A famed NYC museum is closing two Native American halls. Harvard and others have taken similar steps


The south entrance to the American Museum of Natural History is shown, in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. New York’s American Museum of Natural History is closing two halls featuring Native American objects starting Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, acknowledging that the exhibits are “severely outdated” and contain culturally sensitive items. 

(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

BY PHILIP MARCELO
 January 26, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s American Museum of Natural History is closing two halls featuring Native American objects starting Saturday, acknowledging the exhibits are “severely outdated” and contain culturally sensitive items.

The mammoth complex across from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is the latest U.S. institution to cover up or remove Native American exhibits to comply with recently revamped federal regulations dealing with the display of Indigenous human remains and cultural items.

The museum said in October that it would pull all human remains from public display, with the aim of eventually repatriating as much as it could to Native American tribes and other rightful owners.

Sean Decatur, the museum’s president, said in a letter to staff Friday that the latest move reflects the “growing urgency” among museums to change their relationships with tribes and how they exhibit Indigenous cultures.


“The halls we are closing are vestiges of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” he wrote. “Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

Earlier this month, Chicago’s Field Museum covered several displays containing Native American items. Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has said it would remove all Native American funerary items from its exhibits. The Cleveland Museum of Art is another institution that has taken similar steps.

Shannon O’Loughlin, head of the Association on American Indian Affairs, a national group that has long called for museums to comply with the federal requirements, welcomed such developments but said the true test is what ultimately becomes of the removed items.

“Covering displays or taking things down isn’t the goal,” she said. “It’s about repatriation — returning objects back to tribes. So this is just one part of a much bigger process.”

Todd Mesek, a Cleveland Museum of Art spokesperson, said the institution is consulting with Native American groups to secure their consent to display certain items as well as reviewing archival records to determine if there is already some agreement on record.

Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesperson, said the Peabody is committed to returning all ancestral remains and funerary items and has more than doubled the number of staffers working toward that end in recent months. The museum also announced this month that it would cover the expenses of tribal members traveling to campus as part of the repatriation process.

The revised regulations released in December by the U.S. Department of the Interior are related to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. The changes include expanded requirements for consulting with and receiving tribes’ consent to exhibit and conduct research on Indigenous artifacts, including human remains and funerary, sacred and cultural objects.

Native American groups have long complained that museums, colleges and other institutions dragged out the process of returning hundreds of thousands of culturally significant items.

“The only exception to repatriation is if a museum or institution can prove they received consent at the time the item was taken,” O’Loughlin said. “But most institutions can’t do that, of course, because these items and bodies were usually taken through violence, theft and looting.”

Decatur said in the letter that rather than simply covering up or removing items in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains Halls, the ones closing this weekend, the decision was made to shutter them entirely because they are “severely outdated.”

Meanwhile, some displays elsewhere in the museum, including ones showcasing Native Hawaiian items, will be covered, he added.

Decatur acknowledged one consequence of the closures will be the suspension of visits to them by school field trips. The Eastern Woodlands Hall, in particular, has been a mainstay for New York-area students learning about Native American life in the Northeast.

The museum remains committed to supporting the teaching of Indigenous cultures, Decatur said, and officials are reviewing the new federal regulations to understand their implications.

O’Loughlin of the Association on American Indian Affairs said there isn’t as much gray area as museum officials might suggest.


“The new regulations make it crystal clear,” she said. “It doesn’t prohibit research. It doesn’t prohibit exhibiting native cultural heritage. It only requires prior and informed consent before doing so.”
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Associated Press writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this story.
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AMERIKA PRISON NATION INC.

What happened at the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution: An AP eyewitness account


Anti-death penalty signs placed by activists stand along the road heading to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024. On Thursday, Alabama put Smith to death with nitrogen gas. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler, File)

This undated photo provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections shows inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher’s wife. On Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, Alabama put Smith to death with nitrogen gas. (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP, File)

BY KIM CHANDLER
Updated 5:58 PM MST, January 26, 2024Share


ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — As witnesses including five news reporters watched through a window, Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted and sentenced to die in the 1988 murder-for hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, convulsed on a gurney as Alabama carried out the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas.

Critics who had worried the new execution method would be cruel and experimental said Smith’s final moments Thursday night proved they were right. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, however, characterized it on Friday as a “textbook” execution.

Here is an eyewitness account of how it unfolded. Times, unless otherwise noted, are according to a clock on the execution chamber wall at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility.



Alabama man shook violently on gurney during first-ever nitrogen gas execution




Alabama executes a man with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used


The curtains between the viewing room and the execution chamber opened at 7:53 p.m. Smith, wearing a tan prison uniform, was already strapped to the gurney and draped in a white sheet.

A blue-rimmed respirator mask covered his face from forehead to chin. It had a clear face shield and plastic tubing that appeared to connect through an opening to the adjoining control room.

FINAL WORDS

The prison warden entered the chamber, read the death warrant setting his execution date and held a microphone for Smith to speak any final words.

“Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards,” Smith began. He moved his fingers to form an “I love you” sign to family members who were also present. “I’m leaving with love, peace and light. ... Love all of you.”

The Sennett family watched from a viewing room that was separate from the one where members of the media and Smith’s attorney were seated.

THE EXECUTION IS GREENLIGHTED

Marshall, the attorney general, gave prison officials the OK to begin the execution at 7:56 p.m. That was the final confirmation from his office that there were no court orders preventing it from going forward.


A corrections officer in the chamber approached Smith and checked the side of the mask.

The Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual advisor took a few steps toward Smith, touched him on the leg and they appeared to pray.

The Department of Corrections had required Hood to sign a waiver agreeing to stay 3 feet (0.9 meters) away from Smith’s gas mask in case the hose supplying the nitrogen came loose.

THRASHING AND GASPING BREATHS

Smith began to shake and writhe violently, in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements, at about 7:58 p.m. The force of his movements caused the gurney to visibly move at least once. Smith’s arms pulled against the against the straps holding him to the gurney. He lifted his head off the gurney the gurney and then fell back.

The shaking went on for at least two minutes. Hood repeatedly made the sign of the cross toward Smith. Smith’s wife, who was watching, cried out.

Smith began to take a series of deep gasping breaths, his chest rising noticeably. His breathing was no longer visible at about 8:08 p.m. The corrections officer who had checked the mask before walked over to Smith and looked at him.

THE EXECUTION ENDS

The curtains were closed to the viewing room at about 8:15 p.m.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm told reporters afterward that the nitrogen gas flowed for approximately 15 minutes. The state attorney general’s office declined Friday to discuss at what time the nitrogen gas began flowing, or at what time a monitor connected to Smith during the execution showed that his heart had stopped beating.

State officials said Smith was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m.
___

Chandler was one of five media witnesses for Smith’s execution by nitrogen hypoxia. She has covered approximately 15 executions in Alabama over the last two decades, including the state’s first lethal injection.

Alabama man shook violently on gurney during first-ever nitrogen gas execution

A man put to death using nitrogen gas shook and convulsed on the gurney as Alabama carried out the first-of-its-kind execution that once again placed the United States at the forefront of the debate over capital punishment. (Jan. 26)

BY KIM CHANDLER
January 26, 2024



ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — A man put to death using nitrogen gas shook and convulsed for minutes on the gurney as Alabama carried out the first-of-its-kind execution that has ignited debate over the humaneness of the method.

Breathing through a nitrogen-filled face mask that deprived him of oxygen, 58-year-old convicted killer Kenneth Eugene Smith convulsed in seizurelike spasms for at least two minutes of the 22-minute execution by nitrogen hypoxia Thursday. The force of his movements at times caused the gurney to visibly shake. That was followed by several minutes of gasping breathing until his breath was no longer perceptible.

Smith’s supporters expressed alarm at how the execution played out, saying it was the antithesis of the state’s promise of a quick and painless death. But Alabama’s attorney general characterized the execution as “textbook” during a Friday news conference.

“As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution is no longer an untested method. It is a proven one,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said, extending an offer of help for states considering adopting the method.




Alabama calls nitrogen execution method painless and humane, but critics are raising doubts

Why are states like Alabama, which is planning to use nitrogen gas, exploring new execution methods?

Asked about Smith’s shaking and convulsing on the gurney, Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm said they appeared to be involuntary movements.

“That was all expected and was in the side effects that we’ve seen or researched on nitrogen hypoxia,” Hamm said. “Nothing was out of the ordinary from what we were expecting.”

Marshall said he anticipated Alabama “will definitely have more nitrogen hypoxia executions.” More than 40 death row inmates have selected nitrogen as their preferred execution method over lethal injection but did so at a time when the state hadn’t developed nitrogen procedures.

AP AUDIO: Alabama man shook violently on gurney during first-ever nitrogen gas execution.

AP correspondent Sagar Meghani has the story.

Attorneys for those inmates have asked the court to order Alabama to turn over records and information about Smith’s execution. Litigation will almost certainly focus on Smith’s convulsions and movements during the execution.

“The State promised the world the most humane method of execution known to man. Instead, Mr. Smith writhed and thrashed before he died. No further executions should take place by this method until the events of this evening are examined by an independent body,” Assistant Federal Defender John Palombi, who represents death row inmates who requested nitrogen, said in a statement.

Smith’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, agreed that the execution did not match the state attorney general’s prediction that Smith would lose consciousness in seconds followed by death within minutes.

“We didn’t see somebody go unconscious in 30 seconds. What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,” said Hood, who attended the execution.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, a euthanasia expert who designed a suicide pod using nitrogen gas and appeared as an expert witness for Smith, said the description of Smith’s thrashing matches what he would expect to happen when nitrogen gas is used in a mask and someone holds their breath or takes the smallest possible breaths.

“I think this outcome is inevitable if the nitrogen gas is to be used in execution where people do not want to die and will not cooperate,” Nitschke said.

Outside the country, the European Union and the U.N. Human Rights Office expressed regret Friday over the execution. The 27-nation EU and the Geneva-based U.N. rights office say the death penalty violates the right to life and does not deter crime.

Smith, who was paid $1,000 to kill an Alabama woman more than 30 years ago, said in a final statement: “Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”

He made the “I love you sign” with his hands toward family members who were witnesses. “Thank you for supporting me. Love, love all of you,” Smith sai

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said the execution was justice for the murder-for-hire killing of 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett in 1988.

“After more than 30 years and attempt after attempt to game the system, Mr. Smith has answered for his horrendous crimes,” Ivey said in a statement. “I pray that Elizabeth Sennett’s family can receive closure after all these years dealing with that great loss.”

“Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. ... I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”
Kenneth Eugene Smith, in a final statement

Mike Sennett, the victim’s son, said Thursday night that Smith “had been incarcerated almost twice as long as I knew my mom.”

