The Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio will host its annual Yanaguana Indian Arts Festival on Saturday, November 9, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The festival, which has been held each year since the museum opened, derives its name from the Payaya people who were indigenous to the San Antonio area and used the word Yanaguana to refer to what is now known as the San Antonio River. The free, family-friendly event celebrates the cultural traditions and artistic practices of Native American communities. The day will feature art, music, dance, storytelling, and more.
In a press release, Liz Jackson, President and CEO of the Briscoe, said, “Native Americans have played a profound role in shaping the history, culture, and spirit of the American West. Their deep connection to the land, their traditions, and their art have left an indelible mark on the region’s story. At the Briscoe, we honor these contributions by celebrating and preserving that heritage through exhibitions and events. It’s essential that we recognize and honor Native American communities today, not just for their historical significance, but for their ongoing influence on the culture and identity of the West.”
United San Antonio Pow Wow
Festival attendees will have the opportunity to learn about pow wow dance styles from United San Antonio Pow Wow and Enemy Horse Drumming; hear music by Tim Blueflint Ramel, a flutist and flute and jewelry maker; listen to stories from Amy Bluemel; see demonstrations of ledger art, kachina carving, and pottery techniques; among other things.
Learn more about the event and register or sign up to volunteer via the Briscoe’s website.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
I recently wet myself at work. I was actually in the bathroom at the time and it was right at the end of lunch. I was in a state such that I was able to go a nearby store and buy fresh clothes, but by the time I cleaned up, changed, and got back to work, I was over an hour past the end of my lunch and I had missed a standing meeting.
I had let my manager know when it first started that I had had an emergency and would be a while getting back. When I returned to my desk, my manager took me aside and pushed me quite hard about what happened. I tried to evade the question, said it was a health issue and private, but she kept asking what was so important that it stopped me from going to a meeting and was clearly angry. I was so embarrassed and upset I said the first thing I could think of to make her stop. I told her I had had a miscarriage. That did indeed end the conversation; she said okay and left the room.
A note — I am aware that I sometimes tell lies when I feel out of control. I have addressed the issue with a therapist and haven’t really lied like this in about a decade. I have never been dishonest at work before. I am really angry and upset with myself first for lying, but also for what a horrible thing it was to lie about. I know I am in the wrong and what I said was unacceptable. I am taking this as an indicator I’m in a bad place so I intend to go back into therapy to address some major stressors in my life and try and prevent something like this ever happen again.
The difficulty is that a friend on my team (same manager) announced today she was pregnant. That colleague told me the manager had asked her to delay the announcement for my sake (I actually already knew so my friend came to apologize to me for sharing unthinkingly and make sure I was okay). I’m concerned my manager will tell more people something similar, since she is a known gossip and little stays private. So my lie may become common knowledge, and I’m worried about the harm it might do to other people who had actually miscarried. The manager is also treating me differently, being very careful with me and speaking to me primarily through email. I’m worried about repercussions if she thinks I’m trying to get pregnant, I’m worried I’ve upset her (I don’t know her story), and I’m scared my working relationship with my manager in jeopardy.
I don’t think telling my manager I didn’t really have a miscarriage will improve anything, but my instincts on this are obviously poor. I know I’ve made an enormous and hurtful mess. Is there any way for me to extricate myself from this situation that doesn’t make everything worse?
Your manager made this mess, not you.
You told her that you’d had a private health emergency and she kept pushing to know what it was. That was none of her business. The only correct response to “I’m so sorry I was late getting back, I had a health issue that I’d rather keep private” is “I’m so sorry to hear that, is there anything you need?” and perhaps “Do you need to go home for the day?”
There was no health issue that would be her business or that she needed to know the details of. You’d provided all the info that was relevant to her and that should have been the end of it. But instead she pushed in a way that threatened your privacy, and you panicked and landed on something that seemed likely to shut her up. It’s understandable, and you’re beating yourself up more than is warranted.
Nor do I think you did any harm to people who have actually miscarried. Many, many people have miscarried; you’re not stealing anything from them by having landed on that when grasping for an answer that would make your manager stop prying.
