Photo: Museum of London Archaeology via Hyperallergic. A necklace found in a UK burial site probably belonged to an “elite woman“ who wanted to highlight her Christian identity, says Hyperallergic.
Archaeology reminds us that there will always be surprises to uncover no matter how much we think we know. A necklace found in a medieval burial site and considered a “once-in-a-lifetime” discovery is one recent surprise. Michael Levenson wrote about it for the New York Times.
“A 1,300-year-old gold-and-gemstone necklace that was recently discovered in an ancient grave site in England may have belonged to a woman who was an early Christian leader, according to experts involved in the discovery.
“The ancient jewelry was unearthed in Northamptonshire in April [2022] during excavations that took place ahead of a planned housing development. … The 30 pendants and beads that once formed the elaborate necklace were made from Roman coins, gold, garnets, glass and semiprecious stones. The centerpiece of the necklace, a rectangular pendant with a cross motif, was also among the artifacts that were discovered.
“ ‘When the first glints of gold started to emerge from the soil we knew this was something significant,’ Levente-Bence Balázs, a site supervisor at the Museum of London Archaeology, [said in a statement announcing the find]. …
“X-rays of soil blocks lifted from the grave also revealed an elaborately decorated cross featuring unusual depictions of human faces cast in silver, the statement said.
“While the soil is being investigated more closely, ‘this large and ornate piece suggests the woman may have been an early Christian leader,’ the statement said, adding that she might have been an abbess, royalty or both. The site also contained two decorated pots and a shallow copper dish.
“The skeleton itself has decomposed, with only tiny fragments of tooth enamel remaining. But the Museum of London Archaeology said it was almost certain that a woman was buried there because similar necklaces and lavish burial sites were almost exclusively found in female graves in the period.
Scholars said the discovery pointed to the important but often overlooked role of women in the development of early Christianity.
“ ‘The evidence does seem to point to an early female Saxon church leader, perhaps one of the first in this region,’ Helen Bond, a professor of Christian origins and head of the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, wrote in an email. ‘We know from the gospels that women played an important role in the earliest Christian movement, acting as disciples, apostles, teachers and missionaries,’ Professor Bond wrote. ‘While their role was diminished later on at the highest levels, there were always places where women leaders continued (even sometimes as bishops).’
“Amy Brown Hughes, a historical theologian at Gordon College, who studies early Christianity, called the necklace, which has been traced to the years 630 to 670, an ‘absolutely stunning’ artifact from a volatile period when Christianity was becoming established in Anglo-Saxon England.
“Noting that women have often been left out of narratives about Christianity, Professor Hughes said the necklace provides material evidence that ‘helps to reorient our assumptions about who actually had influence and authority.’ …
“Joan E. Taylor, a professor of Christian origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London, said the fact that the woman was apparently buried in a village far from a main population center ‘testifies to the troubled times in this region of Britain in the 7th century.’
“ ‘Perhaps she was on a journey, or fleeing,’ Professor Taylor wrote in an email. ‘It was a tough “Game of Thrones” world with competing royal rulers aiming for supremacy. It was also a time where Christianity was spreading, and abbesses and other high-status women could play an important role in this.’ …
“The artifacts [will] be featured in an installment of the BBC series ‘Digging for Britain.’ “
More at the Times, here. See also Hyperallergic. More photos, no firewall.
Photo: Dezeen magazine. The translucent walls are made of Pentelic marble. So lovely!
You may recall reading about the Greek Orthodox church near the World Trade Center in New York City that was ruined on September 11, 2001. Fortunately, 9/11 was not the end of the story for that church. Tom Ravenscroft reports at Dezeen about Santiago Calatrava’s new illuminated wonder.
“The St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which replaces a church destroyed in the 9/11 attack, has officially opened at the World Trade Center site in New York.
“Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the building replaces a 19th-century church that was destroyed on 11 September 2001. … The church is located alongside the 9/11 memorial that stands on the site of the former twin towers.
“It was designed by Calatrava to be a ‘sanctuary for worship’ but also a reminder of the impact of the terrorist attacks. …
“Said Calatrava, ‘I hope to see this structure serve its purpose as a sanctuary for worship but also as a place for reflection on what the city endured and how it is moving forward. [Architecture] can have an intrinsic symbolic value, which is not written or expressed in a specific way but in an abstract and synthetic manner, sending a message and thus leaving a lasting legacy.’
“Built on top of the World Trade Center Vehicle Security Center, the church is raised around 25 feet above (seven metres) above street level and was designed to be a beacon.
“Informed by Byzantine architecture and the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul in particular, the church is arranged around a central drum-shaped form that is topped by a dome.
“The walls of this central section were made from thin sheets of Pentelic marble so that the building can be illuminated at night.
” ‘This Shrine will be a place for everyone who comes to the sacred ground at the World Trade Center, a place for them to imagine and envision a world where mercy is inevitable, reconciliation is desirable, and forgiveness is possible,’ said Ioannis Lambriniadis archbishop elpidophoros of America.
” ‘We will stand here for the centuries to come, as a light on the hill, a shining beacon to the world of what is possible in the human spirit, if we will only allow our light to shine before all people, as the light of this Shrine for the nation will illuminate every night sky to come in our magnificent city.’
“Surrounding the central domed spaces are four stone-clad towers that give the building an overall square shape.
“The entrance to the church, which faces a large open plaza, was placed between two of these towers and leads directly to the main series of liturgical spaces.
“The altar directly faces the entrance, while the two side niches were completed with translucent arched windows. Above the main space, the domed is surrounded by 40 translucent windows divided by 40 stone ribs, reminiscent of the Hagia Sofia.
“Alongside the main liturgical spaces, several community rooms and offices were placed on the upper floors of the towers.
More at Dezeen, here. Lots of beautiful photos by Alan Karchmer. No firewall.
The New York Times and many other publications reported on the reopening of the church, now a national landmark. From the article by Jane Margolies: “Olga Pavlakos grew up going to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Lower Manhattan. She was baptized there. Her parents were married there. She has memories of her father, who worked in restaurants, volunteering there on Sundays, and of celebrating Epiphany every January, when parishioners would walk to the Hudson River, toss a gold cross into the frigid water and watch divers plunge in to retrieve it. …
“Her connection to St. Nicholas can be traced to her grandparents, who left Greece in the early 1900s and settled in Lower Manhattan, then a bustling immigrant community. Residents there scraped together money and bought a tavern on Cedar Street that they converted to a place of worship, eventually adding a bell at the top.
“These original parishioners, who had arrived by boat, named their church after the patron saint of seafarers — a saint who fed the hungry and clothed the needy and inspired the character of Santa Claus. … The tiny church was obliterated during the terrorist attacks.
“Twenty-one long and difficult years later, St. Nicholas has reopened. But it is no longer a humble church, exclusively for its parishioners. Its mission is larger, as is its splendor.
“St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church & National Shrine, as it’s now called, has become a destination for all. It offers a bereavement center that will serve as a place for meditation and prayer for people of any faith. … The new church is a prominent expression of Orthodox Christianity in the city, and it is a source of great pride for the Greek American community.
“For the few remaining longtime parishioners of St. Nicholas, there is relief that their beloved church has finally reopened. But now, their intimate community hub is a global destination, and some wonder about the future of their once tight-knit parish.” More at the Times here.
Photo: Jesse Granger, Duke University. “North American monarch butterflies migrate each winter to just a few mountaintops in central Mexico, with help from an internal compass,” say Duke University. “New computer modeling research offers clues to how migrating animals get to where they need to go, even when their magnetic compass leads them astray.” But as populations decline, so do the mutual-support possibilities.
Continuing the subject of friends (see the post from a few days ago), it seems that associating with others can be beneficial for many life forms. Robin Smith reports on the latest research from Duke University.
“Animals can find their way across vast distances with amazing accuracy,” Smith writes. “Take monarch butterflies, for example. Millions of them fly up to 2,500 miles across the eastern half of North America to the same overwintering grounds each year, using the Earth’s magnetic field to help them reach a small region in central Mexico that’s about the size of Disney World.
“Or sockeye salmon: starting out in the open ocean, they head home each year to spawn. Using geomagnetic cues they manage to identify their home stream from among thousands of possibilities, often returning to within feet of their birthplace.
