New Archive of Middle Eastern Photography Features 9,000 Digitized Images

From Shamoon Zamir, a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor at NYU Abu Dhabi, comes a “research archive of his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phy from the Mid­dle East and North­ern Africa (MENA),” designed to be  ful­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We’re told:

Today, Akkasah: The Cen­ter for Pho­tog­ra­phy at NYU Abu Dhabi boasts an archive of 62,000 images from the UAE and across the MENA region – of which 9,000 are already dig­i­tized and avail­able online — the only of its kind in the Mid­dle East. These images offer new insights into the his­to­ry and rapid trans­for­ma­tion of the UAE and the broad­er Arab world. They include his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions rang­ing from the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the late twen­ti­eth, cov­er­ing a vari­ety of themes and top­ics, from ear­ly images of the Holy Lands and from the Ottoman Empire, to images from fam­i­ly albums, insti­tu­tion­al archives and the his­to­ry of Egypt­ian cin­e­ma.

You can vis­it the col­lec­tion of images here, which is itself divid­ed into a few key areas: His­tor­i­cal Col­lec­tionsCon­tem­po­rary Projects, and Pho­to Albums.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

20,000 Endan­gered Archae­o­log­i­cal Sites Now Cat­a­logued in a New Online Data­base

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

Hear Meryl Streep Read Sylvia Plath’s “Morning Song,” a Poem Written After the Birth of Her Daughter

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Preg­nan­cy and par­ent­ing are “extreme expe­ri­ences that stretch our under­stand­ing,” writes Lily Gur­ton-Wachter at the Los Ange­les Review of Books. They “push us beyond com­fort or even com­pre­hen­sion.” Women risk their own lives to give life to a stranger, a tiny human whose future is entire­ly uncer­tain. Par­ents live with con­stant dread of all that could befall their chil­dren, an anx­ious state, but also a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that can make us deeply sen­si­tive to the fragili­ty of human life. Gur­ton-Wachter com­pares moth­er­hood to going to war, “a pro­found, fright­en­ing, exhil­a­rat­ing, trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence at the bound­ary of life, an expe­ri­ence from which one comes back a dif­fer­ent per­son.”

It’s a com­par­i­son Sylvia Plath would like­ly appre­ci­ate. With her abil­i­ty to com­press per­son­al expe­ri­ence in col­lec­tions of sur­pris­ing, often vio­lent, images, Plath expressed deep ambiva­lence about moth­er­hood, under­cut­ting a tra­di­tion of sen­ti­men­tal ide­al­iza­tion, giv­ing voice to fear, dis­com­fort, bewil­der­ment, and mys­tery.

In “Metaphors,” from 1960’s Colos­sus, she begins with a play­ful descrip­tion of preg­nan­cy as “a rid­dle in nine syl­la­bles.” With­in a few lines she feels effaced and starts to “see her­self mere­ly as a ‘means,’” notes Shenan­doah, “almost an incu­ba­tor… This cul­mi­nates with the last line, where she real­izes that she is for­ev­er changed, irrev­o­ca­bly”: “Board­ed the train,” she writes, “there’s no get­ting off.”

In 1961, after the birth of her daugh­ter, Frie­da, Plath wrote “Morn­ing Song, which might be read as almost an exten­sion of “Metaphors.” It is “one of her most unusu­al poems,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings, “both paean and requiem for new motherhood—the love, the strange­ness, the sur­re­al and mag­net­ic dis­ori­en­ta­tion of it.” Pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in Ariel, the poem address­es itself to the new arrival, in a series of stan­zas that cap­ture the awe and anx­i­ety of those first hours after her birth. In the audio above from the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets’ annu­al Poet­ry & the Cre­ative Mind event, hear Meryl Streep read the poem “with uncom­mon sen­si­tiv­i­ty,” Popo­va writes, “to the innu­mer­able nuances it holds.” As you lis­ten, read along below.

MORNING SONG

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The mid­wife slapped your foot­soles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the ele­ments.

Our voic­es echo, mag­ni­fy­ing your arrival. New stat­ue.
In a drafty muse­um, your naked­ness
Shad­ows our safe­ty. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your moth­er
Than the cloud that dis­tills a mir­ror to reflect its own slow
Efface­ment at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flick­ers among the flat pink ros­es. I wake to lis­ten:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stum­ble from bed, cow-heavy and flo­ral
In my Vic­to­ri­an night­gown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The win­dow square

Whitens and swal­lows its dull stars. And now you try
Your hand­ful of notes;
The clear vow­els rise like bal­loons.