And your manager is the one who has clean-up to do here, not you. She told your coworker without your permission that you’d miscarried — that’s a huge violation of your privacy, regardless of what actually happened and even if she divulged it in a well-meaning way. You could go back to your manager now and say, “I’m very private about this sort of thing and didn’t want to share it with anyone at work, so please do not repeat it to anyone.” If you’re comfortable being more specific, you could say, “Jane told me that you’d shared it with her, and while I understand what your thinking was, I want to stress that I do not want this shared with anyone else.”
Do you have competent HR? Because it might also be worth a visit to them to say that your manager pressured you to share private health info and then repeated it to someone else and you’ve seen her gossip about others in the past, and ask that she be trained in handling employees’ private medical info. You can do this even though you didn’t actually miscarry; your manager was in the wrong regardless.
Hopefully the reason your manager is treating you so carefully right now is because she knows she messed up. If so, good — maybe it’ll be a lesson for her not to push the next time someone says “private health issue” and maybe that will help out others who work for her in the future.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
Pity your beleaguered colleagues in HR this week, because Halloween in offices can be frightening in all the wrong ways.
You’d think workplace Halloween celebrations would be enjoyable: It’s a holiday centered around costumes and candy, after all. And many offices do manage to make Halloween a good time. Sometimes, though, things go awry.
At Slate today, I wrote about what happens when Halloween at work doesn’t go quite as intended. You can read it here.
Georgia father Colin Gray is facing 29 charges for his role in the mass shooting carried out by his son, which follows Michigan’s dual conviction of parents James and Jennifer Crumbley earlier this year. The Onion examines the pros and cons of prosecuting the parents of school shooters.
PRO: Holds parents accountable for raising children in a country that fetishizes guns
CON: Probably pretty heavily armed
PRO: Adults make for much more productive prison labor than minors
CON: Parents already punished enough by seeing police lock up their precious weapons
PRO: Keeps families together
CON: Not fair to mature, independent school shooters who planned and executed massacre all by themselves
PRO: Fun opportunity for matching suits
CON: Unlike buying a gun, a trial’s gonna be a whole thing
PRO: Could act as a deterrent for school shooters who have a great home life and really love their parents
CON: No idea what to get your 12-year-old for Christmas now
The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry (permalink)
I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.
Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:
But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.
Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."
As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.
DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that this cancerous proliferation was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.
I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.
I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:
The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?
No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.
Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.
No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.
Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?
Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.
That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.
The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.
But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.
You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.
This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:
Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:
When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.
This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":
While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.
This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).
In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:
Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:
This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
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In brief: Today’s post looks back at October, and explains why the weather has felt so incredibly hot in Houston this month. We also look ahead to the return of rain chances this week after a very long dry spell. And finally, we preview the arrival of substantially cooler weather during the latter half of next week.
Putting October’s record heat into context
You may have noticed that this October has felt hotter than normal, and you’re not wrong. A majority of days so far, 18, have reached a high temperature of 90 degrees or above. We have set daily highs on five days so far this month, including two extremely warm days (99 and 98 degrees) in the middle of the month before a front rolled through.
Daily high and low temperatures for October 2024. (National Weather Service)
One way to assess the impact of heat is to look at three-day stretches. That is, if we take a three-day period in October, how does it rank among hottest three-day periods in October history? Well, in this case, four of the ten hottest three-day periods in October occurred during this month. The three days in the middle of the month produced absolutely unprecedented heat for this time of year.
Three-day runs of high temperatures in October. (NOAA)
So what caused this heat? One cannot escape the background signal of climate change when we’re setting daily high temperatures like this. But if we dig a little deeper there is more at play here. Let’s start with daily high temperatures: the average so far this month is 90.2 degrees, which is on pace to smash the previous record of 86.5 degrees set in 2016. So our days, at least during the 135 years of records we can refer to, have never been hotter. However, our average low temperature this month has been 62.5 degrees. This ranks 42nd all time. That is very far from abnormal. (Note these numbers are not final, but will not change too much before the end of the month.)
What we can derive from this data is that Houston, generally, has had a drier flow this month with a lot of easterly breezes. This has kept dewpoints down bit. Therefore we have had hot and sunny days, with cooler clear nights. Based on average temperature, this month will still end up among the five warmest Octobers of all time—the daytime highs have been that extreme—but comparatively speaking our nights have been relatively mild.
Monday
I write all of that to say the humidity is coming back this week, and you’re going to notice the southerly flow. Winds today will be from the southeast, with gusts up to 20 mph. We’ll see mostly sunny skies, with highs in the upper 80s. Low temperatures tonight will only fall into the lower 70s, so it will be very muggy outside.
