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Best Museum Bathrooms

September 27, 2022 by suzannesmom

053017-rockc-wall-Artipelag-bathroom
Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
The ladies room at the Artipelag museum in Sweden.

My friend Penny always knew where to find the nicest public bathrooms in Philadelphia. It turned out to be an important bit of knowledge. Where I live now, the reliable church bathroom has been closed since Covid, but the national park bathroom is available most of the year. And Debra’s Natural Gourmet just added two gorgeous public bathrooms in the new branch, Debra’s Next Door. I always buy something when I go into a shop to take advantage of its facilities.

Meanwhile, have you noticed how glam the museum bathrooms have gotten in recent years? Hyperallergic shared a great list for your amusement (and hour of need).

Sarah Rose Sharp wrote, “A recent poll by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) asked museum professionals to submit their nominations for best museum bathrooms, and the results prove that Marcel Duchamp was only the first, but not the last, to find art in the commode. Joseph O’Neill, a content manager and editor for the AAM, dutifully compiled the results.

“ ‘Every month, we put out questions for museum people to connect around, and we were surprised as anyone to find out how much enthusiasm there is for this fun topic,’ O’Neil told Hyperallergic. …

“The most-mentioned nominee was Smith College, home to two famous artist-designed bathrooms: The men’s bathroom was designed by Sandy Skoglund while the women’s bathroom designed by Ellen Driscoll. [Patti: Do you know about these?] …

“Next up is the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Obviously, bathrooms are going to be a point of pride for an institution founded by the manufacturer of bathroom implements, including sinks, toilets, and more. But JMKAC has gone above and beyond, with the ‘Sheboygan Men’s Room,’ furnished with hand-painted porcelain tile and bathroom fixtures by once-artist-in-residence Ann Agee; Cynthia Consentino’s ‘The Women’s Room’; and Matt Nolen’s ‘The Social History of Architecture (men’s washroom).’ …

“Coming in third, the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia, garnered praise for its bathroom series, A Head of Its Time: A Brief History of Going at Sea. …

“Of course, modern artists know that everything can be art, so it’s no surprise that SFMOMA is placed fourth on the list for its series of monochrome bathrooms in different colors on every floor, designed by the architecture firm Snøhetta. ‘This one makes me feel like I’m peeing in a Kubrick movie,’ commented Instagrammer Gabriel Toya-Meléndez.

“Fifth on the list is the Glore Psychiatric Museum, located on the site of a former psychiatric hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri. … The themed bathrooms are full of mind games, including hauntings, phobias, and worst of all, Sigmund Freud. …

“In sixth place, there was a collective mention of various 21c Museum Hotel locations. Never content to limit visitor experience to the galleries, all 21c locations feature art that extends into elevators, on the hotel art TV channel, through lobbies, and yes — even into the bathrooms.

“The Charleston Museum snagged seventh place with its cheeky chamber pot installation in the restroom. … The Baltimore Museum of Art celebrated hometown hero John Waters, granting his request that the museum’s bathrooms be renamed in his honor in exchange for his donation of his private art collection to the museum. The result is four new all-gender washrooms. …

“The Denver Art Museum closed came in ninth with its set of Singing Sinks, designed by Denver artist Jim Green. … The sinks are installed in the second-floor bathroom at the Martin Building Welcome Center, and sing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ while they run.

‘You can get the sinks to sing in canon if you time it right,’ nominator Melody Lowe told the AAM.

“Finally, the Carle Museum rounds out the top 10. [Asakiyume and I have been to that one!] The picture book museum was founded by Eric Carle, author of the iconic children’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. … All the urinals feature a tiny fly.”

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall.

I also want to draw your attention to the bathroom at Artipelag, a beautiful museum in Sweden. My photo, above, doesn’t do justice to what Trip Advisor calls “The World’s Most Beautiful Bathroom“!

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Not Just a Trailer Park

September 26, 2022 by suzannesmom

Image: Nations Online Project.
At an unnamed trailer park in Northern Virginia, residents help one another.

One recent morning as I returned from my walk, I was stopped by a woman even older than me walking slowly with a cane. She wanted directions to the hospital, apparently to visit a patient. “But,” I said, “you can’t walk there! It’s over a mile!” “I have to get to the hospital,” she said.

After trying unsuccessfully to come up with other transportation options for her (my own car was in the shop), I gave her directions and off she went. I hope she made it. Sometimes women are beyond amazing.

In August, Theresa Vargas at the Washington Post, wrote about how a group of immigrant women turned a manufactured-housing park into a real community.

“The heat was unforgiving and the mosquitoes were biting, but the women who filled the foldout chairs in Imelda Castro’s backyard didn’t seem bothered. During the pandemic, that small strip of greenery tucked behind a Northern Virginia trailer park has been a haven for them. It has served as a classroom, an office and a community play space.

“That backyard is where the women learned from a health-care worker what medical services their children are entitled to receive. That backyard is where a DJ played music on Día del Niño, Day of the Child, and the community invited a police officer to take a swing at a piñata. ‘She had never hit one before!’ said a woman who captured that moment on video. That backyard is where, every Friday, the women form an assembly line and empty with impressive efficiency a truck filled with fresh produce and other goods, and then make sure everyone in the trailer park who needs food gets it.

“ ‘If we didn’t have this community we’ve built, we’d be very vulnerable,’ Rosalia Mendoza said in Spanish as she sat in one of those foldout chairs. ‘We’re united, and it makes us stronger. What affects one trailer affects the whole community.’ …

“That’s why the women want people to know what they’ve created in that trailer park on Route 1. From a shared struggle, they have built something special — a network of moms who regularly check on one another, inform one another and push one another.

To spend time with those moms is to recognize this: Alone, some could find themselves drowning. But together, they’ve been able to do more than tread water.

“ ‘This is unique,’ Patricia Moreno said of the community. ‘This is not everywhere.’

“Moreno has spent the last two decades as an outreach worker for Anthem HealthKeepers Plus, a job that takes her into low-income communities throughout Northern Virginia to teach residents about their Medicaid benefits. Her fluency in Spanish and willingness to go into even the most neglected of neighborhoods has made her a welcome presence among Latino immigrants who don’t trust easily authority figures.

“Moreno first learned about the women when one of them, Ana Delia Romero, called to ask whether she could come speak to them about health care. …

“The population of the trailer park is one that nonprofit workers often worry about. The majority of the residents are immigrants from Central and South America, and their families are tied to the local economy by threads that are usually among the first to be severed during economic downturns. Most of the men work in construction and restaurant jobs, two industries that were hit hard during the pandemic, and many of the women don’t work because of a lack of access to transportation and child care. In the last few years, several families have gone weeks without income, and some have faced eviction.

“Moreno said many people in the communities she visits are hesitant to ask for help, or accept it, but these mothers have worked hard to turn their trailer park into a village. They watch one another’s children. They give one another rides. They invite people to come teach them about subjects that will benefit their families and their neighbors. …

“ ‘I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a system like this,’ Moreno said.

“On the day I visited, she sat with eight of the women in the foldout chairs. Also there was Ivana Escobar, director of collective impact for United Community, a nonprofit that provides food to the trailer park and support to the women.

“ ‘We go to every community in this area,’ Escobar said, ‘and these women have made something stronger than anywhere else.’

“As the women tell it, Ana Delia Romero, who is partially blind, is the one who started bringing them together. She was the first person in the community to test positive for the coronavirus, and she ended up in the hospital for six days. After she recovered, she started volunteering with the Health Department. She knew many Latinos were hesitant to learn about the virus and the safety precautions they could take, and she wanted to help get that information to more people.

“She also wanted to make sure none of her neighbors was going hungry during the pandemic. She got involved with free food-distribution efforts and started knocking on her neighbors’ doors to ask whether they had enough to eat. …

“Escobar said that Romero asked United Community whether a truck could deliver food to the trailer park, and now, a truck comes every Friday. When it arrives, the women unload the contents and distribute them. On the day I met the women, all but one were wearing a United Community T-shirt. Escobar said they don’t get paid by the organization. They handle the food distribution as volunteers.

