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Is the coronavirus pandemic Mother Nature's revenge?
On the 50th Earth Day, it's long past time to recognize that this overcrowded planet has run out of room to cut us any slack. By Alan Weisman Originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine, April …
Manila, Philippines. Photo by Alan Weisman.
On the 50th Earth Day, it's long past time to recognize that this overcrowded planet has run out of room to cut us any slack.
By Alan Weisman
Originally published in the Boston Globe Magazine, April 22, 2020
In China, I always admire how when it comes to food, nothing goes to waste. The Chinese eat practically everything: I've been served turtle knuckles, gelatin cubes made from duck's blood, tuna eyeballs, sea horses, bowls of chicken feet, whole songbirds, and, yes, their nests. I once dined in a Chengdu Buddhist temple with biologists who counted more than 30 plant species on our plates.
Since I don't eat mammals, I've avoided horseshoe bats or the endangered, anteater-like scaly pangolins — rare Chinese delicacies that, as we've learned, harbor a virus they can tolerate, but humans can't. But before blaming China for igniting a global pandemic, we should understand why its people are such extreme epicureans: their long, sad history of famines. The last one, just 60 years ago, killed an estimated 40 million people.
Wouldn't you eat everything you could find, too? Yet the reasons why you don't have to — so far, anyway — make us all responsible for this plague's breathtaking explosion, and explain why we can expect more. COVID-19 is a warning to brace ourselves for corrections that nature always makes when a species outstrips its environment.
It's painful, though, when your own species is the one being corrected.
Calling this coronavirus Mother Nature's revenge is evocative, but ecology — the science of how everything connects — doesn't require a sentient, angry Gaia to smite us. Nature isn't some peaceable kingdom from which we've strayed. It's a violent place where big things devour smaller ones, which feed on even smaller ones. Nature's balance is a bloody pyramid scheme that, since everything's recycled, actually works, with multitudinous, prolific little critters below constantly being sacrificed to sustain the fewer but larger, more powerful predators above.
Like every other species, we Homo sapiens once mainly spent our time searching for food—searching so far that by the end of the last ice age, we'd reached nearly everywhere but New Zealand. By then, we'd started to notice that seeds would germinate where we spilled them, so we didn't have to roam as much. Likewise, instead of immediately killing animals, we could capture some to eat later — and, like those crops, we could breed even more.
Since a few farmers can raise food for many, the population grew. But nature had limits: like other species, until fairly recently people died about as fast as they were born. Most children didn't survive long enough to reproduce, and human life expectancy averaged around 40 years. A few good harvest years might let the settlements that sprouted near fields and water sources boom, until drought or disease regularly knocked their numbers back.
Then, in 1796, a British surgeon discovered a vaccine for one of the most virulent scourges, smallpox. The 1800s brought pasteurization of milk, disinfectants, and even more vaccines and treatments for rabies, anthrax, diphtheria, and tetanus. As life spans lengthened and infant mortality plunged, the nearly flat-line graph of human population rose past 1 billion. After German scientists in 1913 discovered how to suck nitrogen from the air and slather it on the ground, we shot up like a rocket.
No other invention has likely ever impacted the world so much. Previously, that essential nutrient was limited to what a few nitrogen-fixers like beans and legumes added to soils, and to how much manure we could spread. With artificial nitrogen fertilizer, we now grow far more plants than nature ever could; without it, nearly half of us wouldn't be here. Despite two world wars and the murderous Spanish flu, by mid-century all that extra food pushed us past 3 billion. In the 1960s, after Green Revolution agronomists coaxed wheat, corn, and rice to produce far more grains per stalk, we skyrocketed again.
In nature, no large animal's population can quadruple in just one century, but we did it by forcing our food supply with chemistry. Unfortunately, the sprays to protect lab-bred crops also slay pollinators and natural pest-controllers. Artificial nitrogen fertilizer sterilizes soil; its runoff fouls downstream waters, and its production emits vast amounts of greenhouse gases. When it degrades, even more wafts skyward. The combined exhaust from our engines, agriculture, industries, appliances, furnaces, and air conditioners has so overloaded our atmosphere that it's turned on us — turning our seas to carbonic acid, torching our trees, unleashing ticks and mosquitoes, perverting the weather, and sabotaging our future.
Humankind's presence on Earth is now so lopsided that growing and grazing our food supply requires nearly half the world's ice-free land, literally pushing other species off the planet. As we invade their habitats, and poach remaining wildlife for market, their resident viruses and bacteria jump to the handiest species left: us. That's how nearly 75 percent of new infectious diseases this century originated. As temperatures rise, even more will spawn.
With 7.8 billion of us bound tightly by trade and travel, even comparatively weaker contagions like COVID-19 — much less lethal than, say, Ebola — can now trash our economy, crash our lives, and expose how shaky civilization's scaffolding really is, including our now-flimsy food chain: The few genetically-enhanced monocultures we depend on — try counting the species on your plate — are as susceptible to plagues as we are.
Yet even as we shudder to realize how near collapse looms, we marvel at strangely placid streets, at birdsong, and at glimpses of unexpected animals. Amid our yearning to throng those streets again, COVID-19 reminds us of the natural balance we miss, even to the point of wondering if collapse might not be so terrible.
Following the Spanish flu, this country went on a binge called the Roaring Twenties. But that 1918 pandemic was conflated with a world war; an armistice celebration was inevitable. This one is coupled with a far greater existential threat, from which we're momentarily distracted. When this coronavirus finally burns out, there'll still be a deepening climate crisis that will take much longer than any pandemic to abate. Will our deadly brush with COVID-19 help us finally see that nature's run out of room to cut us any slack?
To get through this century alive, we must stop burning things for energy, and give animals the space they need — as Noah understood, we can't save ourselves without them. (Underscoring United Nations warnings that we only have until 2030 to keep global warming from waxing out of control, a recent paper in the journal Naturefinds that by then — just 10 years from now — untold thousands of our companion species may be irretrievably beyond their temperature tolerance.)
How best to clear space? Start by educating every girl alive. Rich country or poor, regardless of religion, females who get past high school average fewer than two children apiece, and are indispensable to the social equity needed to engage with problems facing us all. And as we salvage our wrecked economies, let's discard the notion that growth equals health. Endless economic growth clearly isn't possible on a planet that doesn't grow — look where it's gotten us.
Real health means fewer of us crowding and infecting each other, clear skies and water, ample room to breathe, and thriving wildlife: not for sale, but in its element, where it's thrilling to see, and where it can keep its microbes and viruses to itself.
Alan Weisman is the author of The World Without Us and Countdown. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.
Themes: Food, Health, Economy, Environment
Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
Other Tags: Countdown, population, The World Without Us, Covid-19, Earth Day, Alan Weisman
Gaza journal: Catastrophe and resilience
Sandy Tolan recently returned from Gaza, where he was reporting on water in the context of the ongoing war there. He found people living under siege but determined not to give up hope. Sandy posted …
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Back to the Garden
Alan Weisman reconsiders the Genesis story in the light of what we now know came after it. His essay originally appeared in the 2018 book "Eden Turned on Its Side" by photographer Meridel Rubenstein.
Triptych: Ehmad and His Boat in the Central Marshes. Photo by Meridel Rubenstein, from Eden Turned on Its Side.
This essay originally appeared in Eden Turned on Its Side, by photographer Meridel Rubenstein, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Art Museum/University of New Mexico Press, 2018.
We are stardust,
billion-year-old carbon.
We are golden,
caught in the devil's bargain.
And we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden.
—Joni Mitchell, Woodstock, 1969
Everyone knows which garden she meant. Something in us yearns to go back there. But could we, somehow? And to what, exactly, would we be returning?
To anyone whose cultural roots are entwined with a certain mystical history emanating from the Middle East, the Garden of Eden evokes either a carefree time before sin appeared, or a pristine, untainted planet—or possibly both, if you believe that the twenty-first century's eco-perils stem from our sins against nature. But whichever it may be, it hearkens to a time before any of us was alive—yet one for which we oddly feel a visceral nostalgia.
That gut longing is even stranger, given that our notion of Eden comes not from experience, but from a book—in fact, from one of its most problematic passages. The Judeo-Christian Bible begins, logically enough, with God creating the world. Within six days, there are stars overhead, sun by day, moonlight by night, seas and sea creatures, land, plants, land animals, and finally people, both male and female. It's a world we'd basically recognize, other than that it is entirely vegetarian: fruit, seeds, and green herbs shall be for meat, God tells humans and beasts alike.
All of that is described in Chapter 1—where, incidentally, there's no mention of any garden: the entire Earth is bountifully blessed. But in Chapter 2, after the seventh day when God rests, logic begins to unravel.
Suddenly, the whole story starts over from scratch. This time, there's no workweek plus a Sabbath; instead, God conjures up Heaven and Earth in a single day. And the sequence changes: again, he invents plants early on, but he sets them aside in some celestial nursery because, unlike before, he hasn't created water yet. Next, he does so—then, just as the soil begins to moisten, he selects some dust to mold into a human being. A male.
Only after breathing life up man's nostrils does God add the foliage—but this time, it's to a garden. However gorgeous and fertile it might be, Eden isn't all bliss and leisure. Here, God intends for man to "dress," "keep," and "till the ground." He sets guidelines about what can or can't be harvested, designates a network of rivers for irrigation, and finally, lest man be lonely, creates animals.
Adam gets to name these animals and to identify which are domestic and which are wildlife, yet they fail to assuage his solitude. So, borrowing one of his ribs, God clones him a more tempting companion. And you know the rest.
Much has been made by Biblical scholars of these two conflicting, coexisting creation tales. As their syntax and even their names for God differ (Elohim in Chapter 1; Yahweh in Chapter 2), it's widely assumed that they were written at different times by different authors, drawing on different versions of earlier Assyrian and Sumerian legends that were later conflated, often awkwardly, into a single testament by anointed redactors, who thrashed out what was canonical and what wasn't.
Small wonder religion breeds so much discord. To literalists who claim that the Bible is divinely inspired and thus entirely true, the second chapter simply details Chapter 1's sixth day when man appears, to underscore God's special relationship with us. (Thus, presumably, it's more fitting that humans should precede the flora and fauna over which they hold dominion.)
Babylonian Talmudists tried reconciling another notable discrepancy, over whether woman was born simultaneously with man or later ripped from his rib cage like a bloody afterthought, by declaring that both were true. Appropriating a Sumerian legend of a she-demon, they concluded that Chapter 1's female was Adam's rebellious first wife, Lilith, who disdained his authority and abandoned him. In Chapter 2, God tries to ensure that this doesn't happen again. The woman fashioned from Adam's own bone is merely his "help meet"—so subservient she doesn't even get a proper name until after she also proves too disobedient and seductive to control and gets them booted from the garden.
And us, too, so the tale goes—but that may well be why both creation myths are included in Genesis. Taken together, they reflect an evolutionary truth sensed by whoever compiled the Bible from collective memories inherited through their forebears' stories and perhaps even through their cells and genes. In one version, we had the whole Earth's bounty to pluck for our nourishment. (Archeology, littered with spear points, choppers, and blades, belies the vegetarianism, which probably seeped into the account much later, during the time of Isaiah: an ardent herbivore who condemned animal sacrifice and who prophesized a post-Messianic paradise where wolves would dwell among lambs and leopards lie peacefully with kids.)
But in version two, we are no longer hunter-gatherers. We're stewards of orchards, tillers of soil, and pastoralists of the cattle that Adam named. Thus was born agriculture. Yet by giving us a garden, was the Lord setting us up for a Fall?
To grow, conveniently close at hand, food that we once roamed hither and yon to scrounge might have seemed to our ancestors an astonishing improvement over what Chapter 1's God—or gods, or Mother Nature—had originally given us. But since a few farmers and herdsmen can feed many, the concentration of sustenance eventually led to concentrations of people. Soon our increasing numbers had to seek more fields and pastures, but they found that the greater world wasn't all an oasis like Eden. Before long, as Genesis recounts repeatedly, people were warring over the choicest lands, and especially over water. This has not abated.
What Genesis doesn't mention, of course, is that we were fighting long before we were human: Our chimpanzee cousins have never traded foraging in trees for working the soil, but they battle for territory anyhow, as our common primate ancestors also surely did. What sets us apart from them, however, is what else agriculture ignited.
Once farming and grazing were established, for the first time in our or any species' history, a significant portion of the population didn't have to spend all day finding food. Gradually people devised new things to do for a living: from artisanship to architecture to trade, from prostitution to priesthood. Soon many of us lived farther from crops and livestock and nearer to each other, in settlements, then villages, then cities. Whatever grief early urban dwellers might have sustained for some fabled, lost Edenic profusion gave way to the thrill of something entirely new: civilization.
A New Adam and Eve in the South Iraqi Marshes. Photo by Meridel Rubinstein from Eden Turned on Its Side.
Long before that happened, successive waves of Homo sapiens had begun dispersing from our African origins. By fifty thousand years ago, we had spread all the way to Australia—and, by about fourteen thousand years ago, to the Americas. As a result, civilization emerged independently in several places. Among the first to appear was likely the one in the fertile crescent that our prehistoric ancestors followed from Africa into Asia. As we continue to learn about it, it turns out that Eden may be more than just a metaphor.
Genesis locates the Garden of Eden quite precisely, near the confluence of four rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates—whose joint Mesopotamian valley is often called civilization's cradle—and the Gihon and Pison. The 1611 English-language King James Bible placed the Gihon across the Red Sea in Ethiopia, rather far from Mesopotamia. But several modern scholars believe that its translators confused Ethiopia's ancient name, Cush, with a similar Hebrew name for the land of the Kashshites, who lived in what is now Iran's Zagros Mountains. From there a substantial river, the Karun, flows southward, reaching a delta just above the Persian Gulf at a point almost directly opposite Saudi Arabia and Kuwait's north-flowing Wadi Al-Batin.
That point is sixty miles below where the Tigris and Euphrates meet today, but back then—as noted by archaeologists who contend that the Karun and Wadi Al-Batin are the Bible's Gihon and Pison—local topography was far different.