Tuesday
Conditions will be similar to Monday, in terms of warmth and mostly sunny skies. The only difference is that our southeasterly winds will increase, and we may see some gusts up to 30 mph during the afternoon hours. So it’s really going to be blowing and going. Lows on Tuesday night may only fall into the mid-70s.
Wednesday
Expect partly to mostly sunny skies on Wednesday, with highs in the mid- to upper-80s. Some scattered rain chances return, especially for the coast, during the afternoon hours. Overall accumulations look fairly slight. Lows on Wednesday night will drop into the low 70s.
Halloween
It has not rained in 70 bajillion years in Houston, and of course the first day with really health rain chances comes on an outdoor holiday. Look, I’m not complaining about the rain, since we desperately need it. But on Halloween? Anyway, the good news is that while most of the region should see some light showers on Thursday, they’re likely to fading by around sunset, when trick-or-treating begins. The daytime showers will be driven by a very weak front that should help knock high temperatures into the lower 80s. Nighttime lows remain very warm.
NOAA rain accumulation forecast for now through Sunday. (Weather Bell)
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Highs over this period will range from about 80 to 85 degrees for the metro area, with a mix of sunshine and clouds. Each say will see a modest chance of rain, perhaps on the order of 30 to 40 percent. Nights remain warm and muggy. It’s worth noting that although the region will see some welcome rain chances this week, overall accumulations will likely be 1 inch or less for most locations. That is nice, but unlikely to bust our drought.
Next week
The first part of next week should see continued warm and muggy weather, with some modest rain chances. However, there is a very strong signal that by Wednesday or Thursday we’re going to see a fairly robust cold front that should knock our temperatures back to seasonal levels, with lows in the 50s or so. This is far enough out to retain a bit of skepticism, but it does seem pretty clear that we are going to see a significant pattern change some time next week.
LOS ANGELES—Calling the findings of its comprehensive survey of American workplace practices “total bullshit,” the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment issued a report Monday concluding that you should be able to retire after, like, six years of working full time. “We evaluated the data around current U.S. employment rates, and our research shows that it’s basically crazy that we have to waste our whole damn lives working before we can retire,” said report co-author Sarah Middleton, who explained that six years is actually a really long time and that it sounds like more than enough labor for one person. “Our research found that people have to work and stuff or else nothing would get done, but anything more than half a decade or so seems cruel and excessive. That has to be hundreds of hours of work, right? And after consulting with experts across the field, we determined that six years was a totally reasonable amount of time to pay your dues before you get to kick back and chill. After that long, people are so broken down they barely contribute much anyway, so this seems like a good compromise. Maybe if you’re part-time you work 10 years or something. I mean, when are people supposed to do things that they like? We heard that’s how they do it in Europe already anyway.” Middleton confirmed that the findings were based on a full-time workweek of five-hour days, four days per week.
WASHINGTON—In an update that will require those sitting for the exam to demonstrate the full range of skills necessary to take part in American civic life, government officials announced Monday that a newly revised citizenship test asks immigrants to name every U.S. state where they’re not welcome. “We want to ensure our newest citizens know what they’re getting into, so going forward, they’ll need to display a deep understanding of which parts of the country it’s really not safe for them to live in or maybe even visit,” said Ur Jaddou, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, who explained that after pointing on a map to the places where they’ll be met with cold shoulders, veiled threats, or open hostility, test takers will also be expected to detail the gross misconceptions held about people of their ethnic origin. “These immigrants love America, but before they participate in our democracy, it’s important they familiarize themselves with all the racial slurs they are likely to hear. What’s truly remarkable is that by the time they attend their naturalization ceremony, they’ll know more about America’s xenophobia than most natural-born citizens!” Jaddou confirmed that the test will also quiz immigrants on the process through which a bill intended to strip them of their newfound citizenship becomes a law.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will step down from the Liberal Party leadership – as soon as a newer, worthier Trudeau comes forward to take his place. Trudeau, who has held the party leadership since 2013, made the announcement as increased calls for his resignation came from both within his own […]
Beloved Readers, When we started The Beaverton we were just a bunch of smartasses trying to make each other laugh during our weekly meeting on the second floor of a disgusting pub behind Honest Ed’s (they gave us 10% off chicken wings). We never dreamed our jokes would one day be read by millions of […]
“After the Washington Post announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate in this year’s election or in the future, its billionaire owner remains silent as the newspaper’s staff are in turmoil.” – CNN
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The Starfleet Gazette will not be endorsing a candidate in the upcoming election for president of the United Federation of Planets. This decision was not made lightly, but neither of the two candidates—decorated Starship Voyager Captain Kathryn Janeway or The Borg—has shown us a real path to endorsement, and we must stay true to our priorities: journalistic integrity and not pissing off The Borg.