Streep­’s read­ing of Plath will be added to the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Dis­cov­er the Paint­ings, Draw­ings & Col­lages of Sylvia Plath: Now on Dis­play at the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Por­trait Gallery

Hear Sylvia Plath’s Bare­ly-Known Radio Play, Three Women

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Carl Sagan Returns to His Old Sixth-Grade Classroom to Turn a New Generation of Kids On To Science

All through­out his career, Carl Sagan cit­ed the events in his for­ma­tive years that set him on the road to becom­ing, well, Carl Sagan: the intro­duc­tion to “skep­ti­cism and won­der” pro­vid­ed by his par­ents; his vis­it to the 1939 New York World’s Fair; his first trips to the pub­lic library, the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry, and the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um; his dis­cov­ery of Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine and its fan­tas­tic visions under­gird­ed by gen­uine knowl­edge. That last hap­pened around the same time he entered the sixth grade at David A. Boody Junior High School, where he would even­tu­al­ly return, decades lat­er, to teach the les­son seen in the video above.

“As a child, it was my immense good for­tune to have par­ents and a few teach­ers who encour­aged my curios­i­ty,” Sagan says in voiceover. “This was my sixth-grade class­room. I came back here one after­noon to remem­ber what it was like.” Any­one watch­ing him hand­ing out the “breath­tak­ing pic­tures of oth­er worlds that had been radioed back by the Voy­ager space­craft” and address­ing the excit­ed stu­dents’ ques­tions will under­stand that, in addi­tion to his for­mi­da­ble hunger for knowl­edge and deep under­stand­ing of his sub­jects, Sagan also pos­sessed a qual­i­ty rare in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty: the abil­i­ty and will­ing­ness to talk about sci­ence clear­ly and engag­ing­ly, and trans­mit his excite­ment about sci­ence, to absolute­ly any­one.

The clip also pro­vides a sense of what it was like to learn direct­ly from Sagan. In the inter­view clip above, no less a sci­ence guy than Bill Nye talks about his own expe­ri­ence tak­ing Sagan’s class­es at Cor­nell in the 1970s. “If you saw his series Cos­mos — the orig­i­nal Cos­mos — his lec­tures were like those tele­vi­sion shows,” says Nye. He goes on to tell the sto­ry of meet­ing Sagan again, at his ten-year class reunion. “I said I want to do this show about sci­ence for kids. He said, ‘Focus on pure sci­ence. Kids res­onate to pure sci­ence.’ That was his verb, res­onate.” And so, when Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy debuted a few years lat­er, it spent most of its time not on the fruits of sci­ence — “bridges, dams, and civ­il engi­neer­ing works and gears” and so on — but on sci­ence itself.

Carl Sagan co-found­ed the Plan­e­tary Soci­ety in 1980. Nye, drawn by its mis­sion of “empow­er­ing the world’s cit­i­zens to advance plan­e­tary sci­ence and explo­ration,” joined that same year. After speak­ing at Sagan’s memo­r­i­al a decade and a half lat­er, Nye found him­self on its board of direc­tors. Then he became Vice Pres­i­dent, and then “there was a din­ner par­ty, there was wine or some­thing, and now I’m the CEO.” In that way and oth­ers, Nye con­tin­ues Sagan’s lega­cy, and Nye hard­ly counts as Sagan’s only suc­ces­sor. “This is how we know nature,” as Nye puts Sagan’s view of sci­ence. “It’s the best idea humans have ever come up with.” That view, whether expressed in Sagan’s own work or that of the count­less many he has direct­ly or indi­rect­ly influ­enced, will sure­ly con­tin­ue to inspire gen­er­a­tions of learn­ers, inside or out­side the class­room.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents a Mini-Course on Earth, Mars & What’s Beyond Our Solar Sys­tem: For Kids and Adults (1977)

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Bill Nye, The Sci­ence Guy, Says Cre­ation­ism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Barack Obama Shares a List of Enlightening Books Worth Reading