Until about eleven thousand years ago, repeated Pleistocene glaciations locked much of the world's water into ice sheets, and oceans were hundreds of feet lower than today. When the first Homo sapiens reached the Persian Gulf, its upper third was well above sea level. British archaeologist Jeffrey Rose calls it the Gulf Oasis: a luxuriant delta, continuously fed by nutrient-rich sediments borne by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Al-Batin.
For hunter-gatherers, it would have been a paradise. But post-Pleistocene warming, which allowed their descendants to learn how to farm local wild wheat and legumes, also meant that to the north, vast glaciers were melting. As the thawing accelerated, worldwide coastal flooding commenced. At its peak, eight thousand years ago, Persian Gulf waters were encroaching so fast, according to American archaeologist and Middle East specialist Juris Zarins, that with each generation they advanced several kilometers farther inland. By the time civilization awakened in its cradle a millennium later, paradise had been lost beneath rising seas.
Fall and flood: memories passed from prehistoric ancestors to Mesopotamia's Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, and Babylonians, who passed them on to the Hebrews, and to us. Today, the last traces we have of the oasis that inspired them are some lush wetlands in Iraq's Tigris-Euphrates floodplain, upstream of that now-submerged Eden. During the 1990s these rare marshes were also nearly lost, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein tried to drain them to expel Shia rebels. But following his ousting, a courageous local and international effort has recovered almost half of them.
Staunching that ecological disaster is one of the few encouraging stories from that tortured region in recent years—but unless we act decisively, it could prove in vain, as ice is melting again. In an elaborate, circuitous lineage that humanity has confected, agriculture begat civilization, which begat industrialization, which inevitably—some might say incestuously—begat industrialized agriculture. Force-feeding soil with chemical fertilizer, and genetically developing hybrid grains with many extra kernels per stalk, we multiplied our foodstuffs far beyond what nature ever could supply. But unintentionally this unprecedented abundance also multiplied ourselves.
Averting famine means more people live to beget more people. And so human numbers quadrupled during the past century—the most abnormal population leap for any large species in the history of biology. With all of us hooked on energy, the exhaust from our swollen industrial civilization keeps turning up the heat, forcing seawater up river deltas and over coastlines. If the result of Adam and Eve's original sin was procreation, here we are again, headed for another fall.
Pushed to this modern brink, more than ever we long to reclaim the fresh hope of Eden. Yet lest we despair, it's comforting to realize that one day this Earth will surely see Eden restored.
Should our yearning help us muster the environmental wisdom and the will to act upon it, we'll do whatever it takes to bring humans back into balance with the rest of nature.
Or, should we fail, we'll drag many more species and much priceless Earthly beauty down with us. But not forever. This planet has endured enormous losses and massive extinctions before, from cataclysmic volcanic eruptions to colliding asteroids—yet each time, life, miraculously resilient, has rebounded, lovelier than ever. As it will again.
One way or another, we'll be there too. Either we'll have survived our excesses, and, like Noah, saved enough animals to give our own species another chance—or, like Adam, we will have returned to the dust from which we sprang.
Copyright Alan Weisman 2018
Themes: Food, Health, Economy, Culture, Environment, Peace & Conflict
Regions: Middle East
Media: Photography, Text
Other Tags: environment, population, iraq, Bible, Anthropocene, Eden, Mesopotamia
Life, death, and water in Gaza
Sandy Tolan is in Gaza, reporting on the water crisis there. Here is a Facebook post from July 26: This morning in Gaza, a whiff of war in the air in the wake of Israel's …
Going Gray in LA Exhibit at LA's Central Library
The traveling photo exhibit from Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra's year-long, multi-platform exploration of the lives of older adults in the heart of Los Angeles will open on Friday, October 6th, 2017 at the city's …
In California desert, local activists begin seeing results
For the last several years, Homelands' Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra have been visiting California's Coachella Valley to document the environmental and health disasters there, from contaminated water to pesticide pollution to hazardous waste. Now, in a major piece …
Going Gray in LA event
On April 9th, Bear and Rux's year-long collaboration with LA's KCRW – Going Gray in LA: Stories of Aging Along Broadway – will have a culminating event in Los Angeles that's free and open to the …
Life in Oil
Last year, Homelands' Bear Guerra spent two weeks in the Ecuadorian Amazon making images to accompany anthropologist Mike Cepek's upcoming ethnography about the impacts that oil has had on the life of the indigenous Cofán. The …
Going Gray in LA
Los Angeles is a rapidly aging city in a rapidly aging county. In fact, over the next 15 years, LA County's senior population will double, to nearly one-fifth of the total population. Housing, health care, …
Tension rises between protesters and tribes
Sandy Tolan has returned to North Dakota to report on the status of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the aftermath of the presidential order instructing the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the approval of construction permits. …
KCRW launches "Going Gray in LA"
One of Los Angeles' NPR affiliates, KCRW, has launched Bear and Rux's year-long multi-platform project about aging in the city's working-class and immigrant neighborhoods. "Going Gray in LA: Stories of Aging along Broadway" is part …
Hope on the horizon for strawberry workers?
The strawberries on your breakfast cereal might not taste so sweet if you knew how bitter life can be for the folks who pick them. As if backbreaking labor and extremely low wages weren't enough, strawberry workers are …
Alan Weisman on South American speaking tour
Homelands' co-founder and senior producer Alan Weisman is spending nearly a month in Colombia and Ecuador giving talks and interviews about his two most recent books, The World Without Us and Countdown.
Alan Weisman: Have fewer kids
This month, as part of a special issue on the environment, VICE Magazine asked leading thinkers to weigh in with their ideas about what to do about climate change. Below is Homelands' Alan Weisman's essay, based …
Food for 9 Billion
Exploring the challenge of keeping ourselves fed at a time of rapid social and environmental change.
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In this monumental piece of reporting, Alan Weisman travels to more than 20 countries, beginning in Israel and Palestine and ending in Iran, on an urgent search for ways to restore the balance between our species' population and our planet's capacity to sustain us.
In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Homelands co-founder Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet – only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature.
With a million more of us every 4½ days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were the probably the most important questions on Earth – and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?
By vividly detailing the burgeoning effects of our cumulative existence, Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable, practical, and affordable way of returning our planet and our presence on it to balance. The result is a landmark work of reporting: devastating, urgent, and, ultimately, deeply hopeful.
Countdown was the winner of the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science writing, the 2013 Paris Book Festival Prize for nonfiction, the 2014 Nautilus Gold Book Award, and the Population Institute's 2014 Global Media Award for best book. It was a finalist for the Orion Prize and the Books for a Better Life Award.
"[Countdown] details the burgeoning effects that human population growth has on our environment. Weisman reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable way of balancing this impact." – Mother Earth News
"Alan Weisman's comprehensive and wide-ranging Countdown is the best, most important book on this vital topic in years and demands to be read by all." – Edd Doerr, Secular Humanist
"[Countdown] takes the reader on an exploratory global tour with Weisman to see how different cultures, religions, nationalities and tribes view childbearing and population growth and how they are coping with increasing strains on cropland, water supply, biodiversity and public health… I'd recommend it to teachers, students, or anyone looking to learn more about our rapidly growing world while enjoying a page-turner with a diverse cast of characters." – Population Education
"Please read this book. Take your time. You will weep and yet be cheered. As Alan said when he was here in Minneapolis, 'there are saints out there' so let's support what they are doing and gain a little grace, each one of us." – Louise Erdrich
"Alan Weisman's Countdown is rich, subtle and elaborate. His magisterial work should be the first port of call for anyone interested in the relationship between population and the environment… It's a tightly argued, fast-paced adventure that crosses the planet in search of contrasts." – Literary Review
"His gift as a writer with a love of science is in drawing links for readers on how everything in our world is connected – in this case, population, consumption and the environment…The pleasure in reading Countdown is in the interplay of interviews with experts and with everyday working people around the world, all trying to figure out the size of family they want. Even the experts reveal themselves as a humane and committed lot." – The Toronto Star
"Countdown is a gripping narrative by a fair-minded investigative journalist who interviewed dozens of scientists and experts in various fields in 21 countries. " – Wall Street Journal
"Weisman makes a powerful case that the best way to manage the global population is by empowering women, through both education and access to contraception – so that they can make more informed choices about family size and the kind of lives they want for themselves and their children." – Mother Jones
"He makes a strong case for slowing global population growth – and even for reducing overall population numbers – as a prerequisite for achieving a sustainable future…. Weisman's emphasis on expanding access to contraception as the next-best strategy is both pragmatic and workable, as past efforts have shown. It is to be hoped that his message may be heeded sooner rather than later." – Nature
"If, as Weisman posits, population growth is inextricably linked in today's world with national security, what's the solution? One answer on offer is through family planning development initiatives and women's empowerment." – US News and World Report
"A must read for all those who are concerned about the human prospect." – The Huffington Post
"Spirited descriptions, a firm grasp of complex material, and a bomb defuser's steady precision make for a riveting read…. Weisman's cogent and forthright global inquiry, a major work, delineates how education, women's equality, and family planning can curb poverty, thirst, hunger, and environmental destruction. Rigorous and provoking." – Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"This is not a jeremiad but a realistic, vividly detailed exploration of the greatest problem facing our species." – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Provocative and sobering, this vividly reported book raises profound concerns about our future." – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Little Brown & Company
Themes: Food, Health, Economy, Culture, Environment, Technology
Regions: Central America, Caribbean, Asia / Oceania, North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East
Media: Text
Other Tags: carrying capacity, China, contraception, family planning, Iran, Palestine, population, Sahel, israel
Alt Meat Lunch
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As global demand for animal protein surges, so do the environmental costs of producing it. Researchers in the Netherlands are exploring alternatives, from lab-grown burgers to edible insects to faux meat made from plants. But will people eat them?
Stir-fried vegetables with mealworms. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Themes: Food, Health, Economy, Culture
Regions: Caribbean, North America, Europe
Media: Audio
Other Contributors: Jonathan Miller
Bianca Vasquez Toness
Recycled Lunch
In India, some farmers are replacing chemical fertilizers with the contents of their latrines. It's cheaper and produces less greenhouse gas. Is it safe?
A truck in Bangalore, India, collects human waste from local latrines and spreads it on farmers' fields. Photo by Bianca Vasquez Toness.
Themes: Food, Health, Environment
Regions: Asia / Oceania
Other Tags: fertilizer, human waste, nightsoil, Bangalore
Mary Kay Magistad
Vegan Lunch
Meat consumption in China is soaring, and so are the greenhouse gas emissions that meat production causes. But there is a nascent counter-trend – a small but growing vegan movement in the country's big cities.
Vegan activist and singer Long Kuan and a friend enjoy meatless "lamb" kabobs at a Beijing restaurant. Photo by Mary Kay Magistad.
Other Tags: China, meat consumption, vegan, vegetarian
Taking the Climate Fight to the Table
Low-emissions cooking aims to slow global warming, one plate at a time. A celebrated Baltimore chef and an expert in climate-friendly cuisine join forces on a holiday meal.
Baltimore chef and restaurant owner Spike Gjerde (left) and his colleague Ben Lambert prepare a meal based on local squash and farmed Maryland oysters. Photo by Jonathan Miller.
Low-emissions cooking aims to slow global warming one plate at a time. A celebrated Baltimore chef and an expert in climate-friendly cuisine join forces on a holiday meal.
Regions: North America
Other Tags: climate-friendly cuisine, cooking
China Strains to Satisfy Demand for Meat
China's growing appetite for meat and dairy is driving big changes in everything from farming to food safety. For the country's increasingly wary consumers, those changes can't happen quickly enough.
Over the past three decades in China, meat consumption per capita has quadrupled. This rapid change in diets has paralleled the massive migration from the countryside to the cities. City dwellers eat twice as much meat on average as those back in the villages.
This has put a strain on the country's land and water resources. Agricultural runoff, mostly manure from large-scale farms, is causing water pollution within the country. Because of water shortages, China imports 70 percent of its soybeans and increasing amounts of its corn from the United States, Brazil, and Argentina to feed its cows and pigs.
Toxic blue-green algae blooms populate Anhui province's Chao Lake. Photo by Cassandra Herrman.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set up an office in Beijing to help train hundreds of Chinese companies, government inspectors and officials in food safety.
But some say the Chinese government is relying too heavily on inspections and needs to focus more on prevention.
Chinese fed up with waiting for government action have started to find other ways to access safer food – like buying imported, processed, or organic food.
With the increasing calls for more safe, affordable and environmentally friendly food, China's leaders will need to show creativity and balance to meet those needs.
This video was produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Reporter: Mary Kay Magistad
Producer: Cassandra Herrman
Camera: Serene Fang
Editor: Stephanie Mechura
Field Translation: Yufan Zhang
Additional Translation: Ah Ping
Series producer: Cassandra Herrman
Executive producer: Sharon Tiller
Other Contributor(s)
Cassandra Herrman
Media: Video
Other Tags: China, meat consumption, food safety
Carrie Ching, Sarah Terry-Cobo, Arthur Jones
The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers
Americans love hamburgers. They're tasty, filling, and cheap. But not if you consider the damage they do to the planet.
Americans love hamburgers – we each eat an average of three a week. They're tasty, filling, and cheap. But what are the hidden costs? Learn more in this animated short.
Produced by our partner, the Center for Investigative Reporting, with editing help from Homelands' Jonathan Miller. Art and animation are by Arthur Jones. Visit CIR's story page to see an annotated transcript listing the sources for the information in the video.
Center for Investigative Reporting
Media: Video, Online
Other Tags: beef, greenhouse gases, hamburgers, meat consumption
Sam Eaton
Turning the Population Tide
When Filipino fishing families got access to birth control, the effects were dramatic: more food, kids in school, and a new will to defend their reefs.