“ ‘The women here, they mobilized themselves,’ Escobar said. ‘You wouldn’t even know they’re struggling because of how they show up.’ …

“ ‘When Ana asked, “Who wants to volunteer?” the answer was “Me, me, me,” ‘ Elizabeth Villatoro said. ‘This community doesn’t have excuses. Ana doesn’t say, “I lost my vision, I can’t do anything.” Alberta doesn’t say, “I have children with special needs, I can’t do anything.” We do what we need to do.’ “

More at the Post, here.

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The Man Behind the Snowman

September 25, 2022 by suzannesmom

When Suzanne and John were small, we really got into the holiday books by British author-illustrator Raymond Briggs: the grumpy Father Christmas who gets sick on his vacation in the south of France, the silent, genial Snowman.

My husband pointed out this obit on Briggs.

Richard Lea reported at the Guardian, “Raymond Briggs, the writer and illustrator who delighted children and inspired adults with bestselling cartoons and picture books, died on Tuesday morning aged 88, his publisher Penguin Random House has said.

“Ranging from the enchanting magic of The Snowman to a devastating apocalypse in When the Wind Blows, Briggs created a host of much-loved characters including his angst-ridden Fungus the Bogeyman and his curmudgeonly version of Father Christmas. A career spanning six decades brought him numerous awards, with television adaptations making him a fixture of British Christmas viewing. …

“Born in 1934, Briggs went to the local grammar school in Wimbledon. His decision to leave school at 15 to go to Wimbledon Art College may may have puzzled his milkman father, but he was not dreaming of becoming Michelangelo.

” ‘I never thought about being a gold-framed gallery artist and was only pushed into painting when I went to art school,’ he told the Guardian in 2004. ‘I went there wanting to do cartoons.’

“Briggs’s interest in commercial art was met with horror at college – one teacher spluttering, ‘Good God, is that all you want?’ – and after national service Briggs met with more snobbery while studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. But when he left at 23, his talent for drawing realistic images from memory meant it was not hard to find work as an illustrator for magazines, advertisers and books.

“As the 1960s dawned, Briggs had begun to despair at the quality of the books he was illustrating. ‘They were so bad that I knew I could do better myself,’ he told the Guardian, ‘so I wrote a story and gave it to an editor hoping he would give me some advice. But instead he said he would publish it, which shows what the standard was like if a complete novice who had never written anything more than a school essay could get his first effort published.’

“The Strange House was published in 1961 and five years later, his 800 illustrations for an edition of The Mother Goose Treasury won him the prestigious Kate Greenaway medal. Jim and the Beanstalk, a warmhearted sequel to the traditional tale, came in 1970.

“In 1973, he won a second Kate Greenaway medal and a wider audience with Father Christmas. This 24-page strip cartoon imagines Santa Claus as a grumpy old man, grumbling his way through his busiest day of the year: Christmas Eve. We follow him as he wakes up – ‘Blooming Christmas here again!’ – and sets off on his round, the sparse dialogue a litany of complaints about ‘Blooming aerials,’ ‘Blooming cats,’ ‘Blooming soot,’ ‘Blooming chimneys’ and all the ‘Stairs, stairs, stairs.’ …

“The same spirit infused Briggs’s 1977 Fungus the Bogeyman, which imagined Fungus living in dank, smelly tunnels evoked in a palette of mud brown and acid green. Heading out at night to frighten people on the surface, Fungus ponders the futility of existence: ‘There must be more to life than this.’ The Guardian declared it suitable ‘for children over the age of 10 – or adults – with murky minds and horrid senses of humor,’ while the Times called it ‘the ideal picture book for an age of punk rock and general glorification of ugliness.’ It sold 50,000 copies within a year.

“Briggs turned next to pastels in 1978’s The Snowman, a wordless story about a boy whose snowman comes to life. But this magical story was still grounded in harsh reality; the next morning, the boy wakes to find only the snowman’s hat and scarf listing on a pile of melting snow. ‘I don’t have happy endings,’ Briggs told the Radio Times in 2012. ”I create what seems natural and inevitable. The snowman melts, my parents died, animals die, flowers die. Everything does. There’s nothing particularly gloomy about it. It’s a fact of life.’

“Channel 4 didn’t duck the issue with its 1982 animated version, but sugared the pill by adding a visit to Father Christmas and a soundtrack with a piping choirboy. Despite acknowledging the need for a film to be commercially viable, Briggs told the Guardian in 2015 that he hated it at the time and still found it corny. But the animation became a fixture on festive TV schedules, lending Briggs a Christmassy reputation that only grew after television versions of Father Christmas in 1991 and Fungus the Bogeyman in 2004 and 2015.

“Meanwhile, Briggs turned away from fantasy, with picture books tackling nuclear war (When the Wind Blows), the British invasion of the Falklands (The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman) and an account of his parents’ marriage (Ethel and Ernest). But he rejected the idea that his work was divided into books for adults and books for children.

“ ‘There are a few books which are obviously for small children,’ he told the Guardian in 1999, ‘but I don’t usually think about whether a book is for children or adults. After a child has learned to read fluently, at about eight or nine, then the whole idea of categorizing them seems a bit daft.’

“Briggs’s final book Time for Lights Out, a ‘hotchpotch’ of drawings, verse, memories quotations published in November 2019, looks death square in the face. In it, he imagines ‘future ghosts’ looking around his house in Sussex: ‘There must have been / Some barmy old bloke here,’ he writes, ‘Long-haired, artsy-fartsy type, / Did pictures for kiddy books / Or some such tripe. / You should have seen the stuff / He stuck up in that attic! / Snowman this and snowman that, / Tons and tons of tat.’ “

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall.

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A Better Idea on Homelessness

September 24, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Genna Martin/Crosscut.
Writes Crosscut, “In their roles as King County support services specialists, Kirk Rodriguez, right, and Joe Barnhart walk the area around the King County Courthouse and City Hall Park, as they build relationships with those who live or hang out in that area, … using their own lived experiences with homelessness to form connections.”

After a recent post on better approaches to homelessness, Hannah sent me a link to a New York Times opinion piece by Maia Szalavitz.

“The needs of homeowners and businesses and those of people who are unsheltered often conflict, ” she writes. “Community leaders, faced with increasing crime and disorder, frequently see police sweeps as the only answer, while advocates for homeless people argue that this response is merely a stopgap that does more damage than good.

“But what if there was a way to stop shifting ‌‌people from encampments to jails to shelters to hospitals and back again? In Seattle a unique collaboration among businesses, neighborhood groups, the police, advocates and nonprofits is fighting cynics and misperceptions driven by politics to cut homelessness.

“The coronavirus pandemic presented Seattle with a crisis and an opportunity. In early 2020, authorities closed congregate shelters, emptied jails and stopped new arrests for minor crimes. Lisa Daugaard, a lawyer, saw a rare chance to develop a new approach to addressing homelessness that didn’t involve law enforcement.

“She’d already had success in getting officials to cooperate across siloed systems: In 2019, she won a MacArthur ‘genius’ award for helping to create a program originally called Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, which has now been replicated in over 80 jurisdictions across the United States.

“Instead of re-incarcerating homeless people who typically already have long histories of minor arrests, police departments that participate in LEAD refer them to case management services. The program has an overall philosophy of harm reduction, which, in addition to securing shelter, focuses on improving health, rather than mandating abstinence from drugs and other risky behaviors. LEAD originated as a collaboration of public defenders, the police and prosecutors, who put aside differences to work on solutions.

