Hive mind: Tunisia beekeepers abuzz over early warning system

PUBLISHED : 20 MAY 2022

Tunisian beekeeper Elias Chebbi uses a SmartBee device that remotely monitors his hives

TESTOUR, Tunisia: Elias Chebbi inspected a beehive in a field in Tunisia, minutes after a buzz on his phone warned him of a potential problem.

The 39-year-old beekeeper opened a flap in the hive to reveal a low-cost, locally made sensor dedicated to measuring key environmental variables. An app on his phone then warns him if action needs to be taken.

"Thanks to this, I can relax," he said. "It tells me remotely everything that's happening."

Chebbi has two of the sensors, entirely produced in Tunisia by the only company of its kind in North Africa.

He periodically places one in each of the 100 or so hives he keeps, on a grassy hillside an hour's drive from the capital Tunis.

The devices, each costing under 300 Tunisian dinars (around 92 euros), send live updates on temperature, humidity and the weight of the hive to a central computer.

It then analyses the data and helps him react quickly to potential problems -- as well as selecting the most resilient, productive queens for breeding.

That is a major asset as bee colonies face multiple threats, including climate change and increasingly common collapses of entire hives.

Chebbi remembers being stung by a sudden heatwave in 2013, before he started using the system, when he lost around a quarter of his hives.

"I had big losses, 26 hives, because of humidity and the sudden change in temperature," he said.

But since he started using the SmartBee system -- developed in 2020 by a group of young Tunisian engineering graduates -- his losses have dropped dramatically, to under 10 percent of his hives in a given year.

He has also boosted his honey production by 30-40%.

Today, Khaled Bouchoucha, 34-year-old CEO of manufacturer Beekeeper Tech, says the sensors gather "a huge amount of information on the bees' yield and the threats they face".

The gadgets "gather reliable data in real time, so beekeepers can make good decisions and avoid collapse of their hives", he said.

This data is then fed wirelessly to the company's cloud computing system, which analyses it to identify potential problems.

If it does, it sends a warning to the beekeeper to intervene -- by cooling overheating hives, adding insulation to those that are dangerously cold, or providing sugar solution to those whose weight shows that they have not produced enough honey to survive the winter.

Beekeeper Tech has sold over 1,000 of the systems, mostly in Tunisia and neighbouring countries.

Bouchoucha says customers are swarming to the app and the firm's workers are preparing another 1,500 orders for customers in Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and even New Zealand.

Bee populations around the world are facing disaster from overuse of pesticides, mites and temperature extremes due to climate change.

That also spells catastrophe for humans, as we depend on pollination by bees for over a quarter of all the food we consume.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, three quarters of the world's main crops depend on pollinators -- but the insects are in decline worldwide, mostly due to human activities.

Beekeeping itself is also a vital livelihood for many.

In Tunisia, with its population of 11 million, the sector employs some 13,000 people and produces some 2,800 tonnes of honey every year, according to its agricultural union.

The FAO marks a World Bee Day every year on May 20 to raise awareness about "the essential role bees and other pollinators play in keeping people and the planet healthy."

The SmartBee app offers more than an early warning system.

The data it collects also tells beekeepers about the health and productivity of each hive, its resistance to changes in climate.

Mnaouer Djemali, chief scientific officer at the National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia and a co-founder of Beekeeper Tech, said data from the hives "enables us to measure the profitability of each queen" and to select the best for breeding.

"That can help us boost our food security and sovereignty," he said. "We are sorely in need of that in a world full of diseases and wars."

Jordan's 'Fierce Savage' kicks down martial arts gender constraints


Fayyad says she won't give up Mixed Martial Arts until she's old, at which point she'll turn to something less intense, like jiujitsu (AFP/Roy ISSA)

Joseph Abi Chahine
Thu, May 19, 2022

It's no mystery why Jordanian Lina Fayyad has been nicknamed "Fierce Savage" -- watching as she lands successive blows in the cage, it's clear she is poised to take mixed martial arts by storm.

