On Point: Royal Academy of Dance at 100 celebrates the centenary of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD, 36 Battersea Square, London, United Kingdom), one of the world’s leading dance education and training organizations. With over 60 original objects, including costumes, designs and posters, alongside a wealth of photographs and film material, this V&A display traces the prestigious dance academy’s roots and influence, from its founding in 1920 through to its ground-breaking work to make dance accessible for all today.
Dame Darcey Bussell DBE, Carlos Acosta and Gary Avis in The Song of the Earth, ROH, 2007. Part of the Graham Brandon Collection, THM/110. Image by Graham Brandon. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Curated by the V&A with the RAD, the display explores the Academy’s history, including the impact of important figures such as Anna Pavlova, Rudolf Nureyev and other stars of the dance world who became Presidents of the Academy and promoted its work. The RAD’s first President was Dame Adeline Genée, who brought respectability to the then very dubious career of dance. Within 15 years of founding the Academy, Genée had secured its Royal Charter, and was succeeded by ballerinas Dame Margot Fonteyn, Dame Antoinette Sibley and currently, Dame Darcey Bussell..
Adeline Genée in ‘A Dream of Roses and Butterflies’; Photo by Hugh Cecil
On show will be costumes worn by the Presidents, including Dame Darcey Bussell’s dress for Kenneth MacMillan’s The Prince of the Pagodas, the role which brought her public acclaim, along with designs for costumes created for Adeline Genée, Tamara Karsavina and Margot Fonteyn.
(Left) Costume for Margot Fonteyn in Paquita designed by Philip Prowse © Royal Academy of Dance; (Right) Costume for Fuschias by Claud Lovat Fraser © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Other highlights include a 1942 harlequin sculpture by Alfred Gilbert, the sculptor behind the famous Eros statue at London’s Piccadilly; a unique 1950s pamphlet ‘Ballet Exercise for Athletes’ featuring original artwork by Punch illustrator Fougasse, famous for his ‘Careless talk Costs Lives’ Second World War posters; and shoes worn by Dame Darcey Bussell at her farewell performance as a member of The Royal Ballet (2007).
Harlequin statue by Alfred Gilbert for Production Club (RAD), date unknown. Presented to the RAD in 1924 by Stanislas Idzikowski. © Ali Wright, Dance Gazette Pointe shoes worn by Darcey Bussell in Song of the Earth at her farewell performance as a member of The Royal Ballet, 2007 . © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The V&A’s Theatre and Performance Department is home to one of the largest dance collections in Europe, including many objects that once belonged to the RAD. Drawing on the combined resources and archives of both institutions, this display reveals how the RAD helped to establish British dance, and continues to champion dance as an inclusive, rather than elite, art form across the world.
Tamara Karsavina in Russian dance costume, 1929. Dress by Natalia Gontcharova. Photographer unknown.
Pointe shoes worn by Darcey Bussell in Song of the Earth at her farewell performance as a member of The Royal Ballet, 2007 . © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Jill Norgren: Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers: Lives in the Law
Published by New York University press, 2018, paper 2020
Pages: xvi + 287
Copyright © 2021 by Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com
by Diane Girard
On Boxing Day here in Ontario, Canada we entered another lockdown due to the increase in COVID 19 cases. Many local businesses in the Kitchener-Waterloo area have folded. Others hang on by wavering threads as the winter winds threaten to break them. Meanwhile, my favourite local independent book store had a very good Christmas season and I hope it will continue to do well. There are several reasons for its success so far.
Words Worth Books Inc. doesn’t have large premises but, it is on the main street in the business section of Waterloo. I’m sure that helps, some of the time. But there have been trials and, of course, tribulations to endure for some years. The street in front of the store was dug up for the installation of electric light rail tracks. Then, lo and behold, a corduroy road* was discovered lurking below the asphalt and had to be carefully, meaning very slowly, removed. So, history intruded and delayed that project. Parking anywhere near the store disappeared and would only reappear on the other side of the street many, many months later. At one point in this construction/deconstruction saga the sidewalk in front of the store was closed so a new one could be poured and store access was hidden in a back lane. Then, there was a partial store closure in the spring caused by COVID 19 and now, another one.