“Peer-reviewed research published in 2017 by the University of Washington found a 39‌‌ percent reduction in felony charges for participants (a group of over 300 people suspected of low-level drug and sex work activity in downtown Seattle) in LEAD compared with controls and an 89‌‌ percent increase in the likelihood of being permanently housed for participants after they started case management. ‌‌

“At the height of the pandemic, when the police were ordered not to make minor arrests or referrals to LEAD, Ms. Daugaard decided to try something new. With federal pandemic funds becoming available and desperate hotel owners newly open to being paid to house nontraditional guests, she said she saw ‘our chance to show that there is another way.’

“Ms. Daugaard and her colleagues created a program now known as JustCare. JustCare staff members, rather than police officers, would respond to urgent calls about encampments. After building trust with ‌‌local homeless people, the workers would move them into housing without strict abstinence requirements and then help clean up the site. The police would be contacted only as a last resort.

“An early success involved an encampment on a major thoroughfare, Third Avenue‌‌, where around two dozen tents were ‌‌erected directly outside the popular local restaurant Wild Ginger, which had closed under pandemic restrictions. A co-owner, Rick Yoder, wanted to reopen the restaurant in the summer of 2021, but he told me, ‘I couldn’t get the windows repaired because the guy said, “I’m not going near those tents.” ‘ …

“Outreach workers from JustCare managed to house ‌‌those living in the encampment and clean up the site without police reinforcement. …

‌”The work begins with no-strings offerings of items like food, water and clean needles‌‌. These regular visits help‌‌ demonstrate trustworthiness and defuse fear about coercion. Creativity is also a must: Conflicts arise over everything from open drug use to burning items for heat. Workers neutralize tense situations with humor and compassion and by recognizing that often bizarre behavior is driven by fundamental needs like hunger, thirst and exhaustion.

“Alison McLean owns a condo in the Pioneer Square neighborhood and contacted JustCare for help dealing with tents that started being pitched against her building during the pandemic. …

“JustCare began its outreach. ‘Maybe two weeks later, they were like, “We found housing for everybody,” ‘ Ms. McLean said. …

“Between the fall of 2020 and this past spring, JustCare closed 14 encampments and placed over 400 people in hotels and other lodging.”

More at the Times, here. Thanks, Hannah. Good tip.

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Rare Ojibwe Horse

September 23, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Kerem Yücel/MPR News.
Em Loerzel is a graduate student and White Earth Nation descendant who started The Humble Horse, a nonprofit in River Falls, Wisconsin. The nonprofit is dedicated to reviving the Ojibwe horse, a rare breed adapted to the forests along the Minnesota-Canada border. 

Here’s s story that weaves threads such as indigenous life, endangered species, love of horses — and brings along associations with Icelandic ponies and Misty of Chincoteague.

Dan Kraker writes for MPR News from River Falls, Wisconsin, “Em Loerzel grew up hearing stories about the Ojibwe horse from her uncle, about small ponies that would roam free near Ojibwe communities tucked among the forests and lakes along the Minnesota-Canada border, and help with tasks such as hauling wood and trap lines. 

” ‘I think when people think about Native people and their horses, they think of Lakota people or southwest people, but he would tell me, don’t forget that we are horse people too,’ said Loerzel, a descendant of the White Earth Nation.

“Loerzel has taken that teaching to heart. Earlier this year, the 28-year-old graduate student in social welfare at the University of Washington raised money to rescue six of the horses from a Canada rancher who could no longer afford to keep them. 

“She brought them to a farm owned by a friend outside River Falls, where Loerzel moved last year with her husband. And she started a nonprofit called The Humble Horse, to raise awareness about the breed – which is also known as the Lac La Croix pony, and to help revive it. Only about 180 Ojibwe horses remain, mostly in Canada. 

“The horses are small, sturdy and friendly. Last month, Loerzel nuzzled a 2-year-old stud colt named Mino. ‘Short for Mino Bimaadiziwin. That’s our word for “a good life.” All of our Ojibwe horses have their Ojibwe names,’ Loerzel explained. … We Anishinaabe people bred them to be really smart, sweet, docile.’ 

“They also adapted over the generations to survive in the border lakes country. Their small stature made it easier to navigate the forest. …

“Loerzel says her main goal is to keep the horses safe and healthy. But she also wants to help Ojibwe people to reconnect with the horses. …

“Thousands of Ojibwe horses once lived near Ojibwe communities on both sides of the border. They would roam free part of the year, but at other times were gathered to help with labor.  But their population dwindled in the first part of the 20th century. Many were killed and used to make dog food, even glue. 

“By 1977 there were only four left, on the Lac La Croix First Nation in Ontario, just north of the U.S.-Canada border.  Word spread that the Canadian government planned to exterminate them. So four men from the Bois Forte Reservation in Minnesota planned a rescue mission. 

“They piled in a pickup truck, hooked up a horse trailer, drove across like beaver dams and portages and frozen ice in the middle of February, said Heather O’Connor, a Canadian author and journalist who spent five years researching Ojibwe horses. 

“It was dubbed the ‘Heist across the Ice.’ 

” ‘I was thinking, well, I’m wondering if this is the last time I’m going to ever see those horses,’ recalled Norman Jordan, a Lac La Croix council member who as a young boy remembers watching the men lead the horses away.  

“ ‘Everybody was so attached to them, in a deep way, a spiritual way. And it was sad just seeing them being taken away.’

“But those four rescued mares allowed the breed to survive. In Minnesota, they were bred with a Spanish mustang, and slowly, their numbers increased, largely among small herds in Canada. …

“A dedicated network of people has developed to help preserve the breed, [Kim Campbell of Grey Raven Ranch on the Seine River First Nation] said. But often, a breeder will retire, or run out of money. She said more are needed for the breed to survive. …

“Dr. Gus Cothran, an emeritus professor at the veterinary college at Texas A&M University who has studied the genetics of the Ojibwe horse, said rare and endangered breeds like it often encounter the same challenge — they need more people willing to take care of them and breed them. 

“ ‘And so one of the things that people involved with rare breeds need to do is create a market for them, and create a demand. And for a horse, that can be very difficult. They’re very expensive and demanding.’

“In 2017, almost 40 years to the day after those four remaining horses were taken away from the Lac la Croix First Nation, the horses returned. 

“Norman Jordan, the boy who watched them leave, became Chief. And he helped bring a herd back to the community. 

” ‘It’s almost like when they left there was a piece of my history that was leaving, a piece of me, like a void that I’ve had for all these years. And then that night they came back, it’s like that piece that was missing was back now.’ ” 

More at MPR, here. No firewall.

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The Kindness of a Bench

September 22, 2022 by suzannesmom

My friend Di, who is a trustee of our library, caught me going into the building Monday and said she had put a new bench in the Large Print section and asked me to let her know what I thought of it. Little did she know what a kindness I think benches are!

Sydney Page at the Washington Post reports on a kind man who was moved to make a bench for a weary bus rider he’d seen — and was then moved to make another bench and another.

“James Warren rides the public bus a lot in his hometown of Denver. Ever since he went car-free in 2017, he uses buses to get around if he can’t get to his destination on foot or bike. Many of the bus stops, he began to notice, lack seating for riders as they wait.

Then in January, Warren spotted a woman waiting for a bus along a busy road. There was no seating at the stop — and no sidewalk — so she sat in the dirt.

“ ‘For people to have to sit in the dirt while they’re waiting for a bus is just undignified,’ said Warren, 28, who works as a consultant for the Colorado Workforce Development Council. He wanted to do something about it. He decided to build a bench.

“ ‘I just took some scrap wood and went to town,’ Warren said, adding that he hoped this woman — and others seeking a seat — would not need to rest in the dirt again.

“He then realized that one bench was far from enough. There are more than 9,000 Regional Transportation District (RTD) bus stops in the Denver metro area, many of them without seating or shelter.

“Warren decided to contribute what he could. Perhaps, he thought, his homemade bench initiative might get the attention of transit or city officials who would see the need for better bus stops. …

“Since building his first bench in January, he has crafted seven more and placed them at bus stops around Denver — each made from scrap wood he finds in construction dumpsters. As far as design goes, ‘I mostly just wing it,’ Warren said.

