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  • Beauty’s Awakening Exhibit, the Museum’s Shop, and the Knight Trueheart’s Quest to Find and Awaken “the Spirit of All Things Beautiful”

     

    Frederick Sandys, King Pelles’ Daughter Bearing the Vessel of the Sanc Graal, 1861. Pen and black ink on wove paper.  Lanigan Collection, Saskatoon. Promised gift to the National Gallery of Canada. Photo © NGC
     
    The young and audacious artists who called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood revolutionized the British art establishment of the nineteenth century with their medievalist aesthetic. Featuring more than 120 drawings, this National Gallery of Canada exhibition illustrates how John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and their fellow Pre-Raphaelites strove to uproot the teachings of the Royal Academy, while Frederic Leighton, Edward Poynter and others championed them.

    Visitors will encounter all the major artists, movements and pictorial themes that make up the captivating art world of Victorian England and discover the renewed uses and profound appreciation for the art of drawing at this time. Witness how a single Canadian collector amassed a group of works – exceptional in North America for its breadth – that paints an artistic and social overview of the Victorian age.  Beauty’s Awakening: Drawings by the Pre-Raphaelites and Their Contemporaries from the Lanigan Collection will be on view in the Prints, Drawings & Photography Galleries until 3 January 2016. 

    Named after Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, the Victorian era was a fascinating period of change, full of contrasts and contradictions, brought about by rapid developments in nearly every sphere. As an epoch of great prosperity that afforded British artists many creative outlets, it was a time of artistic exploration for the Pre-Raphaelites and their contemporaries in which drawing played a pre-eminent role.

    Assembled by Dennis T. Lanigan in Saskatoon over of a period of more than thirty years, the Lanigan Collection of British drawings from the Victorian age brings to light the revitalization of this medium in nineteenth-century England. Like the 1899 stage performance Beauty’s Awakening, which tells of Knight Trueheart’s quest to find and awaken “the Spirit of all things beautiful,” this exhibition recounts Victorian artists’ pursuit of a new form of beauty rooted in the past. It also pays homage to a collector’s own quest and celebrates his previous and promised gifts to the National Gallery of Canada.

    The origins of the National Gallery of Canada are interwoven with the British art world of the late Victorian era. It was Canada’s Governor General the Marquess of Lorne and his wife Princess Louise – Queen Victoria’s daughter – who launched the establishment of a national art museum in 1880 and endowed it with its first European works by petitioning their artist-friends in Britain to donate paintings to Canada. Frederic Leighton and John Everett Millais, both well represented in the Lanigan Collection, were the first to respond. This tradition of gifting British art from the Victorian period continues with the transformative donation, presented in this exhibition, of over one hundred sheets from the Lanigan Collection.

     

    Edward Burne-Jones, Study for the Slave in “The Wheel of Fortune,” c. 1875–83. Black chalk with wet brush on laid paper, 29.8 × 16.1 cm. Lanigan Collection, Saskatoon. Promised gift to the National Gallery of Canada. Photo © NGC

     

    Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Study for “The Vintage Festival,” c. 1869. Black chalk and graphite on two joined sections of wove paper, 24.3 × 55.7 cm. Lanigan Collection, Saskatoon. Promised gift to the National Gallery of Canada. Photo © NGC

     

    Editor’s Note: Don’t foget the Gallery’s well-stocked shop with reproductions such as King Pelles’ Daughter (see above), The Lady of Shalott, La Ghirlandata, jewelry including indigenous artists, Canadian jigsaw puzzles including those for youths, Beauty’s Awakening gifts, art supplies and the best-looking rain boots we’ve seen. Marvelous shop.

    Group Tours for Adults
    Monday 12 October 2015 to Sunday 3 January 2016
    Explore the Beauty’s Awakening exhibition on a guided group tour. Groups must include a minimum of 10 people. Cost: $7 + Gallery admission. Registration required. Please call 613-990-4888 or email reservations@gallery.ca.

    Leading Victorian art expert Christopher Newall will address the importance of drawing in the context of British art of the second half of the nineteenth century, focussing on the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and artists of the Aesthetic Movement. Some of the most remarkable and progressive Victorian painters, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Frederic Leighton, used drawing to invent their compositions and refine their ideas. Their drawings were seldom intended to be seen outside of the studio and therefore reveal a freedom and originality that was sometimes lost in their more self-conscious finished paintings. A contributing author to the catalogue accompanying Beauty’s Awakening, Newall maintains that the medium of drawing was decidedly personal and one in which artists expressed themselves without concern for convention or the expectations of the commercial art world. Ultimately, the intimacy of such expression came to be seen as fascinating and valuable in its own right.

     Pre-Raphaelite Illustration: A Selection from the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives

    To 31 December 2015
    In the Library and Archives

    Against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding desire for books and advances in printing techniques that allowed publishers to meet this growing demand, book illustration was elevated to a high art during the nineteenth century. This tendency was particularly evident in works produced by members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England from the mid-1850s until the 1890s. Several prominent artists were active as illustrators during the century, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones among them, and they worked in tandem with skilled engravers such as the Dalziel brothers and Joseph Swain. On view in the National Gallery of Canada Library, this related exhibition will highlight outstanding examples of Pre-Raphaelite illustrated books from the Library collection.

