The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European

Anna Swartwood House, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina
Tue, December 28, 2021

Painting depicting transfiguration of Jesus, a story in the New Testament when Jesus becomes radiant upon a mountain. Artist Raphael /Collections Hallwyl Museum, CC BY-SA

The portrayal of Jesus as a white, European man has come under renewed scrutiny during this period of introspection over the legacy of racism in society.

As protesters called for the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., activist Shaun King went further, suggesting that murals and artwork depicting “white Jesus” should “come down.”

His concerns about the depiction of Christ and how it is used to uphold notions of white supremacy are not isolated. Prominent scholars and the archbishop of Canterbury have called to reconsider Jesus’ portrayal as a white man.

As a European Renaissance art historian, I study the evolving image of Jesus Christ from A.D. 1350 to 1600. Some of the best-known depictions of Christ, from Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, were produced during this period.

But the all-time most-reproduced image of Jesus comes from another period. It is Warner Sallman’s light-eyed, light-haired “Head of Christ” from 1940. Sallman, a former commercial artist who created art for advertising campaigns, successfully marketed this picture worldwide.


Through Sallman’s partnerships with two Christian publishing companies, one Protestant and one Catholic, the Head of Christ came to be included on everything from prayer cards to stained glass, faux oil paintings, calendars, hymnals and night lights.

Sallman’s painting culminates a long tradition of white Europeans creating and disseminating pictures of Christ made in their own image.
In search of the holy face

The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.

‘The Good Shepherd.’ Joseph Wilpert

Even these texts are contradictory: The Old Testament prophet Isaiah reads that the coming savior “had no beauty or majesty,” while the Book of Psalms claims he was “fairer than the children of men,” the word “fair” referring to physical beauty.

The earliest images of Jesus Christ emerged in the first through third centuries A.D., amidst concerns about idolatry. They were less about capturing the actual appearance of Christ than about clarifying his role as a ruler or as a savior.

To clearly indicate these roles, early Christian artists often relied on syncretism, meaning they combined visual formats from other cultures.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Probably the most popular syncretic image is Christ as the Good Shepherd, a beardless, youthful figure based on pagan representations of Orpheus, Hermes and Apollo.

In other common depictions, Christ wears the toga or other attributes of the emperor. The theologian Richard Viladesau argues that the mature bearded Christ, with long hair in the “Syrian” style, combines characteristics of the Greek god Zeus and the Old Testament figure Samson, among others.
Christ as self-portraitist

The first portraits of Christ, in the sense of authoritative likenesses, were believed to be self-portraits: the miraculous “image not made by human hands,” or acheiropoietos.

Acheiropoietos. Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow

This belief originated in the seventh century A.D., based on a legend that Christ healed King Abgar of Edessa in modern-day Urfa, Turkey, through a miraculous image of his face, now known as the Mandylion.

A similar legend adopted by Western Christianity between the 11th and 14th centuries recounts how, before his death by crucifixion, Christ left an impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica, an image known as the volto santo, or “Holy Face.”


These two images, along with other similar relics, have formed the basis of iconic traditions about the “true image” of Christ.

From the perspective of art history, these artifacts reinforced an already standardized image of a bearded Christ with shoulder-length, dark hair.

In the Renaissance, European artists began to combine the icon and the portrait, making Christ in their own likeness. This happened for a variety of reasons, from identifying with the human suffering of Christ to commenting on one’s own creative power.


The 15th-century Sicilian painter Antonello da Messina, for example, painted small pictures of the suffering Christ formatted exactly like his portraits of regular people, with the subject positioned between a fictive parapet and a plain black background and signed “Antonello da Messina painted me.”

The 16th-century German artist Albrecht Dürer blurred the line between the holy face and his own image in a famous self-portrait of 1500. In this, he posed frontally like an icon, with his beard and luxuriant shoulder-length hair recalling Christ’s. The “AD” monogram could stand equally for “Albrecht Dürer” or “Anno Domini” – “in the year of our Lord.”
In whose image?

This phenomenon was not restricted to Europe: There are 16th- and 17th-century pictures of Jesus with, for example, Ethiopian and Indian features.

In Europe, however, the image of a light-skinned European Christ began to influence other parts of the world through European trade and colonization.


The Italian painter Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi” from A.D. 1505 features three distinct magi, who, according to one contemporary tradition, came from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They present expensive objects of porcelain, agate and brass that would have been prized imports from China and the Persian and Ottoman empires.

But Jesus’ light skin and blues eyes suggest that he is not Middle Eastern but European-born. And the faux-Hebrew script embroidered on Mary’s cuffs and hemline belie a complicated relationship to the Judaism of the Holy Family.

In Mantegna’s Italy, anti-Semitic myths were already prevalent among the majority Christian population, with Jewish people often segregated to their own quarters of major cities.

Artists tried to distance Jesus and his parents from their Jewishness. Even seemingly small attributes like pierced ears – earrings were associated with Jewish women, their removal with a conversion to Christianity – could represent a transition toward the Christianity represented by Jesus.

