Monthly Archives: August 2022

July was spent at home reading and working on the new essay collection, and at the very end flying to Albuquerque for Mythcon, where very excitingly my novel Or What You Will won the Mythopoeic Award! (I never expect to win awards, Im so thrilled to be nominated for them and on the ballot next to such great books, so its always an exciting surprise on the occasions when I do win.) I had a great time at Mythcon, seeing people, through masks, but seeing people, and having conversations. Before that,I read 21 books, and some of them were great and some of them were not. The good ones make up for all the others, and Im glad I get to burble to you about the excellent ones and warn you off the terrible ones!

The Plus One Pact,Portia MacIntosh (2020)Funny romance novel in which two people meet, become friends and then roommates while pretending to be dating to provide plus ones for awkward family events, and then inevitably end up realising they are perfect for each other. Fun, funny, cheering, but perhaps a little predictable.

The Grand Turk, John Freely(2007)Biography of Mehmet II, by the same man who wrote the biography of Mehmets son Cem that I read in April. Mehmet II was the Ottoman sultan who conquered Constantinople, he was a complex, interesting man who had himself painted by Venetian Renaissance painters and who was interested in Greek and Roman antiquity as well as Islam. The book is solid, good on facts and places and times, but not lively. I have yet to find a lively book about the Ottomans.

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, C.S. Lewis (1955)He was an odd duck, Lewis, and this is a deeply odd book. It had a strangely compelling quality; once I started it I raced through. Lewis writes about his childhood and early manhood with deep observation and sympathy, but from the perspective of an intellectual historyno, thats not fair. A spiritual history? Hes focusing on the moments when he experienced what he calls joy, the rush that went through him when he read the words Baldur the beautiful is dead and which he found elusive and hard to recapture. He had a very strange childhood, and a terrible school experience, and he was in fact a very peculiar person. It may be because I read the Narnia books early and often, but I feel there are some ways I resonate to him very deeply, and others where he seems completely alien. Hes never less than interesting, and hes honest and coy in weird and unexpected ways. I really like the parts of this where hes trying to dissect what joy is and how it isnt lust and how he figured out the difference. Its fascinating that he hated the trenches of WWI less than boarding school because at least he wasnt supposed to pretend to like it. Glad Ive read it.

Utopia Avenue, David Mitchell (2020)This is a story about an imaginary band in the sixties, and its perfect. It is structured in the form of albums, with side one and side two, and the point-of-view character as the person who wrote the track that is the chapter. It is a direct sequel to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Its got this thing going on where the three main characters are all quirky strongly drawn people, and its doing a great thing with pacing. Im not especially interested in the sixties or rock music (though I was charmed to meet Leonard Cohen in the lift of the Chelsea Hotel), but I loved this book for its sharpness, its observation, the things its thinking about and connecting up delightfully. Writing this now and thinking of the moments of this book, I want to read it again straight away. This is as good as the best of the other Mitchell I have read, absolutely compelling. ForgetCloud Atlas. Read The Thousand Autumns and then read this.

Mappings, Vikram Seth (1980)Delightful early poetry collection from Seth as he was finding his voice, lovely poems about trying to work out who he is and where he wants to be, unsure of everything but his powerful scansion. I loved this, and was sorry it was so short.

The Company, K.J. Parker(2008)This was Parkers first book as Parker rather than Holt. The events of this book add up to more futility than most of his later ones, but theres plenty of the fantasy of logistics that I want. Sadly there are some women, who behave very strangely. Mr Holt is alive, and its possible that at some point I could meet him and say, look, really, women, were people, we do things for the same reasons men do, not for the kinds of mysterious reasons you think, really. But I suspect he wouldnt be able to hear me, that perhaps the pitch of my voice would be inaudible to him. Some of his men are pretty peculiar too, especially in this book. Dont start here, even though he did. But having said that, technical details of gold panning, farming disasters theres a lot going for it.

Something Fabulous, Alexis Hall (2022)A gay regency romance with twins, by an author whose contemporary romances I enjoyed, how could I not love this? Good question, and one thats hard to answer. I didnt love it, it failed to convince me. Unlike K. J. Charles Society of Gentlemen books, this wasnt a version of the Regency that I could suspend my disbelief in. At best I was smiling where I was supposed to be laughing, and often I was rolling my eyes. Disappointing.

Elizabeth of the German Garden: A Literary Journey, Jennifer Walker (2013)This is a biography of Elizabeth von Arnimwhose actual name was Mary Beauchamp, who married Count von Arnim and who used both Elizabeth and von Arnim as names but never together. Walker talks about Elizabeth the author persona as Marys creation and mask. She had a very interesting life, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, and wrote a number of books I esteem highly. This is a good biography, well written and thoughtful. It seems to be Walkers first book. Ill watch out for more by her.

Love the One Youre With, Emily Giffin(2008)I have enjoyed a lot of Giffin but I hated this one. The thing that sometimes annoys me about her work is the slavering love of wealthAmerican unexamined brand-name suburban wealth. This is a book about settling, and its in favour. Skip it.

Miss Angel: The Art and World of Angelica Kauffman, Eighteenth Century Icon, Angelica Goodden(2005)Interesting contrast with the von Arnim bio, because I already knew von Arnims books well but picked this up after seeing one self-portrait of Kauffmans in an exhibition at the Uffizi last year. So when Walker delved into the books alongside the life, that was really interesting, but when Goodden did the same with art history detail I was tempted to skim. Kauffman was absolutely dedicated to her art, despite doing a self-portrait where she depicts herself choosing between art and music. Her father was a painter, she got the best art education she could (though people claimed she suffered from not having done anatomy and life drawing), and successfully managed her work and image to support herself entirely by her own production in several different countries, all of which considered and still consider her a local, or adoptive local, artist.