The Philippines' swelling population is causing fishing villages to embrace birth control for the first time, and not just as a means to plan their families. They also see it as a path to long-term food security, ensuring that future generations enjoy the same abundance of fish.
Reporter/Producer: Sam Eaton
Camera: Sam Eaton
Editor: Charlotte Buchen
Local fixer: Carlos Conde
Additional field translation: Mercy Butawan
Consulting producer: Stephen Talbot
Charlotte Buchen
Other Tags: family planning, fishing, Philippines, population, reefs, Bohol, contraceptives
Metal Worker
Pedro Córdoba's says his job in a giant Peruvian smelter has made him seriously ill. And he's not going to take it lying down.
Photo by Santiago Mujica Bustamante.
Almost everyone in La Oroya, Peru, depends on the giant multi-metal smelter and refinery that sprawls across the valley floor. It doesn't just dominate the city visually, aurally, and olfactorily, but also economically, politically, and psychologically.
That makes most townspeople tolerant of conditions that elsewhere might lead to open rebellion.
Not so Pedro Córdoba Valdivieso, a mechanic who works in the smelter. He is suffering from an incurable lung disease caused by years of inhaling rock dust. And he's determined to make the company pay.
Themes: Health, Lives, Economy, Environment
Regions: South America
Other Tags: La Oroya, metal worker, Peru, mine
Allan Coukell
Worlds of Difference
The Face of the Shaman
For thousands of years, the Mongolian shaman has been the intermediary between the human and spirit worlds. Shamanism was suppressed for 70 years under communism. Now it's back in the open, competing for customers in a market that's crowded with alternatives.
Talk to Ghoste. That's what everyone says. There are three shamans here among the nomadic reindeer herders of northern Mongolia. Or maybe six, depending whom you believe. But Ghoste is the real deal, the most powerful. They say you should talk to Ghoste, and then in the same breath, they say "but Ghoste doesn't like to talk."
Soyun is the oldest shaman, at 100. She's a tiny woman, ancient, with bad knees. She struggles in her oortz, or teepee, to move between her sleeping platform and the kettle of salty milk-tea on the stove. When she steps outside, which isn't often, she walks with the aid of two crooked sticks.
But they say that when Soyun performs her full shamanic ritual, those long nights, when she pounds the drum until the trance begins and the spirits – the ongots – enter her body, they say then she leaps and dances like a child.
Her drum is kept behind a curtain, in the place of honor opposite the door of the tent. She will not show it to a visitor. In fact, she is tired of all the questions. Talk to Ghoste, she says, talk to Ghoste.
Soyun was born across the border in Tuva, which is part of Siberia, and though the children now all speak Mongolian, Soyun still prefers the Tuvan language. During Mongolia's communist period, her own daughter, Tsend, briefly made a living in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, as a singer of Tuvan folk songs.
Tsend is about seventy now, and nearly blind. She has long returned to the taiga, high in the mountains where the reindeer herders live. Tsend, like her mother and her grandmother before that, is a shaman.
One bright and frigid morning, Tsend came out of her oortz, in her long green tunic and bare feet, to welcome some visitors. It had snowed the night before, and the visitors, having just ridden over a high mountain saddle, were swathed in gloves and wool hats and layers of synthetics. Tsend laughed about the cold. Her face is permanently etched with a squint and a smile. Bare feet, she said, are good for your health.
A shaman is a conduit to the spirit world. Shamanism is among humanity's oldest religions. Not everyone can become a shaman, and Tsend's story is typical. She was seven years old, when she became ill, falling to the ground with seizures. Her grandmother performed a shaman ceremony for her, dressing Tsend in her own costume. After that, Tsend developed the ability. Now her grandmother, Urel, is Tsend's most important spirit.
To go to the spirits, the shaman needs some kind of transportation. Tsend sometimes travels by playing the mouth harp, but that, she says, can take her only so far. The most powerful transportation is the drum. A drum is like a horse. It can take you anywhere.
She does her ritual only once each season, or when someone comes to her with an illness or some other problem. When that happens, a shaman cannot refuse. Tsend agrees to play her mouth harp, but says it is not the right phase of the moon to show the drum.
Only about 200 nomadic reindeer herders remain in northern Mongolia. Geographically, they are divided into two distinct groups, known as the East and West Taiga. Tsend lives in the East; her mother and Ghoste in the West. She is happy to hear that her mother is well. Of Ghoste, she says, "he's very strong."
Ghoste is a striking man, about 50, with a broad face and high cheekbones. His eyes contain a glint of mischief, but also something a little frightening. He lives a little apart, higher up the mountain than the other reindeer herders. "Probably people think, because I live all alone in the wilderness," he says, "that I am a wild man." But he explains that this way is better for the reindeer. Later, he will say privately that it also helps him avoid the curiosity of outsiders. For several days, he avoids visitors. Eventually, though, he agrees to talk.
His tent is barer than most of the others. Reindeer skins and old pieces of canvas cover the floor. Tea is poured and a bowl of reindeer cheese offered around. A basin of bones and meat bubbles on the stove. Ghoste smokes constantly, rolling his cigarettes in pieces of torn newspaper.
"It is not easy being a shaman," he says. A shaman receives many people who are struggling with sickness. "I cannot refuse. If I do, the spirits get weaker." Ghoste says he has a responsibility for the people in the community, people who come and ask for help and believe with their hearts. If they believe, it will work for them.
He says the shaman's job is to help people who have lost their hemur, or good fortune. The shaman can call it back for them. "I can't cheat anyone or it would harm my family," he says. "That is what happened in my life." Ghoste is divorced. His son is dead.
"Once someone who was becoming unconscious came to me for help. I helped them, but they didn't give me any offerings. That was bad for me, being the mediator in between. That's why my son died."
There are things Ghoste will not talk about: the ritual, his spirits. And, of course, he cannot show the drum. "This is not play," he says. "Some people treat it like theater."
It is customary and polite to give a gift to a person who has shown hospitality. So, the interview concluded, a few small things are produced, including a bottle of vodka. The translator leaves. The visitor goes outside to stretch, and then, a few minutes later, ducks back from the bright day into the dim tent, to say goodbye.
But instead, Ghoste motions him to return. Ghoste pats the ground in front of the green curtain. The visitor sits. In silence, the drum is produced. The shaman costume is unpacked: bundle after bundle of cloth strips, a feathered headdress, solid iron bells or clappers that hang across his shoulder blades. The skin drum is round, large, open on one side. Ghoste grins, and plays it ever so softly, like a heartbeat: thump thump, thump thump.
– Allan Coukell
Thanks to translators Binderiya Dondov, Badamtsetseg Tsedennyam, and Hosbayar Enkhtaivan (translators); Professor Gurbadar Purvee (Mongol Business Institute), Daniel Plumley (Totem Peoples Project), Judith Hangartner (Institute for Ethnology, University of Berne), and Nansalmaa Myagmar (Mongolian State Veterinary Laboratory).
Lorne Matalon
Themes: Health, Culture
Media: Audio, Text
Other Tags: Mongolia, shamanism
To Perpetuate Life as it was Meant to Be
By almost every measure, native Hawaiians are the worst off of Hawaii's many ethnic groups. One of the biggest problems is drug abuse. Ho'omau Ke Ola is a community treatment program that looks to island traditions for a way forward.
Fourteen people stand together on a shady path in a tropical forest. Half are men and half are women; they wear flip-flops, tee-shirts and shorts. They take a deep breath in unison, close their eyes, and begin to sing. The song is breathy and low, a tumble of words coming quiet at first, then building momentum.
The song is a request for permission to enter an ancient shrine, or heiau – a cluster of bamboo buildings built on low stone platforms among the trees. Just a few minutes from here are fast food restaurants, tumbledown houses and beaches full of partiers and surfers. But these people aren't thinking about those places now. They're thinking about their kupuna, or ancestors, and hoping for a sign that their own presence here is wanted.
When they're done with their chant, a breeze comes from nowhere and rustles the leaves. "Did you feel that?" asks Momi Cruz Losano, the cheerful woman who has brought them here. "You didn't believe it, did you?"
The singers are drug addicts, most of them sent by the courts or social service agencies to live, study, and heal at Ho'omau Ke Ola. Ho'omau Ke Ola is a non-profit, residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment program based in Waianae, on the west (or leeward) coast of Oahu. Waianae is one of the most depressed communities in Hawaii. The center was founded by community members in 1987 to help confront an enormous drug problem in the area, particularly among native Hawaiians. From the outset, it used traditional Hawaiian teachings as part of its therapeutic program. This spring Ho'omau Ke Ola went a step further, converting the cultural component into the program's central feature.
The clients study Hawaiian history and genealogy, cooking and craft-making, storytelling and navigation. They work at a local demonstration farm, and take intensive language lessons. And they learn key concepts of Hawaiian philosophy and spirituality: the importance of ohana (family), malama 'aina (care for the land), kuleana (responsibility), and pono (balance). The idea, program officials say, is to help the clients see that they are connected to something larger than themselves – that they are heirs to a sophisticated civilization, and that that civilization has lessons to teach them about making their way in the modern world.
Program director Jim Lutte, who spent 15 years with substance abuse programs in Pennsylvania, says the approach works. "Even though they're in a treatment setting and they're from different families, they're from the same area and they consider themselves ohana, which means family. There seems to be a sense of safeness to take emotional risks that you don't usually see in traditional programs."
The biggest challenge for clients is to apply what they learn in treatment to their lives on the outside. Lutte says it helps that family, feasting, and fellowship are central to everyday life in Hawaii. "It's not like they go through treatment and they have all this cultural awareness and now they're back out in society and it's not applicable. They actually fit in better when they go through this, because this is part of the way people live here."
But for generations, people in Waianae have also lived with drugs, alcohol, poverty, violence, and despair. Those are difficult cycles to break. The drug of choice in Waianae – crystal methamphetamine, or "ice" – is extremely addictive. Like substance abuse programs everywhere that serve low-income clients, Ho'omau Ke Ola is chronically underfunded. Federal and state grants, which used to fund up to six months of residential treatment, now cover only 60-75 days – rarely enough for full recovery. Not to mention that the number of clients Ho'omau Ke Ola does serve is only a tiny fraction of the thousands of Hawaiians in need of help.
While treating addiction under these conditions is hard enough, there is an even more ambitious idea behind the center's work. Ho'omau Ke Ola is part of a broader movement that seeks not just to help Hawaiians cope in society, but to make that society more sustainable and humane. All over the islands, natives and non-natives are studying the old ways – from farming and fishing to building canoes and dancing hula. The goal is not to escape the modern world, they say, but to change it.
"There's no magic bullet," says Eric Enos, director of Ka'ala Farm, a "cultural learning center" where Ho'omau Ke Ola's clients come once a week to work in the taro patches, move rocks or clear brush. "Drugs are what you turn to when there's a vacuum to fill. When you're full of purpose, when life has a meaning, then you're filling yourself up with something else, something positive. And when you're filled with positive things then the junk doesn't have as much room to enter."
– Jonathan Miller
Other Tags: Hawaii, Oahu, Hoomau Ke Ola, Wai'anae, drugs, addiction, traditional culture
Victoria Mauleón
Panorama, Texas
A Mexican immigrant organizes the residents of his slum on the Texas side of the Mexican border.
The misery of Mexican slum colonias has long been visible just across from many U.S. border towns. Over the past decade, however, despite the economic promise of NAFTA, the phenomenon has spread to the U.S. side.
Today, a half-million Texans live in more than 1,500 colonias that lack running water and sewage treatment. We follow Mexican immigrant Oscar Solís of Panorama, Texas, as he organizes his community to fight for changes.
A Spanish-language version is also available.
Themes: Health, Lives, Economy, Culture, Environment
Other Tags: colonia, slum, texas
Joelle Pouliot
Cholera Diary
A Canadian physician who joined Doctors Without Borders to help others ends up learning quite a bit about herself.
Doctors without Borders is the world's largest independent, international medical relief agency. The group's physicians aid the victims of war and natural disasters who don't have health care because they live in remote areas of the world. Volunteers do everything from emergency surgery to vaccinating children to training local medical staff.
In this story, we hear the diary of Joelle Pouliot, a physician from Canada, who joined Doctors without Borders to help others and ended up learning quite a bit about herself along the way.
PRI, The Savvy Traveler
Themes: Health, Lives, Peace & Conflict
Other Tags: doctors without borders, médecins sans frontières, doctor, volunteer, medical relief agency
Searching for Solutions
Documenting the efforts of innovators and visionaries working on ways to promote sustainable growth and development.
Cecilia Vaisman, Nancy Postero
Brazil's Birth Control Crusader
In northwestern Brazil, a controversial doctor is on a mission to lower birth rates.
In Brazil's northeastern state of Bahia, Dr. Elsimar Coutinho is on a mission to discover the perfect birth control method and bring down Brazil's high birth rate. For over 30 years, he's waged a one-man crusade to bring birth control to Bahia, in direct confrontation with the powerful Catholic Church.
With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the UN-funded Population Council, and the World Health Organization, Dr. Coutinho is internationally known for his pioneering research in hormonal birth control technologies. In Bahia, government officials and many health care experts credit Dr. Coutinho for single-handedly lowering the state's birth rate.
Coutinho is beloved by hundreds of thousands of poor Brazilians who flock to him for advice about birth control. But he is vehemently criticized by women's health advocates who say he is a sexist and a megalomaniac, more concerned with being an international star than with the well-being of his patients. Critics, including doctors and other health care professionals, say Dr. Coutinho is taking advantage of lax government regulations and using patients as guinea pigs for his research.
Other Contributors: Cecilia Vaisman
Other Tags: Brazil, population, birth control, birth rate
Brazil Sterilization
With few contraceptive options, Brazilian women seeking to control the size of their families often turn to sterilization and illegal abortions.
Themes: Health
Other Tags: Brazil, contraception, family planning, birth control, sterilization, abortion, contraceptive
Women's Empowerment in India
The cultural, religious, and social realities that stand in the way of lowering fertility rates in India are apparent in the tiny farming villages where one women's group is trying to bring about change.
Themes: Health, Lives, Culture
Other Tags: India, fertility, birth control, birth rate
Norplant
In India and Brazil, population control advocates have come into conflict with feminists over the contraceptive drug Norplant, considered by some to be among the most effective birth control methods available.
Regions: Asia / Oceania, South America
Other Tags: Brazil, India, population, fertility, birth control, contraceptive, norplant, contracep, feminist, feminism
Family Planning in India
With funding from USAID, Indian health officials have launched a massive new family planning effort in Uttar Pradesh, India's most densely populated state.
Other Tags: India, population, birth control, public health, uttar pradesh
Vanishing Homelands
Chronicling the changes to land and people across the Americas since the arrival of Columbus.