Much later, anti-Semitic forces in Europe including the Nazis would attempt to divorce Jesus totally from his Judaism in favor of an Aryan stereotype.
White Jesus abroad

As Europeans colonized increasingly farther-flung lands, they brought a European Jesus with them. Jesuit missionaries established painting schools that taught new converts Christian art in a European mode.

A small altarpiece made in the school of Giovanni Niccolò, the Italian Jesuit who founded the “Seminary of Painters” in Kumamoto, Japan, around 1590, combines a traditional Japanese gilt and mother-of-pearl shrine with a painting of a distinctly white, European Madonna and Child.


In colonial Latin America – called “New Spain” by European colonists – images of a white Jesus reinforced a caste system where white, Christian Europeans occupied the top tier, while those with darker skin from perceived intermixing with native populations ranked considerably lower.

Artist Nicolas Correa’s 1695 painting of Saint Rose of Lima, the first Catholic saint born in “New Spain,” shows her metaphorical marriage to a blond, light-skinned Christ.
Legacies of likeness

Scholar Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that in the centuries after European colonization of the Americas, the image of a white Christ associated him with the logic of empire and could be used to justify the oppression of Native and African Americans.

In a multiracial but unequal America, there was a disproportionate representation of a white Jesus in the media. It wasn’t only Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ that was depicted widely; a large proportion of actors who have played Jesus on television and film have been white with blue eyes.

Pictures of Jesus historically have served many purposes, from symbolically presenting his power to depicting his actual likeness. But representation matters, and viewers need to understand the complicated history of the images of Christ they consume.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Anna Swartwood House, University of South Carolina.

Read more:

What drives the appeal of ‘Passion of the Christ’ and other films on the life of Jesus

The Case for Christ: What’s the evidence for the resurrection?

Panama celebrates its black Christ, part of protest against colonialism and slavery

Anna Swartwood House does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Durham renters told they needed to be gone by New Year’s until media got involved


Sara Pequeño
Mon, December 27, 2021

Surrounded by houses with Christmas decorations and “Black Lives Matter” yard signs, a set of properties in Durham’s Walltown neighborhood stood bare the Monday before Christmas, save for the crowd and their white boards standing between two of the buildings.

The group — organizers, neighbors, elected officials and a few camera crews — were gathered around the residents of Braswell Properties apartments physically and figuratively.

On Nov. 29, the people living in the homes received a letter from Reformation Asset Management, a company representing new ownership, telling the 12 families living in the duplexes that they had to be out by New Year’s Eve or face legal consequences. That changed after the tenants went to the media last week — now, the property manager says they have more time.

Let’s be clear: The property manager appears to have done nothing that violates North Carolina’s tenant laws. But this also is true: at least a dozen households are going through the intense stressors of finding a new home and moving, in the busiest month of year, in a season of goodwill, in a city that is rapidly pushing out underserved members of the community.

“They are being very ugly,” resident Janice Sanchez said at the press conference. “They don’t want to even do nothing to even try to give us a break. So this is where we are at. It’s Christmastime, [but] we can’t even think on that level.”

Sanchez, a mother and grandmother, said she had only been renting for a few months when she was sent the notice.

Charles Bulthuis, the owner of Reformation Asset Management and new manager of the property, said the previous owner had informed tenants in October that he intended to sell and told them not to pay rent for November or December.

Varon Braswell, the son of the properties’ longtime owner, said he never asked Bulthuis or his company to take over conversations with the neighbors, since the deeds were not officially signed until the week the tenants spoke out. He also did not instruct the group to stall rent payments.

“You could’ve had a little bit more compassion, just throwing letters out telling them to vacate,” Braswell said of Bulthuis. “I wouldn’t have dared authorize that.”

Bulthuis said his employees have attempted to contact the current residents and assist them in finding new, similarly priced apartments, but have had difficulty getting cooperation.

Resident Luz Romero said her experience has contradicted that.

“I have [been] calling RAM since the first week we got the letter and I don’t get an answer back,” she said in a written statement. “I have also emailed them. Till this day I have no answer. For RAM to say that is outrageous.”

The new property owners, two Chapel Hill residents who have asked Bulthuis to speak on their behalf, are concerned about being fined or sued because of the previous owner’s inaction.

Some residents say the city has been contacted over the years, but with little progress. The City of Durham only has three complaints about these particular properties, and visited two of the homes in the last week. The city found that in both homes, the repairs needed would not require removing the tenants. Bulthuis disagrees, but he said last week that tenants will no longer be required to leave by the 31st. The non-profit Housing for New Hope stepped up to assist the residents after seeing the story in the media.

That’s good. But this entire situation shows who is least important in Durham’s cutthroat housing market, and those who get the worst of it are the residents receiving mixed messages from two different landlords about what’s happening.

These residents are immigrants, children, the elderly, and most importantly, the people we allow to be collateral damage in development, even if the development means better, still affordable housing. It’s why conversations about development get so complicated any time they arise, and in the Triangle, they arise often. If not a story with a clear villain, the story of Braswell Properties in Durham is a story with clear victims.