  • Daily Fantasy Sports: States Zero in on FanDuel, DraftKings, With Eye Toward Regulation

    Fantasy football rings
     
    If you have been near a TV set in the last three months, you are almost guaranteed to have seen ads from daily fantasy sports websites like DraftKings and FanDuel about how “easy” it is to make money. Now, states are trying to figure out how to regulate and possibly raise revenue off the exploding industry.
     
    Rings given to winners, 2015. Wikipedia

    New York and Nevada have banned the sites, labeling the games illegal gambling — rulings that the sites are challenging. But many more states are working on legislation for upcoming sessions that would subject the games to oversight or licensing. Pennsylvania and California are leading the way. But other states, such as Colorado, Delaware, Georgia and Illinois, are interested, too.

    The daily sites, an Internet outgrowth of the rotisserie sports leagues of the 1980s, emerged in the last few years and took off this year amid massive ad campaigns. Players will spend more than $3 billion this year in entry fees, said Chris Grove of Eilers Research, a gaming-industry market research firm. Of that, the sites will keep roughly 10 percent; the rest will be paid out as winnings.

    “The uptick in state examination of the issue coincided with the beginning of football season when the ads became nonstop,” said Jonathan Griffin, a gambling specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “I expect this [coming] year we’re going to see a significant number of states that are going to try to regulate it, which is directly related to the fact that they have become so well-known in the past months.”

    The daily sports sites work much like fantasy sports games in general:  A player picks out a fantasy team of athletes from real sports teams (they don’t have to play for the same team in real life). Each athlete has a salary number attached to him, and the cost of an entire team must fit under a certain salary cap. That prevents a daily player from picking a team of only all-stars.

    Fantasy players score points if their selected athletes perform well by scoring touchdowns or rolling up yardage in football, accumulating hits in baseball or making baskets in basketball. The difference between daily fantasy sports and the old-fashioned, group-of-friends fantasy play is the winning payouts that can occur each day. Another big difference:  As the sites stress in their ads, players can win hundreds of thousands of dollars every day.

    For the states, the basic question is whether the daily contests are gambling, i.e., “games of chance,” or not gambling, i.e., “games of skill. “The fantasy companies contend the games are based on skill — that players need to know a lot about a sport and how athletes compete if they are to win. Nevada and New York contend the daily fantasy contests are gambling — that luck plays a big role in who wins. For example, they say, it’s bad luck when the star quarterback fractures his ribs and is out for the game, diminishing his value to the daily fantasy sports player.

    In October, the Nevada Gaming Control Board issued a ruling calling for all daily fantasy sports websites to “cease and desist” operations in the state. As the sites stress in their ads, players can win hundreds of thousands of dollars every day.

  • Wisdom, The Oldest Living Banded Bird, Returns to Wildlife Refuge

    bird with mate

    Meet Wisdom, the oldest living, banded, wild bird.

    This 64-year-old bird returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge on November 19, 2015, after a year at sea. A few days later, she was observed with her mate. Wisdom departed soon after mating but refuge workers expect her back any day to lay her egg.

    bird with mate

    Wisdom was first banded in 1956. And because Laysan albatross do not return to breed until they are at least five years old, it is estimated Wisdom is at least 64 years old, but she could be older.

    Although Laysan albatrosses typically mate for life, Wisdom has likely had more than one mate and has raised as many as 36 chicks. Laying only one egg per year, a breeding albatross will spend a tiring 130 days (approximately) incubating and raising a chick. When not tending to their chicks, albatross forage hundreds of miles out at sea periodically returning with meals of squid or flying fish eggs. Wisdom has likely clocked over six million ocean miles of flight time.

    bird with mate

    Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge is home to the largest albatross colony in the world and 70 percent of the world’s Laysan albatross population. Midway Atoll is one of more than 560 wildlife refuges that make up the National Wildlife Refuge System. National wildlife refuges provide habitat for more than 700 species of birds, 220 species of mammals, 250 reptile and amphibian species and more than 1,000 species of fish.

    Learn more about Wisdom at: http://usfwspacific.tumblr.com.

    Photos by Kiah Walker, USFWS.

     

  • Puzzling: Jumbled Words, Anagrams, Crosswords, Cryptograms, Acrostics, I Love Them All

    by Julia SnedenSwedish crossword grid

    As a lifelong addict of puzzle-solving, or at least of taking a whack at it, I’ve been delighted to note that nowadays neurologists and gerontologists recommend that we seniors keep our minds sharp by doing crossword puzzles. To me, that’s a bit like giving a chocolate lover the key to the Godiva factory.

    German-style cross-word.  Michael Joachim Lucke,  Wikimedia Commons

    Give me almost any kind of word puzzle: jumbled words, anagrams, crosswords, cryptograms, acrostics; I love them all. I do avoid those “puns and anagrams” things, perhaps because I suffered mightily from an older relative who made a groan-worthy pun out of almost any utterance, as in:

    (me) “Good morning”

    (he) “Who died?” (i.e. good mourning)

    Those puns were his only sin, as far as I know, and we all loved him so dearly that we endured his excesses. But an entire puzzle based on that kind of cleverness doesn’t appeal to me at all.