Still, book lovers continue to support the store.
What makes the store a charming and hardy survivor? Its charm is partly due to the physical layout which takes full advantage of the space and partly due to the welcoming atmosphere where books take pride of place. Unlike in chain book stores, fripperies do not abound.
Mostly though, it’s the people who own it and who work in it. They truly care about books and they know books and writers. They make recommendations based on what a customer likes to read and if a book is not in stock, they can order it, swiftly. That’s wonderful but it isn’t all that makes the business work. They have an excellent website they update constantly. They connect frequently with their customers through an email newsletter. They sponsor six book clubs. They have held readings by both famous writers and local writers. And, they care about and support local community organizations and have done so for many years.
Credit for the store’s survival also goes to the customers. I happen to think that this area has more than the average number of inveterate readers of print books. As you might suspect, many are older folk who prefer the delight of possessing a physical book. But younger people also patronize the store. The University of Waterloo and Laurier University are nearby and that may help, too.
I also believe there is a ‘reading culture’ here which contributes to the success of the book store. For instance, the renovated and expanded main library in Kitchener received financial support from the city and from many local sponsors. It’s a glorious addition to our downtown. Every morning when it was fully accessible, there were folk waiting for the doors to open. And, every year, there is a One Book, One Community event. The featured book is always available at Words Worth Books as well as at the library. When Margaret Atwood, the Canadian literary superstar, came to speak at the Kitchener library’s large theatre/auditorium, the house was full to bursting. Other authors get good audiences and book sales too.
The Kitchener-Waterloo area has been called Canada’s Silicon Valley. There are lots of start-up tech companies here and Google is here, too. Fortunately, some younger folk still choose to read print. Maybe they need an escape from the omnivorous online multiverse. Recently I saw a young man with the latest cell phone reading a hardcover book on the bus and later, I saw him enter Words Worth Books. I hope there are many more folk like him, and I hope that my favourite book store will be around to sustain them.
I suggest that when you buy books, you purchase them from your local independent book store. Then, you can relish the good-citizen feeling of supporting a local business and delight in opening the fresh pages of a new book. Talk about instant rewards! There they are. I recommend you reward yourself early and often. I certainly will.
©Diane Girard for SeniorWomen.com
*Corduroy roads are a series of logs laid parallel across a roadbed to allow passage of wagons, horses, or foot traffic through usually muddy or wet areas to prevent them from getting bogged down. It is an old technology that the military primarily utilized here in Virginia as an expedient means to improve rudimentary roads during the 19th century and possibly even the 18th century. It is likely that this method was used during the early colonial years of Virginia settlement when roads were quite primitive. The logs, when laid down in a linear pattern, resemble corduroy fabric, hence the name. These are different from “plank roads” constructed, as the name implies, of flat boards — historically a more common method of road construction throughout Virginia.
Facebook Words Worth website in Waterloo
Houston, Texas Food Bank … http://www.houstonfoodbank.org; houstonFOODbank.org
Even as average personal incomes rose during the pandemic largely because of government aid, millions of people who didn’t receive such help have fallen into poverty, struggling to pay for food and other basic expenses.
That group, trying to get by with the help of local charities, may have been excluded from the federal payments because of immigration status, lack of time in the labor force needed to claim unemployment benefits, or just red tape in states that have been slow to pay jobless claims.
The situation in the Houston area is particularly desperate, with almost half of residents struggling to pay basic expenses in the week ending Dec. 7, according to a Census Bureau survey. That share has grown 10 points since October to 48.4%, the highest of the 15 metro areas included. In Miami and Riverside, California, more than 45% of people said they had trouble paying for routine expenses such as food, rent and car payments.
Statewide, Nevada had the highest rate, at 44.7%. Experts say the hardest-hit areas have large numbers of immigrant workers who aren’t entitled to pandemic relief, or, like Nevada, have an unemployment system that has broken down under the strain of unemployment applications in the pandemic. Nevada also lacks a state income tax, which can help verify unemployment claims.
The new COVID-19 relief bill Congress passed in December includes help for more families with mixed immigration status, who were excluded from previous $1,200 stimulus payments. And lawmakers in some states such as New York are proposing measures that would create relief funds for workers shut out of jobless payments.