Northeastern State University grad, Miss Indian Oklahoma to share passion for STEM careers


Examiner Enterprise
Staff Reports
Tue, December 28, 2021

2021-22 Miss Indian Oklahoma Madison Whitekiller

TAHLEQUAH — Cherokee Nation citizen Madison Whitekiller’s education at Northeastern State University began as a non-STEM major despite her interest in the field.

The 2021-2022 Miss Indian Oklahoma winner said she had never met a Native American in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) field before starting her education at the university.

However, with the support of mentors like Dr. Cammi Valdez, assistant professor of chemistry at NSU, Whitekiller was able to make the transition to a biochemistry major and begin laboratory research on campus.

Now, Whitekiller is hoping to use her role as Miss Indian Oklahoma to encourage young Native Americans to pursue the same field she has grown so passionate about.

More: Chief Hoskin signs order asserting Cherokee's right to hunt, fish

“I want to use my year as Miss Indian Oklahoma to encourage the students who have a passion for STEM to pursue it and help better our tribes in the process,” Whitekiller said.

Whitekiller graduated from NSU with her bachelor’s degree on Dec. 18 but will continue to fulfill her duties as Miss Indian Oklahoma as part of her post-graduation life by being involved in tribal communities through cultural appearances and service events.

The Oklahoma Federation of Indian Women started the Miss Indian Oklahoma pageant in 1973. Today the competition focuses not only on the beauty of the American Indian woman, but also their current issues, academics and cultural traditions. Whitekiller was crowned the latest Miss Indian Oklahoma in November.

Whitekiller, who grew up in Verdigris, attributes much of her personal growth to the community of educators and students at NSU, namely those at the Native American Support Center, Center for Tribal Studies and the chemistry department.

More: Cherokee Nation Film Office preparing Natives for growing film industry

After graduation, Whitekiller plans to attend medical school to become a physician and serve tribal communities.

“I want to train to become a physician and work in rural or underserved communities with a high Native American population,” Whitekiller said. “Indigenous people face incredibly high rates of health disparities, and I want to have even just a small impact on reducing these rates.”

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: NSU grad, Miss Indian Oklahoma to share passion for STEM careers

'Way to honor Native Americans': Local man leading way on Warrior's Path project


Charles Romans, The Daily Independent, Ashland, Ky.
Mon, December 27, 2021

Dec. 27—GRAYSON — When local man Max Hammond spoke before the Grayson City Council earlier this month, the information he presented concerned the Warrior's Path, an ancient trail winding its way through Kentucky.

"The path stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes," Hammond said. "And to our great fortune, the Warrior's Path crosses through the heart of eastern Kentucky."

Hammond said the Paleo Indians, the Adena and the Hopewell were the first people who walked this path, adding that the path was so old Indigenous people followed the mastodon upon it. "But the path for me begins with the War of 1812."

Hammond said that a few years ago a gentleman had reached out to him and said he possessed artifacts that had been handed down to him through the generations of his family.

The man's great-great-great grandfather came into the area in the 1700s and had a son. That son became known as Colonel Plummer. At the onset of the War of 1812 a group of miners had been sent to Carter Caves, into a particular cave known as Saltpeter Cave. And as the miners began to dig, they uncovered some remarkable artifacts, Hammond said. It was Colonel Plummer who instructed the miners to save these artifacts rather than cast them aside.

Colonel Plummer was the long Scout for the miners, scouting out locations where components of gunpowder might be found. As he searched, Hammond said that Colonel Plummer would look under rock outcroppings and natural shelters for those things all through Carter County.

"He found things that have no comparison anywhere in the known world," Hammond said. What he found, Hammond said, were things that the Smithsonian Institute would love to have. Colonel Plummer found sites that had not been looted or undergone any sort of archeological excavation.

"He found objects laying on top of the ground and on top of boulders," Hammond said. "He found them as if the Native Americans had just walked away from them."

The gunpowder they made from the saltpeter and the bat guano was used during the War of 1812, Hammond told the council.

"We don't talk much about the War of 1812, but other than WWI and WWII, it was probably the most important war to the state of Kentucky," Hammond said. "The reason it is important to Kentucky is that it started at Fort Boonesboro in about 1778. It started when a British General and a Shawnee Chief marched down from Chillicothe to Fort Boonesboro and laid siege to it. And from that point onward it was a constant war between the British, Native Americans and Kentuckians."

Hammond said Kentuckians figured prominently in that war and suffered great losses, including war crimes the equivalent of murder perpetrated by the British and their allies. In total, Hammond said 64% of the known casualties suffered in the War of 1812 were suffered by Kentuckians that fought as far north as Detroit and into Canada. Along with the gunpowder made from Kentucky materials, 468 cannonballs made in Kentucky were used in the last battle of that war, the Battle of New Orleans.

"This path will celebrate that," Hammond said. "And it is the first path in Kentucky that also honors and celebrates the Native Americans.

"When Mister Plummer came to me with all of these amazing artifacts," Hammond said, "I thought the best way to get a museum to show off these artifacts was to get a trail that celebrated the Native Americans."

Hammond said, unknown to him at the time, there was a marker in southern Kentucky showing the Warrior's Path. Once he was introduced to the woman who had researched it, Hammond said they applied to the National Parks Service for a trail that would run from the Cumberland Gap to the Ohio River.