With her long maroon hair and small frame, she cuts an unusual figure in the world of MMA, and perhaps even more so within the country and region from which she hails, where women are virtual strangers to the sport.

"At the beginning, I heard a lot of criticism that continues until today," the 33-year-old told AFP from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where she is undergoing and overseeing training boot camps.

"When someone sets their sights on a goal, nothing will stop them from achieving it."

In a region where social and cultural restrictions often bar women from pursuing sports professionally, Fayyad's journey has not been straightforward.

"There were a lot of obstacles that stood in my way: injuries, criticism -- I would get kicked out of sports clubs because I'm a girl and men refused to participate in training with me," she said.

"It used to bother me at first but now I don't care."

- Jordan's only female fighter -

Encouraged by her father, a boxer, Fayyad entered the world of martial arts at the tender age of 10, then practised taekwondo starting at 12, before moving on to a roster of other sports.

"I earned three gold medals in kickboxing in the Arab championships and a gold medal in Muay Thai world championships," she said.

She shifted to MMA in 2017, and has since won two of the three fights she has taken part in.

But aside from her drive for competition -- which is high -- Fayyad is compelled by the need to send a message to her fellow countrywomen.

"I am the only woman who practises MMA in Jordan," she said. "I get a lot of nice comments from women and they are really encouraged when they see me.

"I feel like I am somehow responsible because I want to prove that Arab women can reach their goals," she continued.

"If I had listened to criticism and become a housewife, I would not be happy. I want to make use of the advantages God gave me to achieve more."

In a training hall in the Cypriot capital Nicosia, Fayyad prepares for her next fight in June -- provided she recovers from recent fractures in both her feet.

But as with other obstacles, she doesn't let her injuries get in the way.

"I will stop when I get old," she said -- but by "stop", she means she will simply shift to a more age-appropriate sport, like jiujitsu.

"I often hear that I'm a 'fierce savage' in the cage, and it's true, I'm not afraid. The nickname represents me."

jac/jsa/dwo

'Straight to your soul': Japan's taiko reinvents drum tradition






Yoshikazu Fujimoto has been a member of taiko troupe Kodo for decades

 (AFP/Charly TRIBALLEAU)

Sara HUSSEIN
Thu, May 19, 2022, 7:43 PM·4 min read

In a hall on Japan's Sado island, 71-year-old Yoshikazu Fujimoto strikes the imposing drum mounted before him, producing a boom so powerful that it reverberates through the floorboards.

Fujimoto is a veteran performer of Japanese taiko drumming, a musical form with roots in religious rituals, traditional theatre and the joyous abandon of seasonal festivals called matsuri.

But for all its ancient pedigree, taiko as a stage performance is a fairly modern invention, developed by a jazz musician and popularised in part by one of Japan's most famous troupes: Sado island's Kodo.

Fujimoto is the oldest of the 37 musicians that make up the group, which recruits members through a rigorous two-year training programme.

It was founded partly to attract people to Sado, off Japan's west coast, and tours internationally, spreading the gospel of taiko.

"Taiko itself is like a prayer," said Fujimoto, who came to Sado in 1972 to join the group that evolved into Kodo.

"It used to be said that the area reached by the sound of a drum made up a single community," he said.

"Through taiko... I want to become part of a community with the audience and send a message of living together, a message of compassion."

It has been a life-long project for Fujimoto, who is a specialist performer of the o-daiko, an enormous single drum mounted on a stand that is struck by a musician standing with his back to the audience and arms raised overhead.

The effect is an all-encompassing wall of sound that seems to enter the ribcage and vibrate through its bones.

And it is highly physical, with Fujimoto grunting in exertion as the muscles in his almost-bare back flex beneath the straps of his tunic with every strike.

- 'One with the sound' -

"I become one with the sound," he said. "Playing taiko makes me feel I'm alive."

Kodo's performances range from the sombre power of the o-daiko solo to ensemble pieces featuring flute and singing, and even comic interludes that encourage audience participation.

Taiko simply means drum in Japanese, and performers use two main types.