    In any event, back in my sixties, when I read the advice of those who are experts in the elderly mind, I figured that as a word puzzle addict, I was well set to keep myself mentally fit. I come from a family whose women have remarkable (and some would say dreadful) genes for living long. All my older female relatives have died in their 90’s, and both grandmothers and a great aunt came close to a hundred. If you’re likely to live that long, you need to do everything you can to take care of your mental agility.

    So why, please tell me, did I, so well-armed for bear, reach my current age of 74 only to find that what used to be a remarkable memory has suddenly gone south on me? In the past couple of years I have had to admit that I’ve fallen prey to almost every cliché concerning old age/memory loss.

    Oh, I’m not talking deep memories. Those lie buried under the dross of many years, but they’re there. They seem to come in two types: those that pop up at need unaided, and those that take their own sweet time. The latter may not be readily accessible, but eventually they do float to the surface, usually in the wee hours of the morning. My husband and I refer to them as “the 2 a.m. elbow-jab type,” something which happens in answer to a blank moment at the dinner table, when neither of us can recall a name or event, but which then pops up with a blaze of triumph at an ungodly hour.

    “It was (fill in the blank),” one of us will say with an elbow nudge. The only possible response is a muttered “Right. Thanks” as one turns over and goes back to sleep. Both of us may have forgotten the answer by morning, but at least we’ve had our moment of glory.

    But what of the more immediate kind of memory trouble? I’m referring to the sort that finds me standing in front of the refrigerator, suddenly wondering why on earth I opened the door, or going down to the basement pantry for paper towels and coming up with a jar of salsa instead. Those things are, I think, more a matter of losing focus than of true memory. I’ve always been distractible, but these days it’s as if the problem has gone onto steroids. It does help to stay calm and try to recreate the moments just before I undertook whatever it was I’ve forgotten, but while I can often repair the damage to the errand, it’s harder to repair the damage to my self-esteem.

    And then there’s the really serious short-term memory problem, as evidenced by trying desperately to recall where I set down my glasses, or the checkbook, or, heaven forbid, my car keys. I’ve taken heed of the good advice of others and promised always to put such things in the very same place, which works really well except when it doesn’t, i.e. when I don’t.

    I suppose I could regard those moments as instructive, or at least as lessons in humility, but at my age, it’s hard to appreciate either instruction or humility. Neither is it possible to accept the well-meaning reassurances of younger members of my family. I remember that when my mother was my age, she made some remark about noticing a reduction of mental capacity. I rushed to reassure her that she was still, as far as I could see, sharp as the proverbial tack. She rolled her eyes and said: “Thanks, honey, but you’re not in my head.”

    The only bright — well, okay, semi-bright — moment in all this is that while memory may bobble, the sense of humor does not. I find that most of my friends are struggling exactly as I am, and sharing our tales of woe brings healing laughter. At this point in our lives, that’s probably better than sex.

    The other day, a friend sent me the URL for a You Tube piece featuring a very funny woman named Pam Peterson. Isn’t it good to know that we aren’t alone?

    © Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

  • Bicyclists Who Chat, Send Messages or Listen to Music on Smartphones: Cities and States Try to Crack Down on Distracted Bicycling

    By Jenni Bergal, Stateline, Pew Charitable Trusts*

    • Biker looking at her phone?
    A woman reading SMS messages on her mobile phone while standing on a bike in traffic (with great red heels). New York City at at the corner between The Bowery and Delancey Street. Mo Riza, Wikimedia Commons

    Worried that bicyclists who chat, send messages or listen to music on smartphones are creating a danger, a number of cities have banned cyclists from using hand-held cellphones or texting while riding. And several states prohibit bicyclists from using headphones or earplugs.

    The efforts to reduce the risk to cyclists, pedestrians and motorists come as cities are trying to become more bike-friendly, and people increasingly turn to electronic devices to communicate and navigate.

    “If they want to share the road, they have to share the responsibility as well,” said Massachusetts state Rep. Steven Howitt, a Republican, who has introduced a bill that would prohibit bicyclists from wearing headphones.

    Bicycle advocates say cyclists should use common sense and not use hand-held electronic devices at all when riding. Nor should bikers use headphones if they are distracting. But advocates also say there’s no evidence that such use has resulted in deaths or serious injuries, and question whether creating laws or slapping fines on cyclers makes sense.

    “There’s a huge difference between distracted driving that kills someone and distracted biking that doesn’t,” said Peter Wilborn, founder of Bike Law, a network of personal injury lawyers that focuses on cycling issues. “I don’t think we need laws specifically for this.”

    Most state laws don’t directly deal with cyclists using cellphones or texting. But at least seven states — California, Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Virginia — specifically include bicyclists in their laws restricting or banning the use of headsets or earplugs. An eighth state, Pennsylvania, prohibits people driving vehicles from using headsets, a prohibition that likely applies to bicycles, which are defined as vehicles in that state, AAA says.