"This is a way to honor Native Americans, and tell the whole story of Kentucky," Hammond said.

"It's a story about the pioneers and the Native Americans," he said. "The good, the bad, and the ugly. We aren't going to pull any punches, and we are going to expel the myth that we were all taught in school that no Native Americans ever lived in the state of Kentucky."

Hammond said the Warrior's Path project has been approved by the National Park Service and the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission. They are working with 20 counties and other agencies on the project, Hammond said.

"The National Parks Service said that they intend to make this a nationally recognized trail, if we meet a few conditions," he said, adding that these conditions were things the group had already planned to do.

"One condition is that this will be a multi-use trail," Hammond said. The group intends for it to be a motorized trail a hiking trail, a mountain bike trail, a kayak trail and a horseback trail. And one day perhaps connect it with its southern and northern roots.

Hammond said the different legs of the Warrior's Path can become important from a tourism standpoint as well, but its most important contributions will be historical and cultural.

"This was a very important area to so many Native American people," Hammond said. "It was a hub of culture and trade which many have forgotten or chosen not to remember. And we need to change that."

Visit warriorspath.org for more information.

Candace Owens claims Trump supports COVID vaccines because he's 'old' and 'came from a time before TV'

Peter Weber, Senior editor
Mon, December 27, 2021

Candace Owens

 Jason Davis/Getty Images

Conservative millennial commentator Candace Owens spent Christmas weekend arguing on Twitter with less-conservative millennial commentator Meghan McCain over an interview Owens conducted with former President Donald Trump last week. In the interview, Trump stood up for the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines after Owens suggested they didn't work.

The Owens-McCain spat quickly devolved into personal insults — McCain called Owens an "anti-vaxxer," and Owens called McCain fat — but Owens used subtler means to dismiss Trump's vaccine boosterism, arguing he's "too old" to find the "obscure websites" where people do their own research on the vaccines.

"People oftentimes forget that, like, how old Trump is," Owens said on an Instagram Live post Thursday night. "He comes from a generation — I've seen other people that are older have the exact same perspective, like, they came from a time before TV, before internet, before being able to conduct their independent research." Trump, who famously had his own reality TV show, never lived in "a time before TV," but he also doesn't use a computer.

Trump's vaccine support isn't "evil" or "based in any corruption," Owens told her followers, but "he needs to have a larger conversation to understand what's going on and why so many people are horrified by his remarks."

In the same Instagram broadcast, Owens talked up colloidal silver as one way to ward off the coronavirus, telling one follower she takes a "teaspoon a day" or "more when I'm sick." Colloidal silver "has no valid medical purpose and plenty of potential dangers," including organ failure in extreme circumstances, The Daily Beast notes, citing the Mayo Clinic. "But colloidal silver's most famous side effect is argyria — a condition that turns users' skin a bluish-gray color, usually permanently."

"In the year since the first shots began going into arms, opposition to vaccines has hardened from skepticism and wariness into something approaching an article of faith for the approximately 39 million American adults who have yet to get a single dose," The New York Times reports. "Unvaccinated Americans this year have made up the vast majority of severe cases and deaths from the virus," and "health experts say the roughly 15 percent of the adult population that remains stubbornly unvaccinated is at the greatest risk of severe illness and death from the Omicron variant."

OH WODE IS THEE
Candace Owens Tells Fans to Take Quack Cure That Turns Skin Blue
Will Sommer
Sun, December 26, 2021

Jason Kempin/Getty

Right-wing personality Candace Owens is urging her fans to consume a quack medical cure known for turning users’ skin blue.

In an Instagram video posted on Thursday, Owens praised the use of colloidal silver as a daily supplement, a treatment that comes with no valid medical use and plenty of health risks.

“Yes, colloidal silver!” Owens said in the video. “I take colloidal silver every single day, I love colloidal silver. That is a great one. That is another one that people probably know nothing about.”

While Owens and others have praised preventative use of colloidal silver as a way to stave off illness, colloidal silver has no valid medical purpose and plenty of potential dangers. In extreme cases, according to the Mayo Clinic, colloidal silver can cause seizure or organ problems.

Owens didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But colloidal silver’s most famous side effect is argyria—a condition that turns users’ skin a bluish-gray color, usually permanently. Despite those risks, colloidal silver has sometimes been embraced by political outsiders, including some libertarians seeking treatments for a variety of illnesses outside the medical system. Montana Libertarian politician Stan Jones, for example, turned his skin blue by consuming colloidal silver.

Owens laid out her colloidal silver regimen in a follow-up Instagram comment to a fan asking for more information about colloidal silver, claiming she takes a “teaspoon a day” and “more when I’m sick” in a post first highlighted by liberal activist William LeGate.

As little as that one teaspoon of silver a day could be enough to cause argyria, depending on the concentration of the silver solution. According to medical research, a 56-year-old man who took a teaspoon every day for “allergy and cold medication” noticed that his fingernails were turning blue.