The first is made from a single, hollowed tree trunk with cow or horsehide nailed over each end. The second uses hide stretched over rings attached with ropes to a wooden body.

They have been part of rituals and theatrical artforms like noh and kabuki in Japan for centuries.

But drumming in those contexts is often a solemn practice,while modern taiko performance is closer to folk festivals where troupes often made up of local residents play in streets or fields to unite the community, drive away malign influences or pray for a good harvest.

"Contemporary taiko drumming took a lot of inspiration from this local festival drumming and combined with more formal traditional performing arts to evolve into what we see as taiko drumming today," explained Yoshihiko Miyamoto, whose company Miyamoto Unosuke has made taiko for over 160 years.

Key to that evolution was jazz drummer Daihachi Oguchi, who moved festival drumming onto the stage in the 1950s and 60s.

Then in 1969, musician Den Tagayasu moved to Sado to found a taiko troupe that he hoped would attract young people to the island and revitalise it.

- 'Straight to your soul' -

Fujimoto left his native Kyoto to join the group known as Ondekoza, and when they split he stayed and helped found Kodo.

Joining now involves an arduous two-year training programme, where apprentices aged 18-25 live in dorms, without phones or televisions.

"The day starts at 5am, when we get up and immediately go out to stretch. Then we start cleaning and polishing the floors," said Hana Ogawa, a 20-year-old who completed the trainee programme this year.

After cleaning, the trainees go for a run and then spend the entire day practising, with breaks only for food. They have one day off a week.

It might not be for everyone, but Ogawa, who decided to join Kodo after seeing them perform in high school, has no regrets.

"I'm happy every day, because I love taiko and I pursued this one goal and achieved it, so it's a dream come true," she told AFP.

Taiko drumming has been growing in popularity at home and abroad in recent years, with troupes established in Europe and the United States and a steady rise in overseas orders for Miyamoto's store.

"Taiko has the power to connect people with its sound," he said.

"Especially in this contemporary age, you hear the sound of machines everywhere, but taiko uses this raw hide and the drum bodies made by wood," he added.

"It's like a sound of nature, it's very organic. I think that's one of the reasons it comes straight to your soul."

sah/kaf/lto

Higher wall, Covid policy make US border more deadly



Pedro Rios, Director of the American Friends Service Committee, says migrants have become desperate enough to take large risks to get across the border while Title 42 blocks a legal route 

(AFP/Frederic J. BROWN)More

Paula RAMON
Thu, May 19, 2022

Horrific fractures, punctured lungs and a traumatic miscarriage: Jay Doucet has seen the severity of his patients' injuries worsen as more migrants fall from a growing border wall in their bid to evade a pandemic-imposed legal blockade.

To the already imposing obstacles for people trying to enter the United States on its southern border, the Covid crisis added another: a quick-fix health rule called Title 42 that allows authorities to remove anyone simply because they might be carrying the disease.

And with no legal route into the country, migrants have been taking their lives in their hands.

"You and I wouldn't jump (from) a 30-foot wall, but they would," says Doucet, head of trauma at UC San Diego Health.

In 2019, the wall that straddles parts of the border between the United States and Mexico was raised in several places, fulfilling a campaign promise of then-president Donald Trump.

The increase, from 18 feet (5.4 meters) to 30 feet, was almost instantly noticeable for Doucet and his colleagues.

In the two years before the height increase, they saw 67 significant injuries; in the two years since, that figure has hit 375.

They have dealt with sixteen people who have died after falling from the wall in that time.

- 'We couldn't go back' -

"We have clear empirical evidence that these higher walls do not stop or divert migratory flows, but they do cause more serious injuries," says Carlos González Gutiérrez, Mexican consul in San Diego, who has been called to help hundreds of Mexicans hospitalized in the city.

The "wall" -- which for the most part is a fence -- runs through hills and dunes, out into the waters of the Pacific.

If it is imposing from afar, up close it seems enormous.

"I don't know how I got up, it was all very fast," said one migrant.