The Blue Sapphire,D.E. Stevenson(1963)I think this is the only book Ive ever read where speculation in shares goes well. Charming romance that feels as if its set much earlier than the publication date. It begins in London and continues in Scotland. It has good found family and growing upbut a young woman not knowing what she wants to do and getting a job in a hat shop seems more 1933 than 1963. Still, I suppose there are still hat shops today, and certainly uncles, and maybe even sapphire prospectors, who knows?

Enough Rope, Dorothy Parker(1926)Delightful well-turned collection of Dorothy Parkers poetry, free from Project Gutenberg, containing all the poems of hers I already knew and many I did not. Very much one note, that note being And I am Marie of Romania, but as its a note otherwise utterly missing from English poetry Ill take it and giggle.

The School at the Chalet, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer(1925)Re-read. After reading that disappointing modern school story last month, it occurred to me to look at what might be available as ebooks and this was. This is in the special category of re-reads that are things I read as a kid and havent revisited. There are lots of Chalet School books, this is the first. Madge and her close female friend Mademoiselle set up a school in a chalet in Austria so that Madges invalid but madcap sister Jo and Mademoiselles niece Simone can live healthily while being educated in English, French, and German, and other pupils will pay for rent and food. They acquire other pupils with ease, and proceed to have school adventures in the Austrian Tyrol. In 1925. I remember impending war forcing them out of Austria and then Italy in later volumes.

Theres a thing about a book like this where its gripping even though theres no actual suspense. There was one moment where I was reading fervently with tears in my eyes when something interrupted me and as I picked the book up again I thought a) I have read this before, b) its a kids book, the character will survive, c) the peril is entirely implausible, and d) I really, really cared nevertheless and wanted to get back to it and let all the things I was supposed to be doing go hang. Id happily re-read all the other volumes if they were available.

Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch(2011)Second in the Rivers of London series, just as gripping as the first which I read in April, and dealing well with both having a new adventure and the consequences of the first book. Great voice. Great worldbuilding, consistent with first book and widening implications and scope. Good characters. Slightly too much blood and horror, just about where its worth it, but I can already see how much more I will enjoy re-reading braced. Ill definitely keep reading this series. Start at the beginning, though.

Guilty Creatures: A Menagerie of Mysteries, Martin Edwards(2021)Ive read a bunch of these British Library Crime Classics themed Golden Age of Mystery short story collections, and I always enjoy them. They often, as here, have one Sherlock Holmes story and a bunch of things by other writers. It was fun seeing what animals Edwards managed to findjust one nobbled racehorse! My favourite was a jackdaw. Its also a good way of finding new-to-me mystery writers. This isnt the best in the series, but I enjoyed it anyway.

London With Love, Sarra Manning(2022)I love Manning, everything except last years lacklustre book about the dog. This one was excellenta romance that begins in 1987 with sixteen-year-olds and comes forward in time to the day last year that Britain allowed people out of their bubbles to meet up with people again. Most of the chapters take place a couple of years apart. All of them feature stations on the London Underground or New York subway. All of them feature our protagonist Jenny/Jen/Jennifer as she reinvents herself and grows up, and her friend Nick as he finally also grows up. This is such a great lifetime book, and such a great London book, and the history of the time as it affects the people living through it. I couldnt stop thinking about it. Its also the first time Ive seen the pandemic in a romance novel, though I doubt it will be the last. (Manning was writing this in lockdown. I am in awe.) This is the kind of romance that many people would enjoy and deserves to be more widely read.

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco(1980)Re-read. I read it when I was in university, and its funny, I no longer think its weird to have a book set in a monastery, or about the questions of knowledge and pride and heresy. I didnt understand this book properly when I was eighteen. I still found parts of it slow and hard going, and it certainly is very peculiar. It has the form of a mystery, but thats just the thread to open it up to the wider questions Eco is interested in examining. Weird, fascinating novel.

Wedding Bells At Villa Limoncello, Daisy James(2019)Do you want a romance novel set in Italy? Did you actually want the forty-eight romance novels set in Italy Ive read since March 2020? (I just counted.) Maybe you didnt. Youve been very patient. I didnt know I did. This is not a good book. Its not terrible. Ill be reading the sequels, indeed Ive already bought them. But this one is absolutely classictheres an unhappy person, and she goes to Italy, and everything gets fixed, just because its beautiful and there is good food and Italian people and therefore suddenly everything is therefore fine. However, I didnt read this book in 2020 because it contains a dead sister, and thats a hard subject for me. But now I did read it, and it was fun.

The Memory Theater, Karin Tidbeck(2021)Brilliant novel that takes ideas about fairyland and ideas about other worlds and pulls off a terrific fantasy. Tidbeck is a Swedish writer who writes in both Swedish and English; this is an English original, with very delicate, precise use of language that reminded me of Angela Carter. Theres fairyland, theres Sweden, theres a theatre troupe, theres a girl whose mother is a mountain and a truly conscienceless villain. Unforgettable. This is the kind of European fantasy we need more of.

Saplings, Noel Streatfeild(1945)Re-read. Streatfeild is known for her childrens books. This is not one. This is a book where she takes her ability to write brilliantly from childrens POV and also from the POV of adults and gives us a book about how WWII destroyed a family even though only one person in it is killed. Its really good, and absolutely compelling, but also a tragedy. But its written just like her childrens books, which makes reading it an experience more comparable to L.M. MontgomerysRilla of Ingleside than anything else I can think of.