    Delaware bars cyclists from wearing earplugs or headsets covering both ears. Maryland does the same, except when cyclists are riding on bike paths. In Rhode Island, bikers or drivers who wear earphones, headsets or other listening devices are subject to an $85 fine for a first offense, $95 for a second and $140 for a third or subsequent offense. The state does allow the use of cellphone headsets that provide sound through just one ear.

    And in Massachusetts, Howitt’s bill is pending in the Joint Transportation Committee. Drivers can’t wear headphones in the state, and it should be the same for bicyclists, he said.

    “In this age of electronics and constantly being entertained, I see bicyclists with headphones on, particularly in the city [Boston],” Howitt said. “A biker could be cutting across an intersection, and an ambulance is coming through and he’s not hearing it if he’s playing music very loud.”

    Ken McLeod, with the League of American Bicyclists, said his cycling advocacy group supports allowing bikers to choose whether to wear headphones. He said he is unaware of any research on the impact of using headphones on cyclist safety so his group is unlikely to support laws that ban their use.

    When it comes to cellphones and texting, McLeod said his group promotes hands-free biking, and if cyclists are getting distracted, “it’s an appropriate area to be regulated.”

    “You’re most in control of your bicycle if you have both hands on the handlebars,” he said. “Anything that detracts from that is probably going to make you less safe.”

    But McLeod warned there could be problems with how cities or states enact and enforce distracted biking laws. Many cyclists, for example, mount cellphones on their handlebars and use them as training devices, with apps that track everything from speed to revolutions per minute, and they shouldn’t be penalized, he said.

    And cyclists using cellphones or wearing headsets are more likely than drivers to be arbitrarily targeted by police because they are more visible, McLeod added.

    “If they’re going to be doing more enforcement of distracted biking than distracted driving, that’s not the answer,” he said. “They need to invest more in cracking down on dangerous behavior by drivers because that’s what causes death and injuries.”

    New York state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat, said he has tried for years to get a bill passed that would prohibit cyclists in the state from using hand-held cellphones or texting. Drivers in New York already are banned from using them.

    “I’ve seen people bicycling and talking on their cellphones at the same time. I’ve seen people texting. That’s crazy,” he said.

    “It’s likely that if you’re holding the phone with one hand, you’re certainly distracted,” he added. “This bill would hold bicyclists to the same standard as motorists, when it comes to cellphones. It’s something our state should do, and other states should do the same thing.”

    But most legislatures haven’t addressed distracted biking. And in the small number of states where bills have been introduced in recent years, they haven’t met with much success.

    In California, the Legislature passed a bill in 2011 that would have extended the state’s hands-free, no-texting law to bicyclists. But the measure included provisions unrelated to bikers and was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.

    Distracted biking legislation also has failed in Oregon, New York and Virginia, according to Douglas Shinkle, a transportation policy expert for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Shinkle said he has heard from legislators concerned about distracted biking, but the issue hasn’t gotten much attention because it is still relatively new. Traffic safety researchers aren’t entirely sure how much it occurs and to what degree it increases risk, he said.

    “There’s the need for more research on this because it’s not a well-understood issue,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more bills introduced in the next couple of years, given that a number of cities have instituted such laws.”

    Chicago, Philadelphia and Bozeman, Montana, are among the cities that have passed laws prohibiting cyclists from using handhelds.

    In Chicago, the City Council passed an ordinance in 2011 barring cyclists from using their cellphones to text or talk without a hands-free device, technology that allows people to use mobile phones without holding them, usually through voice commands. Violators are subject to a $20 fine for the first offense and up to $100 for the third and further offenses. If the offense occurs during a traffic accident, violators could pay up to $500 more.

    Last year, the Flagstaff (Arizona) City Council passed a law banning texting while biking or driving. Violators face a fine of $100 or $250 if a crash is involved.

    In Austin, Texas, a law prohibiting both drivers and cyclists from using handhelds went into effect in January. Violators can be fined up to $500.

    “We consider a bicycle a vehicle on the roadways,” said Samantha Alexander, of the Austin Transportation Department. “We want them to follow the same vehicle laws, such as stopping at the stop signs. The crux behind it was safety.”

    Since February, police have cited bikers only three times for violating the hands-free ordinance, according to John Walker, of the Austin Municipal Court.

    First-time violators could avoid a $50 fine by taking a biking safety course, unless they injured someone or damaged property. Those cited more than once in 18 months would face an additional $50 to $200 penalty.

    Democratic Councilman Mark Treyger, who sponsored the legislation, said he became concerned about the issue after witnessing a cyclist who, while texting on his phone, veered into oncoming traffic and nearly caused a multicar crash.

    “Biking and texting is a dangerous practice,” Treyger said. “Not only can they hurt themselves, but they can hurt others around them.”

    Although Treyger calls his bill the most “progressive” in the nation because of its safety course option, the measure has riled some of the city’s cycling advocates. They argue that police should spend their time focusing on dangerous drivers, not targeting cyclists on cellphones.