Average personal income was up in almost every state in the third quarter of 2020 compared with 2019, according to a Stateline analysis of data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s in part because many unemployed people were still getting supplemental $600 weekly checks through July 26, as well as the earlier $1,200 lump sum. A smaller $300 weekly unemployment supplement and $600 lump sum are in the new relief bill.
The pandemic drastically altered consumer spending in its first few months: Consumer demand switched—almost dollar for dollar—from restaurants and bars to food and beverage stores. Clothing sales decreased 86%, and travel by rail and air decreased 96% and 91%, respectively.
Perception can mean everything. People observe new events and use these experiences to inform their expectations. So, while the virus itself will eventually pass, changes in consumers’ beliefs could transform their spending and investment habits—with future losses well beyond the deep drop in GDP in 2020.
Plus, more data and analysis on stresses in the rental industry, the transportation industry, and unemployment insurance benefits.
What are the long-run economic costs of COVID-19? While the virus will eventually pass, an event of this magnitude could leave lasting effects. A shift in confidence and fear could prevent firms and consumers from rebounding to their old investment and spending habits. A recent paper (Kozlowski, Veldkamp, and Venkateswaran, 2020a) formalizes this discussion and quantifies these effects. The authors use a standard economic and epidemiological framework, with one novel channel: a “scarring effect.” Scarring is a persistent change in beliefs about the probability of an extreme, negative shock to the economy.
Perception can be everything: People observe new events and use these experiences to inform their expectations. For example, if you haven’t seen many pandemics, you think pandemics are rare. However, when you see a pandemic, you come to believe that pandemics are not as rare as you previously thought. As an analogy, imagine you see the outcome of many rolls of a die. You don’t know how many sides the die has or if the sides are weighted. However, you see numbers one through six come up many times, about equally, so you think this is a standard six-sided die. One time, though, a seven comes up. As a result, you revise your belief and now think the die has at least seven sides. Even if you don’t see a seven again, the knowledge that the number seven can be rolled stays with you. It would probably affect your willingness to bet on the outcome of a die roll, too. Seeing the COVID-19 pandemic was like seeing a seven come up on what you thought was a six-sided die.
Consciously or not, we all use past events to inform our beliefs, like econometricians do. Rare events are those for which we have little data. In turn, the scarcity of data makes new rare events particularly informative, so rare events trigger larger belief revisions. Furthermore, because it will take many more observations of non-rare events to convince someone that a rare event really is unlikely, these changes in expectations are particularly persistent.1
The work by Kozlowski, Veldkamp, and Venkateswaran (2020a) embeds a belief-updating tool in a macroeconomic model with epidemics. Belief updating can generate large and persistent economic losses well after an epidemic is over because agents think that epidemics are more likely after seeing one. The figure shows predictions about the response to the COVID-19 crisis. GDP drops 9 percent in 2020 and recovers gradually but does not go back to its previous trajectory. It persistently remains 4 percent below the pre-COVID steady state. The discounted value of the lost output over the future is almost 10 times the 2020 drop, and belief revisions account for the bulk of the losses.
Youngsters Pose at Izzy-Dorry’s Roller Rink in New Ulm Minnesota; Photographer Flip Schulke. Commons, Wikimedia; Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division
By Kristin Nord
We had moved that spring from Appalachia – not the pastoral region around Lexington, KY, but the truly hardscrabble region that would launch Lyndon Johnson’s War on poverty. My father had been fulfilling his military service by working as a psychiatrist on an experimental prison — a place inhabited by young boys who had been caught stealing cars or selling moonshine. Their greatest sin, I would conclude later, was poverty. And as my little brother in his cowboy suit would sidle up to them, and refer to them as “My friends, the inmates” I think he was on to something.
The trip East had been prompted by my father’s decision to leave the Public Health Service and set up a private practice in proximity to relatives and so we made the trip, passing over hills and hollers populated by characters on porches Dorothea Lange would have been drawn to, looking skeletal and sad in their calico dresses. And as it was spring, it was a time of slowly emerging leaves and soft breezes.