Owens isn’t the only far-right figure to endorse silver as a fringe medical cure. In 2020, the FDA warned InfoWars chief Alex Jones to stop promising that silver toothpaste and other silver products sold on his website could prevent or treat the coronavirus.

Fake Utah Doc Peddled ‘Ingestible Silver’ as a Bogus COVID Cure: Feds

Owens’s pro-colloidal silver video came days after a disastrous interview where Owens, who works for conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, interviewed former President Donald Trump. In a surprise move, Trump rebuffed Owens’ criticism of the coronavirus vaccines, praising the vaccines’ results as “very good.”

In the same video in which she praised colloidal silver, Owens downplayed Trump’s support for the vaccines, claiming Trump is “too old” to read anti-vaccine information on the internet. She also attacked vaccinations more broadly, claiming, among other things, that there’s “real evil” behind tetanus shots.

‘I thought that people would surely get vaccinated when threatened by actual illness. Nope.’ Here’s what else surprised people about the COVID-19 pandemic

Dec. 27, 2021 

By Charles Passy

A Reddit thread with nearly 25K comments looks at how COVID-19 changed lives in unexpected ways, from vaccine resistance to toilet-paper shortages

Protesters rally against vaccine mandates on November 20, 2021 in New York City. STEPHANIE KEITH/GETTY IMAGES

As the coronavirus pandemic heads into its third year, with signs aplenty that things are worsening with the omicron variant, people are taking stock of how the health crisis has changed and affected them in myriad ways. And some are expressing surprises of all kinds.

A popular Reddit thread posted earlier in December looks at that very question: “What’s surprised you the most about the pandemic?” It has racked up nearly 25,000 comments to date.

Perhaps the most common theme was how the pandemic divided the U.S., if not the globe, and became such a hot-button political issue, which was a development that many apparently didn’t expect. One Redditor lamented: “Not sure if there’s anything that can unite us again.” Another referred to a speech from Heath Ledger’s Joker character in “The Dark Knight” movie, noting that his observations “about how civilized people will eat each other when the chips are down wasn’t that far off after all.”

Some naturally expressed surprise — and disappointment — that the COVID-19 vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer PFE, -1.98%, Moderna MRNA, -2.36% and Johnson & Johnson JNJ, 0.37% weren’t universally accepted. “I thought that people would surely get vaccinated when threatened by actual illness. Nope,” one said. “There is a solution, it’s free, it’s right in front of them, and they refuse it,” another said.

On the other hand, some were taken off guard by all the government involvement — presumably they were referring to shutdowns, and mask and vaccine mandates — and decried what they called a lack of freedom. “It’s like collectively, people haven’t learned anything from history,” one said.

Related: Apple delays return-to-office date indefinitely, gives workers $1,000 ‘work-from-home’ bonus


Toilet-paper shortages have been another great — and unwanted — surprise of the pandemic. NAOMI BAKER/GETTY IMAGES

Some found a surprise silver lining in terms of the quiet and time for reflection that the pandemic afforded them. Even someone in the United Kingdom who was laid off from work at the start of the pandemic saw a positive: “The weather in the U.K. was absolutely stunning for those few months and I just remember going on walks and binge watching so many series on Netflix NFLX, -0.34% … I hated having to go back to work.”

And at least one Redditor was surprised at how the pandemic prompted them to make changes in their life for the better. In this case, the writer said that it became a time to successfully confront their alcohol addiction: “This huge event showed how much I was still willing to fight.”

Some who stayed in their jobs but worked from home were also surprised at their productivity and contentment with the new arrangements. One noted, “It was oddly peaceful…I could work from home without being bothered.” Others claimed the massive shift to so many people working from home proved that most offices are “unnecessary.”

Of course, the great pandemic toilet-paper shortages prompted surprise as well. But at least one Redditor said the surprise came with a solution — the purchase of a bidet. “How nice (it) is,” the commenter wrote. (And indeed, bidet sales have surged during the past couple of years.)

Alas, the most frustrating surprise for many is that the pandemic is far from over, particularly as the spread caused by the omicron variant prompts new closures and restrictions. One Redditor simply said, “It doesn’t seem to end.” Another said they looked back on the early days of the pandemic almost with nostalgia. “Everyone was just baking bread and staying home and it was kind of fun!” But the Redditor added that now “I’m just sad. And tired. So very tired.”

Lake Tahoe shatters 50-year December snowfall record with more than 16 feet of snow

Amy Alonzo, Reno Gazette Journal
Tue, December 28, 2021

LAKE TAHOE, Nev. —With four days left to go in the month, Lake Tahoe has already broken the record for December snowfall set 50 years ago.

On Monday, December snow totals at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab reached 193.7 inches, blowing a 1970 record of 179 inches out of the water.

The lab, located at Donner Pass, has received roughly 39 inches of snow in the past 24 hours and could break the 200-inch mark today.


The lab was built in 1946 by the U.S. Weather Bureau and Army Corps of Engineers and maintains one of the longest-running manual snow depth records in the world, dating back to 1879.

“This has been a very beneficial storm for the Sierra region,” said Dan McEvoy, regional climatologist for the Western Regional Climate Center.