“Nothing happened here today is going to bring Mom back. It’s kind of a bittersweet day. We are not going to be jumping around, whooping and holler, hooray and all that,” he said. “I’ll end by saying Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett got her justice tonight.”

Alabama had previously attempted to execute Smith in 2022, but the lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line.

The execution came after a last-minute legal battle in which his attorneys contended the state was making him the test subject for an experimental execution method that could violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Federal courts rejected Smith’s bid to block it, with the final ruling coming Thursday night from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching,” Sotomayor wrote.

The White House also expressed concern over the execution method, with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying during a media briefing Friday that reports about Smith and his death were “very troubling.”

Sennett was found dead in her home March 18, 1988, with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck. Smith was one of two men convicted in the killing. The other, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.

Prosecutors said they were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance. The husband, Charles Sennett Sr., killed himself when the investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents.

In ‘Origin,’ Ava DuVernay and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor seek the roots of racism

Ava DuVernay has been disappointed that “Origin” and its star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor haven’t been recognized during Hollywood’s awards season so far, but says: “Time will reward the film for its merits.”

BY JAKE COYLE
January 22, 2024


NEW YORK (AP) — Ava DuVernay kept hearing she had to read “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” She had Isabel Wilkerson’s book in galleys before it was published in 2020. Oprah Winfrey kept telling her to read it. But she put it off. It seemed an imposing read. Copies kept proliferating in her home.

“At one point, a high-profile director said to me, ‘I heard you got the book,’” DuVernay says. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I got a couple copies.’ He said, ‘No, I heard you’re doing it.’ I said, ‘As in doing a movie?’ So I said I better read this.”

But even once she cracked Wilkerson’s book open, it took DuVernay a few reads before it really sunk in. “Caste,” a best-seller released shortly before the death of George Floyd, reframed American racism through historical stratifications of caste. “Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste,” wrote Wilkerson. “Caste is the bones, race the skin.”

For DuVernay, whose films ( “The 13th,”“Selma” ) have illuminated American history with rigor and passion, the thesis of “Caste” was eye-opening.

“I was so wrapped up with the idea of race as a Black woman. That was the lens through which I see myself and the world sees me,” says DuVernay. “That’s what I thought.”

“Origin,” DuVernay’s new film, isn’t a direct adaptation of Wilkerson’s book. DuVernay, who wrote the script, centers it on Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), following the author while she researches the book and navigates her own personal joys and tragedies. The film takes a heavyweight work of historical and sociological inquiry and transforms it into a deeply humanistic drama and a globe-trotting detective story.

“She’s Indiana Jones. She’s going around the world in search of the holy grail,” says Ellis-Taylor. “She’s on this process of discovery and then in the middle of that worldwide hunt, she loses, and her loss is immeasurable. But she’s still searching. That is a hero. That is a cinematic hero.”

DuVernay and Ellis-Taylor met for an interview last month in the downtown offices of Neon, which is releasing “Origin” theatrically Friday. They had only just begun talking about their still-fresh experience making the film. Ellis-Taylor hadn’t yet seen it and wasn’t sure she was going to. “It was so personal for me,” she said. “I don’t want to share it with anybody yet.”

Some have overlooked “Origin” since its Venice Film Festival debut. DuVernay has lamented Ellis-Taylor’s absence thus far from the pomp of award season. But underestimating “Origin” would be a mistake. The film, which made numerous 10 lists including this critic’s, is audaciously original in how it fuses big ideas with emotional warmth.

If “Caste” sought to describe some of the man-made hierarchies that repeat throughout history, “Origin” – which DuVernay and her producing partner, Paul Garnes, gathered financing for independently – is itself a work that boldly and beautifully transcends conventional Hollywood limitations.

DuVernay and Garnes raised $38 million with the help of philanthropists — including the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — many of whom had little Hollywood experience but believed in the movie. Melinda Gates is a producer. NBA stars like Chris Paul invested.

“We are in an industry and a society where everything has a label. If there’s a Black woman director and a Black woman lead, it has to be about things they care about,” DuVernay says. “My hope is that we can somehow break caste.”

“Origin” opens with a dramatic recreation of the shooting of Trayvon Martin and later dips into historical vignettes including Nazi Germany, Jim Crow-era Mississippi and the experience of the Dalits in India. It steps into stories from history while capturing Wilkerson’s life with her husband (Jon Bernthal) and mother (Emily Yancy) – intimate dramas that touchingly counter and clarify some of the social structures Wilkerson traces while seeking the roots of racism.

“I wanted something where her intimate personal journey ran alongside, mirrored, challenged and actually complemented this huge universal truth that we don’t really know,” DuVernay says. “And I felt like somewhere in there, there were touch points where they could complement each other. One doesn’t always lead perfectly into other, but that they were in a conversation.”

Ellis-Taylor, the Oscar-nominated co-star of “King Richard,” had acted in DuVernay’s 2019 miniseries “When They See Us,” about the 1989 Central Park jogger case. She signed on to “Origin” without a script. “I had read ‘The Warmth of Other Suns,’” she says, alluding to Wilkerson’s prior book. “So how bad could it be?”

DuVernay describes the making of “Origin” as centered on her work with Ellis-Taylor, a collaboration founded on their mutual personal connection to the material.

“These things that she speaks about in her pillars of caste, that’s stuff I lived with. They’re not abstract ideas. That’s my reality,” says Ellis-Taylor, who was raised in Mississippi.

Seeing race as a caste was, to Ellis-Taylor, a revelatory new paradigm.