“The benches take about three hours to build, and Warren inscribes ‘Be Kind’ on each one — either using a stencil or a wood-burning tool. …

“For Warren, what is most rewarding about his project is knowing his benches are being put to use.

” ‘I get a little giddy when I see someone using a bench,’ he said. ‘They are so thankful. … I met some ladies the other day who were talking about how they used the benches every single day,’ Warren added. ‘It fills me up. It’s air in my tires.’

“Although some of the benches have been vandalized or stolen, Warren said it doesn’t dampen his desire to make them. … ‘It’s not going to stop me,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep doing it. For every bench they steal, I’ll put out two more.’

“Warren said many people have hopped on his bench-making bandwagon, which has motivated him to build more. …

“Aleks Haugom, 32, heard what Warren was doing and was eager to join the effort. They spent an afternoon together building a bench.

“ ‘He showed me how he does it. It’s a pretty simple design, but it seems to work well,’ Haugom said. … ‘This guy has motivation [and not] just a normal amount, huge amounts of motivation. I have never seen anyone quite as motivated as James is to do these things. Hopefully it rubs off on me.’

“Others saw Warren’s work in the local news and decided to take out their tools, too. People also started donating supplies.

“ ‘That puts me over the moon,’ Warren said. ‘That’s the idea. Let’s just all help our neighbors.’ ”

More at the Post, here.

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
A public bench is a kindness.

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Welding for Girls

September 21, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Nicole Mlakar/Texas Monthly.
Kelly DeWitt Norman and Travis Norman’s workshop is one example of the opportunities in Texas for nonwelders to learn welding.

There are no gender specific skills anymore, unless maybe giving birth.

Cathy Free at the Washington Post wrote recently about a camp organized by the Austin chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction in Texas where girls can learn welding and other traditionally male construction skills.

“Ainsley Muller, 11, went to art camp and theater camp in summers past. This summer, she was presented an opportunity she couldn’t refuse: learning how to use a power drill, weld metal and unclog a sink.

“ ‘When my mom told me about construction camp, I knew I had to go,’ she said. ‘Some people don’t think girls can do things like that, and they’re wrong. I had a blast.’

“Ainsley was among 35 middle-school-age girls who attended a free week-long building and plumbing camp last month, organized by the Austin chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction.

“ ‘I thought she’d be a good fit for it because she’s creative and hands on, and she loves science,’ said Ainsley’s mom, Amy Muller, 50.

“ ‘I also wanted to show her that as women, we don’t have to depend on the men in our lives to handle the physically hard tasks that present themselves,’ Muller added. ‘I wanted her to know that she was capable of doing these things herself.’

“That’s the same message Taryn Ritchie had in mind in 2019 when she helped put on Austin’s first girls construction camp sponsored by the National Association of Women in Construction.

“Ritchie is a chief estimator for Balfour Beatty, a general contractor in the Austin area. She said she’d noticed over the years that few women were working at the job sites she visited. …

“ ‘I wanted to shift the narrative and show girls that jobs as carpenters, plumbers and electricians are viable options,’ she said.

“Ritchie learned that other chapters of National Association of Women in Construction also held construction camps for girls. Girls from San Diego to Chicago have put on helmets and safety goggles and learned how to mix concrete, solder pipes together and rewire lamps. Camps have also been held in Baltimore and Silver Spring, Md., where earlier this month 16 girls learned about heavy equipment, heating and air conditioning systems and power installation.

“ ‘This industry, like many, is facing incredible workforce shortages,’ said Jennifer Sproul, a co-founder of the Baltimore camp, who now runs the nonprofit Maryland Center for Construction Education and Innovation.

” ‘The only way we can overcome [shortages] is by welcoming women with open arms,’ she said. …

“Ritchie said she felt a similar obligation. ‘I thought, “We need to do a camp like this in Austin,” ‘ she said. ‘I wanted to let girls know that office jobs in construction were not their only options. Why not teach them about all of the possibilities, from building houses to plumbing them?’

“That first year, she said, 15 girls signed up for a camp held with support from the Austin Independent School District. …

“One of this year’s instructors, Jennifer Barborka, enthusiastically got onboard to teach campers a little of what she’s learned as a fourth-year plumbing and welding apprentice. …

“ ‘I was proud that every single girl completed the project, but I was even more thrilled to see how many of them were interested in my trade,’ she said. ‘Not everyone can afford college, and not everyone is geared toward that kind of learning.’ …

“ ‘I told the girls that if they were to join a union, they could get paid while they get on-the-job training, and not end up with a ton of debt,’ she said, adding that last year as a third-year apprentice she made more than $60,000.

“That sounded appealing to Taryn Smith, 14. … She became intrigued at the idea of making a decent living without taking on student loan debt.

“ ‘Going to Camp NAWIC opened my eyes,’ Taryn said. ‘A lot of the things I do in my daily life — like being on the drum line in band — are very male-dominated. Sometimes, you feel like you’re not heard or seen. Seeing firsthand that women are plumbers and electricians made me think that I could do the same,’ she said.”

More at the Post, here.

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Pandemic Jazz

September 20, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Mark Lennihan.
Emmet Cohen (left), Nicholas Payton, Russell Hall, and Kyle Pool livestreaming one of the weekly jazz concerts Cohen launched from his small apartment when the pandemic struck.

I was listening to Christian McBride hosting “Jazz Night in America” (streaming weekly at WICN, here), and he made me want to learn more about the young musician Emmet Cohen.

Allen Morrison wrote at about Cohen’s pandemic venture at the Guardian: “It’s the most exclusive jazz concert in New York. Only about eight guests can attend the weekly shows, by invitation only, squeezing into the 32-year-old jazz pianist Emmet Cohen’s fifth-floor walk-up in Harlem. Meanwhile, thousands more around the world tune into livestreams of the event on Facebook and YouTube.

“Live From Emmet’s Place started as a near-desperate response to the disappearance of gigs for musicians when the Covid-19 pandemic began. Ninety-four shows later, the weekly concert featuring Cohen, his trio with bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole, and a roster of guest musicians who represent some of the jazz world’s leading lights, has evolved into the most highly watched regular online jazz show in the world.

“Talking on a recent Monday afternoon four hours before showtime, Cohen, a one-time child prodigy who has become one of his generation’s most highly regarded jazz pianists, was chilling in a T-shirt and shorts. At this hour, his one-bedroom apartment seems relatively spacious by New York standards. But that’s only until the technicians – a piano tuner, a sound engineer, a videographer – start arriving and setting up equipment. …

After two and a half years, [it’s] been transformed from a ragtag live shoot using only an iPhone into a hi-tech, multi-camera production with pristine sound.

“The superior production values would count for little if they were not in the service of a charismatic, often dazzling, trio of performers. Partly it’s Cohen’s energy, exceptional musicianship, and likable personality. Partly it’s the appeal of his inclusive brand of jazz, incorporating the entire tradition of the genre from the 1920s to the present day. And partly it’s the joy and esprit de corps with which the trio perform, evident in Cohen’s frequent ear-to-ear grin and the trio’s telepathy.

“At first, the current music scene in Harlem was the central focus of the show. ‘There’s such a high concentration of great musicians living here, right down the block,’ he said, citing regular guests like saxophonists Patrick Bartley and Tivon Pennicott and trumpeter Bruce Harris, all rising jazz stars on the New York scene.

“ ‘There’s a rich history of great jazz musicians living in this area: Billie Holiday lived on the corner, Mary Lou Williams up the street, Thelonious Monk would hang out here … all the stride piano greats would play Harlem rent parties. Duke Ellington and his whole band lived here, Sonny Rollins … So, it just felt very natural to host a Harlem rent party, but an updated, digital, virtual version, where we could invite people in to try to make the rent and get the musicians paid at a time when people were really struggling.’

