | 6 Comments »

Nairobi’s Amazing Libraries

April 14, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Nick Migwi/ CNN.
“I think that libraries are great equalizers,” says Book Bunk co-founder Angela Wachuka in Nairobi, Kenya.

Like many of you, I’m a big fan of reading books. In my family, I’ve always been known for gifts of books — books that I nearly always have read first so that I know they are right for the recipient. My aunt said she looked forward to the gifts no one else gave her on her birthday.

When I was a train commuter, I bought lightweight paperbacks to read while traveling, but after retirement, I became a devotee of the library, a place of magic, as blogger Laurie Graves knows more than most.

In recent years, Kenyan fans of libraries have been working to make them as accessible and lovely as possible.

Abdi Latif Dahir writes at the New York Times, “In 1931, the first library in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, opened its doors — to white patrons only. Nearly a century later, Kenyans dressed in the slinky gowns, flapper headpieces and tweed suits of that era streamed into the now-dilapidated space in a celebration that was part fund-raiser for the remodel of the iconic building, part reclamation of the city’s public libraries as ‘palaces for the people.’

“ ‘Our public libraries can be glamorous spaces of storytelling,’ said Angela Wachuka, a Kenyan publisher. But, she added, ‘we are here to also reclaim history, to occupy its architecture and to subvert its intended use.’

“The restoration of the McMillan Memorial Library and others in the city was the brainchild of Wachuka and the novelist Wanjiru Koinange, who founded Book Bunk, a Kenyan nonprofit, in 2017 to restore and reclaim the city’s public libraries. The aim was to leave behind their excluding past and remake them into inclusive spaces. … Among their goals is to bring more books in African languages to the libraries, and incorporate services catering to those with visual, physical or reading disabilities. …

“As the guests streamed into the gala, in December, organizers urged them to think of themselves as ‘rebellious gate-crashers’ who, while dressed as those in the past, were about to embark on a radically different future in which libraries are an essential public good.

“Nairobi, a fast-growing city of over four million people, has very few bookstores or well-funded libraries. Book Bunk’s work comes amid heated conversations about urban design and about how corruption and colonial systems continue to shape the way public infrastructure and spaces are designed and who gets access to them.

“ ‘In the case of Nairobi, there’s almost an acceptance that certain social divisions should exist across social classes and different societal groups,’ said Constant Cap, an urban planner who has collaborated with Book Bunk in the past.

“Restoring public libraries, he said, could be an opportunity to break those barriers and bring together people from different socio-economic, ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds.

“For Wachuka and Koinange, the journey began a decade ago as they searched for a venue to host an event for the Kwani? [a literary magazine] literary festival. The two thought the McMillan library — built by Lady Lucy McMillan as a memorial to her American husband, Sir Northrup McMillan, and later bequeathed to the Nairobi City Council — would be an ideal venue given its centrality and connection to the city.

“But when they walked in, Wachuka said, they were surprised to see its crumbling state: Its interior neoclassical architecture was fading, its floors and walls were in ruinous condition and its collections were gathering dust.

“While they found another location for the event, the two immediately began researching the history and management structure of the McMillan library, and soon after, left their jobs to focus full time on its restoration.

“One of their earlier discoveries was that the McMillan library was the first of a series of other libraries built in the city. Only two were still open: the Makadara and Kaloleni libraries, in the city’s low-income eastern suburbs.

“After forming a partnership with the Nairobi city administration in 2018, Book Bunk first focused on restoring the two smaller libraries, prioritizing the needs of the communities there.

“The two branches have since reopened, with the Makadara library hosting storytelling sessions, film screenings, music performances and a literary festival. The Kaloleni branch is in a neighborhood built in the 1940s by Italian prisoners of war, and has become a hub for youngsters to do their homework and participate in workshops that help them, for example, learn how to make money using their creative talent.

“Joyce Nyairo, a Kenyan academic and cultural analyst, said that the restored libraries have the chance to be ‘great equalizers,’ particularly for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

More at the Times, here. I love the idea of asking Kenyans to envision themselves as “gate crashers” into spaces that should always have been theirs. Makes me think of One-Eyed Connelly, a famous gate crasher whose name my father borrowed for a pigeon that was always walking through our open doors.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Book Bunk, books, equalizer, kenya, libraries, Nairobi, reclaim | 5 Comments »

Urban Trees Can Save Lives

April 13, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Yoav Aziz/Unsplash.
Urban trees on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv, Israel.

If you search this blog on “urban trees,” you will see many posts showing how trees in cities are beneficial both for the environment and human health. I never tire of new research on this topic. Today’s research comes from medical journal the Lancet via Forbes magazine.

Robert Hart reports, “Planting more trees in cities could cut the number of people dying from high temperatures in summer, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal … a strategy that could help mitigate the effects of climate change as it continues to drive temperatures upwards.

“Cities experience much warmer temperatures than the rural areas surrounding them—a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect—a result of vegetation and green spaces being replaced with structures like roads and buildings that absorb heat.

“The effect is particularly problematic in summer, when temperatures can soar to dangerous levels and more people die of heat-related causes, but can be tackled by planting more trees, researchers suggest.

“An analysis of mortality data from some 57 million people living in 93 European cities in the summer of 2015—the most recent year for which data is available — revealed that 6,700 deaths could be attributed to the hotter urban environment.

“The researchers estimated nearly 40% of these deaths could have been prevented if urban tree cover were increased up to 30% (the average was 15%).

“The researchers said their study … is the first to estimate the burden associated with urban heat islands and the first to estimate how increasing tree coverage, which helps reduce temperature, could combat this.

“Study co-author Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, director of urban planning, environment and health at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, said the findings should encourage city planners and policymakers to include green spaces in their developments, particularly as we already know green spaces have other health benefits like ‘reducing cardiovascular disease, dementia and poor mental health’ and improve cognitive function.

“The research identifies a way for city planners to combat the impact of rising temperatures, wrote Kristie Ebi, a professor for health and the environment at the University of Washington, in a linked comment. Such action is especially important as climate change continues to drive temperatures upwards and it must be combined with other initiatives like modifying infrastructure to reduce heat, added Ebi, who was not involved in the research. …

“Heat has a profound impact on our health. Extreme heat is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world every year, according to the World Health Organization, and is associated with an increased risk of conditions including heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Heat also exacerbates mental health conditions, hampers cognitive functioning and makes us more aggressive.

“Climate change, which experts say is indisputably linked to human use of fossil fuels, is set to drive temperatures higher and a slew of countries around the world have broken heat records over the last few years. This is expected to continue and extreme weather events, including flooding and major storms are set to increase in both severity and frequency as a result. Beyond the direct impact, this can help other diseases spread through water and expand the range of animals that carry them.” More at Forbes.

This 2017 post mentions John’s work with the Arlington Tree Committee to get sidewalk trees to homeowners. Another post, from 2018, says lack of trees increases depression. This 2019 post is on trees in Paris. I also wrote a 2020 entry about preserving the tree canopy in Baltimore, here.

And those are just a few angles I’ve covered. The other day on Mastodon, someone wrote that trees make her incredibly happy. I guess I am not the only one.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged city, environment, health, heat island, urban canopy, urban trees | 6 Comments »

Second Chance Cars

April 12, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Pat Greenhouse/ Globe staff.
Donor Michael Solomon, left, demonstrates the use of the chair topper to store a folding wheelchair to car recipient Alan Mack of Quincy at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School. It’s all in a day’s work for Second Chance Cars.

Dan Holin is a local nonprofit entrepreneur that I’ve worked with in connection with a couple different organizations. I met him in the early 2000s, when he was running the Jericho Road Project, and when he went to UTEC in Lowell, Mass., I wrote how he brought the joy of biking to teens who had been in trouble with the law, here.

Now the Boston Globe has caught up with Dan’s latest initiative, a longtime dream. He has really thought through all the pieces needed to make it work — the banks, the beneficiaries, the automotive high-school programs, the donors, etc.