The woman, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, fled Colombia with her family because of threats of violence.

Her terrifying climb over the wall was a success.

Her daughter was not so lucky, falling and badly fracturing her ankle.

Even if they had known what would happen, they would still have climbed.

"We couldn't go back," she told AFP.

- Desperate -

"During the pandemic, many asylum seekers became very desperate and frustrated that they didn't have a method of presenting themselves at the port of entry," says Pedro Rios of the NGO American Friends Service Committee.

"And so this meant that many of them were crossing through very dangerous areas."

President Joe Biden's administration announced it would rescind Title 42 on May 23, but opposition from Republican-dominated states has tied the issue up in legal knots.

A judge is expected to rule on its fate this weekend.

For migration reform campaigners, Title 42 has been a failure: an immigration policy dressed up as a health policy -- and not fit for either purpose.

"Title 42 has created enormous human suffering," says Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy adviser for the American Council on Migration, who points out that 2021 and 2022 will be the deadliest years on record.

A total 557 people died at the border in 2021, more than double the 283 deaths in 2018, before Title 42 and the wall's elevation.

Those deaths include dehydration and starvation from desert crossings, as well as people who drowned in rivers.

- Health -

Perversely, Title 42 may even have increased the number of people trying to cross illegally.

It provides for immediate removal with no legal consequences, so migrants who are caught and sent back can try to cross again without fear of imperiling a future asylum application.

US border patrol logged a record 1.73 million encounters with migrants in the 12 months to September 2021.

They are on track to surpass that figure this year.

"Many of these (are) the same individual crossing the border multiple times," says Reichlin-Melnick.

With the world's worst official death toll and a high domestic infection rate, the US is not keeping Covid at bay by refusing entry to Latin Americans, he says.

Opening the doors to Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion proves that Title 42 is not about health.

"There is no reason to admit thousands of Ukrainians and block Nicaraguans, Venezuelans or Haitians seeking asylum."

In his hospital office in San Diego, Doucet pauses at the sound of a helicopter bringing in another patient.

"I think we were very hopeful that a simple solution like a wall would make the problem go away," he says. "It's made things worse.

"People don't understand how desperate they are to come."

pr-hg/md

Sisi-mania: Austria's starry empress returns to screens



The fairy tale aspect of Sisi's life has drawn attention and made sites like Vienna's Schoenbrunn Palace among Austria's most popular attractions 

AFP/ALEX HALADA

Jastinder KHERA
Thu, May 19, 2022

She was the Princess Diana of the 19th century. An impossibly glamorous Austro-Hungarian empress whose star-crossed love life and tragic end entranced the public.

Now two movies and two new series -- including one being made for Netflix -- are set to reignite the fascination with Empress Elisabeth, who was popularly known as "Sisi".

The first of the films, "Corsage", premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday while the series, "Sisi" -- which covers her early life and turbulent marriage to Emperor Franz-Joseph -- is streaming in Germany on RTL+.

It has already raised eyebrows there with its frank depiction of the young empress' sexuality while garnering favourable reviews from critics.

The series' Swiss-American star Dominique Devenport told AFP that part of the upsurge in interest in Sisi is a desire "to find more female narratives".

She may have been one of the most famous women of the 19th century, but Devenport said Sisi's life was "full of extremes, full of pain".

CHILD BRIDE
Married to Franz-Joseph when she was just 16, Sisi chafed against the rituals and strictures of life at the stiff and stuffy Habsburg court.

Devenport said the questions she asks of herself in the series are ones many young people today can relate to: "How can I stay myself; what decisions do I make, how do I keep up with what is expected from me?"

The rival Netflix series, "The Empress", is still in production, with release slated for later this year.

- A royal star -

Historian Martina Winkelhofer said Sisi was "one of the first very famous women in Europe".

"You have to consider that she came into Austrian history at the beginning of mass media," she said.

The advent of photography turbocharged her fame -- "suddenly you had the wife of an emperor who you could really see."

With the current thirst for stories with strong female characters, it was no surprise that Sisi's story would be revisited, Winkelhofer argued.