“Now new research offers clues to how migrating animals get to where they need to go, even when they lose the signal or their inner compass leads them astray. The key, said Duke Ph.D. student Jesse Granger: ‘they can get there faster and more efficiently if they travel with a friend’ [Collective Movement as a Solution to Noisy Navigation and its Vulnerability to Population Loss, Jesse Granger and Sönke Johnsen].
“Many animals can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and use it as a compass. What has puzzled scientists, Granger said, is the magnetic sense is not fail-safe. These signals coming from the planet’s molten core are subtle at the surface. Phenomena such as solar storms and man-made electromagnetic noise can disrupt them or drown them out. … How do some animals manage to chart a course with such a noisy sensory system and still get it right?
“ ‘This is the question that keeps me up at night,’ said Granger, who did the work with her adviser, Duke Biology Professor Sönke Johnsen.
“Multiple hypotheses have been put forward to explain how they do it. Perhaps, some scientists say, migrating animals average multiple measurements taken over time to get more accurate information. Or maybe they switch from consulting their magnetic compass to using other ways of navigating as they near the end of their journey — such as smell, or landmarks — to narrow in on their goal.
“In a paper published Nov. 16 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the Duke team wanted to pit these ideas against a third possibility: That some animals still manage to find their way, even when their compass readings are unreliable, simply by sticking together.
“To test the idea, they created a computer model to simulate virtual groups of migrating animals, and analyzed how different navigation tactics affected their performance.
“The animals in the model begin their journey spread out over a wide area, encountering others along the route. The direction an animal takes at each step along the way is a balance between two competing impulses: to band together and stay with the group, or to head towards a specific destination, but with some degree of error in finding their bearings.
“The scientists found that, even when the simulated animals started to make more mistakes in reading their magnetic map, the ones that stuck with their neighbors still reached their destination, whereas those that didn’t care about staying together didn’t make it.
‘We showed that animals are better at navigating in a group than they are at navigating alone,’ Granger said.
“Even when their magnetic compass veered them off course, more than 70% of animals in the model still made it home, simply by joining with others and following their lead. Other ways of compensating didn’t measure up, or would need to guide them perfectly for most of the journey to accomplish the same feat.
“But the strategy breaks down when species decline in number, the researchers found. The team showed that animals who need friends to find their way are more likely to get lost when their population shrinks below a certain density.
“ ‘If the population density starts dropping, it takes them longer and longer along their migratory route before they find anyone else,’ Granger said.
“Previous studies have made similar predictions, but the Duke team’s model could help future researchers quantify the effect for different species. In some runs of the model, for example, they found that if a hypothetical population dropped by 50% — akin to what monarchs have experienced in the last decade, and some salmon in the last century — 37% fewer of the remaining individuals would make it to their destination.”
Art: Georges de La Tour, 17th century. I’m not suggesting that 17th century female investors were pickpockets, but they knew what they were doing.
Do you get the feeling these days that history is in constant flux? It all has to do with how past historians emphasized the role of people with whom they identified, omitting the perspective of women, say, or indigenous people and people of color.
The Guardian is good at finding research with a new historical angle, as in today’s article about 17th century female arts investors. Who knew?
Dalya Alberge reported recently on research into the women who bankrolled a rival to the Globe theatre, which we know was famous for Shakespeare’s productions.
“Male performers may have dominated the early modern stage,” Alberge writes, “but female investors were a driving force behind one of the foremost playhouses of the 17th century, according to new research.
“Academics have discovered that women made up a large part of the financial force behind the Fortune theatre, the great rival to the Globe, partly built by the actor for whom Christopher Marlowe wrote plays, and where Thomas Middleton’s dramas were first staged.
“While a few women investors in the Fortune were previously known, it has now been revealed that they made up a third of the playhouse’s financial backers between the mid-1620s and late 1640s. Of 71 investors, including the carpenter who had worked on the playhouse, 24 were women and, from time to time, owned the majority of shares. While some inherited theirs, others purchased them for themselves, despite having no previous connection with the theatre.
“Lucy Munro, professor of Shakespeare and early modern literature at King’s College London, told the Observer that, in researching the playhouse, she never expected to discover that women had such a huge financial stake in it. …
“ ‘We know that the people who performed in plays at the Fortune were men and boys, but I find it really exciting that these women thought that the theatre was for them, and that it wasn’t just for men.’
“The Fortune theatre was built in 1600 by Edward Alleyn, one of the foremost actors of his day, and his stepfather-in-law, Philip Henslowe, the most important English theatre owner and manager of the Elizabethan age. …
“Its initial resident company was the Admiral’s Men, on whom James I bestowed the patronage of his son, Prince Henry. Audiences flocked to see plays such as Doctor Faustus by Marlowe and The Roaring Girl by Thomas Dekker and Middleton. The playhouse was named after the Roman goddess of fortune but it was destroyed by a fire in 1621, almost a decade after the Globe burned down.
“The research has been conducted by Munro and Clare McManus, professor of early modern literature and theatre at the University of Roehampton.
“In [an] online post, they write: ‘In order to finance rebuilding the playhouse – this time in brick – Alleyn created a 12-part lease, issuing full and half shares in the second Fortune to investors who paid £83 6s 8d for a full share and £41 13s 4d for a half share. This would be around £11,000 [$13,000] and £5,500 [$6,600] today, so leaseholders had to be relatively well-off.’
“But they add: ‘Most of these women came from what historians have termed the “middling sort” – those who were neither very rich nor very poor. They were the daughters, wives and widows of London tradesmen, officials and actors. Many of them had enough literacy to leave signatures or complex marks on legal documents such as wills and depositions.’ Munro said: ‘These playhouses were vulnerable but, when it was going well, they could make a lot of money.’ …
“The Fortune’s female investors included Margaret Wayte Wigpitt, widow of its bricklayer Thomas, and Elizabeth Pierpoint, a servant whose appreciative mistress had left her two half shares.
“While documentation for early modern playhouse investment rarely survives, original lease documents issued by Alleyn are within the archive of his papers at Dulwich College, the charity he founded in 1619.
“The academics write … ‘These fascinating documents detail the payment – or nonpayment – of rent by the Fortune leaseholders, quarter by quarter, between 1626 and 1649, when the college evicted the leaseholders for nonpayment of rent during the civil war. …
“Asked why the Fortune’s female investment had been overlooked until now, Munro said documents had been ‘almost hiding in plain sight’ in the archives: ‘They are catalogued, but only in an outlined sort of way. I’d actually come across a reference from a scholar saying that the Fortune’s accounts don’t survive. Well, they do.’
“Noting that they also studied wills and other documents at the National Archives at Kew, she believes historians have often stopped researching after reaching 1616, the year of Shakespeare’s death, because they were more interested in him than anything else: ‘But interesting things happened after that.’ ”
Can’t help wondering what else these women were investing in. After all, it was really not entirely new in the 1600s for women to invest. Remember my post of a couple years ago about a female investor back in 1870 BC? Read that here. More at the Guardian, here.
Oh, what have we done? We are on our way to ruining Planet Earth with our activities. Let’s see if understanding the extent of the problem can help us rectify it.
At Slate, the online magazine, Niranjana Rajalakshmi writes about plastic in the ocean.
“Richard Kirby, a marine biologist based in Plymouth, England, was looking at zooplankton wriggling under a microscope when he spotted something else: shreds of plastic pieces interlaced with the tiny creatures.
“This wasn’t unusual to Kirby. He’d collected the sample off the sea of Plymouth for the purpose of raising awareness about microplastic pollution in oceans. Examining plankton is routine for Kirby, and so is observing microplastics in his samples.
“Plastic pollution in oceans has been increasing at an alarming rate over the years. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 88 percent of marine species have been affected by plastic contamination.
“People are familiar with seabirds dying from eating cigarette lighters, or turtles suffocating as a result of mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish, but there is very little awareness about plastics that harm creatures at a smaller level, Kirby explains.
Ingesting microplastic can even kill plankton that are crucial sources of food to other marine life, including fish.
“This is because plankton cannot get a sufficient amount of food into their guts if they’re already occupied by little shreds of plastic. …
“Says Kirby. ‘You can even find plastics in plankton samples collected in Antarctica, for example.’ Plastic shreds from clothing are a significant polluter at the micro level. Microplastic can also come from tires, road markings, and personal care products.
