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Work-Life Balance in Japan

July 14, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Sunphol Sorakul/Moment via Getty Images.
Some of Kyoto’s machiya homes that mix work and living space took on a new life during the pandemic, Bloomberg reports.

The places where people worked and the places where they slept merged during the pandemic. In Japan, that change gave an ancient style of architecture renewed prominence.

As Max Zimmerman wrote at Bloomberg CityLab in May, “While the pandemic has turned many kitchens and bedrooms into makeshift home offices around the world, there’s one style of housing in Japan that’s been mixing business and living space for centuries.

“The city of Kyoto is known for its stock of unique historical structures called Machiya, which get their name from two Japanese characters: machi — which in this context can mean a neighborhood, market or group of workshops — and ya, meaning dwelling. These beautiful wooden townhouses, which mingle residences with storefronts and workshops, offer a rare window into traditional Japanese life and architecture. Their design also raises an important contemporary question: How can aging homes created for a bygone lifestyle be incorporated into a modern city?

“Despite economic and cultural headwinds, machiya have proven capable of adapting to the present — and even influencing homes in the future.  An influx of tourists before Covid-19 saw many machiya find renewed purpose as restaurants or vacation rentals, while their mixed-use design provides lessons for people adjusting their lifestyles to working at home during the pandemic. 

Kyoto’s machiya reached their maturity as an urban form as early as the 17th century when, during a tumultuous period that still preoccupies Japanese culture today, the Tokugawa Shogunate ended more than a century of political violence.

“As the city rebuilt, massive demand for housing led to a standardization of designs, materials, measurements and fittings that allowed them to be erected quickly and inexpensively throughout the city. 

“It was during this time that machiya emerged as not just homes and businesses but also the basic building blocks for the city’s wider administrative structure. In times of conflict, communities within Kyoto banded together to defend themselves, even building stockades around their neighborhoods to protect themselves from the violence. When peace was restored, the Shogunate made these groups a permanent part of the city’s administration as semi-autonomous units with the power to establish local bylaws.

“Chief among their concerns was the uniformity of each machiya, whose size and design were crucial for fostering equality and harmony among its members. These neighborhood groups regulated the width of plots, forbidding the creation of larger parcels or combining homes, and imposed strict rules on various design elements. This ensured a relatively even distribution of taxes, light, ventilation and safety — as well as a pleasing aesthetic.

“These plots became known as unagi no nedoko, or ‘eels’ beds,’ for their long and narrow proportions. These ‘beds typically started at the street with a shop unit, fronted not with walls or glass but wooden lattices that provided some visibility from the inside and privacy from the outside. The typical unit was covered in a sloping roof, clad in lines of curved tiles producing a characteristic wave-patterned surface.

“Behind the shop was the residence, composed of multipurpose rooms with tatami mat floors and sliding doors. The deepest room was reserved for the head of house and important guests, with a small courtyard garden for light and ventilation. The spine of the house was a broad corridor with a packed earth floor running down one side of the house, connecting the commercial and residential portions. This hallway was where daily functions like cooking were performed, with a toilet and bathing space at the end. While the earliest machiya were single-storied, most later examples have an upper floor used as storage or sleeping space with slitted apertures to let in light. …

“For more than 250 years, machiya were the economic, political and social glue of Kyoto — as small businesses powering the economy, as households organizing community events such as festivals, and as administrative units by which local affairs were managed. 

“They began to change in the mid-19th century, when reform-minded revolutionaries overthrew the shogunate, destroying much of Kyoto and ushering in Japan’s modern era. In its rebuilding process, the city embarked on a period of modernization by incorporating western technologies and culture. …

“Although Kyoto was spared from destruction in World War II, its aftermath endangered machiya more than any other conflict. Japan’s postwar recovery redoubled modernization efforts that produced major housing changes. In their heyday, the machiyas’ use of gardens for natural light and ventilation would have made them relatively comfortable dwellings. By new standards, however, they were cold in the winter, lacked novel necessities like modern kitchens, had poor lighting and were expensive to maintain. …

“Many owners demolished or sold their machiya to make way for western-style housing like danchi apartments. Those that held on refurbished them with modern appliances, materials and layouts. New laws also made it impossible to build machiya with traditional construction techniques, leading to a decline in their number and skilled workers who can build them. There were 40,146 surviving machiya in Kyoto as of March 2017, down from 47,735 in 2011, according to a city survey. …

“Since the early 2000s, many machiya have found new life as restaurants, cafes, and museums thanks to a nostalgic aesthetic popular among young people and tourists. Some people still use their machiya to make traditional crafts like sake and textiles, while others have been preserved as cultural landmarks. …

“Garden Lab, a co-working space and residence built out of two machiya that were uninhabited for four decades, is one such example of reuse. It forms part of a restored machiya cluster that includes a coffee shop and roastery, which makes use of the machiya’s capacity to accommodate machinery. Garden Lab’s founder, Drew Wallin, says that neighbors have noted the renovation’s positive impacts on the area after their long-term abandonment. 

“Wallin founded Garden Lab, however, to demonstrate how machiya can help balance private and professional life, a struggle for many still working from home as the pandemic endures. He found that machiya’s incorporation of natural light and outside air fostered healthier routines in ways that artificially lit, climate-controlled  homes fall short. Their reliance on the sun for light and warmth, for example, can help residents detach from work in the evenings and improve sleep habits as night set in. “

More at Bloomberg, here. Great photos. No firewall.

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RVs as Vessels of Light

July 13, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Debbie Long.
Debbie Long, “Willa (interior)” (2015-2020), RV, light, glass. The Taos-based artist has outfitted two vintage RVs with hundreds of cast glass pieces that collect light from the desert sky.

In today’s story, we learn about an artist in the US Southwest who was moved by the light of the desert sky and wanted to capture the feeling of awe in her work.

Molly Boyle reports at Hyperallergic, “Nearly a thousand years ago, the ‘great houses’ at Chaco Canyon and Aztec Ruins, both in New Mexico, were aligned to track and highlight celestial events. The same basic idea is behind Debbie Long: Light Ships, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, which pays tribute to the desert sky and its continuous but mercurial shifting of light.

“Over the past decade, the Taos-based Long has outfitted two vintage RVs with hundreds of cast glass pieces that collect light from the sky via a transparent ceiling. Inside the pristine white chamber of ‘Willa,‘ stationed outside the Harwood Museum of Art, viewers lounge in cream-colored beanbag chairs for a one-hour immersive viewing experience (no phones or recording devices are allowed). Clouds pass overhead, light trickles from sunrise to sunset to twilight to moonlight, and every movement of the sky orchestra flickers in the handmade glass pieces. Like many of the most successful Light and Space pieces, ‘Willa’ and her predecessor, a trailer called ‘Naima,’ rely on the simplest of gimmicks: light collection. …

“Long says the ideal viewing experience of one of her ‘light ships’ (a wordplay on the Earthship houses that dot the Taos Mesa) involves a trip to the isolated desert landscape where it will be at least semi-permanently installed. ‘For me, it’s not a regional piece,’ she tells me.