Sisi was also obsessed with her own image, and her figure.

In the elegant 19th century Hermes Villa on the outskirts of Vienna where the empress spent some of her later years, curator Michaela Lindinger pointed to the exercise equipment which Sisi used in an effort "to keep young really until her last day".

Vicky Krieps, the acclaimed Luxembourg-born actress who made her breakthrough opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in "Phantom Thread", plays this later Sisi in "Corsage", withdrawing from her husband and from life at court.

In Sisi's bedroom, a gloomy statue entitled "Melancholia" is a sign of the sadness that overcame her after the suicide of her son and heir to the throne, Crown Prince Rudolf, in 1889.

Just under 10 years later, she herself died at the age of 60, assassinated by an Italian anarchist.

- Enduring fairy tale -

Traditionally, however, it has been the fairy tale aspect of Sisi's life that has drawn attention and made sites like Vienna's Schoenbrunn Palace among Austria's most popular attractions.

Sisi has become a representation of Habsburg glamour far beyond Austria's borders, and is a particular cult figure in China.

Indeed, Andreas Gutzeit, the showrunner of the series "Sisi", said he got the idea to revisit the story after watching the trilogy of 1950s films in which the empress was portrayed by Vienna-born actress Romy Schneider, whose life was also a high-octane mix of glamour and tragedy.

Gutzeit said the RTL+ series has already been sold to several countries in eastern Europe and as far afield as Brazil.

The many different facets of the empress' life mean that "in each period, you have your own Sisi", insisted historian Winkelhofer.

Over the ages her image has moved from a focus on her physical beauty to her use of charm, to more modern depictions of her as a more assertive and empowered proto-feminist figure.

"You can discover a new woman in each lifetime," Winkelhofer said.

jsk/fg/pvh/spm

6.9M earthquake strikes in Australia/New Zealand area for 2nd time in 7 weeks

A map by the U.S. Geological Survey shows where the earthquake was centered on Thursday, just southwest of New Zealand. Image courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

May 19 (UPI) -- A powerful earthquake struck off the coast of Australia on Thursday and created a tsunami warning, scientists said.

The quake registered a magnitude of 6.9 in the Pacific Ocean in the Macquarie Island region, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was centered about 660 miles southwest of Bluff, New Zealand

The quake was strong enough to generate a tsunami warning for Macquarie Island.

The USGS said that the quake affected little land. There were no reports of damage caused by the quake or a tsunami.

Thursday's was the second powerful quake in the region in less than two months. A 6.9-magnitude earthquake also was measured off the Australian coast on March 30, which did not produce a tsunami warning.

INDEPENDENCE SI

House lawmakers introduce bill to end Puerto Rico's territorial status

House lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill that would end Puerto Rico's territorial status, allowing the state to vote on whether to become a state, gain independence or become sovereign while associated with the U.S.

 File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

May 19 (UPI) -- Lawmakers on Thursday introduced legislation that would trigger a referendum to undo Puerto Rico's territorial status.

The Puerto Rican Status Act was introduced by a negotiating group led by House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. It would allow Puerto Rican voters to take to the polls to choose between statehood, independence or sovereignty in free association with the United States.

It is the first status proposal in history to not include an option to extend Puerto Rico's existing territorial status.

"The Puerto Rican people do not want to be a colony, and the United States of America does not want to be a colonialist power," Hoyer said at a press conference Thursday. "This legislation seeks to address that issue."

Hoyer led the negotiation of the legislation along with Reps. Darren Soto, D-Fla., Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon, R.

It combined competing bills including one by Soto and Gonzalez-Colon that advocated for statehood and another by Velazquez and Ocasio-Cortez who pushed for a self-determination convention.

"After months, months, of sincere discussions and negotiations we can proudly announce that we have reached an agreement on a path forward to solve once and for all the island's political status," Gonzalez-Colon said.