“Plankton aren’t mistaking microplastics for food, exactly, says Bill Perry, an associate professor of biology at Illinois State University. They are filter-feeding, during which they extract small pieces of food and particles from the water. In doing so, they gather up microplastics, too.
“The damage that microplastics cause is not just confined to microscopic marine organisms like plankton. In fact, it is more pronounced in species that are located higher in the food chain, explains Perry, and which eat smaller creatures that have themselves consumed microplastics. …
“Eating microplastics, as you might imagine, is not very good for marine animals. Fishes can face problems with growth and reproduction, says Grace Saba, an associate professor who also researches organismal ecology at Rutgers University. Their guts start to have more and more plastic and less food, and they don’t have enough energy to put toward growth and reproduction like they would if they weren’t eating microplastics.
“The microplastic problem is only going to get worse: A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency projects that the amount of microplastics in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean will rise by 3.9 times in 2030 as compared to the microplastics level in 2008 in the region.
“Once microplastics enter the ocean’s food chain, it’s hard for them to leave. Individual animals may excrete microplastics, but ‘the thing about poop in the ocean is that it serves as a food source for marine animals, including plankton and filter feeders,’ Saba explains. In this way, microplastics get continuously recycled. Marine scientists in the future will probably be spotting microplastics in their samples, too.”
Sigh. I do small things to cut down on plastic use, but then suddenly I need plastic bins or some other big plastic thing. What do you do to cut back? A couple of my friends have been studying the issue (one who volunteers with the Sierra Club, another who is with a progressive political group in Massachusetts) and are concluding that recycling doesn’t work.
More at Slate, here. Follow Dr. Kirby @PlanktonPundit on Twitter.
Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom. Suzanne and Kate on Cape Cod. They laugh a lot.
When I saw today’s article by Teddy Amenabar at the WashingtonPost, I knew it would be blog material. That’s not just because friends have been important to me since childhood (Hello, Hannah!), but because I’ve been learning about the particular virtues that conversation with friends has for older people. There’s the value of relaxing, having fun. But there are also cognitive benefits from focusing on what friends are saying and responding thoughtfully.
Amenabar writes, “One of the more surprising findings in the science of relationships is that both romance and friendship often start the same way — with a spark. … A growing body of research shows friends are essential to a healthy life — and they are just as important for our well-being as healthy eating habits or a good night’s sleep.
“Platonic love trumps romantic love in a number of ways. People with strong friendships tend to have better mental health and studies suggest they’re in better physical health, as well. Researchers have found large social networks lower our risk of premature death more than exercise or dieting alone.
A six-year study of 736 middle-aged Swedish men found having a life partner didn’t affect the risk of heart attack or fatal coronary heart disease — but having friends did.
“A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a lot of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with few friends. Notably, having a social network of children and relatives did not affect survival rates. …
“There are multiple theories about the association between friendship and better health. Part of the effect may be due to the fact that it’s easier for healthy people to make friends. A strong social network could be an indicator that someone has more access to medical care. And, someone with more friends may just have a better support system to get a ride to the doctor’s office.
“But there is also a psychological effect of friendship that likely plays a role. Friends help us cope with stress. In one study at the University of Virginia, many people were intimidated at the prospect of climbing a steep hill. But researchers found that when people were standing next to a friend, they rated the hill less challenging than those who were alone.
“Brain imaging studies suggest that friendship affects brain systems associated with reward, stress and negative emotions, offering an explanation for why social connection benefits mental health and well-being. Friendship even seems to affect our immune response. In one remarkable study, 276 healthy volunteers were given nose drops containing a cold virus. Those with diverse social ties were less likely to develop cold symptoms. …
“Friends don’t just appear out of thin air, Franco said. Here’s her advice for making new connections and maintaining the old ones.
“Take the initiative. Trust your gut when you’re meeting new people. We’re particularly good at knowing when someone is a potential new friend (remember that spark). And, you should assume people like you. We often underestimate how positively others think of us, Franco said. …
“Start with a text. Start small by scrolling through your phone and shooting a text message to an old friend you’ve been meaning to reconnect with.
“Show your gratitude. If a potential friend reaches out to you to grab coffee or pizza, tell them how happy you are they reached out, and that you appreciate the effort, Franco said. In a University of Utah study, researchers asked 70 college freshman to keep a check list of certain interactions — like going to see a movie together or calling just to say hello — they did with new friends. After three months, the researchers found that close friendships were more likely to form when the pairs expressed affection to each other. …
“Invite friends to things you’ve already planned. If it’s hard to find time for friends, think of the tasks you already have to accomplish and tag on a friend, Franco said. The next time you workout at the gym, for example, you could invite someone to join. ‘Ask yourself: Are there parts of your day right now that you’re doing anyway that you can just do in community with other people?’ Franco said.
“Join a book club, take a class or play a sport. Regular interaction with people who share the same interests as you could lead to friendship. Another University of Maryland study that found cadets who sat next to each other in police academy were more likely to become close friends. …
“While having friends is good for your health, not having them can be detrimental.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, loneliness has been associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. For older women, loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of heart disease by as much as 27 percent.
“Loneliness is essentially the perceived gap between the relationships you have and the relationships you want in your life, said Adam Smiley Poswolsky, the author of Friendship in the Age of Loneliness.
“A 2018 study found that loneliness is common across age groups. … Social media can exacerbate our perception of loneliness by bombarding us with photos and videos of friends and acquaintances seemingly spending their time without us, said Poswolsky.
“[Said] Poswolsky, ‘No one feels like they can talk about it because there’s a lot of shame associated with loneliness.’
“Billy Baker, the author of We Need to Hang Out, a memoir of his personal journey to find new friends as a middle-aged man, said he realized he needed to build beyond the lifelong friendships he made in high school or college.
“Baker said he didn’t have very many people he could call in the middle of the night if there was an emergency. To remedy this, he started a fraternity for neighborhood dads to meet every Wednesday night, and the group now gets together on other days and on the weekends.
“Baker said he’s spent years ‘checking off so many other boxes,’ to be a good father and husband, but he’s never had ‘hanging out with my buddies’ on the list.
“ ‘We all know how to do this,’ he said. ‘What very often happens in those moments is you feel that spark with someone and you say: “Hey, we should grab a beer some time!” But, how often do you go grab that beer?’ ”
As Suzanne and her fellow Girl Scouts used to sing,
“Make new friends “But keep the old. “One is silver “And the other gold.”
Photo: Alex Bakleyvia Washington Post and Italy 24. Herman Cruse is a school bus driver who is a regular volunteer in classes at Middle Township Elementary No. 1 in Cape May Court House, N.J.
I like that every week the Washington Post sends subscribers a collection of upbeat stories it calls “The Optimist.” It’s good to be reminded that there are people doing kind and generous things every day. We just don’t hear about them often.
Today’s story, by Cathy Free. is about a school bus driver who was concerned when a child on his bus was discouraged about reading. It’s about how his decision to help out led to a whole new avocation.
“New Jersey school bus driver Herman Cruse noticed that a kindergartner seemed a little sad and out of sorts during one morning ride to Middle Township Elementary #1.
“ ‘We have an uncanny gift to discern what kids are feeling,’ he said.
“When Cruse asked the kindergartner what was wrong, he said the boy explained that he wasn’t able to complete his reading assignment because his parents were busy with his four siblings at home. It was hard to find one-on-one time to practice reading with his mom or dad, he told Cruse.
“Cruse said an idea popped into his mind.
‘I told him, “Listen, I have some free time, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to come to the school and read with you,” ‘ he said.
“Cruse received permission from the 6-year-old’s teacher, Alex Bakley, to show up at her kindergarten classroom the following week. When he walked in, he said the boy shouted, ‘Hey, that’s my bus driver!’
“ ‘We went into a quiet corner and began reading together,’ Cruse said. … ‘So he read to me, I read to him and we read together, and from there, it took on a life of its own. … A second student wanted to read to me, then a third. All these kids were going to the teacher asking, “Can I read with Mr. Herman?” ‘
“Almost two years later, Cruse now volunteers to help Bakley’s 18 kindergarten students and another kindergarten class with reading two days a week, and on a third day, he tutors the school’s first- and second-graders. After dropping the kids off at school, of course. …
“Middle Township Elementary Principal Christian Paskalides said every child at the school looks up to Cruse, both on and off the school bus. … ‘Positive adult interactions can sometimes dictate a child’s day, and a bus driver is the first and last adult interaction for most students other than family,’ Paskalides added. ‘This is more than just a job to Herman — he’s a great role model and mentor.’