The Bookseller of Florence, Ross King(2021)Delightful, readable biography of Vespasiano da Bisticci, bookseller and producer of manuscripts. If you are interested in the history of books, in the Renaissance classical revival, in Florence in the fifteenth century, in Marsilio Ficino, you want to read this. Kings best book sinceBrunelleschis Dome and full of useful fascinating information. Absolutely splendid, loved it to bits, and I think almost anyone would, because he assumes an intelligent reader without much background knowledge.

Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. Shes published two collections of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections, a short story collection and fifteen novels, including the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Among Others. Her novel Lent was published by Tor in May 2019, and her most recent novel, Or What You Will, was released in July 2020. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.

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Jo Walton's Reading List: July 2022 - tor.com

News Analysis

As former President Donald Trump warned about an economy thats on the verge of not just a recession, but a full-blown depression, the country should prepare for a rapid slowdown in employment, say experts.

Falling labor force participation, along with inflation, could provide the double whammy that creates an economic crisis this fall, they say.

Historic inflation, on top of the lingering effects of COVID-19 policies, has contributed to a sense of pessimism among many in America.

Democrats have relied on this self-inflicted crisis to pass unprecedented, socialist policies, the critics said.

Those policies, some critics told The Epoch Times, have served to set up the country for further crisis.

One critic worries that such a crisis will provide progressives with their latest excuse to force the country to the far-left before the November election in an attempt to buoy their electoral hopes.

Much of what they are doing is trying to mobilize their radical base and keep it mobilized for the November election, conservative business consultant and political commentator Craig Huey told The Epoch Times about Democratic economic policies.

In order to keep their voters mobilized, Democrats have come to rely on a crisis atmosphere, said Huey.

So an economic crisis, with people losing their jobs, while contrary to normal political wisdom for a party in the White House, is what is driving Democrat strategy under President Joe Biden, said Huey.

Its an ideological driven-bureaucracy that needs to drive ideological voters to the polls, Huey said about the strategy.

Similarly, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said that the Democrats are fully aware of the harm that Biden and the Democrats are doing to the economy by inflationary spending that discourages working.

For too long, the Left has pushed irresponsible, job-killing socialist policies, paired with reckless spending and tax hikes, causing higher inflation and a staggering $30 trillion in debt, said Scott in a statement to The Epoch Times.

Scott said that one consequence of Bidens policies is a labor force participation rate that is shockingly low already.

The rate at which able-bodied Americans have remained in the labor force has sagged from a post-COVID-19 high of 62.4 percent in March to 62.2 percent in July.

The decline, some argue, has diminished the gloss from the 20 percent in labor force gains the economy has made since Biden was inaugurated and the country generally gave up on COVID-19 lockdowns.

And while the employment report last month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) added 372,000 jobs, the BLS household survey showed that, in fact, 315,000 fewer people had jobs in July versus June, as 353,000 people permanently left the labor force.

Jobs came in red hot for July with another 535,000 jobs added, but another 63,000 people left the labor force. Since March of this year, there are 168,000 fewer Americans with jobs according to the BLS household survey, despite the fact that month after month the BLS reports big job gains.

Its a trend that has coincided with accelerating inflation.

On Aug. 1, industry data reported by Reuters from the private employment specialist Homebase said that hours for workers declined by 12 percent in July for small business workers tracked by their company.

Earlier this week there were further signs of a cooling job market.

The BLS reported on Aug. 2 that the number of job openings decreased by about 600,000 jobs month-over-month to 10.7 million openings. Thats down from a record high of 11.9 million job openings set in March.

Fox News Charles Payne called it the biggest non-Covid19 related swoon in job openings on record, while Forbes detailed plans by major corporations to slash more jobs.

Professor Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, told The Epoch Times that its an open question about how badly the Federal Reserve wants inflation to get to its target rate of 2 percent.

He likens todays economy to the 1980s under Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, who brought inflation down from 14 percent to 3.2 percent by bringing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent.

I dont know that they are willing to keep interests so high to get inflation to 2 percent, said Morici.

Morici said that it might take an unemployment rate of 9 percent to get inflation much below 4 percent.

This is a very different economy than the pre-COVID-19 economy, said Morici.

The economy, under the Democrats vision, is willing to pay extra costs to transition to a green economy by not using oil and gas and generally paying more for labor.

It means a lot of capital is badly used, added Morici.

But Morici feels that Democrats dont want to precipitate a crisis for one simple reason: He thinks that establishment figures, including members of the Federal Reserves Open Market Committee, will do what they can to prevent Trump from becoming president again.

Thats the last thing that they want to happen, Morici concluded.

The implication is that the Federal Reserve will try not to allow unemployment to go up too much, less it improve Trumps chances to win the presidency, said Morici.

The House progressive caucus has said that disadvantaged, lower-paid, and Black and Latino workers are disproportionately harmed, by rising interest rates, pleading with central bankers to keep interest rate hikes to a minimum saying the burden of high costs is not borne equally.

With wage growth declining in recent months, our countrys lowest-paid, most vulnerable workers have endured too much already to be sacrificed in pursuit of severe rate hikes that have far too often triggered recessions, said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the progressive caucus.

The Federal Reserve, however, has responded to talk from economists, the stock markets, and politicians that the central bankers might not be that serious about the 2 percent inflation target by publicly reiterating that they will continue to raise interest rates until inflation moderates.