RELATED Supreme Court votes 8-1 to exclude Puerto Ricans from federal benefits

Under the bill, if Puerto Ricans select statehood, they would continue to be citizens indefinitely, while the independence options would maintain U.S. citizenship for existing citizens but those born in independent Puerto Rico would be subject to U.S. immigration laws.

The free association option would see the children of Puerto Ricans who are also U.S. citizens maintain U.S. citizenship for the length of the compact between the two countries.

Puerto Rico has held multiple referendums on its status since 2012, with 53% of voters on the island casting ballots in favor of statehood in a 2020 vote.

"On multiple occasions, the people of Puerto Rico have voted for statehood but Congress never moved to resolve the issue of status," Gonzalez-Colon said. "This is the first time we will have a plebiscite that is binding for Congress and only with non-colonial options."

The bill is likely to face an uphill battle in Congress because if Puerto Rico, which leans Democratic, is accepted as a state it would be eligible for two Senate seats and five seats in the House.

In order to pass, the bill would require at least 10 Republican votes to pass the filibuster threshold, which two Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have said they would not move to abolish.

 

Milky Way photographer of the year 2022 – in pictures | Science | The Guardian

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Whether in war-torn Ukraine, Laos or Spain, kids have felt compelled to pick up crayons and put their experiences to paper


Paul Morrow, Human Rights Fellow, University of Dayton

THE CONVERSATION
Wed, May 18, 2022

In 1970, a 16-year-old Laotian boy drew a picture of his school being bombed. 'Many people' died, he wrote, 'But I didn't know who because I wasn't courageous enough to look.' Legacies of War, CC BY-SA

“They still draw pictures!”

So wrote the editors of an influential collection of children’s art that was compiled in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War.

Eighty years later, war continues to upend children’s lives in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. In January, UNICEF projected that 177 million children worldwide would require assistance due to war and political instability in 2022. This included 12 million children in Yemen, 6.5 million in Syria and 5 million in Myanmar.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 added 7 million more children to this number. To date, more than half of Ukraine’s children have been internally or externally displaced. Many more have faced disruptions to education, health care and home life.

And yet they, too, still draw pictures. In March, a charity called UA Kids Today launched, offering a digital platform for kids to respond with art to Russia’s invasion and raise money for aid to Ukrainian families with children.

As a scholar who studies the ways wars affect societies’ most vulnerable members, I see much that can be learned from the art created by kids living in war-torn regions across place and time.

A century of children’s art

During the Boer War – a conflict waged from 1899 to 1902 between British troops and South African guerrilla forces – relief workers sought to teach orphaned girls the art of lace-making. During World War I, displaced children in Greece and Turkey learned to weave textiles and decorate pottery as a means of making a living.

Over time, expression has replaced subsistence as the driver of children’s wartime artwork. No longer pressed to sell their productions, children are instead urged to put their emotions and experiences on display for the world to see.

Novelist Aldous Huxley hinted at this goal in his introduction to the 1938 collection of Spanish Civil War art.

Whether showing “explosions, the panic rush to shelter, [or] the bodies of victims,” Huxley wrote, these drawings revealed “a power of expression that evokes our admiration for the childish artists and our horror at the elaborate bestiality of modern war.”

Herbert Read, a World War I veteran and educational theorist, organized another show of children’s art during World War II. Unlike Huxley, Read found that scenes of war did not dominate the drawings he collected from British schoolchildren, even those exposed to the London Blitz. In a pamphlet for the exhibition, he highlighted “the sense of beauty and the enjoyment of life which they have expressed.”

While the shows discussed by Read and Huxley differed in many ways, both men emphasized the form and composition of children’s artwork as much as their pictorial contents. Both also expressed the view that the creators of these drawings would play a critical role in the rebuilding of their war-torn communities.
A political tool

As with the children’s war art made during Huxley and Read’s time, the images coming out of Ukraine express a mix of horror, fear, hope and beauty.

While planes, rockets and explosions appear in many of the pictures uploaded by UA Kids Today, so do flowers, angels, Easter bunnies and peace signs.