“These days, Live From Emmet’s Place has an audience that averages about 1,000 fans each Monday night on Facebook and YouTube, but videos of most of the shows, as well as dozens of individual songs, have logged tens of thousands more views on YouTube. One video, featuring the sparkling French-born jazz singer Cyrille Aimee, has racked up 4.6m views.

“ ‘I wanted to figure out how to create an online community where we could play and make money. When you play at [the New York City jazz club] Smalls there are 80 people, if you sell out; at Birdland, 250. When we did the first concert from the apartment on March 22, 2020, after one week the livestream had 40,000 views. For a jazz group to reach that many people requires months, if not years, of touring.’ …

“In its pre-pandemic infancy, the webcast’s unlikely success could scarcely have been imagined. In February 2020, Cohen and the trio were flying high. … ‘Suddenly we had no gigs and no idea when we would play again.

“[The show] quickly became an international ‘communal gathering,’ Cohen said. ‘And community, in a time of hardship, turned out to be the most important thing.’ …

“ ‘When I’m on the road,’ Poole said, ‘people say to me, “I’m part of the Emmet’s Place community.” ‘ …

“ ‘The pandemic caused incredible destruction and dismay, but there was a silver lining,’ Cohen reflected. … ‘The fact that we’re a family, Kyle, Russell and me, showed the brotherhood and what it means to be a band in a time of crisis.’ ”

Live From Emmet’s Place can be viewed most Monday nights at approximately 7:30 PM ET on Facebook and YouTube. More at the Guardian, here. And at NPR, here, you can click on links to several of the musical numbers.

French speakers, Rejoice.

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Altruistic Granola

September 19, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Maliss Coletta.
Afghan refugees enjoy a meal with the team at the granola nonprofit Beautiful Day RI in Providence.

In around 2015, I was writing blog posts for Anne Dombrokski at what was first called the Providence Granola Project and later Beautiful Day, a granola company with a mission to help acclimate refugees to American workplace norms and launch them into jobs. Anne died in a freak biking accident (despite a helmet) in 2016, but Beautiful Day remembers and honors her with the Granola for Good award.

Since Anne’s time, Beautiful Day has expanded its mission a little every year, and you can follow it by signing up for newsletters.

Here’s a recent example: “Since last fall when Afghans started arriving in Rhode Island, Beautiful Day has been reaching out in many ways. We contributed granola bars, hummus and messages of welcome to food baskets delivered weekly by the local food bank. We collected wool rugs to give to Afghan families to help them feel more at home. And we began welcoming Afghans into both our youth and adult job training programs. It’s critical to our mission to support the Afghan community, and we were always looking for chances to connect.

“A new opportunity arose two weeks ago when we partnered with the Refugee Dream Center (RDC) to host a group of Afghan women and their families at our kitchen. The Afghan women’s group had been meeting at RDC for several months and done a number of things together. But without access to a kitchen, they weren’t able to cook. And that’s where we could help. With our beautiful, newly renovated kitchen, we could offer the group the perfect place to cook up a storm! So we invited them to come and prepare a typical Afghan meal and share it with us in our space.

“People began arriving mid-afternoon and soon we had a crowd of over forty people, which included Afghan women, men and children as well as volunteers and staff from both Beautiful Day and RDC. The menu consisted of goat meat with vegetables over rice along with homemade Afghan bread. There was also a salad of fresh greens, picked straight from the overflowing garden boxes on our patio.

“Our time together might best be described as organized chaos. While we entertained the kids with games and puzzles on rugs spread out on our classroom floor, the adults took over the kitchen. The goat meat had to be marinated and tenderized, the dough kneaded and baked, and the rice boiled and seasoned. People broke into spontaneous groups and set to work.

“It took about three hours to prepare the meal and our space bustled with happy talk and laughter.

It’s amazing how well you can communicate even if you don’t share a common language! 

“And when the food was ready, everyone settled down on the rugs to enjoy the meal together. Afghans typically eat with their fingers sitting on rugs on the floor and we had prepared the space ahead of time. All the cooking and preparation led to hearty appetites and it was a happy, hungry crowd that enjoyed a delicious meal together. …

“As people were leaving, one Afghan woman said, ‘This felt just like home.’ It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Also in the latest Beautiful Day newsletter, we learn some good news on college scholarships.

“In July, we received a grant through the Beneficent Congregational Church Scholarship Endowments (specifically, the Lucinda Maxfield and Andrew Ferko Endowments) to provide college scholarships to our refugee youth. Three of our young people have been able to take advantage of this generous gift.

“Marvens, originally from Haiti, has a full-year scholarship to study at URI. This summer, he lived on campus as part of the Talent Development Program, an enrichment program designed to prepare first-generation college students for success. He’s now enrolled there as a freshman and will be studying computer science.

“Rama, originally from Syria, has a scholarship to Johnson & Wales University. For the fall semester, she will be enrolled in an English immersion program and next semester, she’ll attend regular classes. She hopes to complete the prerequisites needed to study neuroscience at URI.

“Our third scholarship recipient is Dahaba, originally from Eritrea and a member of a previous Refugee Youth Program cohort. She attended Holy Cross University last year and thanks to this endowment award, has started her sophomore year there debt-free. She’s majoring in mathematics.”

Other Beautiful Day news, here.

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Market Employs Working Artists

September 18, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Trader Joe’s.
Each of the grocery chain’s 500-plus locations “has custom-made signage, created by staff artists,” says the Post.

They don’t get paid much, but it’s unusual for artists to have a steady gig with benefits. According to Kelsey Ables at the Washington Post, a lot depends on which of the independent Trader’s Joe’s markets you’re working at.

“Growing up,” Ables reports, “Zoe Terrell dreamed of becoming an artist — she sketched scenes from her local farmers market and even won drawing competitions in her native South Korea. But she eventually learned what many creative people know too well. ‘My dad was like, “Well, drawing is not going to feed you,” ‘ Terrell says.

“So she studied education in college and, after moving to the United States in 2008, taught Korean — that is, until a curious job listing caught her eye.

“An ocean away, Terrell called her dad with surprising news: ‘Hey, guess what, Dad? Now, drawing is going to feed me,’ she recalls with a laugh.

“Terrell is one of hundreds of sign artists employed by grocery store Trader Joe’s. You probably know the idiosyncratic chain for its eccentric snacks and peppy cashiers, but that festive atmosphere extends to the stores’ interior design, too: Each of the 500-plus outposts has custom, handmade signage, all created by staff artists. Your grocery store is their art gallery.

“As what Trader Joe’s calls a ‘crew member with sign making talent’ (we’ll just call them sign artists), Terrell, 40, spends much of her workday at the Athens, Ga., store wielding a paint pen in a backroom studio. She makes signs to promote products with puns like ‘Hot Grill Summer‘ and creative drawings such as the Powerpuff Girls reimagined as vegetables. She paints murals that represent the local area, University of Georgia sports teams or the surrounding rural landscape. Occasionally, she gets to incorporate Korean lettering into her work, such as when the store got a shipment of scallion pancakes known as ‘pajeon.’ That was a highlight for Terrell — Korean students told her that seeing the Hangul writing made them feel a little more at home.

“Terrell says that in her early days in the United States, she sorely missed Korean grocery stores, where employees knew her family and each store had its own character.

“ ‘Especially when I moved to the U.S., everything seemed like it had been kind of standardized. You go to Walmart in New York or you go to Walmart out in the boonies in Georgia, and they look exactly the same,’ she says. ‘Trader Joe’s is just throwing a totally different curveball.’ …

“Trader Joe’s calls itself a ‘national chain of neighborhood grocery stores.’ And everything seems to have a human touch: from sweeping murals of local landmarks, which can stay on view for years, all the way down to individual price tags telling you that clementines are $5.99 and ‘great for the road!’ But for the artists, the work isn’t just about selling produce or marketing the latest peppermint-coated, jalapeno-infused, almond-butter-filled whatever. It’s a way to channel their artistic energy in a world that doesn’t make being creative easy. While job postings list pay for sign artists starting as low as $14 an hour, for many, it’s the stable art job they never thought they’d have.