“Cruse said he’s never wanted to be anything other than a bus driver. … Because he lives in Egg Harbor City, N.J., about 40 miles away, it didn’t make sense for him to drive home after delivering students to high school, middle school and elementary school, he said. … ‘Instead, I’d hang out at the gym, go the library or sit in my car and go to sleep to fill up the time,’ Cruse said.
“It wasn’t until he offered to help the kindergartner on his bus last year that he realized there was something more rewarding he could be doing, he said. Cruse had spent a lot of time reading to his own five children when they were growing up.
“ ‘They’d say, “Dad, how come you read so much?” and I’d say, “Come on over and find out,” ‘ he said. ‘I’d tell them, “The book is always better than the movie.” There’s nothing better than time spent with a good book.’ …
“When Bakley showed him the round table where children would read to him in her classroom, he pulled up a small chair and made himself at home, he said. … He spends about 20 minutes reading books with each child on a rotating basis, and he also challenges them to word games like alphabet bingo.
“LaCotia Ruiz said her son Kingsly, 5, is more excited about books since he started reading with Cruse.
“ ‘Kingsly had a rough time with reading at the beginning of the school year, but he’s doing much better because of this fun one-on-one time,’ Ruiz said. ‘In the morning he wakes up excited and says, “I’m going to read with Mr. Herman!” ‘ she said. …
“ ‘There’s now another bus driver who wants to help me out between his routes,’ [Cruse] said. “What started out as a way to kill time has now blossomed into a way to make a difference in the heart of a child.’ ”
Props to him and props to that first kindergartner, too. I’m going out on a limb here and opine that the little boy sensed he could reveal his problem to this adult and maybe have something good happen. More at the Post, here.
Wildfires have have shown Californians the dark side of Nature, especially how it fights back when it has reached the limits of its tolerance for human destructiveness. Today’s article shows the residents of the obliterated town of Paradise gaining strength from the healing side of Nature.
Sarah Kaplan reported at the Washington Post, “Laura Nelson was dreading this drive. It’s bad enough seeing the mailboxes for houses that no longer exist, the dusty roads lined with the blackened skeletons of trees. But the day is also bone-dry and scorching, the smoke from a distant fire casting a too-familiar pallor over the landscape. Her car bumps over rough patches of pavement — places where the asphalt was melted by vehicles engulfed in flames.
“It has been four years since Nelson navigated these roads while fleeing the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history. And still, every return to Paradise is a reminder that she can never truly go home.
“When the Camp Fire incinerated Nelson’s Northern California town, it plunged the community into a mental health crisis. Butte County already had one of the highest rates of childhood trauma in the state, and the sudden loss of home and kinship left residents at high risk of depression. The author of one study on the fire’s aftermath said survivors experienced PTSD at rates on par with veterans of war.
“They are not alone: Research increasingly shows that victims of climate change disasters are left with deep psychological wounds — from anxiety after hurricanes to surges in suicide during heat waves — that the nation’s disaster response agencies are ill-prepared to treat.
“But in the burned and battered forests near Paradise, a small program run by California State University at Chico is using nature therapy walks to help fire survivors recover.
“Drawing on the Japanese practice of ‘forest bathing,’ the community-led walks test a fraught premise: That the site of survivors’ worst memories can become a source of solace. That landscapes still threatened by ever-rising temperatures may hold a remedy to the anguish that climate change will bring. …
“After the dual ordeals of fleeing from fire and navigating an overburdened disaster bureaucracy, participants say the program has helped relieve some of their pain.
“ ‘The forest is the therapist,’ Nelson says. ‘Nature knows how to heal.’ …
“As she approaches the shaded entrance to Paradise Lake park — a rare patch of the forest left mostly untouched by fire — she feels her pulse ease ever so slightly. There is something reassuring about the sweet scent of fir needles, the cool breeze of the lake, the chatter of sparrows and squirrels.
“Suddenly, Nelson is glad she came. She needs this morning in nature, she realizes, to restore some of what she lost when Paradise burned. She yearns to feel at home again in this wounded, warming world.
“In the woods beside Paradise Lake, Blake Ellis stands amid a circle of survivors, breathing deep. As program manager of the Chico State ecotherapy program, she has guided scores of forest therapy walks. But this one feels especially freighted with meaning. …
“Ellis doesn’t know what memories they have brought to this moment. But she knows her job is to create a ‘safe container’ for their pain.
“The fire started around dawn on Nov. 8, 2018, when a faulty piece of electrical equipment sent a spark into the parched vegetation of the northern Sierra foothills. …
“The streets in Paradise weren’t designed to carry tens of thousands of evacuees at a moment’s notice. LeeAnn Schlaf saw families crammed into sedans, boats pulled by trailers, trucks carrying dogs and cats and chickens. Some people had abandoned their vehicles and started to walk. She couldn’t understand why. Then Schlaf turned onto the Skyway and was confronted by a ‘tunnel of fire. …
“After introductions, Ellis leads the forest therapy group along the lakeside trail to a flat, open stretch of ground. The water is so still it looks like a mirror, perfectly doubling the trees, the clouds, the smoke-streaked sky.
“ ‘Find a nice, cozy, comfortable spot,’ Ellis says. … ‘Begin by simply bringing your awareness to your breath. Simply noticing what it’s like to breathe.’ …
“Ellis’s goal in this moment is to help the participants feel grounded. To anchor them in a safe and peaceful present, even as they are buffeted by the traumas of their past.
“Studies have found that as many as 40 percent of people will develop post-traumatic stress disorder after a disaster, said psychologist Karla Vermeulen, deputy director of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
“Survivors often remain hypervigilant, their bodies pulsing with stress hormones long after the threat has subsided. Vivid memories of the disaster can disrupt their sleep and haunt their days. Untreated, their suffering may begin to calcify into something more deep-seated and persistent. …
“In the moment when they are most in need of stability and compassion, Vermeulen said, survivors too often find themselves at the mercy of a convoluted bureaucracy that climate change has stretched increasingly thin. …
“Accessing the few resources that are available requires survivors to complete reams of paperwork, adding to their stress levels. It may take months or even years to get approved for government assistance, exacerbating peoples’ sense that they will never be safe again. …
“Years later, Schlaf still worries something will happen to her house every time she goes on vacation. She compulsively checks that the knobs on her stove are turned off. Though it was her life’s dream to live in the woods, now she is uneasy among too many trees. …
“But sitting in the sunshine beside Paradise Lake, Schlaf notices how calm she feels. She looks at the reflection of tall, dark pines quivering on the lake surface. For what feels like the first time in a long time, the forest doesn’t make her fearful.”
Photo: MJ Gautrau/ University of Maine. BioHome3D, the first 3D-printed home made entirely of organic, renewable materials, was unveiled on Nov. 21 at the University of Maine’s Orono campus.
I wonder if writer Laura Graves, blogging from what she calls the Hinterlands of Central Maine, has heard about this initiative in her state. It actually looks like a good idea for any state (or nation). See what you think.
Maya Homan writes at the Boston Globe, “How do you create lots of affordable housing with limited materials, labor, and other resources? One group of researchers at the University of Maine has come up with a proposed solution: hook up a 3D printer.
“The United States faces rising rents and housing shortages, intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Maine has its own unique, overlapping challenges: The state needs another estimated 20,000 homes to meet the current demand for low-income housing. It also has the oldest average population in the nation, with a median age of 44.7, an issue that exacerbates the state’s labor shortage. With pandemic-related supply chain issues and rising costs of raw materials, the already-expensive housing market has surged.
“Enter BioHome3D, the first 3D-printed home made entirely of organic, renewable materials.
“The prototype, which was created by the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, has been in the works for three years, according to founding director Habib Dagher. It is 600 square feet in total, with a modern, unvaulted barrel roof, and a wide front porch with white shiplap exterior walls. The interior contains an open-concept kitchen, living, and dining area with grooved wooden walls and tall windows. The single bedroom doubles as an office, and a tiled bathroom completes the space.
“The materials used to manufacture the 3D-printed home also help address another issue in Maine: the shuttering of several pulp and paper mills that once processed residual sawdust and other byproducts from local sawmills. …
“Dagher said, ‘We asked ourselves, could we print a home with that material?’ The answer, thus far, has been yes.