Nancy Shohet West wrote, “Three years ago, Alan Mack was struggling to make ends meet as a laborer with the state Department of Recreation & Conservation when he was struck in the back by a bullet and left paralyzed. What followed was not only rigorous recuperation, but also a long stretch of being unemployed and homeless. …

“For a person in a wheelchair, the daily commute he had previously made by public transportation was nearly untenable: Typically an hour in duration and requiring several transfers from train to bus, not to mention relying on a system not known for its reliability even in the best of times.

“Fortunately, the social service organization that was helping Mack with his numerous challenges had one more idea for him: applying for a vehicle through Concord-based Second Chance Cars, which provides automobiles to low-income recipients who can demonstrate that owning a car would substantively help them to get a job, keep a current job, or advance within their field.

“Now Mack makes the 15-minute commute from home to work in his specially equipped car, which he said also will enable him to advance the music production business he recently started after entering an online bachelor’s degree program at Berklee College of Music. …

“Mack is one of about 70 beneficiaries to receive vehicles from Second Chance Cars, founded in 2019 by Concord resident Dan Holin. An Israeli-American citizen who served in the Israeli military and then pursued a career in nonprofit administration, Holin was motivated by several intersecting passions, including social outreach, cars, and entrepreneurship. He envisioned a nonprofit that would serve veterans and former prison inmates returning to society. His mission has since expanded to reach others, including legal immigrants and struggling families.

“Mentored by leaders of other nonprofits, Holin designed a business model whereby his organization provides donated cars to low-income workers for $900, paid for by the recipients in monthly installments of $75 over the course of a year.

“After talking with nearly 20 banks, Holin found two — City of Boston Credit Union and Metro Credit Union — willing to partner with Second Chance Cars by providing zero-interest loans along with free financial counseling to the recipients, with Holin serving as the guarantor. At the end of 12 months, the recipients have not only paid off the loans but also have improved their credit ratings.

“Stephanie Tetreault is the kind of person Holin envisioned helping. After battling a drug addiction and serving nearly 10 months in prison for larceny, she was determined to get her life back on track.

“Formerly living on the streets, by the fall of 2020 she had housing in Lowell and steady employment as a shift leader at Dunkin’, where she wanted to apply to be a manager. But that job required reliable transportation, and a car was something Tetreault had neither the cash nor the credit rating to obtain.

“Her case manager at Thrive Communities, which helps formerly incarcerated people transition back into society, told her about Holin’s organization.

” ‘I went through the application process and met with the board of directors of Second Chance Cars to tell them about my situation,’ recalled Tetreault, whose car was prepped at Greater Lawrence Technical School in Andover. ‘The whole process took just a few weeks, and then I had my car: a 2005 Toyota Prius. It’s been a blessing and a lifesaver.’

“Just as Tetreault hoped, Dunkin’ promoted her to a manager position, which she held for about 18 months. Empowered by her newfound independence, her ambitions grew.

“ ‘Because I had a car, I felt that I could pursue my larger goal of becoming an addiction counselor,’ Tetreault said. ‘I found a job in that field in May of 2022, and then enrolled in the addiction counseling certificate program at Middlesex Community College.’

“The benefits that Second Chance Cars provides reach more than just its recipients. The organization collaborates with five vocational high schools in Massachusetts — Essex Tech in Danvers, Greater Lawrence, Greater Lowell Technical in Tyngsborough, Minuteman High in Lexington, and Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational High in Wakefield — enlisting their automotive technology departments to fix any problems the donated cars might have before they are passed on to new owners.

“ ‘This is a great match for our program,’ said Jill Sawyer, director of Career, Technical and Agricultural Education at Essex Tech — more fully, Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School —whose automotive technology students worked on Mack’s car.

“ ‘Many of the cars our students work on belong to faculty members or people from the community who understandably need their vehicle repaired as quickly as possible.

‘With Second Chance Cars, we usually have a few weeks with a car, which gives the instructors more time to make it a learning experience.’

‘And then the students get to attend the reveal ceremony and learn about the person who is receiving the car, which is eye-opening for them.’

“ ‘It’s a win-win situation,’ agreed Donald Melanson, an auto tech instructor at Minuteman, whose students have worked on more than a dozen vehicles for Second Chance Cars. ‘A lot of the repairs the donated cars need are typical of those that the students will be doing once they get out in the trade. This is also giving them a chance to help the general public, and to see the kind of difference that they can make in someone’s life.’

“Josh Duquette found out about Second Chance Cars from a counselor at Veterans Inc., which provides services to veterans throughout New England. A divorced father of four living south of Boston, he couldn’t drive due to a combat-related disability after returning from a deployment in Kuwait and relied on a combination of ride-hailing services, public transportation, and favors from friends to get to his job as a special education paraprofessional in the North Attleborough school system.

“Once Duquette received medical clearance to begin driving again, Second Chance Cars found him a nine-year-old car with 115,000 miles on it. Students at Minuteman refurbished the interior, serviced the engine, and provided new parts. As a result of having his own transportation, Duquette was able to take a position teaching summer school in addition to his school year assignment.

“ ‘One of the biggest obstacles a lot of our veterans face in getting back to a meaningful lifestyle is transportation,’ said Bill Corcoran, a case manager with Veterans Inc. … ‘Second Chance Cars takes that barrier away, and it’s life-changing.’ ”

More at the Globe, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dan holin, incarcerated, low income, Second Chance Cars, training, transportation to job, veteran | 2 Comments »

More on Naps

April 11, 2023 by suzannesmom

Image: Art Furnace/Shutterstock via Nautilus.

As a longtime proponent of naps, I try to share every new angle I read about them. Today’s article is on narcolepsy, which is not something you want, but it does show how creative work may go on when you’re asleep.

Kristen French writes at Nautilus, “George Church looks like he needs a nap. I’m talking to him on Zoom, and his eyelids have grown heavy, inclining toward slumber. Or maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. He assures me he is wide awake. But sleeping and waking life are often blurred for Church. One of the world’s most imaginative scientists, Church is a narcoleptic.

“A rare disorder, narcolepsy causes sudden attacks of sleep, and Church has fallen asleep in some unfortunate circumstances — at The World Economic Forum, just a few feet away from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for instance. He also had to give up driving due to the risk that a bout of sleepiness will strike while he is behind the wheel. But Church, a Harvard geneticist known for his pathbreaking contributions to numerous fields — from genetics to astrobiology to biomedicine—says the benefits of his condition outweigh the inconveniences. Many of his wildest and most prescient ideas come from his narcoleptic naps.

“ ‘The fact is, I fall asleep several times a day, and so almost everything comes from there,’ Church says. His idea for a quick and simple way to ‘read’ DNA — which resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, of the human pathogen H. pylori — came from a narcoleptic nap.

“He also conceived of editing genomes with a method analogous to CRISPR, and building new genomes with off-the-shelf molecules, during narcoleptic naps. More recently, in December, a wild idea for a space probe that could reach distant stars within just 20 years, at one-fifth the speed of light, came to him after a narcoleptic nap. He proposed that these lightning-speed interstellar missions could be launched by microbes and powered by laser sails. The ideas that come to him are often the result of collisions of unexpected images in his head. ‘I try to turn science fiction into science fact,’ Church tells me.

“The relationship between sleep, dreaming, and creativity has been the subject of conjecture for hundreds of years. Reports of creative inspiration and discoveries made by artists, inventors, and scientists while dreaming suggest these states of mind are intimately bound together. The symbolist poet Saint-Pol-Roux was known to guard his sleep at night with a sign on his bedroom door that read ‘Do not disturb: Poet at work.’ Russian scientist Dimitri Mendeleev reportedly had a vision of the periodic table in a dream after three days of exhaustive effort (though it may have just been the perfection of an idea he had while awake). Stephen King claims he dreamt up his novel Misery during a somnolent transatlantic flight.