‘I always tell everybody, it’s probably the best entry-level artist position that has a steady paycheck, good benefits and everything,’ says Dan Kaufeldt, a 35-year-old sign artist in Sacramento, who has been with the company for 16 years.

“Kaufeldt’s store decor combines comic book energy with meticulous detailing. For Thanksgiving, he painted a smooth-looking Turkey named DJ Gravy Grav who mixes ‘All about that Baste’ on a turntable, while spring break this year inspired an image of a cartoon lemon, strawberry and potato going on a road trip in a bouncing, orange RV.

“For many Trader Joe’s sign artists, going all out is part of the fun. At one of the Philadelphia stores, McKinna Salinas, 25, is working on transforming the bathroom into a parody of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, inspired by works from the museum collection such as Severin Roesen’s ‘Flower Still Life With Bird’s Nest.’ In her version of Winslow Homer’s ‘The Life Line,’ a man is seen dangling above stormy seas — but instead of saving a woman, he’s saving a carrot. …

“Trader Joe’s rarely advertises. It doesn’t have coupons. It avoids the words ‘sale’ or ‘cheap.’ The atmosphere is deliberately friendly. …

“As for the signs, ‘the handcrafted quality emphasizes the personal relationship,’ says Mark Gardiner, a former marketing executive who worked at Trader Joe’s while researching his book Build a Brand Like Trader Joe’s, which unpacks how the chain attracted a cultlike following. ‘It’s the graphic equivalent of that cheerful conversation that you’ll have with a total stranger that’s working there, who sees you buying dog food and asks you what kind of dog you have.’

“While working at the downtown Minneapolis Trader Joe’s, Georgia Gump took that idea to its extreme: The 25-year-old artist made a window mural featuring the neighborhood’s dogs. It was a big hit.

“But for Gump, who left the store in May, the early excitement of working at Trader Joe’s faded fast. That particular Minneapolis store is now trying to unionize for better wages and benefits (a store in Hadley, Mass., became the first Trader Joe’s to unionize last month), and Gump says it has been plagued by bad management. Gump hit a breaking point after breezing through the installation of an elaborate, handcrafted Christmas village.

“ ‘At first I was really excited that I did it in less than two hours,’ Gump says. ‘Then, it hit me that installing this piece of art cost the company less than $30.’ …

“Some artists have used the job as a jumping-off point. Gump now does sign commissions and pet portraiture around town. Salinas recently made a piece for NASA that will be featured on a satellite. Terrell says, ‘Trader Joe’s became my self advertisement.’ “

More at the Post, here.

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Opera Star Forced from Belarus

September 17, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Carlin Stiehl for the Boston Globe.
Belarusian opera singer Ilya Silchukou rehearsing with pianist Pavel Nersessian. Silchukou and his wife, a mezzo-soprano, “fled their native Belarus after Silchukou publicly sided with protesters following the 2020 election,” reports the Globe.

If you live near Boston, check out a concert tonight at First Church. Not sure what is more impressive — the baritone’s voice or the backstory about defying the totalitarian regime of Belarus. To see what Ukraine would be like if Russia’s invasion succeeded, look no farther than the puppet government on Ukraine’s northern border.

Malcolm Gay reported at the Boston Globe, “By the time Ilya Silchukou performed upon the steps of the Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus in Minsk, more than 6,000 protesters had already been detained.

“It was August 2020, one tumultuous week after President Alexander Lukashenko, often described as ‘Europe’s last dictator,’ had claimed victory in a widely disputed election. His opponent had already fled the country. The government had briefly severed Internet service, as police fired rubber bullets and beat demonstrators who’d clogged the streets to protest.

“Silchukou, one of the country’s best-known opera stars, had already publicly renounced three awards he’d received from Lukashenko.

“And now he was prepared to use his most powerful tool to support the cause, channeling his rich baritone to sing ‘Kupalinka,’ a beloved song that had become an anthem of the protests.

‘Two years later, Silchukou, his wife, Tatsiana, and their three children live a quiet life in a rented house in [Wayland] west of Boston, where Silchukou tends the owner’s garden of eggplants. Their furniture is entirely donated, and Silchukou, once a star soloist at the Minsk Bolshoi who sang at opera houses across Europe, now teaches music at Star Academy, a private K-8 school, as he seeks to establish a stage career in the United States.

“ ‘It’s going to be hard,’ said Silchukou, who remains all but unknown to US audiences. ‘On the other hand, I’ve found so many new friends who support us and help us. I look forward with optimism.’

“Among those new friends is renowned Russian pianist Pavel Nersessian, who will perform a concert of songs and arias with Silchukou on Saturday at First Church Boston in Back Bay.

“Nersessian only recently met Silchukou, but during a recent rehearsal at Boston University, he described the singer’s voice as ‘multicolored,’ capable of subtly expressing the full spectrum of human emotion. …

“Silchukou joined the Bolshoi Theatre when he was just 23, making a name for himself as a soloist with leading roles for baritone, such as Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème. He traveled abroad frequently for singing competitions, winning the 2011 Hans Gabor and Helicon prizes at the prestigious International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition, among others. …

“He walked a fine line: He quietly disapproved of Lukashenko’s grip on power, but as an employee of the national opera, he was often called upon to perform at official functions. …

“In the months following the 2020 election, however, Silchukou felt compelled to take a stronger stance. He signed an open letter calling for an end to the violence and an election recount. He publicly supported other artists who’d been fired for speaking out, and he indicated his support from the stage, flashing the ‘victory’ sign as performers received red and white bouquets from the audience, a sign of resistance. …

“That October, Silchukou collaborated with other artists in a video calling for a national strike. He was fired within days, his working card stating he’d committed ‘an act of immorality.’

“Stuck at home with COVID-19, Silchukou decided to play his last card: a highly produced video he’d recorded of ‘Mahutny Bozha,’ a hymn that has become an anthem of the anti-Lukashenko movement.

“ ‘That video was in my pocket,’ Silchukou said of the searing indictment that would go on to rack up more than 500,000 views. ‘I’d been afraid to publish it because I was still working in the theater, but then I said, we have nothing to lose.’

“The family fled the following summer. …

“ ‘I dream to see Belarus free,’ he said. ‘I belong to that land.’ ”

When you think of asylum seekers, remember that most would give anything not to have had to leave their home.

Tickets at https://silchukou.eventbrite.com/ and at the door. More at the Globe, here.

This is courage.

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Habibi Bazaar

September 16, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Bianca Velasquez.
A rug called “Evil Eye,” by Pamela El Gergi.

Today’s story about beautiful craft rugs is reminding me of a college friend who was really into interior decorating. As a hobby. She got so enthusiastic about Scandinavian rya rugs that she began designing and selling her own. Nowadays, when I’m supposed to be replacing rugs with floor coverings that older people won’t trip on, I’m wishing that I had bought one one of her ryas. I could at least hang it on the wall if I was afraid of tripping. Like other crafts, rugs can hold a lot of meaning.

Bianca Velasquez reports at Hyperallergic about Utah-based Lebanese American artist Pamela El Gergi who “modernizes traditional rug-making as a way to stay connected to her heritage.

“A sweeping reclamation of traditional craftsmanship is taking place around the world,” Velasquez says, “with artists forming communities around their uses of stained glass, jewelry, beading, and textiles. Seemingly unapproachable crafts (because of restricted access to supplies or apprenticeship), such as rug-making and stained glass, have benefited from modernized and simplified techniques and technologies that make practicing these trades more accessible, creating a surge of independent creators who work at their own pace and through their own lens. …

“Among the new voices is Lebanese rug maker Pamela El Gergi, who creates her works under her business name Habibi Bazaar.