“That excites me. That sets me on fire,” she says. “And I believe this film is a dangerous film. If it does the work that I want it to do in theaters, it should make people angry. It should make people mad. I felt myself as being a soldier in that battle.”

DuVernay, too, describes herself as ready for “ugly feedback” to the film. A prominent proponent of inclusivity in cinema and the first African American woman to direct a $100 million-budgeted live-action film, she’s accustomed to the cultural battles that often accompany frank discussions of race.

“I am used to it. But on ‘Selma’ I was unprepared and it hurt me. It hurt me when people came at me about LBJ (on ‘Selma’) and that I’m tearing down people’s legacy and that I’m wrong and how dare I do this and that when I was advancing the perspective of a group of people that usually don’t have a story told from their point of view,” says DuVernay. “It seems whenever I do that, I’m wrong. I’ve felt that vitriol and felt that anger.”

“In this, I’m prepared for it in a way I hadn’t been before,” DuVernay adds. “And my preparation involves: Deal with it. I’m not going to fight you. It’s in there. Have at it.”

Yet the most common reaction to “Origin” from audiences has been an outpouring of emotion. Moviegoers often come out of the theater drying their eyes. Far from academic, the movie’s power builds through its straightforward humanity – what DuVernay calls “15 little love stories.”

In between are some painful historic episodes. Yet even filming those – like the Martin shooting – the director doesn’t find agonizing.

“My experience in shooting these kinds of films before has given me a set of muscles and tools where it doesn’t bother me, and I actually feel empowered and bolstered because I get to be the teller of these stories,” says DuVernay.

“Origin” was shot quickly, in 37 days across three countries during early 2023. DuVernay turned it around quickly, completing the edit in time for Venice in September. It was a fast enough process that Ellis-Taylor has trouble locating it chronologically in her mind.

“I think I know why,” she says. “Because it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a miracle.”

DuVernay calls “Origin” the film she’s proudest of, partly because of how she made it outside the studio system. Each film before has felt to DuVernay, who started in the industry as a publicist, like a test, either to herself or to prove her talent behind the camera. Her last movie, “A Wrinkle in Time, ” for the Walt Disney Co., adapted a famously difficult-to-adapt novel. The experience of “Origin” – while no less daunting -- was different.

“For me, it’s shifted everything I know about myself and my work. To be working with a freedom and an abandon yet a sense of certainty in my skills. To not feel like ‘Oh, I didn’t go to film school and I’m just skating by,’” DuVernay says. “This was just free.”
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In a story published Jan. 17, 2024, about the movie “Origin,” The Associated Press erroneously reported the name of actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. It was updated Jan. 19, 2024, to correct her first name to Aunjanue.
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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

JAKE COYLE
Film writer and critic

Movie Review: Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’ is a powerful, artful, interpretation of ‘Caste’

This image released by Neon shows Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in a scene from “Origin.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Neon via AP)

This image released by Neon shows Jon Bernthal, left, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in a scene from “Origin.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Neon via AP)

This image released by Neon shows Emily Yancy , left, and Jon Bernthal in a scene from “Origin.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Neon via AP)

This image released by Neon shows director Ava DuVernay, center, on the set of “Origin.” (Atsushi Nishijima/Neon via AP)

BY LINDSEY BAHR
January 17, 2024

Words like “important” and “vital” are thrown around possibly a little too much in film criticism. It’s not that we don’t mean it — it’s just that sometimes we (ok, I) can get a bit excited. And when watching and reviewing good films in real time, it’s impossible to know what is yet to come. Will there be something else that makes that superlative seem silly in retrospect? Often times, yes.

Ava DuVernay’s new film “Origin” is that something else. It is a powerful and artistic interpretation of an academic book that was anything but an obvious candidate for a narrative feature.

The book in question is “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” in which Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson offers an overriding theory about power and hierarchy and systemic dehumanization in social structures, connecting the Black experience in America to the Dalits of India and Jewish people in Nazi Germany. The New York Times reviewer called it one of the most powerful non-fiction books he’d ever encountered and “the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”

That “Caste” was appealing to DuVernay, who has made documentaries like “13th,” connecting slavery to mass incarceration of Black men, is not surprising. What’s she’s done with it is. Instead of rehashing the facts of the book, DuVernay has turned “Caste” into an investigative, fictionalized drama in which we follow the character Isabel Wilkerson as she puts the pieces together while her life crumbles.

With an unconventional structure, in which we are often transported to different stories in different times, in the American South, Nazi Germany and early 20th century India, “Origin” is nonetheless alarmingly effective, a riveting and haunting journey to a kind of enlightenment.

Wilkerson is played beautifully by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, an actor deep enough to engage with the academic and intellectual inquiries of the film, and charismatic enough to make what sounds like homework absorbing. Hers is the kind of 360-degree Black woman that we don’t see leading films very often: She is at once confident and full of doubt and vulnerability, accomplished but searching, determined and still wary. And she’s unafraid to pursue her hunch that everyone, civilians and book editors alike, seems to be telling her isn’t worth it.

This is a character who is surrounded by love when we meet her, with a fairly perfect and supportive husband (Jon Bernthal), her aging mother Ruby (Emily Yancy) and a cousin/confidant in Marion (Niecy Nash-Betts). She is not immediately interested in an assignment about Trayvon Martin, and is a bit stuck knowing that whatever she does, she’ll have to give herself over fully to it. In “Origin,” a push comes in the form of loss and her research takes on a vital urgency to, not to be too hyperbolic, figure out why everything is rotten before she too leaves the earth.