text:
Q: Unicode equivalents for \w and \b in Java regular expressions? Many modern regex implementations interpret the \w character class shorthand as "any letter, digit, or connecting punctuation" (usually: underscore). That way, a regex like \w+ matches words like hello, élève, GOÄ_432 or gefräßig.
Unfortunately, Java doesn't. In Java, \w is limited to [A-Za-z0-9_]. This makes matching words like those mentioned above difficult, among other problems.
It also appears that the \b word separator matches in places where it shouldn't.
What would be the correct equivalent of a .NET-like, Unicode-aware \w or \b in Java? Which other shortcuts need "rewriting" to make them Unicode-aware?

A: In Java, \w and \d are not Unicode-aware; they only match the ASCII characters, [A-Za-z0-9_] and [0-9].  The same goes for \p{Alpha} and friends (the POSIX "character classes" they're based on are supposed to be locale-sensitive, but in Java they've only ever matched ASCII characters).  If you want to match Unicode "word characters" you you have to spell it out, e.g. [\pL\p{Mn}\p{Nd}\p{Pc}],for letters, non-spacing modifiers (accents), decimal digits, and connecting punctuation.
However, Java's \b is Unicode-savvy; it uses Character.isLetterOrDigit(ch) and checks for accented letters as well, but the only "connecting punctuation" character it recognizes is the underscore.  EDIT: when I try your sample code, it prints "" and élève" as it should (see it on ideone.com).