Sure, The Borg have been a bit of a problem. Their tendency toward mass assimilation and the stripping of individuality and personal freedom doesn’t exactly jibe with our idea of what makes a great leader. But let’s be honest. Kathryn Janeway hasn’t been perfect.
Our editorial board wishes deeply that Janeway had shown us more qualifications to recommend her for our support. But we can’t forget her failures of leadership. Do we really have to remind you what a shitshow the Delta Quadrant was? Everyone knows that Kathryn Janeway was the Delta Quadrant czar, but it took her, what, seven years to get the Voyager crew home? We’ve also gotten reports that she forced her crew to search a nebula merely because she couldn’t have her morning Raktajino.
Also, what’s up with Janeway’s hair? Is it short or long? Her hair has been showed both short and long in a way that defies the laws of gravity. It shows a tragic lack of transparency on Janeway’s part to show us the real her. Janeway may say that she intends to protect the United Federation of Planets from all enemies, but can we trust anything she says when we can’t even tell how much hair is pinned up in that bun?
Look, we know we have received immense criticism for handling this election in an unbiased fashion. However, as an ethical-signaling newspaper that doesn’t want to rub our new oppressors the wrong way, we stand by our choice. After all, democracy dies in darkness, but resistance is futile.
Our friends at 270 Reasons are gathering a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, artists, and citizens of all kinds to weigh in about their plans to vote this November. These opinion essays run the gamut from advocacy for basic human rights to acutely personal mini-manifestoes. Read the rest over at 270 Reasons.
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Because Kamala Harris Is an Ally to the Queer Community
Have you felt the chill?
Since the election of Trump and his Republican stacking of the Supreme Court, we’re facing a rollback of rights, civility, and the idea of joyful self-determination for all.
Trans, gender-nonconforming folks, drag queens, and our whole LGBTQIA+ community are under attack. But we’re not the only ones…
Kamala Harris gets it.
“Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” – Senator Harris, September 5, 2018
“To the LGBTQI+ youth who are hurting and are afraid right now: President Joe Biden and I see you, we stand with you, and you are not alone.” – Vice President Harris, February 23, 2024
Harris sees the interconnectedness of all these fights.
“I asked my team, ‘Let’s do a Venn diagram. From which states are we seeing attacks on LGBTQ rights, attacks on voting rights, and attacks on reproductive freedom?’ And you would not be shocked to know there was a significant overlap. Okay? But what that also presents is, ah, look at this opportunity to think about strengthening the coalition: bringing folks together who have been fighting for voting rights, bringing together folks who have been fighting for reproductive health rights, bringing together folks… who are fighting for LGBTQ+ rights… And building our coalition, remembering the vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.” – Vice President Harris, October 12, 2023
Harris is going to be an amazing president of the USA, and I can’t wait to vote for her (and her choice for vice president, former high school GSA advisor and football coach, Tim Walz)!
I hope you’ll join me.
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Lee Wind is the author of books (like the recent The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie) that aim to empower kids and teens to be their authentic selves and change the world.
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Read more essays (with new ones added every day) at 270reasons.com.
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The arguments here represent the opinion of the authors and not necessarily those of the McSweeney’s Literary Arts Fund.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston has announced a new arts initiative as part of its revitalization and expansion of its clinical facilities, including the development of a multisensory healing environment.
In a press release, Peter WT Pisters, M.D., President of MD Anderson, explained, “As we expand our reach, we do so with the understanding that art can have a profound impact on the healing process. Our new and revitalized spaces will foster an environment that is inspirational and conducive to many different forms of physical and emotional healing.”