    “In New York City, motor vehicles pose far greater danger to street users than bicycles do,” Paul Steely White, director of Transportation Alternatives, a pedestrian, biking and public transportation advocacy group, testified at an April hearing.

    Treyger said he agrees dangerous drivers are a significant problem and motorists should bear the most responsibility.

    “But the fact is there are more and more people biking in our city and we need to make sure we are promoting and encouraging safe and responsible biking,” he said. “If we’re serious, everyone — motorists, bikers and pedestrians — has to do their part.” 

    *The Pew Charitable Trusts is driven by the power of knowledge to solve today’s most challenging problems. Pew applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and invigorate civic life.

  • In Wake of Paris, How Prepared Are US States, Cities?

     Bryant Denny Stadium

     A panoramic view of the interior of Bryant-Denny Stadium during an Alabama football game versus the Tennessee Volunteers, 2011. Matthew Tosh, Wikimedia Commons

    By Sarah Breitenbach, Stateline 

    For Tuscaloosa, Alabama, there are lessons to be learned from the terror that gripped Paris just over a week ago.

    After the Islamic State attacks, Democratic Mayor Walter Maddox took note of the Parisian security staff that prevented a suicide bomber from entering the French national soccer stadium. His thoughts turned to Bryant-Denny Stadium — where more than 100,000 people gather for University of Alabama football games.

    Maddox said he considered what could happen in his 95,000-person city. But he and some terrorism and security specialists say many chief executives and police departments in midsize US cities may not realize that terrorism could put their people and infrastructure at just as much risk as high-profile targets like New York City and Washington, DC.

    “The larger cities understand and grasp this,” Maddox said. “I’m not sure that at the midlevel cities the awareness is that high.”

    But terrorism can and does happen in those places. This year, two men suspected of communicating with overseas terrorists were killed when they attempted to attack a free-speech event in Texas, a gunman killed four people at a military recruiting center in Tennessee, though it was unclear if he had worked with known terrorist organizations, and security was heightenedacross the country during Fourth of July weekend.

    In the days following the Paris attacks New York City deployed the first 100 officers in the city’s new Critical Response Command. The 500-officer program will be dedicated to counterterrorism in the city, which spent $170 million this year to bring 1,300 new police officers to its 34,500-officer force. 

    Conversely, in Wichita, Kansas, where an airport worker was arrested after he tried to execute a suicide attack at the local airport in 2013, the 437-officer police force was struggling to stay fully staffed this summer. 

    While it’s difficult to tell just how prepared every state and municipality is for a potential terrorist attack, security specialists say the ability to prevent and react well depends on a communication system and local counterterrorism efforts that are still underdeveloped, even 14 years after 9/11.

    Chet Lunner, a security consultant and former senior official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the FBI has counterterrorism investigations in every state, but most places probably lack the resources to prevent or respond to an attack.

    “You might think that all 50 states are responding to that kind of warning, but I’m not sure that they are at the appropriate level,” Lunner said.

    The Paris attacks on ‘soft’ targets like the restaurant and the concert hall — places with minimal security — should signal to local governments in the US that they, too, could be at risk.

    Lunner and Michael Balboni, a security consultant and former New York state senator who wrote homeland security laws for his state, say even if smaller cities and towns aren’t at high risk for violence and are short on the financial resources that big cities have, they should still plan and practice for terrorist attacks.

    “State and local personnel are literally the tip of the spear,” Lunner said. “They owe it to themselves as well as the communities they serve” to be as prepared as possible.

    Despite repeated efforts and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on collecting and sharing information nationwide about potential terrorist threats, questions remain about how much filters down to local officials, especially in smaller municipalities.

    In 2003, DHS and the US Department of Justice began creating fusion centers to encourage and ease the sharing of information between federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials in states and major urban areas. But a 2012 US Senate subcommittee report found the centers yielded little counterterrorism intelligence.

    In 2011, the White House released the first national strategy and plan to empower local governments to prevent domestic violent extremism and homegrown terrorism. The plan advocates enhancing federal engagement with local communities that may be breeding grounds or targets for violence, though it has been criticized for disproportionately focusing on and alienating Muslims.

    Until there is centralized information-sharing between the national and local governments, it will be difficult to get localities invested in sustained antiterrorism work, Balboni said.

    Balboni, who also served as a New York state homeland security adviser, said the fusion centers need to morph into what he calls “command and control centers” that gather intelligence and work in places where a potential threat or terrorist activity surfaces.

    People who don’t live in big cities typically viewed as likely terrorist targets may not think about terrorism affecting their communities or about devoting the resources to countering the possibility they could be hit. But they ought to.

    Less-populated locales are where terrorists may settle in to plan or practice attacks, Lunner said. It is up to local police to get to know people and seek out information about potential threats.

    “In this country, if you dial 911, the CIA does not show up at the end of your driveway,” Lunner said.

    In Minot, a North Dakota city of less than 50,000, dealing with terrorist threats became a reality in the wake of the Paris attacks as the names of six people stationed at the Minot Air Force Base appeared on an Islamic State hit list.