A: Source code
The source code for the rewriting functions I discuss below is available here.
Update in Java 7
Sun's updated Pattern class for JDK7 has a marvelous new flag, UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS, which makes everything work right again. It's available as an embeddable (?U) for inside the pattern, so you can use it with the String class's wrappers, too.  It also sports corrected definitions for various other properties, too.  It now tracks The Unicode Standard, in both RL1.2 and RL1.2a from UTS#18: Unicode Regular Expressions. This is an exciting and dramatic improvement, and the development team is to be commended for this important effort.

Java's Regex Unicode Problems
The problem with Java regexes is that the Perl 1.0 charclass escapes — meaning \w, \b, \s, \d and their complements — are not in Java extended to work with Unicode.  Alone amongst these, \b enjoys certain extended semantics, but these map neither to \w, nor to Unicode identifiers, nor to Unicode line-break properties.
Additionally, the POSIX properties in Java are accessed this way:
POSIX syntax    Java syntax

[[:Lower:]]     \p{Lower}
[[:Upper:]]     \p{Upper}
[[:ASCII:]]     \p{ASCII}
[[:Alpha:]]     \p{Alpha}
[[:Digit:]]     \p{Digit}
[[:Alnum:]]     \p{Alnum}
[[:Punct:]]     \p{Punct}
[[:Graph:]]     \p{Graph}
[[:Print:]]     \p{Print}
[[:Blank:]]     \p{Blank}
[[:Cntrl:]]     \p{Cntrl}
[[:XDigit:]]    \p{XDigit}
[[:Space:]]     \p{Space}

This is a real mess, because it means that things like Alpha, Lower, and Space do not in Java map to the Unicode Alphabetic, Lowercase, or Whitespace properties. This is exceeedingly annoying. Java's Unicode property support is strictly antemillennial, by which I mean it supports no Unicode property that has come out in the last decade.
Not being able to talk about whitespace properly is super-annoying.  Consider the following table. For each of those code points, there is both a J-results column
for Java and a P-results column for Perl or any other PCRE-based regex engine:
             Regex    001A    0085    00A0    2029
                      J  P    J  P    J  P    J  P
                \s    1  1    0  1    0  1    0  1
               \pZ    0  0    0  0    1  1    1  1
            \p{Zs}    0  0    0  0    1  1    0  0
         \p{Space}    1  1    0  1    0  1    0  1
         \p{Blank}    0  0    0  0    0  1    0  0
    \p{Whitespace}    -  1    -  1    -  1    -  1
\p{javaWhitespace}    1  -    0  -    0  -    1  -
 \p{javaSpaceChar}    0  -    0  -    1  -    1  -

See that?
Virtually every one of those Java white space results is   ̲w̲r̲o̲n̲g̲  according to Unicode.  It's a really big problem.  Java is just messed up, giving answers that are "wrong" according to existing practice and also according to Unicode.  Plus Java doesn't even give you access to the real Unicode properties! In fact, Java does not support any property that corresponds to Unicode whitespace.

The Solution to All Those Problems, and More
To deal with this and many other related problems, yesterday I wrote a Java function to rewrite a pattern string that rewrites these 14 charclass escapes:
\w \W \s \S \v \V \h \H \d \D \b \B \X \R

by replacing them with things that actually work to match Unicode in a predictable and consistent fashion. It's only an alpha prototype from a single hack session, but it is completely functional.
The short story is that my code rewrites those 14 as follows:
\s => [\u0009-\u000D\u0020\u0085\u00A0\u1680\u180E\u2000-\u200A\u2028\u2029\u202F\u205F\u3000]
\S => [^\u0009-\u000D\u0020\u0085\u00A0\u1680\u180E\u2000-\u200A\u2028\u2029\u202F\u205F\u3000]

\v => [\u000A-\u000D\u0085\u2028\u2029]
\V => [^\u000A-\u000D\u0085\u2028\u2029]

\h => [\u0009\u0020\u00A0\u1680\u180E\u2000-\u200A\u202F\u205F\u3000]
\H => [^\u0009\u0020\u00A0\u1680\u180E\u2000\u2001-\u200A\u202F\u205F\u3000]

\w => [\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]]
\W => [^\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]]

\b => (?:(?<=[\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]])(?![\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]])|(?<![\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]])(?=[\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]]))
\B => (?:(?<=[\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]])(?=[\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]])|(?<![\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]])(?![\pL\pM\p{Nd}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}[\p{InEnclosedAlphanumerics}&&\p{So}]]))

\d => \p{Nd}
\D => \P{Nd}

\R => (?:(?>\u000D\u000A)|[\u000A\u000B\u000C\u000D\u0085\u2028\u2029])

\X => (?>\PM\pM*)

Some things to consider...

*

*That uses for its \X definition what Unicode now refers to as a legacy grapheme cluster, not an extended grapheme cluster, as the latter is rather more complicated. Perl itself now uses the fancier version, but the old version is still perfectly workable for the most common situations. EDIT: See addendum at bottom.

*What to do about \d depends on your intent, but the default is the Uniode definition. I can see people not always wanting \p{Nd}, but sometimes either [0-9] or \pN.

*The two boundary definitions, \b and \B, are specifically written to use the \w definition.

*That \w definition is overly broad, because it grabs the parenned letters not just the circled ones. The Unicode Other_Alphabetic property isn't available until JDK7, so that's the best you can do.

Exploring Boundaries
Boundaries have been a problem ever since Larry Wall first coined the \b and \B syntax for talking about them for Perl 1.0 back in 1987. The key to understanding how \b and \B both work is to dispel two pervasive myths about them:

*

*They are only ever looking for \w word characters, never for non-word characters.

*They do not specifically look for the edge of the string.

A \b boundary means:
    IF does follow word
        THEN doesn't precede word
    ELSIF doesn't follow word
        THEN does precede word

And those are all  defined perfectly straightforwardly as:

*

*follows word is (?<=\w).

*precedes word is (?=\w).

*doesn't follow word is (?<!\w).

*doesn't precede word is (?!\w).

