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Tag: Alison Bechdel
The Best Books of 2019: Some Runners-Up
I sometimes like to call this post "The Best Books You've Probably Never Heard Of (Unless You Heard about Them from Me)". However, these picks vary quite a bit in terms of how hyped or obscure they are; the ones marked with an asterisk are the ones I consider my hidden gems of the year. Between this post and my Fiction/Poetry and Nonfiction best-of lists, I've now highlighted about the top 13% of my year's reading.
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield: Nine short stories steeped in myth and magic. The body is a site of transformation, or a source of grotesque relics. Armfield's prose is punchy, with invented verbs and condensed descriptions that just plain work. She was the Young Writer of the Year Award shadow panel winner. I'll be following her career with interest.
*Agatha by Anne Cathrine Bomann: In late-1940s Paris, a psychiatrist counts down the days and appointments until his retirement. A few experiences awaken him from his apathy, including meeting Agatha, a new German patient with a history of self-harm. This debut novel is a touching, subtle and gently funny story of rediscovering one's purpose late in life.
A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier: Chevalier is an American expat like me, but she's lived in England long enough to make this very English novel convincing and full of charm. Violet Speedwell, 38, is an appealing heroine who has to fight for a life of her own in the 1930s. Who knew the hobbies of embroidering kneelers and ringing church bells could be so fascinating?
Akin by Emma Donoghue: An 80-year-old ends up taking his sullen pre-teen great-nephew with him on a long-awaited trip back to his birthplace of Nice, France. The odd-couple dynamic works perfectly and makes for many amusing culture/generation clashes. Donoghue nails it: sharp, true-to-life and never sappy, with spot-on dialogue and vivid scenes.
Things in Jars by Jess Kidd: In 1863 Bridie Devine, female detective extraordinaire, is tasked with finding the six-year-old daughter of a baronet. Kidd paints a convincingly stark picture of Dickensian London, focusing on an underworld of criminals and circus freaks. The prose is spry and amusing, particularly in her compact descriptions of people.
*The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin: Bleak yet beautiful in the vein of David Vann's work: the story of a Taiwanese immigrant family in Alaska and the bad luck and poor choices that nearly destroy them. This debut novel is full of atmosphere and the lowering forces of weather and fate.
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal: Set in the early 1850s and focusing on the Great Exhibition and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this reveals the everyday world of poor Londoners. It's a sumptuous and believable fictional world, with touches of gritty realism. A terrific debut full of panache and promise.
*The Heavens by Sandra Newman: Not a genre I would normally be drawn to (time travel), yet I found it entrancing. In her dreams Kate becomes Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" and sees visions of a future burned city. The more she exclaims over changes in her modern-day life, the more people question her mental health. Impressive for how much it packs into 250 pages; something like a cross between Jonathan Franzen and Samantha Harvey.
*In Love with George Eliot by Kathy O'Shaughnessy: Many characters, fictional and historical, are in love with George Eliot over the course of this debut novel. We get intriguing vignettes from Eliot's life with her two great loves, and insight into her scandalous position in Victorian society. O'Shaughnessy mimics Victorian prose ably.
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid: This story of the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac-esque band is full of verve and heart. It's so clever how Reid delivers it all as an oral history of pieced-together interview fragments. Pure California sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, yet there's nothing clichéd about it.
*ABC of Typography by David Rault: From cuneiform to Comic Sans, this history of typography is delightful. Graphic designer David Rault wrote the whole thing, but each chapter has a different illustrator, so the book is like a taster course in comics styles. It is fascinating to explore the technical characteristics and aesthetic associations of various fonts.
*The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams: Dr. Lois Pritchard works at a medical practice in small-town Wales and treats embarrassing ailments at a local genitourinary medicine clinic. The tone is wonderfully balanced: there are plenty of hilarious, somewhat raunchy scenes, but also a lot of heartfelt moments. The drawing style recalls Alison Bechdel's.
*Thousandfold by Nina Bogin: This is a lovely collection whose poems devote equal time to interactions with nature and encounters with friends and family. Birds are a frequent presence. Elsewhere Bogin greets a new granddaughter and gives thanks for the comforting presence of her cat. Gentle rhymes and half-rhymes lend a playful or incantatory nature.
*When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back by Naja Marie Aidt: Aidt's son Carl Emil died in 2015, having jumped out of his fifth-floor Copenhagen window during a mushroom-induced psychosis. The text is a collage of fragments. A playful disregard for chronology and a variety of fonts, typefaces and sizes are ways of circumventing the feeling that grief has made words lose their meaning forever.
*Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed by Catrina Davies: Penniless during an ongoing housing crisis, Davies moved into the shed near Land's End that had served as her father's architecture office until he went bankrupt. Like Raynor Winn's The Salt Path, this intimate, engaging memoir serves as a sobering reminder that homelessness is not so remote.
*Hard Pushed: A Midwife's Story by Leah Hazard: An empathetic picture of patients' plights and medical professionals' burnout. Visceral details of sights, smells and feelings put you right there in the delivery room. This is a heartfelt read as well as a vivid and pacey one, and it's alternately funny and sobering.
*Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country by Pam Houston: Autobiographical essays full of the love of place, chiefly her Colorado ranch – a haven in a nomadic career, and a stand-in for the loving family home she never had. It's about making your own way, and loving the world even – or especially – when it's threatened with destruction. Highly recommended to readers of The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch.
*Dancing with Bees: A Journey back to Nature by Brigit Strawbridge Howard: Bees were the author's gateway into a general appreciation of nature, something she lost for a time in midlife because of the rat race and family complications. She clearly delights in discovery and is devoted to lifelong learning. It's a book characterized by curiosity and warmth. I ordered signed copies of this and the Simmons (below) directly from the authors via Twitter.
*Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames by Lara Maiklem: Maiklem is a London mudlark, scavenging for what washes up on the shores of the Thames, including clay pipes, coins, armaments, pottery, and much more. A fascinating way of bringing history to life and imagining what everyday existence was like for Londoners across the centuries.
Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope, Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper: Phelps-Roper grew up in a church founded by her grandfather and made up mostly of her extended family. Its anti-homosexuality message and picketing of military funerals became trademarks. This is an absorbing account of doubt and making a new life outside the only framework you've ever known.
*A Half Baked Idea: How Grief, Love and Cake Took Me from the Courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu by Olivia Potts: Bereavement memoir + foodie memoir = a perfect book for me. Potts left one very interesting career for another. Losing her mother when she was 25 and meeting her future husband, Sam, who put time and care into cooking, were the immediate spurs to trade in her wig and gown for a chef's apron.
*The Lost Properties of Love by Sophie Ratcliffe: Not your average memoir. It's based around train journeys – real and fictional, remembered and imagined; appropriate symbols for many of the book's dichotomies: scheduling versus unpredictability, having or lacking a direction in life, monotony versus momentous events, and fleeting versus lasting connections.
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro: On a whim, in her fifties, Shapiro sent off a DNA test kit and learned she was only half Jewish. Within 36 hours she found her biological father, who'd donated sperm as a medical student. It's a moving account of her emotional state as she pondered her identity and what her sense of family would be in the future.
*The Country of Larks: A Chiltern Journey by Gail Simmons: Reprising a trek Robert Louis Stevenson took nearly 150 years before, revisiting sites from a childhood in the Chilterns, and seeing the countryside that will be blighted by a planned high-speed railway line. Although the book has an elegiac air, Simmons avoids dwelling in melancholy, and her writing is a beautiful tribute to farmland that was once saturated with the song of larks.
(Books not pictured were read from the library or on Kindle.)
Coming tomorrow: Other superlatives and some statistics.
Anne Cathrine Bomann
Brigit Strawbridge Howard
Catrina Davies
Chia-Chia Lin
David Rault
Elizabeth Macneal
foodoirs
Gail Simmons
Julia Armfield
Kathy O'Shaughnessy
Lara Maiklem
Leah Hazard
Lidia Yuknavitch
Megan Phelps-Roper
Nina Bogin
Olivia Potts
Pam Houston
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Raynor Winn
Samantha Harvey
Sandra Newman
Sophie Ratcliffe
Victorian pastiche
The Best Books from the First Half of 2019
My top 10 releases of 2019 thus far, in no particular order, are:
Not pictured: one more book read from the library; the Kindle represents two NetGalley reads.
General / Historical Fiction
Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler: What a hip, fresh approach to fiction. Broadly speaking, this is autofiction: like the author, the protagonist was born in London to a Brazilian mother and an English father. The book opens with fragmentary, titled pieces that look almost like poems in stanzas. The text feel artless, like a pure stream of memory and experience. Navigating two cultures (and languages), being young and adrift, and sometimes seeing her mother in herself: there's a lot to sympathize with in the main character.
*The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer: Every day the Emergency Rescue Committee in Marseille interviews 60 refugees and chooses 10 to recommend to the command center in New York City. Varian and his staff arrange bribes, fake passports, and exit visas to get celebrated Jewish artists and writers out of the country via the Pyrenees or various sea routes. The story of an accidental hero torn between impossible choices is utterly compelling. This is richly detailed historical fiction at its best. My top book of 2019 so far.
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid: This story of the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac-esque band is full of verve and heart, and it's so clever how Reid delivers it all as an oral history of pieced-together interview fragments, creating authentic voices and requiring almost no footnotes or authorial interventions. It's pure California sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, but there's nothing clichéd about it. Instead, you get timeless rivalry, resentment, and unrequited or forbidden love; the clash of personalities and the fleeting nature of fame.
Things in Jars by Jess Kidd: In the autumn of 1863 Bridie Devine, female detective extraordinaire, is tasked with finding the six-year-old daughter of a baronet. Kidd paints a convincingly stark picture of Dickensian London, focusing on an underworld of criminals and circus freaks. Surgery before and after anesthesia and mythology (mermaids and selkies) are intriguing subplots woven through. Kidd's prose is spry and amusing, particularly in her compact descriptions of people but also in more expansive musings on the dirty, bustling city.
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal: Iris Whittle dreams of escaping Mrs Salter's Doll Emporium and becoming a real painter. Set in the early 1850s and focusing on the Great Exhibition and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this also reveals the everyday world of poor Londoners. It's a sumptuous and believable fictional world, with touches of gritty realism. If some characters seem to fit neatly into stereotypes (fallen woman, rake, etc.), be assured that Macneal is interested in nuances. A terrific debut full of panache and promise.
The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams: Dr. Lois Pritchard works at a medical practice in small-town Wales and puts in two days a week treating embarrassing ailments at the local hospital's genitourinary medicine clinic. The tone is wonderfully balanced: there are plenty of hilarious, somewhat raunchy scenes, but also a lot of heartfelt moments as Lois learns that a doctor is never completely off duty and you have no idea what medical or personal challenge will crop up next. The drawing style reminds me of Alison Bechdel's.
Medical Nonfiction
Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson: Perfect for fans of I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell, this is a set of trenchant autobiographical essays about being in a female body, especially one wracked by pain. Gleeson ranges from the seemingly trivial to life-and-death matters as she writes about hairstyles, blood types, pregnancy, the abortion debate in Ireland and having a rare type of leukemia. The book feels timely and is inventive in how it brings together disparate topics to explore the possibilities and limitations of women's bodies.
Hard Pushed: A Midwife's Story by Leah Hazard: An empathetic picture of patients' plights and medical professionals' burnout. Visceral details of sights, smells and feelings put you right there in the delivery room. Excerpts from a midwife's official notes – in italics and full of shorthand and jargon – are a neat window into the science and reality of the work. This is a heartfelt read as well as a vivid and pacey one, and it's alternately funny and sobering. If you like books that follow doctors and nurses down hospital hallways, you'll love it.
Mother Ship by Francesca Segal: A visceral diary of the first eight weeks in the lives of her daughters, who were born by Caesarean section at 29 weeks in October 2015 and spent the next two months in the NICU. As well as portraying her own state of mind, Segal crafts twinkly pen portraits of the others she encountered in the NICU, including the staff but especially her fellow preemie mums. Female friendship is thus a subsidiary theme in this exploration of desperate love and helplessness.
Thousandfold by Nina Bogin: This is a lovely collection whose poems devote equal time to interactions with nature and encounters with friends and family. Birds – along with their eggs and feathers – are a frequent presence. Often a particular object will serve as a totem as the poet remembers the most important people in her life. Elsewhere Bogin greets a new granddaughter and gives thanks for the comforting presence of her cat. Gentle rhymes and half-rhymes lend a playful or incantatory nature. I recommend it to fans of Linda Pastan.
The three 4.5- or 5-star books that I read this year (and haven't yet written about on here) that were not published in 2019 are:
Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods by Tishani Doshi [poetry]
Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood
What are some of the best books you've read so far this year?
What 2019 releases do I need to catch up on right away?
autofiction
Francesa Segal
Patricia Lockwood
Sinéad Gleeson
Tishani Doshi
Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Re-Reading Modern Classics: Fiction Advocate's "Afterwords" Series
I didn't manage a traditional classic this month: I stalled on Cider with Rosie and gave up on Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust after just 16 pages. Instead, I'm highlighting three books from Fiction Advocate's new series about re-reading modern classics, "…Afterwords." Their tagline is "Essential Readings of the New Canon," and the concept is to have "acclaimed writers investigate the contemporary classics."
As Italo Calvino notes in his invaluable essay "Why Read the Classics?", "The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: 'I'm rereading…', never 'I'm reading…'." Harold Bloom agrees in The Western Canon: "One ancient test for the canonical remains fiercely valid: unless it demands rereading, the work does not qualify." But readers will also encounter books that strike such a chord with them that they become personal classics. Calvino exhorts readers that "during unenforced reading … you will come across the book which will become 'your' book…'Your' classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it."
For the Afterwords series, the three writers below have each chosen a modern classic that they can't stop reading for all it has to say to their own situation and on humanity in general.
I Meant to Kill Ye: Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian by Stephanie Reents (2018)
Blood Meridian must be one of the two or three bleakest books I've ever read. I was led to it by Bloom, who speaks about it as a, if not the, Great American Novel. It's over 10 years since I've read it now, but I still remember some of the specific incidences of violence, like skewering babies and sodomizing corpses on a battlefield, as well as the overall feeling of nihilism: there's no reason for the evil promulgated by characters like the Judge; it is simply a reality – perhaps the human condition.
Reents, who teaches English at the College of the Holy Cross, returns to Blood Meridian, a novel she has re-read compulsively over the years, to ask why it continues to have such a hold over her. Its third-person perspective is so distant that we never understand characters' motivations or glimpse their inner lives, she notes; everyone seems like a pawn in a fated course. She usually shies away from violence and long descriptive passages; she has an uneasy relationship with the West, having moved away from Idaho to live on the East coast. So why should this detached, brutal Western based on the Glanton Gang's Mexico/Texas killing spree have so captivated her? "Often, we most admire the books that we could never produce, the writing styles or intellects so different from our own that we aren't even tempted to try imitating them," she offers as explanation. "It's a pure kind of admiration, unsullied by envy." (I feel that way about Faulkner and Steinbeck.)
As part of her quest, Reents recreated some of the Gang's desert route and traveled to the Texas State University library near Austin to look at McCarthy's early drafts, notes and correspondence. She was intrigued to learn that the Kid was a more conventional POV character to start with, and McCarthy initially included more foreshadowing. By cutting all of it, he made it so that the book's extreme violence comes out of nowhere. Reents also explores the historical basis for the story via General Samuel Chamberlain's dubious memoir. Pondering the volatility of the human heart as she drives along the Mexican border, she ends on the nicely timely note of a threatened Trump-built wall. I doubt I could stomach reading Blood Meridian again (though I've read another two McCarthy novels since), but I enjoyed revisiting it with Reents as she finds herself "re-bewildered by its beauty and horror."
A Little in Love with Everyone: Alison Bechdel's Fun Home by Genevieve Hudson (2018)
Alison Bechdel is one of Hudson's queer heroes (along with James Baldwin, Tracy Chapman, and seven others), portrayed opposite the first page of each chapter in black and white drawings by Pace Taylor – the sort of people who gave her the courage to accept her lesbian identity after a conventional Alabama upbringing.