‘Once you’re inside, it almost doesn’t matter where you are. You go somewhere else. But placing them in the landscape, my intention is for the RV to be someplace you need to travel to, so that slowing down and remoteness is part of the whole experience.’ …

“[For ‘Naima,’ glass orbs were] crafted via a lost-wax casting process during which each mold is annihilated in the firing process, making every piece unique. Long says her process of building each glass piece into the RV is intuitive. ‘I started up in one corner and composed my way out.’ …

“Filled with amber light, the small glass clusters resemble globs of honey dripping from the ceiling — or malformed stalactites. … The light changes almost imperceptibly, shifting in the glass, moving your eyes around the shape of new forms and shadows. …

“It’s possible to see a Light and Space lineage in Long’s work. Having moved to Taos in the early 1990s, she befriended artists Larry Bell and Ron Cooper. For a time, ‘Naima’ was stationed in Bell’s yard, and it saw its first installation in a dry lakebed as part of High Desert Test Sites 2013, in the Mojave Desert. But Long also says the work benefits from her long relationship with the vast landscapes and uninterrupted skies she got to know as a child growing up in New Mexico.

“Long is emphatic that Light Ships is not meant to be experienced in 10- or 15-minute glimpses, and the Harwood is offering periodic ticketed sunset viewing experiences of ‘Willa,’ led by the artist herself. Viewers report that at twilight, the ceiling of a light ship recedes into nothingness, leaving only the floating glass to fix your eyes on. It sparks a meditation on the passage of time in a day, on the subtle sway of light and darkness and our up-to-the-minute experiences of both.”

Isn’t it kind of moving that the most common things in our lives are the most beautiful and mysterious?

More at Hyperallergic, here.

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Using Your Skill in a Cause

July 12, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Yehor Milohrodskyi via unsplash.
The flag of Ukraine.

This will be a short post. I want to tell you about something inspiring I got involved with that ended yesterday.

Full-blown war in Ukraine started February 24 when Russia invaded the sovereign nation, but Russia had been attacking and nibbling away at Ukrainian territory for years, and Ukraine was ready to defend itself.

Shortly thereafter, a Ukrainian journalist called Igor Nalyvaiko, alarmed at the Russian disinformation he was seeing all over social media, especially English-language social media, set up a counter-effort.

Working with Ukrainian media people who spoke English, and reaching out to editor types like blogger Asakiyume and me who are native English speakers, he launched a noble experiment that lasted until July 11, when the media company backing him shut down. In the process, he built a team of new friends — Ukrainian and American — who feel invested in one another’s lives because we were interacting 24/7 across a seven-hour time difference.

If you have ever been devastated by an injustice in the world and learned that in addition to donating money, you could contribute a skill you happened to have, you will understand what a gift this was to the volunteer “proofreaders.”

I will quote from an explanation of the initiative that Igor wrote for the new proofreaders who kept signing on.

“Ukraine: Battling Disinformation In the Fight for Existence – A Voice From Ukraine 25 March 2022

“Hi Guys, 

“I was requested to shortly outline the principles of this translation initiative and its purpose for the new coming proofreaders. 

“U24 World is a 24/7 news outlet covering the current situation in Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Its aim is delivery of truthful information to fight Russian propaganda worldwide. The initiative was urged by a group of enthusiasts and workers of the national TV Channel Ukraine and volunteers who were able to join in the fight on the information frontline.

“Being assigned as a translator and a coordinator of the translators’ team (In my past life I used to be a host and a journalist but had to join the ‘international battalion’ and really think that can do much more here at the moment), I started to look for native speakers (English) proofreaders who could help in adaptation of the news for the western audiences (making the information readable), refining the word flow and delivery ,since we are working non-stop to cover every event that might be useful and can shed light onto the actual state of affairs taking place here in Ukraine.

“The work is arranged as follows: as we work 24/7 for optimization reasons we operate in 4-hour shifts. However the times are quite hard and not each one can afford 4 hours to devote to the project, so I am coordinating the group to make the process as comfortable as possible to the realistic extent under warfare conditions.

“There are editors who send Ukrainian news in the group chat, a translator (who is on the shift) picks up the news and sends a translation back into the chat tagging a native speaker who is on the shift. the English proofreader checks the translation and refines it so that it looks readable for English-speaking audience and then tags a Ukrainian proofreader (who is on the shift). The latter one checks if the information is not distorted in the final proofread adaptation compared to the initial Ukrainian news and tags an editor, which means that the editor can pick it up and post the news on one of these three platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. …

“Thank you for your assistance and support. Yours,  Igor.” 

I think it’s safe to say, that grateful as we are to have been part of the collaboration, it also meant something special to our Ukrainian partners running to bomb shelters that strangers across the world were donating hours of their time, expecting nothing in return — just wanting to say, “You are not alone.”

My team may never know why this noble experiment shut down so suddenly, but we will cherish the experience and will, of course, continue to support Ukraine in other ways.

If interested, check out an audio summary at Happiness Quotient, here.

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Unloved Ugly Fish

July 11, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Chris Willson/Alamy.
Round herrings were one of the species that performed lower on the aesthetic-rankings and were deemed ‘uglier’ by the public. But even ugly fish fish need love.

In the fight to protect the ocean, it helps if the creatures needing human assistance are brightly colored and beautiful — the kind you are drawn to at a fancy restaurant’s fish tank. But aesthetic judgments like that can get in the way of important work.

Several media outlets have been covering recent research on how human attitudes are affecting protection of reef ecosystems. I’ll reference a couple.

Sophia Quaglia wrote at the Guardian, “There are plenty of fish in the sea, but ‘ugly’ fish deserve love too, according to a study.

“The reef fish people rate as most aesthetically pleasing are also the ones that seem to need the least conservation support, while the fish most likely to rank as ‘ugly’ are the most endangered species, the research has found.

“ ‘There is a need for us to make sure that our “natural” aesthetic biases do not turn into a bias of conservation effort,’ said Nicolas Mouquet a community ecologist at the University of Montpellier, and one of the lead authors of the study. This discrepancy between aesthetic value and extinction vulnerability could have repercussions in the long run, he said.

“Mouquet’s team first conducted an online survey in which 13,000 members of the public rated the aesthetic attractiveness of 481 photographs of ray-finned reef fish. The scientists fed the data into an artificial intelligence system, enabling them to generate predictions for how people would probably have rated a total of 2,417 of the most commonly known reef fish species from 4,400 different photographs.

“The combined results suggested that bright, colorful and round-bodied fish species – such as the queen angelfish and the striped cowfish – were most often rated as more ‘beautiful.’ But they were also the less ‘evolutionarily distinct’ species – meaning they are more similar, genetically, to other fish.

“Fish species that were lower in the aesthetic rankings and were deemed ‘uglier’ by the public – usually ‘drab’ fish, Mouquet notes, with elongated body shape and no clearly delineated color patterns, like the telescopefish or the round herring – were also more ecologically distinct, at greater ecological risk, and listed as ‘threatened’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.

“The more ‘unattractive’ species have adapted to look this way because they often live in the water column and have to hide within a more homogeneous habitat, but this also makes them of greater commercial interest and more likely to be overfished, according to the study, published in PLOS Biology.

“ ‘Our study highlights likely important mismatches between potential public support for conservation and the species most in need of this support,’ said Mouquet. …

“ ‘Species such as clownfish and colorful parrotfishes are definitely the easiest for people to connect with … and it makes sense why they are often used as the figurehead of conservation efforts,’ said Chloe Nash, a researcher of biogeography of marine fish at University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. ‘But the majority of fish biodiversity is actually composed of species that would not be considered to be “aesthetically beautiful.” ‘

“While aesthetics are recognized as a fundamental ecosystem service, they’re often underestimated for their effect on policy and conservation decisions, said Joan Iverson Nassauer, a scholar of landscape ecology at the University of Michigan. … ‘This research vividly quantifies the power of aesthetic experience to affect science and management,’ said Nassauer. …

“According to Mouquet, findings such as these can help researchers understand ‘non-material aspects of biodiversity,’ which make up what scholars call ‘nature’s contribution to people’ – the harmful and beneficial effects of the natural world on people’s quality of life.”