    The biggest challenge in responding to such a threat, Police Chief Jason Olson said, is the limited amount of resources his department has to focus on gathering intelligence and analyzing data.

    Minot is a good example of a place that many would not typically consider to be at risk for terrorism. And all Olson and local officials can do is push for relevant and timely information from the federal government. But, Lunner said, they are probably not as informed as their counterparts in places like New York City.

    Although states were quick to spend billions of federal dollars funneled to them after 9/11, they couldn’t sustain salaries needed to run long-term local surveillance programs with that one-time infusion of money. Since then, local spending on antiterrorism has been reduced, said Doug Farquhar, a program director with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    “The problem is that they knew this was one-time dollars,” Farquhar said. “You can buy a firetruck or build a building, but you can’t hire employees.”

    Localities have also been unlikely to pay more attention to antiterrorism because of the infrequency of attacks, he said.

    Maddox said Tuscaloosa is unique in its willingness to dedicate money and resources to prepare for terrorism and disaster. He credits much of that willingness to training that he and his staff received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in 2009.

    “It’s getting your team to believe that we need to prepare for a moment that may or may not ever come,” he said.

    For many states and municipalities, counterterrorism has become just a part of general disaster preparation, Farquhar said.

    Maddox, who has been credited with an exemplary response to a 2011 tornado that destroyed 12 percent of the city, said the same elements of responding to a natural disaster or a major violent crime — providing emergency medical care, shelter and food, and good law-enforcement — extend to counterterrorism.

    “Whether we have a natural disaster or an active shooter situation, my protocols are going to be nearly identical in how we approach that situation,” he said.

    And in Minot, which has suffered a number of disasters in recent years — including a train derailment and subsequent ammonia spill, a chemical warehouse fire and historic flooding — Olson said responding to terrorism has become just a part of the disaster preparedness plan.

    Stateline, Copyright © 1996-2015 The Pew Charitable Trusts 

  • Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: Coreopsis on the Table; Skipping the Privets for Skip Laurels; Does Talking to Plants Help Them Grow?

    Coreopsis on the Tablecoreopsis

    The last of the coreopsis flowers graced our table last week. The plants were blooming despite the change in seasons, the erratic temperatures, and their tight quarters in a flowerpot on our patio.

    These are hardy plants even though their flowers tend to look delicate. Coreopsis can tolerate a variety of soil conditions and weather. Depending upon their height, they can be used as back borders or edging. Their blossoms, which vary in color, last into the Fall, providing lovely table decorations.

    I was impressed by how long the flowers lasted in the vase. They seemed so fragile, yet they stayed full and lively for the whole week. What a vibrant expression of nature in such a compact form. And that got me to thinking of how we often judge people by their outward appearance. Delicate doesn’t necessarily mean weak. It is more important to understand the inner strength of a person than to assume we know all there is to know from a glimpse at a person’s body.

    When the coreopsis flowers finally wilted, I said goodbye and thanked them for sharing their perspective with me. We can learn something about the world and ourselves from the most surprising encounters.

    An intro to coreopsis:

    http://www.garden.org/plantguide/?q=show&id=2043

    A look at the beautiful coreopsis varieties:

    http://www.coreopsis.info/ 

    Skipping the Privets for Skip Laurels

    Our privet hedge needed replacing. It had grown too tall, become too leggy, infringed upon our neighbor’s side and was no longer attractive or functional. But when we removed the woody shrubs, we remembered why we originally planted them; we had wanted some privacy, which was now suddenly lacking.

    Ferida and laurels

    ©Ferida Wolff photos

    It was suggested we look at Skip Laurels. So we went to the nursery to check them out. They were nice — full and green with the promise of white flowers come spring. We had some put in and I find that I love them. I welcomed them to our yard and I happily chat to them whenever I’m outside.

    Why do I do this? Is it a myth that plants respond to human/plant interaction? Years ago my friend and I heard that talking to plants help them grow so we each prepared pots with the same soil and the same plants. We watered them equally. Then we talked to one plant but not to the other. After a month we noticed that the plants we spoke to flourished while the other plants were not as vibrant.

    Science now shows that plants interact with each other. We seem to be part of a universal communication system even if we don’t all speak the same language. Wouldn’t it be nice if we would use that knowledge to help us all flourish, plants and people alike?

    Wow, this tells you absolutely all you need to know about Skip (schipka) Laurel:

    http://www.louistheplantgeek.com/a-gardening-journal/582-prunus-laurocerasus

    Does talking to plants really help them to grow? Check out these studies:

    http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread940216/pg1

    ©2015 Ferida Wolff for SeniorWomen.com

    Editor’s Note:

    Does Talking to Plants Help Them Grow?

    Alexa Stevenson, Penn State

     In a 1986 interview, England’s Prince Charles discussed his gardening habits, commenting “I just come and talk to the plants, really. Very important to talk to them; they respond.”