“The prototype, which was unveiled Nov. 21 at the University of Maine’s Orono campus, is now undergoing tests to see how the building fares during Maine’s harsh winters. …
“Dagher’s lab is building on over two decades of research into using biomaterials to create sound structures. Though Dagher’s lab is not the first to 3D print a house, they are the first to use a 3D printer to create the entirety of the structure, as well as the first to use environmentally friendly and reusable materials.
“ ‘The walls, the floor, the roof are all bio-based, and it’s 100 percent recyclable,’ Dagher said. …
“While there are certain drawbacks to using engineered materials over natural ones — fire safety being one — Dagher said the homes have displayed an added durability throughout different climates, as well as increased resistance to termites. …
“The homes are designed using modular construction, meaning that individual rooms are manufactured indoors and driven to the construction site, where they can be quickly assembled. Dagher hopes that this method will help cut down on construction time, as builders will not be as impacted by weather conditions.
“As the project is still in the testing phase, there aren’t yet definitive estimates for how many people will be needed to construct the homes, or how much each tiny house will cost to manufacture. However, Dagher said the use of sustainable materials and the ability to 3D print the structure ‘really changes the game in terms of how we think of housing content and how we think of construction.’
“Though the research process is far from over, ‘we’ve learned a lot,’ he said. ‘We’ve learned what not to do, as well as what to do, and the learning has not ended.’
“The lab’s next steps are to build a manufacturing plant (which Dagher affectionately nicknamed the ‘factory of the future’) to be able to produce the homes en masse. Once the factory is up and running, they hope to be able to 3D print a home within 48 hours, and move on to larger projects like housing developments.
“ ‘There’s a lot of potential, not only to solve a crisis in Maine, but to assist in a solution to the housing crisis nationally as well,’ he said.”
More at the Globe, here. See also my 2018 post on a different kind of 3-D house in the Netherlands, here.
Selfie: Stuga40. Because English is limited in the realm of relationships, I refer to Stuga40 as “my son-in-law’s mother.” But if we spoke Yiddish, I could use the handy word machatainista.
I wish the English language had more words to describe our extended-family relationships. My friend Jeanne laughed at me when I referred to Charlie as “my sister’s widower” instead of as “my brother-in-law.” But I have more than one brother-in-law. The other one is my husband’s brother.
At a senior community where Erik’s mother joined us for a tour, I caused the marketing director a puzzled moment until she translated for herself that “my son-in-law’s mother” meant “my daughter’s mother-in-law.”
A Yiddish word for that connection exists, machatainista, but if I were to use it, few people would understand me. (And I am not sure how to pronounce it.)
At the online magazine Slate, Jason Feifer digs into the subtleties.
“My parents and my wife’s parents have a good relationship,” he writes. “It’s nice. It’s rare. And they use a word to describe each other: machatunim. We hear it a lot. My wife’s dad, at home: ‘I spoke to the machatunim today.’ My wife’s mom, in an email to my dad: ‘I’m so glad we’re machatunim.’ My wife and I roll our eyes at this. Here we have a classic case of secular American Jews deploying a Yiddish word as a little secret handshake, sharing their delight that both their kids married Jewish. …
“But there’s another, more pragmatic reason they use this word: It’s super convenient. The word means ‘the parents of my child’s spouse.’ There’s no English equivalent, which makes describing this relationship otherwise kind of challenging. What else would they say? Co-in-laws? That barely makes sense. My parents would have to say something clunky like, ‘our son’s wife’s parents.’ …
“Why doesn’t English contain a word for this very common relationship?
“English actually lacks lots of familial concepts that other languages have. Consider Croatian: Ujak means an uncle on your mother’s side, and stric means an uncle on your father’s side. This kind of distinction is common around the world, but in English, we just have one word: uncle. Urdu goes deeper, with words for people three degrees away from you. Your husband’s elder brother’s wife, for example, is jethani, and your husband’s younger brother’s wife is devrani. A Pakistani friend of mine learned Urdu as a child, then picked up English by watching TV, and our vague language drove her nuts. …
“But English is highly detailed when compared with, say, many languages in the Pacific. In some cultures there, no version of words like uncle exists at all. ‘They work on a system of generations,’ says William Foley, a linguistics professor at the University of Sydney. If your dad has brothers, you just call them all ‘father.’ …
“Why do we have words for different kinds of relatives at all? ‘There’s a biological bedrock to it,’ says Foley. Societies want to avoid incest, and they want to establish lineage so they know how property and land gets passed down. When a constellation of relatives is given titles, the people in those societies are drawing a map — this person is good for marrying, this one isn’t, these folks get my money when I die, and those folks are out of luck. There are countless ways of accomplishing this, of course, so societies just develop the words that meet their needs. Are multiple generations of a family living together, say? Then they might need more specific words to identify each other. …
“ ‘The relationship you have to in-laws has an awful lot to do with the mating practices and the locality practices after marriage,’ Foley says. The more time someone is likely to spend with their in-laws after marriage, the more complex terms a culture is likely to have for them.
“In Yiddish-speaking cultures — particularly ultra-Orthodox communities in prewar Europe — marriages are arranged, and the bride and groom only meet a few times before their wedding. ‘The goal is to get matched with a family that is equal to or above one’s own family in terms of lineage, money, success, popularity, etc,’ says Ayala Fader, an anthropology professor at Fordham University who studies Jewish ethnography. That means the in-laws are developing a relationship just as purpose-filled as the bride and groom’s. They need a word to use to refer to each other, and they got machatunim. (Yiddish isn’t the only language with a word for this. Spanish has consuegros, for example, which likely developed for different reasons.) …
“English once contained other words about the families of married couples. In early medieval society, a beef between two people could easily spark a generations-long Hatfield-and-McCoys-style feud. So, some families tried to solve things with a high-drama union: One family’s daughter or sister was married off to the other family’s son or brother, and she was called a freoðu-webbe (translation: ‘peace weaver’).
“What happened after that is a little fuzzy; the records aren’t totally clear. But [Andrew Rabin, a professor of old English at the University of Louisville in Kentucky] says this is how it possibly went down: ‘Peace-weaving relationships are almost always depicted as ending in failure, often because my sister has stabbed you in the marriage bed — sorry!’ And so, to keep everyone alive, a second trade was put in place: When the freoðu-webbe gave birth to a son, that son might be handed over to be raised by her brother. The boy was called a ‘sweostor-sunu,’ which literally means ‘sister’s son,’ but the relationship between an uncle and a sweostor-sunu is different than it is today: The uncle was a patron, godfather, even a foster father, but could also represent a threat. ‘In some sense, what we’re looking at resembles an exchange of hostages: My female relative goes off to live with your family, but then the son of that union is returned to be fostered by me and my family. Implicitly, if an accident happens to befall my sister, your son might end up being equally accident prone.’ …
“So, let us all be thankful we no longer have freoðu-webbes and sweostor-sunus. Those words can die off with the traditions that necessitated them. But we still do have both sets of in-laws in our lives, and an English word for them might be nice. Then again, maybe it’s not necessary: English, after all, is a notorious word thief. Around the 12th century, we took the words niece, nephew, and cousin from French, and those words have served us well. (Before that, there was no single word for any of those types of relationships. A niece was simply called a bróþor-dohtor, or brother’s-daughter, for example.)
“So why not steal another word now? Machatunim does the job. Machatunim it is. Our parents — and oh, how they’ll love to hear this — were right all along.”
I’m all for it. But I like machatainista better for Stuga40 because it is even more precise. It is not just for Erik’s parent. It’s for his mother.
How about you? Do you have special words for these relationships?
Photo: Office of the President of Ukraine via Reuters Connect. Ukrainian soldiers capture the moment when Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the liberated city of Kherson on Nov. 14, 2022. War is hell, but soldiers rejoice when they can, even putting dance videos on TikTok.
When the Ukrainian oligarch gave up control of U24 news and the volunteer social-media team I was on disbanded in May, I knew that the outlet would be managed by the government. Now a new law makes it official that freedom of the press is out, at least for now. (See New York Times article here.)
Naturally, I am worried about that. Freedom of the press should not be a luxury only for peacetime. But I don’t feel I have the right to judge, and I am waiting to hear what some of our Ukrainian colleagues have to say.