As portrayed in her landmark graphic memoir Fun Home, Bechdel was in college and finally coming to terms with her sexuality at the same time that she learned that her father was gay and her parents were about to divorce. Her father died in an accident just a few months later and, though he had many affairs, had never managed to live out his homosexuality openly. As Bechdel's mother scoffed, "Your father tell the truth? Please!" By contrast, Hudson appreciates Bechdel so much because of her hard-won honesty: "In her work, Bechdel does the opposite of lying. She excavates the real. She dredges up the stuff of her life, embarrassing parts and all."
Hudson looks at how people craft their own coming-out narratives, the importance of which cannot be overemphasized, in her experience. "Coming out was a tangible thing with tangible effects. For every friend who left my life, a new person arrived—usually someone with broader horizons, exciting stories, and a deviance that seemed sweet and sexy and sincere. After I came out, roaming the streets of Charleston in fat sunglasses and thin dresses, a group of beautiful lesbians appeared out of nowhere. … Everyone was a little in love with everyone."
A Cool Customer: Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking by Jacob Bacharach (2018)
I made the mistake of not taking any notes on, or even marking out any favorite passages in, this, so all I can tell you is that for me it was the most powerful of the three I've tried from the series. The author re-examines Didion's work in the light of his own encounter with loss – his brother's death from a drug overdose – and ponders why it has become such a watershed in bereavement literature. Didion really is the patron saint of grief thanks to her two memoirs, Magical Thinking and Blue Nights – after she was widowed she also lost her only daughter – even though she writes with a sort of intellectual detachment; you have to intuit the emotion between the lines. Bacharach smartly weaves his family story with a literate discussion of Didion's narratives and cultural position to make a snappy and inviting book you could easily read in one sitting.
Indeed, all of the Afterwords books are 120–160-page, small-format paperbacks that would handily slip into a pocket or purse.
My thanks to the publisher for the free copies for review.
The other titles in the series are An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom by Jonathan Russell Clark (on 2666 by Roberto Bolaño), New Uses for Failure by Adam Colman (on 10:04 by Ben Lerner, and Bizarro Worlds by Stacie Williams (on The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem).
Next month's plan: The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa will be my classic to get me in the mood for traveling to Italy for the first week of July.
Adam Colman
Ben Lerner
Cormac McCarthy
Fiction Advocate
Genevieve Hudson
Giuseppe di Lampedusa
graphic memoirs
Jonathan Russell Clark
rereading
Stephanie Reents
"Graphic Medicine": The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams
This sequel to Ian Williams's 2014 graphic novel The Bad Doctor returns to a medical practice in small-town Wales. This time, though, the focus is on Iwan James's colleague, Dr. Lois Pritchard, who also puts in two days a week treating embarrassing ailments at the local hospital's genitourinary medicine clinic. At nearly 40, Lois is a divorcee with no children, just a dog. She enjoys nights out drinking with her best friend, Geeta, but her carefree life is soon beset by complications: she has to decide whether she wants to join the health center as a full partner, a tryst with her new fella goes horribly wrong, and her estranged mother suddenly reappears in her life, hoping Lois will give her a liver transplant. And that's not to mention all the drug addicts and VD-ridden lotharios hanging about.
Williams was a GP in North Wales for 20 years; no doubt his experiences have inspired his comics. His tone is wonderfully balanced: there are plenty of hilarious, somewhat raunchy scenes, but also a lot of heartfelt moments as Lois learns that a doctor is never completely off duty and you have no idea what medical or personal challenge will crop up next. The drawing style reminds me of Alison Bechdel's (and in the cover blurb she says, "Ian Williams is the best thing to happen to medicine since penicillin"), with single colors from pink to olive alternating as the background. I especially loved the pages where each panel depicts a different patient to show the breadth of people and complaints a doctor might see in a day.
This review is on the short side for me, but I don't want to resort to spoilers, so will just say that if you're a fan of Bechdel and Posy Simmonds, or if you are unfamiliar with graphic novels and fancy trying one, do seek this out. The medical theme made it a must for me. In fact, Myriad Editions have a whole "Graphic Medicine" series that I'll be keen to explore.
The Lady Doctor will be published in the UK by Myriad Editions on January 31st and in the USA by Penn State University Press on February 18th. My thanks to the publisher and publicist Emma Dowson for the free copy for review.
Posy Simmonds
Spinning by Tillie Walden (A Graphic Memoir)
I'm uncomfortable with the term "graphic memoir," which to me connotes a memoir with graphically violent or sexual content. However, it seems to be accepted parlance nowadays for a graphic novel that's autobiographical rather than fictional. Tillie Walden's Spinning is in the same vein as Alison Bechdel's Fun Home and Craig Thompson's Blankets: a touching coming-of-age story delivered through the medium of comics.
Specifically, this is about the 12 years Walden spent in the competitive figure skating world. She grew up in New Jersey, and when the family moved to Austin, Texas the bullying she'd experienced in her previous school continued. Mornings started at 4 a.m. when she got up for individual skating lessons; after school she had synchronized skating practice at another rink.
These years were full of cello lessons, unrequited crushes and skating competitions she rode to with her friend Lindsay and Lindsay's mother. The femininity of the skating world – the slicked-back buns and thick make-up; the way every girl was made to look the same – chafed with Walden because she'd known since age five that she was gay. All told, she was disillusioned with what once seemed like her whole life:
Skating changed when I came to Texas. It wasn't strict or beautiful or energizing any more. Now it just felt dull and exhausting. I couldn't understand why I should keep skating after it lost all its shine.
Every chapter is named after a different skating move: waltz jump, axel, camel spin, etc. Walden's drawing style initially reminded me most of This One Summer by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, which is also about teens finding their way in the world and shares the same mostly purple and gray coloring. Walden's work is more sketch-like, and also includes yellow on certain pages. The last third or so of the book is the most momentous: between when Walden comes out at 15 and when she gives up skating at 17.
Believe it or not, Walden was born in 1996 and this is her fourth book. She's already won two Ignatz Awards. I felt this book would have benefited from more hindsight: time to mull over her skating experience and figure out what it all meant. The Author's note at the end struck me as particularly shallow, like this project was about quick catharsis rather than considered reflection. However, the book's scope (nearly 400 pages) is impressive, and Walden is adept at capturing the emotional milestones of her early life.
Published in the UK on September 12th. With thanks to Paul Smith of SelfMadeHero – celebrating its 10th anniversary this year – for the free copy for review.
Ignatz Award
SelfMadeHero
Tillie Walden
Books in Brief: Five I Loved Recently
Here are mini-reviews of five books I loved recently: two I originally reviewed for other websites and three stellar library reads; three works of historical fiction and two nonfiction books.
Known and Strange Things: Essays
By Teju Cole
This collects 55 short pieces under three headings: literature, visual arts, and travel. Alongside straightforward book reviews are essays in which Cole engages with his literary heroes. A 400-page book of disparate essays is a hard ask, and even photography aficionados may struggle through the long middle section. All the same, patience is rewarded by Part III, "Being There," in which he deftly blends memoir and travelogue. Again and again he reflects on displacement and ambiguity. Born in Michigan but raised in Nigeria, Cole returned to the States for college. Though erudite and wide-ranging, these essays are not quite as successful as, say, Julian Barnes's or Geoff Dyer's in making any and every topic interesting to laymen. Still, Cole proves himself a modern Renaissance man, interweaving experience and opinion in rigorous yet conversational pieces that illuminate the arts. (See my full review on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website.)
By Christopher Nicholson
A perfect novel about a few months of Thomas Hardy's later life. On the surface it's the story of a rather odd love triangle: the octogenarian Hardy was infatuated with Gertrude Bugler, a local Dorset actress who had agreed to play his Tess on the London stage; his neurotic second wife, Florence, got wind of his feelings and jealously decided to sabotage Gertie. Underneath, I found this to be a deeply moving book about fear – of death, but also of not having lived the way you wanted and meant to. The perspective moves between Florence and Gertie in the first person and an omniscient third-person narrator. Chapters 1, 6 and 8, in particular, are a pitch-perfect pastiche of Hardy's style. A bleak country winter is the perfect setting for a story of personal decay and a marriage grown cold. This brought back vivid memories of my visit to Hardy's house in 2004 and coincided with my own vision of who Hardy was.
By Art Spiegelman
The only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize, this brings the Holocaust home in a fresh way. Like Animal Farm, it uses the conceit of various animal associations: Jews are mice, Poles are pigs, Nazis are cats, and Americans are dogs. Spiegelman draws what, from a distance of decades, his father Vladek remembers about his almost unbelievable series of escapes, including time in Auschwitz. Spiegelman gives the book an extra dimension by including his 1970s/80s recording sessions with his father as a framing story for most chapters. The narration is thus in Vladek's own broken English, and we see how exasperating Spiegelman finds him – for pinching pennies and being racist against blacks, for instance – even as he's in awe of his story. You can see how this paved the way for comic artists like Roz Chast and Alison Bechdel. I recommend it to absolutely anyone, graphic novel fan or no.