“Rather than leave such inspirations to chance, American inventor Thomas Edison designed a strategy for mining his dreams for material. He would doze off with a steel ball in each hand. Once his body went limp with sleep, the balls would drop to the floor with a clatter and wake him up. He could then recall details of his dreams and record any insights. …

“Scientific studies seem to validate these tales. Study participants asked to ‘incubate’ a problem in their dreams often come up with a useful solution, and both the frequency and complexity of one’s dream recall have been correlated with higher scores on creativity evaluations.

“The stage of sleep most closely associated with creative inspiration is known as REM, short for rapid eye movement. REM sleep begins about 70 minutes after a person loses consciousness and is rich with dream life. Lucid dreams, in which the dreamer knows he or she is dreaming and can sometimes direct the dream, are thought to primarily occur in REM. Waking from REM sleep has been shown to improve study subjects’ ability to solve anagrams. …

“But researchers have recently identified another state of mind that lies in the transition between waking and sleeping and may be even more fertile for creative inspiration than REM. It is called N1 or sleep onset, and it is the first of three stages in pre-REM sleep.

People with narcolepsy frequently fall into and out of N1 during daytime naps, giving them much greater access to these borderland perceptual states than normal sleepers.

“N1 is a hybrid, or ‘semilucid’ state of mind, says French neuroscientist Celia Lacaux, when individuals are just beginning to detach from the waking environment. It is a mental twilight that allows one to ‘freely watch the mind wander while maintaining a logical ability to identify creative sparks,’ says Lacaux. This shadowy frontier between waking and dreaming, to which all sleepers have access, may be the source of many of humanity’s most novel ideas, inventions, and works of art. Psychologists call it ‘hypnagogia,’ after the Greek words for ‘sleep’ (hypnos) and ‘to lead’ (agogo). The French sometimes refer to it as ‘entre chien et loup,’ literally ‘between dog and wolf.’ …

“ ‘Hypnagogia happens to be a time period where you are much more subject to outside influence and where you’re doing much more auditory processing and where your dream recall rates are much higher,’ says Adam Haar, a dream researcher at MIT Media Lab. It is characterized by phenomenological unpredictability, distorted perception of space and time, and spontaneous, fluid idea association.

“A relationship between hypnagogia and creativity makes intuitive sense. One major theory of creativity posits that it results when our minds make connections between distantly related concepts stored in our memories. This is a process that is thought to occur naturally during sleeping and dreaming: New memories mingle in novel and abstract ways with older ones as a means of consolidating them, laying down tracks in our brains for later recollection. Neuroscientist Karl Friston, who studies consciousness, proposes that this mashing together of old and new is a process that helps to minimize redundancy and complexity in our memory system, and prepares us to navigate a fuller range of possible scenarios in our waking lives.”

More at Nautilus, here. No firewall.

I know that when I wrote theater reviews, they came out better for weekly papers than dailies because I had a chance to “sleep on it.”

And then there’s the famous story of Samuel Taylor Coleridge composing “Kubla Khan” in an opium-induced sleep. (Not recommending the opium part.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged creativity, nap, narcolepsy, sleep | 2 Comments »

Being Civil

April 10, 2023 by suzannesmom

US Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska.

Is there hope for Americans with different political views to get along? Well, why not? We used to get along. Now it seems that we have to teach ourselves that skill all over again.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a member of the House of Representatives who is showing people how it’s done.

Samantha Laine Perfas and Clayton Collins at the Christian Science Monitor created a podcast about her with West Coast bureau chief Francine Kiefer.

“A race for [Alaska’s] lone House seat had been won in a special election by Mary Peltola, an Alaska Native and a Democrat. … Representative Peltola had hired the chief of staff of her late Republican predecessor, and then hired two other Republican staffers.

“ ‘This just doesn’t happen in Washington,’ Francine says on the Monitor’s ‘Why We Wrote This’ podcast. ‘And I was curious about what kind of person it was that would make sort of a practical decision to hire folks who knew Alaska, who knew Washington, even though they’re not of your own political party.’ (Representative Peltola’s mother’s side of the family is Alaska Native and all Democrats; her father’s side is white Nebraska wheat farmers and all Republicans.)

“What Francine produced [is] a story about the ‘Alaska way’ at the root of such thinking. It’s about interdependence. And while there are many factors at play in Alaska politics – ranked choice voting among them – it’s really about something that might transfer beyond the 49th state. …

“Samantha Laine Perfas
“Welcome to ‘Why We Wrote This.’ I’m today’s host, Samantha Laine Perfas. I’m joined by Francine Kiefer, a longtime, award-winning staff writer at the Monitor. … What was it that piqued your interest about Alaska?

“Francine Kiefer
“I have to admit that I’ve just been wanting to get back to Alaska for over 40 years. It was the scene of where I had my first job in journalism, at the Anchorage Daily News. I was just a pipsqueak intern, and I fell in love with the state and I’ve just always wanted to go back. And the political story was a fantastic reason. Here you have a red state. And it just elected two moderates to Congress.

“[Mary Peltola] was the first Alaska Native to be elected ever to Congress. And her whole persona is a bridge builder. One of the things that really got my attention was when I read that Mary Peltola had hired the chief of staff of her Republican predecessor, Don Young. She hired his Republican former chief of staff, his Republican scheduler, and she hired a Republican spokesperson from another office on the Hill. And I was curious about what kind of person it was that would make sort of a practical decision to hire folks who knew Alaska, who knew Washington, even though they’re not of your own political party. …

“Laine Perfas
“What was it like talking to her for this story?

“Kiefer
“I’ve talked to many lawmakers over my journalistic career, and she sounded so authentic. She didn’t have her guard up. She wasn’t being measured about what she was saying. She is from an area in western Alaska that depends on fishing for survival. And she’s been fishing since she was six years old. She, as the Alaskans say, ‘She knows how to fill a freezer.’ And she also embraces the spirit of Alaska. It’s a large state. It’s a beautiful state, but it’s also a cold and a dangerous place. And people rely on each other. And there’s a real spirit of cooperation there where people help each other out in tough spots. … Having to help each other out, that is part of the ‘Alaska spirit.’

“Laine Perfas
“I think it’s interesting to think about how this spirit of Alaska might be different than other parts of the US. How did you see that affecting the political arena? Did it affect the way that candidates interacted with their potential constituents?

“Kiefer
“It definitely did, because of the way that ranked-choice voting works. That allows voters to rank their choices in order of preference such that the one with the broadest appeal emerges from the system. When you’re out there on the campaign trail, you’re not only trying to get people to vote for you as their first choice, but you’re [also] trying to get people to vote for you as their second choice.

“I talked with a local candidate for the state Alaska Senate. And she said this time because of ranked-choice voting instead of knocking only on the doors of the Republican base, she knocked on over 6,000 doors, including many Democrats’, and they would open their door to her and say, ‘You don’t want to talk to me. I’m a Democrat.’ And her answer was, ‘Oh, yes, I do want to talk to you because you can put me as your No. 2 vote. And we may not agree on everything, but here is the stuff that we do agree on.’ And in the end, it was votes from Democrats who had ranked her second, who put her over the line into the majority.

“Laine Perfas
“In the beginning of the conversation, you referred to Peltola as a ‘bridge builder.’ What is the value of having someone like that in office?

“Kiefer
“I think it has two main impacts. One is it can help restore civility to a political dialogue and the other one is it can build understanding and mutual understanding among lawmakers, and hopefully lead to compromise.

“One of my sources for this story was a gentleman named Andrew Halcro. He’s a Republican. He talked to me about the time in which he served as a freshman legislator in the Alaska House at the state Capitol in Juneau. Right off the bat, within a few days of his arriving, he gave a speech where he said, you know, the way to solve Alaska’s fiscal problems is to cut the budget. Cut, cut, cut. And he pointed to rural Alaska, which is where most Alaska Natives live as the place [where the budget] needed to be cut.