Snow continued to make travel nearly impossible over mountain passes on Dec. 26, 2021, a day after a Christmas storm left more than 7 feet of snow in some locations. Seen here is a sign for Spooner Summit Dec. 26, 2021

The Lake Tahoe Basin is sitting around 200 percent of average for snow water equivalent – the amount of water that will be released from the snowpack when it melts – for this time of year.

And the Basin is sitting at 60 percent of its peak average snow water equivalent, which occurs around late March or early April, McEvoy said. The median peak average is 27 inches, and today 16.1 inches of snow water equivalent was measured, he said.

December’s storms came in “forming a right-side-up snowpack,” he said. Earlier storms were wetter with higher elevation snow, but then temperatures and snow levels dropped.

“That’s good for both water content and avalanche concerns,” McEvoy said.

It will also help keep the snowpack for area ski resorts in good shape, even if the region runs into a dry spell.

“It’s been a pretty impressive December,” McEvoy said.

But, he cautioned, it’s possible for drought conditions to resume.

“If I had to emphasize one point, it’s that the drought’s not over. We need the storms to continue through the winter.”

Reach Amy Alonzo at aalonzo@gannett.com.

China Says This Strange Light Was a Record-Breaking Cosmic Explosion. Others Say It’s Space Garbage


David Axe
Tue, December 28, 2021

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Pablo Carlos Budassi, Getty

About a year ago, a team of astronomers working in Hawaii glimpsed something in the night sky. A four-minute-long flash of light.

Depending on who you ask, that flash was either a powerful explosion from 13.4 billion years ago—a virtual snapshot of the universe as it existed just 400 million years after its formation—or a reflection from a hunk of space junk lazily looping around Earth. Scientific treasure—or garbage.

Despite a year of heated debate and a flurry of studies, it’s possible we may never know what caused this mysterious flash, dubbed “GN-z11-flash” for the faraway galaxy where it may have originated. But this is high-stakes astronomy—either a landmark, career-defining discovery, or the type of embarrassment people spend their whole lives trying to avoid.

As astronomers stretch the limits of technology and scholarship to peer farther and farther into space, they run into more and more obstacles. Our telescopes aren’t good enough. Our computers are too slow. Our data is too thin. Distant observations are so delicate and shrouded in uncertainty that a passing piece of space garbage can spoil everything.

Back in 2017, a team of astronomers led by Linhua Jiang, from China’s Peking University, was peering through the Keck I telescope in Hawaii, observing GN-z11. They were using an infrared spectrometer attached to the telescope, expecting to scrutinize the galaxy—which at 13.4 billion light-years away is the oldest and most distant object humanity has ever observed—for clues about the early history of the universe. GN-z11 like many very old, very faraway galaxies is only visible in infrared.

They didn’t expect to witness an explosion. But if you believe the team’s subsequent analysis, that’s exactly what happened. For 245 seconds, Keck I registered what appeared to be a possible gamma-ray burst from the universe’s infancy.

Observing a 13.4 billion-year-old gamma-ray burst, or GRB, would be a profound stroke of luck with equally profound implications for the study of, well, everything. “GRBs and their associated emission can be used to probe the star-formation and reionization history in the era of cosmic dawn,” Jiang and his team wrote in their initial paper, which appeared in the science journal Nature Astronomy in December 2020.

“Reionization” refers to the eons half a billion years after the Big Bang when the hydrogen making up most of the atoms in the universe ionized and murky space became transparent. It’s a mysterious era—the first eons of light following a period of hundreds of millions of years during which space was swirling with opaque gases.

Witnessing an explosion from that timeframe would be a scientific coup. “This means that gamma-ray bursts can be efficiently produced at a very early time,” Jiang told The Daily Beast. In other words, the explosions we associate with the deaths of stars, and the creation of black holes, started happening really early. If gamma rays were bursting as long ago as 13.4 billion years, it means the universe—its structure and galaxy-forming mechanisms—evolved fast into what we see around us today.

But other astronomers weren’t convinced Jiang and his team had seen anything remotely interesting. The odds of glimpsing a gamma-ray burst 13.4 billion light years away are infinitesimally slim, a team led by Michał Michałowski, an astronomer at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, explained in Nature Astronomy in October.

In astronomy, a “redshift” is the change in a faraway galaxy’s infrared signature that helps us to determine its age. GN-z11 naturally has a very high redshift, which suggests it’s ancient. But astronomers haven’t confirmed any other galaxies remotely this old. The next oldest, galaxy EGSY8p7, has a redshift of 8.7, meaning it’s probably hundreds of millions of years younger than GN-z11.

U.S. and Chinese Astronomers Are Teaming Up to Hunt for Alien Lights

Astronomers would need to find a lot more galaxies in GN-z11’s age range and spend a lot more time pointing telescopes at them in order to be sure what a gamma-ray burst from these old galaxies even looks like, Michalkowski and his team noted. “A larger sample of very high redshift galaxies is needed to detect such distant GRBs.”