By Francis Spufford
Bawdy, witty, vivid historical fiction; simply brilliant. You'll never doubt for a second that you are in 1746 New York – an English colony with a heavy Dutch influence, and slavery still the standard. The novel opens suddenly as twenty-four-year-old Richard Smith arrives from London with a promissory note for £1000. He won't explain how he came by the money or what he intends to do with it, but the order seems legitimate. This puts the merchant Mr. Lovell in rather a bind, because that kind of cash simply can't be come by. Before he can finally get his money, Smith will fall in and out of love, fight a duel, and be arrested twice – all within the space of two months. In a book full of fantastic scenes, Smith and Septimus' narrow escape via the rooftops on Pope Day stands out. The finest thing about the novel, though, is the authentic eighteenth-century diction. Spufford writes very good creative nonfiction, with five books to date, but with his debut novel he's hit a home run.
By A.N. Wilson
From a prolific author of both fiction and nonfiction, a meticulously researched novel about George Forster, one of the naturalists on Captain Cook's second voyage. Rather than giving a simple chronological account of the journey and its aftermath, Wilson employs a sophisticated structure that alternates vignettes from the voyage with scenes from about 10 years later, when George is unhappily married to Therese and struggling to find suitable work. This is the second novel I've read by Wilson, after The Potter's Hand. I find his fiction to be thoroughly convincing as well as engaging. This reminded me most of Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann, another rip-roaring tale of exploration with prose emulating the more detached narrative style of the eighteenth century. Recommended to any readers of historical fiction and adventure stories. (See my full review at The Bookbag.)
Have you read any of these? Which one takes your fancy?
October 10, 2016 October 9, 2016
A.N. Wilson
Christopher Nicholson
Roz Chast
Graphic Novels for Newbies
Following on from last week's article on quick reads…
I sometimes wonder if counting graphic novels on my year lists is a bit like cheating, since some are little more than comic books. However, the majority of graphic novels I read have a definite storyline and more words on a page than your average comic. When I worked in London I took advantage of the extensive public library holdings there and tried out a lot of graphic novelists' work that was new to me. Some of my favorites are Alison Bechdel, Posy Simmonds, Audrey Niffenegger and Joe Sacco. As it happens, I've never officially reviewed graphic novels (nor do I own any), but here's a handful I've enjoyed, along with my reading notes:
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
This memoir in graphic novel form is super. Bechdel puts the 'fun' in both dysfunctional family and funeral home – the family business her father inherited in small-town Pennsylvania. All through her 1970s upbringing, as Alison grew up coveting men's shirts and feeling strange quivers of suspicion when she encountered the word "lesbian" in the dictionary, her father was leading a double life, sleeping with the younger men who babysat his kids or helped out with his twin passions of gardening and home renovation.
In an ironic sequence of events, the coming-out letter Alison sent home from college was followed just weeks later by her mother's revelation of her father's homosexual indiscretions and their upcoming divorce, and then no more than a few months later by her father's sudden death. Bruce Bechdel was run down by a Sunbeam Bread truck as he was crossing the road with an armload of cleared brush from a property he was renovating. Was it suicide, or just a horribly arbitrary accident? (The Sunbeam Bread detail sure makes one cringe.) In any case, it was a "mort imbécile," just as Camus characterized any death by automobile.
Bechdel traces the hints of queerness in her family, the moments when she and her father saw into each other and recognized something familiar. She also muses on the family as a group of frustrated and isolated artists each striving, unfulfilled, towards perfection. This is a thoughtful, powerful memoir, and no less so for being told through a comic strip.
(Bechdel's Are You My Mother? was also on my BookTrib list of mother–daughter memoirs to read for Mother's Day.)
Blankets by Craig Thompson
This sweet, autobiographical coming-of-age story in graphic novel form is not quite as likable and quick-witted as Fun Home, but it has similar themes such as sexual awakening and the difficulty of understanding one's parents. Blankets are a linking metaphor: the quilt Craig's first love, Raina, makes for him; huddling in the same bed with his little brother Phil for warmth during freezing Wisconsin winters; and playing 'storm at sea' with the covers.
There's also an interesting loss-of-faith element to the narrative. Craig is brought up in your average Midwestern fundamentalist Evangelical church and attends youth group, camp, etc. (where he meets Raina); the pastor even wants him to consider going into the ministry, but he doesn't fit in here – even in the Christian subculture he's forced into a fringe group of outsiders. Writing and drawing are acts of self-creation and self-preservation. He wants to find a way to use his drawing for good but no one seems to see a value in it. Thus everything, or nothing in particular, leads him to reject his faith when he gets to college.
How satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface. To make a map of my movement – no matter how temporary.
The drawings are lush and bold (though even more so in Thompson's Habibi). [SPOILERS ahead!] I appreciated how Thompson denies the satisfaction of a happy ending to Craig and Raina's love story; it's more realistic this way, recognizing that high school sweethearts rarely stay together. As Raina says, "everything ENDS…everything DEGENERATES, CRUMBLES – so why bother getting started in the first place?" And yet the beauty and power in memory of young love remains, thus Thompson's rhapsodizing here.
Mrs Weber's Omnibus by Posy Simmonds
[a collection of her comics for the Guardian]
As with the Garfield cartoons, you get to see the development of Simmonds's style and the characters, as well as the march of fashion over the period 1977–1993. Very clever skewering of middle class liberal values and political correctness gone mad: the characters (especially polytechnic sociology lecturer George, in the Department of Liberal Studies, and children's book author Wendy Weber) espouse these values, but their actions don't always live up to the tolerance they preach. Here are some of the themes:
1980s politics: reactionary against Thatcherism; youth unemployment and purposelessness; income inequality; economic and social injustice
Hypocrisy, avoiding unpleasant truths, compromising youthful ideals
Middle vs. upper-middle / upper class: second homes, private education
Place of women: the irony that stay-at-home motherhood is idealized and the difficulties of working motherhood denied (women – liberated to do what?)
Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger
A lovely and simple fairy tale, with classical plot elements like transformation and true love transcending all boundaries. In a quaint English setting, a country postman is tasked with delivering a letter to an address he's never seen before:
Dripping Rock
Raven's Nest
2 Flat Drab Manor
East Underwhelm, Otherworld
EE1 LH9 [postcode = East of East, Lower Heights]
Here the postman meets a young raven fallen out of her nest, takes her home to mend her and they fall in love. Even when her wing heals and she can fly, she chooses to stay with him. Their daughter is a mixed creature; she can only croak, but she has no wings and so is raised as a human child. At university she meets a plastic surgeon who can create human-animal chimeras; she begs him to make her wings – a mixture of science and magic. It involves bloody surgery and painful recovery, but in the end she has the wings she's always felt were hers. Her identity is described in terms very much like Jan Morris's in Conundrum, when describing her sex change and her knowledge that she was really a girl: "My mother is a raven and my father is a postman, but I feel that truly I should have been a raven."
Like Niffenegger's other work, there's an ever so slightly uncomfortable blend of sinister/grotesque elements with charming, innocuous magic.
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
This is probably the most peculiar graphic novel I've ever read. It's the story of Jimmy Corrigan, a sad-sack workaholic who, at 36, has no friends apart from his mother, who constantly telephones him. One day he gets a letter from the father he's never met, asking him to come meet him. And so Jimmy gets on a plane from Chicago out to suburban Michigan. Corrigan is one of those unfortunate-looking fellows who has a potato for a head and a wispy comb-over, and could be anywhere between 30 and 60; he looked little different as a child in the flashback scenes – somewhat like Charlie Brown, also in his depression, diffidence and inability to speak to women.
I much preferred the historical interludes looking at his grandfather (another Jimmy) and his years growing up in Chicago with the World's Fair under construction. I also liked the more random additions such as patterns for cutting and folding your own model village or business cards with 'scenic views' of today's Waukosha, MI on them.
Parental (verbal) abuse and neglect is a recurring theme, as are bullying from peers, car accidents, and Superman. There's also an uncomfortable amount of imagined violence – either homicide or suicide.
Laika by Nick Abadzis
Palestine by Joe Sacco
Couch Fiction by Philippa Perry
Days of the Bagnold Summer by Joff Winterhart
Do you read graphic novels? What are some of your favorites?