“And this speech did not go over well. And within hours, he said, Mary Peltola, who of course, is from this region, knocked on his door and said, ‘You know, I know we’re both new here, but let me explain to you a little bit about what I know about rural Alaska and what their needs are.’ And he said that out of this discussion came a wonderful working relationship with her, as well as understanding and appreciation for the needs of a part of Alaska that he had never set foot in except for sport.

“So you get a sense there of the relationship building, of the understanding that can come about by having bridge builders in a legislature. At the same time, there are limits. And Mary Peltola also said to me, look, she can’t singlehandedly solve the political divide in the United States, but she can do her job of being a model in the way she communicates and the way she reaches out for other political leaders.

“Laine Perfas
“Do you think what we’re seeing in Alaska could be transferable to the rest of the country?

“Kiefer
“Well, definitely the voting system could be. Ranked choice voting has been practiced by Maine in a more limited sense since 2018. And in this very past election in November, Nevadans voted for a system very similar to what Alaska is practicing. So that part of it, I think, could be replicable. The other part of this that we’ve talked about is ‘the Alaska spirit,’ which is that cooperative spirit. I think that is rather specific to Alaska. And in fact, people told me that. But as Peltola said to me, it’s not exclusive to Alaskans, right? And she said, ‘You know, we have been civil before. If we’ve been civil before, we can do it again.’ ”

Click the podcast arrow at the Christian Science Monitor, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged alaska, civility, cooperation, Mary Peltola, native, ranked choice, understanding | 5 Comments »

Egypt’s Own Archaeologists

April 9, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Hamada Elrasam.
Dr. Asmaa Ebrahim measures a pottery shard at the archaeological excavation at Aten, a rediscovered city of ancient Thebes in Luxor, Egypt, Nov. 17, 2022.

You have probably read about the “curse” that targets anyone disturbing the tomb of a pharaoh. It’s a legend people love but, as one expert says, it’s “unadulterated claptrap.” Still, one could almost imagine that the pharaohs would want to punish non-Egyptians like Howard Carter, who excavated the tomb of King Tut. Perhaps their ghosts would be more tolerant of Egyptian archaeologists.

Taylor Luck wrote about a few at the Christian Science Monitor.

“On a mild, late November morning, almost completely hidden behind the 5-foot-high walls of a sprawling, yellow-gray mud-brick city rising from the ground, a dozen members of an archaeological team survey and brush away soil.

“In a nearby tent, carefully holding jagged pottery shards in one gloved hand under a lens, Asmaa Ebrahim painstakingly scribbles down notes on the 3,000th piece of pottery.

“Traditionally, in this valley, rich with ancient Egyptian history and the iconic archaeological sites to match, the role of ceramicist was filled by a foreign archaeologist with credentials from Cambridge or Princeton, not an Assiut University graduate from upper Egypt. …

“ ‘For once, Egyptians are the leading Egyptologists,’ Dr. Ebrahim smiles.

“As workers brush away dust and sand, a leather sandal pokes out from the ground, strap facing up, slightly sun-dried but looking as if it had fallen off the foot of its careless owner days – rather than 3,400 years – ago. …

“Today, in Aten, the recently discovered city at the foot of the Valley of the Kings, a new generation of Egyptian archaeologists and specialists is uncovering new details of daily life in ancient Egypt. …

“Aten, the so-called Golden City, was the residential, administrative, and industrial center of ancient Thebes, dating back to the 18th dynasty and the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III – the golden age of ancient Egypt.

“Discovered by chance while this rare all-Egyptian team was searching for the mortuary temple of the boy king Tutankhamen in 2021, it is now providing an ever-widening window into the daily life of ancient Egyptians.

“Aten was abruptly abandoned by Amenhotep III’s son Akhenaten, when he transformed ancient Egypt’s religion and moved the capital 240 miles north of Thebes. That means much of the city was left intact as if life was suddenly frozen three millennia ago – Egypt’s own Pompeii.

“Bread remains in clay ovens, precious stones are scattered in the jewelry workshop, and sun-dried bricks are neatly stacked in a tiny pyramid waiting to be carted off to build a temple or a palace.

“A wavy, zigzag serpentine wall that experts believed was designed to limit Nile floodwaters cuts through the north of the city; at its end in a tent, Dr. Ebrahim holds up a four-handle jug. …

“ ‘This [complete residential life depicted in Aten] is unique. You won’t find it at any site currently in Egypt.’

“Already the team has uncovered seven districts containing homes, a bakery, kitchens, a tailor, a weaver’s loom, a leather tannery, a metalsmith, a sandal cobbler, and a butchery complete with dried meats in jars inscribed with the butcher’s name, ‘Luwy.’ The team is also uncovering technical clues as to how ancient Egyptians built and furnished some of the wonders of the ancient world.

“Its discoveries have included preserved amulet molds, a jewelry workshop, a brick factory, and granite, basalt, and pottery workshops, all of which it believes were used to build and decorate Luxor’s lavish temples and palaces – and craft the ornate treasures that were buried in King Tut’s tomb.

“The discoveries are thanks to a new generation of Egyptian archaeologists trained and encouraged by Zahi Hawass, who is leading the dig at Aten. The colorful and bombastic former director of Egypt’s department of antiquities used his public persona as ‘godfather’ of Egyptian antiquities to help bring along 500 young specialists to staff all-Egyptian excavation teams.

“Dr. Ebrahim is one of dozens who studied archaeology and Egyptology in Egypt and then, at Dr. Hawass’ urging, went abroad in the 2010s to work and train to gain technical expertise that Egypt lacked – in restoration, conservation, pottery analysis, carbon dating, and surveying. …

“ ‘Our role as Egyptians cannot only be serving foreigners and bringing them coffee and tea while they write books and make films and we do nothing,’ Dr. Hawass says as he walks along Aten’s serpentine wall. …

“ ‘As a young man entering a bookstore, I never found a single book on Egyptology written by an Egyptian. All our work depended on foreigners, and they took all the credit,’ he says. ‘But now we are a complete scientific team.’

“Although recent years have seen more joint international-Egyptian teams, this excavation is one where every role – from extracting and sorting soil to analysis to conservation – is done by an Egyptian, with eight experts overseeing two dozen workers.

“One core team member is Siham El Bershawy, a Luxor native who grew up a few miles away from the Valley of the Kings and now preserves and restores everything from papyrus to mummies at Aten.

“ ‘That feeling when you take items out from the ground in your own site, in your own country, in your own community with your own two hands – you feel a sense of pride as an Egyptian,’ Ms. El Bershawy says. …

“The team has also uncovered a clue he believes may lead it to the lost tomb of Queen Nefertiti – a name.

“ ‘Smenkhkare,’ the name of a mysterious pharaoh who ruled briefly between Aten and King Tut, was found on multiple inscriptions in Aten. Egyptologists are divided on the figure; some believe Smenkhkare may have been a brother to Tutankhamen or a hitherto unknown co-regent with Akhenaten. Dr. Hawass is of the camp that believes Smenkhare was a name assumed by Nefertiti after her husband Akhenaten’s death as she ruled briefly as pharaoh.”

More at the Monitor, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged all-Egyptian, archaeologist, egypt, excavate, King Tut, Nefertiti, pharaoh | 4 Comments »

The Power of a Daughter on TikTok

April 8, 2023 by suzannesmom

The book Stone Maidens, by Lloyd Devereux Richards, was promoted on TikTok by his daughter.

Never turn down help from your kids. Today’s story is about the daughter of an unsuccessful author who decided to take on promotion of his book using social media the dad knew nothing about. After languishing ten years, the book suddenly caught fire.

Kyle Melnick reported at the Washington Post, “Marguerite Richards visited her family’s Vermont home for an Italian dinner when she brought up her father’s novel, Stone Maidens. Lloyd Devereux Richards’s crime thriller, which published in November 2012, still wasn’t making money. It was ranked 1,452nd among mystery, thriller and suspense novels on Amazon, he said.