Not that nature needs to be justified in human terms, but there’s no doubt that humans have an impact. Sometimes just raising our consciousness about what we are doing can help us make a correction. Read more at the Guardian, here. Or listen at the radio show the World, here.

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Picasso’s Coloring Book

July 10, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Marc Domage/© Private collection.
A detail from one of Picasso’s sketchbooks for his daughter. 

I have read things about Picasso over the years that have made me think that he might not have been a person I would enjoy knowing. Then he goes and does something like this, and I have to remind myself that people are complicated: almost everyone weaves the good with the not good.

Dalya Alberge has a charming story about Picasso at the Guardian.

“They are the ultimate ‘how to draw’ books for a young child,” Alberge writes, “created by a doting dad who just happened to be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. The granddaughter of Pablo Picasso has discovered an extraordinary collection of sketchbooks used by the artist to teach his eldest daughter to draw and color.

“Picasso filled the pages with playful scenes – animals, birds, clowns, acrobats, horses and doves. … He created them for Maya Ruiz-Picasso when she was aged between five and seven. On some pages, the little girl made impressive attempts to imitate the master. She also graded her father’s work, scribbling the number ’10’ on a circus scene, to show her approval.

“He drew two charming images of a fox longing for grapes – inspired by the 17th-century fabulist Jean de La Fontaine’s sour grapes fable, The Fox and the Grapes – and Maya colored in one of them. He also drew simple but beautiful eagles in a single movement, without raising the pencil from the paper, conveying his love of form and pure line to her.

“The previously unseen collection includes exquisite origami sculptures of birds that he brought to life for Maya from exhibition invitation cards.

“His granddaughter, Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso, found the works by chance while looking through family material in storage. Intrigued, she showed them to her mother, now 86, for whom memories came flooding back.

“Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso told the Observer: ‘She said, “Of course, those are my sketchbooks when I was little.” ‘ …

“Picasso, who died in 1973, had been taught to draw by his father, a professor of drawing, ‘so that was something natural for him to do’ with Maya, his granddaughter said: ‘There’s a beautiful page where he’s drawing a bowl and she’s drawing a bowl.

“ ‘Sometimes she’s making an image and he’s doing another, showing her the right way to do it. Sometimes they would depict different scenes. Other times, he would draw a dog or a hat. Sometimes he’s using the whole page to draw one particular thing. Other times, he’s depicting certain scenes, scenes of the circus.’ …

“Maya particularly remembers that, during the second world war, color pencils and notebooks were in short supply: ‘That’s probably why my father wrote in my exercise books and colored with my pencils. I still have fond memories of those moments when we met up in the kitchen to draw together. It was the only place in the apartment where it was warm.’

“Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso is an art historian, curator and jewelry designer, who has just published her latest book, Picasso Sorcier, exploring his superstitions and belief in magic.

“She described the discovery of the sketchbooks as ‘fortuitous’ because she was co-curating a major exhibition for the Musée Picasso-Paris on his close bond with his first daughter. … The exhibition, Maya Ruiz-Picasso, daughter of Pablo, runs until 31 December and includes his many portraits of Maya, personal possessions and photographs, along with the sketchbooks and origami sculptures, which are being shown for the first time. …

“In the exhibition’s accompanying book, [his granddaughter] writes: ‘Who has never heard it said when looking at a canvas by Picasso, “A child could have done that!” Many of the artistic revolutions of the 20th century were greeted with mockery and scandal, it is true, but in Picasso’s case there is a hint of truth in that judgment. As Maya, his first daughter, recalls, “the mystery of life, and therefore of childhood, always filled that father of mine with interest.” …

” ‘Picasso borrowed extensively from the unruly lines of children’s drawings. Where Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse concentrated on the graphic and pictorial naivety with which children draw, Picasso emphasized more the elements that upset figurative traditions, that is to say, distortion and deformity.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here.

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Grapes on the Fence. And Other Photos

July 9, 2022 by suzannesmom

In my last batch of photos, I showed a piece from an Art League of Rhode Island exhibit to which my friend Ann Ribbens had contributed. The show, “Below the Surface,” had a humanity-versus-water theme, and the quilt I shared in that post featured a warning about toxins in fish. Today I’m displaying Ann’s lovely “Undersea Tapestry” and two other pictures from “Below the Surface.”

Now I’m wondering if there’s something in the water that New England artists are drinking. The next group of photos is from a recent exhibit at a Massachusetts gallery, and the subject is “Undercurrents: Water and Human Impact.” If artists are to be believed (and they are), things are not looking good for water and it’s all our fault.

At “Undercurrents,” I especially liked Henry Horenstein’s photograph “Cownose ray” and Joan Hall’s “The New Normal,” which hints at manmade items that wash in with the tide.

Still on the subject of art, I want to mention that yesterday I checked out the new mural on the Boston Greenway, where I used to love walking when I worked downtown. There are many post-Covid changes in the area (I felt like Rip Van Winkle gazing around in wonder after a long nap), but the Greenway is still hiring artists to paint the wall of the giant Air-Intake building over the Big Dig. The latest painting, of a little boy with a boombox, has a wistful feeling about it.

The mural photos are followed by several local scenes, including a look at the bright cherries next to John’s front porch.

I end with a picture that Ann took last month while traveling in France. I couldn’t resist. It looks so utterly French to me.

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Valuable Sculpture Found at Goodwill

July 8, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Laura Young via LiveAuctioneers.
Laura Young with the Roman sculpture she found at a Goodwill in Austin, Texas.

Here’s a fun story. You may have heard it before as it was all over the media for a while. This version is by Matt Largey, reporting for KUT, an NPR station in Austin, Texas.

“When Laura Young found a human head under a table at the Goodwill store on Far West Boulevard in 2018, she had no idea what she was getting herself into.

“The price tag said $34.99. Seemed like a deal. It was all white. Made of marble. Weighed about 50 pounds.

“ ‘Clearly antique — clearly old,’ said Young, who runs her own business as an antiques dealer and goes to a lot of thrift stores looking for treasures.

“So she bought the head and lugged it out to her car, buckled it into the passenger seat and took it home.

“Young wanted to figure out what the sculpture was, so she did some Googling and she started to piece things together. She contacted an auction house in London that confirmed it was really old — like first century old. Another auction house managed to find the head in a catalog of items from a German museum in the 1920s and 1930s.

“It was listed as a portrait bust of a man named Drusus Germanicus.

“And so began Young’s four-year ordeal trying to get rid of a 2,000-year-old sculpture.

“How did a 2,000-year-old sculpture of a Roman general’s head wind up in a Goodwill in Austin, Texas?

“ ‘There are plenty of Roman portrait sculptures in the world. There’s a lot of them around. They’re generally not in Goodwills,’ joked Stephennie Mulder, an art history professor at UT Austin. ‘So the object itself is not terribly unusual, but the presence of it here is what makes it extraordinary.’ …

“The marble bust was cataloged at a museum called Pompejanum in the German city of Aschaffenburg. The museum was a replica of a villa in Pompeii, which was buried in volcanic ash in the first century. The German king, Ludwig the First, had something of an obsession with Pompeii, so he built this villa in the 1840s to house a bunch of Roman art. Germanicus was among the collection.