Currently, MD Anderson integrates the arts through its Art Program and Art Committee, which selects artworks from the existing collection and determines placement throughout lobbies, exam rooms, corridors, and reception areas. In support of this new initiative, the organization has appointed Jennifer Finkel, PhD, as Associate Vice President for Art Experience. In this role, she will develop a strategic vision and work with senior leaders, patients, employees, and community volunteers to curate and maintain a contemporary art collection and commissioned installations. Selected works of art will be pieces that foster inspiration and hope.
Jennifer Finkel
Ms. Finkel remarked, “As an art historian and curator, I am constantly reminded of the profound impact that artwork can have on individuals. However, within the hospital setting, the experience of viewing art takes on a distinct emotional resonance. Research has shown that art can improve mood, reduce stress, and enhance the overall experience of a hospital visit, making it an invaluable resource for fostering healing and comfort.”
A 2023 report released by the Texas Cultural Trust noted the value of the arts in relation to health and well-being. Among other findings, the report showed that prescribed playlists can improve blood flow in a stroke patient’s brain, music therapy can decrease post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and attending one cultural event per month can reduce the risk of developing depression.
Ms. Finkel currently serves as the Acquavella Curator of Art Collections at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In this position, she oversees the development and display of the university’s collection. From 2005 to 2019, she was the curator of the art program at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where she managed art acquisitions and more than 30 site-specific commissions. She will step into her role at MD Anderson on Monday, January 6, 2025.
The Antenna Show drew me in with its odd title, satellite dish-covered flyer, and its promise of being about “frequencies, feelers, and feelings.” Perfectly strange and mystical, The Antenna Show explores the capacity of art objects to receive and transmit messages, emotions, and spiritual energy. The exhibition features a small selection of works by artists Emily Cheng, larí garcía, Iva Kinnaird, Umico Niwa, and Sarah Pettitt, and is curated by Laura Burton, founder of LAURA.
Upon entering the gallery, I was greeted by a cockroach the size of my hand. This wooden creature is lovingly hand-carved and painted, with fabulous feather antennas. Iva Kinnaird’s Jumping Jack Cockroach even performs six-legged jumping jacks when a string is pulled. Two smaller roach friends occupy the gallery as well, although these are made from actual insect carcasses that Kinnaird collected, preserved, and transformed into jewel-like paintings with electric, psychedelic colors. Whimsical as they are, the three cockroaches seem rather helpless, hanging with their backs against the wall, bellies exposed, performing for the viewer. I empathize with their condition – vulnerable and out-of-place, yet defiant and joyful. The tender, human qualities Kinnaird instills within her critters dismantle any fear or repulsion I might otherwise associate with a cockroach. It’s a powerful message in our divided nation, where we are so quick to dismiss one other.
Aside from insectoid antennas, there are other “feelers” in this exhibition too. Sarah Pettitt’s Untitled contains a feather, wrapped in wire, that juts out from an Yves Klein blue pigmented canvas. In contrast to the lightness and beauty of the feather, the connecting wire painfully stabs through the canvas, running under the surface like a dried-up river bed, scabbed, scarred, brutal, buried. This painful moment reminds me of the U2 song Heartland, and the lines “Freeway like a river cuts through this land / Into the side of love.” Mirrored in Pettitt’s work is the idea that love, pain, and beauty are intrinsically connected.
larí garcía’s untitled periphery functions as a mystical web or a net used to trap ghosts and other unseen spirits. There is a meaningful precariousness and impermanence with aspects of its fragmented construction and installation, where various materials, including a goat’s horn, are resting or leaning on each other. The work feels deliberately unstable and temporary, metaphorical of grief and loss. It’s as if the work could be folded up and stored away for future use.
Emily Cheng’s small painting, Maine, evokes the sacred geometry of Hilma af Klint and the intimate scale and psychic symbolism of Forrest Bess. The painting has a landscape quality that looks out, but I also feel like I am looking down at a boat, or into the refracted light of a divine spirit. There is a flatness and a depth that is startling and pleasantly disorienting. The work is elegant, with sacred designs and primary colors resembling a mandala. The painting isn’t exactly musical or lyrical as much as it hums like a singing bowl, meditative, constantly searching, and ever-present. Infused with mystical qualities through line, shape, and color, the painting becomes a conduit of spiritual energy. I feel elated by the formal qualities of Cheng’s painting as much as I feel grounded by its psychic frequencies.