Therefore, since IF-THEN is encoded as an and ed-together AB in regexes,  an or is X|Y, and because the and is  higher in precedence than or, that is simply AB|CD.  So every \b that means a boundary can be safely replaced with:
    (?:(?<=\w)(?!\w)|(?<!\w)(?=\w))

with the \w defined in the appropriate way.
(You might think it strange that the A and C components are opposites. In a perfect world, you should be able to write that AB|D, but for a while I was chasing down mutual exclusion contradictions in Unicode properties — which I think I've taken care of, but I left the double condition in the boundary just in case. Plus this makes it more extensible if you get extra ideas later.)
For the \B non-boundaries, the logic is:
    IF does follow word
        THEN does precede word
    ELSIF doesn't follow word
        THEN doesn't precede word

Allowing all instances of \B to be replaced with:
    (?:(?<=\w)(?=\w)|(?<!\w)(?!\w))

This really is how \b and \B behave.  Equivalent patterns for them are

*

*\b using the ((IF)THEN|ELSE) construct is (?(?<=\w)(?!\w)|(?=\w))

*\B using the ((IF)THEN|ELSE) construct is (?(?=\w)(?<=\w)|(?<!\w))
But the versions with just AB|CD are fine, especially if you lack conditional patterns in your regex language — like Java.  ☹
I've already verified the behaviour of the boundaries using all three equivalent definitions with a test suite that checks 110,385,408  matches per run, and which I've run on a dozen different data configurations according to:
     0 ..     7F    the ASCII range
    80 ..     FF    the non-ASCII Latin1 range
   100 ..   FFFF    the non-Latin1 BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane) range
 10000 .. 10FFFF    the non-BMP portion of Unicode (the "astral" planes)

However, people often want a different sort of boundary. They want something that is whitespace and edge-of-string aware:

*

*left edge  as (?:(?<=^)|(?<=\s))

*right edge as (?=$|\s)

Fixing Java with Java
The code I posted in my other answer provides this and quite a few other conveniences. This includes definitions for natural-language words, dashes, hyphens, and apostrophes, plus a bit more.
It also allows you to specify Unicode characters in logical code points, not in idiotic UTF-16 surrogates. It's hard to overstress how important that is! And that's just for the string expansion.
For regex charclass substitution that makes the charclass in your Java regexes finally work on Unicode, and work correctly,  grab the full source from here.  You may do with it as you please, of course. If you make fixes to it, I'd love to hear of it, but you don't have to. It's pretty short. The guts of the main regex rewriting function is simple:
switch (code_point) {

    case 'b':  newstr.append(boundary);
               break; /* switch */
    case 'B':  newstr.append(not_boundary);
               break; /* switch */

    case 'd':  newstr.append(digits_charclass);
               break; /* switch */
    case 'D':  newstr.append(not_digits_charclass);
               break; /* switch */

    case 'h':  newstr.append(horizontal_whitespace_charclass);
               break; /* switch */
    case 'H':  newstr.append(not_horizontal_whitespace_charclass);
               break; /* switch */

    case 'v':  newstr.append(vertical_whitespace_charclass);
               break; /* switch */
    case 'V':  newstr.append(not_vertical_whitespace_charclass);
               break; /* switch */

    case 'R':  newstr.append(linebreak);
               break; /* switch */

    case 's':  newstr.append(whitespace_charclass);
               break; /* switch */
    case 'S':  newstr.append(not_whitespace_charclass);
               break; /* switch */

    case 'w':  newstr.append(identifier_charclass);
               break; /* switch */
    case 'W':  newstr.append(not_identifier_charclass);
               break; /* switch */

    case 'X':  newstr.append(legacy_grapheme_cluster);
               break; /* switch */

    default:   newstr.append('\\');
               newstr.append(Character.toChars(code_point));
               break; /* switch */

}
saw_backslash = false;

Anyway, that code is just an alpha release, stuff I hacked up over the weekend. It won't stay that way.
For the beta I intend to:

*

*fold together the code duplication

*provide a clearer interface regarding unescaping string escapes versus augmenting regex escapes

*provide some flexibility in the \d expansion, and maybe the \b

*provide convenience methods that handle turning around and calling Pattern.compile or String.matches or whatnot for you
For production release, it should have javadoc and a JUnit test suite. I may include my gigatester, but it's not written as JUnit tests.

Addendum
I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that I've now got a very close approximation to an extended grapheme cluster to use for an improved \X.
The bad news ☺ is that that pattern is:
(?:(?:\u000D\u000A)|(?:[\u0E40\u0E41\u0E42\u0E43\u0E44\u0EC0\u0EC1\u0EC2\u0EC3\u0EC4\uAAB5\uAAB6\uAAB9\uAABB\uAABC]*(?:[\u1100-\u115F\uA960-\uA97C]+|([\u1100-\u115F\uA960-\uA97C]*((?:[[\u1160-\u11A2\uD7B0-\uD7C6][\uAC00\uAC1C\uAC38]][\u1160-\u11A2\uD7B0-\uD7C6]*|[\uAC01\uAC02\uAC03\uAC04])[\u11A8-\u11F9\uD7CB-\uD7FB]*))|[\u11A8-\u11F9\uD7CB-\uD7FB]+|[^[\p{Zl}\p{Zp}\p{Cc}\p{Cf}&&[^\u000D\u000A\u200C\u200D]]\u000D\u000A])[[\p{Mn}\p{Me}\u200C\u200D\u0488\u0489\u20DD\u20DE\u20DF\u20E0\u20E2\u20E3\u20E4\uA670\uA671\uA672\uFF9E\uFF9F][\p{Mc}\u0E30\u0E32\u0E33\u0E45\u0EB0\u0EB2\u0EB3]]*)|(?s:.))

which in Java you'd write as:
String extended_grapheme_cluster = "(?:(?:\\u000D\\u000A)|(?:[\\u0E40\\u0E41\\u0E42\\u0E43\\u0E44\\u0EC0\\u0EC1\\u0EC2\\u0EC3\\u0EC4\\uAAB5\\uAAB6\\uAAB9\\uAABB\\uAABC]*(?:[\\u1100-\\u115F\\uA960-\\uA97C]+|([\\u1100-\\u115F\\uA960-\\uA97C]*((?:[[\\u1160-\\u11A2\\uD7B0-\\uD7C6][\\uAC00\\uAC1C\\uAC38]][\\u1160-\\u11A2\\uD7B0-\\uD7C6]*|[\\uAC01\\uAC02\\uAC03\\uAC04])[\\u11A8-\\u11F9\\uD7CB-\\uD7FB]*))|[\\u11A8-\\u11F9\\uD7CB-\\uD7FB]+|[^[\\p{Zl}\\p{Zp}\\p{Cc}\\p{Cf}&&[^\\u000D\\u000A\\u200C\\u200D]]\\u000D\\u000A])[[\\p{Mn}\\p{Me}\\u200C\\u200D\\u0488\\u0489\\u20DD\\u20DE\\u20DF\\u20E0\\u20E2\\u20E3\\u20E4\\uA670\\uA671\\uA672\\uFF9E\\uFF9F][\\p{Mc}\\u0E30\\u0E32\\u0E33\\u0E45\\u0EB0\\u0EB2\\u0EB3]]*)|(?s:.))";

¡Tschüß!

A: It's really unfortunate that \w doesn't work. The proposed solution \p{Alpha} doesn't work for me either.
It seems [\p{L}] catches all Unicode letters. So the Unicode equivalent of \w should be [\p{L}\p{Digit}_].

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The device network SDK is developed based on private network communication protocol, and it is designed for the remote connection and configuration of embedded DVR, Encoder, IPC and the other IP devices.
1. Live view, playback, remote file download, PTZ control, arm/disarm, voice talk, log query, decoding card function, etc.
2. Remote upgrade, remotely reboot, remotely shut down, remotely format hard disk, and device configuration (system configuration, channel configuration, serial port configuration, alarm configuration, users configuration), etc.
CVR, Alarm host, Multi-screen controller , IP module, and so on.
Software Description:Hikvision Card Linux SDK supports to develop software for DS-4200 & DS-4000 series card under the Linux environment.
Software Description:Hikvision Card Windows SDK V6.0 supports to develop software for DS-4200, DS-4100 & DS-4000 series card under the Windows environment. It contains SDK, drivers, demo and user manual.
Software Description:Hikvision card Windows SDK V6.5 supports to develop software for DS-4300 series card under the Windows environment. It contains SDK, drivers, demo, and user manual.
Software Description:Hikvision card Windows SDK V6.52 supports to develop software for DS-4X00 series card under the Windows X64 environment. It contains SDK, drivers, demo, and user manual.
2. Software decoding is supported by panoramic camera.
3. To support the fisheye dewarping function and 360 degree panoramic dewarping function, if the dewarping image cannot be displayed during playing, you should download the DirectX plug-in in the website of https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?stat=1&id=8109 and install it.
The Player SDK (hereby referred to as "The SDK" or "The player SDK") is the secondary development kit for HIKVISION DVR, Encoder and Decoder, IP devices and compression cards, etc (Please refer to the programmer manual for detail support list of HIKVISION devices).
Real time stream live-view, recording file playback with player control functions such as pause, step forward, step backward, and the SDK can also get stream information such as file index, decoding frame info, resolution, frame rate. The SDK also supports BMP and JPG snapshot.
3. Supports PanoVu camera code stream.
Software Description:Windows 32-bit and 64-bit card drivers are included, please read the Hikvision Card Windows Driver install Notes and FAQs(included in the downloading file) before installation.