“Almost 100 years later, World War II was raging. In spring of 1945, Aschaffenburg was the site of a battle between the Nazis and the U.S. Army. …

“ ‘We know that many of the objects [in the museum] were either destroyed in the Allied bombing campaign or looted afterward,’ Mulder said. ‘So unfortunately in this case, it might have been a U.S. soldier who either looted it himself or purchased it from someone who had looted the object.’ …

“Perhaps the person who took it died or perhaps they gave it away. But somehow, someone decided they didn’t want it anymore and dropped it off at Goodwill. Workers slapped a price tag for $34.99 on it and put it out for sale. …

“Back at home, Young had a problem: She was in possession of a looted piece of ancient art. She couldn’t keep it. She couldn’t sell it. And giving it back to its rightful owners was a lot harder than it sounds.

“ ‘At that point, I realized I was probably going to need some help,’ Young says. ‘I was probably going to need an attorney.’

“So she hired a lawyer in New York who specializes in international art law, Leila Amineddoleh.

“Negotiations began. It was complicated. It takes a long time to figure out all this stuff — even in the best of times. But the pandemic complicated things even further. It was slow going and in the meantime, she was stuck with this 2,000-year-old head on display at her house. …

“It looked great in the house, she says. In a weird way, Young started to get attached. She named him — half-jokingly — after Dennis Reynolds, a narcissist character from the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

“ ‘He was attractive, he was cold, he was aloof. I couldn’t really have him. He was difficult,’ she says. ‘So, yeah, my nickname for him was Dennis.’ …

“Finally, they got a deal: The Germans would take Dennis back. The exact terms of the deal are confidential, but the head will stay in Texas — on display — for about a year. Last month, the movers came to get him. …

“Young says, ‘It’ll be a little bittersweet to see him in the museum, but he needs to go home. He wasn’t supposed to be here.’

“[You] can see Dennis at the San Antonio Museum of Art, which already has a significant Roman antiquities collection.

“ ‘It actually ended up being a really, really good fit. He’s just right down the road,’ Young says. …

“In a way, Dennis will always be with Young. Before she let him go, she had a half-size copy of him 3D-printed. ‘I do have a collection of busts at home,’ she says. ‘So he’s with my other heads.’ “

More at station KUT, here.

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Finns Figure out a Sand Battery

July 7, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Tony Jolliffe/BBC.
Finnish researchers Markku Ylönen and Tommi Eronen, who came up with the sand-battery idea. Don’t these guys look just like the kind of young people you’d expect to tackle something impossible?

The big challenge for renewable energy sources like solar and wind has always been storage. Where is there a battery big enough and powerful enough to store the energy until it’s needed?

Bring on a couple wiz kids who think about daunting problems like global warming and overdependence on Russian gas.

Matt McGrath writes at the BBC, “Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first fully working ‘sand battery,’ which can store green power for months at a time. …

“Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind. The sand stores the heat at around 500C (~932 degrees Fahrenheit), which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.

“Finland gets most of its gas from Russia, so the war in Ukraine has drawn the issue of green power into sharp focus. It has the longest Russian border in the EU and Moscow has now halted gas and electricity supplies in the wake of Finland’s decision to join NATO.

“Concerns over sources of heat and light, especially with the long, cold Finnish winter on the horizon are preoccupying politicians and citizens alike. But in a corner of a small power plant in western Finland stands a new piece of technology that has the potential to ease some of these worries.

“The key element in this device? Around 100 tonnes of builder’s sand, piled high inside a dull grey silo.

“These rough and ready grains may well represent a simple, cost-effective way of storing power for when it’s needed most.

“Because of climate change and now thanks to the rapidly rising price of fossil fuels, there’s a surge of investment in new renewable energy production. But while new solar panels and wind turbines can be quickly added to national grids, these extra sources also present huge challenges.

“The toughest question is about intermittency — how do you keep the lights on when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? …

“The most obvious answer to these problems is large-scale batteries which can store and balance energy demands as the grid becomes greener.

“Right now, most batteries are made with lithium and are expensive with a large, physical footprint, and can only cope with a limited amount of excess power.

“But in the town of Kankaanpää, a team of young Finnish engineers have completed the first commercial installation of a battery made from sand that they believe can solve the storage problem in a low-cost, low impact way.

” ‘Whenever there’s like this high surge of available green electricity, we want to be able to get it into the storage really quickly,’ said Markku Ylönen, one of the two founders of Polar Night Energy who have developed the product.

“The device has been installed in the Vatajankoski power plant, which runs the district heating system for the area.

“Low-cost electricity warms the sand up to 500C by resistive heating (the same process that makes electric fires work). This generates hot air which is circulated in the sand by means of a heat exchanger.

“Sand is a very effective medium for storing heat and loses little over time. The developers say that their device could keep sand at 500C for several months.

“So when energy prices are higher, the battery discharges the hot air which warms water for the district heating system which is then pumped around homes, offices and even the local swimming pool.

The idea for the sand battery was first developed at a former pulp mill in the city of Tampere, with the council donating the work space and providing funding to get it off the ground.

” ‘If we have some power stations that are just working for a few hours in the wintertime, when it’s the coldest, it’s going to be extremely expensive,’ said Elina Seppänen, an energy and climate specialist for the city. ‘But if we have this sort of solution that provides flexibility for the use, and storage of heat, that would help a lot.’ …

“One of the big challenges now is whether the technology can be scaled up to really make a difference — and will the developers be able to use it to get electricity out as well as heat? The efficiency falls dramatically when the sand is used to just return power to the electricity grid. …

“Other research groups, such as the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory are actively looking at sand as a viable form of battery for green power. But the Finns are the first with a working, commercial system, that so far is performing well, according to the man who’s invested in the system.

” ‘It’s really simple, but we liked the idea of trying something new, to be the first in the world to do something like this,’ said Pekka Passi, the managing director of the Vatajankoski power plant.”

One of the aspects of this approach that I like best is that it doesn’t use lithium, a “blood mineral,” the mining of which often hurts local communities.

Check out the graphic at the BBC, here, to see how the sand-battery works.

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Fancy Fireworks

July 6, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images.
Fireworks in the shape of smiling faces at the Opening Ceremony of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games on February 9, 2018, in South Korea. 

Did you get to see fireworks over the Fourth this year? Ours were to be launched from a barge in the ocean, but there was too much wind, so no dice. There’s talk about doing them at Labor Day instead.

If we had had fireworks, it would have been good for my attitude this year. Fireworks have a certain nutty innocence about them, whereas my patriotic fervor has really been put to the test by events in our country the last few years, coming to a head in spring. It feels like only a handful of people are running what’s supposed to be a democracy. I don’t get it. For example, how can it possibly be the case that nothing gets through our elected Congress unless one senator likes it? Whew.

So, fireworks. Salon magazine has a nice story about some of the finer points of producing dazzling, Gandalf-like artistry. I don’t know about you, but I’m smitten with wonder just as much as a hobbit child when rockets turn into elaborate, endlessly unfolding displays.

Nicole Karlis reports, “Fireworks have come a long way since they were first discovered in 200 B.C.in China. Historians believe that fireworks were created by accident when bamboo was tossed into fire. Then, around 800 B.C., an alchemist* allegedly mixed sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate in a search for eternal life— instead, the mixture led to gunpowder.