DuVernay takes us into her findings as Wilkerson learns about a group of Harvard students, two Black, two white, who integrate themselves into a segregated Southern community to study it, a Nazi party member who fell in love with a Jewish woman, and an Indian intellectual who rose out of his lowly caste and advocated for Dalit rights. They feel a bit like different movies. But while it might not be the most elegantly stitched together anthology, it works on a gut level. DuVernay and Ellis-Taylor commit to the big swing, and audiences who give it a chance may find themselves changed — or at least a little more curious, a little more alert — because of it.

Is it premature to say that “Origin” might just be DuVernay’s magnum opus? Well, perhaps. But hopefully it’s the start of a vibrant and bold new era of storytelling for her, with those pesky wrinkles in time firmly in the rearview mirror.

“Origin,” a Neon release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “scenes of violence.” Running time: 135 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

 Leon Trotsky Speaks! (English)

The Founding of the Fourth International

10:51

Leon Trotsky Speaks! (English) The Founding of the Fourth International (Full). Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) addresses American supporters in this 1938 recorded speech. He also addresses the founding of the Socialist Workers Party and the tenth anniversary of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and Third International to Stalin and bureaucratic and increasingly repressive rule by the bureaucratic Communist Party. Recorded in Coyoacan, Mexico CIty. 1938.

Lenin's speech on antisemitism

 

A scholar discovers stories and poems possibly written by Louisa May Alcott under a pseudonym

A selection of Louisa May Alcott books are archived at the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library of pre-20th century American history and culture, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, believes he has found about 20 stories and poems at the library written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms, including E. H. Gould, for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

Elizabeth Pope, Curator of Books & Digital Collections, examines the writings of Louisa May Alcott, at the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library of pre-20th century American history and culture, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, believes he has found about 20 stories and poems at the library written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms, including E. H. Gould, for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s. 

A research walks across the main floor at the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library of pre-20th century American history and culture, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, believes he has found about 20 stories and poems at the library written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms, including E. H. Gould, for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, right, looks as Elizabeth Pope, Curator of Books & Digital Collections, points out a writing by “E. H. Gould” at the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library of pre-20th century American history and culture, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Chapnick believes he has found about 20 stories and poems at the library written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms, including E. H. Gould, for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s. 

Elizabeth Pope, Curator of Books & Digital Collections, points out a writing by “E. H. Gould” at the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library of pre-20th century American history and culture, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Worcester, Mass. Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, believes he has found about 20 stories and poems at the library written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms, including E. H. Gould, for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s. 

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa)


BY MICHAEL CASEY
Updated 10:02 PM MST, January 17, 2024Share


WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — The author of “Little Women” may have been even more productive and sensational than previously thought.

Max Chapnick, a postdoctoral teaching associate at Northeastern University, believes he found about 20 stories and poems written by Louisa May Alcott under her own name as well as pseudonyms for local newspapers in Massachusetts in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

One of the pseudonyms is believed to be E. H. Gould, including a story about her house in Concord, Massachusetts, and a ghost story along the lines of the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol.” He also found four poems written by Flora Fairfield, a known pseudonym of Alcott’s. One of the stories written under her own name was about a young painter.

“It’s saying she’s really like ... she’s hustling, right? She’s publishing a lot,” Chapnick said on a visit to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, a national research library of pre-20th century American history and culture that has some of the stories Chapnick discovered in its collection as well as a first edition of “Little Women.”

Alcott remains best known for “Little Women,” published in two installments in 1868-69. Her classic coming-of-age novel about the four March sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy — has been adapted several times into feature films, most recently by Greta Gerwig in 2019.

Chapnick discovered Alcott’s other stories as part of his research into spiritualism and mesmerism. As he scrolled through digitized newspapers from the American Antiquarian Society, he found a story titled “The Phantom.” After seeing the name Gould at the end of the story, he initially dismissed it as Alcott’s story.

But then he read the story again.

Chapnick found the name Alcott in the story — a possible clue — and saw that it was written about the time she would have been publishing similar stories. The story was also in the Olive Branch, a newspaper that had previously published her work.

As Chapnick searched through newspapers at the society and the Boston Public Library, he found more written by Gould — though he admits definitive proof they were written by Alcott’s has proven elusive.

“There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to indicate that this is probably her,” said Chapnick, who last year published a paper on his discoveries in J19, the Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. “I don’t think that there’s definitive evidence either way yet. I’m interested in gathering more of it.”

When first contacted by Chapnick about the writings, Gregory Eiselein, president of the Louisa May Alcott Society, said he was curious but skeptical.

“Over my more than thirty-year career as a literary scholar, I’ve received a variety of inquiries, emails, and manuscripts that propose the discovery of a new story by Louisa Alcott,” Eiselein, also a professor at Kansas State University, said in an email interview. “Typically, they turn out to be a known, though not famous, text, or a story re-printed under a new title for a different newspaper or magazine.”

But he has come to believe that Chapnick has found new stories, many of which shed light on Alcott’s early career.

“What stands out to me is the impressive range and variety of styles in Alcott’s early published works,” he said. “She writes sentimental poetry, thrilling supernatural stories, reform-minded non-fiction, work for children, work for adults, and more. It’s also fascinating to see how Alcott uses, experiments with, and transforms the literary formulas popular in the 1850s.”

Another Alcott scholar at Kansas State, Anne Phillips, said she was “excited” by Chapnick’s scholarship and said his paper makes a “compelling case” that these were her writings.