“Having relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah, from Beirut, Lebanon, in 2018, El Gergi felt an urge to keep an open connection to her hometown, which she found through the traditional craft of rug-making. … ‘Habibi Bazaar uses my own personal style, which is Oriental rugs, evil eyes (Nazar), patterns that you would see in churches and mosques in Lebanon,’ she told Hyperallergic in an interview.

“And while she applies her voice and background to rug-making in the US, El Gergi creates a new dialogue within traditional rug-making in Lebanon. ‘I’ve taken these vintage, older styles of Oriental rugs, and now I’m trying to make them more centered around Lebanese culture,’ she said. ‘We don’t have much Lebanese representation within Oriental rugs.’ …

“After finalizing her design, El Gergi projects and traces the outline onto her canvas, then uses the tufting gun to apply the yarn accordingly. After applying the carpet glue and backing to the other side of the fabric, she moves on to the final step. ‘I spend hours on each rug, shaving it properly and carving out the designs (or “sculpting” the rug). I finish it all with vacuuming, lint rolling, and doing one last quality check,’ she said.

“El Gergi is currently working on a rug collection in collaboration with her peer Samantha Nader who has created seven Oriental designs based on El Gergi’s concepts. ‘What makes this collection significant to me is the specific flower that is included in the design. This flower is printed on Lebanese coffee cups, and when you drink Arabic coffee, the grounds are collected at the bottom,’ El Gergi said. ‘Then you flip the cup over, and you let the grounds fall along the sides. After letting it sit for five minutes, it reveals a pattern that tells your fortune.’ …

“El Gergi’s pieces tend to use this medium to shed light on her experience as a Lebanese woman, as well as pay homage to and honor the cultural symbolism that has been passed down through her family for generations. 

“Creating cultural ties between Lebanon and the US does not stop at rug-making for El Gergi. Habibi Bazaar also kicked off a pronoun shirt campaign in collaboration with Mexican artist Alethia Lunares, who designed the t-shirt graphic. … She produced three different shirts saying ‘She, Her, Habibi,’ ‘They, Them, Habibi,’ and ‘He, Him, Habibi.’ El Gergi’s decision to include the term ‘Habibi,’ which translates into a non-gendered way of saying ‘my love,’ allows her to incorporate a little bit of her culture into the campaign.

“This year, Habibi Bazaar has been accepted to the 14th Annual Craft Lake City DIY Festival Utah’s ‘largest local-centric art, music, science, and technology festival.’ Not only has she been accepted as a vendor, she was also chosen to be sponsored through the Craft Lake City Artisan Scholarship Mentor Program, allowing her to be mentored by a more tenured local business owner through the entire process of tabling at a large event. 

‘[Her booth] will include her rugs, pottery, stickers, wall hanging, mirrors, and more. … Most importantly, El Gergi hopes to continue finding contemporary ways to pass down traditional Lebanese crafts to future generations.”

More at Hyperallergic, here.

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“Manuscripts Don’t Burn”

September 15, 2022 by suzannesmom

Here’s a wonderful book I want to reread, partly because of the invasion of Ukraine, where citizens of occupied towns are expected to rejoice that they have been “liberated” by the Russians, and partly because some US towns are starting to ban books, just like the old Soviet Union did. Plus, I remember the book as fun to read.

Emily Zarevich writes at JSTOR Daily about the evergreen relevance of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.

” ‘Manuscripts don’t burn.’

“This iconic line made Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita a staple of the Russian literary canon. It’s quoted constantly, in its original language and in all its translations. Uninitiated readers may be surprised to find out that these words are spoken by the Devil, who in the novel resurrects and returns the main character’s abandoned writing project after an attempt to destroy it in a fire. It’s an allegorical exchange between our world and the next, demonstrating that even supernatural entities don’t possess the [ability] to extinguish the power of human creativity.

“As Bulgakov’s Devil — disguised as a foreign professor and operating under the name of Woland — insists through his simple words, true masterpieces will endure and rise from attempted extinction like the mythical phoenix, as proven by The Master and Margarita itself, which emerged intact from the calamitous flame of Soviet censorship.

“The initial journey of The Master and Margarita to publication is somewhat cryptic. Following a morbid and natural cycle of life, its birth began on a deathbed. Bulgakov’s third wife, Elena, who was his inspiration for the avenging character of Margarita, swore at the suffering Bulgakov’s bedside — he passed away on March 10, 1940, at the age of 48 — that she would make his magnum opus her life’s mission; she would prevail against suppression. But unfortunately, unlike the fictitious Margarita, Elena didn’t have access to a sympathetic circle of demons who could offer her the power to reawaken her lover’s lost dream. She was a human woman, and she was given very human, cautionary advice by Bulgakov’s close friend Pavel Popov, as recorded in J. A. Curtis’s reader’s companion to the novel:

‘The less people know about the novel the better,’ wrote Popov to Elena, ‘The masterfulness of a genius will always remain masterfulness, but at the moment the novel would be unacceptable. 50–100 years will have to pass.’

“As Curtis points out, Popov’s prediction was around thirty years off the mark. It would take twenty years for the book to be published. …

“What made the novel so unacceptable to Soviet censors was not only its depiction of unregulated female power and sexuality, but its portrayal of a USSR that existed parallel to the celestial realms of the afterlife. One of the Soviet Union’s main principles was staunch secularity; citizens were expected to be loyal to their communist superpower country first and their faith second, if they believed in the institution of religion at all.

“What The Master and Margarita dares to present is a 1930s Moscow subjected to both paranormal mischief and an overarching Christian-biblical presence, helpless to stop or ignore either. The state is never at any point in the book positioned as the higher power — a major threat to the supremacist government agenda — and so Elena found herself unable to fulfill her vow to publish the book in a timely manner. …

“During the years between its completion and its publication, the existence of The Master and Margarita became something of an open secret among Russian literary circles. The journal Moskva made the daring decision to finally publish The Master and Margarita in 1966, but this version was censored to the point of butchery, and many of Bulgakov’s canny messages vanished in the process. Gone was Margarita’s sexual liberty, for instance, and Bulgakov’s mockery of the USSR’s corruption and incompetence as a communist nation.

“For the book to be published in its full, unabbreviated glory, it had to be smuggled abroad. The publisher Eesti Raamat in Estonia can take credit for bringing out the first unedited rendition in 1967, but it should be noted that this was only a translation. Published in Estonian, not Russian, it, unfortunately, couldn’t be interpreted as Bulgakov’s own voice. The Italian publisher Einaudi brought it out in Russian later that same year, but in the Soviet Union, it wouldn’t be published properly until 1973, three years after Elena’s death, though she would have enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that rebellious Russian readers were enjoying copies of the book being secretly passed around under the government’s radar.

“Naturally, the novel caused controversy and mass bewilderment when Bulgakov’s fellow citizens were able to get their hands on publicly available copies that hadn’t been filtered by the censors or lost in translation. Admittedly, it is a strange book, and as Stephan Lovell explains, ‘Readers accustomed to a diet of Soviet classics were ill-equipped to interpret the novel’s complex network of symbols and plot levels, its unusual treatment of time, its use of irony and the fantastic, and its references to Christianity and myth.’ …

“Today, it’s accepted as one of the finest novels to come out of the political disquietude of the twentieth century, with a modern readership better prepared to recognize its merits.”

More on this classic skewering of authoritarianism at JSTOR, here.

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Rare Sighting Overwhelms Birder

September 14, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Yurgen Vega/Selva/ProCAT.
The rediscovered Santa Marta sabrewing. It is only the third time the species has been documented: the first was in 1946 and the second in 2010. 

As exciting as space exploration is, there are also exciting discoveries being made on Planet Earth — from ancient civilizations revealed by drought to rare birds showing up after many years.

Graeme Green writes at the Guardian, “A rare hummingbird has been rediscovered by a birdwatcher in Colombia after going missing for more than a decade.