In the meantime, I want to share the playful videos from Insider, where you can see Ukrainian soldiers relaxing with goofy dance videos that get put on TikTok.
In early December, Andrew Lloyd wrote, “Across social media, videos showing what appear to be Ukrainian soldiers taking part in lighthearted trends and dances are going viral, drawing a mixed response.
“The same account had previously shared a 21-second clip of a soldier dancing on the hood of what appeared to be a military vehicle, which was viewed over 285,000 times, and included the caption, ‘Morale is high.’
“The videos have received a mixed reaction from Twitter commenters, some of whom expressed exasperation with the soldiers.
” ‘What is the point of these dancing videos,’ one comment with over 1,400 likes said. ‘War is hell, soldiers in trenches are freezing to death and most likely are not thinking about pikachu dance.’ …
“But another commenter with over 700 likes came to their defense. ‘Maybe, just maybe, it is to help cope with that hell.’
“One Twitter user wrote, ‘For those of you who think this is bad: Not sure if you’ve ever been in a combat zone, but I have. … People do things to have some semblance of fun, joy, and normalcy when we could.’
“In the comments, some Twitter users also shared older footage of soldiers dancing and photos of soldiers engaging in ‘silliness in WW2’ in response to the dancing video. Similar videos have also circulated on TikTok, although they don’t appear to have been posted by official accounts.
“One user who goes by @diyak_yuriyhaspostedthree videos in the past month showing a person dressed in what appears to be a Ukrainian military uniform. … Diyak Yuiry, the 24-year-old dancer behind the account, told Insider he’s been in the military for more than three years and he was ‘very grateful to everyone’ who watched his TikTok and left comments. …
“Viewers seemed to have a more positive response on TikTok [than on Twitter]. One comment with over 1,800 likes said, ‘Damn! These Ukrainians do have a sense of humor. I’m rooting for you,’ while a comment with over 200 likes said, ‘You can’t break a brave soldier’s spirit. Keep on dancing.’
“Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, but Vladimir Putin’s troops have since lost half more than half the territory they had initially gained, the BBC reported in November.
“Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was damaged or destroyed as a result of attacks from Russia, which caused a ‘devastating energy crisis,’ according to Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe.”
Because Ukraine’s media is currently under government control, it is not possible to be sure this dance video is a real thing. But I have to enjoy it anyway.
Photo: Stephanie Hanes/The Christian Science Monitor. A jogger runs on a path in Babcock Ranch, Florida, on Nov. 3, 2022. Babcock Ranch, which calls itself America’s first solar-powered town, survived Hurricane Ian with little to no damage.
When does the bottom line get in the way of building something to last? Too often.
But there are always outliers. At the Christian Science Monitor, I learned recently about housing developers in Florida who give “careful consideration of how the built environment will respond to an increasingly harsh climate.”
Stephanie Hanes writes, “As Hurricane Ian moved toward Florida’s west coast in late September, Amy Wicks drove around this rapidly growing community, trying to figure out what she hadn’t thought of yet. She checked for any debris that might be blocking water runoff paths; she took note of the restored wetlands; she hoped that no alligators had taken up residence in the drain pipes.
“Eventually, she returned to her own home here, hunkered down with her husband and three children, and listened as freight train winds moved over Babcock Ranch, a 4-year-old planned community some 20 miles inland from Fort Myers. At that point, she says, she could only hope that the unique storm water system she had designed and monitored over the past decade would be up for the task. …
“The storm sat overhead for nearly 10 hours, dumping more than a foot of rain on this swath of old Florida cattle ranches and newly built cul-de-sacs.
“By the time it subsided, it was clear that something extraordinary had taken place in Babcock Ranch. Created as a sort of laboratory for green development in Florida, and intentionally designed to survive extreme weather, the town proved remarkably resilient in the face of a Category 4 hurricane.
“Unlike surrounding areas, it did not flood, in large part because of Ms. Wicks’ years of planning and her unique stormwater management design that mimicked natural systems rather than fighting them. It did not lose power, thanks not only to its 700,000-panel solar grid and battery backup system, but also to the power line hardening developers undertook with their utility provider, Florida Power and Light. And because Babcock Ranch owns and operates its own water plant, which also survived the storm, it was the only town in Charlotte County that did not go under a boil-water alert. …
“Across the state, there is a small but growing effort to build more resilient communities in Florida – an effort to shift a yearslong pattern of rapid development that many here say exacerbates water shortages and other environmental risks. …
“With a constant flow of new homebuyers – an average of nearly 1,000 people move to Florida each day, according to oft-repeated state statistics – developers have tried to acquire as much land as possible, and as quickly as possible. That often means buying up faded ranches or long-ignored swaths of swamps and forest – green-covered lands that must be flattened and cleared to make way for housing developments and roads and shopping centers.
“Indeed, to meet building codes that require homes to be graded above street level, developers will typically bulldoze the landscape, dig storm ponds, and then use the fill from those holes to prep building sites, explains Timothee Sallin, co-CEO of Cherrylake, a landscape company working across the Southeast that has become a leader in sustainable design.
“Traditionally, developers would replant that denuded landscape with the types of species that outsiders tend to think about when they imagine Florida – green St. Augustine grass, colorful azaleas, draping bougainvillea. The problem, Mr. Sallin says, is that these plants aren’t native to the state, so they require a lot of inputs to stay healthy, such as water, fertilizer, and pesticides. They also struggle to thrive in soil devoid of organic material and nutrients.
“ ‘The developers have to mass grade a site to build efficiently and economically,’ he says. ‘The most efficient thing to do is to raze it and bring in fill. But that creates soils that are difficult to work with.’
“Meanwhile, because the natural topography of the land has been erased, and the natural water collection systems of wetlands and marshes eliminated, the man-made drainage system becomes the only way to capture water. This can be a problem in some storms – particularly those with unusually heavy rains thanks to climate change.
“All of this, says [Jennison Kipp, a resource economist with the University of Florida and the state coordinator for Sustainable Floridians] creates a system without resilience, suffering from both too much and too little water. ‘The landscapes are on life support,’ she says. …
“According to the state’s central water authority, the region will face a 235 million gallon a day shortfall by 2035 unless demand and usage patterns change. This is one of the reasons why when 27,000 acres of ranch land came up for development just south of Orlando – part of a 300,000 acre swath owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – executives at the development company Tavistock decided to approach the project differently. …
“To plan Sunbridge, which is about two-thirds the size of Washington, D.C., [Clint Beaty, senior vice president of operations for Tavistock and the lead on the Sunbridge project] and others at Tavistock coordinated with representatives from the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, the Sustainable Floridians, and other groups. They came up with a plan to use native landscaping – even eschewing the popular St. Augustine grass for the more drought and heat resilient (although occasionally browner) Bahia grass. They are saving and relocating some of the old live oak trees on the property. All of the new homes will be wired for solar panels and electric vehicle plug-ins, and one model house version boasts Tesla solar shingles and a battery backup system.
“Meanwhile, to help move away from fertilizers, scientists have built a living laboratory along a walking path at the development’s community center, called Basecamp, where they are testing the viability of different species of native plants as well as different sorts of compost amendments to soil and the impact on pollinator species. Mr. Beaty is also working to figure out how to arrange for large scale composting and food-waste recycling for the community.”
More at the Monitor, here. No firewall. Subscriptions welcome.
Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/Globe. Apprentices learning how to plaster inside Forge, a trade school that helps students move right into a job.
The kinds of people I follow on social media are always saying that there is no shortage of labor right now, just a shortage of decent pay. So my next thought is, How do people qualify themselves for decent pay, especially young people who don’t go to college?
Investigating one approach, Scott Kirsner writes at the Boston Globe about a trade school that is hiring its graduates.
“In a building next to the Mass. Pike in Newton, two construction crews are at work. Enter the front door, labeled with a sheet of paper that says ‘Forge,’ and a crew is renovating a 1960s-era office space that will eventually house software developers, customer service staffers, and a finance department.
“But go through another door, and you’re in a high-ceilinged industrial space. Here, 10 apprentices are toting lumber, measuring walls, and hanging sheetrock. But this crew is part of a 12-week program that teaches the basics of construction and pays them $15 per hour as they learn.