“Hoping to provide the book some publicity, Marguerite asked her father whether she could record a TikTok video of him. Lloyd, 74, hadn’t heard of the social media platform.

“ ‘Well, what’s that going to do?’ Lloyd recalled asking.

“ ‘Believe me, Dad,’ responded Marguerite, 40, ‘just trust me.’

“Marguerite recorded Lloyd working in his attic office — a 16-second video she posted that night with a message: ‘I’d love for him to get some sales.’ The video went viral, and a few days later, Stone Maidens ascended to the top of Amazon’s bestsellers chart. …

“In the mid-1970s, Lloyd was attending Indiana University’s law school when he said he remembers several women went missing in forests around the Midwest. Those crimes would later inspire the premise of the book he dedicated years to writing.

“After he moved to Montpelier, Vt., in June 1984, Lloyd began working as a lawyer for a life insurance company. For two years, after finishing his workdays, he studied dialogue, structure and pacing with a local college professor. He read legal files about murders and studied books by his favorite authors, including Stephen King and Michael Connelly.

“Around 1998, Lloyd began writing Stone Maidens, a 300-plus-page book that follows an FBI forensic anthropologist investigating a serial killer strangling women and leaving their bodies in southern Indiana forests.

“Lloyd’s home office in his attic isn’t insulated, so he wore a hat and mittens in the winter and blew fans on himself and his computer in the summer as he worked on the novel. While practicing law and raising three children, he said he found a few hours to write at night and in the morning. He said he slept about four hours per night for more than a decade.

“After he finished a draft in fall 2009, Lloyd said, he was turned down by about 80 literary agents.

Lloyd said his mail carrier despised him, because his rejection letters weighed down his delivery bag. In May 2010,

“Lloyd thought he was being hoaxed when an agent finally agreed to work with him. But more disappointing news followed. By fall 2010, Lloyd said, not one editor had agreed to publish his book. …

“The next year, Lloyd enrolled in an online writing class. Then, in fall 2011, Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon subsidiary, agreed to be his publisher. … Although a few dozen people bought the book in the following two years, Lloyd said, sales soon fell off. He said he donated his books to his small town’s bookstore. He sold three copies online between this past December and January, Lloyd said.

“Marguerite had been plotting since the fall to promote her dad’s book on TikTok. Growing up, she witnessed her father’s long hours in his office, and she wanted to make a video that would honor his hard work. She figured a few people might learn about his novel. …

“ ‘My dad spent 14 years writing a book,’ she wrote on top of the video. ‘He worked full time and his kids came first. But made time for his book.’

“The next morning, Marguerite said, the video had received about a million views, which she thought was a glitch. Then she looked at Amazon’s book charts and saw Stone Maidens was one of the top-selling mystery, thriller and suspense novels.

“The following day, Marguerite invited her dad to her condo. … As he read the video’s comments and Marguerite told him about the sales, Lloyd cried. He celebrated with a chocolate milkshake.”

More at the Post, here. Now many struggling writers will now be hiring TikTok mavens to promote their books, I suppose. But I think that what came from a daughter’s heart is the thing that did the trick.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daughter, mystery book, promotion, TikTok, viral, writer | 6 Comments »

The Call of the Quail

April 7, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: AllAboutBirds.
The northern bobwhite quail has a hopeful story.

This is a comeback story. When habitat is lost through ignorance, knowledge can restore that habitat — and the wildlife that used to live there. Humans can learn.

At the Washington Post, Dana Hedgpeth reports on a charming bird that says its name.

‘I don’t want to shoot them anymore — I just like to see them around and hear them whistle,’ said a landowner

“In his teen years, when Joe Graves heard the unique call of quail on his family’s 800-acre farm in rural Virginia, he and his brother Clark would often go out with their dogs and hunt them.

“But due to development and a shift in agricultural practices, the birds that once flourished on their farm in Halifax County and in the state have become harder to find. Now Virginia wildlife experts, hunters and landowners, including the Graves brothers — who are now in their 70s — are working to restore quail habitats in an effort to increase their population.

“ ‘We want to see quail be a part of the Virginia landscape, so we’re trying to create habitats that are critical for their survival,’ said Graves.

“Northern bobwhite quail, which are roughly the size of a softball, have short legs, short wings and don’t fly much. From afar they look like small, plump chickens that walk with their chests puffed out. Male quail typically have a white coloring on their neck area. Quail are best known for their unique sound — similar to a sharp whistle, which they make to communicate with each other and as a way to attract a mate.

“Because they spend most of their life on the ground — much like pheasants and turkeys — quail need a mix of habitat: Honeysuckle and briers provide protection from predators, and they walk among shrubby patches, between weeds and grasses, pecking at seeds. In the fall and winter, quail typically live in flocks, or coveys, with about a dozen birds. They roost in a circle, shoulder-to-shoulder to stay warm, and face outward to watch for predators.

“When a snake, hawk or raccoon approaches, a quail’s defense mechanism is to escape by leaping into the air, flying fast for a few seconds, though they don’t go far — about half the length of a football field. The longer they’re in the air, the more exposed they are to a predator. …

“Quail habitats have been ruined by several factors, including encroaching development and farming practices that have changed because many landowners want neat, well-kept fields between planting seasons. Justin Folks, a wildlife biologist for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, said simply, ‘Quail like weeds and brush, and farmers don’t.’

“Hudson Reese, 84, who owns 1,000 acres in Halifax County, said as a teen, he could regularly find eight coveys of quail on his farm, and now that’s down to one or two. ‘People have tractors, bush hogs and mowers now,’ Reese said. ‘They want to keep their property looking like a golf course. You don’t have quail on a golf course.’ …

“With the destruction of their habitats, the quail population in Virginia has plunged nearly 80 percent since the 1960s, and so too has interest in hunting them. …

“Nationally, experts said quail were once in the mid-Atlantic region, Southeast and Midwest but are now considered one of the top birds suffering a major population decline.

“ ‘It’s amazing we have any because our environment of modern, manicured land doesn’t suit them,’ [John Morgan, director of the National Bobwhite & Grassland Initiative at Clemson University] said. ‘They’re just hanging on and slowly slipping away.’

“While northern bobwhite quail are not considered an endangered species, they are a ‘species of concern,’ according to Jay Howell, a wildlife biologist and small-game project leader who works on the quail recovery team for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. He is worried that continued population declines could make them even more rare.

“Over the past 13 years, Virginia wildlife officials have made a concerted effort with hunters and more than 3,300 landowners to revive their population, and there are signs of success. Howell said the state’s quail population, though still low, is starting to reach equilibrium, and the rate of decline is slowing.

“Landowners are trying to improve quail habitat through controlled burns of forest areas. That process gets rid of pine needles, leaf debris and dead vegetation, leaving more easily walkable areas for quail. The more open ground encourages the growth of new plants and seeds and attracts insects — all of which in turn appeal to quail.

“There are similar efforts in neighboring Maryland. Officials have conducted timber harvests and controlled burns in Pocomoke State Forest since 2013, and last year quail were heard for the first time in decades, according to a 2022 report by the National Bobwhite and Grasslands Initiative, a group that promotes quail conservation.

“Overton McGehee, who owns 150 acres in Virginia’s Fluvanna County, is also working with state wildlife experts to bring quail back.

“ ‘Quail are one more of the species in Virginia that we don’t want to see disappear,’ he said. ‘They’re like a canary in a coal mine,’ he said. ‘If we don’t have the right habitat for quail, then we probably don’t have the right habitat for a variety of birds and pollinators — from whippoorwills and goldfinches to monarch butterflies and bumble bees.’ ”

When I was a kid, I was surprised that organizations of people who fish and hunt were great supporters of conservation, but it stands to reason they need places to hunt. Today I’m grateful for this example of how very different ideologies can work together for common goals.