While the Federal Reserve has talked about a soft landing where they raise interest rates without a recession as they try to combat inflation, Bill Dudley, the former president of the New York Federal Reserve acknowledged recently that at this point inflation is so high that they have to push up the unemployment rate to bring inflation down.

And the Federal Reserve has made clear this week that theyll keep at higher interest rates until they get inflation back to 2 percent, even while politicians and the stock market fret about employment.

Our intentions are really about making sure that people recognize that we are not completed with our fight against high inflation because these prints of 9.1 percent [inflation] are harming American families, harming businesses trying to figure out how to do their business and expand and we are committed to getting that back down to something closer to 2% which is our price stability target, San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly told reporters on a conference call on Aug. 3.

The result is increasing classical tension between Federal Reserve policy that favors higher interest rates in an inflationary environmentand the consequent unemployment that will be created by higher interest ratesand the politicians who want to keep inflationary spending going.

The tension is likely to come to a head at some point.

Its time for Republicans and Democrats in Washington to wake up and stop endorsing reckless, inflation-fueling spending that is crushing American families, Scott told The Epoch Times.

Scott asserted that despite the inflationary pressure that Bidens policies have created, he has done nothing to reverse course and instead has expanded those policies in response.

Democrats only answer is another wasteful, tax hiking proposal that will kill more jobs and raise costs on families, especially our seniors, who are already struggling, said Scott.

And until the classic tension between inflationary spending and the unemployment it will create is resolved, the crisis atmosphere will, at the very least, continue, if not almost certainly expand, critics said.

In part, the crisis could continue because Democrats see rising prices and unemployment as the way by which they can continue expand government control over Americans if not over elections, Huey noted.

But the Biden administration and the left appear to be perfectly fine with inflicting this pain on Americans, experts at conservative think thank The Heritage Foundation argued in a recent commentary, saying that the Democrats Inflation Reduction Act and other Democrat policies do the opposite of what the policies titles imply.

In fact, rising energy prices are not unintended consequences of their policies, but rather the envisioned outcomes, the commentary continued.

The same could be true of unemployment if it serves the best interest of the far-left, warned Huey.

Obviously they know that when there is a crisis they can gain power and control, they can expand the scope of government over the lives of individuals, Huey said of Democrats.

They are so ideologically committed to the creation of a socialist utopia that the reality of economics means nothing to them in their quest to retain and expand power, Huey added.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

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John Ransom is a freelance reporter covering U.S. news for The Epoch Times with offices in Washington, D.C., and Asia.

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Left Will Exploit Economic Crisis to Further Progressive Agenda, Observer Says - The Epoch Times

OPINION: The unattractive do not earn as much as those blessed with pleasant features. I reflect on this as I look at the ageing, wrinkled and aesthetically challenged face that stares blankly back at me in the mirror while giving my yellowing teeth a perfunctory scrub.

It is a face that only a puppy could love; and then merely because I secretly feed her treats.

Life isnt fair but it is no longer solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. When the challenge for a society moves from starvation to combating obesity we are moving up the hierarchy of needs.

READ MORE:* The unreal prospect of unteaching racism* Mori, Pacific in public sector 'significantly' less likely to earn six figures* Black Lives Matter protests are about more than statues for New Zealand

To live in New Zealand today is to live in one of the wealthiest countries in all of human history; where even a plain fellow like myself can earn a pleasant living despite my self-evident physical deficiencies.

Should the divergence in my opportunities relative to the comelier in appearance be something that the state should focus its attention?

Perhaps not; but the wandering eye of those whose salaries depend on finding and solving the great social problems of our age have identified something that they believe warrants investigation. Those with a Pacific heritage earn less than their Pakeha co-workers and neighbours.

Why? The Human Rights Commission, as fine as any government agency you will find, took it upon itself to study this very issue. They paid for a report. It was as awful as youd expect it to be.

To give the report its due, there was an analysis that found Pacific workers didnt obtain the same degree of education as Pakeha and worked in lower-paid industries. Once this was controlled for, only around a third of the pay discrepancy could be explained.

However, a degree in education was considered the equivalent to a degree in dentistry and the fact that someone who pursues a career as a teacher earns less than a dentist is considered to be unexplained.

Four reasons were provided; unobserved differences, ethnic preferences in the non-pecuniary elements of jobs, discrimination and unconscious bias. It is a consistent theme of such research that the reason for some perceived negative outcome is racism, greed or Roger Douglas.

This research provides further evidence about what weve long suspected the bulk of the Pacific Pay Gap cant be explained and is at least partly due to invisible barriers like racism, unconscious bias and workplace discriminatory practices declares Saunoamaalii Karanina Sumeo, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner.

CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF

Alice Olynsma, a healthcare assistant at Ballarat Rest Home, says care and support workers deserve fair pay. (First published May 23, 2022)

It is astounding, but unsurprising, that researchers assume that those who employ staff are racist when there is no evidence from which to form this view. The gaps in their data are, literally, unexplained. Racism is an unambiguous moral wrong. It is a crime. To ascribe this sin to an entire class of New Zealanders because your analysis is deficient is, if I am being polite, disappointing.

It is also easy to disprove. You can be solvent, or you can be racist, but in business it is very difficult to be both. If the assumption behind these sorts of reports is valid; that Pacific people are being paid less than Pakeha while producing the same level of output, then I could make more profit by hiring Pacifica candidates and paying them less than I pay non-Pacific workers.