“Gunpowder was used in early wars, but it didn’t take long for people to notice that the mixture being shot into the night sky also led to something [colorful and bright]. …

“The tradition of launching fireworks to commemorate Independence Day dates back to a letter John Adams wrote to Abigail Adams in 1776. In it, he wished for future generations to observe the day with ‘[Shows], Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.’ The first official Fourth of July fireworks reportedly occurred the following year.

“Today, firework shows … don’t always look like wilting willow trees or shooting stars in the sky. Instead, they come in various shapes and sizes — from animals to flowers to written text. Known as ‘patterned fireworks,’ these types of fireworks are relatively new to the fireworks world. We asked pyrotechnician Mike Tockstein, a licensed pyrotechnic operator in California, and owner and operator of Pyrotechnic Innovations, more about how these fireworks work.

“Salon: How long have these existed?
“Tockstein: Pattern shells have been around since at least the 1990s in the United States, but it’s hard to say they were not used before that in other countries or even further back in time. …

“I would certainly call it old technology. They don’t differ much at all from your standard peony shell, which is the most basic of all aerial fireworks, being a round shell which breaks in a large spherical pattern in the sky. [A] spherical shell will break symmetrically due to a number of well-known principles in physics, such as conservation of momentum, which says momentum before and after the explosion must be equal, therefore the momentum of the material moving in one direction has to equal that of the material moving in the exact opposite direction. …

“There are other physics at play, but if a shell is built properly and the casing fails in a uniform fashion, a spherical shell will break in a spherical pattern. Now that we understand that, the only thing you have to do is lay the stars out inside the shell in the same pattern you want to see in the sky. …

“Pattern shells started with simple shapes such as hearts, but now-a-days you are only limited by your imagination.  Happy faces, rings, cubes, stars, spirals, alphanumeric letters, Saturn shells which look like a planet with a ring around it. I think I even saw a Bozo the Clown face one time. Here is a video of a few Jelly Fish shells, where you can clearly see the cap and tentacles.

“Could someone request a custom, complicated shape, e.g. an @ sign? How complicated is it for these kinds of fireworks?
“Yes, if far enough in advance, a custom pattern shell could be made in most cases.  An @ sign would be fairly simple since it is a simple 2D spiral shape.  More complicated shapes could take longer to figure out, fabricate, and test.

“How are they designed so that they explode in a manner that the shape is visible from the ground?
“Given that a smiley-face is 2D, presumably if it exploded such that its plane were perpendicular to the viewer, it would appear to look like a straight line.

“They are designed as a 2D shape, so the orientation they explode in the sky is important to being able to see the pattern. The shells themselves cannot orient themselves a certain way when shot out of a mortar. To overcome this, whenever we do a happy face or other pattern shell ‘look’ during a show, we send multiple shells up so that statistically one or more will likely break with the proper orientation to the audience.” More at Salon, here.

* A modern-day Alchemist and blogger in Canada makes beautiful Raku pottery full of mysterious starbursts like fireworks. Check him out, please. He can mail to the US and elsewhere.

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Volunteers Maintain the Trail

July 5, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Noah Robertson/The Christian Science Monitor.
“Trail maintainer Russell Riggs digs an impromptu drain in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, May 1, 2022. The drain helps water gently slope down the mountain and off the trail, limiting erosion,” CSM reports.

I grew up at the foot of the Ramapo Mountains and although I never became a serious hiker, I always loved walking in the woods there. The Ramapo Mountains are part of the Appalachians. Today we learn how volunteers maintain the famed Appalachian Trail. Even in a pandemic.

Noah Robertson has the story at the Christian Science Monitor. “The view from Jewell Hollow overlook is hard to beat. More than 3,000 feet above ground in Shenandoah National Park, it’s a 180-degree window into miles of valley and mountains. Surrounded by a mossy stone fence and hiking trails, the sight is one of the best in Virginia.

“But today, Kris English isn’t focused on that. Instead, she’s looking at dirt – grassy green to tan to gravelly brown. 

“She pauses when the ground gets dark. Telling her three-person crew to stop, she teaches them to study dirt like paint swatches (every artist needs a canvas). Darker dirt is wetter dirt. Wetter dirt means the trail will erode faster. 

“Then Ms. English, a technical trail specialist for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, shows them how to dig a drain. 

“Grabbing a 4-foot hybrid rake known as a McLeod, she clears debris in wide brushstrokes and carves a gentle slope. Five minutes later there’s a comet-shaped channel to guide water down the mountain. …

“Ms. English, leading a training session that morning in early May, helped add a few volunteers to the roster of those who routinely preserve the Appalachian Trail – the East Coast’s 85-year-old, 2,200-mile hikers’ paradise. Her role is professional, but each year a 14-state network of trail crews from Georgia to Maine volunteer hundreds of thousands of hours to keep the trail sustainable, accessible, and clean. 

The pandemic has made it harder. When indoor gatherings were off limits, people went outdoors in record numbers. And, not knowing basic hiking etiquette, they made a mess. 

“That hasn’t stopped the volunteers. Last fiscal year, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, which oversees 240 miles of the trail – 101 of which are in Shenandoah National Park – amassed 2,000 more volunteer hours than it did the year before the pandemic. [To] Wayne Limberg, one of the PATC’s district managers in Shenandoah National Park, … the response shows that people understand the Appalachian Trail’s inherent contract. It offers humans an almost unrivaled opportunity to interact with nature. But that agreement takes preservation. 

“ ‘We want to make sure that it can be enjoyed by those of us living now and also future generations,’ says Mr. Limberg, who helped Ms. English lead the training session in May. ‘Trails need to be maintained.’ …

“Humans want to see nature. But nature doesn’t always appreciate the interest. Trails solve that problem by concentrating folks into a single, relatively small path, she says. The arrangement maximizes people’s exposure to nature and minimizes their impact. 

“But this is a fragile agreement. Humans – particularly new hikers – can disturb the forest with litter, graffiti, music, and millions of footprints. Nature, for its part, will always try to take the trail back with weeds, moving water that erodes the path, and fallen trees known as ‘blowdowns.’ 

“Hence, the need for trails creates a need for trail maintainers. And trail maintainers need training. 

“After a series of safety tips, Ms. English walks her group to a set of tools. … The fire rake’s harsh triangles help clear gravel and debris. The mattock’s two ends can dig earth and tear roots. …

“ ‘I could nerd out about tools for a minute,’ she says. And briefly she does, even posing in proper technique – like the relaxed stance of a surfer, not the hunch of an ‘old witch.’

“Maintainers follow several simple rules. Preserve a 4-foot-by-8-foot rectangular ‘trail prism’ free of weeds and fallen trees so hikers can freely walk. Gather litter. Report anything they can’t fix.

“And, perhaps most important of all, guide water. Rain needs to flow down the backslope and off the edge, not pool on the treadway. Otherwise, the path will erode, gather debris, or change shape entirely as months of nature junk accumulates. 

“Official policy is that the treadway should slope down at a 5-degree angle. The reality is almost never that precise. If they want an impromptu level, Ms. English says, a half-filled, transparent water bottle will work.

“Ms. English, Mr. Limberg, and the crew’s other two members remove a rickety log ‘water bar’ and replace it with a fresh channel. Pulling the log up, Ms. English finds two curled millipedes. Mr. Limberg finds a AA battery. 

“In the last two years, litter like that has only become more common. ​​… The motto for seasoned hikers is ‘leave no trace.’ But many of the new visitors during the pandemic hadn’t yet learned the code. The Appalachian Trail has many access points and can’t record each hiker. But the multiple trail maintainers interviewed by the Monitor described a clear increase in use over the last two years. With it, too, they found an increase in waste and degradation – from little bags of dog poop left in a stack at the trailhead to spray-painted boulders. 