Landing on Long Island, NY was not unlike landing on Pluto. Daily life felt speeded up, as if the horses on a child’s carousel had broken free — and were galloping away of their own volition. And of course once we landed my father encountered financial sticker shock; he had planned to set aside money for all of us children to go to college so that we would not have to work the multiple jobs he’d worked. And so he took on moonlighting jobs at social service institutions, and his early morning drives were soon leading to long days, and late nights. We all missed him terribly.
My first introduction to school was in a town which clearly valued ambition and achievement, and I grew silent with my still- present Kentucky accent, in a class where the children felt justified in challenging their teachers, and where, “I Object! I Object!” seemed to be the common refrain.
A lot of my classmates had school after school, and could read backwards. They were obviously being trained in Talmudic academic inquiry, but I was a kid from a white bread Presbyterian background. I would be going to my uncle’s church just a couple of towns away on Sundays, and singing in Mrs. Rose’s choir in my red robe and starched white collar. I would take my cues from her in the reverse mirror, fascinated for some reason by the Band-aids on each arthritic hand.
NPS Photo/Jacob W. Frank; Denali National Park and Preserve; Grizzly Bears
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) finalized a rule change that alters the process for designating critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act. This will weaken the ability to designate critical habitat for at-risk species and prioritize economics over science. The rule gives increased weight in decision making to developers to prioritize oil and gas development and other industries over safeguarding and restoring habitat for endangered species.
The Trump administration tomorrow is expected to finalize a rule to circumvent establishing habitat protections for endangered and threatened species. The rule follows a string of other efforts and rollbacks to weaken the Endangered Species Act under the Trump administration.
In the latest attack on endangered species, the Trump administration today finalized a rule stripping protections from gray wolves across most of the lower 48 states. The politically-driven move will turn wolf management over to historically hostile state agencies
WASHINGTON, D.C— The Trump administration today announced a new proposed rule to circumvent establishing habitat protections for endangered species. The rule follows a string of other proposals to weaken the Endangered Species Act, including another rule proposed just last month putting additional restrictions on designation of critical habitat.
WASHINGTON,D.C. — The Trump administration today released a new proposal that would severely limit critical habitat protections for endangered wildlife. The proposal runs counter to warnings of scientists around the world who have identified habitat loss as the single largest driver of species imperilment and a major contributing factor to pandemics, such as COVID-19. The new proposed definition of “habitat” seeks to prevent former habitat from being designated as critical habitat, even when that habitat has irreplaceable characteristics vital to the recovery of a species. It would also prevent areas that will be the last refuge for species harmed by climate change from being designated as critical habitat until it’s too late.
SAN FRANCISCO–The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the Montana District Court’s opinion that reinstated Endangered Species Act protections for the Yellowstone region’s grizzly bear population. The decision spares the grizzlies from plans for trophy hunts in the states of Wyoming and Idaho. Earthjustice, representing the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and National Parks Conservation Association, argued for restoring protections to Yellowstone grizzly bears.
Washington, DC— The Sierra Club secured over 14,437 documents from the Department of the Interior through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), including call logs, meetings and email communications that are now available for the public. Find and search the documents online here. Included in the lowlights are:
New Orleans, LA — Today, environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) approval of the massive Annova LNG fracked gas export terminal proposed for southern Texas.
Helena, MT— Last week, the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Department announced that the U.S. Department of the Interior has approved paintballing by the public to haze grizzly bears, a threatened species protected under the Endangered Species Act.
WASHINGTON— A federal judge on Tuesday overturned a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect northern long-eared bats as threatened rather than endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
Nature has been a bit more obvious around here lately, with squirrels dashing in front of cars, hawks flying down closer to people and deer gallivanting on streets and in backyards. Here is an example:
There were actually five deer crossing our backyard the other day. Two moved off into our neighbor’s property behind the children’s playground. One had stopped for a moment to look at the swings. I wondered if it was considering having a ride. When my husband came out with his camera, the deer moved on. They crossed the street slowly as if they were just out for a daily walk.