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text:
Lekker est un hameau de Belgique, situé dans la commune de Welkenraedt en province de Liège (Région wallonne).

Avant la fusion des communes de 1977, Lekker faisait partie de la commune de Henri-Chapelle.

Situation et description
Lekker se situe à l'est du Pays de Herve dans un environnement de prairies entre le hameau de Hockelbach situé plus au sud et le village d'Henri-Chapelle se trouvant à environ  au nord.  L'altitude avoisine les .

Patrimoine
La petite chapelle Saint Roch a été construite en 1754. La façade en pierre calcaire est percée d'un oculus légèrement ovale. Le reste de l'édifice est bâti en brique sur haut soubassement en moellons de grès. La chapelle est reprise sur la liste du patrimoine immobilier classé de Welkenraedt.

Notes et références

Lien externe
 http://www.si-welkenraedt.be/

Village en Wallonie
Welkenraedt

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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NDA 206759 describes POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, which is a drug marketed by Actavis Labs Fl Inc, Adare Pharms Inc, Amneal Pharms, Anchen Pharms, Glenmark Pharms Ltd, Lannett Co Inc, Lupin Ltd, Nesher Pharms, Novel Labs Inc, Paddock Llc, PII, Teva, Tris Pharma Inc, Zydus Pharms Usa Inc, Epic Pharma Llc, Pharma Res Software, Abraxis Pharm, Akorn, B Braun, Baxter Hlthcare, Fresenius Kabi Usa, Gd Searle Llc, Hospira, Intl Medication, Lilly, Luitpold, Miles, Pharma Serve Ny, Watson Labs, Amneal Pharms Llc, Apotex Inc, Genus Lifesciences, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd, Copley Pharm, Mylan Pharms Inc, Schering, Sigmapharm Labs Llc, Strides Pharma, Vitruvias Therap, Yichang Humanwell, and Icu Medical Inc, and is included in eighty-seven NDAs. It is available from fifty-seven suppliers. Additional details are available on the POTASSIUM CHLORIDE profile page.
The generic ingredient in POTASSIUM CHLORIDE is calcium chloride; dextrose; potassium chloride; sodium chloride; sodium lactate. There are two hundred and eighty-two drug master file entries for this compound. Four suppliers are listed for this compound. Additional details are available on the calcium chloride; dextrose; potassium chloride; sodium chloride; sodium lactate profile page.


Congratulations to those of you who ran the Boston Marathon last Monday! Remarkably, we had a few PRs despite suboptimal racing conditions. Well done!
I expect many people will be resting from the race. For those who are joining tomorrow, we will run the C&O Canal route.
Reply my email below and confirm whether you will be coming.


text:
require_relative '../lib/command'

# This module can be used to execute commands. It wraps popen3 and provides
# locking capabilites using flock
module Command

    LOCK_FILE = '/tmp/onelxc-lock'

    def self.container_cmd(name, cmd)
        return true if execute_rc_log(cmd)

        STDERR.puts "Check container logs at /var/log/lxc/#{name}"
        false
    end

end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Patricia Loraine Wallace Bouyelas, age 80, passed away peacefully at her home, surrounded by her family on Saturday, August 18, 2018. She was born on April 14, 1938 in Poplarville, Mississippi to the late Marvin Dill Wallace and the late Valarie Lumpkin Wallace. She was a native of New Orleans and a resident of Slidell for the last 30 years. Patricia is survived by her husband of 58 years, Frank Nick Bouyelas of New Orleans; daughter Faith Bouyelas Blessing and husband Dan; son Kirk Michael Bouyelas and wife Sheri; granddaughter Ericka Blessing Personius and husband Jason; grandson Ryan Austin Blessing and wife Julie; grandson Nicholas Kirk Bouyelas and wife Lindsey; sister Bennie Jo Wallace Collins and husband Harold; Rhonda Wallace Block and husband Gary; along with many nieces and nephews, and grand nieces and nephews. Patricia was a housewife, mother and beautician. She loved her work and enjoyed cutting, styling and coloring hair. She viewed her work as a ministry, often praying for clients and inviting them to church. Patricia was a long-time member of Word of Faith Church in New Orleans, and most recently The House Slidell Church in Slidell, Louisiana. She will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved her.
Relatives and friends are invited to attend the Funeral Services in the J. Garic Schoen Chapel of Jacob Schoen & Son Funeral Home, 3827 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70119 on Thursday, August 23, 2018 at 11:00 am. Visitation will begin at 9:30 am. The burial service will be at First Baptist Church of Carriere Cemetery in Carriere Mississippi. To view the family guest book, please go to www.schoenfh.com.