“Alcott scholars have had decades to compare her work in different genres, and that background is going to help us evaluate these new findings,” she said in an email interview.

“She reworked and reused names and situations and details and expressions, and we have a good, broad base from which to begin considering these new discoveries,” she said. ”There’s also something distinctive about her writing voice, across genres.”

This isn’t the first time that scholars have found stories written by Alcott under a pseudonym.

In the 1940s, Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern found thrillers written under the name A. M. Barnard was an Alcott pseudonym. She also wrote nonfiction stories, including about the Civil War where she served as a nurse, under the pseudonym Tribulation Periwinkle.

It wasn’t unusual for female writers, especially during this period, to use a pseudonym. In the case of Alcott, she may have wanted to protect her family’s reputation, since her family who though poor had wealthy connections that dated back to the American Revolutionary War.

“She might not have wanted them to know she was writing trashy stories about sex and ghosts and whatever,” Chapnick said.

“I think she was canny,” he continued. “She had an inkling that she would be a famous writer and she was trying to experiment and she didn’t want her experimentation to get in the way of her future career. So she was writing under a pseudonym to sort of like protect her future reputation.”

At the American Antiquarian Society, a researcher eagerly awaited the arrival of Chapnick earlier this month. For them, this find is validation that their collection of nearly 4 million books, newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts and pamphlets is a boon to researchers studying early American history. Many of their holdings are salvaged from attics, antique shops, book fairs, garage sales

“We’re keeping these things for a reason. We’re not just keeping them to hoard them and pile them up,” Elizabeth Pope, the curator of books and digitized collections at the society. “We’re thrilled when people can find stories in them.”

For Chapnick, the collections offer the possibility of finding additional Alcott stories — including those written under other pseudonyms.

“The detective work is fun. The not knowing is kind of fun. I both wish and don’t wish that there would be a smoking gun, if that makes sense,” he said. “It would be great to find out one way or the other, but not knowing is also very interesting.”

MICHAEL CASEY
Casey writes about the environment, housing and inequality for The Associated Press. He lives in Boston.

Latest EPA assessment shows almost no improvement in river and stream nitrogen pollution

Ships travel along the Mississippi River in LaPlace, La., as the sun sets on Oct. 20, 2023. The nation’s rivers and streams remain stubbornly polluted with nutrients that can contaminate drinking water, degrade aquatic life and feed the so-called “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a recently released Environmental Protection Agency assessment. 

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

BY MELINA WALLING AND MICHAEL PHILLIS
 January 21, 2024

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The nation’s rivers and streams remain stubbornly polluted with nutrients that contaminate drinking water and fuel a gigantic dead zone for aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a recently released Environmental Protection Agency assessment.

It’s a difficult problem that’s concentrated in agricultural regions that drain into the Mississippi River. More than half of the basin’s miles of rivers and streams were in poor condition for nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer that drains into waterways, the agency found. For decades, federal and state officials have struggled to control farm runoff, the biggest source of nutrient pollution that is not typically federally regulated.

It’s a problem only expected to get harder to control as climate change produces more intense storms that dump rain on the Midwest and South. Those heavy rains flood farm fields, pick up commercial fertilizers and carry them into nearby rivers

“It’s really worrying that we are clearly not meeting the goals that we’ve set for ourselves,” said Olivia Dorothy, director of river restoration with the conservation group American Rivers.

The assessment is based on samples collected in 2018 and 2019 and it allows experts to compare river conditions from previous rounds of sampling, although different sampling sites were used. It takes years for the agency to compile the results and release the report, which is the most comprehensive assessment of the nation’s river and stream health. Phosphorus levels dipped slightly while nitrogen levels remained almost exactly the same.

About half of all river miles were found to be in poor condition for snails, worms, beetles and other bottom dwelling species that are an important indicator of biological health of the river. About a third were also rated as having poor conditions for fish based on species diversity.

“Controlling pollution is a big job. It is hard work,” said Tom Wall, director of watershed restoration, assessment and protection division at EPA. “Things are not getting worse, despite the tremendous pressures on our waterways. And we would like to see more progress.”

Water pollution from factories and industry is typically federally regulated. The Biden administration recently proposed toughening regulations on meat and poultry processing plants to reduce pollution, Wall said.

When nutrient pollution flows into the Gulf of Mexico, it spurs growth of bacteria that consume oxygen. That creates a so-called “dead zone,” a vast area where it’s difficult or impossible for marine animals to survive, fluctuating from about the size of Rhode Island to the size of New Jersey, according to Nancy Rabalais, professor of oceanography and wetland studies at Louisiana State University.

That affects the productivity of commercial fisheries and marine life in general, but nutrient pollution is also damaging upstream. Too much nitrate in drinking water can affect how blood carries oxygen, causing human health problems like headaches, nausea and abdominal cramps. It can especially affect infants, sometimes inducing “blue baby syndrome,” which causes the skin to take on a bluish hue.

The EPA established the hypoxia task force in the late 1990s to reduce nutrient pollution and shrink the dead zone, but it relies on voluntary efforts to reduce farm runoff and hasn’t significantly reduced the dead zone.

Anne Schechinger, Midwest director with the Environmental Working Group, said new regulations are needed, not voluntary efforts. She said the Biden administration has done a lot to improve drinking water, but not enough to reduce agricultural runoff.

Methods to prevent runoff include building buffers between farmland and waterways, creating new wetlands to filter pollutants and applying less fertilizer.