My racism would need to be intense to leave that profit on the table and if I was such a terrible person, the business owner down the road would out-compete me and I would be forced to rely on my writing to pay the bills.

A grim prospect for all concerned.

Society is complex. People make different decisions and pursue differing lifestyles. The fact that I am spending time writing this column rather than engaging in more productive and better paid work is a decision that will lead me receiving a lower income.

If your priority is community and family rather than wealth accumulation your lifes achievements will differ. Some prefer to die with seven children rather than seven houses and that isnt a bad thing and nor is it a problem that needs addressing.

The analysis of the pay gap between different population groups isnt something that is being done for academic curiosity. The Human Rights Commission is conducting the Pacific Pay Gap Inquiry to better understand why the Pacific Pay Gap exists and how it can be closed.

One of the ideas floated is mandated pay transparency; forcing firms to publish salaries by gender and race. The law of unintended consequences will ensure this will reduce employment opportunities for low qualified women and minorities and increase them for inadequate white men.

More intervention will be introduced to correct for these failures in a never-ending cycle of regression.

Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth century philosopher, popularised the idea that the legitimacy of the sovereign rests on the willingness of individuals to surrender some of their freedoms in order to avoid a war of all against all; a collective social contract.

It is an elegant solution to the question of legitimacy of the states monopoly on the use of force; but where is the philosophical foundation that permits the sovereign to use that power to manufacture a utopia?

We have accepted as given that the Crown has not only the right but an obligation to embark on social engineering programmes to produce a society that confirms to the preferences of the cultural elite even if it defies the wishes and customs of the population.

Cultural change on the level envisioned cannot be achieved without Draconian intervention into the minutia of our economy and society and an unwavering certainty by those in power that the escalating costs are a necessary price to achieve their Arcadia.

Their ignorance is only matched by their determination and the lack of any willingness to confront these cultural commissars means their ambitions will be translated into policy with the inevitable, and now unavoidable, perverse outcomes.

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Are we too quick to pull the racism card? - Stuff

In 1860, a ship named the Clotilda surreptitiously slipped into the Mobile River Delta in Alabama carrying an illicit cargo of 110 enslaved Africans. While slavery was not illegal in the United States at the time, importing slaves into the country had been outlawed in 1808. To destroy evidence of the crime, the owners of the ship quickly had it burned and then distributed the Africans among themselves to work their plantations. Twelve years later, long after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, 32 of the Africans who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Clotilda returned to the western banks of the Mobile River. Close to where they first set foot on this nations soil, they founded the community of Africatown, a place where they could maintain their culture and language in an otherwise foreign and hostile land. It was among the first towns established by African Americans.

Today, Africatown (also known as Africatown USA or Plateau) has been incorporated into the Mobile metropolitan area. Aside from a mural of the Clotilda on a retaining wall and a plaque at a local cemetery, there is little that signals the neighborhoods connection to this history. As with so many African American communities, Africatown has become blighted through industrial pollution and disinvestment. Abandoned and dilapidated houses and businesses define much of the built environment. A paper mill located there in the 1920s but shuttered in the early 2000s, and in the 1980s much of the land that the town occupied was seized for the construction of the Cochrane Bridge. From a peak of 21,000 residents in the early 20th century, when the paper mill was operating, the population has dwindled to approximately 2,000, about 100 of whom are thought to be direct descendants of Clotilda passengers. Despite decades of organizing and advocacy to improve these conditions, there has been little cause for hope. Now, however, it seems that the very slave ship that started it all might be the key to a brighter future for Africatown.

In 2019, the Alabama Historical Commission announced that the remains of the Clotilda had been found in the Mobile River Delta. The discovery sent a ripple of excitement through Africatown. Residents quickly mobilized to establish the importance of their role in the evolving narrative surrounding the illegal slave ship. The culmination of this has been the launch of The Africatown International Design Idea Competition, which aims to imbue the area with programs and architecture that demonstrate its rich, complex history.

The idea competition is one of the many ways the residents of Africatown are harnessing the power of their cultural legacy to uplift the blighted community. M.O.V.E. (Making Opportunities Viable for Everyone) Mobile~Gulf Coast Community Development Corporation commissioned designer, writer, and activist Renee Kemp-Rotan to help achieve its goal of making sure that Africatown interprets and controls its own narrative, with the huge economic opportunity it now represents because of the Clotilda. What began as a design for a museum honoring the history of one of the few African-owned settlements in America evolved into a complete creative placemaking of the Africatown/Prichard/Mobile area, steeped in the unique history that shaped it. After extensive community engagement, four sites were selected to host a total of 16 venues, each with distinct programs that honor and interpret the history of Africatown while designing for a hopeful and prosperous future for the community.

Each site selected for the competition is part of a greater whole, dubbed the Africatown Cultural Mile. The goal of the cultural mile is to provide the area with economic stimulation and a cultural heritage. We are asking designers to redefine Africatown so that it could be known and admired as a world-class cultural heritage and creative destination system, with the story of a resilient Black people at its heart, said Vickii Howell, president and CEO of M.O.V.E.

According to The Architectural League of New Yorks American Roundtable report on Africatown (also led by Kemp-Rotan and Howell), when Mobile annexed the community in the 1960s there were hopes that the city would take responsibility for its new neighborhood and halt the industrial sprawl and pollution that have plagued the area and cause high levels of cancer and autoimmune disease. Instead, the City of Mobile rezoned much of the neighborhood, shrinking its residential footprint, and opened aboveground waste storage facilities in the vicinity. The community fought back, culminating in a lawsuit against International Paper and a redrafting of the zoning code.