The managers of this platform – who are refugees themselves – have not been able to mount a physical exhibition of these works. But artists and curators elsewhere are beginning to do so.

In Sarasota, Florida, artist Wojtek Sawa has opened a show of Ukrainian children’s art that will be used to collect donations and messages from visitors. These will later be distributed to displaced children in Poland.

The War Childhood Museum, based in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, had recently concluded traveling exhibitions in Kyiv and Kherson when the Russian invasion started. The museum’s managing director, who has spoken out strongly about the need for cultural heritage protection in war, was able to retrieve several dozen artifacts from these shows a few days before the fighting commenced. Those toys and drawings, which tell the story of children’s experience during Russia’s previous effort to gain control of the Donbas region in 2014, will be featured in shows opening elsewhere in Europe in 2022.

By capturing the attention of journalists and the public, these exhibitions have been used to raise awareness, solicit funds and inspire commentary.

However, children’s art from Ukraine has not yet played a role in political deliberations, as it did when peace activist Fred Branfman shared his collection of drawings by Laotian children and adults during his 1971 testimony before Congress on the “Secret War” the U.S. had been conducting in Laos since 1964.

Nor is it yet clear whether this art will play a part in future war crimes trials, as the art of Auschwitz-Birkenau internee Yahuda Bacon did during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.

As a teenager, Holocaust survivor Yahuda Bacon drew a series of pieces depicting his experiences in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Kenyh Cevarom, CC BY-SA

Windows into different worlds

Art historians once thought children’s drawings, no matter where they lived, revealed the world in a way that was unshaped by cultural conventions.

But I don’t believe that children in all countries and conflicts represent their experiences in the same way. The drawings of children imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during World War II are not formally or symbolically interchangeable with drawings made by children exposed to America’s bombing campaign in Laos. Nor can these be interpreted in the same way as images produced by Ukrainian, Yemeni, Syrian or Sudanese children today.

To me, one of the most valuable features of children’s art is its power to highlight unique aspects of everyday life in distant places, while conveying a sense of what can be upended, lost or destroyed.

A Laotian child’s drawing of a horse that “ran back to the village” from the rice field after its owner was killed by a bomb offers a small window into the lives of subsistence rice farmers. The desert landscapes and urban architecture of Yemen are equally distinctive, and Yemeni children’s drawings highlight those differences even as they express aspirations that viewers around the world may share.

‘I am a child of my village,’ the 14-year-old Laotian artist wrote. ‘I once saw a horse of great size and goodness. A man had ridden to the rice field and was hit by the airplanes. Only the horse ran back to the village.’ Legacies of War., CC BY-ND

The challenges of preservation

As an academic who has also worked in museums, I am always thinking about how artifacts from today’s conflicts will be preserved for exhibition in the future.

There are significant challenges to preserving the drawings and paintings young people produce.

First, children’s art is materially unstable. It is often made on paper, with crayons, markers and other ephemeral media. This makes it dangerous to display originals and demands care in the production of facsimiles.

Second, children’s art is often hard to contextualize. The first-person commentaries that accompanied some of the Spanish Civil War drawings and most of the Laotian images often provide details about children’s localized experience but rarely about the timing of events, geographic locations or other crucial facts.

Finally, much children’s war art suffers from uncertain authorship. With few full names recorded, it is hard to trace the fates of most child artists, nor is it generally possible to gather their adult reflections on their childhood creations.

By noting these complications, I don’t want to detract from the remarkable fact that children still draw pictures during war. Their expressions are invaluable for documenting war and its impact, and it’s important to study them.

Nevertheless, in researching children’s art, it is necessary to reflect that scholars and curators are – like the child artists themselves – often working at the limits of their knowledge.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Paul Morrow, University of Dayton.

Read more:

How studying the old drawings and writings of kids can change our view of history

Ukrainian refugees might not return home, even long after the war eventually ends

Paul Morrow serves on the board of the Dayton International Peace Museum. He is also a partner in a working group with Legacies of War, the organization that preserves the drawings from the 'Secret War' in Laos.