More at the Post, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bobwhite, habitat, quail, restoration, Virginia, wildlife | 2 Comments »

Knitter to the Stars

April 6, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Murray Sanders via the Daily Mail.
Delia Barry, an 83-year-old widow from Greystones, County Wicklow, started knitting classes to improve her skills for a cancer charity after her husband of 48 years died suddenly in 2010. Now she’s a knitter to the stars.

How many ways are there to love this story? An Irish woman gets serious about knitting late in life and becomes so highly skilled that she’s in demand. An acclaimed movie director’s team seeks her out to make sweaters (“jumpers”) for actors in a film that turns out to get an Oscar nomination. She has to watch the movie twice because the first time, she is only looking at the sweaters. And when the New York Times calls, she says to call back because she’s playing bingo!

Lou Stoppard reports at the Times, “When I first contacted Delia Barry, she asked to be called back later. It was a Wednesday afternoon in Greystones, Ireland, where she lives, and she was playing bingo. ‘It’s just more of a social gathering for local senior citizens, which I am one of,’ Ms. Barry, 83, said by telephone.

“When not at bingo, Ms. Barry is usually knitting. Four of her sweaters appear in the Oscar-nominated film The Banshees of Inisherin, which is set on a fictional island in 1923, toward the end of the Irish civil war. These include a navy roll-neck and a red pullover with a distinctive long collar, both worn by Colin Farrell; a thick blue knit worn by Brendan Gleeson; and a purplish ribbed fisherman’s sweater worn by Barry Keoghan. Esquire U.K. called Banshees the “Next Great Knitwear Film.” …

“ ‘It’s pure madness,’ she said of the attention. ‘I’ve knitted so many jumpers, they are just another jumper to me.’ She hopes to see the film a second time soon, she said, to better appreciate the acting and Martin McDonagh’s direction. ‘When I went the first time, I was just looking for the knitwear,’ she said.

“Ms. Barry learned to knit at school in Cahir, County Tipperary, at age 7. As a teenager, she made her own clothes, trying out new patterns, perfecting shapes. At 20, she moved to London with her future husband and worked in a telephone factory. More than a decade later, they returned to Tipperary, where Ms. Barry worked in a bar before moving to her husband’s birthplace of County Wicklow, where the town of Greystones is. …

“Ms. Barry knitted throughout her marriage, she said, but her commitment grew when her husband died in 2010, and she began knitting to raise funds for Greystones Cancer Support. ‘They were very good when he was diagnosed,’ she said. She donated a portion of her film earnings to the organization. …

“On an average week, Ms. Barry rises at 6 a.m. and knits until 8:30 a.m. She always knits in the same spot — on her sofa, with the light from the window behind her. At 9:30, she goes for a walk to the beach with a friend, about two miles away. She has never owned a car, she said, and has walked everywhere her whole life. …

“Back home, she’ll knit for another three to four hours. She’ll take a short break for dinner, then knit throughout the evening. ‘I get up and walk around every so often,’ she said. … ‘When you’re living on your own, it’s nice to have something to do.’ she said. …

“Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh, the film’s costume designer, commissioned Ms. Barry to create the sweaters. After the release of the movie, Ms. Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh recalled, ‘My daughter, who is 20, came and said Delia is a TikTok sensation.’

“Ms. Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh came across Ms. Barry’s work when she was sourcing knitwear for a 2017 television adaptation of Little Women. A woman working on the production knew that Ms. Barry had helped on other films, including Dancing at Lughnasa, for which she created knitwear for Meryl Streep’s character.

“ ‘Ireland is very small,’ Ms. Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh said, laughing. ‘It’s all word of mouth.’

“Ms. Barry credits her success to being willing to take on a job without a pattern, something many knitters would be wary of. For The Banshees of Inisherin, Ms. Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh provided photographs of Irish fishermen from the 1920s, which Ms. Barry studied with a magnifying glass. One showed a sweater with a distinctive long collar, the inspiration for the red piece that would become Mr. Farrell’s. …

“Once each item was complete, it went to the aging department, where pieces are dyed and distressed. ‘People think they just take a cheese grater to it, but it’s not as simple as that,’ Ms. Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh said. She sees the process as a means of communicating subtleties about a character — somebody who walks purposefully with their hands wedged in their pockets, somebody who gets nervous and wipes their hands on the front of their clothing.”

More at the Times, here. For the story at the Daily Mail, here, there is no firewall.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bingo, ireland, knitter to the stars, knitting, late in life, movie, The Banshees of Inisherin | 10 Comments »

Strawberry Capital of the World

April 5, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Amy via Louisiana Radio Network.
Do you know where to find the “Strawberry Capital of the World”?

When I was volunteering last spring with the Ukrainian media team, we often chatted by text when work was slow, and Leilya happened to mention that Louisiana was the strawberry capital of the world.

She said the strawberries started in February! This year’s Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival is scheduled for April 14 to 16, so you still have time to get down there.

The festival website says, “Since 1972, the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival has attracted visitors from near and far to celebrate our local strawberry farmers, non-profits, and our special community, flourishing into the largest free harvest festival in the state of Louisiana.”

Events seem to include non-strawberry events, such as rides, an egg toss, and a ceremony for fallen heroes: “Join us in Veterans Square, commonly referred to as the Strawberry Parking Lot, to witness history as we support our Fallen First Responders and Wounded Veterans from 9/11. The Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival is proud to bring the Tunnel To Towers Foundation’s 9/11 Never Forget Mobile Exhibit to Louisiana for the first time! This high-tech exhibit will sit among local Veteran booths, representatives from our country’s Military Forces, and the ‘Spirit of Louisiana’ Fire Truck.”

To learn more about the actual strawberries, I turned to the Strawberry Marketing Board, here: “Louisiana’s strawberry industry dates back to the 1800s when the Great Economic Migration brought a wave of Italians and Hungarians to America with hopes of finding work. Many moved to Louisiana and began strawberry farms in the warmer weather and rich soil.”

“The Louisiana State University (LSU) Ag Center, here, adds, “Tangipahoa Parish is still the leading strawberry-producing parish, growing 75% of the total acres in Louisiana and accounting for 79% of the state’s total gross farm value. Louisiana strawberries can be found in grocery stores, farmers markets and roadside stands as early as November, December and January.

“Early fall is the time to plant strawberries. Home gardeners can successfully grow strawberries with even a small area, plenty of sun and some TLC. … Strawberry plants are typically sold in local garden centers as bare-root plants, but they also can be found as transplants. Plants can be purchased online, too.

“In Louisiana, we need to plant short-day or day-neutral strawberry varieties. Short-day plants begin to produce flowers when the days shorten during fall and winter. They initiate flower buds when there is 14 hours of daylight per day or less. Day neutral means day length doesn’t affect flower production. These strawberries will blossom and set fruit no matter how long or short the days are.”

There was also a piece at Fox News, here.

Every year there are signs that spring is on its way. One of the earliest comes on Feb. 27 when National Strawberry Day is observed.

“While the industry has shrunk over the decades, Southeast Louisiana still holds a strong presence in the strawberry industry with most of the production concentrated in the eastern part of the Florida Parishes.”

The state’s marketing board website, also notes, “The crop peaked in 1931, with Tangipahoa Parish becoming the most important center of distribution as farms along the City of New Orleans rail line could ship as far north as Chicago and even by commercial truck on Highway 51. The activity was so heavy in the area that there was a boom of people moving into the area to farm and experiment with the fertile soil and temperatures to create new breeds of berries.

“The Klondyke strawberry was cultivated in Tangipahoa Parish around the Independence area and the name was given to reflect how the growing industry at the time was like the ‘gold rush’ that occurred in the American west and Alaska just prior to the Civil War.

“Today, most Louisiana farms are small and independently run and some allow the public to come to pick their own berries to buy on-site.”

“The Louisiana radio network noted in February that the crop did not get the ideal weather this year.

“As we approach the peak of strawberry season, Springfield strawberry farmer, Trey Harris said it’s been a tough year so far weather-wise. He said production is down from this time last year, but the current unseasonably warm temps are speeding things up.