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text:
VIDEO CONTENT @ SP'S DIGITAL
SP's Military Yearbook
SP's Aviation
SP's Land Forces
SP's AirBuz
SP's MAI
SP's ShowNews
BizAvIndia
SP's Civil Aviation Yearbook
SP's Naval Forces Team
Key Milestone: LCA Navy lands on aircraft carrier for the 1st time in significant demonstration of indigenous capability
Cabinet approves creation of post of Chief of Defence Staff and new Department of Military Affairs
Over 180 Defence contracts worth $27.5 B awarded to Indian companies since 2014
Exclusive: MoD asks Indian Navy to reconsider HAL's exclusion from $3 B chopper programme
Indian Navy takes a big leap towards electric propulsion of warships
Training facilities set up prepare personnel to power next generation platforms
July 2, 2019 By Vishal Thapar Photo(s): By US Navy
Electric propulsion has debuted on the US Navy Zumwalt class destroyers illustrated in this picture. Along with the US, the UK is also an early mover to electric with the Queen Elizabeth carriers, Type 45 destroyers and Type 23 frigates
The next generation of Indian Navy warships will be powered by electrical propulsion systems. Facilities to train naval engineers to operate electric drive ships have been set up ahead of construction programmes for new warships, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Southern Command Vice-Admiral Anil Chawla disclosed in an exclusive interview to SP's.
Integrated electric power generation in surface warships has been described as the "direction of future naval propulsion", and this transition would mark a major technological leap. The US and UK have taken an early lead in the adoption of electrical propulsion in the Zumwalt class and Type 45 destroyers respectively, besides the Queen Elizabeth carriers and Type 23 frigates of the Royal Navy.
The new Landing Platform Dock (LPD) amphibious warships will be the first Indian Navy ships fitted with an electrical drive. "More significantly, the Indian Navy envisages electrical propulsion for its next series of destroyers, the P18, and aircraft carriers of the future," sources elaborated.
"....(There will be ) electrical propulsion in some of our future platforms, and accordingly, facilities to train personnel in electrical propulsion have already been set-up," Vice-Admiral Chawla told SP's.
Informed sources revealed to SP's that the new Landing Platform Dock (LPD) amphibious warships will be the first Indian Navy ships fitted with an electrical drive. "More significantly, the Indian Navy envisages electrical propulsion for its next series of destroyers, the P18, and aircraft carriers of the future," sources elaborated.
This next generation of naval propulsion will enable better stealth due to significant noise reduction, lesser fuel requirement, improvement in speed, reduction in environmental risks and an increase in manoeuverability.
The shift to electric will open up new avenues for procurement of propulsion systems for the Indian Navy. Warships built in India have traditionally relied upon the Soviet legacy Zorya-Mashproekt gas turbine engines from Ukraine
SP's has learnt that a 5 MW electric propulsion system has been set up by Siemens of Germany at the onshore training establishment INS Valsura at Jamnagar in Gujarat to familiarise Indian Naval engineers with the technology and train them to operate the system.
The shift to electric will open up new avenues for procurement of propulsion systems for the Indian Navy. Warships built in India have traditionally relied upon the Soviet legacy Zorya-Mashproekt gas turbine engines from Ukraine.
(The full text of the interview with Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Southern Naval Command Vice-Admiral Anil Chawla will be published in the forthcoming edition of SP's Naval Forces, and also be uplinked on this website soon)
Prime Minister's Office,
Minister of Finance,
Former Minister of Defence, India
(Dated: October 10, 2014)
Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh,
(Dated: March 19, 2018)
Admiral Sunil Lanba
Chief of the Naval Staff, India
(Dated: September 5, 2018)
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Classroom news: Homework will be a bit different for the next few weeks. We are focusing on more informational texts and finding main idea with supporting details. We will not be sending home CCC's on Monday or Vocabulary on Wednesday. You will see convention (d.o.l) practice given out Monday (due Friday) and another English/Reading type practice sheet on Wednesday.


text:
Home / Statues / G.I. Joe
Home » Statues » G.I. Joe
G.I. Joe is a line of action figures produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier (U.S. Army), Action Sailor (U.S. Navy), Action Pilot (USAF), Action Marine (USMC) and later on, the Action Nurse. The term G.I. stands, in popular usage, for Government Issued and after the First World War became a generic term for U.S. soldiers. The origin of the term dates to World War I, when much of the equipment issued to U.S. soldiers was stamped "G.I.", meaning that it was made from galvanized iron. The development of G.I. Joe led to the coining of the term "action figure". G.I. Joe's appeal to children has made it an American icon among toys.
GI Joe Statue Snake Eyes 65 cm


text:
Raw Courage: As Iranian Government Murders Protesters, Iran's Soccer Team Refuses To Sing Anthem At World Cup
By Hank Berrien
Nov 21, 2022 DailyWire.com
Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
The Iranian national soccer team, displaying remarkable moral courage in the face of the killings of protesters by their despotic, tyrannical government, refused to sing along with their national anthem at the World Cup prior to their opening game against England.
#BREAKING: Iran national team players choose not to sing national anthem at World Cup match; some of the Iranian crowed booing their own national anthem pic.twitter.com/RYPvgHMNUi
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) November 21, 2022
The current anthem of Iran, the "National Anthem of the Islamic Republic of Iran," was adopted in 1990. Its lyrics state:
Upwards on the horizon rises the Eastern Sun
The light in the eyes of the believers in truth
Bahman is the zenith of our faith
Your message, O Imam, of independence, freedom, is imprinted on our souls.
O Martyrs! Your clamors echo in the ears of time
Enduring, continuing, and eternal
The Islamic Republic of Iran!
Iran has had six national anthems: between 1873 and 1909, the "Royal Salute"; between 1909 and 1933, the "Salute of the Sublime State of Persia"; between 1933 and 1979, the "Imperial Anthem of Iran,"; "Oh Iran," which served briefly as the anthem between the fall of the Shah of Iran and the founding of the Islamic theocracy, and "Long Live Iran," which was in use until the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1990.
The U.S. Navy Band records the national anthems of other countries but has not recorded the "National Anthem of the Islamic Republic of Iran" since the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with the despotic Iranian theocratic regime.
The captain of Iran's soccer team implicitly spoke out about the terrorizing of Iranian citizens by the government in his home country prior to the game against England. "I offer my condolences to all the bereaved families of Iran. And let them know that we are with them and sympathize with them," he stated.
IMPORTANT 🇮🇷 Ahead of their game against England, Iran's captain Ehsan Hajsafi becomes the first Iranian player to speak out in support of women's rights protesters in his home country, expressing condolences to families who've lost loved ones.pic.twitter.com/iyOiZ9cikl
— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) November 21, 2022
Protests in Iran have surged since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the government's morality police in mid-September. Since then, 378 Iranians have been killed by the government's "security forces," including 47 children and 27 women, according to the non-profit Iran Human Rights (IHR).
"Based on our information, the killing of protesters were committed exclusively by the Islamic Republic's repressive forces," the Director of Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, stated. "The responsibility for the killing of protesters rests solely with the Islamic Republic and its leader, Ali Khamenei."
According to IHR, protesters have been killed in 25 provinces, with 40 protesters killed in by state "security forces" in the week between November 12 and November 19.
The Daily Wire > Read > Raw Courage: As Iranian Government Murders Protesters, Iran's Soccer Team Refuses To Sing Anthem At World Cup