There is a place in my heart for art objects I almost miss seeing. Where so often artists produce works that demand attention, there is something magical about elusive works that hide in plain sight. In The Antenna Show, Umico Niwa presents the Eulogy Series, a collection of carbonized organic materials that dwell quietly throughout the gallery, as if blown in by the wind. Their tiny, charred remains are almost imperceptible at first. Once detected, they are vital in transforming the space, drawing attention to their peculiar transformation and beauty, as well as the often overlooked areas of the gallery they inhabit. In this way, Niwa turns the viewer into a kind of antenna, searching for other surprises within the space, including another work, Sun Seeker, from the artist’s Daphne Adorned Series. This nymph-like creature, part pewter and part plant or flower, defies categorization and graces a small window, well above eye level.
The Antenna Show is intimate and restrained, featuring only a handful of small objects with plenty of space for each to breathe. The works by Emily Cheng, larí garcía, Iva Kinnaird, Umico Niwa, and Sarah Pettitt are modest and potent, accessible yet highly conceptual. The Antenna Show combines material specificity, emotional acuity, and curatorial precision with a refreshing glimmer of strangeness.
The Antenna Show is on view at LAURA through November 9.
TORONTO – When local man Peter Vidal decided to have “just one bag” of the Halloween chips he purchased for trick-or-treaters, he was shocked to discover that it contained only air. “I was expecting the usual 4 or 5 chips, but there was nothing,” recounts Vidal, who paid the unchanged price of $12.75 for the […]
Our friends at 270 Reasons are gathering a polyphonic orchestra of brilliant writers, teachers, doctors, filmmakers, artists, and citizens of all kinds to weigh in about their plans to vote this November. These opinion essays run the gamut from advocacy for basic human rights to acutely personal mini-manifestoes. Read the rest over at 270 Reasons.
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Because She Won’t Eliminate the Department of Education
I’m the kind of woman JD Vance finds doubly disturbing: a childless cat lady who is also a public school teacher. Does he know that, regardless of whether they have their own children or not, teachers refer to their students as “my kids”? After all, we care for them six hours a day, 180 days a year. And even after they leave our classroom, our students continue to be “our kids.”
So whenever I vote, I’m always thinking about “my kids,” and how policies will impact them and their families. I support Kamala Harris because she believes that education is a human right; that kids should be physically and emotionally safe at school; and that all children deserve opportunities to succeed. The Department of Education’s mission is “to promote student achievement… by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” Not only will Kamala protect that mission, but she’ll also support it by appointing a secretary of education who has experience working in education and believes in equity for all children. (Simply put: not Betsy DeVos.)
By selecting Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala has shown she values public education. A compassionate teacher-turned-governor, Tim signed universal school lunches for all Minnesota students into law. He’s pro-union. And he taught high school which, next to teaching middle school, has got to be one of the toughest jobs around. Tim’s the kind of person I’d want to have as my school principal. I’d be thrilled to have him as the next vice president.
I will proudly vote for Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States of America. Not just for “my kids,” but for all our kids.
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Jen de Oliveira is a former elementary school teacher who now creates comics for kids.
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Read more essays (with new ones added every day) at 270reasons.com.
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The arguments here represent the opinion of the authors and not necessarily those of the McSweeney’s Literary Arts Fund.
Michael Myers breaks through your front door. He informs you that your son volunteered you to bring a “homemade sweet treat” to the kindergarten holiday parade, which is in two hours.
Psycho
You hit it off with a cute guy and agree to move in with him. He neglects to tell you he lives with his Mother.
Rosemary’s Baby
You’re pregnant with the devil’s baby. Your husband won’t stop saying, “We’re pregnant with the devil’s baby.”
Us
You meet your exact double—almost. She’s slightly taller and prettier than you. She just got engaged to a more handsome version of your boyfriend. The rock on her finger is enormous.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Leatherface careens toward you with his rusty chainsaw. He gives you lopsided microbangs.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Against your will, you fall asleep. Freddy Krueger makes you dream about the time you dinged the car mirror and your dad yelled at you.
Poltergeist
Your home is haunted by restless spirits. They flick lights on and off, running up the electric bill. Your dad yells at you.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
The Gill-man chooses you as his bride. He says you have to wear a bathing suit every single day. Your toes prune with terror.
The Shining
You’re working on a manuscript in a haunted resort. Every fifteen minutes, a ghost shows up and reads over your shoulder. “Wow,” they smirk, “You almost finished a paragraph today.”