“Founded in late 2020, Forge is a startup that runs a new kind of trade school but also seeks to employ the graduates. And the company has raised nearly $28 million, some of it from the Miami-based homebuilder Lennar Corp., to train more workers and expand to a second city, likely Tampa. Founder Mark Kasdorf says his goal is to employ 100,000 people in 10 years.
“Kasdorf thinks that can happen by creating a new kind of ‘on-ramp’ to the construction trades for so-called Generation Z workers just now entering their twenties.
“ ‘The types of employers in the trades today are incompatible with Gen Z, from big builders like Suffolk to the union to a 65-year-old operator of a plumbing general contracting company. They don’t like Gen Z, and Gen Z doesn’t like them.’ Kasdorf says nearly one-third of Forge’s graduates so far have been women. ‘They’ll tell you that there’s no on-ramps for them,’ he says. …
“Kasdorf sold a previous company, Intrepid Labs, to the consulting giant Accenture in 2017. … When Kasdorf left Accenture to start Forge, he raised money from Boston Seed Capital and was focusing on creating technology for ‘augmented reality’ glasses. … [But] he realized that ‘we’re running out of skilled tradespeople in the US,’ especially as an older generation begins to retire.
“The company changed its focus in February 2021, to ‘building a private trade school where we’re training the next generation of trades worker for America,’ he says, and surrounding them with technology like those augmented reality glasses. …
“One early student, Nick Claude, was managing a bar in Hingham when he heard about the opportunity from a customer who worked for Forge. Claude says he ‘had wanted to get into the trades. … He reached out to 30 or 40 tradespeople, but found ‘many weren’t willing to take on strangers they don’t know.’
“The 12-week program has students build their own workbench, and then they move on to working on simulated houses, learning how to frame a house, install roofing, and add flashing. They install tile and faux-wood flooring and learn to hang sheetrock, plaster walls, and add molding. Kasdorf says about 70 percent of the apprentices finish the program and move into paid positions with Forge, earning $21 an hour and health insurance. (Forge guarantees them 32 hours a week of work.)
“The company sends its alumni out on window replacement jobs, or one-day bathroom refits, typically subcontracting for a larger brand. … Forge also buys houses in the Boston area, dispatches crews to renovate them, and then flips them. The company seeks to buy $300,000 to $400,000 starter homes that it can resell for $600,000. He says that the worse shape a house is in, the better it is for Forge: ‘We want houses that need a lot of labor — it’s more training opportunities for our people.’ …
“Using technology is still part of the picture, Kasdorf says. Twice a day, at noon and 4 p.m., someone on each crew dons an augmented reality headset for a quality check. That allows a supervisor at the office in Newton to ‘see’ the work that has been done remotely, ask questions, and address any problems that have cropped up. …
“Forge has a long way to go to show that it can profitably train and employ thousands of tradespeople. (At present, the company has 90 employees.) But it is working on a major problem — there were more than 400,000 open jobs nationally in construction in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a recent article from McKinsey & Co. highlighted ‘a persistent labor shortfall’ in the sector that could become even worse in the wake of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which will funnel billions into new transportation projects. …
“ ‘The demand is strong’ for people with skills in carpentry and other trades,” says Tom Fischer of the North Atlantic State’s Carpenters Training Fund, adding that he would never knock a training program just because it is small — every bit helps.
Photo: Ann Hermes/CSM Staff Collections at the Field Museum include more than 100,000 birds killed in collisions with buildings in Chicago,” the Christian Science Monitor reports. “Each bird is stuffed and tagged.”
I learned decades ago that if small birds start flying into my windows, I need to hang up images of hawks or cats to warn them away. Sometimes I bought images of predators from Audubon or Duncraft. Other times I cut shapes out of black cardboard.
For skyscrapers, it’s not so easy, even though suburban homes kill more birds. At the Christian Science Monitor, Richard Mertens writes about the skyscraper challenge.
“The bird lies on its side, a clump of feathers no bigger than a crumpled leaf. It’s just a dark speck on the concrete, with massive glass and steel skyscrapers rising above it in the pre-dawn light.
“Annette Prince sees it at once. She hurries over and lifts it gently in her right hand. It has a slender bill, a tuft of yellow on its rump, and dark eyes that show no glimmer of life. A yellow-rumped warbler, bound for the warmth of the Caribbean or the American South, has met its end in Chicago’s Loop. …
“In the contest between birds and cities, the cities are winning. Scientists estimate that, on average, at least a million birds die in collisions with buildings each day in the United States – and as many as a billion a year. Most perish during the spring and fall migrations in which vast numbers journey up and down the continent, flying mainly at night. City lights attract and disorient them, and many end up crashing into windows, not just the sides of gleaming office towers but suburban patio doors as well. The problem, then, is twofold: lights and glass.
The light from ever-expanding cities is disrupting the movement of creatures that evolved to migrate in the dark, using the stars and the Earth’s magnetism as their guides.
“And the modern architectural penchant for glass has proved deadly for them. Most glass is invisible to birds, appearing either as clear air to fly through or as a reflection of the trees and sky behind them.
“There are growing efforts to make cities safer for birds. The National Audubon Society’s Lights Out programs, in which owners and managers agree to switch off exterior lights during migration, have spread to 45 U.S. cities. Architects and developers are learning how to make buildings bird-friendly by using specially treated glass that birds can see. Grassroots activists like Ms. Prince are monitoring collisions, pressuring businesses and local officials to take bird safety seriously, and in some places asking homeowners to consider their own windows. Scientists say more birds die by hitting houses – urban and rural – than by striking downtown skyscrapers.
“For many conservationists, the issue is far more than birds. … ‘It’s a proxy for a much bigger problem of our stewardship of the planet,’ says Andrew Farnsworth, an ornithologist with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and an expert on bird collisions. …
“A 2019 study by the Cornell Lab concluded that the North American bird population had declined by 29%, more than 3 billion birds, over the previous half-century. The biggest reason, scientists say, is probably habitat loss. Feral cats also kill birds – by some estimates more than windows – as do collisions with vehicles and power lines. But the combination of buildings and city lights is deadly.
“By this measure, Chicago may be the deadliest city of all. According to a 2019 study, Chicago endangers more migrating birds than any American city, followed by Dallas and Houston. It’s a matter of lighting, but also geography. Chicago sits on the Lake Michigan shore and within the Mississippi Flyway, a broad path that funnels migrating birds from as far as the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, Central America, and beyond.
“Yet if Chicago is one of the worst cities for birds, it’s also one of the best. It has produced a strong response in defense of avian migrants, including a well-established Lights Out program and architects who use bird-friendly designs. It also has some of the most determined advocates for bird safety in the country. Ms. Prince’s group started with just a handful of volunteers two decades ago and has grown to more than 150. These monitors take turns patrolling a square mile or more of downtown Chicago, searching at daybreak for dead or wounded birds. It’s difficult, labor-intensive work, and few cities can match the scale of the effort.
“If a bird is alive, monitors take it to a rehabilitation center in the suburbs. They take the dead ones to Chicago’s Field Museum, where volunteers prepare them for storage in the museum’s collections. Over the years, the museum has acquired more than 100,000 birds this way. Songbirds, especially warblers and sparrows, are the most common, but bird kills encompass as many as 170 species.
“The monitors also work with building managers to reduce collisions. Turning off exterior lighting is a start. The lights of entryways, lobbies, and glassed-in atria also attract birds. Moreover, birds drawn to a city typically spend a day or two there, pausing to rest and feed before continuing their journey. Most collisions happen on the lower floors, during the day. Monitors encourage building managers to dim interior lights, move plants away from windows, and apply speckled film to clear glass so birds can see it.
“Geoffrey Credi was one of the first to embrace this effort. Two decades ago, Mr. Credi, director of operations at Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower in downtown Chicago, attended a symposium about birds and buildings. He was surprised to discover that his building, which overlooks Grant Park, was considered one of the worst in town. He already knew there was a problem. Collision monitors and custodial staff had found birds outside. Mr. Credi threw himself into efforts to make the building safer. He and his staff began to track where birds were hitting. They had speckled film applied to clear-glass entryways. An olive tree in an atrium attracted birds, so Mr. Credi had it moved. …
“The effect of city lightson birds is well established. One of the most dramatic examples involves the 9/11 memorial in New York. The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s ‘Tribute in Light’ consists of two columns of light shining into the night, a symbol of the fallen towers. It’s switched on once a year to mark the anniversary.