“ ‘But I see a lot of blooms, a lot of green fruit coming really strong right now. We’ve just to … hope that we can get some really sunny days like today and cold nights so we don’t just get overflooded with berries right now,’ said Harris.

“Harris said highs in the 80s and lows in the 70s are causing a growth spurt among strawberries. And while you might assume strawberry farmers welcome rain, Harris said they are able to control water consumption, and too much water and fog at this point can affect the taste of strawberries.

“ ‘We really don’t want rain at all, we don’t want any rain on the strawberries because it’s going to make them taste like water,’ said Harris. … He said its vital residents support locally grown berries now more than ever.

“ ‘That’s why it’s very important that the people in Louisiana buy strawberries from all of us local farmers. We only have a few Louisiana strawberry… maybe 15 farmers left.’ ”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged February, hungarian, immigration, italian, Louisiana, strawberry capital of the world | 8 Comments »

Upgrading a Favela Home

April 4, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Douglas Magno/AFP.
An aerial view shows Kdu dos Anjos’s house in Aglomerado da Serra, a favela complex on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. The home, in an area of deep poverty, has won an architecture award.

I have mixed reactions to today’s story about upgrading a home in a Brazilian favela, or slum. On the one hand, the results are joyful. On the other hand, couldn’t our world also try to eliminate slums and poverty? (Read about a poverty-abolition movement in Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America.)

Al Jazeera reports on the award-winning favela home, “At first glance, it is a house like dozens of others in the crowded favelas of Brazil. But this seemingly modest dwelling of 66 square metres (710 square feet), with its exposed brick walls, has just been recognized as the ‘house of the year’ in an international architecture competition.

“The house honored by specialized website ArchDaily belongs to Kdu dos Anjos, a 32-year-old artist living in the bustling Aglomerado da Serra favela at the bottom of a hill on the edge of the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte.

“The two-story structure defeated some more imposing contest entries from India, Mexico, Vietnam and Germany.

‘I’m very proud that my house won this prize, because most of the news about the favelas talks of violence and homes destroyed by landslides,’ said dos Anjos. ‘Today, my home is on top of the world!’

“The house, built on a small lot dos Anjos purchased in 2017, is well ventilated and enjoys abundant natural light; it features horizontal casement windows and a large terrace.

“ ‘The design of the house represents a constructive model that uses common materials in the slums, with an adequate implementation and attention to lighting and ventilation, resulting in a space with great environmental quality,’ ArchDaily wrote on its website.

“For dos Anjos, who founded a cultural centre in his community, the prize carries special significance. ‘I know my house isn’t the most chic in the world, but it’s a well-built shack,’ he says with a grin. … ‘What the architects did is pure magic,’ he added. ‘We barely have [710 square feet], but I’ve had parties here with close to 200 people.’

“The design was the work of the Levante architecture collective, which does pro bono or low-cost work in the favelas. From the outside, the house resembles its neighbors, but it incorporates several features that make it both sturdier and more respectful of the environment, particularly in its ‘attention to lighting and ventilation,’ said architect Fernando Maculan, the project leader.

“One apparent difference with nearby houses is in the arrangement of the bricks, laid horizontally — not vertically — and in staggered rows, which adds solidity and improves insulation. …

“ ‘The masons were angry because they thought laying bricks this way was very time-consuming,’ Maculan said. ‘And we had a lot of trouble getting the materials up the stairs — it’s the last house on the alley, and I had to pay the workers who carried it a lot,’ he said. …

“The entire job cost 150,000 Brazilian reais ($29,000), and the investment paid off in more ways than one: Not only did the architecture prize bring international recognition, the house has helped dos Anjos realize a childhood dream.

“ ‘When I was a boy, I lived in a very modest, poorly insulated room. I even got stung by a scorpion — my sister did too,’ he said. ‘Winning this prize after having suffered from architecture-related problems represents a great victory for me.’ ”

More at Al Jazeera, here. There’s a wonderful array of pictures and no firewall.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged architecture, award, brazil, favela, house of the year, poverty, slum | 4 Comments »

Why We Need Ancient Texts

April 3, 2023 by suzannesmom

Images: Public domain.
Depictions of sea creatures in 13th C manuscripts. How marvelous these illustrations are!

The maritime archaeologist in today’s article says it was just a coincidence that he was reading ancient Norse texts and connected the description of a sea creature to recent observations of whales. But I believe it’s not a coincidence. Everything connects to everything, and the more widely you read, the more likely you are to find the connections.

The researchers noted: ‘Definitive proof for the origins of myths is exceedingly rare and often impossible, but the parallels here are far more striking and persistent than any previous suggestions.’

Donna Lu writes at the Guardian, “Mysterious whale feeding behavior only documented by scientists in the 2010s has been described in ancient texts about sea creatures as early as two millennia ago, new research suggests.

“In 2011, Bryde’s whales in the Gulf of Thailand were first observed at the surface of the water with their jaws open at right angles, waiting for fish to swim into their mouths. Scientists termed the unusual technique, then unknown to modern science, as ‘tread-water feeding.’ Around the same time, similar behavior was spotted in humpback whales off Canada’s Vancouver Island, which researchers called ‘trap-feeding.’

“In both behaviors the whale positions itself vertically in the water, with only the tip of its snout and jaw protruding from the surface. Key to the technique’s success, scientists believe, is that fish instinctively shoal toward the apparent shelter of the whale’s mouths.

“Flinders University scholars now believe they have identified multiple descriptions of the behavior in ancient texts, the earliest appearing in the Physiologus – the Naturalist – a Greek manuscript compiled in Alexandria around 150-200CE.

“Dr John McCarthy, a maritime archaeologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, and the study’s lead author, made the discovery while reading Norse mythology, about a year after he had seen a video of a whale tread-water feeding.

“He noted that accounts of a sea creature known as hafgufa seemed to describe the feeding behavior. ‘It really was a coincidence,’ McCarthy said.

“The most detailed description appeared in a mid-13th-century Old Norse text known as Konungs skuggsjá – the King’s Mirror. It reads: ‘When it goes to feed … the big fish keeps its mouth open for a time, no more or less wide than a large sound or fjord, and unknowing and unheeding, the fish rush in in their numbers. And when its belly and mouth are full, [the hafgufa] closes its mouth, thus catching and hiding inside it all the prey that had come seeking food.’

“The King’s Mirror was an educational text used for explaining the world to young people, McCarthy said. ‘They exaggerate the size … [but] it’s not a fantastical description with any kind of supernatural elements.’ …

” 1986 analysis of the King’s Mirror had found correlations between 26 Old Norse descriptions and scientifically recognized marine animals, but had concluded that the hafgufa ‘must be relegated to the world of the miraculous.’

“ ‘The hafgufa was frustrating for these scholars because they couldn’t quite figure out any animal that this matched to,’ McCarthy said. …

“In the Naturalist – a 2,000-year-old text that ‘preserves zoological information brought to Egypt from India and the Middle East by early natural historians like Herodotus, Ctesias, Aristotle and Plutarch’ – the ancient Greeks referred to the creature as aspidochelone.

“A surviving version of the text reads: ‘When it is hungry it opens its mouth and exhales a certain kind of good-smelling odor from its mouth, the smell of which, once the smaller fish have perceived it, they gather themselves in its mouth. But when his mouth is filled with diverse little fish, he suddenly closes his mouth and swallows them.’ …

“Bryde’s whales and humpbacks are both rorquals, a type of baleen whale. The study was published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.”

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations encouraged.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ancient text, behavior, illustrations, medieval, sea creature, whale | 5 Comments »

Instead of Razing Camps

April 2, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP/File.
People collect their belongings as Salt Lake County conducts a homeless camp cleanup of the Fleet Block area in 2021. Today Utah and a few other states are considering government-sanctioned tent encampments as steppingstones for those without homes.

One has to appreciate politicians who try to solve problems rather than sweep them under the rug. If people are homeless, kicking them out of an encampment with nowhere to go just creates an encampment somewhere else. Some states are considering a different approach.