“ ‘When you see stuff that frustrates you, you don’t like it, but you realize that’s why I’m here,’ says Jim Fetig, who manages the PATC’s program of paid seasonal trail ambassadors known as ‘ridgerunners.’ ‘You just rise to the occasion and take care of it and move on.’

“To Mr. Limberg, the good news is that trail maintenance is getting back to its natural state. When national and state parks closed at the beginning of the pandemic, his trail crew’s work stopped as well. Even when things reopened, there were capacity limits and required social distancing. …

“It’s been more than 20 years since Mr. Limberg joined the PATC. Two decades of maintenance have reminded him that ‘the mountain always wins.’ No matter how many times he digs drains, whacks weeds, and lifts litter, the trail will need more work. It’s humbling.  But it also gives him a connection to the land he might not otherwise have.”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Japan Town Nears Zero Waste

July 4, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Yano via Wikimedia.
Kamikatsu, Japan, has worked for years to become a zero-waste town.

Here’s an update on an ambitious Japanese town I wrote about here a few years ago. It’s Kamikatsu, where the residents are still working hard at creating a completely sustainable way of life.

Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Julia Mio Inuma have a report at the Washington Post. “Tucked away in the mountains of Japan’s Shikoku island, a town of about 1,500 residents is on an ambitious path toward a zero-waste life.

“In 2003, Kamikatsu became the first municipality in Japan to make a zero-waste declaration. Since then, the town has transformed its open-air burning practices for waste disposal into a system of buying, consuming and discarding with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality. Now, the town estimates it is more than 80 percent of its way toward meeting that goal by 2030.

“But even for a town its size, carbon and waste neutrality is a high bar. And with more than half of its residents over 65 years old, the rural community is rapidly shrinking. The town is working with manufacturers to encourage them to use more recyclable materials, which would help reduce waste and burning. …

“The Zero Waste Center is the town’s recycling facility, where residents can sort their garbage into 45 categories — there are nine ways to sort paper products alone — before they toss the rest into a pile for the incinerators. …

“The town offers an incentive system in which people can collect recycling points in exchange for eco-friendly products. There are signs depicting what new items will be made out of those recycled items, and how much money the town is saving by working with recycling companies rather than burning the trash. …

“ ‘When residents cooperate, the money used for recycling is reduced at the same time, so you can see the merit to cooperating,’ said Momona Otsuka, the 24-year-old chief environmental officer of the center.

“Two things are key to creating a culture of widespread recycling, she said: policies, such as the 1997 Japanese law that gave towns and cities authority to recycle waste, and the cooperation of residents.

“Attached to the Zero Waste Center is a thrift shop where residents can drop off items they don’t want anymore, and others can take them free. All they need to do is weigh the item they take from the shop and log the weight in a ledger so the shop can keep track of the volume of reused items.

In January alone, about 985 pounds’ worth of items were rehomed — from unused batteries and sake glasses to furniture, maternity clothing and toys. The number is displayed inside the shop. …

“Rise and Win Brewing Co. brews two types of zero-waste craft beer, made of farm crops that would otherwise be thrown out because they are too misshapen to be sold publicly. … For years, the brewery tried to find an efficient way to donate leftover grain from brewing beer. Composting took a long time, and delivering fertilizer to farmers was a lot of work. So last year, they developed a way to convert used grain into liquid fertilizer, which is then used to grow barley for beer. …

“Hotel Why opened in 2020 as a part of the Zero Waste Center facility, which is constructed in the shape of a question mark to depict the question: Why do we create so much waste? The hotel feels like a secluded cabin in the woods, and at night, the stars resemble a planetarium.

“Each guest is given six bins to sort garbage during their stay. The sleek decorations are all reused materials, including a patchwork quilt made of denim scraps, and a wall display made of ropes. The furniture is salvaged from showroom models.

“The hotel emphasizes using just what you need. At check-in, guests cut individual bars of soap so they get just the amount they need for their stay. Coffee beans are ground based on the number of cups the guest wants, so that nothing goes to waste.

“Kamikatsu residents and businesses work to minimize as much food waste as possible. For example, at Cafe Polestar, there was one dish available for lunch to reduce waste: curry made with local vegetables.

“Even the leaf used to decorate their dishes was produced locally, from a company called Irodori, which has been selling products made from Kamikatsu’s lush forestry since 1986. There are 154 families in town involved with the project, mainly women aged 70 and older who can pick leaves to create intricate designs. The leaves are then sold to high-end spas, hotels and restaurants in Japan and other Asian countries, to create sustainable decorations.

“ ‘Our business helps people realize that there are valuable items even in mundane everyday things around them,’ said Tomoji Yokoishi, Irodori’s chief executive.”

More at the Post, here, where you can also read about the town’s ride-share system and its roughly 40 drivers, including the mayor, who use “a handful of cars so they can drive residents or visitors.”

I loved so many of the ideas and like to imagine towns everywhere coming up with their own unique ones.

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Wheelchair Dance & Barbed Wire

July 3, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: DiverseAbility.
After leaving academia, Alice Sheppard “began exploring the techniques of dancing in a wheelchair and learning how disability can generate its own movement.” 

An unusual and dramatic entertainment took place in Chicago in May. It was the brainchild of Alice Sheppard, a fearless risk taker in a surprising sequence of careers. Today she is a choreographer, but as recently as 2004, she had never considered that dance could be compatible with her disability. According to DiverseAbility magazine, “she was a professor in medieval studies at Penn State.” Then a dancer with one leg dared her to try a dance class.

Lauren Warnecke says of Sheppard at the Chicago Tribune, “Alice Sheppard does not shy away from a challenge. In devising her latest dance, ‘Wired,’ she and her Bay Area disability arts company Kinetic Light had to first write the rule books for wheelchair aerial dance.

“Kinetic Light’s mission is to create art that centers disability. Sheppard and the rest of the company are disabled artists who make work for disabled performers. Key to that vision are questions and advocacy around access — who ‘gets’ to dance and who ‘gets’ to watch or experience art? Since the company’s founding in 2016, Sheppard’s work consistently explores the intersections of disability, race and gender. ‘Wired,’ premiering May 5-8 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, is no exception, though it’s the first of Kinetic Light’s growing catalog to incorporate aerial dance.

“Actually, the first step for Sheppard was to read everything she could find about barbed wire. Sheppard, a dancer, choreographer and scholar with a doctorate in medieval studies from Cornell University, devoured the literature on this sharp-edged, steel wire’s fraught history.

“The initial spark for ‘Wired’ came from a visit to the Whitney Museum, where Sheppard viewed Melvin Edwards’ 1969 barbed wire sculpture, ‘Pyramid Up and Down Pyramid.’ …

“It led her down a barbed wire rabbit hole. Sheppard’s source material lends multiple metaphors to what has become her latest multimedia dance piece. Indeed, few pieces of steel are saddled with so much context. Barbed wire is primarily a strict form of forced separation, used in trench warfare and applied in the United States as a means of keeping incarcerated people in, for example, or livestock in and intruders out as ranchers in the American West increasingly claimed land as their personal property.