'A sign of beauty': Henna artist details traditions, practice of cultural body art


Baylee DeMuth, Erie Times-News
Wed, May 18, 2022

For as long as Jasmine Shaik can remember, she's been surrounded by henna body art.

Growing up in India, Shaik, 21, attended many different events where henna — temporary body art resulting from the staining of the skin from dyes — played an important role.

"We do it for every single occasion, like birthdays, weddings, festivals or holidays," Shaik said. "Anything to just be fancy because it's just a sign of beauty. It's kind of like makeup, so we do it very often."

Shaik was 11, and at her aunt's wedding, when she moved off the sidelines and started doing henna herself.

"There was another henna lady, but it took so long (for her to henna others) and the bride still needed to get hers done," Shaik said. "But since it crossed midnight, the girl had to leave, so there was nobody to do the henna except me. I did both of her hands and it's kind of a memorable experience for me because that was my first wedding henna."

Shaik said she was up until 4 a.m. finishing her aunt's henna. Even though she didn't have enough time to cover her aunt's feet, Shaik was proud of herself for completing her first real henna. It was the first of many experiences she would continue to have in India and then eventually the United States.
Sharing a cultural tradition

When Shaik's family moved from India to Erie in 2016, Shaik brought her love of the body art with her.

"After coming here I learned that people love henna, so it's kind of like, a positive plus for my artistic skills," she said.

Shaik graduated from Mercyhurst University this month, where she studied art therapy. She plans to take a gap year and then attend graduate school for psychology. She said she utilized aspects of henna throughout her studies.

"I think this is also kind of a therapeutic thing," Shaik said. "You can just do henna and be lost within it."

It didn't take long for her to start practicing her artistic skills at various cultural events for the Erie Asian Pacific American Association. For those events, Shaik said she can complete henna on a person's hand in five to 10 minutes. The dye Shaik typically uses during cultural events lasts up to a week, but other dye can last up to 20 days, Shaik said.

In early May, Erie APAA hosted its 13th annual Multicultural Asia Day. Shaik spent the afternoon doing henna for visitors, including Barbara Hossain. Hossain, an Edinboro resident, is no stranger to Shaik's work.

"I’ve known Jasmine since she was little; she goes to our mosque," Hossain said. "At these common events when she’s doing the henna I always get in line to do it because she has some nice artistry and she goes with the pictures, but also with what she feels, and I’m like that, too."

Hossain usually asks Shaik to create a simple design, which can include various flowers, vines or hearts. Hossain has been exposed to other henna artists but said Shaik's artistry doesn't compare.

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"Jasmine’s sweet and I love her as a person," Hossain said. "She listens to what I say and she always adds in a little extra, which is so lovely."

Shaik is happy to henna anybody, even if they're not of Asian descent. Even though anybody can get it, whether it's at festivals or county fairs, Shaik doesn't feel like her culture is being appropriated.

"It's interesting that others are interested in it, because it's kind of like a temporary tattoo," Shaik said. "There's not like a specific reason or spiritual thing to it. It's just a sign of beauty, it's just a cultural thing south Asian people do."
Form of artistic expression

Since her aunt's wedding, Shaik has been hired for many more weddings, covering not only the hands and arms, but the feet and legs, too. It can take up to 5 hours to finish wedding henna, Shaik said.

Shaik bases her designs off photos, but will occasionally put her own artistic twist to it, adding "mango" or "peacock" shapes as she goes.

Shown on May 13, 2022, Jasmine Shaik, 21, was introduced to henna when she was 5 years old. Now, she hennas at birthdays, weddings and various events, sharing the body art's culture with others.

"It's just my creative mind, I guess," Shaik said. "I've been doing it a long time so I know what I'm doing, and if they don't like it, I kind of just alter it."

Shaik hasn't yet grown tired of her work as a henna artist.

"I'm like, so into it," she said. "I thought of being a biology major when I went to start college first, but then I got into art. This is what I want to do. I've just had this thing for art since childhood."

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Henna artist Jasmine Shaik shares traditions of body art practice