I think that our housing development was built on the deer’s natural roaming path. They figured out how to navigate around the fences that some of our neighbors have erected. We are used to them coming into our back to munch on our plants and our sweet cherry tree. But they have been showing up more frequently and being less reserved.
I think we all are looking at things differently now. What used to be in the background of our busy lives has come to be more prominent in our awareness as we become more locally aware. Focusing on nature is a way to step out of our daily worries and be lifted by its beauty or be delightfully surprised by an unusual encounter. I think of it as a gift that opens me up to a wider perspective.
We’ve been going to various nature centers during this pandemic, trying to be outdoors but away from crowds. I always find something that surprises me on these walks. This time, at the Parvin State Park in Pittsgrove, NJ, it was tree roots that were reaching up to the sky. The tree had fallen over into the lake and half of its roots were yanked up into the air. It was no longer living but half of its roots still held on, deep into the earth.
It was captivating. It isn’t often that tree roots are so visible. There was a lacy quality to them. I could see how interconnected they were, supporting each other so that the tree was able to rise high into the air.
It made me think of people who have passed away, especially now when so many have died from the corona virus. They may be virtually gone but they, too, have left roots in our society. Some of those roots can still be seen, biologically visible in relatives. But it is the impact they have made through their work and interactions in society that are the hidden roots, the connections that affect all of us.
Parvin State Park has quite a history*:
https://www.stateparks.com/parvin_state_park_in_new_jersey.html
*HISTORY OF THE AREA – Parvin State Park served as home for the Civilian Conservation Corps from 1933 to 1941, a summer camp for the children of displaced Japanese Americans in 1943, a POW camp for German prisoners in 1944 and temporary housing for the Kalmycks who fled their homelands in Eastern Europe in 1952. From the park’s early history, there are still the remains of ancient American Indian encampments, both temporary and permanent.
©2020 Ferida Wolff for SeniorWomen.com
A regular dose of awe is a simple way to boost healthy ‘prosocial’ emotions such as compassion and gratitude, according to a study by researchers at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center (MAC) and the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) – a partnership between UCSF and Trinity College Dublin to improve brain health worldwide.
In the study, published in the journal Emotion, older adults who took weekly 15-minute “awe walks” for eight weeks reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives. This shift was reflected in “selfies” participants took on their weekly walks, in which an increasing focus on their surroundings rather than themselves was paralleled by measurably broader smiles by the end of the study.
“Negative emotions, particularly loneliness, have well-documented negative effects on the health of older adults, particularly those over age 75,” said Virginia Sturm, PhD, an associate professor of in the departments of Neurology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professor in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “What we show here is that a very simple intervention – essentially a reminder to occasionally shift our energy and attention outward instead of inward – can lead to significant improvements in emotional well-being.”
Sturm directs the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) laboratory in the UCSF MAC, where her team studies how neurodegenerative disease affects the brain’s emotional systems. Sturm and her group have previously documented increased empathy and emotional contagion – meaning a tendency to mirror the emotions of others – as an early feature of Alzheimer’s disease.
The new study was inspired by a call from GBHI for research proposals to identify simple, low-cost interventions to improve brain health. Sturm says she immediately began to think about how to improve emotional well-being in older adults, and partnered with UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, PhD, an expert in emotion, to develop a simple intervention.
“Awe is a positive emotion triggered by awareness of something vastly larger than the self and not immediately understandable — such as nature, art, music, or being caught up in a collective act such as a ceremony, concert or political march,” Keltner said. “Experiencing awe can contribute to a host of benefits including an expanded sense of time and enhanced feelings of generosity, well-being and humility.”
The researchers recruited 52 healthy older adults from the MAC’s long-running Hilblom Healthy Aging Study, led by study co-author Joel Kramer, PsyD, a professor of neurology and director of the MAC Neuropsychology program. They asked each of these participants to simply take at least one 15-minute walk each week for eight weeks. For half of the participants, the researchers also described the emotion of awe and suggested trying to experience that emotion during their walks.
Participants filled out brief surveys after each walk, detailing characteristics of the walk and the emotions they had experienced, including questions intended to assess their experience of awe. These surveys showed that people in the “awe group” reported increasing experience of awe on their walks as the study went on, suggesting some benefit of practice.