The design competition encompasses this more-recent history as much as it does the origins of Africatown. The competition sites stitch together the long, intricate history of the area, including the Josephine Allen public housing complex (demolished by the City of Mobile in 2019), parts of the industrial waterfront, and the cemetery where the original African founders were laid to rest. You can connect to all of this history by land and water, said Kemp-Rotan. Thats what the competition is really aboutcultural tourism as an economic development engine with really cool architecture.

The winning proposals will be picked by a jury of 16 designers, historians, and local residents. The results will be compiled in a book and given to the community to provide design inspiration and guide the redevelopment of Africatown into a thriving community. Kemp-Rotan adamantly advocates for a community-scale Afrocentric utopia that embraces the entirety of African architecture and celebrates its role in the legacy of Black spaces. Most of the stuff written about Africatown has been written about the boat and the past and the history, she said. Nobodys really talking about what the future of this place is going to become. Those wishing to participate must register by September 19. Designs must be submitted by January 19, 2023, and the winning proposals will be announced on March 19 of that year. The winning teams will be invited to Mobile for the first annual International Conference on African Monument Design and Heritage Tourism on Juneteenth (June 19) 2023.

Alaina Griffin is a regular contributor to AN.

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A design idea competition seeks to turn the troubled history of Africatown through heritage tourism - The Architect's Newspaper

When the San Francisco Art Institute closed its doors on July 15, the city lost one of its oldest and most important cultural institutions. The 148-year-old art school on the northeast slope of Russian Hill had been struggling for years, plagued by declining enrollment and financial woes. Yet for decades, the school known as the California School of Fine Arts until 1961 was a major force, not just on the Bay Area art scene, but on the national one. The artists and movements associated with the institution include Diego Rivera, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Manuel Neri, the Bay Area Figurative School, the funk movement, and too many others to list.

But the most crucial period in the schools long history, when it transformed itself from a moribund finishing school for debutantes into a white-hot center of artistic experimentation and a force to be reckoned with in modern art, took place in just five years, from 1946 to 1950. During that time, the school played a significant role in the development of Abstract Expressionism, one of the most important artistic movements of the 20th century. And remarkably, it was a bunch of World War II veterans who made that development possible.

In 1945, few expected the California School of Fine Arts to even survive, let alone become a center of cutting-edge art. Founded in 1874, the CSFA was a typical fine-arts college of its era, attracting large numbers of female students who wanted to acquire accomplishments to make themselves more marriageable. In the 1920s and 1930s, Richard Candida Smith writes in Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry and Politics in California, it had the reputation of having the most conservative curriculum in the state, with a faculty that steadfastly clung to the beaux-arts academic tradition.

The Great Depression and World War II hit the school hard, and by the 1940s it was on life support. Enrollment plunged, and in 1942 the schools director quit because there was no money to pay his salary. Most of the faculty soon followed. In 1944, the board of trustees considered closing the dying school and selling off the real estate.

At that moment, salvation appeared in the form of 32-year-old Douglas MacAgy, a curator at the San Francisco Museum of Art. MacAgy offered to run the school, on the condition that he be allowed to revise the curriculum and hire faculty as he saw fit. The board agreed, and MacAgy was appointed director on July 1, 1945. It was a momentous hiring.

MacAgy and his then-wife, Jermanyne, who was acting director at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, quickly became the most important champions of contemporary art in the Bay Area. Jermanyne MacAgy staged the first Jackson Pollock exhibition in San Francisco in 1942, following that with one-artist shows by Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky and Clyfford Still.

The last question: After benches were installed in Golden Gate Park around 1880, what supposed crisis erupted?

Answer: An epidemic of hugging.

This week's question: What San Francisco intersection was known in the late 19th century as "Cape Horn," and why?

For his part, Douglas MacAgy set about remaking the staid CSFA into a center of artistic experimentation. To make up the core of the new painting faculty, he hired four painters he had met as curator Edward Corbett, David Park, Hassel Smith and Clay Spohn. The next year, he hired Elmer Bischoff and Clyfford Still. In 1948, he added Richard Diebenkorn. Ansel Adams was brought in to head the photography department, with Minor White as principal instructor. MacAgy engaged Mark Rothko, Mark Tobey, Ad Reinhardt, Man Ray and Salvador Dali to teach, and even tried to convince Marcel Duchamp to come out of retirement and join the faculty.

MacAgy swept out the cobwebs at the venerable school. He got rid of its old pedagogy, which stipulated that students had to take courses in a prescribed order. He ordered that the studios be kept open 24 hours a day, so that students could work whenever they wanted. He brought in jazz musicians and poetry readings. And symbolically, he hung a curtain over the Rivera mural in the schools exhibition hall.

MacAgy was not only a passionate believer in artistic modernism, he was also sure that his avant-garde vision would attract students. As Smith writes, MacAgy was convinced that only by making the school the center for the most advanced thinking in the visual arts would it be able to survive.

This remarkably idealistic plan Jackson Pollock as a business model? would probably have crashed and burned, had it not been for perhaps the most unusual crop of new students in the history of liberal arts education in the United States: a flood of military veterans.

What led more than two million U.S. veterans between 1945 and 1956 to put down their M-1s and start studying Abstract Expressionism, or Samuel Beckett, or Karl Marx, was an epochal piece of legislation: the GI Bill of Rights. Passed by Congress in 1944, the GI Bill offered generous educational and other benefits to returning World War II veterans. Congress did not stipulate what type of education veterans would receive; in fact, it voted down a plan that would have restricted benefits to courses of study focused on employable skills. Neither politicians nor educators expected that the veterans would prefer a liberal arts education over professional training and certainly not that they would pour into art schools.