text:
Gina Gershon >
Gina Gershon: 'I Still Regret Turning Down Naked Role...
Gina Gershon: 'I Still Regret Turning Down Naked Role In Prince's Purple Rain'
By WENN in Movies / TV / Theatre on 25 April 2016
Follow Gina Gershon
Gina Gershon Apollonia Kotero Prince
Actress Gina Gershon turned down Apollonia Kotero's role in Prince's Purple Rain movie because she didn't want to appear nude in her first film.
The Bound star was just 18 when she was offered the chance to romance the music legend on the big screen in his 1984 movie, and now, days after his untimely death, Gina has revealed all about the part she passed up.
"I had never done a movie before," she told Page Six. "I was 18 or something... I was young. At that time, I wanted to be a quote-unquote serious actress."
Gershon admits she has always regretted not taking the plunge for a naked lake scene in Purple Rain: "I don't know what I was thinking. I was totally stupid."
But at least she got to meet Prince, who picked her up in a purple limousine for a meeting in Minnesota.
"It was all really surreal, but the most surreal moment was when he played me Purple Rain," Gershon recalled. "I kept trying to not let my jaw drop open. It was so beautiful, and then it literally started drizzling through the sky roof, and I thought, 'How did he make that happen?' It was a very magical, surreal, incredible experience.
"We went dancing. He watched me dance. And then we played music at the piano for a while and we laughed and then he handed me the script."
Gershon chose her studies at New York University over Prince's project and she admits the singer was not happy when she turned his film offer down: "I made him drive me to the airport, and I don't think he was very happy," she said.
Inconceivable [2017] Trailer
Gina Gershon Fired Talent Agents Over Bound Dispute
Gina Gershon Back Onstage In Stephen King's Haunted Musical
Gina Gershon Was Hesitant About Donatella Versace Role
Gina Gershon Suffered Bronchitis While Playing Chain-smoking Versace
Gina Gershon To Play Donatella Versace In Fashion Family Drama
Gina Gershon Wonders Why Critics Of 'Showgirls' Still Talk About It
Gina Gershon Writing Book About Missing Cat
The Things They Say 25796
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This film's unhinged plot constantly catches us off guard with its bizarre twists and turns,...
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One Last Thing... was another one of those experimental films -- experimental from a business...
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text:
Home startups Shifting tech and business trends threaten old-line carmakers – Nikkei Asian Review
Shifting tech and business trends threaten old-line carmakers – Nikkei Asian Review
TOKYO — A wave of technological disruptions is throwing the global auto industry into turmoil and upending many long-held assumptions about car manufacturing.
Advances in technology have led to the creation of connected, autonomous, shared and electric vehicles, now commonly referred to as CASE and that Daimler describes as "mobility intuitive."
In recent years, automakers have waded into unfamiliar territory such as software and internet technology to ensure their survival but this has come at great financial costs. Yet, there will be little financial reprieve for them in the years ahead as new, highly innovative competitors, including internet and technology conglomerates, enter the game.
Industry leaders are having to refashion their vehicles and adapt rapidly to new technology — a costly exercise that could take years to show reward, analysts said.
For example, Toyota Motor Senior Managing Officer Masayoshi Shirayanagi said the company would have to spend over 100 billion yen annually on the development of CASE-related technologies over the coming years. "Considering the impact of CASE, we face a big risk in terms of future operating profit," Shirayanagi said at a December meeting with union leaders.
A Nikkei analysis of the financial standings of some 860 companies in the global auto industry based on QUICK FactSet has shown a clear rise in debt loads and sluggish earnings growth. Their earnings before interest and taxes increased by a tepid $220 billion in fiscal 2017.
This compared with their interest-bearing debts that increased by $530 billion in six years from slightly less than $1.07 trillion in fiscal 2011. That grew to an all-time high of about $1.7 trillion in 2018.
READ Yalochat sets eyes on India market armed with $8M funding - ETtech.com
An economic slowdown in China, a huge auto market, hasn't helped either. The EBIT of some 550 companies fell by nearly 3% in the year ended in March 2018. That puts the industry's overall EBIT rise at a modest 36% between fiscal 2011 and 2018, compared with surging debts.
As the industry moves toward automation, employees are also facing an uncertain time. The ramifications of technological change overshadowed annual wage negotiations between Toyota management and the labor union this year. For the first time in 13 years, both sides were not able to reach a deal.
Auto parts suppliers are also worried about the future. A senior Aisin Seiki executive said: "If all vehicles are made electric, there would be no demand for automatic transmission systems," which are the company's main products. The supplier is now trying to carve out a new future for itself by, for instance, ramping up production of AT systems equipped with motors for hybrid cars.
For Akebono Brake Industry, a leading brake maker, its heavy investments in technology has taken a particularly heavy toll as it was forced to file for an out-of-court turnaround process with a state-certified third-party body. It has sought a capital infusion from Toyota, its top shareholder, and debt relief from lenders.
It spent 10.3 billion yen on research and development of new braking systems for electric vehicles in the year through March 2018, 13 times its net profit.
Yet, despite such expenditure, information-technology powerhouses are leaving automakers in the dust. Google started developing autonomous driving vehicles about a decade ago, ahead of the game. With a war chest of over 12 trillion yen, it has the financial and technological muscle to beat leading automakers.
READ ClimaCell bets on IoT for better weather forecasts - TechCrunch
Apart from the fierce competition, the car industry is also facing pressure from tightening environmental regulations. Britain and France have announced plans to ban domestic sales of gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040.
Such seismic changes in the industry have made it hard for investors to plow money into traditional automakers. The total market value of the world's carmakers has plunged by some 57 trillion yen ($509 billion), or 21%, from its recent peak in January 2018.
While the MSCI World Index, a broad global equity index, has risen 30% from the end of 2015, the MSCI Automobiles and Components Index, which traces the stocks of carmakers and suppliers, has declined 4% during the period.
The stock prices of Ford Motor, Daimler and Nissan Motor have slipped 20% to 30% in that time, while Toyota and Honda Motor have also suffered 10% to 20% slides. The market value of parts suppliers Continental of Germany and Valeo of France have shrunk by about 30%.
General Motors and Volkswagen, however, bucked the trend with near-20% rises in that period but largely due to cost-cutting restructuring drives, which investors believed put them in a better position to meet future challenges.
Shares in Lear of the U.S., a supplier of automotive interiors, and Koito Manufacturing, which focuses on automotive lighting equipment, have also climbed by up to 40%.
One strategy taken by established automakers has been to invest in the new players. Toyota has taken a stake in Uber Technologies' self-driving car unit.
But the implications of the CASE revolution goes far beyond the car industry. In particular, Japan's economy could take a hit as the auto industry provides jobs for nearly 10% of the country's workforce.
READ Autonomous tech key to helping African business embrace the digital age
Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities analyst Koichi Sugimoto sounded a grim warning for the industry, saying that if automakers fail to pump up their sales and cut fixed costs, they face an uncertain future.
Sugimoto's prognosis echoes the views of a growing number of analysts who are predicting an increasingly harsher business environment for the companies that manufacture automobiles or their components.
Nikkei staff writer Tomohiro Noguchi contributed to this report.
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Walking into Hannah Collins' exhibition, one is struck by large-scale monochrome photographs consuming the walls, it's almost intimidating given their size in relation to the viewer. The imagery in the exhibition is entirely monochrome, stark shades of grey lending a dramatic effect.
Despite their size, the photography has a fragile, ephemeral air. There is almost a sadness and sense of loss. What she captures on camera varies greatly as it ranges from a simple cluster of balloons to cardboard boxes piled up. Despite this incongruous collection of images, they all seem to correlate. They are like odd fitting jigsaw pieces that somehow manage to slot together.
Photographs hang in strips, the images so large that multiple pieces of photographic paper are layered together to make one work. This removes the element of perfection that is generally presented in photographic display. Instead the precarious nature of the work is apparent. It seems as if one may collapse at any moment.
Walking through to the room on the left is an entirely different experience from the first room. It's like entering another exhibition. Highly suggestive of a scientific laboratory, vitrines with photographic collections and pressed plants are laid out akin to specimens for research and experimentation. Most of the vitrines are hip height, others are closer to floor level. This play on height and relation to the human body's proportion contrasts nicely with the flatness of the images in the previous room.
In both spaces, the viewer is free to navigate the exhibition as they please; there is no clear direction. The contents of the vitrines play with tactile sensibilities, the imagery within depicting vibrant greenery such as photographic details of large fan-like leaves to beautiful flowers whose scent is hinted at through its lively colours. The photos display a wonderful two-dimensional jungle that is just beyond reach.
Two floor level vitrines contain entirely different matter. They contain dead plants. Opening an dialogue of deforestation, on one level they could be hinting at what is to come for the photographed jungle. They present a sinister air which is lightened by the fact they look so temptingly tactile. The urge to reach out and touch, to play with them and to hear them crack as they break up into pieces is difficult to resist. Yet the use of vitrines reinforces a museological context.
Text fragments are screen printed onto areas of the wall; the green text is neat and scientific in its presentation, yet whimsical and poetic in content. What is most enjoyable in the exhibition is the predominant sense of contrast and play underpinning Collins' exhibition, which formulates an exciting and dynamic experience for the viewer.