“Throughout the piece, the dancers wrestle with this unwieldy, unforgiving object, their bodies enclosed by a tangle of wires and barbs. As she continued to explore, Sheppard knew ‘Wired’ had to be an aerial dance. …

“Having never studied aerial dance before, Sheppard and Kinetic Light company members Laurel Lawson and Jerron Herman started from scratch. With support from some 30 artists and engineers with backgrounds in rigging, automation and flight, Sheppard, Lawson and Herman took to the air. …

“ ‘We are not the first disabled artists to fly, by any means,’ she said. ‘There is, of course, in circus arts, a deep and rooted history of disability and flight. That’s not random or new. And there’s a history of disabled dancers also doing aerial work in the UK, New Zealand and the U.S. Part of that history and legacy is to recognize that flight isn’t random. It is perfectly within the tradition and the culture for disabled dancers. What is new here is the construction of the show. It’s not a circus.’

“The process for ‘Wired’ started at Chicago Flyhouse in late 2019. Before the dance and other artistic elements could even begin to take shape, Kinetic Light was faced with huge technical considerations.

“ ‘Before we could even get to “here’s a pretty dance, here’s the choreography,” ‘ she said, ‘we had to get to, “how does this thing fly?” ‘ …

“Lawson, who is also an engineer, assisted in developing the chairs and harnesses needed for her and Sheppard safely ascend into the air. Company member and dancer Herman completes the cast of three and has yet another setup. Herman, who has cerebral palsy, dances sections of ‘Wired’ with a girdle-type harness used to suspend him above the stage. …

“Sheppard reiterated that she and Lawson are not the first disabled artists to fly ,,, but they are the first disabled dancers in the U.S. to explore a thorough compendium of techniques, which includes low flying on hard lines and bungees, as well as flight patterns suspended from joystick-operated, motorized cables. The pandemic enabled Kinetic Light to make connections with then-unemployed entertainment workers with expertise in automation who would not otherwise have been available.

“In a way, ‘Wired’ serves as a primer on wheelchair flight.

“ ‘Understand, this is not actually documented,’ Sheppard said. ‘There are no books. There are no teachers … All of these questions that are easily available to non-disabled aerial artists because there’s a history and tradition here — we just had to figure that out bit-by-bit.’ ”

More at the Chicago Tribune, here.

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Hooray for Plastic-Eating Worms

July 2, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Pacific Beach Coalition.
Scientists investigate whether a “superworm” can help solve our styrofoam problem.

It’s no secret that plastic has become a huge challenge for our poor old planet. Concerned people are finding solutions where they can. Ploggers of India (and other countries) pick plastic off the ground when they go jogging. Plastic Free Hackney is a UK town that aims to do without. Artists turn plastic waste into sculptures.

In today’s story, we learn about scientists testing a “superworm” that might be able to break down a particular kind of plastic, styrofoam.

Pranshu Verma reports at the Washington Post, “A plump larva the length of a paper clip can survive on the material that makes Styrofoam. The organism, commonly called a ‘superworm,’ could transform the way waste managers dispose of one of the most common components in landfills, researchers said, potentially slowing a mounting garbage crisis that is exacerbating climate change.

“In a paper released [in June] in the journal of Microbial Genomics, scientists from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, showed that the larvae of a darkling beetle, called zophobas morio, can survive solely on polystyrene, commonly called Styrofoam.

“The findings come amid a flurry of research on ways bacteria and other organisms can consume plastic materials, like Styrofoam and drinking bottles.

“Now, the researchers will study the enzymes that allow the superworm to digest Styrofoam, as they look to find a way to transform the finding into a commercial product. Industrial adoption offers a tantalizing scenario for waste managers: A natural way to dispose and recycle the Styrofoam trash that accounts for as much as 30 percent of landfill space worldwide. …

“The material is dense and takes up a lot of space, making it expensive to store at waste management facilities, industry experts said. The cups, plates and other materials made from it are also often contaminated with food and drink, making it hard to recycle. Polystyrene fills landfills, where it can often take 500 years to break down and decompose, researchers have found. …

“In 2015, researchers from Stanford University revealed that mealworms could also survive on Styrofoam. The next year, Japanese scientists found bacteria that could eat plastic bottles. In April, researchers from the University of Texas found an enzyme which could digest polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic resin found in clothes, liquid and food containers. …

“[The Microbial Genomics study’s coauthor Christian Rinke] said he was excited by his research results but noted it will take time to develop into an industrial solution, estimating somewhere between five to 10 years.

“To conduct the study, his research team in Australia fed the superworms three separate diets. One group was given a ‘healthy’ solution of bran. The second was given polystyrene. The third was put on a starvation diet.

“Ninety percent of the larvae that ate bran became beetles, compared with roughly 66 percent from the group given polystyrene and 10 percent from those forced to starve. This indicated to researchers that superworms have enzymes in their gut that can effectively digest Styrofoam.

“Next, the scientists will study those enzymes to see how well they can digest polystyrene on a large scale — modifying them if necessary to become more effective. ‘We want to not have gigantic superworm farms,’ he said. ‘Rather, we want to focus on the enzyme.’

“If the research proves successful, Rinke said waste managers could collect and grind Styrofoam materials and put them into a liquid solution made with the superworm enzyme. The solution would ideally dispose of the Styrofoam or digest it in a way that allows new plastic products to be created, thereby reducing the need for new plastic materials, Rinke said.

“ ‘If you can go all the way to the end,’ he said, ‘the idea is to use the system and come up with a biological solution to recycle plastic.’

“Despite the findings from Rinke and others, there are reasons that none have successfully translated into industry applications over the past decade, researchers said. Andrew Ellington, a professor of molecular biosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said it has been difficult to find a plastic-digesting organism or enzyme that can operate in industrial conditions, which often process trash in very hot environments or through the use of organic solvents. … He suggested an alternative solution.

“ ‘I believe that we will be able to offer up, in the not-so-distant future, worm-based composting kits so that individuals can do this themselves,’ he said.

“Jeremy O’Brien, the director of applied research at the Solid Waste Association of North America, said there are other business challenges in putting this type of solution into use. As envisioned, the solution would require waste managers to collect Styrofoam separately from other trash, he said, which makes it cost-prohibitive.

“O’Brien also said it remains unclear what kind of organic waste the enzyme process would generate, and he worries it could harm the microorganisms landfills already use to process trash and reduce odors. He added that a more desirable and cost-effective solution would be to take Styrofoam in landfills and condense them enough so that they can be turned into new plastics.”

More at the Post, here. What do you think of this? Is breaking plastic down to enzymes enough to keep us safe?

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Piñatas as Art

July 1, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Henry Gass/Christian Science Monitor.
Piñata sculptor Alfonso Hernandez in his garage studio in Dallas. He is one of a growing group of piñata makers hoping to transform the industry and get recognition for the piñata as an art form.

When you think of piñatas, what do you picture? Kids’ birthday parties? Long cudgels? Here’s an article about people who want you to know that piñatas can be a serious art form.

Henry Gass asks at the Christian Science Monitor, “Would you take a sledgehammer to the David? A flamethrower to the Mona Lisa? A shredder to the latest Banksy? (Actually, scratch that last one.)

“Why then, some people are beginning to ask, would you want to pulverize a piñata? Alfonso Hernandez, for one, wants you to lower the bat and take off the blindfold and appreciate the artistry of a form that dates back hundreds of years.

“The Dallas-based artist has crafted life-size piñata sculptures of Mexican singer Vicente Fernández and Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. He wants the public to help turn an industry into art.

“ ‘Piñata makers never treated it like an art form,’ he says. ‘They’re taught to make it fast. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, just hurry up because they’re going to break it.’