Pho­to by Pete Souza via obamawhitehouse.archive.gov

What­ev­er his­to­ri­ans have to say about his polit­i­cal lega­cy, Barack Oba­ma will be remem­bered as charm­ing, diplo­mat­ic, thought­ful, and very well-read. He honed these per­son­al qual­i­ties not only as a politi­cian but as a schol­ar, writer, and teacher, roles that require intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty and open­ness to oth­er points of view. The for­mer pres­i­dent was some­thing of a dream come true for teach­ers and librar­i­ans, who could point to him as a shin­ing exam­ple of a world leader who loves to read, talk about books, and share books with oth­ers. All kinds of books: from nov­els and poet­ry to biog­ra­phy, phi­los­o­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, and polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic non­fic­tion; books for chil­dren and books for young adults.

It is refresh­ing to look back at his tenure as a reli­able rec­om­mender of qual­i­ty books dur­ing his eight years in office. (See every book he rec­om­mend­ed dur­ing his two terms here.) Read­ing gave him the abil­i­ty to “slow down and get per­spec­tive,” he told Michiko Kaku­tani last year. He hoped to use his office, he said, “to widen the audi­ence for good books. At a time when so much of our pol­i­tics is try­ing to man­age this clash of cul­tures brought about by glob­al­iza­tion and tech­nol­o­gy and migra­tion, the role of sto­ries to unify—as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize—is more impor­tant than ever.”

While many peo­ple have been hop­ing he would weigh in on deeply dis­turb­ing cur­rent events, he “has been rel­a­tive­ly qui­et on social media of late,” notes Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz. But he has con­tin­ued to use his plat­form to rec­om­mend good books, sug­gest­ing that the per­spec­tives we gain from read­ing are as crit­i­cal as ever. “In a Face­book post pub­lished on Sat­ur­day, Oba­ma rec­om­mend­ed some of the non­fic­tion he’s read recent­ly, focused on gov­ern­ment, inequal­i­ty, and his­to­ry, with one book that address­es immi­gra­tion. Togeth­er the rec­om­men­da­tions are an intel­lec­tu­al anti­dote to the cur­rent US pres­i­dent, who eschews read­ing,” says Ha.

The list below includes Obama’s brief com­men­tary on each book and arti­cle.

Futureface: A Fam­i­ly Mys­tery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belong­ing, by Alex Wag­n­er (2018)

Jour­nal­ist Alex Wag­n­er inves­ti­gates a poten­tial new twist in her family’s his­to­ry. “What she came up with,” Oba­ma writes, “is a thought­ful, beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion on what makes us who we are—the search for har­mo­ny between our own indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ties and the val­ues and ideals that bind us togeth­er as Amer­i­cans.”

The New Geog­ra­phy of Jobs, by Enri­co Moret­ti (2012)

Econ­o­mist Enri­co Moret­ti argues that there are three Amer­i­c­as: brain-hub cities like Austin and Boston; cities once dom­i­nat­ed by tra­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing; and the cities in between. “Still a time­ly and smart dis­cus­sion of how dif­fer­ent cities and regions have made a chang­ing econ­o­my work for them,” writes Oba­ma, “and how pol­i­cy­mak­ers can learn from that to lift the cir­cum­stances of work­ing Amer­i­cans every­where.”

Why Lib­er­al­ism Failed, by Patrick J. Deneen (2018)

Polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Patrick J. Deneen argues that lib­er­al­ism is not the result of the nat­ur­al state of pol­i­tics and lays out the ideology’s inher­ent con­tra­dic­tions. “In a time of grow­ing inequal­i­ty, accel­er­at­ing change, and increas­ing dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic order we’ve known for the past few cen­turies,” says the for­mer pres­i­dent, “I found this book thought-pro­vok­ing.”

“The 9.9 Per­cent Is the New Amer­i­can Aris­toc­ra­cy,” by Matthew Stew­art (June 2018)

In The Atlantic, Matthew Stew­art, author of The Man­age­ment Myth, defines a “cog­ni­tive elite,” a “9.9%” of Amer­i­cans who val­ue mer­i­toc­ra­cy and, he argues, are com­plic­it in the ero­sion of democ­ra­cy. “Anoth­er thought-pro­vok­ing analy­sis, this one about how eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca isn’t just grow­ing, but self-rein­forc­ing,” says Oba­ma.