Patrik Jonsson reports at the Christian Science Monitor, “When Salt Lake City began enforcing an urban camping ban several years ago, hundreds of Utahns picked up their belongings and headed toward the Jordan River.

“For centuries, the river has been a trading post, a border, and a nexus of nomadic activity. But most of all, it has been ‘a place of refuge,’ says Søren Simonsen, executive director of the Jordan River Commission.

“Today, growing numbers of encampments filled with Americans without permanent homes dot the banks of the river. And Mr. Simonsen is on the front line of what to do about it.

“A decade ago, Utah claimed it had largely ‘solved’ homelessness, reducing it by 91%. Now it is considering an idea, supported by Mr. Simonsen, that is gaining traction across the United States: outlawing unsanctioned camping and instead creating government-sanctioned tent encampments as steppingstones for those without homes to find more permanent housing.

“For much of the recent past, one assumption in addressing homelessness has been that everyone wants a solid roof. The debate over encampments is shifting those assumptions.

“Increasingly, cities and states are exploring whether there can be a sense of dignity and agency in ‘safe outside spaces’ as an end in themselves. As some carry out sweeps to clear out encampments, others are experimenting with the idea of making them more humane, hygienic, and livable as one potential part of the solution to the housing crisis. …

Says Mr. Simonsen. ‘Can’t we make space for people that aren’t ready, aren’t capable, aren’t interested in living such a fixed-address kind of lifestyle?’

“The situation is Utah is common across the country. Tent encampments have ‘definitely become more of a visible issue since the pandemic,’ exacerbated by a national housing shortage, says Courtney Anderson, an expert on social welfare law at Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta. ‘It’s a problem that people can see, so they need a solution where they can’t see it.’

“Under pressure from voters, officials are taking action. Authorities in Rhode Island cleared an encampment from the steps of the state capitol in December. Washington, D.C., conducts regular camp removals. New York City has conducted hundreds of ‘sweeps’ under Mayor Eric Adams. Residents have largely hailed the efforts, but the majority of those affected haven’t moved into more permanent housing. …

“ ‘The raiding of camps is really tragic,’ says Professor Anderson. ‘The more you dehumanize people, the easier it is to do that kind of thing.’

“The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it is unconstitutional to ban sleeping in public if there are no other sleeping options available, and some municipal courts have made similar rulings. But this year, Tennessee made camping away from sanctioned areas a felony. Other states are following suit.

“The Georgia Senate is considering a bill that would criminalize camping and force municipalities to comply. But the bill would also allow the state to designate areas for sanctioned camps.

“In Savannah, Georgia, Shirley Walkowicz says the move to criminalize what she is doing – living in her car – ‘just shows that people don’t [care] about me and people like me.’ …

“The Georgia bill is significantly based on the thinking of Judge Glock, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Cicero Institute. Dr. Glock saw the early potential of ‘housing first’ – an Obama-era policy that ended requirements such as drug testing for housing recipients. But he now says the policy has largely failed. An average of five homeless people die on the streets of Los Angeles every day, he says – more than twice as many as a decade ago.

“ ‘This is a crisis situation,’ he says. ‘It’s about what we can do this month, this year. We can’t just sit on our hands until the housing [shortage] is solved.’

“He points to cities such as Austin, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, which are banning makeshift encampments but creating safe spaces for people without homes.

“ ‘The argument is, if cities are going to allow it, make sure they provide the things you need: sanitation, social services, security,’ says Dr. Glock. …

“Birmingham, Alabama, has just voted to erect a tiny house village to accomplish many of these goals. For City Council member Hunter Williams, the logic is clear. …

“ ‘We don’t have to have tent cities under every overpass in America. … We can do better than that.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here. No firewall; subscriptions welcome.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bans, camps, Georgia, government sanctioned, homeless, unhoused, utah | 2 Comments »

Enslaved Potter Carved Messages

April 1, 2023 by suzannesmom

Photo: Lane Turner/Globe Staff.
“Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina,” an exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, presents 12 works by enslaved potter David Drake. Above, David Drake’s signature, “Dave,” on a storage jar from 1858.

Today’s story is about an enslaved potter and the descendants who found him 150 years later. It is so painful to read about him being “bought.” You really have to wonder about the depths to which humanity sometimes descends.

Malcolm Gay reports at the Boston Globe, “In 1857, an enslaved potter in South Carolina’s Old Edgefield district carved a brief poem into a pot he’d turned in the mid-August heat.

“The potter had been bought and sold by a series of owners by then. He’d lost a leg, but his gifted hands won him local renown: His expert work with clay ensured he would be kept in the district known for its stoneware, even as his family was torn from him at auction.

“Using a sharpened tool, he etched into the jar’s shoulder: ‘I wonder where is all my relation/Friendship to all — and every nation.’ The potter then added his enslaver’s initials, the date, and, finally, his own name: ‘Dave.’

“In that simple act, the man, long known as Dave the Potter, and later David Drake, was not only wondering about his lost family: He was committing an extraordinary act of defiance in pre-Civil War South Carolina, indelibly asserting his existence in an age that sought to obliterate the humanity of Black people.

“Originally created to store meats and other foods, Drake’s 40 or so poem jars are today highly sought after by museums. His inscribed vessels routinely fetch six figures at auction, and his stoneware features prominently in ‘Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina,’ an exhibition featuring enslaved potters [at Boston’s] Museum of Fine Arts.

“Perhaps most significantly: More than 150 years after Drake composed his mournful verse, researchers appear finally to have found his direct descendants.

“ ‘He was sending these messages,” said Daisy Whitner, 84, whom genealogists have identified as Drake’s great-great-great-granddaughter. ‘He wanted people to know: I’m a human being; treat me as such.’

“Now in their mid-70s and 80s, Whitner and her three siblings, Pauline Baker, John N. Williams, and Priscilla Ann Carolina, believed for most of their lives that their known family tree began in Aiken, S.C. They hadn’t known they’d had family in Edgefield. They’d certainly never heard of David Drake.

“But that changed in 2016, when April Hynes, an independent genealogist and researcher who’s been tracking down descendants of enslaved people from the area, cold-called Whitner. By pairing historical research with publicly available documents, Hynes had determined that Whitner and her siblings were the potter’s direct descendants. …

“ ‘I don’t have a word to describe him,’ said Baker, 75, seated on a sofa in her niece’s tidy home outside Washington, D.C., a replica Drake pot placed prominently on the dining room table. …

“Seated to her right, Whitner grew emotional as she described touching one of Drake’s pots during a trip to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which organized the exhibition with the MFA.

“ ‘It just tore me to pieces,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop reading and reading, trying to dig more and more.’

“The family has read nearly everything published about their ancestor, as they puzzle over his poems, searching for possible meanings and seeking clues about his life.

“Whitner is haunted by a particular jar Drake created and inscribed in 1836. It reads: ‘horses mules and hogs —/all our cows is in the bogs —/there they shall ever stay/till the buzzards take them away.’ ‘He’s using farm animals rather than to say slave,’ she said. …

“The [family] had mixed emotions when Hynes first called them with the news about Drake, but soon they were traveling down to Edgefield with around 30 family members to take part in celebrations to honor the potter.

“ ‘It’s a joyous feeling,’ said John N. Williams, 81. ‘But then there was a sadness about it, because you thought about the atrocities that happened.’

“They appreciate how rare it is, as the descendants of slaves, to be able to read their ancestor’s thoughts — particularly while he was still in bondage. But discovering a forebear who spent most of his life enslaved has also personalized their perception of the era, wrestling as they do with the scant details, and many unknowns, of Drake’s life.

“Whitner said she’d previously avoided looking at movies about slavery because ‘my heart couldn’t take it.’

“ ‘It hurt me to my core,’ she said. ‘And I will look now.’ ”

More at the Globe, here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged descendants, museum of fine arts, poem, potter, slave, south carolina | 5 Comments »

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