“Unsatisfied with the generic mass production that has characterized their discipline for decades, piñata makers are pushing the artistic limits of the party pieces. These piñatas, bigger and more detailed, are made out of wood, foam, wire, and clay, and sculpted to look like beloved icons and life-size low-riders. Some move, some are political, and some even talk. Rihanna is a fan, as are, increasingly, art galleries.

“For generations, the real cost of bargain piñatas has typically been borne by the piñata makers themselves working long, arduous hours for less than minimum wage. By proving that piñatas can be more than just clubbable party pieces, people like Mr. Hernandez hope they can both create art and bring a wider respect and dignity to a craft long viewed as cheap and disposable.

“ ‘It’s been an underappreciated art form,’ says Emily Zaiden, director and lead curator of the Craft in America Center in Los Angeles. ‘Piñatas are so accessible. They speak to everybody,’ she adds. But there’s also a flip side. Piñatas ‘can be about appropriation, can be about, I think, the trivialization of a cultural tradition.’

“A new generation of Hispanic artists, she continues, ‘see how much metaphorical potential piñatas have, and how deeply it reflects their identities.’ …

“There are lots of questions around where piñatas come from. They may have emerged in Europe, or China, or the Aztec era – or in all three independently. There are few preserved, written historical records on the origins of piñatas – another sign of how underappreciated the craft has been, Ms. Zaiden believes.

“ ‘A lot of this work probably hasn’t been collected or preserved in ways that other types of art have been,’ she says. ‘It’s all speculation and oral history really,’ she adds, ‘but that goes hand in hand with the idea that these are ephemeral objects.’

“For centuries, piñatas were used for religious ceremonies in Mexico. Typically built to resemble a seven-pointed star, symbolizing the seven deadly sins, they would decorate homes – and be smashed – during the Christmas season.

“Their religious significance faded over time, and they became the popular children’s birthday party feature. But as the piñata industry commercialized, quality and craftsmanship became secondary to quantity.

“Yesenia Prieto grew up in that world. A third-generation piñata maker, she watched her mother and grandmother create in her grandmother’s house in south central Los Angeles, and when she was 19 she started helping herself. It was a constant struggle to survive, she says.

“ ‘I was tired of seeing how poor we were,’ she adds. ‘My grandma was about to lose her house. And we just needed to make more money. We needed to survive.’

“She describes a week in the life of a typical piñata maker. A four-person crew makes about 60 units out of paper, water, and glue a week. Selling wholesale, they make $600 and split it between the four of them. That’s about $150 for a full week of work. …

“ ‘What you’re seeing is an art form having to be mass produced and rushed because they’re getting sweatshop wages,’ she adds. …

“In 2012, Ms. Prieto went independent from her family, and independent from the mainstream piñata industry. She founded Piñata Design Studio and set to making custom, complex pieces that reflect the artistic potential of the craft.

“They’ve created pterodactyls and stormtroopers. They’ve made a giant Nike sneaker, and an 8-foot-tall donkey for the 2019 Coachella music festival. They made a piñata of singer Rihanna for her birthday. …

“But the need to hustle hasn’t abated, according to Ms. Prieto. They work longer on their piñatas than most makers do – up to 16 hours in some cases – but still struggle to sell them for more than $1 an hour. They’ve been leveraging the internet and social media – posting pictures of pieces as they’re being made, to illustrate the labor that’s involved – and they’re slowly raising their price point. …

“She’s also now reaching out to other piñata makers about forming a co-op. By working together, she hopes, piñata makers can get paid fairly, at least. Artistic quality could also improve. And as people see elaborate, custom piñatas more often, she believes, demand will grow, and pay will grow with it. …

“ ‘There is a shift taking place,’ she adds. She’s seeing piñatas in galleries more often. But ‘there’s [still] a need for us to push hard to survive.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here.

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Defining Blue

June 30, 2022 by suzannesmom

Photo: Suzanne and John’s Mom.
Blue skies over Concord.

Have you ever wondered about the blueness of skies and oceans? Maybe people from the dawn of time did, too. Or maybe not. Did they notice that the sky is “blue” before they had a word for the color?

Kevin Loria at Business Insider offers a story “about the way that humans see the world and how, until we have a way to describe something, even something so fundamental as a color, we may not even notice that it’s there.

“Until relatively recently in human history,” he reports, ” ‘blue’ didn’t exist, not in the way we think of it.

“As the delightful Radiolab episode ‘Colors’ describes, ancient languages didn’t have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the color, there is evidence that they may not have seen it at all.

“In the Odyssey, Homer famously describes the ‘wine-dark sea.’ But why ‘wine-dark’ and not deep blue or green?

“In 1858 a scholar named William Gladstone, who later became the prime minister of Great Britain, noticed that this wasn’t the only strange color description. Though the poet spends page after page describing the intricate details of clothing, armor, weaponry, facial features, animals, and more, his references to color are strange. Iron and sheep are violet; honey is green.

“So Gladstone decided to count the color references in the book. And while black is mentioned almost 200 times and white about 100, other colors are rare. Red is mentioned fewer than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10. Gladstone started looking at other ancient Greek texts and noticed the same thing — there was never anything described as ‘blue.’ The word didn’t even exist. …

“Gladstone thought this was perhaps something unique to the Greeks, but a philologist named Lazarus Geiger followed up on his work and noticed this was true across cultures.

“He studied Icelandic sagas, the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, and an ancient Hebrew version of the Bible. Of Hindu Vedic hymns, he wrote: ‘These hymns, of more than ten thousand lines, are brimming with descriptions of the heavens. Scarcely any subject is evoked more frequently. The sun and reddening dawn’s play of color, day and night, cloud and lightning, the air and ether, all these are unfolded before us, again and again … but there is one thing no one would ever learn from these ancient songs … and that is that the sky is blue.’ …

“Every language first had a word for black and for white, or dark and light. The next word for a color to come into existence — in every language studied around the world — was red, the color of blood and wine. After red, historically, yellow appears, and later, green (though in a couple of languages, yellow and green switch places). The last of these colors to appear in every language is blue.

The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye.

“If you think about it, blue doesn’t appear much in nature — there are almost no blue animals, blue eyes are rare, and blue flowers are mostly human creations. …

“We do not know exactly what was going through Homer’s brain when he described the wine-dark sea and the violet sheep — but we do know that ancient Greeks and others in the ancient world had the same biology and therefore same capability to see color that we do. But do you really see something if you don’t have a word for it?

“A researcher named Jules Davidoff traveled to Namibia to investigate this, where he conducted an experiment with the Himba tribe, which speaks a language that has no word for blue or distinction between blue and green.

“When shown a circle with 11 green squares and one blue, they could not pick out which one was different from the others — or those who could see a difference took much longer and made more mistakes than would make sense to us, who can clearly spot the blue square.

“But the Himba have more words for types of green than we do in English. When looking at a circle of green squares with only one slightly different shade, they could immediately spot the different one. Can you?”

Go to Business Insider, here. to see what is meant.

Loria continues, “Davidoff says that without a word for a color, without a way of identifying it as different, it is much harder for us to notice what is unique about it — even though our eyes are physically seeing the blocks it in the same way. …

“For more fascinating information about colors, including information on how some ‘super-seeing’ women may see colors in the sky that most of us have never dreamed of, check out the full Radiolab episode.”

What else don’t we see because we don’t have a word for it? Certain kinds of cloud or qualities of snow? Facial expressions? Clearly it depends on the culture in which we were raised.

Hat tip: Hannah. Thank you for realizing blog readers would like this!

More at Business Insider, here.

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