It was way, way more likely that Jiang and his team caught a reflection from the castoff Breeze-M upper stage of a 6-year-old Russian Proton rocket. “We searched Space-Track, the largest publicly available database of Earth satellites and space debris for an object close to the position of GN-z11-flash at the time of observations,” Michałowski’s team wrote. “We found the Breeze-M space debris.”

This particular argument comes down, in part, to common sense, Michałowski told The Daily Beast. “The conclusion is that either it was an extraordinary discovery of something we have not seen yet—a gamma-ray burst at redshift 11—or an obvious explanation with a well-identified space debris, which we are certain went either through the field of view of the Keck telescope or just outside of it… with all properties consistent with being a flash.

“Everybody can pick the explanation they prefer, but I don’t have doubts myself,” Michałowski added. He said he considers the controversy “settled.”

Jiang and his team disagree. “We looked into our records and found that this satellite was ruled out in our original analysis,” they explained in a new paper, a preprint of which appeared online last week but has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Jiang et al’s calculations put the Russian rocket shell and the potential GN-z11-flash inches apart in the telescope’s field of view—a distance they claimed should preclude any confusion between the rocket and a gamma-ray burst from the distant galaxy. Besides, they added, the rocket’s reflection “was much fainter than what was needed to produce the flash.”

The yearlong back-and-forth, which included two other major criticisms of the Jiang team’s conclusions, has so far ended in impasse, with no resolution in sight. “We will never know the true nature of this flash,” Jiang said.

If we had a lot of good data on confirmed gamma-ray bursts from billions of light-years away, we might be able to compare them to the GN-z11-flash and see if they match. Jiang said he looked and couldn’t find anything to form a comparison. “I spent lots of time searching,” he explained. “Unfortunately we didn’t get such data.”

That could change in the future. Better telescopes—such as NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Dec. 25 as a Christmas treat—combined with very powerful computers could help us spot and categorize faraway explosions. With time, luck and new technology, we might eventually be able to reassess the GN-z11-flash.

But Bing Zhang, a University of Nevada astronomer and a member of Jiang’s team, is urging patience. A lot of it. “One needs very powerful telescopes to continuously monitor many distant but faint galaxies to constrain the event rate of GN-z11-flash-like events,” he told The Daily Beast.

It’s possible that, a year ago, astronomers caught a fleeting glimpse of the universe’s infancy. It’s also possible they caught a fleeting glimpse of Russian space trash. For the foreseeable future, we probably won’t know which it was.

THIRD WORLD USA

Some people face eviction even after getting COVID-19 rental assistance. ‘Did this do what we thought it would do?’

Cecilia Reyes, Chicago Tribune
Tue, December 28, 2021

Tenants can once again apply for COVID-19 rental assistance, the latest wave of a $1 billion program that has sought to financially stabilize Illinois renters and landlords.

But although the program has succeeded in protecting some renters, tenant advocates say others are being evicted or threatened with eviction despite receiving thousands of dollars to pay the money they owe. The problem has taken on greater urgency in recent months, as the state’s moratorium on evictions expired in October.

Sara Heymann, a member of the neighborhood group Únete La Villita, said the group helped about 50 tenants in Little Village fill out paperwork for rental assistance through the city of Chicago. But after getting the payments, a lot of landlords still filed for evictions or declined to renew leases, she said, making the experience bittersweet.

“Working so hard to get those tenants rental assistance, and then they weren’t completely out of the woods yet, they didn’t have a job, and then their landlords follow up by just kicking them out? It sucks,” she said.

La Shone Kelly, director of housing for the Garfield Park Community Council, said the program has benefited the community but her agency also has fielded calls from tenants facing evictions or nonrenewals after getting rental assistance.

Many tenants still don’t have jobs when their rental assistance expires, and some landlords, who get many months’ worth of rental assistance in one single payment, lose track of how many months are covered, Kelly noted.

One of the issues, advocates said, is the lack of follow-up by government officials to ensure tenants understand their rights or landlords abide by the rules tied to receiving the public money, such as waiving late fees or temporary bans on filing evictions for nonpayment of rent.

The Garfield Park Community Council has begun following up with tenants on its own, Kelly said.

“That’s a lot of money that went out,” she said. “. .. Did this do what we thought it would do?”

The Illinois Housing Development Authority, which administers the bulk of pandemic-related federal aid for rent arrears in the state, said in a statement that it “unfortunately ... is not in a position to take any action that could be immediately helpful” to tenants who continue to face eviction after receiving assistance. The agency referred tenants to legal aid groups and other service providers.

The Chicago Department of Housing, which also administers rental assistance, said in a statement it has been focused on getting money out quickly “due to the emergency nature of the pandemic crisis.” The department said it was aware of some cases where evictions are improperly filed and has dealt with them on a case-by-case basis.

The department partnered with the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab to follow up with applicants and track their outcomes, but a department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about the partnership.

Evon McAllister applied for assistance with the Illinois Housing Development Authority in July after falling behind on rent for her South Shore apartment this year.

An acute stroke had left McAllister unable to move the right side of her body, which prevented her from working and made it hard for her to manage in her sixth-floor unit, she said. She had hoped the rental assistance would encourage her landlord to move her to a more accessible apartment.