“The Santa Marta sabrewing, a large hummingbird only found in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, was last seen in 2010 and scientists feared the species might be extinct as the tropical forests it inhabited have largely been cleared for agriculture.

“But ornithologists are celebrating the rediscovery of Campylopterus phainopeplus after an experienced local birdwatcher captured one on camera. It is only the third time the species has been documented: the first was in 1946 and the second in 2010, when researchers captured the first photos of the species in the wild.

“Yurgen Vega, who spotted the hummingbird while working with the conservation organizations Selva, ProCAT Colombia and World Parrot Trust to survey endemic birds in Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, said he felt ‘overcome with emotion’ when he saw the bird.

“ ‘The sighting was a complete surprise,’ he said. ‘When I first saw the hummingbird I immediately thought of the Santa Marta sabrewing. I couldn’t believe it was waiting there for me to take out my camera and start shooting. I was almost convinced it was the species, but because I felt so overcome by emotion, I preferred to be cautious; it could’ve been the Lazuline sabrewing, which is often confused with Santa Marta sabrewing. But once we saw the pictures, we knew it was true.’

“The Santa Marta sabrewing is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN red list of threatened species and features in the Top 10 ‘most wanted’ list in the conservation organization Re:wild’s Search for Lost Birds, a worldwide effort to find species that have not been seen for more than 10 years. The bird is so rare and elusive that John C Mittermeier, the director of threatened species outreach at American Bird Conservancy, likened the sighting to ‘seeing a phantom.’

“The hummingbird Vega saw was a male, identified by its emerald green feathers, bright blue throat and curved black bill. It was perched on a branch, vocalising and singing, behaviour scientists think is associated with courtship and defending territory.

“The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia is home to a wealth of wildlife, including 24 bird species not found anywhere else. But scientists estimate that only 15% of the mountains’ forest is intact. It is hoped the surprise sighting of the Santa Marta sabrewing will help to protect their remaining habitat, benefiting many different species found there.

“ ‘This finding confirms that we still know very little about many of the most vulnerable and rare species out there, and it is imperative to invest more in understanding them better,’ said Esteban Botero-Delgadillo, the director of conservation science with Selva: Research for Conservation in the Neotropics. ‘It is knowledge that drives action and change – it is not possible to conserve what we do not understand.

“ ‘The next step is [to] involve people from local communities and local and regional environmental authorities, so we can begin a research and conservation program together that can have real impact.’ ” More at the Guardian, here.

By the way, the Guardian routinely covers encouraging environmental stories, including a recent one on the strengthening numbers of protected hen harriers in England. Nadeem Badshah reported here that, according to England’s conservation agency Natural England, “nearly 120 rare hen harrier chicks have fledged in England this year, the highest number for more than a century. … But conservation experts have warned that work needs to continue to tackle the illegal persecution of England’s most threatened bird of prey, which hunt red grouse chicks to feed their young, bringing them into conflict with commercial shooting estates.”

Now, there’s a riddle for you!

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An App to End Food Waste

September 13, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Amr Nabil/AP.
A man buys food at a popular restaurant in Cairo, March 22, 2022. The app Tekeya is working to counter food waste.

In restaurants around the world, especially in the fanciest ones, a lot of perfectly good food goes to waste because of some perceived defect. Can we find a better solution than throwing it out?

Eman Mounir reports at the Christian Science Monitor about a new app in Egypt to deal with food waste.

“Early one morning, servers at the Al-Aseel Al-Dimishqi restaurant began their usual preparations for the day. They laid out rows of baklava, kunafa, and other syrup-drenched, nut-stuffed delectables. But the offerings weren’t for customers who flock to the upscale New Cairo suburb. 

“Instead, within an hour, staff from an organization called Tekeya had arrived to whisk away 135 portions of perfectly edible dishes.

“The reason? The desserts – made a day earlier – weren’t considered fresh enough to dish up. 

“Throughout Egypt, which boasts a rich culinary history, such views aren’t uncommon. … Now, though, amid a global reckoning over the food chain and its role in the climate crisis, attitudes in Egypt are slowly changing. 

“The Al-Aseel restaurant is one of around a dozen across the Egyptian capital that Tekeya staff visits each day in a quest to stop fit-for-consumption food from being dumped. Restaurants pay a small annual fee that allows them to alert Tekeya whenever they have unsold food. Personal users of the app can then buy that food at half-price, or either the restaurant or the user can request Tekeya  deliver the food to a food bank or charity of their choosing. In total, up to 40 plates are saved from going to the trash each day. …

“Tekeya, which was inspired in part by the rituals around Ramadan, is the first such app in Egypt, where poor nutrition and undernourishment account for up to 55% of annual child deaths.  

“ ‘I’ve seen several platforms helping fight food waste across Europe. It’s uplifting to find one that does the same here in Egypt,’ says Al-Aseel’s manager, Ramez Abo Abed, who has been using the app for three years.

“In 2019, Menna Shahin had an idea particularly inspired by Ramadan, the Muslim holiday when the devout give to poor people and fast throughout the day. That prompts both celebration and waste. Since fasts are eventually broken with lavish meals at dusk, demand for food commodities soars by up to a third, and waste, in turn, also multiplies. 

“ ‘I would put so much thought into how to dispose of [food] responsibly without harming the environment, and how to minimize my excess usage,’ Ms. Shahin says. ‘I thought to myself, why not assist everyone to dispose of their excess food wisely?’

“Ms. Shahin ended up co-founding Tekeya along with her husband, Max Hartzen. By Tekeya’s second Ramadan, some 10,000 discounted meals were ordered during the holy month, with users choosing to donate roughly a quarter of those to charities.

“Now a 15-member team, Tekeya continues to face the stigma associated with ‘leftover food,’ says Aya Magdy, the startup’s account manager. ‘People presume that it’s food that has gone bad, making it difficult to convince them to buy or donate it.’

“Traditional Egyptian fare includes delicately spiced falafel served piping hot, while koshary, a staple street food, provides a hearty kick through mixing rice and pasta with fresh onions, tomatoes, garlic, chili, lentils, chickpeas, and a dazzling array of spices – these and other classic dishes almost all require freshly chopped ingredients. 

“But there’s a growing awareness of the impact of food waste on the environment. When food is thrown out, it rots and creates methane, a greenhouse gas that is almost 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide. To date, Tekeya counts at least 45,000 meals it has saved from ending up in landfills – preventing the equivalent of 133,000 kilograms (about 293,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide from being released into the environment, Ms. Shahin says.

“The team also works hard to guarantee the quality of the food it passes on, carrying out regular checkups amid stringent requirements. And because trust is such a big factor, if clients complain that the food from a restaurant is too stale or otherwise unsatisfactory, collaboration is immediately terminated.   

“The number of users has climbed steadily. The app now has more than 50,000 subscribers and 120 food suppliers in Cairo. And users tend to be conscientious themselves. Sara Harfoush, a teaching assistant in Cairo University’s Faculty of Economics and Political Science, was initially skeptical, so she conducted her own trials to gauge quality. After ordering off the app several times – and finding it satisfactory each time – she began buying food cheaply to donate to those in need. …

“The idea is catching on with well-known brands. Alban Khalifa, a dairy shop with multiple branches across Cairo, has been reducing food waste and financial losses through Tekeya for nearly two years. Regulars know they can snap up half-price puddings through the app at the close of day.

“That food would otherwise join the tens of thousands of tons of ingredients overflowing from trash cans on many streets of Cairo. In rural areas, heaps of discarded vegetables and harvests rot in the sun, attracting stray animals.

“There are other draws beyond environmental and sanitation concerns. Soaring inflation and another round of currency devaluation in March have further squeezed citizens in a country where a third of the population is classified as low-income earners. 

“Mohamed Refaat, a pharmacist in Cairo, says he quickly became a regular user after learning about Tekeya. The combination of contributing to saving the environment and getting good food at a discount is, he says, ‘very attractive to any user given the soaring prices and rising inflation rates.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here.

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