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text:
The Highlands Current (https://highlandscurrent.org/2022/12/23/rental-needed-term-300000-years/)
Rental Needed. Term: 300,000 Years
By Brian PJ Cronin, Reporter | December 23, 2022
These casks are used to store spent fuel rods at Indian Point. (Photo by John Meore/The Journal News)
Feds search for home for Indian Point fuel
By 2024, a Florida company is scheduled to have finished moving radioactive fuel rods from the shuttered Indian Point nuclear plant south of the Highlands to 125 concrete-and-steel casks stored outside.
The long-term plan is to move the casks to a permanent storage facility somewhere other than the Hudson Valley. But a representative of the U.S. Department of Energy said at a Dec. 7 meeting of the Indian Point Decommissioning Task Force that the agency expects the casks to remain where they are into the 2030s.
Indian Point is not unique in this. More than 70 nuclear plants across the country store their spent fuel on-site because the U.S. government has not made good on a 1998 promise to build a storage facility. Its first attempt, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, ran into legal, operational and cultural challenges, at the cost of $9 billion in settlements to the owners of nuclear plants with stranded fuel.
To avoid further judgments, the government is searching for communities willing to take the fuel temporarily, meaning the sites would not have to be as robust as permanent ones that need to keep the fuel rods isolated for at least 300,000 years. Erica Bickford, the Energy Department representative, referred to the process as "consent-based siting."
Even if interim sites are identified, the operation to move the waste from dozens of nuclear plants would be unprecedented. It's expected they would be modeled after U.S. Navy procedures to transport spent fuel from nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
The Florida firm, Holtec International, is awaiting approval to build its own interim storage site in New Mexico, although Bickford said that a privately owned facility would be "a highly unusual circumstance."
Sandy Galef, a member of the state Assembly who sits on the decommissioning task force, and whose district includes Philipstown, said at the Dec. 7 meeting that she had an idea why Holtec wants to take on the burden of storage.
"Do you have a financial interest in that place?" she asked Rich Burroni, a Holtec representative, referring to the proposed facility in New Mexico.
"Absolutely," said Burroni.
"So you would prefer to have it go there, instead of a Department of Energy-type place that would be a public place," she said. "You'd lose money on that deal."
"So we have to watch you, I guess, for 10 years," said Galef.
This past summer, state and federal officials visited Indian Point to explore routes that the casks might take out of the Hudson Valley. The transport would be done by railcar, but the fuel still would need to get from the plant to the tracks.
One possible route would move the casks by truck to Newtown, Connecticut, where they would be loaded on cars on the Housatonic Railroad, which is being used to ship low-level radioactive waste to Texas.
However, that route would be the longest, at 57 miles. Shorter routes present their own challenges. Three options (Hopewell Junction, Peekskill and Croton) would require transporting the fuel along Metro-North lines. Another option would be to move the fuel through Beacon and over the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge to reach the CSX Railroad on the Newburgh waterfront. Alternatively, the waste also could be transported on the Hudson River by barge to waiting railcars.
The next meeting of the Indian Point Task Force is scheduled for Feb. 2 and will focus on the options for the disposal of the radioactive wastewater in the spent fuel pools. Galef will no longer be on the committee; she will retire next week after 30 years in the Legislature.
About Brian PJ Cronin
The Skidmore College graduate has reported for The Current since 2014 and writes the "Out There" column. Location: Beacon. Languages: English. Areas of Expertise: Environment, outdoors
More by Brian
3 thoughts on "Rental Needed. Term: 300,000 Years"
Dan Graser on December 24, 2022 at 8:09 am said:
"Consent-based siting" is a concept introduced by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's hand-picked blue-ribbon panel to ensure that no site (such as Nye County in Nevada) is ever going to make it through as a "volunteer" willing to take it.
With consent-based siting, any government entity — city, county, state, tribal — can veto any other volunteering entity. That built-in, "success-proof" mentality has destroyed any possibility of a solution to the end-of-fuel-cycle aspect, destroyed the nuclear energy industry business model and doomed the utilities and ratepayers to eternal custodianship.
You can shell-game it up and down the Hudson River, but that fuel isn't going away without the political resolve to make a permanent, deep-geologic repository succeed. In the meantime, remember that above-ground casks make terrific targets for 9/11-style attacks.
Before he retired in 2012, Graser worked for the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel.
Michel Lee on December 26, 2022 at 10:22 am said:
Beyond the distasteful ethics of dumping Indian Point's nuclear waste on a low-income minority community elsewhere in the U.S. that is already overloaded with pollution, there is the folly of moving tens of thousands of canisters containing massive quantities of highly radioactive material over thousands of miles. What could go wrong?
Marilyn Elie on January 21, 2023 at 2:15 pm said:
Closing a nuclear power plant requires a lot of attention to details. In the case of Indian Point, this responsibility rests with the New York State Decommissioning Oversight Board. Composed of representatives from many different state agencies, the DOB considers what the owner of the reactors (Holtec) may do in regard to public health and safety. The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also have a role to play.
The DOB's next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 2 at 6 p.m. at Cortlandt Town Hall, 1 Heady Street. It is possible to attend virtually.
Disposal of the tritiated water from the fuel pools is on the agenda. Tritium is a radioactive isotope. Currently Holtec plans to release it into the Hudson River. Our group, United 4 Clean Energy, opposes this plan and instead recommends storage on site as a better alternative that will not add to the cumulative burden of pollution to the river, even if technically allowed under NRC regulations.
There are questions that need to be answered about tritium disposal. On Jan. 26, we will present a panel of experts discussing the health impacts of radioactive waste to address these questions. A second public forum will be presented on Feb. 16 on best practices for decommissioning. Contact Ellen Weininger of Grassroots Environmental Education at 914-422-3141 for more information.
At the last meeting of the DOB, Holtec's plan to ship high level radioactive waste to New Mexico was on the agenda. NRC representatives were there to say that this plan met their specifications. Slides were shown that outlined visits to our neighborhood that have already been made by Holtec. The company has scouted locations that could be used to ship high-level radioactive waste by truck or barge from Indian Point and sent on its way by train to property owned by Holtec in New Mexico.
This is called Consolidated Interim Storage. Highly radioactive fuel rods in steel canisters inside giant concrete casks would be shipped hundreds of miles on regular roads and train routes to be deposited there, supervised by Holtec for an unknown number of years. Holtec representative Rich Burroni was candid in stating that this would be a profitable arrangement for his company.
Centralized Interim Storage would mean moving the casks twice, with very little indication of how they might have fared during their wait for permanent storage. There is no plan for what might happen if a cask were somehow damaged or had deteriorated and the dangers that might create along the way or what might happen if the company went out of business. This is a faulty and dangerous plan.
New Mexico is opposed to high-level radioactive waste being dumped in the state. The governor has written President Biden telling him so. There is an active contingent of citizens intent on stopping Holtec's plan, which is unlawful under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. This act states that no Centralized Interim Storage can be established until a site is found for a geological depository.
Forcing highly radioactive waste on a community against their will, as is the case in New Mexico, is undemocratic in the extreme. It raises charges of environmental justice since it is one more example of a corporation taking advantage of a disadvantaged community. The people of Nevada were faced with a similar situation and after years of opposition finally defeated the proposed plan for a Yucca Mountain depository in their state.
Like those in Nevada, people in New Mexico have mobilized to stop Holtec from carrying through with this scheme. It will undoubtedly go to court with all the delays associated with the legal process. Given the opposition, the time frame of 10 years laid out by Holtec for moving the fuel rods off site from Indian Point is improbable at best.
Transporting the fuel rods once is a bad idea, transporting them twice is horrendous. There is no good solution to the problem of storing high-level radioactive waste. We are stuck with the least bad alternative, which means leaving it in place near the reactor where it was generated and carefully monitoring it. High-level radioactive waste from reactors all over the country is stored on site or near the reactor where it was produced for this reason.
What does this mean for our neighbors in Buchanan who would like to see it gone from their community? What does it mean to the redevelopment of the property?
A strong case can be made that those who enjoyed the benefits of the electricity generated at Indian Point, including a significant reduction in property tax over the last 40 years, now have an obligation to take care of the waste that has been left behind. The property is still taxable, as are the fuel rods. Money from state sources has been made available to help with the transition for the community and former employees; some of whom have retired or moved on to jobs in other power plants, some staying on to work on decommissioning.
Those living in the former reactor village of Buchanan may feel that this is not what they bargained for. However, it is the inevitable consequence of the nuclear generation of electricity. Buying into statements by the company that it could make the high-level radioactive waste go away when there clearly was no place for it to go has always been magical thinking and a stark refusal to look at the reality of the situation.
Indian Point occupies a large site on the Hudson River that has the potential for many different uses, once it is certified as a green field. Can that happen if a small part is reserved for the storage and supervision of high-level radioactive waste? That is a question that needs to be explored.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I consider myself to be an independent person, I always have. I hate feeling vulnerable or like I am relying on somebody else for anything. My only interpretation of this is that I hate feeling like I am putting somebody out, even if I know that I am not and they are happy to help.… Continue reading What does it mean to be independent?