“Members of NYC Audubon and others were alarmed when it was first turned on in 2002. Videos show hundreds of birds circling and crossing through the light, like insects in a car beam. Radar and ground observation revealed that the number of birds in lower Manhattan increased from around 500 to as many as 15,700. Conservationists reached a compromise with the museum. Monitors would consult radar and watch the sky. When the number of birds in the beams exceeds 1,000 in 20 minutes, the organizers would turn off the lights for 20 minutes.
“ ‘There was an immediate reduction,’ says Dr. Farnsworth. Some years, he says, the lights go off eight times on the tribute night. Other years, when migration is low, they stay on all night.
“Meanwhile, architects are beginning to design buildings that reduce bird collisions. Jeanne Gang, a prominent Chicago architect, is well known for her efforts. Her designs do not eschew glass, but modify it in critical places to discourage collisions. On lower floors, the glass is fritted – printed in the factory with a ceramic pattern that is both durable and visible to birds.
“A simple pattern consists of lots of small dots. But other patterns work, too. Glass on a dormitory complex that Ms. Gang designed for the University of Chicago is imprinted with pale white chevrons, making an aesthetic element out of a safety feature. Elsewhere in the building, decorative steel panels screen the glass. Retractable shades reduce transparency. At glass corners, vertical shields eliminate the see-through effect that is perilous for birds. …
“The world of bird-friendly architecture is evolving rapidly. Glass companies are coming out with more products, including glass imprinted with patterns only visible to humans under ultraviolet light. Birds can see the patterns; people can’t. Architects also are finding new ways to reconcile the competing demands of function, aesthetics, and economics. At the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, architects used fritted glass to reduce sunlight into the building and save on energy bills. The pattern also reduces bird collisions.”
Lots more at the Monitor, here. No firewall, but subscriptions are solicited.
Photo: Harv Greenberg via Etsy. How to illustrate a story on the brain’s mysterious remembering and forgetting? Do you approve of this shot of Arizona’s Antelope Canyon for the purpose?
As forgetful moments become more common for me, I tend to think of them only as bad news. This article by Sanjay Sarma and Luke Yoquinto at BBC Future asks me to look on the bright side.
“On 25 February 1988, at a performance in Worcester, Massachusetts,” they write, “Bruce Springsteen forgot the opening lines to his all-time greatest hit, ‘Born to Run.’
“According to the conventional wisdom about the nature of forgetting, set down in the decades straddling the turn of 20th Century, this simply should not have happened. Forgetting seems like the inevitable consequence of entropy: where memory formation represents a sort of order in our brains that inevitably turns to disorder. …
“In such a model, the preservation of information like song lyrics requires constant upkeep – which, in the case of ‘Born to Run,’ no one could accuse Springsteen of neglecting. … According to the entropic model of forgetting, such a slip-up made little sense. … Schools and education systems around the world had been built based on the best psychological theories of the early 20th Century. If these models of learning – and its supposed opposite number, forgetting – were wrong, who could tell how many learners had been done a disservice? …
“Efforts to explain forgetting date back to the late 1800s, when psychological researchers began – slowly, at first – to incorporate mathematical tools into their experiments. The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied his own powers of recall by memorising long series of nonsense syllables, then recording how well he remembered them as time elapsed. His ability to summon up this meaningless information, he discovered, sloped downward over time in a curved distribution: he lost most of his hard-won syllables quickly, but a small percentage of them persisted in his memory long after his initial memorization efforts.
“These results seemed to support the intuitive idea that forgetting was the result of the simple erosion of information. But even in these early efforts, wrinkles appeared in the data suggesting that there might be more to forgetting than met the eye. Importantly, the timing of Ebbinghaus’s rehearsals wielded enormous influence over how well he remembered items, with a spaced-out practice schedule outperforming rehearsal sessions that were bunched together.
“This finding was mysterious, hinting at some unexplained requirements of the memorizing mind, but at the same time it was unsurprising. Indeed, the benefits of spacing out one’s studies were known to most students. …
“In Ebbinghaus’s time [quantitative] methods were the exception in psychological research, but a generation later, they were rapidly gaining adherents. Perhaps no psychologist was more responsible for this change than Columbia University’s number-loving psychologist Edward L. Thorndike. … His research laid the groundwork for the influential mid-century movement in psychology known as Behaviorism, which attempts to explain behaviors purely as a function of environmental conditioning, not any intervening mental processes. …
“From his observations he produced three basic laws of learning for human and non-human animals alike. These concerned how the brain ‘stamps in‘ associations (which he dubbed his Law of Effect); under what conditions learning occurs (his Law of Readiness); and how memories are maintained or forgotten: his Law of Exercise, which breaks down into sub-theories of use and disuse. …
“Thorndike’s theory of forgetting largely aligned with Ebbinghaus’s observations, except it didn’t account for the still-mysterious fact that spaced rehearsal of information seemed to steel-plate information against forgetfulness. It would take decades for cognitive scientists to come up with a model of forgetting that satisfactorily accounted for this issue. …
“In both the standardization of education and the ongoing research into learning, forgetting became something of a sideshow. Its status began to improve, however, thanks to two separate research traditions begun in the 1960s and 1970s. One operates at the level of neurons and is detectable through tiny electrodes implanted in cells, while the other operates at the level of cognitive psychology and is detectable through cleverly designed quizzes.
“At the cellular level, Eric Kandel, in a Nobel-winning series of studies, demonstrated that memories are preserved in the form of strengthened connections between neurons. Training regimes, he showed, whether conducted on intact, living, learning animals, or by electrically prodding neurons in a dish, create such beefed-up connections. And, as Ebbinghaus first observed, training (or rehearsal, or study) with extra time scheduled in between led these connections to be longer-lasting. This is a fact that holds true throughout the animalkingdom, from sea slugs to mammals. …
“At the cellular level, part of the answer may be that some of the mechanisms involved in preserving memories seem to require downtime: recharging periods, in effect, before neurons can get back to the work of strengthening their connections.
“A different, yet perhaps complementary, answer is forthcoming in the research tradition of cognitive psychology. Here, a variety of studies suggest that gaps in one’s rehearsal or study schedule are so helpful because, counterintuitively, they create the opportunity for a salutary bit of forgetting. To understanding how forgetting can be useful, it’s important to first recognize that a memory is never simply strong or weak.
Forgetting, it seemed, was less like a cliff slowly collapsing into the sea, and more like a house deep in the woods that becomes harder and harder to find.
“Rather, the ease with which you can summon up a memory (its retrieval strength) is different from how fully represented it is in your mind (its storage strength). The name of your parent, for instance, would be one example of a memory with both high storage and retrieval strength. A phone number you held in your head only momentarily a decade ago could be said to have low storage and retrieval strength. The name of someone you met a party mere minutes ago might have high retrieval but low storage strength. …
“Psychologists became aware of the distinction between storage and retrieval as early as the 1930s, when John Alexander McGeoch, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, tasked study subjects with memorizing pairs of unrelated words. For example, every time I say pencil, for instance, you say chessboard. That task became far more difficult, he discovered, when, before asking his subjects to recite what they’d memorized, he confronted them with decoy pairs: pencil and cheese,pencil and table. The decoy pairs, it seemed, competed with the true pair for the memorizer’s attention.
“As this line of research gained traction, the metaphor for forgetting changed. Forgetting, it seemed, was less like a cliff slowly collapsing into the sea, and more like a house deep in the woods that becomes harder and harder to find. The house might be perfectly sound – that is, its storage strength remains high – but if the path leading to it becomes surrounded by equally plausible paths leading the wrong way, one’s formerly clear mental map can transform into a maze.
“In Springsteen’s case, it’s easy to see how his mental wayfinding might have gotten thrown off track. ‘The reason for the muff, apparently was that he was concentrating so much on the spoken introduction, telling the audience how the song has assumed a new meaning to him over the years,’ the Los Angeles Times’ music critic wrote several days after the event. The new introduction meant he was approaching the same old memory from a different set of cues: a different starting point. Suddenly, the once-reliable path to the opening lines of the song was surrounded by false starts. But soon, the lyrics came roaring back.” The idea is that now the memory is more accessible and the heightened accessibility will stick around.
Pretty cool stuff. More at the BBC, here. No firewall.
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