In the Shad­ow of Stat­ues: A White South­ern­er Con­fronts His­to­ry, by Mitch Lan­drieu (2018)

Mitch Lan­drieu, the for­mer may­or of New Orleans, Louisiana, writes in his mem­oir of the per­son­al his­to­ry and reck­on­ing with race that led him to take down four Con­fed­er­ate stat­ues in 2017. “It’s an ulti­mate­ly opti­mistic take from some­one who believes the South will rise again not by reassert­ing the past, but by tran­scend­ing it,” writes Oba­ma.

“Truth Decay: An Ini­tial Explo­ration of the Dimin­ish­ing Role of Facts and Analy­sis in Amer­i­can Pub­lic Life,” by Jen­nifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, RAND Cor­po­ra­tion (2018)

This report for the non­prof­it RAND Cor­po­ra­tion, avail­able as a free ebook, attempts to study the ero­sion of fact-based pol­i­cy mak­ing and dis­course in the US. “A look at how a selec­tive sort­ing of facts and evi­dence isn’t just dis­hon­est, but self-defeat­ing,” says Oba­ma.

While the for­mer pres­i­dent no longer has the pow­er to sway pol­i­cy, he can still inspire mil­lions of peo­ple to read—essential for stay­ing bal­anced, informed, and reflec­tive in our per­ilous times.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres. Oba­ma Releas­es a Free Playlist of 40 Songs for a Sum­mer Day (Plus 6 Books on His Sum­mer Read­ing List)

The 5 Books on Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Sum­mer Read­ing List

The Oba­ma “Hope” Poster & The New Copy­right Con­tro­ver­sy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Chris Cornell’s Daughter Pays Tribute to Her Father, Singing an Achingly Pretty Cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”

Just a lit­tle more than a year after Soundgar­den front­man Chris Cor­nell took his own life, his daugh­ter Toni, only 13 years old, released an aching­ly beau­ti­ful trib­ute to her father. Record­ed for Father’s Day, she sings a poignant ver­sion of Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” a song her father also per­formed live on many occa­sions. Indeed you can hear his voice on this track too. It’s a duet of sorts.

Released on YouTube, the song came accom­pa­nied by this short let­ter:

Dad­dy, I love you and miss you so much. You were the best father any­one could ask for. Our rela­tion­ship was so spe­cial, and you were always there for me. You gave me courage when I didn’t have any. You believed in me when I didn’t. I miss your love every­day. Record­ing this song with you was a spe­cial and amaz­ing expe­ri­ence I wish I could repeat 100 times over and I know you would too. Hap­py Father’s Day dad­dy, noth­ing com­pares to you. — Toni

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Large Choir Sings “Black Hole Sun”: A Mov­ing Trib­ute to Chris Cor­nell

Soundgarden’s Chris Cor­nell Sings Haunt­ing Acoustic Cov­ers of Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U,” Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song”

Hear Chris Cornell’s Mas­ter­ful Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”

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A Meditative Look at a Japanese Artisan’s Quest to Save the Brilliant, Forgotten Colors of Japan’s Past

We might assume that 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy enables us to pro­duce fab­ric in all imag­in­able col­ors, most of them total­ly unknown to our ances­tors. Yet none of it has ever quite repli­cat­ed the strik­ing hues achieved by dyers of cen­turies and cen­turies ago. That premise under­lies the slow and painstak­ing work of Sachio Yosh­io­ka, whose fam­i­ly’s fab­ric-dye­ing her­itage goes back to Japan’s Edo peri­od of the 17th to the mid-19th cen­tu­ry. Hav­ing tak­en over his father’s work­shop Tex­tiles Yosh­io­ka in 1988, he has spent the past thir­ty years work­ing only with tra­di­tion­al plant dyes, the kind that once, in a time long before his fam­i­ly even got into the dye­ing busi­ness, made his home­land so col­or­ful.

The Japan­ese dye­ing tra­di­tion, in this read­ing of its his­to­ry, reached its long apex of bril­liance in the Nara and Heian peri­ods, which togeth­er last­ed from the years 710 to 1185. Most of the world admires Japan­ese aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, but often with ref­er­ence to inter­na­tion­al­ly well-known con­cepts like wabi-sabi that ide­al­ize the rus­tic, the imper­fect, and the sub­dued. Unlike in the Edo peri­od, when the strict Tokyu­gawa Shogu­nate man­dat­ed that com­mon peo­ple stick to grays and browns, Nara and Heian cities would have been rich with vivid reds, blues, yel­lows, oranges, and even pur­ples, all in vari­eties one sel­dom sees even today, in Japan or any­where else.