text:
(802) 295-6500info@uppervalleyhaven.org713 Hartford Ave, White River Jct, VT
Español English العربية 简体中文 Français Deutsch Italiano Português Русский
Food Shelf FAQ
Shelter & Housing
Winter Coats and Outerwear
VolunteerHub Login
Hixon House Dinner Volunteers
40th Anniversary Speaker Series
19 Days of Norwich & the Valley
2022 Covered Bridges Half Marathon
Annual Haven Day of Giving
Food Shelf
Our Shelters
Community Service Coordination
Haven in the News
19 Days Online Giving
19 Days 2021 Businesses & Organizations
19 Days Bonding of the Beauticians – 12/17
19 Days Pet Contest
Feeney Legacy Circle
Gifts of Securities, Stocks & Bonds
How My Gift Can Help
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness "seventeen out of every 10,000 people in the United States were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2019 during HUD's Annual Point-in-Time Count. These 567,715 people represent a cross-section of America. They are associated with every region of the country, family status, gender category, and racial/ethnic group."
As of January 2019, Vermont had an estimated 1,089 experiencing homelessness on any given day, as reported by Continuums of Care to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
As of January 2019, New Hampshire had an estimated 1,396 experiencing homelessness on any given day, as reported by Continuums of Care to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Haven's Byrne House Family Shelter and Hixon House Adult Shelter do not have limits for stays. The average length of stay in 2020 for Byrne House was 136, while the average for Hixon House was 101 days. Some guests stay longer, and some may only stay a few days. We recognize that homelessness does not have a one-size-fits-all solution.
Byrne House Family Shelter
The Haven's Byrne House Family Shelter provides a temporary home for families. As part of the stay in our shelters, our Service Coordinators, who serve as guests' advisors, work with each family to achieve financial, housing, education, child development, and transportation objectives.
46 beds to accommodate up to eight families
Two family "pods" with shared kitchens and common space
Children of families in the shelter are invited to attend the Haven's After-School and Summer Programs both while in shelter and after moving to permanent housing. The kids enjoy enriching activities with the support of caring, trained staff while the parents can focus on employment, education, and developing greater self-sufficiency for their families.
After families leave the shelter, 75–80% of the guests find and maintain permanent housing and retain jobs, and service coordinators from the Haven continue to offer support through extensive aftercare services.
The residents of the Family Shelter are required to participate in the following while staying at our shelter:
Search for employment
Save a percentage of their earnings to be used for securing housing
Work together with other residents to complete community tasks
Hixon House Adult Shelter
70% of people experiencing homelessness are individuals who are living on their own or in the company of other adults. (endhomelessness.org)
To meet the rapidly increasing need for an adult shelter in the Upper Valley region, the Haven completed and opened a new shelter for single men and women, and couples without minor children in June of 2010.
Ten bedrooms to accommodate up to 20 guests
Communal dining area with kitchen for volunteer Dinner teams to cook meals
Ives Library provide computer and internet access, books, games, and meeting space
A unique feature of living at Hixon House is the dinners served in the dining room. Dinner teams—volunteer groups of all kinds—prepare meals there and then join our guests for dinner to meet and learn from one another. Guests can count on three meals a day at Hixon House, helping free up some of their time to concentrate on employment, education, housing, health, and more on their path to greater independence and stability.
Like residents of the Family Shelter, all residents of the Hixon House Adult Shelter are required to:
''Without the Haven my family might be living in a tent or in our car. My wife, two daughters and son and I received shelter as well as opportunities to enroll in (education) programs. Thank you for helping us.''
Paul C.
''There are no words to describe the gratitude and appreciation I have for your program! In such difficult times it's nice to see a ray of light in all the darkness! Thank you so much from our family to yours!''
''You have helped me and my family in our time of need and I am beyond grateful. God bless you all!''
Lindsay M.
Food Support
Service Coordination
info@uppervalleyhaven.org
713 Hartford Ave
White River Junction, VT 05001
Most Needed Items
Tuna/canned chicken
Salt/pepper/spices
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text:
3 Inspirational Disabled Heroines for International Women's Day 2021
Post published:7 March 2021
International Women's Day (IWD) is held annually on March 8th. It is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality. The first IWD took place in 1911 and was celebrated by over a million people; today IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. You can find out more on the United Nations Women Page.
Greater Challenges for Disabled Women
For disabled women, inequality is even greater and even more so for disabled women of colour. 10% of the world's population has a disability which in the UK is 14.1 million. In most of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, women have higher rates of disability than men. Disabled women have a much more challenging time accessing healthcare, education and employment. According to the United Nations "Men with disabilities are almost twice as likely to have jobs than women with disabilities. When women with disabilities work, they often experience unequal hiring and promotion standards, unequal access to training and retraining, unequal access to credit and other productive resources, unequal pay for equal work and occupational segregation, and they rarely participate in economic decision making."
Left to right: Kate Stanforth, Myra Ali, Eiko Kimura
This IWD 2021 I'd like to celebrate those women with significant disabilities who not only work, but who excel in what they do. Their achievements are not only inspirational because they're winning on a grossly uneven playing field; they do so whilst suffering chronic pain, exhaustion and other symptoms, as well as the financial burden which disability brings. Here, 3 amazing women are featured: Kate Stanforth a disabled dancer who runs an inclusive dance academy, Myra Ali a disabled journalist and woman of the year runner up, and Eiko Kimura a disabled politician in the Japanese Parliament. I did a Q&A with UK-based Kate and Myra, and researched a profile for Eiko as I don't have access to a Japanese translator.
Credit: Hannah Todd photography
Profile: Kate Stanforth
Disabled dancer, teacher, choreographer and inclusive dance academy owner
Hello Kate, can you tell me a bit about your journey?
I'm Kate, 26, from Northumberland. I was training to be a professional ballerina when I suddenly became ill at the age of 14. After spending years extremely unwell, I was able to get back into the dance studio in my wheelchair and started small amounts of teaching. From then on, I was determined to make the dance industry more accessible as I came across many barriers and now have opened my own inclusive dance academy.
What has helped you come to terms with, and adapt to, life with disability?
Time. For the first 6 years I hated my wheelchair and could not come to terms with the fact I was disabled. It was a grieving process and one which will always be difficult. Now, I am a much more confident wheelchair user but I do, as everyone does, still have my days where my disability just is that little bit too hard.
What do you wish you'd have known/been told at the start of your journey?
I wish I had known where I'd be now! I thought my dance journey was over, not that I'd be flown to Miami to dance for George ASDA, dance for brands such as Kappa and open my own dance school. Also, I wish I knew that I would eventually adapt and make a career out of helping others with disabilities and still pursue my dream in the dance world.
What gets you through the tough days now?
My assistance dog, Spencer. I got him around 3 years ago from Canine Partners charity and I really mean it when I say I probably wouldn't be here without him. He helps me so much, both physically and emotionally, I really love that dog!
What advice or encouragement would you give to people struggling with disability or chronic health problems?
Take your time. It's ok to not know where your 'new' life is taking you. It's ok to grieve the life you had before. Just take time to process things and 'run your own race' as I say. It's easy to compare your journey to someone else's but make it your own. You've got this.
How has lockdown made things more challenging than usual?
Lockdown has been difficult because I've been shielding on and off for nearly a year now. I haven't seen many of my friends in a year, or taught students in a dance studio, or just continued with my usual routine. I've felt very isolated which means my mood and anxiety has suffered, so I'd just love my mental health especially to get back to being more stable.
Anything else you'd like to add?
A shout out to all the chronically ill women on IWD – you are fighting so many battles people don't know about and I just want to say I appreciate you all.
You can find out more about Kate and her work on www.katestanforth.com she's on twitter @katestanforth and also instagram @katestanforth @katestanforthdance
Profile: Myra Ali
Credit: Myra Ali instagram
Disabled Entertainment Journalist and advocate of disabled women of colour in the UK. Credits include New York Post, Marie Claire, Stylist, UK GQ and Cosmo. Woman of the Year runner-up (2019)
Hello Myra, can you tell me a bit about your journey?
I was born with the most severe form of Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB). Constant pain and scarring has caused my hands to mitten; when I was younger my fingers were open and I had a lot of dexterity, but with increased scarring the fingers have closed into fists. I work as a freelance celebrity journalist writing articles and interviewing celebrities at press junkets and red carpet events. At the same time, I live with family and I have nurses who come to the house to do my dressings.
I've accepted it is a difficult condition I have but it could be a lot worse and it's important to remember the struggles of others too – I try to keep positive about it I'm a believer in if you think positive you'll attract positivity.
That believe in yourself and not to listen to people around you who try to put you down or put their beliefs on you. Amazing things can happen if you have faith and believe in yourself. And always aim high in every aspect of life.
My faith and belief that everything will be ok and a struggle is just a test – being positive can help get you through the worst times.
What advice or encouragement would you give to people struggling with disability or chronic health problems
Make sure you have a strong support system around you – family , medical professionals and friends , never be worried about talking about your struggles. Always remember your life and journey is unique and you will get through this – try to find something in your life you really enjoy this will make you feel better- your condition doesn't define you at all.
Being fearful of going to the Drs. etc because of covid that's all.
You can follow Myra on instagram and twitter. I highly recommend her article: Women of colour with disabilities are always left out of the conversation about diversity.
Profile: Eiko Kimura
Eiko Kimura became disabled at 8 months old. She spent most of her childhood in a nursing home and school for disabled children. She suffers from cerebral palsy and tetraplegia. At 19 she decided she wanted to live in the community and not in an institution. At the time, this was a rare and ground breaking move for a severely disabled person in Japan. Eiko moved from Yokohama to Tokyo, married and had a son. In her 30's she began advocating for disability rights and founded an organization that helps the disabled to live independently.
In 2019, she made headlines around the world when she was elected to the National Diet (the Japanese Parliament) alongside Yasuhiko Funago who is also severely disabled. Whilst not the first wheelchair users at the Senate, they are the first to be severely disabled. So, modifications were made to accommodate their reclining wheelchairs. They are also given dispensation for their carers to attend with them. You can read more about Eiko's election in this BBC article. Both Eiko Kimura and Yasuhiko Funago are members of the small leftist opposition party named Reiwa Shinsengumi. It is founded by actor-turned-politician Taro Yamamoto. The party advocates for a society that does not cut anyone off, especially those usually overlooked. You can read more about Eiko's life and political journey in this excellent post on the disability visibility project.
Credit: EPA, BBC News
Tags: disabled heroines, Eiko Kimura, inspirational women, international women's day, international women's day 2021, IWD 2021, Kate Stanforth, Myra Ali
Chronic Illness, Disability and Loneliness (part 1)
Easy Glowing Skin


Helping your pet to be part of the family entails you to do some housebreaking. Naturally, dogs like to be neat as well, so as soon as you give your pet a special spot in the house, the happier he will become. Your dog would love to have a nice place to sleep and there's no better way to do that than get him some nice dog bed covers for his little bed. Before anything, you should consider a highly durable weave nylon that doesn't rip off easily in case he chews it. So, what else do you need when you let the dog inside the house?
First, start by putting some newspapers and telling your pet dog that it belongs to him. Be as affectionate as you can possibly be and once you see him doing the right thing, gently pat him to signify your consent. In case your dog starts making some mistake, take your dog to the newspaper set on the floor right away to let him finish the job right where he's suppose to. This will soon give your puppy the idea that he should do his business there and not on the dog bed covers.
Soon after he catches up on the routine with a little mishap, it's time to lessen the pieces of newspaper to a couple or single page. Doing this will reduce the clutter and will imply to your pet that there is nowhere else to go than that single spot you left. When you encourage good habits to your dog early, the more convenient it will be for all of you. Giving him his own place inside the house will also ensure that your furniture is kind of off-limits!
Your puppy would be spending most of his time on his bed because it is where he could play digging, curling and chew with his tiny teeth and gums. But what if your pet grows already? On that case, you don't have to buy him a new bed. Just replace its dog bed covers from time to time. It would be best to get something that's easy to wash even if the fabric seems a little tough. Wearing and tearing is a normal process but there are specially designed to last for years.