text:
The Ultimate Guide to Badlands National Park
Amber walls and prairie grass make for impressive landscapes in western SoDak
Striped in yellow, amber, and purple, the colorful eroded formations of Badlands National Park dip and rise amid the prairie grasslands.
More than half the North American continent was once grassland like that which exists in the Badlands. Today, only two percent of that grassland remains—it has since been replaced by farm fields, ranches, and cities. Nearly 600,000 acres of prairie grassland border the national park in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland, as well as the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Buffalo Gap National Grassland meets Badlands National Park © Rex Vogel, all rights reserved
Badlands is a geologic term for a type of dry terrain where soft sedimentary rocks are extensively eroded by wind and water. The title is also derived from the Native American Lakota name "mako sica" meaning "land bad" for its extreme weather, lack of water, and rugged exposed landscape. French-Canadian fur trappers seconded that notion dubbing it les mauvais terres pour traverse, or "bad lands to travel through."
Badlands National Park © Rex Vogel, all rights reserved
To Native Americans, the area was a seasonal hunting ground for bison, animals that again inhabit the park. Sharing the prairie landscape are pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and coyotes. In prairie dog "towns," black-tailed prairie dogs in large numbers pop out of their holes alerting pals when outsiders are coming. Overhead, birdlife watches over the landscape—magpie, hawks, bald and golden eagles, peregrine falcons, and as many as 211 other bird species have been identified.
The park is divided into two sections: the main North Unit and the largely roadless and inaccessible Stronghold Unit located within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the park's southern section. Driving is one of the most popular ways to see the park and routes such as the Badlands Loop Road (Highway 240) are well marked. Park entry costs $30 per car ($15 if you enter by foot or by bike).
Think of the Badlands National Park as remote and prepare accordingly. Cedar Pass Lodge serves as the park's only commercial hub with a restaurant, gift shop, and snacks for sale. Restrooms are available here as well as in the parks two visitor centers, campgrounds, and picnic area.
Come prepared with ample supplies of water. This is especially important if you go hiking; the Park Service recommends two quarts per person for every two hours of hiking. Also bring your own snacks, sunscreen, wide-brimmed hat (we recommend a Tilley), and sunglasses. Sturdy hiking boots will help with footing on some of the looser trails and also protect you from cactus spines.
That said, you don't have to be an outdoors expert or hiking ninja to enjoy the park. In addition to scenic drives and turnouts, there are easy short hikes of less than one mile and one fully accessible boardwalk trail as well as wooden boardwalks at most scenic overlooks.
You ARE allowed to walk onto the badland formations throughout the park. Naturally occurring erosion makes it so that footprints don't have a great effect on the landscape. Watch where you step and place your hands though—there are prairie rattlesnakes throughout the park.
You just might have heard of tiny Wall (population less than 1,000), the park's chief northern gateway and named for the rock-wall formation that runs across the park. Billboards on Interstate 90 touting "free ice water" have been pulling in traffic to Wall Drug since 1936. Originally a drugstore, it's now a tourist attraction—thronged in summer by up to 20,000 visitors a day—with a splash park, Western art gallery-cum-restaurant, and a mall selling everything from cowboy boots to mounted Jackalope (a fictional animal). It's a kitschy but must-visit experience complete with homemade donuts and five-cent cups of coffee.
Total acres: 244,000
Date established: November 10, 1978 (established as a National Monument: January 29, 1939)
Highest peak: Sheep Mountain Table, 3,300 feet
Miles and numbers of trails: 17.5 miles among eight trails
Main attraction: Striated rock formations
Cost: Entry $30 per vehicle
Best way to see it: Driving the Badlands Loop Road
When to go to avoid the crowds: Spring or fall
You don't escape sky and sun, but wear them in your eyeballs and on your back. You become acutely aware of yourself. The world is very large, the sky even larger and you are very small…
—Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow
Author vogelontheroadPosted on September 4, 2020 September 2, 2020 Categories National ParkTags badlands, Badlands National Park, Buffalo Gap National Grassland, South Dakota
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Here I am with my pride and joy, a great big model of an anatomical heart (it even opens up so you can look at the chambers and valves).
This week in the creative writing class I am taking, I am one of the people assigned to bring "show & tell", usually in the form of one or more objects and a piece of writing. I have been working hard at pulling together the words and pictures that will accompany this object for my presentation.
Personally, the heart is a potent basis for poetic and symbolic thinking whether in art or writing.
Looking around at everything going on in the world today, I find myself wondering how different the world would be if all of us approached our fellow humans (and other life forms) with open hearts, not hardened ones.
What am I doing with this jumbo anatomical heart?
You, my dear, have always been ALL heart. You're smart, funny, talented, etc, etc. But you ALWAYS lead with your heart. That's why I, and so many others, love you so!