But in that era, when the military was a true cross-section of America, they did. As Smith notes, a 1946 UCLA survey found that veterans were more likely to take humanities courses than non-veterans. Veterans were driven far less by practical concerns than non-veterans: 44% of veterans in a 1946 survey of 25 institutions of higher learning said their principal aim in returning to school was self-improvement, compared to only 12% of non-veterans. The veterans also got better grades than the non-veterans.

Thanks to the GI Bill, veterans swelled the ranks of liberal arts colleges and proportionally, still more of them enrolled in art schools. As Smith points out, between 1946 and 1952, the percentage of veterans who were full-time students at the five most important art schools in California the CSFA, the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and three in Los Angeles was never less than 70%. At CSFA, veterans in 1947 and 1948 made up 74% of full-time students; in 1949, a staggering 87%.

The first veterans began enrolling in fall 1945; by the following spring term, enrollment had grown to 1,017 full- and part-time students, 350% greater than in 1944, and far greater than the schools previous high in 1929. Registration and school income increased every year through 1949.

It was a unique cohort. Smith calls it a special group of students, those veterans who, for absolutely no practical reason, turned to art when they were given the opportunity to achieve their educational dreams. When they entered the CSFA, they threw themselves into the world of art. They devoured the intense, demanding, at times quasi-religious courses offered by Still, Smith and others. And they saved the school.

In the years to come, the CSFA evolved. Still and other faculty members departed. MacAgy resigned in 1950. Abstract Expressionism was followed by the Bay Area figurative movement, which was followed by funk, which was followed by pop, and on and on, in a pattern of change as old as art itself.

The long run of the San Francisco Art Institute, formerly the California School of Fine Arts, came to an end this year. But while mourning that loss, its worth remembering the five unique years when the schools modern era began driven by brilliant artists and administrators of vision, and by a bunch of veterans who wanted to expand their lives.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. His most recent book is Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals.

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How veterans and avant-garde art saved the California School of Fine Arts - San Francisco Chronicle

Taking the mic at the Local Progress national meet-up at the Colorado Convention Center on August 5, Denver City Councilmember Robin Kniechhighlighted some regressive moments in Colorado's recent history with the progressive politicians, advocates and government workers who'd gathered there.

"In 1992, Colorado was dubbed the 'Hate State' because our voters passed a measure prohibiting anti-discrimination ordinances for gay and lesbian individuals. Now, it was overturned by the Supreme Court, but our divided state government also passed laws targeting immigrants, excluding them from government. And we have also had we still have a quasi-right-to-work state that's anti-labor," Kniech recalled.

But then she began to talk about more contemporary progressive victories in Denver and the state: earmarking significant city dollars for affordable housing, enacting a minimum wage in Denver and across Colorado, and giving undocumented immigrants the right to access unemployment benefits.

After two years of Zoom meetings, the return of the Local Progress convention to an in-person format was an opportunity for progressives such as Kniech to share what they've accomplished with people who'd flown in from across the country, including Teresa Mosqueda with the Seattle City Council, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and Christian Smalls, president of the Amazon Labor Union.

Local Progress, which was founded in 2012, describes itself as a "movement of local elected officials advancing a racial and economic justice agenda through all levels of local government." The organization has a network of over 1,300 local elected officials in 48 states; over 200 people showed up for the three-day convention in Denver, including 24 from Colorado.

The August 5 session focusing on "abusive state preemption" came on the second day of the gathering, and was the only one open to the press.

During Colorado's "Hate State" days, local municipalities were preempted by the state from establishing anti-discrimination ordinances related to LGBTQ individuals. But while that preemption went away when the amendment was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, local officials have had to battle against many other measures over the past few decades.

"We were preempted from local minimum wages, inclusionary housing, lots of other things," said Kniech, who'd lobbied for the convention to come to Denver during her last year as an at-large council rep.

In 1999, Colorado passed a minimum wage preemption law that prevented municipalities from enacting their own minimum wage levels. In 2019, however, the Colorado Legislature repealed that law. Led by Kniech, Denver City Council soon approved a new minimum wage, which hit $15.87 per hour in 2022. Starting next year, the city's minimum wage will increase in line with the Consumer Price Index.

Joe Neguse, the Democratic representing Colorado's 2nd Congressional District, was at the event, and praised Kniech for leading Denver's efforts to increase the minimum wage.

"That does not happen. It does not happen without Robin Kniech," Neguse said.

Lizeth Chacon, the founder of the Colorado People's Alliance who recently transitioned to a job as co-executive director of the Workers Defense Project in Texas, discussed the 2016 campaign to raise the minimum wage statewide through a ballot initiative. That effort ultimately resulted in the minimum wage hitting $12 in Colorado at the start of 2020.

"We were really clear that $12 an hour was not enough. We also knew that $15 was not going to do in a state like Colorado," Chacon said. "We made a commitment that we actually needed to continue the fight."

That led to a "big preemption fight" in the Colorado Legislature that lasted three years, until lawmakers passed the preemption repeal bill in 2019. "Local elected officials really shifted the narrative of this campaign," Chacon said, noting that they were able to say what their cities and counties needed.

Many of the elected officials at the conference work in blue cities in red states, where preemption fights are heating up. The issue of abortion, for example, will continue to be a major battle for some states and municipalities.