In November, she notified her property manager, WPD Management, that her application for assistance had been approved. The company responded by noting she could still be evicted and offering $1,000 — and movers — if she found a new home by Dec. 15.

“If the IHDA does not process the payments in a timely manner you can still be processed for an eviction if the owner decides to,” a company representative wrote in a Nov. 11 email McAllister provided to the Tribune. “Please try to start looking for some places on your own.”

“This is wrong,” McAllister said in an interview. “He got the money.”

According to IHDA, the property management company cashed the $8,010 rental assistance check, which covered nine months of back rent, on Nov. 17. The company also received an earlier round of rental assistance for McAllister that was processed through a Chicago nonprofit.

McAllister said she’s upset the management did not improve the condition of her South Shore unit or move her to another apartment, given that the assistance money meant she was more than caught up on her rent. “Nobody should have to live like this,” she said of the mice and roach problems she reported encountering at her unit.

Reached by phone, Robert Ellis of WPD Management said he thought rental assistance had worked for McAllister, as she was not taken to court. He acknowledged problems with the apartment but said McAllister didn’t have sufficient income to live in the building, a problem the temporary rental assistance wouldn’t solve. “She can’t cover the rent moving forward for the unit,” he said.

“We’re doing our best to work with her,” Ellis said.

Ellis suggested that McAllister apply for rental assistance a third time, but McAllister said she just wants to move on. “You’re not gonna get any more money from me,” she said.

McAllister said she applied to live in a low-income apartment but was told there were many more people in need ahead of her.

The rental assistance program, together with other pandemic-related safeguards around eviction, has left renters and landlords more stable than they would have been otherwise, said Michelle Gilbert, legal director of the Lawyers Committee for Better Housing. The organization represents low-income tenants in eviction proceedings and is also connecting residents to public rental assistance.

But the assistance push alone can’t promise long-term housing stability for tenants, Gilbert said.

“There are people who are experiencing housing instability either because they’re not back to the amount of money they were making, or because their savings took a hit, or because they were unstable to begin with,” she said.

It also doesn’t address the power imbalance between landlord and tenant, Gilbert added. “We’re not able to represent everyone,” she said.

Susan Brewer and her wife, Le’Denise Henderson, got help with their rent this year through a city of Chicago assistance program that predates COVID-19. They fell behind on rent after Henderson was laid off as a lead barista at DePaul University at the start of the pandemic, Henderson said.

On March 31 they were approved for $5,355, which would cover nine months’ worth of rent. But a new landlord purchased their South Shore building shortly afterward, then filed for eviction against Brewer and Henderson for failing to pay rent during the months he owned the building. The case was dismissed in October.

Brewer and Henderson’s landlord, Anthony Glispie, referred questions to his attorney. The attorney, John Norkus, said the eviction case arose out of confusion surrounding the rental assistance when Glispie purchased the property. They decided the eviction case was not worth pursuing because paperwork on the assistance was muddled, he said.

Now the two women are again behind on rent. They said they did not receive rent invoices and could not access the payment system. They are now able to view invoices and pay rent, but can’t come up with enough money to make multiple rent payments at once, Brewer said.

Norkus disputed that Brewer and Henderson were blocked from making payments. Their landlord has again filed to evict them, he said.

Brewer and Henderson said they had not yet been served with eviction papers but were expecting a knock on their door soon. They are considering loans and asking for help, and plan to apply for the most recent round of rental assistance. But they are worried about how much time the process takes.

“That will leave us pretty much in a homeless state,” Henderson said.

Indonesia says will turn away stricken boat of Rohingya refugees



Indonesia says will turn away stricken boat of Rohingya refugeesA boat carrying Rohingya refugees, including women and children, is seen stranded in waters off the coast of Bireuen

Tue, December 28, 2021
By Hidayatullah Tahjuddin

BIREUEN, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesian authorities will help repair a stranded boat packed with over 100 Rohingya off its coast but will not allow its passengers to seek refuge in the Southeast Asian country and will turn the vessel away, officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Fishermen spotted the skiff on Sunday, adrift off the coast of Bireuen, a district on the western island of Sumatra, with around 120 men, women and children on board.

"The Rohingya are not Indonesian citizens, we can't just bring them in even as refugees. This is in line with government policy," said Dian Suryansyah, a local navy official.

Authorities would provide humanitarian aid to the stricken vessel, including food, medicine and water, before turning it away, he added.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees and is predominately seen as a transit country for those seeking asylum to a third country.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday that the boat had suffered engine damage and should be allowed to land.

"UNHCR is concerned about the safety and lives of the refugees on board," the statement said.

Badruddin Yunus, a local fishing community leader, said that the refugees had been at sea for 28 days and some of them had fallen ill and one had died.

Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar have for years sailed to countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia between November and April when the seas are calm. Many have been turned away, despite calls for assistance by international rights groups.

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar in August 2017 after a military crackdown that refugees said included mass killings and rape. Rights groups have documented killings of civilians and burning of Rohingya villages.

Hundreds have reached Indonesia over the last few years, after months at sea.

(Writing by Stanley Widianto; Editing by James Pearson)