Hence Yosh­ioka’s mis­sion to prac­tice and even refine the same labor-inten­sive dye­ing meth­ods used back then. For­mer­ly a stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy as well as a pub­lish­er of books on the his­to­ry of col­or and fab­ric arts, he now seems devot­ed to what goes on in his Kyoto work­shop. You can watch what he and his assis­tants do there in the video from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um above. Com­posed of four short films, it includes a seg­ment on Yosh­ioka’s pro­duc­tion of paper flow­ers for the Omizu­tori fes­ti­val at the Tōdai-ji Bud­dhist tem­ple in Nara, the his­tor­i­cal cap­i­tal out­side Kyoto, that cul­mi­nates in an evening fire cer­e­mo­ny.

That fire cer­e­mo­ny, called Otaimat­su, remains as com­pelling a spec­ta­cle today as it must have been more than a mil­len­ni­um ago, just as sure­ly as the col­ors Yosh­io­ka has redis­cov­ered have lost none of their allure since then. His ded­i­ca­tion to the work of tra­di­tion­al dye­ing — work his daugh­ter Sarasa will take into its sixth gen­er­a­tion — comes not out of a desire to pay trib­ute to Japan­ese his­to­ry, nor even out of fil­ial piety, but some­thing much sim­pler: “The col­ors you can obtain from plants are so beau­ti­ful,” he says. “This is the one and only rea­son I do what I do.” 

via Kot­tke/Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Japan­ese Crafts­man Spends His Life Try­ing to Recre­ate a Thou­sand-Year-Old Sword

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Does Language Shape the Way We Think? Cognitive Scientist Lera Boroditsky Explains

Imag­ine a jel­ly­fish waltz­ing in a library while think­ing about quan­tum mechan­ics. “If every­thing has gone rel­a­tive­ly well in your life so far,” cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Lera Borodit­sky says in the TED Talk above, “you prob­a­bly haven’t had that thought before.” But now you have, all thanks to lan­guage, the remark­able abil­i­ty by which “we humans are able to trans­mit our ideas across vast reach­es of space and time” and “knowl­edge across minds.”

Though we occa­sion­al­ly hear about star­tling rates of lan­guage extinc­tion — Borodit­sky quotes some esti­mates as pre­dict­ing half the world’s lan­guages gone in the next cen­tu­ry — a great vari­ety still thrive. Does that mean we have an equal vari­ety of essen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing? In both this talk and an essay for Edge.org, Borodit­sky presents intrigu­ing pieces of evi­dence that what lan­guage we speak does affect the way we con­ceive of the world and our ideas about it. These include an Abo­rig­i­nal tribe in Aus­tralia who always and every­where use car­di­nal direc­tions to describe space (“Oh, there’s an ant on your south­west leg”) and the dif­fer­ences in how lan­guages label the col­or spec­trum.

“Russ­ian speak­ers have to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between light blue, gol­uboy, and dark blue, siniy,” says the Belarus-born, Amer­i­can-raised Borodit­sky. “When we test peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to per­cep­tu­al­ly dis­crim­i­nate these col­ors, what we find is that Russ­ian speak­ers are faster across this lin­guis­tic bound­ary. They’re faster to be able to tell the dif­fer­ence between a light and dark blue.” Hard­ly a yawn­ing cog­ni­tive gap, you might think, but just imag­ine how many such dif­fer­ences exist between lan­guages, and how the habits of mind they shape poten­tial­ly add up.