It’s a politically fraught issue, especially in major Midwest farming states that significantly contribute to the problem. Many of those states cite their voluntary conservation programs as evidence they’re taking on the problem, yet the new EPA data shows little progress.

Minnesota is one of the few states that has a so-called “buffer law” that requires vegetation to be planted along rivers, streams and public drainage ditches. But because groundwater and surface water are closely connected in much of the Upper Midwest, nutrient pollution can end up leaching underground through farm fields and eventually bypass those buffers, ending up in streams anyway, said Gregory Klinger, who works for the Olmsted County, Minnesota soil and water conservation district.

There should also be a focus on preventing over-fertilizing – about 30% of farmers are still using more than the recommended amounts of fertilizer on their fields, said Brad Carlson, an extension educator with the University of Minnesota who communicates with farmers about nutrient pollution issues.

Martin Larsen, a farmer and conservation technician in southeast Minnesota, said he and other farmers are interested in practices that reduce their nutrient pollution. He’s broken up his typical corn and soybean rotation with oats and medium red clover, the latter a kind of plant that can increase nitrogen levels in the soil naturally. He’s been able to get by with about half as much fertilizer for a corn crop that follows a clover planting as compared to a corn-corn rotation.

Growing oats and red clover as cover crops improves soil, too. But Larsen said it’s difficult for many farmers to plant them when they often rely on an immediate payback for anything they grow. Cover crops are planted on just 5.1% of harvested farmland, according to 2017 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Larsen said since regulations are so unpopular, more should be done to incentivize better practices. For example, he said that could include companies shifting the makeup of feed they use for animals, giving farmers an opening to plant some crops that use less fertilizer. Or government programs that do more to subsidize things like cover crops.

He said that many farmers in his community acknowledge the need to do things differently. “But we also feel very trapped in the system,” he said.
___

Walling reported from Chicago.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Ford to cut production of electric pickup on lower demand

By AFP
January 19, 2024

Ford is reducing output of its electric F-150 Lightning - Copyright AFP/File JEFF KOWALSKY

US auto giant Ford said Friday that it is reducing production of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup, as it anticipates weaker demand for electric vehicles this year.

The automaker plans to cut production at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center to one shift from April 1, impacting about 1,400 workers, with some to transfer to other roles and others expected to take retirement packages.

“Ford expects continued growth in global EV sales in 2024, though less than anticipated,” the company said in a statement.

It is lowering production as it aims “to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability.”

Sales of the F-150 Lightning jumped 55 percent in 2023, with further growth forecast this year, according to Ford.

But the company earlier lowered the listed price by almost $10,000 for entry-level models.

With expectations for slower EV growth in the coming years, the auto industry has been pulling back from earlier targets.

US consumers remain cautious about the vehicles, partly due to costs, as well as concerns about recharging on longer trips, with the slow pace of programs to expand national recharging facilities.

On Friday, the White house announced $325 million in new investments this week, in part to help repair and replace EV chargers across the United States.

Automotive research firm Edmunds predicts that the share of electric vehicles in the United States will represent eight percent of sales in 2024, up from 6.9 percent in 2023.

On Friday, Ford also announced that it would add nearly 900 new jobs as part of a third crew at its Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, to boost production of its gasoline-powered Bronco sport-utility vehicles and Ranger pickups.

Flexible underpinnings of new big Stellantis vehicles will help company navigate political changes

 The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT concept is unveiled, Aug. 17, 2022, in Pontiac, Mich. New large vehicle underpinnings announced by Stellantis, the maker of Dodge cars, on Friday are key to the company’s ability to adjust to European and U.S. government electric vehicle requirements that could change depending on this year’s elections. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)


 The Dodge Charger Daytona SRT concept is unveiled, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022, in Pontiac, Mich. New large vehicle underpinnings announced by Stellantis, the maker of Dodge cars, on Friday are key to the company’s ability to adjust to European and U.S. government electric vehicle requirements that could change depending on this year’s elections. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

BY TOM KRISHER
 January 19, 2024

DETROIT (AP) — On the surface, you wouldn’t think the platform beneath a new generation of automobiles has anything to do with politics and elections.

But at Stellantis, new large vehicle underpinnings announced Friday are key to the company’s ability to adjust to European and U.S. government electric vehicle requirements that could change depending on this year’s elections.

CEO Carlos Tavares says the company’s new large platform is flexible enough to handle batteries and electric motors, gas-electric hybrids and internal combustion engines. The company also can build midsize to large vehicles on those underpinnings, including sedans, crossover vehicles, SUVs and even off-road Jeeps

That flexibility is important, he said, because policies promoting EVs as a way to fight climate change could be rescinded depending on who is elected U.S. president or to European parliaments this year.

Tavares often says that EVs for 40% more to make than vehicles with combustion engines, boosting prices beyond what the middle class can afford. Governments have tried to promote EV sales with subsidies and tax credits, but some countries are starting to rethink those.

“As soon as you do not fix the affordability issue by giving me a significant subsidy that will fix it, then I stop buying,” Tavares said of consumers. “That message is loud and clear.”

Electric vehicle sales growth already is slowing in many countries with consumers balking at the added cost as well as limited range and too few charging stations. On Friday, Ford said it was cutting production of the F-150 Lightning electric pickup after weaker-than-expected electric vehicle sales growth.

Some politial candidates, including GOP front-runner Donald Trump in the U.S., have criticized the move to EVs, indicating they would end policies to promote them.