  • Houses and Passageways: Vermeer’s The Little Street Whereabouts in Delft

    vermeer's streetFrans Grijzenhout, Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam, consulted seventeenth-century records that had never before been used for this purpose and clearly indicate the site of The Little Street in Delft. The discovery of the whereabouts of Vermeer’s The Little Street is the subject of an exhibition running to 13 March 2016 in the Rijksmuseum. It will then transfer to Museum Prinsenhof Delft.

    Pieter Roelofs, curator of seventeenth-century paintings at the Rijksmuseum, said: “The answer to the question as to the location of Vermeer’s The Little Street is of great significance, both for the way that we look at this one painting by Vermeer and for our image of Vermeer as an artist.”

    His new research has enabled Professor Grijzenhout to identify the exact address:  It is Vlamingstraat in Delft, at the point where the present-day numbers 40 and 42 stand. Various other addresses in Delft have been suggested over the years, but none was convincing. The new source Frans Grijzenhout consulted for this research, which led to the conclusive findings of his investigation, is De legger van het diepen der wateren binnen de stad Delft (translated as ‘the ledger of the dredging of the canals in the town of Delft) of 1667, also known as the Register op het kadegeld (quay dues register). It is a record of how much tax everyone in Delft who owned a house on a canal had to pay for dredging the canal and maintaining the quay outside their door.

    The register provides a detailed account, accurate to within around 15 centimetres [about 6 inches], of the width of all the houses and of all the passageways between them that lined Delft’s canals in Vermeer’s day. He was able to establish that on the north side of Vlamingstraat, a quite narrow canal in what was then the poorer eastern quarter of Delft, there were two houses where numbers 40 and 42 now stand. Each house was approximately 6.3 metres wide, and between them were two immediately adjacent passageways, each around 1.2 metres wide. Further research into the position of the houses and the small gardens behind them confirmed that the situation on the spot corresponds exactly with the painting. There was no other place in Delft during that time where this constellation was found.

    Professor Frans Grijzenhout consulted many different sources for his research which led to this spectacular discovery, among which records in the Delft Archives (especially the Quay Dues Register) and also Google Maps.

    The houses now on the site were built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The only aspect that can still be recognized as it appears in The Little Street is the striking gate and passageway on the right. The investigation also revealed that the house on the right in The Little Street belonged to Vermeer’s widowed aunt, Ariaentgen Claes van der Minne, his father’s half-sister. She earned her living and provided for her five children by selling tripe, and the passageway beside the house was known as the Penspoort — Tripe Gate. We also know that Vermeer’s mother and sister lived on the same canal, diagonally opposite. It is therefore likely that Johannes Vermeer knew the house well and that there were personal memories associated with it.

    View of Delft by Vermeer

    There are some thirty-five surviving paintings by Vermeer, among them just two townscapes. One is View of Houses in Delft, the earliest known name of The Little Street, in the Rijksmuseum, the other is View of Delft in the Mauritshuis in The Hague (seen above).

    There are three other paintings by Vermeer in the Rijksmuseum collection, The Milkmaid, Woman Reading a Letter and The Love Letter. Vermeer’s paintings are exhibited in the Rijksmuseum’s Gallery of Honour, where they are seen by thousands of visitors every day. The exhibition about Vermeer’s The Little Street will be running in Museum Prinsenhof Delft from 25 March to 17 July 2016. All Vermeer’s locations, under which The Little Street, can all be visited easily from the museum.

    Frans Grijzenhout in 2006 collaborated with historian Niek van Sas on The Burgher of Delft for the Rijksmuseum, in which he established that Jan Steen’s famous painting, dating from 1655, is a portrait of the corn chandler Adolf Croeser and his daughter Catharina.

    book

    Title: Vermeer’s The Little Street. A View of the Penspoort in Delft
    Author:  Frans Grijzenhout
    Publisher: Rijksmuseum
    Pages: 84
    ISBN: 978-94-91714-70-2
    Price: € 20,00

    Editor’s Note: Also visit the marvelous shop in the Rijksmuseum.

  • CultureWatch Reviews by Nanda and Gregg Provide Gift Ideas: Crime and Culture, Three Extraordinary Murder Mysteries

    Reviewed by Serena Nanda and Joan Gregg*

    A Dark Redemption
    By Stav Shavez, 2012
    Published by Faber and Faber, London; 383 pages

    Zaddik
    By David Rosenbaum, 1993
    Published by Invisible Cities Press, Montpelier, VT; 431 pages

    Murder Casts a Shadow
    By Victoria N. Kneubuhl, 1993; 276 pages
    Published by University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, HI
     

    Old is Gold. Culture plays an essential role in the crimes committed in these three extraordinary murder mysteries in the lives of the victims and perpetrators and in the interactions of the investigations.  Each narrative situates its action in historical realities that extend from the past into the present. These novels are all available through public libraries and Amazon.com.  

    A Dark Redemption, the only true police procedural of the three, is set in London, and if you cut your teeth on British “cozies” such as Agatha Christie’s, you’ll find this complicated policier suspenseful and even alarming.