Throughout the years, state preemption has been used to prevent progressive achievements, according to Courtnee Melton-Fant, an assistant professor in the Division of Health Systems Management and Policy at the University of Memphis. "Its being used to maintain the tool thats already there," Melton-Fant said of state preemption being employed to maintain homophobia and racism.

Jamie Torres, who just became president of Denver City Council, told Local Progress members of her sponsorship of a land acknowledgment that's now read at council meetings.

"It would be a disservice, it would be offensive, for these words to be left to symbolism. They have to spur action, or we should not say them. After adopting this acknowledgment, we were able to convert Denver's annual bison public auction to an annual bison donation program, exclusively to tribes re-establishing their bison herds throughout the country," Torres added, noting that she's witnessed two transfers of nearly fifty bison through the program.

But while progressives have enjoyed successes in Denver, Torres and Kniech acknowledged that the city still has issues.

"Denver is not utopia. Police use of force, housing-price increases and displacement, homelessness these challenges are as bad as theyve ever been," Kniech said. "We have a lot of work to do. And we have a lot to learn from all of you."

As the session wrapped, Smalls, the keynote speaker for the Local Progress convention, offered one major takeaway.

"We all have to be Davids versus Goliaths," said the man who stood up to Amazon.

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Local Progress Convention Brings Progressive Politicians Together in Denver | Westword - Westword

We're all familiar with hard-boiled Christian clergy who rail against the sins of other people and with culture-wars lobbyists who push restrictive laws against what they see as society's larger evils.

What often strikes their critics is the disconnection between the gospel they claim they're defending and the human foibles so visible in their own lives.

Of course, outspoken Christians aren't the only people to preach one thing and do another. That's a problem endemic to the human race. It's just more noticeable when it comes from self-proclaimed spokespeople for God.

One of my favorite spiritual writers, the Catholic contemplative Richard Rohr, addressed this problem recently in a series of devotions taken from his earlier writings.

In these devotions, Rohr suggests a radical path for the religious: learn to live your beliefs so fully you don't have to talk about them -- and then let others infer from your example what they will, without direct input from you. I offer up his observations as food for thought.

The core principle of Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation is taken from the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi (11821226): "The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better."

In one devotion, "The Joy of Not Counting," Rohr hearkens back to Francis, who chose a remarkable approach to improving himself and maybe in the process quietly nudging the larger culture toward its own betterment as well. See tinyurl.com/3z8b7ra3

Francis arrived on the scene "in the pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war," Rohr writes.

He was the product of that same complicated culture, but as his faith developed, he began to rethink his assumptions.

"Rather than fighting the systems directly and risk becoming their mirror image, Francis just did things differently," Rohr says. "He moved from the common economy of merit to the wondrous economy of grace, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly."

As the West entered a long, still ongoing cycle of economic production and consumption that would, by our time, threaten the whole planet, Francis chose to love nature and go about barefoot.

"Francis didn't bother questioning Church doctrines and dogmas," Rohr says. "He just took the imitation of Christ seriously and tried to live the way that Jesus lived."

To him, serious believers should function primarily as living, breathing, organic practitioners of Christ-likeness rather than what the contemporary Pope Francis has called "word police," "inspectors" or "museum curators."

Rohr summarizes Francis' tenets: "As the popular paraphrase of a line from Francis's Rule goes, 'Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.'"

In a subsequent devotion, "Living What We Are 'For,'" Rohr takes this idea a step further. See tinyurl.com/yeyphksr

To become spiritually effective, he suggests, people who claim to be followers of Jesus should practice what Rohr calls "non-idolatry ... the withdrawing of our enthrallment from all kingdoms except the kingdom of God."

This nonattachment is more peaceable, and more effective to boot, than constantly lashing out at everybody who isn't part of your particular sect or political party.

"Nonattachment (freedom from loyalties to human-made, domination systems) is the best way I know of protecting people from religious zealotry or any kind of antagonistic thinking or behavior," Rohr writes.

Mainly, Christians shouldn't be obsessed with all the things they're against.

That's a pet peeve of mine, if you want to know: those activists, religious or not, Right or Left, who define themselves by the people and things they hate, never by what they love.

"There is nothing to be against," Rohr argues. "Just keep concentrating on the Big Thing you are for!"

We've gotten so much of Christianity backward, he says.

In the New Testament, St. Paul taught that Christians "were supposed to live inside of an alternative society, almost a utopia, and from such fullness 'go to the world,'" Rohr says.

"Instead, we created a model whereby people live almost entirely in the world, fully invested in its attitudes toward money, war, power, and gender -- and sometimes 'go to church.' This doesn't seem to be working!"

This could be why church membership and attendance are declining:

"Some new studies indicate that Christians are not as much leaving Christianity as they are realigning with [alternative] groups that live Christian values in the world -- instead of just gathering again to hear the readings, recite the creed, and sing songs on Sunday."

Such alternative groups include support groups, prayer groups, study groups, house-building projects and the like, he says.

Now this is a radical concept, isn't it?

What if we who hold what we believe to be Christian views quit trying to push our agenda on others -- and instead concentrated on trying to live our own lives like Jesus lived his life, full of acceptance, mercy and faith? What if we sought to broaden our own relationship with the Lord more than we sought to judge everybody else's relationships? What if we felt more allegiance to the kingdom of God than to some earthly political agenda?

Why, I imagine we'd not only become better disciples, but we'd be more effective at spreading the faith. We'd say less, but accomplish way more.

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at

pratpd@yahoo.com

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Live what you preach so you don't have to preach - Arkansas Online