Stellantis, maker of Jeep, Ram, Dodge and other vehicles, has plans for two scenarios, one if populist candidates who are against EVs win, the other if EV-friendly candidates are elected, Tavares said. “One is to accelerate (EVs), the other one is to slow down,” he said. “Not necessarily stop. We need to fix the global warming issue.”

Tavares said in some European countries, governments are imposing electric vehicles on consumers who can’t afford them. So many are keeping their current vehicles longer, raising the average vehicle age, which he said is a “disaster” for the planet.

Stellantis, he said, makes money on its EVs now, unlike many competitors. Those who can’t get strong prices for their vehicles won’t have money to invest in lower-cost new ones, and could wind up being consolidated into another company or going out of business, he said.

If companies keep cutting EV prices to attract buyers and don’t make money, there could be a “bloodbath” in the industry, Tavares said.

Stellantis said vehicles built off the new large platform will be built at multiple North American and European factories. In North America, it’s likely that the first new vehicles to come out will be a replacement for the Dodge Charger muscle car and a new version of the Jeep Wagoneer S.

The platform can handle front wheel drive, all wheel drive and rear wheel drive vehicles, the company said. The first will reach the market this year, with eight vehicles from Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo and Maserati on sale by the end of 2026.

The company can vary the length and width of vehicles and differentiate them from each other with ride and handling changes as well as infotainment and other interior features. Use of a platform for both battery and gasoline powertrains is unique to the industry, with many competitors building different chassis for each type of propulsion.

“The flexibility and agility of this platform is its hallmark and will be a driving force for our success in the shift to electrification in North America,” Tavares said.

A midsize vehicle platform announced by the company last year has similar flexibility, the company said. It’s also planning a new small-vehicle platform.

Earlier menopause can be triggered by toxic heavy metals


Dr. Tim Sandle
January 25, 2024


Picking up a glass of water. — Image © Tim Sandle.

A new health study finds middle-aged women with elevated levels of heavy metals are more likely to have depleted ovarian function and egg reserves. The significance is where this may lead to earlier arrival of menopause and its negative health effects.

The research comes from the University of Michigan, and it is based on assessing data relating to hundreds of women approaching menopause (drawn from the U.S. Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation). This review finds that the presence of cadmium, mercury and arsenic in their urine was connected to low levels of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH).

The women in the study were ages 45 to 56 were ethnically diverse: 45 percent white, 21 percent Black, 15 percent Chinese and 19 percent Japanese.

AMH measures ovarian reserve, or the number of eggs available for fertilization or menstruation. The temporal significance is since the menopause is the time of life when hormone depletion ends monthly menstruation and sets off many changes to women’s health and wellness.

The of associations between heavy metals and AMH was stronger than the association between smoking and AMH, which is a previously characterised risk factor for depleted ovarian reserve. So far, only a few studies have explored associations of cadmium and lead with AMH.

Commenting on the findings, Sung Kyun Park, associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences at the U-M School of Public Health, states; “Widespread exposure to toxins in heavy metals may have a big impact on health problems linked to earlier aging of the ovaries in middle-aged women, such as hot flashes, bone weakening and osteoporosis, higher chances of heart disease, and cognitive decline.”

Hence, the potential adverse effects of heavy metals on ovarian function should be of significant public health concern. Arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead are commonly found in drinking water, air pollution and some foods, notably seafood and rice.

It is hoped the information will enable researchers to address adverse health outcomes known to be associated with metals and with reproductive hormone changes such as premature menopause, bone loss and osteoporosis, increased risks of cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and vasomotor symptoms. The research is published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The study is titled “Heavy Metals and Trajectories of Anti-Müllerian Hormone During the Menopausal Transition.”

Pope defends blessings for same-sex ‘people’ 

JESUITS CREATED LIBERATION THEOLOGY

By AFP
January 26, 2024

Pope Francis has faced criticism from Catholic conservatives after the church agreed to give blessings to same-sex couples - Copyright POOL/AFP Ludovic MARIN

Pope Francis defended Friday the Catholic Church’s recent approval of blessings for same-sex couples, while attempting to soothe his conservative critics.

In December the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, its department for Roman Catholic doctrine, said priests could bless “irregular” and same-sex couples under certain circumstances.

That sparked an outcry in some quarters, particularly in Africa, with critics accusing the Church of back-tracking on the issues of gay marriage and homosexuality, both of which it opposes.

“These blessings… do not require moral perfection in order to be received,” the pope said during an audience with members of the dicastery.

“When a couple asks for it, it is not the union that is blessed, but simply the people who together have asked for it,” he said.

“Not the union, but the people, naturally taking into account the context, the sensitivities, the places where one lives and the most appropriate ways to do it,” Francis added.

The original declaration cautioned that priests could only perform blessings for same-sex couples, divorcees, or unmarried couples in “non-ritualised” contexts, and never in relation to weddings or civil unions.

Opposition to the Vatican’s move has been particularly strong in Malawi, Nigeria and Zambia, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It has also sparked criticism at the highest levels, with Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, an influential figure in the conservative camp, slamming the declaration as “heresy”.

Earlier this month, the dicastery defended itself, saying the Church was “clear and definitive” about marriage — which it says can only be between a man and a woman — and sexuality, with homosexuality considered a sin.

But it urged “prudence and attention to the ecclesial context and to the local culture” in applying the measure.

Since his election in 2013, 87-year-old Pope Francis has insisted on opening the doors of the Church to all its faithful, including the homosexual and LGBTQ communities.

But his efforts have met with strong resistance among its traditional and conservative fringe.