    Police Detective Jack Carrigan, featured in this new British series, is a complex personality who has never forgotten a horrendous act from his past. The novel explores many dark themes of the human condition: gruesome sexual murders; the mixed motives of a slew of native born and immigrant cops as well as perpetrators; female detectives ‘with issues’ and a Police Department’s top brass who continually monitor their cops’ findings  in order to bury information and change the investigation’s direction to protect their image. Carrigan, who has just made Detective, still butts head with his superiors, but he has developed a good rapport with his ornery newly assigned sergeant, Genevre, who is keeping her own secrets.

    The redemption of the novel’s title refers to a horrific incident from 25 years before when Jack Carrigan and two friends took their University graduation trip to Africa. It irrevocably marked the lives of all three men, one of whom, we learn indirectly through Jack’s thoughts, is now deceased.  The second man still alive, now a successful lawyer with a suburban home and attractive family, has consciously buried his memory of the incident, because there is more to it than Jack knows. It is not until the very end of the novel that Jack gains full understanding of the incident and then realizes that the full redemption he has sought will be impossible to achieve.

    A widower still single, the lovable loner, Jack, has recently been raised to Detective rank, and with Genevre is working on a gruesome case of a young African female’s murder that connects to a number of other African students and Professors in the field of African Studies.

    The first killing takes place in an African neighborhood and Jack’s investigation moves forward through the neighborhood’s links to historical events in African colonialism and its subsequent fratricidal wars and homicidal military leaders who have emerged on the continent.  Not your Baedeker’s London for sure! But Carrigan and Genevre, using old fashioned footwork and highly intricate modern electronic devices extend their investigation into a complicated series of criminal activities based in the little known and sometimes confusing swath of London’s African immigrant sections.  

    Part of the unusual pleasure of this graphic, frightening mystery is following this pair through all their smart — but sometimes wrongheaded — maneuvers and enjoying the development of their growing relationship and success in solving the original murder and the several other related ones that follow.  With two additional Jack Carrigan policiers in print we can look forward to following this sympathetic Detective through other tangled cases that,  like A Dark Redemption, will ultimately reveal to us a lot of things we didn’t know we didn’t know.

  • As America Inhales, Scientists Raise Health Concerns; Drug Use Disorder At Some Point Reported by US Adults

    Marijuana is going mainstream. So far, 23 states have legalized medical use of the drug or effectively decriminalized it. Ohio recently voted against legalization, but another 17 states will consider the issue next year. As laws and societal mores around marijuana are rewritten, public health scientists at the Mailman School of Public Health are taking a close look at a range of issues, from who is using it and how widely to its long-term consequences.Prof Deborah Hasin

    Epidemiology professor Deborah Hasin has written more than 350 papers on the epidemiology of drug and alcohol use disorders. In October, she published a study in JAMA Psychiatry finding marijuana use among adults more than doubled between 2001 and 2012. The numbers of people diagnosed as abusing the drug or dependent on it also climbed, reaching nearly 7 million, or nearly three in ten users. Was legalization of marijuana for medical purposes a factor? Among one group, at least, it wasn’t. A study of teenagers, published by Hasin in Lancet Psychiatry, found teen use of pot was elevated in states with medical marijuana laws, but because the rates of use were higher in these states before they even passed the laws, some other factor seems to be responsible for both the higher rates of use and the laws.

    As director of the Substance Dependence Research Group at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, Hasin sees considerable evidence that using marijuana involves some risk. “Our studies show there are dangers from using marijuana,” she says. “Others have shown lasting impairments in brain functioning among adolescents who are heavy, regular users, while adults with marijuana use disorders show impairments across various areas of functioning.” 

    Silvia Martins, associate professor of Epidemiology, points to a wealth of data on the health risks of regular marijuana use. Using it this way over the long-term is associated with reduced IQ, and with hallucinations, schizophrenia, and major depression, particularly if adults started using it heavily as teenagers. “Research shows that about one in eleven users can become addicted,” she says. “Regular and heavy marijuana use during the adolescent years can affect brain development and may reduce thinking, memory, and learning.”

    Some of us are more attune to the risks than others. A study by Martins published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence earlier this year found women were twice as likely to see regular use of cannabis as potentially harmful, although that number had dropped from 59 percent in 2002 to 27 percent in 2012.

    What Is the Evidence for Medical Marijuana?

    Three-quarters of Americans favor using marijuana for medicinal purposes. Many in the medical community too favor its use for pain, as muscle relaxer, appetite enhancer, and for other reasons. Yet there has been very little careful research to back up this and other potential upsides. “We see segments on the news about children with epilepsy showing tremendous improvement from taking the drug,” says Hasin, a professor of Epidemiology. “Yet while it does help some, it could harm others, and we still need rigorous studies and data to guide our decisions about medical marijuana.”

    One significant hurdle to research: marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug. This could change. Recently presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton echoed the sentiment of the American Medical Association by saying she would like to see marijuana reclassified so it can be more easily studied. “I want to move from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 so researchers can research what’s the best way to use it, dosage, and how it works with other medications,” she said.

    Driving High

    It’s well known that alcohol and automobiles are a deadly combination. According to the Centers for Disease Control, almost 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver every day. What about pot? While driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal no matter what state you live in, growing numbers of marijuana users are getting behind the wheel.