Scream
Your landline rings. A robotic voice asks if you’re willing to take a brief survey about your insurance coverage. You say it’s not a good time. They promise to call back.
The Amityville Horror
The walls are bleeding. Again. You get out the “Gray Mist” gloss paint and the roller. Again. You’ll never finish this remodel.
The Invisible Man
You’re on Tinder. A guy without a profile pic keeps DM-ing you. You switch to Hinge. He’s there too.
The Wolfman
You’ve spent hundreds of dollars on electrolysis. It keeps growing back.
The Wicker Man
You’re staying in an isolated village. Its only pub is hosting a karaoke night.
The Omen
Your son is… special. He’s three years old. Last year, he was three years old. Next year, he’ll turn three years old.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
You drink an entire pitcher of margaritas at the office happy hour and black out. You become someone else. The next day, your coworkers inform you of your heinous deeds (making out with Stu from accounting).
Hellraiser
Pinhead arrives at your housewarming party. He’s holding a mysterious box in his hands. “Let’s play,” he intones. It’s Catan.
Saw
Jigsaw chains you by your ankle in a filthy bathroom. His puppet-minion rides in with a high school algebra workbook. “You have three hours,” says a sinister voice.
The Substance
You get an expensive injection to look younger. Nothing happens. You continue getting injections every three months. “Huh,” says your doctor. “I guess your skin is just like that.”
Friday the 13th: Part II
You’re having sex with your high school girlfriend. A machete chops through the door. Oh no—it’s Jason! He stops, looks at you, and shakes his head. “You seem really bad at this,” he rasps.
Night of the Living Dead
Slavering, brainless hordes shamble through the street intent on destroying your way of life. They’re all going to the polls.
Hostel III
You’re having a lovely European vacation. Someone presses a chloroform rag over your nose, and you awake tied to a chair. A man emerges from the shadows. It’s Eli Roth. “Prepare to suffer,” he chortles. He makes you watch Hostel I and II.
OTTAWA – Canada’s Liberal government has lowered immigration targets in the hopes Justin Trudeau sees less competition in the private sector job market when he starts sending around resumes sometime in the next few months. The Federal government has committed to scaling back the rate of arrival of New Canadians by 120,000 a year beginning […]
TORONTO — Account manager Andrea Gill was quietly dispatched on Tuesday after spending the weekend festooning her workplace with Christmas decorations. “She’d been starting earlier every year,” said HR representative Suzanne Lee. “But getting it going when everyone’s gearing up for Halloween was the last straw. For the mental health of the workplace, she had […]
FAIRFAX, VA—Shaking his head as he rushed past yet another indecisive group laughing together at an obvious dead end, area man Justin Carter reflected Friday on how going with friends would have just slowed him down on his way through a Halloween-themed corn maze. “How do they expect to make it out of this thing in time for the haunted hayride if they’re just giggling and enjoying one another’s company?” Carter said as he quickly and methodically navigated each turn of the agricultural labyrinth. “I’m so glad I don’t have seven or eight iron balls chained to my ankle preventing me from actually completing this maze in a respectable time. Thank God my friends didn’t text me this year, or I’d be no better than those sorry losers still stumbling around near the first scarecrow checkpoint.” At press time, reports confirmed the sun had set and Carter was covered in mud and calling out for help.
TRAVERSE CITY, MI—In an effort to reach out to swing voters crucial to his reelection bid, former President Donald Trump reportedly attempted to soften his image Friday by distributing airbrushed JCPenney beauty shots of himself at a campaign rally. “Here you go, these are nice glossies of the president we took at the JCPenney Portrait Studio—he looks great, huh?” said senior advisor Corey Lewandowski, who spent the event passing out 8-by-10 and wallet-sized photos that were taken during a 30-minute session last week and that feature the Republican candidate in soft lighting with a coquettish expression on his face. “It was the photographer’s idea to have one with him in jeans and a matching denim jacket. Kind of silly, but we think it shows off a gentler side of him that most people don’t ever see. We also have this great one where he’s holding a hand to his chin in a pensive pose and has a sweater tied around his shoulders. Really sharp, right? And it didn’t break the bank, either.” At press time, reports confirmed the campaign had further targeted suburban moms with a holiday photo of Trump’s senior staff in matching striped shirts in front of a roaring fire.