“You don’t even need to go into the lab to see these effects of lan­guage; you can see them with your own eyes in an art gallery,” writes Borodit­sky in her Edge essay. “How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be paint­ed as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 per­cent of such per­son­i­fi­ca­tions, whether a male or female fig­ure is cho­sen is pre­dict­ed by the gram­mat­i­cal gen­der of the word in the artist’s native lan­guage.” More Ger­mans paint death as a man, and more Rus­sians paint it as a woman. Per­son­al­ly, I’d like to see all the var­i­ous ways artists speak­ing all the world’s lan­guages paint that waltz­ing jel­ly­fish think­ing about quan­tum mechan­ics in the library. We’d bet­ter hur­ry com­mis­sion­ing them, though, before too many more of those lan­guages van­ish.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 40+ Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More

A Col­or­ful Map Visu­al­izes the Lex­i­cal Dis­tances Between Europe’s Lan­guages: 54 Lan­guages Spo­ken by 670 Mil­lion Peo­ple

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The French Village Designed to Promote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visual Introduction to the Pioneering Experiment

Hav­ing seen first­hand in my own fam­i­ly how dev­as­tat­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease can be to the suf­fer­er and those who care for them, I acute­ly feel the need for bet­ter social reme­dies than those we cur­rent­ly have. Insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing rel­a­tives places them at risk of abuse, neglect, or extreme lone­li­ness and anx­i­ety, over and above what they already expe­ri­ence. Rely­ing on fam­i­ly mem­bers can result in high­ly over­stressed care­tak­ers who lack resources, time, and train­ing. In either case, patients and care­tak­ers can end up iso­lat­ed, emo­tion­al­ly over­whelmed, and heav­i­ly reliant on med­ica­tions.

While there is yet no cure for Alzheimer’s and age-relat­ed demen­tia, the good news is that there may soon be a treat­ment that pro­vides suf­fer­ers with care, atten­tion, dig­ni­ty, and gen­er­ous social inter­ac­tion, while also giv­ing researchers humane and eth­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties to study the pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease. The not-so-good news is that it might require build­ing an entire vil­lage, com­plete with a super­mar­ket, hair­dress­er, library, gym and oth­er facil­i­ties. But if an exper­i­ment in Dax, in south­west­ern France, proves viable, many oth­er munic­i­pal­i­ties might will­ing­ly shoul­der the expense.

Designed by Cham­pag­nat & Grè­goire Archi­tects and NORD Archi­tects, the 12-acre Vil­lage Landais Alzheimer will cost a hefty $28 mil­lion, reports Newsweek. Curbed quotes the even high­er fig­ure of $34 mil­lion, “pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed by the gov­ern­ment.” Expect­ed to open at the end of 2019, the vil­lage will “house 120 patients, 100 live-in care­tak­ers, 12 vol­un­teers, and a team of researchers who will approach the treat­ment cen­ter as a test­bed for alter­na­tive Alzheimer’s care.” Designed to repli­cate a tra­di­tion­al medieval town com­mon to the area, the exper­i­ment was inspired by a sim­i­lar under­tak­ing in the Nether­lands, in which res­i­dents showed increased well-being and lived longer than expect­ed.

Neu­rol­o­gist and epi­demi­ol­o­gist Jean-François Dar­tigues explains the pur­pose of the vil­lage as main­tain­ing “the par­tic­i­pa­tion of res­i­dents in social life,” a proven fac­tor in slow­ing mem­o­ry loss and improv­ing men­tal health, as stud­ies have shown. The vil­lage will also give res­i­dents a sense of free­dom and con­trol over their envi­ron­ment, while mak­ing sure atten­tive care is on hand at all times, and it will “host trained dogs,” reports the BBC, “to help res­i­dents escape their psy­cho­log­i­cal iso­la­tion.” More­over, “drug treat­ments will be set aside,” along with the side effects of med­ica­tion that can neg­a­tive­ly affect qual­i­ty of life.

The pre­vi­ous exper­i­ment and cur­rent state of the research pre­dict that Vil­lage Landais Alzheimer will be suc­cess­ful in improv­ing the lives of its res­i­dents. While one can imag­ine this idea tak­ing hold among pri­vate investors will­ing to build exclu­sive vil­lages for wealthy patients, the ques­tion is whether coun­tries far less inclined to fund health­care would invest pub­lic resources. Local offi­cials in Dax at least “have promised,” Curbed reports, “to match nurs­ing home fees and make some form of gov­ern­ment assis­tance avail­able so as not to pre­vent poor­er patients from resid­ing in the facil­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Dis­cov­er the Retire­ment Home for Elder­ly Musi­cians Cre­at­ed by Giuseppe Ver­di: Cre­at­ed in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

The Health Ben­e­fits of Drum­ming: Less Stress, Low­er Blood Pres­sure, Pain Relief, and Altered States of Con­scious­ness

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.